Wow. It seemed to hit me like a ton of bricks.
I was driving home from a meeting this week and for some reason decided to take the longer route home, I was in one of those contemplative moods.
As I rounded the corner of Old 63 and turned onto Bearfield to connect with Grindstone Parkway, I passed the street I would normally continue on to go home.
Home… a year ago. Then it hit me how much life has happened in the last year.
This time last year, I was living in the beloved Pimlico House. Jenni had just moved away to Japan, leaving Hope, Shandy and I still in the house. Hope had only a few more weeks left and then would be heading back to St. Louis for grad school. For the whole month of July it would just be Shandy and I. Just two roommates left in a house of normally five girls. Not only was just two roommates a far cry from what it had been, I realized that I had been the only common denominator in three different sets of Pimlico House girls. I had been the one remaining as girls would graduate and move or get married and move out/away.
Now, as I passed that street, I remembered how much different life looked a year ago.
I found similar threads, yet mostly everything was radically different.
Then, it hit me, I have been in three different places in the last year, but now was finally back home. The feeling I’d had and so missed from the Pimlico House. Now, I have an even more wonderful roommate and one I don’t have to say goodbye to!
I found it all surprising.
It was as if time had traveled in warp speed since last summer.
This time last year, I had just said goodbye to three best friends over graduation weekend. Jenni, one of my best friends and former roommate and David’s Bridal co-worker, and I had just shared a tearful goodbye in our last roommate nite at Flat Branch and then her graduation day as she was moving to Japan with her new husband, who is in the marines!
Also that week, I said goodbye and had a last hoorah on my birthday, spending the whole day with another best friend, Jessica Petzel, as she was moving to Colorado after graduation.
And just when it seemed like my heart couldn’t take much more. I realized just a week later, I would be saying goodbye to yet another best friend headed overseas, Leah Rawden, who has now been working in Indonesia for a year.
A month later, I would be saying goodbye to another best friend, Olivia Vitale as she left for Burkina Faso.
But saying goodbye to Olivia and Pretzel were easier, knowing that Olivia would be coming home in nine months and that Pretzel was just states away and we could talk on the phone or email regularly.
But with Jenni and Leah, it seemed more permanent. Mostly because it was. I had known from having friends move overseas before that the best thing was really to have no expectations. I didn’t know what phone/skype capabilities would be, how much internet access they’d have. It was saying goodbye in the sense that the daily doing life together was something that would never be the way it once was ever again.
I found myself in this intense grieving period last summer.
Many moments where I would cry out to God, why does everyone I get close to have to move away? How much more of this would I have to go through? And where would the new best friends come from? I couldn’t imagine life without these key parts of my support system.
It was then I remembered that all three of those girls were people the Lord placed in my life after I first experienced the wave of all my friends and girls my age moving after graduation summer 2006 and 2007, and that just as God had provided in their absence, the same would be true here.
Yet, I learned that I culd trust God to provide the relationships I needed yet sometimes it would look different than what I was wanting. For example, after Breck and Eva left shortly after I graduated, I was longing to have older women mentors in my life and truly missed the support of these women who had had such a powerful influence in my life.
I prayed for that often, and God brought those mentors along about 3-4 years later, during my support raising period. Yet, relationships with older women and mentors was something God knew I desperately needed in that time and was a huge answer to prayer.
Then, later in the wake of Kate, Maria, and several other close girlfriends my age moving one summer, two years later, God brought new girl friends along for me to connect with.
But last summer, things didn’t look promising.
I remember wrestling with God and telling him sometimes I wondered why I’d love so much. if I didn’t invest, I wouldn’t continue to get hurt. I found myself wishing I’d never gotten so close with those girls, because it felt like all that kept happening was my life had become a revolving door and everyone close to me seemed to keep moving away while I was left behind.
This period of questioning and wrestling however proved fruitful. It brought about an intense three months of crying out to God that I would later see more of what God was doing later.
I soon embraced the truth, that I didn’t want to ever go back to how I once was with my heart, giving it away to no one so I’d never get hurt. That wasn’t the way Jesus was now calling me to live. I had experienced life that way, and that way of life is empty, cold and meaningless. Yet, as C.S. Lewis says, “to love at all is to be vulnerable.” I had experienced the awesome wonders of real, authentic relationship, and found it had been better to have loved and be loved than never loved at all.
Before moving on to what is different now with relationships, another difference from this time last year is, this time last year I was still support raising.
I was on my last leg of my support raising journey and as I went to my first summer Rock function on Monday, I remembered how last summer I longed to go to events but wasn’t able to due to support raising.
This time last year I was also single, yet processing heartbreak from a relationship I had hoped would have blossomed, and it seemed like there was no guy even remotely on the radar.
This time last year I was wrestling with fears and doubts with how I was going to make it in this next year my first year on staff and re-entering the world of campus ministry, without the girls I had ran hard with the last few years. I found these girls were huge life-givers to me, and that part of why I was able to participate in ministry and stay sane was the way these relationships with Jenni, Leah and Pretzel breathed life into me. They were best friends and like sisters, girls I could talk to at any time about just about anything. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like without them.
