...and if you feel like reading...it'll be worth it.

It is interesting how you sometimes have to leave home before you can ask difficult questions, how the questions never come up in the bedroom you grew up in, in the town in which you were born. It’s funny how you can’t ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize nothing that is happening to you is normal
The trouble with you and me is we are used to what is happening to us.

~Through Painted Deserts, Donald Miller.

Ah Denver. I am learning, but sometimes I doubt whether or not I am growing up or just thinking about growing up. It has been a very weird transition for me. At times it feels temporary and other times it sinks in that this is now home. I have moved from home. I finished school. I am a grown up.

I have been looking at graduate school programs in between my two jobs at the mission and Ann Taylor Loft, and it kind of hit me. If I leave here, I have to start all over again on the east coast. Starting over takes a lot of energy, now granted it wouldn’t be exactly like “starting over” out east, I would hopefully get to live with Haley and Kendra, and be close to home and have friends near by that I can call to come over and hang out with me on a bad day. But hopefully when the time comes for me to leave here, I will have established friends like that here in Denver. The problem is they’re not here yet. Where are they anyway? How do you make friends in such a large city? Real friends..not call you on a Saturday night because you told them to friends. But friends who can tell when you’re in a bad mood, or know what kind of ice cream to buy you because you hang out all the time friends. When does that happen? When does that magic moment occur when calling them is no longer tense because you know you’re not bothering them? Is there a special formula I missed out on because I was always so busy doing other things that I happened to glance over it? I used to think I was okay at making friends, it came easy to me, and I appreciated that. But I think something happened on the flight out to Colorado that took away all of my social skills all together and now I am an insecure stuttering young girl.

I do believe that moving here, leaving home, has forced me to ask hard questions. But it has also helped me evaluate friendships and the value that people have in our lives. I talk to many lonely people on a daily basis who do not have friends, some of them do not even have families. I have both, and I don’t think I will ever take them for granted again. Being here has caused me to reevaluate silly arguments or disagreements I had with people who I care about. The arguments happened because we’re all human, and guess what that means? We’re flawed…we’re not perfect, that’s what makes life interesting, among many other things...

I had two clients recently who came to me to fill out an application for our program. Both of them sat in my office and wept. Grown women, with children. They wept and said to me "how did I let it get this far?" They also expressed that they hadn't stopped long enough to really think about their situation and they both have not talked to anyone else about it. They are holding it all in. And it all came out. I prayed for both of them in the office, and it was beautiful, not because they were my words, but because I honestly felt God in our presence. healing these women, taking burdens away, letting them know it was okay and I was here to listen to them and not judge them.

I think this holiday season everyone should take a minute and listen. I know it;s changed my life because I actually listen now. And I actually pray for others and I honestly care that God hears their cries and heals them. Life is not easy. It's especially not easy when you're alone or just simply lonely. Listen. Care. Love. You'll change someone's life.

So for now I leave you with another beautiful quote from Donald Miller.....

We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?
It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
I want to repeat one word for you.
Leave.

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.