a heart's call

"After all my job is to believe without wavering. 

His job is everything else."

Katie Davis

I think of the wearied sun-beaten mothers speaking truth over my soul and heart with their singing Spanish.

I think of the children, their chocolate-candied eyes brimming over with glee, screaming my name at the top of their lungs.

I think of the blazing sun, leaving imprints on my porcelain skin during the walk to the center, the one that stole my unassuming heart by surprise. 

Yes, Mexico, you've had my heart since I was fifteen. 

My waking, sleeping and dreaming moments have all been spent with you in mind. 

Pictures of you are plastered on the walls of my room and my soul, stowed to be forever kept. 

The children that latched themselves to my side, forgiving my four-word vocabulary. 

The little ones that we tried to feed, but instantly ran off to feed the twelve others tending to home.

The mothers and the fathers, whose stomachs were always empty, but hearts always full. 

The students that taught me more than I could ever teach them. 

I think of these and those. 

My heart can't resist the pull, the tug- to leave.  

It beats for the city of a million, and the always-loud streets. 

My heart beats for students to rise up and out of their circumstances, but not just that- it beats for them to feel drawn to MORE. That they'd feel drawn to the quiet voice of their Maker calling them home, to wave the white flag of surrender and to come as they are. 

And so, I'm left believing that support will come, that it's coming. 

I'm believing that I will go, that I am going. 

Every last thing that I need will be given in His sweet, perfect time. 

Every last penny, every last dime. 

I picture the future with a bright colored house and revolving doors.

Always having enough, never wanting more. 

I see the chocolate-candied eyes at home

without a need or a want to run away, to roam. 

And I'll be loving, holding nothing back, 

I'll be all things, and not what I lack. 

My hands will hold more than one, 

my heart will be full, my spirit sweetly broken and soul, undone. 

I'll be where, I'm needed. 

The call, will be heeded. 

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promises for the runaways

Your weak in the knees, your heart's bent for all it has seen.

And you stumble, yes, on the not-so-good days, you stumble begging for the light.

Cause your day has been dark and plagued with moments, draining the life out of you.
You're nothing but an empty shell, crying out to be filled again.

you've exhausted your prayers and God, He, seems to be scarce.

He's out of sight, but not out of mind.

Because deep in the dusty crevices of your heart, you know
His promises have been kept quaintly to His word.

You know it to be true, don't you?

You've seen the wilderness before; you've walked the dusty roads
and on into rejoicing.

Because Your Maker, He's always been,
&
He's always been enough.

His love is never silenced.
It's always singing.

Call out. Cry out.
Awake from your sleep, sweet child.

he'll come.

He always comes.

Those tears you've poured out onto your pillow are counted.
Those cries that have fallen onto deaf ears are heard.
Those struggles are known.
Those hidden pieces of your heart longing for love are seen.

You run.
You run the opposite way.

You run to people.
You runaway.

You run to drink.
You runaway.

You run to an immediate release.
You runaway.

But God runs to you.
He holds out His arms and whispers to you,
"run the opposite way, child.

Give up those things that have a hold on you, because when you run to them,
you're really looking for me.
Only I can fill the empty shells and breathe life to dry bones.
You're empty and oh so broken, but all is not lost.

All never was lost."

I wonder if you hear Him.
Do you hear Him?

I wonder if you feel Him.
Do you feel Him?

I can't imagine the loss you've experienced, the pain you've known, the words you've been dealt.
But your Maker knows all things. He has seen it all and He is ready to redeem you out of your dust.
Stop running the opposite way. Your past has been redeemed. You are loved.

You are loved to the core of your being. The parts of you still crying out for change.
The parts of you that still won't relinquish full control. He loves even those.
He loves all of you.

Run His way. 

He's waiting for you, love. 

worth fighting for

What dreams have you silenced? 

What lies have you received?

What have you done to the whimsical child-like heart of yours 

that used to twirl in the torrents of rain?

Maybe you lost it all, when people that walked in, quietly walked out on you. 

Maybe your heart broke in two, without remedy, when someone didn't fight for you, but you fought to the death for them. 

Nostalgia creeps in the crevices of your heart. 

It reminds you of friendships that were founded on truth, those that held your hand in the darkest hours. 

Emptiness quaintly enters in, and you look for reprieve. 

But times are hard, just when you think they're good, they become harder. They loosen your grip on the mountaintop and cry out for you to surrender, to let go. 

