look, I made a valentine

I mean, that's kind of the dream, right*? Love me on the good days, sure, when I'm all dolled up and well-mannered and wearing pink because it's the holiday of love and all that. Love me then, sure. But also, love my junk. Love my crap. Be crazy about the stuff that isn't pretty or clean or tied up in a neat little bow. Don't tolerate it, or accept it reluctantly, or cross your fingers I will change with proper training. Valentine's Day is nice because it celebrates love, but it's tricky because everyone works so hard to make it good-looking, at least for today. And it's nice to feel good-looking, to get all dolled up for a minute, maybe many minutes; maybe on more days than it doesn't, your love looks really good. But if you can't hang with it when it's not good-looking, well, I can't hang with it when it is. Because that's what real love is. Love of any kind, really. It is without condition.

Just as strong and crazy and can't-keep-your-hands-off-y on laundry day as it is on Valentine's Day.

*Right.

The Well

[I wrote this a while back about the food pantry where I spend my Sundays. I have been feeling especially thankful for this place, of late, and it felt like a good time to post this little ditty bragging on the community I call mine. Come see us.]

It was a sweaty Sunday a few Augusts ago when I walked down into the basement of Wellspring Church to The Well food pantry to volunteer for the first time. I probably could’ve counted on one hand the number of homeless people I’d interacted with in my life up to that point. But through a strange chain of events that I can only attribute to our funny God, there I was, about to sit down and pray about I had no idea what with someone I’d never laid eyes on before and who similarly had never laid eyes on me. I didn’t know what I was doing, what to say, or how to be. I didn’t know what it was like to be hungry or homeless or really even in need. But like I said – there I was. I took a deep breath, pretended I knew what I was doing, and prayed one day I would.

I came down the stairs that first time because I thought I could help. Oh Jesus, you are bigger than even our very best intentions. I will never not be thankful for that.

And since that first day, I have seen wonderful things. There was one woman in particular I prayed with regularly for a long time. I will never forget, after weeks of praying for his heart to soften, the day she came in beaming to tell me that she’d just sat in church for the first time with her husband. Or the day a man who couldn’t get a job to save his life came in practically giddy to tell me he finally had an interview. Or the day a woman who only a year ago was living in an abusive home, desperately miserable, came back after several months and said, her prayers answered, “I’m so happy.” 

As an “interviewer,” I get to do what I like to do the very best: talk to people. Talk and listen and pray. It’s a little counter-intuitive for me, though, because I like to have answers. I like for there to be a neat little bow tied at the end of everything, but I quickly found I wouldn’t get that here. The ugly truth of the matter is that some days, it feels like too much. Some days I am speechless because a 9-year old girl is here by herself getting groceries for her family. Or a man my dad’s age is holding my hands and weeping because he hasn’t spoken to his children in years. Or I meet with 13 people in a row who can’t find jobs and aren’t sure where they’ll sleep tonight. Some days the world is so overwhelmingly not good that things can start to feel hopeless, and I don’t have a bow to tie on that. And yet even on those days, even then, I am continually amazed by the faith and strength and even joy of the people sitting across from me. Because the world may not always be good, but God is. In the direst of circumstances, that truth remains a promise.

The Well is a food pantry. But it doesn’t stop at just meeting people’s physical need to eat food – it’s about transformation. Prayer isn’t just about answers – although often we see them, and it’s amazing – it’s about the changing of hearts. Recovery, over time. And sometimes, yes, it’s about sitting still in heartache and addiction and suffering and holding hands with grown men while they cry. It’s about hope when things feel hopeless because while the world isn’t good, Jesus is. In the messiest story, the dirtiest past, the saddest circumstance, there is hope. Fixing problems and tying bows may be quick and pretty, but it’s nothing compared to messy, beautiful, new life in Christ.

The Well taught me that. And I will probably never be the same because of it.

ain't nobody got time for that

You all know by now that I like - nay, love - Zumba.  It is the self care-iest thing I do for myself; as good for my soul as it is for my quads. At the end of my favorite class each week, we stretch it out to that Baz Luhrmann song about wearing sunscreen. I remember when that song came out - I was probably fourteen and I thought it was just about the most profound thing I had ever heard. Probably in reality that was only because I thought the class of '99 was hella cool and I wanted to be a part of things, but whatever. When I first heard the song come on in this class, I'll admit to you that my eyes rolled a little bit. It was involuntary. But dang it if that song hasn't stuck itself into my brain and I kind of don't hate it. Maybe it's that by the end of class I'm so exhausted I'm partly delirious, but each week I catch myself listening to the words and as I stretch, letting each part sink in as I need it to on that particular day. 

Recently, though, there has been one part that makes me feel a little more in my feelers than the others.

