A new chapter | a 4 month journey

A life that is no longer mine. 

I, Callie have no clue what my life will look like. I have no idea where I will be in 5 years. Where I will be in a year. I am learning new things about myself daily. I am learning new things about what I am supposed to become, who I am supposed to become and what it will all look like. I never know what the next day will hold. I have always been a free spirit, but I never knew what that would look like. And right now it looks like a 22 year old who is in school to be a teacher. Why? Because I love kids. I am not sure what the teacher job will look like. My dreams are much bigger than anything I can draw or every write down. I want to teach, I want to travel, I want to learn everyday, I want explore, I want to start a non-profit, I want adopt children, I want to see the world. There are so many things I want to see-- to feel, to embrace. I want to be so reliable on Jesus that I don't know what else to do but turn to him. I do not have a dream job, I never have. I want to be a lot of things. But, since high school I want a different kind of life, a life outside of the ordinary. I want to make a difference. I thought this would mean traveling with an organization called Invisible Children and being a roadie. This job would entail me traveling around place to place with a group of people my age and telling everyone we see about the children in Uganda. I would be a roadie on tour. I would be around people who are passionate and I would be telling about Ugandan children-- it was a dream. I wanted it so bad, but I couldn't do it. I wasn't old enough or strong enough. I was too nervous, so I went I went to massage therapist school and finished it. I worked in it for a year then it was time for something different. This meant none other than the trip to Africa, it changed everything.

I became more of a free spirit - wanting new things, wanting to learn more about myself and my creator. It was an exciting thing -- but a scary thing. Years have passed since that first trip. Multiple endeavors: more trips to Uganda, leading life groups, doing outreach, being a student, being a writing tutor, being a massage therapist, a photographer, a preschool teacher, working at a daycare. So many things. Unsure of what I was doing, I stayed a student. I said I was going to be a teacher. I still want to be a teacher. I am still in school. I am still working on campus, but what happens when the opportunity of a lifetime pops up? Remember how I said earlier that I wanted to travel and tell people about Uganda? What happens when you get offered the opportunity to travel with Ugandan children who sing and tell all about Uganda? Do you take it or do you not?

I was offered this opportunity and 

Im taking it.

Sure, I am in 100 things right now, I have school, I have a tutoring position, I have a million things going on at the church. I have a bunch and it can get overwhelming, but I have to weigh things out. I have to remember that I am 22, that I am single and that I do not have children. I have to remind myself that I am only here for a short amount of time and this opportunity came out of nowhere. It landed in my lap in a season that I needed a change. It showed itself only by Jesus.  

My journey will start Friday when I meet the team in Tallahassee. The tour will continue until the end of June. There will be stops in the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio & more. I will be an auntie to 18 children, I will be helping with the sponsorship program, I will be helping set up and tear down after each show, I will be whatever they need me to be. I will be wearing many hats.

Of course as any new adventure starts-- I am nervous -- about leaving my family and my comfort for 4 months. I cant look at my cat without crying, but this is an opportunity I can't miss. An opportunity that will shape who I am in the future. It will be an adventure and that's what I want my life to be. Sure, it will be a challenge, but it will be time to get closer to the one who created me. To watch the children and their faith. They are away from their parents and in another country. I can only imagine how much I will learn from them. 

To answer a couple of things:

Yes, I am still leading the missions trip to Uganda in July. 

Yes, my parents stand behind me fully. 

No, I am not sure what I will be doing when I get back from everything. 

Most of you reading this will have questions, but I pray that you see this the way I do. I pray that you don't think negatively about my decision making-- and I pray that you take the opportunities  that are thrown your way, they may not come back around. 

Life is a struggle. I am going to be honest.

Life is a struggle. I am going to be honest.

We weren't born with a manual that explains how to handle a bad day. Or how to embrace life in its most precious moments. We didn't come into this world knowing how to handle things. We've had to learn how to handle every situation thrown at us, sure we've had people along the way try to help us out. People who are there to help explain their past mistakes, people who tell you to 'be careful,' people who tell you to jump into things-- but we never know how we will handle situations until we are actually in them. We think we know of course, we joke with our friends saying, "I would literally run away if that happened" or " I will cry everyday if that happens." We think of how we will handle situations but then it when those things happens. That is the real test. How do you handle them then?

I am a girl, I have emotions, I have thoughts, I have fears, I have a doubt, I have moments of courage, I have moments of complete weakness, I have moments of complete insecurity, I have moments where I love and moments where I have to remind myself to love. I have moments where I want to scream, I have moments where I want to weep at the thought of hurting a single soul.
I go trough every one of these emotions every week, its safe to say. However, yesterday I felt everyone of these at the same time.

It was hard to process, probably the hardest. I am not even sure if I am fully done processing them, actually I know that I am not. I am still going through every emotion.

