yoga and other things...

"There are moments that I feel, suddenly, lucky and thankful and shocked at how happy I am. 

I have called this the hardest season of my adult life, which it is, and it's not what I had 

planned in the least, but it is also a secretly beautiful, special season at the same time. 

It's hard, because some relationships still feel broken, and because we have no money, 

and because I am afraid, sometimes, about the future, but at the same time, 

I surprise myself with how okay it is and how okay I am with not knowing exactly what

 will come next." -Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines

A year in and I still don't know what I'm doing in Colorado. The whole reason I moved out here in the first place was because I just knew I was supposed to. There was something here for me and also something deep in my intuition telling me to go and find it. I used to think that a strong intuition and the sense to follow it was something that everyone had. I have since learned that is not true and in turn learned to trust it even more, not without discretion, of course. After all, if you know me, you know I have a flare for dramatics from time to time. But if we are all just being honest here, which I think we are, some days it feels like my intuition led me here, dropped me off at the welcome center, wished me luck, and kept driving.

A lot of the time I have no clue what I am supposed to do now. I'm clueless. And I'm not talking Beverly Hills, Alicia Silverstone, matching plaid outfits kind of Clueless. No, I'm talking about the clueless that if you think about it for too long you start to get that deep gut fear that you hope you're not wasting your opportunities and your experiences and your life because you don't even know what you're supposed to be looking for.

I started writing this post exactly one month ago and boy have things changed. Not changed in like I know what I want to do with my life kind of way but changed in like the its funny how quickly the ebb and flow of contentment and anxiousness change. Even though a month later I still don't feel any closer to knowing why I moved here I am in a season of serious ease about the whole thing.

I think over the past month or so I have started to feel my roots grow more here. Sometimes it can feel like they are growing here but maybe at the expense of them becoming shallow in other places. I started practicing yoga a few weeks ago. In my never so humble opinion, if you can find anything that makes you dig a little deeper into yourself and reflect on what your outlook on life is at the moment, I think you need to hop on that train as quickly and as often as you can. That's what yoga has been doing for me so I can dig it.

Anyways, tonight as I was laying in Savasana, AKA corpse pose AKA laying on your back with your eyes closed and palms to the sky AKA the way I sleep every night, my mind started to do what its not supposed to do and was wandering, but what can I say, I'm a ~*~ReBeL~*~. I'll take you through my train of thought now, try to keep up. I started with thinking how good it feels to just lay on your back on a wood floor, what if I slept on the floor?, I hate sleeping on the floor, James slept on the floor in college, I miss Meredith and James, I still haven't sent them a wedding gift, I have a whole year right?, were they registered at Pottery Barn?, I should ask Stephanie what their house looks like, I miss Stephanie, woah, she is a business owner now and I don't even know what she's doing, I should talk to her more, I feel like I hardly know her anymore. And right about then is when the flood of fear and sadness welled up in my heart and my eyes and would have come pouring out of my eyes if it weren't for the "eye pillow" AKA the bean bag that smells like lavender that was resting on my face.

And there it is. The shallowing of the roots. So sneaky.

So how did I respond to that fear and sadness? I did what any other mid-20's, single, American girl, that secretly likes the fact that she doesn't have much of a social agenda does and got on Pinterest until I forgot a little about how scared I just got about losing touch with the people that I hold so dearly to my heart. But then, somewhere in between 100 ways to decorate with mason jars and the DIY's about repurposing a wooden pallet into any and every piece of furniture in your house, I realized hiding, trying to dispel that fear with tutorials was doing nothing to honor the fact that I need those people in my life. That if anything I need to sit in those feelings until I am compelled by them to act, to reach out, to bridge the gaps in geography for the sake of people that remind me of who I am while I am trying to figure out why I am here.

