Like a Sunset

Recently we watched the sunset from atop a mountain and it was truly breathtaking! It was Labor Day weekend, so the place we had chosen for the view was pretty packed—vacationers, weekenders, locals—all there for the big show. Droves of people stood there looking over the horizon as the sun slowly and gradually slipped behind the mountain tops in the distance.

Soon after, many people left.

We knew to stay as we knew the best was yet to come.

We’ve all seen sunsets—the anticipation, the beauty, the colors—but in my opinion, the real magic happens in the minutes after the sun has disappeared. We stood there and watched as the sky turned from blue to orange to pink to purple and then back to blue. The light bounced off of anything it touched and continued to make the most vibrant painting. We stood there in awe and we watched the magic happen.

I’ve come to believe most of life comes to us in this way. Our years become marked by big events that seem to come and go in an instant. A birth, first day of school, graduation, wedding, new job, and the list goes on and on. And while there will be a single day to mark the occasion, the real magic happens in the years that follow.

I have been thinking about when we made our big move—when we felt we had unbinded our lives and moved from the ‘burbs of Austin to the mountains of North Carolina. That move was huge and it had taken so much soul-searching and dream-defining to get to that point. But that’s what it was, a point in time.

The truth is, the real magic happens in the years that follow.

We are finding that the longer we are here, the more unbinding we do.

The more we spend time with one another and the more we appreciate the life that we have. The more we step into our true selves and the more we discover our purpose.

The more we let go of the things that once held us back and the more we move with faith into the unknown.

Like the changing colors in the sky after the sun has set, we continue to grow and to change and to more fully realize who we are and what we were put on this earth to do.