Undefined Sadness.

In the silent moments

Is when I hear the most noise 

And in the lonely moments

I feel so crowded out.

Where do you go

When everything seems lost?

Where do you go

When lost seems

Where you’re found?

And if there’s a light at

The end of this tunnel

I haven’t seen it yet.

But my weary eyes

Are heavy

And my bones

Are aching for some

Rest.

And it’s happening again. I can feel it, but can’t control it. My eyes are brimming with overwhelming tears and my heart feels like a semi has just reversed and parked right over my chest. And the tension is at the base of my neck, stretching upward into my brain, I can’t catch my breath and everything seems too big and too small all at once. I’m sobbing into my bowl of Captain Crunch, at first the tears ebb and flow like a gentle tide, but now the waves are crashing in like tsunami tides.

And I’m underwater this month. I’m deep and dark, so everything that reaches me comes sopping and soaked with water itself. Everything seems twice as heavy because it comes with this weight of sadness, this weight of anxiety that is already all around me. Sometimes words just don’t get you there… don’t let you say the stuff from deep in your heart, stuff that no dictionary has a name for.

      Living alone is hard.

      No, it’s not hard. It’s painful.

      It reveals my insecurities. Reveals that as much as I’d like to believe I am independent. Being on my own scares the crap out of me. That there is this joy that comes from being surrounded by people who love you, a joy that comes with coming home and being able to sit down with someone and just talk, about anything, about nothing.

      And right now I don’t have that. I wake up at six am alone. Get ready, alone. Go to class then to work and then come home, alone. Everything I do lately feels like it’s alone.

      I mean there are people around me, in my classes and at work, and people who love me and care for me, but even then there are times when a person can feel completely alone in the crowds. And how do you explain to people this undefined sadness that seems to be hovering over you like an impending thunderstorm. How do you explain to them all the feelings you can’t even understand yourself, without them getting swept away in the high tide?

      Making sense of things has never been my strong suit. I tend to overlook things or just be oblivious to the obvious. And I know that God is at work in this. I know, because what other hope do I have, but Him. And people keep telling me that everything will be okay and that I’m strong and that I’ll make it through. But honestly I feel anything but strong, and my floaties feel like they might have a hole in them, and my legs are tired from treading all this water.

      And I think that I will inevitably drown in my sadness if all I do is wade in it. Jesus is with me. I have to keep reminding myself of that. I have to keep reminding myself that He is the breath in my lungs, He is the release in my chest, the peace in my mind. That He is the constant lifeboat, always anchored near me, when my floaties fail. And I’m not saying I’m happy, I’m saying that this undefined sadness is easier to swim out of, knowing that my life boat is always there with me.

      I mean life is not simple when we have Jesus, but there is hope. And just because circumstance are ugly, doesn’t mean that there is no beauty in the midst. I mean He has blessed me beyond measure with a job, with education, with a group of kids I get to hang out with and love on. With wonderful friends who let me sob through my problems with them and eat their food and sleep on their couch and borrow their sweatshirts when I’m cold. God is teaching me lessons on being patient, on finding joy, on loving, on making mistakes, on being human.

      And they’re hard.

      And the waves aren’t easy to walk on.

      I’ve failed repeatedly.

      I’ve mis-stepped

      Hurt people.

      Done stupid things.

      Misunderstood.

      This journey is a hard one. And sometimes when I go back to an empty house, with nothing but clothes and an air mattress, I’m tempted to just let my head dip under the water and let go. But I hear His voice, reminding me that I am not alone, that I will never be alone. And sometimes I can feel it. That overwhelming sense of the world and its waves crashing down on me. And sometimes I just have to cry in the middle of work, or into my bowl of captain crunch. Sometimes life is sopping wet.

      But I’m swimming toward the boat, and I can see Jesus holding up a big fluffy towel. And once I get there, I’m going to climb into that boat, wrap myself in that arms that hold that towel and continue on in this pilgrimage.

      Because I must travel on, I must keep going. HE keeps me going.

       So I will continue to try and cast all my anxiety on Him, because He cares for me… but for now, on this pilgrimage, I am  traveling light with a heavy heart.

HIS and yours,

Cami

Wandering to Follow.

  The weather outside seems to reflect the depths of my heart. Cloudy skies and storms raging, with winds coming in from the north. blowing me over. The rains been falling and if I'm honest it doesn't feel like these dark clouds are going to be lifting anytime soon. And I can feel my feet sink into the ground, like quicksand; I feel it pulling me down. The weights around my ankles too heavy to walk with, the knots too tight to untie. They're dragging, my toes cracking under the pressure, my knees buckling as I try to pick my feet up to run, to chase, to pursue, to follow.

