Just to preface.
I'm not a writer and never claimed to be.
I started this thing what feels like so long ago because I felt the need for accountability.
Whether that be from the public or just from myself looking at archives years down the road.
I have the heart and mind of someone whose spirit isn't truly free unless it lets things go.
Through words. Written or spoken.
And when that doesn't happen... things start to weigh heavier and heavier.
I feel trapped, or like there is an emotional and physical barrier
that keeps me from where I am meant to be.
I never intended for this to have a following.
But what this has confirmed for me over the years,
is that I am not alone in the feeling of needing a space to speak.
To write it out. To be heard in some weird way.
I say all this to say... I have forced myself to sit here again and string together whatever I can from the racing thoughts that have no true home.
I am doing this because one day, this too big of a heart,
will be just big enough to quit,
and I will want to have memory of the times I truly expressed myself
in a capacity separate from my physical voice.
And that brings me to my next thought of how this season in my life has been one of the heaviest. Surprising to some maybe.
Because now I have the dream job, in my childhood city,
my parents are down the street, my siblings moved back.
The list goes on and on.
This... whatever this is. Was supposed to be the end all for me.
And yet,
darkness waited for me to get comfortable.
Recently I heard someone say, people ought to stop blaming the devil for their hard days,
because it's us falling into our own comfort-ability, that is the true hardship to overcome.
I made my own path, I was, I am, my worst critic.
I placed all of my joy in others, when they had their own demons to fight themselves.
I know better now.
I know that my darkness was masked terribly this year.
I chalked it up to needing to show up for others or that I would seem weak or lost.
In years passed maybe I was happy and didn't need to hide anything.
This year... this year I can only remember being truly happy a few times.
Don't hear this as a lack of Joy.
But know that day to day... happiness is the perception of the previous.
I had friends, my kids even, ask me if I was okay.
Ask me if I needed help connecting the dots or taking a step to talking to someone.
It wasn't till others in my world showed me the blood on their own bodies
that I was even willing to say this wasn't sustainable.
And that is why I share or write or whatever.
Because there is someone else, just like me, drowning.
And hoping someone will say, I can't breathe either, but here comes our life jacket.
A lot of my kids considered my personality to be "sunshine" like my last car,
but I felt and feel like rain.
But the kind you can dance in.
I think that was the biggest lesson I learned about myself in 2019.
People can perceive you however they want, that doesn't mean you have to buy it at face value for yourself.
Because dancing in the rain is something I really enjoy.
I turned 25 a few weeks ago and it felt like my world was ending.
Getting older is weird, especially when 90% of your time is spent around young people.
Everything about that situation felt claustrophobic and mandatory.
It was black Friday and I had family in. None of it was their fault.
I just always feel the need to maintain everyone's elses... whatever... why we are together.
They didn't pass out job descriptions at my family gatherings.
But I always seem to end up with, "mediator or "glue" or "perspective" and that doesn't really balance well when you're watching the days tick by on your "young adult" calendar.
Anyway... I survived of course and realized then that being
sunshine and also darkness didn't make sense for me anymore.
Thus. Rain.
The last time I wrote something there wasn't threat of snow...
We were celebrating giving out a scholarship.
And my prayer over the next 5, 10, 20 years is that every year there be an abundance of our kids receiving money from us, schools, scholarships etc.
Because people will see the spectacularly vibrant family I am a part of and not be able to look away.
I went to Atlanta because God knew I needed to jump up and down
for hours and hours around people that are unashamedly themselves.
The siblings and I got older.
I said goodbye to my little yellow car.
We celebrated 20 years as a nonprofit.
I blinked and realized that the ministry I have been part of has become its own little family.
Spending everyday in the schools or evenings getting to know
the students are kids have invited to be part of the program (fam).
They have formed their own sort of discipleship by invitation and we could all learn from it.
We ran a marathon worth of events that honestly feel like a blur.
We cried over lost lives and celebrated over new babies.
I'm not sure what all this new and old means. End of a decade. Start of a new season and year. Growing and trimming at my own roots.
Maybe this is why I had such a hard time to piece it all together over the last three months.
I can't see land quite yet.
But so many beautiful people have thrown out life lines,
disguised as undeserving blessings in my mind,
but we all know they are doing it because I wouldn't survive without it.
I unfollowed a bunch of people.
I made some really bad financial decisions.
I put a little more effort into myself... which is hardly anything but should still be acknowledge.
I am telling myself 2020 is the year I allow myself to receive.
To receive the blessing without an excuse of being undeserving,
to receive love without questioning my own worth,
to receive help when it is needed... or even before,
to receive change, newness, loss, and victory as it is.
It is still developing. But I knew I needed to claim it before I doubted its validity so there it is. Receive. Not deny. Not decline. Not anxiety or doubt. Not anger.
Receive.
