One Week Down

So tomorrow it will be one week since I moved back to the country and only 8 weeks till I leave to go to training for the Congo.
This past week has been hard, I think going home will always be a little hard for me.
On Friday I went home and made my brothers birthday cake. Then on Saturday I hosted his birthday party and mediated between my Mom and him. The party was pretty long and so I was wiped out after wards.
I started work on Monday and worked Monday and Tuesday moving trees and getting things ready for opening. Then today I did respite for a friend. The greenhouse opens on Thursday and then I will be working more regularly there.
Tomorrow is my first day off and I plan on going over to the house and starting to pack and sort through all my stuff which is piled all over the place from my various hurried degrees of packing and having my Dad and brother unpack over the last three months. So pretty much all my possessions are randomly located in boxes all over the basement and I want to find stuff and organize it.
I plan on downsizing. I have enough stuff to furnish my own house or apartment and well it seems that my life will be a lot of moving around in the next couple of years so hopefully I will be able to have a garage sale and raise some more money for the Congo.

My friend just gave me this quote "For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must stop being a pleaser and reclaim your identity as a free self"-Henri Nouwen
Coming home is hard because everyone has a box that defines their perception of me and that box is outdated so I really don't fit into it. Yet still people want to fit me into it. So it is a constant battle to break that mold
and have the freedom to just be me as I am without the crutch of doing and people pleasing.I am praying that I can find the freedom even here to really blossom into the person God wants me to be.That I will have the courage like the crocuses to poke my head out and make myself

vulnerable to the world allowing God to work in and through me.
I find it especially hard because the last couple of months I have been able to really just be me whoever that was in the moment, having the freedom to grow with people and discover the things that are core to who I am. Now that I have established some of those things it is a challenge to hang onto them when I am back in an environment where people really don't know who I have become. Their image of me is shaped by
my childhood and for most outdated by several years as I haven't lived at home in two years. So even though nothing drastic has changed a lot of subtle shifts in view point and mindset effect how I live my life and the motivations behind some of my actions are different. I am me, but I am growing and continually redefining what exactly it means to be me.
The three things that I know for sure are that I love God and want to follow Him, and that I love people. Those things haven't changed but the direction they take me has.

Reflections on Moving On

May-01-09
12:18 AM

Hello everyone,
Today on my drive home I started thinking about how many times I have moved in the past bit. I have moved four times in the past eight months. Moving so much really challenges my desire to hang onto things. It aids me in my efforts to live simply by challenging me making me ask myself if I really need the things that I tend to accumulate. It's hard because there is a part of me that wants to nest and have nic nacs all over my living space, but that part is losing to the me that goes alright well I don't want any more junk. Only useful things and my art because it is necessary for me to thrive. That mentality was sorely challenged when I went home yesterday and started going through stuff from my squirrel days. I tried on a pair of boots that my friend gave me two years ago. You have to understand these are not just any boots they are beautiful boots. I have large feet and often feel like the only shoes that fit me are clunky, but these boots made me feet feel pretty. You know how certain articles of clothing can make you feel as if you are in fact beautiful. These boots did that for me, but I never wore them much because they really hurt my one foot.
However, I kept them secretly hoping that my feet would shrink or that the boots would become just a little looser across my right foot. Today when I tried them on they still hurt my foot. In fact my foot is hurting now as I write this. The pain only serves to underline the ridiculousness of me clinging to a pair of boots that never fit me.
Why did I cling to this pair of boots? Was it the ideal they held? The dream of being something I'm not? The knowledge that I will likely never buy myself a pair of handsome boots like them? The fear that God doesn't really know me and therefore will only provide me with drudgery clunky rubber boots?
Honestly, I think it was probably a little of each of those things. The thing that scares me the most is that I know God, we have walked through many fires together. I have experienced His provision and love and yet there is a part of me that stubbornly clings to these useless boots saying I have to look out for myself because no one else, including God, will. The reality is that people often fail and I end up looking out for myself, but God, God does not fail. Whenever I fully place my trust in Him and throw myself upon his mercy He provides in ways beyond anything I can comprehend.
So why do I hesitate to trust Him? Why do I sit alone mired in fears? Why am I seemingly incapable of completely relinquishing my hold on my life even when I know it is the answer to my sometimes crippling fears?
The answer I think lies in my condition, that of being human. As much as I know the truth in my head and have experienced it in my life I still struggle to believe God's truth.
Imagine Jesus is sitting across from me staring into my eyes.
"Keep trusting me?" He asks as he holds out his nail scarred hand. "I love you and I promise to never leave you or forsake you. Keep trusting me, really trust me. Let go of all the things that are distracting you, don't embrace fear as a friend. Trust me, ask my Father, search for us and then you will find us. You will be given what you ask for and the things you trust me with will be taken care of." Matt 6&7
He is telling me that I can't rest in the fact that I trusted Him in the past and He came through, but I have to be actively engaging in relationship with Him journeying down the next path. Going over and over the lesson of trust until I really truly learn it. To the point where I am able to throw off all my possessions and fears living contentedly in the trust of God.
Unfortunately I am human and as Kenneth Boa says the renewing of our minds is not a one-time deal but a continuous cycle of "surrender and trust and of emptying and filling as the Holy Spirit replaces the lies we have believed with the truth of our identity in Christ". I know the truth; that God will provide and that the Creator of the Universe loves me deeply, madly, incomprehensibly for all eternity. That love is so great that He gave His only son, Jesus who was perfect to suffer, bearing the punishment for my sin. I have immeasurable intrinsic worth, because not only did God create me in His image and declare that I was good. He sent Jesus to rescue me when I choose to run away from Him and broke His heart. Even now when I wander and doubt He calls me back.
No matter how much I know this in my head and have even experienced it personally in my life, those lies are buried too deep and I doubt yet again. I cling to the boots as a toddler rebelling against their parent. I tell God that I don't really trust Him when I cling to these things, but I am learning to trust Him. To hold all things in my life with open hands. It is so hard and I struggle often, but I continue to hold my life in open upturned palms to God. My hands are open to receive but also open to surrender giving it all back.
So today I put my boots on the garage sale pile.