Baz says: "don't be reckless with other people's hearts -
don't put up with people who are reckless with yours."

 I harp a lot on a lot of things, and one of those things is relationships and how they are risky and hard. I write a lot about how I think it's worth it to take the risk - I think to talk myself into it more than anyone, because engaging with people is, yknow, hard. I made the above card with this very thing in my mind. I remember standing in a store looking at this photo and thinking what a perfect picture of relationship it is. In loving each other, we are all at once at risk of both squishing and being squished. In a good way, for sure, but in a risky one nonetheless. CS Lewis said, "Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken... to love at all is to be vulnerable." I have to remind myself continually that it's worth it, to make myself keep doing it - because the alternative is quite a lonely reality. I don't think I'd last long there.

Here's the trick about it though - and thank you Baz Luhrmann for reminding me of this - we can't be flippant about this business. We aren't responsible for one another, per say, because that can get a little codependent. But we are absolutely responsible to one another; especially to those who put their tender little hearts in our hands, and ours in theirs. It's a great honor and a big deal to enter into relationship with another person. It happens all the time, every day, every hour even [if you're an extrovert like myself], and as such, I think it can be easy to take for granted it's big-deal-ness.

My point is, we have to be careful with each other. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't do that. It's a big deal for someone to put their heart on the line and I want to urge you to think about it before you let them. We will have reckless days, days we will be selfish and forget to be careful for a minute. We'll screw it up sometimes and I pray for us the chance to make our amends when we do. But here's maybe the even trickier part, for me anyway - don't put up with people who are reckless with your heart. Don't do it. I struggle with it, honestly, but I promise you from experience it's not worth it. It's not good for you or for them to let it happen, and I urge you to put the kibosh on it when it does. Our hearts are valuable. Worthy of care. So don't even for one hot second put it in the hands of someone who won't.

It's a lesson I needed to learn. I wasn't open to it for a long while because it meant I had to put some kiboshes on, and I'm really not good at that. But thanks to a combination of Zumba exhaustion [thanks, Portie], a tug at my pre-teen heartstrings [thanks, Baz], and a warning I'd heard a thousand times before [thanks, Clive] - I think I see it now. I will not be reckless with other people's hearts; I will acknowledge the risk they take to be close to me. And I will not put up with people who are reckless with mine.

Life is short, sure, but you're far too important to be reckless about it. Let's try our hardest to quit squishing each other. Because to quote Sweet Brown, a poet for the ages - ain't nobody got time for that!

what does she see?

I recently spent some time in the homeland, and one day while I was there my niece Shelbie and I had some quality time together while her mom, my sister, was still at work. Shelbs was in the bathtub and we were playing a rousing game of drive-thru bank teller with the sliding shower doors when she stopped and she asked me a question.

What does my mom see?
As I am with many of this girl's questions, initially, because she is so stinking profound for a 5 year old, I was confused. What do you mean? I asked her.
She tried to explain. What does she see? Right now?
Still unsure if I was answering her question or not, I said that her mom probably saw her office, her computer, that kind of thing. And that sweet little angel face bank teller held her hands in the shape of a heart, sighed, and said, I wish she could see my heart instead.

We texted her a picture right then and there, thanks to the miracle of modern technology, so her mom did get to see her heart instead. But you guys. If that isn't a lesson in basic human empathy, I don't know what is. I don't sit often around wondering what people are seeing at a given moment. I don't think I have ever asked or heard of someone asking that question before. But isn't it a good one?

I take for granted that we are complex people with many senses, all of which we use to encounter the world. As a counselor, I ask all kinds of questions all the time about feelings and thoughts, about motivations and beliefs and experiences, but I rarely think about what someone simply sees, and what that means for them. Just the fact that Shelbie stopped in her tracks, assessed what she saw, thought about her mom seeing something different, and then wondered what that was is sort of amazing to me. And then she even went so far as to wish that she could make a difference in what her mom saw. I learn all the time about empathy from these little chickadees; it is one of their more powerful skills, I think. Whenever I spend time with them, it makes me want to be better at it myself.

I can get pretty caught up in my own self, in my own proverbial bath time and bank teller games, as it were. But that we would have these moments, however brief, where we stopped what we were doing for the simple purpose of wondering what another person is seeing at that same moment. Maybe even thought about a way we might help them see something better.

family, simply defined

lyrical inspiration cred: Mumford & Sons, "Timshel"

you are not alone in this
and you are not alone in this
as brothers we will stand
and we'll hold your hand
hold your hand

when pigs fly

Something you may or may not be aware of is that I make cards.

If we're being honest, I seem to have developed a sort of need to constantly caption things. I see a picture and I caption it, even if only in my brain. I started making cards because it also met the desire I have to cut and glue and craft things on a regular basis. See, one can only make so many crafts before they start to take up lots of space in one's home. Making cards, then, is a compact way to scratch my decoupage itch. While simultaneously captioning things. It's really a perfect combination.

