onward.

It is 3:21 and I am still in San Diego.

My flights have been switched, and I will be waiting in the San Diego airport for close to 6 hours by the time I finally take off. San Diego to LA, LA to London, London to Uganda.

But it's ok. It gives me more time to soak up this fact: I am going to Uganda.

I remember the last time I was waiting at an airport like this. I was waiting, amongst the business men and women, sandy, dirty, and smelly from a trip through Neverland with my best of friends. Now, I am waiting amongst these same business men and women, but clean, hopefully not smelly, and headed to a different home.

Joel P West flows through my earphones, and I am reminded of all the times I have listened to his songs before. The times I have been in San Diego with Invisible Children, back at Northwestern, and especially the time on tour. This particular song, my dearest Suzi sang with him. And I remember her glowing as she had us listen to it the first time. Joel really does provide the soundtrack to life.

This adventure is so different. It is so surreal. I am going to Uganda. After three years of working with Invisible Children, I am going to set foot in this beautiful land in less than two days. I am going to be working toward a different sort of goal that I was with Invisible Children, but one that is just as important and equally as beautiful.

I go to Uganda alone. I travel with my backpack, book, and pictures of a life I have lived. I reflect on how I got here, and how I will be different when I set foot back in southern California. I don't know who I will be in six weeks' time. I am waiting, hoping, and praying for me to emerge and grow through this time.

So in less than two hours, I will finally - finally - be going. The past three weeks or so have been a whirlwind, but somehow I have felt peace through it all. I can't believe I am actually here .. the fear that has ruled my life for 22 years is finally subsiding, and I am breaking through to be here now. I am learning to trust .. because I have to trust that His timing is perfect, that He has a plan, and that I am going to be used.

So I thank you, dearest ones, for coming here. For reading this. For supporting me in whatever way you have. Because I don't say it enough, I am going to say it now: I love each one of you, so much. Whether we have traveled together in the past, laughed together at anything, have exchanged stories and hugs, or simply have found each other online, I cannot thank you enough for the impact you have had on my life. I will never, ever be the same because of you.

I keep listening to Joel. I let my cell phone die. I am relaxing my hold to this western world. And in a matter of hours, I will be on the other side of this world, doing who knows what. And all I am asking is to be used ..

I love you. So much. And I cannot wait to be reunited soon. My heart is with all you roadies out there .. blow the road a kiss for me and dance in the freedom it offers. And another part of my heart rests with my family in Iowa, my friends in California, Seattle, and the midwest.

onward in peace and hope, and of course, Love.
kristin.

p.s. if you have skype, please add me (kristin.lorey). Then we can chat. :)
p.p.s. if you ever get bored, I love updates. email me (kristin.lorey@gmail.com, or kristininthesky@gmail.com. Take your pick.)

what more than is there but love? love is everything. teach me to be love. make it all that i am.
[that's you, alex. thanks.]

55 hours.

55 hours from now, I will be boarding a plane. First to Chicago, then to London, and finally I will be purchasing a visa to get into Uganda.

Life is happening.

It is an odd stage to be at. People are finally finding out that I am going and they are curious as to the details. Let's be honest here .. so am I.

And then enters in the aspect of trust. I am learning to trust. Because my path is being uncovered only as I travel along it. It is grandiose and frankly quite beautiful, but the mystery of it is making me realize .. I have to trust.

I have been telling people for months that I feel as if I am on the edge of the next great stage of my life. My life has been so full, so so full. And I have been so blessed. But I have felt that the past couple of months have been a time of transition. Me being here in San Diego for some unseen reason. And now I am going to Uganda to work on a project I fully believe in, although I am only learning the details as I go.

Trust.

I have been so lacking in it. The time has come to own up to this shortcoming in my life. To face it head on and to trust that Love has a plan for me. That He is asking me to be patient, to rely on His wisdom, and to work hard and let Him work, as well. To realize that I wouldn't be going if He didn't have a reason for it.

37 hours. And I will fly across the Atlantic.

Thank you from the very core of me, to those who have supported me thus far. I could not have done it without your emotional, financial, and mostly your prayer support.

Life is happening.
here i come.
kristin.

'your life is an occasion .. rise to it.'

mortality.

Life is picking up speed. Yet again.

I laid tonight in the grass. The neighbor's cat came to greet me, and we spent time loving on one another. The trees gave me company as I got lost in my thoughts.

A week from now I will be in Uganda. A land I have dreamed of for years.
Two days from now, fifty of my new friends will be on the road. A life I love and whose challenges I miss. They will be engulfed in the beauty it offers.
Two days ago, my sister suffered. And I wasn't there to comfort her.

I am trying to grasp the responsibility and privileges of life. What it means to know something and to act on it. That choice determines not only what you believe, but who you are and who you are becoming.

I am realizing how easy it is for me to be good in the company of my friends. They are good. So so good. When they are engulfed in beauty, it catches on. And it's wonderful. But it makes me think of our origins .. would I be this me if I were living somewhere else?

