These are my loves:

Connection with God

Singing

Sunlight in a forest

Deep blue lakes in summertime

Canoes cutting through the mist and quiet of early morning

Dancing

The golden warmth of sun on your skin

Laughter, especially when unexpected

Deep and intimate conversation

The wee hours of the morning, when time does not exist (but the best thoughts and conversation do)

Lights on a Christmas tree

Wind

Camping and Exploring

Getting muddy and dirty

Flying

Learning something new

Speaking a different language

Choral music

The Psalms

The moments just before you fall asleep

Olive oil

Candles

Poetry

Me, a single lifetime

What does one do when they come to a point where nothing seems familiar and nothing seems right? Oh, God is there, He does not sleep, but what of the times when He is silent? What of the times when there is discontent with life and the way it is? What of our dreams, our sincere desires, our curiousity and our zest for life? What of these? Are they to be muffled down and left out of sight and remembered only in our prayers that God would realise these dreams of ours one day? Are they a sign that we are not strong enough in faith to be content merely with Christ?

But where is ministry in the colour of leaves? Where is salvation in a mountain breeze? Where is sin in the Northern Lights, or Victoria Falls, or the vast stretches of ocean at night?

We are told that God is Beautiful, and perhaps we believe it, or rationalise to ourselves that we do. But why is there a guilt in pursuing the beauty of His creation, instead of devoting all goals to bringing souls to Him? Why must there be that choice? Why must we give up selfishness and the chasing after of our own desires--desires to see beauty, not to harm, desires which are good, and yet are not the very best. Is this but the complaint of a couch potato who cannot comprehend an Olympic Runner?

The truth is, I don't know what to do with my life. And I'm afraid to sit and moulder and wait for God to poke me in the right way. Restless restless restless as the breeze, with feet so itchy I wonder where the sensation stops and my foot begins.

I want to see the world! I want to be a million different people and things, and live a million different lifetimes.

Why the one, God?

It occurs to me that if my life and my writings were to be (falsely! Ridiculously! Blasphemously!) compared to the Bible, this blog would have been Esther, up to the point of this post. If you read what I have written here, not once should you find God's name. Yet, if you read what I have written here, not once could you separate what has gone on from God's plan. And this is where the comparison stops, for I am no Apostle, and this is no divinely-inspired, God-breathed message to a dying world. This is merely an eclectic, grandiose collection of thought which occasionally presents itself as wise and world-weary, but mostly just as pretentious.

Awesome!

Shadowed Companion

"The past, what we have done or not done, slips and flows, like a stream to a carved-out channel, into the things we do years after. It is never safe, or wise, to say that anything is over." --The Last Light of the Sun

Today I am a TCK. Today I am a Missionary Kid. Today, I am Global Nomad. Today, I am an International.

Most days though, I'm just A. I'm A, who just moved here, and is still slogging through the introductions and awkward impression-making. I'm A, who loves cooking and laughing and being outside. I'm A, who wants to work in medicine, exults in dancing, loves the colour green, and who is almost never late for anything. If it's a chore to relate my lifestory to others and wade through explanations and dodge the responding gasps, then it's also a chore to remember it everyday myself, beyond a vague, near-prideless knowledge that I am simply "different".

Today though, today I will be more than a tinge of unusual. Today I will remember who I am and where I come from and all those who have walked with me this far. Today I will glory in the knowledge of companionship in my solitude, and of kinship in my disconnect.

This was a clever title.

There is a particular strain of music which plays in my mind, the days I write here. This is not the entirety of who I am, in these small typed words and melancholic phrases, influenced as they are by contemplation and maudlin, beautiful compositions. This is not even the core of my being--can an amorphous stream have a core? But this is a moment of me, and in this moment, this is the entirety of myself and who I am.

This moment, the entirety of me is old, and tired, and already sitting outside that stream of life and relationships. When one is alone so much, it is easy to forget one's age, and even one's joy's and personality. Impersonalisation and detachment have ever been my peculiar talents.

And I have just become bored. Very suddenly. I think I shall go somewhere are read. Enough of this vanity!

It is finished. What is finished, they ask. I am. I am finished now, for I have given up want for the sake of wisdom. I have given up that which I desired most for the promise of a better future. On some level, I have died; an echo of a long line of choices, marching stoically on, armed with naught but unvalidated promises and fervent hopes has trodden over my many graves. But do not fear--there is much of me yet to die.
I wish it didn't have to be this way; that I could do what I want and still what I need, and both at the same time in the same manner. Is it a fault with me, that I want that which is not best for me? I hope so--personal faults can be corrected, but if it is a fault of the world, of man's purpose, then I fear I will never be freed of this my conflict. Will I always be of two minds? I think so. Even three, four, five minds--however many a situation demands. Will I ever be united within myself? Only in death, I believe. There is too much about life that is war for it to be elsewise.
I will trade my dream for gold--sell out my hope and love for the stability of the future. I am still young. Dreams are like young fruit on a young tree for me--numerous and bright and in a great abundance. I may yet sacrifice some of this fruit, but there will come a day when I can spare no more dreams to the fire, when I can let them tumble to the ground no more. For now, though, I will give and I will grieve and I will heal and be the better for it.
But first, let me grieve. I have already given. You cannot ask more.