I am a little church

thrifting is redemptive

2012-01-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

I have always envied people who thrift well. You've met at least one of them, I bet. You say, "oh my gosh I love your totally unique and vintage looking shirt/bag/end table/necklace/artwork/sweater set! Wherever did you happen upon such an awesome item?"

Their answer is always annoying: "Oh this? Goodwill/ARC/Savers/The DAV."

It's a skill, I think, and one that I've thought for a long time that I don't have. But recently I hit my stride. I walked into Goodwill with big dreams and I walked out with a cartful of treasures. I can't remember the last time I was so pleased with myself. I think it had something to do with karaoke? Either way. This was a good feeling.

I can't believe it took me so long to figure this out. I think the whole idea behind it - behind purchasing something that someone once already purchased and loved and is done with - is lovely. Because you take something that's been around the block a time or two. Something that's been used and loved and let go and used and loved and let go and maybe held on to in memory or spirit, but even then, let go. Something that is beautiful in its wornness, lovely in it's usedness, potential-full in it's wear and tear. And that thing - it can be turned into something entirely different, if you want it to. A beat up old frame can house a new family portrait or can be loved again as trendy wall art. A plate can be repurposed as a cake tray. Anything can be anything else. It is, for all intents and purposes, the same reason I love working with and living among broken people; because redemption is a possibility, for me as much as for them.

Thrifting is redemptive.

And let's be honest. The world is full of stuff. And everything good that exists has more than likely already been bought at least once anyway. Why waste good money on buying it again when you can have the one that other lady already bought once for the low, low price of $2.49 and half off of THAT with a pink sticker on it? I'm just saying.

I am a little booknerd: The Hunger Games

2012-01-25T20:36:00.000-07:00

I love reading. I'm an unapologetic nerd when it comes to books and I'm sorry I'm not sorry. I'm almost positive it's hereditary, in which case I'm doomed. I just finished reading The Hunger Games Trilogy - like, 6 minutes ago - and I must say, for adolescent literature, it did not disappoint. I just love getting caught up in a book [or in this case, three books] and feeling like the world needs to stop so I can keep reading. I love being so enthralled in a story that I can't make myself go to sleep even though my eyes are fighting with me. I even sort of love that all day today I could barely focus on anything other than the last third of the last book waiting for me on my nightstand. Both hours of The Bachelor were even hard to get through, you guys, which is saying something, because I love The Bachelor.

That's how I know a book was good. Well, there are a few ways, really.

1. When I am so caught up in it that I have a hard time functioning in the regular world.
It doesn't happen terribly often and sometimes it's why I don't read as many books as I could, because when I get into a good one it's hard to stop me. It's like when you start watching Mad Men on Netflix and you say, "ok, one more episode," until you've said it so many times that it's nearly 6 AM and you're just really glad in that moment that you don't have a job. Not... that I've ever done that. But really. There are few things more delightful to me than getting wrapped up in a good book. The Hunger Games fed that for me three-fold.

2. When I am so sad it's over that it makes me turn the last few pages slower.
In the same way I love being enthralled in a good story, I love to hate when it ends. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I hold off on reading the end as if to delay the inevitable. Sometimes I write a blog about it to deal with it's over-ness. When I finished the seventh Harry Potter I was devastated; thought I would never love again. But that's the tell of a really good novel - when even just through words, through rhetoric and dialogue, you are so attached to and involved in the development of the characters that for a weird little minute it feels like a loss when they're gone. [also - for the record - I am Team Peeta all the way]

3. The writing has got to be good.
I want adjectives and big words and passion and emotion. I don't care if you have the most interesting story line or M. Night Shyamalan plot twist in the whole wide world. If the writing is lame, the book will be too.

4. No one wants to be a cover-judger, but let's get real, I'm a sucker for a good cover.
Or as my friend Beckie says, we like "sexy books." All three of those hardback badboys are sexy as all get out and will look stupendous out on my shelves for the world to see. [That, friends, is what we in the business like to call a bonafide perk.] Don't hate that.

This is specific to novels, obviously. In fact, if I'm reading another kind of book, say, Christian Inspiration or Self-Help for Women or some other category from the sections in Barnes and Noble you hope no one ever catches you browsing in, my criteria is almost exactly opposite. As in, I know it's good when after I ~~cry through~~ read the first chapter I never, ever want to pick it up again. But I for sure should read the whole thing, like, yesterday. But I digress.

This little trilogy provided a nice little break from reality for the few days it took me to read them. I don't ask for much in a novel, really. Take all my attention while we're involved and make me miss you when you're gone. Then just try to not write like you're texting a 14 year old or writing an online dating profile, slap on a sexy cover, and we'll be in business.

please, someone, manage my case

2012-01-19T21:11:00.001-07:00

Don't get me wrong. I am super thrilled, ecstatic even, that I was born with the wherewithal to take care of myself. I'm glad that I have the mental capacities and social skills [most of the time] to take care of my life on my own, without much help. But there are times when, even if I've got all my faculties in working order, I think to myself, I NEED AN ADULT! And I do, you guys, I honestly do. And those are the times that I wish that I, a case manager, could have one of me. My own personal case manager/assistant/stand-in adult. I wouldn't hate it, that's all I'm saying.

Here are some of the things I would require of my me if I had one.

+ Remind me to get my prescriptions each month. Do I remember to reorder my client's meds every month? Almost always, I do. But once a month I run out of Zyrtec and forget to get more until I am so itchy [I really should probably live in a bubble] that I literally can't take it anymore and finally go the 500 yards from my bedroom to my Walgreens.

+ Remind me to return movies I rent from Redbox within 24 hours. Or, at the very least, within the calendar year - both of which I appear to be constitutionally incapable of.

+ When I need a drivers license, or license plates, or any other item that will require me to go to an awful place like the DMV to get it, please pick me up and take me there. Oh, and remind me to save the money to get the thing I need. Oh, and if I get flustered, feel free to step in and tell the cranky person on the power trip behind the desk to lay off.

+ Make me get a car wash. I am afraid of the car wash. I have severe and irrational anxiety about going to one. I could use a case manager for emotional support and maybe some exposure therapy so I can take care of things like this.

+ Be my payee? I'll give you my check every two weeks and then you can make sure my phone bill, rent, storage unit bill, Visa, etc, all get paid on time. Then you can give me whatever's left for my personal needs and I won't spend any more than that ever because you won't let me.

+ Remind me to send birthday acknowledgments in a timely fashion.

+ Remind me that I like talking to my out-of-town friends and it would behoove me to call them.

+ Remind me that I don't want to do something every night of the week, so scheduling my life in such a fashion is going to cause me extra/unnecessary anxiety/tiredness.

-- Actually, can you just schedule things for me? That would be nice, since I can't seem to remember to not schedule counseling on the one Wednesday a month when I have book club. You'd think I learned my lesson when I double booked it the first time with both small group AND watching The Bachelor.

+ Help me be on time to things. Wake me up in the morning. Enforce a bedtime. Time, in general? Not my forte.

+ Tell me when I'm making bad choices. Or when I've made one, point it out. Or when I'm about to make one I've already made before, remind me about the time I made it before and how badly it went for me that time. I seem to lack the ability to do that for myself.

+ Oh, and maybe let me know that when I've eaten broccoli and popcorn for dinner not once but twice, it's time to go to the grocery store. Actually, wanna drive me there?

When it's someone else's life [like my clients] I can do stuff. Not all of that stuff, because that's more the work of a personal assistant/slave than a case manager in most cases. But still. Probably instead of whining that I need a servant I should just do what normal people do; make a list of New Year's resolutions and get on it.

I guess it's just nice to daydream about what it would be like to have someone be a grown up for me every now and then. But alas, I am capable. And I live on a social worker's salary, so I'll have to keep doing things on my own for now. At least until I am rich and/or famous and can hire someone to be responsible for me while I breeze through life renting Redbox movies willy nilly and getting car washes all the time without a care in the world.

That's a reasonable expectation. Right?

on perks

2012-01-12T22:12:00.000-07:00

One time, in what will go down in history as one of the best conversations I've ever had with my friend Adam, he asked a few of us a simple question: Would you ever date someone for the perks?

So we're thinking, ok, like, if he's an airline pilot, you could go on trips all the time! Or if he's got a sweet house in the mountains you could go skiing every weekend and not have to sit in traffic all the live-long day. Those kinds of perks. But before we could weigh in, Adam went on, and ohhh, am I glad he did:

You know, like a pizza delivery guy. For the free pizza.

Clearly.

Sometimes I wish, when you met people, you got to see a little list of the perks they come with. Because everyone has perks that you can't necessarily see at the outset. And what if you don't get to talk to them long enough to find out that their perks are exactly your dream perks! You know what I'm saying. Maybe you're a better person than me and you never think things like this. But I mean, I think it would make dating a whole lot easier, for one thing. And would be, in general, just kind of a fun thing to know about people. No?

It might look like this:

Super fun family! Won free movie tickets for life in a stroke of luck in a drawing at Hallmark once, so you can go to as many movies as you want until the end of time! The Love Language he speaks best is the one you need to receive the most!

or,

Family owns a cruise line! Bakes the best [thing you like best in the world] you'll ever taste in all your life! So good at giving second chances it'll make your head spin! Has a Netflix subscription!

or even,

Seat heaters in the car! Won't even be annoyed when you try on nineteen-ish outfits every time you leave the house! Personal friends with the drummer from [your favorite band]! Will watch The Bachelor with you even though he hates it!

I suppose this might take some/all of the fun out of getting to know people. It's possible. Probably the reason life isn't that way is because it would take away the challenge. Now when we meet someone we've got to stick around long enough to find out what all their lovely bits are. Yes, actually, I think I just talked myself right on out of the perks debate - because perks, by their very definition, are benefits which one is entitled to as a shareholder. Boom. You don't get them right off the bat because there's a requirement on your part. You've got to invest first.

So there it is, then. Perks are there, it's to be sure, everyone's got some. But they are like presents you unwrap over time or a bonus in your paycheck you don't expect. You don't get to have them for nothing, you have to earn them, sort of. You have to stick around long enough - through the days that maybe aren't so fun and maybe some of the less lovely parts - in order to get the benefits. People aren't meant to be easy. They're not meant to be advertised. They're meant to be cherished and earned and unwrapped and delighted in, both for their perks and their not-so-perky parts, too.

So, yeah, it'll be a sweet deal if you've got DVR. And you'll probably thoroughly enjoy my family's affinity for party buses. But mostly I want to know that you'll love me even though I'm late to everything I do and my socks never match. And I bet you want to know I'll stick around even when you get cranky and don't fight fair.

After all, those are the perks we're really after, amiright?

So let's hear it. What kinds of perks are you into? Better yet, what are your perks?

everyone isn't everything

2012-01-06T08:51:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I have been fortunate to know some really fabulous people. I have had truly great friends, each one different than the last. Zionsville friends. Collegiate friends. Cul-de-sac friends. 8th grade confirmation class friends. Lake friends. Sigma friends. Beze friends. Intro to Biblical Interpretation friends. Recovery friends. Church friends. Work friends. I've had all kinds of friends and I bet you have too. It's fun to look back on each of them, and what they brought to my life. It's a lovely gift.

Knowing all those people, maybe, like me, you've caught yourself trying to figure out why people are the way they are. Because people are not always peaches. Maybe my most consistent friend is not so very generous and my most generous friend is ever so slightly flaky. Perhaps the nicest person I know is not even a little bit funny. And my most fun friend might be the worst at consoling me when I'm sad. My most honest and genuine friend might also be the one whose words hurt the most often. No one is perfect. No one, I don't care if they are the best of all besties you have ever had in your life, is doing it all right.

The other day I caught myself internally criticizing someone I love dearly for doing a subpar job at something that I am already fully aware is just not their strength. I was right in the middle of being awful and something struck me: everyone isn't everything.

I can't expect them to be. I'm not, that's for certain, and even though I'm sure the people I am in relationships with sometimes get frustrated with me for who knows what all I do that's frustrating, they're still in relationships with me. They still show up to my birthday parties and take my phone calls and pick me up from the airport. Because on some level they have accepted that I am not everything. That everyone isn't.

And it's fine, it's all fine. I don't need everyone to be everything. And if I live a life in expectation that everyone will be everything - well, I think that will turn out to be a very lonely life for me. I think the best we can hope for is that we meet enough people who are things that we aren't that we can learn from them how to be that thing that they are, if even just a little. I think if we can do that, we don't have to be everything. We'll be us - limited, less-than-everything us - with just the faintest resemblance of everyone we've ever met. And that will be enough.

So instead of focusing on what people aren't, I vote we shift our eyes to what they are. I add caution in that we should not use this as an excuse to become complacent with the things we already are because I think we should learn to be a little more than we are. And on the other end of that spectrum, I vote we not allow ourselves to be treated recklessly; I hope we can recognize those who aren't interested in learning more and let go when the time comes. Because even though you aren't everything, you are you, and that is something worth protecting.

And most of all, let's be gracious to the ones who aren't everything, but who love us with everything they are just the same. Because those, I think, are the keepers.

christmas cards = primitive facebook

2011-12-30T13:25:00.001-07:00

I was talking with my dad over my trip to the homeland about Christmas cards. We were going through the list of people we see each year in the cards and how it's nice to get up-to-speed on their lives. He made a comment about how he should get back on the holiday card bandwagon so he could keep up with those people more effectively. In my head I thought: isn't that what Facebook is for? Which is when it occurred to me. Christmas cards are just like Facebook.

I always looked forward to the lovely day on which the very first holiday card arrived. I loved as they stacked up in the card-sleigh, and every time a new batch rolled in I would go through them like they were baseball cards, picking MVP's, laughing at poems written in earnest, crying as I read aloud from a heartfelt letter. We'd see who has dyed their hair since last year and who is living in their mom's basement again and it was great fun. Perhaps something of a horrible exercise in judging books by covers and whatnot, sure, but fun nonetheless.

Then along came Facebook.

See, in the olden times, pre-social media, there were Christmas cards. You'd spend a month of the year receiving small doses of people's lives, pruned to look as pretty as possible. You'd get all caught up on their goings on in their concise anecdotes, to see what is without a doubt the picture they've decided is the best they took all year. But I bet you'd also have a little their life looks so perfect moment of resentment. In that moment you tend to forget that you yourself wrote your card to show off your good parts. You yourself picked that picture of you at the one formal event you attended all year in order maybe to appear more glamorous than you are. These are things our brains forget to remind us when we feel the pang of low self-esteem at those whose lives seem prettier than ours on holiday-themed cardstock. We're all a bunch of [carefully wording, photoshopping] liars.

So Facebook, I'm pretty sure, would be the equivalent of if every single day of the year from every single person you have ever known you got an upbeat holiday blurb and the very best picture of them they could locate. It's like constantly being beaten over the head with other people's success and good fortune. Where before we got one little mini update once a year and that was enough, at the present moment I think we are significantly too aware of what everyone is up to, all the time. I think it's not terribly healthy.

And talk about a horrible exercise in judging books by their covers and whatnot. Woof. It's no wonder we're sent into a tizzy when someone posts a bad picture of us or when we tipsy-post something we shouldn't have. Within moments we'll know if someone Likes it. Maybe someone'll comment something sassy or reproachful and we'll feel ashamed. Maybe as the minutes and hours pass, no one will say anything. That's the Facebook kiss of death. That's like someone calling right after the holidays and telling you, "oh I got your card this year" but not saying whether they liked it or not. You're left to wonder, and likely you'll assume the worst. You'll berate yourself for not including the picture of that one day your hair looked really not like a lion's mane, or mentioning all that volunteer work you're doing. Better luck next year.

We should all try harder to not get sucked into the holiday card game. To recall that while that girls' profile picture makes her look like a supermodel, mine is from the one day I intentionally dressed up for the specific purpose of getting my picture taken and the other 364 days of the year I was probably wearing my sorority sweatshirt with the puff paint stain or one of it's siblings, like the softball hoodie I stole from my high school. I've had people at the worst times in my whole life tell me, based on my Facebook, that "your life seems so great," or it "looks like you're having so much fun," or they "just love to read your statuses because they're always so happy."

Facebook, much like a Christmas Card, isn't a full picture of reality.
It's just a happy snapshot of a normal, messy life.

Emmanuel, Barnabas?

2011-12-25T02:01:00.000-07:00

[Another repost? Yes. Because I thought about writing a Christmas post and this all still feels true and relevant and lovely. So a revised repost it is. Merry Christmas readers!!]

I grew up with the Amy Grant & Mariah Carey Christmas CD's as staples for the month of December. I remember that on the day after Thanksgiving, Mom would drive Thomas and I to Kansas City to see Nana, etc, and it was on that day each year that we broke out the Christmas tunes. I would sing "All I Want for Christmas is yoooooou baaaaaaaby" until my throat hurt. I really like music in general, and I really like that Christmas music is only for a special period of time once a year. Nothing makes me crave something quite like telling me I can only have it for a month of the year does.

Just as a funny aside, when I was a wee one, I loved the Amy Grant version of "Emmanuel, God With Us." The trick is, I genuinely thought for most of my childhood that the words were "Emmanuel, Barnabas." (Before you judge me, sing it. It sounds right.) I can just hear me, 9ish years old, singing my little heart out. And I can just hear Thomas, 3 years my junior and know-it-all-y as can be, "ARE YOU SAYING BARNABAS? Mooooom, listen! Megan thinks its Barnabas!!!" Then I probably hit him and we both more than likely cried, but I'm just guessing here.

Not much has changed about much, including the fact that I often am mistaken about the meaning of things. (And Thom is usually there to correct me, but that's another story for another time.) Now, I can't say I've ever really been searching for the "meaning of Christmas," at least not the way they do in Lifetime Original Movies or Hallmark specials, but nevertheless, I think I finally get it. I think this is a big deal. Really big, actually. Bigger than I have words to describe, in fact, which is the kind of thing that I find at once both frustrating and delightful.

In church last Sunday we talked about Emmanuel. Just like I once thought Amy Grant was singing about a guy with a funny name, I don't think I really understood Emmanuel until last Sunday. The concept that God is here, with us, is hard. Lots of bad things happen. God is there? It is hard for me to believe that in the past two years of loss and suck that God was here. In the past week, even, God was there? I hear so many people cry out in their pain, where is God? Why hasn't God shown up? It was pointed out that more often than not, those words are uttered as a question, in desperation. Far less often are we sure of it.

Christmas doesn't just bring the answer to those, our most personal pleading - it is the answer. Baby Jesus is Good News. He shall be called Emmanuel, which means "God with us." The babe didn't erase our pain or guarantee us a life free from sadness, loss, rejection, hurt, loneliness, addiction, anger, or resentment; which I think sometimes is what I expect "God is here" to look like. But alas, Christmas doesn't signify that we won't have to deal with that stuff. And really, how much more powerful - personal - is a God who does not remove our pain but steps right into it with us. Sometimes I wonder if asking the question of why God lets bad things happen isn't a little like asking what the color blue tastes like. That's not really the point, is it, so there isn't really going to be a satisfactory answer. I don't know. Some days this makes more sense to me than others, but right now, I feel it in my very bones. Emmanuel is not a question. It is a promise that's been kept.

There are times, not often mind you, when I get a feeling that I like so much that I wish I could bottle it up and give it away. I don't mean to imply that I have a monopoly on warm fuzzies or that you are not capable of getting it yourself. Probably even more, I'd like to save it for myself on the days when my bones feel less sure of things. I want to take it off like a jacket and give it to the people I know who feel sure of nothing right now other than that life is hard, because I have been there and it was awful.

It is possible that being there was the only way I could get to this place, though, this truth. It is possible that I had to be there in order to really, finally, fully feel the peace I felt last Sunday when I heard that God is here.

Here.
It's not a question, it's an answer.

things that don't have faces

2011-12-22T18:37:00.001-07:00

I decided to revisit and revise this previously posted post, because today was a hard day. And I wondered for a minute, when I got home tonight, just why it was so hard. And then I realized: I've had this job for 7 months. Mental illness has faces.

Kids are funny, and my nephew Timmy is one of the cleverest. I find that when he doesn't want to do something, he can usually come up with a pretty good reason that he can't. Once, another little boy wanted Timmy to play with a worm. Clay held up the worm and Timmy told him, regretfully, "oh, I can't. I'm not allowed to touch things that don't have faces."

Besides that this may very well be my favorite sentence of all time, what an interesting thought that is.
Things that don't have faces.

As an aside, it is cold. This morning when I got in my car, it was -13. Degrees. Fahrenheit. Given my personality it may not shock you to learn that I rarely check the weather. As such, I often leave the house wearing inappropriate footwear, and sometimes I walk out my back door in the morning and step into a winter wonderland when I didn't even know it was supposed to snow. But on Sunday at the food bank I had so many people alert me to the weather that this time, I knew it was coming. We prayed a lot this Sunday about the impending temperature drop. We prayed for jobs to come through so that they could afford a motel room for a couple of days, things like that. A mere 48 hours later I walked out of the gym and the sweat in my hair froze. It was in that frigid moment that I started to really worry about those who wouldn't have a place to sleep when it was in the negative teens.

I have to admit that I haven't worried much about this in the past. It's never bothered me to the extent that it did yesterday, anyway. And I felt like such a jerk because it was the first day I worried about it, but it was far from the first time people had been homeless in subzero temperatures. I felt selfish and ignorant and hypocritical. But maybe it isn't that I was a soulless human being before yesterday (fingers crossed). Maybe it's just that this time when it struck me that people would be without homes in this disgusting cold, it didn't just look like a special on the evening news; it looked like people I hugged and laughed with not two days ago. It's not that I've never had compassion for people sleeping on the street, it's just that now, homelessness has faces.

It's sometimes hard to really understand things that are beyond the realm of our experience, because those things don't yet have faces for us. It's not that I don't care or don't see it before, it's just a different, more wholehearted kind of care and sight after. Giving pain a face makes it real-er. And when something gets real for us, I don't think we need to be embarrassed because we didn't get it before. It doesn't mean we're heartless, just so very limited.

I didn't have much empathy for addiction until it had names and stories, until they were in my family, until I saw my own face in theirs. Maybe divorce is just a statistic until your best friend gets one. If you come back from Africa and suddenly can't talk about anything but, it doesn't mean you're going through an "Africa phase" or that your concern is a fad. It's that now, Africa has faces. Maybe you never felt the need to speak out against derogatory slurs until homosexuality was a friend you dearly loved and mentally handicapped was the sweet kid holding your hand tightly at Young Life camp. Suicide didn't hurt until it was someone I'd gotten accustomed to seeing all the time. When I heard about Penn State I had to close my office door and cry for a longer time than I even expected, because child abuse has faces. I didn't often think about cancer until it bulldozed my family, and now even hearing the word hurts. And I didn't pray much about people sleeping on the streets until sleeping on the streets had faces.

My stomach was in knots as I tried to pray over every name I could think of. But through the knots there was a whisper of truth and with it, a sigh of relief: it didn't matter if I knew their names because Jesus knows their faces. God knows each of our faces. We are all faces, names, stories, children, and the knots that I feel over the names I know is nothing compared to the love, compassion, and pain that Jesus feels for us and with us. And while I can't begin to wrap my mind around bad things, while I feel completely blindsided in the face of tragedy, at the end of the day I believe that God is big, bigger than any of it. And Jesus is so personal that the smallness of him can seem almost counterintuitive. I believe he knows your face and my face and the faces of everyone I just mentioned and then some. The very hairs on our heads are numbered. If even just one of us is lost, he knows it, and he comes looking.

I chose this profession. I've picked a life with people, and as I've mentioned before, some days it's hard. Today was harder than most. Maybe this whole face thing is another part of why we're meant to be together, in community, taking care of each other - so that when the horrible days show up, we're not alone. So that we can catch a glimpse of the immensity of the tenderness of God. When we feel the knots (that come, inevitably, with community), I believe it's a reminder that God is big enough to be powerful and small enough to be personal. What a lovely juxtaposition.

Even though it means we have to feel heartbroken sometimes, may our hearts keep right on breaking for the things that break God's heart. Let us [continue to] see faces.

santa is a party clown

2011-12-16T17:13:00.000-07:00

I continue to posit over and over that my niece and nephew are the funniest kids on the planet. And though she doesn't get nearly enough press on here, my big sister Amie is a kickass mom, and when it comes right down to it, that's why her kids are so cool. And you know I mean it because I said the a-money-money word and I rarely do that in so public a forum. But Amie is so great that she warrants a public swear every now and then. As big sisters go, I really hit the jackpot with mine. Little sister was a role I got comfortable with later in life, when I was maybe not so little, but it's hands-down one of my favorites. And as you can see, just because you're an adult doesn't mean you don't still think your big sisters are the best dressed and coolest ever. For many years I was fairly focused on maintaining my position as bossy elder sister to Ben & Thomas [sorry dudes], so I am experiencing little sister syndrome late in life. So good.

Anyway, for sure Timmy and Shelbie are smarter than me. I'm sure of it, because they are constantly saying things that make my internal dialogue go something like this: I knew that. Right? I did, didn't I? Surely... I must have... They say things that are so funny and profound all at once that it's hard to fully wrap my mind around it. Given their track record, I wasn't that surprised when Timmy said to Amie the other day, about Christmas, the following:

"So, is Santa like a clown for Jesus' birthday?"

[are. you. kidding. me.]

Today I spent more time trying to come up with a Christmas list than I did thinking about Jesus. I'm embarrassed about it, but it's the truth. And that's what Timmy was getting at when he said that to my sister.

"Jesus is what's important, right?"
"Santa is fun but Jesus is the big deal, right?"
"This party is really for Jesus, right?"

