Finding the Words

I’ve been trying to find the words for all that has happened in the last month.

Numbers in no particular order:
7 full weeks of lockdown
8 grocery runs (4 to secretly meet a friend)
17 teachers/speakers on Google Meet for classes
40 house meals at the dinner table together
20 early morning Bible study sessions
4 “mirror moments” with an audience
5 personal meltdowns
10 glasses shattered against the outside wall to relieve stress
7 hours of freedom to go outside each day as the quarantine has begun to lift
3 weeks till I head to Indianapolis, IN for my 3 month practicum

The days, while scheduled for the most part, have blurred together. So many times I go to message someone and realize it’s been a week since we last talked (I’m sorry if that’s one of you).
The days have been full. Full of learning, resting, connecting, laughing and more.

The best way to understand what I’ve been learning is actually a moment I witnessed back in El Salvador.
I was at a park having a break from the orphanage and there was a paved track that went all around it, probably equaled about a mile and some change if you walked the whole thing, and there were lots of roller skate rental booths. That was something the majority of people enjoyed doing.
I was sitting, drinking coffee and conversing with the Lord when I saw a dad holding his daughter’s hand while teaching her to roller skate. He didn’t have skates on so each time she fell they stopped until she got her feet up under her again and then they would go soothly for a little. But he would have to jog a little to keep up with the stride.
Then a mother and her daughter came past. They were both in roller skates but the daughter was also new at it, but when she fell she still glided with the mom. She was held up and still moving forward as she regained her footing.
The same thing happened with both daughters. They were both learning. They both fell, but because their hands were being held neither ever touched the ground. They both got their balance back and continued skating.
But one had to stop and had the limitation of only going as fast as the dad could run. The other never lost momentum and wasn’t limited by the speed of her parent.

We could stay in that revelation for a moment and what it’s like to try to teach when you don’t have it yourself, you only have knowledge of it versus teaching while also having and using it. (As that was the word the Lord spoke to me that day.)
But that’s what it’s been like here at G42. I’m learning so much and I know I’ve fallen on some of it, and I don’t think I’ve grasped all of the mechanics of it. But I’m surrounded by people who are full of Holy Spirit, who have been skating with Him for a long time. They are holding my hand so when I fall (and I have) there is still momentum. I have regained my balance and I’m beginning to understand the freedom and joy in skating (really abiding with God and not just knowing I am born to be loved but experiencing more of what that entails).
It’s exhilarating and exhausting and beautiful and scary and so very hard to put into words.