On the Vision

I have spent most of my adult life having a love affair with words.

In the middle of my junior year of high school a creative writing class was offered as an elective and I remember thinking, "okay, I'll give this a go." and there was really no looking back after that. I wanted all the prompts. I wanted to litter every single journal page in every single journal I owned with formulated words and sentences laced together with passion and heat. Up until that point the only writing I had done was to honor hearts that had ceased their beating much too soon for my liking. And it was therapeutic. It was therapeutic in a way I'd never experienced before. Prior to the writing you could have found me sitting firmly at the top of the stairs leading to my bedroom, the landline cradled between my jawbone and shoulder, coiled phone chord stretched to its capacity, crying or laughing to the girlfriend I had chosen as my therapist for that week.

But with this creative writing class it was as if I had found the proverbial buried treasure I never knew I was really looking for in the first place. With my brightly colored pens and the same three lines of a song, I could create an entire world of my own. I could be the girl that looked just right and had it all, and always got what she wanted. I held power when I had the pen in my hand. I read and wrote about anything and everything I could get my hands on, whatever popped into my head. So, after realizing that writing came increasingly easier to me than math or science or anything, really, it seemed like a natural step to declare Creative Writing as my major in college.

I spent entire quarters falling in love with crafting fiction and characters and work-shopping pieces that had come to be like delicate, tiny newborns to me. All the while, I was proud to claim that I would be a writer one day. I will be a writer. I was wholly convinced I could, and would, do it.

And then I graduated. And I got a job that had nothing to do with my degree. And I ended up really loving that job. And my heart - that had beat and pulsed most vividly when I was writing, started to shut down over the idea that I would, one day, be a writer and make a dent in the world with my words. And I was mostly okay with it. I was a grown up. Grown ups don't spend time wishing over these things when they have bills to pay. I would be remembered some other way. I'd figure it out somehow.

Because, in transparency, THAT is what I was concerned about. I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be heard. The desire to be remembered sat at the core of my chest and was reiterated in everything I did. I wanted to be seen. Period. And so I did just about anything I needed to in order to feel seen and heard. I was reckless and senseless and dangerous. It wasn't attractive or endearing. I look back on those days and my throat threatens to constrict with gasped thanks that I am here to even look back on it in the first place.

And then I got on a plane and flew to India. And everything changed. Jesus stepped into the cyclone of my existence and single handedly calmed the storm. Because that's what He does, guys. He knows the storm will come, how long it will last, and the damage that will result from it. And then He commands it to stop.

He silenced the winds that were roaring and lying and wreaking havoc and He used a 13 year old boy to crumble down the walls I'd managed to build in the midst of the storm.

And my life never looked the same.

I have spent most of my adult life having a love affair with words. And then I closed the door on ever getting to write them full time. And then the unthinkable happened.

I got a job as a writer.

I could try to put words to this, but I'm going to let someone much more brilliant and seasoned do the work for me:

I feel, in the best moments, in spite of the uncertainty, in spite of the fear, like Lily Brisco in To the Lighthouse. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.  . . . I have had my vision, and I thought it would come in a flash, a bright beam of knowing. But it has come in the same way that all things come to me. It has come to me with a fight. It has come to me the hard way, through tears and fog and fear and chaos, and now has landed in the palm of my hand like a firefly. There now, I have had my vision. --Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines

I have had my vision. And I am seeing it literally come to life before me. I was given my first assignment for the ministry I am going to be working for and I cried when I read it; the 13 year old boy that God worked through to flip my entire life upside down? Well, I am being asked to write a story about him.

I received the necessary backstory on his life before I met him for this assignment. I will confess here that I am terrified by this piece. I am simultaneously humbled and absolutely wrecked that this is my first assignment for my new job. That sweet boy, his story has known darkness. And I found myself wholly distracted today in Dayton . . . I found myself desperately wanting to be with him. To hug him. I find myself wanting to whisper flurried, hushed proclamations of love in his ear -- Jesus loves you. So do I. Over and over again.

I feel like, up until India, I spent all of my time wanting to be known and seen. And, as I mentioned before, that led me to put myself in horrible situations . . . because it didn't matter if they loved me or not - if they were taking time, I was seen.

