On a Scattered Mind, a Wandering Heart

Fifteen years.

Fifteen years ago I sat in Mr. Greher's American History classroom. I was a naive, selfish 8th grade girl. My best friend, Lindsey, sat behind me and to the right. She and I, we were pretty convinced we'd conquer the world. And truthfully, there was no one else I wanted to conquer the world beside. Fifteen years ago, I didn't know anything of war, other than the black and white photos bracing the text books that always took up too much space in my locker. Fifteen years ago, I listened to my mom share about how she remembers, vividly, where she was when JFK was assassinated. How sad for you, I remember thinking. How sad for you. Fifteen years ago, moments before a tower was struck with selfishness and evil and a warped thought process of freedom and standing up for one's belief, I sat entirely untouched by pain, devastation, or sorrow.

And then a T.V. screen was bombarded with plumes of black smoke and I had to choke back cries of terror because I wasn't even entirely sure why I was called to cry in the first place.

Fifteen years ago I become one person in a generation of many who would be defined by a historical event that I would eventually teach to developing third grade minds in an inner city, public school.

The sun is shining today. There isn't one single cloud in the sky and I find myself trying to name the blue in a new and poetic way. The sun is shining. It's warm and encompassing and I should be exuberant with joy.

Something lurks in the corners, though.

My mom can always tell when it's going to rain. Her knee aches in a way that feels differently from the chronic pain she experiences from bone pushing up against bone. She will walk into the kitchen and whisper, "rain's coming," because she must baby the joint that gets her from place to place differently than how she normally would.

Depression and anxiety are similar to a joint devoid of cartilage, in that way. My stomach and thought patterns seem to know when the sun just won't brighten the haziness of a heart. The very pit of my gut, he knows when extended ours of sleep just won't make me jump out of bed ready for the day, but rather burrow deeper into the mattress and attempt to further cocoon my body with a quilted blanket.

I have a good life. I don't want to, at any point here, allow anyone to think I am suggesting things are bad or wrong or hopeless. They are not.

But I suffer from depression. And I exist, nearly twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, in a perpetual state of panic. No, I do not know why.

But my gut - you know, the one who reminds me no amount of sleep will ever be enough? He has been especially unkept lately. I'll be going about my day and will be overcome with this foreboding feeling that I should be dreading something. And so I mentally pace. I pace and pace and pace - up and down the hallways of a mind that never shuts off to begin with - trying to define what it is I'm supposed to be dreading. And I often can't put my finger on it.

So then I get anxious. And I revolve around this anxiety. Hoping like hell I will figure out what it is I'm supposed to be dreading.

It would seem, when anxiety lets her hair all the way down, she makes it nearly impossible for celebration to make a home within me.

On My Momma

There isn't a number for the amount of phone calls she takes in which a shaky voice on the other end whispers, "I need to talk to you about something. . ."

I can't imagine the fear that likely swells in the walls of her heart - wondering what the green eyed girl will share with her this time - in what ways might both of their worlds shatter or alter, skip necessary steps or pull back in a reversal that just shouldn't be.

She always takes them with stride, though. Her reaction - I've memorized it along with the smell of baby powder and gardenia that immediately helps me understand her presence in the room. A deep, belly-deep breath in and she calmly says, 'okay. go ahead.'

And she always has an answer, a solution. She always knows the next steps to take. She always does.

There is no calculable measurement for what I owe her - monetarily, but also with time. The amount of crises she detours from hitting me, the tears she patiently wiped when I, yet again, trusted a sneaky eyed boy with my heart and was given mere fragments back when he chose the blonde over me.

No prose in the world will properly encapsulate the times she came swooping in - a super heroine who never wanted recognition or title, but to simply be called momma and be loved deeply.

She is both of those things. But she also has the full capability of changing the world. She's certainly changed mine.

Recently we were discussing how much I've changed in recent years. I recall a time when powder pink was my entire universe - all the Barbies, all the Barbie homes, all the Barbie limos - and I was unapologetically GLEEFUL over the sparkle of the world she created for me.

