Rest & Finding Who I Am

Have you ever turned your ankle while dismounting your bike whilst wearing heels?

Haha, stop laughing.

You may have guessed that I did. Last Sunday.

You can't make this stuff up.

With an engagement directly after church and the habit of always biking to church...and the need to present myself in a certain way at said engagement after church I biked to church and post engagement...in heels.

Now they were just one inchers, and really a merger between kitten heels and wedges, so I felt just fine biking in them. The only problem is that they are pointy in the toe and I was afraid of scraping them on the pavement while pedaling. That never happened. Underestimating my speed at dismount and miscalculating the stability of my landing in said footwear, however, did happen. Were it not for the kindness of strangers in the middle of Chicago I would not have gotten home.

Have you experienced the desire to be at rest when it felt like you were in constant motion? Have you also experienced the desire to be in motion when you are finally forced to rest? All the things one could be doing instead of lying in bed with their foot up... I want to read when I can't read and now that it's nigh my only option...

So I'm thinking. Thinking on the many things that have transpired over the past two months. They've truly been quite wonderful months. I have done many things that have been scary to me. Some of them have been moments of large decision, some...small decisions that I consciously knew affected those that are larger and chose to say yes to the small scary, knowing that it is often the small "scaries" that add up and in turn influence the big "scaries".

I have chosen to be bold and vulnerable. I have been courageous and yet dependent. I have stepped out in leadership. I have tackled things I thought were only in a far off dream, or my distant future, but by God's severe mercy have been here and now.

As someone who has spent the majority of her life recoiling in fear and imprisoning herself in the confining cell of comparison...

Well, for understanding, here's an insight:

If you've ever taken the Strength's Finder Test, you'd know that Intellectualism 

is one of the many options for your Top Five. Having taken the test I was 

shocked to discover that it was my third quality, because I've not viewed 

myself as intellectually smart in a long time. 

I equate being an intellectual as someone who knows a lot, knows well what they 

know, and can articulately explain exactly what it is they know. 

I, however, lack the ability to swiftly craft sentences on the fly, stringing together

 scholarly words (heck even laymen's terms) that communicate exactly what I 

want to say. My brain is always a jumble of thoughts and ideas, questions and 

quandaries, worries and wonders. You know those scribbles of charcoal-colored 

mess that hover over the brains of characters in cartoons when they're frustrated, 

or can't communicate their anger? 

It's like that. 

Or, Oh!...

It's like a ball of yarn - but not one quite so tidy, wound up in nice circles before 

it's begun its use - strewn about the room by the curious paws of 

a playful kitten, the fibers coming undone from the carefully wound chord, then 

swiftly gathered together by the kitten's owner, aghast by the mess silly kitty has 

made, quickly crumpled in a tangled mess, for company is coming you know, 

and carelessly thrown into the yarn basket, where its chords become entangled with 

other strings, strands, and colors from other balls of yarn (the cat has a habit of making 

a mess directly before company) and it takes a substantial amount of time to find one 

strand and follow it, making sense of the jumbled mess of ideas, thoughts, indecision, 

worry, endless possibilities, probing inquiries...influenced by a deep (I mean deep) 

understanding of emotional i.q., feeding, feeling, and sensing the feelings 

and thoughts of others...this is my mind. When I open my mouth I feel as if 

the tangled yarn is revealed, and linear thought just doesn't compute. 

...and the thought that something may go horribly wrong so why try?, I have been training my mind to instead have the audacity of hope. This may go wrong...this truly may flop, and it could be incredibly embarrassing, but what if...WHAT IF it succeeds? What if this small step, which may produce not the best result still presents something good...which then grows to something better.

What if I try?

This new mindset has been incredibly freeing, and I cannot tell you the weight that this freedom relieves.

This freedom sheds death; it sends searching tendrils of hope that push through the weight of dust and soil and reach for the light.

This freedom searches for who I actually am, who in Christ I was made to be. 

So maybe I'm a storyteller. Maybe. And not the best of them around, but maybe my strengths do not lie in retaining facts or figures, spouting facts or figures, debating with the best of them, or even in being able to communicate my own strengths aptly. Maybe there is strength in emotion. Maybe there is sometimes strength in silence. Maybe there is strength in listening and observing, in pondering for days on end, in understanding people. Maybe there is beauty in a narrative, in raw emotion felt so deeply, that it translates into art, into communication beyond words, beyond just now.

Therefore, even amidst the pains of growth, I must find delight and joy in shaking off the dust and the chains that entangle and soar ever a bit more into the arms of my Savior. Further up and further in into the realization of a kingdom coming. A whisper heard in full. And a dream a reality.