Six months ago, I brought my car to the shop and was informed the repairs would take four hours. I live two hours from the city, so I took a loaner vehicle and set off to kill time. I went for a hike, reveling in the crisp single digit temps as I ascended the heights to a lovely overlook. I wandered a garden and let the soul-shaking soundwaves of the peace bell wash over me. I watched my breath condense in twisting clouds to tangle with bare tree limbs overhead. And still, 2.5 hours remained. So I took an amble through the shopping mall, ending up in the music shop where I picked at ukuleles, strummed guitars, and plunked piano keys, all without looking anxiously at my watch.

And I felt joy.

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I was born a few decades ago and have been family-ing and hugging and caring and calling, and then I was baptized a dozen years ago and have been making bulletins and sharing stories and updating websites and playing music and planning and smiling and cheering, and then I got a new job three years ago and have screened and examined and treated and cupped and scraped and needled and counted and documented and typed and typed and typed, and then I bought a house two years ago and have been painting and planting and trimming and cooking and cleaning, and then my whole life just became a run-on sentence – and I am anxiously gasping for air.

That trip to the car shop was revelatory. In those four hours of unstructured time, God planted a reminder that He not only knit together my bones and ligaments, but He also formed my inmost being and is familiar with the song in my heart (Psalm 139). On that frigid day in December, God punct me: He placed a period where commatic pauses were insufficient. I was forced to stop – and joy caught up.

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Joy ambles. It strolls and saunters. It pauses by the lake to skip stones, and squats down in the middle of the path to count ants. Joy cannot be rushed.

Because of this, I am embracing a full stop. A solid period. A (less than punctual) punctuation mark.

I am tearfully – and a bit fearfully – saying goodbye to this busy season of my life.
I am stepping away from my career and taking a summer sabbatical, taking time to let joy catch up again. I am letting go of some good things – enriching relationships with coworkers, fulfilling investment in the lives and well-being of patients, a sense of purpose in my career – to make space for potentially better things.
It’s scary and exciting; invigorating and paralyzing; exhausting and rejuvenating.

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A 14th-century Persian poet penned:
Every child has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who ever does Anything weird,
But the God who knows only 4 words.
And keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come Dance with Me, come dance.”
-Hafiz

The Creator placed a song in my heart. And I believe He waits ever so patiently, in tux and tails, to have the next dance.