I Lost My Sister...

Technically, she's not my sister, she's my cousin, but my heart has never known the difference.

Born 6 months apart and living only 10 miles away, growing up for me was just amazing.  If she wasn't over at my house, then I was at hers.  We did everything together, sharing our secrets and our hearts like only best friends can do...hey, we even hung out together when one had to go to the bathroom..THAT'S how close we were (and perhaps how disgusting we were too!).

But I lost her..somewhere along this path in life, I lost her...

and I don't know if I'll ever find her again. 

To be honest, I'm not even sure when it happened.  We didn't fade out during high school or college...or even those years that followed, when she traveled the world, and we both eventually called opposite sides of the country our home.

No, it was sometime after that...when we both moved closer to home...and, it breaks my heart over and over again.  It breaks my heart to see her at family parties and not know what to say.  It breaks my heart to know that we are so uncomfortable around each other that eye contact is ..well, unnatural...and our obligatory "hello/goodbye" conversations are simply disconnected and superficial.

How did we ever get to here?  I'm grappling to understand this.

Gone are the girls who once knew each other so well..who knew how to make each other laugh and comfort each other when we cried.... It's such a tragic and confusing void for me, because I don't even know what happened.  Perhaps, then, I would find the closure my heart aches for though, trust me, I've openly tried to understand.  I've worn my heart on my sleeve for her, but there are still no answers.

So many invitations to coffee turned down, so many blatant conversations about my missing her politely noted and received, yet nothing in return.

I'm trying to move on, 

I'm trying to move past, 

but she

is

 my sister.  

To me, she will always be.  

Sadly, I've lost my sister...but how do I walk away when I can still see her right there...I guess I keep hoping for that one day when she lets me in again...when I get to know what her life is really like.  She was my best best friend...there was none closer..and yet, as I looked at her today, I've realized that the only things I know of her anymore are based on the memories we once shared.

I miss her... 

I've lost my sister.

Yes..

but is there a reason I did? 

I'm coming to peace now 

with the knowledge that I may never understand...

I'm astounded to accept that I have to lay this relationship to rest now.  Maybe someday it will be revived, but today...today I have to leave it behind...as I walk deliberately forward into the arms and the lives of those who truly do love me and want to know me.

Goodbye, Beans...I hope someday that you will know my kids and that I'll know yours...I hope someday to say hi to you and see my old friend again.  I couldn't possibly explain how terribly much I miss you, and how terribly sad I am to let you go.  

Image by Hajnalka Ardai via Free Images

Living in the Moment

So much has changed in my life...transformed, really...and right before my very eyes.  This summer, I can honestly say that I have let everything go, in terms of control and a tight schedule to maintain.

Don't get me wrong, there has been carting around to this camp and to that one for most of the summer, but something has been different this time around.

I'm no longer that haggled mom, running around with her head cut off 

because the house is a mess 

and I feel like I've failed my kids for not having star-quality activities every moment of every day.  

I've just come to this point where I've stopped doing things from my own strength...I've stopped striving and struggling and have learned to just go where God is leading...to allow Him to open my eyes to what He so generously has chosen for me to see.

It's ridiculous to hear me say it now, but I seriously felt like the key to a successful summer was tied into that whole bucket list idea I wrote about a couple months ago.

I thought, if we completed the list, it would equate to an amazing summer, 

but nothing within that bucket list itself could have ever compared 

to the amazement of having learned 

to just be in the moment with my kids.  

What a gift to be a stay-at-home mom...Yes, it's a lot of work, and yes I have had an overabundance of lessons in the area of patience and wisdom of speech, but man, what a blessing.

I've never been so content in my life since having given over my plans and ideas of structure to God...

What He's done with them in turn, there's just no words for...

Is Your Faith Real, or Just a Facade?

To look at me, 

you'd hopefully never think me capable 

of the hardcore bad choices I have made in my life...

...the kind of bad choices that most have the common sense to avoid.  

Since coming from those places, I have often looked back and marveled at how, despite these wildly sinful choices, my faith and relationship with Christ had remained so strong and solid.  I didn't understand how it was that I could be so strong in this area of my life and yet make choices that were blatantly against Christ's teachings.

It is only now that I am able to understand:

It wasn't that my faith was so strong, 

it was that I had created a whole facade of deep faith 

in order to allow myself to continue doing the wrong things that I was doing.  

This "faith" was a shell I hid behind...my faith and long conversations with God back then were more about clearing my name.

I was fooling myself.  

I knew what faith should look like, and I modeled it well enough that I somehow had fooled my own self.

I'd played the role of faithfulness like a part in a play, but Christ was not center stage, and He most certainly was not the star of my show.

I'd painted a picture to hide behind, but I was not behind my faith.  

I needed a place to obscure my real self, because to see who I actually was would have meant that I needed to change, 

and I didn't want to change, really...

After all, back then, it was not Christ I was serving...

it was myself ...

...and it was Satan, though I hotly denied it!

I have a deep relief in knowing that the faiths were different between now and then, because I'd been a little nervous all along that I would somehow become that person once again.  I'm so grateful to God and His faithful mercies....so grateful for showing me the difference... so grateful for the relief He has provided my heart in this revelation, even though I don't deserve it and, quite frankly, never will.

It is ever important to live in genuine faith...

to roll up your sleeves and get behind it...to deeply live it....

to not allow yourself to live the smoke and mirrors life that I had lived for so long.  

If you are there now and are just starting to wake up to where you've allowed yourself to go, you know what I'm referring to.

Or perhaps you are in the place I once was, with a faith that seems so deeply intact but a lifestyle and consequent choices that can't help but make the abyss of your faith so blatantly obvious.

Open your eyes...

WAKE UP!!

There's no time for this...

Roll up your sleeves and dive back into the faith you've been telling yourself you've been living but deep in your heart, you've known...you've just known...that you have not.

Let the excuses you've strung yourself along with for so long fall by the wayside...you know, the ones that have brought you down a path you so urgently felt Him telling you not to take in the beginning of it all...If you sit still and listen, I bet you can still hear His voice calling you...if only but a whisper...

Wake up...wake up and turn around....

He is right there waiting to lead you back out.  

You don't belong down that dark and lonely road 

that you've tried to paint with flowers and sunshine any more than I did.  

Wake up and turn...it's time.