Nomad for God

I feel as if God is calling me to leave the comfortable life I’m settled into and become a nomad for Him.
My parents are not saved, they want me to get married and have kids and get some 9-5 job. I’m a quiet sort of person. I’ve somehow settled into a role where everyone is my friend, I serve them in anyway, but no one expects me to do anything big. I told my pastor and his wife that I’d love to go on the Campus Target mission for nine months and all he said was,”That’s really long…” as if I’m just not that type of person to do something like that.

It’s not the expectations or lack there of from others, or some selfish need for freedom. I don’t want to “prove them wrong” or escape from the boredom. I feel like God is using all of this among other things to gear me towards getting out of my safe zone and get out there in the world.

Here’s my problem: I have very little money and a not-so-great job. I don’t have any college credits. I have artistic skills and I love to write and do photography. I was thinking I could get out into the world and spread the gospel. Maybe when God calls me back home I could write a book about everything and use that as a form of ministry. But I don’t know where to go from here, or how to go about it.
FaithHopeLove,
-TiA

Complications

I’ve fallen in love.

Everyday I’m finding it harder and harder to be away from him. I’m finding it easier to trust him, easier to love him, and easier to be myself around him. But I know God’s plan for me. How can I leave him behind when I embark on this journey; this pilgrimage? My plan was to leave. To take a year to ready myself, to get equiptment and money, to pray about it and make sure it was what God wanted of me, and then to pack up and set out. I was going to follow my heart on an open heart, come rain or wind or heat or cold. Come a grumbling belly or headache. Sore legs and feet and muscles. I was going to leave behind my nine to five or one to ten crap job, my security, my comfy bed and just go. I was going to give up relying on family and friends for awhile. I was going to give up my cell phone, iPod, and laptop. I was going to give it up and become a Christian nomad. But I fell in love.

Can I be one of those girls?

Could I really give up this dream out of fear? But then again, could I leave him? Them? My family and friends. My parents. My church. My nieces and nephews. Could I leave my family behind knowing that most of them are unsaved?

Lord Help Me Understand.

Leaving

It’s time.

Staring out my window, saying that to myself, it didn’t seem real. I couldn’t tell whether I had just woken up early or if I hadn’t slept at all. I spent the entire night drifting in and out of consciousness, half-awake, half-asleep. But I had laid my head next to the window earlier that morning and watched the sun rise slowly over silhouettes of the trees and hills of gravel and towers behind our house. Our house. My parents had left for work, like any other day. I had laid still, eyes closed, as my father came in to get K.D., my dog, and take her out, leaving me alone in my room.

I had watched the sky go from black to purple to blue. I had spent the entire night dreaming about my life, my past and present and wondering about my future. I prayed. Staring out the window, my window, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in. It was my last attempt to soak in this world. The air was heavy morning air. Dew had collected on each individual blade of grass and a light mist had set in over the ground outside. Everything seemed clean and clear and peaceful. The clocked had ticked down over the past year of planning and plotting and shopping and saving.

This is my life. This is life and I plan to live it.

I kept reciting life quotes in my head about how “life is about the journey” and “you don’t get a second chance to live”. It made me feel more at ease about what I was about to do. I was dressed from head to toe the way that I had planned. My pack was next to me, ready to go, calling out to the open road. With train tickets in hand I decided that I was ready too, even if I really wasn’t. I said goodbye to my home, my life, my family in friends in this secret place and, with that last look backward, I left.

Note To Self: Tell Me

Please let it stay like this. Please God, tell me that the season has passed like a winter gone. Finally the snow has melted and life is starting to bloom again. Your beauty and grace are starting to show and everything begins to become warmer; more comfortable. The feeling of freedom thickens in the air as I breathe in. The sun rises and falls, and the days, yes the days, seem longer. Please let this be true. Tell me that it won’t turn away again. That the cold and snow won’t return again. Tell me that everything won’t die all over again.

Tell me that this feeling is real. That maybe I can start to feel again, grow again, dream again. Tell me that I can breathe without the cold stinging with every breath. That it won’t hurt with each short, forced respiration. Please just tell me that I can start to relax again. That I can stop worrying so much. Tell me that there’s hope.

