Shredder Girl, Episode 2: Ready...Set...

Exactly 8 months ago to the day, I was stepping on a plane that would take me to Bangkok, Thailand (we had to stop at Chicago and Seoul, South Korea first, but we eventually made it). It was a cold, drearily rainy morning and we had to drive all the way to Cleveland to catch our flight. And hopping on a plane to Thailand came with a heck of a lot of prerequisites, let me tell you.

But somehow I managed to pack, prepare, and survive the 20-hour flight and arrived, breathless and terrified, on a piece of land that was utterly unfamiliar to me.

It seems like so long ago now. The friends I made there seem worlds away. The crazy thing is, my Thailand cohort, Bethany, is back in Thailand right now as we speak. She moved there - for a year. I have a feeling she may never call America home again. Thailand completely captured her heart.

But while Bangkok serenaded all of my senses to the max, it didn't speak to me like a homeland. Instead it spoke to me of a forever foreign and breathtaking land. A place of beauty and kindness, riveting views and astonishing people, and of course, the heat that suffocates as it caresses. I loved it. Yet...it only inspired me to see more. To travel again and again and again and again.

Apparently my great thirst for travel is already to be assuaged, for tomorrow I step out on yet another grand journey with this God of mine. He stretched out His hand and offered me another plane trip (only this one not quite as far away). Another temporary move to a new, thrilling place.

C O L O R A D O .

I barely breathe the word, letting its syllables slide off my tongue and linger in the air, where they expand into slides of sunbeams and fluttering snowflakes and ponds that mirror the incredible beauty of majestic mountains.

God has asked me to move there for 6 months. And I get to snowboard while I'm at it.

I can hardly believe it! It doesn't seem real! Even though my bags are packed - FINALLY (and don't get me started on the outcome of all that backbreaking labor) - my mind just can't wrap itself around the fact that this is actually happening...to me.

And you know what? A part of me doesn't want to go. That part is scared of stepping onto unknown ground, of losing my footing (yet again) and free-falling into God's hands. It's scared of losing things and comfortable jobs and, most of all, people.

Saying goodbye has never been easy for me.

I have been so blessed. I am being so blessed. This crazy God that I am trying to love but only succeeding in betraying, this God who adores His creation and lavishes His love and mercy upon it, this God who is everywhere and knows everything and is beyond what I can understand...this God whom I barely know has already done so much for me.

Besides giving my dreams of travel literal wings with which to take flight and surrounding me with people who love me, He also did something that blows my mind even more.

My Creator died for me.

And somehow that huge cosmic idea of God dying for me and then choosing to spend His time and energy on loving me just blows my mind so much but I still turn around and look at the fake glitz of earth and think that that's where the good stuff is. I see good things in my life and what do I do? I claim them as my rights. They are my reward. I deserve them.

Ha. Puny little Caitlin thinks that she deserves something. Isn't that sweet? Dear immortal that dreams, you deserve nothing from this world. Even less do you deserve something from your Maker.

I am breathless.
I am weightless.

How can there be life better than this? I know that God exists. I know that He loves me.

And I am learning to know Him.

From the hills of Ohio (and soon the mountains of Colorado!),
~Caitlin Marie 

I'll spread my wings
And I'll learn how to fly
Though it's not easy to tell you goodbye
I gotta take a risk
Take a chance
Make a change

And breakaway...
(BreakawaybyKellyClarkson)

Struggle Bus

I just want to tell people, "Hey, what you're seeing here isn't the whole story. This girl who laughs and plays all day and slips into a novel after work...she has an evil twin that rarely comes out to play. But she's there." Sometimes I just don't understand why people think it's so easy to come into my life and they want to be my friends. Don't get me wrong, I love my friends. Forever. With all I've got. But I wonder sometimes if they know what they're looking at when they see me.

For the past month or so, I've been saying that I'm on the struggle bus. It's kind of a joke between me and myself (talk about an inside joke). I've been on the struggle bus so long that I furthered the joke: I'm now the driver of the Struggle Bus. It's a means of travel, and if you want to come along for the ride, just let me know.

Being on the struggle bus for me means that I somehow manage to scramble through life, get things done, and be social -- only at an awkwardly slow pace. That usual involves many setbacks. 

