Home. Happiness. Here.

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Home is waking tucked between pillows to the light leaking through rain-glazed windows.

Happiness is opening worn pages to favorite passages and finding strength in familiar truth.

Home is omlettes and homemade biscuits and apple butter with the roomie.

Happiness is growing into a language you hope to one day call your own.

Home is the endless stream of motorbikes weaving around your car on the bypass. It’s street food carts and little warungs and rice with every meal.

Happiness is little cafes and dark coffee and rainy afternoons. It’s acoustic ballads in the headphones and doing work you’re passionate about.

Home is the presence of a heart you trust. One that whispers, cease your striving and just be. I take you as you are.

Happiness is knowing that before all your doing, you are already enough.

Home is a meal shared with family from all over the globe because there’s nothing like food and Jesus to bring people together. It’s probing conversation and honesty.

Happiness is here and now and this.

*the other day, a writer friend of mine asked me what home and happiness meant in the context of that day. this piece was the result. thanks josh!

Inhale, Exhale

I just realized that I start almost every poem with “And…” as if the words that follow are simply the next breath.

Because these days I write poetry like breathing.

It began again one day about two months ago with a sudden spark of inspiration from an obscure corner of the web where one brave soul had posted beautiful, honest words.

It drove me to pick up my peach felt tip and for the first time in forever, I scrawled halting lines in the yellow notebook. Suddenly I can’t stop.

Suddenly everything and everyone is a poem and I tuck it all away in pages both physical and digital.

I chuckled to myself the other day about how my brain works – how I can bookmark certain thoughts or moments that I know will become poetry – return to them like dog-eared pages in my mind the next time I have a moment.

And every spare moment is a moment to write…to dream, to think, to process – in meetings, in coffee shops, tucked behind friends on motorbikes.

Some days I can’t see straight until I scatter thoughts across paper to clear the fog of them all.

Some days I can’t make sense of my heart until feelings are emptied and dealt with in lines and rhythm.

Rhythm has always been healing for me. It’s why I write, really – to breathe easy and deep.

I have discovered the stability of a soul that lives in rhythm. And even in the craziness, the absence of schedule and routine, this soul finds her rhythm.

This rhythm of inhaling and exhaling beauty and heartache in each one’s time.

And in this way you can find delight even in the tired days.

“Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered…” Luke 12:7 ESV

 

Indonesia Has My Heart

September comes and I hit the ground running.

Day one brings school ministries and lunch meetings and new faces.

Everyday new faces. And trying to remember all the names when most of them are Asian and unusual…I’m getting there.

Day three brings community and new-found family and I knew that very first gathering that I was all in. Happy tears. Grateful tears.

Suddenly I could see how everything had been leading up to this. Because all of my hobbies fall into place here and all of my skills and experience are being called on and this, this is where God has been working to bring me all this time.

It all made sense now.

Suddenly my planner is full and everyday holds new adventures and good food and genuine friendships.

Suddenly meetings are my favorite because when great minds and big hearts get together to dream and plan, amazing things start working themselves out.

I’ve never encountered a community so passionate and creative and infectious.

These people are changing Bali. And it won’t be long before the ripples start reaching other shores. I have no doubt.

Because here the dreams are big and the faith is bigger and impossible situations are simply opportunities for God to step in.

Indonesia has captured my heart.   

Home Across the Pacific (Thailand pictures)

Bangkok skyline

It was incredible coming back five years later to the country that had such an impact on me growing up.

I was raised to have a curious mind, to explore the beauty of language, to love cultures different than my own.

It was in this city that I found Jesus as my best friend, where I learned that family is one of the most important things you can have, where I became convinced that Thai food is undeniably the tastiest food on the planet.

I knew such a huge part of me was wrapped up in this land of traffic thicker than the humidity and blatant stares and friendlier smiles. I remember days when all I wanted was to leave. But you can never run from who you are. Missions runs through my veins and I knew I’d come back. I’d always come back.

This time it felt strangely like…home.

Home is one of those words I always stumbled over.

What is home?

I had moved so many times early in my life and I rebelled mentally about settling in the unexotic Midwest. And it wasn’t until I’d been back to Thailand twice, Kenya, Costa Rica, and finally Greece to realize that this little Midwest city that could hardly be called a city wasn’t such a bad place to come back to.

I fell in love with the smallness, the simplicity, the coffee shops, the culture. Even after my two closest friends moved several states away, I was content.

And for the first time I knew how it felt to be planted – my roots grew a little deeper. Suddenly I realized I had two beautiful places to call mine.

Friends come and go and home isn’t always where all the friends are. My people span too many continents for that.

All at once I realized that home was less about my surroundings and more about my heart. It was about the coffee shop I visited two afternoons a week, where the Americanos are strong and the baristas know my name. It was about my favorite streets and downtown memories and old houses full of character and charm and stories to tell. It was about the library brimming with the worlds and adventures that filled my childhood summers. It was about family and shady trails and quiet creeks.

It was when I became content to call my little Midwest “home” that Bangkok suddenly felt like home as well.

Now I’m packing my suitcases and moving back to Southeast Asia, though a new part for me – a little smaller, a little more beachy, a little less familiar.

I’m less sure than ever about what the future holds and far more excited than I ever hoped to be.

New country, new people, new adventures to be had and memories to be made.

I am so looking forward to adding Indonesia to the places I call home.

I Choose

These past couple weeks I’ve learned a lot about forgiving people – including myself. I’ve learned how to pray for those who have hurt me.

Praying blessings is powerful – to bless those who curse.

It’ll change the way you think about them, to intercede on their behalf, to plead with the Father for their happiness and well-being, to pray deep faith and abiding peace and overflowing joy over them.

It’ll do things to you – eliminate selfishness and bitterness, change the way you love.

Not for the faint of heart but I highly recommend it if you’re willing to learn a lesson in humility.

That’s where I’m at for the moment.

Humbleness. Prayer. Letting go of the need to be right, to be understood.

Because let’s face it, we’re going to be misunderstood sometimes. People aren’t always going to stick around to hear our side of the story and we’re not always going to get our apology.

And it’s okay. Really.

Their opinion doesn’t define you. It’s how you respond that defines you.

So I choose forgiveness and blessing and grace.

And that is when the healing comes.