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.***

When Your Happy Ending Isn't

" . . . sometimes the happiest ending isn't the one you keep longing for, but something you absolutely cannot see from where you are." - Shauna Niequist

I have thought long and hard over these words in the time since I've returned from India. I have reflected on who I was before I left and who I am now that I'm back. I have searched deeply for answers to the questions of "what parts of the before Steph do you want to hold on to? Which parts of her do you want to shed like dry skin?" I have found that the answers lie more within what defines a happy ending for me now versus what helped to shape it then.

I have been quite candid in the past about my desire for love. I am a thoroughly relational person, a monogamous person, a person who really loves love. It has caused deep pain, wide division, and many more lessons than I would prefer to admit.
In my pursuit of a relationship I began to find my comfort, my peace, in people -- my family members, my girlfriends, men who were undeserving of my time -- I believe I have put so much pressure on these people -- I have placed expectations on them that they were never designed to withstand.

I prayed for the wreckage of my beating heart in India. It manifested in ways I didn't, I couldn't, foresee.

When you travel to a third world country there are things you should likely expect, but that my first world brain did not calculate into the equation: internet access is spotty and difficult and unreliable on its best day; people are going to stare at you, let their eyes linger over you, because you are drastically paler than even the palest native; your body is going to be livid with you for dragging it through several time zones and not sleeping adequately when you were given the time to; caffeine will only slightly lessen grogginess and headaches because, ya know, the time zone thing; it will not be an easy transition - everything will feel wrong and off and foreign because IT IS.

I prayed for the wreckage of my beating heart in India. It manifested in not being able to reach "my people" whenever I needed them. It showed up in a hotel room at precisely 2 AM and allowed room for me to willingly and whole heartedly cry out to Jesus in a way the comforts of America didn't allow.

I was always less likely to run to Jesus when I could call mom or Stephen or one, or all, of my remarkable girlfriends. If I could physically hear a response or rest on a shoulder then crying out to the One who had the power to overtake it could become an afterthought.

Wreckage came in when running to God was my only option.

_______________________________________________________________________

Before I left for India my brain was focused on battling depression. My heart wanted desperately to be pursued by someone and my brain wanted desperately to not want it all so desperately. My happiest ending was in line with what the people around me have, and are, experiencing -- good jobs, falling in love, happy marriages. It was safe to say that my happiest ending certainly involved love -- I just assumed I knew the sort of love that needed to be written in to my story in order to obtain my 'happiest ending.'

India found me seeing and feeling God closer than I had ever experienced Him in America. He was in the bright colors the women decorated their bodies with. He was laced in to the laughter of young girls giggling at the way I waved goodbye to them. He was in the hopscotch game drawn in dirt with a stick. He was within the smile of a boy that held my hand tight and now has a piece of my heart forever. He was, He is, everywhere. I don't know why I had to travel through time zones and try new and spicy foods and feel so removed from everything I know and love before I could truly know and love Him in such a new way, but I am so glad for it.

I landed in India crying; I swore I had made a mistake; all I wanted was home and familiarity.

I left India sobbing. I didn't want to leave those kids, that little boy; I wanted more time; I couldn't believe things were finally becoming familiar.

I journaled much of the plane rides back -- recalling conversations with the children I met, trying to memorize their smiles and laughter and the way they said "sister" in their sweet accents. I didn't want to forget anything - I didn't want to lose anything that I had gained while I was there.

One of my last pages of reflection on India I wrote, "Lord God, if bringing a relationship in to my life is going to stop me from returning to India next year, I don't want  you to bring a relationship in to my life."

I go back to my journal and read that line almost every day -- mostly because I still can't quite believe the transformation that has occurred in my heart.

I think about that quote, as I attempt to end this post . . . You can rest assured that when I climbed aboard that plane to Hyderabad, I was completely and utterly blind to the happy ending He was writing for me. But it was there and He was penning it. They were both waiting for me to arrive.

When Words Won't Come

The henna on my right hand is starting to fade. The darkest parts remain on my knuckles, but I've begun to see the cracks of my skin pull the dark brown down in to them.

