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

Fear is Overwhelming, Strength is Overrated.

How should I begin. Should I write a list of rules and guidelines, of do's and dont's? Should I pick a nice number that adds up all the ways to get through this. Should I give advice that I certainly would never take myself? Should I smile through clenched teeth and say everything is alright if we just do this number of things.  Giving an answer to all these questions, to aching hearts and wandering eyes. A list. would that do it?

Not even.

And I'm tired of list, and numbers and bullet points of advice for my life. I'm tired of the 23 things i should do before i'm 24 and i'm tired of the 7 things i should do while I'm single and the 5 things i can do to be more joyful.

Life is not a list. Life is not bullet points. Life is not so easily mapped out. And I have to write these things out. Write them down, because that is what I do with the things that unravel me. I drag it across the page in hopes of it all making sense one day. But I'm seeing that sometimes it's best to stop trying to make sense of things, because life isn't always clear cut, black and white, there are always gray areas.

Lately it's felt like I've been wandering in the wilderness, with a broken heart, lost in every direction with no map to guide me and no footsteps to follow and I'm finding no trail of bread crumbs. There is dry rivers winding through the trees and me.

And the tears I've shed the past two weeks could fill these dry riverbeds. and in all my sorrow, I know Jesus is better, I need to make my heart believe.

But strength is overrated. And maybe I'm just saying that because I have no strength. Maybe I'm saying it because I feel so weak, too weak to pull myself out of bed, to eat, to shower, to make conversation, to go a day without swollen eyes and crying until I can't breathe. There is no list for these feelings. There is no boxes to check on how to get over this.  Life keeps hitting me hard in the face, waiting for me to get back up again just to kick me in the stomach. The wind is knocked out of me, I have to keep reminding myself how to breathe.

I think one of the most dangerous wars is the one we have within ourselves. I am so easily defeated by the one who knows me so well. Me.

"The weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." 1 Corinthians 1:25. But I want to know if His strength is greater than my weakness. greater than the ache of missing in my heart. Because lately this weakness has never felt so strong and I'm leaning in close to Him and He's giving me breath and He's drying my eyes and He's reminding me that it is okay to be sad. it's okay to miss the ones I so fiercely love. That there is nothing wrong with that. That "His grace is sufficient for me, His power is made perfect in weakness." But this weakness hurts more than it ever has before, my heart feels like paper, stained with tears, being torn in two. And it's hard to not want to pull away and hide in my darkness.

I am afraid. And the crazy thing is I made this decision. I chose to move across country, away from the people I've fallen in love with. But knowing I prayed through this decision and feel it's right doesn't make it any easier and doesn't make it hurt any less and doesn't mean i'm not scared out of my mind. It's a big life changing moment when I don't know what the next ten seconds will bring, but I know in my heart nothing is ever going to be the same.

And right now in my weakest moment, I want what was before this moment, I don't want the now. I don't want the fear of the unknown. I'm in uncharted territory, deep waters, in no-man's land. And I'm not really sure what to do next, but to be honest and say I'm sad. deeply sad. and I'm afraid. deeply afraid. And that that's okay.

A dear friend of mine constantly tells me to find my joy in Christ. To delight in Him and depend on Him, that Christ is where my true joy lies. and so I'm trying to lean more into His arms, more into His grace and His love. but I'm still afraid.

and i'm not saying with God we will no longer fear, that we will no longer be afraid. No I think that there will always be fearful moments in our lives. But it is with God that those moments become bearable. It's with Him that we can conquer them. It is going to take time and patience, something that I don't seem to have a lot of. And for me it's taken a lot of sobbing into my pillow and in the shower. lots of looking at pictures and listening to old voicemails. of trying to remember to not be afraid of the unknown but to embrace it with God right beside me.

That is where the Word comes in. Through the scriptures New and Old Testament are stories of people just like us. It may seem like an old boring book, but I bet if we open it up and we really look at it we'll find ourselves in it. Moses who kept silent out of fear he might stutter, Jonah ran scared of the place God was calling Him to. Martha busied herself, David full of jealously, Peter denied Jesus three times for fear he would be identified as a disciple. There are our stories in there, things that we struggle with, things that we go through, that we fear.

