Remember what I told you about butterflies...?

People say that there's a first for everything... Pretty accurate, right?
More than once will we take our first steps and our first words.

First steps into a new period in our lives, or the first words we exchange with a new friend. As obvious as it may seem, those 'firsts' can certainly be only the beginning for something bigger, even bigger than we initially thought when it first started. One thing always leads to another thing.

Take, for example, the first steps outside of college. I graduated college in May, walking straight into training for doing college ministry. Now I've been on the journey of gathering supporters to be able to start working with students face to face, one fumbling artist to another.
Steps have been taken to recieve a studio in Philadelphia, a haven where I can work on art and exchange ideas... a place where my creative flower box can bloom in whatever direction it so chooses. Lynne and I had started tearing old, retro wooden accents from the walls in the studio on Thursday; another beginning. It's so exciting and so refreshing to start working on the room, to get it all nice and cleaned up, so we can get in there and start making art again.

If you asked me what I was going to do with my life about a year ago, I would have never dreamed this is where I would be.

In the season of Autumn, when things die or either go into hibernation, so many things have been brought to life. So many new things are cropping up to create an interesting paradox of newness in the midst of Fall. One of these days, I ought to conjure up some kind of visual representation of this, since the theme of life in the midst of death seems to keep coming up.
One of the things that has developed in this season of newness is definitely something I wasn't looking for. It caught me by suprise, and honestly it scared me: his name is Scott.

While I make no angle to be overtly girly or dramatic, there's something that has to be said about this new moment in my life. There are so many new things going on right now, that being in a relationship became one of the last things I even really wanted to happen. Nevermind the fact that, after training, I gave that very desire over to the Lord and pushed it to a quiet corner in my mind. I didn't want the distraction, I didn't want to deal with it. It was the last thing I needed.
God had something else in mind, it seems.
When I first met Scott, a scant three months ago, I seriously wanted little to do with him. Not in a mean, snobbish sort of way; but in the kind of way in which there was just so much coming at me at once that I was just too busy to make a new friend from Jersey. However, like I said, God had something else in mind. I would love to go into novel-esque detail about the story, but I don't feel as though this Blog is the place to do such things. Although I do enjoy the fact that he presented his case to me by starting out with, "I have a friend that came to me for advice about a girl..."
Adorably transparent, and I wouldn't have Scott any other way.
I appreciate the way the Lord worked it out, since it only proves that once you let God handle things and open your hands instead of clinging so tightly to the way you think things ought to be, it really is better. If I remained white-knuckled about fighting Him on this, nothing would have come of it. It teaches me a few things about how often I actually resist something God may be working out... it shows me for the jagged rock in the middle of the river that I really can be, pressing against the flow with all my might. Could it be that, because I haven't been in a relationship before, that the Lord wants to teach me something in the midst of all the other new things He wants to teach me? God can do anything He wants to.... and if He's the kind of God that knows what we can and cannot handle, then I suppose I can trust Him this time too.
God is central, and I need to remember that.

"Spinning around and around
Until my left was my right and up became down.
With just one look you knocked me off of my feet.
So unable to speak. Oh how you made me weak." - Mae, Ready & Waiting to Fall

I must be crazy.