For the first time in a long time, I have so many words to say that I’m not quite sure where to start. So I’ll start here. (I guess it’s as good of a place as any.)

Today was an incredible day. I got up went to a great job for a company that is doing good around the world and had the pleasure of interacting with talented and supportive co-workers and friends. Lunchtime came and I got pho-to-go (actually it was bun but that doesn’t have the same ring to it, now does it?) After work, I introduced a dear friend to the luxury of a pedicure and the deliciousness of Bear Flag Fish Company.

Yes, today was an incredible day.

Life is rich. And I am blessed.

But the last nine months have been hard.

When I packed up all my things to move to California, I was braced and ready for the challenge. A loss of the people, places, and things I held most dear coupled with a discovery of a new culture, a new home, a new church, and a new job. Yep, the challenge still managed to knock me on my rear end.

Hard, yet necessary.

I have learned much about myself, about solitude, about community, and about things I haven’t even learned that I’ve learned quite yet.

Over the last few months, I started to sense this adventure was meant to be a short-ish one.

So when I got a phone call from Ben Greene about an opportunity IN NASHVILLE to join the work that FOOD FOR THE HUNGRY is doing and MOBILIZE SPEAKERS, AUTHORS, AND OTHER STORYTELLERS TO GO TO THE HARD PLACES AND BRING HOPE AND HELP TO THE CHILDREN, I perked up. I explored the possibility that sounds like THE BEST JOB EVER. And when the job offer came, I jumped, I shouted, and I accepted.

This is my next right step. I know it. While zig-zagging across the country once again might seem a little whacky or sideways to some, I know it is just perfect, for me, for now.

So that’s my bittersweet news.

Bitter because it is the end of an awesome adventure and bitter because I will have to say goodbye to some precious friends. Sweet because by God’s grace I get to live and work in the flow of the Spirit and sweet because I AM GOING HOME.

“God’s plan is not just for us to be saved by grace – it is for us to live by grace. God’s plan is for my daily life to be given, guided, guarded, and energized by the grace of God. To live in grace is to flow in the Spirit.” John Ortberg, The Me I Want To Be

Thank you for your ongoing friendship and support. It means the world to me. 

I know. I know. I am a little early to the party with this one.

But inspiration struck as I drove home tonight, and since inspiration has been MIA lately I thought we’d take it and run with it.

Here we go. 11 lessons that I learned, a few the hard way, in 2011:

1. ‘Cold’ is relative. Somehow the 40s really do feel quite unbearable in California. {Thankful we don’t see a lot of them.}

2. A crush is called ‘a crush’ for a darn good reason.

3. When it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

4. There is something unmistakably lovely and unusual about the fall in the South. College football, brisk mornings, and glorious foliage should not be taken for granted.

5. ‘Ay de mi!’ is a term of exclamation that we learned in Spanish class, but not one that is used by any real Spanish speakers.

6. God is more concerned with who we are becoming than what we are doing. {Pretty sure I have learned this one before and will be learning this one again. It’s a good thing I am surrounded by friends that won’t allow me forget it.}

7. Life is better lived in the company of a great dog.

8. The Pacific Ocean is breathtaking, even when you see it everyday.

9. Moving cross-country creates moments where exuberant joy and poignant grief collide, often leaving you confused and speechless.

10. Friends come in and out of our lives. While it’s hard to see them walk off stage, it is so fun to see what scene they show up in next.

11. Entering our ‘promised land’ is not necessarily the big red bow neatly tying up the end of our story. We will still have to fight combat fear, grieve our past, and learn to stop trying to go at it our way and embrace complete surrender.

 Now it’s your turn. What’s one lesson that you have learned in 2011?  

On Wednesday, I went to John Wayne International Airport and picked up my dog, Molly, at the baggage claim. {If you haven’t been following along, my sweet Molls has been staying with my parents for the last couple of months while I got things situated in California. And I was REALLY missing her.}

After more than two months, we reunited. And it feels so good.

For the last few days we’ve just been enjoying each other’s company. We have snuggled up on the couch enjoying Hallmark Christmas movies {our favorite, okay maybe they are my favorite, but Molly never complains}. We have walked the beaches of Orange County. We have met some new friends.

And we are just getting started. We have a brand new state to explore.

Welcome to California Molls. I love doing life with you!

What have you, and your pets, been up to?  

