Where I am right now

Still navigating my way through the 3-in-1 Donald Miller book I purchased when I was home in Oregon during the end of May.  There is so much about his writing that speaks to me, I can hardly explain or believe it.  I'm currently on "Through Painted Deserts".  The author's note had me in tears as I read it because of the way it explained the things I have felt in my heart over the past two years.  Particularly:

"Everybody has to change, or they expire.  Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons."

"I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die."

I have been feeling physically stuck lately.  I am currently tied to Oakland for fieldwork with only weekends serving as a relief from this tie.  At the same time I have been having vivid dreams about holding and snuggling my newest niece Claire.  Dreams so vivid and sensory that I wake up believing I know exactly how it feels to hold her.  I have been imagining the fourth of July in Chelan because many friends and my boyfriend where there experiencing the celebration and sharing their stories in a way that enabled me to slip into their story-line in my imagination.  When I return to reality I feel stuck.  Granted, the time is flying in my internship.  I love the challenge it is presenting and the way I am learning and adapting into my new career; transforming every day, moving towards the practitioner I should and want to be.  The other therapists are a dynamic group that provide varied points of view for me to learn from.   My weeks and weekends have become significantly more meaningful as I move into my career.  I've been playing beach volleyball in Alameda and creating a new group of friends out on the sand.  So when I say I am stuck it does not necessarily mean everything about life here in Oakland is static for me.  Far from it, actually.  The stuck feeling comes from wanting to be someplace closer to people I have been missing dearly over the past year or so.  However, I have noticed something growing out of this stuck feeling.  My heart has begun fighting against the stuck-ness.  I am looking at the things I can change in my heart since I cannot change my location.  I am finding things that need to die.  This is not necessarily an easy process and I have focused more on the unpleasantness and have associated that with my time here in Oakland.  Donald Miller reminded me that when things die, new, beautiful things will be born.  I am learning to associate the birth of beautiful things within me as part of my experience here too.  Though this does not negate the unpleasantness but it gives it reason.  I am changing.