Meltdown.

On Monday afternoon, October 10th, at 2:30pm PST, Heather Michelle Baker commenced a full-out meltdown. This meltdown lasted for approximately 9 1/2 hours, stopping only to spend time with a few teenage girls at "Monday night knitting/crafty-type things" Group.

What happened? I'm not exactly sure. Suzanne speculated it was hormones. Lizzy called it a "Mental Health Day." All I know is that I was balled up on the couch crying for nothing and everything simultaneously.

I have felt on the verge of tears for months, since a few significant relationships ended, since finances got tighter, since I began returning home to an empty apartment every night, since I left the company of at least 30 people I love and cherish who live on the other side of the country, since Grandma and Grandpa came to visit and left.

So apparently, on Monday, my body submitted and said, "You will cry. It will be a long and exhausting time, and at the end of it, you still won't understand why it happened."

In the last six weeks, I've definitely been feeling like the novelty of being on a grand adventure has worn off, and I'm sitting here asking God why I am 2500 miles away from things familiar and centering. I've also realized that I've been away from Southeast Ohio longer than I have in my entire life, and I always miss it most in the fall, when I should be able to look outside and see rolling hills in bright red and gold.

I think that doing ministry away from a home base is difficult and risky, because although there are people who are here who care about me and who would do anything for me, when it's Monday night at 9pm, and you want to cry for no reason, it suddenly feels like home is very far away.

No worries, though...the telephone is a partially adequate substitute, and with a bit of long-distance late-night counseling, and a good night's sleep, morning brings a lot of clarity. Heidi even offered last night to sit on the phone with me while I'm watching TV, if I'm feeling horribly lonely.

It is in times like these that I cling to the Word--and this week it is Philippians 1:9-11, "And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God."

I want that--to be filled and overflowing with love that would bring knowledge and insight to help determine what is best.

There is no easy solution to the internal turmoil I am facing, other than, to rest in the knowledge that God does know, and He does care, however quiet He seems to be.