there are probably times where that answer has been true, probably even in recent times. but i can't think of them. i feel alive. i feel at home in my own skin. i would pen words to that feeling but I'm not sure they're adequate.
i moved to TN 3 weeks ago. my old testament professor-turned-friend brought her daughters over to help me pack up. a few sets of hands joined in & we finished packing the uhaul with plenty of time to spare. so we made breakfast together because there would be no more appropriate way to move out. emily manned the pancakes, dr qualls took care of the sausage & i had the bacon & eggs. a full kitchen to balance out my empty room. goodbyes were emotional & we prayed together. and i was loved. i was so very loved & so very grateful for that love.
I've moved myself a couple of times but I've never had anyone load up my car. it was new and nice and kind. they waved me off as i reluctantly put my foot to the gas petal. it felt like the movies. i cried for the first 30 minutes of the drive and it was the ugly kind because id lived there 7 years. minutes after my eyes dried, i got a phone call from christa, where we talked about crying & trying new things. and then the call got interrupted by one coming in from dr qualls. (whilst discussing her brazen prophecies for our future). aside from my slow winding trek through the mountains, i spent my entire drive on the phone. but i made no outgoing calls. these were my friends, walking alongside me through 6 hours of highways. it was so beautiful. christa & dr qualls traded hours where they would call me. i felt so loved. it was so wild.
i pulled into the parking lot in nashville & felt like i hadn't yet left. a friend of mine once said in regards to our tribe, "i carry you all with me always." thats what it was like. it was the scene from harry potter where he's turned the resurrection stone (except obviously i wasn't facing lord voldermort, and i had no world saving to do.) i was in the company of everyone who had walked with me in friendship. what a kind thing for love to do. a refusal to leave me stranded.
ive thought of my friends often in during this move. really, i think every post in here eventually comes back to them. but they are my grace and God has not pulled them from my view.
i worked my favorite camp for just a week this summer. it cranked like an old car; rusty but resolutely faithful. the pace of camp requires a tremendous kind of energy. one that i legitimately cannot sustain in real life. but for a week, i can live in that exhaustion/aliveness. i got to participate in people grace & friend grace & team grace.
i watched profound social anxiety turn into LITERAL dancing. i met a boy named sam, who came without knowing a soul & taught him to play vance joy. he became a camp rock star during the volleyball tournament. i played soccer with a boy from nepal named deepan & another boy from some profound country in africa. his name was gadsoni, and together we all played soccer. i got to sit for worship and breathe. i felt life in a way that i have missed. my sense of spirutuality is not so fine tuned & sensitive as it once was. the vocabulary of spiritual insight feels bitter & foreign in my mouth. but the gritty work of hands on plows makes sense to me. that is where my spirit comes alive.
it was so good. luckily, there was another mid tenty on the team & we connected well. camp life is this wild thing where time passes like it does in the narnia series; slowly & all at once. (and also the john greene series, since i love that quote) you live a year in a summer & a month in a week. we shared stories and comments that fermented a few years longer than for the rest of the team. and it was good.
it was good to meet someone in my own skin. it felt good to share life again in danville & to be in a way better place. the last time i was there, my personhood was still pretty fragmented. i was still trying to fit into my old skin with my old words,but the skin had a tear & no longer fit. i actually read some older posts from that time. i referenced my demons coming out of the rafters & the anxiety in the posts was so loud. its almost jarring in how that picture was juxtaposed this time.
marilee and i shared stories, demons & dreams with ease. THAT is what i believe in. being seen & heard. trading stories with honor instead of shame & fear. it felt so good to sit in my own skin again. to feel alive in yourself again is a profound grace.
i dont understand how passport camp works. in general, its WAY outside of my comfort zone. but its a place to my hands in the dirt. i get to reconnect to myself. i get to see these tiny glimpses of Gods kingdom & where God is moving me inside (& outside) of that kingdom. i can see where my design has niche & my presence is specific.
i used to be afraid of that. today im not. today im 25 & 4 years have passed. the broken pieces mended & today i get to breathe with my fearless lungs. that feels so good. im not anxious right now. i am alive & i am well & that is not always the case, so i celebrate.
when dr qualls asked me how nashville felt, i told her that i felt alive & at home in my own skin, in a way that i hadnt felt in years.
we dont get all the pieces back when the paradigm shatters. but if we'll steady our hands, the mosaic on the other side sits in the same space, just in a different shape.
feels nice to be alive again. to open & honest & brave.
i pulled out my box of letters, just to browse in the midst of transition. i have gracious friends who wrote me letters & told me what they saw in me. some of these date back beyond college & into early high school. in almost every letter was some semblance of, "im grateful for your friendship.. i love your honesty.. i love how real you are.. i love your courage." its neat to come full circle again, sharing life on a kitchen floor & sharing stories, breathing life back into those qualities. neat to make a new friend (who you shouldve met before but didnt bc of diff circumstances) & to wear those badges again. differently, but still authetically. neat to share life & know that dark doesnt always win (& it dossnt always mean bad or forever). 4 years can be a capping point & a place to re-walk your own personhood.
florence + the machine has a new song called Third Eye. her whole album sounds like a diary/self-talk-mirror, but there is a line in that song that she screams out of herself, in a loving desperation to make herself hear. "hey look up! you dont have to be a ghost here amongst the living! you are flesh and blood! and you deserve to be loved! and you deserve what you are given!" so fitting that a florence song frames this post. full circle, shake it off framed the other one.
you deserve to be loved.
you deserve to be loved.
you deserve to be loved.
amen.
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