     The words sounded easier than the action. And I feel like I deserve to know that there will be days where I can barely get out of bed because I will be sad, or sick, or just not ready to face the outside world. That there will be days my feet drag in the sand, and I won't be able to stand because of the weight. That I deserve to know that moments of weakness do not make me fundamentally weak, only fundamentally human, and that sometimes I'm not going to be elusively happy, and that's okay.  But "Follow Me," they are just two simple words. Words so simple, words so light, weren't meant to be this heavy.
   Because there are times where I feel like I'm not really following. that I'm just kind of wandering around in the dark, bumping into rocks and trees on this not so widened path. Because really I just want God in my weakness, in my pain, in my joy, in my strength, in my complacency, in my love, and in my life. I want God so completely; that everything I do is covered in Him. But sometimes I feel like I am just failing when it comes to these two simple words. That I'm too busy trying to make sure that my life fits into these neat little puzzle pieces.
  And yes, I know, I know I overanalyze everything, yes I think about things way beyond the point of thinking about them. I sit here in this little coffee shop, wondering if my wandering is getting me anywhere. Have I really dropped my fishing net and followed after Him, or am I keeping my anchor down at the shore afraid to swim out to sea.
   I keep reading in the gospels, how the disciples just dropped what they were doing and who they were to follow after Jesus. To chase, to run, to pursue this magnificent man, and I'm wondering in my heart if I have what it takes to be a disciple. Because I think I'm too selfish and too prideful. I think that these storms raging inside of me are too wild to control, too wild to contain and I'm not sure what to do with all these emotions. And I find myself all too often on my knees or face down on the floor, sobbing in exhaustion for direction, for guidance, for love.
    "And oddly enough, it's the storms that whisper His name, the storms that make His presence most known. So prepare, when the seas of life begin to grow restless, because we might be getting ready to encounter God; what a heartbreakingly beautiful thing it is to behold." (-T.B. LaBerge). 
  God has His hand in all of this, in my life, in the storms, in the chaos. Yes, I still worry, I think it's built into my hard-drive. He creates this beautiful chaos within my soul and I'm not sure what to do with it. And maybe that is the wildness that I'm trying to contain. A wild, untamable thing, that shouldn't be contained. I'm continuing to tread this path, even in with clouds and the darkness, because His breath fills all things with a living breathing light-- a light that thrives in the depths of darkness.
    And I think that even through our struggle and our heartbreak Christ finds His way through the cracks.  Is it not just beautiful, how we tend to find God when we lose ourselves. Isn't He beautiful, the Creator of the starts and of you and I. Isn't it amazing that even though I feel underwater, I'm not drowning, because He is there swimming with me. He is there guiding me to the surface, through these storm-ridden murky waters.
     So I'll just continue to gather these spilled thoughts into messy paragraphs and write through these storms because I'm seeing there are small slight breaks in the clouds. And that's enough to let the sun in. Sometimes things have to crack for the light to filter through.
  And His light is filtering through in bright shades that are too wild to contain.


     Basking in His glorious light,



  HIS and yours,



 Cami

Just Another Beautiful Mess.

 

