My house is silent, and that is strange.  Ryker's in China, Quincie and Carl are at church, and the dogs are asleep.  The only sounds are my fingers on the keyboard, and the faint rustle of wind and rain outside.  No music, no TV, no conversation, no dishwasher, no washing machine, no anything to disturb my peace.

The really strange thing is that I'm not asleep.  Normally if I get this quiet and still, I'm out in seconds flat.  Not tonight, here I sitting, musing in the silence.

It seems like life goes in cycles, or waves, and things never stay the same for very long.  This can be good or bad, depending on your perspective, but it is an unavoidable fact.  Everything is always in a state of change.  Sometimes life moves like a roller coaster - changing so fast that we can hardly keep up with it.  Our body is racing forward and our heart and stomach lag behind, leaving panic and terror in the gap.  When life is like this, each new challenge comes at us faster than we can process, and we lurch and retch as we struggle to keep up.

Right now it feels more like hiking an unknown trail.  I am setting the pace, but I have no idea what is around the next corner, or up the next hill, or even if there will be a corner or a hill.  I'm not lurching or flying along in panic, but rather straining forward, to see what is waiting for me.  The lack of a map is frustrating, and the fleeting glimpses I occasionally catch of the path ahead are not enough to satisfy my curiosity.  I can see the mountain top, the ultimate goal, but the path is obscured, and at times that is maddening.  I long to meet someone coming back down the path that can tell me all about it, or find someone that has been up there before that wants to go again, and lead me.  But, no, I mostly get to climb the mountain alone.  My fellow travelers are few, and just as uninformed. 

The challenge is to have patience, and enjoy the journey.  There is joy in every step, and too much focus on what is to come, limits the ability to see what is here now.