Overflow: When tears become words

I am raw and broken.
I am a boat tossed in the sea.
Waterlogged and splitting, falling
apart as fiber after fiber
comes undone.

I can't continue, not without losing
the essence of who I am.
What do I do?
Do I surrender to the process?
Do I let myself be unmade in the
hope of being remade in a more
complete and whole way?
What do I do when what I thought
was my purpose is
no longer my purpose?

We talk about our desire to be
real, authentic, intentional.
But what do we do when the realness
is too much, when the unpolished
and ugliness of real overwhelms our persons?

Real requires time spent with the
pain and unpleasant as well as the
joyous and thought-provoking.
Real see the dissonances within living.
But what do we do when Real gets
too real?

I want to pull the mask up.
I want to pull away from Real.
Because...
Real is hard.
Real is brokenness.
Real is raw.

highways, love, and dreams

My little sister is engaged.


and instead of celebrating with her, I'm crying at my own singleness.

and I hate myself for it.

I feel like the only one of my friends who is not in a relationship. Yet my logical side tells me that my feelings are lying to me.

I want to be in a relationship. And yet as I write those words, I feel shame because I think that means I'm not enjoying my period of singleness like I've been reminded to do by pastors, married women, and once-married women alike.

I hope to be married in the next five to ten years. Yet I think I am afraid of commitment.

Somewhere in the craziness of driving on the road called Life - going to college and making great memories and dealing with horrible illnesses and falling in love with Jesus - I seem to have spaced on what turnoff I was wanting to take. I feel like I just discovered that the road that I wanted to go on at some point in the future is nowhere to be found now. I've taken so many other great roads that have led me on a journey to this incredible city of Seattle, so why am I so attached to this one path?


If life is a highway as Tom Cochrane so eloquently put it, then I think I missed the turnoff that leads to a romantic relationship.

If life is a highway, then I've traveled down roads of medical issues that aren't supposed to be driven at the age of twenty-one.

If life is a highway, then I've found a way to drive slowly on the road of college.

If life is a highway, then I think I went off-roading.


I have to believe that I haven't missed the road for a relationship. I have to believe that it is somewhere in my future travels.

I have to learn to be okay with the fact that I may be exploring and off of the main road for a while. For whatever reason, it's not time for me to take the road to relationship. If only my heart would remember that life is not stagnant.

I am on a journey and every day brings something new.

Someday, Jesus will let me know that it's time to turn onto that road to relationship. But that day is not today. I have to wait and trust that the One who carried me through my desert storm has my itinerary and will be with me every step of the way.

Today, I choose to let Jesus drive. 
Today, I choose to sit back and relax and just enjoy the road trip. 
Today, I choose to see the beauty on the road that I am on. 
Today, I choose to not worry about the itinerary. 
Jesus doesn't need my help in navigating so,
today, I choose to let him take me on an adventure.

coincidences and God

Do you ever have those moments where you KNOW that they are completely and utterly moments where God is working? Where events seem to just work together so perfectly? Some people might call them coincidences, I  like to call them God-incidences.

I just had one of those.

I have gone through a semester of intense learning. I have grown leaps and bounds in my faith. I can't express how much of a change I see in myself and how I view events. I have gone from having absolutely no clue what I was going to be doing six months down the road to having a rough idea of what the next six months is going to hold. I've gone from being very unsure of what my passion was to being confident that I have discovered it. I know where my heart is, I have some idea of what purpose God has created me for.

At the beginning of the semester, it felt like I was in a holding pattern of sorts. I was waiting. At first, I struggled a lot with God telling me to be still and wait, to get to know Him, His character, and His plans. I didn't want to wait. I wanted to be doing something. I wanted to hurry up and get to the "good" stuff. Yet God knew that I wasn't ready for it. I needed the time of waiting to dig deep into what it meant to live for God, to get to know God on a even more personal level.

Now, about three months later, I am starting to see all the pieces come together. I may not be able to see the whole picture yet but I know that every single encounter that I have is important. Whether it be talking with a woman at Starbucks or trying out a new church or seeing a student counselor, they all have an eternal impact.

It makes  me a lot more conscious of how I interact with people. Because you never know when that person or that encounter could become a life-changing moment.

Abba, I thank you and praise you for the work that I see you doing in my life! Thank you for my times of waiting and preparation. Thank you for opening my eyes to the seemingly small moments. Help me to keep my eyes trained on you in this next period of my life. Thank you! Thank you Abba!