Circling the Wagons

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles of where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. If he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly so that his place should never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat

This morning I stayed home from church, curled up in the corner chair with my tea and my journal, and listened to a podcast by Shauna Niequist.
Something about her words hit me, and I ended up crying and scribbling down notes in my journal, pausing and replaying different sections of the message because something about it hit me.
It took me until this morning to admit that this past week has been hard.
It's the first week away from PRBI, and I'm trying to adjust to a new normal. My home team has now been dispersed all around the country, I'm now committed to making my relationship work long distance, and my life has entered a season of turbulent uncertainty. And I kept buying into the belief that I should be stronger and I should be handling this better and things should be easier.
And then this morning I had a revelation.
It's allowed to be hard
For the past week, and probably even before that, I've been pushing and trying to make the whole transition season go away and get back to the happy season.
I've been wanting my old life back, the one where I had learned to become happy and safe and comfortable, not wanting to have to trust God. I fell into the lie of believing that I did my hard time, now life should be easy. My life still is very beautiful, and I am richly blessed. But under the desire to grow was a layer of fear, and selfishness, and faithlessness, and an unwillingness to let myself be changed.
It took a lot of guts to actually admit that these past few weeks have been hard. My life is beautiful and great and how can it be hard?
But it is hard. Its new and its different and its challenging me in new ways and the stretching is uncomfortable.
I've been telling the story recently of how hard it is. Ask my mother, ask my boyfriend, ask my close friends. But that's not the whole story. If I'm being honest the story includes the part where I'm failing to live with courage and hope and have instead chosen to live in a place of whining, of fear, of closing my eyes and just waiting for things to get easy again instead of letting myself be changed by the hard place.
That's not the story I want to be telling.
I was writing a blog post today for teen girls about failure, and as I was writing to them I also felt like I was writing to me. I know a lot about failure. Unfortunately I don't know a lot about coming through failure and being stronger for it. The main thing I said to them, and to me, is to remember who God says you are.
Easier said than done. Because right now the world is screaming at me that I should be better and I should know what I'm doing and I should have it all under control. Bottom line is I don't.
I want to scream back at this world "Its allowed to be hard! I'm allowed to not know!"
I keep forgetting to plug back in to the one voice that truly matters: the one that says I am still loved, that I am valued for who I am not what I do, that I am enough, I have enough, I do enough, period.

When the criticism starts you need a group of people around you with their hands up, keeping you safe and reminding you to 'do your thing'

I need people around me reminding me to do my thing. My people are scattered all around the country, and I could sit and be miserable until I get back to what I know or I could reach out. I could reach out and say "This is hard, and I don't know how to do my thing anymore, and I need you to help me."
I need people to circle the wagons, to create a circle around me of warmth and safety.
I'm not really sure how that's going to look right now, but I also know that one of the things I've been craving madly this week is community.
Life is hard, and new things are hard, and I need my people. I need the ones holding their hands up and keeping me safe and encouraging me to do my thing.
If you're out there, and want to circle up around me, let me know.

This morning I realized how much I need to lean in. If I try to stand and face this, I have no doubt it will smash me to bits. But if I let it change me, let it carry me, let it transform me, I believe beautiful things will come of it.
I want to unclench my fists and let the beautiful right now happen to me, trusting that there is something to be gained from this hard place.

15 on Friday

Over the past few weeks, God's been growing me.
I've been stretched, pushed and pulled and spread out. I feel all this space surrounding me, all this uncertainty and wondering and openness. The whole thing just feels too expansive, too much for my small hands to hold.
I remember a few weeks ago a friend saying that it feels like there is such a heaviness over this place, like we're engaged in this battle.
Yeah, I thought, I feel that
I feel the heaviness of fighting against myself. I feel the space when I am walking through those times where I feel out on my own. I feel the tenderness of my heart as it feels like it is being rubbed raw.
I'm questioning, flailing, stumbling, trying to navigate my way through this expansive wilderness.
Over and over I seem to echo a similar cry: Dear God, I want to hear your heartbeat
And gently He's been teaching me
One thing He's been showing me about His heart is His love for people
And I've never been a strong one, one good at walking into battle, but in this growing time I've become more open to hearing His voice and I can't ignore it when He whispers These are my people
This afternoon I bundled up in boots and a sweater and began walking. I walked my usual loop around the city, and then I came upon the church.
The church step was the only sitting place without snow, and so I sat. And though I am not strong I began to pray, my voice shaking, for His church.
For myself and for my friends, for church members and the community in which I live, I prayed without knowing words, feeling empty within myself, lacking eloquence.
And something changed.
I stayed on the church steps for 15 minutes, interceding on behalf of this community and His church, begging for His hand of provision over us, His mercies to fall, His grace to overwhelm. I uncurled my clenched fists and asked to be held. Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes and as I walked away 15 minutes later I knew I'd heard the sound of His heartbeat.
His heart beats for these people, too.