And when the Barbies took a backseat to first kisses and holding hands with the tall, blue-eyed athlete, she did what she could to let me tip-toe into maturity, but she was always there. She was the ever watchful eye I resented up until the day I realized just how much I needed it to survive in a world designed to break me.

Of late, I cannot formulate, in words, the degree of panic she has probably felt over the questions that have traveled from my lips, through the phone line, to reach to ever bending ear.

"What if I moved to Dayton?"

"India?" 

"What if I took a job in which I had to create a ministry team?"

 "What about a longer stay in India?" 

"Could I spend Christmas in India?"

She listens patiently - never hesitating to lay her fears, her concerns, on the table before me. But don't be mistaken - she never once utters the word no. She never thinks to close a door on the frightened whisperings of an over feeling heart.

As I collect years and become more acquainted with this woman God wrote a story for, she watches her little girl grow and make mistakes. She holds her when life is too much or the darkness grips too tight. And she is the first to squeal through the phone is pure delight over something beautiful on the page.

As I collect years and become more acquainted with this woman God wrote a story for, she stands firmly in the corner of her girl who, surprise, surprise, loosens the roots of those corn fields a little more each day. She backs every decision made to get on a plane - even if the destination haunts in its mystery. She maintains her role as loudest supporter as her girl falls in love with a land, with a little boy, with a culture far from where she originally raised her.

As her girl cries for more room, lets loose her lengthening hair, and slowly unwraps from the binding anxiety who has riddled every movement of her adolescence, she gets out the watering can and, with tears rushing down her face, pours life back into the dry places so the green-eyed Coco can flourish as she was designed to.

No essays or books or poems could encapsulate a love that continues to grow like a weed. I watch her be a momma - she is a momma in the ways I imagine her momma was to her. She is strength - visceral and innate. She is a warrior - standing tall and speaking firm. She is unconditional love - her wild children push their limits, test the boundaries of a world counting on them tripping up - and she remains the warm embrace, the tender answer, the landing place.

She watches as I refine the wildness within me - unapologetically testing patience and seeking out passion - and she never once considers stifling what is within me.

She is cultivation personified - harvesting the wonder and intensity inside and wrinkling up her beautiful nose in joy when I, by God's purse grace, get it right.

She is my momma. She feeds the luxuriant. She loosens the free. She ruffles the skirt of my natural. 

She waters my wild without hesitation and still allows my return when something goes awry.

On the Unhinging of a Heart

A large portion of my life lies in the doubting. I doubt my ability to stir movement with my words. I doubt my role within relationships that are real and raw and good. I doubt I am noticed. I doubt whether a 14 year old boy will remember me when we spend nearly 365 days apart between visits and our communication lies in hand written letters most of the year. I doubt that God is concerned with my trivial desires and hopes.

Of a couple of those things I am realizing my doubt is ill-advised.

As I write this out, I'm doubting I'll ever be able to write about India well.

But here's what I know.

India moves me. It moves my blood and steals my words, but it's okay...

I cannot explain to you with words the ways the brown eyes of the children shoot straight into the center of my soul and refuse to budge.

I can't explain the light rain that falls anytime a little girl walks through the slum with belled anklets bracing her delicate feet.

I cannot verbalize the joy I obtain by being around growing girls with deep, raspy voices who ask endless questions and tease with confidence.

I don't have the training to properly share the innocence coming from a 16 year old boy's voice when he asks me about my hobbies in America.

I cannot articulate the beautiful ache that comes from sitting with an 8-year-old coloring and admiring the impossibly tiny, thin, gold band on her middle finger.

There aren't enough verbs or adjectives or creatively combined metaphors to illustrate how a foreign land, and the most beautiful people I've ever laid eyes on, have become a source of home.

But there it is.

I doubted, last year, when I boarded a plane to India for the first time that a country so far removed from everything familiar to me would be good or pleasant for a girl who hates change. And now I can't imagine not having these stories, these faces, these moments as a part of me.

I can't describe the way I am moved, but I pray - high and loud - that you have a space that shakes your blood like India does mine.

