The word horizon describes that boundary line, far out in the distance, where earth and sky meet. It is the line which divides the landscape before us into two distinct realms: the known and the unknown. Curiously, the word also bears the definition of limitation – the boundary line of one’s own knowledge, perception or experience.
I have been both intrigued as well as intimidated by many a horizon in my life. I have stood before possibility and longed to embrace the challenge and adventure of reaching for of all the hidden potential wrapped into it. And I have come face to face with limitation and cowered before the reality of my own lack and sufficiency in areas where I have desperately needed to reach beyond the small places I’ve come to know.
In my recovery journey, the horizon has come to represent the space where God’s power meets my pain, and therefore the place where new and unimaginably beautiful things become possible. In motherhood, the horizon has become an invitation to break through the limitations I’ve inherited and press toward the edges of possibility, for the sake of the ones whose eyes are always watching and whose hearts are waiting to inherit a new horizon.
Yesterday came and went, as most holidays do, and I found myself struggling with the familiar tendency to grab ahold of something preservable. Life is fleeting, ever more quickly than before, and I understand the value of moments that possess the potential to become monuments.
If I am, if we are not intentional with our moments, we will soon see them fade away like the sands on the seashores that are washed out toward another distant horizon. But if we become determined to seize something of what passes through our fingers in our moments, we can begin to build castles where dreams of greater things are born, and where horizons become voices that beckon us into those greater things.
So in the midst of celebrations and gifts and sprays of flowers that will soon fade into memory, I searched for something to treasure, for something to preserve and build onto. I reached for a horizon I could justifiably chase, rather than one I could merely view from a comfortable distance. I know Mother’s Day is a day in which we are meant to take a seat and be relieved of some of the responsibility that consumes our normal, daily lives. But Mother’s Day, for me, has always provided an opportunity to pause and ponder, and to dream and wander. I always find myself imagining greater possibilities, and looking for more distant horizons than we’ve come to know.
It’s not that I fail to appreciate where we are, or even that my over-achiever tendencies are given room to take over. In fact, I fight to shut down the unhealthy tendency I know I have to be unsatisfied and to always want more or better. I have learned to dig for and celebrate the beauty of daily, small progression, and I have come to appreciate my children and this journey for whatever it looks like with each new morning and evening.
But there is still a voice within me that beckons me toward the promise of more. Where it is good to celebrate the moments that become another year, there is always a whisper that says, “Don’t rest here…”
Let me quickly clarify that I understand and value the principle of rest, and so this is not a violation of that very necessary gift. Instead, I believe it is the unfolding, compelling grace of God inviting me, as a woman and as a mother, to not only know more than I have known, but more even than I think I can know.
Dear Woman of Breakthrough, I pray that your Mother’s Day was full of recognition and celebration for all of your toil in the lives of the children God has given to you. But I also pray that whatever you have inherited, and whatever you have come to be comfortable with, will become places too small for you to continue to inhabit. This time next year, I pray that you will be able to say you were stretched and pulled toward new horizons, and that you grew as a mother in ways you never knew you needed to.
May your vision for the next generation grow, and may you be inspired to stretch out your tent pegs and make room for more than you ever thought possible. May you break through the limitations of former things, and into all the possibility God has planted within you as a mother to the children you are surrounded by, who will grow up to rule this now broken world.
Whether your own or someone else’s, there are sons and daughters waiting to receive as their inheritance a horizon that will take them beyond where you and I now stand.
So Dear Woman of Breakthrough, be empowered by the grace of God to chase after the more that is being held out to you!
(Photo images courtesy of http://www.pixabay.com)
She Dances Over Graves 