But God of the good days comes ever-so quietly into your bad days. 

He wakes you from your swollen-eyed slumber. 

He steps out of the darkness, to hold you. 

and He doesn't just hold you. He holds your heart. His arms reach around you, to the tips of your fingers, to the beating of your heart and the cries of your soul, and He holds you. 

You don't know how to pray, cause there are certain things that you don't have the answer for, you never will. But God graces you with strength, He graces you with His presence. 

He tells you it's all gonna be okay, one of these days, there will be no more tears, there will be no more fighting- to be known. 

You'll be with Him, and He'll be all you need. 

Depression and death will be conquered. FOREVER CONQUERED. 

Dreams will have their way, because you were made for more. 

You'll enter into a church and you'll be welcomed to tell your story. You'll be told that this time, people are fighting for your dream to become reality. You'll sit with tears standing in those already, swollen eyes of yours, because what you're being told, is something you've searched the depths of the seas for, it's what you've waited for. 

Your dusty prayers and traces of tears from ten years, all had purpose. All those goodbyes that left your heart spent when stepping on the plane, had a purpose. 

Every last thing had a purpose. 

And now you aren't alone fighting for your dream. 
People are leaving the shadows and surrounding you with support. 

People see you. God sees you. 

And maybe those people you poured yourself into, yes, maybe they're gone. 

But child, He sees you. He has you. 

He bottled the tears on your pillow. He kept count. He never lost track. 

The country He made you for, He's taking you there. He is taking you there. 

It's real. 

Stop doubting. He fights for you. He fights for your dream. 

lies of being left

I wonder if I sat down in a room of people caught up in the torrent of their twenties and asked for lies to be outlawed what would happen.

I wonder if I asked the questions, nobody wanted to ask, themselves- who if any, would silently nod their head in agreement, or heed the need to let their voice be heard.

How many feel like you're flailing amidst passion and responsibility, fight or flight?

How many feel like you're the battle-scarred and bruised, with no sign of reprieve?

How many feel like you're the leftovers?

Am I the only one?

I stood before the mirror today and I let myself get lost in thought. I reckoned with truth and out came words that needed to be written, immediately. There was no saving this for later, because otherwise I'd be scared to death to own up to it.

My heart feels like it's leftovers, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

These transitional twenties have left you barely breathing, you're weaker than when you were barely crawling.

In your heart, you look about you, friends are mothers and fathers, with sons and daughters. And yes, you'd be the first to admit you aren't ready for parenthood. But sometimes, you have to wonder. Wonder why your hands have to be left and deemed empty, why you can't seem to find someone to share your passion.

And then you think, all the more, and you're the friend that broke the silence, that danced in the rain, but you've become leftovers. The truest of friends have quietly whisked themselves onward and outward, and maybe you are partly to blame, but you are ALONE. They've gone, they come in and out, but it's not the same anymore, is it?

You are fond memories kept and stowed away in vintage cigar boxes, you are the notes that might rise up out of dusty drawers for one last look, you are the past, and all that you've become is leftovers.

And in my heart of hearts, I know this isn't true of me, or you.

But goodness, I'd be lying to tell you my throat didn't catch when the unacknowledged lie reared its ugly head. I'd by lying to tell you that I'm okay, alone. I'd by lying to tell you that I don't hurt sometimes, at how quickly friendships have faded, forever. But even still, I'm socially awkward, it's like I'm paralyzed, longing for friendships, but having forgotten what it means to befriend someone in person. I'm longing for it, but then I'm too tired to fight for it.

Is this any of you?

Maybe it's just me.

But I don't know, I feel like someone else might have needed to hear these words.

What it comes down to is, this, you aren't leftovers. You might have been left, sweet one.
But that means nothing in the grand scheme of things, NOTHING.

God hasn't walked away, child. He hasn't and He won't. I know that rejection hurts and leaves your heart stalling, too afraid to keep beating, but love, YOU. ARE. HIS.

He claimed you. He has you. Wherever you are. Whatever you are doing.

I'm begging you'll stand up with me tonight, let's be honest, it hurts, we're broken, but all is not lost.

Because praise Jesus, we are His redeemed first loves, overcome the lie, you aren't leftovers.

People Move Me

I wonder if I could take away the furrowed brow, that tells me that you're trying to conquer this world with the burdens on your shoulders.

I wonder what I could do.