And now, post India, all I want to do is spend my time making sure HE feels known and seen.

Perhaps that is what having had one's vision is about. You see, for yourself, something that you've spent an expansive amount of time wishing for and hoping for and when it comes to fruition, it's nothing like what you expected it to be. Mostly because you simply aren't who you started out as. I have come to not be wholly occupied by being seen. Generally, I yearn to simply see him, this little boy who changed the wiring of my heart.

I've spent most of my adult life having a love affair with words. And being seen. And being known. And it wasn't until I left the familiar, said yes to the unknown, that I came to find that I am wholly seen, fully known, and that my dreams - my vision - they are placed delicately by Him, nurtured by Him, and brought into the light by Him.

If your dreams, your hopes, your vision are from Him, He delights to bring them to life. He delights in being the One who fully knows and sees us.

And that's what I'm learning my having had my vision -- I need not perform extravagantly or behave foolishly to be seen. He simply asks me to say yes.

On Valentine's Day

Another Valentine's Day is upon us. It is always an interesting day of the year for me; we live in a culture, in a society, that likes to try to make us feel lacking if we are without a significant other. Singles have the propensity to feel on Valentine's Day what I might imagine a woman deeply desiring children might feel on Mother's Day; I could be wrong. I am not a woman who has wanted a family since the days of playing with dolls, but I can imagine that it is a hurt that nestles in deep under the collar bone and these days of the year - single days earmarked for celebration in some capacity - have an intrusive way about them that can quite blatantly sucker punch someone with the reality of what they don't have, but want. Or, at the very least, are consistently being asked when they will obtain said thing by well meaning family members and friends.

I've had quite a few Valentine's Days with no significant plans or significant other. And I used to feel alarmingly bad about this. What must it say about me that in the days leading up to this one day of pink and red and white, I have been found spending too much money on supplies to make handmade valentine's so that I wouldn't feel so bad about not having one person to shop for. What does it say about me that I found myself getting pissy over the many posts of flowers and chocolate and jewelry that my friends were receiving, all in the name of love? I was finding myself becoming one of those people that shouted obscenely about Hallmark and it's attempt to raise their sales on the 14th of February every year -- I was white hot mad because each year they were missing the sale of one card - the one that I should have been receiving; the one I so desperately wanted.

This day, ya'll. This day has a way about it that will allow you to feel either chronically happy or acutely aware of what you're missing.

But I've been thinking . . . As I sit here typing this out, there is a beautiful spray of yellow roses, daisies, and lilies on my coffee table from two people that took the time to surprise me. And last night, way too late, I made a not so wise decision, as a bit of a glutard, to eat a donut that two other people had dropped off at my house as a surprise. And last night I shared a meal with one of my dearest friends.

And who is Hallmark, or the media, or this culture to tell me that that's not big love?

I don't know where you're at today. Maybe you woke up and you knew exactly what your plans were because someone took the time to plan a whole day for you - to celebrate  the love they have for you. Maybe you woke up, next to your husband or wife, and you don't have plans, but you smiled knowing that you have a valentine year round - and I am convinced that is one of the best feelings. But maybe you woke up like me -- in a bed with no bones lying next to you. And guys? That's okay. There are certainly mornings I wake up and I feel the emptiness more than anything. I can feel the ache of wanting what is not yet here. And that's okay. But one of my people is always quick to say a particular set of words to me in instances where I'm prepared to blow the kazoo to begin my pity party of one: "feel this, but know I won't let you sit in it."

If you feel sad today, or mad today, or broken because it's another "day of love" that you don't have a date for, feel that. But don't pull the blankets over your head and make a fort in it.
This is something I'm always having to work at. Consistently, I am having to allow myself to feel what I need to feel but reminding myself that this is not a life lived - holing up in my house with junk food and milk and sappy episodes of Grey's Anatomy or the exact same plot line with a different title written by Nicholas Sparks; it is not a life lived to sit and list all of the things I do not have and feel cheated for. It is not a life lived if I am not celebrating the people, the moments, the things I do have.

