.: moving in brokenness :.

Life has taken an expected turn, in that 24 hours ago I took my girlfriend down to the airport and said goodbye to her for a little under four weeks. Then I packed my own bags and headed up to Vancouver to take a summer course on Christian Apologetics this week at Regent. Needless to say, I am a pinata full of emotions, getting the tar absolutely slammed out of me by simply having my life (or at least for most of August) change from how it has been. It takes very little for me to realize how I can so easily settle into the patterns of life as I grow to expect it. I miss her more than I was anticipating. There are tears welling up at some of the softer moments of my days. I am excited to get to be with old friends from Regent, for there is still faint remnants of my life up here that I can slip into when the need be. But with that joy comes deep-seated jitters, the kind that comes with the traditional first day of classes. My heart is heavy with both sorrow over the loss of Kelly (that is exactly how my soul is bearing her temporary absense)... and fears over my ability to handle what I have gotten myself into here at school. So often in moments like these, my prayer is that God would release me... from fears, from unreasonable expectations, from ways that I am being hindered or restrained. Having prepared me for this time and these experiences that I am about to encounter, I simply ask that He would allow me to be the person that He has been fashioning far before this day arrived. Do I have what it takes for even this? That question remains woven throughout so much of my story. Would I be here if I had the chance to change it all? That almost feels like an even harder question to answer in the midst of feeling alone and, at some level, back where I once sought to escape. I want to hear her voice, to hear her encouraging me to give it my best and give myself grace in every space that leaves me exposed and vulnerable. But I also want to hear His voice, one that is bidding me to abide in Him, to trust her in His hands (which are far greater to save than my own), and to enter fully into what lies ahead of me this very day. I want to enter into it... but a large part of me was hoping to enter into it with her beside me. I find now that I am far more divided than I was anticipating.

So release me, Father...