Interim Times
Fall is an interim time. I recently received for my birthday the book To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue. I’ve been feeling unsettled and thought this book might help. The unsettled feeling is coming from this season of our life, an interim time. Our daughter is a senior in college and our son is a senior in High School. We have always thought their spacing worked great for our family. However, this year is proving to be a bit much.
There is lots of advice to give and decisions to be made over the next few months. Decisions that will greatly impact what the future holds for our little family. However, it is impossible to know for certain (who doesn’t like certainty?) what the best course of action is for the next stage of our lives. So, we wait and hope and try to take each day as it comes.
One of the great things about Peace is that we’re not a young family church, and we’re not an older retired people church. We’re a “we’re here for you no matter your life stage” church. We have people whose children have graduated and moved on and people for whom that milestone is many years away. There are those who don’t have kids and those whose kids will never leave home. There are many of the possible life stories attending a church which affirms them all.
However, if you – like me – are feeling unsettled due to your particular stage of life, here is a blessing for the interim times from John O’Donohue’s book.
For the interim time:
When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,
No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.
In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems TO believe the relief of dark.
You are in the time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.
The path you took to get here has been washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.
“The old is not yet old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.”
You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.
Everyone else has lost the sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust
You know you have to make your own way through.
As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have overgrown.
What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.
Creator,
In all the stages of our lives, you are there. Grace to us this week. May we find it, and may we give it to others.
Amen
Michelle is a wife, mother, sister, friend, a chocolate and coffee lover, reader of books, listener of podcasts, and a travel enthusiast.