Feel your feelings. My God knows I definitely do that. But know that, wherever you are, however you woke up, a girl in Dayton is cheering for you - whether you have a Valentine or not.

Because you are more supremely loved than you can even imagine - and you have a tribe that will be quick to remind you. And, hey, if you don't have a tribe, find one. Name them. Make each of them a part of your life and piece of your heart.

One of the best things I ever did for myself was find my "persons" and name them and call them my tribe. I let them see the grime and grit and they still choose to stay. To stay is to love out loud.

It's another Valentine's Day. But it's also a Sunday. So I may not have a date that I need to get fancy for, but this has been a week of me realizing I am wildly loved and fiercely protected and I do absolutely nothing to deserve either of those things. But He chose to die for me and fight for me, even when He knows I'm going to try to run from both of those gifts.

I will save you the cheesiness of claiming that Jesus is my Valentine. I won't say it. But I might say this.

He loved me first. Before my babe parents held me in their arms. Before they argued over what to name me. He loved me. He saw me. He created me and knew that I would be stubborn and reckless with my heart and body; He knew I would run from Him, and often; He knew I would hit brick wall after brick wall before finally realizing He was the one who built it up for me. He loved me first.

So today, on Valentine's Day, that is also a Sunday, I'm going to choose Him first back. And I'm going to keep choosing Him first.

So, holler at a girl, Hallmark, when you wanna make a card for that.

On True North

I've been thinking a lot about direction lately. Where am I going? Where have I come from? From where have I risen and where, next, will the falls occur? I think, as someone who has claimed storytelling as the heartbeat of her life, I am learning more and more that direction is a key component in any story. It is, without a doubt, intrinsic to my little life.

I've been quite clear on where I came from; raised in the midst of cornfields and wearing Carhartt isn't something that escapes a girl's mind easily. I never felt quite right in the middle of all the jacked up trucks and driving behind farm machinery on those back roads, but I willingly admit that I began a love affair with my roots in the country the moment I left them for space of my own.

The where I'm going seems to change from season to season; I can recall my mom very lovingly nudging me, saying, "You will change what you want, coco. What you desire at 21 won't be the same at 25. And rest assured they will change again before 30." I finally was able to admit to her recently that she couldn't have been more right about this point -- along with about a million other points, but let's not stray from the subject at hand . . .

Where I am headed - the direction, the location, the heart state from here forward is not wholly known. I can tell you simple things. I live in Dayton; shortly I will work in Mason; in August I get to put my heart back together when I am reunited with Goutham in India; tomorrow, I will go to work and probably make funny faces to get my students to laugh.

Two years ago, if you would've told me that on the cusp of 29 I would be entering into my dream job I wouldn't have believed you.

Two years ago, if you had told me I would have traveled to India, fallen crazy wild for a 13 year old boy, and met Jesus in a whole new way I would have laughed in your face.

Two years ago, I would have entered into a relationship with a man who was kind to me, regardless of his beliefs or who he claimed King over his life.

So here I am - on the cusp of 29; I am raising support for my dream job. I visited India last summer, came to love a little boy named Goutham, and am counting down the days until I get to be with him, again. And I stopped a relationship from starting because, although this man was kind, Jesus was not his first love.

If we are to stay on theme with direction, folks, you must know that, on the subject of my heart and falling in love, I was prone to allow the compass needle to spiral heedlessly in efforts of finding someone.

But something has altered my course.

Here's the thing . . . when you accept a job that is ministry based, when you sponsor a child because Jesus asked you to, when you leave the comfort of a job you've been at for more than two years -- it's because something, someONE, bigger than you is saying go, say yes, follow Me. So then you start to consider that Someone over every area of your life - it's not just about a job, it's about building accountability with people so they can ask the hard questions; it's about confessing past sins to your support mentor so she knows to pray and ask in the future; it's about recognizing that I cannot claim to live my life for Jesus and only allow Him into the parts of my heart that I have "mostly" together.

It's about being able to look myself in the mirror every morning and know that, while I'm never going to get it right or perfect or stop struggling, I can lay it all at His feet and He will make things come together the way they need to.

