The bird returned to sleep in its egg.

It's funny, getting ready to move to a new town thinking about the comfortability it might bring and all the questions, what ifs, and whys and hows that come with it. Many of you know, but many more are about to find out that I am moving to Birmingham, Alabama for several reasons, but for the most part it is for me. I am doing it for myself, a move that is not dependent or reflective of love or treasure that I have hidden in some field in North Alabama.

But with all of that, with miles and new faces and new jobs comes a frightening reality: restart.

I get to meet new people (which I love) and I get to see new things (which I adore) and I get to go down new roads (which I need). But they don't know me, and I get the choice to let them or not. One thing that this past year has taught me, which I wanted it do and didn't want it to at the same time, is growing up, being a man, making decisions, taking roads, being in charge, being bold and honest and gutsy and stupid and falling and getting up and fallingt again. It has taught me to say what I feel, to really love people, and that I can invest in lives and not because someone is watching me or it makes me look attractive. I am doing things because of me, for me and for G-d. I am more free than ever before.

At the same time, though, I walked into a church today, though it felt more like a marketing campaign for Jesus, that he needs to be sold to kids today because our generation and the one under us have such an attention deficit disorder that Jesus and G-d must be flashy and artsy and smooth and modern. Lights flash and many thousands of dollars are put towards the sound system and people seemingly clap and smile and act like everything's fine. And I wonder if it really is, that maybe I am just this dark spot, this little piece of cancer that appears normal, but really infects those around him, and soon I'll have killed most of them. I really feel that way, that I am the struggling believer in this sea of tranquility. But the preacher preaches, he is a seminary professor who talks on Gideon and how afraid he was, how he didn't trust G-d, and I identify with him, thinking about this new place, these new people, my old sin, my dirty rotten past, and the thing that covers it all. And I am refreshed and I am worried all at the same time. What a war.

Sometimes I wish that everyone in the world, at one time, would stand still. And all at one time we would take one step back just to see, that maybe, just maybe, we could stop the world from spinning that somehow our gathered momentum and our togetherness and we as one could pause time and even take another step back and another and another until maybe we actually could travel back in time, spinning the world backwards. And flowers would turn into seeds, and birds would go to sleep in eggs, and my heart would be mended and the stitches would wind themselves back into a ball and the trainwreck that feels like my life sometimes would go back to the first train depot.

In my heart I wish such things, but in my head I know these things to be impossible and quantum physics and thermal dynamics and all sorts of science clogs any kind of romanticism from reaching my mouth and my eyes and the rest of my face. The awful truth is that I am more wretched that i could possible imagine but I am much more loved than I could dare dream.

And all of a sudden that black spot on the map doesn't feel as dark anymore. Maybe because it sees more of its own, or maybe because it sees that the light is coming. Indeed, it has arrived.