Kingdom Work.

I've learned valuable lessons in the last three months, about time and space and life and work and meaning and play and calling and rest.  Because it all came in one bundle of thought, through struggle of experience:

Work is part of the kingdom.

I spent two and a half of the last three months without "work."  Without a schedule, a community, a need to arise and be productive in the morning.  And this turned into sloppy emotions, sloppy thoughts, sloppy behaviors.  Though there were things to be done, without a schedule or need to get to done that moment, I just fumbled and lost the ability to feel purpose and my place.

I dwelt on this in the moment, and especially at church, as we walk through the Old Testament this year.  And I land on Genesis One.

Work is Pre-Fall.

Work is created by God.  Only after the curse does it become laborious and long and tedious and exhausting.  But all things of God desire redemption.  Including work.

Work is created to give meaning, to satisfy, to create bountiful days, to create beauty, to sustain our hours.  Work can, and was intended, to bring relationship with others and our Lord.  It was created good.

As mornings roll around and I crave those few extra minutes in bed down before heading off to my out-of-home work, I am reminded of this lesson and given purpose.  In what I do each day, I am doing Kingdom Work.  I am being part of the Kingdom simply in working.  Especially when I work as for the Lord, and with a steadfast heart holding fast to him with grace.

Messy notes

When my mom died, I went through a long period of things in my brain not transpiring.  I couldn't think straight, plan meals, cook, or seem to make sense of the world around me.  My friend Kate came and stayed for 3 days in June and cooked and grocery shopped and listened to my whirlwind of everything that I couldn't place in my brain.

When I moved to Charlotte, I found the fall so difficult.  Everything was new and I was splattered in it -- new job, new house, new roommates, new grocery store, new church, new everything... And it felt so displaced.  Like - did my life really happen?  how did I end up here?  Is this me?  What is all this around me? Because nothing stayed the same (except Christ and my phone-call friends).

Its been two years now since that and I regained my footing and created a home and began to settle...

Now I'm back in this transition with 10 weeks without a schedule, friendships that seem to have faded, with lots of my energy trying oh so hard to make new ones, and this cloud of transition and waiting getting darker over my head.  I'm a woman that needs heart friends, that needs a schedule, that works best with a project underway... But right now I'm fumbling and just wishing I could somehow get back on that platform of steady -- I'm not even asking for green grasses -- just steady for a while...

So it makes me want to buy flights to send my friends here, so that I have them deeply in my world, and somehow convince them to move here.

Or sit down and ask my mom a million questions.  Literally a million -- like: how did she stay home all day? how did she organize her morning? what is so important about dusting each week? what does it mean to be a wife at the beginning? how did she survive when both her parents died?

So here I am in transitioning, wishing I could lean on her faith and her wisdom, and somehow find schedule and forward movement in order to regain my footing once again...

Messy Words on New.

When everything is new
You can't find your footing
When everything is unknown
You grasp harder
But find no familiar control.
Whenever thing is new
It seems to send a whirlwind

I wish everything weren't new.
I wish I lived near family
Where faces will recognize me
For thirty years
And hugs and memories
Are deeply held near.
They know, they understand,
They have walked the shifting sand.

When everything is new
I wish for my "old" friends.
For those of Charlotte 3 years
And college of 12 years.
For those who see the Big
Bad and Ugly,
But know you are more than this
Instance you're in.

When everything is new
You long for fimiliar
For faces and memories
And places and talks
And anything to make you feel
Known.
Not wind or tossed by the sea.

I long for something that is not new
New job, new schedule (or lack there of)
New husband, new "roommate"
New roles, new responsibilities
New season, new Bible Study
New friends (acquaintances really)
None of these are bad, and most blessings.

But in this season, so much has changed
That everything feels new
And leaves me wondering,
whirling
for the familiar
Because somehow the
Un-new
Makes me feel known.
Settled.
Rooted.
Okay.