Day 30: Sometimes you gotta go...

It was a nice day. Ulrich and I needed to blow off some steam so we left work a little early and took the boys to the park for a picnic dinner. No sooner did we get to the park, set up our blanket and start eating did I feel the sudden and immediate urge to go to the bathroom. I ignored it. Sometimes it will go away. Not this time. Eddie was so happy spending time with us. He wanted, of course, for me to run and climb with him on the playground and go down every slide. By the 5th slide, I was agonizing. "Buddy, mommy needs to go home." "Noooooooooooo! I want to go down the slides with mommy!" To Eddie's chagrin, Ulrich stayed at the park with the boys while I jumped in the car and drove home. It was that urgent.

Sometimes the need to go is urgent. We feel a growing need to go that doesn't stop and only gets louder and more consuming the longer we ignore it. It becomes an imperative and it won't be silenced. Sometimes the need is biological - the need to eat or go to the bathroom or have a baby. Sometimes it's emotional - the need to run off stress or to retreat to a safe place in the midst of self-doubt or vulnerability. And sometimes, the call is spiritual. It is the very breath of the spirit sweeping over you, filling you with a passion that is strange and foreign but none the less an unmistakable call to action as real and urgent as needing to go to the bathroom.

I've seen it in people and in myself, this spiritual call to "go" to follow a new path. People called to ministry. People called to serve. People called to fight injustice. Sometimes we go because we choose to. Sometimes we go because we must and can't choose otherwise.