from the inside.

The past couple of weeks have been hard on my immune system- I was out of commission most of the weekend. It was right after coming back from the Mission that I started feeling the heat rise in my lungs and heaviness in my head- if I was going to catch a cold, it definitely would have been there.

And always, there was work and homework. So when Courtney texted me last night saying, "Do you want to see a movie!? I don't have time to, but I want to LAUGH" I was so in. We saw Silver Linings Playbook, which I think just won a bunch of Academy Awards?? Tell me if I'm wrong. It's the story of screwed up people finding love and redemption in their new freedom and families and each other. And Courtney LAUGHED a lot through it. Something about getting her Masters in Social Work and being a counselor- "I want to dedicate my life to working with these kind of people!" And honestly, if I was "that kind of person" I'd want Courtney to work with me. Look for a post about just her later on :).

The characters were extra honest- everything that was on the inside flipped to the outside. There's a scene where the main character Pat, played by Bradley Cooper, is searching desperately for his wedding video in his parents house where he's been living since being released from the mental hospital for a severe bipolar disorder. His entire existence revolves around getting his wife back. He has been pining to resume his broken marriage, and is searching for the video because it is something concrete to anchor himself to. He can't find it and wakes his parents, searches the house from top to bottom, and escalates from mild frustration to full rage. Yelling and fist fighting with his father. A policeman shows up and Pat immediately regrets his outburst, begging the officer not to report him so his displaced wife won't get wind of his progress- or lack there of.

This was an intense circumstance, but I think of how God promises to change us from the inside out. That He's going to start at the center and work His way out. He is the anchor I am searching for, and in the hurricane of a sometimes bipolar academic/professional world I wear my outbursts on the outside instead of coming back to the core of what I am aiming for.

Which brings me to telling you that my beautiful tribe leader goddess of a mother broke her foot last week, too. Poor thing! She is so active, and she twisted her ankle chasing after one of her kindergarten students. If you're going to break your foot, that's definitely how it can happen. And amid our text messages of self-pity (wearing it all on the outside!) of being sick and broken, she wrote "Do you know that you are the only one who has ever heard my heart beat from the inside?"

Do you know that God knows the sound of your heart beat from the inside? I find a lot of identity in what my mother said. And in God as my anchor.