Autumn

Well, summer is officially over. I guess I’m a little slow on the draw, here, because summer has actually been officially over for a long time. But it just hit me recently: we haven’t had a really warm day for quite some time. The leaves are falling off of trees at an alarming rate, and there are Christmas decorations for sale everywhere I go. I am pretty sure that it was only yesterday that I was feeling horrified at the Halloween decorations sitting out while it was over 90 degrees outside.

Really, I am a little slow. I’m a slow processor. I know this and am okay with it, most of the time. It makes me appear calm when alarming things happen (really, I just freak out later because it happened too fast to freak out in the moment!), which can be a bonus.

So it shouldn’t be too surprising that now, several months after leaving New Zealand, I am realizing that I have really left New Zealand. I miss it. Badly. I can’t believe I wasn’t there to cheer on the All Blacks as they won the Rugby World Cup. I can’t believe that I missed out on docking sheep at my friends’ farm. I want to go to the beach and sit in the hot New Zealand sun and stare at the aqua waves. And I can’t.

I’m sad about that. I’m sad that I am far from my NZ friends and I’m sad that I’m not with YWAM right now. I think that some of that is because I am a little bit adrift at the moment. I miss knowing what I’m doing and being good at it. Right now I don’t feel like I know much. As I pray and seek guidance, the most prominent thought that has come to me is: Be Here Now. So I’m trying. It’s interesting to me that this should be the simplest possible task, and yet I struggle with it. Because with just a little awareness and discipline, all I really have to do is exist, and here I am, now. But it’s so much easier, somehow, to drift away. To think about what was, and what I did, and what will be and what I will do. And that is what I think about more than I probably should.

I think those things are important, too. The past has molded me into who I am today. And without vision, people perish. But I have been realizing that I need to let myself just be every once in a while. Because at the heart of it all, I am a child of God. I have value that is not wrapped up in my success or failure in the things I have done or will do. And I think that really living in the truth of this is what God wants for me, even as I reflect on the past and miss the amazing gift of NZ, and even as I choose to stay in Portland and search for a job here. When I figure it all out, I will let you know. I have a feeling it might be a while! But I’m willing to wrestle it out; I think it might be worth the wait.