spring. it’s my favorite season. change is also one of my favorite things. those two loves have joined together to start a cycle in my life. a natural and obvious pairing as weather change gives nature the opportunity to come back to life. making amends for the cold weather that striped the tress naked. the two reconcile and change comes.
four years ago i had the opportunity to go to africa, i will forever be a changed person because of that trip. i came back with a bigger perspective of the world and saw what life looked like for other groups of people. i saw a lot of brokenness. it was extremely healthy for me to see, and it broke me. three years ago in the spring, my perspective on community outside of america continued to grow and i saw what it looked like in the dominican republic. i went with a lovely group of people that challenged me and probed me to think outside my american bubble. to see beauty and worth in people and seeing god in them and through them in completely new and beautiful ways. i came back a changed person. two years ago, i traveled to europe. i saw and heard so many stories, saw so many beautiful places, met a lot of broken people. last year the spring brought a big change in me moving to Atlanta. this experience broke me once again. i learned a lot of lessons the hard way, but do we ever really learn the easy way?
i’ve come back from these experiences with a fresh realization of the world’s brokenness, of my own brokenness. i’ve felt god close in those times, and he has helped me rearrange the pieces, and build me back up, but slightly changed.
this spring i’ve set out on an adventure. realizing that humans seek comfort and stability, moving back to orlando has forced me out of that and i refuse to settle for comfort. we have to be forced into change, into the uncomfortable. its discomfort that transforms you. and allows your pieces to be re-shifted.
i long to be transformed. permanently and perfectly.
i graduated a year and a half ago. everyone i talk to agrees that this is one of the most confusing and hardest times of one’s life. adults tell me that they’re still trying to figure out what they’re going to be “when they grow up.” unfortunately this isn’t the greatest time in america’s history to be figuring it out. the alternative to not knowing what exactly to do is take a risk and just try out something and hopefully find your niche. but now it’s hard to even find the opportunity. its been a year of bumbling through my days. dreaming and scheming and thinking about options. it would be very comfortable, very “worthy,” very american to default to grad school. that seems the thing to do when you don’t know what to do after undergrad. but i don’t want to just jump into something else. something comfortable.
intentional community is heavy on my heart. it’s the thing that keeps coming back as i search through options and adventures. when i read exodus 36 and acts 2, i can literally feel my heart beat faster. i want to find people that are passionate about making christianity real. i want to see how other people are doing this. i want to hear people talk about attempts, successes, failures. how they do it in the mundane. in the extraordinary. in the everyday. the exodus community came together in the middle of the desert and build a tabernacle, something with the only intentions of glorifying god. they were so generous. so sacrificial.
i want a space for gathering, creating things, sharing those creations, encouraging one another, and collaborating with each other. i want to help reduce the barriers that prevent people from creating. (i.e. lack of space, lack of resources, lack of people who give a crap.) a safe place to create, marked by generous participation with and encouragement of one another, as well as mutual education. i want to reach beyond ourselves in generously meeting the needs of the people of orlando to the best of our ability - impacting their lives through our creations. yeah.
let’s do this.
i'm so thankful for the community i'm in. i know know know that there is purpose in god's timing and placement in conjunction with these ideas. they have been so supportive in the last couple months concerning this and can not wait to walk through this with them and support each other.
