The Need to Be...

Oh, the words have been within me, begging to get out, but I've had to hush them. So garbled and beyond recognition to even me, to spill them out would have been foreign...

No one would have understood. Least of all, me.

So, as I sit here, I realize our lives are no more than chapters...

Composing one big book at the end.

I've been with those as their books came to completion...

Sometimes, even, in the middle of the story...

Leaving us begging for more.

My story, as of today, is yet unfinished.

I await the ending of this chapter so that I can move on to the good part of the book, but like a dutiful reader...

I will read this part, as difficult and laborious as it is, knowing that when it's over, I'll have forgotten most of it, so that I can get to the part where the story starts to turn.

All the while knowing that the parts that irritate me today are the parts that I will miss tomorrow.

I am still working at making my life to be an old friend I find in a book...

That I could sit on the back porch swing and read over and over and over again.

It still hasn't happened, but I know that one day it will.

My chapters unfold...

I find myself looking back to those chapters when my children were young and I chased them and bathed them and laughed with them and loved them and their chubby little faces, dirty from whatever adventure had captivated them on that day...

And, I'm longing to get to the part in the story where I find resolution and my children are grown and happy and settled and their lives are nothing short of greatness and happiness.

My mother knows how I feel.

She's still reading that same part of her life's book.

I await the part of my story where I have it all resolved.

That I am settled.

And, at long last...

Happy.

In every sense of the word.

Secure.

Nothing in the world can touch me.

It hasn't happened yet.

And, people, I'm not ready to stop reading.

I'll continue this story on and on and on.

Because, as sure as there will be a tomorrow...

There is an ending.

It was written for me before I was even born upon this earth.

And, honestly, knowing that Someone...

The One who created me...

Knows how this story ends...

Is enough for me.

For right now, I am all that I need to be.