I'd Swim Across Lake Michigan...

Healing rain pounds the earth

and my soul.

I guzzle* red wine

and dance in ecstasy

in this rustic cottage,

a haven.

Oh God,

How I prayed for

peace,

And forgot:

It's not the absence of thought,

but the remembrance of truth.

You are mine,

and I am yours.

You are love,

I am your beloved.

You are hope,

and I hope in You.

Oh sweet peace.

* I'm not a drunk. Guzzle is just a great word.

(Poem written last Monday night, in the middle of a thunderstorm.)

This past week I went to Sawyer, Michigan to an idyllic (albeit a bit cultish) little community called Bethany Beach where my family and I have spent almost every summer since I can remember. This summer was the first I spent in our rental cottage without my dear familia. While I love being there with them, I was in desperate need of a week alone. A week to get away and not have to meet any demands. A week to do things for me. A week to try to get out of my head. A week to try to rid myself of anxiety and fear and allow myself to relax. It was such a blessing that my parents paid for this vacation for myself and friends (I had a few friends come for a couple days.) Really, beach vacations are just the best. I mean, there's just no question in my head.

Solitude is wonderful for your soul. Did you know that? It is amazingly cathartic. So are old friends and meteor showers.

I jumped back to reality this week with a couple interviews for teaching assistant positions, and a messy bedroom and basement full of still unpacked suitcases, and bags and boxes of clothes, shoes, books, purses, and other miscellaneous items from the past. So sorting through all of that is my project for the next few days. (Read: I'm going to go shopping in my basement and feel like I bought new clothes.)

Although this week was in a lot of ways exactly what I needed, I'm still dealing with anxiety. I'm still figuring life out, and jumping on a plane back to Bolivia seems agreeable to me most days. But I'm beginning to discover my purpose here and I'm hopeful for what this next season brings. I'm finding prayer and yoga and writing to center me, and I'm grateful they're reducing my anxiety. I'm also extremely thankful for the friends from high school and college around me now, and my parents who provide me with free housing and food and do things for me like make me iced coffee in the morning. Really, I've got it good.

Thanks for supporting me, friends and fam. Let me know how I can support you.

Palms Up

I need to quiet my mind for my sanity. I need to quiet my mind to regain my joy—joy that comes from the Spirit within me, from communion with the Lord—not from circumstances. I need to quiet my mind so I begin to view myself and my life through the eyes of God—to regain my sight. So that I may be at peace with myself and the things I'm choosing to do here, in the suburbs and in the city of Chicago.

This transition back to life here has been weird and difficult and well, just basically a rollercoaster. I don't know if I've ever been so emotional.

I have questioned multiple times in every day I've been back if choosing to come back to Downers Grove was the right thing for me. I've almost applied to jobs in other states; I've considered going back to Bolivia every single day; I've been restless and sleepless and stressed; I've felt like I'm going backwards; I've had several fits of crying; I've felt confused and worthless and a bit like I've lost my identity, which shows how warped my mind has been in thinking that being an expat in Bolivia was so much of who I was.

I'm coming back down to earth and steadiness and becoming more okay with myself and where I'm at, even with a younger brother getting married and moving to Arizona. It's been hard and weird and I've cursed about life in prayers a lot—which I think is the only thing you can do sometimes. It's a slow process, but I'm beginning to enter into a stage of acceptance of my life, I think. I have my eyes more set on here and what I can do around here, on relationships I can build. However, it's going to take a long time to find my place in these suburbs of Chicago. It's familiar, yet so foreign to be planting myself here, especially as I see and hear news and pictures of friends and new teachers' journeys and beginnings back in La Paz.

My anticipated job(s), community, classes, and how my life will play out in the coming months is all so unknown, and I've never been in this place before. I've never had so little sight of my future circumstances; I feel like I'm blindfolded, stretching out my hands and sometimes touching things that I can make sense of, but unsure of where I'm walking and where the path leads.

I know I have to trust God, but sometimes I feel like I don't know how.

I just finished the book "Love Does" by Bob Goff, and he mentions that as a lawyer, he has his clients testify with their hands resting on their knees with their palms up. He says something along the lines of physically having your palms up helps people be more honest, more humble and open, and less angry and stressed and prideful. I've been trying to put my hands in that posture more. In yoga class today I realized we kind of automatically do that in our ending resting pose lying sprawled out on the floor. To completely relax your body, your arms and hands naturally move upwards. When I'm in that position, I feel kind of vulnerable, in a good way. Like, even if I'm not mentally praying and asking for help and guidance and strength and joy and all of those things I want, the posture of my body kind of begs for it—if that makes any sense. Mentally, I'm still all over the place, but maybe the posture of my body will help my mind catch up to this desperate need to surrender.

Next week, kind of as a birthday present from my parents, they're renting the cottage we normally go to on family vacation just for me…my parents took their vacation days to come visit me in Bolivia, Danny's on his honeymoon in Cancun and then will be back in Arizona, and soccer is starting up again at Northern Illinois for Paul. I have high hopes this will be exactly what I need to process and come back to Jesus and my identity as His beloved and not who I am in the eyes of friends or employers, or who I am in the context of a place or a job or a group of people.

I need to meditate on His incredible faithfulness in my life, on the fact that He is enough, and therefore I am enough in His sight. And on this: Even if my own sight is blurred, He'll lead me where I'm supposed to go.

Next week's agenda:  I will quiet my mind, palms up.