300

This is officially my 300th blog post! Happy sailing to me!

This is a tribute to all the times I have spent more time and energy looking for the perfect picture on google images to complete my blog than the actual planning, conceptualizing and writing of the darn thing. Today was definitely one of those days. Trying to find a picture that wasn't blood, Gerard Butler's face or someone else's tribute to their own 300th blog post was quite the feat.

This is my first day reinstating a very dear, very highly regarded tradition with an equally awesome person. Here we sit, in our Starbucks, in our seats, and I am writing an epicness blog about our epicness. I love her to death.

Sidenote: I have officially decided to begin using "epic" again. It was way too overused for way too long and I am tired of ignoring the perfect word. EPIC.

This is not where I thought I would be a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago. Not Starbucks sipping the perfect coffee; I'm sure I was aware that I would still be doing that. I am referring to Bible college, earning a degree I do not need or even really want at this point; "devoting" my life to God by going to school to do what He wants me to do instead of what I want to do, which ironically is also the driest spell I have ever experienced in my walk with Him; arguing semantics on that which has always come most naturally; carless, jobless and boyfriendless; contemplating the big things while still failing to grasp the small stuff; and turning 23. I am slowly and steadily getting old, but the older I get the younger I feel. Now that I'm getting into my mid-twenties, late-twenties and early-thirties really do not seem old at all; in fact, they seem younger and more fascinating than ever. I cannot wait to be there: to have my own family established, to be living on the edge of whatever God has for me, to know that I'm still not even half done this leg of the journey and yet I've already lived what feels like a thousand lifetimes. I used to want to live forever, or to never grow old, or to reincarnate and know it; now that seems ridiculous. I want to live this life, live it well, and then go on with the rest of it with Him by my side. Literally. That is the only eternal future that sounds good in my books.

This is a ramble blog. I can see that now. It is a lot of things flowing out that link perfectly in my head but probably look like a gibberish-ish list of random thoughts to anyone else. I feel like I am on the verge of something huge, and if I stop then I will lose it. It's on the tip of my brain, you know? Right there, just out of reach. A breakthrough.

This is a recollection: at chapel on Thursday the speaker talked about Christ within us. I almost cried, not because he said anything profound whatsoever, but because He had just been speaking the same thing to me. Last week, pouring rain, took a shower, looked outside, saw the rain, got dressed, went outside, sat in the rain beneath a tree and stared at a dead swamp and a grey sky. I was real with Him. I told Him I don't hear Him, don't feel Him, don't really know how to anymore. And it broke my heart that it wasn't breaking my heart. So I told Him I wasn't moving until He spoke. I sat, soaked, sort of prayed, tried to sing but couldn't sing the things that wouldn't be real on my lips or in my heart, sat and sat, soaked and did not cry. So many times I went to get up and give up, but I knew that would be the end. How could it be the end?! I'm in Bible college, studying to pastor people in their walks, and I was on the edge of walking away from my own. But something stopped me every time. Finally, drenched face and hair and hopes, I stood and looked at the grey swamp and the grey sky and the grey grey greyness, ready to leave, and it came. You're in me. Here I am, in this desert of grey, and You're still in me. I don't see You, I don't feel You, but You're in me. And without doubt, there was a new transcendent peace that said, definitively, I will survive this season. I will come out of it better than when I started. What a sigh of relief.

This is relief. This is the 299th blog I didn't know I would write when I started out, but here it is. And I am here. And He is still here. And even when I don't recognize it, He's still speaking, re-assuring, giving peace and gently guiding me.

This is okay.