Old Habits

I had to laugh today.

Just yesterday, Sam and I were talking. We've got a 45 minute drive every day, so we cover a few topics. But yesterday we were talking about being gracious receivers. This is something that has always been difficult for both of us. God has been gracious and good, as always, and has taught us both a lot about allowing other people to love and serve us.

It's kind of funny, because service is something that comes so naturally to me. But learning to allow other people to serve me? That has been a long process. We were talking about how far we have come, and how much God has changed our hearts in this. In being gracious receivers, and not being stubborn and refusing to let anyone do anything for us.

And it's true. We have come a long way. I know I am not at all the person I was before. Even in the last year my heart in that has changed so much. My willingness to allow people to love me by doing things for me... It used to be that I didn't want to owe anyone anything. Then I didn't want anyone to have to do things for me, because I didn't need them to. I wanted them to save their service for someone who needed it, you could say. I have only recently learned that it is just as loving to accept service from others as it is to give it out. Funny how that works....

I had to laugh because Sam and I were just talking about this. And then today, at the end of a very long, hot day, I had an empty water cooler to walk up to the office. It wouldn't fit on the golf cart, so one of my friends grabbed the cooler and told me to take the golf cart and that he'd walk. Without a thought, like a reflex, I told him not to worry about it, that he could take the golf cart and I would carry the water cooler. The look I got said, "You're crazy if you think I'm going to make you walk." And I had to laugh.

Some habits die hard, I guess. Though my reasoning isn't the same as before, it comes down to the same thing. Which that reason then boils down to the same thing that drives all my sin: pride. That stubborn pride that God promises to tear down, thankfully. One water cooler at a time :) I am so grateful for a God who is patient and loving and good. And for friends who don't offer to serve, they just do.

One of many lessons I have learned over the last few weeks. More on this later. :) 

Basic, Pensive, Different

There's something stirring in me. Like the swirl of wind and color in the rise of October, there stir the beginnings of something new and different in me. The browns and reds of the familiar are falling way to something foreign to my soul. Something colder, like the winds of first December. It's a comforting cold, a stretching cold, a welcomed cold. Like a dive in the pool after a hot day. It's shocking, different, new. And exciting.

What? I don't know. There is simply something colored on the horizon. It's a color that I've never seen before. Something subtle, that has no prior emotion or memory tied to my heart. And yet my heart beats on, like ever before, as if the colors on the horizon are something it's been yearning for all along.

There is a constant pull in me, to know the colors that dance before my eyes. To know them and give them names. To put edges on the smudges of sunrise. But that is not my job.

There is another pull in me, just as constant, but of the opposite. To love the moment of presence. To love my days in the heat of  the sun and the screams of wild abandon that follow children to the ends of the earth. To love the exhaustion of the day in and out. To know the temporariness of now, to take breaths and love the moment in which I find myself every day. Every moment.

There are blessings all around me. And the colors of what comes next are truly something beautiful. But I know not what it is, and that is good. It's in the heat of now where I can see the eyes of my God staring back at me. The hands of my Savior shaping me for the next bend in the road. The heart of my Father embracing me, encouraging me, loving me so deeply.

And yet, there is a noise in me. It's a dark, heavy cloud that sits just on the horizon. Encroaching on the deep colors of the sunset I seek so desperately to embrace. It thunders, flashes of light pulling the center of my attention from the beauty in which I long to reside. The violent light threatens to pull my gaze instead towards the darkness that trembles within the distant clouds.

They are there. They are always there. The clouds. They come and go with veracity, violence, subtle whispering lies. But they always serve the same purpose, the same call; to pull my gaze from the sun in the sky, and fill my head with the worries of lightning and thunder.

But the lightning and thunder are not what define me. Or my God. Or anything. They come and go with the shifting of the wind. They change, they grow, they diminish. They are only here for a moment. It's the colors that sit so elegantly on the floor of the sky that define the world. They change, yes, but they are always there. Every day. There is not a thing in the world that can hold them at bay. After the storm calms, no matter what havoc it may have wreaked, the colors remain. Elegant, present, calming.

They are where my gaze belongs. They are where my attention, my heart, my love lie. Because the wind will shift and the worry that clamors for the attention of my soul along with it. And at the end of the day, I will have learned nothing from watching it but that it cannot be controlled.

May we choose instead to watch the colors as they dance in the sky.

Constant Pursuit of Adventure

It's 7:43 in the morning, and I am currently sitting on a bus on the way to Atlanta. From there, I have forty minutes to catch my second bus to Orlando. I'm praying I make my second bus... Otherwise I have some serious problem solving to do. Either way, I find the Megabus a wonderful adventure and am thoroughly glad I forgot to buy a plane ticket and had to take the bus.

The world truly is a small place. There are big places, small places, off-the-beaten-track places, well worn and loved places. There are close places, far places, familiar places, and worlds-away places. But they are all places, and all within reach.

Do you really grasp the vastness of this idea? Not just that there is an entire world outside your doorstep, but that you can go. You need no reason, no explanation, nothing. You can just pick up and go. And all those excuses running through your head as you read that? That you don't have the money, the time, you've got homework, work, kids... Whatever it is, they are never truly tying you down. They may craft the comfortable walls behind which you hide, but they do not bind you.

Because God is bigger than your job, your school, the rigorous demands of kids and family. I'm not saying you have to up and leave those things. God calls us to our jobs and schools and families, absolutely. They are good, Godly, important, beautiful things. But what my head and heart are mulling over as I watch the miles pass by is this: Would you pick up and leave those things (or take them with you) if God called you to up and go? Or are they an excuse to stay where you are?

Maybe these are just the ramblings of a gypsy. I have never liked staying put for very long, nor do I struggle to drop everything and go. I need no plan, no agenda, no specifics. I am in constant pursuit of adventure, no matter what that looks like. It's just how God made me, and one of the ways I see him best.

But I don't think I'm alone. Ours is a God of adventure. He made this world, and he made it beautiful. He filled it with people and places and mysteries. Do you know the story of Jesus walking on the water? He didn't have to walk on the water, but he did. And you know what? I'm with him. Walking on water is way more fun than just appearing on the boat. I bet Jesus thought it was fun, too.

Adventure comes in many colors. It never looks the same twice. I think it's more of a way of life than an experience. But don't miss the truth in that: life was never meant to be safe. It was never meant to be calm and predictable and passive. That is the great lie of American Christianity. Loving Jesus makes life less predictable, not more so.

I hate the term "missions." Because no one likes to be a project. And I think life is a mission. It isn't something a handful of exceptionally godly people are called to do overseas. If you love Jesus, your life is a mission, whether you live in the States or not.

Not everyone is called overseas. Not everyone will see the world. I count myself incredibly blessed to have seen as much of it as I already have. More than most have in a lifetime, and that is such a huge blessing. But what my gypsy spirit longs to share with those around me is the freedom to do so. The freedom of head and heart to pick up and go and trust the Lord to provide. The lack of fear to walk into an unknown adventure and trust God to not only come through, but overflow.

Because it isn't always easy. The opportunity may not simply present itself in a nice little package on your doorstep. Sometimes, and most of the time I've found in my life, God's call to pick up and go is a faint thing. Is a soft tug at the heart and little more. And from that soft tug, you often encounter more closed doors than open windows. You often have little more than that soft tug to break down the doors standing in your way.

One of my favorite books says that the saying "God never closes a door without opening a window," is a load of crap. It's often an excuse to be passive. The truth is, sometimes God closes a door because he wants you to break it down.

Would you?