The Familiar Bridge

Thursday morning, I arrived at the pier before the sun, as I always do. The silhouette of the fishing pier stretched into darkness—a familiar bridge I cross each morning between night and day, between who I was and who I’m becoming. I came expecting the sunrise. What I got was something else entirely.

The sky began its familiar dance with thick clouds of slate blue separated from the river by a ribbon of light, the horizon line warming. Pretty, of course. Instagram-worthy, certainly. Only it didn’t hold those hues. Something shifted. Between the first blush of dawn and the sun’s actual arrival, the world caught fire in a way that made me forget to breathe.

Being Still

I parked on the left side of the pier, like I always do. Snapped a video clip for my morning Snapchat post, then crossed to the right side to set up my beach chair for a November sunrise. After blogging about living in the moment last week, I was determined to entrust future fears and worries to God and enjoy His many blessings instead.

When I pulled my spiral journal out, the scripture on the cover spoke on behalf of Yorktown Fishing Pier: “Be still and know that I am God.” I was still. I was aware of nothing more or less. God was in the sunrise, deepening lavender clouds with pink highlights, mirroring sky in sea, draping me in dawn. Were it not for timestamps, I would have guessed these photos captured merely four minutes apart were taken on different days entirely.

I did something unusual then. With nothing more than a date written in the corner of the page, I used my pen as a bookmark and set the journal aside in the sand. There were words in my brain, and I would process them… after the ethereal light and color show had resolved itself into a predictable Thursday morning.

The Waiting Room

I gazed into the glow, felt the cool air kiss my cheeks, and breathed in the colors. I soaked up the stillness, and within five minutes, dusky purple melted into indigo—that particular purple that only exists in the pause between night and day. Mirrored nearly black in the water below, the sky seemed darker than when I’d arrived at the pier. I was, somehow I knew, in a waiting room of almost-but-not-yets.

Still, the sky shifted. Within the span of a few short minutes, a tangerine fire painted the water copper and wrapped around me like a promise I couldn’t quite grasp. This was the orange that makes you understand why monks wear saffron robes—it’s the color of almost-enlightenment, of being so close to transcendence you can taste it on your tongue, metallic and sweet, before it dissolves.

I was surrounded by glory I could see but not keep.

Glory That Fades

The sun would crest, and the sky would forget the majestic hues it had boasted just moments before, bringing to light an ordinary Thursday morning. I picked my journal back up and attempted to put into words what I’d just experienced. Had others witnessed it? Sensed the fullness of God’s presence? Felt the need to raise an Ebenezer to say, “Look, the Lord has made Himself known to me”?

The entire display spanned nearly half an hour, but I felt as though my soul had been restored. I left the beach thinking not about what I lacked or feared but how grateful I was for the gift of being at Yorktown Fishing Pier in that specific set of moments, living out a future memory I know I’ll recall when I need the feeling of sanctuary the most.

The author of that sunrise is the author of me, and I trust Him with my dreams and worries. He’s proven Himself faithful, embraced me at dawn. I love what it means to be still and know that He is God.

Saturday’s News

On Saturday morning, my husband joined me for the daily sunrise ritual. Unlike weekends past when his presence beside me directed prayers to our marriage and family concerns, I was able to hold onto my peace. I journaled instead about another epic sunrise—translucent and alive and still all at once, full of color and white and nothing. A silver sliver moon lounged lazily in a sky already tinged blue by the coming light. A gentle lapping river tide, soft and low. Sweet echoes of songs, chirps and caws, undertones of a near-silent, nearly monotone, melodic and hypnotic dawn.

My soul softened and stirred, and since we had no work to rush off to, we stayed a while. Tony was sitting beside me on the beach when I got the news. I’d checked my email on my phone for another reason, but the new message waiting in my inbox had a curious subject line I couldn’t ignore: “Offer of publication for Fearfully, Wonderfully, and Bipolar-ly Made.”

Was it real?

The Missing Glow

I stared at the email. After months of rejections, of pivoting from “Coming Out” to “From Shame to Sanctuary,” of discovering that sanctuary wasn’t where I thought it would be… here was an offer. A real publisher wanted my book.

But where was the orange glow? Where was that encompassing warmth that had wrapped around me just two days before?

Thursday morning, standing in that tangerine fire, I’d felt held by something infinite. It was a promise that transcended words, a knowing that went bone-deep. The sunrise was teaching me something about recognition: This is what arrival feels like. This is what yes tastes like—metallic and sweet on your tongue.

The email in my inbox tasted like nothing.

Wipf & Stock wanted my manuscript, but reading their terms—author-funded typesetting, two weeks to decide—I felt none of Thursday’s transcendence. No copper warmth painting my world. No sense of being held by something larger than my fears. Just… flat light. An ordinary morning after the pre-sunrise disappears.

If this was my sanctuary moment, wouldn’t I feel it? Wouldn’t there be even an echo of that saffron peace? Thursday’s sunrise showed me what it feels like when God wraps His yes around you. This offer, despite being everything I’d supposedly been working toward, felt like standing outside the glow, watching someone else’s light.

The Journey So Far

I thought about the manuscript’s journey—how “Coming Out” had served its purpose, giving me the strength to speak my truth. How the subtitle had transformed into “From Shame to Sanctuary” as I discovered that sanctuary wasn’t in the arrival but in the relationship with God during the storm.

This offer felt like being asked to pay for a ticket back to shame, investing money in something that didn’t ignite my soul. The publisher specializes in academic theology texts. My memoir would sit on their shelf like that ordinary Thursday morning sun—present, functional, but stripped of its transformative fire.

Then again, it’s currently not sitting on anyone’s shelf.

I looked at Tony. “It doesn’t feel right,” I said.

I’d experienced Thursday’s glory. I knew what divine confirmation felt like—how it wrapped around you, changed the color of everything, made you forget to breathe in the best possible way.

Sunday’s Understanding

Sunday morning, I returned to the pier before dawn. The fishing pier stretched into darkness—still that familiar bridge, still that crossing between who I was and who I’m becoming. But I understood something new about bridges: sometimes they’re not meant to be crossed quickly. Sometimes the holiest ground is right there in the middle, suspended between shores.

The sky began its dance again—slate blue, ribbons of light, the horizon warming. I pulled out my journal, but this time I didn’t set it aside. I wrote through the color changes, chronicled each shift from grey to purple to blue to day.

The sunrise doesn’t promise to hold its most spectacular colors. It offers them freely, then lets them go. Maybe that’s the lesson: sanctuary isn’t in grasping the glow but in trusting that the God who paints Thursday morning in impossible oranges will show up again, will make Himself known again, will wrap His real yes around me when the time is right.

The offer from Wipf & Stock? I still have time to decide, but right now, I’m thinking I’ll decline it gracefully. My manuscript will wait for its true sunrise—the one that tastes metallic and sweet, the one that makes me forget to breathe, the one that feels like coming home to a sanctuary I don’t have to pay to enter.

Until then, I’ll keep meeting God at the pier, in that liminal space between night and day, between who I was and who I’m becoming.

Be still and know that He is God.

Even when the glory fades.

Especially then.