Response

Her face lit up my screen as I typed out words, lacing together a story, attempting to illustrate for future readers just what makes this little girl come alive.

Her eyes are this impressive combination of dark brown and creamy caramel. And they're laughing eyes. Her smile isn't one that stays on her lips, it spreads all the way to the pupil of her eyes. As I was sharing her story I couldn't help but think, stay glittering just like this, sweet one. Stay sweet and sure  of what you want out of this life.

Because you see, against the backdrop of a culture that is hell-bent on taking what does not belong to it, I can't help but look at the faces of the children I'm serving and not think of all the promise they have and how deeply I want them to be able to carry it through their lives. I want them to be on the cusp of 29, at their dream job, and not have to worry about how damaged they are and wonder if it shows in the cracks of their smiles.

I think about the college student who was raised within the confines of a life that set him up for success and somewhere along the line, he got the misconception that a passing stroke across his back was permission to enter where one must really hear a firm yes on before penetration. I think about the mugshot of his, flashing across news stations and social media outlets and all the ways people are rising up against and on behalf of him. 

I am disturbed.

In the midst of this I look up at the pictures on my desk and see a picture of the sweet boy I love that lives in India. There are days when I go before the Lord and I am so speechless with privilege of being able to love him that I just have to say, "Father, help me pray well for this boy, even when I can't find the words." These last days, though, I just lay verbage on a hamster wheel and let it spin and spin and spin - it's still spinning. Dear God, let him choose You. First, last, always. Let him chase you, Jesus. Allow him to be so enraptured by Your love for him and his love for You that he would only ever think and act, say and perform pure kindness.

I am not a parent. But I think about G and his dreams and his capabilities and I want them so desperately for him. I want him to remain good and kind and whole.

Last night I was watching a video on Facebook of a man who decided to attempt kidnapping a young, teen girl from her mother in a grocery store. I go red just typing that out now.

When did we become a race of humans that think everything is up for grabs?

I am a woman who, by the grace of God has never been snatched or stolen, beaten or physically broken. No one has mistaken a pat of friendliness for permission to assault. 

Yet I maintain my fury.

I've had just about enough of the taking.

Young man of privilege, from an area of my current city, do you feel remorse? I read her account of what you did to her, the ways you broke what wasn't even intended to be bent. Your forceful approach on something so sacred makes me ill. Are you sorry?

Will she ever go  out at night, again? Ever trust another man who looks at her for longer than .2 seconds? Will she ever be able to be intimate with a man who does, actually, love and respect and treasure her? 

Why did you feel it necessary to rob her of something never meant for you to begin with?

Man who certainly should know better, what were you thinking when you attempted to snatch a thirteen year old child from her mother? 

What made you think a mother, fierce and protective, fiery and in love with her child, wouldn't rip entire limbs off your body before she let you leave with her baby?

When did we become a society that welcomed entitlement in and slid into it like a second skin? Just who do we think we are?

Sweet girl, with the liquid chocolate eyes and dreams of being a chef - keep going. Because you are what you Father says you are. Valuable.

Young woman, recovering from assault of not just the body, but of the heart, soul, spirit - keep fighting. Surely you are one of the most prayed over women in the world right now. Keep fighting. Because you are not what the world says you are - disposable.

Thirteen year old child, doing what I used to love doing with my own momma - try to trust, again. Because you have lions protecting you.

Women - victims and advocates, fighters and frightened, voiceless and pissed off, we have names. And they have nothing to do with our hair color or pant size. Not one thing to do with the tightness of our clothing or the measurement of our cup size. We are not to be identified by our promiscuity or our virginity, by our self-defense skills or our affection. They are not associated with the level of sass we put out or whether or not we take shit from people.

We are not a product of our pasts or what someone else has decided we deserved. We are not an ornament for someone else's enjoyment and our soul's and their sparkle will be what change this world. And if we are going to continue to have to live in a world that is broken and abusive and insists we must listen to whistles and cat calls, "hey baby's" and risk the chance of slaps on the ass, then we better pray high and loud for Jesus to return - because, oh God, we need Jesus' return; we are crippled until His return. And we need to start speaking up for one another. I want to leave this world better, and more in love with the Savior, than I found it; I want to take part in a generation of women who stand on the front lines for each other and know brothers who flank their sisters on all sides. Let's stop slut shaming and name calling and fighting over who gets what, or who, and let's defend. Let's protect. Let us honor one another.

