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.