Letter to Myself

At the end of Mission Year, during the retreat, we were asked to write a letter to our three-month-later selves, reminding us of what we'd like to remember.

I received mine this evening and found it very timely.

There is so much turbulence in my life now; it seems that everything is teetering on the brink of change.  I am excited for the plunge, and yearning to take courage in the fall. I am so aware of all that I don't know about myself, and waiting still for a community to sink my heart and teeth into. The details would be too much to inform you of in a blogpost, so I share this as my update, asking you pray it move my heart to a courageous place, praying that it move yours.

One thing more: to live fully, I think, is to be most painfully in love.


July 24, 2013

Dear Hannah,

I don't know what to say to you, because I don't know what to say to me.  My heart is heavy again, with the same thing as always, it seems: the burden of longing; that air that hovers all throughout my torso, making me perpetually uneasy, as though I were teetering along a tight-rope, suspended above a great and impeding darkness; as though my heart were a little butterfly, soft and fluttering senselessly, cruelly beating its wings against a solid, cold metal cage.  Like no one can see me.  Like nothing will be right.  Like I will collapse inside, unable even to carry out the simplest and most necessary of daily tasks.

It is amazing how lost within it I get, and how quickly.  Why is my heart designed this way - to desire another so wholly and overwhelmingly that I feel useless, unable to breathe without being able to partake in love with them?

I don't know what to say to you; I don't know what to say to myself.

Just now, I confessed in prayer to the group, "Lord, I feel weighed down with longing, and I need you to fill me."  A greater peace came up within me.

Dear Hannah, remember~
He is here.
He listens.
He desires me - perhaps with a great weight.

You have no need, but for to take Him in with your breath and be continually made alive again in the vulnerability of community.

He will fill you with every love to extend to others; you need only ask.

To be broken is a gift, if we will let it bring us to listen.

Listen.  He is speaking; He is speaking with a great voice.  Do not delay to listen.  Make no other priority.

I am a hypocrite, but I believe in you, and so does He.

Do not be afraid.

Listen.
Listen.
Listen.

That is the only advice I can give you.

Love,
Yourself