All seasons end

There are seasons in life, seasons of growth and change, seasons for rest, seasons for running harder than you every have before. Every season is different, with different shades and colours and sounds. The past six years have been one giant season full of a million microcosm. I leave this place knowing I am no longer the same person, no longer the girl who came. My opinions are stronger, my sense of self is deepened and my understanding of the world widened. I am no longer the same.Six years ago I boarded a plane after a night of vomiting and too many tears; fear and anxiety crippling me about a move I wanted to do, across a continent I didn’t really know. That girl has grown, and changed and lost some of her anxiety and fear.Now full of anticipation, expectancy and a little bit of confusion, I will board a plane in a month, no doubt with just as many tears and go back to the home on my passport.To explain or process six years in this place will no doubt take just as long, to fully see or understand the amount I have been impacted or things I have seen I have no idea where to begin.But for now there is a bitter sweetness in my mind at all times: this is the last time for this, or when shall I see this person again. There is beauty in a season ending, a finality of a chapter closed, a peace in the time to move on. For this is a place where a diverse family has grown and for this season I became part of it. For this season I was one with it. It will never stop being a part of me, never stop being something that shapes me, for this beauty village in this beautiful place will always be a home....It is two months since the above was written; the plane has been boarded - the ride home poetically similar to the first one. I've rested, moved and started a job, almost found a home and am wearing suit trousers and heels to work on an almost daily basis. I'm amazing at how life just moves forward. It has felt like each day has tumbled into another with no time to think. Tonight feels like one where I could sit and type out every process and every thought. But I am leaving it at this...The God I know and trust is larger and more faithful that I can every understand. His ways are wilder and better and beyond all my wildest dreams. This next season has started and all I wonder is what God has planned because I could not have fathomed all that happened in the last one.R./ 

'Karen don't be sad'

you came for 21 days.

you inspired me to keep on going, you listened and talked and made me laugh until it hurt. Ladies, you are welcome: wherever I am, you are welcome, anytime. keep being incredible.

r/

tan lines and dirty soles

it's summer, the sandal tan lines on my feet prove it, as do the polaroids taken in hammocks and balconies, in lakes and at late night tire swing conversations.and the time of farewells for this blonde beauty as she travels back to the place called paradise and the place that sent her here in the beginning.it's the season of no shoes, and late night conversations, and new friends, and swimming in lakes that aren't that clean, and all the fresh vegetables and fruit you can find.a little update/ i try to promise there will be morer/

4 days

4 days away. almost no planning. walking and talking. escaping.

pizza, coffee, gelato, crazy waiters and a friend who patiently waits as you set up camera angles on napkins and menus, just so you get that one good photo of the two of you.

thanks for the memories.

r/

more to say

Just stand up and take a breath and let the words come out your mouth. 

You have more to say that you are letting on, 

you have more to say that your heart racing and fingers sweating would have you believe.

 There is always been more to say, conversations that I finish in my head because in that moment I did not quite get to say everything that was spilling through my brain. I'm learning though, slowly but surely just to speak out the things that make my heart race and fingers sweat and that make me a tiny bit fearful of what comes next.

But sometimes, and this is one of the most important things I am learning, sometimes, although there is more to say...it is just better to stay quiet, or to just say one simple sentence.

I miss this space I came to process, where words tumbled out my fingers, but it has always been sporadic, I think I am a sporadic person in general. So it shall be, sporadic and uncertain. Sometimes with all the words there are to say spilling out into these screens and sometimes just silence, a photo here or there.

R.

soft snow flakes

[wpvideo HRxnSHOO] it snowed on christmas day.winter is here. the wood store is going low. the layers are adding up...5 long-sleeves today and counting.  i am simultaneously loving the cosy evenings and dreaming of the sun-soaked spring days that are coming.r/ 

