I recently lost my neighbor, my friend, tragically. She just got sick and died within days while celebrating her birthday. It’s a loss the whole community has felt.

Just as the long season of grief, sadness, and anxious tendencies was fading into the green grass, a burden of mourning came over me with something new. A life lived to its beautiful fullest rests in the earth, remembered well, and I am here wondering if I’ll ever get there. Life to the fullest. A pang of slight jealousy as I weep at the sight of a sweet friend. Not something I should ever feel, sinful, but my human tendencies push themselves in.

I kick up the ant hills in my garden and pull out the weeping flowers that have lost their time, knowing that I have lived a life people could only ever dream about. A life that people don’t believe or try to relate to but can’t. It’s been full yet in an unexpected way still with holes in it. Holes… and it’s unfortunate that I focus too much on those.

We can plan and dream and wish on that star, and pick a path that God just allows us to take. We can send little prayers to God over the little longings of our hearts. However, God may push us to take a different route to get to that dream or goal, or His will may say otherwise. We don’t have to get stuck on comparing a life lived to ours. I don’t have to compare my life to my beautiful friend’s. We’re both full.

The thing is, we can all still have our dreams and wishes, longings to see or hear or to be part of something extraordinary. The Lord may be nurturing those things inside of us. Maybe He put them there to inspire something we can’t quite understand. Or, maybe He put them there because those things are not so out of grasp.

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. -Psalm 16:11

I’ll just be inspired by what the Lord has given me: insight and awe at His creation, wisdom, and experience. His future plans are just as grand and will one day be realized.