The Kites of El Morro

     After a long, hard work week, I decided that I will make sure I relax and have fun this weekend. After spending last night with some good friends having a girl's night with cookies and chick flicks, today was filled with beach time and Old San Juan. While walking around Old San Juan, I was amazed at how gorgeous the city is with the Old Spanish architectural influence in the small and windy streets. There are two Spanish forts, one that wraps around the coast line of the city. It is called El Morro and it is open to the public as almost a park area. It the open space people go and fly kites. Unfortunately I did not have my camera to take a photograph, but try to imagine an old fort wall overlooking the sea with kites filling the sky. It's really an amazing thing to see. Or you could just Google it, and you will see what I had the privilege to see today.

     Earlier this week my good friend Anna shared an excerpt from a book by author Donald Miller. It is part of the introduction to Through Painted Deserts. I sat in her apartment telling her how much I love it here. I have no desire to leave Puerto Rico, I just wish I could have those that I love at home here with me. I cannot have both worlds at the same time though. Right now I would like to share some of the words from this book that she shared with me:

     I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like the seasons; they have to, or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God's way..... Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.
     I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because I was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.
     .... And my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?
     It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
     I want to repeat one word for you: Leave.
     Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn't it? So strong and forceful, the way you always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You will never be alone. Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you that will have changed.
    
    Those are chilling words to someone like me. Chilling, yet comforting, knowing that I am in His hands. I am not even sure how to put into words how it feels right now, knowing how eerily those words apply to my life right now. Thinking that my life is so important to God that He has had me leave, to change, to shine out so that I can be a different person, the person He wants me to be. Yet these words can apply to anyone, anyone who is willling to let Him in.