wise words

Today, I took an adventure.  I went to one of my secret spots by the pond and sat on the bank beneath a tree.  The sun was shining, the sky was bright, and the clouds were daintily gazing at their reflections in the water as they floated by.  The mountains stood heroically on the horizon, like they always do, and flocks of geese scurried to and fro above the forest of naked trees.

It took me a while to settle in.  Too many thoughts barraged my heart with unsolicited advice when all I needed was to be.  That’s really hard, you know.  Even in silence, I feel the presence of responsibilities breathing heavily down my neck.  Sometimes it’s hard to remember what it felt like when we were kids, soaking in each moment as they came, never caring what anyone thought of us.

I have choices to make.  How will I know which is right?  There are people I’ve never met that I miss.  Is that even possible?  There is a world waiting to be explored, cultures to be tasted, memories to be made.  Is this one of them?

As I sat beneath that sweet tree, I listened to the silence which was only interrupted by the occasional beep of a distant earth mover.  No words of wisdom prevailed themselves upon me until, softly, there came:

“Does not your Father, who feeds the sparrows and clothes the lilies, care for you more than these?  Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 6:25-34, paraphrased)

And that was enough.  For today, it slaked my thirst for meaning, for hope, for validation that my feet are on the right patch of dirt.  I always have so many questions, and there never seem to be enough answers.  But God knows what He’s doing, so maybe I should just let go.

always give thanks

Thank you for the sky.  Thank you for the sweet scent of summer air and the cool feel of clean water.  Thank you for songs.  Thank you for the hearts who relentlessly love my own.  Thank you for the changing seasons and the uncertainties that make me want to curl up in my bed and stay there.  Thank you that I am alive and that life is always good with you.  Thank you for the revelations that you have yet to open my eyes to.  Thank you for those who have gone before me and for the creativity and hope they inspire.

You are good...may I always remember.

momentum

I just want to travel.

There is nothing quite like breathing in the air of a different place on the planet.  Seeing breathtaking sights that don't exist in your own reality.  Feeling the double-edged pang of being so vulnerably far from home, yet desperately wishing you could fully soak in every tiny detail of where you are in the moment.  But you can't.  You can't soak it all in until you're home, far away from the adventure, back in the mundane comfort zone, back where the most important memories gradually set themselves apart from the general thrill of the ride you had 'that one time'.

I had some decisions to make at the beginning of this year.  How was I going to proceed with my life?  I had been back from Africa for over 6 months, during which time my eyes had started to open to the rawness that is reality to most people in the world.  I felt so inadequate to do anything.  Helping costs money.  Helping requires skills.  Helping, long term, means solid visions, massive networks, and people who have the same painful passion you have.  I needed education.

I wanted education.  I wanted to be able to travel for a living.  Have a reason to traipse the globe.  Leave a trail of kindness and Jesus wherever I found myself.  Create solutions to problems bigger than my heart could ever comprehend.

So I decided to stay.  I decided that I would ask for help to start the train moving.  You know, the more momentum a train has, the more unstoppable it is.  It wasn't going to be enough to work, travel, work, travel.  The vision was going to have to be self-sustaining, self-propelling.  I need momentum.

It's a sacrifice, one that honestly makes sense to me.  Even though part of me says TRAVEL NOW.  YOU'RE YOUNG AND YOU CAN but the bigger part of my heart says, 'It will be so much better if you wait a little bit longer.'  This season is about pulling the rubber band back as far as we can.  Soon God will let it go and I know the adventure my heart so craves will be more incredible and satiating than I could ever imagine.

sun + rain

Lately whenever it rains, it's also simultaneously sunny.  Like right now.  As it began raining, it quickly turned to hail, which quickly turned into bigger hail, until all of a sudden the clouds blew away, leaving a gentle rainfall and sharp shadows on the ground.

It's as if God was saying, "See!  I'm in charge.  Trust me."

freeze-frame

via

You know how sometimes you witness a moment and it happens really fast but your brain takes a freeze-frame and you just remember that one moment instead of the whole scenario?

As I was leaving work this evening, it was still light out with just a few clouds and as I sat admiring the general beauty of the outdoors, and also waiting for the light to change green, I noticed a young couple walking down the sidewalk headed in my direction.  It all happened so fast:

My left-turn arrow turns green.  I accelerate.

Halfway through the intersection, I notice that the couple is about to cross.

A car who has the yield sign, but obviously doesn’t notice the couple, keeps on cruising through his right turn just as the girl sets her foot into the intersection.

Mind you, I’m still mid-turn.

All in one motion, she starts stepping in front of the moving car and the guy sticks his arm out to his side across her belly, holding her back, while he turns to look straight at the driver who almost ran over his lover.

I still see the heroic air in his stance as he saved his girl from danger.

I don’t know, maybe he overreacted.  Maybe she was going to stop in time.  Maybe they aren’t dating yet and she was infatuated, or perhaps bothered, by his overt effort to save her and prove himself manly and strong.  Maybe she felt demeaned as a woman and got mad at him a second later because “can’t I look after my own safety?”

But it was a sweet picture.  I hope that it made her fall more in love with him because he cared enough to stop her from getting hurt.

the impossible has been done

Think of all the things that once seemed impossible.  We take them for granted now.

Maybe in the beginning, their inventors didn’t think they could actually do what they had somewhere vaguely pictured in their hearts.  Maybe they thought that even if they did their best it would still look like a half-hearted, underdeveloped, pile of broken pottery.  Maybe they didn’t know if they could pull out the dream from deep inside and mold it just right.  Maybe they felt like inspiration waned and waxed faster than their heartbeat.  Maybe they felt trapped within the limitations of culture, workspace, thought.