Anyway. I give them to people sometimes, but sometimes I just make them for the sake of making them, so I thought, why not post a few occasionally? I especially like this one for the beginning of a new year. I think it's hopeful, in a weird sort of way. 2013. Full of possibility.

new year, new you

I don't love transitions. Any of them. Even the good ones cause me lots of stress and worry and bother. I don't love beginnings either, for that matter. I'd pick being comfortable and established over being new any day because I hate not knowing what I'm doing and it seems beginnings are always full of that. But for someone who is against transitions and beginnings as much as I am, there is something I really love about new starts and clean slates. I suppose it's an exception to my rule about hating all change. So as you maybe can imagine, I've always had kind of a love-hate thing with New Years. It makes me all kinds of anxious, but there's something nice about waking up January 1 feeling all shiny and new.

About 4 months ago, not for any particular reason really, I started making some relatively significant changes in my life. I don't know why September happened to be the time, but it was, and here we are. Whenever we've talked about it over the past few months my friend Kim has exclaimed, supportively, "new year, new you!" I just love that. I feel a little thrill every time she says it, and in approaching the actual New Years event, I have been thinking both about glitter and champagne type things and also about how exciting it is to have a whole new year ahead and to be going into it with a whole new me.

The past few New Yearses I have written about wanting to be more free, then feeling more free than the year before, and wanting to be even more so, still. But this year for the first time I accepted freedom - as a sort of gift I'd already been given - and decided to stop looking for it so much as just living in it. I even got the "freedom tat" I said I would get someday, and though I know that really only means something inside my own head, still, it means something. More so than in years past, I look over the year behind me and standing here today, I feel different in a lot of good ways. That's a nice feeling. Even so, when I look ahead, I don't see a whole hell of a lot with any kind of definition or certainty. Which I suppose is normal, given I'm not a psychic, but normal or not, it's not a great feeling, right? Not the kind of thing that's super reassuring when you've no choice but to keep moving and you have no idea where you're headed or how you'll get there.

When it comes right down to it, I can think of about a hundred things to worry about. I'm anxious as I write this, in fact, about quite a few things. I don't know if my September self-renovations will continue to go smoothly, but I'll keep at it right on through next September, if I have to, because this is my life and it matters. I will work on taking deep breaths through the tricky stuff, I will do the next right thing even when it seems like there isn't one. I'll keep learning how to treat people more kindly, make amends to myself when I owe them, I'll keep trying to figure out where the Lord is in all of it even when that part is really confusing. I'll keep taking risks and loving people and letting them love me and probably getting my feelings hurt more than occasionally; but if it happens, it will be because I decided someone is worth risking that for. And I feel ok about that.

If I were making resolutions for 2013, which I try not to do because I can get real weird real fast about putting parameters like that on life-change, I suppose it would be just to keep living. Not like as opposed to dying, but to keep doing all that life stuff I mentioned before. I'd like to live so that at the end of a day I know I've done what I could. To love myself and people and Jesus, to get what and where I want to get and go with my life. I will do what I can. Some days I won't, and that will be hard. Some days I will and that will be hard too, though. So.

"New year, new you" happens when it happens. Either way, come January 1, it's still exciting [if also slightly terrifying] to ring in another new year full of equal parts possibility and uncertainty. But any way you slice it, kiddos, life is happening. So do with that what you will.

santa is a party clown

Being Aunt Meggie is one of the very most prized roles in my life up to this point. I love when I get to spend time with the little preshy-pies, and also I love quoting things they say and writing blog posts about them. I quote them a lot because regardless of our significant age difference, they are for sure 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 last year when Timmy [age 7, then] said to Amie, about Christmas, the following:

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

I mean, really. These kids. They're like  tiny theologians.

I feel sure there have been days during this very season where I spent more time trying to come up with a Christmas list than thinking about Jesus. I'm embarrassed about it, but it's the truth. And that's what my tender-hearted, brilliant little nephew 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? 
Isn't this party is really for Jesus?

Whether he knew it or not, with that little question, Timmy hit a pretty hard theological nerve, at least for me. Because I think no matter how good we are, no matter how much we love Jesus and how well we evangelize and how many seminary degrees we have - yes, even for us - there may come a moment where we're so caught up with the clown that we 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 over the ones that actually mean something.

Clowns aren't bad. They can be fun, I guess,  if you're into that kind of thing, and 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 entertainment, 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: Christmas is fun. So much fun. I love it, and I intend to continue enjoying the many perks of the yuletide season. But instead of spending the holiday season focused on frivolous entertainment - on Santa Claus and Christmas lists, the plethora of ABC Family Christmas movies available on Netflix, Skinny Peppermint Mochas, and the Mariah Carey Christmas album - I hope that we can all [myself perhaps the very most] heed Timmy's warning and not lose sight of what we're celebrating.

