“Soulmates”

So, I got inspired to write this as I was talking to a friend this morning. My friend (we will call her Sarah) is currently dealing with a tough situation where she has been in love with her best guy friend (let’s call him Brian) for a very long time.

I think we’re very familiar with this story (I know I am) whether it has happened to us directly or not.

It’s been the plot of hundreds of chick flicks and probably thousands of novels. Hell, I think practically every TV show I’ve ever seen has that couple that is just friends but secretly everyone is just WAITING for them to finally get together.

Sarah knows she is meant to be with Brian. I’m going to be completely honest, even I have told her that I think they are meant to be together. I’m pretty sure all her family members have told her the same thing. It’s obvious to everyone except him I’m pretty sure.

Brian is her soulmate…her person….THE person she is supposed to be with. We’re all silently rooting for the happily ever after for them that we’ve seen in so many movies…

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I had a Brian. I think most of us at one point or another have loved a Brian. For me, I had multiple Brians.

He was my first love. We were best friends for about two years before we dated,and after we broke up, it took me about two years to get over him. I thought that we were meant to be together. I thought he was my soulmate…my person….THE person I was supposed to be with.

Then in college I met another Brian. He was older than me. He was a musician. He was super intelligent. We had so much in common and I felt like our chemistry was electric. Even my whole family noticed it.  I had just met him but I felt like I had known him my whole life. I thought he was the person I was going to marry someday. I thought he was my soulmate….my person….THE person I was supposed to be with.

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Then I met my husband.

My husband is not a Brian. In fact, because my husband is not a Brian, it took me a long time to realize I had real feelings for him. He wasn’t my type. He wasn’t the mysterious, artsy, musician type I usually went for.

My husband is a James.

But I was supposed to marry a Brian…I spent my whole life thinking I was going to marry Brian. Brian was my soulmate.

This was the argument I had with myself when I first met my husband. He wasn’t the person I pictured. He wasn’t the “soulmate” I had been waiting to marry.

James wasn’t mysterious at all, which I found profoundly confusing. I had spent my life trying to “figure out” Brian.

Did Brian like me? Did he have feelings for me, but was he too afraid to admit them? Did he just have intimacy issues? Was he scared of getting hurt? When would he text me? Should I text him first? The list of questions was endless…

James texted me when he said he would. James told me he had feelings for me. James told me I was the only girl he was interested in. James told me he wanted to date me. Later on in the relationship, James told me he wanted to marry me.

I had only ever chased after the unavailable Brians of the world. I genuinely did not know how to be with someone so….available….

Because truthfully (and we hardly ever admit this, even to ourselves) as much as we say we want someone to love us and treat us right and all that….when someone comes around who finally does treat us right…. we ditch them for Brian.

PRAISE THE LORD I did not ditch my husband for Brian.

…but it could have happened…

Had we not gotten to know each other slowly so that I had plenty of time to realize I had feelings for him,  I might have just written him off as “too nice” or thought we didn’t have enough in common.

If I didn’t pray regularly for God to show me if James was the right person for me or not, I might not have ever given the relationship a chance.

If we both hadn’t been willing to work through some tough insecurities and issues, things might not have worked out.

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Now, I don’t have anything against the Brians of the world. Brian just has his own issues he needs to work out like anyone else. Maybe you are meant to be with Brian. Maybe Brian IS your soulmate….the one person you are meant to be with.

….or maybe….

Maybe holding on to Brian is more of a fantasy than true love.

Maybe you’ve never known what it’s like to love someone, not because they are perfect for you, but because they are imperfect just like you.

I have trouble saying I believe in “soulmates” because I feel like it tricks people into waiting for the “perfect” person.

I think some people miss the right person waiting for the “perfect” person.

Or…they marry the “perfect” person, but give up on the relationship when they find out the other person isn’t so perfect after all.

Marriage is gloriously messy and wildly imperfect. It is not a romantic comedy or a happily ever ever. It’s raw and unfiltered. It’s beautiful.

I thank God every day that I chose James to go through life with. I’m so thankful that I chose someone kind and caring, someone I never have to question if I can rely on, someone I can be completely goofy and myself with, someone I can be imperfect with. I’m so thankful I married the right person.

Don’t wait for the “perfect” person.

