starting to have some dreams again.

so, it is weird to sit outside and hear the rain on the tin roof and type on my computer.
but i kind of like it.
oh, god. your company is my favorite thing. i have started to find a peaceful place with you that i am now jealous for and beginning to be afraid of losing. i love to sit with you and know that you are near. and i want to press into it more and learn what it is to hear your voice and just to be with you. can we have more secret time? even in the middle of everything?

a good day. church was good but it felt a little weird... i was trying to pay attention to what was happening in a different way and see how i can help people do what they do better. we were really short on people setting up this morning but it got done like it always does. and i am thankful. russell was great, and i was excited to listen to god speak through the crazy things that man has walked through. what was one beautiful thing was him talking about what if we had the same faith in god that our children have in us... what if my kids asked me to make breakfast and then they stuffed it in their pockets because they were afraid of it not being there tomorrow... or i told them i loved them and they said they weren't even sure that i knew them... and then i cried, because how often the analogies go the other way. and that family is such a gift that those kids know their parents love so well, even in their imperfection.

having funny thoughts and dreams like never before in my life... dealing with the issue of choosing to establish your life, to be rooted in a place and a people, which i have always not-chosen and am starting to have dreams about. i am not sure what god is doing in that but there is a place in my soul that yearns for it. thoughts about helping to make the red c exist and what god wants in that. will this dream for pittsburgh ever go away? i think not until i see it or until i hand it off to a faithful one... i wonder if i could do it with bryan but he would have to understand and i am not sure he can yet...

thoughts too, today about control and me and god. how i can't control mariana when i am with her, i could - i am bigger and stronger - but at what cost? her love? her safety? her self? so i listen to her... and my goal is to learn to connect and listen and show myself to her and show her another way. the same is true with carli... i could say no, and judge and yell and tell her the hundred reasons why she is so *wrong* - at what cost? our relationship? so i love her and i choose her. and i receive her. and that means hearing my sister talk about her one year anniversary with her girlfriend because i want to be in her life and i want to know her... and knowing that in doing that i am not violating god, i am not selling out. god is not shocked. he loves. and what is true is still true. thank you, god, that you are god.

it is itchy out here.