I finished reading the book that the excerpt at the top of the page if from a couple weeks ago. Its from a book called Cold Tangerines and is written by one of my favorite authors and I would recommend it to, oh, i don't know, EVERYONE! When I read that part I felt like she had captured so much of how I feel about this season of my life. I still don't know what I'm doing in Colorado. Sometimes I might know in part but definitely not in whole and I am perfectly fine with that because I feel a freedom to still be figuring that out. I feel fine with not having certainty of what the future holds because of the roots that have grown here in the last year, but in some strange way, I mostly feel fine because of the roots that I already had when I got here. I don't know how to explain that and I won't try to but I do know, I need those roots. We all need those roots. And I don't always know how to keep them from shallowing. Tonight it looks like a desperate email letting some people know that they are vital to my wellbeing. Tomorrow it may look different. Either way, I think that effort is important and worthwhile and beneficial in order to embrace what life has for each of us.

time heals all things...

Today is my dear friend, Julia's birthday. The first time I met Julia we were at CollegeLife, which is training for people that potentially want to be YoungLife leaders. I met Julia because she was with my friend, Ellen, who was one of my best friends YoungLife girls. They had just come from a Georgia College Ambassadors meeting and Julia was wearing a blazer and pencil skirt and we joked about her being overdressed for CollegeLife, where the typical uniform is Nike shorts, a Patagonia pullover, and Chacos.

The thing about Julia is when you met her, you just knew there was something different about her, which now I can only point to as the Holy Spirit. She's one of those people you meet and it feels like a breath of fresh air. From the moment I met her all I could think about it how much high school girls were going to love her. I remember her freshman year she would come and talk to me about how scared she was to be a YoungLife leader and how she didn't know if she really wanted to apply for it. I would always tell her about how much I envisioned her being an amazing leader and how I thought she would be placed at Baldwin High School and girls there were going to love her because she was better at popping, locking, and dropping it than most of the school. And by the end of her freshman year she was doing just that. She was a leader at Baldwin and girls were falling in love with her because lets be honest, how could you not? And as for the popping, locking, and dropping, I'll just say there were quiet a few dance parties in our living room at their Wednesday night campaigners meetings once she moved in. 

At the end of her freshman year I asked her to move into our house. What an incredible blessing to get to live each day along side her for a year. I loved getting to watch her grow into this pillar of strength in our community. And I loved getting to watch her eagerly pursue high school girls. She was desperate to give her life away for the sake of high schoolers, and honestly anyone else who crossed her path, just so they could know Jesus. That is and always will be one of the most beautiful qualities about her. But if you have ever gotten to know Julia you know that she has many beautiful qualities. I think the most common description of her is joyful, but she is also passionate and loyal and zealous and my favorite thing is that she is consistent. She is consistent in all of these qualities and consistent in the way that she loves people. 

Some of you may remember a post I wrote about Julia a few months ago. Tragically, Julia passed last August. It was one of the most devastating things I, our house, and our community have ever experienced.  It was the most joyful sorrow I have ever felt. Joyful because I knew Julia was fully restored and healed in Heaven, walking hand-in-hand with Jesus. Sorrowful because the day of her accident she was headed back to Milledgeville and part of me fully expected her to walk in the downstairs door from the driveway at any moment, yelling as she came up the stairs, and we would all run across the house to meet her and then the other part of me knew that wasn't going to happen.

It has been just about nine and a half months and I still miss Julia everyday. There are still some days that are just as hard as the moment I got the phone call about her. I got the urge to watch her Celebration Service a couple nights ago and there were times while I was watching it that I could remember the heartache I was feeling that night so vividly.  

I have always heard time heals all things. What an incredible lie. Maybe this applies to things like paper cuts or petty arguments with your roommates about the dishes. But what about the real stuff, the things that are hard to heal? Time can numb your pain. Time can give you distance on your pain. Time can maybe even give you better hind-sight view on your pain. But one thing time can not do is heal pain.

Despite the days like today, that are harder to get through because I can't call Julia and hear about YoungLife and Phi Mu and Winshape and 221 N. Columbia, there are also days of great joy because of seeing signs of her throughout my day. Days that I remember that I learned from her how to better love people because of the way she earnestly cared for those around her. Days that I  have realized my deeper need for Jesus because of the difficulty of her not being here and there is rejoicing in that. Julia left behind a legacy of choosing joy regardless of circumstances. A legacy of celebrating life and the people in it because this is the legacy she found in Jesus. And a legacy found in Jesus is the only one worth leaving behind. I think Julia knew that more than anyone. These are days that I know there is peace in the midst of pain and that there is healing despite sadness. And I will never give the credit of this healing to time because time can not take ashes and turn them into life, only Jesus can. Jesus heals all things, not time. 

