Take heart.

Life is overwhelming.  The ups and downs, the happiness and sadness, the hard work and the emotions we all feel each day...

it's a lot.

I was reminded today of the fragility of life while reading some updates on Daisy Merrick, the little girl with cancer who has become well known through the amazing power of the internet and the willingness of God's people to pray.

I was also reminded of the strength of the spirit and the ways in which we were created to overcome, to conquer, and to redeem so much of the hard stuff...but not alone.

Every single day I find a portion of my thoughts falling to India and the time I was able to spend there serving, learning, growing, and being challenged.  I sometimes have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that I was chosen to go, me of all people...so broken and emotionally scattered...yet I was blessed with an experience of a lifetime.  It doesn't make sense, but it's beautiful and for that I am thankful.

While learning to live again in a place labeled "home," I feel the weight of adjustment every day.  I feel the anxiety set in each morning taunting me to feel unsettled and unsatisfied.  But I have to fight against what the world pushes upon me because I know I serve a God bigger than any pressure, real or imagined.

Take heart, weary servants, knowing that we are not alone in our pain and our anxiety.  Remember to let go of the complexities that make our heads spin and simplify life into one thing: loving God so we can love others.  There is immense joy to be found in the journey but you have to remember to allow yourself to find it...

Street Sweeping.

This morning was one of those mornings in which I kept waking up afraid I was going to over sleep...and I over slept.  Rather than my alarm waking me, I awoke to the intrusive sound of the street sweeper...and remembered with a sharp pang that my car was still parked on the street and it was a few minutes after 8...

Sure enough I started my day late and with a parking ticket.

Though this is generally not a worthy topic to blog about on its own, I have been meaning to blog a  lot more often and it bums me out that I've already let myself become too busy to do the things I want to do, even the little things.

I miss India and the slow simplicity of life there.  Sure, sometimes I got bored but nothing was ever really that stressful.  I had time to just sit and think, time to contemplate, time to just be.  For whatever reason, I don't allow myself that time here and during moments where I have nothing else to do, I feel anxious about figuring out the next thing I'm supposed to be doing.  I have always thought that it was just me but now that I have seen myself outside of my culture, I realize so much of it is just my environment.  It feels like a terribly difficult up-hill battle to fight against busyness...but I realize it's perhaps what I have to do to maintain my overall health.

Why do we keep ourselves so busy?  What are we afraid of?

Dot. Dot. Dot.

Do you ever have a moment where suddenly you seem to come to the full realization of yourself?  A moment above the storm where you can see clearly for miles ahead?  A moment in which you feel defined, determined, and delineated from the crowd? A single drop in time where you actually know that you were created for something beyond human contemplation?

I hope you have those moments...

and that you let them change you.

Rain Down.

Ok, I can't wait to get my day started (and I slept in a bit later than I had planned on...) but before I jump into it I had to take a few moments to share the overflow of blessings in my life.

Brief background on the last 6-ish years: College was a crazy time in my life.  I had a difficult time deciding exactly what I wanted to do, or at least deciding to make that happen.  Once I finally settled on a school and a degree, I felt the entire experience was an up-hill challenge. Academically I didn't feel like always rising to the occasion and personally I was a huge wreck. My life was flanked with failed relationships and vain pursuits to fill voids, depression, medication, and countless tears and days hiding out in bed. I had some great things come out of those 5 years, mainly some incredible friendships and a whole lot of tough lessons learned. Right after graduation I took a corporate admin job and for the most part hated it...loved the people (most of them anyway) but did not fit into the environment whatsoever.  When the opportunity to potentially go to India showed its face, I dove in completely and, well, the rest is history.  In a nutshell, the several years leading up to my India adventure were hard and wrought with a lot of challenges, fighting within myself, and days of wandering in the desert. I often asked, "where are you, God?"

Low and behold the Promised Land.  Coming home from India started some incredible things happening for me.  Before I knew it, I had gone from having nothing to a having car to use and a house to stay in for almost no cost while I was looking for a new job. And then, with literally very little effort, I had a job a week after I moved back into Orange County. A WEEK!

