What the Outstretched Hands Overlooked

There is a blueprint beneath a life,
faintly drawn beneath the years—
the image of someone always reaching
toward something just beyond her.

As an adolescent,
she longed to be one year older,
as though another year would open
another window into the world.

One more year.
One more experience.
One more horizon to touch.

The world appeared vast before her,
and she wanted a taste of it—
its distant roads,
its hidden rooms,
its beauty waiting beyond
what she already knew.

The sweetness was a gift.

She opened her hands to receive it,
not knowing that bitterness
sometimes travels beside sweetness,
or that an open hand
cannot always choose
what will be placed within it.

Still, there is no regret
for having reached.

The reaching became a life.
It gathered places, people, wonder and sorrow.
It carried her into moments
that would shape the quiet architecture
of her soul.

But hands extended toward the distance
may overlook what rests nearby.

And so a different season arrives—
not empty,
not without wonder,
but quieter.

The hands that once reached outward
begin to rest.

The eyes that searched the horizon
slowly turn toward what has always been near.

Within that stillness,
a prayer rises without urgency:

God, reveal what may have been overlooked
while the hands were reaching outward.

Perhaps nothing was lost.

Perhaps some truths remain hidden
until a life becomes quiet enough
to recognize them.

Perhaps the vastness once sought in the world
was also being formed within—
each sweetness leaving its light,
each bitterness deepening the vessel,
each experience becoming another line
in the blueprint.

The reaching was not a mistake.

It may have been the road
that led toward stillness.

And now, without needing
to grasp what waits beyond the horizon,
the soul becomes aware
of what is already surrounding it—

a quiet presence,
a sacred nearness,
and a life that no longer asks
to be chased in order to be felt.