How I Feel

There is something about being on the water continuing to move further away from the coast that makes me feel so small. So far away from the comfort I am used to and the purpose I fulfill in my everyday life at home. I am in the middle of some amazing Sea in Thailand in Southeast Asia. And while I know that this moment and experience is grand- I know that more greatness waits and that is the part that I find drawing my dreaming-what if I did?-paint the future as I go- personality back into what home is. What home life could be. My dad made a point recently to me about sharing your life with someone and saving somethings for later- in that relationship. Posing the question to me in a matter of terms, "Kari, why so fast, and so much?". I replied with "because this is the time, and I can". I can appreciate that one day I will get married and be in a relationship that is so intense I cannot imagine right now, and how wonderful it will be to travel and to experience life with someone. Will the running end? Will I always want to keep moving so quickly, to squeeze it all in? How unrealistic am I?

But what I do know is that home, my home in Virginia that the closeness I feel to my community is enough for now. The balancing act and struggle at this point for me, being so far away is: how to connect those loved ones to this moment on the water? Connecting any sight seen beyond a photograph, any conversation to anyone besides reciting it back in stories are important, but they are always different. No true articulation, no true accurate description, will bring to life the green I see in the water, or the size of the bubbles in the surf can be conveyed to them or anyone who is not sitting along side me on this boat. I am thankful that on this adventure and journey I am sharing this ride with Mark, BC, and Tiffany. How to include you all? The sights, the sounds. I suppose what matters in the end is: how we feel., how we grow and how we change.

So dear loved ones across the plant: I feel small. I feel far away. I feel like I never could have planned this moment on my own. My imagination may never have dared to dream it into reality. I feel like the past 6 months have gone by in such a blur, and yet the times/days I spent driving into camp on a daily basis exist only in a different life. I miss home. I miss Gracie (oh puppy). And yet if given the option to travel from here to there in this moment I dare say I would choose to sit here, along port side of this boat watching the mainland drift further and further away and each small island slip past as we head to our destination: Phi Phi Island.

I feel like I see your faces in crowds of strangers. And I am remembering conversation I have had in the not so recent past about what this time in Thailand was going to be like. Hearing your insights to the intention behind the days and the things packing the itinerary seem like lifetimes ago. When joking about not wanting to return home in January or wanting to continue my time travel beyond what was originally planned- instead of feeding into to the gypsy and daydreamer in my heart you simply replied in your own way that I would return, that I would lay roots. That this time would come to an end.

I have prayed about that transition and I have tried to vision what that will look like...and today on this boat in this great big world, I feel small. I feel significant and challenged. I feel inspired and changed. I feel the Lord's mighty hand and master plan in my life and heart. My skin is damp from the salt water surf that sprays up in the breeze...I wish for little more than this.

Except perhaps to reach my hand out to yours, or to see the reflection of what I am seeing in your eyes. But this letter to you my dear friends with have to suffice.

Love.Love.