A large portion of my life lies in the doubting. I doubt my ability to stir movement with my words. I doubt my role within relationships that are real and raw and good. I doubt I am noticed. I doubt whether a 14 year old boy will remember me when we spend nearly 365 days apart between visits and our communication lies in hand written letters most of the year. I doubt that God is concerned with my trivial desires and hopes.
Of a couple of those things I am realizing my doubt is ill-advised.
As I write this out, I'm doubting I'll ever be able to write about India well.
But here's what I know.
India moves me. It moves my blood and steals my words, but it's okay...
I cannot explain to you with words the ways the brown eyes of the children shoot straight into the center of my soul and refuse to budge.
I can't explain the light rain that falls anytime a little girl walks through the slum with belled anklets bracing her delicate feet.
I cannot verbalize the joy I obtain by being around growing girls with deep, raspy voices who ask endless questions and tease with confidence.
I don't have the training to properly share the innocence coming from a 16 year old boy's voice when he asks me about my hobbies in America.
I cannot articulate the beautiful ache that comes from sitting with an 8-year-old coloring and admiring the impossibly tiny, thin, gold band on her middle finger.
There aren't enough verbs or adjectives or creatively combined metaphors to illustrate how a foreign land, and the most beautiful people I've ever laid eyes on, have become a source of home.
But there it is.
I doubted, last year, when I boarded a plane to India for the first time that a country so far removed from everything familiar to me would be good or pleasant for a girl who hates change. And now I can't imagine not having these stories, these faces, these moments as a part of me.
I can't describe the way I am moved, but I pray - high and loud - that you have a space that shakes your blood like India does mine.
Maybe it requires long plane rides and a list of ways to be respectful in a culture you don't quite yet comprehend. Maybe it's right where you are, in the spaces between work and play - kisses hello and cooking dinner. Maybe you haven't found it yet. Maybe you don't even know you need a place like this - that stirs something within you hadn't realized you possessed; a place that brings out pieces of yourself you hadn't yet met, a place that releases the wild within you.
Fight to be the most wild version of yourself, friend. Find the place that stirs and moves, asks you to bend and bow to new customs, new foods, new sensory experiences.
Fight like hell to create space to meet new pieces of yourself. Then plant yourself there, even if just for fleeting moments, and make it home.
If you're anything like me, you've long needed someone to show up and tell you to stop doubting that there's an element within you that needs unhinged.
Unhinge yourself.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Because my words won't do, here's a look into a place that makes me feel the most free, the most wild, the most unhinged.
Here's to you and your untethering.
No comments:
Post a Comment