I haven’t written in awhile. I’ve been running on iced coffee and dark chocolate. (Figures.) And I should be sleeping instead of writing right now because I’m tired and I’m promising myself that I’ll wake up early to go running. But my mind wants to write instead of sleep.

Today I drove to Missouri. I made myself a latte, opened the sun roof of the car and danced behind the wheel as I drank in the sunlight and navigated the back roads of southern Iowa. All alone, just me, my coffee, and the music. It was a necessary hiatus. Cathartic.

This month has been busy. I’ve worked every day in May except one. Eat, sleep, work, drink coffee. Repeat. Life has seemed cyclical lately. At times it’s felt rote. Routine. The rhythm is sometimes soothing. Familiar. But in the past weeks it has at times felt somewhat pointless. Tiring. Like this circle I’m on doesn’t have a destination. And there are all these questions and things and facts about this world that I don’t understand. And they jumble in my brain as I run around in circles. And I know there is a destination (or at least rest stops along the journey), but yet, the unsettledness comes in waves.

I can’t nail down a precise reason for the unsettledness. Really, life has been great lately. I love my job. I’m healthy and happy. I have the most incredible friends. I’ve laughed more in the past week than should be allowable. I have incredible things on the horizon. But yet, there are things that I don’t get. Like people dying of cancer. Like babies born way too premature, life hanging in the balance. Like rudeness. Like how some people seem to find love so easily. Like relationships in general. Like what to do with my wanderlust. Like what the meaning is of the rote-ness and routine-ness of certain seasons of life. Is there a point to the rhythm?

And the answer I got as I drove south into Missouri was yes, there is a point. But I have to choose to make a point of it all. I have to choose to make the routine things sacred. To make them meaningful. Sacredness is a choice. And when I opt into it, everything becomes significant, or at least holds the capacity to be significant. The early morning latte-making, the laughter in the kitchen, holding my niece’s hand, running on gravel roads, picking dandelions, writing a letter, watching the sun set over the lake, dancing to music behind the wheel of the car. If we so choose, everything is meaningful.

And as for all those things I don’t understand? Well the big guy upstairs pretty bluntly tells us that we don’t get to understand it all. That’s the thing about being human, you know. There are just things that we don’t get to know. But I guess I don’t have to know. I don’t have to understand. Someday I might, and I think I can be okay waiting. But for now I just pray for peace to surround me. I pray for more moments of pure joy…singing in my car…laughing until my stomach hurts…picking dandelions with a babbling two-year-old. I pray I would opt into those moments. Because in those moments, when I choose to make them meaningful, everything is okay. The racing world halts. The cyclical motion stops. And it’s not rote. It’s not routine.

It’s breathtakingly brilliant.