Everything Moves.

I wrote this to my mom last year towards the end of the summer. She shared it will me again recently:

There is too much change that is constantly happening in this post-high school stage of my life. It's hard on me. I don't do change very well. Sometimes it feels like my heart is continually breaking. I have to leave high school and get used to college. I have to leave college and get used to internship life. Then, right when I get the hang of things and really start to love my work it's over and soon after that everyone is scattering off to school again. Nothing is constant. It's a struggle for me. I am excited to go back to school though. We're going to have a really cool group of girls this year, I think. I'm not so excited about my classes, but I'm sure they'll grow on me. I'm sad to leave Hope. I'm sad to leave home. I hope you know that I'm sad to leave you. Sad that Jenny will never greet me again. But happy and thankful that I'll get to come home sometimes. But for now, Raleigh it is.

This was so me. So something I would say. And it still is. But I'm also different now. I've changed since last summer. I am stronger than I was then. I am a little bit more brave. I'm not as insecure. I've ditched a few idols (probably also picked up a few more). But I'm better. I'm more like Jesus, or on my way to more like Jesus. I still have a lifetime more of improving to do, but I am glad for this stage. Thankful for the lessons, the trials, the friends, the memories. I am thankful for this time, and I am loving it. Maybe not always in the midst of things do I love them or appreciate them, but I love to look back and see how necessary and purposeful it all is. I cannot wait to understand in full all of the wonders and mysteries that fill this life.

My heart still hurts every time things change. I don't know if I will ever not be like that. Even transitioning into things that I am excited about is sad on some level. Going from my familiar, my routine, into something new is sad to me. It's sad and it's scary and it's hard, but it's also good. I've learned that it makes me better. It forces me to lean on solid things, the few things that don't change, that don't move. It forces me to see beauty in new things. It give me a fresh perspective. I love to be able to see life and beauty from different perspectives. It opens my heart and my mind to possibilities. It increases my ability to love. It gives me new eyes, and I need new eyes. Sometimes my old ones get in a rut, and it's hard to get them out of it on my own.

It's makes things tough when nothing stands still. It makes life hard. I feel like I'm having trouble keeping up sometimes, but I am thankful for grace. As I go into this summer (at Hope Chapel again) I don't ask for the pain to not be there, but rather that I would embrace the pain, enter into it, and learn from it. I pray that I would hold on to this solid foundation I have been gifted, and interact with all the movement, love the movement, embrace the inconsistency.

all the things I pursue

well, they stay for a season

then everything moves

everything moves, oh

my towers fall

but you aren't leaving me

cause everything moves but you