And once again, thank you to Julia for teaching me more about this. 

Happy Birthday, JJ! I love you.

gratitude.

Recently I have been noticing the difference between feeling grateful and having gratitude in my life.  I do realize that these by definition are entirely synonymous but to me there is something that feels slightly different about the two.  There are a lot of things I am grateful for in my life, having a job, a place to live, roommates that I have a lot of fun with, a car that runs (maybe not very well but hey, life's all about small victories, right?). I guess these are things that I notice everyday but I don't necessarily let myself feel my gratefulness for them. My gratitude. I think that is the difference for me. 

Gratitude evokes something much more in me. 

I love words. Maybe it is because I majored in "putting words together and speaking them out loud", also known as Rhetoric, but I LOVE words. Definitions, origins, antonyms, synonyms, I love it all. I decided to look up other words for the word grateful. I found things like thankful, gratified, indebted, and pleased. Then I looked up synonyms for gratitude. I found some of the same words but also a few more that I think coincide with my feelings towards the topic. They were words like acknowledgement, praise, grace, recognition, honor, responsiveness. 

Mmmmmmm....those are some good words, huh?? 

You are probably wondering what the picture at the top of this post has to do with any of this. I instagrammed this picture today. It is from this past weekend when two of my very best friends visited me from Georgia. I have known Jillian and Erica (not pictured) since my freshman year of high school, actually Erica and I met sometime in middle school....either way, I've been friends with them for what seems like forever. Forever in the best possible way.  I think there is something exceptional about the people that have known you for that long and still choose to fly across the country to visit you for less than 48 hours. There is something special about the ones that know where you come from, the places you have been to where you are now. And when I think of the fact that they still love me and cherish our friendship despite the ways I might have failed them in different areas and at different points in our friendship over the years leaves me with a deep, deep sense of gratitude. I didn't really fully grasp that gratitude until I was staring at this picture this morning and remembering the feeling I had in this moment. With our feet hanging off the edge of a mountain that we had just hiked, laying there with no worries except for how much time we had before the downpour of rain was coming, I felt completely known, completely comfortable, completely content. And those are things I can't say that I feel all the time with just anyone. Gratitude.

One of my favorite bloggers one time wrote, "Here's to gratitude and how it turns everything into enough." Cheers to that!

John 6:66-69

"AT THIS POINT MANY OF HIS DISCIPLES TURNED 

AWAY AND DESERTED HIM. THEN JESUS TURNED

 TO THE TWELVE AND ASKED, "ARE YOU ALSO GOING TO LEAVE?"

SIMON PETER REPLIED, "LORD, TO WHOM WOULD WE GO? 

YOU HAVE THE WORDS THAT GIVE ETERNAL LIFE. 

WE BELIEVE AND WE KNOW YOU ARE THE HOLY ONE OF GOD."

[let this be my cry in times of trial]

What a gift.

This morning I awoke to a six month old baby crying at 6:17 AM and my very first thought was, "Even Luke is sad this morning." After stumbling my way to the bathroom and then back to bed I quickly fell back to sleep. When I woke again a few hours later I opened my eyes and as I stared blankly and confused at the ceiling, I immediately asked myself, "Did I dream it?" But once I remembered where I was and whose voices I was hearing coming from the kitchen, I knew I hadn't.

Yesterday, my dear, dear friend Julia finally made her way to heaven and is now with the person she loves the most, Jesus. For the past week Julia has been battling for her life and an unreal amount of people have been ceaselessly praying for her to win that battle. Watching prayer requests spread like wildfire felt much like we were part of some kind of movement. I mean it drew attention from all corners of the earth, people from all over the state, country, and world were praying confidently and boldly to God for a healing, life-saving miracle for our sweet Julia. Still, Saturday afternoon came and The Lord chose to take Julia to be with Him in eternity.

I realize what this looks like on the outside to a lot of people. At first glance, it looks like a lot of people prayed for a good thing to happen and it didn't. It looks like there is room to doubt God, to not trust Him. It looks like a lot of people should be let down by God who didn't give them the miracle they had in mind. And as I was thinking about all of this last night it occurred to me what my response would be to this perspective and this is what I came up with.

