It exists.

Jesus, you need to  I'd appreciate it if you'd choose a place a little less public to speak to my heart than at a middle table in a busy coffee shop.  It's hard to squelch the tears without quenching the Spirit or looking an absolute fool in front of complete strangers.

But as I'm reading through the Gospel of Matthew, and furiously underlining and scribbling personal notes on the text in my journal, the momentum of my heart builds, accumulating a pressure so heavy my heart feels like its about to burst and seep out of my eyes.

It has nothing to do with the Words on the page; the reason for the tears.  Or maybe it has everything to do with the Word,  I don't know,  God's ways are higher and more mysterious than one can discern at times.

But in a sweet little whisper as I surveyed the panoramic scene on the wall of the Old City on the riverbank, He spoke to the deepest part of my heart, addressing a concern that has long caused heavy disappointment within.  Among many other things, there's a beautiful duality in this city, a place where southern-charm and hospitality co-exist with the romantic, culture, a decorated history, and street-names with French -eaux suffixes.  A beautiful combination of two things I have absolutely cherished since I was running around barefoot in my yard wearing a hooped-skirt Belle dress, dreaming I was a sweet-speeched debutant, while teaching myself simple French since the time I had learned how to read.  Suddenly this meld of culture that I never knew existed, revealed its reflection of the unexpressed concerns of my heart.  How can a duality between two seemingly different cultures, two polar-opposites, truly exist?

The answer is simple: because of Him.  He not only knows our deepest desires, but, in many cases (if not all of them), He's place them there.  And simply because He is a creative and loving and provisional God, He can, and will, bring them into existence in a beautiful, outward manifestation of the ironic and complicated and seemingly-impossible combination of our heart's desires.

As so much of my heart longs for foreign soil, and the simply-complicated nomadic, missional life of dirty feet and hungry hearts and bellies, the other half of my heart longs for the domestic, landscaped soil of the stable, traditional family life with dirty diapers and hungry babies.  The part of me that doesn't mind living out of a suitcase for months at a time, is also extremely dissatisfied by the claustrophobic space of my tiny closet.  The part of me that loves the convenience of one-stop grocery shops, prefers the adventure of open-air markets and the uncertainty of finding each ingredient and negotiating a fair price.

The worry has been that these two lives don't exist in the context of each other, but through the complexity and irony of the sweet and savory city that is New Orleans, the Lord has affirmed that it does exist.  He has not given me dreams in my heart of mythical proportions.  They are indeed God-sized, and through Him alone, all things are possible.