You're lost in an abyss, fighting the temptations alone, and I'm here on the other side and well, you're barely known to me. But that doesn't mean that I haven't been sleepless, that my pillow hasn't been covered in tears.

There's something about you.

Tears well up in my eyes, because I knew before you told me, that you were struggling.

Sometimes, I'd give anything for intuition not to befriend me, just once.

Cause, there are times when I know you're hurting and I'm powerless to change anything.

For years, it's been this way.

I meet the people behind their names and I'm overcome.

I'm in awe of the love that rises up within me for strangers. I long to know their stories. I long to feel their pain with them.

My fingers caress the keyboard to carry out the emotions I feel and penn the words, meaningless to many, it's all I know. But sometimes, a blank document seems to understand me the best.

The sage ones tell me not to take on the pain of others, to ignore their problems, to think about myself. But the blank document doesn't fight back. The quiet times spent with Jesus, remind me that I'm blessed with this burden for a reason, unknown to myself. That sure, it's heartbreaking, but I shouldn't ignore it.

And so here I sit, and I think of the boys, the survivors of depression, that awakened a sense of love in me, I think of the men, who've lost themselves to loneliness and addiction, and I long to fight for them.

I think of the women, skin-stained and wrinkled from the love of the Sun, and I long to take the burdens off their shoulders. I think of those darling ones, that'd do anything to cover up their scars and hide behind the mantra, all is well.

I long to sit with the bruised and battered, hand clasped in mine, and a cup of coffee in the other.

I long to pour love over their loveless hearts, speak truth over the piles of lies, and guide them out of their messes.

But then I have to reckon with reason and the truth to everything, I'm not the fixer. 

I can't fix that boy-man, lost in a field of loneliness and addiction. I can't stand him up on his feeble, trembling knees, but I can kneel at the throne, with his name on my tongue and surrender.

I can surrender him over to the Fixer of souls, the Keeper of hearts.

I can't carry that skin-stained woman home and erase the abuse that's left her forever changed. But I can  quietly give her over to her Maker, and remember that He alone, can save her.

I can't feed every hunger child and house all of the homeless, but I can fall to my knees and pray for the nameless. I can pray for their stomachs to be filled, their souls to be housed, and the lost to be found.

God's the fixer.

And for some crazed reason, He's given me eyes to see people in a different light. A light that sometimes means, I can't stop thinking of people, unknown or known to me. A light that means, I feel their hurt in ways unfathomable to me.

And so, today. The boy-men are on my heart, that they might conquer addiction, once and for all. For the women, with their little girl dreams, that they might feel worth and love to the core of their being and the corners of their souls. My prayers go out to the nameless that I've seen on the street corners. My prayers are with those that I have stumbled upon on Twitter, the hearts that I've yet to meet in person.

Because God made me to love people.

So I will love people.

I will hurt with them, and for them.

I will love them until there's nothing left of me.

Rejected, but Rising...

I was trembling.

Inside and out.

Shaken to the core, that something I had merely given a chance had all but collapsed in front of me.

I didn’t even ever claim it to be a dream of mine, but it had just come down to what do I do?

SO I threw myself into something and heaved upon it great expectations.

But rejection came in the form of three paragraphs, with no personal explanation.

It came on a day, when I was working and unashamedly refreshing my email for the 6:00 EST time of arrival.

A day, when I had already surrendered the outcome on my morning commute, but even still, to say the pangs of rejection weren’t felt in the depths of my heart and soul, would be a lie.

And so two little women walked me up the stairs and sat me down, and began to speak their truth. They refused the rejection and buried it into the ground with the hope for better things, newer things. They sang of future triumph and joy, all wasn’t lost.

I sat in my heap of tears. I sat and listened. I longed for reprieve.

I muttered to myself that I was a walking contradiction.

How could I surrender the outcome just a few hours ago and still be torn to pieces?

But even so, the tears wouldn’t let up.

The sobs wouldn’t escape into oblivion.

Those two had to leave and so I continued to sit in silence. Until another woman unlocked the office door and before she could say anything, she just came up and held me. She held me with all of her might.

She painted a picture of hope rising and instilled within me that this just wasn’t a part of His plan. She reminded me with the twill of her British accent, that I was still needed here. That for some reason, things weren’t coming, progress wasn’t being made, because I needed to wait. I needed to rest. I needed to hope.

