Lesson Learned?

For so long, I thought I was stripped of everything I knew, of my very home...but I have been learning something lately- that that isn't the case. 

Sure, my days aren't spent beneath the Mexican sun- loving on babies, holding things loosely, and reveling in Spanglish. 

Sure, I'm not there, but God's telling me that I don't have to be. 

He's telling me that wise-old saying, written years before I ever came to be, 

"For such a time as this, Daughter."

He's whispering that I can love here. I can love now. 

Our hearts have the truest, purest ability of being in many places at once. 

Take my two jobs for instance: being spent in the classroom with my students, and then falling back into place with my regulars at the Goodwill. 

I used to ignore life stateside. I didn't think that there was worth to this other life I lived.

But why is it we forsake the mundane; we refuse it to be our ministry?

Why is it that we beg to differ that we are where we are for a reason? 

We think love is only required in the grand scheme of things. 
We think it must come easy, that it must be requited. 
We think we are only being used when we are lost in our dreams, caught up in our purpose. 

But what are you fighting for, and more importantly, what is being overshadowed?
Why are you refusing to be used, right where you are?

There are people to love here, aren't there?

There are moments that become shadowed, by our own mere refusal to let them be seen. 

I am here for the students that need a little extra attention, to sit beside them and spell things out a little more clearly- attaching them to their memory. I am here for the students that get distracted and fight to be known. 

I am just as here for the regulars that come in at night, pouring themselves out to me. The grandmothers that are taken advantage of, the children that I've watched grow up before my very eyes. I am here for the ones that come in for company on a nightly basis- afraid to go home alone.

I am to be love to them, each and every last one. 

I know this comes as a broken record. 

How many times can these words fall from my heart and down to my typing fingers? 

But I guess sometimes the lessons we need to learn the most, are the ones that God continues to rain down upon us incessantly. 

Just as we stubbornly refuse to get out of bed on the hard days, our God stubbornly refuses to give up on us. 

He keeps teaching. He enters in. He makes Himself known. 

He sends a child into your store asking for a Bible, because her grandmother's heart is just too heavy. 
He sends a student into your classroom, because they are always written off as the jokester. 

He sends a patient into your care, because someone chose to look the other way. 

He sends a needy heart into your life through social media, because they have seen all other friends lost with the seasons. 

These are the sent--do you see them?

They are right here. 

Refuse to believe the lie that you have to be miles away from everything you know, to be used. 

It's time to love. Love these. Love the least of these. 

                                                                                                  

the right here

Word seep in and they seep out.

My soul lies barren to your open eyes, and it’s the closest you will come to this not-so vulnerable heart.

There is a quickening in my pace to do well and thrive here.

Right here.

Walking the concrete floors, picking up unwanted clothes, right here.

Fighting back the negativity that hangs over the heads of those around me, right here.

Loving the faces that compliment my waking hours, right here.

Loving comes easy when that is your forefront task, but sometimes we cloud our vision, we forget- no guilt, no questions asked.

We love the easily loved, not the unforgiving.

We love the familiar lands and the known ones, not the strangers.

We love on our good days, not the bad.

But we have the capacity to love the whole world, not just the unfamiliar nations that draw butterflies to scurry in our hearts, but the right here.

We have the capacity to love the right here, whether that is the patients that are lost in suffering, the customers that come in- not so much to buy things, but so as not to go back to their empty house. The not-easily loved, the people of our homes, our jobs, and our streets.

We have the capacity to love those, right here. 

Sometimes I think we hold out our hands, palms up and empty. We declare that our energies are used up enough for ourselves, than that of those about us. We pull out our pockets and stowaway all that is spare, and that doesn’t just mean our change- we throw out our spare love and kindness. We throw it away, because it just takes too much out of us.

I say all this, and I’m just as guilty as the next one.

The walls of my store are full of the not-easily loved, the people that use their bad days as reason for blatant rudeness- but if I return the same, what does that do?

Nothing.

I want to thrive here,

Remember?

I have the capacity to love the whole world.

And yes, my heart was built for Spanish-speaking land, pesos, kisses on the cheek for greeting, dirty faces and hands, Spanglish battles, hair pulled and tugged into braids, ten little babies screaming out Christina, enchiladas for breakfast and dinner, my heart was meant for Mexico.

But God constructed this life of mine, with this bit of transition in mind, before my feet stepped foot onto Mexican land.

He knew that my heart, quick to pack up bags and fly away, for months at a time…would need to be tested, He’d have to take me away.

Bills would have to be paid, work would have to be doubled, friendships would have to fade and I would have to do it all, right here.

Miles away, from the home my heart has come to know.

But doesn’t God deserve “our right here?”

The right here means those in-between moments, the mundane days, when we are just reaching from the beginning to get to the end.

He deserves that.

It isn’t about loving the easily loved, leaving behind our hearts on the fields of foreign travel, selfishly stowing away all that is spare.

It’s about the right here.

The not-easily loved, the streets we know as second nature, the homes we moved out of- to move back into for a spell, the smallest and insignificant part of our routine- the right here.

If we give him these moments, we trust him with the right here, I think one of these days he will bring out his projector and play out our life before our eyes, showing us that those right here moments were precisely when he used us the most.

I know maybe you aren't where you thought you would be, but don't be discouraged, there's more to this. 

So be used, little heart; be used in the right here.

And don’t you for a second-leave any last bit of love and kindness to spare. 

communing with written words...

It’s one of those days when darkness wants to creep in and take over my soul, and it’s just not letting go.

But I’m closing the night with the reality that I need to wake up, stand up, and hold my empty hands up.

I need to look up.

Because there is more to this, there really is.

Sure, I’m still waiting on that job, where my passion can finally rest, and my heart can finally feel at home.

I’m still begging for friendships to come up to me and hold me, to be known.

I’m still hoping for that some ‘one’ to maybe show some interest in me, for who I am, without the hopes of changing me.  Cause there’s still that little girl in me, that doesn’t want to live forever alone.

But life beckons me every sweetly still, and I have to think that there is more to this.

…That these things aren’t what it’s really about…

That instead it’s about becoming the beacon of love with twinkling blue eyes, it’s about holding someone up and getting them out of their demise.

It’s seeing their problems in the wake of my own.

It’s seeking God, in every last thing of this life of mine, so that His glory might be shown.

It’s coming to the realization that maybe He needs my hands emptied, pocket change all I have to spare, realizing that even in this, the mundane of dreams, He’s still right there.

It’s easy to fall into negativity when that’s all a heart is around, but I don’t want to live chained and bound. 

I want to wake up.

I want to stand up.

I want to speak up, live with empty hands held up.

And maybe I’ll just have to come here and commune with my words as I close the night, to remember these things, keep them tied around my wrists ever-so tight.