Trust The Spark

“You, Lord, keep my lamp burning;
my God turns my darkness into light.” Psalm 18:28

I’m a woman of words. I obsess over them, mull over them, am transformed by them.

I've been relinquishing burnout this last week. Unclinging myself from an identity of defeat.

I know what I’m moving away from. I have a vocabulary for burnout that I've painstakingly compiled over the last year. But what am I moving toward?

In my life, I've shifted from cynicism to gratitude, from despair to hope. But what lies on the other side of the burnout pendulum?

Productivity? Usefulness? Even the joy that I have been promised doesn't quite seem to be the opposite of burnout.

So I've been hoping for a word. A hint of where to go. How to navigate this process of rebuilding. In a foreign country. Away from (most) friends and family.

But I've been scared to ask. Scared that I won’t get a response.

Yet yesterday, while the pastor spoke about the vision of the church and I easily tuned out his Spanish, I dared to close my eyes and ask.

“Please give me a word.”

I thought maybe “baby steps,” “open,” “willing.”

But those words were mine, not His.

And then out of the silence, out of nothing, out of I don’t know where. The phrase resonated, vibrated, crystallized within me.

Trust the Spark. 

Trust the spark? What does that mean?

And then I heard, remember the spark, Aly? The spark within you that loves and cares and wants more? The part of you that can’t help but fiddle with words and tinker with ideas and come up with goals? The part that feels and flies and aches to do something meaningful?

The part of you that is loving and creative and patient and beautiful?
The part that never gives up?
Remember that, Aly?

That spark is still there.

You have a spark that burnout did not snuff. A small flame that will never go out. That still burns within you.

That spark is Me within you.

Trust the spark.
Grow the spark.
I am in you.
I am here.
I have never left you.

I will turn your darkness into light. I will keep your lamp burning.

Unclinging

I feel a shift I can’t explain. Something has changed. Something, or Someone, has started moving. Perhaps He never stopped.

I've shared what burnout feels like. Here is what (I am learning) relinquishing burnout feels like:

A weight lifted. Or lifting.
A bitterness gone.
Palms opening, unclinging.

A release of the cringing, the gut reaction when I get an email, when I think of working, when I think of blogging, working out, writing, anything that I connect with “being productive,” anything that used to bring me joy but eventually became tangled in a mess of obligation.

In the past few weeks, I've used “recovery” as an excuse to do nothing instead of as a chance to rediscover my passions. Yes, I needed a time to let go, to release responsibility, to do nothing and be okay with doing nothing. But it’s time to move forward, to unchain myself from the shackles of burnout.

I crumple the list of words that have taken up occupancy in my mental lexicon:

Lazy
Useless
Selfish
Numb

I release the identity of victim. Of helpless inmate at the burnout, breakdown, palace.

I can be FREE to work.
OPEN to invest in the lives of others.
RELEASED from an identity of death, of grasping tightly to what I have in fear that I will be sucked dry if I give away one drop more.
I am FREE to be FILLED by LOVE. 

I “get to” work and give and try and invest.
Work is a gift. Life is a gift.
I can care.
I do care. 

Love, please show me where to spend my time and energy.
Teach me to sit still in your presence that I may give myself wholeheartedly to the work you have before me.
Teach me to uncling to this identity and cling instead to You. 

Amen.

i carry your hearts with me (i am carry them in

This post is for my friends, my family, my church family at Coast Vineyard, my former coworkers at Plant With Purpose, and my friends who have become my family. *Warning: this post contains major doses of sap. 

After an intense I-miss-my-old-life-in-San-Diego mope fest earlier this week, I realized something.

I am not alone. 

In one of my favorite poems, ee cummings writes,

"i carry your heart with me(i carry it in 

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)"

I am not alone because you are all with me. You are with me wherever I go. 

My room here is splattered with cards and notes and pictures you all gave to me before I left the States. So, literally, I carry your words--and the heart behind the words--with me wherever I go. 

But I also carry the moments. 

I carry the encouragement.

I carry the laughter.

I carry the hours spent tanning (and in my case, freckling)  on the cool San Diego sand.

I carry the barbecues and sushi nights and happy hours and fro yo and chips and guac and California burritos.

I carry the moments spent crying in the stairwell, hugging in the parking lot, jumping into the frigid ocean in a fit of "whimsy."

I carry the Sundays worshiping and taking communion together, holding hands at the end of the sermon as one Body. 

I carry the happy lunches and AGMs, scheming fundraising endeavors, battling cynicism, filling out ridiculous government grant forms til 2am. 

I carry the phone the calls and family vacations and Christmas mornings hiding from Dad's video camera. 

Today marks one month of being back in Guatemala, of eating tortillas and speaking Spanish, and trying to build a life for myself here. 

And though I'm here, what feels like so far away--miles and cultures and languages and paces of life apart--you are actually as close as my very heart. You are in my thoughts and words and conversations and prayers. You have made me who I am today. 

I carry your hearts; I carry them in my heart.
I carry it all with me. And no distance can take that away.

Thank you for your love and cards and skype dates and Heytells and Instagram convos and blog comments and prayers that have FILLED my heart this week. But most of all, thank you for who you have been in my life for so long, face to face and heart to heart. 

***

Here are some pics from my room: