Dear Tired Heart,

You were brave and opened the cabinet of your self looking for purpose, calling, but found pain there where it seemed purpose was supposed to live. You are right. So, maybe linger a little longer? Please, don’t turn in disappointment because what is supposed to look shiny on the shelf is lying there in the soil while night falls ’round. Watch a minute?


You thought it would be tidy and contained, but did you see how the wild’s surrounded that piece of you, that peace you went looking for? Did you smell the wet air? Did it catch your breath? Exhale dear one. Now, breathe deep again.

Can you hear it, the music—the melancholic harmony of your soul in this wild, throbbing, breathing, world? Your profound deep—keeping beat, keeping time, pulsing with this world you live in, are here in, with so much purpose it’s emanating from you. It is wound. It’s true. But if you’ll stay just. a. while. longer?

wound…wo…wo..n…der…

You forming there as you weep and are wept upon. You wondering there as you lose sleep and then sleep long, feeling forgotten again. But did you feel that wind? Did you open that door and think nothingness whipped around you? Oh, but that wind was just trying to make sure you never mistook it for nothing again. Yeah, wait there?

Let that wind fan that burning deep inside, yearning for your purpose. Remember this moment—you’re alive.

You’re alive with fire in your bones—fire, reaching up, seeking flame, seeking name. Because it’s true, there is a place for you and a name all your own. The story is true. Flame seeking flame to be fed again.

Frederick Buechner is known for saying,

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

But what if you just. haven’t. quite. caught your breath back yet? What if laughter became foreign? “Gladness” might feel like the name of a distant land, but maybe…what if…it is a good time to laugh and be glad? What if the mistake of believing the rules that have been touted about purpose being shiny and tidy don’t make us mad, what if it just makes us glad?

You there, peering over the edge, wonder in your eyes, that nothing in the world can disguise—not your tired, not your shame, not your broken heart—you. Your pain is not your purpose, but your purpose just may be found in your pain.

That is something to have deep gladness about, the kind that brings a renewed perspective—compassion and vision about “the world’s deep hunger”, because all of a sudden it looks a lot like yours. What if your purpose is less something to find, and more something that simply exists in perfect harmony right. where. you. are?

What if you were to open that door to your self and keep it open? Surrender—finding you’ve been found this whole time?

Calling? Purpose? Your deep gladness is a country within. It’s waiting to spring forth and feed this place you thought you had been left lying in the soil and dark night. Can you hear the tender laughter echoing through the hills coming to tickle up your spine, moving you to a rhythm you knew a long time ago, a freedom rhythm. Night is still night and every day is new—rhythm.

Laughter comes to weave and root you—gently, powerfully—tether you to truth. It is the humility that lights up our faces as we say, “Oh!”.  “Oh!”, like Jacob in the Bible, a wanderer, deceiver, and wrestler with God, that night he camped under the stars, dreaming. He dreamed of a stairway set on the ground and it reached all the way to the sky; angels of God going up and going down on it.

Then God was right before him, saying, “I am God, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. I’m giving the ground on which you are sleeping to you and to your descendants. Your descendants will be as the dust of the Earth; they’ll stretch from west to east and from north to south. All the families of the Earth will bless themselves in you and your descendants. Yes. I’ll stay with you, I’ll protect you wherever you go, and I’ll bring you back to this very ground. I’ll stick with you until I’ve done everything I promised you.”

Our faces will light up like Jacob when he woke up from his sleep. He said, “God is in this place—truly. And I didn’t even know it!” He was terrified. He whispered in awe, “Incredible. Wonderful. Holy. This is God’s House. This is the Gate of Heaven.”

We’ll say, “Oh” and we’ll laugh. Because Jesus (Yeshua) said it,

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

This soil you and I are made from, we belong, here. It is our inheritance. You are beautiful, here. You and your process are too unique to be compared to someone else’s and too made of the same stuff to ever consider it being better. Earth—God’s wildly varying masterpiece.

This is your calling. Paul said it, “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”

If you’ve gone looking for your purpose and feel at a loss, I want you to know that if you feel like you’ve hit the ground that is actually a pretty great place to be. It is a humble place, it is an earthen place, a place of birth and inheritance.

You’ve been brave enough to open the door and find you’re no compartmentalized cabinet at all and that is a marvelous thing. You’ve lingered awhile with me, thank you. What if now you turn around and invite one other in? One other who has found they are made from dirt too, and don’t mind finding a belonging here, don’t mind laughing about how we’re not all shiny? One other ready to lose themselves in order to find themselves in Jesus’ words too?

Sometimes we wonder who we are because we never just let ourselves be us. Take that from a recovering people pleaser. You are a wonderland waiting to be explored. This is your invitation to adventure, dance, and to laugh, not like no one is watching—but rather like you are seen, known, and delighted in forever. Do not be afraid.

Much love from your fellow citizen and sojourner of the land called Glad,

Raynna


Hi, I’m Raynna Myers. I’m a writer and photographer and I really just want to live well, so I process life through writing and shooting—both have simply become prayers.

Thanks for reading, I’m glad you are here. Subscribe to stay connected? I’ll send ya an unpublished poem, Bound by Light, to say welcome and thank you.

You can find my book Pray, Like a Woman in Labor on Amazon. It’s a book of prayers based on the prayer Jesus taught his disciples. It’s a book of becoming.