Stay the Course
I came into this season last December expecting it to only last three months. I was a little broken and a lot scared after saying goodbye to such a wonderful couple. I was surprised to find this season expanded into an eleven month pilgrimage of healing in my heart. While living inside this home of peace and ordered chaos, I’ve learned the importance of living my story in process, even when it is difficult.
Speak up when necessary. This is a lesson I continue to relearn as years go by, but in this rotation around the sun, I have seen how “when necessary” is time that also garners with it the word “always.” When I struggled to pay rent over the summer, the couple I live with extended a grace to me like no other. When my heart wanted to hide and run, they called out the pieces of me that needed to be recognized. In this, they showed me that no heart goes by unnoticed within the walls of a home.
It’s impossible to live with people and not be changed in the middle of beginning and ending. To recognize one another and love despite the shortcoming’s and flaws is a large part of life i am candidly still learning to walk out.
I hear that it is all about that, though: To lay down one’s life in order to love another. In Kris Vallotton’s recent podcast on Bethel TV, he said something along the lines of “you can’t have influence unless you really love with the depths of your heart.” I still need work on this. My biggest desire is to leave some sort of influence in this world, but the lacking aspect keeping me from taking hold of it right now is my inability to love deeper and wider toward all people, out of fear that it would be painful.
None of us make it out of this alive, though. We all know this. I fear the pain that comes with the journey, but that’s the caveat, isn’t it? No one can escape the pain because it is actually the pain of exposure that brings breakthrough, healing, and restoration.
That is exactly what this season has done for me. It has exposed where I need help and where I need to be okay with taking up space. It has healed the places where I was wounded. It has brought closure and allowed me to open my heart to new possibilities of friendship, love, and longevity in my new vocation. It’s taught me that staying the course and remaining solid comes not from a foundation of sand and wishy washy tides of in and out.
Instead, staying the course requires an anchor that remains solid and secure even when change comes.