stability.

"Stability is in the wholehearted coming and coming and coming again. Prayer is not an act I perform, words I recite, a behavior I strive to maintain. It is a returning. It is a broken life finding healing, a misplaced soul recognizing home."

I read this quote over a month ago yet cannot seem to stop thinking about it. How nice the word stability sounds, does it not? It brings with it warm feelings of safety and knowing and surety. Yet, life often totally destroys this concept. Stability is not often found in the refuge of comfort and certainty. In fact, I'm starting to believe that it is only in the unstable trials of life that we can find true stability.

Perhaps I'm drawn to this idea because everything about life overseas seems unstable. You must learn to expect the unexpected but even then, everything is surprising or shocking or unfathomable. Constantly teetering between your heart culture and this new culture. Attempting to live in the tension of the haves and the have-nots. Stumbling through the language as if a new child learning to speak for the first time (yes, even after living in country for multiple years). Stability is a thing of the past, a worn dream, an unreachable status.

Yet, I'm finding, through prayer true stability is obtainable. Prayer and stability are so closely related, so braided and woven together that it seems impossible to separate one from the other. We find stability when we give up our own strengths and sheer forces of will to come and come and come again - to never stop coming, depending, leaning on Him.

Everyday I want to wholeheartedly come and come and come again to the feet of Jesus, even when confusion clouds my vision, my dreams, my hopes, my present, my future. I want to consistently return over and over and over again to the only place where I can make sense of who I really am. I want my wild soul to give up its misplaced desires and realize its true, life-giving home.

Stability is found in the surrender, in the acceptance, in the letting go, in the healing...in the places we often do not think to look.