Comfort

Comfort is a guitar perched on a knee. Picking and strumming and humming.Comfort is a quick text to get dinner.Comfort is everyone at the table together.Comfort is a conversation on accountability and integrity and how we hold each other's hearts. We hold something sacred.In the States, I equated comfort with Complacency. Stagnation, isolation, a routine, a rut.But living in a foreign country, my eyes are opened to the blessing of comfort. Not plush towels and hot water and lavender eye masks kind of comfort, but another kind of security, reassurance. Reassurance of my own worth and value.The comfort of having friends who've known me for a million years. The comfort of speaking my native language with other native speakers. The comfort of a church body that speaks love and truth and beauty into my life whether I want to receive it or not.Comfort can be consolation. And walking with. A back rub, a hand written note, a silent smile.These last few weeks I’ve felt more home here. Not home home, but moments of home, feelings of home, small comforts of home. I’ve felt recalibrated. Calmed. More secure. More me.More sure of myself and what I want.Less needy. Less desperate. Less grasping.Engulfed by grace.Are these the seeds of the last the months, giving birth to grace so wild and wonderful? Giving birth to comfort. In bits and pieces that sound like voices joined in worship in my living room and giggles with friends and morning journaling in the park.I didn't even think about it until now. How He once told me, when I was flailing in burnout, "I don't want to fix you. I want to comfort you."He speaks now,I want to comfort you. To bring you comfort. Consolation. To come beside you in your pain. To catch your tears and hold your heart.You mourn the joy you've lost. I mourn with you. You mourn the friends you miss. I mourn with you. You mourn the dream that hasn’t turned into all you’d hoped. I mourn with you.I want to comfort you. To bring you the comfort of voices joined in worship in your living room and friends who place a hand on your knee, your shoulder, and say "How are you, really?"My comfort looks like emails from friends that say they miss your sweet a$$. That remind you with Pink’s words that you are F** Perfect.I want to comfort you. To give you the freedom to mourn. To let the tears fall and know I am with you.My comfort says. I know. I'm sorry. I feel with you. Lo siento. I feel it.I see you. I know you. I am here.***I’m learning that comfortable is not so bad. I wanted to break out of my comfort zone.  After ten months of uncomfortable, of being whistled at and stared at and feeling like the outsider that I am and missing friends, I no longer view comfort as the enemy.Comfort is grace.Comfort says it's okay to be disappointed. To be angry. To be sad.Because Comfort shares in the good and the bad.Comfort says I want to give you life. To walk in your life.Comfort comes close to the brokenhearted. Comfort draws near to the crushed in spirit.I’m reading Marilynne Robinson’s book, Gilead, a beautiful narrative of a dying father writing to his son, and gleaning gems of wisdom like these,“As you read this, I hope you will understand that when I speak of the long night that preceded these days of my happiness, I do not remember grief and loneliness so much as I do peace and comfort—grief, but never without comfort; loneliness, but never without peace. Almost never.”Today my heart hurts for my friends near and far who are hurting. With their grief, I pray for comfort. With their loneliness, I ask for peace.For those mourning broken marriages, lost jobs, the death of friends, sickness, and disappointed dreams, bring your comfort and your presence.I want to pray as the father in Gilead prays,“And I’d pray for them. And I’d imagine peace they didn’t expect and couldn’t account for descending on their illness and their quarreling or their dreams.”And so I ask that You would come, Comfort, with a peace we don’t expect and can’t account for. Amen *Author's note: I originally started writing this piece in response to Lisa Jo Baker's Five Minute Friday prompt on Comfort, but my thoughts seemed too jumbled and scattered to post at the time--even for a free write. And it seems I had more to say than five minutes would warrant anyway. 

A still, small lantern of rising hopes

Sunday night. The sun had dipped below the clouds and the volcano, painting the sky darker and darker shades of gray as the minutes passed by until I was left, book light and journal in hand, in the calm, dark air.I can’t say why, but I felt the call. I heard a voice that said to wait, to stop, to put away the cell phone and the computer and the distractions, to ditch trivia night and salsa dancing, and step out on the terrace and just be. “Go out and stand on the [terrace] in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”Soon the lightening started and the dazzling flashes bounced off the clouds and the silhouette of the volcano.I'd been avoiding it: Reflecting. Writing. Reviewing. Examining.I’d been examining my life much like a flash of lightening—quickly and briefly and unsustained.If I really examined my life, I'd be disappointed, I feared. I thought by now my Spanish would be better and my friendships deeper. I thought I'd feel awake and alive and adventurous. Instead, most times, I feel lonely and small. Disconnected and disconcerted.So I’ve been numbing, tuning out, taking the insight to change like a flash of lightening, here one minute in radiant glory, back in stagnant darkness the next.I sat a few moments more, breathing in the cool air and reviewing my journal from the last four months, scared of what I would find—or of the changes and growth and life I wouldn’t find.And then the fireworks started. No kidding. Not just little homemade things, but Disneyland caliber explosions boomed and sizzled against the twilight sky. Like the dramatic adventure I thought my life would be. And in the darkness between bursts, weeping willow shapes burned against the canvas of the sky, burned into my brain—the remnants of the dreams I once saw so clearly—the adventure, the learning, the restoration of joy. Quick and bright and burning, and then darkness.And then the show was over. Back to silence. Back to breathing.And then, as if a lightening show and fireworks were not enough for one night, a tiny Japanese lantern--just one--with its silent, soft flame ascended into the sky, past my terrace over the rooftops and away into the distance.A small, sustained light of rising hope.

