the words that carry the hope

10-23-09

Blog Carnival (is that what it’s called? it is now!)

I just sent this email out, but in case I missed anyone who might want to participate, here ya go:

Hello [blogging] friends! I don’t know if you know this, but November is National Blog Posting Month, where you commit to posting once a day for a whole month. I’m pretty sure you can do this any month, but most bloggers I know do it in November. I attempted it last year (and failed) but i found that it was really good for me to write every day…soul-healing, even. Being the planner that I am, I have been trying to come up with great blog topics to write about, and I had this idea….

Over coffee one afternoon, Jamie and I had an idea to collectively write a book. Though this hasn’t come into fruition (yet!), we realized how many people we know who are fantastic writers. And today I had the idea that we could start sort of small…as in, one blog post, one day, all writing about the same thing.

Consider this email your official invitation to join us in writing about home. Interpret that however you want, say whatever you want…there are pretty much no limits to this. There are a few guidelines, because I need them and maybe you do too.

Guidelines:
1. Let me know if you’re going to join us by November 2. Just shoot me or Jamie an email so we have an idea of who’s in.
2. Each of our posts will go up November 9. That’s a Monday, a little over 2 weeks from today.
3. Within the posts (like at the bottom) we will link to each other. I will send you all an email with everyone’s blog so you can easily include it in your post.
4. If you commit but something comes up and you can’t write it, please let me know so I can take your blog off the list.
5. If you want to forward this email to other people, please feel free. I think it will be way fun to have more people who will offer perspective!

email me: spencertheduck AT gmail.com

or comment if you wanna join!

10-22-09

girl is driving, she’s the queen

sometimes, on rough days, you need someone to say:

it’s okay. you can vent.

so you do….let it allll out.

and sometimes, on rough days, you need someone to say:

let’s get in the car
put the top down
and just drive

so you do. while listening to the soundtrack of your life.

thank you.

10-20-09

How much love would make you whole?

I’d never thought of myself as someone with ‘trust issues’ until I moved to New York. Maybe I always had them and didn’t realize it, but more likely it was that I hadn’t had to make that choice. I naturally trusted my family and friends in Tennessee, but when I moved and started afresh it was a decision I had to make.

i wrote these words on the wall of my first apartment: you have to trust someone in order to follow them. i was having a hard time believing that anyone in that whole city was for me (as opposed to against). I felt like I had no one. No one who knew me, the real me at least. These things take time. 6 months, for me…longer, for some.

i had a lot of thoughts on what leadership is, and hospitality, and how that plays out in a city such as New York. It got better. We got better at it. we might even be good at it now, because we’ve all been alone and we don’t want anyone to feel that way so we ask new people to lunch and we invite them to our growth communities and we encourage them not to leave, to give New York a chance, to plant themselves there for a while because it really can be good, if you let it.

it took awhile before there were people to be that for me, but in that alone [lonely] 6 months God taught me about community and what it meant and how to create it and grow it and learn to need it and even trust it. even when it’s hard, like one night when you have to sit down and tell your community that you’re dealing with the hardest struggle you’ve ever faced and you have to confess and tell them details and ask for help and prayers. and now we’re all better and stronger because of that night, and i would not change it. it’s hard to need somebody, but i needed them. need them, present tense.

I learned that trust is a choice. i learned that with a growing faith, the choice to trust someone gets even more difficult. Trusting someone doesn’t mean that we won’t be let down – rest assured we will – but we do it anyway, because we need each other. and no one is perfect.

Recently God has gifted me with new people, a new church, a job i completely love, and a new community. A different kind of community, because I don’t live in close proximity with most of these people. But a community in the sense that they know me, they are for me, they encourage me, and in turn i am learning to trust them.

This past weekend I was surrounded by people from New York and people from Tennessee. we were laughing and eating cake and the conversation was so good and everything just felt like it was in the right place. it was one of those ‘clarity’ moments in my life — the choice to trust means i get to love and be loved. and if trust means risk, i’m risking it all because it’s totally worth it.

10-05-09

lights came down and the room spun slow

i am overwhelmed with the amount of posting i would need to do to update the last few months of my life…sure, i’ve blogged, but just a little here & there. So…me, lately:

June:

+ left New York (please forgive the blurry photos; there were taken out of my window!)

i’ve got my bags; i’m good to go