it's been twenty-eight years [for the loves I have met along the way, a look back]

I am sitting in front of a blank page and in front of a new year.

Twenty-eight years have fallen from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. Twenty-eight years spent in desperate attempt at finding who I am in the likes of others and a host of wrong places, but twenty-eight years spent recognizing that the God of my parents could also be the God of my life, too.

Twenty-three years spent realizing that Jesus, that unknown man crying out on a cross on TV when I was just five was a real-life story, that it was nothing to be taken lightly.

The prayer that was prayed with my parents that day changed my life forever.

Eighteen years ago to this day, one of the biggest loves of my life baptized me on my tenth birthday. And I honestly think that is when everything started making sense. That’s when I realized the prayer that fell off my lips in hushed repetition when I was so young meant that I was choosing to live for more.

Thirteen years my heart has held a love for a country so out of my element, a love for a language so foreign to my grammatically correct English that refuses to shorten words, and a love for a people set apart to love the girl that used to just hide behind the scenes.

Because thirteen years ago, I found myself reveling in His presence at Rio Bravo Orphanage…I knew maybe thirty words in Spanish, but it didn’t seem to matter. The love that I left with for those kids; that love was GOD. I couldn’t have come up with it, myself.

Thirteen years of telling Jesus that I was okay with it just being us. One of those prayers that you pray, because you feel you have to; one of those prayers that people will tell you will erase the longing and will make you complete. But it never happened, not until I fully reckoned with what I was telling Jesus. Not until I realized that half-hearted, barely spoken-aloud prayers fall on deaf ears and that really Jesus has always wanted me to just be completely honest.

Ten years have been spent cowering in the midst of clothes and realizing that I am stronger than what myself and most others believe. Ten years spent surrounded by a cast of crazy characters that find hope in each other and respite in reveling in second-hand treasures with a coke in hand and a laughter that cannot be contained. Ten years of being adopted by a grandfather, a dear boy and a score of mothers who are convinced that while I have chosen a crazy life, they are always ready and waiting to take me back.

Ten years since having to figure out what living life on my own meant and understanding that while others may consider you and your table misfits and outcasts that you are okay with it, because that’s where you feel most known.

It’s been nine years since I found my feet stepping out of a van among a group of almost-strangers in what I would soon see as my forever home. Nine years since my dreams became adamant on living with an open door and an open heart for the children that refused to let me go after a few days time. And I would end up telling the world in an attempt to just get there and to just settle into what my heart knew was home. But it would be years, it would be years before anyone would really give a girl with a dream, bigger than logic, the time of day. There would be a constant battle of packing and unpacking, the sweetest of hellos and the harshest of goodbyes for a number of years before I would find myself making the Baja home.

It’s been nine or so years since I was teetering on the edge and off the radar, ten years of assuming that “my everything” existed in just one, the one that would come in and out of my life to his choosing.

It’s been eight years since I packed up all of my worldly belongings and said goodbye to my familiar, moving eight hours away to a place that I just happened to stumble upon online.

Eight years since finding true friendships, the kind of friends that walk into your life and in that very minute, you realize life will never be the same, whether or not you find yourselves meeting on a daily basis…life was changed as you knew it. And you were better for it. I was better for it.

Eight years since finding another home away from home in Highland, Indiana and loving on the people He gave me for a time.

Four years of teaching at a place that was just a city I couldn’t pronounce, the home of a beautiful cathedral and a building in the heart of the city that Max Lucado became fond of. And these four years, they are the ones that leave me speechless.

And a few months after my first time at NOE, I would give my dream a try…I would brave making my dream come true with a fellow heart. We were the teachers, the directors, the contractors and the drivers…and while I just knew nine years before that Baja was home…I would be tested, my heart would be open and exposed to a pain, a pain of missing the place that was just once a place on a map. It would be a time of trying to make it work, but realizing that God’s story for my life never once held finality and that He wasn’t done yet. People would tell me that I was giving up on my children and I was so hurt that I started to believe them. But if I look back, that fellow heart is still working for those babies that will always, always have a piece of my heart. She’s thriving. And I just needed to go there for the beginning; God took care of the rest of it.

Four years of experiencing healing and the finality that comes with realizing that “that one” was never enough. Realizing that there isn’t one that will ever be enough, because God is enough.

It’s been two years since I worked fifty-plus hours on average and tried living stateside for a time, just so I could return to my heart. But Jesus, He used that year. He used those students and that teacher and while you found rejection creeping back to you in the form of an email; He still received the glory.

It’s been a year of you having to leave earlier than expected, but the grace of God made sure that you returned. He made sure that while those were some of the most painful goodbyes, that hellos would take place just a few months afterwards.

It’s been almost a year since you ran your first half-marathon and finished your Master’s and those my dear girl are moments to be proud of, because you didn’t think you could do it, but with grace and God on your side you stomped on your own past running records and you successfully aced your Master’s program.

Two years of speaking up and speaking out before being asked and understanding that while I may have received a gift of words in written form, that sometimes God speaks words into my life that need to be spoken, rather than written and stowed away for a rainy day.

And hey, twenty-eight, I think a could write a book about the life you have seen up to this point and it’s on the list for the near future, but until then, make sure you understand that life isn’t meant to be spent living in the shadows, nor is it to be spent alone with your books. You lived that life for a time, because fear kept your heart on lockdown.

But those moments of stepping out up to this point have been worth it. My how they have been worth it. Those are the moments that you will always look back upon, those are the moments that will at some point grace the pages of your book…because your story started when you started letting people in. Your story started when you began to understand that there is so much more to this life than you. Your story started when you understood that your perfection pales in comparison to the perfection of your Maker, the only one who truly knows you.

Gratitude fills my heart, because my parents are my two biggest cheerleaders. Their constant presence these past twenty-eight years have molded me into the woman that I am, today. Thank you Mom and Dad for giving me over to Jesus since my first day on this side of Heaven, thank you for cheering on my dream even when it’s something so out of the ordinary. Thank you for passionately seeking God and for being my two prayer warriors from the very beginning. Thank you, dear brother, for inspiring me, for loving me and for sitting with me in the mess and chaos. Your presence, some twenty-something years ago, is a gift that I refuse to discount. Grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles, cousins….my family, I also have you to thank. Thank you for loving me and wrapping me up in your embraces all these years.

And for you, the one on the other side of these no longer empty pages, wherever we met, you, too, played a significant role in my life. Thank you for the years or simply the season of being for me. Thank you, because these twenty-eight years wouldn’t be the same without you. And may you know, that maybe it has been years since last seeing each other, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t still on my heart, that doesn’t mean you have been erased from my prayers and my memory. You are still ever with me and I am who I am today, first because of God’s grace and then because of you.