I know where I have come from -- and I am thankful for anytime I get to talk about the dips He's allowed me to fall in to - because He gets the fame over carrying me out.

I know where I've been.

And every now and then I am able to see glimpses of where I'm going - the way there is paved with roads littered with whispered prayers and journaled desires of a life I so desperately wanted. And I can see into the panes of the windows of what it will look like when I get there . . . And ya'll. It's dreamier and richer and more delicious than anything my human imagination could wish to muster.

So here's what I've come to learn about direction. . . I'll always choose the wrong way. Nearly every starting point will go South of where I need to be going, if I allow myself to make all the decisions. Jesus will always step in to redirect my wild, wandering, flight-risked steps. And because of that, because He never stops stepping up and swooping in, He needs to be my first choice every time. Every moment needs to be insulated with the knowledge that He created me - He formed me - and He knows how this all ends before I get to the starting line of any plot.

I will not choose kindness from someone I barely know over relationship with my King. I will not, I cannot, choose anyone over my Father.

I know where I come from. I can celebrate the valleys because I have been rescued from their clawing depths. And I may not have all the answers for where I'm headed, or what may happen along the way, but I am more sure of this than anything else . . .

 Jesus is my true North.

On Protection

I've been thinking a lot about protection lately. I've been considering all the ways we have come to be protected in our little lives on this planet.

When we are young and fragile and naïve, our parents protect us; they shield us from illnesses by bundling us up in the winter time and always having cough medicine on hand; they hold us as we cross streets, reminding us gently, but firmly, that we are to look both ways before crossing; they teach us to not speak to strangers or take candy from unfamiliar faces; they are supposed to be the barriers between us and a world that doesn't stop to consider what our age is before it attempts to wreck us.

As teenagers we go through classes of varying topics to maintain safety; we must take a written test to obtain our driving permit to ensure we understand traffic laws; we are required to drive with an instructor and our parents so they can correct mismanagement of the wheel; we're asked to complete a driving test, then, to make sure we absorbed said laws before we are given the keys to a machine on wheels. Depending on where you go to school at, you go through sex-ed classes to enlighten you on safe practices; you are forced to succumb to vivid photographs and videos of sexually transmitted diseases, what a labor looks like, and then all the wear and tear that comes with those consequences of intercourse too soon; we are educated in a way that might deter our desire to participate in certain activities. You can either be protected by abstaining or you will learn about protection that can be purchased with consideration.

There is protection blanketing nearly ever facet of our lives this side of heaven. We aren't supposed to drink until we're 21 because, hopefully, we are wise enough to make better choices at this age. Tobacco cannot be purchased if you are under 18 - because perhaps you've had the misfortune of watching someone become ill as a result of tobacco consumption. If you wish to serve our country, you must be trained, and trained well, before you are handed the tools you need.

Vaccinations and  medications and prayer groups are integral parts of our lives to add layers of protection to our mortality on this planet.

Daily, I go before my Father and pray for protection over my family and friends. I ask Him to blanket Goutham in safety, in whatever he is doing, in Hyderabad. Losing someone you love deeply at 15 will surely guarantee you are acutely aware of the fallibility of our flesh and pumping organs.

Most of our lives we see protection as something that is soft and affectionate. It doesn't hurt, it comforts. Protection ensures our safety and well-being - it is the cool side of your favorite pillow right before you slip into sleep.

But what happens when protection goes from feeling warm and succulent to cutting and jagged? Just how are we supposed to react when it is the protection that stings and that which we are being protected from seems welcoming?

I have written here often about my struggle with God's timing in my singleness. I will not bear false witness and try to make you believe that it is something I am thriving in and excited about. Certainly, it has served me well because it has brought me closer to Jesus; it has allowed me to say yes to things that having a partner may have deterred me from. But I do not consistently like this season. And there is freedom in being honest with your King about that, guys. I'd like to believe when I start getting fired up in my prayers and get angry with Him, He sits back and thinks, "there she is -- there's the sass I laced in her veins in 1987."

So in the midst of this season - that has felt long and dry and drawn out - I am finding protection to be much less of the down comforter variety and much more like the searing tip of a hot fire poker.

