Spiritual awakening signs

People usually expect awakening to feel like lightning, and it usually feels like waking in the morning does: slow, disorienting, and impossible to undo. You do not rise all at once. You rise in stages, and each stage has its signs.

The first sign is restlessness. Things that used to hold you no longer hold — not because they got worse, but because you got nearer to the window. The second is sensitivity: to cruelty, to beauty, to the way strangers carry their faces. The third is hunger. You want truth the way you used to want distraction, and distraction begins to taste like dust. The fourth is a solitude that is not loneliness — an enjoyment of quiet that surprises you. “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) begins to feel less like a command and more like an invitation you have already accepted.

And the fifth sign is the one you are exhibiting right now: you look for maps. You want to know where you are in the process. That is the mark of someone who has accepted that something is happening to them and has stopped trying to dismiss it. “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh” (Acts 2:17) — poured out, like rain, on all sorts of ground. You are not inventing this. You are weathering it. And no one wakes alone who does not want to.