A Year of Home: Interdependence & Dove's Eyes

 

It's been a year!  A year of mental, physical and emotional gymnastics.  A year of learning to be flexible. A year of acknowledging trauma, grief and disappointment. It's been a year of welcoming loneliness and aloneness as friends in an apartment all my own.  It's been a year of doubt where I've wondered has it all been worth it? A year of missing hugs and singing with people. A year of goodbyes and so longs.  A year of initiating conversations where my voice and tear ducts quiver. A year of learning how to be at home with myself---of being at home in God.  A year of learning to laugh at myself and to stop being so serious.  A year of "flipping tables" inwardly as I learned Zoom screens and to unmute my microphone as time and time again being with people was deemed unsafe or restricted.  It's been exhausting. It's been beautiful discovering all the things around my city and walking/praying as I walk or wheel on these sidewalks. It's been a year of sending resumes and cover letters to employers with moments where I pulled up my 'brave socks' and asked them to consider some physical adaptions. It's been a year of receiving a few kind, but hard emails with some form of "Your application didn't get chosen to go on" (I actually appreciate those emails more than the silent response or even chasing people on phones or long email threads). It's been a year of dead end interviews and looking at weird job ads and some pretty fun ones too!

It's been a year of GRACE GIFTS! It's been a year of  walking around in an Abbey and growing into/ living the words "I am pastoring" after years of discernment, a couple of praydreams and whole lot of seeking the face of God. It's been a year of understanding decentralized leadership and flowing in friendship and celebration of other's gifts and vocations and allowing God to be the center---or reminding my ego of that! :)  It's been a year of finishing School of Spiritual Direction  and leaving the resistance I’ve fought to complete all that behind. It's been a year of growing in my capacity to love/learn from the suffering and marginalized and knowing when and how to be a friend  with them. It's been a year of growing in friendship with my body and all her uniqueness and capacities. It's been a year of falling in love with Scripture in my imagination and a year of also tasting its dryness and hardness.  It's been a year of feeling the heat and warmth of God's Presence and a year of just reminding my soul simply that to "Be still and know that He is God" is enough"  It's been a year of living in nuance and at the same time feeling like my feet are grounded and solid on a sure, truer Foundation. It's been a year of healing. It's been a year of breaking.  It's been a year of knowing my limits and of thinking that it's ok to need help and have others around you to help you get by. It's been a year of knowing independence---and learning interdependence.  It's been a year of leaning dependently on God and also interdependently on Him as God has become my partner---as He has chosen me to become His partner and with a simple glance or ask I can live in sync with Him in the world.

So for the days ahead ? I may have to move again.  I can't guarantee that I will be secure---that I'll have wealth or health, but I'll always pray to be living much of the same crazy---much of the same focus as this year in God's gaze---looking at His face.