Why I Go Home for Thanksgiving

I know I recently promised a tell-all of the abandoned buildings I've thoroughly explored in the last 12 months.. that blog is still coming. I just decided that maybe this post needed this broken window from an old early 1900s school I explored... twice. That's a whole big story in and of itself, though. When I get around to typing it up for you, I'll be sure to include the disappearing idol and having to army crawl through tall grass at top speed while praying for invisibility. 

Isn't it interesting how much light can come through a broken window? If it was a whole window but a dirty window.. not near as much light would be able to come through it. One thing I've learned during my abandoned excursions are 1) Broken windows are always your friend. 2) Day time is always the best time. When you don't have any electricity, sunlight is the next best thing. Also.. exploring at night is really obvious to any passer-by. One little light dancing in the window of something that's sat "untouched" for 50 years is a little suspicious. 

All that is to say... sometimes God breaks out the windows of my heart. He replaces them later, of course, but sometimes the necessary things are painful and messy. 

My heart has been doing a little better since my last post. 

I think after time at home with my family, things will be much improved. I've felt a little suffocated lately and I think a little break and breathing will be just what the doctor ordered. 

If you've followed my blog for any length of time, you'd know that Thanksgiving is one of my very favorite holidays to be home. My family is just wonderful and so any time we can get the whole bunch of us under one roof for a while, is a wonderful time. 

I'm beyond words excited to head home. I'm kinda imagining myself to be like one of those cartoon characters who crashes to a stop and is all bent out of shape and dead looking. Just on my insides, though. I'm very thankful for the life I have and the place I'm in and the people I have. I'm VERY blessed. I love my church, I love my church people. 

I'm just really excited to be around the people who love me best. Where I can ask for a glass of water and receive it without anyone telling me I'm needy. Where kitchen cleaning inevitably turns into a dance party and it isn't uncommon to be awoken by someone bringing you a hot cup of coffee just the way you like it. Where we are so loathe to leave each other's company in the evening, we fall asleep on the couch and slowly drag ourselves to our rooms at 2 in the morning. Where you fall asleep to the smell of the woodstove and wake up to the sound of someone stoking the fire and adding another log. 

Home is where whipped cream comes in liquid form at first and only becomes whipped cream by the act of being whipped. 

Home is where your contact solution goes missing because someone else forgot to bring theirs and you accidently left yours out in the open. Home is where mom assigns everyone 3 hand-wash dishes after dinner which adds up to 30 dishes that wouldn't fit in the dishwasher and you just kind of hope that there's actually only 17 dishes and there isn't enough for you.. but then you end up doing five and it doesn't even look like you did any. 

Home is where you can play Age of Empires with 7 friends and still have too many friends for the maximum game capacity. Where reading Calvin and Hobbes, Foxtrot and Garfield are a perfectly acceptable way of spending your afternoon. Also, sleeping is very respected. Even if 14 people are in the house and someone fell asleep on the couch.. the lights get turned off and the person gets covered with a blanket and then used as a pillow. 

Home is where you can count on unlimited hugs and getting your shoulders rubbed and your split-ends trimmed. Home is where laughter is in abundance and hiccups are inevitable. 

I like home.  I will be home soon. 

When the Boat Springs a Leak

It was just yesterday morning that I realized that a lot of my short snapchats to people are not laced with thankfulness and positivity.
I realized this because I woke up to a response that said, "You poor dear." Or something to that affect. 

I've been taking some nice little knock-out potions before bed lately, and so it's almost like I don't even have memories from the night before sometimes. So, with snapchat, the snaps disappear after a certain amount of seconds and when you send one, you don't get a chance to take it back OR know what you sent if you forgot.

SO , for whatever thing I complained about two days ago that elicited the response "poor Fern" was probably not worth complaining about if I don't remember what it was. But then I got to thinking, "Gee... am I just a really negative person lately? And I think I concluded that, yes, I probably have been.

I mean, I know the internal state of my heart lately, and I've been trying to keep it under wraps and hidden and stuff, but who am I kidding? I can't hide anything in my heart any better than I can keep my kitchen sink free of dishes. 

Sometimes, too, my heart gets worse before it gets better. That's where I've been lately. Now that I have my job, The Lord is working on some things that just need some adjustments.

The way my job works, I'm able to listen to whatever I want as I work on cases or wait for paperwork to come in or whatever. It's been nice, I've listened to HOURS upon hours of sermons. Different pastors, different topics.. it's been amazing. Honestly, I've spent more time listening to sermons lately than I have on social media.. which is like... #LifeGoals.

I've had really good hours spent at home with the Lord, too. Sitting, listening, journaling, listening. It's been raw and honest and good.
That being said, you'd think being SO saturated in Truth and Challenge, my heart would be on cloud 9, right?

I feel like Jacob, wrestling with God in the darkness, waiting for Daybreak to come. But the thing is, I don't even know what I'm wrestling with God about and I already feel defeated anyways.
I mean, I've told God I give up a lot of times at this point. That means I surrender, right? I thought it did. But, there hasn't been any relief or overwhelming sense of freedom and joy and peace. 

I'm beginning to wonder if there is something to surrendering that I haven't comprehended yet. Because I feel like "giving up" has worked for me in the past, but for as many times as I've told the Lord that I give up, it's not even really an option because if I don't keep actively pursuing Truth and fighting for the joy that I know is out there somewhere, I'd be defeated I think.

But I am, currently, defeated.