Don’t write off that sweet guy because he’s “too nice”

Don’t spend your whole life waiting for Brian.

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Maybe James is your person after all….

I know he’s mine ❤

 

p.s. this song played at our wedding and it’s oh so beautiful 🙂

 

 

 

When His plans are definitely not my plans…

I’m getting married in 15 days…

We’ve been engaged nine months, gone through six months of separation while he was deployed and a total of a year and a half of long distance. All of that time and only 15 days until we are husband and wife! I can’t believe how close we are. I can’t wait until I finally get to set off on an amazing journey with an incredible man by my side. I can’t believe how blessed I am!

You might wonder, given all of the happy things in my life, why I’m currently crying my eyes out in my bathroom…

I’m like really crying too. You know, the ugly kind of tears where your face gets all red and mascara runs down your cheeks and your nose gets all stuffy and you can hardly breathe.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that I’m marrying the best man in the world. I’m marrying the person God chose for me. He’s the man I spent all those single years begging God for. I’m so beyond lucky and so ridiculously excited.

But I’m also leaving…

I’m leaving my home. My parents. My siblings. All my friends.

I’m leaving my insanely adorable two year old niece who is the most lovable person on the planet.

I’m leaving my two church jobs. Two different communities of people who have accepted me and loved and appreciated me and helped me to grow into an even better musician and leader.

I’m leaving the prayer group I’ve been blessed to get to sing at and the amazing, prayerful musicians I’ve been blessed to get to sing with.

I feel like I’ve been given more of a sense of community in the past year than I’ve ever had in my life. I’m surrounded by not only my family but so many people who have made such a huge difference in my life.

I’ve been so insanely busy with work and planning our wedding that I feel like I haven’t had time for it to really sink in.

It just really hit me so hard tonight.

I never planned on meeting someone in the military. I never planned on moving across the country away from everyone I know. I never planned on marrying young. I never planned on landing amazing jobs just in time to leave them.

It’s so hard to understand what God’s plan was giving me so so many blessings that I would have to let go of.

It’s hard to just trust that there is a reason His plans are way different from my plans. His ways are far more challenging yet far more glorious.

The more I think about it, the more I realize it is just like Him to give me this pain along with this beautiful excitement and joy. We always consider joy and pain so far apart when really they are always intertwined. New life and new growth is always painful. Leaving is always painful. It’s always scary setting off on a new adventure with so many things unknown.

But God is so faithful. Every season of pain I’ve had has been filled with more joy and love than I could have ever imagined. It is so so hard to be leaving so many people that I love, but I know I’m being called to find my new home in the heart of my soon-to-be husband. What a beautiful gift that I will truly get the experience of leaving my father and mother and clinging to my spouse.

I just opened my bible and read the words “My Presence will go with you.”

I may be leaving, but I’m not going alone 🙂 I will have my new husband beside me and most importantly, Jesus’ presence will never leave me.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways.” -Isaiah 55:8

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” -Jeremiah 29:11

Share your story.

This post is going to be less filled with my own ramblings and more about you. It’s been put on my heart a lot lately that we need to share our stories with other people. We will never reach anyone if we keep our messy and beautiful lives to ourselves.

Today I had a coworker share with me just how rough his past was. Before he got the job at our current workplace, he had been homeless and couldn’t break his addiction to drugs. He wasn’t sure what he believed in, but he called out to God that he couldn’t stop on his own. He was tired of his life and his addiction and begged God to help him. He told me from that day on, he didn’t know what higher power it was, but something changed in him. He stopped doing drugs on the spot and three days later got a job at our coffee shop.  At the same time he met his girlfriend who helped take care of him and give him the support system he needed to turn his life around and get back on his feet. They both saved up enough money and just moved into an apartment together. And he’s so happy and doing well! He told me about how God has given he the things that he needs and he never could have gotten here on his own.

It really struck me that I’ve been working with him for months and never knew any of his story…

How much different would the world be if we truly opened up to the people around us? That thought has been haunting me ever since. What am I doing closed off from the world, afraid to truly share my experiences and my testimony to others. God has done POWERFUL things in my life.  I imagine my coworker and I arent the only ones who have had God change something for them…bring them to another place they never could have imagined for themselves.

