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