Let's jump into lakes

Has anyone ever asked you to jump into a lake when you don’t think it’s safe, or told you to close your eyes before they feed you some unknown thing, or asked you to ‘trust me, I know its going to be fine’?Has anyone every just taken you so far out of your comfort zone and all the things you feel safe and secure in and then shown you why it was a good idea to travel so far away. Why it was a good idea to trust them with it all?There is a surety in trusting someone. Knowing that someone has your back 100%, in so many ways that whatever crazy thing they ask of you, you know it will be fine. There is a surety in those relationships: I think that’s part of what I admire in the marriages of my parents, and my brother & sister-in-law (and so many others I know) this certainty in one another that means they trust the other would catch them if they fell blindfolded.I’m in my last week of a two-month break from my normalcy. I’ve spent the past two months traveling to see people, helping my parents pack up their home and generally trying to get my mind, heart, body and spirit rested. If I am honest with you I would say 98% of that time has been spent in avoidance of what I came home thinking I needed to process.When I boarded my flight to London in June I had these romantic ideas of coffee shops and endless notebooks full of my brain on paper, days spent in quiet processing of the past three years and all that I have seen. I wanted to delve deeper into theological questions and find solutions and answers to things that were plaguing my mind. That was what I thought I was jumping into.Those days and coffee shops didn’t happen. I didn’t seek them out and I avoided the idea of them. I instead spent time watching TV and reading novels, sleeping and becoming way to interested in made-for-tv Hallmark channel movies.And then on Thursday evening I had dinner with Becky; a sound solid friend who never fails to get to the heart of everything. She has the ability to draw out the inner thoughts of me that I didn’t know were there simply by asking me the right questions.As I answered her questions and thought about what she was saying I began to see that maybe I had been processing in the past two months. That while I was ignoring my usual focused, determined, coffee shop and moleskin idea of processing, my brain and heart were doing in for me.In this time away, in the simple act of doing something else and breathing a different rhythm I had begun to process the exact things I had wanted to when I left Romania.last night as I read back over the few journal entries from the past month I found this written and circled:"The surety of Gods call and goodness over the safe and secure and comfortable”I’ve never heard God say ‘trust me’ as much as he did this last year, and I’d never been so unsure if I could trust him.However there was something in this idea of being sure of his goodness and call… of trusting him the way Jeremiah does when all is going wrong and he declares that the idea of holding onto and stopping doing as God asks “… is like fire in my bones! I am worn out trying to hold it in! I can’t do it!”It’s like being asked to jump into a big dark lake, or being blindfolded and not knowing what is coming.You take a deep breath and trust the person, you jump and end up in the most beautiful lake you’ve ever been in, with the stars their brightest above you and the lake the freshest temperature. And you breath and you float and you are thankful they took you there, and asked you to jump.This summer I went into it with expectations of big things happening, of God changing everything. Leaving Romania for two months was stepping far away from my comfort zone. And it wasn’t until Becky and her beautiful perfect questioning that I saw that I was in the lake, the perfect one, staring at the stars and the biggest, brightest moon I’d seen in a while. The jump just looked so different from what I had thought it would.We have to be willing to jump, it doesn’t work if we don’t. We have to be willing to jump in friendships, relationships, work, life, growing up. We have to be willing to jump when it comes to God- whether we are deep in relationship with Him or not even sure He exists. Trust that he is going to catch us if we ever fall, and that when he asks us to jump or close our eyes then it will all be okay because He's got this.Because if we don’t jump, if we don’t trust then we get stuck: on the cliff edge, on the heather, comfortable but never knowing the reality of the beauty and experiences that lie beyond it.R/

candy coated unicorns are hard to find...

i took up running in February...okay so maybe jogging at a push, but consistently 3 times a week before work i have met up with the beautiful Tori and run around our little town.so when our friends suggested a 5k colour-run we signed up along with them. Queue a bus trip to Timisoara, a walk across the city, crazy dance music, tutu's, temporary tattoos and a crowded warm-up....5k later we are covered in chalky paint, sipping beers waiting to be told its time to throw the paint packs in the air and be covered all over again.it's worth doing, i promise...the tag-line as the happiest 5k might actually be true. We ended the day tired and happy, vowing to make this a tradition.

not until you look behind

It happens so quickly this time thing. The seasons change behind you as you move through day to day and suddenly it's 'how many weeks until you fly?' 'When are you coming back, are you coming back?' And 'how do we finish this well'.The summer crept up on me this year, somehow the endless blue skies didn't give it away. There have been fewer goodbyes (thank you Dumnezeu) and no thoughts of a summer alone in a house. This year has passed a bit like a dream, one dreamt a million times over which you only realise actually happened when you are looking behind you. The time moves on and on and somehow I'm here, planning time off to sleep and dream bigger, travel a bit and then return...hopefully with more fire in my belly and better language skills and dreams and plans a bit bigger and wider and higher than before. We sat on the balcony of the green/blue house the other day; Looking out at the view, praying for this time apart that we have before us... And I found myself being in awe that somehow I had become one of them. The ones who just stayed a bit longer, and suddenly in 3 months I'll be into the fourth year here... the one who is meant to know how it goes. Working with these people, I don't know how to explain it, it's beautiful, heart breakingly, joy bringingly beautiful. I've realised more than every now that change happens slowly and gently and often in a way you don't realise until you look behind you. I'm spending the week at Tauț, helping with cleaning and organising and making sure the visitors have what they need. It's a different type of work and it's the most beautiful place to be. R/

life lately

R/

rushing waters

brain tired of thinking, simple tasks becoming mammoth mountains, and these words ringing in my ears....'if the world started with a ball of energy, and the only thing that existed before that was God, then surely He is the source of all energy...'home; candles, music, paints, bible, blank pages, and breathing it all in.trying to gain some of His majestic energy, His creator energy, resting in Him.and processing it all, here in this space, this tiny corner of the world wide web.r/

One thing

I have been sick all weekend. Cancelled plans and all. And as I sit in bed at 8pm about to shut down lights and technology in the hope of waking up better for the Monday morning start, I am listening to a song...