My friends Justin and Trisha Davis asked if I would be willing to guest post on their blog. I happily obliged because I adore the Davises and there aren’t many things I wouldn’t do for them. But it has been a little difficult to find the discipline to get the post written. Why?  Well, because the topic they asked me to blog about is “transition” which I feel like is all I have been talking about, all I have been blogging about, and all I have been living. Candidly, “transition” has me a little exhausted.

It’s hard, you know?

Waking up in a new apartment, in a new city, in a new state, in a new culture, throwing on new clothes {the weather and the casual Orange County atmosphere necessitate}, heading into a new job with new co-workers and a new boss, and escaping in the evening to grab a quick dinner at a new restaurant before going to a new small group at a new church. Nothing is familiar. It’s all new. It’s disorienting. And it’s hard. Click here to continue reading. 

Lately I have been oddly intrigued by the idea of liminal space.

Liminal space is a place where boundaries dissolve and we stand on a threshold, getting ourselves ready to move across the limits of what we were into what we are to becoming.

It seems like there should be a finite moment between here and there.

But it is quite impossible to pin down. With no clear beginning. And with no clear end.

Sometimes I lay in bed and try to decipher when the threshold first appeared. Was it when life in Nashville began to get alarmingly comfortable? Was it my first trip out to California when God began planting seeds of friendship? Was it the conversations at Q that made me start questioning my purpose and His plan? Was it the coaching group that forced me week-after-week to revisit my restlessness? Or was it this summer when I decided to pack up and head to California to work with Project 7? When exactly did I start transitioning?

And sometimes I lay in bed and try to decipher when the threshold will be crossed, when I will have “arrived.” Because although I am physically here, I still can’t begin fathom who I will become, or what life might look like, in this next chapter.

Yet these questions are futile.

Surely I will slip across this threshold one day. Just as surely as another threshold will appear.

“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” ― Richard Rohr

Are you in a period of transition? Can you pin down when it began or when it might end?  

As I spent time over-analyzing myself earlier today {too bad I can’t figure out how to make a career out of self-analysis…I’d be rich}, I realized that I am in the midst of a mini identity crisis. With so much new, and so little old, I am struggling to pinpoint who I am, what I think, and how to share this journey with you.

In the most simplest terms, I am in the process of discovering what remains…of me.

Without my precious pup, the church that restored my faith in God and community, the comfortable routines that filled my Nashville existence, the job and the company that I knew like the back of my hand, the conferences where I felt known and respected, and the cast of kids that I adored spoiling rotten, I feel a little lost, a little timid, and a lot unsure.

Answering questions as simple as “who are you?” and “what are you doing in Southern California?” leave me perplexed and stumbling to find words. But maybe, just maybe, that is how it should be? Maybe I don’t need to search for the answers, maybe I need to live my way into the answers?

“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the question themselves, as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Are you good at loving the questions? Or are you like me, searching through every nook and cranny for answers? 

Last week got off to a rough start. A funk enveloped me and I wasn’t sure I was going to find my way out.

Moving can be hard. A thirty-fifth birthday can be hard. Together they became the double whammy that did me in…at least for a couple of days.

But sometime Wednesday morning the tide turned. And instead of grieving faraway friends, failed attempts at romance, and fruitless dreams, I started seeing the love that I often take for granted.

It was everywhere once I just opened my heart wide enough to see it, and receive it.

A hijacked blog. Love.

A Facebook wall and Twitter feed full of familiar faces sharing their birthday greetings. Love.

A Skype call with my three favorite nieces. Love.

Not one, or two, but three beautiful bouquets of flowers. Love.

A leisurely birthday lunch with a team of co-workers. Love.

A post-Rooted birthday tapas celebration. Love.

The perfect birthday dessert, a “colossal cupcake” from Crumbs. Love.

A weekend with a dear friend I’ve known for the better part of the last decade. Love.

Everywhere. Love.

Even in  the suddenly dulled aching of my grief. Love.

As my sweet friend Ann Voskamp says, “All’s grace.” Yes. Love is near. We just need to open our eyes, and our hearts, and delight in Him and His gifts.

Where have you seen Love lately?  

I left Nashville four weeks ago today. And my transition for the most part has been surprisingly smooth.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t have mornings, like this one, where I wake up aching to turn the clock back four weeks and relish in a place that I know and that I feel known.

