After a While

After a while
you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand 
and chaining a soul.
And you learn love doesn't mean leaning 
and company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts 
and presents aren't always promises, 
and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up 
and your eyes ahead with the grace of a woman, 
not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build all your roads on today 
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans 
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers

And you learn that you really can endure,
that you really are strong and you really do have worth.
and you learn with every good-bye you learn.

Surrender

Surrender - 
To let your peace rest in me,
give up the fighting,
the striving in my own strength.
Surrender - 
To the stillness
to the aloneness-
yet, never without you!
Alone with your spirit
It's easy here.
Your peacefulness is all around me
You are somehow very present
in the changing stillness,
in the pregnant pause of life;
in me.

Things that are making me smile lately.

Day light savings (until next weekend!)

Cloudless days

Conversations with toddlers

Spontaneous plans

Laughing more often

Remembering old songs

Taking photos on a daily basis

Graduation in sight

Girly giggles

Inside jokes

My guitar

Bed socks

Feeling like a nurse

Sunsets

My camera

Special new friends

Self grown vegetables

Homemade popsicles

Making travel plans

My new hoodie

Home cooked meals

Sunny days

Hopeful situations

Today was somewhat of a milestone.

I realised something today that I should have seen a long time ago.

I thought my life fell apart 8 months ago. In a way, it did. But in another way, it was just the next move. I was very close to somebody, and I thought when that person was in my life, I was a better person. In fact, I thought that I was the best person I could ever be. Who I was, was all there was ever going to be. But then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, that person disappeared, and I was left to fend for myself. To figure out if our dreams were my dreams. That took me a long long time. Maybe Im still figuring it out, I dont know. But today I realised something weird. That person showed me who I could be. But in their absence, I've started to see who I am. Who I am as a person, who I am in this world, who I am in God. And she's a different girl to the one a year ago, who thought all she could be was a small nurse with a suburban dream.

How exciting.

Jesus Wept.

Jesus wept.

Jesus - the Son of God, the Saviour of the World - wept.

Jesus was human.

Jesus experienced pain.

Jesus was sad.

And he allowed himself to be sad.

Jesus showed us that it's okay to be sad.

It's okay to hurt.

It's okay to weep.

And that hes weeping with us.

Maybe we should allow ourselves to be sad more often,

to weep with the Lord, the Son of God

at the brokenness, crapiness, suckiness that surrounds us sometimes.

Because

he showed us that it's okay.

You have searched me, LORD,

and you know me.

² You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

³ You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

⁴ Before a word is on my tongue

you, LORD, know it completely.

⁵ You hem me in behind and before,

and you lay your hand upon me.

⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too lofty for me to attain.

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

¹³ For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place,

when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts,^[a] God!

How vast is the sum of them!

¹⁸ Were I to count them,

they would outnumber the grains of sand—

when I awake, I am still with you.

I'm learning slowly how much God knows me.

Like, really knows me,

more intimately than anyone else ever will.

And with that comes the fact that he knows what's best,

even more than I know,

because he can see so much more than I can.

I think I've said that before.

He won't abandon me when I'm sad.

When I awake, he's still there,

whether I awake with sadness,

with loneliness,

with joy,

or with excitement.

He is there,

and he is saying

"I know"

Give me today a humility which seeks to sacrifice oneself to honour you.

A vulnerability which acts to engage with my own brokenness.

A faith that walks through the darkness, one step at a time.

And a strength to pick myself up when things seem to have gone astray.

For today, that's all I need.

Vision

I don't think I've ever had a vision. Or I don't think I have. I don't even know if I believe in visions as such. I don't really know what a "vision" is.

But last night something weird happened.

I was lying in bed, after coming home from Perth, in astonishing sadness and grief for the last few months of my life. Almost conversation like silent cries:

"I'm sad. It hurts."

But suddenly, through my ugliness, my brokenness, my tear stained face, Jesus was there. And he hugged me tightly and said:

"I know."

It wasn't a promise that he would solve everything. It wasn't a promise that tomorrow I'll be happy. It wasn't a promise that I would wake up and I would have everything I'd lost back.

It was just a reminder that Jesus knows me, and he is walking with me.

Yes, it still hurts some days.

Yes, I'm still sad some days.

Yes, I still long for a past time some days.

But last night, Jesus was with me, and reminded me that he never left.