But it worked.  Those people changed the world.

human

My feet started tingling at the prospect of sinking my feet into the soft Italian grass.  I could go there?  I could.  I wish I was.  I wish that right now I were on a plane headed to Italy just because the world is awesome and I want to see it.

I get hung up on the not-so-awesome parts of the world much too often.  Sometimes money is where my dreaming stops, and with it my joy.  I mentioned in my last post that I'm giving up expectations of myself...I have learned that I am capable of more than I think I am, but sometimes feel trapped from making capabilities reality.

Transparency.  Why is it so easy to perceive others as totally and entirely transparent when in my head I can't even get a solid picture of who I am?

If we're honest, nobody's completely okay.  "That which is most personal is most universal," and yet we resist total honesty, would rather act like we have it all together.  Which might be true most of the time, but one moment of honesty and we feel like the rest of them will judge while pulling their cloaks tighter against their vulnerable hearts.

Here's to being human.

giving up

via

I'm giving up

my self-imposed expectations

for happiness

for this journey

for my future

for my relationships

for my image

for my heart.


And most importantly

I'm giving up

my expectations

of who God should be

and choosing to let Him be

who He is.

"I'm heading into the office to get an early start on stapling papers.  Good thing my high school principal was insistent that all the girls took office skills," mom says.

"Yeah, that was before women's lib," dad replies.

bird's eye view

Here in the city, silence is rare and solitude hard to come by.  When you're on the highway, it's a race to see who will get out of your way the fastest.  At the store, the crowd is a blur, everyone with his own mission, daring not to share it with another lest he be hindered in his pursuit of efficiency.  At work and at home, there is an invisible force field of tunnel vision that blinds us from the simple fact that

life is not a race.

Suppose we were levitate a mile above the map we live in, the places we frequent, the highways we so adamantly race down.  What would be seen?  The details would disappear, a tapestry of colors blurring away the busyness.  We would be able to see far beyond destinations that normally take hours to reach.  The sky would look bigger yet smaller at the same time.  We would feel tiny compared to the vastness of atmosphere.  Suddenly, calories wouldn't need to be counted, time constraints would fall away, replaced by simple awe.  Fears of life and failure, debts and obligations, present and future, would seem insignificant.

There would be silence.

I am rather fond of silence.  I crave solitude.  It comes as a surprise to people who don't know me well because, yes, I do have extrovert tendencies. But it's when I'm alone that I can truly think, dream, imagine.  It's in solitude that I can catch a ride on the winds of fresh perspective.  Here is where I can finally be still enough to hear His still, small voice.

"With all your heart you must trust the Lord and not your own judgement.  Always let him lead you, and he will clear the road for you to follow." Proverbs 3:5-6 CEV

today wasn't my birthday

Today was another day.  It wasn't my birthday.  I didn't wake up early to rush around the house, collecting last minute items to stuff in a suitcase and drive to the airport at the crack of dawn.  There weren't holiday festivities to look forward to or a wedding to get dressed up for tonight.

It was just another day.

I woke up planning on going to the dentist, but my throat was sore so I rescheduled and slept in instead.  I planned on getting a bunch of odds and ends done between work and band rehearsal, but I wasn't able to do half of what I wanted to.  I'm tired now and should be sleeping since I'm opening at 4:30 tomorrow morning, except I just wanted to say that

THIS IS LIFE.

No matter who you are or where you live or what you're doing, these beautifully mundane days will always creep up on you.  These days are when I find out who I am.  I can make a choice to live like it's the life I dream of living, or else succumb to the disappointment of the dull, tedious moments.

I am reminded that God's ways and thoughts are higher than mine.  His perspective is that these rhythmic days will one day have morphed into something I'll refer to as a "season" that I'll look on with thankfulness and relief.  There are no in-between seasons.  God is always good, always right, and when He's silent, let it be enough to

simply

BE

with

Him.

xo,

jess

a year's worth of thoughts

When you realize that 365 days have come and gone, four seasons have run their course, and a different number goes at the end of all your dates, there is always a surreal sense of, "wow, that went fast" and "has it only been a year?"

2013 was a freaking blur.  I made new friends who quickly became family, then turned around and said goodbye to them after only five savored months in their company.  Two of those months were spent between Uganda and Kenya, where I discovered I know so little of the vast, beautiful world we live in.  I don't know exactly what I intended to do while in Africa, but if I went to teach, I left taught; taught what it means to love, shown a new side of God, and given a new taste of life through every piece of chapati and hot cup of chai.

Coming back to the good old U.S. of A., life felt different than it did before. I felt like a fish back in water.  I always knew the unspoken 'code of conduct' when I walked into a room.  I also felt a bit trapped; I wanted everyone to know what I knew, but couldn't teach them.  I wanted to leave the country again, keep tasting what I didn't know of the world, or at least go back to the family I had known for those sweet 5 months. 

But I couldn't.  So God took me through an overgrown garden and taught me how to pick out the roses through the weeds. (Matthew 13:24-29)  He introduced me to two young women at my job who desperately needed to know they were valuable, loved.  They taught me all over again how to love unconditionally, even when it takes a battle.

Then there were three more months of YWAM.  Three months of finding hope in every bad thing that happens in the world.  Human trafficking, AIDS, abortion, refugee camps, lack of water sanitation...you name it.  It's hard to believe God is good when there's no hope of fixing one of those problems, let alone all of them.  But He is good.  Bringing justice to unjust places is a slow, long, steady journey.  It is as much one step as it is the whole journey.

Here's to you, 2014, and every adventure you have in store. //