And throughout the Word it shows us that God is the one who conquers it. It shows us that no matter how worthless or inadequate or how scared we may be He is calling us, He is using us. Even if we don't know it, Even if it frightens us. He's taking care of us, carrying us through and giving us hope when all seems dim.

I'm not telling you to not be afraid. I'm afraid. I'm saying be afraid but do it anyway. at some point we just have to let go of what we thought should happen and live in what is happening.

I've constantly been telling myself stop being sad, don't be afraid and I'm realizing how stupid that is. saying don't be afraid is like saying don't move out of the way when someone tries to punch you, or don't blink or breathe, or don't be human.

I'm afraid and you're afraid and we're all going to be afraid that's the point, in this life it's bound to happen. What we should be telling ourselves is be afraid but do it anyway, love anyway, live anyway and know that God is there with us, guiding us and keeping those things that so easily frighten us at bay, even when it doesn't feel like it.

And I wish I could live my life always being happy and always be fearless. I wish I could live unafraid without making any wrong turns. But that's impossible. A path like that doesn't exist. We fail, we trip, we get lost, we make mistakes and little by little one step at a time by faith we push forward.

It's all we can do.

I've been waiting for God to give me some big purpose or waiting for Him to tell me that I haven't done enough yet. But I think He just wants me to understand that He is with me and for me no matter how sad, and dark and scared I may be right now.

...and when I become brave, I will let you know, but until than I'm going to try to do a lot of awesome things scared out of my mind, with faith that God's got me in His hands.

I am learning that I am not a train, and it's okay if I fall off the tracks. That "life is not about the outcome we settle into, but instead about the story we write along the way." And I'm enjoying the story so far, I wouldn't trade it for anything, and even the pain I'm feeling right now is worth it.

And I'm still scared and I'm still sad, but I'm also settling into this wild place, this uncharted wilderness, this no-man's land. Because it is even here that God is with me, and He loves to make a way when it seems like there isn't one.

He is singing over me "hey unfaithful, i will teach you to be stronger. hey ungraceful, i will teach you to love. hey unloving, i will always love you."

Leaning into Him through the sadness,



HIS and yours



Cami

Bone to bone, flesh to flesh, Breath life into me,

       There is this valley filled with bones. and I can feel them across my feet as I shuffle through. This valley filled with dry bones, bones cut off from everything, they echo against each other in the shadows. I ache from this journey through the bone-filled valley...
   And I've been walking through this for quite some time. You could chisel the shape of it into my heart and fill it with all these dry bones. cut off from everything, cut off from hope.  But I think I see something, think I hear something, think I feel something.
   Take a deep breath.
   The wind is coming.

And I wish I could put into words what these last couple months have been like. Like roller coasters, like rainy days, like mountaintops, like valleys.
   And I've been searching and learning what it looks like to follow after Jesus, been trying to dig deep into what that looks like. and I'm seeing that much of my learning to follow Jesus is unlearning to follow myself.
    Which is a hard lesson to learn by a selfish person. One who likes to think she deserves more than what she has. One who likes to believe she has everything figured out. One that too often looks nothing like Jesus and much like a valley of dry bones. Cut off from everything, cut off from hope, cut off from life. And I do it to myself, then turn around and blame someone else, something else. But only I can ask for this wind to blow through these dry bones, only I can ask for the tendons and the flesh and the skin to cover me. and only I can look to Him and ask for His breath, His wind of life to breathe through me. No one else can do it for me, only me.
    I think it's easier to be in this valley and be dry, to be able to have excuses and complaints about things, rather than be walking through this valley filled by the wind and the breath of the spirit. It's easier to walk through a place when we don't stand out, when we blend in, when we are all bone and no life.
    But that's not how I am called to live. I'm not called to walk through this valley of bones, dried up and hopeless. I'm called to walk through with breath, with life, and hope and let God speak through me like He did with Ezekiel and bring these other dry bones back to life!
     Because without the breath of life, we will never really live. I mean we can even have the tendons, and the flesh, the skin, we can have everything but breath and look like we're alive, but without that breath, without that wind deep within us, deep within our lungs we're still just dry bones covered in skin, lying in a valley going nowhere.
    We need this wind. We need this breath. We need life. We need HIM.
   