I don't know why it seems to be a theme in my life right now. But it's pretty entertaining. Because really, it helps me laugh at myself. And laugh at the mud puddles and crappy French fries and broken power lines in this world. 

That moment when I'm carrying a hot tray of bread and I drop a baguette on the floor. Or I go to say, "Have a nice day," to a customer and it comes out, "Have won-goo-nice da...night..." and they basically walked away before I got past the word have. Trying to do laundry and getting interrupted and finishing it a whopping three days later.

It's the little things in life.

Picking up a random book at a bookstore and absolutely loving it, but then running out of time to read it and knowing that I don't have time to read it before I move and it's too expensive to buy. Staring at a roomful of stuff and knowing that I need to pack it but being unable to get myself to do so.

All of this stuff is petty, really. I think it's stemming from the spiritual chasm running through my core right now. I seem to be going forward (if forward is the right word), and I know that my relationship with God is getting stronger and stronger every day.

But the thing that keeps getting me is this: I constantly love the darkness and crave the light. Constantly.

It makes me sick inside to realize this about myself. And to know that I am deeply, irrevocably lost in this without a way out. I cannot physically escape this state. If God doesn't come down and change this within me, I will be stuck in it forever.

I feel like I am going forward deeper into the light.

But almost every day I run into a wall of darkness and I slip right through it and into the other side almost effortlessly.

And I listen to Demons by Imagine Dragons on repeat...

Does anyone feel this chasm? Does anyone know how to heal it? Because so far bandaids aren't working, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm not letting God heal it.

[yournamehere]

Names. We all have one. One that our parents gave us. One that we get just by having parents. Nicknames that follow us around. Names we wish people would forget were associated with us. Words that aren't even names, but ones that somehow seem to stick to us, things like hard-working, drop-dead gorgeous, lazy, a party-er, flirtatious, quiet, and a million others adjectives both good and bad. We judge others by their names and then we add more names to them.

Basically, the whole world is constantly identifying others while at the same time seeking to proclaim their own identity. Every single person in the world has an identity. Is it self-made, or just a picture that others have painted for you?

IDENTITY.

We tend to figure out our identity in a very backward way. The things we wear, the way we look, our bodies and our expressions and our physical traits...these things paint a picture of us. But that is entirely opposite of how identity is really determined.

Our identity is determined by who we are on the inside. This body is flesh, and flesh only. Made from the dust of the earth. Polished with some soap and a dash of brightly colored fabrics. That identity bleeds into our physical appearance in little ways.

But these bodies that we live in? They are passing shadows, faint glimmers of beauty, fragile as a dandelion gone to seed.

Photo found on Google images

Sometimes it is hard for me to remember that. My flesh is so strong. Its desires pull at me, jerking me back and forth all over the board. I listen to my flesh because...I think that it is me. I think that my blond hair and grey/blue/green eyes are mine. I think that my skinny little body is all mine to own and keep forever. I even kind of like my feet (don't tell anyone). 

For me to say "no" to my body -- when it's hungry or thirsty, tired or fidgety, weak or strong -- seems like a preposterous idea. Why would I even want to do that? 

I am asking God to show me the difference. The difference between me (my soul) and my body (the fleshly cage in which I live). 

I watched The Host for the first time tonight. I read the book a few months ago and it blew me away with its intense insight into the battle between soul and body. I posted about it here.

From The Host; picture from Pinterest

The movie was, of course, not nearly as good as the book. (I'm pretty sure that that's my favorite line. Get used to hearing it.)

But again, I was struck by the way souls and bodies were shown as completely separate concepts. Which, they are! How crazy is it that I know this to be true and yet I don't live it as truth. I don't act like I believe it.

From The Host; picture from Pinterest

The world is beautiful and there is magic in it. But the bigger magic is found within us. God chose to make us "in His image" -- we are a miracle fashioned by His very words to be like Him.

And then He did something even crazier. He died so that we might die to our flesh in Him. That our souls might have power over our flesh. And that He might take His Spirit (the very Spirit of God!) and anoint us with Him, as a present. We have the Holy Spirit living within.

My flesh fights this Spirit with its whole being.

It is a war of the very deepest kind.

"But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts." ~Romans 13:14

"Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." ~ Romans 5:16-17