Have you ever gotten a phone call, text, or have someone say something to you that totally changes your whole day for the worst? No matter how hard you try to not think about it or shake it off you just feel shitty for the rest of the day. This happened to me yesterday. On top of trying to sort out foreign visa applications and passport things trying to work my way through a to-do list a mile long, I got one of those texts. BOOM! Just like that at 4:30-something in the afternoon my day goes from somewhat stressful but good to total shit.
And so it starts. The turning of details over in your hear. The guessing game of what could have happened. The endless nonsense I put myself through to try to rationalize people’s behavior inevitably making it worse because lets me honest sometimes we come up with the most outrageous, awful reasons for people’s behavior when it really isn’t even that serious. Dose anyone else do this or is it just me?
Why do we do that? Why do we let people’s actions, words, and opinions effect us so much? Why do I let people’s actions, words, and opinions effect me so much?
Recently it seems like anything slightly confrontational sends me into madness. For some reason everything is amplified. Have I just gone insane or is there something under all this that is greater. Something unknowingly my heart has been searching for that it can’t find and each failed attempt or wrong turn hurts more than the last time.
This morning while running my errands I tried to pray but I couldn’t find the words. I tried to listen to some music hoping that somewhere in lyrics I would find the words that would accurately articulate what I was feeling. Frustrated and annoyed I turned the radio off and just drove around in silence. Through the silence of my car I heard this, “sometimes what looks like the end is really the beginning. Sometimes what looks the end is really the end. Sometimes we just need to grieve everything. Seasons change and there is pain in that and that is ok.”
In that I began to cry…it is apparently it is what I do now. I think I have finally figured out why this is so hard. Everyone has told me how much doing the World Race is going to change me. They have all said how I am not ever going to be the same or think the same or see things the same. What is so hard about this is that it is not a see you later. It is a goodbye.
Goodbye everything I know. Goodbye to all the comforts and securities that are in my life now. Goodbye to my family. Goodbye to my friends. Goodbye to me and the person I am now because I am changing and growing and I am never going to be same and I know that is a good thing but it is also terrifying. It is time to leave everything behind in pursuit of something and someone much greater.
So here is some truth. The truth is that this season of my life is closing and I and leaving. My friends and family are going to have a year in their lives that I am not going to be a part of. They are going to get married, have babies, start new relationships, end relationships, make new friends, have birthdays, get their hearts broken, and accomplish amazing things that will I will not be apart of. On the flip side I am going to have a full year of life that they will not be apart of. I will make new friends, have a birthday, have my heart swell with love for complete strangers, have my heart broken, and accomplish amazing things without them. This season of life is coming to and end. While it has been a challenging season it has been a beautiful one.
As the last few leaves of this season of life begin to fall to the ground it looks like I am surrounded by tress that are dead and have no life. But in the death there is hope that is rising up growing stronger and stronger each moment and I hear the voice of the Father telling me he loves me, that I am not alone in this, and that he is for me. Telling me that He goes before me, he walks beside me, and he guards me from behind. That I am completely surrounded by him at all times.
Sitting in the silence of my car today I could feel him there. Calming me each time I became frustrated. So I say nothing. I just sat there in his presence and I give him the floor to say what ever He wants to say or to say noting at all. Sometimes the biggest comforts is just knowing and feeling he is there. A lot of the time words, they just get in the way. Be still my heart and know He is God and He is for me.
