gypsy landing

The past several years, I have felt a bit like a gypsy. I've lived for months at a time with different people—in Columbus, Ohio... Kennesaw, Georgia... Medford, Oregon... Nashville, Tennessee. Initially it was for what I thought would be a season of restoration in my marriage. Then he decided he was done—with counseling, with marriage, with me. I stepped back from ministry—even resigned my Board—and did almost nothing but engage in intensive therapy for about a year. Then I slowly got more involved in the ministry again, focusing on fundraising efforts. My "dark night of the soul" got unimaginably darker when the funding drought left us no choice but to close. I closed down the ministry in Africa and walked away from the only home/job/community/life I'd known since I was 19. Back in the States, I spiralled again into a deep depression, unable to find my smile or my hope or my energy.

Through all of this, friends graciously took me in, opening their hearts and their homes to me. I was always made to feel completely loved, welcomed, and part of the family for however long or short I was planted there. I'll never find words big enough for the gift that was to me in the midst of my most painful season. Thank you, loved ones, for caring for me so graciously and generously, continually extending yourself for me when I had nothing to offer in return. You held me up me when I didn't have strength to stand on my own, and you loved me loudly. I am forever in your debt.

Slowly but surely, some normalcy began returning to my life, and in the past six months, the remaining "big pieces" all seemed to come together. Finally. Since February, I've been sharing an apartment with a friend. Countless people reached out—passing along furniture, housewares, kitchen supplies, and filling this place with their love and generosity. It was overwhelming in the best possible way.

I was finally able to purchase a car, which I still thank Jesus for every time I get behind the wheel. All these years, the families I lived with were more than generous with their vehicles. But there is just something about being able to run to Target when I need to without asking permission or joining someone else's errand run. It's like I've reclaimed a bit of my independence that had been lost over the past few years.

And then just a couple weeks ago, my shipment from South Africa arrived. When we'd closed down the ministry, I was left with a house full of belongings and, well, life. The majority of it was given away or left with my ex-husband. But some of it was irreplaceable—like my entire lifetime worth of photographs, family Christmas ornaments, heirlooms that have been in the family for decades, childhood keepsakes...

So I bought space on a shipping container: the smallest amount of space you could buy, with the disclaimer that I would only receive it when the container filled up, by other people shipping to the same destination. The day before I left Africa, the movers came and packed up my "must-keeps". They said there was still room left in my allotted space, so I also packed up my African baskets (a prized possession), some artwork from my walls, and a few favorite kitchen items. When they said there was a lot of remaining space, they took a few random pieces of furniture just to fill it.

And two weeks ago, 20 months after I packed it up in Africa, my things arrived here in Nashville. Unbelievable! It feels so good to have some of my "former life" back. We quickly added baskets and signs and art all around the apartment, and it looks amazing. To look around and see glimpses of my old life mixed in with my new... Man! It's honey to my soul.

This gypsy is feeling more settled than I have in a long time. And, with Africa splashed all over my apartment, I feel more at home than I ever thought possible again.

Grateful is an understatement.

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God is good

My friend and fellow Deeper Story writer, Seth Haines, wrote a post recently that really resonated with me. He wrote about the unintended double-edged sword of proclaiming God's favor. "I’ve heard the creeping theology of prosperity in the averted tragedies of others. They spill wonder-filled, mystical stories, recounting God’s graciousness in piecing together the impossible jig-saw puzzles of life."

You need to read his entire post to really get it. The comment I left there ended up being long enough for a post of its own, so I figured I'd share it here as well.

... ... ...

I have found myself in the wrestling ground of this very issue for the past few years. I haven’t even been able to find words for what I’m grappling with, and I certainly haven’t come to any answers or conclusions.

But having walked through infidelity and then divorce, while surrounded by countless others whose infidelity journey (thankfully) ended in restoration/reconciliation, I am left with a pit-in-my-stomach feeling over my former position on the favor and goodness of God. Because as much as I’ve heard the seemingly careless remarks, I know I’ve made them in my lifetime as well.

“God is so good, and our marriage is better today than it ever was before.” “By God’s grace, we caught it in time and they got all the cancer.” “God is so faithful, and provision was there right when we needed it.”

Sometimes the provision doesn’t show up—sometimes the bills don’t get paid and the ministry God had clearly started is forced to close its doors. Sometimes the healing doesn’t come—like my beautiful, faith-filled friend who passed away last year or the chronic pain I live with daily. Sometimes the marriage doesn’t get restored—sometimes he really leaves to begin a new “happily ever after” with the other woman.

So do those outcomes mean that God isn’t good or faithful? Do they negate His grace or His love or His kindness? I know that they don’t. Because I know I can’t trust the God who gives without also trusting the God who takes away. He is one and the same, and His goodness is in anything His hand extends (and even in what it withholds). I know that He is both good and sovereign. The challenge lies in believing He is both of those at the same time.