I like to look at it while I'm driving or as I lay down at night - under the glow of my cell phone or laptop screen. I look at it and recall the color of the dirt in India - the decibels of sound that were reached during long and bumpy traffic rides through the streets of a land foreign and complicated and unapologetically vibrant. I gaze down at the fading color on my skin and have to swallow hard and fast to keep the tears at bay; dear Lord, I have to bite my tongue so I don't cry aloud, while looking down at skin that somehow feels wholly different now.

The henna on my right hand is fading. Soon it will be a distant memory - absorbed by the skin and washed clean by the soap. But what it represents - the place where I got it - I can feel it begin to nestle itself beneath my collar bone; it has taken up residence in the center of my heart.

I've started and then deleted the body of words beneath these three paragraphs a couple of times. They all just feel flippant and un-encompassing - no amount of creative writing training or diplomas from expensive institutions will be enough to help me write about India and what she has become to me.
Certainly no amount of flowery language or edits and rewrites will help anyone to understand the way a group of dark haired, dark eyed children and their singing laughter wrecked my heart for the better.
I am wholly sure I don't possess the intelligence, clout, or capabilities to talk about the way Jesus used a thirteen year old boy to finally stop my wild wanderings and whisper, "this is why you didn't get those things you thought were the end all, be all, my girl. I've been writing this, I've been waiting for this -- we've all been waiting for your arrival, here."

It's not within me to write about all of this just yet. I will confess my foolish nature and then let photographs speak as much as they can; India and the call to go there came at the most perfectly precise time. It was inconvenient, uncomfortable, and against everything I believed would make a better life. I boarded a plane on June 12 believing that what I desired for my life was the best there could ever be. I returned June 21st with the understanding that the happy endings for my life are most likely not anything or anyone I can see from where I stand - they are more life-shattering, heart-wrecking, soul-changing than what I was designed to comprehend.

The henna on my right hand has begun to fade, but the imprint of Indian soil, twinkling laughter, and the most unforgettable smiles have just begun to take root.

A Letter of Okay.

I do not have a predisposition for spontaneity. I like clear plans, set times, precise handling of who should be where and when. If things must change or plans be rescheduled, it is best for my mental stability and breathing patterns to know well before the day things are supposed to happen. It could be said I would prefer these hard-set rules to permeate every area of my life.

The morning routine will be offset by something, no matter the level of significance? I would much rather know a panic attack will arrive approximately five minutes after I pull into work and three minutes into a conversation with my mother.

That Sunday I blocked half the day out in order to hang out with someone? Yeah, would rather not make the plans versus being stood up for hours on end. Would especially love to avoid the painfully, over-critical, analysis of what I might have done wrong to make this happen.

But life isn't like that, is it? We don't get to know what detours lie in waiting. We don't have the option of knowing when we might be stood up, let down, rearranged.

I would have genuinely desired to know at 21, 22, 25, even, that at 27, I would be diagnosed with depression.

I would also, apparently, really desire for the superhuman power to change up the chemical balance in my head and completely avoid said diagnosis.

But I digress.

At 27 I was diagnosed with depression. And there were no flares shot up into the darkest darkness I've ever existed within to warn me that every waking moment I would desire to return to my bed. There were no hot flashes of lightening to warn me of the deepness of undeterminable sadness with which I would fall in to.

There was no warning for the way the desires that once consumed me would dissipate and only exhaustion and guttural desperation for Jesus would remain.

There are no warnings.

And even knowing all of that - that I would never be privy to when panic attacks would take over, or plans would change, or someone would simply change their mind - I was never good with the simple 'okay.'

All my life I have been raised and loved by those who were alarmingly okay with the okay; last minute cancellations? No problem, other plans can be made. A person changes their mind about the role they'd like you to play in their life? No issue here, plenty more fish in the sea. A call ten minutes before something is happening with an invitation attached? Yes, okay. Let's do that.

And I was very likely the one in the corner rocking slowly and proverbially chewing her hair because something changed or went wrong and just what the hell was I going to do NOW?

Okay hasn't ever really had a space in my vocabulary.

