Be Still

i love living in town. i love the noise, the traffic, the lights, the people. i love that my car is adding up next to no miles. i love that i can drive 3 weeks on one tank of gas if  i'm careful. i love that if i took the time to i could walk or bike almost everywhere i want to go. but i MISS the country. and i miss the south. i saw this video tonight and realized just how much i really miss it! (take a minute and actually watch the video. its totally worth it!) 

Be Still

www.theworkofthepeople.com

A contemplative prayer for presence.

              click on the blue Be Still to watch.

i think sometimes now about the HOURS i spent alone with God in the last two yrs. all the time i would study and study and study curled in our big green chair or bent over our kitchen table or sprawled on the floor of our living room or hunkered in the corner of our darling red couch. and then when i could focus no longer i would walk... kiesha and i would go stretch our legs on that long expanse of hard packed dirt and i would talk to God and cry and sing and let out my soul. i wonder sometimes what happened to all that soul. now i live each day smiling at a hundred people and loving every one of them. i cook and cook and cook for 4 beautiful men whom i love with all my heart. i laugh sometimes till i cry with my new friend that i am so blessed to share a home with. sometimes i feel like that soul that was growing and stretching to such big wide expanses all those months now uses all the those borders as elastic to keep in all the loving that it has to do! but i'm seldom still now. and maybe in my not stillness i'v moved a bit away from that ever abiding knowledge that He is. i want to know how to find that here in this cold busy crazy new world. how to find Him in the asphalt where i knew dirt and the 4 men where i knew one sister and cashiering where i knew cleaning and the housing development where i knew a hunting reserve and only one small rodent where i knew the loe and kisses of many darling furry creatures and only one small person who loves me and one that sometimes loves me and sometimes doesn't where i knew many who had constant hugs and three million kisses and the working for the approval of my elders where i knew constant support and encouragement. i want to know God in this place. God now that i am girlfriend with a solid supportive man instead of as a clinging desperate-for-every-drop-from-His-gracious-fingers, barely-making-it college kid.

i want to know God. i want to know me. i want to know God in me and God in this world and God in the grace that colors my glorious world shimmering shades of amber, silver, amethyst, turquoise and black. ya, there is black in my world. streaks and slashes and lines that make the whole more beautiful and keep my feet firmly planted on the ground. i want to have still, even in my fullness of love and community, the abiding hunger for God that comes with clinging fiercely to Him for my all. He is my true Love, my first Love, my Passion. He holds the key to my purity and breathe and laughter and life. i want to find Him here. in dirty dishes and pulled pork and bagging 23 bags of organic pearled something or other and counting change and running credit cards and making fresh doughnuts because the man i love is crazy about doughnuts. God was on that dirt road. He moved with me in the dance of the vacuum cleaner. He held my head through every single algebra class. He was the one wrapped around me tight and close on those nights when i simply sat and pounded on my head with closed fists trying desperately to fit one more fact into my brain. life is different now, but God is the same. i want Him here. i want to be still here. amen.

  

Joy in MY journey.

THEY are so beautiful! Thin, perfect hair, gorgeous houses, darling children, adoring husbands. THEY are so happy. So fulfilled. They have all they ever wanted. They are mommies, wives, lovers, cooks, chauffeurs... And they do it all so flawlessly! Their little girls wear darling pink dresses with brown polka dots and their little boys wear green and black plaid shirts. Not boring plaid mind you but cute. The kind that you buy at GAP or Old Navy. THEY have it all together... My married friends.

THEY are strong women. They laugh, they cry, they hold good jobs. Their check books are neatly balanced, they have their own houses. They know that something is missing in their lives but they fill the void with God and other people. They have deep rich lives because they allow their pain and loneliness to make them ever more beautiful. God does miraculous things for them because they fall before Him daily for the strength to carry on. They bless people constantly because they use their lives well to serve the God who is saving them for Himself. Ultimately they long to be mommies and wives and lovers. THEY are waiting and praying and living so close to God Almighty... My single friends.

And then there is me. I don't fit in either category. Never have, never will. Ok, I know, that is so entirely narcissistic (self centered in the extreme!) but please bear with me a minute. This is a blog and I think more people feel like this so I'm just saying it, ugly as it is. Back to me not fitting. I never was really a 'single girl' because I never really wanted to not be single. What I wanted, want, is to be a nurse. But first I wanted to go to Bible school, and travel, and live in other places. So I did those things. And then I got my own house, settled down to multiple jobs and a crazy class schedule and was a college kid... My life long dream. I LOVED it! Loved my house, loved my work, loved my school, loved my life!! And along came Trouble, otherwise known as Strider... And, because I'm not crazy enough to turn down the opportunity to date the world's most amazing man, I agreed to date him. And here we are, nearly seven months later, still dating. No, we are not engaged. And probably not going to be for a long time yet, so don't ask :)

So this is my life now. I'm dating.( Completely weird! I don't even know how that happened!!) I live in the north. (Way way way north!! Where it snows two thirds of the year!! And I HATE snow!!!!) I live here because I love the church. Thats why I chose to move here anyway. (All of that happened before Strider happened). I'm going back to school in January. To a fancy school. To a northern school. To a school that is not my darling EMCC (East Mississippi Community College) To a school that I have absolutely no idea if I can really make it at or not. So,,,, I'm scared. My life is not like anyone else's that I know. Its not like my old life. Not at all. I have absolutely NO idea what I'm doing here. Not with dating, not with living in the north, not with going back to school. I wish I could just drop school. Let go of that craziness, date my darling Strider, maybe eventually marry him, be the great mom with the perfect and darling babies... But I just can't. I can't because my passion is nursing. Because when I get around a helpless old person and I think of then not getting proper care my blood absolutely boils. I can't because when someone asks me a question about how the body works it is sheer delight for me to explain it in detail and I just wish I knew more. I can't cut off my dream and live a normal life because to do that would be to die inside.

So I walk a journey that feels more like a blind slide than an intentional walk. I was used to an ordered life. To being in charge of my world. I'm very goal oriented which makes me a great scholar and an absolutely terrible girlfriend. How to overcome that?? Weddings and babies and love are in the air all around me and most of the time I feel like an impostor in someone else's skin. I really really NEED this crazy goofy man that has become my absolutely best friend. But I'm not someone who really needs other people normally so I don't know what to do with that even! I really love this church but I have absolutely NO idea how to be a good Bethel girl so I end up doing or wearing something wrong every time I turn around. I don't know how to desperately need and cling to both God and Strider and since Strider is the one who is here and physically present, its God who often doesn't hear my desperate ramblings or wipe my angry tears...

So I guess what I'm saying is basically just that I'm still pretty lost in this big new world I'm living in. I get overwhelmed so easily with all the changes. I get mad at myself for not being totally adjusted. I cry because I miss my parents and sisters back home. I get frustrated because I am SOOOO busy and don't have a lot of time to talk to my family and when I do have time I usually am sad about missing them and don't want to risk crying on the phone and making them feel worse. I still hate not owning my own business. I'v learned that dating does NOT automatically make life easier or better. I definitely don't want to give up my sweetheart, but some days I still don't know what on earth to do with him! So, this is my fight... To find joy in MY journey. To find the heart of God even in my hurt and loneliness. To remember that even though I envy my single friends a bit, I wouldn't trade places because THIS is where God has me. To remember that even though I envy my married friends a bit, I wouldn't trade places because THIS is where God has me... Its a good life, even if it gets tough. :)