And I am starting to feel again. I am realizing that a lot of times I block out emotion. I get lost in other people's stories. I try to forget myself so I don't have to deal. But I am getting attached to people again .. and they are leaving again. All the more reason for me to continue my cycle of arm's distance relationships. I am battling with myself .. trying to convince my heart to be vulnerable.

It's not that I lose faith in people. It's not that I desire so much to be loved. All do, but that isn't quite it.

It's that fear. That fear that I have let rule my life for all 22 years of it. People scare me, because once I let them in, there's no getting out of it. And if I open up and am ignored .. I shrink a little back into myself. It's happened all too often, in tiny, little ways. No one's fault, but I need to grow out of it.

I need to grow out of me.

I am hoping that the next few weeks will help me break into my stride of independency. International travel, taking on a huge, unknowing project, and standing up to greet who I am becoming. I think it will be good.

I am facing mortality. Realizing life is meant to be lived. And I am constantly rediscovering that I have no idea what that truly means.

Here is a favorite quote from Steinbeck that I find particularly relevant. It has been on my mind ever since I read it a couple of weeks ago.

"It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is."

Remember mortality. Let it bring life.

As a friend has put it, "What more than is there but love? Love is everything. Teach me to be love. Make it all that I am."

Jesus, world, friends ...
... teach me to be love. Make it all that I am.

I could go on writing forever .. my mind is reeling and I am afraid it will all come spilling over. Just in time to be filled with .. Africa.

[may i never be the same again.]
k.

it's you.

Dearest friend,

If you are coming to this page, it is time for me to say ...



THANK YOU.

So much. For thinking of me, for sacrificing for me, and for helping me get to Uganda.

As you may know, I am heading over to Uganda within a matter of days to help develop a sound base for our children's book operation. It is our goal and dream that these books will provide a source of real beauty through the telling of stories throughout this world, as well as changing lives in numerous ways. Starting in Uganda.

So thank you. I literally could not be doing this without your help.

If you want to recieve updates as we embark on this journey, please feel free to follow along on this blog at your own convenience. It's http://www.bornintocolour.blogspot.com/. Or you can email me at kristininthesky@gmail.com and I will gladly put you on an email update list. There won't be too many flooding your inboxes, but hopefully just enough.

And finally, if I may ask one more thing of you, it would be to pray. Pray for us as we travel, pray for our community as we take on so many projects, pray for us as we begin this in Uganda. There is much to be done while we are there, and we are all following Love as He takes us. Please pray that our eyes are only on Him through this. If you do not pray, a thought spared would mean the world to me. Or maybe just telling someone about what we are doing. Or even better, start dreaming big of how you are going to change this world. You can do that even if you do pray.

Thank you again. Even though I do not know what to expect, I am excited and ready to do this. And I am so incredibly grateful for you helping to give us all the opportunity to begin this.

Love you and please, be blessed.

for Love,
kristin lorey.
kristininthesky@gmail.com

magic.

birthday was ...

... magical.

good friends, laughter, looking to the future, and the remote presence of my family was all beautiful.

i think 22 is going to be a stunning year. one to remember, for certain.

thanks, loves.
k.

with a touch of urgency ...

Dearest Family and Friends,

I hope that this finds you all well. I wish that I was up to date on all of your lives, and I hope to hear more about what is going on in your lives. Here is a little update on mine, with an urgent request. I am sorry about the length, but I would be honored if you would take a few minutes to read this.

As many of you know, I have recently moved out to California, where I have continued volunteering and working with the non-profit organization I have worked with over the past three years, Invisible Children, Inc. Invisible Children is working with the northern part of Uganda, Africa, where a civil war has been raging for the past 22 years, making it the longest running war in Africa. This war, although extremely complicated, has involved a rebel army called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the government of Uganda. The LRA has been abducting children to be used as child soldiers, forcing them to fight in a war that they care nothing about.

I have been working with Invisible Children for the past three years in varying degrees, but the past few months I have been on the road with them, traveling with a team of close friends, living out of a van and working with the youth of America. We gave speaking presentations to high school youth and college aged students, as well as many churches and youth groups, helping them to understand social activism and the ways that they can get involved. I strongly believe in this organization as an outlet as the hands and feet of Christ, bringing social justice, peace, and the love of Christ to not only the youth of this nation, but also to the people of northern Uganda.

I have since ended this tour and am now searching for what to do next. While I have been helping Invisible Children plan upcoming national tours, I have also been working with a close group of friends who are seeking to do the work of Jesus through what we like to call 'creative action'. We are experimenting with ways to love people, and how to do it creatively. All of us have worked with Invisible Children at some point, but are now pursuing other dreams that are bound to change the world. We have spent the past couple of months desperately seeking God and how to share His love, and are in the process of dreaming up many different projects that are taking place both in San Diego and around the world. I have never seen God work in a way that is so obvious and beautiful as I have seen Him work in this close community of friends.