Whether he knew it or not, with that little question, Timmy hit a pretty hard theological nerve. For me at least. Because I think no matter how good you are, no matter how much you love Jesus and how well you evangelize and how many seminary degrees you have - yes, even for you - there may come a moment where you're so caught up with the clown that you forget about the real reason for the party. There are moments when things that are not the point take the spotlight over the real reason we're celebrating. When our focus goes to gifts that are shiny and tangible. When we gloss over the gifts that make our souls more beautiful, not so much our wardrobes.

Clowns aren't bad. They're fun, so long as they're not starring in a horror movie. But if you're at a birthday party, you don't fawn over the clown, do you? You don't tell the clown how much you love it, right, how glad you are it was born? Unless, of course, it's a clown's birthday... but let's forget that as an option or my whole analogy is shot. My point is this: instead of spending the holiday season focusing on frivolous entertainment, on Santa Claus and Christmas lists and peppermint mochas and the Mariah Carey Christmas album, I hope that we can all [myself perhaps most of all] heed Timmy's warning and not lose sight of what we're celebrating.

Because this party is really for Jesus.

everything is fine

2011-12-13T22:59:00.003-07:00

I'm sitting in a 24-hour coffee shop which is right next door to a Cash For Gold establishment. I like this place because there are books everywhere and a piano and not many people and it's a little weird, maybe, but then again so am I, maybe. I came over here straight from recovery group, R@W, where I was just tonight whining about the fact that it seems like nothing is happening in my life right now. I'm bored. I catch up with people and I have nothing new to report, and it's annoying. I'm ready for some excitement and it seems like the readier I get, the less excitement seems to come. The guy making coffee remembers me from last week, so that's something I guess. Maybe I'll be a regular here. Or maybe the Cash For Gold sign is too bright, shining in my eyes. Hard to say.

But now I'm sitting here. I'm listening to Belle & Sebastian, at the moment. It's a song I don't really like, but I don't want to waste a Pandora skip just yet, so I'm hanging in there. There, finally, it's over. And another crappy song has taken it's place, but for some reason I haven't changed the channel yet and honestly I probably won't, for no particular reason. Maybe things will turn around, if I use a skip? Eva Cassidy. Yes please. I am g-chatting with my brother, and I am laughing out loud because he is being funny. And he is in a Starbucks hours and hours to the east of me, laughing out loud because I too am being funny. The girls across from me are obviously horrified, but I'd be lying if I said I cared. I wonder if my brother is as unconcerned with the judgment of the banjo-playing transient he's sharing a table with. I'll have to ask.

And it just struck me -

nasty old chai tea taste in my mouth, another crappy song on Pandora, writing things and talking on the phone intermittently and getting judged by girls wearing too much eyeliner for laughing out loud in public, still a little in disbelief that a real-live author posted my writing on her blog, my eyes are getting sleepy and now I'm antsy to leave because I remember I'm going to finish my book tonight

- that I'm just fine.

It may not be exciting, today. But everything is fine.

remember that time I online dated?

2011-12-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

There comes a time in every writer's life, I think, where funny has to trump embarrassing. Where no matter how much you don't want people to know you did something, it's too good not to share with the world. That time, for me, is today.

A while back I found myself in kind of a pickle. A jam, if you will. Other foods that come in jars maybe, too, I'm not sure. For one thing, I was becoming acutely aware that I suck at dating. I'm good at a lot of things, but dating is just not one of those things. For the other thing, I was stuck in a pattern of spending a lot of energy on unproductive... situations. Yes, that is an accurately vague word to describe bad news boys. So in a moment of weakness, curiosity, and boredom, I did something I swore I would not do. At least not until my mid to late sixties, anyway.

My famous therapist's encouragement ringing in my ears, I precariously entered my credit card number, THEREBY entering the forbidden and more than slightly embarrassing land... of online daters. Yes, that's right.

I signed up for a month of Match.com.

I know, I know, I was disappointed in me too. But lucky for you, this experience was, right out of the gate, just absolutely delightful blog fodder. That made it seem less like vulnerability and more like a social experiment, which made me a little less horrified at what I was doing. A little.

Oh, my, you guys, there are some really wretched people on dating websites. And I'm not trying to be judgey or anything, truly, but there are some real weirdies out there! They make choices that truly blow my mind. I mean, you would think that someone who is writing and posting things with the SPECIFIC PURPOSE of trying to convince someone to want to date them would be a little more choosy. But you guys, they aren't.

I went in with an open mind, I assure you I did, but it was hard to maintain that level of acceptance. After the first date - the most awkward and un-fun two hours of my life thus far - I knew that this wasn't going to work out. Going on dates with people you know you're not interested in spending a minute with, let alone a lifetime, is not a fun thing. It's just not. So after that little escapade, I decided to stay away from situations where I would have to spend more than 5 minutes with someone who wasn't even a little bit interesting to me. It was too painful. Which, you may be able to deduce, means I didn't go on very many dates during this monthlong venture.

But I did put together a little list of advice for those poor clueless lonelyboys.
And I hope they will heed my warnings:

1a. If the first thing that comes to mind when I see your primary photo is "he's for sure in his mom's basement in this pic" then you're in trouble. This means no pictures of you clearly taken by a webcam with you sprawled across the floral comforter that's probably been on your bed since 1996. No thank you.

1b. Oh and also, if the only pictures you have to offer the world wide web are pictures of you by yourself in your bedroom or shirtless in the reflection of your mirror, I'm not going to find that attractive. I'm not going to swoon at your rockin' hot bod, which is clearly what you're hoping I'll focus on. I'm probably going to assume you don't have any friends and rarely leave the aforementioned basement.

2. Maybe don't start an email to a girl who is white [this is an actual direct quote. I copied and pasted for authenticity], "up front and honest, typically I date black... however, I've been trying not to limit the possibilities." Yes, yes, I'm swooning. I'd love to go out with you even though I don't fit the racial profile you typically go for. Your honesty is not at all weird to me. Also, for the record, that guy was also white.

3. If you find yourself typing the words, "Am I too close to social security for you to consider going out with me?" - you probably are.

4. Is there a cat on/around/in the vicinity of your photo? Is the first thing under interests, "my cat"? I'm out. It's over before it began. Our love was doomed from the start.

5. More than once I was matched with someone based on the following criteria only: "Like you, he's not a smoker!" Really? You air 26 success stories per minute on national televison and that's the best criteria you can use to find me love? It's not even fully true, there just wasn't an option for "only sometimes at really low points in my life and I don't plan on divulging that until we're like 10 dates in," now was there? No. No there was not. Thanks for letting me be my whole authentic self, Match.

6. If you're opening sentens is typed as tho u r an orangutan who probly didn't finish 4th grade, I probly am guna twitch a little until I can find the "no" button. Srsly. It's 1 paragraf on a dating websight. Get a proofreeder. Use spelchek. I beg of u. It's not 2 hard, I promiss.

7. likewise if you cant be bothered to use Punctuation or are sporadic and inconsistent with Your capitalizations I might go out with you just so i can have an opportunity to Punch you in the face for your clear hatred of the english Language

8. One guy who emailed me mentioned that he liked to cook. I asked, what was his specialty? This was his response, and I quote: "I am a good cook. I can make anything. For me cooking is a science and I have the skills to cook so all I need is a recipe. I don't know much food science though so I don't create things too much on my own. I like to cook all things. I am not much of a baker though." So wait. It's a science to you, but you don't know much of it? I'm confused on several levels. One of two things is happening here: either this guy is literally a robot, or he is the actual most boring person I've ever interacted with.

9. Making 27 comments about "I never know what to say on these things" or "how awkward this is LOL" does not, in fact, make it less awkward.

10. If we're out, on a date, and I tell you I don't want gravy fries, please don't embarrass us both by trying to peer pressure me into ordering them while the waiter stands there, awkwardly, probably considering if we'd notice if he just slipped away and avoided this whole situation. Force feeding me food I don't want is not attractive and will not, in fact, lead to us going two-stepping together after our drink, which you had originally hoped for.

So there you have it. There are some normal people on there, I think, they're just... harder to come by, let's say. Lots of people date online. Some people even succeed and get married and live happily ever after and I think that's superb. So while I genuinely see nothing wrong with it and I'm sure some of those people I mentioned are perfectly normal men who simply made bad dating-profile choices, I think I'm done with it for now. I just don't feel great about feeling like my every word, photo, and habit is being judged and analyzed by weirdos using the internetz from their mom's basement.

Someday I'll get better at this whole deal. I mean, I will, right? I will. I think. Either way, I've met too many unicorns to get caught up with robots who "don't know much food science" or two-stepping-gravy-fry-pushers. Plus, maybe some girl out there wants to date a guy who can't spell and loves cats and has an assortment of floral bedspreads. I bet the weirdies are unicorns for someone, too.

I like that, actually. Let's end with that.
On the high note of a low point.

at times most unexpected

2011-12-06T21:49:00.000-07:00

I missed you today.

And it never happens when I expect it to, but at times most unexpected, which is tricky. Because instead of being ready for it I'm standing in a store and I see something you'd like. And I think, what a perfect gift! Before my brain has time to catch up, I hold the thing in my hand. I applaud myself again for how much you will love it.

And then I remember.

I prepare for anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, important days. I know they will be sad and I am ready. But I do not prepare myself for walking through a store. I cannot anticipate that I might hear that song you loved. I don't know how to plan for being caught off guard.

That is a hard thing about grief, to be standing in the sale room of a store in a mall holding measuring spoons shaped like fish in my hands and I feel like I can't breathe because I forgot, for a moment, that I cannot buy you presents.

On the other hand, I don't mind that every now and then you are still so present to me that I want to buy you one. That's how I get myself to let go of the fish and walk back out of the sale room and into the mall and so on and so forth; because it is in those moments, in songs and stores and other little pieces of you out there in the big wide world, that I remember how to keep breathing and living and being ok. Because no matter what any of us do or where we go or how well we prepare for any of it, you'll always be there, in those places, with each of us. At times most unexpected.

the one where I guest post for reverie.

2011-12-01T07:25:00.001-07:00

How I get so lucky as to be a guest poster on sweet Sarah's reverie blog, I just don't know. But sometimes she lets me and today is one of those times! The topic she presented spoke to my soul and I had no choice but to answer. Here is that answer. And while you're there, definitely read some of Sarah's brilliant writing!

Also, something funny: in order to submit this post, I had to post an original photo with it. I toiled over what to do and ended up having a delightfully awkward afternoon photo shoot with my friend and coming up with the photo for the post. But we also came up with these which I think demonstrate pretty adequately how not acquainted I am with posing for photo shoots. Hope you enjoy.

sorry, subscribers...

2011-12-01T07:20:00.001-07:00

Last night I pressed the wrong key and accidentally posted something unintentionally. It was an old post I was playing with and it's not done and I didn't mean to post it. Soooooo... ignore it. Or don't, I guess, that's your call. The original is probably better and you can find that here.

I like scarves because they make my neck feel safe

2011-11-27T12:33:00.001-07:00

I feel like by now almost everyone in my life already knows this little factoid - and thus tortures me with it on the daily - and for the rest of you, well, now you'll know too. I have a highly irrational issue with people touching my neck. I HATE IT. I will judo karate chop you right in the jugular if you come near it. I really don't know why, and yes, there are some exceptions to the rule. But generally, I am programmed to flinch as though you've thrown a grenade at my face the minute you reach for that vulnerable area between my face and my bod. Which, come to think of it, probably explains why I own like 37 scarves; they make my neck feel safe. And I like feeling safe in a wide variety of fashionable colors, apparently.

Over the holiday, I got a facial for the first time. I walked back to the tranquil room, ready to get my relaxation on, and I lay down as instructed and waited for my facialist to re-enter when I realized something alarming. She was going to be all up in my neck space. I panicked a little, but I thought, it's fine. I can totally handle this. I could not. It was a nightmare. Constant neck touching. I flinched as she touched me the first time, then the second, third, fourth, until she said very sweetly in her heavily accented voice, "You're goink to chave to get over this, sveetie. I'm goink to be touching your neck the chwhole time." Perfect.

I realized suddenly that my shoulders were literally up my my ears and I was white-knuckling the sides of the table like my life depended on it. I was embarrassed by my inability to lock it up and thus, determined - and I did it. Slowly but surely. I made myself put my shoulders back down and unclench the table. I reacted a little less every time she reached down, until finally, I relaxed. And ohhhh, how relaxed I was. It was a positively blissful hour of time. My discomfort at the outset aside, that hour of perilous neck-touching put me in a state of peacefulness unlike I'd experienced before.

So of course it got me thinking, you know as everything does, about vulnerability. I keep looking for a study that states something like, JUST KIDDING! You don't need to be vulnerable to be happy. Go ahead and hide under scarves forever. But the more I look for that, the more lessons I learn that are exactly the opposite; that everything worth having requires some degree of vulnerability on my part. Much like you can't get the full effect of a facial without letting somebody touch your neck [no matter how much it makes you want to scream], you can't really connect or be known if you're not exposed a little. It just can't happen.

Touching is the most tangible form of connection there is, I think, and thus serves as a pretty stellar metaphor here. And this experience taught me something that's probably kind of an important extension to all my other lessons about being vulnerable. Metaphorically speaking, the places I don't want to be touched are probably where I need it the very most. There's something really beautiful about letting it happen, too, I can tell you that from experience. It was horribly unpleasant, because for that window of time I was at risk of strangulation and other such neck-specific foul play, but in the end, letting go of it made for an insanely delightful hour of self-care.

There will always be options to flee, or scream, or punch someone in the jugular when they get close to wherever your vulnerable place is. But you're gonna have to suck it up and let someone touch your neck if you want the best possible experience. And you're going to really hate it, right up until you realize that you don't.

on generations

2011-11-23T07:55:00.001-07:00

Generations are fun because when you're the same generation as someone else, unless you grew up on different continents, you are probably going to have something in common. Probably, you who are reading this from my same generation, one of the following is true:

We both loved Shining Time Station [and as a result...]
We were both pretty convinced that jukeboxes only operated because puppet bands lived inside them
We both wished our pog collections contained slightly more impressive slammers
We're both going to get excited when "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" comes on the radio
We both wore half side ponies on the first day of school at least once
We owned Umbros. Or Sambas. Or both. And probably wore them together. Every day.

Anyway, I could go on, but unless you are a girl and were born in the mid-80's, you probably are bored by now. My point is that even though popular culture is sort of lame in a lot of ways, there is a commonness to it that is a little bit nice.

A while back I was talking to my friend Megan. We get confused a lot because we both spell our names the right way and both of our last names start with G. Anyway, once we were talking about our similar name and we discovered - much to our dismay and delight - that we share something else in common: we have the same namesake.

Both Megan G and I were named for the same slutty [sorry if that's crude, but I mean, she was] character, Meggie, from the same smutty novel, The Thorn Birds, which was published in 1977 and which both of our moms read and loved. And while it is alarming on several levels that I am named after a character who fell in love and had an affair with her priest, let's just bypass that detail and agree that it's funny and great that Megan and I have this oddly specific thing in common.

So, while our mom's can bond over their common love for some good old fashioned smut [I've got to be honest here - I read it too and loved it so much] Megan and I can bond over our mom's weird connection and over Fraggle Rock or having wanted to look like Kelly Kapowski at some point or another, I'm sure.

It's nothing terribly exciting or revolutionary.
But it's kind of fun, and that's something good too.

divine reminders

2011-11-20T17:24:00.001-07:00

It was a hectic morning. With Thanksgiving coming up, the Well was a madhouse today. And since I sort of thrive in chaos, I didn't hate it, in all honesty - it was kind of fun if a little exhausting. But by the time I got out of there, my entire self was moving a mile a minute. My brain was buzzing and I had pretty much forgotten all about stillness. Now, if you haven't read what I wrote about stillness on Wednesday, go do it real fast. We'll wait.

So I run out of the Well and remember that if I'm going to bake this afternoon, I'd better stop by the store and get some chocolate chips on my way home. To be perfectly candid here, as I left the Well I had a little sad moment. I don't know what it was - because I didn't even take a second to identify it before I was in full-swing go-mode and had successfully forgotten that there had even been sadness to begin with. Which is, to be clear, exactly the opposite of what I learned from the lady eating soup. She was but a distant memory as I walked into the store, still doing six things at once, still not in any way still.

I grabbed some chocolate chips and some cuties clementines because they were the perfect shade of orange so I knew they'd be delicious and I walked towards self-checkout, and you guys, I am not kidding you. There, right in front of me, shuffling through the store in the exact same jacket I wrote about on Wednesday, was the lady eating soup. She's perhaps been to the hairdresser since last we met but it was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, her.

After I registered who she was, I got very awkward and ducked back into the baking aisle and feigned interest in muffin mixes while she passed by. She was, of course, entirely oblivious to the absurd reality that someone I wrote about randomly in a Panera less than a week ago was now in front of me in a grocery store that was on a completely different side of town than said Panera. I mean, really? That's just plain crazy.

I told my friend that story today and her response, I think, says it better than I could. After hearing about the lady eating soup and her valiant reappearance in my life today, she just looked at me and said:

"Stop it. Jesus!!"

My friend is right; it was. And the message I saw in the lady eating soup was to stop. So, I did. And I was sad a little, sure, but it's okay that I was sad because that's just what I was today I guess. And you can't be anything other than what you are, so that's that then. The issue for me is that sometimes when you stop, when you're still, you have feelings that you've got to contend with. Which is in large part why I am opposed to being still in the first place. Which is I'm pretty sure why the lady who ate soup showed up in my day today.

I wonder if she knows. I wonder if she has any idea that a chaotic twenty-something is getting seemingly divine reminders of stillness from her. I wonder if she feels a little tug and quietly knows, in her peaceful sort of way, that she made a difference in a life. I still really can't believe that I saw her again. It just seems like a lot of work, I guess; bringing that poor old woman all the way to the grocery store by my church, far away from the Panera where she eats soup, just to remind me to be still. But it's an important lesson, isn't it? So important that I needed to hear it twice in 4 days, apparently.

I suppose I'd better listen. Mostly because if I'm faced with a third encounter with the lady eating soup, I'd have no choice but to talk to her. And we all know how awkward I can be.

a lady eating soup

2011-11-16T20:49:00.001-07:00

I was sitting in a big comfy chair in the corner, happily bouncing my feet to the bluegrass pouring out from my earbuds, indulging myself in reading some geared-towards-adolescents literature. I look up for a second, only for a second, to see if they've refreshed the coffee yet, and I see you. You, a lady eating soup. You catch my eye.

There you sit, in a booth all alone, slurping up soup in slow, deliberate spoonfuls, daintily dipping your baguette, when the mood strikes. You don't speak. You don't have any company, today, as you eat soup in the afternoontime. You don't read a book or listen to music or even really look around much. You just eat soup. Legs folded neatly under the table, cups and bowls and utensils placed meticulously in front of you, napkin gently resting on your lap, you eat soup. You are still.

And at first, you make me sad. I think, oh, how sad, to eat alone. How upsetting, to have nothing to do while you eat your soup. But I realize upon further study that the sadness is mine - I don't think you are sad at all. The discomfort is my own, it must be, because I think you are content. I think you are peaceful and grace-filled and lovely in your Reebok sneakers and sky blue sweatshirt. Your hair is unruly and your eyes are soulful and your skin is wrinkled in ways that let me know you've lived and loved and laughed in your lifetime. Maybe even just today, right before you came here to eat soup. I wonder if that's what you're thinking about now. Or if you're thinking of anything at all.

And I think, I could learn something from this woman. I could stand a lesson in stillness, in contentment, in grace. I bet you play bridge with your friends and laugh until you cry, sometimes, but today you are just taking a moment to eat soup. By yourself. At 4:00 in the afternoon on a Wednesday in an unseasonably warm November. And you seem to be just fine with that.

I watch as you don your jacket, probably the same one you've worn for years, gather up your things, and shuffle out of the place. I think a little thank you to you, lady eating soup, and then I return my gaze to my book. My feet pick back up with the rhythm of bluegrass, and I sigh [probably audibly] and sink a little further into my big comfy chair in the corner.

Just ever so slightly stiller than before.

the thing about people

2011-11-09T15:52:00.000-07:00

People are crazy. It's a fact. I'm not trying to be hateful or flippant, I'm just trying to put it out there, yknow, safe space and all. People, myself included, are generally pretty nuts. Which makes them an interesting sort of business to be in. As a professionally diagnosed extrovert and social butterfly, I love that I get to work with people for my job, and I really do heart relationships. I need them, I thrive on them, they are great. Sometimes, however, relationships with people are not fun. They are colorful and not in the good way. They are annoying and high maintenance and a lot of work, generally speaking. Some days, even though I am naturally bent in this social direction, I get tired. In my profession as well as my life I get tired of people, because being involved with people means that some days, I get yelled at. I get used. I get ignored. I feel swindled and stuff and that is no fun.

HOWEVER.

Some days, babies get born and you get to hold their little hands. Some days, people need a hug and you're who gets to give it. Some days little girls sit on your lap, pet your face, and tell you how nice you are. Some days parties get thrown and you get to bring the funfetti. Some days, you get to see people thrive and succeed and recover and it's so beautiful. Some days you are thanked and loved and valued and it's a gift unlike any other.

That's the thing about people. Maybe it doesn't make the days you get crapped on any easier in the moment. But in the longrun, I promise, the good stuff faaaaar outweighs the crap stuff. And that makes it more than worth it.

never too old to be new

2011-11-06T23:10:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been feeling old. Not due to my age, so much, because I'm actually younger than most of my friends and spend the majority of my time trying to seem older than I am, where age is concerned. So not old-old, just sort of used up. Maybe a little lost. I don't know why really; it's not like anything is overtly wrong. There's just sort of an underlying feeling of yuck.

But this morning I woke up feeling new. I walked into church and someone said I looked wide awake, and I thought, yeah, daylight savings! I got an extra hour of sleep! But that wasn't it. Kenneth would probably tell you it's because I went to my first metal concert last night and now my life is forever changed. And be that as it may, that wasn't all it was either. I was wearing a new scarf, but new scarves [while delightful] don't usually have such a profound effect on my psyche. I had a great weekend - I saw so much live music, spent so much time with people I like, did crafts and laundry and took care of other life-necessities that having gone undone were causing me anxiety. But a good weekend and a little less anxiety still aren't enough to account for what I felt like this morning.

Then there was a baptism at church. And I always get real weepy when there are baptisms because it's just the best thing to hear someone talk about where they were and how Jesus saved their lives. There's nothing like a good story of redemption and recovery to tug at my heartstrings. They are a new creation - you can see it in their face and feel it in their joy. Having been doing this Christian business for some time now myself, I forget sometimes what it's like to feel that shiny newness. Which is silly, because it even says in the bible that because God is faithful, his compassions are new every morning. Regardless of time passed, I still need that grace. A lot, actually. Regardless of years under my belt, so to speak, I should still be living and telling stories of redemption and recovery. I am still new. Which is at once and the same time both significantly disconcerting and supremely comforting, if you really stop and think about it.

Isn't it the best when you get a perfect gift and it's a thing you didn't ask for? Something you maybe didn't even think to ask for in the first place? Well, sometimes, more often than I deserve, I get gifts I didn't ask for. Extravagant gifts. Gifts I didn't really even know I wanted. I just show up at church one Sunday, well-rested thanks to daylight savings, neck warm under a new red Target scarf, ears still ringing from heavy metal, and boom.

You're never too old to be new. And for that I am grateful.

[mine]

2011-10-26T08:21:00.001-06:00

When I was a little girl, I thought my grandpa Jim was the best. And I didn't really get this at the time, but Jim was not my actual biological grandfather, so we never called him Grandpa. But I was little. And he was the one making silly faces at me across the dinner table and the one crouching down on the floor to feign dismay and pretend like it was entertaining when I sent the prince plummeting through the trapdoor on the Fisher Price Castle that I never stopped playing with. And when you're little, that's pretty much the definition of true love. As the story goes, without being told one way or the other, I always referred to Jim as "my Jim." Grandpa or not, I was too little to know that this wonderful man laying on the tile beside me was anyone other than mine. Because that's what he was - that was the part that mattered to my little self. Just like Nana was my Nana, Jim was my Jim. And that was that.

I didn't know this when I was a kid, but this is a lesson I would be glad I learned early. Because as you may have gathered, I come from a broken home. A phrase that doesn't bother me anymore because even if it is what psychology textbooks call us, it's not what we feel like to me. Generally speaking, brokenness implies a need for grace and I'm cool with that. But distinguishing my family as more broken than any other implies that we by definition inherently need fixing, and I just dare you to try and tell me that. Because I'll be more than happy to knock you into next week.

Which is a perfect segue to the topic at hand: today is Tim Farrell's birthday.

Now, first and foremost, Tim has been a faithful reader, commenter, and self-appointed editor of this blog since its humble origins in the Fall of 2007. And that, that's dedication, because I write about a lot of inconsequential stuff that probably doesn't all always interest him. Recently, Tim has been sending helpful suggestions to me via email after I post. Suggestions mostly involving how I could have slipped in a mention of him in posts about things that really had nothing to do with him. When I suggested he had such good ideas that maybe HE should write a blog, he said, "no, I'm just the idea man. I could even be your agent if you want." He's just such a giver, you know?

But in all seriousness - on this, his birthday - let's raise a glass [of coffee, come on, it's morning] to Tim. The guy who comments on my blog even when it has nothing to do with him and thinks I'm great even when I'm probably not sometimes. The guy who drove to Denver to stand in a moving truck bossing my friends around and in so doing made moving 1,000 times less stressful for me. The guy who would drop anything at any moment [and has] to sing karaoke with me. The guy who reminds me that the world isn't ending when someone has knocked out the front passenger side window of my car. The guy who tells the same 3-5 jokes no matter what country he's in, who he's talking to, and regardless of if it makes sense or not. The collector of cool cars and the maker of egg sandwiches and the kind of person who thinks to get me a new hair straightener when mine breaks and I am too poor and unemployed to replace it myself. To Tim, who has been faithfully laying on the proverbial tile beside me for so long I barely remember a time when he wasn't. Who is this, you might ask me? And I might answer, he's my Tim. And if you gave me any lip, I'd probably point at an imaginary stain on your shirt and pop you in the nose when you looked down. Because that'd show you.

