The whole of life seems full of sacred presences

The title of this post, it's something I read last semester in an article about jazz music. It's also how I feel about my life of late.

Something very awful and probably wonderful is to take place in exactly one week:

I will be twenty-five.

To say that I'm going through a quarter-life crisis (thanks, John Mayer) might be an understatement. But in the midst of all the questioning about my worth and my purpose and the seeming impossibility of a future that is real and breathing and happy, I am witness to no small miracles.

For example, this healthy seven-pound, six-day-old bundle of sacred I'm proud to call my nephew:

And his name is Parker.

There really aren't poems enough for what it means to me that he has come into the world. Today, I'm crying a little because he's so young and so new and he has a whole life of his own miracles and heartaches before him. But I'm sure God feels the same way about me, so there's not a single reason in this big blue universe to give up (even though it's ever-so-tempting).

Getting older is hard. Things haven't always panned out the way I wanted. But there are moments, sublime and deeply true, when I realize I wouldn't trade it, this life of mine.