soon

I don't believe I've ever felt so out of control yet so controlled.

The ship sails in 40 days! What the "ship" will look like and where she will be going are yet to be determined. But I've discovered something wonderful, and that is that I must go. The thought of driving through my country (my country..) with no place to be and no time to have to be anywhere.. the thought of paying my bills three months in advance, grabbing my passport (nothing is out of the question for this one) from the safe, filling my duffel bags with the fewest of items I might need for the journey (a girl needs a good sweater, some trustworthy spandex pants and alpaca mittens, for sure), stocking the ship (oh, I can't wait to name her!) with bulgur, wheat berries, beans, granola..

We will have a tent. We will have couchsurfing.com. We will have our books of empty pages. We will have Spanish tutorials and tapes. We will have maps (sorry GPS, you didn't win the battle for this heart). We will have hiking shoes, a video camera, sleeping bags, flashlights, and matches.

We will have time. Finally, we will have time.

It must be divine. There's no "I hope" in that. It must be divine. Every encounter, every conversation, every experience, every "wrong" way. All it would take is one conversation and I could be on my way towards something I've been holding out for, believing for (sometimes without realizing it) for what seems like a long time.

It's a little rediculous. But,

1. I need to know my country.
2. I want to find within myself a love my country that I have yet to experience.
3. I need to let this person I've discovered find out what it's here for without any specific people or place or group influencing that.
4. Jesus Christ is alive and he's moving.. I saw him in such color in Ghana, but I have to believe he's shining here too, and I want to see it.. to be a part of THE body of Christ, not just one segment of it, as it is functioning across denominations here in America.
5. It's time to give and time to take. I'll leave pieces of this heart along the way, but I'm taking pieces of others' with me as I go.

*6. In the morning when I awake I have this odd feeling that I'm not waking up in the right place. Not that it's the wrong place, but it's not the right place. I'm going to find the right place. I can no longer wait here and beckon for it to come to me.

There are moments when I panic a little. The reality of it is that there will be cold nights, days where we're filthy, hungry. The boat may break down. The people may turn their backs. The people of God may disappoint me. The maps may take us down roads we never wanted or expected to travel.
Which is why this whole darn thing needs to be divine. It has to be. Because every day that passes is another day that could have been changing someone's life, filling someone's stomach, clothing someone's back, nursing someone's wounds. Every day I'm here is another day I'm not there. And while these days sometimes seem long, they're going by all too fast. I need to get there. I need to be sitting in the dirt surrounded by dark, dusty faces. I need to be carrying hope in action to a world deprived of even the smallest of necessities.
[ignorance really was bliss.]

Across America I want to find love. I want to find people who want exactly what I want and who are willing to work for it as we find a way to do something about it.
But I need to know my own country first. I refuse to leave America resentful of what I had here. I need to be humbled and grateful, and the ugly truth is that I'm not.

And I need time to slow down so I can breathe this crisp, fresh air and let the changes it makes sink deep into my being.

(jack kerouac,
you've driven me mad!
for this i am grateful.)