Morning coffee thoughts...because sometimes a hot cup of coffee (or two) in the morning can help awaken more than just our tired eyes. Grab a cup of coffee (or tea, if you prefer) and join with me as I document these moments of reflection and awakening. I hope you'll share your moments of awakening, too, because sharing stories is one of the best things we can do.
It's funny how it happens. How instead of reading my devotion first thing in the morning while I drink my coffee, I feel the need to read one of my favorite author's blogs, and her words drive themselves straight into my heart and help heal my hurt.
Her words, they just help me breathe better. And this morning, that is just what they did. Yesterday I had plans to post today on how hard this has been; being in a new place. And how much I miss my home. This morning, though I still feel those hard pangs of homesickness and loneliness, I have a new perspective.
I do not have a full time job here, yet. I don't have close friends, either. I don't have my family here with me, and that's one of the hardest parts. I feel so isolated, sometimes. Some days I just stay in my tiny apartment most of the day because why do anything else when I have to do it alone? I don't enjoy being alone. I ache for community, but it's draining to seek after it.
My perfect, in my mind, would be back home, surrounded by family, by the friends I dearly miss. My perfect would be at our church back home with our small group that has given so much and grown my faith in so many ways over the past two years. Why must life have so many seasons?
This season, it is breaking me. But maybe it is beautiful because as it is breaking me, it is building me back and it is building me different. It is taking who I was and making me into something better. Through pain and struggle and loneliness, we grow.
This is life. My perfect has been blurred and distanced from me, but that is a good thing because perfect is a myth. Take me out of my ideal situation, and I have to learn to grow outside of my comfort zone. I have to learn to grow and get outside of myself, even when I want to stay in my head all day long, curl up on the couch and pout about the fact that I am where I am, and it doesn't feel like home yet.
I am where I am, and it doesn't feel like home. But I when I look to my right, I see my favorite person doing this with me. I am growing into a new type of family here, Nick and I, and that makes me feel a little more home when nothing else does. I am in the middle of the building of a family, the everyday, the beautiful ordinary. Even if that beautiful ordinary stings a bit, it is still beautiful. It is still an adventure.
My ordinary isn't easy right now. And I know there are a lot of others living a much harder ordinary that I am. But I think we are all free to feel pain in our own struggles, rather than compare them to someone else's. We shouldn't feel bad for feeling bad. We are aloud to be sad, to feel the hurt, as long as we strive to see the beauty around us through our struggles, and thank God for all of the good things, because there are always so many good things.
And although my ordinary isn't easy for me right now, and my heart is hurting a little, there really are so many good things. There really is adventure here.
And this is my present.
I could continue to ache for my home, or I could live right through that pain and live right here and right now. I could trust God a little more, and trust that He has us here for a reason, and He'll continue to sustain us.
I could live in the present, and let go of the perfect, because the perfect doesn't actually exist. Perfect is a myth that fools us into discontentment when God actually has us right where we need to be in our present.
So today, and tomorrow, and next week and this month and for the rest of my life, I hope, I'm focusing on the present, on the real, on just living each ordinary day as if it were an extraordinary gift. Because that's what it is. It might be messy, unorganized, painful and hard, but it is also a beautiful adventure, and I want to let myself be honest with my feelings and just simply live, striving to be present rather than perfect, to live in the present rather than wish for the perfect.
Let's Be Friends, Coffee Date
Inspired by Shauna Niequist, and celebrating because she announced she is writing a new book! Please do yourself a favor and read her blog, and all of her books, and this post.
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