Bittersweet

I'm re-reading Bittersweet, by Shauna Niequist because, well, life in Korea is bitter and it's sweet. There are times I love it here. I love the public transportation system, I love being brave enough to go all the way to Seoul and wander around that massive city on my own, I love being able to navigate, I love being able to solo-travel, I love having a place of my own to decorate, I love having no one to answer to. But there are the times when living here is so so bitter I could drop everything and leave. There are times when I realize I'm completely alone, there are times when I realize I kind of have a church, but I don't have a church family or a church community. There are times when I bitterly realize the Koreans put sugar in EVERYTHING and it makes even my lattes too sweet. Last week, all I wanted to do was be with my family and say goodbye to my best-friend-cat, but I could only say goodbye over skype. There are times when I need to talk to my friends back home and I can't because it's the middle of the night there. There are times when I don't want to even try making friends here because I already have friends back home. There are times when the sight of a trash can brings me JOY because they are so few and far between. Life here is bitter, but life here is sweet.

Things that have stood out to me during my re-reading, but I'm only on page 81 of 249.

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Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness.

This is what I've come to believe about change: it's good in the way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good. By that I mean that it's incredibly painful, exponentially more so if you fight it, and also that it has the potential to open you up, to open life up, to deliver you right into the palm of God's hand, which is where you wanted to be all along, except that you were too busy pushing and pulling your life into exactly what you thought it should be. So this is the work I'm doing now, and the work I invite you into: when life is sweet, say thank you and and celebrate, and when life is bitter, say thank you and grow.

The smell of dirt and herbs seemed like the essence of life, something I needed desperately.

And this is what Denise told me: she said it's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard, she said, is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.

I write and read, in airports and hotel rooms and coffee shops and in the little blue room in our house. I read novels and essays and magazines and cookbooks and the Bible,  and I couldn't live well without those things.

Because there really is nothing like good friends, like the sounds of their laughter and the tones of their voices and the things they teach us in the quietest, smallest moments.

There's something so healing about those quiet moments at the table, where everyone's mouth - or mind or heart - is full, when you feel connected and nourished and content, even if it's just for a split second.

Sometimes we have to leave home in order to find out what we left there, and why it matters so much.

That's why travel is so important, among other reasons: to get far enough away from our everyday lives to see those lives with new clarity. When you're literally on the other side of the world, when you're under the silent sea, watching a bright, silent world of fish and coral, when you're staying up at a sky so bright and dense with stars it makes you gasp, it's in those moments that you begin to see the fullness of your life, the possibility that still prevails, that always prevails.

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There's the good and there's the bad, but they compose this journey I'm calling an adventure. I'm growing. And it's not always pretty. There are parts that are ugly and unexpected. There are parts of me I didn't know existed. There are parts that are beautiful. There are parts that are blooming. And there are parts I desperately need to out grow.