Happy hearts!

The time finally came for us to take the giant leap of faith and move to Wyoming. Here we are! It's quiet, it's peaceful, it beautiful...and I don't know what to do with myself. Here we are and I don't know how to occupy my time. I should just give myself some time to adjust and relax but how do you do that? I mean really? I've been in such a mode of moving and packing and planning that I don't know how to relax. I think it'll come more natually to me as the "city" gets out of me more and more. I'm excited aobut learning life here. I'm looking forward to walking at a slower pace and taking in life a little more than just running from here to there all the time. I always think I'm the type to stop and smell the roses, but I'm really not! I'm so not. I used to be. What happened to that girl? I think she got lost on her journey and she's now been rerouted. I have my husband to help me along in this battle and he LOVES to stop and smell EVERYTHING. :) This is why we work I suppose. He likes to linger and I like to speed walk. Oh how opposite we are in that fashion. :)

As he was napping yesterday, I was looking at him and thinking of how happy his heart must be right now. This is home to him. He LOVES Wyoming with all that he has in him. He's been dreaming of moving here and creating a new life for himself for years and years. I hope this it's here that he finds that settle in his heart. I hope it's here that he discovers himself and becomes the man that he wants to be. I have all the faith in the world in him and I am anxiously awaiting the shedding of his cocoon. Here we are, Babe! A new beginning, a fresh start and nothing but moving forward from here on out.

Speechless

I sit in this place of not knowing how to receive God's favor. I stand in a place of receiving God's very promises but I do not know how to thank him for them. He provided to me the very thing that I wanted for the last 15 years. You gave me my Beloved. You did. You promised me many years ago that you would bring he and I together and it took many many years but you did it. you heard my hearts cry every night for years and you answered my petition. Abba Father, I do not know how to thank you for such an amazing gift. Let your name be exaulted in this beautiful union. I know this road will be long and with be filled with many uneasy times but I know that you will be with us. You have walked so faithfully with us both in the last 15 years. My faithful Savior you have been. Remind me to turn my eyes to you when times are tough and when I cannot see the path in front of us. Guide us both in this journey to keep your name Holy. You did not die for either one of us to walk this journey alone. light our path, keep our gazed fixed on you. Make my heart soft towards him and show me how to love him well. Show me what he needs from me to affirm him as a man, my husband, and a father. I want to put all of who I am in this journey and give it my heart. I have waited and stood in the gap for him for years and I am not about to give up now because I have him. I want this to be a marriage that turns the hearts of those that do not believe that there is a God who loves them and wants good things for them. I want others to see our love story but most of all I want them to see the ultimate love story between the Bride-groom and His Bride.

I look at my husband and I think to myself, I married Scott. I married Scott. I almost can't believe it myself. I married Scott. After all these years, I married Scott. Abba, help your daughter love him well. Sow into me the gifts of your love and show me how to love your son well. Tell me what he needs when he can't. Tell me how he's hurting and how I can comfort him when he needs me. Give me the right words to say to encourage him and make him feel respected and loved. Help me open my heart to him and allow him to love me fully.

Small and Significant

Fasting. Fasting is not my favorite thing to do. I don’t enjoy it at all. At least I don’t enjoy the temporal discomfort that you experience when fasting. But I realize that what small gesture I’m making, makes room for the heavens to move. What I do here effects the heavens and takes back what Satan is trying to steal. Most of the time we don’t see the results from our physical fasting but we know that in heaven, mountains are moving! We know that deep empty wells of pain are being filled again with clean, pure restoration. So for this reason I give up a basic need. If my minuet sacrifice gives way to the freedom of my loved one, then so be it! I will do whatever it is I need to do to make space. God has called me to be the gap girl. I stand in the gap for those who cannot stand alone. I am the conduit. I am the bridge. I am to wire which God’s grace and life can flow through. Use me Abba Father. Use me! Take my tiny sacrifice and use it! This is for your son. This is for your beloved son who looks out at the dry land in desperation. You are his water of life. You are his cool drink that quenches. You are what his sights shall find when he seeks for refuge. A beacon of hope, Abba. Only you have what he needs. I ask that you go to him. Make him aware of your love for him. Show him that you have been with him all this time. Show him that it is not too late to have the life you promised him. I have faith in you Father. I know that you have him in your hands. You hold him more delicately than his own mother could. You created him for so much more than this. FREEDOM!! Abba Father. Freedom. I declare freedom for this one. For your child. He has been covered by your blood and will not be stolen by the evil ways of the ultimate deceiver. You have staked your claim on this one. I stand and say NO! in the face of evil. Enough is enough! Now is the time for the chains to be broken. Now is the time for the cycle to end! Abba Father, in the name of your precious son, Jesus, I ask that you rescue this one from the snare of the evil one. HE has been bought and paid for. You have redeemed him. You have made him clean and pure. There is no shame in you.

Thank you for all that you have given that we may know your love. Thank you for never giving up on your son and daughter. We are your reward. You are my good father and friend.

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".