She is not a dog, stop whistling.

She is someone's child. Someone's best friend. Someone's sister. She is someone's future wife. A child's future mother. She is the daughter of a King. 

On Risk (and quite a vulnerable look into the current state of my heart.)

It started last year. She came to my little table/classroom in the too loud hallway and quickly got sassy with me in this really beautiful, ornery way that made me catch a glimpse of myself in her.

"Whoa, now sister. Take it easy and have your ears open." She made direct eye contact with me - that sparkle that people always talk about was there -- reaching out at me. I could've never known it was going to seep into my heart and plant itself firmly with no intention of leaving.

From that day forward she would tack on "sister" to just about any sentence or phrase she could when it was directed at me.

"Good morning, sister."

"Sister, I have a question on this math problem."

"What's your favorite color, sister? Your middle name, sister? Can I sit next to you on the bus, sister?"

And she became a student I not only loved dearly, but also found myself rising to defend, lovingly correct, and garnering the ability to reprimand, when necessary, with just a simple look.

She's a fourth grader now. That means she rarely comes to my table/classroom because she has surpassed the requirement for extra tutoring, but she always seems to find herself a reason to stop by. This morning she plowed into my back, full force, giggling musically.

"SISTERRRRRRRRRRR!"

And then ran back to her classroom.

We have cried together not just once, but many times over the course of this year in regards to me leaving. She had a bad day and we took a time out in the hallway to talk and she placed her hot, damp, tear-riddled, olive skinned face against mine and threw her body on mine, hanging on with a vice-like grip.

"What will I do when you aren't here next year to calm me down?" she whispered in my ear and then bellowed, deep and guttural, into the crook of my neck.

Oh, my little sister, but what will I do?

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The swings sang a rusty, twangy, Conway Twitty-like song on the playground. The sun was warm on my cheek, my name had been screamed out across the soccer field three times in a row now, and I was taking a moment before my name would, inevitably, be called again -- most likely because of those two Turkish boys fighting over a pink football and the fierce and feisty spirit of the Julianna girl who never stepped down because a boy told her to.

And the swings kept their melody going; cacophonous in the midst of the rustled grass and occasional bird, but I took joy in their tune, anyway.

Three Hispanic sweethearts racing against their 15 minutes of recess time to get high, higher, highest on those swings, all the while, speaking fast and passionate about something sounding remarkably like the root of happiness and adolescence.

It is my last Friday like this. It just kept beating in my blood, with each thu-thump of a heart that is perpetually learning its own rhythms.

Oh, my sweet, crazy, too much attitude for your own good, middle schoolers, but what will I do?

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She walked into the cafeteria in the chaos of snack time - that rush of adrenaline on a Friday between freedom from the school day and actual freedom to leave the school. She's pure grace, when she walks. She always has been. And you see her hair before you get to her heart-stopping smile - because it's all degrees of the best kind of curly and it's got a bandanna around it all in a way that most females dream about being able to accomplish.

She was a part of the first after school class I taught on my own. Her sweet nature and kind ways made me love her immediately and then we both realized we were kind of kindred, just many years and cultures separated.

She's so grown now. She's a kid, but she's growing fast; boys notice her, girls adore her, and she always finds time to come see her old teacher, kiss her on the cheek, and then head up the street to home on her own.

"Miss Steeeeeeeph," she says in her eloquent, accented speech, "I leave in less than two weeks! But I'll come see you before the last day of school is over. I promise, girrrrrrl."

She hugs and kisses me fast and hard and prances out the door.

Vivacious, full of life, spirit, but what will I do?

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Humble baby girl has no idea how stunning she is; her hair is piled high in her signature 'do and she rocks Converse high tops like I dream about filling. She's still innocent; her momma protects her, has rules for her, and she follows them. And she's funny.

We talk about music, inevitably, everyday.

"Check out this new song, girl," she says, pulling out her phone that she has simply for music. And we dance and sing off key.

She is the little girl I was and wish I would've been smart enough to fight to hold on to. I see myself in her - in her smile, in her attitude, in her desire to  honor what adults in her life think and say about her.

Her rotten, but undeniably lovable, brother comes to get her and she rushes over to me and bumps my hip. "Girl, I will see you Mondaaaaay." She winks and walks away.

Little mama, but what will I do?

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He is, by far, the hairiest eight year old I know. He walks, no stalks, down the hall, fists clenched at his sides, trying to look lean and mean and full of fury.

