finally ready to be here

In my twenty-five years of life, I've lived in four states. I've traveled to eight countries. I've seen so much of the beauty that the world has to offer.

I spent just under two years in California. I was a baby then. I didn't like the water. I lived in a house I do not remember with two parents and a beautiful yellow labrador retriever who enjoyed eating the fruit that fell in our backyard.

Then I lived in New Jersey. I remember that our house was "upside down" with the kitchen on the second story. My brother was born in New Jersey. I made friends with a set of twins. I dressed up as a mermaid for Halloween. I hid behind the couch of the twins' house the day my family moved to Texas.

Then, it was off to Texas. This is where I grew up. I picked the smaller bedroom with wood floors and clown wallpaper, though my parents tried to persuade me to take the larger, carepeted bedroom. We later took off all the clown wallpaper and painted the walls a light pink. Then years later we painted the walls a pepto bismol pink and sponged the walls with a lighter pink. For years, I was the only little girl on the street. I did my best to keep up with the boys by playing football and cowboys/indians.

I grew up in Texas. I found myself and lost myself. Then found myself again and eventually lost myself again. I made friends. I rode the bus to school, something I was not able to do in New Jersey. I swam in the pool in our backyard. I had sleepovers with friends. I stayed up chatting online and writing. I thought I fell in-love in Texas, but I didn't know what love meant. I don't think anyone really does at that age.

After a year of college in Nacogdoches, TX, I spent three weeks in Europe and then moved to Oklahoma, where I now live.

Through these moves, there has been one constant. My constant has been Michigan. Both my parents were born and raised in Michigan; both left after graduating college and neither moved back. I always hoped to experience Michigan as a resident, but it was not meant to be.

My relationship with Michigan is one of summers spent swimming in cold lake water, of walking into town for ice cream, of sleeping in the converted attic with sheets sticking to me some nights and shivering under the sheets some nights.

The cottage began as a one-bedroom home. My grandmother visited the home with her parents as a child for long weekends and week vacations. Eventually, my mother visited the home with her parents and siblings for long weekends and week vacations. My grandparents later purchased the cottage. It now has a bedroom and two bathrooms on the main level. There are narrow, creaky stairs to walk up that open to an attic. There are three twin-sized beds and a full-size bed in the attic.

There's a guest house close to the garage with a bed, a sink, and a toilet. The water only runs cold, and there's no heater or air conditioner in the guest cottage.

This is my favorite place in the world. New York City might have bright lights and Broadway. Paris offers the Eifeel Tower. But I would much rather be in Suttons Bay, Michigan.

I see it more clearly that my childhood home. I hear the creaks of the stairs and the waves of the lake. I smell the fresh corn and the mint and the plump tomatoes. I taste the clean air. I crave the homemade ice cream.

It's my home in so many ways. When I am there, my heart is at rest. I feel at peace, like I belong. It's the place that inspires me to write. It's where I want to be almost all the time. It's my Northern Star, the guiding light that brings me home when I lose my way and forget what is the most important in life.

I learned to daydream here. I wore hula skirts with my grandmother and pretended the creek was Hawaii. I went on adventures with friends, exploring the secret passages in the houses aroun the cottage. I scraped me knees crawling through the sewer system. I kayaked from the cottage to the library and walked the boardwalk. I made friends here with myself and with others. I combined my past and present with the past and present of my family. I pretended like I could play the piano, like I could sing. I dressed up in my great-grandmother's clothes. I watched the weather change in the span of five minutes just like I so often changed.

Suttons Bay has grown. But it has stayed the same. Just like I have grown but also stayed the same. It is my heart. It is my guiding light. It is the one place I know will always be there. It envelopes me like a hooded sweatshirt just out of the dryer.

Sometimes, if the wind blows right in Oklahoma and the clouds cover the sun, it feels like I am there. And I let that feeling wash over me again and again.

