Now that I have time on my hands, I am fully aware of and embracing the fact that I simply do life better when I write. I think in the world that I often convince myself I live in, it feels as though my only option is to keep things to myself-solve my own problems, comfort myself, and quickly bring things to God, so that I can smile, move on, and keep on trucking. I spend a lot of time thinking, avoiding over-thinking, or talking myself into or out of things instead of just doing what feels right or real.
While I've had a fabulous and totally undeserved month of back to back awesomeness, traveling, eating, celebrating, and exploring, I haven't felt the most connected. I've been catching up with old friends, which is nice, but even with a great friend, this kind of communication tends to remain at a relatively superficial level. I wandered the streets of London, drowning in all of the glorious input, but too exhausted and content to do much outputting. And for many, many, hours of the past month, I've been lost in my own head-flying, wandering, driving, resting, cleaning, working, catching up...but none of this alone time has been used all that well, definitely not with the intention of sitting down to think, write, and reflect on some of the big unsolved mysteries that I feel looming like a rain cloud over my 24 year old life.
I learn more, feel better, live harder, love deeper, and fall on my knees in thankfulness and faith way more when I am in a habit of writing, praying, and communicating well. But, today, while I thought that what I needed was going to be an hour or two with my journal after an equally needed coffee with a great friend, turns out that hour and a half with her was more than enough.
I enjoy putting my own thoughts into a neat order on paper in order to feel better about them. This part of me loves to be in control. But sometimes I just need to hear from someone else a gentle "me too, that is exactly what it's like" to remind me that I'm doing just fine in this transitional-feeling time of life. It is highly unlikely that I'd just be able to sort it all out if I could only have enough time with a pen and paper. Instead I know that I would do well to rest in this place, to live out of and lean into this season of my life.
What I needed more than I knew today was a good old-fashioned coffee date with a woman I respect and enjoy. And that is exactly what I got. We sat at Good Cup while it rained outside and laughed. We have both just come off of what felt like a marathon month in our own ways, and we sat and shared thoughts and stories, encouraged, bitched, and laughed some more, all the while being straight up honest about the things that we have in common in life right now; things that can be tough and more often than not feel like the short end of the stick. We are both glass is half full type people who don't often enough seek out an occasion to receive encouragement from those around us when things feel a little sucky. We have a tendency to buck up, remind ourselves that our time will come, someday, that things will eventually all "fall into place and make sense." At 24 and 25 this illusive someday feels like it has everything tied up into it. But I was reminded again today that while waiting for someday is hard, it's a lot more fun when you take the time to step outside yourself and realize that you are not waiting alone. Not only are there other rad people waiting for someday with as much anticipation as I am, they are waiting with me here and now, and we're having a damn good time today.
When I walked back to my car, after the sun had come out, I thought about the kind of friends you have when you're little who would want to play in the mud with you when it rained, making mud pies. It's like that's what we were doing. We were sitting in the dirt and rain, which could very well have felt miserable. But we were using it to cheer one another up, cheer ourselves up, and remind ourselves that we're doing just fine; celebrating the lives that are ours to live and making some fun out of what we've got at the moment.
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