When you're a kid, it doesn't matter who anyone is so much as how they are. No one sat me down and explained to me exactly how Jim was related to me, but I knew [in the way that little girls know] who he was. What I love most about that is that I don't think anyone meant to intentionally teach me to feel this way about family. I am thankful that I have the kind of family where this is just the reality. Where no matter how messy and convoluted it gets, family is just that and it doesn't so much matter where they came from or when or how, it matters that they're mine. What matters extends far beyond biology or genetics to presence and silly faces and Fisher Price castles.

When you're a grown up, luckily, not much changes in this way. I'm always going to care less about who anyone is and more about how they are. I might be older now, but I still know [in the way that even girls who aren't so little know] who Tim is. Because what matters is presence and hair straighteners and egg sandwiches. What matters is that he's mine.

hello, Allen

2011-10-25T00:14:00.003-06:00

Some of you may recall reading about when I had to change my phone number. I gave up mine and naturally, got a new one. I was really intentional about it because for some reason I really wanted a 303 area code, but those are apparently a hot commodity, so you have to snatch em up early in the day. So I went, first thing in the morning, and out of a long list, I picked my new number. I guess I never really thought about where phone numbers come from. I guess I assumed they were regenerated by a computer and spit back out, new. But that doesn't really make any sense... eventually we'd run out, right? There can't just be infinite phone numbers. You can't retire them like football jerseys after somebody great had them. I don't know. I've never been great at math.

Needless to say, as I chose from the list of 303's, I unknowingly inherited a phone number from someone named Shelley. And I've been learning some things about Shelley. One of my favorite pastimes is to take context clues and try to piece together the whole story. It's kind of a weird habit and makes me feel a little creepy sometimes, but essentially, I want to be Nancy Drew. Or Harriet the Spy. Really either one would be fine. Anyway, here's what I know about Shelley:

After getting the new number, when I called Kansas, she came up on the caller ID as "Allen White." I know this because for months every time I called my house I was greeted with, "hello, Allen." Which was a real treat. I've decided [based on both my imagination and insinuations of information to come] that Allen is Shelley's sugar daddy. He paid for the phone, so it was in his name. Obviously.

Shelley gets constant calls from collections agencies and other angry sounding 1-800 numbers. Shelley isn't a very responsible spender, I've deduced.

This tidbit was also backed up by the fact that when I tried to change my phone number [which acts as your ID] at 24-Hour Fitness, they asked if I was Shelley, and if I would like to pay the money I owed them. I explained that I was not, in fact, Shelley, nor did I know who Shelley was, so no, I would not be taking care of her debt. That's the other thing about this whole deal - everyone who calls thinks that I should somehow telepathically know where Shelley is. I may have big dreams of covert ops, but I'm not magic, people, ok?

Shelley may or may not be incarcerated. Potentially in Washington. This I know because the other day I got a call asking me to confirm my advance pay account with which I could put money on a card to make phone calls from prison. "Ummmmmmmm, no thank you. I think I'm all set. Yep. Yes. I'm pretty surely sure."

The Child Support Enforcement Medical Support Facilitator Project would like to speak with her. That's a direct quote. I have no idea what that entails but it sounds like nothing I ever want to be a part of. [Maybe Allen was a baby-daddy too? There's just really no way of knowing.]

What's my point, you ask? I probably don't have one. In fact I'm sure I don't. But Shelley, if you're out there, take care of your biz-nass so these people will stop calling me and insisting I tell them where you are. Also maybe call sometime and explain to me just what happened with you to make your number become available in July of 2011 for me to swipe out from under you, because it sounds like it's a pretty convoluted story. And I really want to know if I'm right about Allen.

I guess I should thank you, too, because you have made getting a new phone number not only a fun game of sleuthery but also an exercise in gratitude. As in, fielding your phone calls makes me grateful that my most stressful calls are from my family members reminding me that someone's birthday is tomorrow and I haven't sent anything yet. And those are pretty stressful, and frequent, but not quite so much as the debt collectors and prison phone systems.

Thank God for small favors, that's all I'm saying.

I turned on my tiny red iPod, and...

2011-10-16T23:04:00.000-06:00

In the latest of a string of events that I like to call "being a grown up is a real pain in the a-money-money so far," yesterday morning I walked outside to my car, innocently trying to meet Beckie for brunch, only to find that my front passenger side window had been bashed in, and my iPod was MIA.

Please. A moment of silence for my tiny red friend.

I could spend a good while telling you all how and why this sucks, but you are all humans and can probably make many accurate assumptions about that yourselves, so I'll leave you to it. I got in my car this morning, the window fixed and good as new, and I unconsciously reached for the little guy to turn on some jams, and alas - it was not there. And I thought about all of the times I've used the phrase "I turned on my tiny red iPod, and..." on this blog, and I had a nostalgic little moment about it. I miss it already.

It's a bummer, that's for sure. But it's fine. I didn't lose any actual music, just the music receptacle. I still have all my good/bad/show tunes. And as a coping strategy, I kept the Cranberries Greatest Hits in the CD player all weekend, which has been super miraculous. Like, really. Every time I get in my car it comes on and I'm immediately filled with joy and wonderment. I'm not even exaggerating. It's that good.

My mom spent the weekend with her high school besties (or as they call themselves, "My True Blues") helping one such MTB move out of her house. Mom called me last week and asked if I would make them a mix cd for their weekend - and as mix cd's are my love language, I happily complied. But I realized pretty quickly that the only way this mix cd was going to get there on time was if it was overnighted. So I went to the place where you do that, and inquired about how much it might cost me to mail this little brown envelope to Ohio and have it get there in time for the True Blues' arrival. She told me how much and I balked, but agreed to pay the price. She seemed to think this was a little weird, and asked me, "so, are these like, tickets or something? A really important document?" Imagine her surprise when I answered, "Ohhhhh no. It's a mix cd."

But you know what? Worth it. Because music - especially music that is special to us (even if it is Earth, Wind & Fire) - can make things that suck, suck less. Music can comfort. Music is memories. It puts words and tunes to feelings we couldn't name before and it reminds us of things we already know; things that are true. It's familiar in the good way. For some, it's a means of connection. Whatever it is, it's a gift, and it's one of the beauties in this occasionally yucky world that makes me feel all gushy and sappy. It gives me faith. It makes me feel loved.

And though this weekend I lost a meaningful little vessel of that love, this week I was also loved well: in live musical free-for-alls, in the giving and receiving of mix cd's, in the sharing of memories attached to certain songs. I sat with someone in their pain and we found a moment of laughter and relief in the soft beat of the Eagles over the loudspeakers at the dentist's office. I was loved in the reassuring words of the hymn we sang in church this morning, in Disney songs at a friend's wedding, and in the comfort of the Cranberries. That's a lot of love, you guys.

The world can be yucky. And from Moon River to Hotel California, the Cupid Shuffle to Amazing Grace, whether I'm in my favorite concert venue, the pew of my church, or sitting indian style in Michele's living room singing along to the karaoke channel - music makes it seem a little less so. I see Jesus in that.

So rest in peace, my tiny red iPod. May you find fulfillment in the pockets of your captors [or whoever they choose to sell you to on the black market]. Sing to them like you did to me and maybe they'll stop breaking people's car windows and ruining their Saturday brunch plans. Here's hoping.

1403

2011-10-03T23:47:00.000-06:00

So the thing is, I moved.

I moved out of the house I have lived in for [nearly] the entirety of my time here in Denver. Aside from my first 3 months in this city [when I lived in a ~~sketchy~~ snazzy little apartment downtown with Alix] I have lived in the 1403 house. As for why this move took place, let's just leave it at this: I tried my hardest to stay and nothing [and I do mean nothing] worked out. The best possible option for what to do next existed in an apartment a couple of miles away. So while I do think this is the right thing, to have moved, the choice made me more than I made it.

There was so little time between said choice and d-day that I was immediately catapulted into action mode and forced to work my little fingers to the bone getting ready. Living in such a big place for such a long time, I think, would turn the most simple of livers into a hoarder. I have packrat tendencies to begin with, so as you can imagine, moving out of that house was no easy task. All that to say, it happened so fast that it wasn't until tonight - the move over and final and done, the house cleared out and cleaned up and empty as can be - that it finally hit me. I went through each room one last time. I started to take the key off my keychain and my eyes got full of emotion and I cried. I cried a lot. Significantly more than I expected to cry, in fact, and I stood there for a solid 45 minutes and I couldn't make myself leave because it seemed so final and suddenly, I wasn't ready for it to be over.

Because on the one hand, it's just a house. And yes, we had mice. The maintenance man who we had to call all the time, Sam Hill [I did not make that up], had a conspiracy theory about almost everything from the Catholic Church to the government controlling cloud formation. The windows in the entire house are painted shut so no air that isn't central air circulates through the house ever. It's arctic in the winter, tropical in the summer. I don't think it was ever really been satisfactorily clean in the entire four years I lived there. It was decorated primarily with items that were a) acquired in some kind of white-elephant gift exchange or b) free. There is duct tape holding my shower together. And I'm pretty sure if you take a shower in the upstairs bathroom at the right time of day the neighbors might can see you a little bit naked. All of these things are true about that house. All of those things are less than ideal on multiple levels.

And while leaving those things behind I'm ok with, closing the door for the last time meant closing the door on a really beautiful four years of my life. On so many occasions it has been filled to maximum capacity with my people. I drank a lot of cheap wine and made a lot of great friends. It's where I spent the night on the floor while my bed went unoccupied because a sleepover sounded fun. I spent snow days watching movies in the basement and I trundled and I baked a bazillion pumpkin cookies and I became a writer. I lived with ten different roommates in this house [thirteen if you count the dogs]. I never quite knew who would stroll in the back door and that was fine because whoever it was was welcome and they knew it. I like who I've become there. And you know what? I actually really like Sam Hill. I like [most of] what I learned there and I am so unbelievably thankful that in these past four years of finding and losing and laughing and crying I've had a home. And like I've said before, there are few things more comforting and lovely than the right kind of home.

So off I've gone. Part of me is excited and part of me is terrified and most of me is just tired, what with all the crying. And I think it's ok to grieve a little because, say what you want, change is hard. But what I have discovered in the past two weeks of purging my life of extraneous items is that without meaning to, I've let a lot of things that don't define me do just that. And maybe that's why I couldn't stay there any longer. That house will always be special to me, but that house is not me. I will be me without the Halloween Party. I will be me without a big house in a perfectly central location. I will be me in my new house, too. And it might take a minute to figure out what that looks like - but just like any good breakup, no matter how amicable the terms, I've got to give myself some time to be sad. Then, though, I have to turn off the 90's breakup ballads, get up, and figure out how to be me outside of 1403 S. University Blvd.

Probably I'll learn some more and then probably I'll write something really magical about it. So we have that to look forward to, which is nice. In the meantime, I'll just be here in my new apartment, listening to Exposé and replaying the good times in a black and white montage in my head. Because nothing commemorates true love like a good saxophone solo.

It was a pleasure living in you, house. Thanks for the memories, as they say.

honest ≠ embarrassing

2011-09-13T00:26:00.001-06:00

The other day I had to do a hard thing. As part of my work day, I had to spend some hours at Denver Health. Here is one way Denver Health has been described to me: "Hell is a lot like one of the waiting rooms. Except at Denver Health it's hotter and there's more Michael Bolton music." I feel like that should paint you a pretty solid picture of why I don't love that place so much.

But this particular day in one such waiting room, I watched as two women waited for their labwork to be completed and struck up a conversation. Now, we were in a tiny room, a room so tiny that whispering would have been entirely pointless, as I'm pretty sure the guy next to me could actually hear my thoughts. Which is why it was interesting to me when these women - complete strangers - began talking. Within, I'd say, three minutes of initiating this conversation, they were sharing with one another [and by default, the rest of us as well] about their struggles with addiction, discussing in detail their drugs of choice, and pretty literally comparing rap sheets.

I have chosen a profession where my job will always be, in large part, to allow people space to share personal things. But this? I won't lie to you, I was super freaked out. I wanted to aggressively tap them both on the shoulders and remind them that those things are personal and you are in public! I started to get embarrassed for them and for myself, a little. But as I wiped my sweaty palms on my cloth-covered padfolio, I started to listen. And as I listened I realized that this wasn't embarrassing, it was just honest.

And then I got a little sad that those two things are sometimes, in my mind, synonymous.

There is a researcher named Brene Brown who decided she did not like the idea of vulnerability and was going to do a lot of research and essentially [her words] "outsmart it." It's the greatest thing ever because she totally fails and gets on board with vulnerability as basically an essential to what she calls whole-hearted living. She defines shame as "the fear of disconnection." She says: "Connection is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. It's why we're here."

In one of those bizarro, colliding-of-worlds moments, though these women were strangers to one another, I happened to be privy to a little bit of both of their hearts on that particular day. And as such, I believe firmly that they both left feeling refreshed, feeling important and validated and loved, because they connected with each other. It was raw and messy, it's true. It was absolutely not the prettiest thing I've ever seen. But it was also unarguably good.

Recently I've gotten to spend time with people who wear their hearts [and rap sheets] right there on their sleeves. In my experience, they can occasionally tend to be construed as uncouth, impolite, maybe even a little bit inappropriate. But even when I put on my judgiest of judgey faces, really? I would give just about anything to be that brave.

So maybe instead of worrying about being socially acceptable, we share. Maybe instead of being ashamed, we connect. Maybe we are even honest with a stranger in a waiting room. It won't always end well. We may even get our little hearts broken. But the lives we get to live are wholehearted ones.

And each time we leave the proverbial waiting room I bet we'll think:

"Yep. Worth it."

if karaoke was a love language, it would be mine

2011-08-20T14:01:00.000-06:00

I am a pretty good convincer; it is one of my sharper skills. On the one hand, it probably has something to do with that I'm especially good at being convinced. But on the other, I have a lot of strong desires that sometimes other people don't share, so in order to not to do stuff alone, I convince. For sure in the top five of said strong desires are singing karaoke on a regular basis and also doing the Cupid Shuffle any/all the time. Karaoke isn't a tough sell, but I can't tell you how many times I have had to defend my love for the Cupid Shuffle and basically drag people to the dance floor. Sure, it can be tiring, but this is important work, people. And if not me, who?

So last night I was at my favorite place in all the land, Dubbs Pub, singing karaoke. A little backstory - I have been talking this place up to my coworkers pretty much since my second day of work. And finally, at long last, my dreams came true. Now, I can tend to get a little too excited about things, maybe even overshoot a touch when it comes to talking about something I like a lot, so I secretly worried just a little that once we got there my coworkers would call shenanigans and shun me forever for leading them astray. But that was not the case. Not even a little bit.

I sang, they sang, we sang together - and my heart was full, so full I thought it might burst. And then without warning, I heard a beat. I heard Cupid whispering as if just to me, "cupid, shuffle, cupid, shuffle..." and before you go putting on your judgey pants, here's the thing about the Cupid Shuffle: I just like it. I know it's a dance and it's silly and inconsequential, but it is a silly inconsequential dance that makes me happy. Sorry I'm not sorry. On this particular evening, I heard my jam beginning and pretty much on autopilot, I walked-it-by-myself to the dance floor and prepared myself to recruit.

But you guys: these beautiful souls, my coworkers, required no convincing, because they were already there kick-now-kick-now-come-on-baby-kicking right alongside me. I thought I might cry. And it's not just because some people know a dance I know - no, it was more than that. Convincing is fine, I generally don't mind it, and like I said, I'm pretty good at it. But sometimes it is a nice thing to look around and see other people who already like what you like and then just enjoy liking it together. For a moment in time I did not have to organize or convince or recruit or rally the troops. Sometimes being social and having fun can be a lot of work, and that is annoying. Last night was fun and great and I didn't have to do anything but show up. And sing and dance, of course.

Let's all take a moment to recall that I looked for a job for a year and a half. How did I get so lucky to find a job I love where I also get to work with people who share at least two of my top five favorite things? Three if you count Yogurtland, and I totally do.

I knew I liked them; I told you about it. But this? I mean really. Beyond my wildest dreams.

it's saturday night

2011-08-13T23:56:00.003-06:00

I babysat tonight. I am still babysitting, in fact, but the little tots are sound asleep in their little beds, all worn out from our all-afternoon-and-evening dance party. It's understandable, really, I'm pretty wiped myself.

Anyway I don't usually agree to babysit on weekend nights - mostly because my highly extroverted self can barely handle the thought of missing something, which is a real possibility on a Saturday night. But this time it felt right. Firstly, I adoooore these two, so much, so it wasn't hard to twist my arm. I also think it just sounded really good to have a sure-fire way to do nothing on a weekend night. Being a grownup is tiring, and I was jonesing for a night in. With these two cuties?

Done and done.

We were reading stories before bed [we had a lot of time - we read a lot of books - I did a lot of voices] and he asked to read one about Jesus. (Since I know now you're wondering - no voices for Jesus. Bert and Ernie, absolutely. Jesus though, that might get weird.) We read about Easter and in very simple terms, we read about the crucifixion. On one particular page we read about how soldiers came for Jesus to take him away, and the sweet kid said this: "I don't want to be Jesus. I don't want soldiers to come for me!"

Can I get an amen?

Without thinking - and honestly mostly with nightmare prevention in mind - I explained to him that that's why Jesus let it happen: he loved us so much that he let the soldiers take him just so the soldiers wouldn't have to come for us. And he thought that was just great. I tucked him in, went downstairs, and it wasn't until I was scrubbing mac n' cheese from bowls with cartoons on them an hour later that the beauty of that entire exchange hit me square in the face.

I've tried to wrap this post up a hundred different ways - they all worked fine, sounded good and spiritual, rounded things out nicely. But I typed and deleted them, one by one. Because when it comes to truth, generally speaking, the wrapping is pretty inconsequential.

aaaand ten minutes later:

No, you know what? I want to wrap it. Truth needs no wrapper and I hope that you will take it for whatever you need it to be. But what it is for me is a reminder that I am loved. A reminder that I deserve soldiers. And every day, I think it's fair to say, I really earn them.

But they don't come. And grace, every day, covers my shame. Covers my fear. Covers me.
And that, my friends, is nightmare prevention at it's very finest.

blog is a funny word

2011-08-07T09:46:00.002-06:00

I will pretty much support anyone who uses the word "bloggy."

But really - this is a fun little website of fun little blogs. And for blogging about them, I get to have my blog listed among other bloggy things! Isn't that fun?

the table's tale

2011-08-01T07:55:00.001-06:00

A few years ago, my mom gave me a really cute end table that sat in my storage room for about 2 years because it had been decoupaged with random restaurant menus. I think it's fair to say that I am a crafty person, and I enjoy a good project every now and again, so one day, I undecoupaged said table and painted it roughly 25 different ridiculous colors in a fit of crafting genius. Today I looked at said table, sitting in the corner of my room in all its hideous glory, and decided that I was going to make it presentable. I was going to make it look like something a grown-up might own. I was going to paint it red and distress it and make it look vintagey and awesome.

Such a good thought.

I took it to my friend's house who was going to help me. We sanded it, primed it, and got it all ready for its magical makeover. Once the primer had dried, I valiantly charged outside to get my craft on. And just as we flipped it over to begin, I kid you not, my cute little table promptly fell completely to pieces. No, but like, literally. See?

We hammered. We glued. We said swear words and [thankfully] resisted the urge to beat ourselves over the head with the legs of this stupid table that would not go back on no matter how hard we tried to make them. It was, to say the least, an epic fail. And I was so mad because this table has been in my room for a year, standing on all four legs and holding things on it even! So why, why oh why, am I so untalented and pitiful that I can't even make a basic wooden end table go back together again?!

I was telling my mom my sad tale, and here was her reply: "Oh, you know where that table came from right? [I didn't] Oh yeah, your Nana made that table herself from a kit. Probably 40 years ago? It's been on the back porch outside for years."

ooooooof course it was.

The moral of the story is this: sometimes things fall spectacularly to pieces and it has absolutely nothing to do with me. A lot of times maybe it does, and that is another blog for another time. But sometimes tables that seem sturdy fall apart simply because they are super old and were handmade by my Nana and have been bearing the brunt of midwest weather for years and years, not because I am a pathetic crafts[wo]man. Sometimes things fall apart and there's not much to be done about it except decide what to do with all the pieces. Decide how to move forward.

The remnants of my table will likely make roughly 10 new craft projects for me, and I love that so much.

But it will never be a table again. And that just is what it is.

ten recent revelations [I will never]

2011-07-27T07:57:00.000-06:00

I'm going to share them with you now in the form of a list.

1. I will never not cry when I get in a car accident.

2. ... or when there are needles involved.

3. I will never not appreciate a good doo wop chorus.

4. I will never get tired of reading Dr. Seuss out loud.

5. I will never feel settled when a relationship is not.

6. I will never not love making small talk with three-year-olds.

7. I will never think that the Bachelor/ette is stupid or smutty enough to make me actually stop watching it.

8. I will never not feel really pleased with myself when I successfully learn all the words to a song.

9. I will never see things clearly.

10. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly of all, I will definitely never think it's a good life choice to call in to Delilah's radio show at 11:00 at night to sing "a few lines of the song I want to hear." I don't care how good she says I am or how many times she calls me sweetie.

I'm an easy read

2011-07-20T21:36:00.002-06:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I wear my heart on my face.

I don't really mind this about me because it's kind of nice. I don't feel like there's any point in faking it because 9 times out of 10 when I lie I get this response: "you're not a very good liar, are you?" There is a known-ness to it that I like. I am thankful that this readableness is woven into my genetic makeup because were it not there naturally, I might spend a greater amount of my life in hiding than I do. And that, we've established, isn't great.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, at work, I was feeling especially harried. I swear about half my caseload was in crisis and I didn't know where to begin to get everyone situated by the time the clock hit five. I walked into my office and started to vent to my office mates in a frantic manner. One of said officemates, God bless her, stopped me. "Sorry," she said, "I just want to say that I could already tell you were having a bad day. I think I can usually tell what kind of day you're having by the way your hair looks." Mind you, in this moment, my hair was curly [i.e. lion-like] and haphazardly thrown into a sort of side clump of hair by a clip so tiny that it couldn't hold all my hair in if it tried.

Now not only am I wearing my heart on my face, I am wearing it in my hair as well.

I know this is a silly thing, but in that moment, I felt a little bit naked. I felt exposed. This girl has known me for what, 5 weeks at this point? And she can already tell just by looking at me what mood I'm in? This does not bode well for me in the hide-the-crazy department, let's just put it that way.

And then I turned on my tiny red ipod, and Katie Herzig sang these words to me:

freedom is: a naked heart
And I thought, ok. Fine.

oh me of little faith

2011-07-15T17:48:00.000-06:00

When I was fifteen years old, something very special happened to me. It was Christmas morning, and after we opened our presents I was feeling a bit disappointed because one little thing wasn't included in the loot. But then my parents directed me and the boys to the basement, where we were greeted with a foosball table - which I'll be honest, was a pretty major letdown for me. Until the foosball table rang. Following the sound of that blissfully tinny little ringer, I pulled from said foosball table, in all it's glory, a sparkly blue Nokia cell phone. My very own little dream come true.

Last week, eleven years later, something very awful happened to me. I had to change my phone number.

This might not sound like much to you, fine, but to me it was sort of earthshattering because ever since I pulled that sparkly blue Nokia from the foosball table so many years ago, I have had the same phone number. It was my number, and now someone else is going to have it, and this devastates me. One of my oldest friends, when I texted him my new number, told me that he would now have to save my number to his phone for the first time ever. It is the end of an era. There's a lot attached to those 10 digits and on a Friday morning in July I gave all that away for some Colorado number that means nothing to me.

As I approached the AT&T store that Friday morning, having done all my research and thusly prepared to rip off the band-aid of abandoning the 316 and adopting a 303, I started to panic. I thought, what if my future husband tries to call me and can't get me because of my new number? What if someone else super important wants to reach me but can't? WHAT WILL HAPPEN?! I legitimately almost didn't go in the door. It was at this moment I realized that I have some pretty significant trust issues.

This might sound like a stretch, but the thing is, it's a symptom of a bigger issue. It's a microcosm of how I approach everything else in my life. In a matter of seconds I had become convinced that big, important, worthwhile things wouldn't come to be in my life... because I changed my phone number. If the italics didn't tip you off, I'll just spell it out for you: that's completely insane. I worked myself up into believing - on some level - that God is not bigger than my telephone number. Oh me of little faith.

I spend a lot of energy worrying about a lot of stuff. I worry about saying the wrong things, about figuring out what I should do to get the outcomes I want from a given situation. I worry about messing up the plan with my silliness. I worry about missing out on important things and people and never even knowing it. I worry every time I have to make a choice that I will make the wrong one and thus alter the course of history and my life as I know it. I worry about controlling for every possible outcome, and when things go awry I can think of 29 things I should've done to prevent it.

Do I really believe that by changing my cell phone number [or any other host of things I could do under the reign of my little tiny power] I can actually alter the outcome of the life that is ahead of me? Sometimes I live like I do.

But you know what?

Phone numbers may come and go. I will say yes and say no a million times. I will say a lot of dumb things and make some really bad choices. On days when those things feel catastrophic, and those days will come, I will take a deep breath and trust that God is faithful. Even when I'm not.

please forgive me for time that I've wasted;

I'm a doubting Thomas

I'll take your promise

though I know nothing's safe

oh me of little faith

[fireworks] keep falling on my head

2011-07-04T13:09:00.000-06:00

I love fireworks. The fourth of July is far from my favorite holiday, but I think a good fireworks show is easily one of my favorite things. I don't honestly have an explanation for why I love them so much, or why there is so much memory attached to these particular crackles of colored light, but I see them and my heart fills and it's one of those things that - explanation or not - just is.

