Move On
I have not done a great job at writing recently, but here are the truths I do have:
Jesus Christ is the Holy One of God.
I've been stuck. When I got my job I got confused, because I'd been told that you need to work for a while to get your dream. I know people still don't believe me, but when I got this job, it was the ultimate dream. It still is. Somehow I am allowed to do what I love everyday, and while church ministry isn't glamorous and sometimes I have no idea what I'm doing, I still feel incredibly thankful. I'm learning how to manage the stress and how to be healthy, but I'm young, so I'm also learning accept grace for the things I'm not good at yet.
The confusing part was that I felt like I had peaked. I felt like all the dreams had been used up. I'm traveling to Palestine in a few weeks and it is quite literally the last thing on my bucket list. I'm not sure if my bucket list was just not long enough, but at the age of 23 I will have done all the things I have ever wanted to do. I've preached, I've landed a job in full-time ministry at a church I'm in love with, I've lived in Paris and backpacked through Ireland and soon I will have traveled to the Holy Land. Someday I want to travel to New Zealand with my family, but I'm serious - that's it. That's my list, and it's nearly finished.
I've had a rough couple of months, working through all these feelings. Then, last night, as I laid in bed, scared to fall asleep for fear of more nightmares, I felt God turn my face away from my past. I felt him put his hands on my cheeks and gently turn my eyes toward the future. And then I heard him say, lovingly but with power and strength and finality: "Move on." That was it. Just "move on." And I knew, immediately, what the problem has been.
My story has changed so much in the past two years. Still, though, I hung onto my past out of a painful homesickness and nostalgia. But I'm tired. I'm tired of martyrdom, and I'm tired of bowing down to old pain. I'm tired of being unforgiving, and I'm tired of letting it all swirl me about in a hurricane of feelings that I've had on repeat for years. I'm tired. I'm done. I quit. I'm moving on.
Then I got prayer this morning, and the woman praying for me spoke of dreams, and how maybe there might be new ones out there, waiting for me to dream them. She spoke of wide open spaces and places where I can be me. She spoke of Paris-sized dreams - she spoke of how it wasn't over, how it had only just begun. That was when the spell broke - the idea that all the dreams are in the past. They're not. It's time to move on. It's time to end the nightmare. It's time to let it go and take it all for what it is, and it's time to dream new dreams.