Through my work with Invisible Children and my growing understanding of the situations taking place throughout the world, I have been wanting to go to Uganda for quite some time. My heart is very attached to the people of this beautiful country, and it has been my great privilege to be able to work with and for them for the past few years. Although I have had several opportunities to go and participate in trips to Uganda, I have never felt that the time was right. But at this time, I now have the chance to go to Uganda through the community that we have been developing. One of the projects that our community is working on is creating a line of children's books that are set to tell the stories of children around the world, starting with the children of northern Uganda. Our theory behind these books is that we are realizing that as people of past generations have escaped to the beauty of imaginary worlds such as Middle Earth and Narnia through storytelling, we are hoping to help bring to light the beauty that exists in our own world through the telling of true stories. While this is still in the very early stages of creation, it is just one of our projects that I know is going to be both enlightening and life changing to so many people.

While in Uganda, I would be working to set up this project, talking to the people of Uganda about their stories, and encouraging children to start telling their own. We will be coordinating a contest of sorts for children to start writing creatively, and when a winning story is picked, start the process of publishing it. The story will be available to the people of Uganda in Lwo, their own language, and will be translated into English to be available in the United States. The original idea was that when one book is purchased in the United States, a parallel book will be given to a child or a library in Uganda. This idea is under construction, as we are in the process of talking to different publishers and ideas are still formulating. As this is only starting in Uganda, there will be many other stories from around the world that will be shared, including from countries such as Burma, Nepal, and more. It will be an incredible way for people to become educated and familiar with other cultures around the world, creating a closer feeling of community throughout the people of the world, as well as giving people voices in areas that have never really been exposed before. I am very excited to see where this takes us and how this will affect change.

While I am excited and ready to do this, I need help. As I have been on the road as a volunteer, worked as an unpaid intern, and been a college student over the past few years, I am very much lacking on financial funding. I am turning to you, dear friends and family, for any support I can get. Especially including financial support. Please understand that I know what it is like to be poor and being constantly asked for support and money by so many people, so I do understand if you are unable to support me at this time.

But I also do believe that a lot of smalls add up to one big amount. If each of my friends could donate several dollars, that would help significantly.

The thing is, I need help very, very quickly. Abnormally quickly. The plan is to leave on September 2, which is coming up incredibly soon, and I would be staying for approximately six weeks, doing work in Uganda. I am in need of about $3000, including travel prices and living expenses while in Uganda.

At this moment, I am not asking for your money. I am just interested to know if you feel you can support me. Please email me at kristininthesky@gmail.com and let me know what you are thinking. If you think you can support me financially, please include an amount that you think you can give. If you can't, I would love to know you are praying for and/or thinking of me. This is a journey that I am fully trusting God is guiding me on, and it means so much that you would be lifting me up in prayer.

If I get enough pledged support within a few days, I will commit to going and then you can actually give me the money. But at the moment, I do not feel comfortable taking your money without a promise of actually going. Also, if you want to hear more about what our community is doing, more about the project that I am embarking on, more about Invisible Children, or just want to chat, I would love to hear from you, as well.

Thank you so much for making it through this email, and I truly hope you are well. One of my biggest regrets is that I am out of the loop in so many of your lives, and I wish I could be involved more. Please let me know how you are doing, and please know I love each of you very much and I am grateful for any time we have been able to spend together. You have each impacted my life in so many ways, and I am so grateful.

Thank you again, and I hope to hear from you soon.

in Love,
kristin lorey.
kristininthesky@gmail.com

4am musings.

life is funny.

it seems that there is a sort of clarity that comes when you least expect it. like when driving home at four in the morning, an empty interstate drawing one toward the coast.

maybe it isn't necessarily clarity, but perhaps a shift in perspective.

a palm tree sticks out with a shady sillhouette. and it hits me for maybe the second time in one week ... i am in san diego.

what?

and then i begin to wonder how i got here. my mind drifts and rediscovers the delight in the relationships i have formed here. remembers the times we all danced in a newfound freedom. and then rests upon the relationships that are presently budding.

beauty is exposed in the newest of ways. and i love discovering those ways. sometimes i think i need to remember to turn off the music and listen to the silence. because when i really think about it, it is silence that has spoken more truth to me than anything else.

there is a Sound there that is not present anywhere else. at least to some degree.

on another note, i sense things are changing. a contentment is creeping in without any warning, except that a presence has returned to san diego that i have missed for over three months now. his laughter warmed my soul tonight more than anything else could have. but beyond that, i am seeing that a place is being created for me in this community, at least for these several upcoming months. i am forseeing myself nestling down and drawing in close the relationships that will be sticking around through the end of this year, and i am beginning to agree with the idea more and more.

the journey is leveling out for a while, only to become more adventurous in the near future. i do hope.

i am starting to dream big ... and not letting anything stop me.

i am beginning to open my eyes yet again, and straining to see the beauty in even the smallest of things. it is a challenge i am welcoming. far too long have i settled for the past when the present is quickly passing me by.

i am welcoming you home, although this welcome will soon turn into another goodbye. i do not know who we are in the eyes of the universe, but i am content simply with you being here.

and now i must sleep.
.k.