 And I believe that life is made up of more valley's than anything and yet we constantly mope around in these, through most of our lives we wait to feel the wind once we get to the mountaintops, when what we should be doing is calling to the wind from down in the valley.
   So I think I realize what I've been doing. I see that I've been like a pile of bones laying in a valley waiting to feel tendons in me, waiting to feel flesh over me, waiting to feel breath through me. waiting to live.
     And I'm like the house of Israel in Ezekiel, who kept saying their bones were dried up, that they had no hope, that they were cut off in the valley.
   But God is calling to me, He's pulling me out of the grave I've dug for myself. He's put tendons on my dry bones, and has given me skin to cover them. and He's breathing His life, His spirit into me. And now I must walk.
    Because I really do believe that it is easier to cut ourselves off in the valleys of life. It's easier to lay down like a pile of dry bones, then to continue to let breath fill our tired lungs and walk on through. to let God bring us forth from the graves we so easily dig for ourselves and guide us, and push us through.
    We can't walk through these valleys and scale their walls to the mountaintops without breath, without God. We'll never survive this life we'll never survive the valleys.
   It's been a crazy couple of months. And the valley's have been so long lately, and i'm exhausted and yet I am still moving, I can still feel His breath in my lungs. There are big changes coming, big goodbyes that I'm nowhere near ready for. this is one of the toughest valleys I think I've ever had to go through. And in the beginning I wanted to lay down, defeated, like a pile of dry bones. But He kept pulling me, pushing me through. His wind rushing through me in these moments in the valley.
   And i've seen so much dependence, so much grace and so much love in all of it.
    No it has not been easy, and I don't think it's going to get any easier. I'm standing on a bridge between valleys and I'm on my knees. I'm not going back to that grave, I'm not going back to dry bones. I'm moving forward through the valley, with Him.

Listen... do you hear that. the rattling sound of bones coming together, bone to bone. do see that. the tendons, the flesh covering bones. do you feel that. the rush of wind, the breath of life moving through?
     He's given us life, so what are we doing with it? We have to get out of the grave and step into life.

   Can these bones live?
    HE alone knows.
    HE alone can give them life.



Bone to bone, flesh to flesh, Breath life into me,



HIS and yours,


 Cami

To the people that will live in my house after I move out,

 Welcome. welcome to this house. to this home. a home that is more than a home. it is a life. the walls within the home you’ve just begun to call your own have seen much life and much more love. they hold memories deep inside them and if you are quiet long enough, if you listen to the silence they’ll share their stories. 

and i don’t think you realize what you’ve just purchased, what you are walking into. This may look like a seemingly old farm house, but it’s so much more than that. You are walking into life. You are walking into love. You are walking into memories. 

The bottoms steps creak when you walk up them. You probably won’t notice, I never did until trying to sneak up the stairs at two am when I was suppose to be home at midnight. those three creaks were more severe then my punishment. I never forgot about them afterward. And now I can remember an exact path to avoid the creaks in the stairs. This house will give you away, but it will also hold your secrets once you learn to maneuver it.

On the all seasons porch, I swear if you inhale deep enough you can still smell Christmas in that room. 9 years of christmas, with ribbons and wrapping paper and early morning stockings. Little feet dancing to the gifts receiving. my brother, my sisters, and me. that room didn’t see much, not until Christmas…  like cinnamon rolls and evergreen trees and bits of laughter and arguments over who would open their presents first. I hope you decide to have Christmas in this room, the windows let the lights twinkle through perfectly. 

Oh, out there, by the propane tank. It holds significance for me. Of course because it’s the source of heat and warm showers, but there’s a spot there, when the tank was once a royal blue painted color, and the mulberry juice covers bare feet, on a chilly october evening where I had my first kiss. 13, young and thinking i knew what love was. he was beautiful, with eyes as blue as a mid-afternoon sky. I wouldn’t trade that moment for anything, a game of capture the flag had never been more appealing. I’m hoping there will be moments like that for you in this house, moments of pure joy. 