I am something of a fireworks snob, though, as I grew up watching fireworks the only way I think fireworks should be watched ever - in the middle of a lake. While I can appreciate a good fireworks show on dry land, it's nothing compared to the boat rocking gently back and forth, water lapping against the sides, all quiet aside from the booms and cracks, the Apollo 13 soundtrack playing on the stereo, and the occasional [obnoxious yet somehow endearing] cheers of lake people. It was so good it felt like a secret, like something not everyone could possibly know about or there would be WAY more people out on that lake with us. I watched fireworks the other night from an amazing rooftop patio with a perfect view. I was enjoying people I love, enjoying knowing and being known, and as good as it was, I kept thinking to myself that when fireworks are done right, you should have debris intermittently hitting you in the face as you lie there in the stillness and the dark. That's how you can tell you're close enough; when fireworks keep falling on your head.

I have dear memories of sitting with my little nieces and nephews in my lap as they marveled at the "firecracks." Each time, I've found myself wiping tears from my eyes as their wonder explodes from their little mouths; because I can remember just as vividly watching the fireworks when I was that little, my mouth gaping in equal parts excitement and terror, mesmerized by the colors taking shape above me. Something about fireworks, to this day, makes me feel dreamy. I remember thinking about what my life might be like, someday. I remember being adolescent and thinking about the romance that was sure to come, of the hands I would someday hold under that same red-white-and-blue sky. I remember distinctly feeling great and inexplicable peace as I watched the firecracks, surrounded comfortably by my people, imagining how I would bring my someday people there, someday - how I would let them in on the secret, and take them to the place where the fireworks fall on your face if you're doing it right.

I feel unbelievably humbled that this is the life I have known, that these are my memories. And that someday is here and that there is more someday ahead. Fireworks create, for me, a [very] rare space in which I can love and live my present and feel hope and excitement for my someday all at once. Even still, after years and years of hearing the same noises and watching the same finales, I watch [my mouth gaping] in equal parts wonder at the loveliness of my today and dreamy dreams of romance & somedays to come.

let's go to the movies

2011-06-25T09:37:00.001-06:00

One of my great joys in life is to go to the movies by myself. I don't know why I like it so much, and I don't do it very often, but when I do it's the bomb.com. Honestly, I think as a super-extrovert being alone at the movies makes me feel like a rebel. I usually go all out and wear my sorority sweatshirt with the puff paint stain to draw ample attention to myself and my rebelliousness. It's a real treat.

So the other day I was in the mood to go to the movies by myself, like the freedom fighter that I am. Of course by the time I got home and sat down I'd lost all motivation to get up and go out again, so I thought, maybe I will go to the movies this weekend. But then I thought, well that's lame, because 20-somethings are supposed to be in night clubs meeting people and taking pictures to post on Facebook on Friday nights. Right?

As I was considering if it would be lame to go to a movie on a Friday night, I started thinking about how COOL it used to be to go to the movies on a Friday night. I can just see myself sitting in Algebra 2 and passing notes about which movie starring Freddie Prinze Jr. we should go see at Northrock 14 [the cool theater, as opposed to Northrock 6, which was soooo yesterday]. Should we invite the boys?! I mean, we have to invite the boys. Don't tell anyone [pinkie swear!] but I'm totally crushing on Hottie McSweatsalot over there and he totally sat by me in Bio this morning so I'm pretty sure we're in love. I'll call my mom on the office phone at lunch and ask if she'll look up times in the paper. My friend would then spend the remaining 47 minutes of class origami folding notes for the others which undoubtedly included movie details and probably everything I had just said about that boy, too. I'm sure he knew I was in love with him by the time we got to gym class. But I digress.

And seriously, it was like the greatest thing you could possibly be doing on a Friday night. We'd all meet up and buy tickets with our babysitting money. Then we'd file into the theater - and this, this was by far my favorite part. Watch a group of boy/girl adolescents walk into a theater sometime because it's got to be the greatest thing to watch ever. Watch as each one walks at an awkward pace - some too slow, some too fast, some randomly stopping to check for their ticket, some pausing to tie their shoe - trying to stagger their entry to the aisle to ensure that they'll get to sit by their crush. The whole thing was a thrill-a-minute - hearts pounding in suspense of how the seating order will turn out. Watch as they [not in any way nonchalantly] get to the seat they want. Watch as they try to look surprised when they end up there. No one wants to be obvious, that would be social suicide, but how am I supposed to accidentally constantly brush arms with him if he's sitting by that B in the platform flip flops?

The whole thing was just so exciting. We'd go home then and stay up all night talking about how fun the movies were. Seriously - nightclub, facebook pictures, and all - I could not manifest that much excitement now if I tried. And all from a simple night at the movies.

Times were simpler then. Going to the movies was the most glamorous option there was. Brushing arms for ninety minutes was the actual best possible outcome. Now we're all trying to get married and stuff, so the stakes are a little higher. So I hereby rule that going to the movies on the weekends is not lame, rather, it is a throwback to a simpler time. It's a brief moment of no pressure. It's one night of arm brushing in a lifetime of marriage proposals.

I officially have no idea what I'm talking about anymore.

But I fully intend to go to the movies this weekend, if you're wondering.

purple is a metaphor

2011-06-06T23:14:00.002-06:00

I distinctly remember having a conversation with Kelly Marhaver in high school about how much I hated the color purple. Like, I really hated it. I don't remember why, at all, but I remember that I was adamant that I would never wear or own anything that was even in the purple family. I was morally opposed and no amount of convincing from my ever-fashionable bff was going to convince me I was wrong. Lavender? Ew. Grape? Absolute detestation. Eggplant? Rage blackout. Yes, at a color. I always have been a very passionate person.

I was cleaning my room today because at present I feel confident that there are more clothing items on my floor than there are in my closet, and when it gets to this point even I can't handle it anymore. So I'm hanging up clothes, sorting through a million piles, trying to decide if I can get away with not doing laundry for one more day, minding my own business, and I began to notice a little trend. A recurring theme, if you will.

I own an obscene amount of purple.

I started thinking about it... and I bet I wear purple at least three times a week. At least. And I love it. It's not a reluctant like, a maybe-every-now-and-then-I'll-wear-purple-undies like, but more like if-something-is-purple-I'll-have-to-think-really-hard-about-buying-it-even-if-it's-not-even-that-cute like. I even have purple pants. I currently spend the majority of my adult life wearing the one color I swore I would forever loathe.

I don't know when or why this happened to me. I certainly didn't ask for it or seek it out or force it. I don't remember ever making a conscious decision to not hate purple. One day I just looked around [that day was today, if you're confused] and purple was all up on my sheets and my fingernails and littered in piles of clothing on my floor and occasionally it's even the color of my eyeliner and I don't hate it. Not even a little.

This is not the first time in my life I have decided something, sworn to forever uphold it as truth, and then been proven radically wrong; to the point that a few of my favorite friendships exist majorly in spite of my first impressions of said friends. Sometimes there is a big picture I can't see and I need to be ok with every now and then recognizing that I don't always know best. In fact, I think I take comfort in the fact that even when I've got a baditude, even when I stomp my foot and swear I'll never change, somehow, purple makes its way into my heart, life, and wardrobe anyway. It was natural and organic and spontaneous in a way that most things aren't and I just think that's great.

Fact is, purple is a good color for me. And if I was in charge, there's a good chance I'd have missed out on that. My eyes would still be lined with boring black every day and then how would the green pop? My nails would be painted with OPI Dutch Tulips until the end of time. My shirts would be black and boring and my sheets would be off-white and lame. I shudder to think of it.

I can be short-sighted, narrow-minded, stubborn and a little bit silly.
But when something's right, it's right, and even my silly humanity can't stand in its way.

What a relief.

living in loveliness

2011-06-01T20:47:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Yesterday was, in every other conceivable way, total crap. So when I got home, in a valiant effort to bounce back from said crapfest, I decided to go for a sort-of run. And by sort-of I mean that I have run exactly thrice since I decided I was going to pick up running again. So "running," by the end of said run, is pretty much just walking with enough gusto that my ponytail bounces a little. As long as the ponytail bounces, it still counts. At least I think so.

I love my little neighborhood. It's the kind of place that makes me want to write things and I love that about it. It was just dusk enough last night that as I bounced my way past all the lovely little houses, every so often I would catch a little glimpse of the lives that were being lived there. Kitchens that wouldn't be cleaned til the morning, flowers half-planted, Eeyore, Pooh and Piglet left on a skateboard in the middle of the sidewalk. I imagined marriages that were new there, fights being fought there, lullabies being sung there, dinners being made there. I imagined what summer would be like there. I wrote it all in my head. And then I got a little sad.

It can be a little discouraging to live in the midst of such cuteness. To be fair, sometimes being single looks like dancing at the Rockbar til my feet hurt and I do not hate it. Other times though I feel antsy to join the ranks of the settled, ready to be living in the loveliness too. Sometimes being patient sucks. Sometimes I imagine lives I'm not living yet I feel sad. That does not make for a pretty blog post. I'm not particularly proud of it. But it is honest. And we all know what happens when we're not honest.

If I'm not careful, I can camp out there. Looking in other people's metaphorical [or literal if you're a creepy voyeur like me] windows makes me want to throw things, honestly, because I get sick of waiting, sick of living for someday, sick of being patient. But sadness didn't stick this time because something else did instead. So much of my story is yet to be written. My lovely house is yet to be decorated, yet to be filled with marriage and kids and dinner and summer. Some days I will get impatient for what comes next. But while there's something to be said for being content with today [and I do so wholeheartedly try] there is also a beautiful sort of calm in the anticipation of what is to come. I stopped imagining other people's lives and instead, I basked in the hope of my own.

Before I knew it, I was too busy being excited to be sad.
And I bounced right on home to enjoy living in my very own loveliness, thankyouverymuch.

absolutely

2011-05-26T00:18:00.000-06:00

When I need to feel comforted, I pretty much always find myself in Lamentations 3. Sometimes I don't even believe what I'm reading, but still, I go there. I read the words. Without my permission, I am comforted.

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.

My friend prayed tonight that God would bring order. She said, "you are a God of order, and this is chaos."

Chaos: I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to not be sad. I don't know how to comfort and I don't know how to be comforted. I don't understand. I don't know and I don't see and I don't get it. There is no explanation. There is pain I can't fix. There are problems I can't solve. There are things that no matter my education or experience or training, I can't handle. There is brokenness I can't mend. There is so little I can do. And if I'm being honest that is just skimming the surface. Of just this moment.

Yet this I call to mind...

I believe in a God who is absolute. In the midst of chaos, there is a promise. We are not consumed, because his compassions never fail. Like, not ever. Not once accidentally. Not even on the days when I think my head will explode from the chaos. There is no condition, no limit to God's great love. It is perfect, unchangeable, unlimited, unbounded, pure and unadulterated. Nothing is too broken. No one is too much or too messy. What I want to know when it comes down to it is that I will not be consumed. Because some days, I feel like I might be. And then I remember that I believe in a God of absolutes.

And therefore I have hope.

directionally challenged [doesn't begin to describe it]

2011-05-19T21:23:00.000-06:00

When I turned sixteen, I was so excited. I couldn't wait to drive to the mall and meet my friends at the Orange Julius and buy crappy earrings at Claire's. I couldn't wait to get in the car and drive by myself to school, to roll up to Wichita Collegiate in my sweet '94 Ford Explorer, windows down, Cranberries blasting on the CD player. The world [or Wichita, at least] was mine for the taking. Because I could go everywhere.

So imagine my surprise when I get in the car that bright morning, the sun shining, the world fresh and new with possibilities - and I realized, suddenly, devastated - I didn't know how to get anywhere.

I probably could have guessed that I was bad at directions, but I didn't know for sure until that moment. And what a sad, pitiful moment it was. All I wanted to do was get to Towne East Mall. I'd been there two zillion times. Yet there I was, paralyzed; I didn't even know where to begin. But like, literally. It's quite possible I wasn't even sure which direction to turn out of my driveway.

Realizing what I had to do, I collected myself, I turned off the car, and dragged my Doc Marten sandals into the house. [literally, dragged, do you remember how heavy those things were?] I averted my parents [unprepared to face the mockery that awaited me if I told them the truth]. I slunk quietly into my little brother's room and asked him ashamedly if he would mind terribly shutting off his gameboy for just a quick sec... and teach me how to get to the mall? And to Kelly's? And to Ali's? And to... everywhere else I'll need to go pretty much ever? I'm pretty sure he started drawing a map. And I'm pretty sure I surrendered what little pride remained to ask him if he could please just tell me rights and lefts, because I was pretty sure I couldn't read maps either.

That pattern continued essentially until I moved away from home. But leaving home didn't really change much about much. Once in college [in Texas] I called my brother [in Kansas] and [I'm not kidding] said something like, QUICK, I need to get back to Trinity, which way should I go on 410!? And he told me. And he was right. And I died a little inside.

I got cocky though, when I moved to Colorado. Sure, the first week I lived here I cried for a solid hour because I couldn't find Target, but that's neither here nor there. Somehow, slowly, I kind of figured out where I was going. You see, in Wichita, my entire life took place in a 1-block radius. At Trinity, I barely ventured off campus and when I did it was pretty much just to one place. When I moved off campus, I moved to that one place. So Colorado was a new thing for me - I lived in downtown Denver, went to school in Littleton, nannied in Lakewood - and I did it! All of it! All by myself [mostly]! Up until a week or two ago, I was feeling pretty freaking great about my ability to get effortlessly from point A to point B.

My family still makes fun of me for the events mentioned above, and I have been fighting it recently, insisting that I have recovered from the directional challenges of my youth. I was rehabilitated, see, I can even get to and from my friends' houses without Google Maps. But a hard truth became abundantly clear to me today as I drove aimlessly around Denver trying to find places I've never been before. Less than two weeks as a case manager [where a great deal of my job is, apparently, to do just that] and I feel I need to confess the truth to you:

I am [still] bad at directions.

I haven't called any out-of-town family members yet, but hey - there's always tomorrow.

[whatever the mess you are]

2011-05-18T23:05:00.001-06:00

For as disheveled and discombobulated as I can tend to be, I really hate when things are counterproductive. I hate when I can visibly see that there is a goal and everything that's happening seems to be happening as though the goal doesn't exist. If I have to go to Kansas from Colorado, I don't want to have a layover in Florida, you know?

I have a [probably over-simplified and emotion-fueled] theory about authenticity: I think everybody wants it but everybody's scared of it so nobody does it. Counterproductivity in it's ugliest, most hate-able form.

We all want to fit in, to be accepted, to look and sound and feel right. I think no one [and I do mean no one] is excluded from this category, I don't care how self-assured or well-adjusted or popular or good-looking a person might be. So we're all out for this belonging business, at certain points [read: middle school] willing to get it at any cost. The thing is, no one really knows what they're doing, in general. So they fake it. I see that Veronica is doing so great, so I think that if she has it figured out, I better follow suit and at least make it look like I do too. So I fake it. Then Genevieve and Cynthia and all my other fictional friends who sound like they were named after American Girl dolls see that I have it all together, and they start faking it too. We're faking it to prove something to someone who's just faking it to prove something to someone else.

Everyone is faking it. And honestly, I don't blame us.

Authenticity is messy, highly unpredictable, and not always pretty; and that makes people very nervous. As such, [I've said it before and I'll say it again] there is a great deal of risk involved in being authentic. We fake it for a reason. Being authentic rocks the boat. People don't really like it when you rock the boat because it threatens the safety of their boat, and everybody wants to have control over their boat. Including me.

The logical part of me [which to be fair is a very small part of me] just thinks it's kind of simple. If we’re all sort of faking it, let’s just all sort of stop. If we embraced authenticity, if we recognized the beauty in being genuine, we'd be ok. Yes, we'd all be quirky and screwy and more than likely super awkward but we'd all be in it together. We fear rejection because it's a reality, it's a thing that can happen if we're not careful. We spend so much time being careful, though, that life can get exhausting and lonely and maybe we're not even having any fun most of the time.

I don’t know what your story looks like, but don’t you for one-half second believe the lie that it makes you any less lovable. Because exactly the opposite is true: people love people for their stories. If you don't tell it, I truly believe you are depriving yourself of one of the best things I have ever experienced: being you, and being loved for it. Authenticity opens you up to a level of intimacy that isn’t attainable any other way. Faking might feel safe. But being content with safe is just silly when you consider what's possible.

Brokenness is a reality, but exhaustion and loneliness and rejection don't have to be. This is a thing that can change. So be authentic. For every middle school girl and middle aged man in this world for whom faking it feels like the only option, and for the consequent exhaustion and loneliness they think is unique to themselves --

Embrace your mess so you can embrace theirs.

no matter how many years go by

2011-05-12T07:18:00.000-06:00

i carry your heart with me[i carry it in my heart]

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
[here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide]
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart[i carry it in my heart]

------------------------------
we carry her in our hearts

I can tell that we are gonna be friends

2011-05-11T20:56:00.000-06:00

So sorry my blogging has been sporadic. That may be the case for a while because I am busy being busy and important at my job that's full time and important and keeping me so busy. And important. Am I bragging? Maybe. I'll stop soon I'm sure.

So far, so good -- at least in that I completed day 3 and I'm planning on going back tomorrow. I'm just in that awkward new-kid stage where everything is new, and I hate that. I like not being new. I like knowing things and knowing people and having answers instead of infinity questions and I like having friends and not feeling like I need to be cool and fun always and wear pink on Wednesdays so I can get in with the popular crowd. [In my head, work is a lot like the lunch room in Mean Girls.]

The thing that's annoying is that I can tell I'm going to like this job, a lot. I can tell I might even be good at it when I learn how to be and what to say and do and pretty much everything else I don't already know. I can also tell - and I pray wholeheartedly that none of them read this until we are friends - that we are gonna be friends. I only have a few skills I'm willing to brag about [including but not limited to: the Target Lady impression, great handwriting, funfetti baking] but one of them is that I can usually tell pretty quickly if I'm going to click with people or not. It's only Wednesday of my first week, sure - but I'm pretty sure my coworkers are great. I like them and I think when I stop being gawky and awkward they might like me too. Both of those things are great and hopeful - but I'm ready to get there. I sort of want to just stand up at lunch tomorrow and be like, "Look, everybody. We're gonna be friends. Can we just skip the part where we pretend we're not sure about that yet? Give me a nickname and let's go to happy hour or something that people who work and are also friends do with each other."

More than likely I will exercise some restraint; I will lay low for a while and ask my infinity questions and try not to drive anyone crazy while I do. I'm not terribly patient, though, never have been. If we're not all besties by Friday at 5, I can't promise I won't try to win them over with funfetti. Nothing brings people together quite like funfetti.

I am not just me

2011-05-02T09:12:00.000-06:00

I have complained so much about being unemployed. Not just occasional whining, not just "I have nothing better to say" complaints but genuine, heartfelt, deeply rooted complaint. So as this transitional part of my life wraps up, it came as quite a shock to learn that I was actually going to miss some of these things I've been whining about. I'm going to miss the baby, even though some days he can be tyrannical in ways I did not know babies could be. I'm going to miss the Hedge Fund even though I still don't really know what it is and I hate loading printer paper and my hands are always paper cut from filing.

So I get that I sound utterly ridiculous. I am very excited to have a job. For real. And to the people who have fallen victim to my whining, I apologize in advance for the M. Night Shyamalan plot twist I am about to throw at you.

Even though I've been dying to move on, as it turns out, I'm sad about moving on.

Here is a fact about what it is like to be me: I am an attacher. I get attached. I pride myself in not being a stage-five-clinger [generally speaking] but I do, after prolonged periods of time with other humans, find myself often inexplicably attached to them. It doesn't matter if they are tiny and refuse to take naps or if they are brusk money-handling types. It doesn't matter if they are normal or exciting or crazy or wah-wah debbie downers.

When it comes time to leave them, I'm going to have to give myself a second to grieve it.

The annoying part is that I always forget this about me. At each transition, then, I find myself confused and startled at my emotions. Usually someone [my mom, mostly] will say, "oh yes, I expected this." And then I'm all, "Well why didn't you tell ME!??!?" because I am almost always caught off guard by it. When I got sad last week about leaving the babe, I wondered to myself if this attachy way of being was really good, in the end. Should I work on it? Maybe transitions don't have to be this hard every time. Maybe I can fix this about me.

But the thing of it is, wrong or right, I like this about me. I like that I get attached. I like that I feel the absence of people when they're not around anymore because it means they meant something to me when they were here. I like that when I say goodbye [even if it's not a real goodbye but just an I-won't-see-you-all-the-time-anymore goodbye], my heart feels a pinch that stays for a while. There comes a time to move on, and I usually can. But the person I am right now in this moment, the person who interviewed and was offered and accepted a big girl job wasn't just me as I am right now today.

It was Suzie's mentor. Bodie, Andrew, Gabe & Sara, Christina, Micah, Lucy [the kid who liked to rescue stray cats after school], and even Luke's nanny. The HF's trusty paper stacker. The most paranoid part-marker Weaver Manufacturing ever saw [I kept having dreams that planes crashed because parts were mismarked. It was traumatizing]. It was my childhood best friend and the bully from middle school art class and a bunch of roommates and the kid I taught how to fist bump at First Pres. It was the old lady who wanted me to help her decide [for hourssssssss] if she should buy Matchstick or Bootcut corduroy pants. It was everyone I've ever gotten attached to and it was a bunch of jobs I maybe didn't love with a bunch of people I definitely did. My point is, I did not grow up in a vacuum, but surrounded by people [for better or worse] who meant something.

I am not just me. Or at least, I didn't get to be me all by myself.

And I don't think I want to change anything about that.

it's all downhill from here

2011-04-25T11:46:00.001-06:00

I have a lot of hair. It's not atypical for my half-pony to be the same thickness as other people's regular size pony. And right now it's really long too, so there is an especially large lot of it. After I take showers, if I put my hair in a ponytail, I swear to you it will stay wet for DAYS. Days. My hair's water retention is impressive. So when I was in high school, I realized that if I flipped my hair back and forth like 15 times it would shake some of the water out of it and make it easier to dry. I did it every morning.

If this song isn't already in your head from reading that, it should be:

Sorry I did that to you. But not that sorry.

Anyway, I haven't whipped my hair in I don't know how long. I don't know why I stopped, really, or why yesterday morning when my hair's water retention was at an all time high, I decided I should try it again. I'm going to call it sleep deprivation paired with I'm-running-late-what-will-make-this-process-go-faster desperation. So I flipped my head upside down - so far so good - flipped it back up, and promptly fell to the ground in a heap of crippling pain. I don't know if it's whiplash or I pulled a muscle or what but it was awful. All day I moved around with stiff neck. In church I had to do the whole body swivel during greeting time since every time I turned my neck it hurt so bad I thought I might throw up. I felt like Joan Cusack in Sixteen Candles trying to function with that awkward neck brace.

She may very well be my favorite character in that movie. When she tries to use the drinking fountain and then wipes her mouth with the applique skirt on her sweatshirt, I DIE.

Apparently for me, 26 is the year of becoming old. Suddenly I can't do things I used to be able to do and I'm inflicting serious bodily harm by trying to do them. That's never happened to me before. I hate it.

Since I've been 26 I've also acquired [I don't know if you heard] a REAL GROWN UP JOB. Which I'm so excited about - but also I realize that my days of prolonged adolescence are coming to a rapid halt. Sure, no more cover letters, no more babies [at least not til I have my own], no more Hedge Funding, no more folding khakis... but also, no more sitting in coffee shops, no more going out on Monday nights just because I can, no more watching Mad Men while the baby sleeps, no more sleeping in, no more fun. I'm hoping it's not that extreme, but I really wouldn't know, I've never had one of these before.

I guess I'm just flustered because no one told me it would happen so fast. One day I'm footloose and fancy free, flipping my hair and galavanting about, and the next thing I know I'm whole body swiveling and going to bed at 9 PM and I'm talking about my 401K. Or 403B. Or 402X. Or something. I have 2 weeks before I start my job in which to learn how to be a grownup. Or learn how to make it look like I am one. I don't think my new employer will appreciate it very much if they ask me a question and I ask to call my parents or yell in a panic, "I NEED AN ADULT!" If anyone feels they are especially proficient at adulthood, feel free to help a sista out.

Either way, I think my neck debacle has made one thing perfectly clear: it's all downhill from here.

something & Everything

2011-04-22T17:18:00.000-06:00

One of the most comforting things I have ever heard came to me in a time where very little was comforting at all. I got this little email from a friend telling me this: that she had no idea what to say or do but, she told me, I didn't have to carry my sadness alone. She told me that there were people who loved me who would carry it with me. Words are my favorite for a lot of reasons. Where comfort is concerned, I think words almost always fall short. For once though, they sort of didn't.

In the book of Numbers, Moses is at the end of his rope because the Israelites need too much from him. He says to God, "I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me. If this is how you're going to treat me, put me to death right now - if I have found favor in your eyes - and do not let me face my own ruin."

[Moses just asked to die rather than deal. Can I just say that I love that this is God's response:]

The Lord said to Moses: "Bring me seventy of Israel's elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people. Have them come to the Tent of Meeting, that they may stand there with you. I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take of the Spirit that is on you and put the Spirit on them. They will help you carry the burden of the people so that you will not have to carry it alone."

There is a lot of burden. I got a whole degree in counseling for that very reason and I still don't know how to handle it. But I read that and I think, yes. Let's bear one another's burdens. Not in a way that makes us all codependent messes with terrible boundaries, but in a way that is the way community should be. Not because I want something from you or because I want to control you or because I want to fix you, but because I love you. Because I have room right now for a little of your junk, so let me carry some for you. We won't ever do it perfectly or even right, but that doesn't mean it's not something.