Beyond having all my physical and logistical needs met and exceeded, a "garden" of friendships has begun to explode with new growth in my life.  Hardly a day goes by in which I don't receive a text, phone call, or email from someone reaching out or responding to me and wanting to get together.  I have this laundry list of amazing people to spend time with and not enough time to do it!  I suppose that's a pretty good "problem" to have...

I have encountered a couple of people who, upon hearing my story of blessing, chalked my life up to something as simple as, good people who do good things (referring to India) get rewarded, much like a sort of karma mentality.  With all due respect, that is SO not it.  I suppose for all intents and purposes you can state that I am a "good" person...in other words, I haven't murdered anyone or tortured any cats (to be debated, heh heh...).  In the eyes of the God I serve, I'm just as sinful and screwed up as the people who do murder others.  That concept, understandably, is really difficult for people to understand, especially in the world of secular humanism.  In terms of what's fair in the eyes of the world, those who murder and act out evil should be considered not as inherently good as those who feed starving children in Africa.  I do not wish to debate theologically on any of this, I merely want to remind everyone reading that I have my fair share of crap inside and out and am only considered anything good and worthwhile because I am FORGIVEN.

Let's not preach, shall we?  I merely want to remember to be humble and to give the glory to the Big Guy upstairs for the outpouring of blessings in my life.  Even if it looks technically "good" that I moved over to India to help those "less fortunate," truth be told, I had a load of very ugly and selfish moments during my time there...ask one of my absolute best friends who witnessed it, Cory.

May my season of blessings serve to encourage others to see the goodness of God and that in the world we live in, we need to call on that far more often than we do.  God is all powerful, all knowing, and all loving...and wants to take each one of us into a life of incredible fulfillment.  And for those of you doubting that this is possible or true, get in touch with me and I will share with you the nuts and bolts of who I was when I was trying to do life on my own strength...and compare that with the way I am blessed and taken care of in this season (only through submitting my life to the Lord)...and tell me God isn't real.  Sure, not every season will bear such comfort and greatness (um, hello, the least six months in India were HARD and PAINFUL!) but the Lord is faithful to bring us to places of rest when we need to feel His covering and love the most.  So, after an indescribably challenging time in India, God has granted me incredible solace and has freed me up to share His blessings with those around me.

He gives and takes away.

A Deep Breath.

Take a deep breath.

Inhale...

exhale.

Today is a day in which I feel I am spinning outside my own universe, looking in on my life and desperately reaching out to grasp at it...but I'm too far away.  I am at a disconnect.  This is one of those moments in which I am paralyzed by the reality of who I am and where I am...and wondering what to make of all of it.  Truth: I usually do well at loving my character and the stuff I have inside me to offer the world.  Another truth: if I'm not using those traits and gifts for a purpose I find worthy, I immediately feel...disconnected.

I realize life is full of ebbs and flows, ups and downs, rights and wrongs...but what I want and what I've always wanted is consistency in doing the things I'm passionate about and doing them well.  I can't blame the rest of the world or the hand of cards I find myself staring at when I don't have that consistency...it's not just the situation I was was dealt, it's ME.

Mediocrity pisses me off more than anything, especially when incredible people with incredible potential give into it...yet all too often I look in the mirror and see a person who settles exactly for that.  Settling.  Ugh.  I can see it so clearly in the lives of those around me and can even speak encouragement and love to the people I care most about who are bearing the weight of mediocrity...but when it comes to myself, I tend to ignore and allow the complacency to fester, all the while growing increasingly unsatisfied yet doing little about it.  What is wrong with me that I would allow my passion to fizzle so easily?

Tomorrow is NOT the day.  TODAY is the day.  Anything worth doing "tomorrow" is worth doing today, right now.  Otherwise, what the hell are we doing if we are living constantly for tomorrow?

I would say, not living at all.