Too tired to sleep....

How can that be?  How can I be too tired to sleep?  Dunno, but I am!  I think my "sleep window" has moved back significantly, so when I find myself out late I have missed that "first sleep"... and I have no idea when the second one is coming... I hope its soon!

Today I hiked 4 miles and then got in my car, came home, and took a shower.  That's still weird to me, but it was the first significant hike I have taken since I have been home, so it was good.  I was giving the bum leg an opportunity to show me how it has healed... it failed pretty painfully, but I don't care, I want to walk!  So I did.  =)

This afternoon I went up to Lakeside with Faye to visit Lindsay.  It was rainy but we had a lot of good laughs, good food, and of course good coffee.  Then we watched probably the strangest concert I have attended in my ENTIRE LIFE (and that's saying something!), seriously so weird.  Disturbingly so, but whatevs!

I have been thinking today about fear.  (Yup, I think about odd things at odd times!).  I have been thinking about fear in the context of being willing to face the things that scare me.  Not things like moving water or mice... but things like vulnerability, showing weakness, or failure.  I have never been good at letting people into my little bubble.  I don't like people to know what I struggle with or what might show I have weakness.  Yet this sabbatical time has been exactly that.  In order to get to here I had to put out in the open my shortcomings, weakness, and failure.  I had to be willing to say "I can't do this" and "I need help"... ahhhhh!  Two statements that are so very true and so very scary to admit at the same time.

In order for my sabbatical to START I had to be willing to admit that I was in desperate need of help, rest, and refocus.  Scary to admit, but very very true.  In the process of these weeks, as my journey has unfolded, I have had to admit that I am imperfect, vulnerable, and at times, lost.  I have gained a lot in these weeks.  I have learned that I am in fact not going to achieve perfection, that in weakness we learn strength and in being lost we surrender to being found.  I have also found that there are an awful lot of people on this journey with me, who never expected me to be perfect to start with.  =) 

I don't always learn lessons well the first time.  Sometimes I need to be beat over the head REPEATEDLY before I begin to understand.  I tend to be stubborn and desperate to be self sufficient.  I hate to have people see that I may not be able to handle EVERYTHING on my own.  Yet it is in facing fear that we learn where our strength comes from.  It is in admitting we can't and don't want to do this on our own that we find purpose and meaning that can only come from acknowleding that just maybe, God knows better.

And it is in falling down and getting banged up every now and then that we better understand God's grace.  It is in saying "I actually can't do this on my own" and "I can't figure out how to NOT keep screwing this up" that we learn to depend on a plan and purpose much greater than our own. 

Truly that is where I want to land... I want to land in the place where there are things much bigger than my own imperfection, where God's grace is more than sufficient for my weakness and where, even when I feel lost, I know that someone else knows EXACTLY where I am headed.