Leave

This post is going to be a little self-reflection, not really the typical "here's-what-I've-been-doing-in-Africa."  So, if you don't care to listen to my rambling, I hope this encourages you. 

The following in a excerpt from Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller. He posted this today on his blog, and it just really touches upon a lot of the things I have been thinking about during my time here in Arusha.  I think this post was meant for me.  Here is the blog post.  Enjoy, maybe it will speak to you too.

"Here is something I found to be true: you don’t start processing death until you turn thirty. I live in visions, for instance, and they are cast out some fifty years, and just now, just last year I realized my visions were cast too far, they were out beyond my life span. It frightened me to think of it, that I passed up an early marriage or children to write these silly books, that I bought the lie that the academic life had to be separate from relational experience, as though God only wanted us to learn cognitive ideas, as if the heart of a man were only created to resonate with movies. No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath:

I’ll tell you how the sun rose

A ribbon at a time . . .

It’s a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn’t matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were . . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be.

So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God.

We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?
It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.

I want to repeat one word for you:

Leave.

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed."

I have struggled with the idea of creating my own story since I read Donald's book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years a few years ago.  With the nudge from his beautifully written prose, I continually ask myself, "Am I living a good story?"  I have to admit, living in Arusha has not been the easiest thing.  I have realized since my time abroad how dependent I am on certain people in my life; I count on them to affirm me, make me feel important, and define my worth.  Now while I am not saying it isn't important to have great people in your life who do these things for you, I have come to realize that in the end, I have to be strong enough on my own, bold in my endeavours, and love myself regardless of what others say or do. I have to be confident in who I am.  I have to be unafraid to write a good story. 

I'm thankful that I am writing a story that involves some coming and going. 

My story involves hanging out with eighteen incredible children in Nepal, playing with kids in a low-income neighborhood in Wingate, North Carolina.  A part of my story is about spending countless lazy afternoons on the lake with my family, and hiking the Natural Bridge in Kentucky with some of my best friends.  My story involves praying with one of my best friends before she walks down the aisle to a man who makes her happier than I have ever seen her.  My story involves laughing so hard, I cry.

I'm thankful my story includes friends who drive to my moot court competition just to be there, even though they have no idea what I will be talking about for twenty minutes.  I can never thank this group of crazy-wonderful chracters who unconditionally love me, through all my mistakes and messes, who call me out when I need some accountability and cheer me on when I triumph.  I'm grateful my story showcases a family of amazing individuals who collectively believe in me and my abilities, even when I sometimes don't see my own potential, and encourages me to do anything and everything I could ever set out to do. 

I'm glad I am writing a new chapter.  A chapter about leaving...

I'm thankful that by the grace of God, I left Kentucky, my little bubble, for this internship and experience.  I have seen beautiful sunrises and sunsets, mountains, and lakes; I have witnesses the beautiful scene of grace and reconciliation in Rwanda during my time there; I have been accepted into an international family of young people who are going to do incredible things with their lives, things that will change the world; and I have felt myself grow in ways I never imagined. 

My prayer is that there will be other opportunities to leave, whether that be physically leaving some place or the opportunity to close one door and step through another.  I want to continue to learn and build authentic, real relationships with the people in my life.  I hope that I am able to see only good in others, to love unconditionally and without judgment.  And most of all, I am truly grateful that leaving is never easy.  This strange step involves not only the boldness to go into the unknown, but the ability to let go in faith that regardless of how far I go, it's never alone. 

I'm thankful for a beautiful reminder this morning, the gentle nudge to live life to the fullest, to be a part of a beautiful story.