Sometimes he is all of those things and it scares me.

But the other day, they all brought stuffed animals in for a point of view assignment and he was allowed to borrow one from his homeroom teacher; he gripped it and made it dance to the corny POV song we were playing for them. It was in that moment I saw a glimpse of the little boy he should always have the permission to be.

He doesn't like me; he tells me nearly everyday. But he races to the seat next to me.

"You give me one million dollars, I answer this question," he barters. Rolling his r's in only the way a young, Turkish man can roll them. He wiggles his eyebrows and laughs. HAH-HAAAAH!

I let third grade know a couple weeks ago this was my last year with them. He looked at me, grinned the most terribly ornery and infectious smile and said, "Good! BU-BYE!" and then found a reason to reach for my arm.

Young, impossible, lovable, rotten man, but what will I do?

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He is the perfectly coifed young dude. He came late in the third grade year, speaking very little English, but his clothes and hair were impeccably on point.

He started "sneaking" up behind me humming the Mission Impossible theme song (duh, duh, duh-duh, duh, duh, duh-duh . . .) about three weeks ago. It always hits the climax of the song when he throws his arms around my neck and whispers, "Hola!"

I receive a hug every morning when I walk into the room; and the Impossible Mission occurs right around lunch time every day. He enjoys asking me to repeat things in Spanish and I've realized I should only oblige when my college-level Spanish classes come back to me enough for me to know what he is asking me to say.

He hopped up, at the end of the day today, as I walked into the room and snuggled up against my side, squeezing tight, his little arms around me.

"Good weekend, Miss Steph-a-neeee." And that smile.

You little, handsome man, but what will I do?

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Little sister, my middle schoolers, you full of life spirit, sweet, little mama, that lovable, rotten man, my little handsome -- you will never know the ways you shaped me. You may never understand the detailed ways you changed me. But I pray you take chances, you believe in your own power, you remain good and kind. And sweet Lord, I pray you know that, with all my guts and nerve-endings, I love each of you in impossibly large ways. And that's forever.

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I am realizing, in these final days, just what I'm walking away from. And it terrifies me. More often than not, they make me crazy, but their little arms and mighty voices - always fighting to be heard and embraced in return - they've found a way of thumbprinting on my heart. And there is no coming back from that, I've come to see.

Without question, what I am stepping in to is by design, crafted intricately for me by a King that knew just how hard and painful this was all going to be. These very moments - with the sneak attacks and the tears of confusion - He placed them in the rise of my story so long ago.

So I will trust Him. I will trust this new page.

But I will go into it slightly tender; the days to come will be doused in the bitter and the sweet. It is a strange and wondrous thing to want to bottle and capture so many personalities and little loves to keep with you forever.

I just started this book today called Wild and Free and in the Foreward it says, "God designed us for adventure because He knew following Him would be one. . . . It isn't wild in rebellion; it is wild in obedience. And it isn't free to do whatever we want; it is free to do whatever He calls us to do."

And then, "Risking for God is the greatest choice you will ever make."

Y'all, when I accepted that job back in September, I accepted it as a girl who was feeling more like the shell of her former self than a woman who was following a calling. I felt Jesus, no question, leading me to that decision, and I felt His assurance as I said yes. But I was under a horribly bad assumption that I could no longer love my current job, or allow myself to think about what I might miss, because then it meant I wasn't all in with the next one.

You know what they say about assumptions . . .

And in transparency and vulnerability, guys? I wasted a lot of time this year wishing for May to be done and June to arrive because I had convinced myself, I had believed a story in my head, that I couldn't be joyful in the current job while anticipating joyfully the next one.

And now May is preparing her leave and she is ushering June in and I am the most complicated and beautiful trembling mix of terrified and utterly hopeful.

These characters you've just met, they're just a few of the multitude. And each of them, for better or for worse, has altered the map of my heart and the trajectory of my future.

God designed us for adventure; my time at Ruskin has been to the brim full of it. And I will carry each of these kids, each of these memories, and the friendships I've built ,with me forward. They're stuck with me, whether they enjoy it or not.

Risk is a good choice, it turns out. And this is such a blatant, thrumming, intoxicating risk. This job is all I've known since college. My coworkers and these children, they've become my family. It is a harrowing, terrifying, sometimes crippling, risk of a leap. But I'm all in.

I'm in because, in these last days, I've realized that this was all molding me for this next step. Each beautiful, obnoxious, laughable minute of this has been preparation.

