I'm a planner like you wouldn't believe. Thursday's always make me emotional- it's the day that Michael died about 8 years ago, but it feels like just yesterday. I'm a high anxiety student who really doesn't know what margin is. All I'm trying to do is trying to find out. I struggle with self image. I want to be the one that provides hope and restoration, if that's where God calls. I'm someone racing the clock almost every hour of everyday- trying to do as much as I can. I'm full of hope and caffeine. I desperately need to sit back down at the piano and play like the olden days. I'm a reader. A believer. A living spirit. A passenger in the greater ride. A writer with some words, a stockpile of books, and a bunch of images in my head. Let the images pour from my heart and the uncertainty to flow with it.
How can I possibly begin to sew together the pieces of what this week, this weekend, has been for me? If someone asks me tomorrow how am I going to possibly explain what has gone on, the fire and the faith I've seen?
Hope.
Like I said, I like to plan. Like I said, my anxiety most days is out of control, and it's really something I'm trying to restore and reconfigure, for my life and those around me. We left on Friday afternoon and I had no idea what this weekend was going to provide, how God was going to speak to me, how He would speak to others in our group. How he would speak to the seas of people from other schools. So, with the journal I carry almost everywhere, I made a promise to just listen. To try and let go of myself, walk away from the path that my own feet seem to go, from the way that my body and mind both sway, and to just go. To just move. To just soak. To just digest.
For a planner, that's the HARDEST thing to do.
From Friday night when we arrived up until today when we got back to Glenside at 6:30, I have felt an overwhelming sense of hope. There's something about the sight and the stories of others, about the smiles, the labors and the restorations of others, that jolts us back to life and creates an entirely different campus. Sometimes, it's the laughs you hear, the arms you see stretched toward the One we're all reaching to, the simple ways that people are attempting to digest goodness, that makes you fall more in love with the world.
Maybe, what it all comes down to is hope. The simple idea of sewing together the truth and the glimpses when all of the rest of our worlds seems to fall out of place. Under the water and out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind.
Maybe what it all comes down to is the hope in the scar. The restoration in the broken. Maybe it comes down to the community of worship, the binding of writing down promise, the depth of reaching inside and trusting the fire inside to walk us toward the greatest path.
Whatever it is, I'm blown away. There's something about hope. There's something about being in a room, being in a city or a place, or a state of mind where the world doesn't seem so big and the axis doesn't seem to spin so fast. There's something about the hope I see in eyes I've never met, there's something about the path that's chased because, as much as we all want to believe that it's different- as much as it is according to what God calls for our lives- it's the same in that we're looking for God's light, God's restoration. What hope is better than that?
This weekend was one of hope. It's one that flipped me upside down, turned me right again, and flipped me once more. It's one that allowed me to see the sights, sounds, and words of a greater story. This weekend has been one where God has certainly played me one tune, then I sit down in ONE workshop, and He changes the tune entirely.
What do say other than, "Okay, God?" How is that not a sign of hope, because when the world seems empty, when the heart and the mind are tired, God's holding the pen to write a greater story. A story the planner, in her quick moments, might not initially appreciate, but one where she climbs out from under the skin of fear and anxiety and says,
"I'm on my way, God. I'm on my way."
I'm a planner who likes to plan my own notes, my own chapters, my own maps, but this just isn't mine. I'm surfing the current. Heart wide, eyes clear, mind subdued. I have hope. Jubilee gives hope.
Romans 12:12
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