Here’s My Nothing

I just can’t quite see it. And I don’t think it’s only the myth of my eyes. I think it’s the truth of my reality. All I can see standing here at this shore looks a whole lot like a whole lot of nothing. Nothing less. Nothing more.

Here I am.

Empty hands. Open hands.
Nothing to hold on to. Everything to receive.

In two and a half months, our family is planning to make the move westward once more. Three wide-eyed, big-hearted kids. A dog — different than the one that traversed this trek the last time. But equally a part of us. A minivan and a Prius weathered by our whirlwind adventures. And grey hairs on me and the missus. Mine upon the chin. Wisdom whiskers, I say. Hers adorning the side of her head like the crown she deserves.

And while we know the call is to come. We stand here, these 72 days away. With nothing but a whisper wooing us on.

No job. No schools. No home. No neighborhood.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

And though we’ve been here before — some sort of limbo, déjà voodoo dance we know quite well — in this process, I’ve learned something new about myself:

I’m better at giving God my everything
than I am at giving Him my nothing.

My life is yours, God. My family. My house. My car. My guitar. My purpose. It’s all yours. Every single bit of it. I give it all to you.

But my nothing? The blank page staring back? The turn ahead I cannot see? The sea stretched long where waves are forming that I know not yet?

Now that? That’s harder. That nothing is something I want to keep holding on to. Even when it slips straight through my hands like nothing but sand.

“Go,” he told Abram. “From your country, your people, and your father’s household, to the land I will show you.”

To the land I will show you, he says.

Go.

There will be a showing, through the going.

Go. And he will show.

And so. Go we must.

“So Abram went.”

Go, because we want him to show. For we need to see. Even when right now, we surely cannot.

So show us, Lord.

The story beginning to write. The bend in the path pointing the way. The waves swelling from the deep.

I surrender today. As I will again tomorrow.
Not just my everything. But also. My nothing.

Empty hands. Open hands.
Nothing to hold on to. Everything to receive.