So, I had the most amazing weekend. I have been attempting to somehow get at least the smallest glimpse of what manifested in those few days onto a blog. I've gone through several emotions while pondering how to share it. Parts were so intimate that I couldn't dare share, they're too close to my heart to open them up. And other parts, they were flat out hilarious...and I don't know that I could articulate just how funny they were in the moment. And then other moments, well they were just so supernatural that I could not even try to re-create it. It just was. He just was.
But let's just start with what I do know how to articulate. I would like to articulate that having best friends who are older than you rocks. Some of the women I got to be with (and others who weren't there--but you know, were still there in spirit) just make my life awesome. They make me smarter, wiser, more lovely, and they also help me waste way less time. And not only that, but the 30 year gap in age is not a gap when you are seeing each other in light of eternity. It is brilliant, God's gift to us to live cross-generationally. Oh, that more of us would get to experience best friends of all different ages.
In addition to being with them, I also got the opportunity to step into the lives of over 50 other people. Some that were acquaintances and some that I had never met. It is a beautiful thing, stepping into the life of someone else. And not only stepping in but then asking God how to bring out the best in them, especially those parts that are buried, broken, hidden, or scared. And together, that's what we did. Sometimes it involved conviction and well, was, downright sobering, but that's what makes being intimate beautiful. Knowing that behind the alert awareness of our sometimes skewed reality was always love, cheering each one of us on to live more full, free, and passionate lives.
And even better than that was the beauty of interacting with one another, not just from a natural perspective but by a spiritual perspective. The last few years (because of the encouragement of those older, wiser friends), I've had the unique pleasure of starting to live--not out of my soul--but out of my spirit. Let me tell you, this makes life A LOT brighter. It's the transition from living in my mind and in my own will to living in Him. The place where He resides in me. When my spirit lives in front and is nurtured, then my mind just falls right in behind it, resting in the Truth of the freedom that is already in place. And then you know what? My body comes right into place after that, and all those achy ailments seem to heal up, and my body functions so much better. There is no performance, no striving. Just living in the reality of what Jesus already did for me. Really beautiful, isn't it?
Yes, well that's where it got really good. Instead of drinking of one another's souls, we drank of one another's spirits. That place where He is living uniquely in and through me, it shares communion with how He is living uniquely in and through her. And her. And him. And so on. Talk about community. Talk about feeling full. Talk about feeling rich. Oh, we did. We Talked.
And by the time I left, I felt like I just might fly on outta here. Heaven felt really close. And, so, it explains how in some ways it was hard to articulate---because this feeling, and this reality, was so large and beautiful that I sometimes don't know what to say. But I am hoping that over the next few months, as I see the reality and practicality of what happened start to play out in my life, then I will get to share that with you. Because it is so beautiful, it must be shared.
So, I'll be writing more soon.....
(corresponding song: Life in Technicolor II by Coldplay)