I think we are called to bear one another's burdens. If I stop to really think about that, when I remember and reflect on my friend's words, I am moved almost to tears at how beautiful that really is. But that verse in Galatians continues: "and in this way fulfill the law of Christ." Today is Good Friday. That passage in Numbers is not insignificant, I think, and Galatians either. But today we reflect and remember and weep because Jesus took all of our sin and suffering and burden to the cross. Not like us - not just a little. Not just when he remembered. Not just what he could handle. Not just for the people he liked best. It was hard and it hurt and it cost something.

We don't have words extravagant enough to describe that. It's Everything.

getting the pause back

2011-04-18T16:31:00.000-06:00

I have been babysitting ever since I was old enough to take the Babysitters Club Class at school. A real dream come true, then, after all the BSC books I'd read - it seemed the coolest thing to be at the age of 12 was a babysitter. At the present time [why yes, 14 years later, I am still at it] while I'm good with toddlers and pre-teens, it would seem that my specialty is babies. Word has apparently spread that there is a 26-year-old Seminary Grad with baby experience [magical words] who will still babysit. I would rather be pretty much anything other than a 26-year-old with a Masters degree who is still babysitting - so I'm not bragging - but I am in high demand. A hot commodity. What do you know.

At present, I nanny for this little tater tot who's about 11 months old. He can crawl at warp speed, he can pull himself up on just about anything, but now - I can see it in his eyes - he wants more than anything to walk. Over and over, each time hoping for a different result, he pulls himself up to standing, precariously lets go of whatever it is he's pulled himself up on [9/10 times it's some apendage of mine] and stands. Foooooor about 2 seconds. Then he falls squarely onto his little diapered butt.

And a funny thing happens at this point: he looks to me. There is a small window of time - just a couple seconds - in which to decide if he is upset about this fall or not; if he's going to pitch a little fit or if he's going to move along as though nothing happened. I have a lot of power here, as his reaction will be likely be a direct response to my reaction. If I rush over and act like I'm going to call an ambulance, he will probably cry. If I laugh and make a funny face, he will likely shoot me a little two-tooth smile and keep on keepin' on. It would seem we were born with the pause. Without fail, with the majority of babies I know [unless they are legitimately hurt, which is another story entirely, before you go calling CPS on me] there is an event [in this case, the fall], there is a pause, and then there is a reaction.

Somewhere along the line, though, I think the process starts moving a lot faster, and the pause is lost. Now we are adults and it goes like this: we fall, we react. Simple. That little window of time where our moms or nannies are constantly watching us is over. So one day we pause, look up, and realize we have to decide on our own how to react. It's up to me. Am I fine? Am I hurt? Am I upset? Am I going to cry, scream, laugh, yell, throw my toys around in a fit of rage?

Most of the time, I don't pause anymore. Maybe some days are better than others, maybe my reactions on a good day are calm and peaceful and holy. Emphasis on the word maybe. Regardless, something bad happens and I react to it immediately, on instinct. So many times I catch myself, twenty minutes, three hours, four days later, finally pausing to reflect on my actions. And what good is the pause to me then?

This whole train of thought took me to Paul in Romans 7: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, and what I hate I do... For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out." Even though I have the desire to do what is good, and most days I do, my inclinations aren't always right. My habits are not always healthy. And as such, my reactions are not always fruitful or productive. I will always be a dirty sinner, as it were, so praying for the erasure of sin and the arrival of perfection seems a little silly. But in watching the munchkin process his little life, I've come to realize that what I can pray for is a pause - a moment to process. A moment to look up for guidance.

Chances are I won't ever get it perfectly right.
Getting the pause back might be a step in the right direction, though.

your real thank you note is in the mail

2011-04-16T09:14:00.000-06:00

I don't need to tell you [again] how much I love birthdays. It goes without saying that birthday week is one of my favorite times of the year. This year was no exception. I am having a great birthday week.

Another thing I love about my life at present is that I am known. I am known to the very depths and core of my being and that, that is a simultaneously terrifying and beautiful thing. I believed for a while the lie that if people knew me, they wouldn't like what they saw. They would reject and point and laugh and leave. But this week as people I love loved me in birthday ways, I realized that that scary fear is no longer a fear. It's a reality. A lovely one, at that.

The proof is in the pudding, as they say:

a surprise over breakfast tacos; a pink & purple cake with cream cheese frosting; a statue of a hand making the rock out sign; going to see my favorite band with favorite people; handcrafted cards and other handcrafted items; a ticket to a high school musical; my favorite book, fancily bound; a [big-ass] book of crafts; an art-capade; the perfect StoryPeople print; relief for the dire straights that are my finances; a movie about Unicorns; THIS; words of affirmation all over my Facebook; and quality time with so many people I love so much.

Some of those things are basic, perhaps, but others of them are not necessarily what you would call normal. I don't know that all of you would like a statue of a hand for your home or a movie about Unicorns or to go see a high school play. Which is why I call that list - perfectly crafted to somehow meet my every need and desire - perfectly delicious proof of how I am known and loved.

I don't mean to sound braggy, but honestly, I feel a little braggy.

And to those of you who know me, who know my crazy and my ugly and my broken and who have stuck around to love me, you should know that you are by far my most prized gift. Even better than that video of the Unicorn puppet singing Michael Bolton. Which is saying something.

the right kind of home

2011-04-09T07:34:00.000-06:00

New is exciting, and fun, and healthy, and necessary. Change can be good.

But I have to be honest, I like familiarity. And I think it gets a bad rap sometimes, like it's a lazy thing or it's about settling or we're getting "too familiar" - which means it's time for something else to take the place of said familiar. And in some instances, like I said, good. Great. It's not good to get bored or to settle or to be lazy. But sometimes I just like feeling familiar.

So I like it that I listen to The Cranberries Greatest Hits and instantly I'm transported to my senior year of high school and I'm in my '94 Ford Explorer and I'm late to softball practice. I like that the weird mural on the walls of the basement stairway of Wellspring makes me feel a surge of safety and community and welcome as soon as I turn the corner. I like that I know my house will smell like pumpkin for almost the entirety of autumn. And I like it that when I stepped off the plane last night in San Antonio and felt the nasty humidity blow through the jetway, it sent me right back to the years I spent here. I took a deep breath of wet air and I was walking home from the Kappa house on a Friday night. I was heading to the Murch study lounge to write a paper on the role of the femme fatale in Hitchcock films (best paper ever) and also laugh with my friends all night long. I was walking to Marble Slab on the Riverwalk with a bunch of high school kids. I was at the Taco C drive through with The Power Six at midnight, I was cheering for the Spurs [without fear of persecution, I might add], and I was getting thrown into the Trinity fountain on my birthday.

Let me be clear: I pretty much hate the weather here. I hate that I walked across the street this morning to get a cup of coffee and I got sweatier than I did in Zumba class on Wednesday night. I hate that when I'm here my hair becomes akin to a lion's mane the minute I step outside. This isn't one of those situations where I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect, either. Had I considered for even a moment the climate of San Antonio in my college choosing process, I probably never would have made it to Trinity University.

But I loved the four years I spent here. I love that wet air and lion hair and general sweatiness makes me feel, in a weird and sort of unpleasant way, like home.

I remember reading a study in my Social Psych class about familiarity and attractiveness. It showed [long story short] that when a person became familiar, they were rated as more attractive than they were initially, when they were unfamiliar. Their appearance hadn't changed, but [psychologically speaking] knowing their face made the subject perceive them as better looking, somehow. I remember thinking that that's kind of beautiful: that knowing a person makes them more attractive to us. Intimacy breeds desirability. Familiarity - for better or worse - has an effect on us.

I don't think it's a trick that our brains are playing on us. I think it's not about settling or getting too comfortable or being lazy. I think it's because we were designed for knowing and for being known, so the connection between knowing and liking is in our wiring. I think it's because familiarity makes us feel home. I didn't mean to love San Antonio, but San Antonio became home. I can't not love that.

New is exciting, and fun, and healthy, and necessary. Good.
But I think a case can be made that the right kind of home is all of those things too. And then some.

running errands [things that are my favorite]

2011-03-29T16:53:00.000-06:00

I am not a particularly organized human when it comes to my personal life. I can do jobs and be successful and graduate from schools most of the time, but I can't find a correct pairing of socks on a daily basis to save my life. I do however, against the grain of my own personality, LOVE a good to-do List. I covet that wonderful feeling of scratching things off, of getting stuff done. Sometimes [if I'm honest] I feel a little put out that more people aren't applauding me for the major accomplishments that I am accomplishing. But it's ok, because at the end of the day, I know what I did. And I know I deserve a trophy. Whether or not you're willing to acknowledge it.

I do admit to occasionally doing that thing where I put things on my to do list that I've already done just so I can cross it off. But it's not cheating because it COUNTS. Just because you made the list as an afterthought to that particular accomplishment doesn't mean you didn't accomplish it. Get the credit. Write it on the list. I also write really inconsequential things on there so that at the end of the day I feel like I got more done than I actually did. "Check email" or "get dressed" probably don't merit a whole line on the List, but the longer the List, the better I feel when it's done. And don't judge me, because I'd be willing to bet you do it too.

Running errands then, you can imagine, is like the end-all-be-all of cross-it-off-the-list productivity for me. I love to spend a day running errands (which, if you think about it, is a highly ambiguous term that can mean actually anything I want). Yesterday was blissfully full of Errands, and today I was applauding myself in my head for all that I achieved. I gave myself a big huge pat on the back for getting my phone fixed. Why did my phone need fixing? I broke it. So was it an entirely counterproductive activity, a time-suck if you will, when I really thought about it? Yes. But did that stop me from feeling on top of the world leaving the Apple Store? It sure as hell did not. It's like how I feel when I purchase something and then return it. I feel great after the return, but could I have saved the time by not buying the non-essential in the first place? Quit raining on my parade, please.

Essentially what I'm saying is that I want to get special praise and acclaim for doing what all other grown ups do every day of their lives. I may never get used to being a responsible adult; I will always expect that someone should high-five me for paying my water bill, face-kiss me for returning the shoes I don't like to DSW, fist-bump me for filling my car up with gas. Is that too much to ask? I think it's really not.

you're not fooling anyone

2011-03-25T17:03:00.000-06:00

what are you afraid of? she said &
I said, nothing & then I said
what are you afraid of? &
she said, people like you &
it was such a relief to know I wouldn't be able to fool her for long
[via storypeople]

I think when it comes right down to it, none of us really want to fool anybody
but I also notice that we go to GREAT LENGTHS to try and fool everybody

[I don't know about you,] but I'm pretty sure all I really want is to find somebody I can't fool

the moral of the story is this
we certainly are a counterproductive breed

are we not?

oh, and by the by...

2011-03-23T18:46:00.000-06:00

check me out - I made it on The Well Blog!

{thanks Julie!}

one topic guy [categories of awkward]

2011-03-23T18:44:00.000-06:00

I first noticed this category of awkward in the seventh grade.
It's the guy who only knows how to talk to you about one thing. The one topic guy.

I give you exhibit A: James.

A seventh grader named James. For the entirety of the time we were in school together, which was like 6 years, I'd say we talked a fair amount. But we rarely [try never] deviated from the subject of Latin homework.

I feel like it's not a stretch to say that we could have been involved in some kind of gas station hold up together over the weekend and Monday morning he would still walk by my locker and ask me if we had any Latin homework. Or if I had done the Latin homework. Or if I could believe we had so much Latin homework. Or if I thought the Latin homework was hard. Sometimes I think he would just say, "Latin homework," chuckle to himself, and continue his trek to Ms. Kehoe's class to get new conversation ammo for our next encounter.

There have been others since high school, and I have continually been blown away by their consistency and persistence in talking to me about only one thing. A guy I work with switches topics every few weeks, but for those few weeks he is unrelenting. [I see what you're doing, guy. Switch all you want, but I know who you are under this facade.] Maybe the first time I met you we had a conversation about how I love jukeboxes, and now my love for the jukebox has stuck with you as my only definitive characteristic. Maybe once it rained when we were together and so now the go-to convo starter is always, "HEY! Been in any rainstorms lately?!" So very clever, friend. Now let's dance around the topic of rain for 3-7 minutes until one of us can come up with a reason we have to leave.

The issue is super prevalent among dads of kids I nanny for. They are maybe the most awkward demographic of people I have ever come into contact with in my entire life. Once in college I was babysitting and the dad got home before the mom [which I think, to be fair, he wasn't expecting]. He fumbled for his wallet, shoved some money in my hand, barked a quick "BYE" and abruptly left the room. I skedaddle out of the house so as not to drown in my discomfort, walk outside, and realize that he has no idea how long I've been there or how much I get paid, and he has just paid me about $40/hour. I mean I'm not complaining, that's for sure, but when your awkwardness is costing you actual money, I think it may be time to assess it as a legitimate issue.

There is also the kind of dad who talks to you EXCLUSIVELY about his child. That's it. We will broach no other topics. Try to divert the convo and watch him squirm as he tries to bring it back around to the kid. Then there is the kind who, like Latin homework guy, will pick one or two topics [weather & traffic, almost always] and run with them until the end of time. Which gets really awkward if you nanny for them a lot. There is only so much that can be said about the traffic on I-25, you know? I'm not sure how we manage to talk about it three times a week.

But really, you just have to love one topic guy. They're making an effort, they're just sort of debilitated by their awkward ways. I recognize now that James just wanted to talk to me in the hallway, so what if he couldn't think of anything thrilling to say when he walked by? And if we on the receiving end are equally persistent, I have hope that maybe one fine day we can break the chains of the one topic and talk about something crazy. Like, I don't know, the traffic on I-70. Or biology homework. Or other kinds of storms. Who knows what scintillating conversation lies ahead.

There are very few constants in this world, so in the meantime I will find comfort in the stability of this dependably awkward demographic. They are almost as consistent as that Bruno Mars song, Grenade. I don't listen to the radio very often, but I swear that song plays perpetually. I think it ends on one station and auto-starts on another. Anyway, constants are great.

That's not one, but TWO constants in a world of crazy. You're welcome. We can all rest easy tonight.

posers for good

2011-03-21T10:50:00.000-06:00

Book Club was Wednesday. I have not read the past two Book Club books because I am a Book Club Loser (BCL). I wasn't always this way, really I wasn't, but recently it's been the case and I hate it. I'd be ashamed to show my face at BC this time having not read. So last Monday, 30 pages in to a 300+ page book, I sat down to tackle that sucker.

I do, however, watch a lot of crap TV. (And we wonder why I am a BCL?) Some of it is probably acceptable but I mean, The Bachelor? I spent roughly two hours a week for the past six weeks watching crazy people pretend like they are making legitimate lifelong connections with their future husband/wife by riding in a helicopter and talking over and over about how they're "in it for the right reasons" and "totally falling for each other" on national television. (This vice is justifiable by how hard I laugh at the commentary of the funny people I watch it with, but unjustifiable for pretty much any other reason at all) I am learning a lot about Mormons from Big Love... well, ok, no I'm not. When I sit down and think about some of the stuff I am wasting my time on, it's upsetting. Pretty much on the whole it is really not enriching my life in any way.

But it's so easy. Sometimes it's nice at the end of a day to sit and watch stupid TV. And I don't think it's always wrong to do it. It's sort of like being really tired and debating whether you should eat a pint of ice cream or go do yoga. Ben & Jerry's isn't always a bad choice and it is immediately satisfying, but you will probably feel sick after. It is a poser for good. Yoga requires a little more work but will make you feel limber and awesome after. I don't always make the right choice. I fall for the impostors more often than I care to admit.

I sat down to speed-read that book though and I couldn't stop. I got wrapped up in the story and the characters and I could barely tear myself away to attend small group for two hours. (I did, because I'm very holy.) After those fools left my house I grabbed a diet root beer, shut myself in my room and read until my eyes were starting to cross and it was after midnight and at last, I was finished. I love doing that. I used to do that all the time. I genuinely book-worm nerd-style love reading; I love getting lost in books and caught up in stories and not being able to stop until it's over because it's THAT good. I shut the book and I thought to myself, that was so much better than watching Desperate Housewives on Hulu. TV is fine I guess. But reading is real good.

I think we know what is good and what is not as good but just sort of looks good. But it's super easy to forget and instead of going for what is good (because usually good takes a little more effort) I go for what is easy and sort of looks like it might be good. I go for the imposters. For me, reading a great novel is life-giving and enriching and makes me feel limber (sure, why not) and awesome. I know that. I know that reading does that for me. I know what is good and what is a poser but I often choose what is not good anyway.

I like being reminded of what really is good. I'm going to work harder at doing those things because I think in general they make me a better, more pleasant, limberer and more awesome human. Even if it seems like it might take a little more work, I'd rather feel limber than sick, I think.

gratitude [three ash wednesdays later]

2011-03-13T11:57:00.000-06:00

[I will boast only in the Lord]

I discovered two things as I wrote this: (1) that [scripture] spoke my heart better than I could.
Also (2) that if you feel a twinge of deja vu, it's not your imagination. I've said a lot of this before.

[let all who are helpless take heart]

In March of [2009], I was a hot mess. And much as that phrase delights me, I do not mean it delightly; I was grieving a loss, fearing another, and feeling so broken I could barely stand. I walked into Ash Wednesday service at DCC, [very] alone, needing something and expecting nothing. I felt desperate. I wanted answers, strength, I wanted to understand. With my then limited understanding of Lent, I felt sort of silly looking for all of that at this service - how was giving up caffeine or whatever going to give me what I needed to survive?

[I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me - he freed me from all my fears]

But it was that night that I learned about Lent. I learned that Lent was a season to sort through mess and debris that life had left in the way. Through sacrifice and surrender we learn to depend on God again. I learned that we take on the ashes as a symbol of our repentance, as a statement and acknowledgment of our brokenness before God. Before each other. I read these words: Ashes are a prerequisite for Easter. Brokenness for healing. Death before resurrection. Our ancestors have given us Lent to help us find our way.

[in my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened]

Brokenness for healing. There was an exchange possible here. Brokenness, even my own, wasn't nothing after all. There was a way to be found, and Lent could help. Maybe there wasn't hope just yet, but for the first time in a long time I had hope that there could be hope. And that, right then, was enough.

[the Lord is close to the brokenhearted;
he rescues those whose spirits are crushed]

A year later, [2010] I learned that in the ancient church, only the worst sinners were adorned with the ashes [sort of like a scarlet letter] so everyone could see that they had sinned. As the years passed the church began to see that they were not superior to these penitents, that their sins were no better, and they began to wear the ashes as well. And that, I think, is amazing. It's community: desperate and in need and humbled, each of us no worse or better than the next, standing together in our brokenness before God. What an incredible shift - something that once filled hearts with shame has become something that draws us close to God and to each other. Shame is transformed into joy, right before our eyes.

[those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy;
no shadow of shame will darken their faces]

I sat in church a few nights ago [2011] and I was flooded with familiar emotions and thoughts, comforts and pains. I was crying and I couldn't figure out if that was good or bad or if it just was. I listened. What resonated within my whole self was thank you.

Thank you for my community, that I am not alone. Thank you that broken isn't all there is, that death is nothing. Thank you for [ashes and] Easter [and brokenness] and healing [and death] and resurrection. Thank you for taking away the power of shame and putting something beautiful in it's place. Thank you that two years later, in the wake [and, at times, the midst] of hard and scary things, I am hopeful. For: helping, answering, freeing, listening, being close, rescuing, taking shame, giving joy, for never not being faithful: thank you. Thank you for proving me so very wrong.

As much as it may hurt, I don't ever want to forget that place:
I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.
Because it brought me to this place.
Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
We are not consumed.

[let all who are helpless take heart]

I don't understand everything. I still don't have answers. But I have hope. And that, for now, is enough.

[Scripture from Psalm 34 and Lamentations 3]

a guest post [milestones]

2011-03-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

Drumroll please...

Today I am a guest poster. In my (sort of secret) quest to become a legit member of the world of bloggerdom, this feels like a big deal. Really it's just a post that could easily be found here being found somewhere else, but I don't know, it feels exciting.

Head over to my great friend Sarah Ann Noel's brilliant blog - check out some of her beautiful writing as well as pictures of her beautiful new baby, Iris Ann! Sarah has a way with words unlike many people I know, plus she is a great friend and I have no doubt she's already a wonderful mama. I am thankful to have her in my real life as well as my blog life!

It should come as no surprise that I knew I liked Sarah almost immediately.

Oh, and I guess while you're there, read my guest post about my against-all-odds first best friend.

I have included a visual aid for your viewing pleasure.

please take a moment to soak in the gawky awkwardness of the picture on the lefthand side.

A few final thoughts: A big congratulations to Ryan, first of all, on his recent engagement! Hard to believe we are this old. A very special thanks to my first best friend for giving me permission to write about him and the magical story of our first meeting. Thank you for your friendship. And for walking me to the bus stop every morning.

here it is:

This is the story of the first time I met my childhood best friend. And about how before I had even learned his name I burst into tears, turned around, and quite literally fled in terror.

I spent the better part of my childhood standing at the very edge of the grass [I wasn't allowed to leave my yard] begging anyone within earshot to come over and play with me. Catalina Way was a veritable smorgasbord of playmates–even creepy Jeremy would occasionally look up from whatever insect he was dissecting that day and respond if I beckoned him.

When I was about 5, a new family moved in one cul-de-sac over. Here is how the story goes: the new kid showed up in my backyard with the Dixon sisters one day. (In my defense, to preface: at present, Ryan is 6’8”. He was an extremely tall child. And I was 5. Give me a break.) The way it is explained to me, I saw two things and two things only: he was a boy, and he was a giant, and I was not ok with either. Utilizing my most theatric theatrics, I turned around and ran inside, sobbing, terrified.

Honestly, I’m not sure I’ve changed that much since then. I think if it were socially acceptable, when faced with new people (probably especially new big scary boys), I would just run. And as a brilliant friend once asked: aren’t we all just kids who got old? Even when we were kids, relationships required risk. And we’re still scared. We’re still vulnerable. Maybe by now we’ve even risked and we know for a fact how much it hurts to be hurt. Scary people invade our swingsets every day and in very mature, grown up looking ways, we head for the hills. I wonder what and who we miss out on because of it.

Back to 1990. Somehow, my parents convinced me that my life was not in imminent danger, and I reluctantly tippy-toed my way back outside to give the giant boy a chance. Inexplicably and against all odds, Ryan and I were almost immediately inseparable. Every summer day when the garage door went up, Ryan was on the driveway waiting for me. When my mom had to go back to work, I ate breakfast at his kitchen table every morning before school. He walked me to the bus stop every day, and I collected X-Men cards for about a year just because Ryan told me that was cool. While I will never know for sure why he scared me so very much at the outset, what I do know with absolute certainty is that I adored that little giant.

When I met Ryan I was nothing short of terrified. And honestly, he probably should have thought I was nuts and fled himself. (But he was 5. And I did have a really killer swingset. Give him a break.) But we both took a risk that day–I went back outside and he decided to give the deranged screaming girl a chance–and because of it, for the entirety of my time on Catalina Way, that boy was my very best friend. Because of it, I learned about love. The thing is–and this is the catch – I wasn’t wrong about the risk. In fourth grade Ryan got made fun of for having a “girl-friend” and wouldn't sit by me on the bus anymore. It may have been my first little glimpse of heartbreak. We aren’t wrong to be scared, but risking it is so worth the gift of loving and being loved.

I am so glad I didn’t stay inside. If you find yourself fleeing, give yourself a pep talk and go back to your swingset.

People are worth loving. Even scary giant boys.

the only place for emoticons

2011-03-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

I think emoticons are almost entirely a useless entity. If you like them, I mean, no judgment (maybe a little judgment. I'm just being honest). But really, it's your personal choice. Here's what I think it comes down to: I passed a copious amount of notes in my middle/high school career, and undoubtedly I was all about the :), ;), :p. You name it, I used it in excess. I think I just peaked early where the smiley is concerned. But really, to each his own. Use emoticons all you like. I won't de-friend you on Facebook over it or anything.

There is one exception to the rule though - one instance in which I am extraordinarily thankful for that little two (or three, depending on your preference) character magic trick: when they act as a buffer. It's very useful in any situation wherein your tone can't be read. A well-placed emoticon can be the perfect safeguard alongside saying something that is potentially a little bit questionable. So if I'm saying something that COULD be interpreted as offensive (but of course I don't mean it to be), maybe I add a little smiley guy to diffuse potential reactions. Not sure someone will pick up on your sarcasm? Wink that sucker. As a person who can barely go six seconds without saying something smart-alecky, I have to be honest, I require a lot of emoticon buffers. [This is not to be confused with the person who actually says something offensive or hateful and then adds a smiley so it looks like a joke but everyone knows it's really fully true. I'm not trying to rationalize an intentional jab, just a harmless sarcastic comment. To recap: the emoticon buffers sarcasm, not being a big jerk.] So I soften the blow of my brilliant wit with the occasional emoticon. I may have said something iffy, sure, but hello, I added a smiley face. So, what? You're going to get mad at me? How could you have possibly misread that... I used a smiley face. There's nothing confusing happening here.

I could just stop being so sarcastic. But probably I won't. So in the meantime I will continue to use emoticons as my life and humor necessitate. And likely shun them at all other times.

we need no longer fear the closet monsters

2011-03-02T12:55:00.000-07:00

Love > Fear.

