this is about the possibility that love might be at the center of the universe and that that love is worth trusting in.

I've been experiencing a lot of ups and downs the past few months. Mission Year has been tough, especially living within community. More than volunteering at Esperanza. More than reaching out to the community. These past few months have been causing me to grow up and out of old dead places in which I've spent so many years lying in.

There are people saying that they see my growth.

They're proud of me. The word left their lips. "Proud."

It's hard for me to see that growth most days. My heart has been breaking a lot. It's also been crawling closer to the truth -- the ridiculous and often ridiculous but life-giving truth -- the truth being that, i, AM beloved. Somehow.

My friend, Joel, asked me one time, if the search for transcendent love affected much of my life. And, I thought to myself "Of course." "OF COURSE DUH" I think, it does for most of us. Maybe all of us.

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I've been thinking how important it is to remember that Jesus is a person, not an idea to be debated, a mantra to be recited, an ideal to live up to, or a figure stuck behind Mexican candles and rosaries... but a person. He's a someone I can relate to. There was a man who lived and breathed one day and wandered obscure towns upon the earth, trying to love people the way G-d, the Creator of the Universe, intended for all of us to be loved. Experiencing that love for myself and being able to imagine, believe and then sit in his love is changing me. It's causing me to hope for better things.

My heart is melting despite her constant breaking lately.

When it breaks, it threatens to freeze back up again, into the jadedness, conforming to the same irritable "you're stupid, Rachel!" and "nobody cares about your shit, Rachel" that I'm used to hearing in my brain.

When I think about the love that man embodied in light of my life... when I think about the way he would respond if he were in my shoes... when I remember the promises that I will never be left by him... when I see the way the people who love him light up and love in their broken sincerity and honesty....

my heart melts.

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Sometimes, I look back at the past eight months and I notice that it wasn't what I thought it would be. I thought that by doing Mission Year, I would know what to do with my life. I thought I would narrow down the thousand passions raging in my heart down to one or two that I could allow to sail my life. I thought I would finally know what to go to school for. I thought I would find my place and my people.

Maybe I'm a little closer to those things now, but I think more than anything, I'm learning about who I want to be. I don't want to be sad anymore.
It's okay to be sad. It's okay to cry.
But, I don't want to lie in a pool of my tears.
If any tears, I wish that they could water the world around me and cause something beautiful to grow in my life.
I don't want a stagnant, un-moving bucket of tears in my life anymore. I don't want to drag around in the weight of my tears.

Life, life that is really life, is worth fighting for.
Love, love that is really love is worth trusting in.

I don't understand much of the mysteries of the universe (maybe multiverse!), and neither do I intend to know them all. I think the biggest mystery of all is there might be Love at the center of this thing at all. I think that's what that man suffered to prove.

That G-d is love.

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P.S. I'm sorry that I've been so silent lately. There are many of you that I have wished to write or to call or see. I've been the opposite of brave and the opposite of encouraged a lot of times, but, I hope that you will forgive me, and that maybe, we can engage in having some sort of relationship again.