Yesterday we made it to church in time for worship, for two songs at least. I stood there pulsing with praise as my feet pressed into the floor, trying to beat the anxiety and worry of the past few weeks into the floor, down and away.

As I lifted my heart and hands in grateful praise I felt the words “wild and sweet” scrolling through my soul over and over again.  His plans for me are quenching, stretching, crazy and lovely.

Can I believe in them?

I pictured myself as a cliff diver, with toes curled around the edge of the rock, peering into azure blue ocean, longing to take the plunge.

Then the song ended and a new one began

“Come away with me, come away with me, it’s never too late, it’s not too late, it’s not too late for you.  

I have a plan for you, I have a plan for you.  It’s gonna be wild, it’s gonna be great, it’s gonna be full of me… So open up your heart and let me in.”

The courage to jump, to alight, to open up started to creep up from my toes and I felt like I could, in him, fly.

Yet, before I could take another step, the chain caught me and held me fast.

Wild and sweet?  Lord, what if it isn’t?

My mind always flashes to my parents on their wedding day, my father holding my mother’s chin in his hand, posing for the camera pre-kiss.  Their eyes so obviously full of love and hope, those lovely wedding feelings that brings the congregation to tears.

Did they open up their hearts to you?  Did they jump in only to find depression, brain damage, near bankruptcy, heart attacks and death by the train tracks?

How can I trust that this loving God has all these wild and sweet plans for me when I still feel so broken, skeptical?  When Holiday weekends bring an acute sting of loneliness and feeling just plain orphaned?

I don’t believe that God sent any of this pain, but how can I believe that I have mostly wild and sweet in store for me when this world is such a broken, tangled mess?

This world is the stage for his plans, and it will certainly bring me stinging pain, over and over again.  Perhaps today, perhaps now in this very next jump.

Can I really totally faithfully and forever immerse myself in the waters where I taste it all as sweet, come what may?

Maybe, maybe not, definitely not today.

But I can take slow and purposeful steps to the edge of this cliff, this today that lies before me.

Each day, and so many moments held in them are decisions to jump.  The leap of believing that it will always be wild and sweet isn’t something that I can do today, but still, I can jump.

It’s not about one big leap but a series of leaps where we choose to leave the high heat of the cliff.  Where we make the choice to fall into something that cools and surrounds us completely in deep, dangerous blue unknown.

And so I spin around from my retreat and go for it, madly hurling myself into something bigger and lovelier than my pain and questions.

Knowing that some leaps will bring cuts and rocks, but that I cannot survive up here any longer, I need the crazy swirling blue to surround me now.