Sometimes it's so hard to dream. To have a dream, a desire, that is so much bigger than yourself. To yearn and work for that dream to become a reality, yet always feeling so far away from it...3,228 miles away from it to be exact.
I'm sitting here in my room, packing. Yet again.
As I sit next to a pile of books I'm thrilled to read and a pile of old journals I've skimmed through, all I can think about is the excess. I have so much stuff. So much un-necessary stuff. I've already given bags to Goodwill and donated books to the Library, yet I still have so much stuff.
Over the last few months I've moved so much that, for a while, I had been "traveling" with roughly ten shirts. It didn't matter if I was at a place for two weeks or two months, for a while I just found it easier. Cleaner to live that way. It didn't actually bother me that every week and a half or so I had to do laundry, It just felt right. That lasted until April...what happened to that? ...Oh, yeah. fear.
That's a silly example I know, but while part of me loves planning for "the future after college graduation in May", there is a LARGE portion of me that has learned to settle in with the idea of having very little. Maybe it is because my inner self believes that if I have little I can GIVE more. Not to say people with more than 10 shirts in their closet can't give more, many many many of my dear friends show that this is untrue. They are the most selfless people, those I love.
I've been in this "season" (ugh that word!) where I've been really struggling with the reality that I need to be asking for help. I need to accept that others give to me because I'm in need: I'm the one who needs rides to the doctors and the one who needs encouragement when recovery becomes my worst nightmare. It's been...no, it IS, such a struggle to feel like I have so little to give to the ones I love.
Maybe that feeling of being less-useful because of my physical limits (you should see me become all antsy when moving day comes) is why I think an emptier closet equals more opportunity to give. I want to give back. I want to give back regardless of if I'm in a wheelchair or refusing to use my cane.
I don't want to be told that my giving must fit inside the box of MY capabilities. I don't want to be told to give "as long as it's safe for your body" and deemed "appropriate".
I don't want my body to cage my heart.
I serve a God that is bigger than my non-walking limbs. I serve a God that provides miracles. I serve a God that places in his children's hearts the desires to give and serve in ways that don't make sense.
So tonight I have to believe that those dreams and those callings to serve and give are NOT there to just tease me. Though the word "desire" does not seem to even begin to encompass the passion and heart I have to go to Haiti, to learn from the Haitian people, to break all those stupid molds of "capabilities"...I have to believe that the desire to go give and be given to in Haiti was not placed on my heart to tease my limbs.
For now then, I guess I have to fight for those dreams...keep working at my Creole lessons (I just started last week, but I'll get there), and believe that where I'm at now is not permanent. I have to believe and keep taking those small steps to this giant dream. My God is faithful-now only if I was more like Him.
Well, here's to trying to be just that...faithful.
Love Always and Forever
Your Daughter,
Brittany
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