Too Like the Lightning

by Travis Beaudoin

At some point over the last five years, I’d learned to settle. For a while that had worked. Life had come to me, and I’d gotten comfortable. I’d forgotten how to want things, never mind how to chase them down. Now I had a new thing to want. I could tell myself I’d fight for it, but when push came to shove, it seemed easier to just keep standing around. Waiting.

I couldn’t quite put a name to what I was feeling, but it reminded me of the pictures in this illustrated Bible I’d had as a kid—the ones where God was depicted as a single beam of sunlight piercing through clouds, painting everything it touched golden. Oh. It was happiness. I felt happiness.