Last summer, I started praying specifically in my heartache… that God would provide for me relationally. That He alone knew the condition of my heart and what I needed. I prayed and asked Him to bring me a friend that wouldn’t move away on me, knowing moving is a natural progression of life and that friends will constantly be coming and going, I told Him how I so longed for that person I wouldn’t have to say goodbye to. That soul mate, that partner for life.
It is funny about this time last year, at Chris and Aimee’s wedding June 13, 2009, I had been asked by a couple friends how I felt about this guy, Ben Lewton.
One of my best friends, Kate and her husband, Ryan, had seen Ben and I talking and flirting I guess as we were all walking from the wedding to the reception. I didn’t see anything going on, and I was not going to let myself even go there and start liking him again, the last time I did that, two weeks later he was on a plane to Sudan!
So I denied it and told my friends I was totally over him. Besides, as I remember telling Kate at the table, Ben and I would never work, we’re not compatible, I said and he’s totally emotionally unavailable!
Lol.
Little did I know how untrue these things were and that getting to know Ben in the context of a relationship was way different than being friends with him. For something I call “the wall.” He had a MAJOR guard up with any girl that came within 10 feet of him and I would always try to connect with him on a deeper level but he always had this way of evading my deep questions that made me feel like talking with him was like talking to a wall.
It is crazy what God has done in a year. And how amazing and absolutely incredible getting to know Ben more has been.
I found God providing relationally for me this year in ways I could have never imagined. It was right after I had left the Pimlico House in August that I realized God was putting people in my life, I was just not recognizing it because I had gone from being totally surrounded by girls, to now being on a nearly all male staff team and having a lot of guys around me all the time. I hated it! I found myself saying, okay God, you know I connect way better with women, what are you doing?
Yet, I found God was doing something more in my heart. He was opening my eyes to gratefulness. To look not at what I did not have, but to praise Him for all I did have. And that even though I was mostly uncomfortable in these relationships with guys, that there were things God wanted me to learn from these men and that I could even be blessed by them, as they could by me.
About a week later from moving from the Pimlico House (which I had invited Ben to help with, along with Hoops and David), Ben asked me to coffee and asked if I would consider being his girlfriend.
That brought one of many changes in my life.
This year has been a year of change and transition.
August 1st hit and I had moved to a new house, had a new set of roommates and settling in there. Then, a week later, August 8th, Ben and I start dating.
Then later that week, is the beginning of fall craziness, move-in week and fall kickoff stuff with our campus ministry. Also during that week, I completed my support raising journey and jumped in with both feet to the madness that is the fall semester on a college campus.
And I feel it has taken until now to catch my breath.
My first year on full-time staff brought a lot of challenges, change and transition, more than I could have imagined. It was a year that stretched me to the core and it seemed things were constantly changing.
Then, Ben and I got engaged in December and entered an even crazier season. February he was in Haiti, and then March until now I have been sick. And then just about two weeks ago, we got married!! And enter another huge season change and transition!
Yet, He has been with me through it all.
As I reflected on all these changes, I found myself shocked at all that has happened in this last year. And even how I have come to know the Lord more intimately and deeply through all of this. He has been my Rock and my refuge. My shepherd and my Guide as we have traveled from season to season.
It has been wonderful being married to Ben. There has been so much peace this new season has brought. Everything was just in His perfect timing. It feels so natural being married to Ben, like we’ve been together for years.
I see how much this relationships has stretched and changed both of us, how we’ve come to depend on his love and grace more intimately, as daily we’ve been faced with our desperate need for Him and how He and He alone is our Savior.
As I continued on that drive, rounding the corner from where I would have last year turned to go home, my heart started to beat with anticipation as I realized how excited I was to go to my new home. Where my husband was waiting for me.
A place where I call home. Where I feel totally safe and known. Deeply loved and cherished.
A place I’ve only dreamed of. Where we can share the days fears and failures, or rejoice with one another over the joys and victories, large or small.
A place where I find peace and rest. Where I have someone who can’t wait to see me. Where I can sit and say nothing at all in his presence, yet feel connected. A place where I long to be, away from the world and at rest. A place where there is peace and the excitement of a new beginning. A place we now call... home.
Thank you Lord, for all that you are and all you have done. For the way you are faithful and true in every season. In the way you carefully orchestrate and ordain every moment of our lives, giving us good gifts in every season. I thank you Lord, for the seasons you have used to refine me and draw me closer to You, and the ways life is so much sweeter and so much better now, in this new season of knowing You more and becoming more like You in the mystery and gift of marriage. Thank you for providing and doing infinitely more than I could have asked for or imagined.
Thank you that in every season, your love is so sweet. In the rugged terrain of the desert or the sweetness of the mountaintop, lush and green, your love remains.
No comments:
Post a Comment