Heavy on hearts, and heavy on backs.

I had a massage today. 

It was awesome. I love massages. If I could get a massage every week I soooo would. But that would be wayy too much money (side note: I NEVER pay full price for a massage - that's why they invented Groupon!) I love getting massages from my friends too. In college, my roommate and I would have "massage time" a couple times a week and would take turns just massaging the crap out of each others neck and shoulders while we were watching TV. When I was in choir growing up, sometimes warm-up would include "turn to the right, massage your neighbor's back." This was my favorite warm-up.

There is a down side to getting a massage, ya know? At least for me. As soon as I do, I need another one soon after, like the very next day. My back/neck hurts, almost to the point where I can't do anything because it's screaming at me to have someone dig their elbow in and work on the knots. So it's like a "catch 22". I like the massage because it feels good. It's good pain to get the knots worked on. But part of me wants to stay away from them because I know it will just highlight all my problems and cause more pain and work and time and money to try to get all of the knots away, permanently.

I've struggled with back problems for many years. That's where I carry a lot of my stress. You've heard the phrase "carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders?" Well I know that phrase entirely too literally. I guess I just learn to live with it. Which is why I go through periods of needing a massage every day after just one, because it brings the pain to light, to going months without it, because I just bury it deep down and life goes on...



So today, it was a therapeutic massage at my chiropractor's office. Which I was excited about because I hoped she would work at the root of the problem and not just make it feel good for an hour.  Honestly I just wanted her to take a jack hammer and break down the knots this way. I feel like this would have been most effective. Unfortunately, no jack hammer. Not even a regular hammer. No. Instead, she had to press down on the muscle until it "releases."

So I'm laying there, and she's actually getting irritated at my back, because it has so many knots that aren't going away. I know lady. I'm messed up. I can hear her try to hide her irritation as she exclaims, "I don't know why it won't release for me. I'm being easy on it." I snicker to myself to give her some reaction, (really I don't like people talking to me when I'm getting massaged, just let me have an hour of peace!), and immediately the first thought that pops in to my head is "Don't take it personally. I do this to everyone."

Woa. Where did that come from self?

So for then the rest of the massage, I'm having this spiritual/mental metaphor of what's been happening in my life lately as I'm getting a massage.

When she said that sentence, there was almost a pleading sound, like "I'm doing my best, but it's just not getting though." And I know I've made other people think that same thing about me lately. They are trying to pour truth and love and friendship and goodness into my life, and there's something stubbornly not letting it get through.

In the past few weeks, I started going back to counseling. I've been to counseling a couple of times since I was little. I've always been an overly anxious person. Every couple of years, it goes through cycles and will get really bad, and I will seek help from someone smarter than myself to help me work through it. I don't remember much about counseling when I was young, and what I do remember, is that obviously the root of the anxiety or problems have never been addressed.

I absolutely adore the counselor I'm seeing now. Love her. I could go on and on about how awesome she is and what all I'm learning, but that's for me and not for the world.

(If you want a recommendation, let me know and I will pass on her info! And I do think everyone in the entire world would benefit from counseling. Everyone. The world would be such a happier place. Everyone has issues, and it makes me really sad that "going to a counselor" has such a negative stigma. I got my undergrad in Family Studies, with the intention of becoming a counselor later. I'm not embarrassed to say I see a counselor cause she's awesome and is helping me work through things I don't know how to other wise. I don't think people are stupid that have to use a dictionary, it's a tool at their disposal when they don't know how to spell something. And everyone in the world at some point uses a dictionary. So...case and point for my side rant right there.)

Anyways this is how she described her kind of therapy to me the day we met: She talked about a person's life like a tree. Often people seek counseling because they are producing bad fruit or branches. And counselors help them cut it off and learn how to live without that particular behavior/person/thought-patter/fill-in-the-blank. But instead of cutting off that particular branch or fruit, she likes to look at the root, and discover why that fruit and branch is growing in the first place. (How Biblical!)

Back to my massage. Another thing my masseuse mentioned was how I had some knots that are in the deep layer of under muscle. Well that's fun. So it's way down to where you can't even reach it. She also talked about how I have knots that are built upon knots. Joy. I think I probably knew that too. One of my personal favorites and most relatable quotes: "I would have to remove your arm to get to where I need to, that's where the problem is." YES! Finally someone understands my intense pain that makes me want to rip layers and limbs off to just to extract the knot out of my body! WE CAN'T EVEN REACH THE PROBLEM SPOT PEOPLE!

