So, I started this post intending for it to be published on May 31st, the actual one-year anniversary of my return to the States… but as life, writing and timing all tend to go, it didn’t happen quite as I planned…So, let’s just pretend it’s May 31, okay? Good, I knew you’d be down to play along.

A year ago to the day, my parents and I pulled our mini-multitude of suitcases across a circular courtyard and onto Rue de Rivoli’s sidewalk. As we peered down one of the city’s busiest streets, humming and halting with morning traffic, we watched for our van to the airport and I ordered all possible tears away.  A long day of travel stretched before us and somewhere far beyond where I could see, it ended with Texas, Mexican food and my great big, American bed. Well, all that and no more Paris.

When the van finally appeared and my dad miraculously fit our luggage inside, I said a prayer that I would make it home before my heart broke. I remember looking straight out the windshield as we rode further and further away from the city’s center, not once looking back, only really seeing the green tops of trees.

That was a year ago today.

And if you’ve followed along for the past 365 days, you know that things haven’t gone exactly as I initially hoped. There is no consuming, super sparkly job that I can throw myself into, allow to fill me up or define me. There is no raucous, rambling city to serve as Paris Part II or act as a grand master escape.

No, none of that. Just me. And the same town I’ve known all my life. And a few writing gigs and part-time jobs that all together can’t scrape up anything impressive. I started this season feeling disconnected from who I grew into in Paris yet not quite the person who left Fort Worth in January 2011, grappling with how to bring those halves together.

In truth, I’ll never have my fill of that city. As Rosecrans Baldwin finished his book, “Saying goodbye to Paris was something a person did when he knew he was dying. Otherwise, Paris was forever one day soon.” While I never have to say goodbye, I do need to be fully present in where I am now. That season of roaming untethered and all on my own – well, I think that’s what I really left a year ago today.

As this day edged closer, I started to get uneasy.  One year is a significant portion of time. The thought that there should have been more change over the course of the last year criss-crossed my brain more than once. Part of the uneasiness came from knowing that waking up on day 366 was not a guarantee that this season is over. This, I’m afraid, is not a clean-cut, one-and-done scenario.  It would be so easy if on day 366, like a math equation, days plus a specific amount of struggle plus a certain number of prayers cried would yield the beginning of a new season, but it’s never been about me fulfilling a specific timeframe of struggle to get what I hope for. That’s not how God works and it’s certainly not how He loves. It’s about His timing and His weaving of the details that fill the frame of my life.

I often picture God’s work on my life and heart like a carpenter in his studio. There’s the sawing off of unnecessary pieces, the nailing together of ideas and people, the hollowing out of desires and plans not of Him, the sanding down of roughness and unwillingness, the chipping, whittling and finessing to refinement, or maybe just usability or practicality.

This is the work I’ve felt in the past year:

I’ve learned, in months of waiting for whatever God has for me, that I crave control, sometimes desperately. From everyday motions to lifetime plans, I want to know what’s happening. I want to have a say in it. And while I may want it to be God’s plan, if I’m honest, that’s only if I really like it too. He’s been hollowing out that control and in the place its place, He’s laying down surrender and coating it with stillness.

I’ve also realized that cities are one way I escape. Cities are great and glorious places. I feast on getting lost in their streets and filling my eyes and ears with their people and rhythms. Jam-packed with languages, ethnicities and personas, they are heartbeats pulsating God’s creativity. I love cities, but as with anything good, things can quickly go wrong when I start letting them fill me up more than Him. Escaping into the fold of a city tempts me to mistake my wit for God’s provision and fool myself into thinking independence is equal to freedom.

As you might know, somewhere along the way of this past year, I looked up to discover that life was springing up right where I didn’t want it to. So many new relationships have taken root that it left me first, shocked, and second, completely unsure of what I wanted. I didn’t know how desperately I needed community until they were here, starting to fill up my days and thoughts. Pushing out the quiet and solitude of my first few months at home, it’s their presence, laughter and hearts that changed my mind on Fort Worth.

I’ve shed 25 pounds. Every time I run, I think about what an honor and gift it is to have the ability to move in such a way. Every time, in the midst of the physical act of running, I think about how this is a near-sacred experience – to work off what I have put on. And while I haven’t always viewed this year as a gift, I know that it too was a sacred opportunity. Every day is.

God was absolutely and heart-breakingly good and faithful to me in Paris. If I had a hundred trans-Atlantic flights to tell you all the stories of how He walked with me, was a shield around me and provided for me, not just in a basic-necessities kind of way but in the greatest, most gracious, uniquely-Caitlin ways, I’m not sure we could cover it all. But I don’t believe that God is one way one year and another the next. That’s not who He is. He is always good, always faithful and always wanting to give His children the best.

So what I’ve been coming around to the past few weeks is, what if Paris was the lesson – a great and glorious one where God taught me all of these things – and this past year has been my opportunity for application? I’ve heard it said that when you pray for faith, God doesn’t complete an automatic deposit, but instead, provides opportunities to build it, cultivate it, stretch it. It’s like Paris was this great Master Class – just the two of us and while He’s never left me, this year has been my chance to stretch, cultivate and build. To trust that He is faithful, to wait on the best gifts from Him, to keep my heart joyfully expecting even when it looks and feels that nothing is coming.

A friend the other day was talking about how God is never trying cage us. No, He wants His freedom to reign, ever-increasing and expanding our lives. That’s why He takes the time to hollow out the rottenness inside of us, to sand off the abrasive sides and to nail together the best bits. He’s restoring us to our initial designs, our best ways of being.

As many times as I have thought over the past year that I’m stuck, I know it’s not true. I haven’t been caged, but rather, positioned. For what or even for whom, I don’t know. Mystery and possibility abound. And so does freedom.