I'm realizing slowly (sometimes I'm a slow learner) that this single gig - it's much less about me and significantly more about what He is doing IN me. There is a very good chance I will connect with someone in a way that I truly didn't believe was possible only to find myself wondering where he went when a week goes by and I've not heard from him.

That's protection.

You can love someone very deeply and care for their well-being and they are so unquestioningly wrong for you, but you can't see it - so they'll start ignoring you. Or they'll be really hateful to you. Or they will do something so gut wrenching you'll wonder how you'll rise up from the cramps of pain.

And that's protection.

You'll have a friend that you've watched and wondered about for years; he will move away and finally come back home the week you've gone to India to have your life forever changed.

That right there, that's protection.

And sometimes it has nothing to do with falling in love or finding the person of your prayers and dreams. Sometimes it's the two people who made Dayton feel like home being called to Mexico and you realizing that you can't follow them because you're not being called to Mexico. You're being called to stay.

The call to stay is protection.

See sometimes protection is the stop to something that felt good so that catastrophe doesn't follow closely behind. Sometimes protection looks like the only One who knows your soul and all its idiosyncrasies building a wall so high around your heart that it will take someone extraordinary to scale and conquer it. And sometimes protection is just learning that you can do things, be in places, stay and show up for people even if they're not five minutes up the road from you anymore. Protection, for me in the last year, looks like learning how to show up for myself just as much as I am for my people.

I have a feeling 2016 will be another year of big lessons and hard truths - and I'm coming to be okay with that because I love how it all tends to feel on the other side of the heat. I'm realizing that these new forms of protection that can cut and bruise, scar and tear, and hurt before they become pleasant dawnings of thankfulness, are just as integral to my little life as the protection my parents afforded me when they offered their much larger hand for my small one all those years ago at the crosswalk.

I'm learning the best things often come after many tears, ragged breath, and the whispered admittance that I simply cannot savor any sweetness without chewing on the bitter first.

On Showing Up

It's a wet and dreary day here in Dayton. It is the eve of New Year's Eve -- that day that ushers in a new year; we of the human variety, with our starry eyes and resolutions loaded and cocked for that first day in January, we can tend to await this day with frazzled anticipation. This'll be the year we will shed those extra pounds and be a healthy eater. This will be the year we become organized and cook every meal at home versus going out. This will be the year we find love, stop being a doormat, cease with the choosing of those so blatantly wrong for us. This will be the year we think before we act, pay off those bills, shed the calloused skin of the version of ourselves we'd rather not sleep with at night anymore.

Hear my heart, these things are not bad. These desires for our little lives and hearts and health are not deplorable. They are not bad ways to want to kick off that new year. But could we consider a different approach?

Roll with me a minute, here. What if we stopped starting out each new year with a laundry list of half-hearted attempts at making ourselves "better" or "more whole" or simply distancing ourselves from who we were in the year we're stepping out of? What if we took the time to really consider what all those days and hours and minutes of the closing year did to shape us?

I feel as though, every year, I say "this was the biggest year of my life" or something in the vein of "so much happened, I'm so changed." And each year it rings with truth. But 2015 feels alarmingly different in comparison with the years that came before it.

2015 found me ringing in the new year alone, on my couch, with pizza and New Girl. 2015 was the year my grandmother was diagnosed with leukemia; it was the year my great grandpa Floyd got to see his bride, again. 2015 was tightly laced with lessons on what it means when your next door neighbor, turned best friend/first single friend in Dayton, meets her person and gets married. This was a year when not one, but three, of my tribe members were called outside the confines of the area code we all used to occupy together. 2015 saw me getting on a plane and flying to Hyderabad, India; she saw me falling in love with a 13 year old boy and recognizing that my heart really can't be mine if it is to receive what it needs - it must be wholly in the hands of my Maker. 2015 taught me that a diagnosis of depression, on top of that anxiety disorder, can't extinguish my flame if I don't allow it. 2015 was filled with dark, cobwebby corners that bit and scratched and scathed the skin. It warmed me from the inside out with new friendships, four hour phone calls, FaceTime dates, and the reminder that the whistle to ring in a time-out isn't necessarily best in my hands; protection sometimes looks like scalding pain in the moment, but it is something I must welcome warmly.