But what will I do?

I'll keep coming back. I'll fight like hell to maintain what I've been privileged to build these last four years within the walls of an elementary school. I'll choose to show up. And I'll keep showing up.

He called me to this four years ago and now He is calling me to the next adventure in His name. And I'm in.

Because risk is a four-letter word I can't be afraid of any longer.

On This Exact Moment

I opened my back door after work tonight and found it lying right in the center of the cement of my back porch; I felt it call to me, in the way nature sometimes does to a heart that beats a little out of tune and wants to gallop more often than not.

It was delicate, but most nearly perfect. The green of its stalk was pure and had promises of summer coming. And its puffy white soul was the puffiest and whitest I'd ever seen; just lying there beckoning to me.

It's a weed, but I think the frailty of it makes me want to cup it under a glass jar and hope it remains just as is.

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My dad's best friend was called home yesterday. And I feel paralyzed by the knowledge that I am now reaching an age in which parents passing isn't abnormal. I looked in the mirror last night and found myself asking aloud, "when did you age to this age where saying goodbye wasn't such a startling reality of your current reality?" At that very moment I was the oldest I'd ever been and it's been hitting me lately just how human my parents are; this man and woman who brought me in to the world and raised me up in it, they are fallible. They need let off the hot seat of that pedestal I anchored them to so long ago.

I am older today - maybe more wise. My need for my parents isn't diminishing, but each of our days is, aren't they?

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There are moments I want to capture. Like that fluffy weed that greeted me earlier today, I want to capture them under a wide mouthed Mason Jar and just spend more time lingering and longingly staring at them.

But they are fleeting - even in their most precious of states. Learn from them, glean joy from their existence, and then let them go.

Is life a perpetual lesson of letting go?

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I crawled down on my hands and knees, right there in my doorway, that had mud imprinted in its grooves from all the rain that's pounded the roof these last days. I crawled down on my hands and knees and tried to gather the perfect angle of the weed resting against my back porch.

It wasn't until later, when I was washing my hands and preparing dinner, that I noticed the mud attached to my elbows. The sudden and distinct urge to harness that moment of beauty required my joints get a little dirt on them.

I brushed it off and let the words of that song I've had on repeat the last three days wash over me.

If you want your people and to be seen, your joints - your organs - are going to have to settle into the being dirty. The very center of your soul is going to have to understand the grit that must be developed when capturing the fleeting moment of whimsy is ingrained in your veins.

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Take the picture. Replay the song. Wear the favorite shirt, even if it doesn't match your pants or whoever it is you are wanting to be that day.

Hug your parents. Tell them you love them, even when you don't get them or like them or you feel like you're wiser and have seen more of this world than them.

Form a tribe. Know who'll have your back when the shit hits the fan. Because it will hit the fan. Know your siblings. And if you don't know them, get to know them. They are the only ones in your story that share the foundation of your history. There's magic in that.

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Here's to wild. To realizing our parents are human and flawed and that it's unfair to place them on the pedestal.

Here's to coming to understand, with each minute we grow older, that fallibility courses through our blood. And all those "I can't even imagine" moments just might, too soon, become moments we're no longer trying to not imagine, but succumbing under the weight of.

Here's to grabbing the camera when a perfect weed, that promises wish granting, is on your back porch waiting for you. To playing the song, that feels more like an anthem, over and over again until your pulse begins to thrive within its beat whether the song plays or not.

Here's to now. To showered or unshowered, jeans too tight and the shirt that hides the gravity of your bodily situation. To saying what needs to be said, what should be said. To sending the text or making the call to say I love you, I miss you, it's stupid we aren't saying bigger things, even if you know you'll likely not get a response.

Here's to staying true to yourself, but always being open for the lesson.

Here's to the bittersweet - to walking away, even if your body says not yet.

Here's to saying cya soon to people you want to keep RIGHTHERE; to having the last dinners, last hugs until next time, to wiping the tears quick -- here's to all those agonizing moments that come with being the variety of species that will inevitably grow and change and move -- and to trusting the binds that tie, the laughter that links, the go on, girl, I'm with you looks silently shared across rooms are deep and strong enough to gather you back together once more.

Here's to trusting the world gives us all sorts of soul mates and bonds like that just don't shatter.

Here's to praying about the big and scary right after the last big and scary came true -- to asking for something you always said you'd never want. Here's to listening to that heart of yours -- because He places the desires there, so trust it. Trust Him to know you better than you know yourself.

