I am thankful for this season. For overnight shifts, for a new rhythm, for a reason to look at my hours, my free time a bit differently. I appreciate this change. For an opportunity to slow down and be reminded of truth, of the things that actually matter. This is the first set "nights" i've had off where i haven't fought sleep to try and get back on a day schedule. I am fully on overnights now. I'm awake when the rest of my world is sleeping, and it's peaceful and painful at the same time. I don't see my favorite faces as often as i would like, but there is a gift in the quietness. I've watched the sun light up life the last several mornings, and something about that stirs my heart a bit. It speaks of promise to me -  that mornings always rise after long nights. 

I'm also in a season that I need to just simply avoid facebook. It makes me insecure and more certain that I’m not enough – not sexy or successful enough, not smart or certain enough. It makes me lonely, and the baby pictures make me cry because I’m in this terrible baby phase where new life inspires me. I think it's been the birth of my "nieces." My baby girls that remind me life is beautiful, and most of those moments are small and ordinary and yet inexplicably amazing. 

But really, today I’m sick of looking at all the pictures of married people, and hearing about newly married things, or wedding things. I just need a break from the couple oriented season of life I am living in and not apart of. It’s hard. Hard not to feel less. Hard not to take it personally. Hard to keep my eyes hopefully forward. Hard to trust the Lords control over my life in my singleness, in my loneliness.

I’ve been asking the Lord for a word for this season. I’ve feel very strongly that He is asking me to wrestle with Him. Not in the way I’ve spent the last year doing – not out of insecurity and thrashing about for meaning. But to really ask and seek and trust in who He is while working in all this gracious uncertainty. Working overnights and being up all night relatively alone creates more space that makes that easier. 

I went on a long walk today. Its not exactly the cardio party I was having when training for the marathon, but it’s been the only exercise I’ve been able to coax myself into. I read an article a couple weeks before i ran about ‘the race blues’ that most runners experience after the race. Its true. It’s a running-working-out depression, and it is terrible. So for now, I force myself into fresh air and walk. Just walk. I live about 1/3 of a mile from the Tualatin Hills Nature Park. Its been to me what ‘the loop’ was at Capernwray. It’s been me time, alone time, prayer time. It’s time to step back in the hopes to see a bit clearer, to think clearer, to feel clearer.

I’m growing. Walking down a path, and trusting that my life is meaningful where it is, trusting the Lord is only continuing to guide into some meaningful He has set apart for me. Today it’s hard to trust that. All I know is that I’m lonely and the pie I baked actually exploded sticky, sugary thickness all over the oven and I hope to clean it all before Justine notices. Justine is getting a puppy on Friday, and I feel a little overwhelmed by the idea of 3 girls, the cat and and "ali" all in our 1000 square foot apartment. Further, it makes me even more grumpy when others question the sanity of that decision as I spend most unoccupied seconds of my day questioning the same thing. 

Perhaps this is pathetic, but i feel normal and peaceful when i'm walking, just talking, praying the Lord would open my eyes to see him a bit clearer. That's all i can do right now. 

Loneliness is a strong emotion.

I've thought about that a lot. And about how there is a connection between loneliness and bravery. About loss and ache, pioneering and soldiering on towards the next sunrise.

 I read this in a book recently and i really liked it:

"There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of everyday, the slow walk toward a better life. "

Perhaps because it suggests that the ordinary is bravery. That living each day, within its routine and normalcy, finding firm footing in the non-spectacular is noteworthy victory. Or perhaps I desperately need that to be true as I continue to walk in the now, trying not get anxious about the future or frustrated by the past. I need bravery to not be reserved solely for the outwardly heroic among us - the ones that do amazing, stage worthy work for the kingdom - but for those that make peace with where God has placed them when its so far from where they dreamt themselves to be. I need bravery to be living 'wholeheartedly' as Brene Brown would say, in the regularness of life.

As I think of that, I keep arriving at this same point; I have richness in my life right now. I can tangibly recognize the hand of God in this season. Although the promotion at work is challenging and difficult, I see the Lord changing me, growing me, and stretching me through it. I see him changing my attitude and teaching me to rest in the uncertainty that is in my work culture. For me, learning to 'roll' with the unknown is a huge deal. He has opened my eyes to the unique opportunities before me both at work and in the lives of those around me. I am challenged by these, blessed by ability to use my gifts to love those in my life.

The richness is constant; in my morning swims, in the candles burning bright and slowing by my bedside, in the summer heat with a bowl of fresh homemade guacamole and sparkling white wine (strange combination, I know). I see richness in conversations about life and walking with the Spirit, in ramblings of new motherhood and big dreams. In the melodies of soulful songs and the silence of late nights when the rest of the world is sleeping.

But sometimes those blessings cause that ache. That ache for being understood and that ache for intimacy. I see the richness, but the richness begs for more and reveals a painful emptiness inside of me that demands relief. Sometimes all i can do is cry and beg the Lord to keep changing my heart to see His presence in my life a little more clearly. Because that aching hurts too much and the loneliness is overwhelming. Living vulnerably and honesty within the tension of richness and that ache feels like bravery.

My walk with the Lord has changed so much over the last couple years. Desperation for intimacy has been the single greatest catalyst in my understanding of grace. Because sometimes in my groaning for deepness and richness to touch my heart I touch the Hand of grace and I become strangely, peacefully aware of the God who loves me deeper than words can express. Its strange how pain and ache and trial and tribulation so often leads to the Well that never runs dry. And that changes my life. The grace that the Lord extends to me to be fully vulnerable with my frailty changes me.