Each issue of FullFill contains surprise tidbits ranging from ideas for organization, trend tips, recipes, little-known facts to who knows what!

 

​Bonus:

“The Between”

Copyright: Elisa Morgan, 2009

Between the diving board and the water

Between one trapeze and another

Between here and there

Top and bottom

Bed and floor

Test and grade

Take off and landing

January and December

Zero and fifty-five

School and afterschool

Afterschool and bedtime

Morning and night

Night and morning.

Between birthdays

Between Christmases

Between Anniversaries

Between please and thank you

Between I like you and I love you

Between I’m sorry and I forgive

Between beginning and ending

Start and stop

Today and tomorrow

Now and then

Breathing in and breathing out

Between: in the space or time separating.

In The Between comes fear. The unknown. The what could be. The unsure. The what if? The might happen. The now what? The oh no! The can’t happen. The could happen. In The Between comes fear.

In The Between comes trust. The unknown. The what could be. The unsure. The what if? The might happen. The now what? The oh no! The can’t happen. The could happen. In The Between comes trust.

Fear and Trust. Two responses to The Between.

Most of the time we don’t like The Between. Hovering, falling, stepping, launching from this to that has a great feel to it in our imaginations. But in the doing, as we leave one and move toward the other, discomfort surfaces. We hesitate. We consider clinging. Sometimes we do. We notice the span before reaching the next. It looks bigger than we’d thought. We second guess. We worry. We wonder. We recalculate, reassess, reexamine, rethink, re-everything.

We consider why not just remain where are? Safe. Stagnant. Missing where we’re going. Then we’d avoid The Between. But then we discover that mostly, we really can’t. “Fifty” arrives whether or not we want it to or feel ready to be it.

In Through Painted Deserts, Don Miller talks about the true impossibility of avoiding change.

The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God’s way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends…Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.

I want to keep my soul fertile for changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently. (p.x)

Change brings about The Between. If we didn’t change, we wouldn’t have The Between.

So. While we don’t really have the option of avoiding The Between, what do we have? What we have in The Between is our focus. Our absorption in it. Our realization of what we experience and offer in it. Our attitude through it.

If we are really in The Between, we will fear. The only way around or out of the experience of fear is denial. And in denial we miss everything, not just the fear.

In the fear of The Between, we can trust. Faith requires doubt because if you know, you don’t have faith.

In The Between we can mix fear with trust and trust with fear. Whatever we face, whatever we are about to do, we can do it scared. Scared enough to focus on The Between in such a way that we experience more of our need and therefore more of God meeting it.

It is possible to be okay in The Between. When he was four years old my grandson Marcus asked, “Yia Yia, when we are in heaven, do we miss being on earth?” “I don’t think so, Marcus, I think God made us to be happy where we are.” God has made us to be able to be okay wherever we are.

God is in The Between.

The Israelites faced The Between with fear and trust and saw God in it. Then the angel of God, who had been traveling in front of Israel’s army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, coming BETWEEN the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side; so neither went near the other all night long. Exodus 14:10-20

David expressed his conviction of God’s presence in The Between in Psalm 139:1-18. O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways…You hem me in — behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.

God is in The Between with us. As we juggle fear and trust, he invites us to experience our need so that we can experience his presence in this specific Between.

Lord, you are our dwelling place in all generations. Between the here and the there. Between the now and the then. Between today and tomorrow. Between hello and goodbye. Between goodbye and hello.

Between the diving board and the water.