She walked me through the pain with her soft-spoken, beautifully blunt words and all but refused the power this lie of rejection had over me.

I saw Jesus that day. I heard Jesus that day.

He didn’t come in the form of a burning bush telling me what to do next, nor where to go.

He came in the form of a British woman going out of her way to avoid work for thirty minutes and just hold me.

He spoke through her in that tiny office and he went out of His way to remind me that it was okay to hurt for a time, but I couldn’t hold onto to it in the days to come.

He used her to tell me to rise.

To rise and refuse, that this was all there would be.

Jesus came to me that day in the form of three women customers, who I’ve known for years, wrapping me up in words of wisdom and offering their hope to take the place of my hopelessness.

Jesus came to me in the form of strangers, huddled in prayer, acknowledging the pain of something lost, and the beginning of stumbling onto more to be found.

I saw Jesus. I heard Jesus.

And on that day, when I thought, talks of moving somewhere in the states would begin; I stumbled onto something even more beautiful.

I felt rejection, but I felt hope rising.

I felt alone, but I was held in the arms of many.

On that day, rejection came to me in the form of a letter, but Jesus came to me in the form of His people.

I don’t know where you are as you read this, but I have a feeling rejection has come to you. It’s been received in the form of paragraphs or implied by friendships faded. It’s been the unrequited love that has kept you up at night.

Whatever it’s been, I know I haven’t been the only one dealt it.

Maybe depression has stolen someone close to you, left them to be but an empty shell- and all of you has cried out for truth to take its hold. Maybe you’ve longed to be the fixer of all that is broken, and you’re just now figuring out that that is entirely impossible, improbable.

Darling, you may have the best intentions, but you can’t fix souls. You can’t revive empty shells. You just can’t.

But you have access to the fixer. You have access to the Keeper of Souls, the Guarder of Hearts. You have access to the Bearer of all Baggage. You have access to the Healer of all Sickness.

Your Maker has power over depression. He calls people out of death, TO RISE.

Do you know that?

Do you know Him?

Do you know that He has set out to build a home, one where sadness cannot touch you, where depression cannot taint you, and where brokenness must avoid you?

He built you a home.

And He waits to eliminate the traces of rejection in whatever form they came to you, with His truth.

You can overcome, because He overcame.

So little one, RISE, and lose yourself in prayers for the hearts of those dear to you that they will find the courage to RISE, TOO.

glancing at my scattered heart...

And here I sit, beneath your feet, humbled that you would grace me with your presence, time and again.

Humbled that your love would rock these faltering knees up to a standing position, and awaken my eyes to stare at my fears without the desire to flee.

But that’s what you do, isn’t it?

You take away fears and strongholds with an ease that only belongs to you, Sweet Jesus.

You overcome.

You overcame what seeks to overcome me. And by your grace, I can overcome.

I can stare down my fears and remain standing with them in sight.

Cause your voice calls out to me.

It welcomes me back into the arms of your truth and ever so gently, you whisper fear has no hold over me.

You sing over me with delight.

You revel in my scatterbrained presence and you tell me, oh you tell me, I’m enough.

You pick up the pieces of my mess and you love me in spite of it.

The stigmas the world has attached on me mean absolutely nothing.

The rejections men have spoken over my heart have no hold on me.

I’m yours.

You overcame all of this, Jesus.

You overcame my heartache. 

You overcame the gaping wound of my heart that cries out to be home for good. 

You overcame the trivial mess that attempts to conquer my days. 

You overcame the loneliness that threatens my content heart in the middle of the night, when all is quiet and truth is far. 

You overcame my voice that feared speaking and you taught me how to speak.

You overcame. And because you overcame, I can overcome.

I used to convince myself that I had to wait. I had to remain paralyzed in one position before your voice called out of a burning bush where you needed to take me. I thought I needed to remain inactive for you to move within me, but sometimes I have to move in the midst of uncertainty to find what is certain.

And so with that being said, today, March 14^th, 2013, my life could go one of two ways. All I ask, is that “you lead me where my trust is without borders, let me walk upon the waters, wherever you would call me, take me deeper than my feet could ever wander, that my faith would be made stronger in the presence of You, my Savior.”

The beautiful thing I can rely on is that you already know the outcome.

You planned it into being, when you formed my heart from your very hands.

Today is your day, Jesus. I will rejoice and be glad in it.

I will overcome, because you overcame.

I will follow, where you lead me.