I wish I knew how many articles  I’ve read about the “5 Things To Know Before Getting Married,” the “20 Things to Do to in Your Twenties,” the “8 Ways to Know You’re Calling” and on and on.  There are a whole host of questions that hang in the air at this juncture in life – but this is what I DO know: this season feels simultaneously all about me and none at all about me.

Now’s the time to buy the ridiculous(ly awesome) egg chair for no other reason than it’s PRETTY. Now’s the time to buy the dishes from Anthro that I don’t totally need and the dress from Madewell simply because it winked at me from across the store. I don’t have to ask another person for permission or even their opinion. Now’s the time to buy that, to go there, to do this, to give here because they feel right to me.

But now is also the time to pour. Pour, pour, pour into the family nearby, into the girls that are my dearest community, into the places and faces that for two years now, have slowly, steadily, truthfully poured into me and built the life I now have. Now is the time to fill my nights with their faces and stories – across restaurant tables, living room floors and random parking lots. Now is the time to slow down, ask them long questions and leave even longer spaces for their answers. Now is the time to sit in unsettling quiet and listen for the Lord. Now is the time to leave all I have and am open to Him. Now is the time to give all of them all that I can, because the other thing that I know is that times change. They shift or all-together slip through our fingers quickly and quietly, often gone before we even realize they’re going.

Whatever time or season I’m in, it’s dangerously easy to look behind and ahead at what I wish this time was about.  Doing that though will waste today and waste the exquisitely sweet time that this is. Now’s the time for now. For them. For me. Now, just now.