Appalachian Trail.

Day -1: driving. Visiting Uncle Brian. Dropping Paul off. Enjoying the finer things of class and hearing stories of an unexpected traveler.

Day 0: Panera breakfast. More driving. A visit to Grandma. Peanut butter pie. Even more driving. Getting lost. Getting found. Meeting with the Maloneys. Camping. Night hike. Fire.

Day 1: Wake up. Pack up. More driving. Getting lost again. Getting found again. Getting to a trailhead.

Putting packs on that were waaaay to heavy. Saying goodbye to the Maloneys. Starting hiking. Sweating. More hiking. Realizing we started at the wrong place. Near breakdowns. Almost tears. Asthma attack. Up and down mountains. Too much weight.

More walking. Carrying way too much weight. Sun went down. Still walking. Head lights. Setting up tents in the dark. Eating dehydrated dinner. Camping by 4-H facility.

Day 2: up and at em. Breakfast. Packing up. More hiking. Soreness. Kind mom lightening the load. 2 bears. Up and down more mountains. Slept in Gavel Springs Hut.

Filtering spring water. Sweet book of journeys. Blackberry shake (without the blackberry).

Day 3: packing up. Easy day. Stopping every 4 minutes. Contempt for the trail turns to fun in the pine forests. Mom and Justin’s food fight. Throw-up TVP. Camping. Fear of bears. Sassafras root tea. Silence at 8:30.

Day 4: October 1. Government shut down. Uh oh….we’re in a national park.

Through hikers who were depending on the Wayside Stores. Unloading so much extra food. Struggling parents. Going to hitch-hike…but the park’s closed…so there are no cars. Wait! A lady! She’ll give us a ride. Or she’ll join us backpacking since we have extra food. Kristen joins our motley crew.

 More hiking. “There was a bear” songs. Hiding away from rangers. Clifty. Mutts. Slips. Foot. Funny guy with the beard. S’mores all around. Playing cards. Cool people, amazing stars.

Day 5: Wrong spring. Lost mother. Stony Man. Amazing views. Still hiding away. Lots of cyclists who are enjoying the ride of their lives with no cars. Try to find a ride. But the parks closed. Nobody’s here. No cell service. No rangers. Street dance on the yellow lines.

Dad hitchhikes to our car. Mom freaking out. Nice ranger, nobody’s gonna come search for us. Back to the backcountry. Birds Nest #4 hut. Oz. Human. Junko. Gear talk. Sharing stories. Stunning stars. Falling asleep on the log.

Day 6: Hiking out. Driving to Big Meadow Lodge, our would-be last night of luxury. NOBODY around. Raid the walk-in cooler. Left money. 4 rangers drive up. Enjoying  a victory snack. A family of naturalists spends 100 years looking at the plants in the meadow. Drop off Kristen. Have to beat the lock to get through. Overlooks. Mama bear and 3 cubs. Locked in? Yep.

 Life-saving lady dives up and unlocks the gate. Onward. Subway. Breyer’s Ice cream. Driving through West Virginia. Scariest drive of my life. Dark, twisty, foggy roads with deer. Get to Uncle Don’s. Chili. Showers. Sleep.

For the sake of Love.

Laid bare. Today I chose to bare my soul, to share with rawness my life of imperfection, my struggles, my weaknesses, yet the beautiful redemption I’ve come to know. I choose to be laid bare for the sake of Love, yet I ask you don’t see my nakedness, my vulnerability, and tear into me, shredding my delicate skin, I ask you, don’t see my fragile frame and aim for destruction as the end.

Today I’m lade bare for the sake of Truth, and I pray you embrace that and that same freedom finds you.

I don’t have it all together, yet I invite you to read the letter of my soul, not so you know better where to attack, but so you see the brokenness I no longer hide or hold back from plain view. But how can something be embraced as beautiful when it’s not seen in entirety? Among the backdrop of hopeless brokenness that I used to be, now I can own these things with humility for the sake of restoration, redemption and the true-self God created me to be.

No, I don’t have all the answers. I can’t combat your every word. I can’t even explain all that I’ve heard and learned in the depths of my being-yet I find rest in the truth that I can just be in Christ and trust in a transforming love, a saving grace. So I put up no walls, no barracks to blockade in, but I offer my true self, the honest Truths I’ve come to walk in. It may sound like foolishness to you, but I pray for his words to be spoken, for the Spirit to move and lift the veil, opening blind eyes to see the truth set sail into the core of who you are. So I won’t apologize for who I’ve become, but in love I choose to be laid bare, I choose not to run in fear, but to listen and hear and speak a grace-filled, love-rooted Truth. Yes, brother, I choose to be laid bare because I have confidence in YHWH, and I truly love you.

Revelation.

All these questions, what once was hostility, attack after attack, the goal to defeat me. Helpless I used to run, like a dog being chased by a man with a gun after digging up his yard, tail between my legs, not even sure of the legs I was standing on. Tottering between standing and falling off the cliff into the abyss of humanism and self-sufficiency, not having the answers I’m expected to say. Before I’d leave interactions replaying the conversations over and over until I thought myself into a well to deep to climb out of. A well I felt trapped in, the waters of doubt crashing onto my ‘well-constructed’ house, our talks just made me want to walk away since I lacked the words you wanted me to say.

