Meanderings

Ya know, I usually literally start like three blogs and never finish them before I actually post one. I wish it came easier to me, but alas it does not. I am working on one called "Finding My Calcutta," which I would like to finish tonight while I have some free time, but I'm not just able to pour it out of my heart tonight. Does anyone ever get like that?

Things are settling in with my job pretty well. It's still not exactly what I want to be doing, but I'm still surrender and submitting what God wants me to do with my life to Him.

Patrick and I are still trying to figure out where to serve in our church and wrestling with where our community is. I have had a deep longing lately for rich, authentic, and organic community. I guess you could say I am in a dry spell. Patrick is learning and growing in the spirit like a weed lately, which is awesome and praise God! I guess things are coming to me more subtly. It's like nothing and everything changed when we got married. Community is one of those things. I still have my very dear friends, but I don't live with some of them anymore. I don't have long girl talks after Patrick goes home later. I have to work at it a lot harder, which is hard sometimes when you and your friends have busy lives. I am a drop in kind of friend. I like to be spontaneous, which made living with three girls for almost four years out of college so much fun. "Hey you wanna go...." at 11pm on a work/school night. I am in bed usually by 9 or 10 at the absolute latest now. I'm getting old!

I have felt a little lonely lately, and not lonely in the sense of the kind of loneliness I felt in some of my single days. A deep ache that is echoed in a lot of my older blogs. It's different. Last weekend I was volunteering at the race track with my church (we drive the golf carts and man the info booths every race) and I was just in a funk. I couldn't place my finger on it, but I just felt....detached. There are so many other things I am wrestling with currently that are weighing on me. Not in a this-burden-is-so-heavy-I-can-barely-take-another-step-forward. It's like a fog.

I go through seasons of this every so often. I get this feeling like I need to go somewhere else, not necessarily move or anything, but uproot myself from my current community and go to another one. Then the ping pong match starts in my head and I never go anywhere (I've been in the same place for six years this month actually!). Of course now, this is a whole other deal now that I'm married. It's no longer just my decision. I'm not saying I want to do this, but I can't seem to marry the idea of doing and being when I'm not growing. I want someone, other than my husband, to really know me (a female of course). Call me out. Ask me how I am doing in certain areas of my life. Challenge me. And every time I get to this place, I immediately mentally slap myself on the wrist for being selfish. Then I never go anywhere. Just spinning my wheels. I know that the Lord is/can/will be this for me, but then I also know I am called to live in community. So there is some kind of balance between the two. There is a need for both evangelism (I tend to be less gifted at) and discipleship (I tend to be more gifted at). Don't get me wrong, I have awesome friends. Community for me lately is a lot more forced and less organic. I take my own responsibility in this.

My question now is what does true discipleship look like? That's what I want to know, see, experience, and share. I realize that so much of my thinking is faulted. I am just trying to work through it all right now. These are just my honest and raw thoughts about where I am at at this current moment in time.

I want to be the change I'm longing for. I just don't know what that looks like. I'm not a big group gathering gal. I am a one-on-one person. However, I can't spend the rest of my life only hanging out with people on coffee dates. I get that. There is something that has overcome me lately in group gatherings. A tension in my heart that I am almost certain has to be from satan. Ugh. It's nothing new. The situations are different now, but the feeling is the same.

I want real community. More than getting together than just to complain or gossip. That's right I said it. So many people (including myself more than I like to admit) would have nothing to talk about if they weren't allowed to complain or gossip because both of these can take all sorts to forms and is a sneaky sneak tool of satan.

Lord, rid me of complaining and gossip. Convict me. Deconstruct the places in my heart that need your change and reconstruct me in Your ways. I can't do it on my own. You know how many times I have tried and still do try to do it alone. I'm sorry. Unleash the power of Your Spirit in me which can work mighty and powerful things into this weak and faltering heart. I am in desperate need of You.

Basically this blog makes no sense, but that is about how much sense I can make out of how I feel right now.