You see those trees there, yeah the ones lining the fence. Us kids, with our parents, planted every one of those trees. With lots of grumbling to our parents of course, but that’s when I learned how to use a shovel, and what it means to work hard. and looking at those trees now, tall, branches entangled in one another, i have pride in knowing i had a hand in making something beautiful. I know, I know this house is yours now, but please, make it beautiful. 

There used to be a tree house out back. okay i use the term tree house lightly. it was a floor and one wall with a ladder up the trunk. but the tree’s been long gone for years now, struck down by lightening on a stormy evening, and the tree house just another project that was never finished. but my dad taught my sister and i how to work with our hands that summer, and i wouldn’t trade that make-shift tree house and the hours spent with our dad for anything. 

Somewhere in the overgrown grass there’s remnants of a trampoline. oh that trampoline. my sister and i used to practice our gymnastics to country music for hours on end. we would put together skits and make our parents watch. and if you look close enough you can see a baseball diamond worn into the grass. from years of family baseball games. where everyone wanted to be on dad's team because we all knew that's how you win. before we actually were sucked into the world of tv and internet. in the days of carefree childhood, that was this house, carefree childhood. it’s still here, the carefree days, and i hope you find them here in this house. this house that is now your home.

and I know, i  know that garage looks like it’s on its last leg. but the garage has seen good days. It saw my first slow dance ever. it’s seen many feet of kids on birthday parties and housed dogs on sunny days when no one is home. It held my cars safe in it’s old walls during rain and snow storms. It’s where i was taught how to change a tire and check my oil. the garage may not look like much to you, but to me it’s a lot more than a garage. but i know, it’s yours now, so do with it what you will. 

you’ve gotten a deal with the basement. when we moved in my sister and i used to rollerblade around in circles down there, with the dogs on leashes leading us. it was just and empty room with a cement floor where we did laundry. but now it’s finished and ready for you to make memories of your own down there. do me a favor… pull up the carpet and roller blade around for a bit. You’ll love it. 

the kitchen, it’s where everyone entered the house. it has seen everyone who has ever come and gone in this house. we didn’t use the front door, we never did. it’s too formal, and our family has never been one for formalities. we like everyone to feel like family, you come in through the kitchen, it’s where family is at. it’s where I would see my parents laughing and dancing in the early morning making us kids breakfast. it's seen almost 14 thanksgiving turkeys and christmas hams. it's where family gathers. it's where my family gathered and i hope yours does too.

let me apologize for my closet. you won’t actually know which one is mine. but i just need to tell you that if you sometimes smell a faint scent of roses i am sorry. if you look close enough at the cracks in the floorboard you can see dried rose petals there. It’s where I threw the flowers he gave me after he broke my heart. i tried to get them all out but some are left behind. there are stains on those floorboards too. i can’t tell you whether or not there from tears or something else. this house holds so much happiness, but it also holds much sadness. 

and the living room. i can’t forget the place where all the living is done. that room has seen many late night conversations about life and love and God. that room holds the whole house together. it’s where family meetings took place. where we shared movies and music and meals. it's where things got heated over long games of monopoly. it’s where we talked about everything from school to sports to heartbreak and the future of our lives. It was the first room to be filled and the last one to be emptied. I hope your living is done here. deep conscious lovely living. this is your house now, but I just wanted you to know. 

I used to count the years i’d been in this house, i lost track after the first three and then i stopped looking at everything else. I began to memorize where each light switch was so that i could turn them on in the darkness. the number of stairs and the path to ascend and descend without waking anyone from sleep. the way it sounded when someone pulled into the driveway to visit, the gravel rocks crackling under tires. But eventually you forget the minutes you’ve been here and the days you’ve spent and the years racked up and you tend to remember the moments. 

The moments are the most important. Soak in the moments. This house has seen many. And I think this old home is ready for new memories to take within it’s walls and old deep. I think this house is ready to be your home. and I know, I know it’s your home now. live wildly. laugh loudly, live deeply within these walls. enjoy it. 

Welcome Home.

-with love 

 the previous tenant. 

Sometimes You Have to Let Things Go...

I have a grip like an iron fist. I hold on tight. My fingers white, my hands aching. I don't let go of things easily. I hold on until my fingers bleed or until there's nothing else to hold onto anymore. And lately I've been dealing with a lot of scary things. Trying to carry more than I can handle, trying to appear like I've got it under control. That my arms aren't struggling and my back doesn't ache, and no that is not sweat dripping from my forehead.