I beg you to share a little of what God has done for you or the way he’s revealed himself in subtle or obvious ways.

Please comment and share with me! Even if you’re at a place of not knowing what you believe in, im guessing you’ve probably experienced something like this.

I think the world needs our stories. ❤️

 

“Stop reaching”

The lord surrounds me with light and warmth. He gives me hope, shelters me, nourishes me. He provides everything for me. Pure goodness. Pure light. I reject him. I distance. He is too good. How do I accept him? How does he accept me in all my wretchedness? Oh doubting heart, will you ever have faith? I descend to my own despair. God remains. My despair is too dark. Can he find me here? Where am I? Lost. Lost again. His arms reach out, but I must meet him there. Choice choice. I must choose him. I must reach out. The cave is dark. Monsters surround, but maybe I will be safe if I hide long enough. All the while the lord waits. Patient and kind. Full of understanding for my dark soul. For he knows the secret. There is light in me. He sees me. There is good in me after all. What is wretchedness, but a sheet over the light? A film over goodness. It is not a thing itself but the covering and veiling of God. It is rejection of good. Absence of good. The lord hates my sin because my sin hides my light. My sin rejects his goodness. Will I ever be enough? How does he love me, only a little creature? Again his arms reach out…my mind is full of weapons. It speaks lies. Whispers them into my heart. Yet my heart knows truth and will fight back. I reach….I reach. There is a gaping hole in the ground between us. If only I can reach the lord’s outstretched arms I will be safe. “Stop reaching.” The voice tells me. “Fall.” It commands. Fall? I will surely sink into the gaping hole. “No,” he tells me, “you will be saved.”

The Journey of Openness

The most influential thing that has allowed me to know Jesus in a more personal way and to grow tremendously in faith is a spirit of openness. Maybe for some of you opening yourself up to God is easy. I’ll just start by saying that openness is the hardest things in the world for me.

Our society tells us our vulnerability is bad, our imperfection is bad. It gives us picture upon picture of what we “should” look like or tries to tell us what we should be. It tells us that the self is the only person we can truly rely on. No one else. Be strong. Be independent. Don’t let anyone take anything from you.

Now, I’m in no way saying independence and strength are bad things. They are wonderful things! The problem I have comes from the way in which we try to achieve this standard. We try to achieve strength through hardness.

We harden ourselves to the world, numb ourselves to the pain. We reject our vulnerability. We reject our desire for connection. We embrace casual sex as a means to gain some sort of faux intimacy and pleasure while shutting off our emotions. We tell ourselves we don’t care. We believe it. We tell ourselves we don’t need anyone. We believe it.

I did this too. I spent years hiding my emotions from people. Feeling as if no one understood me. Guarding my heart. I was happy, right? I was strong. I could do anything. I didn’t need any help.

All the while I wondered why I never really felt God’s presence.

…not that I needed him.

I wrote so many songs and felt this longing to share my music with people, but it was so hard for me.

The songs I wrote were…me. My voice was….me. I felt paralyzed in a way because it felt way too personal. Like sharing my music was letting people see too much of me. I was giving them the power to reject the deepest parts of me if they didn’t like it or weren’t moved by it.

I chased boys who were emotionally unavailable. It was intoxicating trying to get them to appreciate me and always left me feeling disappointed when they remained unavailable to me.

But the truth is…was I ever emotionally available? Was I only seeking distant boys because it was safer that way?? If they were distant, it meant they never really saw me up close. Never saw the vulnerability I like to hide. Never saw my fears or insecurities.

It wasn’t until I went through one of the darkest points in my life that I was too broken to hide it. I was so far from okay I couldn’t pretend that I was. I was bleeding emotionally and it broke down every wall of defense I had.

This was me. Broken…struggling….weak.

It wasn’t until I was drenched in my own vulnerability that I felt God. He was all around me. It was like my vulnerability had opened some door I had kept locked for years and allowed Him to make something beautiful out of my suffering. It allowed Him to make me strong.

The strength I had was real. It was not the same “strength” I had claimed before in all my desire to be hard to the world and not let anything affect me. It was strength through my openness and vulnerability.

I felt for the first time in my life free to actually reveal myself to people. There was such a lightness that came with this freedom. I felt no longer weighed down by all my walls of defense. I was better able to not only receive love but to give it away. I’ve always felt awkward showing people how much I love them but I didn’t feel that way anymore.

