i am

right where I need to be. Where I'm supposed to be. Where I didn't, not in a million years, no matter the circumstances, want to be. Where I am content to just be.

Why is it that God has of late been placing me in places I'd never thought I'd be? Let alone be joyous in said geographical locations. (Probably because) little growth comes from easy. And while I feel like Thailand was stretching/painful/painfully joyful process enough, God's focused on the now. And on growing me for the next. I'm thankful that He's not finished. This last month of being home has revealed to me (read "knocked me on my ass about") how embarrassingly easy and natural-feeling it is to fall right back into the flow of how things were. Which is not who I am now. Hence the frustration and disappointment. Thankfully, my limitations don't have any influence over God's illimitable and (this word that I'm coming to adore) unconditional love for me.

I'm not used to love like this. I'm learning. I'm floored. That God takes the time and energy to invest in my growth every single flippin' day. That He is daily deconstructing the "me" that's been built on hurt, on defense mechanisms against further hurt, on lies, on pride, on disillusion. That He is daily showing me the real me. That there is no stagnant, in-between time with the Lord.

This my friends, is going to take some getting used to. And in the meantime (and it is always meantime), when I feel myself losing balance, I'm hoping I'll remember to simply reach out and grab His hand.

sometimes I just want to scream or cry

or both and then I read words like these:

"God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait."

repeat, repeat, repeat.

- C. S. Lewis via taste-see-enjoy

“Does it make sense to pray for guidance about the future if we are not obeying in the thing that lies before us today? How many momentous events in Scripture depended on one person’s seemingly small act of obedience! Rest assured: Do what God tells you to do now, and, depend upon it, you will be shown what to do next.” 


- Elisabeth Elliot also via Bri's blog mentioned above

"Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth."

- Benjamin Disraeli

I place this at one end of the spectrum. At the other is something my mom used to say - "You control your emotions; your emotions don't control you." I always seem to find myself closer to the first quote though. Or to something one of my favorite authors said,

"But in some cases, it is really more to one's credit to be carried away by an emotion, however unreasonable, which springs from a great love, than to be unmoved." 

Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov

are you home?

i am home. in a way. the reason i know that it is not all the way is because of the restlessness. i think home precludes restlessness. it must; i'm convinced in the way some people are confident in things they can't be sure of. yet we go on knowing.

at night, here, it is cold. i have left the mountain top and find myself in a valley. this is where faith is tested. "after every time of exaltation we are brought down with a sudden rush into things as they are where it is neither beautiful nor poetic nor thrilling." - oswald chambers

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. 

                         - Ralph Waldo Emerson "Art"

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

- e.e. cummings