If I’m going to hear the Spirit, it’s going to be during the first moments of waking. Maybe while I’m still cozy in bed, maybe as I slowly trip around the bedroom finding clothes. It’s definitely those moments of twilight – half asleep, half awake – that I most clearly, most reliably hear the still quiet voice. 

The hinges of my brain creak, beginning to turn, far yet from cranking full power. Thoughts flow unfettered by my will. I’m no more directing them, than commanding them. Neither looking for order nor fitting pieces together. His spirit silently slips in, whispers truth, provides answer, offers insight, occasional confirmation. The days I don’t relish the knowingness are fewer than those I do. Praise Him for finding me somewhat worthy, sometimes, for these moments. 

As a younger person, I couldn’t distinguish between my own thoughts and His verbal breath. The two jumbled like a basket of snakes, interwoven, indiscriminately combined, unwaveringly interlocked. Time. Pain. Love. Joy. Heartache. The full experience of these and specifically, our reactions to them, mold our abilities and world view. To whom, to what, where we give credit for everything good and or bad in our life, is paramount. 

There is something very very beautiful about the experience of age. Anyone who’s lived through deep deep valleys of pain and suffering, and mountain top highs of vision and love, knows both aspects of the roller coaster is capable of breaking your heart wide open. And a broken heart is far more felt, more intensely interesting, more amazingly useable, and wonderfully more pliable than the safe one: forever unchanged, unruffled, undisturbed. It’s pain that grows us best. When we let it.