Wish you were here

It's not so hard to believe.

That I would sleep in Walmart parking lots wear the gray "A" every day for a year live successfully
out of my suburu was difficult to believe. This, this semi-normal life, is much easier on the mind
the numbers
that F word- (shh)
Future.
Pit cherries with my tongue while creating event codes in my cubical. Cover coffee stains with file folders and toss the dented scratched painted Sigg
in the trash. Pull a man whom I love very much into my neck, close my eyes,
breathe. Don't leave.
My first pair of minimalist running shoes lost their tread. I've turned the television on three times since October.
The coffee is very black. Parsley is in my lap.

There's a silence on this blog I am wanting to break. I've been afraid to share for fear of criticism.

But did you know-
My insides leap and still when I am with him. Not much else matters.
(so this is what it's like...)

[but then]

I sit in my window, drink raspberry vodka, watch the few late night wanderers on the sidewalk, and write wreckless e-mails to my traveling companion-

i cannot sleep. you're the only person in the world i would want to be with right now.

I rarely eat peanut butter and haven't made a batch of granola in months. It's still in me, and I'm still moving, but I've moved on.

In an attempt to play "catch up", allow me to say something as I said it in an email to a friend recently-

The thing you are seeking in 2012 is to find out who you are and really become that person.. fully alive. I've been on that journey for years now. I've been true to myself- not a set of rules, not a book, not an image of what the people around me would want me to be. I know what makes me come alive. I know when I'm doing something because it is something that is rising up from a place of raw truth within me and when I'm stepping into a motion simply because it's what I think I should do or what I think is expected of me and acceptable to those around me. I know that right now you don't approve of certain aspects of my life. But I can honestly tell you that right now I am being true.

We're all given different lives, different upbringings, different families, different gifts, different desires, wants.. how can we compare lives that are destined to be so different from the very beginning? And how can one life look at another and say "you're doing it wrong". My soul is different than yours. We've been exposed to different things. Maybe I've allowed my mind to wander too far, to question too much, to explore too fully.. or maybe I'm taking what I've been given, totaling every single conversation, voyage, experience of my short 24 years into something absolutely genuine and true to who I've become, not who I was. I can't be the girl I wanted to be when I was 13. Thirteen year old Kendra never expected to watch people shoot drugs openly on the streets of Camden day after day and to put those same needles in the trash when they were finished, to pioneer a movement of college kids to seek only the very heartbeat of Christ, to realize what fullness of LIFE really looked like in a third world nation of red dirt, bloated bellies, and rice. Thirteen year old Kendra didn't know she could live out of a backpack or in a trailer with 8 people, didn't know she loved mountains, didn't know she could sing. Thirteen year old Kendra didn't know what it was like to be in love.

Finding out who you are isn't a one time thing. I think that's the mistake some people make. They decide who they're going to be and then they become that person, only to realize once they're there that it's not at all what they want. If we're engaged with life, we're going to change. Life is going to change us. People are going to change us. At least they have me.

These days my life outwardly looks very different than it did just a few months ago. My thoughts are different, my mindsets are different, my conversations take different routes but my soul, oh my soul is the same. I feel it. It wiggles and turns and moans and stirs and dances and laughs within me, always, and it is the same. hah! How does this work.. that one can change so much but feel so much the same. It is this that tells me that I'm doing something right. When I no longer recognize myself, that's when I'll be afraid.


xo