bittersweet.

I'm a bittersweet kind of girl when it comes to chocolate ... pick the special darks out of the miniature mix ... and reach for the semi-sweet variety of chips over milk chocolate every time.  I am finding, however, that I am not such a bittersweet kind of girl when it comes to life. 

I've been wondering what makes this move more hard than the seemingly millions of others I've made in the past.  Admittedly, I am WAY too attached to my house ... yes, the thought of selling a house right now would make anyone crazy ... but even more than that, it is my first house ... and I've fallen in love with it one little project and painted room at a time.  Plus, it's scary ... there's part of me that says I will NEVER buy a house again ... it's just too risky.  But, given a few months (or years, I will see the error of that thinking!).  I guess any kind of commitment is scary and risky ... and worth it!  Cannot imagine all of the things I would have missed out on the last 6 years without my little house with the huge yard.  But, you know, that's just a house.  a concrete and wood and siding house.  I am also struggling with transplanting my life once again.  SOOOO thankful for friendships that are already here and the amazing couple of nights I've gotten to spend with David, and Callie, and Wells ... but there's also fear in knowing that my mainstay relationships in my "old" corner of Georgia will change.  Yes, it's only 2 hours away, but that cuts out a lot of spontaneous dinner invites, adventures, and occasions ... especially once my house belongs to someone else. And despite all of the frustrations of life at UGA, there were many more sweet, wonderful relationships and awesome memories that I will dearly miss.  And in spite of the promise of a more healthy, balanced life here ... I might have forgotten what that looks like ...

I so see God's hand in this new place.  I KNOW He orchestrated this place to fit my passions and needs.   And He brought me here for the same season as he brought David and Callie ... and all those years of laughing about living in the same neighborhood is becoming a reality (down to the perfect house we found for rent 3 houses away ... that got rented 10 minutes before we got there!).  There is such sweetness in knowing that ... and in finding some pieces of myself that I have lost in an insane life of the last six years.

But right now, the fears and uncertainties, and the back and forth and living in a hotel, lack of closure at UGA, the loss I'll take on my house, having no solid ministry in place here ... well, those are the bitter.   Honestly, I've been struggling too much with the bitter parts of this instead of counting my incredible blessings ... then I picked up Shauna Niequist's book and she got right to my heart once again ...

"The idea of bittersweet is changing the way I live, unraveling and re-weaving the way I understand life.  Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness.

Bittersweet is the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet, and that a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul.  Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through, what helps us earn the lines on our faces and the calluses on our hands.  Sweet is nice enough, but bittersweet is beautiful, nuanced, full of depth and complexity.  Bittersweet is courageous, gutsy, earthy."   - Shauna Niequist

I KNOW that God never promised easy ... I know that He often does His best work in the toughest stuff of life.  And when I start my pity party list, I can easily look around me to those facing much harder things than this.  And for today, I am thankful for someone who has put into words the deepest parts of my heart far better than I have ...

This is what I've come to believe about change: it's good in the way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good.  By that I mean that it's incredibly painful, exponentially more so if you fight it, and also that it has the potential to open you up, to open life up, to deliver you right into the palm of God's hand, which is where you wanted to be all along, except that you were too busy pushing and pulling your life into exactly what YOU thought it should be ..."

Thanks Shauna ... think I'll stop and pick some sunflowers on my way home (to my Winder house) tonight, make some chocolate chip cookies (the bittersweet kind) in the kitchen that I love and learn to count my blessings in a fresh way knowing that this is SUPPOSED to be hard ... and being grateful for the hands that hold me in the hard.