room

i'm coming to understand the value of what i am going to call room people.

to put it simply room people are people who, when you interact with them, give you room.

room to breathe. room to think. to feel and break and doubt and rebel and flail. and when after all of that you are left sitting on the floor surrounded by the dust unsettled by all of your frantic movement and the sound of your own rapid breaths, there they are. the good ones are sitting almost right next to you. close enough for you to know that they were there the whole time, but with enough space to assure that the movement was all your own.

i'm starting to see that i'm a person who needs room. especially as of late.

it's been almost a year since i started this blog. if you're not me (as i know most everyone reading this is not), it's entirely probable that you didn't even notice. if you haven't walked through each moment of the last year with me (again, as i am fairly confident almost none of you have), this year in my life has probably not been as significant for you as it has been for me. well. okay.

the thing is, this year has been a lot of things for me. and i've written about some of it, and i've seen things and felt things and tasted things. it's been one of the hardest in many ways - filled with transition and loss that left me feeling broken and vulnerable on many occasions. but it's also been filled with life and laughter and risk and love and hope.

i guess it's been so long since i've written anything because i was hoping to come to some sort of conclusion. to wrap some bow on this whole situation, and share my wisdom and conclude this chapter and step off into the next. except that i'm not sure how or when this chapter will ever end, or if that's even how life works. because for every day that things feel so sure and right and good, there are five other days where life is messy and complicated and my heart gets broken and i'm filled with doubt and ready to walk away from it all.

and i think i just need to be honest. i am not the same woman i was a year ago. my faith life has been rocked in ways i never expected. i've had deeper and darker doubt in the last six months especially than i have experienced in my faith at any time prior to this. i've almost given up, and maybe even actually given up at times. and i wish i could explain why or how or what, but i'm not even sure. and while i don't think i'm anywhere close to done with all this God stuff, i know that it's changing.

i guess that's where all this gratitude for room people comes from. these people who aren't scared by the questions because they're asking them themselves. they aren't put off by the doubt or the darkness because they're honest enough to admit their own fears and failures and uncertainty. they let you wonder and wander and trust in a process that's bigger than all of us.

i'm finding that it's that kind of room exactly that allows real healing, wholeness, faith, hope and love start to bubble (even if sometimes very slowly) up to the surface of a broken and desperate life. in that kind of room the food tastes amazing, the water is refreshing, the air is invigorating, and the Spirit inside me continues to push me forward. i'm not exactly sure toward what, but i think that's okay.