2015 found me a girl too afraid of her own thoughts and desires and dreams to be alone with herself and she's leaving me a woman who has come to know the faithfulness of a God who holds all those things tight to His chest because He knows when the cards need to be played.

There are certainly things I want to do in 2016 -- the bills and the weight, I'd surely like to shred them. But I no longer want to be a woman who believes she has to resolve to fix so much about her life. I showed up in 2015 in ways that I never believed I would. I showed up and bore the brunt of what I needed to in order grow. I showed up. And then I lifted my eyes and found myself not alone, but surrounded by people who chose to show up, too.

There is power in showing up for people and having them show up in return. There is meaty muscle in people choosing to stay.

I don't know what your 2015 looked like -- often times what we watch other humans walk through is merely a fraction of what their life feels like from the inside. I don't know if you're making resolutions or simply resolving to no longer resolve. But I think we - the pumping organs and fire-fueled blood wrapped in feeling flesh - we should breathe in the knowledge that we made it through another year. And those scars and burns and battle wounds turned killer life-tales, they're worth remembering and guarding. There are moments I would like to forget from 2015; people I should've said no to instead of the bated breath of a yes; there are plot lines I wish I could've experienced much sooner than I did. But I won't forget the moments, I will accept that saying yes may have been misguided, but there is nothing to be done now, and those experiences happened in the most timely manner, no question. It is with complete certainty I would say no to the offer of hitting the backspace on any minute of 2015 because, let's be real, Jesus wrote each of those dances on my queue card for the most explicit of reasons. 

If 2016 begins and you feel like you need to slither out of the skin of 2015, then go for it. But I find there to be great and powerful worth in knowing that it's okay to search out the grace of the wounds and the victories. You aren't required to make resolutions -- you are not a problem. You showed up. You made it.

And that, that right there is what we should be celebrating.

A Letter to 27

You started out in similar fashion as many of the years before you started -- me thinking that THIS would be the year.

You were gonna be the year that changed my status -- That changed the nudity of that left ring finger. You were going to be the year that I was able to finally stop praying so desperately within.

You surprised me a great deal, you know.

Twenty-seven turned out to be the year that changed the course with which my heart beat upon. The desires of all the anxiety riddled years before you came into a fine focus two months before the end and collapsed under the weight of more beauty and freedom than I ever understood to be relevant in this life.

You, year twenty-seven, put a screeching halt to all the amusing ways I presumed to know better for my life. You laid out the most magnificent of crashes and up in the flames of it all was the debris of everything I had clung to so tightly; with one fell swoop, my ideas of a life worth living were detonated.

I still find myself wondering if you had known of the ways you would solitarily wreck me so I could become a tailor fit human for the life being written for me.

You certainly never took it easy on me. You watched closely as I continued to make poor decisions, as I put my values and hopes on the line for anything resembling a loving human with a pulse. You stood to the side and watched carefully and then you ripped the seams out of what I had haphazardly strung together; you took a jagged edge to the horizontal slant of a twisted version of what I thought I needed.

You continually broke things down, made room for Someone more worthy of putting a heartbeat to the blinking cursor of my existence.

You followed me to India, 27. You flew across oceans and traveled through time zones and when I stepped off that plane in a foreign land littered with smells and sights and sounds I'd never had the intelligence to imagine, you ordered me to breathe.

And I did.

I breathed in and out came the knowledge that I was so twisted if I was under the assumption that I had a clue about what was good for me. I breathed in and finally saw that I was never really willing to trust Him with my life or my heart.

Hey, 27? You came crashing into those walls and obliterated them. [Hallelujah]

This time last year I was convinced you would be the one to bring me love. I wasn't necessarily wrong. I was simply misguided in what that should look like.

Want to know something, 27?

You are, bar none, the best year that has ever happened to me.

You took my basic fairytale dream, seesawed through it, and gave me a glimpse of the canvas being painted with my name on it.

Thank you for breaking me. For making room for Him.  For putting me in my place. For not giving me what I wanted, but bringing me to a land and a people I needed.