No. I don't feel let down by God and I definitely don't doubt Him just because Julia is no longer physically here. If anything, the reason I can't doubt Him is because of the simple fact that she did live. Julia was a one-of-a-kind person in every sense of the word. People like Julia don't come along very often and I got the joy of getting to experience her for two whole years. I got to live with her for one of those years. Everyday I got to talk to Julia, to laugh with her and dance with her. I got to listen to her sing musicals in the kitchen while she made coffee. I got cry with her and snuggle in a bed with her. I got to watch her giddily make baskets for her little and go on and on about how excited she was. I got to watch her do ridiculous hand motions while she talked. I got to read notes she would leave me on my desk. But more than any of that, I got to watch the way that she chased after Jesus. I got to experience the way she loved with her entire heart and overflowed with joy. I watched the way she beamed with a light she only found in Jesus. I got to see the way that she made each person she talked to feel like they were her best friend, she changed people for the better. I got the privilege of being someone she looked up to and I got to give her advice. I got to encourage her to become a Young Life leader even when she was scared to. I got to tell her that without a doubt she would be a Baldwin High School leader and that girls there would love her. And above all, I got to be someone that she loved.

Even now, the affects of her spirit and life are changing people. Sixty people got to live because of the organs she donated. Hundreds of people heard the Gospel last night. A girl she had been meeting with and pouring into all year long finally accepted Christ, along with countless others whose lives she touched.

So, no, I don't feel let down by God at all. I feel nothing but thankful.

starting to quit

Being where you are. Its easier said than done, am I right? I think so, anyways. I think there is this myth, especially when you are in college, that one day your life will start. Once you graduate, that's when life starts. Until then, your goal is just to make it through. Make it through your test this Thursday. Make it through your presentation next Tuesday. Make it through that speech that you have in the morning that you haven't started writing yet. Maybe that last one was just me mostly... Either way, it always seems we are all just wanting to make through that next thing we have to do, all so we can make it to that graduation ceremony so, finally, we can stop waiting for life to start and we can start living it!

Believe me when I say, this is dumb. And unrealistic. And now that I am on the other side of this myth, I can see how detrimental these expectations are to my life. I graduated seven months ago and I am still waiting. I have spent the last seven months trying to figure out what is next for me and convincing myself that once I figure that out, that is when I will finally begin to start living my life. And it didn't hit me until today, when I was sitting in my room, staring at boxes all packed up, wishing that I was moving tomorrow so I can "start my life" that I asked myself, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" The truth is, I am waiting to approach a point in time that does not exist. It never has and it never will. Let me start from the beginning.

For the last seven months or so, people have been asking me what I am going to do when I leave Milledgeville. What is next? To most people I have probably seemed like a pretty cool cucumber about the whole situation. Very non-chalantly telling them 'I'm not very sure, but whatever is going to happen will happen and I'm gonna just roll with it'. I would like to say that I was acting so calm about everything because I fearlessly and open-heartedly trusting in the Lord, but I wasn't. In all reality I was anxious. Impatient. Faithless. Scared. I was surrounded by people that were in college still, living the "i'm a college student, hanging out with friends on week nights and cramming for tests in two hours" lifestyle and on the other hand, I had my graduated friends that were getting real jobs or getting married or planning trips for Europe. And here I was, stuck in limbo. I was still in Milledgeville, still working at Starbucks, still longing for my new and exciting things to start. And although, trust me when I say, deep down I was and still am genuinely ecstatic for the things happening in my friends lives, there was still a tinge of jealousy underneath my OH-BOY attitude. I actually had a ho-hum attitude when I was by myself.

Finally, at the beginning of June, when many doors had been shut and many of my attempted plans for the future had failed, I decided to just stop. In the midst of the all of the worrying, desperate trying, and disappointments, I decided it was time to quit. I figured it was time to quit depending on my own coordinating skills and shoddy attempts  at determining my own "greater purpose". I sat down and I thought, simply, where would I go if I could go anywhere? Colorado. Duh.  So from there on, this was my prayer, "Lord, you know more that anything, I want to be in Colorado but I am going to trust that if that is where I am supposed to be in the next chapter in my life, You will make a way for me to get there. I don't know where I am living in August, but You do and You have known for a long time and I believe that You are faithful. So, this is the end of my planning." And so, I waited. And I told myself that in the waiting, I have to be where I am, in Milledgeville. Of course like anything else, in the beginning its great. I began to think of how special Milledgeville was to me, all the wonderful people that I love here, and how this city has been more of a home to me for the past five years than any other place. I began to feel relieved and content. The longing, although still there, was beginning to diminish a little each day.