The spirit of openness that I had not only allowed me to know God more personally but it also transformed my current relationship because love is all about vulnerability. It’s about truly seeing the other person and accepting them even with their flaws. We love with the tender part of our hearts that we all have, and we block out so many good things by trying to reject that tenderness.

How hard have we as a society become and how many good things do we keep out? What parts of ourself to we reject and try to hide for fear of revealing our own brokenness and desire to connect with others. The way I know God is through trust and openness. Openness makes us feel vulnerable, but it is also strength. It is love. It is….me.

It Begins With Joy

Source: It Begins With Joy

It Begins With Joy

I found myself thinking about Joy this morning. Christians and non-Christians alike, I think it’s a feeling or even a state of mind we’ve all experienced. For me, Joy seems to be the most similar to freedom. It’s a feeling of release almost. Happiness uninhibited.

The image that most often comes to mind is being out in a field with flowers all around and the wind blowing and trees swaying. Surrounded by rustling sounds of leaves and chirping birds and floral smells and a feeling of being all at once united and still distinct in your surroundings. I picture my arms outstretched to feel it all pass through me.

Its such a deep and pure and Joyful feeling. The goodness of it is the same goodness I experience in prayer. In church. In my desire to know Jesus personally.

Christianity, true Christianity, is Joy.

Many of you who are not religious may think I’m crazy. After all, christianity is rules and hypocrisy and judgement and insanity.

Or if it is something good, it is just a bandaid to make people feel better.

I used to fear the same thing. Maybe faith is just something to make me feel better because the alternative is so bleak. I used to stare down the path of nothingness and look at my life. All my hopes and dreams in a vacuum of me and not much else. Sure there was the hope of my own happiness but to what end? Why search for meaning in my own life or create my own meaning when that was it. Me in a sea of randomness. My entire identity and consciousness just a bi product of humans evolving in extraordinary ways.

Still…that nagging Joyful feeling would come. As I searched for answers for whether or not God existed, I seemed to come into contact with this Joy more and more. Sometimes it was as simple as sitting outside at starbucks in the mornings, drinking a warm latte, and watching the clouds go by. The sky looked different to me. Almost like I was seeing it in a clearer way. The breeze felt pure and full of possibility. I don’t know how else to describe this feeling to you. Hopefully, you’ve felt it at least once yourself and can relate.

This was about as far as I got in my intellectual quest. Moments of this fleeting Joy followed by a quick descent back to the fear and dread that it was merely my mind searching for hope. No matter how I tried I didn’t understand faith. I didn’t know what it was. How could I believe when I didn’t? How could I be sure of a God when I was not sure at all? My feelings of Joy and certainty were only brief.

Months passed and this state of mind seemed to persist. Sometimes I would go to church. Sometimes I wouldn’t.

Sometimes I believed in God. Sometimes I didn’t.

Then my best friend died.

I can tell you with honesty that this was the darkest, most painful, and LEAST joyful time in my life. It happened at the worst time possible too because I was taking an overload of 21 hours and trying to graduate and working on top of it.

I almost dropped out of school. Every single fiber of me wanted to. Grief floods you. That’s the only way I can describe it. It takes over everything, darkens everything.

I prayed one night. I remember it was a half-hearted prayer basically asking God to help me if he even existed.

The next day I felt something different.

I felt…peaceful.

The pain was still all around, but I felt this quiet assurance that I would make it through school. I was going to get through this somehow.

The grief and darkness were still there but everyday afterwards that familiar feeling of Joy would appear too. Sometimes it faded quickly. Sometimes it would stick around for a little while.

I described it to my mom once. It was almost like the grief intensified my experience of everything. The pain was acute, but so was the Joy. The vulnerability broke me and opened me up to Love more fully and more deeply and to receive Love in the same way.

It was the most powerful experience of my life. It was so horrible, so difficult, but so beautiful. I felt literally carried in that time. Given every grace to messily make my way through the semester and finally…to graduate.

Faith was not a bandaid over a wound. Faith was transforming me through pain. It was changing me, allowing me to become someone who was more myself and yet so far from the person I was before.

I felt…free.

