the long meal of the journey

Every couple of weeks I’m hoping to give updates about our home adventures. I have a tendency to want to end my posts with a wrap-up message or conclusion, but not everything comes together that neatly in life, so why should it here? I’m not really doing this to provide you with sermons every few days. Let’s be real.

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This entire month has felt so so very long. Something people say often is that time flew by, yet seemed to take forever. Endless is the number of conversations I’ve had about this. Why do we keep saying it as if it were a new concept?

Anyway, October did not fly by. It was like eating a huge meal over the course of a day, where you don’t have time to fully digest but you keep being given stuff to eat. And you’re like, “when will this end? I need a pause, people.”

Just reading that over again makes me feel uncomfortable. You too? You’re welcome.

That’s how I’ve felt for about 30 days. Hubs is about halfway through his academic quarter, and he has so much on his plate with work and classes. I’m proud of him though; he started out so strong, making a homework plan and reading every day to keep up with it. And last month, he had interviews for an internal job opening, and he technically got the job! Now we’re waiting to learn what and where it will be, exactly.

I’ve been working and becoming more and more involved with our church family. In concert with a couple of other women, I started a monthly gathering for women with the intention of deep conversation.* At this point, I’m the only one of our trio still involved, so I’m feeling the burden a bit more and hoping to find others to join me in leading it. I’m also assisting with the women’s Bible study at our church, which brings me to my knees in unworthiness. Why on earth am I someone leading a small group of sisters in discussion and fellowship these past 6 weeks? God has ways we don’t understand. I know I’m learning more than I’m teaching.

Hubs and I have to this point been training for races, but now, for different reasons, we’re calling that into question. Hubs hurt his knee last week and will need to take really good care of it, so we’ll see. On the other hand, I’m learning about a different way of being healthy (primal living/paleo, to be precise), and it doesn’t include distance running so much. So we’ll see.

A couple of weeks ago, a dear friend moved in with us, where she’ll be through the end of the year. It is a joy to see her every day. I am sure challenges will come, but we are all excited for what God will do in and through us and one another.

Birthday/family dinner with our new roomie!

And, friends, last night my sister arrived! Her trip was meant to surprise me for my birthday (oh hey I just turned 26), but oops, I guessed the surprise based on my husband’s dodgy hints and secretiveness. I am so honoured to have her with me for these few days.

That is my sis. 🙂

It’s been just over a month that I’ve been writing consistently, and it is absolutely a habit hard to form. Yet, looking back on what I’ve written is encouraging and empowering, and I know I’ll get better at this. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing with myself. That, and so many thoughts have been trying to get my attention in my brain that I can hardly attend to any of them.

Friends, I have been forgetting to chew. Doesn’t feel good to swallow if that’s the case, and definitely not great for the tummy. So much has been coming in, and while I’ve become slightly better at saying no to some things, I still feel full. I am pretty ready for this meal to end and give me a break.

Sometimes, life looks you in the face and says, “Here’s a break.” Examples: when you’re too sick to do anything, when you’re on vacation. And sometimes, life doesn’t proceed with regard for your needs and you have to holler at it, “I’m taking my break now.” And get up from the table, go for a walk, stretch, breathe, think. Stop eating.

Sometimes, you don’t realize you’ve been eating that much. Maybe you watch TV with your hand on auto pilot in and out of a bag of something or other. And then you stop watching for a second, and you’re really not feeling good.

But enough is enough, and in the next few days I’ll be crafting an opportunity for stillness and digestion. This doesn’t mean circumstances will change whatsoever. And at this moment, I feel sort of that uncomfortable I hinted at in the beginning – this over-full, this exhaustion that comes with big meals.

And here is where you find me.

Life together has to involve vulnerability and openness to hard things. With that in mind, this is a snapshot of what we’ve been up to, and, friend, wouldn’t you let me in on your adventures too? What have you learned about life full of things? About digestion and chaos?

*Inspired by IF:Table

how to be … in awe [part two]

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This is the second part of my previous musings about awe, the first of which you can find here.

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part two

The sky tonight is such a deep, pure blue. There’s a lone star next to the moon; these two are the first to arrive to the fete of the evening. It’s wintry chill outside, and still. It’s a night when I almost could change colour loyalties, it’s that beautiful.

There is something about blue, something wistful and sweet. It’s wholly placid. Wistful is one of my favourite words, because so often it describes how I feel: “full of yearning or desire tinged with melancholy,” “pensive,” “musingly sad” (www.merriam-webster.com). It’s not that I’m depressed – far from it. I just oftentimes feel this longing inside, for more, for wholeness, for something greater. It’s difficult to express in words, but since I’ve started writing about it, I suppose I have a certain degree of responsibility to do so.

What’s this longing for? I can’t think of any way to put it except that I feel a yearning for eternity. Nothing earthly can completely satisfy me. Nothing. I’m not necessarily only talking about money or popularity, although I hear the more of those sort of things you have, the more you want. I’m referring to things like success, or health, or relationships, or career, or food… or love. Of course, a milieu of all these things together can make one quite content, for the most part. But is it enough? I say no. Why? Because there are stars out there. There are unvisited lands. There are people who need love. There is eternity.

Sometimes I’m so filled with joy that I feel I might burst. In those moments, I am absolutely content. And still, there’s a longing. Because in those moments, I’m so close to what I think eternity must be like (eternity for those who know Christ and whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life). Moments with no troubles, no tears of sadness. Moments of sweet, simple freedom and peace. In those moments, sometimes I’m the most wistful of all.

Similar to Psyche in Til We Have Faces by Lewis, though perhaps less extreme:

“I have always … had a kind of longing for death … It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine … And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche come! But I couldn’t (not yet) come and I didn’t know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when other birds of its kind are flying home.”

I wrote a poem one night after driving through the mountains at sunset. Over the space of two hours I felt such an intense and sincere longing as I gazed out the window at rivers, green fields, rocky mountains, and all the glorious colours of evening. I felt this longing to fly, to continue over every next hill and peak to see what was beyond. A longing to be in the sunset, with its colours swirling around me in wholeness and light.

We all long for [Eden], and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature…is still soaked with the sense of exile.

(Tolkien)

But we have taught ourselves how to hush this longing when it whispers to our hearts. We decide we just feel close to nature or in-tune with something grand and vague, or we determine how to regain control of things. This is how we often respond to awe when we encounter it.

Because the uncontrollable isn’t safe. It’s too great. And God is too awesome for us. Too powerful.

But, wait, Reader. Because when we surrender to His holiness and acknowledge our weakness and dirt, and let ourselves be washed by His grace, then He gives us His powerfulness and He puts His same Spirit in us. He still isn’t manipulatable or touchable. Or safe.

But I don’t want safe. I want good.

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How, then, shall we be?

In awe.