Reintroduction

It's been a long two years.

I stare at the screen, and my eyes are full of empty space, and my ears are ringing with the stillness of the words I want to say.

Hello.

Goodbye.

It's me.

I know it's been a long time.

I don't even know how to encapsulate all that the past two years have been. They've been rough. They've been bad.

But they've been so important. And that's really good.

And to squeeze all that into a page... yikes.

In June of 2016 I moved over to wordpress. I had a blog called One Sparrow's Song.

I put up 15 posts.

I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I had fought the battle of chronic Lyme, and it had destroyed me. This was my attempt to rebuild.

I wasn't ready yet, and quickly that blog died.

2016 was a big year. I was sick, really sick. I started and ended my first relationship. I almost failed my first classes. I wrote. I didn't write. I tried to do too much, and didn't do any of it well. The guilt of my own failures hounded me until I couldn't do even the smallest things I agreed to. I fell into pits so dark I thought I was losing my mind.

2017 came, and was an even bigger year. I had beaten the Lyme, but all the destructive habits I had slipped into were eating me alive. I had clung to God and my faith more while I was sick than ever before, and as I got physically well, so slowly I didn't even realize it was happening, I slipped away. I wrote as an escape, a way to lose myself when I was already too lost in the real world.


And I didn't tell anyone.


Fast forward to now.

I've come a long way.

I can go out and do things without the constant, terrifying fear that I'll get sick at any moment.

I've seen the endings of friendships that I thought would be forever.

But I've made new friends, met more people in the past few months than I have in the past three years. And I'm slowly learning how to trust them. With myself and all my pieces.

I met a boy who invited me to his youth group, who took me to his church, who is the biggest blessing of my life, someone I never saw coming, someone I couldn't even have dreamed up in order to ask for.

I've heard God use the youth group and church services to call me back to Him, as He reminds me that He is here, and I need to trust and lean on Him, in the good times as well as the hard. That I'm meant to walk through life with my hand in His through everything, not grab on when I'm falling and let go when "I've got it now."

I've been accepted to my dream college, I've decided on my major and I've never felt such a strong peace, wiping away all my worries with the knowledge that this is right where God has put me, and I've finally opened my eyes and ears to seek out his guidance.

I've started to figure out my purpose.

So I've broken. I've fallen from my nest and shattered on the ground and been buried alive by the wind and the sand and swept under by the current.

But I've been put back together, wrapped in the loving arms of my Savior and my family and my friends as I learn to stand on my feet again.

And I'm starting a new chapter by revisiting an old. When I named Flights from the Aerie, it was with the hopes and dreams of an impulsive 15 year old ready to put myself out there. Ready to fly from my nest and see the world.

And when the world was too big to see, One Sparrow's Song was about pulling back. Finding myself. Singing my song through all the mire of being sick.

Am I perfectly physically well? No.

Am I an Ultra Christian who has everything I believe in figured out? No.

But am I still scared of the future? No. This new chapter of Flights from the Aerie is about leaving my safety nest and following God, wherever he leads.

"A ship at harbor is safe. But that's not what ships are for." -John A. Shedd