There was the Joy.

The Freedom.

There was God.

There was my beginning.

I still grieve. I still don’t understand the loss and I don’t think I ever will, but as I’ve gotten closer to God and grown in what it means to have faith, I experience Joy more and more. It’s the best feeling I think we’re given on earth. It’s the closest thing to freedom. Look deeper at the Joy. Look harder in suffering. I think God is there.

A Life Lost, but Something Found

A Life Lost, but Something Found.

The Depth of Joy

Ive found that one of my gifts is a recurrent sense of joy. Some days I even seem to wake up joyful. I long for the complexity of the simplest beauties. The sunrise makes me joyful. The general quiet atmosphere of morning makes me joyful. The warmth of the sun covering me makes me joyful. Being caught in a thunderstorm makes me joyful. Mountains make me joyful. The sound of waves against the sand makes me joyful. I used to somewhat resent this quality when people would describe me as merely “happy”. “But there’s so much more to me”, I secretly thought. If only they knew the depth of my existence and the things I hid. I always hid. I think we fear our own darkness. We are shamed by the thought that we are composed of something bad or wrong. I’m not loveable. I’m strange. No one knows me.   I am not enough. Why why are we so quick to disown our own goodness? My joyfulness is a gift and even that I do not love. As I sat on the edge of the roof with my feet dangling, looking off into the mountains in the distance surrounding me on all sides, I was overcome with love and joy and peace. There was so much depth to this joy.  So much life in it. So much God in it. And yet we hide. “This joy is not just for you”, he whispers into the reaches of my joyful solitude. “Stop hiding. Your joy is for others”

A Life Lost, but Something Found

I’m much different than I was even six months ago. It’s funny how so little time can change a person. I’m in a different place and heading in a different direction than I ever could have imagined for myself.

I want to tell you about how I found God. I want to tell you about what I’m learning about Jesus. I want to tell you about this journey I’m on. Our lives mean nothing by ourselves. Isolated, only looking inward, we reach no one. Not even ourselves I don’t think. That’s not to say that introspection isn’t essential. It’s so essential, but it is not enough. The lessons I learn and all of the love that fills me means nothing if I don’t share it with you. Even if I can make you feel the tiniest connection or longing or inspiration, that is more than nothing. It is infinitely more than nothing.

My best friend died four months ago.

She was 22. In the middle of her life. Literally. I had talked to her that day and she was going on about work and school and various boys. She was in a similar place to me. Working through college, being suddenly in her life and yet still sort of waiting for it to fully start. It’s where we all are in our early 20’s. Still only beginning.

And then she didn’t wake up.

I work at a coffee shop and at 8 in the morning a good friend from high school called me in a panic to say she had heard that Mary Paige died. My heart started racing and I started shaking and I went to the back to call Mary Paige’s sister to assure me that this was some kind of sick joke. She sounded so calm. God love Peyton, she is so strong. She very quietly told me it was true.Mary Paige was dead.

Mary paige is dead.

I’m not going to go into detail about how hysterical I was that day or how I processed it because it’s still not something I’d like to revist. To be honest I don’t think I’ll ever fully process it. Most days it’s always there in my mind, but I can never grasp it. Never fully comprehend that she’s gone. Sometimes I repeat it to myself over and over in hopes that it will sink in or I’ll understand something or be able to wrap my mind around some small part of it. It never works. All that’s left is me and my life that refuses to stop for anyone. Life doesn’t care if you’re mourning. Life doesn’t care if you’re not ready to face it.

I remember sitting on a bench on campus one day looking out at all the people passing by fascinated that they couldnt see the pain. They couldnt see that I was broken and utterly different than before. They couldnt see how horrible and unappealing the world looked to me.

I could go on forever about everything I felt during that time. I could tell you about the darkness. About the way that it covered everything like some dense fog I couldn’t escape from. Maybe in another entry the darkness will be more important. But I need to tell you about the light. I need to tell you how I got through this. I need to tell you about the beauty that transformed my anger into something profound and infitely more powerful.

I need to tell you about God.

Just a glimpse at any of my previous entries will show you how much I doubt everything: God, religion, creation, I mean literally everything. The existance of a God sounds ridiculous to me. Completely ridiculous. I want to reach the intellectuals out there who don’t just doubt aspects of religion but everything from the ground up. I can’t stress enough how much I doubt the fundamentals of any kind of belief in God.

