Let the Waterworks Flow

It's true. I cried last night for the first time since I got home.
I felt all the weight of it hit me at once.
And my first and only thought was, "Man I wish my life wasn't so cliche and I could have my own breakdown for my own reasons rather then the same exact breakdown every racer has after coming off the field"

So what was so extraordinary about yesterday, that left me gasping for breathe as I balled my eyes out?
Nothing, everything was normal. Thats what got me. The normalcy.
I was working at the same job I had worked at right before the race. Going to work, coming home, getting on the computer.
Everything was NORMAL.
and I hated it.
Nothing in itself was bad. In fact I appreciate the wonderful nepotism that allowed my mom to give me a job                                                               to get some moo-la for this month I'm home.
And I love the comfort of home, and sleeping in my way to fluffy bed that surrounds me like a glove. Man I love my bed!

But I'm not comfortable in my comfortable world.
I'm not comfortable living for the status quo.
I was made for more.

Nothing is wrong with living this way, but THERE IS SO MUCH MORE.
So much more. And I have seen it. I see it here when I look in peoples eyes, and listen to them talk about their lives. I listen to the things we settle for and let get in the way of really and truly getting it. I see it in people longing for more and not really knowing what they are longing for. I see people fighting trying to find people who will fight for them and stand by them through anything, to be known and loved.

I see it, in others and myself.

We want more.
We want people to live side by side with, even when it sucks.
We want community.
 What does that look like here?
How does that happen in a world that's so independent and does anything in their power to avoid their neighbors, their friends, their family. (insert anything here___________, we find ways to avoid it all)
We want it so bad that we run from it at every turn because we know that it's not easy, it takes work and it causes us to confront the things in our life that we would rather keep hidden.

So I sat here last night in my bed balling as I listened to Jonathan David Helsers, God of the angel armies (something about that song knocks me off my rocker in the best kind of way) remembering God fights for us. HE FIGHTS FOR US. What? How can that not just blow your mind, and he knows our deepest desires and dreams, and he remembers the prayers we forgot we prayed. The prayers for more, for experiencing him to the fullest, for living a life sold out. He not only remembers them but he speaks them into existence over our lives.

Before I left for the race I asked God for community that I couldn't live without. Community that wasn't easy, but that got to the core of who I am. I asked him to surround me with it, that I would never be the same. So, what did he do? Well just that, he gave me what I prayed for. He gave me it to a degree I can't even express.

So last nights tears were shed in realization that I had found that community, and that I am longing with every part of my soul to be back in it. Not in the same way, I know it won't ever look exactly the same. But God made us to live life together to pour into each other and to carry burdens with each other. Were not meant to live or do life alone.

I want community and will fight for it with everything I have. I will move for it, and pour everything I have into it, because I know what can come of it and how good it is. I refuse to do life alone, I will not fall into that pattern.

Me thinks that Shane Claiborne got it right.
Just sayin.