The past 5 months have been an incredibly challenging 5 months. There have been days of unexplanable peace and days of undescribable pain. Peace that has allowed laughter and pain that has left me laying on my bed, reething, cetain that my soul was being ripped in two. In fact, it makes sense to me while the ancient Israelites would tear their clothes from their bodies. When it hurts this bad, you've got to let it out. Except that I'm not good at letting it out. At all. My desire to be strong is probably my greatest weakness. And so I soldier on, "unaffected," and my friends say things like, "I don't know how you do it." It never occurred to me that they're saying these things because it's too much for one person to handle.
I have never felt like more of a failure in my entire life. My sense of self and worth directly attached to what I accomplish and whose approval I gain. And here I am, jobless, in debt, and unable to pay rent. I have been lucky so far; I'm good at handling money, so I've been slowly living off my savings. Now at a point where that is nearly gone, I cannot manufacture one ounce of security for myself. I am at the mercy of God's graces.
In this season of reluctant surrender I've discovered the art of camping. "Camping" meaning you look for the good and camp there for a while. It's not going to remove the struggle or supply all my needs, but "camping" allows me the chance to find light in the darkest of nights; it restores me just enough to take the next unknown, blind steps.
I'm currently living with two other CU graduates. One of them I knew of, but did not know until I moved in. She has been an amazing source of encouragement over the past couple weeks. We have laughed more than I can even explain. We've had some intreguing and honest conversations, we've pulled pranks and made jokes and she laughed hysterically when I added frozen peas to hot oil in a pan and the peas became mexican jumping beans (I'm not use to cooking with an electric stove, k? And, quite frankly, I don't like it). Needless to say, I was scrubbing oil off of all sorts of surfaces for the longest time.
I recently introduced her to El Matador Tortilla Chips. She really likes them. I tell her that if she's gonna eat tortilla chips, she might as well eat good tortilla chips.
Also, we have a marker board we use to communicate/joke around. She starts the day off with a thought, and I come up with some wit-driven retort while she's at work. And so on.
Wednesday it was a warning, "Beware the Landon Monkey. He cometh at 5pm"
Thursday it was blank because she was stressed about leaving for mexico today. So I wrote in big letters "BREATHE" acrossed the whole board. We referenced it often. :-p
Today I woke up, went to grab some breakfast, and read the board.
It said, "Never underestimate the power"
I then discovered that love can look like a bag of El Matador Tortilla chips
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