I know that my gut-level cringing reaction to those seemingly flippant remarks about God being good when His favor is evident says more about me than the one who says them. Because I know they don’t mean them flippantly and I know they are right that God’s goodness is evident there.

The gritty sandpaper grating I feel inside is because I’m left wondering if I could say the same thing had the outcome been opposite. Or really, it’s because I’m left fully aware that I haven’t always done so. Even now, can I honestly and truly say I believe God’s grace, goodness, and faithfulness is evident in the way things turned out in my marriage? Maybe evident isn’t the right word. If “faith is the evidence of things not seen”, then I need to believe His goodness is there even if it isn’t evident.

And so I wrestle.

He is good. And He is sovereign. And both are displayed when the protection, provision, healing, and restoration shows up. And both are displayed when it doesn’t.

Lord, I believe. Help me overcome my unbelief.

it all comes down to choice

Someone asked me the other day where I'm at in my journey. She was talking about the traumatic loss and transition I've endured in just about every single area of my life over the past few years. "Do you feel like you're on the other side of it?" I didn't really know how to answer that question because I don't think she fully understood what she was asking (though I know she certainly meant well.)

I'm in a much better place than I've been in a long time. Although I'm painfully aware of how fragile it all is, life feels good right now. And I haven't been able to say that truthfully in years.

But that doesn't mean I've gotten over—or even through—my loss.

I think the idea of "recovery" from loss is a harmful and misleading mirage. It's unrealistic to expect that life could ever go back to normal after catastrophic loss of any kind. In a way, life will be forever divided by before and after. And to strive to go back to normal—to return to how things were and how you felt before your loss—is like trying to get somewhere on a treadmill: exhausting and impossible.

I don't know if I'm meant to come out on the other side of my heartache. At least not in the usual sense.

I'm discovering what it's like to live in the delicate tension of sorrow and joy. What we deem to be opposites are not actually mutually exclusive. They can be—and maybe they should be—embraced together. We don't move out of sorrow into joy, as if we've recovered from our heartache. Instead we learn to choose joy even when that seed of sorrow remains ever present.

Jerry Sittser, in A Grace Disguised, said it so beautifully:

"I did not go through pain and come out the other side; instead, I lived in it and found within that pain the grace to survive and eventually grow. I did not get over the loss of my loved ones; rather, I absorbed the loss into my life, like soil receives decaying matter, until it became a part of who I am."

What happens in me matters far more than what happens to me. It's not my experiences that define me, but my responses to them.

So instead of making it my aim to get through what's happened to me, I am learning to focus on my response to what's happened to me. As with most things, it all comes down to choice.

That's the reason "choose" is my One Word for this year. Because I need constant reminding that even when I have nothing else, I always have the power to choose.

While I can't control what's going on in this world or in my life, I do have control over my responses to those things. So today—same as yesterday and the day before—it's entirely up to me to choose how I will respond to pain and sorrow and loss. I need to continue to choose to face, feel, and work through it, rather than to avoid it. And I need to continue to choose joy and trust right here, right now.

So if you're wondering where I'm at in my journey, know this: You can always find me right here, in the middle of the tension between joy and sorrow, grief and gratitude, weakness and strength, questions and faith.

Join me here, won't you?

Originally posted on Deeper Story. Read the comments there >

the grace of fragility

Cozied up in my comfy chair—still in pajamas, coffee in hand, snuggled under a blanket—I close my eyes and take a deep breath. And I can't help but smile. I have a home, a job, an income. I have friends and family who love me. I have health insurance, a car, a closet full of clothes. I have all I need, really. I shake my head in wonder. All gifts. All grace.

And I whisper a "Thank You"...

I open my eyes and breathe in deeply again. This nagging thought—the same one that's been hovering just beneath the surface for weeks now—scratches again and reminds me it's still there. It lingers close, threatening to steal my exhale and my smile. Like a funhouse mirror, it plays tricks on my mind, distorting hope into a frightening creature and making fears appear larger than they really are.

The thought I can't seem to shake is how fragile everything in my life feels, in a way it never used to. I'm painfully aware of how quickly it all can vanish. How in an instant, everything can be taken away.

Realizing life's fragility is ultimately a good thing. It keeps me mindful that nothing and no one ever belongs to me. It forces me to hold things (and people) more loosely. No matter how strong my death-grip, the concept of "mine" remains a mirage. Nothing is mine. And I'm not in control.

The constant reminder of fragility also leaves me feeling unsettled... insecure... unstable. It makes it difficult to invest in relationships, trust wholeheartedly, and put down roots. It feels harder to dream, to laugh, to enjoy the good that's present right now. Joy takes more effort than it used to and anxiety comes more easily. Hope often seems like a cruel joke. Remember Lucy and the football?