Here's to you. Here's to celebrating this very minute with you - we're the oldest we've ever been, you and me.

Let's make it count.

On Marking the Day, Whispering the Prayer

I've never really had myself together. I was always the girl turning the glossy pages of a magazine with dirt under my fingernails. I recall thinking, as a tween and then teen, that when I got older, I'd figure out how to not get dirt under my fingernails.

I'm still working on that part of this complicated equation called adulting.

My hair is never creamy and smooth. It's various stages of big and flirting with frizzy. Some of my best friends have long, glossy, shiny hair; I always assumed I'd get that figured out, too.

You'll likely see the hurricane that is my hair coming before you see my physical body, though.

I've never been good at math. Or science. Or social studies, for that matter. I have always felt most true to the beating, pumping organ in my chest, with a book in my hand or frantically scribbling notes for an idea that I'd like to write about. If I'm being honest, I always wished I was better at math. Maybe budgeting would be significantly easier and more successful if numbers didn't turn me into an absolute shivering, exposed nerve of terrified.

But numbers still terrify me and the budget and I are still dancing and attempting to not step on each other's toes. He should probably lead, but I've always been a little more strong-willed than is best for me.

More often than not, I feel like a fragile mess. I can encourage and hand out Truth and compliments - and mean them to my core - but please don't tell me I'm good at something; you'll swiftly be met with a poorly timed joke about how little I wash my hair or how I, literally, own one fork and 4,271 pens in various colors.

So you do the math on this chaotic sister -- because I don't like numbers and I'm busy dipping bananas in peanut butter and trying to figure out how to not get it all on my hands.

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I remember the first thing I ever wrote. It was on a black computer in the "junk room" of my parent's house. I was young - not really understanding words and the weighty heat they possessed, but I pumped out a poem, change the color of the font, and added some clip art because Fancy is my middle name.

I recall showing it to my mom and she said, "you wrote this, Stephi?" I don't recall the actual words I wrote, but I do know it was about love and it was a little intense.

It seems I entered this world with the propensity to miss someone I haven't yet memorized with my fingers and to feel exactly every little thing half a degree hotter than everyone else.

I don't know where that poem ever went to, but something was born that day, behind a closed door, when a little girl realized it didn't hurt her brain to string words together.

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The teenage girl grew into a twenty something girl who wasn't wholly convinced she was ready to be a grown up, mostly because she still didn't have all those things figured out.

I still don't.

So the twenty something girl, with the dirty fingernails and messy hair and even more disastrous heart ,found herself praying over these words:

Look among the nations and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. - Habakkuk 1:5

I am doing a work in your days. . . Yes, okay. Let's see it. Blow the lid off this life of mine. Yes, do a work. Please, God, do a work -- make sense of this mess that's me.

Make sense of this mess I've made for myself.

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The little girl, in the dark room with only the light of the computer screen illuminating the green in her eyes, sat tap, tap, tapping away on that keyboard, never knowing she was beginning a love affair that would carry her to a King and rescue her from herself time and again.

She was messy then. Her room a perpetual maze of clothes and cds and boxes of triangle-folded notes.

Here's what I'm learning.

God is in the mess.

He is in the beautiful and the pain. He's just as much in the raindrop that smells of worms as He is in my favorite shade of lilac that sweeps across the sky at my childhood home. He is in the books that I read and the words I wish I could say, but didn't get the chance to. He is the flicker of the flame burning cinnamon in my house and He's the hushed whisper of the smoke as I close down my home for the night.

He's in my wild hair. He knows each strand - He's counted them, you know. He's the dirt under my fingernails - because I'm hugging kids and scratching backs and cleaning countertops and He is most certainly in the grit that comes with loving people and places deeply.

He stands next to me as I panic over numbers in the grocery store and He knew I'd love bananas and peanut butter and I'm wholly certain He stood just right behind me as I typed out that too mature poem all those years ago.

He is in it, ya'll.

I've spent so much of my time trying to figure out how to be more together. So many minutes have passed and have found me trying to smooth down, cover up, scrub clean the fingerprints left behind of the life I've been living.

I prayed over those words up there - I begged Him to step up and step in and astound me.

And then the little girl became a woman at some point in all this chaos and said yes when she'd been so comfortable with the no. She said yes and He met her there - in the hurt and confusion and discomfort - and so she kept saying yes.

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She grew up. She understood the messy was part of the story and, for goodness sake, just accept the hair for what it is - unruly and reckless - a little bit like her heart.