I feel like in a roundabout way I've been writing/thinking/talking/living about fear a lot lately, so I was excited when at church a couple Sundays ago our pastor talked about this equation and really brought things full circle. He discussed that the world is scary and unsure (long story very short & far less eloquent) and as a result we are often engulfed by fear. He discussed the story where the disciples are with Jesus out on a boat and as a storm surrounds them, they find Jesus sleeping. In the darkness, amidst the turmoil of the storm, Jesus sleeps. The disciples - I can only imagine feeling the sting of what looks like betrayal by the one they thought would protect them - wake him and say, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?" [how often do my prayers sound just like this?] But then: "Jesus got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!" And the wind died down and it was completely calm." From the safety of my chair, I thought of my own storms. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Remember being convinced as a kid that there were monsters in your closet (or if you're me, that Corduroy Bear was going to come to life in the night and eat my face)? Maybe you ran to your parents' bedroom and found them, sleeping. Here you are, in mortal peril, your very life hanging in the balance, and they who are supposed to protect you have the audacity to sleep. But maybe now you are a mom or a dad (or a nanny or an aunt) and you know the other side. You know that even though the shadows look gigantic, they are nothing. That even though your child's fear feels huge, the truth is that there is no monster. Corduroy Bear will remain a stuffed toy when the lights go out. We sleep not because we are heartless, but because we know better.

The world was (is?) looking for a Messiah who would come in power, with force and might and strength. When the disciples were caught in that storm, I imagine they expected Jesus to be at the helm, steering their boat through the rough waters, conquering them. Instead, he sleeps. Think of it this way: if every night of my childhood my parents had taken turns holding watch outside my door to ensure that Corduroy Bear didn't slit my throat, it would have done only one thing - it would have validated my fear. It would have confirmed a danger that wasn't real. In the same way, had Jesus made a great show of steering through the storm, if the disciples had found him furiously bailing water from the deck, it would have done nothing but give power and credence to their fear. Fighting at all would imply that fighting was necessary in the first place. Which (spoiler alert!) it wasn't. It's still not.

And yet we pray: Jesus, don't you care if we drown?

I think the point is not that the world isn't scary or dangerous, because really, it sort of is. As grown ups, we sleep through the night because we don't fear the threat of monsters. But if the kid calls for me, I will go. I will double-check the closet. Even though we know better, we don't ignore their fear; we calm it. As grown ups we are afraid too, but of much realer dangers than closet monsters and demon toys. Jesus sleeps, but he doesn't stay asleep. In the face of the storm, as we cry out, if we listen carefully I wonder if we can't hear amidst the chaos: Quiet! Be still! And then? Calm. Instead of any big show of brute strength, the gentle Messiah calms the storm with a word. And seriously - how much more awesome is that?

"Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!"

To quote my pastor,

"The God of love, who sovereignly sleeps through our greatest fears, silences them with a word."

I am so tired of living in fear.

Even when the evidence points to the contrary -

even when the storms seem like they'll destroy us -

the fact of the matter is this: fear is nothing.

Spoiler alert!

Love wins.

out of chaos, Life

2011-02-27T17:49:00.000-07:00

Today I have redemption on the brain. And that has been a real gift.
To sum it up for you: I sometimes can't believe the beauty that comes out of such junk.

Listen:

We bring a lot of junk to the table, but God is in the business of beauty. And try as we may, there's really no getting in the way of that. Whatever the mess we are, whatever the junk we have, whatever the chaos we are living in, however lost we have gotten -

You make beautiful things
out of the dust
out of us

I don't know how it's possible. I just know that it is.

I need an adult

2011-02-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

Because I love to preface...
The following story has been slightly hyperbolized for dramatic effect. (operative word = slightly.)
Mostly I thought it would be funny to see the following chain of events on paper.

We've talked before, you and I, about how I am a highly irrational human. I have come to the conclusion that this irrationality is perhaps at the root of another of my flaws as well - (two, I know, you wouldn't know it to look at me) - I am indecisive. I hate making decisions. I'm terrible. I know that I'm a grown up and I'm supposed to be able to do things like decide what to eat for dinner or what movie to rent from Redbox, but some days it is just not that simple, you know? Recently we were invited to go to this swanky grown-up martini fundraiser, and we decided to get all dolled up and go. I felt great about it. Until the day arrived, of course, and I found myself on the brink of hysteria because it was already 4:00 pm and I still had approximately 287 decisions to make.

What should I wear? Should I go get something new? No. I don't have any money because I'm a nanny. Great, now I am stressed about my career path AND I have to decide what to wear. There's this dress - buuuut I wore this dress the last time I was trying to pass for a grown up. What if someone notices that on every grown up occasion I wear the same thing? (That's not a lie. I actually thought that. Upsetting on multiple levels.) Maybe if I style it differently? I could belt it. There's this skirt - no definitely not that skirt. Back to the first dress again. Maybe I can just do my hair differently? GOODNESS, my HAIR! Curly or straight? Curly. Natural curly or curling iron curly? What time is it? OH THE HUMANITY!

THEN (yes, it gets better. worse? better.) I get in the car with my dear, darling, wonderful friend. My friend who is a kindred spirit in general irrationality - which is both awesomely validating and double-trouble all at once. This is, I think, an accurate depiction of how the ride to the event went:

- I think I'm wearing too much eye makeup. Does it look trashy?
- No, of course not it looks great but do you think I shouldn't have worn nylons? Do people wear nylons? It's just that tights looked funny... Maybe I should take them off. Do you think I should take them off?
- No, they look great, you look perfect. Is it ok that I'm wearing a shrug? Maybe I shouldn't wear it. Do I look like a grandma? I look like an old lady don't I?
- No! Wearing a cardigan is totally acceptable. You look great. [We arrive.] Now get out real quick and look at my legs. Should I keep these nylons on? I really don't love these shoes...
- Should we wear our coats inside? It's not THAT cold, but do you think there will be a coat check? What if there's not and we have to carry it around? It looks like those people are wearing coats. Ok, let's wear coats.

Then as we walked in my friend slipped on the ice and onto her be-hind. It was the last straw. It was at this point I thought to myself, I need an adult. We needed one. Someone to step in and tell us to shut up, because really, we are smart, normal girls who know how to dress ourselves and attend functions. We just forgot for a minute.

You can laugh, it's ok, because the whole thing was ridiculous. To be fair, most days we get dressed all by ourselves like we've been doing since we were toddlers and go out and have a lovely time without spiraling into the pit of despair because we don't know if we're wearing an appropriate nail polish color. But we were just ever so slightly out of our comfort zone, and we panicked a little. At least we can laugh about it now. And since I know you are on pins and needles... you can wear a shrug, people do wear nylons, and there was, in fact, a coat rack.

Despite it's deceitful appearance, it seems to me that being a grown up isn't about not being scared so much as it's about doing stuff even when you're uncomfortable and unsure, indecisive and irrational. Learning with every heroic foray into grown-up-ish activities that yes, in fact, you can do it. The adult is in there, somewhere, and I bet with practice I'll start to hear said adult interject a well-placed "shut up" every now and then. Maybe one day I will walk into a fancy party and realize halfway through that I got there with grace and ease. One day...

In the meantime, I feel pretty lucky to have at least one person who understands what it's like to become slightly deranged when I get a little insecure. The more I'm honest about it, the more other people are too, and the less alone we have to feel in the face of adversity.

Yeah, adversity. Or, as the case may be, in the face of completely inconsequential daily choices.
Coat or no coat? We can do this!

a smattering of love-type things

2011-02-14T13:39:00.002-07:00

I'm something of a rebel, and as such, I don't just love rules. And I feel like Valentines Day carries with it a lot of rules for how we're supposed to feel and behave. Speaking exclusively in sterotypes, boys are [as a rule] irritated in anticipation of the pressure of we-the-females' expectations. And girls, as a rule, have seen about eleven too many rom coms starring Ashton Kutcher and as such have irrational and unrealistic expectations for aforementioned don't-stand-a-chance dudes. Single people are supposed to wear black and call it 'Singles Awareness Day*' and make fun of people on dates and hate boys (or girls, as the case may be). Which in my experience really isn't that fun and Mondays are bad enough as it is, you know?

I have only ever bought one Valentines gift for a boy, and I'm proud to say that it was a Bryan McKnight CD when I was a freshman in high school. I stressed so much about what to get, but the aforementioned boy loved the song "Back at One" [repeat steps one through threeeee] and I decided this was the perfect way to tell him that after being together for a week and a half that my feelings for him were real. Looking back, the fact that he liked that awful song enough to warrant wanting the whole CD should have been a real sign of things to come, but alas, love is blind. Especially when you're 14.

Honestly, my favorite Valentines Day was senior year of college and it involved copious amounts of Bella Sera with assorted members of the Power 7 and sort of unintentionally sneaking into the neighbor's house when they weren't actually home. The Bella Sera was pretty business-as-usual but we saved breaking & entering for really special occasions. So top THAT, future Unicorns of my life. I dare you to try.

Speaking of Unicorns (when am I not?)... here is, as promised, a smattering of love-type things:

a favorite (possibly only but who's counting) lovey dovey blog post: remixed below, original here

a favorite love poem: i love you much (most beautiful darling)

[and if what calls itself a world should have the luck to hear such singing

everyone certainly would (my most beautiful darling) believe in nothing but love]

a favorite love song for your listening pleasure:

and lastly, mostly because I can't resist: a favorite super snarky valentine e-card:

And so, happy Valentines Day. May yours be filled with love-type things. And Unicorns. And the kind of joy that one can only find in cheap wine and accidentally kind of committing a misdemeanor.

* Probably not a coincidence that the acronym for this is SAD. I'm just saying.

remember that time I admitted to believing in Unicorns? [a valentine re-mix]

2011-02-14T13:39:00.000-07:00

Having a blog is a little bit like writing an ongoing novel about myself. I write my life, that is true - but I am fully in control of what about my life I write. It is a great thing that I can be real and authentic and write truth... to the extent that I see fit on a given day. The truth is the truth, but I can spin it how I like. I get to choose. When it comes to my life on paper, I am the author, creator, editor, and mastermind. I can write something completely untrue if I want (I don't do that, for the record). I can write something and delete it if I don't like what I see. I'm in charge. I have control. And for your information, yes, the weather is lovely in delusionland.

In the life that I write, I try very hard not to write about the L bomb. Love.

I don't mean love as in a "love your neighbor" or "I like my new Sketchers, but I LOVE my Prada backpack" kind of way. I mean love... like, LOVE love. Romance love. The subject of every movie geared towards my demographic love. DOYOULIKEME check-yes-or-no love. It's not a subject I feel super comfortable positing my opinions on. On the one hand, to be a 25 year-old single girl writing about love feels stereotypical to me, and I genuinely never want to be described as predictable. But admittedly, I also secretly fear becoming that girl. I feel like you've probably met her - the one who talks about nothing but. It is possible, however, that my refusal to accept this topic has caused me to err on the side of never acknowledging it, which is a kind of predictability in itself. Foiled again! So here we are.

Against my will, the yucky love stuff (I will face kiss anyone who gets that reference) has been stalking me lately. Believe me, I fought it... but this past summer I was invited to 8 weddings. 8 save the dates, 8 invitations, 8 RSVP cards (typically late, because, I'm me), 2 pretty great bridesmaid's dresses, 1 maid of honor speech, many bachelorette parties, rehearsal dinners, plane tickets, road trips, and blisters (from excessive dancing in heels) later, way more of my friends' last names have changed on Facebook than I am comfortable with. (Seriously. I hardly know who anyone is anymore and it's very stressful.) I get that it's unavoidable at this stage of life, but still. I'm surrounded. And at some point, one must put on one's big girl pants and DEAL.

Which brings me to the topic at hand: Unicorns.

Yes. Unicorns. Those mythically wondrous sparkly horse-like creatures with horns growing triumphantly from their majestic brows. Sunlight beaming from every inch of their lithe, irridescent bodies. Unicorns. The concept of the Unicorn is wonderful (don't argue, I won't listen) and magical but at the end of the day, we don't think they really exist. Which is why one day, when speaking of a friend's fiancé, another friend and I dubbed this particular man a Unicorn. He was so great that we weren't sure he was real. It came up a few more times as other good guys showed up. Again, we thought, "is this real?!" Months have passed since we first coined this phrase, and one by one, Unicorns have continued to strut into the picture of our lives. Fascinating.

I can no longer pretend that Unicorns (the man kind, anyway) do not exist. The evidence is there, albeit sporadic, and I can ignore their existence no longer. I'm going to resist the urge to go all Nicholas Sparks on you - I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I did. And I will add as a caveat that in the midst of all the wedded bliss I was privy to during the summer of oh-ten, I learned too that these things rarely look like we think they will. That the timing we have in our heads is never accurate. That there is the potential for a lot of heartbreak on the way there. And while I don't believe in "but even after all that they found each other and they lived happily ever after and nothing bad ever happened ever again because they were both beautiful and in LOVE" Disney fairytale crap-ola, I do believe in Unicorns. Which, if you know me, is a big deal for me to admit.

Since we (the females) first gazed longingly into the eyes of Jonathan Taylor Thomas in the shiny pages of Teen Beat and discovered what True Love really felt like at the tender age of 11, we have hoped (some of us more quietly than others) that Unicorns were real. I just want you to know, girls, that I'm starting to think it might be possible. You need not settle for horses that will kick you right in the teeth if you let yourself get close enough. (To be fair, I've always been ~~a little~~ a lot afraid of horses, so my opinion of them may be slightly exaggerated, but it's all in the name of the metaphor. Hang in there.) Quit hanging out with horses. Hold out for a Unicorn.

And boys - I'm not trying to be subtly hateful, so before you get your boxer briefs in a bunch, listen up. You, too, can (and probably will) be someone's Unicorn. Let me rephrase - you get to be someone's Unicorn. Yes. I've seen it happen too many times not to believe it's possible. We're waiting for you. I think I may already know some of you which is equally encouraging. Thank you for being so swell already. Thank you for acting Unicornly to me even though you aren't necessarily my Unicorn. Congratulations. You, well, you're the rarest of rare.

things that don't have faces

2011-02-02T17:24:00.001-07:00

Kids are funny, and my nephew Timmy is one of the cleverest. I find that when he doesn't want to do something, he can usually come up with a pretty good reason that he can't. Once, another little boy wanted Timmy to play with a worm. Clay held up the worm and Timmy told him, regretfully, "oh, I can't. I'm not allowed to touch things that don't have faces."

Besides that this may very well be my favorite sentence of all time, what an interesting thought that is.
Things that don't have faces.

As an aside, it is cold. This morning when I got in my car, it was -13. Degrees. Fahrenheit. Given my personality it may not shock you to learn that I rarely check the weather. As such, I often leave the house wearing inappropriate footwear, and sometimes I walk out my back door in the morning and step into a winter wonderland when I didn't even know it was supposed to snow. But on Sunday at the food pantry I had so many people alert me to the weather that this time I knew it was coming. One of the things I get to do at The Well is pray with people, and we prayed a lot this Sunday about the impending temperature drop. We prayed for jobs to come through so that they could afford a motel room for a couple of days, things like that. A mere 48 hours later, yesterday, I walked out of the gym and the sweat in my hair froze. It was at that moment I started to really worry about those who wouldn't have a place to sleep when it was in the negative teens.

I haven't worried much about this in the past - I have to admit that. It's never bothered me to the extent that it did yesterday, anyway. And I felt like such a jerk, because it was the first day I worried about it, but it was far from the first time people had been homeless in subzero temperatures. I felt selfish and ignorant and hypocritical. But maybe it isn't that I was a soulless human being before yesterday (fingers crossed). Maybe it's just that this time when it struck me that people would be without homes in this disgusting cold, it didn't just look like a special on the evening news, it looked like people I hugged and laughed with not two days ago. It's not that I've never had compassion for people sleeping on the street, it's just that now, homelessness has faces.

It's sometimes hard to really understand things that are beyond the realm of our experience, because those things don't yet have faces for us. It's not that I don't care or don't see it before, it's just a different, more wholehearted kind of care and sight after. Giving pain a face makes it realer. And when something gets real for us, I don't think we need to be embarrassed because we didn't get it before. It doesn't mean we're heartless, just so very human, so very limited. And I think in getting it, however late we feel we are, we get to experience firsthand the character of God.

I didn't have much empathy for addiction until it had names and stories, until they were in my family, until I saw my own face in theirs. Maybe divorce is just a statistic until it happens to your best friend. If you come back from Africa and suddenly can't talk about anything but, it doesn't mean you're going through an Africa Phase or that your concern is a fad. It's that now, Africa has faces. Maybe you never felt the need to speak out against derogatory slurs until homosexuality was a friend you dearly loved and mentally handicapped was the sweet kid holding your hand tightly at Young Life camp. I didn't often think about cancer until it bulldozed my family, and now even hearing the word hurts. And I didn't pray much about people sleeping on the streets until sleeping on the streets had faces.

My stomach was in knots as I tried to pray over every name I could think of. But through the knots there was a whisper of truth: I didn't need to know their names because Jesus knows their faces. God knows each of our faces. We are all faces, names, stories, children, and the knots that I feel over the twenty or so names I know is nothing compared to the love, compassion, and pain that Jesus feels for us and with us. God is so big, and Jesus is so personal that the smallness of it can almost seem counterintuitive. The Creator of the universe knows your face and my face and the faces of everyone I just mentioned and then some. The very hairs on our heads are numbered. If even just one of us is lost, he knows it, and he comes looking.

Maybe this whole face thing is another part of why we're meant to be together, in community, doing life with one another and taking care of each other - so that we can catch a glimpse of the immensity of the tenderness of God. When we feel the knots (that come, inevitably, with community), that's Jesus. It's a reminder that God is big enough to be powerful and small enough to be personal. What a lovely juxtaposition.

Let our hearts break for the things that break God's heart. Let us see faces.

two truths and... a country song

2011-01-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

One. I read this on my great soulsisterfriend's blog this week and it's been on my mind ever since.

"Truthfully, it is no one's fault but our own if we do anything in life other than bring ourselves without disclaimers."

I am the world's champion prefacer. I preface everything I say; vulnerable or not, important or not, I feel like I have to give a full dissertation of the reasons why I am about to say a given thing before I can just come out with it. I've been called on it many-a-time. I actually gauge friendship legitimacy based on whether or not a person has at one point told me to "STOP PREFACING AND SPIT IT OUT." I have one friendship in which one of the key rules of our relationship is no prefacing. Anyway. I want to be better at bringing myself without disclaimers. We're cool and unique and fun and we bring ourselves with all these warnings and prefaces and disclaimers anyway and I hate that.

Secondly. I saw Country Strong last weekend and ever since I have been on a country kick like you would not believe. I think it was a long time coming (I blame the brothers Smeester primarily) and Gwyneth Paltrow just threw me right over the edge. I don't think I've listened to this much country since the days when I was singing John Michael Montgomery on the back of the bus on the way to Eagle Elementary School. I know I'll take some heat for this flare-up, I'm ok with that, because I also like cool hipster Indie stuff which these days I think some people my age take as a dealmaker or breaker for whether or not I'm a worthy human being. I'm going to see The Decemberists in concert in February so it should all even out. Now that I've covered all my bases and countered any judgments you could come up with and disclaimed all there is to disclaim (are you starting to see what I mean? I didn't even plan it!), here's my song for the week.

THIRD. I love this blog post too by another sister of my soul and I think you should read it:
"Aren't we all just kids who got old?"

I have brilliant friends. I'm thankful this week for all the truth that's getting told. And also for country music.

addendum [to that thing I said about booty shaking]

2011-01-26T17:41:00.000-07:00

I told you that I intend to make amends by shaking my booty. And Zumba is fun, it's a fact. I dig shaking my groove thang and you should too. But it's not the whole story.

I think I (we?) believe lies in an attempt to remain protected from inevitably catastrophic fates which I can easily avoid by just not taking risks. So in going to Zumba, with a whole gym of people (read: attractive young professionals who always work out exactly when Zumba happens) watching me do the Merengue march, I risk that I might fall on my butt and be embarrassed. I believe truth (= I can do Zumba if I want), and I trust God (= God is bigger than potential catastrophes) and since I am at least relatively coordinated, probably I won't make a huge fool of myself. Therefore, Zumba is a risk, yes, but a relatively benign one.

With bigger risks, sometimes the "catastrophe" that we fear [rejection, embarrassment, vulnerability, sadness, hurt] comes true. While I'm having the time of my life popping & locking at 24 Hour Fitness, other things like actual legitimate wholehearted vulnerability are far scarier. By entering opposing lies territory, in the same breath as the fun came the suck. I think I sort of expected that since I am operating out of a healthy place, (for vocabulary's sake we'll call this "recovery") the world would respond to me as such. Well, shoot, that's not how the world works. I gave myself a pep talk, let myself be vulnerable, and lo and behold - catastrophe of catastrophes.

I started to get homesick for the safety of shame. I started to sort of yearn for before when even though I wasn't satisfied, I knew what would happen because I controlled it by not risking in the first place. I thought if this is freedom, no, thank you very much. I considered a valiant return to my old tricks, because being sad isn't fun and I wasn't prepared to give in without a fight, nooooo sir.

BUT.

The lie told me I couldn't survive the risk. And I am sad, hurt, and disappointed, BUT as catastrophic as I thought catastrophe would be, lo and behold, I am surviving it. I won't go back. I know too much about freedom (and recovery and life and love and joy) to give it up now.

On the other side, truth is still truth. I am still me. Maybe even a little more so than before.

I have been a fool for lesser things [have I, though?]

2011-01-21T15:57:00.000-07:00

Here I sit - the ~~babysitter~~ nanny. I'm wearing leggings and a Wichita State t-shirt and Ugg boots. I am partaking in a healthy morning snack of baked natural Cheetos something-or-others and watching TV while the babe sleeps. What I'm telling you, is that I'm a stereotype. All I need to do is start chewing gum loudly and call the boy I have a crush on from the landline (I'll hang up when he answers, duh) and it's 1999 all over again.

My head is full of inanities and songs from the eighties today. I'm going with it.

My head is like an endless abyss of nonsensical song lyrics and tunes. I get things stuck in there, and they will not leave. This song has been stuck in my head for the past week or so (if not longer). Essentially, Billy Joel has taken up permanent residence in my poor defenseless little karaoke brain. Watch the eighties magic below and maybe you can get it stuck in your head for weeks too!

What am I doing this weekend? Glad you asked. By some miracle, two of my very favorite people will be making the journey to Denver tonight! These girls, well, they are a couple of my oldest and dearest. I knew them when they were wearing jelly bean tights with their Doc Martens and trying out for cheerleading. We rode in the same limo to our Freshman homecoming with a bunch of sweaty boys who couldn't drive yet. I knew them when I had braces and wore a half side pony (thanks for that Mom) and when I was writing love poems in my diary about a different boy every week.

[They went something like this:

standing by your locker
I am kind of a stalker
you are my one true love
sent to me from up above
I only wish you knew
that my feelings are true
please ask me to the prom
so I can call and tell my mom

I was a pretty promising poet. Never should have given it up. Maybe if you're lucky someday I will show you a real one from the archives.]

Those two were also there when I thought I could potentially be a clothing designer:

I know, I know. I've missed my true calling. Comfort is important, people. So if you want a swim suit that looks like something Kelly Kapowski might have worn in the Hawaii episodes of Saved by the Bell, I'm your girl. I also do wedding dresses, but that's another picture for another day.

I digress. My friends are coming. I still remember their home phone numbers. That's the kind of friends these are.

ali su wu, kelly "misdemeanor" marv, meeee, circa 2005, lawrence, KS

So, there it is. Maybe I will make a habit of posting a song on Fridays for your listening pleasure (other people do this... so I'm not original, but I have some really great music so I'm ok with it). Maybe I'll even throw in embarrassing pictures of when I used to dabble in all sorts of arts: modeling, more design, sketch artist, lyricist... oh yes. My Wichita closet is a wealth of embarrassment.

Time to go - the baby's up. I guess it's time to stop giggling with my BFF's on the cordless phone (3 way calling, of course), turn off MTV, and go fetch him.

I intend to make amends by shaking my booty

2011-01-15T17:31:00.000-07:00

It has recently come to my attention that a lot of good things aren't fun. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that "good" and "healthy" are often antonyms for "fun." Making amends is the notorious part of the 12-step process that almost everyone super hates. By the above definition, lots of steps aren't fun, but amends are the wooooorst (see how many o's there are? That's how you know I mean it). Sincere efforts to offer apology for past harm. Sick. We all [the addicts, the crazies, even you normalest of humans] have done harm - both to others and also, I think, to ourselves. It's a fact. If we're lucky, we've made right in a timely fashion. Other times though, we haven't, and those are the places we need to revisit during this whole step nine business. What I'm struggling with is that I think I owe myself an amends. I need to apologize... to myself. Awkward.

In my experience, self harm can have a lot to do with lies. The lie could be anything from "you can't do that" to "you're not good enough" to "you're not enough, period." It's easy, when that voice is loud (and this is the part where things get harmy) to live like those lies are true. To say, "you're right, I can't do that." So I don't. "You're right, I'm not good enough." So I won't even try. "You're right, I'm not enough." So if I work hard enough, maybe I can DO enough to somehow BE enough. Which, if you've been there, you know just doesn't work. Because I would argue our worth isn't our own doing. The lies perpetuate.

There is a post on Stuff Christians Like called "Thinking You're Naked" and the first time I read it, it spoke to my soul. From Genesis 3:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She gave some to her husband and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. They heard the sound of the Lord God and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?" [Adam] answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

Jon Acuff calls God's response one of the "saddest and most profoundly beautiful verses in the entire Bible"::

"Who told you that you were naked?"

Before this moment, naked wasn't really even a thing - not a bad thing, anyway. I think it's not insignificant that the very first thing that happens after their interaction with the serpent is that Adam and Eve are struck with the awareness (lie?) that how they are naturally is shameful, and that they must cover it up. Naked was how they came. It was all they knew how to be, and they had never felt the need to hide before that moment. Here is the sequence of events as I see it: they came into contact with the father of lies. As a result, their "eyes were opened" and they "realized" that what they were was bad, and they became ashamed. As a result, they hid from the Father who loved them. They (we) exchanged the truth for a lie, and it separated them (us) from God. Lies induce shame. Shame tells us we'd better cover up, and fast. And I just don't think we were created to live under wraps like that. God hears our shame, sees the lies we believe and asks, "Who told you that?" There is an implied second part, I think: "because it wasn't me." That is profoundly beautiful. The truth often is.

