Change You Can Believe In

I got a letter in the mail from my amazing friend, Tracey the other day. I loved seeing her scrawling handwriting and pretty stationary and feeling like she was with me just for a while, in her words. And what she wrote about really hit me. She told me about how her heart is resistant to change, but how she realizes that we are not static beings, but are constantly changing, little by little into more of ourselves (best case scenario).

I think the thing I have loved the most (while also being the most frustrating) about this job is that it has stretched me and helped me grow. And who I am now astounds me.

And now for a short inventory of 

Things I Used to be Afraid of but am Now OK With: big dogs, cooking, heights, my hair.

(via http://modernhepburn.tumblr.com/ and yours truly)

We’ll focus on just one item from the above list: heights.

I used to be terrified of any notion of being up off the ground unless I was enclosed in an airplane.

 And now I climb 25 foot poles. I walk trails on the edge of a cliff. I stand on top of our climbing tower for hours. I jump off platforms over 100 feet above river beds (shout-out to the impeccable Camp Eagle in Rocksprings, TX!)

 I not only accept challenges but have become that girl that seeks them out. I like to be thrilled, to taste accomplishment on the other side, and don’t care about that fear doing cartwheels in my stomach the whole time.

Because that fear isn’t completely gone. What has changed isn’t that I am some fearless, thrill-seeking maniac, but that I have understood how to work through it. I have grasped that I am capable of so much more than I once thought. I have realized that being challenged helps me grow, and learn, and trust, and live. And living is the way to meet our Maker, because living and choices and people can bring us so much fear but I’ve learned to work it out as I trust in the Lord.

Homesick

Having a family that you are crazy about is the best and worst thing in the life of a wanderer.  I mean I’ve come to realize that family really means leaving. I never thought I’d be one to move more than a few hours away, yet here I am in Texas while my family hunkers down through another winter in Minnesota.

And I've started to really grasp how that means I miss out on the little everyday things and it's made this girl homesick.

All of my visits are always storybook wonderful while still being internet hilarious and awkward and leaving is hell. It’s something with a solution so simple, so elementary and yet I cannot bring myself to move closer to home. Maybe that’ll change someday. But for now, home is wherever I go. Because my family is so much who I am and I cannot help but share them with anyone who will listen.

"You can kiss your family and friends goodbye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world, but a world lives in you" Frederick Bueechner

Headaches & Blessings

Once in a while I get terrible headaches. It’s hard for me to function as every noise, every fraction of light, and every movement makes my noggin’ feel like it’s filled with strong men using hammers. It’s upsetting to me because I never know when they will creep in and start to set up their brick walls.

This one hit on day two of my first week back at camp after my holiday break. It was during a group activity during which we were all supposed to work together on the task at hand and I was eager to get it over with.

In my hasty and cloudy manner, I gave my friend, Nate, the impression that I was mad with him.

Back in the office he flat-out asked me, “Are you mad at me?”

A surprised and breathful, “No, of course not!” was my reply.

And what he said next struck me. “Good, because I like you and I don’t want you to be mad at me.”

I was so hit by his simple and honest words. And I wanted to cry with the knowledge of having someone I don’t deserve care for me.

Which is, of course, who God is. Someone who cares for me-deeply, unbelievably- though I don’t deserve it. Someone I get to have around all the time, His presence holding everything together and blessing me constantly- though I am frightfully unaware. His love giving me strength-even when friends I love completely like my own family come and go. I don’t deserve such constant undivided, untainted devotion. And yet I receive these blessings upon blessings.