Estes Park Getaway - Entry #2

Every time I get alone with God my mind and heart are drawn once again to the same things - transformation, adventure, risk, family, Vietnam, $, significance, discipline. It's almost as if there is this ball that is continually rolling around in my heart and mind with each of these words written on it. And my mind journey's from one to the other, just wandering and dreaming and wishing and praying.

Today I am aware of it spinning.

I get still. The world goes away for a while. No one and nothing is pulling my strings. And when I really take time to listen to my heart - it's almost scary, yet exciting and breathtaking, what I hear. My heart beats fast (maybe from all of the coffee I have had today) and my desires grow strong. It's all about the adventure. It's about the desire to jump out in faith towards something worthy.

I feel so conflicted sometimes - stuck in the middle of being faithful and joyful towards the life that God has blessed me with today and dreaming of all that I hope and want to be a part of in the future. I often don't do a great job with contentment - yet I am content - it's more like I am expectant. Yes, expectant is a good word. I am expectant of God to take the desires that he has placed in my heart and do something with them.

I have always heard a friend say, "find yourself in your twenties, grow yourself in your thirties, change the world in your forties. After that leverage everything you've got for ultimate meaning and radical transformation."

So I'm in my thirties. I need to focus on growing myself. And yet I feel like a child who is counting the days until they turn 5 3/4. Who ever heard of being in your thirties and wishing you were older? That's ridiculous. And yet, my heart longs for so much more on days like today when I am quiet and alone.

The life I have today is more than I could have ever wished for. This is not an issue of being unhappy. I am blessed and thrilled to have the husband and children and day to day life that I do. If it were to all end today, it would have been a storybook life. Yet, that guy, the Holy Spirit, keeps on nudging me. He keeps telling me to pay attention to all that is inside my heart. There is so much more to this life. Dream and focus and soak it all in.

So today I am dreaming and trying to figure it all out. I'm reading and listening to people who I respect. I am singing at the top of my lungs as I drive down the road and I am resting.

I am such a planner. I like to know what is next. I love the security of marking things off my to-do list and moving on. I like the big picture so I can figure out how to get there - wherever "there" is. But right now I only have glimpses of "there." So I have to be okay with "here." God, help me to overflow with enjoyment for "here" and wait patiently and expectantly for "there."