Choosing to Get on the Ride

As a child, I really wasn’t that fond of riding on roller coasters. But as I got older and as friends promised to hold my hand, I finally mustered up the courage to ride on a roller coaster.

To be honest, I actually now enjoy a good roller coaster ride. There is something incredibly great about raising my hands up in the air as we travel around each curve, over each hill and then down each hill.

Lately my life has felt like one great big roller coaster ride. I’m in the midst of a transition as I leave a place that has incredibly blessed my life and get ready to go to a new place. I’m excited for this new adventure but I’m also sad to leave behind the relationships and the place that has made me into the woman leader that I am today.

And that, my friends, is why I feel like I’m on a giant roller coaster. I am jolted from my seat every time we hit a huge bump. I feel every moment of the deep valleys and high mountains. I feel every moment of extreme excitement and every little bit of fear.

But in the end I’m glad I got on the ride in the first place. I’m glad that I have let myself give in, raise my hands in the air, and experience the pure joy especially after the fear and doubt I felt as I got on the roller coaster.

So for now I’m choosing to get on the ride…

Road Maps and Traffic Signs

If you are a faithful reader to this blog, you know that I have commiserated often about how my life isn’t where I would like it to be. At 35 years old, I am so ready to find my Mr. Right and settle down with a family. For the most part, my heart is content, yet I yearn so deeply for these things; yearn sooooo sooooo soooo DEEPLY!

Throughout my life, I have had some awesome amazing guy friends. There is my friend who is the “adopted baby brother I always wanted.” We could talk to each other about anything and everything. Then he found his dear wife who is awesome and we have kind of lost touch. Our lives are just at different points.

Several summers ago, God brought this amazing guy into my life. I deeply treasure our friendship and our conversations. He is going through a difficult time in his life and so I am doing my best to be a good friend; to support him in the midst of this trial. There is so much I would like to say to him, but I also know he is grieving in the midst of this difficult time in his life. So I have simply held back and just been a friend; a friend who listens whenever she can. I often find my mind playing mind games and wondering why God brought us into each other’s lives. I know that this is not the time or place to even think this since he is going through this difficult time. However that is often easier said than done.

Yet my heart and my head don’t and can’t understand. Why hasn’t it happened for me YET? What if I tell someone how I truly feel? What if I don’t say a word? Will I always wonder what “might have been?” What does that mean for tomorrow, for the next year, for the next 5 years, for the next 10 years? I simply wish God would give me a road map or traffic signs to when or even if these dreams will ever happen for me.

And then sometimes God doesn’t send a road map or a traffic sign, but rather a dream. And then I find myself trying to interpret what this dream means in my life. Is the dream a way of God and the Holy Spirit trying to give me that road map or traffic sign that I have been wanting and needing? I find myself praying for God to reveal to me what needs to be revealed. Yet it is hard to wait patiently and trust in God’s timing and not my own. That is the beauty of God in our lives….God always walks with us and is with us especially when we least  feel like God is there.

So for now…I will just wait…and pray for those road maps and traffic signs to come into my life….sooner rather than later!