Mongolia

Mongolia…. In my mind it is a wild, untamed place.

In my mind when I think of the people there, I think of descendants of Ghengis Khan. Fierce and independent men and women. Forgotten royalty from a forgotten era.

In my mind I see I rolling steppes and wild horses. Nomadic people who choose to live nowhere and everywhere. I see hunts led by men on horseback with falcons on their arms. I see herds of reindeer in the cold northern places. I see snow and ice, and deserts and heat.

Tomorrow I will arrive in this land that I have dreamed about since I was a little girl.

And my heart is dreaming about what I will find there.

Manta Rays

I have to share a video of my last adventure in Hawaii! Some friends and I went and swam with manta rays on our second to last night here. 

I can't even describe how incredible it was to swim with such massive, primordial, strange and gentle creatures. 

What an experience...

Missing Kona

Cool mornings, hot days, warm evenings.

Truly enjoying the relief that cool breezes bring.

Ocean. Always the ocean.

Palm trees.

The way it feels to sink into the water.

Swimming with the knowledge that you’ll find something beautiful.

Papaya.

Early mornings spent swimming with pods of dolphins.

Warm summer nights spent stargazing.

Weekends spent exploring waterfalls, hiking new trails, laughing with new friends.

These are the things that I will miss about Kona...

Yes

This week I chose to say yes.

Yes to everything—the new, the scary, the unexpected. The purposeful and the pointless. The boring and the fun.

And I tried to make it a wholehearted yes as best I could.

You see, I realized one day how my answer is almost always “no.” Why is that? Why is it so easy to hold back if an idea doesn’t originate in my own heart and mind? What is it that makes me distrust everything that comes from outside of myself?

It doesn’t matter if it’s a family member, a friend, or even God asking me to do something, come somewhere, enjoy something… it’s easier to say no. To hold myself at arms length and remain aloof until I’ve weighed the options decided how involved I want to be.

It occurred to me that this holding back and hesitancy can’t be a part of having a joyful and fulfilled life, so I decided to spend my last week in my DTS responding with a confident, crazy, joyous “YES” to all things.

And I am so glad that I did.

It’s not as if I stumbled upon a magic formula to constant happiness, but I think something changes when you decide to always try to say yes (using discernment, of course) to the things that find you.

When my heart is in a position of always saying “no” it is focusing on the likelihood of disappointment. On a lack of trust for anyone or anything outside of my own heart and mind. That heart posture effectively says that no one else is worth my time, my love, my risk. No one. Not my friends, my family, or even my God.

Who would want to live like that..? It’s a wall that, though breachable, keeps out so much good. It keeps you from getting hurt, but it also keeps you from receiving love, and even more importantly, from giving love to others.

But, when I choose to say yes, my heart is saying that it expects great things. That life is good, and that joy is coming. That beauty is in this world, and there is light everywhere if only you choose to see it. It says that the people I surround myself with are worth taking risks for. They are worth going out of my comfort zone for. They are worth taking off the armor and shields that we pick up throughout our lifetimes to keep ourselves safe. 

They are worth giving the benefit of the doubt.

It says that I am brave enough to let myself make mistakes, and courageous enough to love people even though people are as prickly as cactuses and being close to them without being covered with armor hurts sometimes.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to say no or to have boundaries. I think that in order to have balance in your life, you must know where to draw the line. But for someone like me who has no problem drawing hard lines in the sand, it’s good to exercise saying “yes” for a change.

It puts my heart in a place where light can get to it easily and make it grow. It’s a choice I can make that brings joy and trust within my grasp.

So here is to many more weeks where I choose to say “yes” as often as I can.

How to Love

Love is patient.

Love is kind.

It does not envy.

It does not boast.

It is not proud.

It is not rude.

It is not self seeking.

It is not easily angered.

It keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil.

Love rejoices with the trush.

Love always protects.

It always trusts.

It always hopes.

It always perseveres.

Love never fails.

Sometimes I like coming up with excuses for why I can dislike someone. Let’s be honest, it’s a little too easy to find reasons not to be friends with difficult people sometimes.

Recently though, I realized that is a complete lie to believe that that is acceptable.

If, as a follower of Jesus, I am commanded to love everyone, then that means that I am literally meant to love everyone.

To choose kindness, patience, selflessness, humility, trust, fierce protectiveness, longsuffering, and perseverance in the way that I act towards them, treat them, and talk about them.

To choose to not be self seeking in a friendship is such a counter cultural thing. I think that in American culture we choose our friends based on what we can get out of that friendship.

How does they treat me? How do they affirm me? How do they make me feel? How often do they say yes to me?

But what if I chose to offer the hand of friendship to anyone, and not based on my human standards, but based on the standards that Jesus set? What if I decided to love people well just because people need to be loved well, and the more difficult the person, the more their need is.

Not to say that boundaries are wrong, or that we shouldn't have friends who do love us well. We need that. But I do feel challenged to learn to better love the people that I would naturally rather avoid.

Sometimes I like to think about eternity. It’s an idea that our brains cannot comprehend.

No end.

Compared to that, my life here is such a tiny little blip. It is so small. So short. Too short to not choose to radically love. Too short to put my own desires above my call to serve and love others.

So God, help me learn how to love. I’m not perfect. I will mess up. But change my heart to look more like Yours. Help me to see what you see when I look into the eyes of the angry, the unkind, the obnoxious, the socially awkward, the smelly, the ugly, the broken. Give me Your compassion and help me to be a friend to the forgotten.

You say that You are near to the low and to the broken—that when we love them, we love You. So help me to love You well…