(I promise that list filled up with more things, but we really wanted to get some drinks in downtown. We also toured libraries and went to cafés and saw the only view in Sarasota and went to the beach and the movies and ALL THE THINGS you need to do before leaving a place and your roommate for a while.)

Me
and my Clara

and my Florida.

Today I took a walk as the rain started to fall. Someone taped this on the sidewalk. I tried to find meaning in it, but I also try to find meaning in everything these days. I half expected someone to jump out of the bushes to scare me.

And then as the sun started to set I stood painting under the roof of our carport. There’s something nice about painting when the light starts dissapearing, you stop caring about the details since you can’t see the details. If it’s messy, I can clean it up later. I think I’m also gonna add yellow at the bottom, to make it look like some upside down sunset, but I went inside because all the insects were attracted to the light and I already had three mosquito bites on my left hand.

That’s it.

The organisation I’m working with is taking a break. It’s great, really, becase:

A. We need to lay a foundation. There are a lot of different directions you can take a ministry, and sometimes the best way is down. To stop running and dig, so that what grows out of this can be sustainable.

B. All good death is birth pain. We need to let the old things die to become something new.

C. To not give up is good, but sometimes it takes more faith to let go. We don’t want to keep going out of human stubborness or fear. God knows the world is full of companies or churches or whatever that just continue, when in reality they’re tired, the people could be happier somewhere else, and the world would go on without them. Let’s not hold on out of fear. If this is meant to be, it can handle a break.

So the break is great. The only problem is that I all of a sudden have a break. And I’ve just been here for a short time, I don’t need rest or restoration. Or maybe I do, but in a different way, and I don’t know what to do with the months that have been given to me. I have a lot of things to grow in, a lot of foundations I need to lay in myself. But I don’t know where to go, or how to do that. And I’ve had so much time to think that I’ve started to question the things I actually did know.

There’ll be no conclusion to this, no fancy end point, but I wanted to say this: Right now I’m still good, happy and okay. I want to be, regardless of circumstances. Maybe that’s my growth. I need to move out soon and I don’t know where I’m going, but I think we’re allowed to not worry even if we should. I think we’re allowed to be illogically hopeful and overwhelmingly expectant of what the future holds. I think I’m gonna wait here a little bit longer, and I think I’ll know more soon. I think so.

Until then

~

(I put an easel in the middle of the kitchen and my roommate is cutting her hair off listening to Coldplay.)

I always sleep in front of the fireplace because it’s cold in the rooms in our cabin. And possibly because this is cosier, even if my sheets and pyjamas smell like smoke.