Word baby!

I feel like I have my wings back.  They have been clipped for entirely too long! I haven’t wanted to pick up a “pen” for months or really even in the last two years and now I get excited to to write about my passions and thoughts running around my head. It literally does something magical to my heart. Sweet bliss.

My favorite author, Jen Lancaster, said that writing is like a muscle and the more you use it the stronger it gets. And I had never really thought about it like that but it is absolutely true! It hurts a little in the beginning because it feels like your trying to squeeze your head through a fence and you’re just not supposed to do that! But then there’s a little bit of space made and then there’s room for words and thoughts and ideas and you swirl around in circles in your mind because you’re just so excited about all the possibilities that you can write about! Whew! I get excited just thinking about the endless opportunities I have to pour words onto a blank page and watch it grow and have a life of it’s own. Writing for a writer is like having a child. You nurture, care for, carefully watch and guide and then when it’s all grown up, you let it run free and hope that what you put in it will be taken care of. It is a piece of your heart after all.

So… here is where I will write and share my thoughts, dreams, ideas, adventures and anything else that should fall. Life is good!

Pink is the new black!

It's been some time since I've sat down and planted some words here. In fact, its been a long time since I've planted words any where! The past year of my life has been anything but a lovely road of beautiful wandering and mystic pondering. It has been a year of rocky terrain, steep tumbles, bruises, deep wounds and even a few to-the-bone gashes. I had fallen so far from the woman I was. A woman who knew where she was headed, what she wanted and where her strength came from. Instead I became a woman who tossed all of where she was headed into the ditch. A woman who had no clue what she wanted, other than to feel something other than alone and disappointment in herself. And certainly a woman who knew where her strength came from, but didn't care in the slightest about holding that giant hand again. It has been a year a of tar and thick smoke slowly suffocating the once pink lungs.
But, through the prayers of people and the angry nights of crying and demanding answers, I have come back to the place of being able to take deep breaths of clean, refreshing air. What was once a dark shade of gray has once again become a glistening pink. Brand new, in fact.
What I forgot about who God was in my stumbling in the hot, dry, desert was this...I was never alone. No matter how hard I shut those doors, I was not alone. I was in the hearts of people who had no clue how to reach me, but knew that I was in there somewhere. I thank those people who stuck with me. I thank those people who were good friends to me. I thank those people who "bled" for me at night in their secret places. I would not be where I am if it had not been for those ones crying out for me.
I have learned a lot about who I am in this winter season. I am not as strong as I thought I was. I was functioning in a deficit and didn't bother trying to fill it up again before "giving" again. All I wanted was to be known for a minute. I wanted to do something great and be this amazing person, but I had nothing to glean from. I had nothing to take with me and to offer to people. And I think in this round, I'm building slower and smarter. I'm taking the time to really be still and just breathe. I recognize the restlessness that rises in me and I remember that I ought not run before I learn to walk. Waiting has never been my strongest characteristic, but I am learning that I'm not in a rush. I have tasted the doings of "wanting what I want and I want it now" and it left me alone, hurt, confused, wounded and ultimately broken. So I slow down and I recognize the root of these things and I remember that I am not in a race to finish first, the goal is to finish in one piece with minimal battle scars. I have a new respect for boundaries and how important they really are to my heart. My heart is a pearl that is not to be tossed before swines. I am required to gather the foxes that ruin the vineyard. And sometimes gathering those foxes feels as though I'm literally prying the claws of a bear from their neck, but I pry and pull because it is my heart that I'm fighting for. My heart has been wounded in so many ways by others but when I see that the deepest gash was caused by the doings of my own hands, it shakes me to the core to see that I can have such disregard for my own heart that I would place it directly in the path of the bear with a side of honey. What a fool one can be when their heart is broken.
The pieces are mending and forgiveness is the suture.

Full Circle

Late night reading always gets me into trouble. I start looking at old emails and it stirs the emotional pot and the outcome is never predictable. I was looking at emails sent and received during the India departure decision and the immediate landing and what came over me was a sense of nonrecognition. Even reading the conversations had while in India, I do not know that woman who wrote to those people. I don't believe she's long gone, but I don't know how much of her came home. Don't get me wrong, there are pieces of her that I'm happy to be rid of, but there are some that I wonder how long they'll be missing or if they'll return at all. Still the quest for truth stands alone in my late night observation. Truth in what I believe, truth in my identity, truth in the relationships that complete my circle and truth in where I'm standing. There are pieces of me that would like to apologize to those that I have alienated and pushed away. But by that same desire, I stand in the knowledge that I did not like who I was and I'm not willing to pick those pieces up and try to make them fit the broken picture frame. Most of what I refuse to pick up again is the denying of myself the space and permission to be broken and the 'mob' mentality. Christianity doesn't mean following the popular thing because everyone else is doing it. It doesn't mean riding every new train coming into town. To me, it's simplicity and truth. It's finding that space that makes the relationship between you and your creator intimate and unique.