She started writing poems and then she got to see the prayers over feelings and watching of astonishment come to life.

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I am reckless. My house is piles of clothes and stacks of books and one fork and more pens than I'll ever use. I feel too much and much too often and I believe, firmly, that sour patch watermelon sustain giggling.

He stepped into it. He was with me all along. He knew where I'd end up before I was wise enough to ask Him to take the lead.

Look among the nations and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told.

April 27, 2016. He came through. He left me astounded and giggling in wonder.

Hear me, ya'll -- when desires and dreams and hopes are born in the palm of His hand, under the protection of His wing, He will step in, show up, and come through.

And it does not matter, one inch, what your house looks like or how maintainable your hair is. He doesn't measure your worth by how clean your hands are or what the ratio of forks to pens currently is in your home.

He sees our potential far before we even realize we possess any. He's our Father. Our Lover. Our Protector. He is the Keeper of our dreams.

And He delights in bringing them to life. No matter how disheveled or disordered you believe it all to be.

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Write down your dreams. Let Him have them. Let Him take the lead with the dancing.

And when the dreams become your life, write down the date. Whisper the prayer, you cried and moaned and screamed out to Him, to yourself and know, for certain, one thing.

He will come through.

On Humility.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak at the church my great grandparents, my grandparents, and my dad and his siblings grew up in. I attended Bible School in the summers of my childhood at this church; I recall distinctly lining up in the yard of the church to play the relay game where you have to put a thousand layers of clothing on, run to one end and back, and then remove those layers for the next person to slip on. I hated that game. And, honestly, in my dislike for it, I've misplaced just what it was I was supposed to glean from it.

The yard is still there. And the stained glass windows depicting different Biblical passages still allow the sun to share space on the pews with the red cushions.

I have shared meals with the people who have raised me and loved me the hardest in the basement of this church. Far too many of my people have been laid to rest in my 28 years, and we always gather at Cove Springs Church for a meal after each of us has thought, or said aloud, that we simply cannot cry anymore hot, sodium riddled tears. This church has pieces of my history in it.

But as children often do, I grew up and I began making decisions for myself and so that little church with the basement for teaching and eating and the red-cushioned pews with the stained-glass windows letting in the light became something of my past. I stopped attending Bible school and then I stopped attending church; I went to college and thought I knew Jesus and then I got a real job, moved out, and realized I'd had no clue, but He was a man I wanted to fight to know deeply. And in that time, I returned to that church for one, two, three gatherings for my family after three of the greatest men I knew were called home.

But yesterday I got to go - not because of a death, but because of life. I returned to this little church - that still has Hymnals in the pew backs and where they list joys and prayer requests out loud to the pastor before the sermon - and I was given the opportunity to share about the life I've been given because I said yes.

How often do you say yes? I'm currently a teacher, so I often say no more  than yes -- to the bathroom requests and the urgent need for water from the drinking fountain two halls over and to the occasional request for one million dollars in exchange for a uni-browed Turkish boy to complete his verb sort.

No comes easily to me. It slips off the tongue sweet and quick because I am of the human variety.

If I can't imagine the outcome, I'll say no. If I can't guarantee I won't look like a blooming fool, I'll say no. If there's a chance I'll be embarrassed or left behind, no is a sure bet from my mouth.

But what happens when we say yes?

I could turn this into a litany of ways my life would've been easier if I wouldn't have said yes, but it is simply because I wasn't saying yes to the right person.

What happens when you say yes to the nudge on your heart that makes little to no sense? When you can't see the ending, don't even have the capacity to imagine the ending, but nod your head up and down, anyway?

What could occur when you finally relent under the twist in your stomach that occurs anytime you think about a certain place, or person, or event?

What might alter in your life if you agree to traverse a plot twist in the narrative you'd been so hell-bent on writing yourself, but could just never get right?

For me, it was everything.

I said yes to India - and my entire worldview expanded and my heart tried to break right out of my chest.

I said yes to Goutham - and my heart willingly split itself in two so that I could remain with him and still return to where I needed to be.

I said yes to a job change - and humility rolled over me; it drenched me in the cleanest, purest rain; it watered pieces of my soul I had no idea were in need of hydration.

Because each time I sit down to talk about India, or I share a new picture of Goutham, or I ask someone to prayerfully consider making this journey with me, I am laying my heart on the table. My pumping, over-feeling, fractured, aching heart is laid bare. And it absolutely cannot be about me.