I'm good. I got this. Curling my fingers around things and people and places, knuckles bared and white and hands aching. I'm good. I got this.

And everything falls.

This post has been sitting here for far too long. way too long. Just waiting to be typed into existence. I haven't known how to get it all out. And yet would it even matter, does anything I have to say or do matter. Do I make a difference with this one post, with my words, with my heart. I'm dealing with too many scary things. I'm carry way too much, holding onto many things.

There comes a time when you just have to let things go.

Now is that time.

Lately life has seemed like a balance of holding on and letting go. And things have become uneven with too much holding and not enough letting go. But how do you come to terms with the quick switch of direction, the quick flip of the page, the quick hand flicks of goodbye that are coming? How do you deal? Honestly I've let the sadness seep into the corners of my soul and darken me.

If you would have asked me a few weeks ago how I was doing, I would have answered with a grunt and a growl. Because as of late, I have not been on speaking terms with God. My line of communication silenced by anger and frustrations and fear. so much fear.  And the thing about fear is, that it doesn't leave room for anything else like beauty or purpose. It sucks the life out of you. It sucks the hope out of you. Fear swallows hope. And I've felt hopeless lately.

My lack of faith has made me feel worthless and useless.

and I turn to Ecclesiastes, which I've been reading for almost two months now. The first month all I could focus on is the phrase "Everything is meaningless. ...a chasing after the wind." And my attitude reflected it. I didn't care, I didn't want, because everything was meaningless. Because I had it all planned out, my life and everything in between. I was going to be home for a short amount of time, work and save up money, then return back to the place where I buried my heart in the soil, dig it up, put it back in my chest, and live there for the rest of my life.

But life, as it would seem, rarely ever goes according to plan. And God never follows according to mine, He follows according to His. And life happens, it did happen, it is happening. I came home, got a job, a car, meant people and kids, fell in love, lived, fell apart, got my heart broke, found out Africa is just going to have to wait, sunk inside myself. And I think I wanted everything to stay the same until I was ready for it to change. But I'm realizing that I can't do that. That I can't expect the whole world to stand still until I'm ready. and Everything is not meaningless,  I am seeing that now, through watery eyes, we go through things to strengthen us, to draw us closer to God, to grow.

So I open it up again, Ecclesiastes, and I am mediating on the simple phrase; "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens."

And it's a scary feelings, this letting go. It's the loneliest feeling in the world. I feel like I tend to find myself on the opposite end of the spectrum, that I'm constantly standing when everyone else is sitting. That everyone is looking at me and saying "what the heck is the matter with her?" Like I'm walking down an empty street, listening to the sound of my own footsteps, windows closed, blinds drawn, doors locked against me, and I'm not sure whether I'm walking toward something, or if I'm just walking away.

And I'm finding that my heart tends to swing back and forth between the need for routine and the urge to run. and that's okay. I know that God's got everything under control. I know that deep in my heart, even if at times I fail.

But Christians fail because Christians are people and people, like me, are not perfect. We slip up.  I don't know what else to tell you.

 i am constantly trying to find my feet.

And I am letting things go. I'm learning that it's okay to have unknowns. That it's time to let go of my job, of my car, it's time to let go of love that's not returned, to a life that i've been clinging to, to realize that sometimes I have to let go of the things and the people i so desperately want, to have empty hands to receive the things I so desperately need.

On November 14th 2013 I wrote in my journal; "Jump First, Fear Later." I don't know what happened to the girl that wrote that, but I can tell you now that I am seeing it's not really Faith unless it taste a bit like fear. and that I feel the fear, but leap anyways. And that's exactly what I'm doing.

It's time to move on. It's scary but it's what needs to be done. I'm not running away, I'm running into.

Into life, into possibilities, into new, exciting things, into His calling.

I need to stop holding hands with doubt, and  start letting go and trusting Him more. I need to loosen my grip on all those useless things and curl my fingers around His and jump.


It starts tonight.

I may not be brave, but He makes me courageous.





 Letting go of doubt and Holding on to Him,



HIS and yours,


  Cami