Where am I?

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If you search Pinterest or even google travel sayings you will find a myriad of one liners trying to explain what a person experiences when one travels. I would simply like to say that traveling changes you.

In being back in the U.S. And in mostly familiar places (Eight Point Lake, Mt. Pleasant, Ann Arbor) it's funny how almost nothing has changed, but everything is different. Or more accurately, I am different.

I can't explain it, and I frankly don't want to try, but I do want to share what has been on my heart and how God is changing me in it. In the last year I have talked a lot about love. How incredibly huge God's love is for each of us. With that, however, we must also experience loss and pain deeper than we can imagine. This week I am reconnecting with the staff team of New Life Church and we went to see the new movie "Inside Out." I was brought to tears watching the interplay between sadness and joy and how essential each is for the other to fully be expressed and experienced. As Ecclesiasties reminds us, there is a time for everything. 

I feel as though I am currently in a phase of mourning. I look around me at the life that I once occupied and it feels like trying to put on an old sweater with the neck too tight and the fit not quite right. It just doesn't fit anymore. There is some great sadness in it. Relationships which I once held dear have faded, I can relate less to people than I once could, kids have grown, friends have been lost and in looking forward I know all of these things are only going to grow more true. However, in all the loss there is also great joy to be celebrated. My heart has grown to a size only possible by the power of God. I live in a way that more truly reflects the woman God made me to be, and I have chosen to love recklessly in the face of pain because I know that that is what Christ did for me. I more fully embrace the day for the truly amazing gift that it is. I more firmly rely on my creator to provide everything I need to do the work he asks, and I more fully fit in the Body because I am doing what God has made me to do. 

It is not all sunshine and flower. I often miss running water or air conditioning or a simple quiet morning drinking coffee with my sister, but I know that it's worth it to feel so fully alive and so able to fully love those around me. 

Standing in awe of the beautiful paradox we are living,

Sigourney

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