That is the hardest part about moving…the constant uncertainty. That everything, and I mean everything, is new.

Don’t get me wrong, I love exploring. I love meeting new people. And I love an adventure.

But there are days when I just want to know the fastest way to get from point A to point B. There are days when I just want to be able to stroll into church on Sunday morning and see more friends than strangers. There are days when I just want to savor old routines instead of going through the hassle of establishing new ones. And mostly there are days, when I just want to know and be known.

Have you moved? What did you think was the hardest part?

I said my last goodbye and pulled out of Nashville eight days ago. And it still hasn’t hit me that this isn’t some supped up vacation.

I have been in Orange County since Wednesday, but haven’t even begun to get settled. {I know what you are thinking. I should be settled by now. I’ve had days. And you’ve seen my twitter stream and are well aware that I have been running around Southern California footloose and fancy free. But don’t judge me, it’s difficult to get settled when your stuff, and your car, are on a semi-truck somewhere between here and there.} Instead for the last week, I have been crashing with friends and living what I’ve deemed “the surreal life.”

My friend Allison flew down from San Francisco and we had a wonderful couple of days exploring Orange County. We strolled through Newport and Laguna. We ventured out into Newport’s Back Bay on standup paddle boards. {No, I didn’t fall in. Well, I didn’t fall completely in.} We made our way down to Dana Point to have a cocktail al fresco at the Ritz Carlton. {The view and the ambiance was definitely worth the extra $5 I paid for my drink.} We ate fish tacos and poke at Bear Flag Fish Company. And we hung out with a host of welcoming Californians.

Yesterday, Allison flew home and I caught my first service at Mariner’s Church. While on the outside Mariner’s looks and feels so different from Cross Point, I love the heart of the church. Like Cross Point, they believe that real life transformation happens in community and so they make it a top priority. I’m really looking forward to getting rooted there.

All my loot should arrive sometime later this week and I’ll be ready to get to work. Truth be told, living “the surreal life” has been nice, but I cannot wait to sleep in my own bed, start my new job, and begin establishing a few healthy routines.

What have you been up to this Labor Day weekend?

Five years ago almost to the day, I got Molly as an early 30th birthday gift. I had been debating a dog but could never seem to pull the trigger. So the boy I was dating at the time pulled it for me. Molly was 4 months old with a shiny black and white coat and a head cock that could melt your heart in two-seconds flat. Unfortunately, she was a terrible puppy. A truly terrible puppy.

Almost everyday she did the unthinkable, she peed in her sacred space, her big black wire kennel. I’d rush home from work excited to bond only to find her bouncing around in a puddle of her urine. I’d have to toss her in the sink, bathe her, and towel her dry. Not to mention a thorough scrub down of the kennel and the utility room. It wasn’t just the peeing that made her so terrible. She was a barker. She was a jumper. And she got into everything. She especially loved to shred paper so it was quite convenient that I worked for a bookstore chain and had lots of books around for her to make into piles of worthless confetti.

I seriously debated getting rid of her. She wreaked havoc on my life those first few months. The boy who had given her to me didn’t stick around. But Molly did. And she bloomed into the best dog that ever existed. Ask anyone who has met her. Molly is the absolute best. {I am pretty sure as we pulled out of town last week, she left a bigger whole in the heart of Nashville than I ever could.}

A year later I was offered a new job in a new town. So I packed up my life and my dog and headed to Nashville. I will never forget snuggling up with Molls in my empty Sylvan Park apartment as we waited for the moving vans to arrive. We were going to tackle this adventure together.

And here I am today, 4 years later ready embarking on another adventure. Only this time it seemed selfish to force her to suffer through the turmoil of the transition. So I left sweet Molly with my parents for a month or two so I can get settled before adding a dog into the mix.

Leaving her this morning was absolutely brutal. It wreaked havoc on my heart like none of my other goodbyes. I know that she is in great hands. She will be living the high life with long walks, playful scuffles with my parents’ maltese Lily, and of course bountiful trips to the lake and the pet spa.

It is me that I worry about. Molly is my partner in crime. Molly is my alarm system. Molly is who I talk to so I don’t have to admit that I talk to to myself. And Molly is the warm body that lays her head on my crook of my leg as I settle down to sleep reminding me that I am not alone.

So can I ask you to pray for me as I embark on this journey without the comfort of my sweet pup?

And will you share with me a little about your favorite four-legged friend?