I mentioned in my last post that my spirit has been in something like a coma. My spirit is the part of me that I relied on to make decisions. Without it to direct me I have been drifting, a passenger in my own life. I’ve been functioning on autopilot and in the process, I seem to have become more lost than ever.

Coming to Nashville and spending time with the people at Grace Center has been like a defibrillator shock to my spirit. During worship yesterday I was able to actually engage with my spirit instead of just singing along. I can feel myself waking up and the empty shell of who I have been is filling up with life once again. This awakening has not been easy. In fact, it’s been quite painful. The things I have pushed down for months have bubbled up to the surface and I am experiencing renewed pain and loss. I’m struggling with my identity and the decisions that shape it. During these past months of walking around half alive, decisions didn’t really matter. I just went with whatever was easiest and felt good. Now that I am waking up I know I have to get back in the driver’s seat of my life which means making hard decisions that I am not sure I have the strength to make.

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At the same time, I am feeling more myself again. When I am here in Nashville it’s easier for me to see hope and a future. Honestly, if I wasn’t pregnant I would have already moved back here. The community that I have here is so life-giving and healing. I think I got more genuine hugs in yesterday’s church service than I have received in the past three months. Grace Center is like a hospital for the hurting and I am in serious need of time in their trauma unit. It’s really hard for me to have to leave so soon after getting here. Honestly, I don’t want to go at all, especially with the healing that has already happened in so short a time. Lately, I have felt that even as I have been getting emotionally stronger I have been getting spiritually weaker. This week has been refreshing. I feel like my heart has been restarted but I’m still bleeding out and there isn’t time to stop it before I leave tomorrow.

I have felt like I have been wandering in the desert and have finally reached an oasis only to have to return to the desert again. I know it’s hard for people to understand, for most people a church is a church… but there is something so different about Grace Center that’s hard to understand without experiencing it yourself. (The next best thing would be to listen to the podcast that the young adult pastors Alyn and AJ recorded today where they talk about what makes Grace Center, Grace Center.)

I don’t want people at home to feel that I am ungrateful or don’t appreciate them. I really do. Like I said before, I have been getting emotionally stronger and that’s in large part because I have such great friends and family. I’m just severely lacking in spiritual healing. The spiritual part of me has always been the most important and made me who I was, but I feel it slowly fading and with it, I am losing myself. I know I have talked about coming here to do the ministry school next year. But a year feels so long and I wonder if I will make it that long in the desert or will I bleed out before then?

Psalm 63:1-8
You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land where there is no water.
I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.
Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
I cling to you; your right hand upholds me.