From the Head to the Heart

I see life as a piece of string. Our life, from beginning to end, is a set length of string. During our journey, we have the ability to move the string. We cannot make it longer or shorter, but we can move it from side to side. As we move it from side to side, we entangle ourselves with other people, or other pieces of string. The more different the person, the more complicated the tangle. Some people don’t move very much either way, and that's fine. Some people, however, want to see how tangled they can make their string. How many people can they meet? How many experiences can they experience. 

I’ve tangled mays string over the past few months. I will never be able to completely describe the last few months, but a quote from one of my favorite songs over the last year, and coincidentally a sort of “anthem” of the last few months, is that my life has been God doing something pretty remarkable. 

“From the head to the heart, 

You take me on a journey of letting go, 

and getting lost in You.”

I’ve gotten lost over the last couple of months. I dove into an experience I knew nothing about, and can never fully appreciate. I lived life with people from every corner of the earth. We had nearly nothing in common. What we did share, however, was a thirst for the love of people and God that Jesus lived out while on earth. Politics and religion aside, our focus was love. Love for each other, for our individually unique gifting, and the love of people. We laughed together, cried together, struggled in projects together, and even argued with each other. That’s family though. Families fight, but families love. I may never see most of the people I shared life with, but we will all have eternal impacts on one another’s hearts and lives. I have no idea if I will ever use media in any significant way, but I now know how to love. I know how to see the best in people. I know how to see what people can do instead of what they can’t. I know how to depend on my brothers and sisters in Christ. I know how to share life. I know how to love life. I know how to dwell in the joy of living and the joy of letting go of the things I can’t do and to focus on what God has allowed me to do. 

I will always have so much more to say than what I am able to sit down and type, but I don’t think words will ever suffice the experience. Because, that’s what it is, its an experience. From the mountains to the seas, I have seen God’s love in a culture I never thought I’d get to love in. 

Coming home will be hard. I am coming from a Godless region where I lived in a community similar to the kind the disciples lived in while following Christ. I will go from a small, powerful family, to a world where everyone professes Christ, but where Christ is seldom seen. It will be easy to go back and boast in my experience as “seeing the light.,” but I cannot do that. To come back home, I will have to practice the hardest thing in the world for me: grace and understanding. I have a job to do now. My job is to be a humble, consistent example of the life God wants for people. I have to love everyone, reject no one, and give completely of myself. I have to be a small, powerful voice for God’s love and his will for my life. Whether that is in the form of a Bible study, a media production company, a church, a small group, or a series of coffee shop encounters with strangers, I have to do something. 

To leave my experience as a series of neat pictures, and stories about living in a different world would be a waste of this season. I have to be different. I have to live differently. I have to think differently. As Jesus was different, so must I be also.