Until I am purified.

It's been a month. I haven't written for a month and it's been wearing on me. It's time to write.

Life's been boiling here, bubbling up rapidly and I really just need some simmer time, give or take twenty minutes. I keep asking God to refine my purpose, bring forth my gifts and focus my efforts and all this steam is rising, purifying. "Let go of this Rachel, let go of that...you can't do it all and I don't want you to, I don't need you to", He's been telling me. Stop trying so hard and so much. Be faithful, oh be faithful in the little things. I will heal your broken heart and I will deliver you. Be faithful, be faith-full. These things he whispers and shouts to me in books, in presence, in community.

I had been praying for mentors for the longest time and he's given them to me in authors, bloggers, local women's leaders, and new friends and for the first time in a long time I know who I want to be.

There's a lot of dust in our lives right now. It feels almost like a bomb went off in our transition back to Midwestern life and another one when I began working outside the home. It's confusing, cloudy and we don't know what to say about it all yet. I think we're in the 2nd stage of culture shock, or for us re-entry culture shock. It's time for us to dig through our Delta souls and our Midwestern DNA and figure out what we want to keep and what to sweep up.

Some days it's all I can do to say, "I'm listening, I'm tired, I'm here Lord. Let that be enough."

Jesus, be with all my friends who draw near here at Redeeming Her. May your presence be sweet and strong and may you fill them up. Amen. Love you, Rachel.