But as she's massaging, she found places I didn't even know were carrying intense knots and pain. But sure enough, there were giant knots of ugly torture hiding in random places. Apparently, those were the roots. Causing problems all over my body. I couldn't even feel where the problem started until she touched it. The hidden root shot pain and created other knots elsewhere, away from the base, trying to throw me off track and distract me from the real root of the problem.

Shoot just got real! I'm only a couple of weeks deep into counseling now, and have already discovered and rediscovered things about myself that I didn't know were issues. Fears, questions, doubts, insecurities I've pushed deep down, so far that I didn't even know they were there or causing other issues. Just like the knots, I've learned to live with them, until I've forgotten, or buried how it's effected me. And it's causing all these other problems or hurts or ways of thinking, and I don't even know where it's coming from. Knots upon knots upon knots.



I don't really know why I'm writing this. I think today was just such a clear physical picture for me of things I've been learning about myself recently. I just had to write it down because that's therapeutic for me. And I hope some of you can relate. And if you can't, it's because you won't let yourself believe that this is about you too. ;) If you can't relate or don't care about knowing a piece of my heart, I will end with this:

Pretty much nothing happens independently. Every single person you come in contact with is carrying a piece of their past with them. That's why they look, act, smell, talk, think, behave the way they do. Maybe they just woke up and they aren't fully engaged in the day yet - well they are carrying their bed with them! Or maybe they just got the news that the cancer spread. Or maybe they found out they got the scholarship. Or maybe someone just cut them off on the highway.

Not only are people carrying with them the past few hours, but some people carry the past few days. Or weeks. 

Or years. 

That's heavy, y'all. Heavy on hearts, and heavy on backs.

So remember that, the next time someone is a jerk to you, or is snarky at the drive-thru window. Every single moment they have been living so far has lead up to this very one - making them do and think and speak the way they do. Same goes for you. Cut yourself, and your back, some slack.

Times

Time is a strange thing.

Sometimes you are going through things, and you think they are going to last forever. Even some days, some hours, feel like you are going to be in that one place forever.

I can think of SEVERAL times in my life where I thought a certain time would never end.

Like nap time. And I would just have to lay there, pretending to be asleep, even trying to fall asleep, but sleep would never come. And I thought I would never make it through. But I did. Everyday. I did. And now 17 years later I wish I was back there again, and I wish nap time would have never ended.

Or in my last blogpost - my trip to Swaziland this summer. There was a time of about 5 days that seemed to last an eternity, and I wondered if it was ever going to end. And it did. Now I've gone to Swazi and back and have been back for almost 3 months.

Or what about something I haven't shared with the entire world yet? Times of extreme heartbreak. Nights of crying, turning into months of crying. Wondering if I was ever going to get over this. And sometimes, wondering still.

Why do we always think this way? That we're never going to get through this time? Or we're never going to be happy again? Or maybe the opposite. That we're never going to loose this happiness we have. Or this friendship we have. You know why? I think it's because that's all we know. All we know is what we have lived through and experienced our entire life up until this very moment.

Think about that for a minute.

Everything we know right now is a compelation of what we have known in the past, all of our entire past moments piled up to bring us right now, to this present moment.

We don't know what tomorrow will bring. We don't know what 5 years from now will bring. We don't even know what the next second will bring.

I like to think of what my life would look like if it were in the Bible. I give myself a whole book because, well I don't know I just do. I don't think it has to be like as long as Genesis, but hey, that's easiest for my brain is just to think of getting an entire book about my life. (And also, our names ARE in the Book of Life, so I think this is a fair analogy). Anyways. Like I think about what certain times will look like in My book. Some times I think will be the ENTIRE book, might only turn out to be a chapter. Or maybe a verse. I think of a lot of stories in the Bible where I feel like HUGE things only get one verse. Like the story of Jacob and Rachel. Here's this guy, who agrees to work 7 years for his wife, and all of it is summed up in: "So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her." Gen. 29:20. A lot of things can happen in 7 years! Maybe he lived through famine. Maybe he lived through war. Maybe his great aunt died and he had to travel a month to go to her funeral. Maybe he fought a wolf. Maybe there were nights where he cried himself to sleep, wondering if it was all even worth it. But we don't get to know about that stuff. Doesn't mean it didn't happen. Nope, all we get is "So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her." And THEN he ends up getting married to Leah, and has to work ANOTHER ENTIRE 7 YEARS for Rachel. But it's summed up by "And he worked for Laban another seven years." Gen. 29:30.

