Five Minute Friday: Limit

The sky is the limit...

but what does that really even mean?

How do you reach the sky? How is that even a limit?

And then there's another one of my favorite quotes- if you reach for the sky, you'll end up out of the mud... that's a  complete paraphrase, of course.

And it kind of contradicts itself, because if you've ever waded through mud you know you can't be looking up at the sky.  As you pull your muddy boots out of the miry bog, you better be looking at your feet and making sure each step is sure.

And there's a limit, right there.  You can only walk where you see.

You can only put one foot in front of you if you can see where that foot is going...

but Martin Luther King Jr. said something about faith being going up the staircase when you couldn't see the next step...

when you didn't even know what your limit was.

And in that case, maybe, the sky was the limit, because if you can't see the step in front of you, you sure can't see how long the staircase is.

So, we just keep stepping.

Blindly.  Stumbling.  Gasping for air.

Praying that one day the next step will mean we step out on a platform surrounded by shooting stars, reaching the end of the staircase and the end of our faith.

but too often that seems too far away. Too pipe-dream-like.

So we stand there, afraid to even move our foot a little.

And we use all these words...

Not good enough, or I don't have enough, or I'm too old or young or fat or limited...

All these limits, keeping us from stepping forward. *** Five minutes up

Today I read in a book a quote by Albert Einstein. "Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them."

That quote can seem crazy... because if we know we are limited then how can we go beyond?

But humans are this crazy lot. And sometimes we do our best work in a challenge, in a deadline, when we know that the next step really is it.

We boldly step forward on that staircase and just keep going...

even though we're out of breath and our heart is racing.

May we allow our fear to be enough to drive us to go beyond our limits, rather than keep us from even trying.

Linking up today at Five Minute Friday. I went a little longer than five minutes. We write for five minutes on a prompt, unedited. Today's prompt... Limit. And to be honest, I was going to skip today because I'm pretty good at setting my own limits and making excuses... but then I read that quote and thought, "Well, this isn't coincidence."  But nothing with God ever is.