Jun 29 | CPE Journal #18: June 28th

My very singular friend mailed me a letter from where he is working in the interior. It was such a very sweet note on a pretty card I can tell he made himself. In it he tells me he is so glad to be working where he is because he feels it’s good for the soul. He also asked me what I was doing with myself.

I wrote him back and described CPE this way:

“You are invited into someone’s very private world of pain, doubt, anger, love, and hope. It is completely amazing.”

This week, I’ve met with a living saint, a man haunted by an inner pain that seizes hold of him at his darkest moments, a First Nations man who has sat with chiefs at a potlatch and seen ghosts, a young woman with colitis who needs to be in the wilderness to really feel like herself, a man with cancer who is much too young for it, and an elderly woman who could do nothing but stare at the ceiling and eventually fell asleep as I sat next to her. I cannot tell you what a gift I have been given.

I also decided today that I am awesome. :)

Not more awesome than anyone else, but awesome nonetheless.

One of my classmates asked me the other day, “How do you find the courage to stand by your convictions and be yourself?”

I didn’t really have an answer. I don’t always do it, but more often than not I try to. And most of the time, I have no choice.

Here are some awesome things I’ve done:

*Lived in a foreign country

*Gotten a Bachelor’s degree

*Gotten an EfM diploma

*Learned to drive (but don’t have my license yet, heh)

*Played some great gigs

*Started a Masters’ degree

*Worked as a camp chaplain

*Helped run a kickass Lenten program

*Started CPE

*Gotten great marks in subjects I love

*Asked my man to marry me

*Made my father proud

-Clarity