This is just another invitation. I write to invite people in. In to my heart, in to my mind, in to the thoughts I can never seem to easily express outside of pen scratches and journals, and the constant tap tap across my laptop keys. It's just another invitation for complete strangers to join me, just for a moment in my beautiful mess; between the breaths, between the heartbeats, between the words spoken and not.
And I keep feeling like there is this stigma, this dream, this real crap definition that seems to revolve around life and what it's suppose to be, what it's suppose to look like, what it's suppose to mean. That life should be this beautiful picturesque scene from a movie. That it should be clean and neat and perfect, without any mess. That when the credits roll and the curtains close, it is all just a happily ever after.
   But that's just crap.
  Even if we clean up our lives and manage to never struggle ever again, but we never get Jesus, we've totally lost. We've actually attained a whole lot of nothing. In the end if our lives look "perfect" if we look great and act great but we don't know Jesus, than who cares?
This "perfect," this happily ever after is a fantasy and life is not a fairytale, it is a battle. Life is a complicated mess, and I think faith in Jesus is often misunderstood to be this all encompassing "get out of jail free card." but it's not, it's so much more than that.
    That even with faith in the driver seat, even with Jesus right beside us, living in us, life is going to be difficult, even more so than before. That life will always have storm clouds and lightening strikes. It's just with Jesus, when the boat starts to rock, we have the courage to step out and walk on the water, instead of cowering in fear and allowing life to toss us overboard.
  Faith is meant to be lived moment by moment, it isn't some broad general outline, it's a long walk with a real person. And I'm seeing through my long walk that life though messy, is still beautiful.
   And so here I sit a worthless sinner, trying to find answers to questions I don't even have. Wondering why He calls me, why He asks me. I'm underestimated, I'm unworthy, I'm too young, not smart enough, not joyful enough. There are so many other people who could do this much better than I ever could. With one glance around me I can see behind the eyes of those who look at me, I can feel the doubt pouring over. More so from the face peering back at me in the mirror. Over and over again I ask God why, Why this? Why here? Why now? Why me?
   And I don't want to get in the way of things but I keep finding myself way off the beaten path. I constantly lose my grip on HIS hand and opt for clawing through darkness. I'm longing for light again, searching and seeking it out. Longing to lace my fingers with His, to calm the restlessness inside my heart, answer the questions and follow Him home.
   But this is not where I thought I would be at twenty-three. Sitting in a little coffee shop, typing up my inmost thoughts, struggling to breath, struggling to find purpose, struggling to know what my life is for. If I'm honest, which I have no reason not to be. I figured at twenty-three I would be working my dream job, sharing my life with a man I deeply love... that i would have it all together, all figured out, all neat and clean in a picture frame. but that's not the case. and that's not the path i've chosen.
  And I know that, I do, but in the moments when things get messy, it's easy for me to think that if I'd never discovered this faith, if i still lived in the darkness, would life be easier? would decision not carry the weight they do now? Maybe, maybe not. But then again the woman I am now would not exist without the Jesus that so beautifully pieced her life back together, and knowing that, is worth the  burden I carry like weights on my shoulders.
    I wouldn't know love, I wouldn't know joy, I wouldn't know grace. I wouldn't know pain, I wouldn't know the need that this world has for Him. I'd been in the dark, and maybe choices would be easier to make, and I would give no cares, but I think I would be a miserable woman, a worthless woman, a woman who's life is being wasted on herself, instead of on others.
  You see things lately haven't been working out the way I intended or planned. But I find that, that seems to be the case when I try to keep to my own accord and my own plans for things. I didn't expect to be back in a place i thought I was leaving behind for good. And maybe there is a reason for this, maybe I'm just not completely finished here. Maybe God has something planned. and maybe, there are just a lot of maybes in the works and sometimes it feels like the maybes are what kills us. but honestly maybe, may be not such a bad thing.
 
  Lately I've been pushing God back and away from me because things just haven't been the easy I 'd like them to be. I've been upset and depressed and frustrated with the way things have or haven't been working out. And I've filled that with an endless amount of Netflix watching and crappy book reading, trying to ignore the void that I have dug into the middle of my heart. But that void is there for a reason, and I can try all I want to fill it with the unsatisfying things, like Netflix and cookies, but it just can't be filled by the world. No matter how much I leave Him or put Him on hold, He is always there for me, patiently waiting for me to turn back to Him.
   And I want to get more comfortable being uncomfortable. I want to get more confident being uncertain. I don't want to shrink back just because something isn't working out, because something isn't easy. I want to push back, and make more room in my heart, more room in the area between I can't and I can. because with Him, I know I can. and honestly I don't last long without Him. This beautiful mess is the life He has given me. And the more I depend on Him the more dependable I find He is.
  And through this long walk and my journey of discovery I have found that i don't want this perfect life. I want beauty in the mess. That I am dirty and broken and He still carries me.
  So cover me in mud, cover me in filth, paint me in the shades of reckless love, take all that I have if need be as long as I am still loving while dirty, as long as i'm still living while dirty, as long as i am still chasing after him, mud flinging in every direction as i run headlong into His arms.
    Following God isn't glamorous, but it is so beautiful. Our hands will get dirty and our hearts will get wrecked, but love, unfailing love makes it worth it.
 Because this beauty doesn't live in a life perfectly mapped out, it doesn't live in a dream job or the arms of a man, it doesn't live in our skin, it lives in the love that we give away. It lives in the mess, in the dirt and grime of the hard knocks of life. It lives in the the arms of Jesus.
  and that's where you'll find me.




Just another Beautiful Mess,




  HIS and yours,




   Cami