known, and loved.

i wrote this email to a friend a while ago and never sent it...but i came across it today and it's still true...

have you ever sat in someone's office for 2 hours, talked back and forth about everything important in your life and theirs without any fear or censorship...and just let your wandering mind spill out of your mouth knowing that you were understood and loved? and felt so absolutely welcomed, appreciated, known and cared for...known for who you were as an immature, apathetic freshmen 5 and a half years ago; an obsessive compulsive, perfectionistic, competitive stress case 4 years ago; a frustrated, confused mess of questions about the world and God 3 years ago; an impassioned, driven senior in wonderment and in love with life; a lost, scared, homeless post graduate who isn't sure how to be happy or loving but just knows she's in need of love; and now as someone who's slowly figuring out life and finally seeing some congruency between thought and heart and action if only in small windows of life and seeing some beauty in the whole mess of it all...???? to sit in this man's office, surrounded by the presence of someone who has known your heart through so much pain, joy, struggle, triumph, fear, confusion, and peace is i think a very very microscopic piece of what it is to be known by my father in heaven. which is nuts! because it feels so huge...so tangibly real...and the whole world i live in today can be contained in the hole that remains when a single blade of grass is plucked out of the ground in heaven... As much as long beach really is becoming home...i haven't felt more at home in a quite a while than i did yesterday in an office filled from floor to ceiling (literally) with old books and the presence of a wonderful servant of God. to be encouraged...to have hard questions asked of me...to look into someone's eyes and know the question that's being asked without it actually ever being spoken...to have someone I have a respect for that I attempt but fail to explain, take such care with the things he says to me...to preface the truth that he's about to speak with "i don't feel the privilege to speak to very many people in this manner...." he considers it a privilege??? and to be trusted with his life...his family...his thoughts and wisdom! i want to learn to love like this man.

anyway...that's one story from my life lately...the rest involve a suspended bridge, stopping traffic, long talks with an old roomate as i drift to sleep, colors and music and dancing and a happy marriage for two friends...the beauty of the earth, rain that soaks your clothes, and baskets made by some villagers in oaxaca, mexico. ya know...the usual.

everyday i wake up is beautiful in a new way lately...not always happy or secure or really understandable...but beautiful (even if it takes me a few days going by to appreciate it).