I thought if I didn’t have all the answers, I couldn’t live with integrity of the mind, so I kept trying to find a way to master God with my mind. And when you brought up those questions, tears would later flood my eyes as I agonized over what I didn’t know. There were times you tried to tear me apart, to destroy me by ripping out my foundation, by cutting out my heart, vein by vein, everything you’d say would be aimed at my destruction.

And I was helpless. I did not know the reality of my defenses. Your questions left me senseless, resenting what I once clung to.

But now. Now I know I may never hold every answer. Now I’m not crippled by my own self-sufficiency, dependence on me, with my feeble arms and weak knees. Now I am free. Free to see the confidence I can find in Jesus. The exact imprint of God, who knows my deepest thoughts and every last answer my mind claws for mastery over.

Now I have realized that I need not convince, I need not seek to relieve your every question by the strength of my own mind. I cannot talk you into belief, but I can lead my life as I know, not bereft of fullness. I can still ask my questions and yours, striving for the truth we both knows out there to find, but I choose to press in, yet preserve integrity of the mind. I can rest in the rest that’s found by abiding. I can’t offer you resolution to all of your issues, but I can walk side by side, living and residing in your life. I can share what I know, I can listen and learn, I can even do research on those questions, but I cannot tell you the amazing grace of knowing I need not explain entirely my faith, but I can rest in the Truth that God is good, his love is pure and his faithfulness endures.

After all these things, when all’s said and done, I can’t offer what you think you want, but I can offer you one thing the world can’t give. I can offer you transforming Love.

9/29.

There is indeed a battle raging within me. It’s so hard to find beauty, to choose joy in the midst of this adventure. I’m surrounded by everything you would think you would need to have eyes to see and a heart to perceive the incredible majesty of God, yet it’s in this time of solitude with my family of love that I find it the hardest to do.

I think I can say with confidence that you can’t find beauty and rest anywhere unless you can find it everywhere. And now I see the memory of a dear kindred friend who can see the beauty and redemption in the midst of an obscure location, like Panera bread, where the eye lacking sight cannot see the restoration in the interactions, in what’s being done and said.

What freedom there is in contentment. What joy there is in the release of resentment toward my current situation. So many would kill to get to go on these adventures, yet it’s so terribly difficult to abide outside of the fence of comfort I hide behind. Practicing the presence is a beautiful treasure that you can take wherever you may be, resting in the presence of the sovereign King, in the middle of a society that never leaves you be, even for a moment. I beg for grace to truly see Truth. To know intimacy and perceive reality as it is. But maybe I’m striving to much, maybe the secret is giving up control and letting it fall, letting the beauty that’s always surrounding me envelop my being. Maybe when I let go, then I’ll truly know what it means to be loved. Showered by grace, by not grabbing the wheel of control, truly seeing his face and resting in every place I come to, for then he truly becomes my only refuge.

9/28.

Laid Bare. That’s where true freedom is found. That’s where genuine life, complete with tears and tears, full of hopes and fears, yet governed by healing, by feeling inexplicable joy, and by the on who created and defined what freedom is. For freedom we’ve  been set free, therefore do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. But our view of freedom has been twisted.

We have nothing to lose and nothing to prove, fully seen, fully known, fully and unconditionally loved. What else do we need, what more can make us move with confidence into the restoration given freely to those who would let their opened eyes see and receive that which has been the whole time.

Laid bare. No longer trying to defend or justify, no longer trying to rationalize these comfortable lies everyone lives by. But allowing myself to be fully seen. With nothing to hide, standing strong under the penetrating, judgmental eyes of the world. I don’t stand firm on my own works, my own merits or reputation, but I can be seen in my brokenness, in my pain and hostility, I can let the cat of the bag, let them see how I struggle and sag under the weight our culture crushes me with. I can show my ugliness, and still be confident of this. That I’ve been fully seen, fully known, and fully and unconditionally loved by the God who created life and breath. In him I’m declared righteous, holy, and beautiful. Through sweet surrender to Jesus I’ve been made completely whole. Not because of anything I’ve done, but because of the transforming, redeeming Love. A Love made manifest on the cross that Jesus bore, a love that when received and surrendered to leaves us restored, finding fullness and needing nothing more than God himself.

Laid bare. I can stand up under the attacks of those who lack this transforming love because I know my confidence is not in my acts, not in my own mind or its capabilities. I have been redeemed, so now my own insufficiency points to the beautiful grace and is a testimony to the power of God, a God who has seen the depravity and horridness of my soul yet calls me beloved.

In this moment as I read what I wrote not too long ago, I see the sweetness of a reminder written to me through my own hand. For God knows that when I can barely stand, my instinct is to fall, to turn away cause it’s hard, but even reading over my own writing I can hear a gentle call to return to Truth, to return to Love, to return to the God who was and is and is to come. In the midst of my wandering, his word to me is a soft cry for me to return to true reality.