I'm sure as you read this, it all must sound very rosy and peachy and like it was this easy, magical process. Well, it wasn't. It did not come with out times of trying and one impromptu road trip that turned into a vacation simply for the fact that I didn't want to go home and feel alone in Milledgeville again. But for that most part, it was good. I'm sure you are also thinking, "Jessica, you said that you just realized all this about 'being where you are' today, this is weird." Well that is because as the month went on, things started happening and the longing to start something new happened too, especially in the last week or so. You see, as the month went on I started getting phone calls from my friend Caitlin, (for more about who she is read this) and she was telling me that she wanted me to come live in Colorado with her. Then, I got a phone call about a house she found for us and her two other roommates to move into.  Then, all of a sudden, I was moving to Colorado in August. And of course, then, I started daydreaming about how I can't wait to get out of Milledgeville and start my life in Colorado. And there it was. The stupid thorn in my side, I thought I had conquered. The wanting for something else and for time to hurry up. I was back to wishing my days away so that my life could soon begin.

I guess I'm realizing that there will always be that thing happening in a few days or a few months that is begging for our attention, our thoughts, and our hearts. I think these things are meant to excite us and encourage us to keep going not to make us long for something better than we have now. Because what we have now is probably pretty great if we would just stop wanting something different.  It makes me mad at myself when I sit back and think about how badly I want to leave Milledgeville, how I let myself have this awful, poor-me attitude about living here still. I think I owe a lot to this town for making me who I am, in some weird way. And I definitely owe it to Milledgeville not to be wishing my time here away. So here is my challenge to myself, to try and keep myself in the now, I am making a list called "100 joys". It is exactly what is sounds like, 100 things that bring joy to my life and I dont want to write it all at once, even though I'm sure I could. I want to write a few things each day, things I discover throughout that day because of the whatever I am experiencing at the time. Hopefully, I'll post it on here soon. I encourage you to make your own list of joys and I hope it helps you to be where you are.

TTFN,
Jessica

unpacking my backpack.

I finished college last night. This morning I woke up and cried. 

I cried for a lot of different reasons. The first one always being just because I am an extremely emotional person. But also I cried out of relief. That after four and a half years, I have finally completed what seems like an impossible feat when you are a baby freshman. I am relieved that I actually did accomplish what I set out to do and passed with flying colors. I am relieved knowing that if I make it through these last four and a half years, I can probably make it through anything. Oh, and of course it is a major relief because I will never have another test, paper, speech, self-evaluation, or piece of homework. But also I cried because I am sad. Sad that I will never have another test, paper, speech, self-evaluation, or piece of homework. I am sad that I will never answer another roll question again in Dr. Burt and Dr. Dillard's classes. I am sad that I will never give another speech that really challenges me, to Dr. Clark. I am sad that I will never sit in a classroom in Arts & Sciences waiting for the first day of the semester to begin. I am sad that never again will Dr. Vail ask if I have any Questions, Comments, or Concerns and then genuinely care what my answer is. Mostly though, I cried out of awe. I am in awe at how The Lord brought me to a place that I had no idea about. I had no clue how perfect my college experience would be. How, from beginning to end, there is not one thing that I would have changed about it. And the people, OH THE PEOPLE I'VE MET! I hate knowing that not everyone has such wonderful people in their lives that love them so much and so well. All of the joy and encouragement and all of the disappointment and struggling has brought me here today and as cliche as it is, made me into the person I am. Even when I hated it, I've loved it. And now it is done. 

Before I formed in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; 

I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. -Jeremiah 1:5

I could never have asked for a better place to spend the last four and a half years. Milledgeville is the absolute best fit for me that there ever could have been. Which makes this verse ring true more now than it ever has before. 

Mazel Tov,

Jessica