June 29, 2011
I just ran into this post after a random look at old files. I almost winced at the sight of these words. Who was this woman who wrote this? What happened to her? Where did she get lost? And I can say this much; she survived the most intense two years of her life and is standing on the victorious banks of that raging river of life. These last two years have been anything but honoring and steadfast. I have made every mistake you can make when running away. Trying to cover scars that cannot be covered and can only be masked. I didn't want to rip the band-aid off the wounds that I had created. I didn't want to go down that path of yet another self discovering season. I wanted to feel better. I wanted results! I wanted tangible proof that I was alive. I grabbed every numbing agent I could get my hands on and it is only by the grace of God that I am standing here. And I AM standing here! The RD version of my time in India is this...it was not what I thought it was going to be. I was told that would be able to do things and I was not. I wasn't able to accomplish what I thought I was sent to do, but I went. I put my feet on the ground. I gave up everything to follow after God and I don't regret one single second. India is a part of my heart. It is in my veins and flows through me like an energy source. I cannot cut India from the fibers of my heart! I have been trying for two years to amputate this place from my life and I have been functioning as a wounded soldier. I have not worn my love for India as a badge upon my heart. I have not carried the faces of those I met with me every day. I think of them often, but I have allowed the etching to fade. But, it is beginning to come back. In the past few weeks, my heart has been reconciled and wounds have been healed and my heart has been repaired. Shame is not my name and I am not to wear its heavy cloak and hide the beauty that I have been given. My God is faithful, even when I am not. I pushed, shoved, slapped and yelled over the last two years and He took it all. He took the blame for what was not his. He didn't try to give me answers for the questions, he let me find my way...my way. I would stare him in the eyes and know that I was breaking his heart and I would apologize and continue on with my chosen sin or coping mechanism. And I would run to him and beg for forgivness and turn around and do it again. The cycle continued for too long and the damage done, although minimal, still haunts me. What kept me safe these past months is the solid truth that I am loved no matter what. It doesn't give me the right to continue my sins, which damage me more than I can even conceive. I know more than I know anything else, that I am loved and nothing can ever seperate me from that love.
So I've come full circle, it seems. Not completely unscathed, but I am far less damaged than I could have been if I wasn't covered in the grace and mercy of my creator.
I have allowed myself to dream about my life for the first time since I've come home. It feels good to have the wind blow through my soul again. I'm excited for the future and I am anxiously awaiting for the next adventure.

Restless

Finding the ground of which I'm planted upon is shifting. Settling feels like settling and I've witnessed entirely too many people taking that route and being eternally miserable. I don't know what it looks like but I certainly haven't counted anything out. I do actually grow quite tired of this feeling appearing now and then. Being content feels like being complacent. Some days I wish I were able to just sit and be. And I do have moments of that, but there's this itch that won't be scratched in the core of who I am in this place of wondering. I was not built to live life as usual, so I guess in some ways I should stop looking for it. Such a double edged sword for me. A new place doesn't make the old one useless or dull. The new is just that, new. Exciting. It doesn't hold all the answers to happiness but it holds a mystery that may or may not be caught. Are we to always just wonder about these new places and never actually behold them? Are those of us who are restless deemed flighty and non-committal? I don't believe that a constant rediscovering of who we are is a "mid-life crisis". I think it's actually planted in us from conception to be a constant movement of wondering. To want more, discover more, love more, always be more. Reaching the finish line isn't the goal. It's the journey of which we are on to finding that "more".