Until it did.

I'm not sure I could tell you what changed. Words like jagged glass were thrown at me and something, somewhere inside of me, chipped off and, glory be to God, I think that is just exactly what I needed.

Isn't it funny how absolutely broken we must become - how decimated our innards must be left - how catatonically miserable we must find ourselves before the spirit can be built back up, again?

The pieces lay still where they fell and I felt a rolling heaviness move in and settle right beneath my undetected collar bone; everything felt too hard to manage - breathing without the hiccup of a sob was nearly unfathomable. And all those desires for love - for a relationship, to be seen - they were replaced by the most alarming want to just feel normal.

I started seeing a counselor not too long ago. I managed to make it through an hour and a half session with only crying three times. She laid down the D word and said, "but you don't have to live like this."

I felt myself nodding my heavy head and just whispering, "okay."

Okay, I am suffering from depression.
Okay, I am allowed to break.
Okay, I am 27 and single.
Okay, I want to be Stephi again.
Okay, a relationship isn't a top priority right now.
Okay, I will wail and cry and tear at this darkness and tie myself to Jesus if it means this will get better.
Okay.

Who woke up this morning and set out to do just exactly what their 18 or 21 or 25 year old self thought they would be doing at this age?

Anyone? No one?

Not me.

Not me, who fell asleep at 8.30 last night and woke up feeling more exhausted than when she laid down.

Not me, who lives alone in a house with rooms decorated all by herself.

Not me, who went to school to be a writer and have her name be known.

Not me, who really, truly, didn't know Jesus until year 26 and is a mere 10 days and 2 hours from sharing Him in India.

Not me.

Because somewhere along the line I miscalculated and led myself to believe that not only was I factual in what I wanted, but also in what I needed. I misjudged what I would know and what I would still need to learn. I made the mistake of thinking that I wouldn't change; that my heart wouldn't transform; that what I wanted at 21 would be, tied and true, the same in all the years after.

This life will wreck you. It's a guarantee. And there will be mountaintops - oh, there will be seats on peaks with sorbet colored sunsets that you can reach out and tickle your thumbprints into.

But there will be valleys, too. They will hurt. They will place their palm over your chest, leading you to believe they're there to soothe, and they will walk away with tattered chunks of your too much feeling heart held tight within them. There will be darkness. And labels. Diagnoses and people you want to forget you ever handed hope to.

Get yourself a tribe. Surround yourself with people who knew you before the dark and twisted moments got reigns over your soul and mind. Make sure they are willing to fight for that person - even when you don't want to be in the ring anymore.

Tie yourself to the belief that there is purpose and authorship behind all of this that serves Something and Someone so much greater than these divides of the darkest hours.

Be okay with what has to come, what has to manifest, what has to be left behind, in order to reach the you that is ahead.

Become acquainted with the knowledge that one night you might be sitting at your kitchen table, eating by yourself, reading notes about how to break through the darkness, and you will find gleeful joy at the knowledge that for the first time, possibly ever, you just want to be whole and healthy and a better version of you.

Be willing to be okay with the things, the circumstances, the people, that will change and alter the course you find yourself on. Be willing to be okay with the unexpected things of a life to become center stage of your life. Be willing to be okay with ending up becoming a version of yourself you could've never imagined -- because it'll likely be better than anything you could've wanted to dream up.

Let's be okay with ok.

Okay?

A Letter from Me.

It has been a long time since I've sat down and just wrote directly to you. I've been working on a series of letters these last couple months as part of a bigger project I've been dreaming of and praying over - and those will continue to show up - but I think I needed to just write and be extremely raw.

I've been looking at this screen for some time, watching the cursor blink in and out of vision, attempting to formulate a letter for where I'm at right now; it won't come. The words aren't particularly cooperative lately . . .

If you were to find my journals lost on a sidewalk somewhere you would hear a girl who is desperately praying for a break in the darkness, for a change of season, for different desires. Because this season feels heavy. There is a weight to these days.

So I probably could've sat here a little longer and come up with a letter subject with which to disguise the feelings I'm having behind it, but I won't.

