never been here before

he reached down to me i tried to reach up that didn't work what makes more sense... him lowering himself reaching for me or for me to actually reach him? my arms are too short yet still i reach swatting away his arm more times than i care to admit i can do it own my own, i think my reach is pretty strong i am pretty strong nope this reach is grace undeserved unaccomplished by me this reach is joy forgiveness love mercy the ultimate compassion for a dead-in-sins soul his reach is long enough wide enough strong enough he reached for me grabbed me out of slimy pit the mire and clay he gave me a place to stand it's on his grace it's on his love it's with him http://katemotaung.com/five-minute-friday/

I looked down at my phone and sighed the biggest sigh in the history of the world. Yeah, ok. I might be exaggerating. But that’s how I felt this morning. They say that habits form with repetitive choices and positive reinforcement. Well, I was used to getting a text message from a friend. Nearly every morning for the past few years I would get some hilarious or crazy text from a friend. Usually about nothing important. Something stupid that happened at Starbucks or at work. Something on the internet that was crazy. A song that made them feel. Something that would make me laugh. That changed a few weeks ago. Thus my sigh. Old habits die hard. I miss the texts. The stories. The laughter. The conversation. And now I have to start my day boring. Boo. It’s amazing how a person can come into your life and crawl right into your heart and come to mean something so much to you in a short period of time. It’s amazing the hole they leave when they go. I don’t like ...

Today’s post is for Five Minute Friday for my VERY FIRST TIME EVER, and the urging of my friend Karen . Five Minute Friday is where whoever loves and writes is urged shut down their critical voice and and write on a prompt word for five minutes straight. No editing (hahahahaha is happening in my head right now, by the way.) Today's prompt is the word "tell". ____________ She sat across from me in my office and I hear her say the words that will not let me go. The words I keep hearing from people. The words that resonate and by now, simply hurt, “I don’t feel like I belong here anymore.” “ What is my job, now, at this point? ” I’m asking myself inside. Wondering how to respond. My heart is tearing and I close my eyes for a long while as we sit together. I almost feel my heart cave in, that familiar feeling of heartache. But this time it’s not about a boy or a friend or family member or a loss. This time it’s caving in dread. To tell me that you d...

This spring I did a series on expectations – what it actually would look like if we tried to live our lives without them. If you go back and read the series, you’ll see I never come to any kind of solid thesis (that wasn’t the point). But I did come out of it realizing that as great as it sounds to avoid hurt in life, it just didn’t seem possible to truly live without expectations of some form. It seemed like regularly the logical part of my brain collided with my heart. And I let my heart win. Here’s what’s funny. I think that I hoped deep down that I would, through the writing, stop having expectations of the people in my life. That somehow I would have learned this powerful lesson through all those painstaking words I wrote and felt… that somehow I would be free of what often hurts me.  Disappointment. Yeah. That didn’t happen. Surely goodness will follow me. I don’t know why I wanted that, other than the obvious reason of it seems like such a great way to li...

This has been a challenging four years. A lot has happened in my time in Arizona… a great deal of joy and laughter. Even more growth and stretching. And many tears. Tonight, for the first time, I actually heard a small voice inside me say, “I regret coming here.” And right now isn’t even the worst of times I’ve had here. So I had to pause. (My version of pausing is to write. Well, first I cleaned and organized my office. Then I sat down to write. Because I don’t know how I feel until I write it.) I panicked as soon as those words entered my mind, because I don’t know if they are real. True. Or the enemy working against me. There is something keeping me here. It’s a strong and powerful force. It would have to be to keep me tethered to a place so far outside my comfort zone. So far away from my family. So far away from what I consider home. But it’s home here, too. It happened when I fell in love. With this season. “But then I come down here… and ...

I sat down to write today, remembering I still had one more post I wanted to do to finish off my series on expectations. I don’t think I’m going to do it. I realize I could write about expectations a lot more, and the last topic is one that I think would be too much like the others. And while I’ve enjoyed the consistency of doing a blog series, I go back and read them and see what sounds like a self-pitying martyr. I don’t want that. So here I sit, staring at a blank white page on my computer screen, knowing that writing is just as much a discipline as it is an art. That’s why it often hard for me to go back and read some of what I wrote. It’s not great writing, but it is self-reflection, which, as you may remember , is what I feared would go away in my life once I moved here and entered a different environment, one that didn’t have that focus like my time in St. Louis did. I’m wondering if I’m doing too much self-reflection, and there is nothing attractive about navel gazing. ...

There is something powerfully heart-crushing about realizing you don’t mean as much to someone as they mean to you. If you’ve been reading around here for a while, I’m a pretty intense feeler, particularly since the beginning of this year, when I finished writing the talk I gave for the Women2Women conference, and made a significant breakthrough: that we are completely known and loved by the God of the universe (anyway), and to feel and understand that kind of love on earth we have to let yourself be known by others. This caused me to be very intentional with my communications with others, my best friends and co-workers, the friends with which I feel a kinship and the family members whom I love. It’s had varying results, to be sure. It’s been painful, without question… which is where I come to the “heart-crushing” part. You know that awkward moment when you’ve carefully and thoughtfully picked out a Christmas gift for someone and you didn’t get anything from them? That’s what t...