The call to honesty is screaming louder than the call of fear.

Right now and forever until it is completed . . .

Six months.

"It happened so quickly . . . after taking so long."

One the biggest reasons my life is so beautiful is because Mark Palmer was a part of it.

In seven days it will be six months since he passed away.

I just cannot believe it will be six months.

I miss him . . . alot.

As I feel my life being connected deeper and deeper into the life of the Landing Place community . . . I miss him even more.

When he invited me to move out here over two years ago, I don't think I really knew exactly what I was getting into. But here I am . . . still here two years later . . . and I am pretty sure I am almost entirely a different person then the one he corresponded with in the Summer of 2004.

I wish Mark could be here . . . to see the change that has happened in my life, even in just the last few months. I wish he could have seen more of who I was becoming . . . as he invested so much in that process.

I wish Mark could be here for the community . . . for Amy . . . for Micah.

I just wish he was still here . . . and he isn't . . . and it sucks.

You would think after six months it would seem more real . . . in some ways it does . . . but sometimes I still cannot comprehend it . . . I cannot process the images in my mind from his hospital room . . . from the burial . . . my mind and my heart cannot make sense of it all.

Six months . . . I just don't understand.

I am currently reading a book called "Homage to a Broken Man" . . . it is basically the biography of Heinrich Arnold . . . who was part of the beginnings of the Bruderhof.

One of the most striking things for me thus far in my reading was their care for the broken (also known as outcasts and degenerates to society). Both Eberhardt and Heiner (and for the most part the community at large) cared deeply for the broken . . . deeply enough to take them into their families, stay up with them all night to make sure they did not harm themselves, sleep outside their doors so they could not run away in their madness, protected them . . . and so much more.

They embodied love. Truly embodied love.

Another world is possible.

So my destructive pattern in relationships sucks . . .

It has not carried over very much into my life here in Columbus . . . but the aftermath that it left in my life before I moved here . . . it is awful.

I had (and sometimes still have) the tendency to run when things got too close or when I felt too vulnerable. I have hurt people deeply because of my fear and that sucks . . . really bad.

I have always been an "all or nothing" kind of person . . . "all or nothing" kind of friend. And that is really great for the people who received my all . . . but really shitty for those who were receiving my "all" and that got shafted into nothingness by my fear.

It would appear there is a major need to for confrontation and reconciliation on my part . . . my list of "misdeeds" towards others is astronomical . . . I feel as though it is time I laid that all bear . . . let them in to my inner "messed-up-ness".

For some it would appear it is already too late . . . that I have lost the opportunity to be present in their lives because of my "all or nothing" . . . because I run. And that is completely understandable and something I can live with . . . I just wish it could be different.

I almost feel like I need to do a "fourth step" (AA/Al-Anon) on my life . . . make amends to the people I have hurt . . . even though most of the time I hurt them out of my own brokenness . . . I still hurt them . . . and that sucks.

Can I go about seeking forgiveness from people who have moved on from being an active presence in my life . . .

Can I do it without seeking anything but to be honest . . . not asking for relationship or trust . . . but simply to share my brokenness and how I know I have hurt them . . .

Can I to ask to be forgiven . . .

Can I find release in that . . .

Can I let go of the relationship and its meaning in my life . . .

Can I leave it in my formative past as long as I make my attempts at reconciliation . . .

Does reconciliation mean that the relationship is restored . . . or is it more a matter of tending to the wounds and brokenness that exist . . . and moving forward . . . Possibly leaving the relationship behind?

For as broken and messed up as I am . . .
I have hurt so many people . . .

For as many wounds I have taken . . .
I have wounded just as many . . .

I need to bring peace to my life . . . to my past . . . to those I have hurt.

But how?

This is my friend Eric . . . some people call him "Yoder" . . .
I think it fits him well.

I just finished up a book entitled "Contemplative Youth Ministry" . . . it was great. Not just for the insight it provided into youth ministry, but for its ability to make me want to be more contemplative. Seriously . . . I am so stoked to start practicing some contemplative exercises. Anyone interested in diving head first in with me?

Fall is coming quickly in Ohio . . . the mornings are already a bit chilly . . . it is awesome. Though I have difficulty comprehending that summer is over . . . simply because it went by so quickly, I am looking forward to fall.

The Stetler's come home today . . . they are a pretty nifty family . . . who have been missed by their community while they were on vacation . . . I am super excited for them to be home.

I have learned a lot about being present to people in the last few weeks . . . I am coming to believe that being present and loving people is really all there is. And if that is what the rest of my life will look like, if I am to spend my days loving people and simply being with them, well then I am ready to settle in and begin living.

Be Peace.

Understanding and love are truly one.

Confrontation. Reconcilation.

Today is my dad's birthday . . . all week I have been thinking about why it is that he really has no idea who I am . . . and has never really tried to find out . . . he has never really known his own daughter. He knows more about his old drinking buddies and the guys he goes fishing with now, than he does about me.

I don't understand . . . and to be honest, it hurts.

I would like to understand . . . I would like it not to hurt.

Redemption is coming . . .
Redemption is here . . .

Last night we gathered around a fire at 827 Northwest Blvd. and shared poems and prayers centering around Isaiah 35:1-10.

It was a very meaningful time for me.

Everything that was written, shared, and prayed was very signficant.

I walked away very encouraged by the night . . . I feel like it was such an edifying time for the community . . . but especially for me.

Redemption . . . restoration . . . reconciliation . . . ressurection.

All of these things are possible . . . all of these things are happening.

The proof is in my life.

Two years.

There probably could be and eventually will be a great deal of reflection on the last two years of my life.

However, life has been so full this week . . . full of friends, conversations and shared meals . . . that I have not had the time to do it.

Which is honestly, almost all the reflection one really needs . . .

I often struggle with the fact that there is so much beauty in my life . . . but I feel so much pain inside.

The people I have surrounded myself with . . . the people that have chosen to surround and support me . . . they are beautiful . . . breath-takingly beautiful.

Sometimes its just hard to feel that . . . hard to trust that.

But I am slowly learning . . . slowly walking towards them.

Last week I had a crisis of faith . . . a crisis of life.

My crisis . . . my cries . . . were answered with a knock on the door . . . with phone calls . . . with a tremendous amount of love and support.

So tremendous that I have no idea what to do with it . . . I want to learn to just experience it . . . to feel the richness of it.

These last two years have been a long journey of faith . . . a journey I am learning has only just begun.

The ideas of "journey" and "process" . . . well, sometimes they scare the shit out of me.

But the reality that I will never be in this alone . . . it changes everything for me.

It really does . . .

For now my waking moments are spent praying that God would continue to raise the dead in me.

I am at a new beginning . . . I am somewhere in the middle . . . I have faith that someday there will be an end.