I've been living in Florida for the last five years. I have many good friends and a strong support system here. We have laughed together, cried together, and prayed together. I'm moving to Kentucky in a week or so. One by one I meet with the faces that I come come to love dearly. They all seem to want to avoid talking about my leaving, instead they want to go to crowded places and laugh too loud and avert their eyes from meeting my eyes, they desire one last hoopla. They want me to remember the laughter. I'm persistent, and when they're not busy "Having fun," I whisper to them how much I'm going to miss them. And the tears finally come.
Everything is moving fast and changing quickly. My time in Florida is up. I have to go to Kentucky to start a ministry for women of the streets. I have known for a couple of years that I would be leaving. I just wasn't prepared for the pain of the emotional separations. It is in Florida that I finally learned how to be loved. Not in a couple, man-woman way, my love came through an unexpected source; it came through a lot of spiritually strong women. The kind of women that you could rest your head on their shoulders and cry when life seemed big, spooky and unfair. They taught me what holy women looked like, and that I really am beautiful and I do have worth, and gifts and talents to offer the world. They have encouraged me and bragged on me, and never let me believe less of myself.
When the Lord first told me to move to Florida it was with much protest. I laid before him and gave him all the reason I should stay in Michigan, I cried and begged. I had to leave all I held dear, my mother my son, my grandchildren. He wasn't the least bit moved by my childish displays, so with a heavy heart I left Michigan. I cried myself to sleep many nights the first year away from my grandchildren, but I took up my cross and followed him. Jesus told me he required all my trust. He has always demanded all of me. My passion, my pain, my insecurity, my weakness and my sins. He wanted it all and I gave it though sometimes reluctantly.Trust and Faith is scary and uncertain, you can't see it; it's like walking in the dark in unfamiliar territory. You do it all the while hoping your eyes would adjust, hoping to see just a few feet ahead.
Today my cross feels heavy and bothersome, with prickly wood that tear into my skin and leave splinters, but Like Simon the Cyrenian, I pick up the cross that I may bear it after Jesus. I carry it for love.
Fearless
