dreams, passions, callings...

While preparing for the confirmation class that V and I are leading, I found myself challenged. This specific lesson is on callings, based off of God's calling Moses and then the excuses that Moses offered God. The workbook as a place for the students to write about their passions, spiritual gifts, and personality. In preparing I did the workbook questions in my own personal journal. What poured from my heart challenged me, surprised me, and leaves me wondering what God is up to. This is what came from the pen held in my hand, I call it, the words of my heart.

My passions as of late, which in time have been developing, are children and horses. If I had no restrictions of time or money, the group of people or the cause that I would chose to work with are foster children. I want to give them a home, love, and nurture. I want to use horses as a means of therapeutic love for them. In the perfect world, I would have a home full of children needing a home and a barn full of horses needing rehabilitation. Giving both horses and children the safety and nurture that they need.

My beloved V would say that I am passionate about my faith, broken people, horses, the country and farms, family, and children.

My Spiritual gifts, according to a inventory taken both in college and recently, say that my spiritual gifts are:
Shepherding
Teaching
Showing Mercy
How the three of these will combine, I am not sure.

My personality is one that loves people. I enjoy the interactions of relationships and long to learn how to love people better. I like a good balance of relationships and stimulation intellectually. I love to learn and am best to be around when I am learning something in my life (which is rather easy because aren't we all students?). I love leading, and organizing. I like to write things out: goals, lesson plans, or creating curriculum.

In the end, this is how my passions, personality, and dreams were summed up:

My passion is for the country. For farms, fields, dirt, horses, grass, and the community of rural people. I want to raise children in this kind of place, where they can run, roam, and rest. I want to give kids who have seen neglect, abuse, or have just not known the reality of love, the opportunity to be in a safe and caring place - where they can learn to dream, thrive, and be fully alive.

These words came to my mind as I shaped this dream in my head: Simplicity,good nutrition, gardening, relationships with animals and people, reading, education, play, rest, books, saddles and bridles, freshly baked bread, the twinkling of stars, and the sound of peepers on a spring night.

This is not what I had imagined for myself ten years ago, but I feel inspired and motivated to continue to pursue the dreams that God has laid out for my V and I.

Home is where the heart is, but what happens when you leave your home? Is your heart supposed to stay at the place that had been its shelter for so long?

The chilly November air quiets my soul and leads me to reflect on the thoughts of home and its impact on my life. All this thinking concludes what I had begun to think was true. I wasn't sure where my heart was if the quote I began this post with is true. A sense of place is important in my life, I long for the sense of home; rootedness, beauty, and family. But my heart is still in the place I can no longer call my home.

I long for its quiet meadows, bubbling streams, and the laughing filled meals around the dining room table. If I close my eyes and make myself forget the last few years, then I can imagine that I am back on our beloved farm. The smell of freshly baked bread still hangs in the air as Mom and a few of the girls bustled around the kitchen getting dinner ready. I can feel the stinging cold's imprint on my cheek from the sharp winds of the winter as I would come in from doing the evening barn work. But with a deep sigh my eyes open, I realize that this is just a dream.

And I ache for my farm to be back in our possesion. To claim its land for generations to come.

Maybe a new place can be found in the heart for a new home. It will never be the same but it might make a difference. With that final thought, my trust deepens in knowing that this world is not our home.