I’ve got say He pulled out all the stops to point me to the miracle, the magic. To help me realize not in a flash of understanding, but in a slowly burning brighter and brighter awareness that this was a holy moment, a magic night, a sacred space, a sacred life.

That He is here. That His voice is the one that calls with love and grace.And when I open not just my journal, but my heart to the feelings I’ve buried deep within, to the hopes and fears and disappointments, when I finally have the courage to stop and be honest, be real, be present—He will meet me in those moments.I don’t have to listen to the lies and the cries anymore that say:Don't be alone.Don't think. Don't stop. If you stop, the guilt, the sadness, the loneliness, the regrets will engulf you.“BUT THAT IS NOT TRUE”, the still small voice said as the lantern climbed into the sky.“If you stop--stop your striving, your avoiding and distracting and numbing--if you stop before me,IT IS GRACE THAT WILL ENGULF YOU.”Not guilt. Not shame. Not a voice of condemnation. But my love and grace.And it caught me between my ribs, a pinch, a pulse, and it burned throughout my being, rose up to my heart, my hopes.I am loved. There is nothing but grace for me, nothing but hope. I can’t help but write it say it shout it share it.He spoke Love. He rekindled my heart. Stirred my hopes.Not in the flashing lightening.Not in the roar of fireworks.But with a still, small lantern of rising hopes, glowing softly in the inky sky.***Have you ever experienced an invitation to stop and be engulfed by grace? 

Light Floods: Darkness, Dreams, & Daylight

The Darkness

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Proverbs 13:12 NIV)

The darkness flooded strong and heavy. Torrential.

Before Plant With Purpose wiggled its way into my heart, I wanted to live abroad. I dreamed of Antigua’s cobblestone streets, flowering woven shirts, bright skirts, distant volcanoes, and a day when I would dream in Spanish. I hoped to call Antigua home.

And that hope burrowed down deep within me, determined.

But I was scared. I was content, even joyful, to serve at Plant With Purpose. So I stayed silent. Stayed put.

About a year and a half ago I felt God calling me to ask if it would be possible to work for Plant With Purpose remotely from Guatemala. To ask if my dreams could come true. After an initial yes, I was given a final no.

I. felt. so. foolish. for thinking I could get what I wanted. That I wouldn’t have to choose between the job I loved and the country I wanted to call home.

And so, not ready to leave my job, I stuffed in the disappointment. Swallowed it down. Tucked it into a pocket. And went back to work.

Could I dare to hope again?

Night Vision

I spent one and half years in grief and burnout, trying to discern if the call for Guatemala was God-given or God-thwarted. Was I being too selfish or were my dreams too small?

I learned to name the grief, the ache, the burnout.

I learned to see God in the dark.

As my sight failed, my Hope grew. I learned to don my night vision God goggles, my hope growing wide as my pupils.

At a prayer workshop at my church, I was given a vision of light, of freedom, of joy:

"Someone is running in the dark, past all of these closed doors. But God rushes in and takes your hand; suddenly you are running with him in the light—free."

I was running in the dark, past closed doors. I was running so hard and so fast and so desperate. I couldn’t see the light, but knew the light was coming. I kept running anyway. What else would I do?

I was promised light.

The Light

I know this is a lot of background and you’re probably wondering why I don’t just hurry and up and tell you already how the story ends, how God has made a way, but the darkness is what makes the light so sweet.

In the last few weeks of praying and pleading, of discerning and deliberating, I sensed a calling to let go. To loose my fists that clench too tightly around Plant With Purpose. To silence the voices that tell me I am nothing without my job, without this identity as a social justice do gooder. To quell the fear that Plant With Purpose is the best part of me, the only good part of me. That alone I will unhinge, disappear, disintegrate.

And so I decided to leave. To let go. To step forward.

I have friends who live in Guatemala who have graciously offered their home to me. I have roommates who have graciously agreed to let me leave halfway through our lease. I have a family that has graciously encouraged me to follow my dreams, even if it means I’ll see them less.

And so I told my boss I will be leaving Plant With Purpose at the end of June.

And so I told my roommates I will be moving out in the middle of July.

And so I told my friends I will be coming to live with them in Guatemala.

Just as soon as I made these plans, as I took this step, the light began to flood in. God answered my prayers for confirmation, my heart cry for meaningful work.

I have been given the opportunity to work as a freelance writer for other non profits. Over the last few months, the dark months, God has been building connections and giving me time to cultivate relationships that will allow me to do what I love to do in the country I would love to call home.

I have been running in the dark for so long, banging closed doors, and now I see the light. Like the woman at the prayer workshop told me, it is as if God has rushed up beside me, grabbed my hand, and we are now running in the light.

FREE.

I stand here astonished. My vision flooded with light, with gifts, with promises fulfilled.

Ful-filled. Filled with fullness. Only the Great of Greatness, the Holy of Holies, the true God of True God, the Deep of Deep can fill with fullness. Is Fullness Himself.

The light floods quick, burns pupils. I am left, face unveiled, squinting out the glory, whispering gracias, gracias.

***