Expanding

I meet with a most fantastic group of women on Tuesday mornings.  We've been meeting just over a year now.  We meet with a purpose, doing some form of spiritual study together during the week and then getting together to talk it through.

My mind is expanding.

Every single week we talk through hard things, fun things, life things.  We lay it all out on the table, even when we are dancing around actual terms due to the wandering children around us.  These are moments when we move past talking about diapers and teachers and last weekend's plans.  These are moments when we want to talk more to learn more, to wrestle and struggle with ourselves during the week and then grow a little under the light of friendship.

I think if I studied on my own, I wouldn't grow as much, not being forced to acknowledge and accept realities out loud.  There is something about having to form an opinion, delicately choose words, and then send it out into the world that makes you do more than gloss over pat questions.  We put our ideas out there, our worries and concerns and questions, and then turn them over and over and over again in our hands, smoothing out the rough edges, turning them into precious gems.

These days slip by so fast I can clearly see the trap of Time, ticking seconds forward whether they are filled productively or not.  I have spent 34 years on this earth so far, and I have changed so much already.  Yet I can see there is more, much more, to be done.  I am not one to live nostalgic for times gone by.  I love and live for these days right now, but I want to roll forward, always forward, into the future.  I don't look back at who I was, but I do want to make sure that I'm not standing still.