Metamorphosis, Pt. 3

It is late, dark, wet and I'm trying to get home as fast as possible.

I am cruising just fine, wipers on their highest speed when an accident up ahead brings traffic to a halt and I decide to detour on back roads to get around this obstacle.  Even though this takes me through an unfamiliar part of the city, I dismiss the map on my phone. So what if it takes a few extra turns.  I should be able to figure it out if I dare to call myself a Seattlite. 

And I do.  Soon enough I'm taking a left at the genesis of Interstate-90.  This bridge will take me home.  If I let it, it could take me all the way to Boston.  I've followed it that way before.  The ends of a road fascinate me.  It's an inexplicable sense that I find every time I go there - where that long of a road runs into the water.  I think it's the Hobbit in me; "The road goes ever on and on..."

And then I'm in the tunnels, moving fast under lights.  Like the movies, I'm driving and weighing decisions - but they're nothing compared to the weight of my heart.  My heart is trying to say so many things at once.

I'm thinking of the future. And past. And of the film I just watched. Of how much heartbreak we can handle. Of the music. Of the parking ticket that's drying on my dash. Of how difficult relationships are. Of what it would be like to get to know different mountain ranges.

Of how things can be light and dark at the same time.

Speaking of... I don't know if this is unique to Seattle, (but I like to think it is) we get these schizophrenic spring days where you can be in golden light, needing your sunglasses and yet at the same time be rained on.  Usually just a system rolling through.  But the phenomenon seems an apt description for the melancholy beauty I see in things.

Thoughts keep rushing by faster than my wheels.

But then, I turn into my driveway.  I turn once again inward to the stillness.

Nearly out of the dark...

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And this is why I love my city...

West by Northwest: City Lights from Edward Aites on Vimeo.

HOLD ONTO HOPE.

Advent is a time of waiting in the darkness, of preparing quietly and prayerfully in the tension of what is hoped for and what may be. Oftentimes, we don't even know what we are really hoping and waiting for, and even if we do, we are unsure as to whether it will come to be. For most of 2013, we lived in a consistent season of Advent, all of which was preparing for an even brighter celebration at the very end of the year.

- Via Relevant's "13 Lessons I Learned in 2013"

We have come through the darkest.  We nurtured our internal light throughout Advent.  Epiphany is upon us and it can only get lighter from here.

Cheers to 2014!