May Day

Perhaps it’s the snow flurries outside. 

These long ‘winters’ can easily convince me that Christmas just ended and summer is still months away. Or maybe it’s just the disbelief that 32 is happening in 5 more days.  

Too often time is a mysterious thing. 

Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was swatting swarms of locusts away from my face as I stood outside of the junior high building, waiting for my mom to pick me up after school? Didn’t I just put on a prom dress and get ready for an angsty night of unknowns, giggling with all my girlfriends as the evening unfolded? Wasn’t I just a Djiboutian Princess on a mud volleyball team, taking the rest of the seniors by storm? I’m sure I vividly remember strolling Truman State’s campus in spring, taking pictures of all the new budding, beautiful life. And wasn’t the time we enacted May Day with the Walmart $1 items in the middle of the night not that long ago, either? 

Cramming for finals and Go Nuts for Donuts. 

Empty, packed up houses and heart-wrenching good-byes as college came to end.

Crazy new (and old) adventures, across 4 states and down an 8 mile road. 

Frantically squeezing as many hours out of each day as possible, before Summer Staff arrival. 

Pool & pizza parties, galore!

Hours and hours of lifeguard training. 

Complete devastation and despair. 

May brings back a lot of memories. 

It’s streaked with dances, final exams, graduations, good-byes, hellos, late nights, vacations, new adventures, heartbreak, and (for now) 31 birthdays. Sometimes I feel like my heart can’t keep up. 

I can’t help but wonder. 

What am I doing with my life?  

It’s a question I’ve been asking a lot lately. A question that burns deep, when I allow it to really sink in. All of the memories, all of the experiences–what do they mean/what purpose do they have? Have I loved well? Have I done everything I could and been everything I’ve been asked to be, have I lived fully? Am I doing, being, living…? 

I don’t know that I am. At least not always. 

There’s a large part of my heart that craves more…and it’s in constant disagreement with my lazy, fearful self. This part of my heart tells me I’m too comfortable. It tells me that there’s more to be done. It tells me that there’s too much pain and sorrow in the world and too many people idly standing by. It tells me that the call on my life is greater, more demanding, and (in direct contrast with my flesh), not about me. 

But, too often, I’m just tired. 

I work a lot. 

I feel like a failure in my interpersonal life, as I struggle to keep up with the people who are physically around me- not to mention the ones who are not. 

There’s too much that I want to do, that I don’t know how to make time for or have energy for. 

I don’t mean to sound like a Debbie Downer. 

Mostly, I just want to live a life of purpose and meaning–not one that’s centered around me. Purpose and meaning, even in the smallest of things- from the tone of my voice, to the look on my face, to a conversation with a stranger, to a conversation with a dear friend, to the words that I write and the prayers that I pray. 

Birthdays have a way of influencing these mid-year wonderings, I suppose. 

I’m not 100% sure what that means for me right now, in this current life…but I know I want to ask the questions. And I know that I want the answers to the questions to actually change some things. 

I’m aware of how uncertain everything is. I have no idea what the future holds. I don’t know what opportunities, what tragedies, what circumstances will ever be…but I know, in all things and in all seasons, I want to be found obedient. I want to be found living out the Gospel, running a good race (no matter how tired I think I am). 

I do love May. And I love to remember all the things the Lord has brought me through in the last 30+ years during this month. I love spring, and I love knowing that summer is almost upon us. 

I love that my days will get longer and harder, because I know in my weariness, the Lord sustains me and that it has to be about Him. I love that lives will be truly changed….and that for some reason, I get to be a part of it. 

Perhaps you’ve figured out how to live life purposefully, even in all the little things. I’d love to hear from you on the things that you’ve implemented into your own life that allow you to truly live out the Gospel, no matter what’s going on in your world. 

I know none of us are perfect.

I just don’t want to wake up in ten years and find myself just idly standing by. 

This year, I want more. 

More of Jesus and more of who He is calling me to be.