Back to the topic at hand: I owe myself an apology. For believing lies, for living out of the shame that the lies created and for allowing them to separate me both from the Father who loves me and from the freedom I think was intended for us. I owe myself amends for hiding out from the things that I was created for (connection, joy, freedom, worship) because I was afraid of what might happen if I let myself be naked (metaphorically speaking). The question is, how does one apologize to oneself? Do I take myself out for coffee? Write myself a letter? Offer to do my own laundry for a month? Buy myself a nice bottle of wine? A gift certificate for a mani/pedi? I've been toying with it for a while now and then the other night as I walked out of my Zumba class, it dawned on me. I was making amends with myself and I didn't even know it.

Every time I do something that opposes a lie, it's an amends.
Every time I say yes when something inside me screams, "you can't!! you can't!," it's an apology.
Every time I tell shame to shut the @!#$... well, you get the idea.

It'll look different for all of us probably. For me, so far, it looks like being honest regardless of the outcome. It looks like sharing my junk with someone I trust without fear of rejection. It maybe looks like writing something that makes me feel a little bit naked and not feeling like I need to cover it up because I know it's truth. And as silly as this may sound to you, it looks like letting myself go to a Zumba class and admitting that I love it. Good things.

And I know what I said before... but some of it's actually even kind of a little bit fun.
Especially the part that involves shaking my booty on a bi-weekly basis.

the upsetting power of the party pic

2011-01-07T14:51:00.001-07:00

I used to think that a party was only truly great if it produced approximately 267 pictures of me doing fun things and looking awesome with crazy people having a crazy time. In most of said pictures, my mouth is open and my hands are in some sort of rockstar positioning (that's my go-to). So many candid shots of us having a grand ol' time. Posed group shots where we're all laughing because right before the picture was taken someone said something hilarious. It may have been about the creepy guy who is consistently lurking just on the outskirts of our dance circle, but there'd really be no way of knowing. The next day, you'll put up a totally hilarious Facebook photo album and title it some crazy quote from around 2 AM the night before about crab walking down 16th street mall or something. (The other option is to call it something like, "best night everrrrrrrr" with extended consonants to fully get across to the Facebook world just how AWESOME the night really was. Without them, no one will believe you even had fun.) Honestly, I think the day-after-picture-upload-frenzy is sometimes more exciting than, in reality, the party/night really was. If we're being honest.

It's a high-pressure situation then, taking party pics. This is part of the reason that my wise friend Cristy and I have decided that Facebook is probably going to end up being the root cause for 98% of anxiety disorders. It used to be that you could go to a party, have fun, and maybe scam a photo double (I loved double prints so much) at a sleepover a few months later. Or, you could NOT go to a party, and easily not have a clue what went on or what Sheila wore or how much fun everyone had. NOW, not only do you have to a) look good b) have fun, but you also have to c) be careful and not wear the same outfit you wore to last weekend's party (even if it's with different people and it was a really cute outfit) because what if you are outed by the Facebook pics? and d) (the worst) deal with the repercussions of your actions the next day when undoubtedly someone has taken a highly unflattering picture of you on the dance floor at the Tavern with an 80 year old man (not that that's happened to anyone I know). And if you miss a party, well, get ready to be jealous, because we all looked hot and had the time of our lives. Serves you right for thinking you could get away with going to visit your grandparents for the weekend. We'll probably never have that much fun again, I mean, did you SEE how many consonants were in that photo album title?!

It has become highly unnatural what we know and see about each other's lives, yes? The stakes are so much higher now! With everything you do, every step you take, there is a high likelihood whatever it is will inevitably be immortalized until the end of time on the internets. It's no wonder we're anxious. But I digress.

We had a New Years Eve party, and I realized the next morning that I took exactly two pictures: one of Cristy and Lindsay trying desperately to make ugly ribbon look like decoration instead of trash (to no avail, sorry girls), and one of the infamous board which was hosting a "Midnight Kiss Sign-Up List" that we thought should be documented. After that, I took no more pictures. Not a one. I wasn't really even IN any pictures. All total, I was in two, and I've decided that's great. It was a fun party and we had crazy moments and things certainly happened that would be funny in a Facebook album, but now we can sleep easy at night with the knowledge that we had fun and leave well enough alone.

But I do have these two gems to remind me of the fun times we had. I like to call them, "BC" and "AC" which stands for "before & after champagne." You can say it, I'm very clever.

Before: Megan & the aforementioned Cristy sipping Champagne in fancy outfits that sparkle

aaaaaaaand After.

There you have it - a truly great party. I'm 265 pictures short of proving it, so you'll have to take my word for it.

oh-leven [2011]

2011-01-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

I have a seriously screwy love/hate relationship with transitions. On the one hand, I am reeeeeally bad at them. Not my forté in any sense of the word. But in theory, I think they are delightful. Which is why I like the idea of New Year's resolutions. I like the idea that one year ends and a new one starts, and that in said new year I can do new things. I can make new choices and meet new people and be new myself, somehow. I like that. I think it's hopeful and sometimes when things are full of yuck it's nice to get to a new year where there is a possibility of less yuck. I mean goodness, along that same line of thought I even sometimes like Mondays. New weeks when old ones weren't great. Yes, technically, any day or even minute can have the same effect, I recognize this. But there is something neat and clean about a Monday transition. And even more neat and clean is a new year. Oh-leven. New and neat and clean.

Given my natural bent toward irrationality, I can tend to put too much stock in that, though, and I never want to put too much pressure on something silly like a change of date. Because really, it's just a different day. Things may not change much, in reality, and not even in a bad way. More in a just-because-we-write-a-different-year-on-our-checks-doesn't-mean-our-lives-are-dramatically-altered kind of way. Seems logical.

Which is why I really don't like resolutions. In theory, delightful, but in practice, potentially disastrous. In the past I have viewed it as much like saying, "Hey, I have an idea - let's make a list of things I probably won't do this year, so that when the year is over, I have an actual, pre-written, physical checklist of reasons I suck." Perhaps a little dramatic, sure, but my point is NYR's can go one way or the other. That said, I went back just now and read my blog from New Years LAST year, and I am unexpectedly thrilled. I did not plan this. I swear to you. Check it:

[in 2010] I will be freer, generally speaking.

Direct excerpt from my "Christmas Card" this year. Check it:

Despite the fact that life is not perfect, that I still don't have a job and I am still in transition and I still have a ton to figure out, I feel thankful to reach the end of 2010 and tell you... I am free-er than I have ever been.

And you know I didn't plan that, because if I had, I would have spelled free-er/freer the same both times. (The difference is driving me a little nuts actually. I would say I am uptight about a total of 3-5 things total in my entire life but one of them is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, spelling.) I am acutely aware as I read those words (all spelling issues aside) that there was no resolution I could have made to make that happen for myself.

My hope for us in oh-leven is pretty simple. I want to learn how to do free better. I want to do new things and make new choices and meet new people and live newly. I want to do more of the things that delight me, like investing in wonderful people, singing karaoke in my living room, and wearing red lipstick and crazy nail polish. Probably I will try to find a job and go to the gym more or read more books too, let's be honest. I'm not completely above resolutions. But mostly I want to enjoy the gift I have already been given and try to live from there. I want to rest in the truth and power of Jesus and live out of that, because that's the only place I've ever found freedom. I want to take risks, and I will only take risks if I am free. I've started practicing (it's hard and hurts a little, I will not lie to you, and I can't say yet that I love that) but I want to get better at it.

Making freedom the goal for 2010 wasn't a resolution, it was a prayer.
And I'm not achieving it, it's being given to me.

happy New Year & happy Monday & happy 1:19 pm. Newness all around. Let's pray and take risks and be free and new. What do you say?

this is a christmas card

2010-12-26T15:53:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my Christmas Card and consequently, well look at that, my blog! I realize I am late, that Christmas has past, but I'm me. I wouldn't want to confuse anyone by being on time for something.

to those nearest & dearest to my heart, etc. & so on & so forth:

left to right: me, Santa, Cristy

I hope you all are enjoying the magic of the holiday season as much as I am. I look forward to this season all year; the season where cooking with pumpkin is once again acceptable, when people put horribly tacky lights and things on their homes, when I can listen to Mariah Carey's Christmas Album and watch Jim Henson's Christmas Toy without shame, when I can unabashedly stay home and make crafts on a Saturday night - because it's all in the name of Christmas! And no one can argue with Christmas!

I thought I'd catch you up on the past year ever so briefly, as Christmas letters are wont to do.
Here are the highlights:

I traveled to weddings, bachelorette parties, birthday celebrations, and graduations. I was a maid of honor. I threw a killer Halloween party with my three sweet roomies. My purse was stolen. I decided I believe in Unicorns. I was loved extravagantly and beyond what I deserve. I found, lost, laughed, cried, healed a little some places, healed a lot other places, and learned more than I know what to do with. I perfected a karaoke duet, finally had tea at the Brown Palace, started wearing red lipstick, and my hair got real long. I saw 7 incredible concerts (don't know how 2011 is going to top that), sang a lot of karaoke, baked a lot of funfetti, and had a lot of fun with a lot of really wonderful people. I think I understand the meaning of Christmas, too.

I worked as an office assistant for a Hedge Fund, a sales associate at J.Crew, a sitter of sorts, and even did a short stint with the Leukemia & Lymphoma society working on their Light the Night Walk. All the while writing innumerable cover letters, updating my resume daily, and applying for any and all jobs here in Denver. The search continues! Despite the fact that life is not perfect, that I still don't have a job and I am still in transition and I still have a ton to figure out, I feel thankful to reach the end of 2010 and tell you that I am happy. I am free-er than I have ever been, I have a great life, and I'm happy. That is great.

One gift of transition is that I have found that I love to write. I have taken the liberty to link you above to some posts from the past year if you are interested in hearing more about any of the aforementioned topics of great importance. I read it recently from another jobless blogger: "I blog because I love writing and, since there hasn't been an occupational opportunity, this is what I do." She goes on, and so will I: I write because I love it, and this is how I can keep doing it. I offer no deep analysis of the human condition and my posts are not about politics or anything of any importance at all (sometimes). "They're just me."

I don't mean to be presumptuous, but I want to offer you a special Christmas/New Years surprise. There are not many things I brag about, really, but if there is one thing that I am confident about in my life (other than my talent for doing voices) it is my ability to make a great mix CD. Seriously, and I don't say this lightly, but it is something I feel I really excel at. As such, if you become a follower of this blog (by going to the right side and clicking "follow") I will burn you your very own mix CD. I don't care who you are, or if I know you, or even if I like you. Follow the blog, send me an email with your address, and you will get a CD in the mail. Like magic. Available until supplies last. Or until I get tired of burning CD's.

I'll be here all year, folks. finding, losing, laughing, crying and writing about all of it.

wishing you all a 2011 filled with funfetti cupcakes, karaoke to your heart's content, red lipstick,
and every so often (if you're lucky) a piña colada in the shower.

meggie

Emmanuel, Barnabas?

2010-12-19T07:39:00.000-07:00

I grew up with the Amy Grant & Mariah Carey Christmas CD's as staples for the month of December. I remember that on the day after Thanksgiving, Mom would drive Thomas and I to Kansas City to see Nana, etc, and it was on that day each year that we broke out the Christmas tunes. I would sing "All I Want for Christmas is yoooooou baaaaaaaby" until my throat hurt. I really like music in general, and I really like that Christmas music is only for a special period of time once a year. Nothing makes me crave something quite like telling me I can only have it for a month of the year does.

Just as a funny aside, when I was a wee one, I loved the Amy Grant version of "Emmanuel, God With Us," but I genuinely thought for most of my childhood that the words were "Emmanuel, Barnabas." (Before you judge me, sing it. It sounds right.) I can just hear me, 9ish years old, singing my little heart out. And I can just hear Thomas, 3 years my junior and know-it-all-y as can be, "ARE YOU SAYING BARNABAS? Mom, listen! Megan thinks its Barnabas!!!" Then I probably hit him and we both more than likely cried, but I'm just guessing here.

Not much has changed about much, including the fact that I often am mistaken about the meaning of things. (And Thom is usually there to correct me, but that's another story for another time.) Now, I can't say I've ever really been searching for the "meaning of Christmas," at least not the way they do in Lifetime Original Movies or Hallmark specials, but nevertheless, I think I finally get it. I think this is a big deal. Really big, actually. Bigger than I have words to describe, in fact, which is the kind of thing that I find at once both frustrating and delightful.

In church last Sunday we talked about Emmanuel. Just like I once thought Amy Grant was singing about a guy with a funny name, I don't think I really understood Emmanuel until last Sunday. The concept that God is here, with us, is hard. Lots of bad things happen. God is there? It is hard for me to believe that in the past two years of loss and suck that God was here. I hear so many people cry out in their pain, where is God? Why hasn't God shown up? Our pastor pointed out that more often than not, those three words are uttered as a question in desperation. Far less often are we sure of it.

Christmas doesn't just bring the answer to those, our most personal pleading - it is the answer. Baby Jesus is Good News. He shall be called Emmanuel, which means "God with us." The babe didn't erase our pain or guarantee us a life free from sadness, loss, rejection, hurt, loneliness, addiction, anger, or resentment which I think sometimes is what I expect "God is here" to look like. But alas, Christmas doesn't signify that we won't have to deal with that stuff. And really, how much more powerful - personal - is a God who does not remove our pain but steps right into it with us. I don't know. Some days this makes more sense to me than others, but right now, I feel it in my very bones. Emmanuel is not a question. It is a promise that's been kept.

There are times, not often mind you, when I get a feeling that I like so much that I wish I could bottle it up and give it away. I don't mean to imply that I have a monopoly on warm fuzzies or that you are not capable of getting it yourself. Probably even more, I'd like to save it for myself for the days when my bones feel less sure of things. I want to take it off like a jacket and give it to the people I know who feel sure of nothing right now other than that life is hard, because I was there and it was awful.

It is possible that being there was the only way I could get to this place, though. It is possible that I had to be there in order to really, finally, fully feel the peace I felt last Sunday when I heard that God is here.
Here.
It's not a question, it's an answer.

vacation angst [why I'm thrilled I'm not 15 anymore]

2010-12-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

My family is going on vacation for Christmas, and as a result, a certain tale has resurfaced and I have been taking a lot of heat as a result. I figured it best to address it here, publicly, and then perhaps said story will lose its luster and everyone can move on with their lives. And stop making fun of me. Doubtful, but worth a shot.

We've all done things that we regret.

Things that, if we could go back, we might do differently.

Things that, in retrospect, are embarrassing.

That thing for me is the Disney trip. Ten years ago.

First of all, in my defense, I was fifteen. Let's be fair. Characteristically and by very definition, fifteen-year-old girls are on the brink of hysteria at all times. I can't help it if this cycle of teen angst was set in motion just in time for the plane to leave Wichita, KS on the fateful first morning of Spring Break 2000, can I? No. I cannot. Hormones are to blame.

So it is the morning of our departure, and per usual I am jolted awake by my parents' voice on the intercom. I learned early on that with this intercom system, all I had to do each morning was SOUND awake. I didn't actually have to BE awake, but as long as I could muster one or two alert sentences, I was good to sleep for another 15 minutes or so. And what's more, in the morning, I am not smart. Nothing productive happens in my brain until about 34 minutes after the initial alarm goes off. This particular morning was no exception. On either count.

As the story goes, when everyone else was hopping in the car for the airport, I was still slumbering soundly in my bed. I was discovered, in bed, unprepared for departure - the fury and panic in my mother's eyes will be forever burned in my memory. After attempting unsuccessfully to feel satisfied with my atypically unkempt appearance, I was ready. Tearfully utilizing my best theatrics, I headed out the door to a car full of sleepy, probably angry family members.

I vividly recall being pissed the entire week. Honestly, I have no explanation for it. I spent a lot of the time avoiding rides that scared me (which was, as it were, most of them) and being generally ridiculous. My niece who was 5 at the time commented that she remembered me being upset about a hair-braid situation somewhere along the line. Thanks for throwing me under the bus, there, Em. I'm pretty sure (and I only tell this because if I don't someone else will) that I insisted on getting the aforementioned braids and then pitched a fit because I didn't like them. My sweet little niece is now 16, and mark my words, when she has her inevitable meltdown on our upcoming vacation, I'm going to listen and nod my head sympathetically. I will tell her I understand, been there, felt that.

And then, when she least expects it, at the ripe old age of 25, I WILL BRING IT BACK.

I'm kidding, relax, I am a very nice aunt actually. I will probably be the only one who stands up for her. I will probably laugh a little bit... until they start talking about me again. I can hear my hypothetical children now: "Mommy, is Nena right? Were you crazy?"

Here are some personal rules I came up with to ensure that our trip will not be a repeat disaster:

1. No braids. I don't care how cute they looked on that girl in Teen Vogue that one time.

2. No skipping rides/activities for fear's sake. Even if it terrifies me and I am basically catatonic for an hour following, at least no one will mock me for skipping things that they've deemed "fun."

3. No oversleeping. I'm setting 5 alarms and telling all 3 roommates to make sure I'm awake.

a. And not just that I sound awake, but actually am awake.

b. Maybe shower the night before, just in case of mishaps.

4. Laugh at above story, which will inevitably be brought up at least twice daily on upcoming trip.

a. Cry in the shower if you have to. Don't let them see you break down.

b. Obtain a solid number of embarrassing tales about everyone just in case.

5. Wine. (This is the key option that was missing when I was 15!)

It may also help that I am sort of a grownup now. But in case it doesn't, and upon entering vacation mode I revert to my true inner teenager, I will have those rules in my back pocket.

Puerto Vallarta, here we come!

birth-days are the best-days

2010-11-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

It is no secret (I don't have many of those, if you haven't noticed) that I love birthdays. Love them. So much. I love my birthday. I love other people's birthdays. I love children's birthdays and geriatric birthdays. (I feel a little like Dr. Suess and I don't hate it.) I do not discriminate where birthdays are concerned.

There are several reasons for this, which are (but are not limited to):

1. I unabashedly love being the center of attention 1 day a year. If I ever tell you different, I'm lying. Or I'm being held hostage and I'm trying to let you know in an obvious way that my life is in danger and to please send help. One of the two.
2. I really love parties
3. Invitations, generally speaking, is my love language
4. Simple genetics (my mother is the birthday queen)
5. I get to send/receive greeting cards, and I really love greeting cards
6. Everyone gets one and no one is left out of the fun
7. When you're late with a card or gift (which I always am) it's acceptable because that only extends the fun of the birthday rather than being a bad thing (which it typically is). At least that's how I spin it.

There are more reasons, I'm sure of it, but 7 seemed like a good, holy number to end on. Anyway, this weekend I heard about a birthday celebration where celebrators sat around that evening and told the birthday haver why they all appreciated her. They poured encouragement out on her, prayed over her, loved on her and praised Jesus in all of it. I loved that. It made me realize today that THAT is the big reason I like birthdays so much. Because on that one day, we all get to be thankful for just you (unless you share a birthday, in which case fear not, there's enough to go around). The rest of us get to reflect, that day, on how much you mean to us and the reasons we love you and why we are so fortunate to know you.

It's not that on this particular day however-many years ago you were born as a tiny babe into the world so much as it is a good reminder, one day a year, that you (whoever you may be) are a gift. Maybe you are an attention giver, and getting attention gives you pit stains. Or maybe you are an attention fiend and birthdays are where you'll really shine. Whether you're a friend or a wife or a boyfriend or a sister or a dad. Whatever you are, on this one day per year (or one week per year, as I prefer to celebrate birthdays) we will celebrate you.

I think what I like most is that we all get a day. And to you birthday naysayers far and wide, fine. Naysay all you like. Don't have cool parties with hula hoop contests (I had that in 5th grade, not to brag) or bring funfetti cupcakes to school or let me sing to you in a restaurant, that's fine. But you cannot stop us from celebrating the gift that is you.

One ~~day~~ week a year.

lost in transition

2010-11-23T00:09:00.000-07:00

For those of us in this great stage of life that I love to hate to call "transition," the holidays are annoying as all get out. Because really, there is just NOTHING more frustrating than having the "OH HI I haven't seen you in a year what are you doing what's new tell me everything!" conversation over and over again when there is really nothing cool to say at all.

I don't mean to sound bitter, I really don't. I'm actually getting quite good at the "What's new?" "Nothing!" conversation. I have lots of great one-liners dripping in just the right amount of self-deprecation and humor. It's a science, really. And while, sure, I had to have a tutor for high school physics, I am something of a savant when it comes to THIS kind of science. (The banter kind.)

I used to think about making stuff up, just for kicks. I think maybe once I kind of did but then I got confused by my own story and ended up sort of just hoping people would forget what I'd said. I think it worked. Tomorrow I will embark on another journey through the luscious landscape (ha) of Western Kansas. Thing is, I am a 30/30 extrovert on the Myers-Briggs - and as such, I very rarely require alone time. But about once a year I dabble in introversion, if you will, and I CRAVE a road trip by myself. I need 8 hours to serenade myself with bad country songs and entire musicals. Heeeeavenly. So tomorrow, home for Turkey I go. And oddly, I do not have nervousness about said trip or said transition. And here is (I think) why.

Because I may be in transition, and I may hate it, buuuuuut I also get to see the mountains every day. I have an immaculate collection of fun, brilliant, big-hearted people who I call friends. I bake delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies on demand. I think my family is the coolest. I laugh, a LOT. I wear red lipstick when I feel like it. And because I read somewhere that those who look to him are radiant, their faces never covered in shame.

Transition isn't glamorous, that is one thing I know for certain. But in transition, I am learning about freedom. And though it may not make for riveting conversation over cranberry sauce*, if I have to be in transition to get that, then fine. I'm not even mad about it.

And per the advice of a wise girl I know, I will do my freedom dance.

Radiantly and without shame.

Take THAT, transition.

* I've never liked cranberry sauce anyway.

don't you dare "we" me

2010-11-16T23:51:00.000-07:00

I kind of hate the collective "we."

It starts simply enough; you're telling a story, writing a blog, giving a testimony or teaching a lesson... and then you cross the "we" line. One minute you're telling a story about yourself, and the next you're offering general commentary on the human experience. "When I was a little girl, Susie told me on the playground that unicorns weren't real. I never talked to Susie again because I was so upset. I think we have this tendency, all of us, as people, to believe in unicorns and hate any and all naysayers." and suddenly, I'm being lectured on the nonexistence of unicorns. I don't even care about unicorns.* Nor did I have any childhood friends named Susie. What just happened?! How did I get inside this story?

Here's what I think happens. You're talking, and you're fine, but then suddenly there's this moment of panic: "what if no one knows what I'm talking about? what if they don't realize that I'm making an attempt to relate to each of them individually with my personal anecdote? quick... how can I let them know??" And then you've done it. You've crossed into "we" territory. No no, I can't let people decide for themselves if they identify with my story. I must put them in there with me myself.

When people we me (yep, its a verb now), I usually have one of two reactions. Either a) I'm angry and outraged because for goodness' sake, you've just lumped me with you in the crazy without my permission! Everyone here now assumes I am crazy too (because everyone is always thinking about me) and I must prepare my defense. Now I'm not even listening to you because I'm too busy arguing with you in my head.

Or b) I'm just mad because you're right and I don't want to hear it. (9/10 times this is probably the case.)

I am just as guilty. I bet if we went back in time on the old blog, we could find one trillion examples of the collective "we." I we you all the time, and I'm sorry about it. It's just that I want you all to be here with me in crazytown. Nevermind that you didn't agree to come here - I have brought you here against your will. I don't want to be alone, goodness no, I feel too conspicuous! So I've brought you in with me.

Now it's not just me, it's we.
I hope that's alright with you.
Personally, I feel great about it.

* False. I love unicorns.

I couldn't find it, so it found me

2010-11-08T16:53:00.001-07:00

Forgetting is the worst.

There is a subtle difference (I think) between forgetting something and just letting go of it. Letting go might be a choice, or you might do it because of stubbornness, or laziness, or indifference, or even bitterness. And some of those things might be a part of the process of forgetting, but it's still different. It's worse.

Because when you forget, that's it. No one chooses to forget, it just kind of happens. You can't summon what you forgot back, and no matter how much you look there's a chance you don't find it. That it stays lost, forgotten, for a long time. There is also a difference between brain forgetting and heart forgetting. And I would argue that the heart kind is the worst of the worst. Because I can learn all I want. I can read, memorize, recite, listen, tell, and be told. But I cannot will myself to feel. I cannot think myself into emotions. I can't decide one day to trust or love or be comforted. I just can't.

Once I lost my favorite necklace. I got it at YoungLife camp - and I tell you what, I loved that necklace. It was sentimental and exactly perfect and I loved it. And then I lost it. I just forgot where I put it one day. I looked and searched and wracked my brain and retraced my steps and simply could not find it. I forgot what it looked like, after a while. I forgot how it was shaped and how long it hung on my neck but I knew it was gone and I hated that.

I think for a while I forgot how to believe that there was power in prayer, that there was comfort in that power, that there was relief in that comfort. And no matter what I did, or how hard I looked, or even how many prayers I said, I couldn't make myself remember what that felt like. I just knew it was gone and I hated that.

And I bet you know exactly how I felt the day I found my necklace. The day I looked in the bottom of a bag and saw it lying there, unworn, unchanged. It was relief and joy and delight and the assurance that, finally, a search was over.

This was like that. But like... 342,908,654 times better than that.

I didn't feel it, then I did.
I wasn't sure, and then I was.
I couldn't find it, so it found me.
I don't know why and I don't know how, but I remember.