Or even Jesus' life. We get the story of the boy Jesus at the temple, and then this verse "
 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man." Luke 2:52, and then boom! Jesus is grown up and starting his ministry. I'm sure LOTS of interesting things happened between those times. But we only get it summed up in that verse. Doesn't mean stuff didn't happen, but apparently that's all we need to know.

Last example. Abraham and Sarah getting Isaac. Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was borne to him. And Sarah was in her 90's. Ok, I mean we don't have to discuss details, but that's a lot of years of trying to conceive a baby without actually having one. And we don't hear about the agonizing months and years of crying to God because they weren't able to have children. Or the time when Sarah realized she was too old to bear children. I'm sure those times sucked, and probably maybe Sarah didn't feel like she wanted to keep going. Maybe she didn't see a point of living if she couldn't have her dreams realized. Or, she didn't see a point of living if God wasn't going to be faithful to her.

But, He was. And still is.  "Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him." Gen. 21:1-2

We don't get to hear about the hours/days/months/years of anguish and despair, faced by all of the great heros in the Bible. We know there was a struggle, and then we know there was a promise fulfilled. Does that mean they didn't have horrible times during the waiting? No. But God didn't think it was necessary to put all that in there. Maybe that's because He knows we all get to experience times like this, so we don't need to read about everyone else's. Maybe that's why we have the friends we do now, or the books we do now, to hear about such dark times that were turned to light. Maybe He doesn't want us to dwell on the darkness and fear, and just look at the end goal.

Or maybe, it's because those times weren't the ending.

 The "waiting" period wasn't the end. He gave us examples time and time and time again throughout the Bible to to minimize the times of our waiting and suffering, but to show us that's not the focus; that's not the end goal. The promise is fulfilled. There is victory.

Jacob got to marry Rachel. Sarah gave birth to Isaac. Daniel made it through the night in the lion's den. Noah finally got off the ark. The Israelites made it through the time in the desert. Jonah survived being in the whale. 

Jesus died...and then rose again, defeating death, sin, and the devil himself.

As Christians, we do know the future. I mean, not like, "the future future," but we do know the ending. And it is victory. It is Victory.

"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." 2 Cor. 4:17

Sometimes we don't get to choose the battles we face or the circumstances we find ourselves in. Sometimes we don't get to choose the length of time we must suffer with a certain issue. 
But they don't have to define you're entire book in the Bible. They might not even define and entire chapter. They might only get one verse. 

I also think of that Laura Story song, Blessings
"What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?"

A thousand sleepless nights sounds like a really long time. So do 40 years in the desert. But I know Who wins, and Who has already won. 

I heard this verse in a new way the other day "being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil 1:6)." Right now, in the midst of my struggle, I feel like God has plainly showed me the truth time and time and time again. Yet I need to be shown again. And again. And I worry that He will just get tired of showing me the Truth, and eventually stop. But I heard that verse spoken over me in a new way, that He who started this work, and began showing me His truth, will continue to do so until it is completed and I get it. :) Praise God for that. 

So even now, I write this in faith. Even now I hear the lie from the enemy telling me, "yea, "if" you get through this. you probably won't." Well, right now I'm calling him out on his lies and saying Yes, I WILL get through this, because I choose Jesus and He who began a good work in me will carry it out to completion, and God will be glorified.  

 "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." 2 Cor. 4:17

You should also listen to "Times" by Tenth Avenue North. Cause it rocks. And is true. 
 

Swaziland: The Beginning

Hello world. Or whoever is reading.

I think I might give this blogging thing another go, at least to cover my experience with this Swaziland trip. After that I make no guarentees.

So for those of you who don't know, I'm on my way to Swaziland for a 2-ish week misison project. I won't go into details of how it all came about and all of the wild, incredible stories that are involved in this project thus far. If you realllllyyy wanna know just ask me. I'm just gonna start with the actual trip itself.

Today is Sunday June 30th, and I'm in the lobby of the Marriot in the Houston International Airport. Side note - even if the nice friendly lady says it's ok if you sleep here, it's not a good idea because the mean man will come wake you up and tell you "don't sleep in my lobby." Dude, if you only knew, if you only knew.

Let's back up. *Disclaimer. This is a very long story. If you don't want to read all of it, at least skip down to Saturday June 29.

***********************

This was "THE PLAN": 

Step 1-June 28: Fly from Dallas Lovefield with Brant (another teammate who lives in Dallas) to Houston.

Step 2-June 28: Meet up with the whole Swazi gang (5 student-ish people, and 1 professor = 6 total) during the 5 hour layover in Houston. 3 of us on one flight route, 3 of us on another. At this point Mark (another teammate), Brant, and myself fly to Dubai (HELLO LIFELONG DREAM).

