After The Storm

Sitting here after a rainstorm, the water is loud and falls from the mountain behind my house. Usually there is a small trickle but today the recent storm has turned this quiet section of woods into a powerful sight. I am sitting on a rock in the middle, wondering why I am so sad. There are obvious reasons, the school year has started, and I am still an unemployed English teacher, Sallie Mae has been calling and I am unsure what the future will bring. I watch students go back, teachers go back, and I would love to join them. But also I think it is a time of transition, the season is changing, bits of red and yellow dot the landscape now, summer is winding down and I am about to go into my first autumn without textbooks to buy; my first year without a degree to pursue. My son has made his way to his junior year of college on his own and I feel as if I don't have a direction, I don't have a clear cut goal. So I am sitting in the middle of a crazy directionless waterfall, its water spilling haphazardly over numerous rocks, unable to form a single path because of the sheer amount of water. The water makes its own path. Maybe I have choices; I don't have to just teach high school English, although I enjoy that. I am a teacher and a writer. I need to teach and I need to write, but maybe the form of my employment will be different than what is pictured in my head. The water is making its own path, maybe I should be as well. The answers are here in my church, in the power and strength of the falls, in the slippery rocks and the crazy act of climbing to get a better view (coming down was scary). I have made it this far, maybe what is around the bend will surprise me. Once I reached the "top" of these falls I saw they went higher than I had previously thought. I just don't know, and that is ok. The Universe knows, and that should be enough for today. All it takes is a step up or a step forward, hold on to a branch and hopefully enjoy the view.