A friend collected milkweed pods, so that her grandchildren could make wishes. If you have never opened the crusty case and been blessed by a whoosh of white fluff, it is the stuff of imagination. God was in a playful mood when He decided to package such utter softness in a rough exterior. When a child frees the feathery seed on the wind, which it is eager to be, she or he is granted a wish. 

My friend noticed the capriciousness of some of those desires. To see a unicorn. A visit from a mermaid. The coincidence is that those very hopes could easily transpire at the end of this month.  You can never predict what will walk by in the pursuit of chocolate. 

I made my own wish this week. It was encased not in a gray shell, but a business sized envelope. It was an application to a program offering Clinical Pastoral Education. The process has been one of self reflection, as I articulate my spiritual aspirations, and how I imagine I might serve as a chaplain. In truth, the wish feels as capricious as a unicorn. Yet something has been tugging at my heart of late, and I am getting braver about the possibility of stepping into a world I know little about. 

My children will attest in one loud voice, that I am not who you want in the emergency room. My capacity to remain calm was limited, for even those few catastrophes that visited our family involving spilled blood. And yet that is a forty-year-old self definition, and I am perched to see whether God can use even a soft-hearted soul like me.  

I feel as light as a strand of milkweed silk, wondering without worry where the Holy Spirit will ferry me.