I think that's neat.

on curing colds, popularity, and menageries

2010-10-29T21:54:00.000-06:00

I have no legitimate purpose for this blog post. I simply have a lot of thoughts in my brain (probably inspired by my cold medicine cocktail) and feel the need to put them out into the universe. So here you are.

+ I think I somehow cured the common cold. Yes, researchers, sit down and shut up because I HAVE DONE IT! Yesterday I thought I might die... it felt as though Allison had roundhouse kicked me in the throat repeatedly. Felt like I was swallowing a cheese grater. It was terrible. I took a nap, and then over the span of the evening took Aleve (which I am convinced is made with unicorn tears, fairy dust and magic), sucked on a Cold Eeze (still just as gross as when my mom first made me eat one many moons ago), and then before bed downed some cough syrup (chased with orange juice because it still makes me gag). And this morning? I feel AWESOME. Still a little bit cold-ish, but my throat feels 98% better and I want to die much less than I did yesterday.

Boom. Cured. You're welcome.

+ I love Halloween. I love dressing up, and I love any excuse to wear black lipstick, red lipstick, fake eyelashes, too much makeup in general, witch tights, cowboy boots, and fringe... all of which I get to do this weekend. Tomorrow my costume is still in the works... but I am fairly thrilled about it. Today for work Halloween I resurrected the Wicked Witch costume (green face and all - although this morn I didn't have my hat on yet and our exec director looked and me and said - "let me guess - dead?" Wah wah.) Also the costumes overshadowed that this was my last day at LLS so I was able to very well compartmentalize that I have sadness about that. Ideal. Halloween is so useful.

Additionally, my sweet, long-time fantasies of popularity come almost completely true around Halloweentime. Let me tell you a tale. Three years ago, my roommates and I decided that we should have a Halloween party. Our house is great for parties, and we thought it was just a super idea. Somehow - and I do mean I literally do not know how this happened - it was pretty much the only party in all of the Denver area or something because it was RIDICULOUS how many people came. People none of us knew showed up. It was delightful. And now, 3 years later, this party has a reputation. People expect it and look forward to it for months. We have a responsibility, now, to the young fun people of Denver. And we dare not disappoint.

+ Lastly, a list: the top 5 reasons I love living in my house with the people who live in my house: (many require photographic documentation for full effect.)

5. My roommates:
i. Alli Pie: because she will push me through a crowd shouting "ITS AN EMERGENCY" when I need her to, does not really punch me in the throat, and is supportive of my pumpkin habit.
ii. Jammy: because she creeps around stealthily, texts me from downstairs, and looks in my throat when I'm convinced I have contracted the Bubonic Plague.
iii. Key-air-uh: because she makes glass menagerie signs when I want her to, sings rap lyrics gospel style with me in our house, and gets as excited about going to Target at night as I do.

4. The Old Man Chairs... None of our chairs cost more than $10. All of them are exquisite. Latest addition (not pictured) is a delightful blue striped rocking chair that is sort of broken.

old man chairs.

3. The Board. So useful. I love when people update it for us with cool new elements like "crush of the week" - thanks Vinnie!

a couple of past boards...

2. The Glass Menagerie... our figurine collection. Still waiting for a second cat. I don't know why I think this is so funny, but I must say, it absolutely delights me.

glee & delight - figurines

1. The Halloween Party... duh. More on this as it develops...

"Oh great. I bet they're sexting from our phones!"

2010-10-26T11:07:00.001-06:00

That is what Cristy said to me on Friday night when our purses were burgled.
Well, OK, on Friday night when I was dancing my little heart out and someone stole my bag from a bar. But seriously. Same diff right? We have still been done a horrific injustice, have we not?!

The whole thing is WILDLY irritating. Of course, I've been playing the "if only" game: "If only the stupid Tavern hadn't played Lady Gaga and kept me riveted on the dance floor for so long so I had gone to check my purse before last call" At fault: The Tav. "If only I had not worn my cute new boots which convinced me I should probs go dancing in them" At fault: Boots. "If only I had not packed every single thing I own that night and just taken the basics" At fault: irrational purse hoarding. "If only purse thief had decided to go to Cowboy Lounge that night!" At fault: sucky purse thief. See? So many things at fault that are not me.

I just did not realize the degree to which I am dependent on the things in that bag. And why on this particular evening I decided to pack a small travel suitcase to take to the bars is beyond me, but as a result, I have no stuff. Like, I go to grab my purse and every time I have this thought of "what will even go in it?" I'm like an 8 year old who has a purse and REALLY wants to carry it so she looks like a grown up but doesn't have anything to put in it really. So like the aforementioned 8 year old, I have to put random stuff in there to make it look legit to passersby. But if you looked closely, you'd see it was full of Barbies, a Unicorn figurine, an array of Scratch'n'Sniff stickers, assorted accessories from the Pretty Pretty Princess game, and a Hello Kitty wallet with my mom's old grocery store discount cards in it and the photo ID that my aunt made me out of cardboard (that, FYI, was a thing I actually had). Also maybe some fruit snacks. Who can say really.

I am realizing reluctantly that it is possible, although SUPER annoying and stupid, to replace stuff. I've been without a phone for a few days. (People keep asking me, "well, isn't it kind of nice? Sort of liberating?" Ummm, sure. Yeah. The bright side, you found it! Congratulations! Taking a break from your phone is one thing. I'm for it. BUT THIS IS NOT THAT. But really, your optimism is inspiring.) I have no camera. WHAT IF SOMETHING MOMENTOUS HAPPENS? I won't be able to capture it, that's what. I have no student ID to use for discounts at the movies anymore, which I couldn't go to anyway, since I have nothing to pay with. I wake up in the night and weep silently over the loss of my favorite J.Crew bag and Hobo wallet, and how they will probably spend the remainder of their days in a dumpster somewhere. I had to replace the 5ish Chapsticks that live in my purse, but really, that's no big deal because I have 17 more in my bedroom somewhere. I did have to stand in front of the Maybelline display in Target for a ridiculous amount of time in an attempt to remember the shade of lip gloss I loved so much, though.

But you know what? All of that I can deal with... but my FAVORITE pen was in there. I loved that pen. Enough to carry it with me everywhere. And now some thieving loser gets to enjoy MY Wild Rose Casino pen, and I hate him or her. You think I can just drive to Iowa again and replace it? Well, I can't. And also won't. There is just only so much one person can handle, and that crosses the line. Now it's personal.

The moral of the story here, kids, is that I never want all of my important items to be together in the same place ever again. Especially not a cute leather place with an accessible shoulder strap so that someone can conveniently carry it all away from me with ease and style.

If you need me, I'll just be here trying to rebuild my identity and fill a purse with legitimate grown up items.

why won't you wave at me?

2010-10-11T15:23:00.001-06:00

To the drivers of Denver & other places I have lived and/or driven:
WHY WON'T YOU WAVE AT ME?

There are few things that make me more furious than those jerks on the road who KNOW that their lane is coming to an end and yet REFUSE to plan ahead and get over until their lane is 6 inches wide and they are about to crash directly into the side of my car. Fine, fine, you arrogant loser who clearly thinks your time is more important than mine, FINE. I will let you in. I won't even be rude about it. I'm calm, cool, collected, and far more mature than you. I might even smile at you, politely, inviting you to respond with matched courtesy. But do they? No. They don't. Not even a backwards glance as they cut in front of me.

It's just about as aggravating as lunch line cutters in the cafeteria. You think your time is more valuable than mine? You think you deserve warm, fresh lasagna and I don't? No, yeah, I see your point. Go right ahead. Let my noodles get crunchy. No big deal. It's the same story with driving. Yes of course, Toyota Tercel, I would love to let you in my lane. No, it's fine that you didn't plan ahead and are now holding up traffic. Sure, I'll be late to work, but at least you got up here faster than those jokers who merged lanes at the appropriate time - you really showed them. I was hoping to get through one more chorus of I Would Do Anything For Love before getting to the office anyway. Really, your arrogant merge habits are a blessing in disguise.

These are the kind, forgiving, very holy thoughts that fill my mind as that freaking Tercel cuts right in front of me day after day...
UNTIL I DON'T GET THE COURTESY WAVE.

You're an especially terrible person. YOU ALWAYS WAVE! I'm pretty sure serial killers and bank robbers wave. A guy who just pulled off a jewel heist and is running from the law would probably wave if you let them merge in front of you. I don't care what kind of jackhole you are, you wave. Because it's courtesy. It's basic human kindness. It's THE RULE. It's the thank-you note of driving. It's a little ray of hope and sunshine in the gloomy darkness that is traffic. The wave has become so infrequent that it hurts me in my heart. Honestly, I think not waving is more painful for me than if you'd flipped me the bird. If I made a list of ways I would want you to respond as you squeezed in front of me in rush hour traffic, a middle finger would be listed just above doing nothing at all.

Next time some poor, crazy soul singing Meatloaf in a red Saturn Vue lets you in her lane (like you gave her much choice, just saying), just throw up the hand. Give a quick wave. You don't even have to wiggle your fingers. Just one swift arm movement up to the rear view mirror could change the course of my day and restore my faith in humanity.

It's in your hands now.

(I have this feeling that given my last two posts, someone is going to send me to anger management or the psych ward or something. But these are legitimate upsets, people! I know somebody is as enraged as I am! Right!? I'm just trying to bring it into the light so we can all find some healing. You're welcome.)

Dear Microsoft Word

2010-10-08T11:38:00.001-06:00

It has come to my attention that I have some very strong feelings about Microsoft Word. Computers in general, maybe... but mostly, WORD. Many of these sentiments are similar to what one might feel for a human person who has wronged them repeatedly. It's gotten personal. I have drafted a letter in an effort to therapeutically unload and express some of my word processing baggage. As a trained counselor, I feel that this catharsis is necessary. This is very emotional for me, so I ask that you be sensitive to my vulnerability. Thank you.

Dear Microsoft Word,

Hi. I feel a little awkward bringing this up... so publicly... but you've left me with little choice. This is what it has come to. Where do I even begin? We've been doing this dance for years, you and I, ever since you first betrayed me by losing half of my Good Life paper senior year of high school. Do you have any idea how hard I worked - how much heart and soul I put into that paper - only to have it ripped right from my hands the minute I turned my back for a moment? It took a while to regain my trust - I'm sure you remember the rocky years we had - but I always came back, even though the wound of that night still remains. I never left you. I never turned my back on you. And look where it's gotten me.

In college, and then seminary, you were never perfect, sure... but then, I never expected you to be. I didn't ask for perfection - I'm certainly not perfect myself. For a brief few years, I was happy. I let my guard down, and I let you in. I took a risk in vulnerability. How wrong I was. It wasn't long before I became wary again; I started feeling paranoid, living in fear of the heartbreak and document loss that lay ahead. It was hard to be content, hard to focus on anything at all with you constantly testing my patience, moving my margins, when I needed you at top performance. Is this fun for you? Is that it? I just... I just don't understand. I suppose I never will.

Lately it feels we are on the brink of destruction - I am this close to ending this thing once and for all. All I want to do is create documents that are well-formatted and attractive. Why won't you let me? Are you afraid of what will happen if my documents are pretty? Are you jealous, is that it? Is it because I said that thing about loving handwritten sentiments most? Is it because I use blogger to do most of my writing and not you? Well, why would I use you?!? Nothing I could ever say or do affects your choices - you have made up your mind and no amount of backspacing or CTRL+Z can change that. You are inconsistent, unpredictable, and impulsive. I think that's what bothers me most - the inconsistency. When I click "Tab," I want to know what to expect. Are you going to move an inch or all the way to the other side of the page?! I can never tell!! From one line to the next, I cannot predict your behavior. I feel on edge all the time. Flinching with each error message. Cowering every time I see the little paper clip guy come into the bottom right corner. I fear that our relationship has become abusive.

I tried being supportive, I did. I went to the Help menu, I tried to correct auto-formatting. I even spoke sweetly to you, stroked your ego, promised you my undying devotion, to reassure you. But nothing worked. Nothing. I continued to flounder, always afraid of your next move. I know I've been reactive, I've called you things that would make a sailor blush, but still you misbehave. I'm out of options. This isn't me! I don't even know who I am anymore. You have ruined my resume one too many times. Why must you sabotage my efforts to find a job? Are you afraid if I succeed I won't need you anymore? One too many times, you have refused my attempts at formatting when all I'm trying to do is make pretty signs for a charity event. A charity event, Word. What kind of monster do you have to be to get in the way of something like that? Your constant need to restrict my creativity makes me sick. You are controlling and manipulative. Let me choose how I want the wording centered! Let me decide how I want my lists indented! You don't always know best which font I should use. You can't fence me in. I will not be your doormat any longer. You can't continue to treat me like my opinions don't matter. Like I'm not a person with feelings. I'm done letting you walk all over me. This is an ultimatum.

I hope you will consider the things I have said, and I hope this is not the end for us, I truly do. I'm sure you have made and will make some people very happy. But I know I am not the first woman you have disappointed, and I'm certain I will not be the last. And I care about you too much to let you keep making the same mistakes. Maybe this will be a wake up call for you. More than anything, I feel sorry for you. I really do.

You leave me no choice but to wait for another word processor - one that will meet my needs, one that will treat me with the respect that I deserve. I wish you the best, I truly do. Get help. Until you do... well, I guess this is goodbye.

Sincerely yours,
Megan

the loveliness of sows

2010-09-25T11:33:00.000-06:00

Much as I enjoy using words myself, I am more often than not blown away at the ways in which other people put thoughts together. To me, the putting together of words into sentences that I couldn't have thought up in a million years borders on magical. I think it is why I have always loved to read; because other people's thoughts, their joys and their pains, look much like my own. That I can feel something, acutely, and another person can describe it perfectly, eloquently, better than I ever could have - is just so freaking awesome. Even if (situationally speaking) our lives look strikingly different, on paper, we connect, intersect, relate to one another. While in real life reading another person can be not only scary but horrifically difficult, reading another person allows you more insight into their thoughts, their feelings, who they are. And as I get older, I find that more and more, I get to be in relationships with people who are honest enough, comfortable enough, to let me into those places (the "me too" places, if you will) that reading becomes less of a necessity to feel connected.

But I don't love it less. Because I firmly believe that words make art, and although art is not perhaps necessary to our basic survival, we don't thrive quite as much without it. At least I don't.

All that to say, I really, really, really love poetry.
And I really, really, really love this poem, Saint Francis and the Sow, by Galway Kinnell.

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and flops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them,
the long, perfect loveliness of the sow.

So. For those of you I have not lost into a fit of giggles because now the word "teat" is now forever immortalized on my blog, do you not love that? When I read that line - "though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness," I had to stop and catch my breath. And as I kept reading, I imagined St. Francis stooping to the earth to remind a sow that it was lovely. St. Francis. A Saint for goodness' sake. And a sow. The very picture of filth. The very last thing I think of as lovely. Are you starting to see what I'm seeing?

I've given a lot of thought recently about forgetting who you are. I wrote a few months ago: "I wonder how often we become something we're not simply because we've forgotten who we are." And to take it one step further now, I wonder if we haven't forgotten who we are simply because we've forgotten who God is.

I want, sort of desperately, to be retaught my loveliness. And I want to reteach others their loveliness too. Would that every interaction we had with one another - every touch, every word - pointed to just that: loveliness. That we could flower, and in so doing could be fully alive. That we could remember. And in so remembering, would remember too that our loveliness, our worth, comes from the God that created us that way. In his image.

Remember?

the kind of day where doubt is difficult

2010-09-19T23:27:00.000-06:00

you do your work the best that you can

you put one foot in front of the other

life comes in waves and makes it's demands

you hold on as well as you're able

you've been here for a long, long time...

This morning, someone I care about got good news. There was some scary stuff laced in there as well, but the long and short of it is that this woman - who has been dealing with health/medical issues for a long time - might be looking at relief. Finally. There is hope where before there has been very little. And without going into all of it - the story, the whole chain of events, is just really unbelievable. It's so much an answered prayer for her, I can't even begin to tell you. When she was telling us this morning, she barely had words to describe how she was feeling.

I can't be sure, but if I were a betting woman, I'd say that's probably what hope looks like. Real, genuine, expectant, faithful hope. It was delightful. And insanely beautiful.

I left the hospital and as I got in my car to go about the rest of my day, I thought to myself,
"I'm going to have the kind of day where doubt is really difficult."

dear this kind of day,
you are welcome to return anytime it suits you.
in fact, maybe be a frequent visitor, if you like.
I wouldn't hate it.
kindest & most sincere regards,
Megan

hope has a way of turning it's face to you
just when you least expect it
you walk in a room, you look out a window
and something there leaves you breathless
you say to yourself:
"it's been a while since I felt this; but it feels like it might be hope"

[sara groves] (click to listen to the song. which, by the way, I love.)

why I [might maybe possibly kind of sort of a little bit] believe in unicorns.

2010-09-09T16:44:00.000-06:00

Having a blog has its perks. Sure, I like to write, so that's a big one. And I've mentioned I like to be heard, so there's that too. 2 for 2. But then there is the story part. It's like I am writing a continuous novel about myself. I write my life, that is true - but I am fully in control of what about my life I write. It is a great great thing that I can be real, and authentic, and write truth - to the extent that I see fit on a given day. The truth is the truth, yes - but I can spin it how I like. I get to choose. In this life that I write, I am the author, creator, editor, and mastermind. I can write something completely untrue if I want (I don't do that, for the record). I can write something and delete it if I don't like what I see. I'm in charge. I have control. And for your information, yes, the weather is lovely in delusionland.

Anyway, in the life that I write, I try very hard not to write about the L-word. Love.

I don't mean love as in a "love your neighbor" or "I like my new Sketchers, but I LOVE my Prada backpack" kind of way. I mean love... like, LOVE LOVE. Romance love. The subject of every movie geared towards my demographic love. DOYOULIKEME check-yes-or-no love. It's not a subject I feel super comfortable positing my opinions on. On the one hand, to be a 25 year-old single girl writing about love feels stereotypical to me, and predictable is never something I want my writing to be described as. And on the other, I secretly fear becoming 'that' girl. You know her... the one who talks about nothing else. It is possible, however, that my refusal to accept this topic has caused me to err on the side of never acknowledging it, which is a kind of predictability in itself. (If it was offered, I would trade self-awareness for blissful ignorance in a heartbeat. Just saying.) So here we are.

Against my will, the "yucky love stuff" (My Best Friend's Wedding anyone?) has been stalking me lately. Believe me, I fought it... but in the past 5 months, I was invited to 8 weddings. 8 save the dates, 8 invitations, 8 RSVP cards (typically late, because, I'm me), 2 pretty great bridesmaid's dresses, 1 maid of honor speech, many bachelorette parties, rehearsal dinners, plane tickets, road trips, and blisters (from excessive dancing in heels) later, its September, and way more of my friends' last names have changed on Facebook than I am comfortable with. (Seriously. I hardly know who anyone is anymore. Very stressful.) It's unavoidable at this stage of life, I think... but still. I'm surrounded. And at some point, one must put on one's big girl pants and DEAL.

Which brings me to the topic at hand: Unicorns.

Yes. Unicorns. Those mythically wondrous sparkly horse-like creatures with horns growing triumphantly from their majestic brows. Sunlight beaming from every inch of their lithe, irridescent bodies. Unicorns. Unicorns are wonderful (don't argue, I won't listen) and magical and at the end of the day, we don't think they really exist. Which is why one day, when speaking of a friend's fiance, another friend and I dubbed this particular man a Unicorn. He was so wonderful that we weren't sure he was real. Another time the term came up when a friend was being pursued really well by a guy. Again, we thought, "is this real?!" Months have passed since we first coined this phrase, and one by one, Unicorns have continued to strut into the picture of my friends' lives. Fascinating.

I can no longer pretend that Unicorns (the man kind, anyway) do not exist. I can't. The evidence is there. Having been present at the aforementioned six trillion weddings in my lifetime, I can ignore their existence no longer. I'm going to resist the urge to go all Nicholas Sparks on you - I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I did - but last weekend I stood with another wonderful [more-like-family-than-] friend as she got married. In the midst of all the wedded bliss I was privy to during the summer of oh-ten, I have been learning too that these things rarely look like we think they will. That the timing we have in our heads is never accurate. That there is the potential for a lot of heartbreak on the way there. And while I don't believe in "but even after all that they found each other and they lived happily ever after and nothing bad ever happened ever again because they were both beautiful and in LOVE" Disney fairytale crap-ola, I do believe in Unicorns. Which, if you know me, is a big deal for me to admit.

Since we (the females) first gazed longingly into the eyes of Jonathan Taylor Thomas in the shiny pages of Teen Beat and discovered what True Love really felt like at the tender age of 11, we have hoped (some of us more quietly than others) that Unicorns were real. I just want you to know, girls, that I'm starting to think it might be possible. You need no longer settle for horses that will kick you right in the teeth if you let yourself get close enough. (To be fair, I've always been ~~a little~~ a lot afraid of horses, so my opinion of them may be slightly hyperbolic. But it's all in the name of the metaphor. Hang in there.) Hold out for a Unicorn.

And boys - I'm not insulting you, so before you get your boxer briefs in a bunch, listen up. You, too, can (and probably will) be someone's Unicorn. Let me rephrase - you get to be someone's Unicorn. Yes. I've seen it happen too many times not to believe it's possible. We're waiting for you. I think I may already know some of you (Unicorns, that is), which is equally encouraging. Thank you for being so swell and Unicorny already. Thank you for being a Unicorn to me even though you aren't necessarily my Unicorn. Congratulations. You are the rarest of rare.

why we are pansies

2010-08-19T14:56:00.001-06:00

I've noticed some patterns. I find patterns both comforting - in that there is consistency - and frustrating - in that we don't learn our lesson very easily. Psalmists were writing and confused about stuff that modern day songwriters are still writing and confused about. I'm pretty sure if you look closely, we're still making the same mistakes that Adam & Eve did. There are books written long ago that speak so true to the confusion of the present that it makes me feel like the authors somehow achieved time travel. (Seriously. I had that thought once. I underlined like a fool and drew impressively symmetrical stars in the margins and flipped back to the copyright date about 300 times to make sure I wasn't confused.) Things have changed, that is for sure, but there are some things that are just true about us.

A friend of mine told me that one of the reasons she believed that God was real, on a very basic level, was that she had never met a person who was fully content in this world. Jonah Werner says "that everything created cries out for something more." I think they're both right. Bottom line: we were created with these great, big, powerful desires. And here is where things get tricky. We consistently spend, spend, spend [money, energy, time, ourselves] on things that are not what they claim to be. (Isaiah 55: "why spend your money on what is not bread?") The pattern is that since the beginning, we have sort of been pansies. We freak out and create more manageable desires [idols, perhaps?] because the real stuff seems (and maybe even is) scary & unpredictable & like it might hurt us if we let it (and it might, actually).

Once again, I think of a C.S. Lewis quote (the one that I reference constantly as though Lewis' people are paying me royalties or something. What can I say? I love all things metaphorical.) "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink & sex & ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea." The mud is gross, but it's what I know. The slum is terrible, but it is predictable. I think that sometimes we are in the slum for so long that we, too, can't imagine how beautiful the sea could be. How beautiful freedom could be. How beautiful it would be to stop drinking, using, controlling, worrying, looking, eating, working, sneaking, hiding, lying, manipulating, shaming, being afraid, making mud pies, sitting in slums.

Henri Nouwen explains this beautifully when he writes about the old country v. the new country (the slum v. the sea, if you will, and you should): "You are very much at home, although not really at peace, in the old country. You know the ways of the old country... Even though you know you have not found there what your heart most desires, you remain quite attached to it. It has become part of your very bones.”

I think at some point or another we were hungry or bored or disappointed or hurt or confused or let down or empty or lonely - and [insert your mud pie(s) of choice] seemed like a good way to cope. And maybe it made us happy for 5 minutes, brought comfort for an hour, made us feel in control for a couple of years. For even a brief moment, what we chose as our substitution worked. But see, before we knew it, we were in chains of our own making. We became quite convinced that the mud pie was the best we could do. We stopped dreaming of the Sea because, quite simply, we forgot about it. Or maybe I remember, one day. I might even (in a weak moment) ask someone for directions. Maybe someone reminds me, even offers to take my hand and bring me along with them.

But I have been in the slum for so long.
My face is dirty & my shame is great.
I couldn't possibly be deserving of the sea.

I spent a lot of time thinking that if I could just work hard enough, I could break free from the old country, from the slum. But then I had this thought: What if I'm already free? What if I just stood up? What if instead of pleading for freedom, I accepted the freedom I already possess? What if I looked down and the chains that have bound me for so long had already been broken? What if I turned to see that the cell door was standing wide open? What if I’ve got it backwards – what if instead of having to do something to get free - because I am free, I can do something? It stands to reason that if I can understand that God is more powerful than I am, then Jesus is probably not waiting around for me to perform the magical combination of actions to unlock my chains. Again with the misunderstanding.

Regardless, the mud pie isn't enough anymore. It stopped working, because a lie is still a lie no matter how many times I exchange it for the truth. The slum is not the sea no matter how many times I am told that it is. There will be days when I still wake up there, probably. Sometimes we will sit there, sulking, broken, the chains will feel too heavy to move. There will be days I need so many reminders of the sea that it will make the people who love me feel crazy.

I am comforted by Nouwen’s words about baby steps:
"The new country is where you are called to go, and the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable. For a while you experience real joy in the new country. But then you feel afraid and start longing again for all you left behind, so you go back. To your dismay, you discover the old country has lost its charm. Risk a few more steps into the new country, trusting that each time you enter it, you will feel more comfortable and be able to stay longer."

Don't be afraid.
Risk a few more steps.
We're not slaves anymore. We can stop trying to free ourselves. We've been set free.

We can go home.