Sometimes that's what hope feels like, and I'm left feeling stupid that I fell for it yet again.

Even as I say all this out loud, I know how ridiculous it sounds even in my own head. I hear the nudging reminders not to worry about tomorrow as today has enough worry of its own. I see the "choose joy" on my arm and feel the heart hug of my ever-present friend who showed me what it means to live that out. I hear God calling me to hope. Again. No matter what.

I want to believe that eventually dreaming will feel easier again, that life—though fragile—will feel more secure, and that thoughts of the future will breed more hope than fear. I want to.

So I close my teary eyes again, and take a deep breath. I hold it as long as I can, and as I let the air out I shake my head. All gifts. All grace.

And I whisper a "Thank You"...

rounded the bend

The other day I was responding to a friend's email and found myself rambling. In a good way (hopefully). I was updating her on where I'm at and how I'm doing, and — as usual — writing it out was so good for me. I wanted to share bits and pieces (edited for context) here in this space, because I want you, my friends, to also know what's going on with me. And I already found some of the right words to articulate that, so I might as well start there. The first half of this year has been crazy-transitional... I've moved into an apartment, begun navigating a new "career", and started to get established in a new city. The changes I've faced in the past few years have been plentiful and overwhelming, and I feel as though I am finally exiting the limbo stage. I'm beginning to feel some stability and normalcy, like I haven't experienced in a very long time.

It's all still very new and it's a daily process of embracing my "new normal", but it feels good.

And it is no small thing for me to say that. Things haven't felt good in years, and so it's almost with trepidation that I acknowledge out loud that they do now. There was no light at the end of the tunnel for so long that it feels almost surreal to be out of the tunnel. Quite extraordinary actually...

My Africa trip brought a lot of much-needed healing. It was equally good and hard to be back again, but my time there was long enough for me to eventually begin feeling okay with where things are. With where I am.

A place that once felt like home no longer does, but it will always have my heart... and I'm more okay with that now. For so long I've grieved the loss of even that sense of home and belonging, and I am really starting to be okay with that having been a season. I'm not saying there isn't still grief in that — there probably always will be to some extent — but there is nothing to do but embrace it.

Africa is — and always will be — in the fabric of my DNA.

It is a huge part of what makes me who I am, and for that I will always love her and be drawn back to her.

I am a contributing author to a book that is being published in September. My section is about finding God in Him leading me to Africa as well as in Him leading me away from it. As always, it's about my wrestling... about my questions rather than my answers. While I'd written it prior to my trip, I rewrote it while I was there as I worked on it with my editor. It was certainly not a coincidence, and entirely reshaped the direction of the entire piece. And God really used it to work His healing in my heart. Just incredible...

My Africa trip also brought some much-needed stability. My roles with the two organizations I work with there were solidified and clarified even further. I am now the Brand & Communications Manager for Love Botswana Outreach Mission (Maun, Botswana) and the Communications Director for Bridge for Hope (Cape Flats, South Africa), working from here in the States with trips back there as needed (hopefully a couple times a year). I am assisting both ministries with branding initiatives, online presence development, design project management, and copy writing, and also getting to do some program architecture, which I love. I feel very blessed to be able to work for such incredible organizations, each at very different phases of development: Love Botswana will soon be celebrating their 25th year and Bridge for Hope is in their first. I absolutely love that, as each comes with unique challenges and joys, and I'm grateful I get to be involved in both.

For the first time in years, I have a steady income again. And for the first time in pretty much ever, I'm being paid an actual salary as opposed to raising financial support. It feels unimaginably freeing. Just this past week I was able to purchase a used car (thanks to my parents' assistance with a loan). It feels like such a gift to be mobile again. To have reclaimed a level of independence I haven't had in a very long time.

I've heard it said that in walking through grief, you don’t realize you are turning a corner toward healing until after you’ve rounded the bend.

Then you look back and see that somewhere, something changed, even though you may not be able to identify specifically what or when. That is exactly what happened with me. Right now, looking back, I see a bend in the road. And I have no idea how or exactly when I turned that corner, only that I did. And I find my heart open at last to the possibility of a different future.

I am not saying it was a passive process — that I just woke up one day and suddenly I am “better”. Because that’s not it at all, and I think “better” is somewhat of a mirage anyway. Walking through grief is active. Very active. And doing the hard work of actually walking through it means eventually you find yourself on the other side. Looking back. And seeing that you’ve rounded the bend.

It remains a road I am still walking, and one I will likely be walking for a long time to come. But now, just like way back when I moved to Africa — practically a lifetime ago — my heart is once again filled with a cocktail of hope and doubt, faith and foolishness, and as always, more questions than answers.

And it feels good. Really good.

Thank you for standing with me. For walking with me. For prayerfully carrying me through. I'm grateful for your love & friendship. Tell me about you. Where & how are YOU?