Pathways and lanterns. Two design elements you'll find strewn throughout my home. You could jam the two metaphors and you'd have me hankering for a light for my path. I see a warm, lit lantern as a type of lighthouse, too. While I don't decorate with lighthouses, I enjoy looking at images and artwork featuring them. They show up in in nearly every type of coastline scenario you could imagine. I've seen them pictured amid a riot of flowers in my favorite colors, the sea idling beneath them in the glistening sun. I've seen them portrayed as rocks standing tall as wildly churning waters nearly engulf them. I've seen them proud and plain, elegant and New England to the hilt, or small and humble vestiges of a by-gone era nestled near a fading ocean, looking lonely as evening draws near. There is a lot you can do with all three of these images. They evoke joy and sorrow simultaneously as I arrange, add candles, tilt my head and sigh or run my hand longingly across a statuette or framed print. I often swallow hard and gather the skirts of my heart to move back into what can be a mundane, colorless day.
So where are we without dreams? Where are we without that one thing or things that makes our hearts beat faster, makes us feel full without food? We were made for passion, created for adventure. Our souls crave diversity, open to creativity, breathe in those things we are best at, those things that add panache to the song that is our daily life. God programmed us that way! We are His masterpieces, after all, the crowning achievement in His creation. His sons and daughters.
If you love nature, take pictures. If you enjoy poetry, write some! If your heart is drawn to children as a moth to a flame, volunteer at church and nurture some! Make something happen. People who are perpetually unfulfilled have something to hide. That something is the steadfast act of ignoring their very design, of boxing their potential, of caging their beating heart so tightly it seems to gurgle rather than pulse. They've become the masters of excuse, plodding from duty to duty, hating life and failing to understand why!
If you don't know what God is calling you to do with the rest of your life, get on your face before Him and find out. Pull out a journal and write down what He says. Then. Do. It. All. You'll never live another unfulfilled moment.