community

Yesterday I sat cross legged on the floor in the gym, surrounded by people yet in that small space entirely alone. We were given five minutes, time carved out to pray. And as I sat there, the first words out of my mouth were Well here I am, God, in the wrestling ring again
October has come to me quietly, much like the changing of the seasons. It is testing my relationships, taking hold of my human characteristics and pointing out the flaws in my selfish desires.
This process of examining my beliefs, my thoughts, my relationships is bittersweet.
I have a longing for hours spent curled up in front of the window, basking in the sunlight, for closeness and poetry.
But life slows down for nothing, and in this place I feel like everything is always moving at rapid speed. The last few nights I have been sneaking off to bed early, crawling beneath the covers, emotionally exhausted.
I feel a strange mix of look how far I've come and yet still look how far I have to go.
The struggle is never ending, there is always more, and nothing is quiet what I thought it would be.
Living in community often leaves me feeling vulnerable, like one wrong move will leave me shattered. And when something comes up, an internal struggle that turns into an external conflict, my instinctive reaction is to pull back and draw within myself.
When I am exhausted, when I am overwhelmed with everything I am learning, when life doesn't happen the way I think it should the first thing I want to do is pull back.
I want to stubbornly hold myself away from the body. The hardest thing to do is to keep being honest, keep loving and extending grace and offering up parts of myself.
One of the main themes I've heard discussed in all my classes this month has been unity, and the body of Christ.
This morning I sat in one of my classes while my teacher spoke on this very topic, emphasizing that none of us are individuals. My failure to grow and dream and love and be the person God intended for me to be doesn't just affect me, it affects everyone else within the body. My struggles, questioning, wrestling doesn't just affect me, but everyone around me. I am not an island.
And maybe I used to think I was. Almost exactly a year ago I wrote for about a month on the idea of being an island, separate.
But I'm not an island. I'm part of this body, this community. And while the easiest thing to do when I'm wrestling out what I believe would be to withdraw, my job is to be here and show up and keep working towards extending that grace and love. I don't get to be off by myself because that's not where I'm put.
The strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf
In these tender moments of wrestling out what I believe, I have been so blessed by the people who have come around me.
Things like going on an adventure only to end up changing a flat tire in the dark,  long walks with good friends, a sweet encouraging note from the girls in my care group, it all reminds me that I am not alone.
Being in community means there are people here, to make me laugh and share in those good moments with and also just to come alongside me and walk with me.
And it means that I get the privilege of coming alongside them as well, sharing in the moments in which they burn the brightest but also stepping into their darkness.
Not one of us is an island.
It is in these hard moments that I begin to truly understand what community is.
It means being here, for the good and the hard. It means standing by your people, and letting them stand by you. It means sometimes getting over yourself to realize you are a part of something bigger.
It means choosing grace and love and to be honest even when your heart is aching.
What I do doesn't just belong to me, but every other person in this community, in this body.
Together we stand, divided we fall

“We don't learn to love each other well in the easy moments. Anyone is good company at a cocktail party. But love is born when we misunderstand one another and make it right, when we cry in the kitchen, when we show up uninvited with magazines and granola bars, in an effort to say, I love you.”  

Motherhood

This Mother's day I've found myself spending a lot of time thinking about motherhood
I've been writing poetry, not only about my mom but about other amazing mother's that I know, and what makes a mother, and different kinds of mothers, and the beautiful legacy left for me by all the strong, incredible women in my life
As I've wrestled through the concept of motherhood, and my own feelings regarding the subject, I also found myself faced with the question of what is womanhood?
It is something I am entering into, a road that has been paved for me by all the incredibly courageous women who have gone before me
Basically I'm trying to figure out what it all means
I have been lucky to have been surrounded by so many amazing women in my years who have taught me a lot about what it means to be a woman and also what it means to be human
And while this is still a journey I am trying to figure out for myself, and while these are still words that I need to find meaning to for myself, I have been lucky in having been able to see them so fully embodied by some of the people in my life
Because of the legacy left for me by these women, and mothers, I am able to begin my own journey, and have the courage to push off of their truths and find my own.
I am so thankful for my mama, and for all the beautiful women in my life who have showed me what it means to walk this journey
I am incredibly blessed