Thank you for always knowing when to be entirely too rough with me and when to sit back and chuckle as you whisper, "take a deep breath, you wild, wandering girl; get ready for your life to actually begin."

A Letter to Goutham

There is no way you could know of the ways you changed my heart. Before I left to come to where you call home I was diagnosed with depression and immediately felt the weight of all that I wouldn't be able to offer in the wake of a stamp like that on my soul.

Did you feel me coming?

I knew before I left that the Lord would work within me while I was in India, but there was no seeing, no telling of how He might conduct said change; there was certainly no way I could foresee you as the end of a story line -- a happily ever after of sorts.

You see, before I left I was consumed with "getting better" - because surely that meant that then I would meet someone and fall in love and I'd finally get to do all those things you're supposed to do at 27 with a husband.

I knew God would work within me in India, but I never anticipated you being the answer to the longest, most lonely wilderness of a season.

I'm usually pretty good with words -- I don't often struggle to string them together elegantly and shoot them off rapid-fire. But I arrived in India and all I could think was, "Come, Jesus." And then I met you and the words ceased to exist.

I don't know that I ever want children. Or that's what I've said for most of my adult life. So the idea of unconditional love has always seemed foreign to me -- there is just too much selfish humanity within my 5'3" frame to love another person without condition.

Those decisions and wordy declarations were slain on a Tuesday in Hyderabad, India.

You greeted me as all of you beautiful, small humans did -- by shaking my hand and saying, "Good afternoon, sister."  But in the moments it took you to walk up to me and extend your slender hand, I felt an assurance and knowing wash over me; it settled into my skin and nestled beneath my bone - it began to keep time with my pulse so I would come to know it as truth.

He is why I called you here.

Did you know you are an answer to prayer? In the time it took you to sit and make a tambourine with me I felt my Lord nudge me delicately and whisper, "See why I stayed so quiet all these years? You cannot tell me anything or anyone you were crying out for could be better than this boy."

He was right.

Jesus was writing our stories together long before either of us were thought of in this world. He knew I would become a girl broken and untrusting and blindingly adamant about what would make it all better. He knew He would make me wait for answers - that He would make me angry in that process. He knew He would create a beautiful boy 14 years younger than me with a smile that would stop me beneath the fiery heat of an Indian sun. He knew you would be kind and gentle, that you would want to be a pilot and that you would think of me and draw pictures for me long after I flew back to America.

He knew we would help each other; He knew that we would weave into each other's stories and nothing would ever be the same.

I think about the last night we got to see each other -- how each of our hands spread across the opposite sides of a van window. You watched as tears raced tracks down my cheeks and you kept whispering, "Don't cry, sister. I love you, sister" again and again and again. We stayed frozen, like that, until the van pulled away. I had to fight the urge to run after you. Every chord of life within me was silently screaming "I'll stay. Okay, ok. I'll stay."

How is it that I came to India with the intent of helping you and here you were comforting me?

Do you know how brave you are? How proud I am of you because of it?

I think of you everyday. I pray for you. And I am counting down the days until I return to see you face to face.

In the meantime I talk about you as much as I can -- because I want every human in my life to hear about the most beautiful boy who would become my friend and "son" and how he is so much more of a gift than the relationship and 'fixing' I was so convinced would right everything that was wrong.

I don't know if you'll ever understand how meeting you changed my heart. And I don't believe there are words for how much I love you. But thank you.

Thank you for being there, waiting for me -- even if you didn't know you were a part of this tapestry from the onset.

Thank you for being the balm to a cracked heart and the answer to a prayer I never truly understood I was praying.

Thank you for helping me to understand that my God is completely capable with my life in His hands, that He is worthy of my trust, and that He understands my wild and wandering heart more completely than I ever anticipated.



***Before India, sponsorship wasn't on my radar, but I arrived and the Lord ripped my heart wide open for it. By sponsoring Goutham, I am not only helping him financially, but I get to encourage him and watch him grow through shared letters and pictures. This process and getting to know Goutham has altered the way I think about and consider my future. There are many children on the Hope Campus in India that still seek sponsorship. If you are interested, or feel a tug on your heart, to learn more, I would love to talk to you.***