But I've also been defeated for a long, long time. You know? Like, not being employed, being a bum on society really defeated me. To the bottom of my heart I felt like I really had no good purpose for anything. I didn't feel like I had any right to be living in Des Moines, enjoying an apartment with a swimming pool and hot-tub without working myself into exhaustion and "deserving" it.

You know? Like, I wasn't a "real adult" in the "real world".. I was just a bum, staying the day in my apartment applying for jobs.. but that doesn't make you worth anything when that's all you're doing with your life, right? People don't ask you anything about your heart or your art projects or your quiet times or your latest adventures when you're unemployed. They only ask you how the job hunt is going because that's all that really matters, I think. All I wanted was a job so I could count, you know? And I thought when I finally achieved employment and an income, I'd feel like I counted or was worth something.

Now when people ask me what I do, I get to say, "I work with Roth IRAs and inspect the paperwork to make sure people's social security payment requests are in good order and then I issue their contracts." I have a whole important-sounding thing I get to say about my life.

Having a job is like having a resume for life. Now when people ask me what I do, I hear it like, "Why do you matter to society?" My answer "Job searching" was more like me saying, "I'm working on mattering to society but I'm not there yet." And NOW I can say I matter because old people need their social security payments.
That's nice, right? I should be happy. And proud. And happy.  Right? Am I wrong? I feel like I'm right.

What have I to complain about anyways? My team is awesome, my job is ideal, my pursuit of the Lord has been intentional and consistent and my Christian fellowship has been encouraging. So the formula is perfect for a full and overflowing cup. All the ingredients are there.

But somewhere in the bottom of my heart, I still don't feel like I've quite earned my worth just yet. And that's funny because I KNOW in my head and in my heart that my worth only truly comes from the Lord. I'm 100% fully aware of my identity in Christ and my value in His eyes. I know the Lord sees me as valuable even when the world does not. The Lord fights for me, I know. The Lord has brought me out of a lot of deep, dark valleys before brought me into a spacious place because He delights in me.

The Lord has done obvious, big impressive things to make me aware of His love and intentions for my life. So I know, deep down, that one day I won't be surrounded by darkness. Some day. At this point, though, my present and my future are far too dark to even know if I'm going the right direction to get out of the valley, you know?

My pastor used to talk about a dark night of the soul. Where everything can be just fine and your heart still cannot comprehend joy. And perhaps that is just where I am. In the dark. But with God, too. His light casts out the dark, right? Perhaps in heaven, but for now, on earth, I feel like I'll be in the dark more than in the light even if I never take one step away from the Lord.

While I don't have joy and peace.. I do have hope. A deep unmoving hope anchored to a foundation that will not move. A lamp that never quite flickers out.

I've felt like the disciples, too. The part where they wake up Jesus and say, "Lord, don't you even care if we drown in this storm?"  For as much as I judge those guys for not having faith when they straight up had Jesus in the boat with them, I'm just exactly like them. Perhaps because a good deal of the disciples had been in a boat a million times before and they knew when it was time to panic about the situation. They weren't sissys, afterall. They were competent sea-men with muscles and the know-how to handle their boat in the water. But there's an appropriate time to panic, right? The Bible says the boat was taking on water.

Maybe they had faith that whole time. Maybe the storm was going on for hours and they battled it for a good long time and were pretty much exhausted before they noticed the boat was straight up sinking.. like actually going down, and that's the point they were like, "Hey Lord.. this is a real bad situation that needs some help. Like.. wake up and DO SOMETHING because we got no other option." And I feel like that sometimes. Where it's like, "Okay Lord, you're in the boat with me, so that's good. You can walk on the water if I don't have the boat, so that's good. BUT I know me and I know my limits and I know that after I've battled a storm in my boat for a good long time, if I lose the boat I'm not gonna have the strength to swim in the sea in the middle of a storm. I'm not going to be treading water or making my  way to shore or even attempting either of those things. So.. save the boat if you wanna save me."

I'm really gaining a lot of insight into the dipsticks in the Bible, actually. The more I look at my life, the more I see myself in the other guys' boots. Jacob was wrestling with the Lord and I'm like, "Yeah, I'ma struggle 'til the sun comes up because I'm alone and I got nothing by night-time ahead of me."

And I'm like, "Jesus, I'm about to drown.. in case you missed that part while you were sleeping. Feel free to calm the waves and the wind anytime.. no pressure but.. the boats been leaking and it's barely floating."

And I'm like, " Hey God.. been wandering in the wilderness for a while. I've seen you do big things before.. but it's been a while and the daily Manna has tasted pretty good.. it was pretty great to start.. but anytime you wanna point me towards the original goal.. the original plan for my future... the promised land goal.. that one.. any time.. you can lead me there anytime now."

And you may as well call me Mara while you're at it because I'm a little bitter. I've noticed that. I don't really fully comprehend why at this point.. but if we're being honest, you can add that to the list.

And sometimes I'm one of the blind baggers on the roadside.. just sitting, not seeing. And sometimes, I see myself as Jonah.

I always prayed in college that I would never ever be a Jonah. Jonah went the opposite way on purpose. And God tracked him down real quick.And then he did the right thing and kept waiting for things to happen the way he wanted them to happen. He say waiting long enough for a tree to grow big enough to shade him from the sun and die from a worm problem.. that's a REALLY long time to sit and wait for God to do something.

I really hope I'm not Jonah. But sometimes I wonder if I am.

Either way, I'm waiting for something to happen, I think. I couldn't tell you what exactly.. maybe just my heart to be filled with joy down to the bottomest places. Maybe that's all I want. But I'm waiting and sometimes it's hard to tell if I'm looking the right direction to see what God is doing.