Dumbfounded

Life takes interesting twists and turns. The last thing I should be saying is that I doubted that God actually answered prayers, but I really did. Not that I doubted his ability to do it, it's just that my prayers are generally so off that I miss the mark by 1000 feet. Someone pinch me because I think God is actually answering prayers in my life. And not the little prayers. I'm talking the big guns. The one's that you keep close to your heart and never really let go of. But if he's not answering them the way I thought he would or is, then I still believe in his goodness and faithfulness. Just because my prayer isn't answered in the exact way I thought it should be doesn't make him any less faithful or good. He doesn't even have to answer my prayers, ever, in order for me to believe these things. He's good. Always working for his daughters best interest at heart. He knew that I was strong enough to climb the mountains that he placed in front of me. He knew that it was going to hurt like hell but that I would, at some point, stand at the top and look at what we've accomplished and be proud. I am a different person because of all the things that I've had to struggle with over the years. But never once did I think that things would circle around again. I hoped, but I never really thought it. Here I am, possibly looking at a long lost dream coming true and I'm dumbfounded. Are my hands out to receive them freely or am I holding back because I'm afraid to try again? Can you do both? Can you try and receive it freely and still guard your heart and still be able to give pieces of yourself because you know that it takes your being vulnerable to open the door? Where's the line? Where's the safe zone? Am I being asked to take a few steps out of that zone in order to see my dream come true? If I did it once, I can do it again. Right? This time, with a better perspective.

Defined

There's this place in my heart that has been shut off for so long and I'm on the verge of opening it up. I'm not sure that I want to open it but there is an undeniable tug that tells me that I'm no longer able to run in the other direction. What lies on the other side of this wall in my heart? I think that's what I'm afraid of. I'm not sure of who is on the other side of this wall.
A few weeks ago I was unpacking my boxes of books and placing them on my bookshelves. One by one I looked at these books that had somehow shaped me into the person I was before I left for India. Someone who was strong in her faith. A woman confident in her relationship with Christ. Someone who had so many things to offer others in her community and across the world. Or so I thought. As I was putting these books away I started to see that I no longer was able to relate to these titles sitting on my shelves. Who I thought I was as a "Christian" has changed 100%. I am no longer convinced that I loved Jesus the way I thought I did just a few months ago. I'm not even certain that I loved him the way I thought I did all these years. Yet, I know that I am safe in him. I love him, but I don't love him the way I thought I had. None of this is a secret to Jesus, of course. He has been well aware of my broken heart this whole time and yet he has stayed true to love me as though I have loved him the way I said I did. While looking at these books and wrestling with the feelings of loss of India, I stood broken-hearted and lost. It occurs to me that I am not who I thought I was and did not return from India with the ability to just live life as usual. I don't know what life is suppose to look like on this side of knowledge, but I can tell you that they way it was lived before will not satisfy. This doesn't mean that I'm going to bury my head in the world of "Christianity" and get lost in the new fads and join the next big thing. The last thing that I want to do is get involved in something that will only allow myself to define my identity in it and not in the one place that it can be defined. It means that I'm not going to follow suit. I'm not going to allow someone elses bullshit to tell me what it means or looks like to be a Christian. The idea of what it looks like to love Christ has been so distorted over the years and I'm tired of it looking like a cookie-cutter. In my search of an authentic relationship, I expect to find myself in a vast desert. I'm not in the search of a new "me" but I am looking for a "real me". One that I can relate to and isn't fooling herself as to the depth of her relationship with her creator. More importantly, someone who is not defined by the hopes and dreams in her heart, but defined by the knowledge of being a daughter.

One day...

Time heals all wounds, right? I haven't taken a lot of time to sit and figure out what my returning to WI really means. Sometimes I think it means more than it ought and then there are times that I think that it should mean more than what I'm allowing it to be. The 4 weeks that I've been "home" I have missed India more and more every day. I LOVE that country. I could have lived there for the rest of my days, if I had only felt that I had a purpose there. If I had only felt that I had the grace to do it. I had to go and learn about myself and the higher than normal expectations I place on things to equal my life's meaning. I learned that things done in another country are not more noble than the things done in one's own country. And as I was being driven through the city on the way to the airport, I was looking out the window at my dream and here I was leaving it. Tears streamed down my face as it made no sense to me that I had to give up something that I craved for so long. What I thought I was going to India for, turns out to not be what I was there for. Another person, place or thing does not equal a purpose.
Home feels good and the future feels free. All in all, I'm happy with what I accomplished in myself. I look to my beautiful creator to make sense of it all in due time. I'm in no hurry to move on to the next "big thing" and I'm enjoying the rest. The past year has been quite the intense ride and I'm ready to get off for a while. I know there are things in my future that God has yet to show me and I look forward to them one day, but today is not that day.