The overflow...

I have a couple thoughts backed up in my Juja filled head, but instead of stacking them into one post, I think I need to sequence this out. So for my first thought stems from the week I just had.

This week was rough for a variety of reasons. I will just throw it out there as it is.

I wrote on my blog a little bit about the theme that seems to be invading me right now-- the concept of leaving and staying.

As I see people physically and emotionally walking out of my life, I find myself staying fixed. And as I find myself physically and emotionally separately myself from people, I find others steady in their places.

Perhaps one of the hardest things about returning from Kenya has been the shift in the dynamics of my friendships. I knew that my relationships would be different when I returned, however the manifestations of that have exceeded my expectations. I left for Kenya, other people stayed. This brought and continues to bring change.

And so sometimes I struggle to embrace the changes that are produced by the act of leaving and staying. However, given time and stillness, I always come around to it. Christ always gets me to the place of understanding why others and myself sometimes need to leave and sometimes need to stay.

Yet in grappling with this concept this week, I had one very bright spot. It came from none other than... Erin Titus!

Because here is the thing that this week demonstrated to me so well--

Erin and I are not friends because we have a dream that we share. We do not join for the sake of the dream. Instead, Erin and I are friends who happen to share a dream. We join for the sake of friendship, of fellowship, and under all of that has emerged the beautiful concept of Juja Java.

So this dynamic of friendship is at work and it is so very encouraging.

I look over to Titus sometimes and tell her, "You know, we are real life friends now." And I say that to mean that we spent this summer with twenty three people. Some of them are friends in the context of Kenya. And others are friends in the greater context of life.

We have overflowed into real life now. And that is a beautiful, sacred thing.

Because regardless of who is leaving and who is staying in the rest of my life, one person that I have complete faith in is Titus. She could physically go to any part of the world, I could physically stay in any part of the world, and yet I never question emotionally leaving. She is stuck with me!

We have overflowed into real life now. Amen.

-Bethany-