Yesterday in the most pure and raw moment someone told me something they had no clue what it held. They told me something that they had no clue would change my future. I've only known this person for a little while, not longer than 3 months and in just one tiny conversation my story changed.  For the better. I learned more about myself in that moment than I ever have in my entire life. I learned that I am stronger than the scenarios in my head. That I am stronger than the enemy. I felt like I was in a cartoon, I had one on one shoulder telling me to say something rude and the other telling me to say something nice. Nice won. It felt great, but it felt scary. It felt everything at the same time. I walked away from the situation and within second realized that I needed to let out a tiny cry and I did. I did not feel bad for crying, it was a pivotal moment in my life. It was a beautiful moment in my life.

It was a defying moment. It was moment that I said hello to the future and what it holds and goodbye to the things holding me back from living my life. The things holding me back for feeling completely free in everything life holds. It was a special moment.


_______________________________


Since I wrote this first part of the post, life has changed a little bit more, funny how that works. You think that things will fall into place once something good happens, but things rarely ever do. Sometimes they get better and sometimes they get worse, way worse. This past weekend a friend and I took a step towards something big, much bigger than anything we've ever thought about doing. We went to view another college in another town. It was nerve racking, the decision making, the pros and cons list, the idea of uprooting your entire life and planting it somewhere else. Its all very scary. With that come multiple attacks. This is when the playbook for my life would have come in handy. Knowing if transferring schools is my best option or if staying home is my better option. There are so many things to weigh in during this process.

The excitement was a real, raw emotion at the time being and then as the trip home started, we started doubting and started worrying and now that we are officially home things have changed all over again. There have been a lot of tears, a lot of talks and on my end a lot of shutting down. I tend to do that when the enemy tries to attack things in my life, I try to play a mind game on him. I let him know that I don't care about anything so he doesn't go after the next big thing in my life, this NEVER works because when he comes he comes after it all. The past couple of days he meant he was going to stop me and instead of screaming a prayer over myself, instead of allowing myself to plug into the word. I dwelled in everything going wrong in my life. On top of all the other things he attacked, I caught a nasty cold. One that makes me lay on the couch all day and watch Netflix. However, instead of watching the usual Friends -- I found a new show Parenthood. I watched all of season 1 yesterday, that should explain just how much of a 'nasty cold' it truly is.

For those of you who don't know Parenthood is a show about a family. There are parents, then 4 children in which have kids of their own. You go through life with them, you watch them have good days and bad days. It's just a good show. I cry in every single episode, not because its sad, but because its so beautiful. Some moments are moments that you experience in your own life, there was a scene yesterday where the dad was talking with his daughter after her first heart break. He walked into her bedroom and loving told her, "You can't go through life allowing pain to dictate how you behave." This only meant as much as it did because the thoughts that were going on in my head. The thoughts behind me allowing the enemy to have complete control over my thoughts and me not trying to change that.

Until this morning when again I woke up sick and decided to not turn on Netflix because I'd cried enough while watching Parenthood the day before. Instead, I turned on my computer and watched a sermon series from Elevation Church, called Mood Swingers-  nothing fit my situation better than the title of this sermon series. I turned it on and laughed as he got started because he was speaking to my soul. He was talking about guarding your heart first, not guarding your finances, or your job, but first your heart. Sure, we've heard this our entire life, but then he put it into perspective. He explained that we as humans always say, "they made me mad," nope, you chose to be mad. You chose to handle the situation how you did and you chose to allow that person affect your heart so much that they changed your entire mood. This is not a fair game. He went on to talk about David and how much of an emotional guy he was, he couldn't finish writing one verse in the same mood, he jumped moods a lot. This is not a bad thing. He referenced John Mayer in the sermon too, he talked about how in a  interview John was explaining why he moved to Montana, he moved to disconnect himself. John says that celebrities know how to secure themselves. How to protect themselves- they spend millions of dollars on security systems, body guards, the whole 10 years. They go to sleep feeling nice and protected, but then the next morning they wake up and what do they do? None other than check their phone to see the terrible things society said about them throughout the night. So in essence they didn't protect themselves at all. They let the very thing they are protecting themselves from get right to them. This only causing the celebrities to fall into a further pit of insecurities. He explains that this is the reason he took a step back.

This post is long and I am not sure how to close it out, so I will simply say this. The enemy knows how to make you feel alone, he knows how to change the way you think, he hears what you say and uses it against you, your head- the scenarios you create in your head are your worst enemy. You are powerful, you hold more power than you know. Speak life into yourself. Speak beauty into yourself. Speak goodness into others. Treat people with love. & guard your heart. Guard your emotions. Don't allow people to have such a hold on your life. You are not here for other people, you are here to fulfill the purpose set out for your life.