I leave for India in twenty-six days. In exactly twenty-six days I will be doing something I swore I would never do; if you would've told me at 18 that I would one day willingly go across the world to share Jesus with Indian children I would have laughed in your face - or vomited. But it will be a reality in less than a month. And I am feverish with prayer that the Lord just explodes - that He just wrecks me in the most incredible way. Because, guys, I want to want His plan and story and authorship for my life more than anything I could attempt to desire for myself.

And He's slowly doing it -- as I knew He would. For the first time since I can remember in my twenties a relationship is not something I am losing sleep over. I still desire it, but it feels so much less urgent than it ever has. And I feel free.

I wish I could say every area of my life feels free . . . but things are dark right now. There is purpose, I know. I also realize, for the first time in maybe ever, that He is good - even though things don't feel really good right now. I find myself looking for Him in these days. And I find Him.

I suppose I didn't turn this into a letter of some sort with a fancy, spectacular title because most of the time I do not feel fancy or spectacular. And that's okay. I don't need to feel those things, or be those things, to have a good life.

I also think this letter is the most bland I've written because honesty can't always be flowery and vast in its vocabulary. I want there to be freedom in being able to say "this is incredibly hard right now" and people hear and understand it the same way as they would if I engaged that Creative Writing degree I worked so hard for.

In this season right now, writing feels harder than it ever has -- and I think there is a lesson to be learned in that. And I'll be honest -- sometimes the lessons overwhelm me and I just want to throw my hands up and say "Just quit with all these things I am to be learning, please." But who really wants to be stagnant and unlearning?

I don't know what the days will bring. I'm unsure of what the school year ending will lead to. I am unaware of how India and its children and my King will change me. I don't know when the darkness will lift - but I know it will.

Life can hurt. Be kind to each other. We're all fighting a hard battle.

-sd.

I Wish My Students Knew . . .

I remember, not so long ago, walking into that classroom and believing that I had everything within me to teach and mentor middle-school aged students with ease. How hard could it really be?

I was so terribly wrong.

Stepping up to the front of the classroom I was convinced I would teach them so much; I would help them grow; I would help mold them into better boys and girls.

Who knew the stepping up would entail the breaking down of an attitude that claimed to be the wise teacher. Who knew the stepping up would mean becoming the one who was taught.

I could write one thousand letters to the students I've worked with the last three years and it would never wholly cover all the important and invaluable things I've learned.

Because here's the thing - when you decide to teach, when you decide to graduate from school and return to the classroom, you will educate, but you will continue to receive an education, too.

There will be more like this - because there are just too many small humans who've wrecked me in the best ways to only write one; here's where it will start, though.

You are every kind and good thing I've ever hoped people would see in me.

You pulse talent with every flicker of your hand and stomp of your foot.

You have the sort of infectious smile and laugh that I am sure tunes the soundtrack of Heaven.

I see me in you. In the way you don't want people to see you cry, in the way you want to make sure your tribe is good and secure, in the way you listen when we ask you to.

You have the voice and style and grace to live in the spotlight. I surely hope you change the world with it.

Meeting you was one of the greatest occurrences of my little life.

You challenge me to be kinder, to be wiser, to think of myself far less than what I do.

Did you know I admire you? The way you love people and want people to know they matter -- because they matter so, so much.

Sometimes I'll hear you laugh or give grace to your classmates and I choke up a little -- you are the little sister I never had, the child I love the way I imagine a parent does, the heart I want to protect and nurture and help tend.

I want you to be a game changer; for the East side of Dayton, for our heart of a state in this country, for our world.

I believe you will set this place on fire with your determination and wildly free love.

I love you. I appreciate you.

Thank you for changing my heart, making me better, helping me to know what love actually is.

Fight for who you are.

Stay true to the desires of your heart.

Don't conform. Dear God, don't fall in line.

I am wholly convinced your creation was on purpose, full of purpose, and laced with world changing abilities.

I cannot wait to see your heart light up this small spot on the map.

I believe in you.

Goodness, I am for you.

Thank you for changing me. Thank you for trusting me.

Thank you.