It Is Well

I moved in to my new home yesterday.

My new home just so happens to be on the other side of the world from my old one.

That photo was taken this afternoon when I had coffee. No different from usual, right?

Wrong.

I had that delightful cappuccino in a cafe on the top floor of a hotel that sat across the river from a castle in Salzburg, Austria. The funny thing is, I don't even live in Austria.

I live in Germany.

And I can go to another country to traipse about for a few hours in the afternoon and have coffee if I so desire.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to my new life.

I don't even know where to begin.

I'm staying in a charming house with a family who treats me like I'm one of their own. I'm in a town nestled comfortably between the Alps and Lake Chiemsee. I'm also living absolutely for free and getting paid to spend a few hours with three delightful boys Monday through Thursday. I don't have words to describe how perfect everything is. This is everything I have wanted for so very long.

But the ideal setup and the closeness to so much history and culture isn't even the best thing about this.

The thing is, for the first time in God knows how long, I am at peace.

I sat on my first flight from Denver to Reykjavik unable to sleep much. I met a darling woman who is a volleyball coach in Denmark, and who happened to know a friend of mine from high school. Everyone else on the plane settled in to sleep within an hour or so, but I, so dreadfully fueled with excitement, could not. I shifted over from the B seat I had been assigned to the A seat that was unoccupied next to me and put in my headphones.

I don't even know how long I sat there, listening to music and watching land and ocean pass by beneath me.

I do remember when Something Beautiful by NEEDTOBREATHE started playing.

I was somewhere an hour away from landing, looking out the window I could see ice caps and glaciers and, occasionally, little bundles of flickering lights where some brave souls had taken up residence. I rested my head against the side of the plane and took a few deep breaths and spent some time with Papa.

Hey now, this is my desire, consume me like a fire, 'cause I just want something beautiful to touch me.

I always know He's there because I get chills. He's done that for a few years now, His way of turning the cold - something that I so desperately hate - into something that I associate with Him.

I know that I'm in reach, 'cause I am down on my knees, waiting for something beautiful.

The thing was, we didn't even talk. We just kind of . . . existed in the same space. And that was everything to me. I've always judged closeness with someone by not feeling the need to do or even say anything when you're together. I have that with Him.

Oh oh, oh oh, oh oh oh, something beautiful.

His name isn't even a real name. YHWH. It's breathing sounds. Think about that. Every time you take a breath you call His name. He designed us that way. We weren't supposed to function any way but without Him. We aren't capable of it.

Beloved friends, I don't even know what to say. I have never been so at peace, so rested, so happy in my entire nineteen-and-a-half years of life. I left behind everything I ever knew, everything that was ever familiar to me for a life that was so different from what I would have normally chosen for myself (a small town in Germany? I was thinking Paris or Casablanca).

And here I am and I can truly say that it is well with my soul and for the first time in forever, I actually mean it.

Whatever time zone you are in, rest knowing that you have constant access to Something Beautiful.

All you need to do is breathe.