Tell me that my feet won’t sink in each snow drift, that I can stop walking in circles in the driving snow. Tell me that the storm is over. Here comes the cool breeze and summer rain. Lord, help me to believe that I can walk again, loose and free. Unafraid. Help me to see things in the manner that I used to. Bring back my passion and love. I want to believe that I can run forward with my eyes closed and feel as if I can fly. Help me break free. I want to trust. I want to believe. I want to love. I want to feel. I want to see and hear. I want to be secure. I want to hope. I want all things to be possible. I want to be free.

Please dear God tell me that this real and that it will stay. Tell me that I won’t wake up from this dream just to realize that I’m here, alone and broken. Show me there’s hope. Don’t rip it all away again. I couldn’t take it. I can’t take it. Not again. Tell me it will all be okay…

I Have Faith, Hope, Love.

And I Pray

Note To Self: See

Control. It’s all about control. Do not let the fear control you. But not just ‘the fear’, but rather ‘that fear’. Remember back to last time. Don’t let it control you this time. Don’t.

I opened my eyes and lifted my head slowly to peer around the room. The walls were breathing, rythmically moving in…and out. I stopped breathing for a few moments but the sight itself persisted on its own accord. I glanced up at the cieling, large, oval lights hanging densely from chains. The cieling was bowing down and inward as a tarp would during a rain storm, and the lights each seemed to be defying gravity in their own way, bending upward. I looked down towards the floor with the closely-knitted carpet that appeared as thousands, millions of tiny bugs crawling all around. My eyes shut tight again.

Do not let it control you. It’s not real.

It was a different world. An alternate reality. How odd and strange it seemed. The stained glass windows came to life, very linear in places, just shifting, but in others there seemed to be backgrounds and foregrounds, a waving banner, a spinning pattern that gave the feeling of tye-dye brought to life. A large crack in the wall grew silently, extending out in all directings, slowly, yet never moving and never changing. I followed it up the wall onto the cieling, circled by water stains. Where did it start? Where did it stop? I couldn’t tell anymore.

Just take it all in. Breathe.

Lowering my head I began to snap back to reality. The worship music was still playing lightly in the background, but was now coming into the foreground of my consciousness again, as it should’ve been all along. I peered around the room, wide-eyed, at everyone. Sitting, standing, kneeling, bowing; singing, praising. Worshiping. They were all so focused on God. And me? I was focused on…on things that don’t even exist. Moving inanimate objects. Things that defy the laws of physics and reality.
God was the reality, but I was there, focused all everything that wasn’t Him. Surrounded by people were surrounding Him, and that wouldn’t  understand the things that I see. The things that I saw. I was sitting in a room full of people that could not see what was seeing. A room full of people who could not understand.

How alone can one feel in a room full of people?

And I Pray

Note To Self: Hear

I have options when it comes to this.
I could run through the room frantically ripping every cord from its outlet, tearing them away from the walls. I could try and silence the world, all in some pointless effort to make it go away.

I glanced over the bland wallpaper. So bland, so boring, and wondered how I got here. Not to this place, but to this point in time. How was I so strategically placed into this moment of my life. And…why did God put me here, in this place, at this time, in this position?

I could crank up some music, louder and louder, slip on my heavy-duty headphones that cover my ears and sit in the corner drowning it all out. Drowing out that noise; the music, the voices. Try to focus on something else so I don’t have to think about it, any of it. Or I could just sit her and take it.
Mind over matter. Focus on other things. It’s not really there. It’s all just a trick. Close your eyes and focus on other things around you. The crickets, the fan, your own breathing. Slow everything down and stop thinking about. I can’t understand it anyway. I have options but I’m stronger than this. Mind over matter. But, it’s my mind that’s the problem, isn’t it?
I can’t understand them anyway. It’s faint, just enough that I can’t make out the words. No matter how hard I try they’re all just out of reach. Even the melody, no I can’t fix on that either. It changes. I can hear the static. A radio shifting from station to station. Static, static. Bits and clips of voices, changing, distored. Here and there and everywhere. I’m losin’ it.

I’m losin’ it.

And I Pray