Why it's scary and exciting to become something else.

Geez louis, I'm one heavy chick these days.  (FYI:  I'm the only one allowed to refer to myself as a "chick" or a "skirt."  Don't test me.  I do have a minor in Women's Studies, which included a free handbook with instructions for how to turn sexist remarks into delicious casseroles and right hooks.  Strangely, I'm not uncomfortable with "dude.")

I was just writing this to Michelle:

Perhaps it doesn't matter that I can't remember her name, but some author I love once said that moving creates ripples on the surface of your life and that you must be patient while the movement stills itself before you attempt to "settle in."  I suppose it's akin to not anchoring your boat during a storm.  You have to be willing to endure the turbulence of newness.

I was embarrassed by my post yesterday because it seems self-contained and self-absorbed in so many ways.  (Embarrassment is such a useful thing--pointing to areas that need work, places that are raw, shy, mistaken but still "true".)  What's so interesting about my pain that I'd want to live in it, cultivate it, grow it, nurture it?  It's like some exotic and captivating plant that requires all my attention.  (Clearly, ferns fall under this category, too.  That's why I don't have one.)  And all the while, the time investment, the energy and devotion this dark magnet requires turns my heart and hands away from others.  The only way out is out.  Help someone.  Move.  Do it now.  (Truly this is the only way I've ever found to cure what ails you, and the heart of why and how we must die to the self in order to reflect Christ's love for each other.  My pain must never become more interesting to me than another's need.)

I'm not really sure how (or I have been unwilling) to accept the pain of loss, the heavy disappointment in my own choices and actions in the past, the present and those I know I'll make in the future.   And I know where I should hand this, but it's so hard to do.  Why is that?

(She entered her closet and cried there with Him.  A necessary, ongoing confession.)

On the brink of becoming something else, something stripped clean of fear, something other, something completely foreign--the work He is doing is the work of newness, and the unsure footing is the turbulence that must be approached in complete faith.  Beneath the wire, there appears to be no net.  So walk ask if you never fell.


("At what point did you doubt?")  Otherwise plummet.  His hand extended.  All is forgiven.  It is always already so.