Busyness is not my calling

It's really funny that I hate running in real life, but in my mind I am a runner. If things get complicated, I become a track star in my mind. Trying to take the next flight out. I want to run away and start over. It is funny how my brain has created this pattern. 

When I became a Christian as an adult, I was 19 years old. I was in Uganda and I knew that I felt the Holy Spirit. I knew then that my life was about to do a 180 and it did.  I ended an awful relationship I was in for far too long, I started going to church, I changed my music to mainly just Bethel. I prayed more. I tried to teach myself how to have quiet time. I started serving at the church because that is what all the other Christians were doing. I knew that I had found my purpose, it was to serve. I felt like I was called to ministry in some way, so at 19 years old being a fresh -  I mean fresh Christian, I already signed myself up to be in full time ministry. I started overcommitting to the church I was a part of - I taught preschool every Sunday. I took pictures during the worship nights. These things were not and are not wrong, but somewhere along the way -

 I replaced my works with my relationship. 

I knew that I was passionate about Jesus because I surrounded myself with people who were passionate about Jesus. I knew that I was joyful because the people I was around were joyful. But the kicker - I was using others peoples walk with the lord to determine mine. 

I knew a few things about myself at the time. 

1. Africa was not just a continent, it was my entire heartbeat

2. I did not want a job that did not lead me in the direction of ministry.

3. I loved being busy. Coffee dates, church meetings, outreach, preschool. 

4. I never really silenced my mind. 

So I was 19/20 running on the fumes of my communities relationship with the lord and I was trying to find my groove as a Christian. I was reborn, this was all supposed to come easy. I was supposed to wake up every single day with a purpose. I was supposed to walk boldly in my calling. I was great at quite time in the mornings when I got up at 11, I would go sit under the tree in the field and read my bible and write. I would top it off with Bob Goffs book Love Does. It was the perfect thing for me, but my day would go on - I would go get coffee, go hang out with friends here and there, start planning fundraisers for my upcoming missions trip and then I would start getting anxious about, "what I was supposed to do with my life." So I would keep busy to try to avoid that question. Mind you, I was a licensed massage therapist, who talked about going back to college for a teaching degree - but instead I was literally frozen because I didn't want to make the wrong move. So I was a freeloader at my parents house for far too long.

I wish that I had a dollar for every time I have gone through this season. Someone told me once that our brains actually create memory lines- so any habit we have it is so hard to break because we are fighting the line our brain created. So for 10 years I have been reliving the same pattern over and over, not every day, not every month - but at least once a year for a couple weeks I do this:

I look back at my life and try to define when I was the happiest.

Mission Trips

Tour

Food Truck 

I then contemplate if either of those things brought me true joy or if I liked it because I felt busy. 

I then go through 25 different jobs that could maybe fulfill me in some way.

Then I list out every single thing I am passionate about 

Then I sit, I stew and I wonder - wow, so what in the actual hell am I supposed to do. So I sit more, I don't do anything, I become lazy and then I chat with a few friends and finally get out of my funk. But not until I make some major quick change. 

So tomorrow, I start massaging again. It will be good. It will give me purpose. It will give me income. It will get me out of the house. It will help me break that brain pattern. 

What you need to know is that the other day a friend who is basically another version of me, we are truly soul sisters. one in the same. I have never met another human who is so much like me that its kind of wild to see. She told me that we (the type of person we are) tend to find our identity in the closest thing that feels like Jesus, but it is not Jesus. Meaning I, Callie, have put all of my passions into Africa, tour, fundraising, church ministry - but I have skimped out on my relationship with Jesus, like my true one on one relationship. Because somewhere along the way, I was thrown into serving. My husband and I both were. So we are currently rebuilding. We met on the mission field, we have served our entire marriage. And we just were never taught to sit and be poured into. 

Heavy, this one is heavy - but its necessary. In order for me to move past my past, which is truly a crap show - then I have to put this down. I have to realize that yes, the lord used me in the season of Africa, tour, all the things - but. I wasn't allowing myself to truly be filled by him. I was being filled by moments, by other peoples passion about the lord. It is a tough wake up call, but necessary. Because I am trying to redefine myself. Trying to tell myself that the mess that my last church caused is not because of the Jesus, it is because people ran the church. And people are messy. I am trying to remind myself that I do not need to have my hands in 5,000 things to feel like I am living out my purpose. Because just being a good christian, a good wife, a good mom, a good worker is more than enough. 

I gotta stop romanticizing busyness as my calling. 

come meet your baby boy

 I have found myself telling our adoption story so many times recently. I am not sure if its because this is around the time that we matched with first expectant mom, two years ago. Maybe its because I got a fun new job as an adoption consultant. I am honestly not sure, but there is a part every single time I tell our story that I cannot help but get goosebumps and teary eyed - and I have told this story at least 15 times. 

As many of you know our first adoption was a disrupted match. It was a goose chase for a few days. I remember being confused and broke, lost and hurt. But I still felt a sense of hope for some reason. I knew that we were not done. We knew our adoption had truly failed on a Thursday and on the following Monday we got a text about a baby boy who was born at 3:01PM - he was Hispanic, a stork drop and birth mom was ready to look at profile books. I can tell this story over and over - then I get to this part. 

