I've started writing this three times now. Run out of words, run out of energy, run out of cohesive thoughts. Run out of something. But maybe today things will come together. Maybe not. We'll see if you get through this post feeling any less lost than myself.

Last weekend was Good Friday, an amazing art experience, Easter, friends, food, the onset of the headcold I now battle, nice weather, and many many thoughts. The thoughts have been rushing for weeks now, but this weekend, after completing the marathon of a seven-day spring break camp with the Y, complete with a fluke snow day, a few more thoughts seem to have culminated-- life has landed a bit. Maybe. I can't quite decide.

It is strange how even without school and without a full-time job, these months have still been full of whirlwinds. Funny how opening your heart to the voice of a powerful God seems to turn everything upside down. I have often found myself coming to the end of the day feeling exhausted not from activity, but from the weight of all of my thoughts, all of the movement that went on in my heart during the day. Taking risks simply on entering ideas, feelings, relationships, myself. Oh, the dark, tangled cave of myself that lies beneath.

Over the last several weeks, the word that seems to be on my tongue over and again has been this idea of tension. I've fallen into this place of coming to understand what it means to hold the tension of the mystery of life, to sit through all I do not understand, waiting patiently as I learn to trust that the Creator is at work beneath the surface, beyond my own vision or understanding. Learning that life is a great deal larger than I could have ever imagined, let alone grasp or control.

I am coming face to face with this desire for things to be simple. I think I want the stuff of life to be easy, straightforward, cleaned up in a matter of moments. But, as I come in contact with the truly volatile reality of this life and as I plunge deeper into who God is, I realize that the thing I really want is all the stuff that comes out of the mess, the complexity of truth that we find in the things we can't quite nail down is where true life is found. My impluse is to avoid the pain, to keep things organized, to think myself out of feeling all of the pain of loss and disappointment, but I am coming to realize that all of the fear, all of the pain, all of the hurt, all of the confusion, must be accepted and followed all the way down in order to really teach. And so, against my better judgement and false desire for simplcity, I am following it down. I've fallen down the rabbit hole.

There are a lot of "practical" areas of my life these days that somehow seem to be getting left to collect dust. I know there are things to do like laundry and applications and important reading and professional development, but for this season, another adgenda seems to have taken over. I feel my heart being called to take risks on things that seem to accomplish nothing in the short term. I find myself entering places that I've only avoided in the past-- dangerous places far from the areas of doing and accomplishment that I've used for long to avoid the being that lurks underneath. I wake up in the morning, burning to write down all the manifestations of my thoughts that have emerged in my sleep.

I am getting to know a self that seems to have been dormant for a long time, and I am almost now taken over by it. It is as though all of the emotions, all of the hurts and questions that I've pushed down to make room for papers and paintings and deadlines have come bursting to the surface, suddenly unencombered. I feel the peirce of growth, the energy of so much that has been germinating under the surface for a length of time I can only begin to imagine. I keep thinking about something my counselor said to me during my time in Idaho. As I sat across the table at the Library, crying and confused over my purpose there, he often said, "Think of this time as 'beach cleaning.' The tide has gone out and now you have time to clean up all the things that have been hidden."

And so, here I am, the same season, a few years past, and the tide has again gone out. I walk along the beach and can't seem to take more than a few steps without accumulating a foot full of shards. It is a mess under there. I keep trying to walk away, telling myself to stop taking a seaside vacation and get back to the "real work." Yet, the shrapnel in my feet keeps drawing me back, a deeper voice telling me that this is the real work.

Most days, I feel vulnerable and raw. I am being taken apart and for the first time, I am seeing areas of my heart that I've been ignoring. As the flesh is being opened and I feel the exposure of my nerves, I am facing again the pain of hurts I have taken out before, but then replaced in the back of drawers without fully exploring or claiming them. I am seeing in myself a continual tendency to renounce my true desires, I sense a habitual building of walls, a "resilience" that is really a habit of talking myself out of my feelings for the sake of not being too obsessive or burdensom to those who don't have the time or energy to take on the full outpouring of all that is going on inside my complex heart.

People keep telling me "you are in a really good place," and to "savor this time because you may never have it again." Truthfully, it is difficult for me to see what "this place" is. For me, it often feels like it is just my life-- it doesn't feel all that special, it just is. This is my life-- today is today and tomorrow will be tomorrow. All I can do is hope for the next paycheck. But as I sit back tonight and take a long, hard look at things, I realize this is a different kind of time for me-- a very good time, a time that does feel heavy with significance. A liminal experience (As some friends of mine like to say ;). I am in a new place, surrounded by new people, entering a new season of life. And much of me feels as though it is being totally made new. I am not who I was. Many of my illusions about life are being shattered as I learn to see myself, people, money, life, purpose, intension, pursuit, desire in all sorts of new ways. The "important" things are changing a great deal.