Step 3-June 29/30: 9 hour layover in Dubai. Then head from Dubai to Johannesberg, South Africa.

Step 4-June 30: J-berg to Manzini, Swaziland.

Step 5-June 30: Drive to the African Christian College campus where we will be living and working for the next two weeks!!

Friday, June 28
This is the day!! The day we leave for Swaziland!! All of the hardwork and fundraising has finally come togetther and we are leaving today! Well...it was supposed to be "the day."

Everything was going great in the morning - and mostly on schedule (ok so maybe I was a few minutes behind, but it's me we're talking about). Anyways, my family arrived at my apartment to take me to the airport and off we went! (**There is an INCREDIBLE story that happened right about this time, but I will tell you about it later :)) So we get to the airport on time and meet up with another teammate and his family. We get checked in and get through security and everything is running smoothly. We have about an hour and a half til take off.

About the time we are supposed to be boarding, they make an announcement that there will be an hour and a half delay. Seriously? Oh by the way, did I mention we were in the worst airport in the world? It shouldn't even be considered and airport. We flew out of Lovefield Terminal 1 - aka a less classy Greyhound bus stop. The walls were bare and white. There was one place to get "food" - which was either a tuna sandwhich or a fruit cup. And then of course munchies. All overpriced. Although it's not ideal news, we have a five-hour layover in Houston so this delay won't affect us catching our next flight that was scheduled to leave Houston at 6:50. Well, it shouldn't have.

We wait awhile and notice other people are still in line at the gate talking to the ladies. I don't know what they are talking about because there is no flight they can check into. Then we hear that there will not be another update on our flight until 4:00. Not that it will leave at 4:00, but there won't even be an update. Then Brant and I put it together that those people in line are trying to re-route their flight plan, because the delay will cause them to miss their connecting flights. So we jump in a line.

This is the part where it starts to blur. Lines. Stand-by. No luck. Our original flight now won't even have an update til 5:00. Talking on the phone to Charles, the professor going with us who is in Oklahoma until his plane takes off. Trying to talk to the only three ladies who are there, and they are starting to get an attitude with us. At one point we stood at their desk, I was literally laying on it, and they would not even acknowledge us. THEY WOULDN'T EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE OUR EXISTANCE!! WHO DOES THAT?!?! At one point we left the United Airlines portion and walked to the Southwest terminal because we heard a rumor that they had a flight to Houston with open seats. But they told us there would be a huge money ordeal to switch airlines and also it was to the wrong airport in Houston so we wouldn't be able to make in time to the right one to catch our next flight. Talked on the phone with my dad. As the clock ticked closer to 5 we became more and more anxious and frustrated because after 5:00 we wouldn't make it in time to catch our international flight. We even tried to get on a 5:20 flight because Charles thought we could barely make it. But of course we didn't. So it's 5:30. There's no way we could have made it to catch our international flight.

Now let me add the most confusing element: there are 3 different airlines involved. United Airlines, Emirites, and South African. In a perfect world, we wouldn't have missed our flights, and this plan would have worked perfectly. It also was the cheapest way to go. But because we missed the first one with United, it screwed us up for the rest of the trip. And United was willing (sort of) to accomodate us domestically. But they weren't under any other contract to help us get out of the country. Emirites never did anything wrong in the first place, so they couldn't help us for free.

So now we are on the phone with Emirites the remainder of the day, trying to find someone who speaks English well enough to understand our situation and can help us. At this point we loose communication with the rest of our Swazi team because they got on all the planes they were supposed to get on. God bless them. Brant and I are still stuck in Dallas. Then we start talking to Ben, the guy in charge of the Center for Global Missions, who oversees the entire trip. Brant and I are on the phone constantly with either United Airlines, Emirites, Ben, or my father (who was graciously helping us). Through lots of 3 way calls, it seemed like the only options we were getting were - fly out the 16th of July because all of the other flights from now until then for two people flying economy were booked, or pay an extra $6000 EACH to bump up to business class. Or start over completely, forget about our entire flight plan and start over - loosing all that money and spending and entire new fee to try and get to Swaziland somehow, some other way.

It was a whole lot of akljg;aojef;aojirg;oaiejf;aijrgh;oaiejfjwbdgALWiojd:abgrilaufalkj.
I realize that's not actually a word, but that's pretty much exactly how I felt.

