The Girl with Blonde Hair

I had never been so broken before.

My heart thundered, then stopped, then thundered a million more rolls again.

I couldn't leave. I couldn't. 

This place where my heart was planted deep in the rocky terrain, where I bled and I cried, where I laughed and my heart was opened to joy again. To letting people into my brokenness. To being raw and vulnerable without fear.

Where my hand was opened again to receive His good gifts. 

Where I physically saw Him answer prayer in ways I could have never imagined.

Where I fell in love with Him all over again. 

Where He romanced my heart, danced with me through the storms and showed me just a glimpse of the breathtaking vistas He has in store.

I'm not a very emotional person. I could probably count on one hand how many times I've cried in public my entire life. Next to the time when we found out my brother's cancer had returned, I had never sobbed so hard in my life. Wracking sobs that shook my soul.

I felt like I was being emptied. I felt my heart leave my chest, heard mom calling my name, pulling my hands to get onto the van, but my eyes couldn't leave this place. They roamed and scanned wildly and tried to lock in every detail through blurry vision, eyelids blinking to clear.

Now thousands of miles away, months later, it's still a moment I relive a hundred times a day. The burning ache where my heart used to be, my soul yearning to be reunited again.

Some people don't get it. They try, but they just can't. They haven't seen what I've seen, felt what I've felt. They haven't had the dirt run through their fingers and the vision seep into their veins until it wraps and engulfs their very core.

And yet, others do. 

I may relive that moment a hundred times a day, but there's more than just feeling my heart being torn, falling onto the sand. I see more than just blurry images through the tears.

I see a girl with blonde hair. 

She followed me all that day. Hugged me. Wiped tears from her own eyes as she saw mine. She stood by me for hours as we waited for the bus. She whispered words of hope into my ear, then was brave enough to stand there in silence to give room for both our thoughts. She was real- beautifully real- giving of her soul not because it was the "right thing" to do, but because she simple did it without any pretenses or reservations. I may have been seven years her senior, yet she so faithfully ministered to my needs without even a clue. She didn't make it her "ministry". She didn't do it for praise. She just did it- because that's what love does.

And after 3 weeks of pouring into everyone around me, her action wrapped around me like a warm blanket that assured me I wouldn't be alone in this.

She didn't say it would be okay. She didn't say I'd get over it. She didn't tell me to stop crying, that the tears wouldn't stop the inevitable. She didn't say that I had a purpose elsewhere and that's why I had to leave.

She reminded me that He still loves me. 

She reassured me over and over that this was not the end- that He would bring me back. This was not a once in a lifetime experience- it was the beginning of a lifetime of purpose I had never known before.

That this look was not the last. 

There were others who had come by my side that day. They spoke as well, gave hugs and even prayed. But somehow, the girl with blonde hair vividly stands out from the rest.

She silently lived with me through that moment. Didn't speak the profound, just told me what my heart needed to hear. She cried, but she didn't leave. She stood with me as the minutes dragged tortuously onward as I waited for the van. She ran with me. She saw the unglamorous and jagged and didn't shy away.

I want to be like the girl with blonde hair. 

Want to live with people in the moment, in the broken, and be fully there to pour into their souls. Not because I have to, not because it's right- but because I'm right there with them. Not to be the hero- but to be the whisper in their ear that He still loves you. I don't want to shy away from the ugly, from the painful, but to embrace it with the arms of Christ.

It's not a duty, not a job to fix the world, never a place of glamor. It's a position of deepest humility, knowing you can't make it better, knowing your words are nothing.

It's standing there, even in the awkward and uncomfortable, to let Him live through you.

Even in silence and not saying a word. Through just being near. To say "You're not alone, because I'm choosing to walk this hard path with you"

And in that memory, I choose to live like that a hundred times a day.

When Faith Feels Like Dying

You'd think I'd be used to it, having family that's done this before. No trepidation, no hesitation, just a let's-go-get-'er-done mentality. 

And I do. I really do. 

But makes it a world of difference when you're purchasing your own ticket for half way around the world. Makes it a whole lot different when it's yours and not someone else's. 

It's your world that will forever be changed. Not your dad's or your brother's or the widow next store. Your world. 

And what are you supposed to do with that? With all the unknowns and the less-than-ideal environment and late nights and early mornings and food you normally avoid here in the States- and that's not even the spiritual warfare and mental exhaustion and mountaintop highs and valley lows. 

By faith Abraham left. 

Up and left even though he didn't know where he was going. Didn't know what God was going to do. 

Sometimes faith feels like dying. 

Dying of yourself. Your dreams. Your control. 

I've never really admitted to anyone, but I'm scared of heights. I blame it on one too many times of siblings pushing me towards the edge of a cliff, then "heroically" saving me as a scream and flail. Take me to a mountaintop, and I will stay at least three feet away from the edge. Knees turn to jello and my stomach bottoms out. 

So when it's the two of us girls standing at the bottom of the climbing wall, looking up at the zip-line, she panics and says she's not going to because she's afraid of heights. 

Ditto, girl.  

But I lift my chin and say that I'm doing it- and she can, too. We climb to the top of the rickety, curving staircase, boards jutting out and slanting precariously. The attendant clips my line, secures my harness...

And I can't take my eyes off of that one inch wheel, just sitting loosely on the rope, holding me from sudden death. 

"Just jump," the attendant says, nudging me. I gulp. Jump? Really? Won't the wheel come off the track? I sit at the edge of the tower, feet dangling in the air. I clear my throat nervously. Shift back and forth on the platform, slowly inching myself off but hands still gripping wood. 

God, please don't let me fall. Please don't let me fall. Don't let me fall....

I close my eyes, suck in air, and grip the rope like it's my lifeline.

It was the most terrifying 45 seconds of my life. 

Faith is just that. Feels like dying. Feels like letting go and you're just going to fall and shatter every bone in your body. 

But faith feels like living, too. 

Wide awake, adrenaline surging, heart pumping, lungs screaming. Every part of you tingling, senses alert, soul flying. 

It's when you die to your control when you truly can live....whether it's here or halfway around the world.