When this year began, I remember a series of really important and powerful conversations with the Lord about what lies ahead. I could not escape this sense that the road ahead was a new journey of love, of walk to learn a new kind of love, of enterning the heart of the Father in a wholly different way. "We love because he first loved us," I often return to this line that seemed to start so many things in my heart. How can I fulfill my purpose in a kingdom defined by love if I do not get this love from the source? How can I begin to understand love if I am unwilling to submit to it, to enter it, to risk everything on it? And how can I begin to understand love without stepping out and risking all of my heart on the broken shards of people all around me?

The lesson of this semester has been one of great pain and difficulty-- when I look back on the path I've walked, I see myself walking through thorns and nails, peirced and bleeding-- risking my heart in ways that I never imagined I would ever dream of risking-- yet I would not choose any other road. I've often wondered at the nature of the community that I've found here in Boulder. Over the last several years of my small lifetime, this issue of community, of family, of friendship, of the Body, has been one frought with difficulty, pain, confusion, and a great deal of searching, disappointment, disillusionment, as well as joy. I have found it strange being here for only eight months that I've found myself midstream in community in a way unusually easy. I've only been able to count it as a mark the work of God in my Spirit, a stone on the Jordan as a remembrance of all that I've been carried through, a way of learning to simply accept and to sit with the mystery that is relationship, friendship, community. I find myself investing and expending energy in ways that I never thought possible for my broken, frail heart. I see in myself a relational strength I never knew I had.

And in the midst of this realization, I am being introduced to a relational self that I did not know in its fullness before. Perhaps it is the absence of any other source of distraction, maybe it is the abundance of sleep, maybe it is a new work of the spirit in me-- I do not know. A few years ago, in Idaho, a dear friend said to me, "Heidi-- you have a lot of love to give." This was the first time that I'd ever heard that word spoken about or to me. I had thought that part of me had died with the rejection of my childhood-- no one wanted the love I had to give, so I quit.

But here I am. And in the midst of this awakening, I am beginning to see how volatile, how dangerous, and how beautiful we are in our relational existences. I am coming to see the radioactive power, the electrical forces at work when we risk intimacy with one another. When we really begin to enter the lives and hearts of those around us, large, uncontrollable things begin to happen. And it is quite frightening. Yet, in having the space and the strange courage to walk into the spaces of relationship, I am understanding the beauty of life that comes out of the deep, painful, peircing mystery of this Spirit, this soul, these hearts the Lord has built into us. I am learning anew what grace means was I walk deeper into the mess of relationships-- taking a risk on hopes, finding the words to confess in ways I've only feared before, asking people to enter and speak into my life in ways that I have only feared in the past. It is quite an exhilarating feeling.

And in the midst of all of this, under it all, this thread of a new and deeper trust in the Lord has been running, thick and wild. Before much even began, the first word seemed to be simply, "trust My love--" somehow the Lord knew that as I walked forward, I would need to always know that his love was trustworthy, that any weight I put into him must be motivated by an understanding of his deep and endless love for me, his wholehearted goodness. He has been drawing me into this space in which I dream, imagine, and hope for goodnesses that I've only toyed with before. Areas of my heart that have only been toes creating rings in puddles have become oceans in which I've become immersed. Ask me, he seems to be prompting, and see what I can do. Just ask. Take the risk just to ask.

I was listening to Pandora earlier tonight and I was caught by the song I started this post with. It caught my attention because it reminded me of an illustration I heard ealier this week about the lengths to which God will go simply to let us know that we are not alone. As I've sorted through a lot of my hurts, my disappointments, my longings, my hopes, and my doubts, I've had to battle a great deal of adversity telling me that I ought to simply move on, ignore the hurt rather than entering it, a sense of condemnation for my risks and hopes and feelings. It has been of great comfort to know the lengths to which the Lord will go to make us feel his love.

As I worked through the creation of my contribution to the Good Friday experience (I may explain more in another post if I get around to it... haha), I spent a lot of time contemplating the willingness and bravery of Jesus to enter into the fullness of our pain. I've been thinking a lot about allowing the tensions of all that remains unknown in my life, all of the things I don't understand about God, about the future, about myself, about the people in my life to simply be while the Lord works underneath it all to make me into something new. And more than anything, the theme of this season seems to be learning to trust the love of God to the point of risking everything to find him in those places beyond myself. I am coming to know this Kingdom life as one in which the closer we come to death, the sooner we will find life-- that it is in the peirce of pain we find the poinancy of love and goodness and truth. And I am learning how to enter the battle, to fight for the things that sometimes seem to be the hardest, ugliest, riskiest, and most difficult, because these are the places in which we find the sweetest kind of life.