Maybe it requires long plane rides and a list of ways to be respectful in a culture you don't quite yet comprehend. Maybe it's right where you are, in the spaces between work and play - kisses hello and cooking dinner. Maybe you haven't found it yet. Maybe you don't even know you need a place like this - that stirs something within you hadn't realized you possessed; a place that brings out pieces of yourself you hadn't yet met, a place that releases the wild within you.

Fight to be the most wild version of yourself, friend. Find the place that stirs and moves, asks you to bend and bow to new customs, new foods, new sensory experiences.

Fight like hell to create space to meet new pieces of yourself. Then plant yourself there, even if just for fleeting moments, and make it home.

If you're anything like me, you've long needed someone to show up and tell you to stop doubting that there's an element within you that needs unhinged.

Unhinge yourself.

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Because my words won't do, here's a look into a place that makes me feel the most free, the most wild, the most unhinged.

Here's to you and your untethering.

On a Rushing, Throbbing Heart

The rain pelts my windshield. I watch the wiper blades, one slightly askew from the winter ice -- a subtle peek into the manipulation made possible by frigid cold; I watch the wiper blades and wonder what might happen if they swooshed so fast they unhinged off my car. My eyes try to keep time with the rhythm - wa-WOMP, wa-WOMP, wa-WOMP.

I wonder if that's what my heart sounds like from the inside out.

The looming light finally evolves from red to green and I take the left turn cautiously; rain makes my fingers tremble over the steering wheel. I think I might live in perpetual fear that, like my life oft does, the car will hydroplane in an intersection of where I'm coming from and where I've yet to grasp.

The left turn is made and a family of geese totter slowly, carefully across the street. I feel impatience well within me; I am already late. Sleep, like it so regularly does now,  evaded me last night. I slip hard into slumber and then the deafening quiet wakes me -- beckons me to think about those things I so desperately want to avoid.

The damp, inky night siren-cries at me to share with her the secrets lining my clavicle, and when I refuse, the temptress leaves me wide-eyed and chasing rest.

So I am late to work, having just made a left turn, and am accosted by having to wait on a family of geese leisurely making their way across the road.

They do not rush themselves - even when idiotic humans around them beep their horns to rush their travel. I shake my head and the windshield wipers provide monotonous sound track music for the journey.

wa-WOMP. wa-WOMP. wa-WOMP.

These geese - they are not bothered by being creatures who prolong a commute. They will not hold guilt over needing time to get where they need to be.

wa-WOMP. wa-WOMP. wa-WOMP.

It occurs to me the many instances in which I truly do need to rest, to take leisure, to attempt to sedate the manic within.

The geese waddle, treading lightly, in the midst of the downpour, and I feel every fiber within me wanting to rush.

I hasten towards the horizon of each day, convinced tomorrow must be the day something will finally happen that's needed to happen all this time. I charge into the setting sun, wholly certain taking time, diligent and intentional, will gain me naught.

wa-WOMP. wa-WOMP. wa-WOMP.

The geese family finally reaches their terminus and I step lightly onto the gas, turning up the speed of the skewed windshield wipers. The rain assails my windshield and I detect my pulse picking up rhythm.

What is it about the deceleration of a life that makes me queasy to the point of inhabiting the skin of a flight risk?

wa-WOMP. wa-WOMP. wa-WOMP.

I am a flight risk.

The slowing down recently has shown me this. All the rushing around and desperately gnawing at skin, all the attempts at saying what I want and wanting what I feel, it's succeeded in captivating me so effortlessly that I am missing entire pieces of myself.

I am absent in the interview process over the beating organ beneath my clothing.

wa-WOMP. wa-WOMP. wa-WOMP.

The geese family, long gone by the time I end my day and traverse the drive home, continues to pulse just beneath the surface of my thoughts. Slow and steady. Prolonged in travel, unhurried, leisurely in pace, they get where needs going on time and safely -- they do not exist in the propensity to rush head-first into calamity.

wa-WOMP. wa-WOMP. wa-WOMP.

My hearts thrums evenly on the drive home; no rain to blitz my windshield, no family of geese unabashedly requiring my anticipation in their arrival to the destination.
I am met, in the afternoon sun, with roads unwinding, imploring for acceleration.