On Tuesday morning Lisa, our case worker, called and asked if I was near Alejandro. She had a different voice than I had heard before. I wasn't sure what it meant exactly and I was still pretty numb to the chaos that unfolded a couple days before, but remember - I said I had hope. So with the ounce of hope that I had and a smidge of wanting it to happen. I heard, 

'Come meet your baby boy.'

a small cloud was lifted. We were ready to go, but couldn't leave that day due to flights. The next morning we got to the hospital and I remember being so nervous. Like the most nervous I had ever been in my entire life. I walked through the door in the NICU and immediately it was as if time was frozen and not a single second of heartbreak mattered anymore. We knew in that moment that we walked through every second of the mess to get to Miguel. I knew that I would need to process things, I knew that would come with time. But in this moment meeting our baby boy was so bittersweet and that was something to focus on. 

Over the next couple of days, Lisa was very good about reminding me that I would still mourn the loss of baby girl. I did not know that this would happen or how this would look because honestly I felt fine. But then, one night while doing skin to skin with Miggy I remember silently weeping. Alejandro was resting on the couch and woke up to see me crying over our new baby and then I realized what happened. I was processing. I was mourning, but joyful. I was in shock but excited. I as hurt, but healing. Miguel was not a bandaid - I will forever say this. This was a process I walked through for weeks following. I was never mourning what we did not have. I was mourning the fact that this child was being placed in state custody and there was nothing I could do. I was mourning the hurt caused by an expectant mom who was so lost that she created a trail of lie and deceit. I was just mourning. 

But as I say so often, we would walk through it again because we know the outcome. 

I still think about that baby girl, we named her Marlo. I still pray for her often. 

But I would never change where we are now as a family. I trusted that God had us and I knew that our story was not over. God truly had to break me to build me up. I had to loosen my grip fully before I could be an adoptive mom because that title while a beautiful one, can be a tough one. Guys, I do not wake up every morning thinking about the fact that Miguel is my adopted son. I wake up thinking about how he is my son. However, when I see the picture we have framed in his room - the one of us and his birth mama I am reminded that we, 'share,' Miguel. She gave him life. She birthed him. She chose life for him. She chose adoption for her child and she chose us to parent her child. 

don't sweat the little stuff

 This post has been a long time coming. I quit writing awhile back because I couldn't find the time, honestly. I still wrote things in my head everyday and would sometimes write on social media platforms, but would never allow myself time to write on here. This blog has been with me since 2013, maybe. If you looked back you would find all of my secrets. I mean not really, but you would be able to tell what I was going through in each season. I tried looking back awhile ago and laughed and cried, then laughed some more. Just because the blogs I wrote then were really meaningful then, but they are still punching me in the gut now. 

A couple months ago while listening to a podcast, I heard someone say - 

 you are never as passionate as you are at the age of 22.

And nothing has ever made more sense. I have spent most of my late 20s chasing after that feeling, chasing after the girl who was on fire for things. So passionate that she was a force to be reckoned with. I have spent so much time trying to win her back. I mean she truly was fearless. She went to Africa every summer without hesitation, got baptized in the Nile river without thinking about the parasites. She traveled around the States staying in strangers homes. She truly was fearless. 

Now she is 28, a wife and a mother. She is me if you haven't picked up on that yet. & I find myself more scared now than ever before. I wonder where the fear came from, but the only thing I can trace it back to was moving to Uganda. I cannot wrap my mind around why it happened or why I am the way I am now. Its really not a fun place to be, to be scared of the craziest things. 

I can create a wild scenario in 2 mins flat. I can fall asleep on demand, its a defense mechanism I created to handle the fear.I cannot get in an elevator without my palms sweating. 

This list could go on and on. If you met me you wouldn't know I was scared of so many things - until I started making jokes about how I fall asleep on demand when I am scared or make dumb jokes to laugh off the fear while stepping into an elevator. When I am nervous I talk louder, according or my husband. Or I am scanning the area like Maggie from FBI, waiting to catch someone. 

However, I do not want to be this anymore. I do not want to live in fear. I want to feel like I did at 22, granted I know that won't really come back fully because -who are we kidding - I was single, with no bills and lived by the saying. 'why not.' But I promised myself that this year I would do something every week that scares me a little bit because that is how I get rid of this beast on my back. I do not mean skydiving. I simply mean riding in an elevator alone. Driving down the interstate in a thunderstorm. Normal everyday things that make me a tiny bit nervous. 

I think the wildest thing about all of this and that I know hard things are worth it. I know that I do things and then look back and I am shocked that I did it. I seem to be able to do the big things for some reason. I can adopt a child, I can move states, I can walk through a disrupted match. I can go months into national pandemic without a single anxious thought (I did this and I am still not sure how. Maybe it was Tiger King or TikTok, but y'all. I never panicked about Covid - I mean duh I have since, but the first panic about it was last month.) I can do all of this because I knew that Jesus was with me. Like I knew I was not walking alone. 

But man, the tiny things. I always sweat the tiny things. 

and as my dad always says, 'don't sweat the little stuff.'

So here is to my year of not sweating the little stuff.