My dad came and picked Brant and I up from Lovefield and drove us to DFW so we could talk to someone who represented Emirites face to face. Which was a really good idea until we got there and no one from Emirites OR United was there. Brant's parents came and picked him up from DFW, and my dad took me home. At this point Brant and I decided we might try one or two more ditch efforts with Emirites that night, but mostly give up and sleep and try this whole thing again first thing tomorrow. I cried the entire way home.

I didn't back to my apartment until 11:00 pm. It was 13 hours after I left it in the first place. It felt like an eternity. My dad picked up the phone and tried Emirites one more time. We had to fix the Emirites part first because they were the people who were supposed to get us to the southern part of Africa. He explained the entire ordeal to this lady, Heba. She understood us but didn't give us very good news. Then she asked if we could arrive in Capetown instead of J-berg?

Why not? That's closer to Swaziland than Dallas is.

From 11:00-12:00, my father and I worked via the phone with Heba and Ben, but got flights booked that used our Emirites credits. It cost us extra money and extra days off the trip, but not $12,000, and we would get there before the trip ended!! Then my dad called United Airlines because he just wanted to get as much of it done as he could. It worked. We had the first half of our trip planned, and our new flight plan started on Sunday June 30th. My parents left. I finally got to sleep.

Saturday June 29
I won't go into as much detail about this day. But it involved being on the phone again all day, planning and negotiating the South African airlines part of the trip. By the end of the day, we finished our new route, which now looks like this:
Step 1-June 30: 6:30 am fly to Houston
Step 2-June 30/July 1: 11 hour layover, leave Houston to Dubai at 6:50 pm
Step 3-July 1/July 2: Dubai to Capetown
Step 4-July 2: Capetown to J-berg, overnight in J-berg
Step 5-July 3: J-berg to our beloved Swazi team in Swaziland

Sunday June 30
I got up at 3:30 am - got ready and headed out to DFW(Yea, I'm never going back to Lovefield ever again). Met Brant at the airport. Dealt with crazy. GOT ON THE PLANE. THE PLANE TOOK OFF. WE LANDED IN HOUSTON.

Which brings us to now, the middle of our 11 hour layover.


I didn't tell you all that just so you would want to pull out your hair. If you're wondering, I'm pretty much bald. Not really, but really. Now's the part where I go deeper. Can I be honest with you? I'm going through a really really low time in my faith with God. I won't go into the details about that. But I am. Yesterday, I kind of tied the events of the day to my faith. As the day went of, heartbreak after heartbreak, as the anger complied, my spirits were literally crushed. I was almost to the point of giving up on the trip to Swaziland, and I honestly speaking, I was close to a "giving-up" point in faith. That doesn't sound very good, especially coming from someone who is about to go on a mission trip to share Jesus. That's the biggest reason I was excited about this trip, because I knew it was going to do big things for my faith. Well, it is. Everyone all day Friday kept telling me everything happens for a reason, and God has a plan for all this. God's gonna work. It will happen. Everything will turn into good. I didn't really believe them.


My father's sacrificial love saved me. Hmm...I guess that sentence could be taken two ways. My dad gave up on work on Friday to make my world his. He fought with me and for me, when i could barely even stand and hold the phone to my ear. This wasn't his battle. When he took me home, he was the one that made the call again. When I heard there was a glimmer of hope, my spirits rose. I picked up my phone and started fighting too. He was Jesus to me.

One good thing about the new flight plan is that we had a day to rest. I was exhausted physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. A day of rest was a necessity, and God granted us that.

But mostly, it has been good for me. I spent a lot of Saturday in prayer. I have never been so humbled. Everyone wanted to help Brant and I. Ben gave up this weekend to help us, when God knows that man has enough on his plate right now(which by the way if you are still reading this say a prayer for Bella Langford). My grandfather wouldn't even sleep until something was solved. He offers his time and money over and over again. I can't even speak because I am filled to overflowing with gratitude and humility.

Maybe the reason all this happened was for me (if so, sorry Brant, but I know God is bigger and you're learning a lot too). I got to go to church Saturday night because I was home. And you know what? That sermon was for me. It was the story of the gosoel, which I so desprately needed to hear. God spoke to me in that service. I was stunned. And yet, at the same time, a part of me knew something crazy like that was going to happen. Because that's just the way God works.

This song is everything to me right now. I listened to it Saturday and bawled my eyes out before God. Give it a listen. It's true for me. And for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prCOifyARGs

I can't say I'm on the mountain top again. But I can say God is good, and faithful. And everything will work together for good and for His glory.

Taste and see that the Lord is good;
    blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
⁹ Fear the Lord, you his holy people,
    for those who fear him lack nothing.
Psalm 34:8-9