Yesterday I got to share about pieces of this story. I cried over Goutham in front of former teachers and strangers alike. I briefly got the chance to talk about God knowing our hearts, our dreams and visions for our little lives, in a more intricate way than we are capable of understanding. I got to talk about saying yes. And, not for the first time, I thought about that 14 year old boy and all those other beautiful young boys and girls and I recognized that it was never my choice to love them and see them and know them. It is my privilege. It has been gifted to me by a King.

Here's what I realized yesterday, about saying yes. . .

It is the most humbling experience of my life. Saying yes to India, to Goutham, to Back2Back Ministries - it all has absolutely nothing to do with me and everything to do with Jesus. He is the star. He is the big deal. He is, and must continue to be, the biggest event of my life.

I thought about those dreams of my name in bold print on the cover of a hardback book and had to laugh out loud.

Because of Jesus I got to talk to an 11 year old boy yesterday who leaned over to his mom as I was talking and said, "mom, I think I know what I'm supposed to do with my life now."

Ya'll. That is what this is about. Not me. Not you. It's about movement. It is all swirling and rotating and dancing around movement for the Kingdom.

He gives me the words. He allows me to step into the story. He gives me the strength to say yes and He gives me the wisdom to admit I cannot do it without Him.

Life is a series of seasons. Most of mine in the last three years have been dark. They've hurt and they've hallowed me out. They've left me feeling like the shell of the green-eyed girl I am.

But this season? This season of yes and okay and I have no idea what You're doing, but I'll follow You into the dark? This season is about humility.

This whole story and this job and loving that boy thousands of miles from me has absolutely nothing to do with me.

And for once in my life, I want to rest and rejoice in that. Hallelujah.

On Loneliness

I don't know how to stop thinking.

I know how to wander. I know how to assume things. I know how to settle into the darkness and make a cup of coffee.

But I've never known how to stop the thinking.

I stood in my kitchen not too long ago, chopping an onion, and my eyes began to water; those red onions are always making me tear up. But after I finished and washed my hands and bagged the remaining onion, the tears were still present.

So, not the onion, after all.

And I began to wonder why, on this Sunday where the sun is welcoming and comfortable and filled with the promise of heat not far down the road, why am I crying in my kitchen?

I can't stop thinking.

I think about the week ahead and the laundry that should be getting done on this one day that I've made no plans (and it wasn't even a full day, if you wanna call me on my transparency.) I think about the grass in my back yard and how it looks like I might've planted it blindfolded because it is, literally, three different heights. I think about that journal that hasn't been cracked in a couple days and the way words cut and don't just go away, even when everyone is saying you just need to ignore them. I think about the way the pit of your stomach can feel like it's folding in on itself just to feel a little less like you're the only person in the world who can feel a sense of loneliness so deep that your bones hurt.

And then I think about running and sitting in the darkness and putting my feet up. Because those things I can be rather spectacular at.

Here's the thing. Sometimes my overthinking becomes so suffocating that I can't do anything but write about it. Tonight, it happens here. I don't know that I have any wisdom to tack on to the end of this post -- I don't know that encouragement will leak through the musings I'm laying out tonight for people to skim or read or absorb.

Because, bottom line, guys? I am not qualified to hand out advice. I am much more qualified to recognize someone else in the darkness and pray like hell that my eyes relay the message that they are seen. People recognize their people, right?

Perhaps you're reading this and you are feeling full and cup-runneth-over joy. And, truly, I am undeniably happy for you.

Ironically enough, a lot of things are going incredibly well for me. Like, never would I dream that this is what I would be doing with my life, well. And there are days I cry about the insane grace that has been given me in this part of my story.

But loneliness has become the proverbial backpack I am afraid to leave home without. Some days I slap it on my back and then am able to leave it in the car and forget about it for a while. Other days it weighs me down and feels as if it is pulling on the very marrow of my bones.

Some days it feels like it's sucking some of the sunshine from the center of my soul.

Today, my cartilage feels the loneliness. It feels the weight of friendships that have been lost because an evening of vodka sodas with friends can turn into a bit of a blood bath on a heart that was fractured to begin with.

People draw lines - whether they intend to or not. And I can pretend to play hardball and say "there's no looking back," but I don't have the energy to suggest that it hasn't taken everything within me not to reach out and attempt to mend things that might never have been alive and breathing in the first place.

