Inhale, exhale.

In less than a month and a half, I’ll be in France. What??? That’s so exciting! Sometimes I can’t believe the moment. How is it that I’m already a college graduate? I feel old, yet at the same time I know just how young I still am. And each day, though my physiological clock ticks away another 24 hours, my soul does not. The person inside me, she only grows younger and more vibrant; wiser but all the more childlike; stronger and all the more secure.

I have this great gift stretched out before me. The chance to go and reshape my life. Wipe away every way in which I’ve defined myself by what once was.  Paint a new scene across this new page. Let the strokes of this new life sear beauty into the ugliness, seep moisture into the dryness, contrast the darkness in radiance. It’s hard to really put to words what this trip means to me or how important it is.

Leaving all that is familiar behind gives you the chance to reinvent. That’s what I seek. Not start over, not bury the past in denial, but reform the way in which I live, love, and interact. Three months of daily intentionality. Three months of learning the Word that never dies. Three months of peeling off the rest of this dead skin and laying bare my true heart. Soaking up everything He has for me and taking the risk of being known. I’ve been made a promise about this journey, and I know it won’t be broken.

I can see the future for the first time and it looks like love. Freedom is painted across the dawn and I’m willing to do all the hard work of looking at the truth and accepting what I’ve turned away from.

As much of a blessing this is going to be, it will also be a sacrifice. But it’s the sacrifice that makes everything possible. It’s the sacrifice that is going to allow me to take it all in so that I can wholly pour out. When we lay down, we find life. And when we find life and become alive, we give life in return. That’s the dream. That’s what I was born for.

God gave us these beautiful things called mirror neurons. When we look at someone who is smiling, for example, these neurons mirror that smile, and our brain lights up as if we ourselves were smiling. How cool is that? That’s probably why we love being around happy people so much. In a way then, we’re all contagious. What will the world catch from me?

The life that has been given to me, the joy, the love…lungs revived and flooded with sweet air, dead heart jolted awake…I have to testify.  I have to be a vessel carrying this living water, a vessel through which other people come to taste the same thick, golden truth that is honey on the lips.

So on the surface, it looks like three months in, three months out. But really it’s me, diving completely in, for a lifetime of this, of inhale and exhale. Glory to glory. Inhale life, exhale life. Love in, love out. Breathe Jesus in, breathe Jesus out. He is worthy of it all.