I don’t know how exactly it happened. On top of losing my best friend, I was in my last semester of college. I was taking an overload of 21 hours because my scholarship ran out, and otherwise I would have had to take out many more student loans. It happened the week before all my midterms. On top of that, I had just been informed that I had roughly two weeks to compose a piece of music for for a 13 instrument ensemble.

I remember thinking that all of this had to be some sort of horribly cruel joke. It all seemed so ridiculous. There was no way she was dead. There was no way I was going to get all this done. There was no way she was dead.

I wanted to quit. Really I just wanted to hide. From everything. I remember I would drive to school and just sit in my car trying to convince myself to get out and go to class. I felt weighed down by bricks, drowning in my own life.

I was going to fail. I even longed to fail. How glorious would it be to give up? To bask in the rebellious power of choosing to do nothing at all. To crawl into bed and never come out, to never have to answer to anyone.

In that time more than probably any other time in my life, I had people praying for me. I heard it so often, and yet it sounded so strange to me each time someone told me that “I’m praying for you”

“I’m praying for you”

“I’m praying for you”

I felt nothing but the obligation to reply with “thank you” and the odd sensation that none of the prayers and concerns in the world could affect or change the situation and how I felt about it. I even felt a slight twinge of anger that their sympathy seemed more concerned with making themselves feel good and selfless than in actually helping me. It felt dismissive almost. Im sure it was kindly meant, but it couldn’t touch any of my anger or pain.

And then something changed I think.

I was sitting in class one day texting one of my good friends about how I was handling everything. I was telling her about all of the millions of things I had to do if I was going to graduate this semester and not fail out of school.

And suddenly something was different. I don’t know where it came from but as I talked to her I remember telling her definitely that it was all going to work out. I was going to do it. I didn’t know how I would do it, but I felt this overwhelming grace assuring me that it would get done and I was going to graduate.

I wasn’t alone in this. I wish there was a way that I could better explain my experience of God in this time but it was this quiet certainty that got me through everything. Everything was heightened for me in this time of grieving which I believe allowed me to feel God in a more present way.

I felt him in everything. I mean, everything.

The sky looked different to me in this time. Through all the pain I couldn’t help but feel God in everything around me. Even the air seemed full of Him and his promise.

I firmly believe that in the same way that my experience of pain was heightened, so was my experience of beauty. I felt like I was coming alive in some way.

I don’t want you to read this and think that any part of this was easy and that I wasn’t suffering. Some days seemed a little brighter and more hopeful and then the next minute I plunged back into this haze of depression that seemed to paralyze me from doing anything besides feeling it.

I missed her. I miss her right now. I miss her in everything.

There was beauty in those weeks when all I did was study, work, write papers, and spend any free remaining time I had composing. I discovered a different kind of strength than the hardness I generally like to exhibit.

“Of course I don’t need any help. I’m fine. I’m fine.”, I would always say.

I couldn’t say that now. The strength I was given was more than me. It was strength through my own wounds and weakness.

It was grace.

I found myself thinking back to my favorite bible verse that I tend to revisit at various difficult times in my life:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness…this is why for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”   -2 Corinthians 12: 9-10

I used to think of God and religion as a sort of bandaid or “opiate for the masses” as many like to say.

This experience of suffering shattered that idea for me. There was nothing sparing me from pain or covering up my wound. It was freedom and transformation through the pain.

Im different.

My composition was the best thing I’ve ever written. It was real. I channeled everything I was feeling into it and in turn other people felt it deeply as well.

I graduated.

I met an amazing man that I never would have met or known without Mary Paige.

Sometimes I cry because of all the blessings I feel have been poured out on me during this incredibly challenging time in my life.

I cry sometimes because I’m so thankful for the deeper understanding of God I feel I’ve been given.

I cry because I’m so happy. I honestly am happy. I feel like I’m filled with a light and openness that was never there before. I feel more capable of loving the world and those around me with even more depth than before. My family sees it. My friends see it. I see it.

I desperately want to share this with you. I hope it touches you in some way. It’s changed me in more ways that I can count. It’s how I found God.

This is why I believe in Him.