It’s been two years – to the day – since I left Paris. And this morning, I’ve been turning that reality over and over, like a quarter in my hand, trying to figure out how it feels.

 

Recently, I’ve come back into contact with a friend from Paris and graduate school and she said something that hit so fiercely and directly on a feeling that I hadn’t been able to hang words on. “No one ever tells you about the interesting time one experiences after accomplishing a dream and realizing you have to create the next one,” she wrote to me.

There has to come a point where I stop marking and measuring my life by Paris, right? Otherwise, I become someone that can’t move on. We all know them –  people who cling to the faded, often embellished glory of high school, college or a past relationship. We were not created, apart perhaps from our salvation through Jesus, for any single experience to define us. God, after all, does not dwell in a single moment, but all of time and His restoring work on each of us is an elaborate, continually unfolding story. We were not created to dwell inside a time capsule.

But then, there are some experiences that mark you so deeply, cover you so thoroughly that they seem impossible to shake off. What about those times – how are we to treat them? I honestly don’t believe that in remembering Paris, I’m dwelling on it. It’s not the first, second or third thing I tell strangers about myself. It is not my defining factor nor the thing I talk about most often. And yet, it remains closer than close.

What I’m realizing is that Paris was one of the very first dreams I had for myself, birthed completely from somewhere deep inside. And to think it, dream it, watch it grow into reality and then live it out has been one of the most personal ways I have ever experienced God’s love. It’s affirmation in a thousand little ways that yes, dreams are real. That yes, God hears and sees us. That yes, God spins plans together for us, lining  both our hearts and the paths of our lives to and beyond them with hints and signs that they are meant to be. In a hundred, thousand ways it is God saying to me, Yes, I am for real. And yes, my love is out-of-control for real. And it all feels closer than close, etched into the pores of my skin, continually running up and down the million tiny lanes of veins in my body – saying, Yes, He is for real. Yes,  He is here.

Two years past Paris, I have looked up to suddenly realize that I have been slowly walking into in a new, settled state. I just moved and have officially committed myself to a city, a home and a roommate for the next year of my life.  That may not sound like a lot to you, but to a girl who two years ago had zero plans of sticking around, who would have done absolutely anything for another big city adventure, it is monumental.

I had a tiny moment of panic and terror the day before I moved in which I felt the move – literally and emotionally – was me playing it dangerously safe. I look around though and see how God is lining my path with certain people and moments and I suddenly don’t care to be anywhere but here. Two years past Paris, there are new dreams inside of me that feel so tiny they almost don’t exist. Those same dreams though, feel distinct and deeply personal with just enough that’s crazy to feel like sisters of Paris. I carry them around, inside of my heart and mind like little secrets, wondering if they indeed are the next ones that my friend wrote about. Regardless of if they are or are not, I know that they (and Paris) are neither the beginning nor ending of this story – great, moving, glorious chapters perhaps, but life does not begin or end with them.

Paris may feel to me like one of the most sacred seasons of my life, but the truth is that God is telling me – and you – the same message each and every day: Yes, I am for real and yes, I am here. I love you beyond your comprehension and we are in the middle of the greatest story ever written –  please, look up and see it.