a delicate tower composed of fine lines and feathers on the wind, urgent messages in green glass bottles upon the rocky sea. Does he see our hearts and hear our prayers? Are my dreams whispers in the wind or ladders climbing the sky? What is the one thing that matters, to what should I relentlessly hold?

An easel covered in faded green sheet, cut paper plates, Popsicle sticks, and little hands peaking out from behind, small snow-boot laden legs flailing arms erupting around the sides. Stiff arms and legs and alien languages become robots murmuring in the background. Here a Japanese Space Alien, here a French one. Everyone is fascinated with their country of origin and clay is a hot commodity. High fives and synonyms for "good job" are the highlight of the day and she is stressed out about having to put her snowpants on at school.

"They seem happier this year," she said, talking about letting go of units and agendas in favor of more free play and "student-led learning". I thought about years-past class discussions about the ideas of traffic and the personification of vacuum cleaners, remembered long chapters in text books about Italian children discovering trees in a thousand ways.

I drove home in the crisp cold darkness and thought about this morning's plot-free outer-space play that seemed to come to an appropriate end with a dance party, complete with impromptu song making. I thought about myself standing there in the back of the room, thinking, "I can't believe that I get paid to be a part of this." I thought about the rarity it is for these children-- starting now and for the next 12 years-- to be in an environment free of extreme scrutiny. They are free to simply be a part of a play without being required to make logical sense. It is appropriate for the show to end with a dance party and everyone laying on the floor laughing. There will be no grades, no feedback, no judgment. They just get to try it out.

I think about this beautiful thing that I get to be a part of for a few hours a day. How right it seems that the background music to my work in the copy room is the laughter of children simply enjoying everything that is to be enjoyed. I think about how "swinging" and "playing catch" are major portions of my job description. I thought to myself as I served snacks today, "It's sort of like hosting a party everyday."

I lay sick in bed on Tuesday, hardly able to keep my eyes open-- a whole day to indulge in much-needed sleep, and my primary thought was, "I just wish I could be there," thinking of hair-bows and tiny drawings.
...

It's been a year now. What a strange, beautiful, amazing year it has been. Place me beside myself, these two people twelve months apart-- would you see me in there? Somewhere between? I often see this image of myself, staring out the wide windows, that white, white door-- all so stark-- I see myself standing there in that kitchen, full of terror. Who am I? What have I become? Who am I headed for? I looked inside and saw.... nothing. So little. An empty shell, lost. A dry flake of heart. A head full of answers and a heart full of burned out wicks. lost lost lost.

It's been a year now and now I find myself asking this whisp of a question: What happened to my dreams? It's been a year now and I can't help but realize that so many things have changed. And I think many of my dreams have changed with the weather, with the city. Changed with me.

If I am honest, I have to say that often I am afraid because the passions, the longings, the hopes, and the goals that used to drive me are simply... gone. The things I wanted so badly four, five, six years ago are just that-- things I wanted then. And it isn't that I don't want them now. I just don't have the drive, the passion, the desire that I did then. Why? I am not sure.

I wonder, though, as I sit here, in this chair, January 13, 2011, if perhaps what drove me then had less to do with the thing itself. I ask myself if I wasn't driven more by the desire for self-sufficiency, if I wasn't running after a way to keep from really needing anyone, if I was simply determined to be something. I found it useful to say things about a "calling" and matter of "can't-not," but I am wondering now...

It's been a year now and I am still asking myself a lot of hard questions. I am facing down this sense of grayness that I still feel about teaching. This something that continues to exhaust me. Something outside my reach. Perhaps it is this matter that actually touching this dream still feels too big for me-- even though my education, even those around me, tell me that I have what it takes, that I will do well, I am... afraid.

This seems to be the only word I seem able to find. It is, perhaps, a similar feelings to jumping off the ledge for me. Even when I know there is something above, holding me, I always find it impossible to jump. I am frozen. Why am I afraid? I am not sure. A sense of aloneness, I suppose. It feels much like walking into the darkness. A vulnerability. An extreme potential for failure. A totally new experience that, truth be told, I am afraid to walk alone.

What is alone versus not-alone? I don't know this answer either. I can think of many trite things to say, many easily-said, harder-to-swallow things that someone else might say. And yet the sense of difficulty seems, perhaps the greatest of my life. I am facing something large that I cannot do on my own. That I don't want to do on my own.

If there is anything I would say that has changed in me over the past year is this sense of needing to everything myself. I've lived a good 23 years of my life devoted to getting everything covered on my own, figuring it all out, doing my best to keep from imposing my needs upon others. But something in my heart has changed. I've started to allow myself to be in need. I am able, now, in so many new ways, to be small, weak, broken and needy. I've learned to see that although I can read the manuals and figure it out in some difficult way, say I manage to muddle through on my own, there is a great deal more goodness and depth to simply letting others in to my need. Two are better than one, I believe some wise sage said once.

Yet-- here is this duanting thing that I've closed the door on for a year. I've walked away, ignored it, saying I've had other things to do. And perhaps this is true. But I think it is also time that I face the fear, scale the wall, dive in.

I have been thinking about the delicate balance between dreams, desires, trust, and risk. They all seem to hold hands in this tedious sky-dive of life. There are dreams and desires that must be held loosely-- surrendered, but not crushed, discarded, or destroyed. The feather must rest upon the hand of the dreamer. We entrust the whole of our selves in the hand of the father, coming to Know his love, experiencing his care, believing his goodness. We come to a place where we know him so well that we bring our dreams, hold out our desires, knowing that he sees with a depth that is far beyond our understanding. And we wait for him there as he prepares all things for our good. Good that is worth every minute of waiting.

And then there is the risk. It is the moments of the really hard questions that force us to ask,"What is keeping me locked away? What is keeping me from reaching the top of the stairs, finding the way out of this endless labyrinth?" I have to ask myself what fears keep me locked away, what keeps me settling for less than my dreams?

I think we get stuck sometimes in these places of settled-ness, of less-than because walking into the true abundance of God is a frightening, uncharted territory that we would rather not wander. It is more comfortable for me to stay in a classified, hourly position, under someone with less imagination than I do than it is to step out and believe that the Father would actually give me my wildest dreams. There is something about that desired thing, that yet seems, too wonderful for me. It is like the one who is left in the cage so long that when the cage is unlocked in the center of an open field, they only want to remain in the cage or return to it quickly.

So, I suppose that is the word I need to face in my own heart: fear. This is the thing I must claim in order to walk through it. Perhaps I should take the advice of Parker Palmer and the Quakers, and ask, "What does this fear have to teach me?"

So it has been a year. I am certainly not the woman that I was. My values are different. My desires are different. My dreams, it seems, have shifted their shape. And I have a lot to learn, a long journey ahead.

But this I do know: that the Lord is ever-faithful, that he loves me in a deeper, more abundant way that I can ever begin to grasp, and he has promised to never leave me or foresake me. He knows my fear and yet, I know, he will continue to awaken my heart and call me forth to a new freedom and a new reality, like never before. Despite my thousand fears, I can't wait to see what he has to do in me in the coming year.