Decompress Re-Compass

I have been hearing it regularly, in just the past few days, flowing sweetly from the tongues of friends and strangers who have been following this blog about our trip to Croatia. There is a deep appreciation for the words chosen to post, connecting our souls together.

I always embark on my expeditions with my camera fully poised to picture the moments of magic and beauty of the experience, yet while I return with well over a thousand images, I find my heart and soul more drawn to my blog than revisiting the images. One of my dear friends familiar with my writing has told me that this trip has done something to transform my writing into something much deeper than before.

Decompression, required by the diver's body with the bends (caisson disease),takes time, tricking the body into thinking it is back at depth by increasing the surrounding evironment of air, back to the resembling the great pressure of the seas, shrinking nitrogen's bubbly balloons within the body. Failure to do so causes a rapid death. Once the body is 'back at depth' only a slow and lonely, time consuming process, gradually reducing the pressure will allow the body to deal with the excess nitrogen until it can remain in balanced levels within.

I found myself now in the throws of the bends without the ability to return to depth, until I finally remembered my many musings poured out onto my netbook as I was in the throws of the depths of my dive. My mind started diving into the many things I had captured, including a recording of the church service we attended the morning after our arrival. I need time to listen, time to decompress and re-compass my life following such an amazingly complex dive.

My compass for life was being set for personally uncharted waters with uncharted depths. The more I muse and munch on the morsels of my expereince, the more I find that my life has been re-compassed. My old compass was that of a seeker, looking and sailing towards God, yet it seems that He has given me a new compass, one that seeks the uncovering of His glory through the lives of the people He places around me. It is a refined compass calling me to a refined heart of service. All the waters before me now lie uncharted, as they were before, yet I have a new tool of confidence to move ahead. This new compass will lead me in new ways to see the hand of God no longer through His word alone, but through the lives allows me to share in this voyage, a sort of living word. Is not His word, the Bible, filled with the accounts of the interaction between God and His people and the people and their God? Did this testimony stop once the final pens were put down? Is not God at work today, in our lives as He was even then?

It may take weeks, even months for me to decompress and walk my re-compassed life. I believe my blog will be a vital part of this decompression time, revisiting, reliving, reexamining, all while continuing to explore the newly uncharted waters ahead.

My prayer for all who engage with me on this voyage, walk into each day, with a new sense of seeing, seeking, and serving our Lord of grace, compassion and majesty, as we walk together with Him.