being real.

The seasons change and if we forget to look around, everything has a way of passing us by. We’re busy, we have things that make us happy, things that hurt us and break us, but eventually, everything changes. It is here where the struggle proves itself. It is here where I find that I don't have a “place” to be. Well, of course, besides where I am. Yeah, I know, my own head is confused too.

I don't think I have slowed down to really breath since late June. Surprisingly, my energy keeps building in spite of the momentum here in Tokyo, and I am able to do more than survive, but things are different. I can’t seem to put my finger on it, and I have been warned against even trying, but Japan feels different this go around. Before, I was living here with this metaphor that screamed of a home somewhere else in the world. That I was only here for a set amount of days until the rest of my life began. I don't know when I really started thinking that, and in what brain that was all actualized in, but it was there and it was real and it was ignorant.

My trip home this summer reminded the deeper parts of me how home is carried within and how there isn’t a “place” to belong. Being in the states somehow ripped me open and broke me in ways I couldn’t have prepared for. It was such a strange feeling. I was with those I truly love (and that didn’t change with time and distance), but there was still something that I didn't understand. Don’t bother asking, there aren’t words… and I am afraid that it is merely because I am unable to know. It’s all such a strange feeling. The best words I had when I was home were, “I feel upside down and inside out…” and that hasn’t changed. Much. Here, I am a part of something that I think is bigger than me. I am investing in the lives of children, and they are reacting. I am loving and have a context to love as well as I can possibly try. There is a freedom within certain boundaries, and it's a freedom I can now appreciate after almost 14 months. But this freedom has come at a price. I don't even bother trying to figure out how much that price has amounted to for fear of the honest answer…

I have lost myself here. I wont give up, don't you worry, but I am not who I know that I could be. This city swallows me whole—day in and day out—in ways I can’t articulate. The constant drone of the city and its smells blind me sometimes to even myself. I forget how to think within myself, internalizing my pressing experiences. Slowing down is something to be extremely sensitive to because otherwise, you are neglected. Reconciling myself back into the arms of God while kicking and stomping through this city of blurring lights is pulling my flesh in every which direction it can. I feel blind to who I am and who I am becoming… doubtful if there is even movement in the first place. And what is it all for? I am trying not to care, because I know that the Lord is up to something. He isn’t a God of deception or a god that takes us as far into the wild as he can before he bursts out laughing at our expense. At least, I have to remind myself of that nearly every morning.

Because love is different than that.

Love is beautiful and hard and breathtaking. It’s everywhere, even—no, especially—in the hard things. Yesterday I was reading James 5 and was reminded of the importance in prayer. It was refering to the prayer of faith—this praying and hoping for answers and the movement of the Lord’s mighty hand. Amidst the blinding stimulation, prayer is proving to be a hard discipline. I was happy for the reminder of the POWER in prayer. How silly and strangely stupid of me to forget. How stupid to waste our chances at life because we are busy and over stimulated. Because we cannot rip ourselves away to taste and smell and see. I don't want to live my life to find it was wasted.

I like finding that when I live life, it works.