And I know people say words all the time. But listen, words are my heart beat. They are my love language. And I'm realizing just how many people might not grasp that. And it's okay. But I can't act as if words from people, or the lack of them, won't stay with me long after they might have forgotten they even uttered them.

I'll replay things and think them through with a fine-toothed comb. And eventually I'll shatter them and I will be done. I am learning my patterns as a human in this world. But it felt like I needed to free up some space in my head and in my heart about how the darkness and the loneliness is real and it can be crippling.

It can be crippling and blinding and today it is choking the airways.

I'm not sure where you are. Or where you're reading this from. I don't know what you want or what you have or what you're trying to wash clean from.

But if you know this place - of painful replays and wondering what's to come next - then we are kindred, you and me.

You are seen.

On the Labels that Bind and the Shaking Off

How often do you think about labels? Too fat, too thin, weak, strong, taken, married, single, childless. Wanting. Waiting.

Because we are all wanting and waiting, simultaneously, for something, aren't we?

How often do you take a label - self-given or slapped on from a bystander to your life, and slide into it as if it's a second skin?

We live in a world, in a culture, that wants nothing more than to hand out labels like lollipops to young children in the candy store. People often have a visceral desire to inform you of all the ways you can improve and grow and lose and gain; there is a perpetual well that is seemingly endless - full to the brim of advice waiting to be given, handed out, laid down.

I've spent a lot of my life trying to adjust under the weight of labels. Some of them I, admittedly, have given myself. They're not often kind and they tend to have quite localized pressure points. I've met these labels head on, nestled into their breast, and awaited the coddling that will never come from slipping into a skin I wasn't ever supposed to carry around.

And then there are the ones that have been given. And these really seem to be the ones with the sharpest edges, the most devastating with their pitch perfect aim. These labels can become like bondage. We hear them, we hear how we should go about changing them, and then we hold out our wrists and wait for the shackles to be locked and the proverbial key thrown to the bottom of a well that once housed our self-esteem.

Here's what my heart tends to hear when labels come up: change. Change who you are. Change how you look. Change your levels of willingness. Alter. Alter your size. Alter your ego. Alter the amount of things you feel for people. Succumb. Succumb to what this world says is best. Succumb to saying yes, always. Succumb to being an object to be noticed. Give up. Give up your ideas of what you thought were best. Give up believing what you bring to the table is enough. Give up thinking you are enough.

Hear me out. Change is good. Change, in my story, started out like that step sibling I never had, nor did I want, that I just longed to stomp into the ground and never be heard from again. And then I realized how much they might actually add to my life. My step sibling change ended up scraping off all the crud I had let build up in the crevices from staying put. I think change is beautiful and revolutionary; it has the propensity to create growth you never knew you were capable of.

Change has become a character I consider to be a leading role in my story.

But the changes I've made, the times I've said yes when I wanted to say no, the space I've allowed for growth and learning, is because I wanted it.

Not because someone else told me it would be best.

Not because it would garner more attention for myself.

Not because it would allow me to slip into a better label.

I am not perfect. Neither is anyone else. But for the better part of the last 48 hours I've tried slipping into a label because I started to believe it was true of me; I held out my wrists, that I've always been really hard on because they're not thin or delicate, and awaited the clank of the shackle to be locked -- because someone compared this me to what I could be.

Truth? I could be a lot of things. I could be thinner and quieter and less likely to cry over music. I could be less sensitive and more unwilling to let people know how much I love them and I could definitely eat less dairy and think less about bread.

But those things make me, me. And if I'm going to go about altering any of those things, I want it to be as a result of believing it's what's best for my own life, not anyone else's.

And I've spent the last year trying to remind myself to be softer to my own reflection. I've actively not thrown hate filled words at my jeans before I put them on in the morning. I'm trying to learn to give myself some of the love I easily give out to others.

I don't know what labels you're carrying around. I don't know if they've become freeing and enlightening or if they are holding you stiff and immobile. But I have to believe that we need not stuff ourselves inside them in order to survive.

How many years have I been existing because I bound myself in lies and claimed them as my definers?

I don't want to exist in a life when I can actually be living it.

Shake off the labels. If change is healthy for you, then welcome it. But do it for you.

Because, I don't know about you, but it's high time I stop fighting for people that only make me feel worse and start going to battle against those that make me feel that worth is lacking.

And y'all, more than I'd like to admit, I'm at the front of that charge, carrying the weapons that scar and desecrate.

And it's time to stop.