Everyone should keep a blog just to be hit over the head with TIME and its refusal to slow down, much less stop and wait for us to catch up. Since my last post, my universe has dramatically changed. I know that’s a true statement for many people … after all, it’s been 18 months. Many things can change in the time it takes a baby elephant to be knit in the womb.

The culmination of nearly all of my changes have been wonderful, though the end was definitely not in sight most of that time. In that 18 months, I closed up my very small, one quarter of a garage pottery studio and put it all in storage as we moved into a small apartment to weather a layoff and a long job search. Among other (and more pressing) questions concerning our future, I wondered whether I would have another place to call “studio.” Uncertainty is taxing.

It’s during these seasons–the difficult seasons–that I have been grateful for the stubbornness of time. It moves at its own inflexible pace, single-mindedly advancing minute by minute. During that relentless progress it takes me along, depositing me somewhere else further down the path whether I want to go or not. That’s the part I am most grateful for. I am moved along.

So I find myself here, 18 months passing since my last post, in the bend of this particular path as it turns to a new direction. Only a couple of weeks away (if the rain will stop)  from being reunited with wheel, kiln and magnificent clay, as Angus finishes the gorgeous studio he’s building me out back. A new job, a new town, a new season.

And new questions, too. Actually, maybe just the most basic question of all … who am I, now? Now that the kids are grown, now that my dear husband has given me the most precious gift of time (as in no 9-5 desk job), now that I can pursue artistic work freely? And, close on top of that one, What if …. I am no good?

But I fiercely believe and hold onto the benevolence and providence of God, and His active work in my small, daily life. So I take my steps forward …