December 8 – Beautifully Different.
Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.
So there's some kind of 'meme' or twitterized writing prompt series going on through December that a few of the blogs I read have been working through. And this one (above) is the #reverb10 prompt for today. Hot damn, that is fitting. Pull up a chair, and I'll endeavor to explain why.
In the process that is my life, the last couple months have been rather foggy. I remember September by the mad dash to the first annual hoedown at Calvary and my final trip to North Dakota, and I'm sure lots of other exciting things happened but I was pretty whipped and don't remember them. October...let's see, there was the women's retreat, then the Ascent fall camp, both wonderful but also exhausting, and then the exhausting sadness of the end of the month, when my dear friend's dad died. And then I moved in to other people's houses for 5 weeks. House sitting is fun, but I think that was a bit much for me. So the past few months have been pretty full of life, but I moved through them in a haze, a fog. What is that? Depression is its name. If not exactly depression, then certainly something like it.
Depression, loneliness, fear, avoidance - these have been a consistent theme in my life for the last 5 or 6 years. I have lived with these gray companions, a gray sort of undercurrent running through most of my time at Olaf and beyond, punctuated by the many wondrous and absolutely blessed moments of happiness, joy, challenge, victory, learning, growing, being...
But this year, this fall, this winter, this moment, NOW - things are changing. I am seeing more and more each day what is different and new and ever so beautiful about where and who I am right now. And WOW, you know what? THAT IS PRICELESS. I cannot tell you how good it feels just to know that I am alive. Really, I'm alive. You know what that means? That means that I am IN this WORLD and I'm wading into the wet and muddy things, I am not running away, I am HERE. Here is really a very big, wylde and woolly place to be - full of mystery, excitement, adventure, love, pain, and joy. Generally speaking, I don't really know what is going on big-picture-wise. But I get to look closely at the details, at the little corners of life I float around in, and the details of that big picture are just as beautiful and shot through with light as the whole shebang is.
So where I was going with this was...ah, yes. Beautifully different. What is different about me? Well, I've been finding words for me, and here are a few of them:
+ I'm a celebrant. Life is so beautiful and good, and I feel compelled to celebrate it. Truly - celebration as reverence, as thanksgiving, as acknowledgment, as prayer.
+ I'm spending a lot of time these days (and frankly, it appears that I'm to spend a lot of my time through my whole life here) in what has been named The Uncomfortable Junction. Sounds unpleasant, or even somehow inappropriate (if that is where your mind goes) - but here is what I mean. I love a good challenge, and I am finding myself drawn over and over to the challenge of meeting someone else where I am not comfortable. Of leaping into situations I don't understand and maybe even fear. I'm not talking common sense fear here, but fear of the unknown, fear of what looks different from this angle. How will I ever get to know the other side(s) if I don't look at them closely, talk to them, build a relationship with them...commit to them. I guess I feel this as a sort of calling - called to put myself in the uncomfortable junction and see what is going on and learn how to build a house there and welcome all travelers. I have to say, I am excited about this. Living in the uncomfortable junction is frequently frustrating, exhausting, and confusing. But also, life-giving. Amen. A-freaking-MEN.
+ I'm unfinished. Jean Q Jacques, the mysterious and wise transmogrified ascended being (or whatever) who wrote letters and made wacky collages for angsty-stressed-whacked out college kids at dear ol' Rolvaag Library [The Bored] responded once to a letter I had written about being unwilling or unable to bust out of my cocoon. And JJ, dear JJ, responded with a beautiful treatise on the goodness of being unfinished, of letting go of that idol of being DONE.
These are just a few of the things that I guess are 'different' about me, or at least the things that I am claiming for myself in this time of my life. And they are good, and they make me beautiful. And I hope and pray that these aspects of who I am will bring some kind of light into the lives of others, whether it be my joy in terribly cheesy puns (because we have to celebrate the cheesy as well as the boringly beautiful!) or my drive to try to make friendships with people I really don't have much in common with. Let my life be a testament to the goodness of it all.
Thanks be to God.
;)
Also, happy birthday me. :)
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