(title from "been a long day" by rosi galan)

i wanna feel it from within

My mind is currently racing at the speed of at least 1,000 miles per minute. But my body is still. My heart is racing at a slightly slower rate of 500 miles per minute. There are so many reasons for this. Life is moving much too quickly, and at the same time, I feel as though I have barely taken a step forward in the past year.

I feel like something is coming, like change is coming. I can feel it. But I've felt it for several months, and I am losing hope and patience for when change will arrive.

God has moved in the past few months. He has answered prayers. He has spoken to me in dreams and in thoughts and sometimes through people. I know He is here. I know His hand is over all of this, and I know He is sovereign.

But my heart is hurting, and my mind is tired. And my body is sore. And I'm just at a point where I feel like I can neither slow down my mind, speed up my heart, or propel my body forward. I am in the place He wants me to be; it is a place of waiting. It is a place of uncertainty. It is a place of crying out to Him and then at times keeping to myself.

The past seven months have been some of the most difficult. There have been beautiful moments tangled in with the difficult ones, and there have been moments of clarity, of understanding. I know He is preparing us for something much bigger than me, than my husband, than the lives around us. A part of me feels as though I know what He is preparing me for, but I do not plan on this knowledge becoming truth. I know He can change the plans, and if He does, I will follow Him where He leads.

It's frustrating because I want to align my life with the life He desires me to have. Thinking back to my childhood, to my teenage years, I see how He placed people in my life to bring me to this point. I see how He prepared me to have a heart for people who others have forgotten. I see how He molded me to be a person who desires to take in the orphans and to love them as He first loved us.

It's a dream I share with my husband. We want a large house. We want at least five bedrooms. We want playrooms and plenty of bathrooms. We want at least one large office. We want a house with a large backyard. We want at least one swing set in the backyard. We want grass. We want a vegetable garden (or maybe that's just me). We want a fence.

We want these things so we can provide a life for the children in need. We've talked about having children of our own, but I have no desire to become pregnant, to birth a child, and to raise a child. Maybe one day I will, but right now, there is no desire. I do have a desire to open up my home to children who need a safe place to go. I want children of all ages. I want the children who need extra help, the children who have been forgotten, the children who need someone to fight for them and intercede for them.

I want to see these children return home to a safe place, to parents who love them and who know how to provide for them. I want to provide love and nurturing to these parents. Because when you take in a child, you also take in their family. When you love a child, you also love their family.

And if they can not return home, I will make my home their home, and I will provide for them the best I can. This is the desire of my heart. It is a desire I feel has been on my heart for years. The picture has changed and developed as I have changed and developed, but the subject matter has remained the same.

And I am close to being ready. My heart is close to being ready to give until I can no longer give anymore. But my house, my finances, my life are not ready.

So I am waiting. For this and for so much more. I am waiting with my husband, and I am praying for the time to come quickly but also when it is meant to. Because while I think I am ready, God knows best, and I need to believe in His timing, in the way He wants things to work. 

And so my mind races. My heart races a bit more slowly. And my body remains still. I remain still and try not to waiver. I cry out when it becomes too much. I ask for His hand to fall when hardship comes, and it does.

There's more than just this, but many of the other callings are ones that I have pushed aside out of fear. I am called to write, to tell stories. It is a desire of my heart, but I ignore it out of fear. Every now and again, I will tiptoe back into the world of stories, but I generally tiptoe out after only a few days, maybe a few weeks. 

And it's up to me not tiptoe out. I know that. But I fight it. Out of fear, out of uncertainty, out of knowing there are other storytellers in the world, some are better than me and others are not.

I've felt called to take better care of myself but have also ignored that calling until recently. I am on my third week of working out, but I can feel myself backing out of working out, out of eating better. I slip on eating something not healthy and try not to focus on it, but I know it's just one step closer to giving up, to going back to the lifestyle that did nothing positive for me before.

And so, maybe, it is these things that need to line up before my dream of a large house become reality. Maybe it is these things that need to be fixed before my mind, my heart, and my body move at the same pace.

(title from "shine" by rosi galan)