Come, sit for a while...

Every Tuesday it's become a rhythm for my week (doesn't that sound nice rhythm...perhaps a frenzied circus would be more accurate as of late) to walk up Higuera Street to visit my favorite local coffee shop Kreuzberg and write. Each week as I make my way over I walk by a furniture store window and this chair beckons me.  

Look at it!  Doesn't it say slow down, stop, come have a seat, and rest for a while.


The curves of the wicker, the face to face design, the cup holders...everything about this chair draws me and yet terrifies me.


How I long to be invited in, asked to sit, rest, and share.  To be met by interest, intrigue, insight, and most of all love.  Yet the very thing that beckons me leaves me tempted to walk on by and move on to the next thing, the goal of the day, the efficiency of getting 'it' done.  While that may be what distracts me, what really prevails underneath is fear....do you really want me, just me? uh, what if you get bored or disinterested? the silence, what about the silence? what do I do with those moments? worse, what comes up inside when there are no words.


Yet there is something about this chair, this well constructed chair, that says You were meant for me.  I designed it this way for you.  Can you see I AM what your heart craves?


I peer through the window front, much like my fictional friend Lucy from The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, curious, a little scared, but hoping there's magic behind it.  Something greater than myself beckoning me out and inviting me into a great adventure.  But this adventure begins first and foremost with entering and re-forming the inner life, my heart.  To know and be known, love and be loved, serve and be served.


I hear His life words, Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.  I make you lie down in green pastures, lead you beside quiet waters...I restore your soul.  I will never leave you, never-ever forsake you.


With His quiet words, I feel my resistance rise up, but it must come, this too part of the invitation...but you are in these other things too, they are good things you gave me.  Finally the things we've talked about for years are actually happening...are you sure now is time to pull away...


I peer in at the chair.  So safe, so inviting, but I've never sat so close, so locked in the gaze of another. The cost so clear, the way prepared...


Honored but conflicted.  


Longing but afraid.


I continue to stare, looking in on that chair.