And I . . . I am petitioning for a slow down.

On Watching (And interesting imagery about armpits)

My hair has been getting caught in my armpits lately. If all 600 pounds of my locks are loose and untethered, I will go to turn my head or look to see if it's safe to switch lanes on the interstate and it will pull because it's caught in the crease of my armpit.

I've been trying to grow my hair out for some time now. I was always that girl in school who would SWEAR she wasn't going to cut her hair and then would watch some reality show like Dancing with the Stars and Julianne Hough would cha-cha across the stage with her perfect coif and I'd be furiously googling photos to send to my best friend, who also manages my mane.

"I thought we were growing it out, Stephi," she'd say.

I know. I know. I changed my mind.

But recently, I've stuck to my guns. I've only gotten it trimmed and when people see me who haven't seen me in a while - or anytime I FaceTime with my favorite married couple in Cancun - they remark on how long it is.

A few months back, right before I left my previous position and transitioned to my new job, I got lice. The school I worked at is filled with sweet babies who love loving on you, but they sometimes come with friends... I'm not going to not hug a child and so I was found with lice. After several treatments of olive oil and shower caps and frying my skull from washing with Dawn dish soap, a coworker suggested I cut my hair.

"NO!" I semi-shouted. I'd worked too hard to get my hair this length. There was no going back.

And so, with my mermaid hair, I got rid of the lice and now am prone to getting it caught in my armpit.

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I am reaching my one month anniversary at Back2Back. And it is a job filled to the brim of everything I've ever hoped for. I am learning new rhythms, gaining new sleeping patterns, and attempting to figure out what it looks like to output creatively approximately 8 hours a day. It's glorious and exhausting and I've never felt more full, professionally.

But I come home to an empty house at night. Sometimes Saturdays come and I stay at home and read into the night. And most of the time, I love it. Like I love my long, and still growing, hair.

But sometimes, I feel like I'm stuck in the armpit.

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That's the thing about chasing after what you want and having the privilege of holding it in your hand; it's not going to make every other pain disappear. There will still be moments in your days filled with the aching for something that didn't come along with the bigger dream.

You still might struggle with depression. Or painstakingly complete homework assignments from your therapist. You will more than likely have to admit that it is not all sunshine and pure joy all the time.

I would like to be naive about how to treat hair with lice. But I am not.

I would like to know what it's like to have someone else to consider when planning, or not planning, a meal. But I do not.

And it's okay. Most every day, it's okay. Because my hair is growing. Because I have my dream job before I'm 30. Because there's a little boy in India I get to return to in a little over a month from now.

And ya'll? It is good. It's so sweet.

But, I have to remind myself there is space for me to still desire and pray and hope and watch for. I have to whisper to myself there will always be something more. Because if it were all to be mine, then what is there to look forward to? How could I trust in a King who delights in being all I need. Because He is. I don't like admitting it sometimes. There are moments I cover up in my stubbornness and think, "You won't be enough. I won't have it."

And He laughs. I'm sure of it. I'd like to think it's His pleasure to watch us being every inch of stubborn and controlling as possible, all the while thinking, go on, girl. We'll come to agree on this eventually.

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What do you want - this very moment? Is it a new job? Or a new car? Maybe it's to be someone's Mrs. or to hear a developing voice whisper Mommy into your ear.

Maybe you want a dog, or to write a novel. Maybe you want to travel the world, learn to speak Spanish, fill up your passport.

Or perhaps, you just want to be able to rest.

Keep hoping for those things. Pray hard and diligently over every molecule of your desire. And watch for it. Watch for it as if you're expecting it.

Because isn't one of the best pieces of living for Him knowing that you can thank the Maker before He's gifted you this part of the story?

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You're not alone in the wanting. I can promise you that. There will always be more. Always one more mile to go. And it's good that way, I think. Even when I pull out strands of my hair or end up falling asleep at 8.45 because I don't have someone to talk to.

I'm learning to be okay with what I have before me and within me. He's created me for just this very moment. You, too.

But let's keep watching.

Okay?

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.