"You are the one thing that I need, You are the one thing that I need."

I haven't written in a while, (which was not my plan in the last post I wrote I know) I haven't really been able to get out of my head everything that has changed or moved since September. But above all else that has changed and adapted in those few months these lyrics could define them.

I am realising more and more than there is one thing above all else that I need and that is God. It is Jesus. It is time with him, spent sitting waiting on him. It is not a new revelation but it feels like an urgent one. One where I know more now than before that I really truly need it.

I don't think we necessarily ever leave seasons of being molded but for sure Isaiah 64:8 is ringing in my ears over everything right now.

 "And yet, o Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We all are formed by your hand." With each new week I can feel myself being stretched and pulled in the best of ways: the way a potter throws his clay around, making it the right texture before molding it... in the way that you know everything will feel different in 6 months.

Currently my brain feels full of cotton wool but at some point maybe I will try and put together the words to explain everything that has been going on in my head.

R/

afraid to write

"the thing you are most afraid to write, write that."

This quote has sat in the draft section of this blog for about a year. I see it each time I log in and each time before this I said "no way"; The quote makes sense to me, because I think most often what we are afraid to write, or speak or share, or let the world see is linked to the things that make us vulnerable. It just seemed too big to tackle.

But this week I responded to a banterous comment in a way I never have before, and the response came back something like this:

'well, there speaks a women who is healed'

A tiny, throw-away comment, made over lunch in the midst of a busy day in a busy week. But it stayed with me and has been playing over in my head since then.

And I think this is why.

Because this week I didn't get upset, or offended, or angry. I didn't take the comment as a reflection on my character, or identity. The words of someone else did not effect me in the way that they had done in the past.

And tonight as I have sat down to write after not writing in so long, I have begun to see that above everything else that has happened, God has and is healing me.

He has slowly, gently, beautifully picked up the pieces of me that made me misunderstand my identity and showed me the truth.

The truth that my identity is in Him. That my identity has nothing to do with my face or body shape. It has nothing to do with the things others say or do in regards to me. My identity is not as short or brunette or loud or extroverted or introverted or organised or messy. My identity has nothing to do with the boxes and structures we humans seem to love to place one another in.

It is 100% to do with Him.

My identity is to do with pointing to Him, worshiping Him, following Him.

His creation of humankind, His love as a Father, as a King, as a Friend. His desire to be close and in relationship with us. My identity is in that relationship, in His grace (which I am forever trying to understand), in His might and wonder. In His love, compassion and heartache for the world.

I've been scared to make public, to write the process of it all. I've been scared to make public that I have had to ask the King of Heaven to break down walls and chisel off things I have held so tightly to, scared to admit that I have hidden behind causes and false 'independent women' statements rather than dealing with the pain or the anger.

I still do not have it all together, I still over-think sometimes and get offended and angry. I still have things in me which need healing. But I no longer find myself walking into every room with the need to prove something.

 He is enough for me, and by His grace He accepts me as I am.

So I am going to write, to be disciplined and write.

About the journey, and the reality of it all. About the things which make me a bit afraid and vulnerable.

I will always try to point to God, to Jesus in it all, because I do not know anything else in the world that is more real or wonderful than them.

R/

Human Planet

My head is full of new things. My mouth trying to form around new kinds of words and my brain trying to change gears as if my life was going from motorway to serious off-road. And so tonight, I'm hiding in David Attenborough's voice as he speaks of the human planet and watching beautifully shot scenes of this planet we live in. R/  

Year 3

  I started my third year here a few weeks ago. Another year and another version of my job, this time more changed than before, more what I thought I would do when I stepped onto the plane 3 years ago. I wouldn't do it any other way though, even if it seems to have taken a while. I wouldn't change the lessons I've learnt, or the people who have taught and surrounded me. I feel lucky, no, blessed to have had that chance. Most of them have left now and I feel a little like they taught me to fly and flew next to me for a while before dropping off and letting me go. A friend from home recently released a song 'Masks' and something about the vulnerability of it got to me. It fits with everything at the moment, putting down crowns and being completely transparent, and knowing identity in God above all else. So tomorrow I start in a new sort of office (hopefully less office and more community), with a new team and a new agenda. And in a week or so I will move into a freshly painted and refurbished home. With the risk of being completely clichė I guess I am saying I'm entering a new season. A beautiful, wonderfully fresh new season. R/