Latitude

While to others it will not seem this way, and that is fine, I can accept it...God rocked my world yesterday. Let that set in for a second...we good? Ok moving on.

Let's rewind back to the prayer retreat when I had my awesome 2 hour quiet time with God and got some things sorted out. I pretty much was being impatient and He was like you aren't ready for what I'm doing and I am preparing your heart for what is to come. Fast forward to Monday...I didn't have to work so I stayed after school to hang out with some friends and ELW pretty much called me out and was like you seem dissatisfied. Truth. I haven't been acting like myself. Yet it was probably most disturbing because I didn't know why. Everything seemed off and I wasn't sure why. I was so dissatisfied in fact that I pretty much cried the whole way to small group. I hate that. (And no I haven't gotten over the crying thing in therapy yet. Still working on it.) I felt uneasy about the state of many things and it all really felt like a mess in my head of unhappiness. Now...I don't know that most people would even have known such things because in general I think I can hide things well. Call it a gift, or call it most peoples lack of truly taking the time to see other people. But alas...Tuesday comes. So, you will have to forgive me for being vague and ambiguous for the time being but something happened. That is all I will say for now. God showed me what he had been preparing my heart for big time. The type of reaction I expected to have was not the one I was having and that can only be because God was right and I wasn't ready until now to know. While everything I'm being prepared for hasn't been made known and that is not to say everything in my world is A-ok, but the fact is, I now know where my uneasy feelings were coming from and I have a tangible example of what God was doing in me. He is just SO good, all the time. Things just happen seemingly out of nowhere and yet you look and there are all these signs that are leading up to it and yet I am still oblivious until the time where I am being retrospective. So there it is...I am no longer dissatisfied. Not about everything, but about the most important things.

I have been reading many blogs lately and two of my very favorite ones (here and here ) have been talking a lot about relationships and the path of them and what they are made of and besides making me look at all of the people in my life and their relationship to me... it makes me think of those people and their relationships with other people as well. Just how interconnected we are and how that helps to form us as people. Just for the sake of reading awesome-ness you should check out the blogs. But more importantly, I will copy something I read the other day from the 2nd one that was just wonderful and it made me think about someone I know, and the obvious (to me) missing link in their life.

"Guess what relationship requires?
that we are willing to make ourselves vulnerable.

period.
that we are willing to need someone else.
that we are willing to say so.
that we are willing to be hurt.
because the willingness to be vulnerable is where relationship lives.
the question is: are you willing?"

And what a question that is...are we willing? I feel like most people would say yes, but then retract when it came down to certain parts. Because the fact is that we don't want to be hurt, or admit that we need others. That doesn't come easily or naturally, and it really only works out well every time with one person (Jesus). People hurt us. Most of the time they don't intend to, but it happens. Yet as much as it sucks sometimes, I would have it no other way. I would be in a very sad place if I had no deep, meaningful, loving relationships. I'm glad that I have down times (valleys if you will) to know the good times.

On to another note of worth: I can't believe it is already the 2nd month of the year and in 22 days I will be somewhere over the Atlantic en route to India via Frankfort. I can only imagine what kind of heart preparation God is doing for that but I know it is great per usual.

I can't wait.