5 Small Stones & 2 Little Squishes

I'm sitting here at the closest of three coffee shops in the greater metropolitan area of our small town.  How, you might ask, does a little town like this support three coffee shops?

It can be summed up in one word.  Winter.  Here we have eight months of snow and a four month break of "bad sledding".  We need to get out and drink hot things.

So I sit here in the corner, drinking an Elixir Of Knowledge they call "Nite Owl".  It's roasted and ground just 30 feet to my left and brewed just 15 feet to my right.  They call it Nite Owl due to the caffeine content.  You ain't sleepin' if you drink this stuff.

It's like filling up Phlegm the Taurus at the gas station pump labeled "Racing Fuel".

Vrroom, baby.

This morning I need something to cut the fog and the funk.  It's been one of those weeks.

Life seems to be in flux.  Relationships are changing.  Work is changing.  The body is changing.  And none of the changes seem to be positive.  Things seem off-kilter.  And it's not a comfortable feeling.  Like sitting in church and realizing you have an extra sock stuck in your underwear.  There's really nothing you can do but hang in there and wait it out.

A pull of this Elixir blasts out a memory.

Huh. Yeah.  It feels like that, too

I'm flashing back to grade school.  I just traded a kid my cookie for his hot dog and another kid a nickel for his.  A three hot dog lunch.  And now, at recess, I'm stuck on the merry-go-round as five kids try to make it go fast enough to take off.  Just hang on, baby.  Hang on.

I know this is not deemed a positive attribute in today's world but I like the status quo.  The mundane.  The "stuck in a rut" lifestyle that has me settling into the muck and silt of my nice little stream.   Life flowing by.  Me watching it flow by.  Just a stone in a brook.

The next pull of  the Elixir Of Knowledge jolts me hard.  Oh my.

And we're off...

In my mind's eye I have become that smooth stone in a small brook.  The water swirls slowly past, the light dappled, the world blurred except for my immediate surroundings .  Things are content.  Static.  And I'm surprisingly okay with that.

And then two small squishes move the stream bed in front of me.  The squishes come from two small sandaled feet.  Suddenly a small hand plunges into my watery world.  It pushes me, rolling me over before yanking me from the stream bed.  Pulling me out of my world into something different.

Waaaaay different.

I lay in this small hand as a breeze - a totally new experience - blows across me.  There's a warmth that I've never felt before as light hits me directly and unfiltered.

Wow.  This is amazing!  I could stay here forev-

The hand suddenly closes and I'm dropped into darkness.  No light. No water. No breeze.

Just the dark.  And a jarring motion that causes me to roll back and forth in the dark.  Then the motion stops, leaving me waiting.  Alone in the dark.

Suddenly there's light and the familiar hand.  But it puts me into darkness again.  But this time the motion goes round.  And round.  Faster.  Then terrifyingly faster.  The world is reduced to the dark, spinning out of control.

And then light.  And wind.  And incredible speed as I fly toward a mammoth face that is screaming in rage.  I slam into it, just missing the edge of a thick, metal helmet.

I sink and stick, like I'm back in my brook. And the screaming has stopped.  It's quiet, deathly quiet as I see the ground rush up to meet me.  And it's dark once again.

But now I hear a loud, earth-shattering cheer and feel the ground tremble as a multitude pounds by, rushing forward to victory.  And now I'm back in the coffeehouse.

Okaaaay.

I carefully put the Elixir down as I blink my eyes.  Now that - that's some kinda coffee.

I get up, stretch, and get a refill.  Letting it cool, I sit and stare at the wall, letting my mind process this newest of stories.

And I realize that He has a reason for the dark and the spinning.  And it might have more to do with what He wants to do for others than what I want to have done for me.

One little, flying stone changed the course of history.  But it wasn't the stone.  It was the One who chose it, who placed it in the right spot, and then gave it power to do what needed to be done.

Huh.  I guess we're all just stones in His hand.  And we all have something incredibly impossible to do.  But He makes the impossible possible.

By His power. And by His arm.

All in His timing.

And, yeah, my fellow stones, it's not fun - all this spinning in the dark.  Frankly, it sucks.

But, oh momma, just wait'll He lets us fly...