We left the ranch in New Mexico for good last week. I cried throughout the 35-mile drive to town.
That surprised me.
That ranch is impossible. It's impossibly beautiful and harsh at the same time. It's dry and mean and full of rattlesnakes and yet, the skies are darker there and the sunsets wilder than anywhere I've ever been. The solitude is immense, but so is the isolation, which isn't really my jam.
As I drove away, I realized my reaction was mostly fear.
I like who I am on the ranch. I'm deliberate, calm and focused. So dropping back into the world — in Florida — with to-do lists, traffic and water in the air, feels frantic.
A friend likened it to what missionaries and global aid workers experience when they return to their passport nations. It's common for them to tuck away who they became in different world, and succumb to who they were before they left.
That doesn't feel good.
I let myself be sad without judgement
And in so doing, it occured to me that the dark skies and silence of the high desert are a permanent part of me now, and I can drop into them at any time.
I can love my neighbors in Pensacola AND sit still. I can allow the peace and solitude of New Mexico to consume me, even as I'm milling around my busy little beach town.
It's a choice.
But for the past three days, I didn't make it.
Instead, I made a two-page to-do list and high-fived myself when I checked the boxes, feeling worthy and productive, which parts of me love.
I knew I would do that, it's why I cried leaving the ranch.
But here I am this morning, writing to you — slowly. I still have that long to-do list and plans for my whole day, but I'm doing it with my soul in New Mexico, under a black sky full of stars.
I am the sky full of stars and I can operate from that place whenever I want.
Photo: Jensine Odom
Maybe you just got "home" from Africa
Or some place where your life is incomprehensible to people you love.
May I remind you that Africa, or wherever, is still inside you. All the work you did, the love you gave and received, the person you became doesn't change because your physical context did.
You can be that person here, now, but you may need to build it - especially the community part.
It's the opposite for me, I have lots of opportunity for community here. What I have to build is the slowness and confidence that I am God's beloved here in the noise, just like I am there in the silence.
Photo Credit: Tyler Hill
A substack I'm loving.
In the weeks leading up to our departure, I met Tyler Hill on Substack. This is the post that hooked me.
Tyler's a Benedictine oblate, which just means he's a trained monk, with a regular life out in the world — wife, kids, job etc.
He models what I'm talking about really well, but I think what's most compelling is how he thinks about being loved by God.
Because when we get that right, who cares if the to-do list is done?
So many of us habitually perform for love, trying to prove ourselves to whomever is watching. To Tyler's way of thinking, God isn't just watching, He's in every second of it with us, loving us all the way through it.
And that hits different.
That's the reason, in my mind, for dark nights full of stars, so we'll look up and marvel, remembering the one who created that created us too. I'm writing about it here, so I won't forget. Hopefully, you won't either.
Tyler says it like this.
The deepest truth is not our brokenness. It is not our failures. It is not our inadequacies. The deepest truth is that beneath all of those things, before all of those things, we are loved.
And when we begin there, everything blossoms in incredible ways.
Have a great week, go blossom wherever you are.
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