Because this party is really for Jesus.

for just in case you get nervous

Today I went to see a guy I know. He's an older guy, and something you should know about him is he's a giver. He loves to give people things. He doesn't have a lot, not much at all - but what he has, he gives. I've seen him give away anything from wristwatches to cigarettes to an entire platter of chicken, once. One thing he particularly likes to try to give me is VHS tapes. He's got a plethora, apparently, and I can't tell you the number of times he's tried to convince me to go buy a VCR so that he can give me videos. He'd very much like to be my own personal Blockbuster. Videos for days.

Today I did something for him, something that he could not do for himself, and afterwards he wanted to thank me. After going through the whole VCR debate once more for good measure, he hoisted himself up from where he was perched on his walker and went to a drawer under the the shelf where the infamous videos are haphazardly stored. From the drawer he pulled out a small plastic bag of what I know to be his favorite candy, and from that he drew a generous handful and motioned for me to hold out my hands. Here, he said. I resisted, said no thanks, said I'd rather he keep them, tried all my usual refusal tricks, but he would not take no for an answer, not this time. After some back-and-forth about how no, I was not refusing because I thought he was trying to poison me, he said:  just put 'em in your pocket. For just in case you get nervous. What that even means, I'm not sure. I suppose there'd be no way of knowing. Either way, what choice did I have?

I filled my pocket with Root Beer Barrels.
For just in case I get nervous.

I don't have a really significant reason for telling this story, other than I wanted to tell it - it was just one of those nice moments we get to enjoy sometimes, if we're paying close enough attention. I was presented with a sacrificial kind of generosity, one of the rarer kinds, and one I wouldn't have expected to experience in the form of a Root Beer Barrel, if we're being honest. It was only a handful of candy, yes, but it was his handful of candy. It was all he had to give, and he was so, so happy to have given it. I think that's kind of a beautiful thing.

Maybe it sounds like a strange thing to take note of, and maybe it is, a little. All I know is, today was a good day, and whether I wanted them or not, I've got a pocket full of Root Beer Barrels to prove it. And for whatever reason, I just think that's great.

fine or not fine, here goes nothing

The other day I was sitting at my desk with my office door open and one of my coworkers walked by. I heard him, noticed him, I think I even turned around and maybe even waved. Once he passed by the door, though, he almost immediately turned back - he came in, sat down across from me, and looked at me with what appeared to be extreme concern.

Ok, he said, what's wrong? 
I said, confused, nothing's wrong. I'm fine. I was. Why do you ask?
Dead serious, he said, when I started down the hall I was singing a song and you didn't pick it up when I walked by your office. I was worried. 

Being in a profession with so many intuitive people is annoying sometimes, I won't lie to you, because hiding is essentially impossible. It's not far from the truth to say that he knew something was wrong before I did. After all, he was right. I hadn't even noticed he was singing - and that really isn't like me. So I thought about it. I thought I was fine, but was I fine? If not, then why? Why am I all of a sudden not doing things that I love and are important to me?

On a completely separate and unrelated note, you may or may not have noticed that it has been over a month since I wrote anything at all. So. 

It wasn't a choice I made, really, to not write - I guess I just didn't feel like it. Even now, sitting here, it's kind of hard. I wish I knew why. I wish it wasn't hard. I wish I was picking up on songs being sung in my hallway, but I'm not. I wish I felt like sitting down to write, but I just don't. 

A few days after my friend said that about the singing, I was in the car listening to Christmas music. One of my favorite Mariah jams came on and about halfway through it I drew my awareness to the fact that not only was I not singing, I had my jaw clenched so tight I had to make a conscious, physical effort to unclench it. What happened next was this: I started the song over, unclenched my jaw, and I made myself sing. It was incredible. Despite my best efforts to remain cranky, and despite the fact that I did not in any way feel like singing, I just felt so much better. 

Tonight, similarly, I am sitting in a coffee shop, drinking chai tea, listening to good songs, and writing a blog post. It's not the best one I've ever written, but it doesn't have to be. Much like the Mariah phenomenon, just being here is the point. Unclenching my proverbial jaw, so to speak, and putting something on paper. I still don't feel like it. But thankfully I know that feelings aren't facts, so I don't have to listen to them always. So tonight, for a change of pace from the recent past, I'm not.

There are probably a few reasons I feel less-than-fine. I should probably unpack that a little more at some point, but not tonight. For now, tonight, this is enough. Fine or not fine, I'm going to do the things I love to do but currently don't so much feel like doing until maybe soon I feel like doing them again.

Not to mention, we are currently within the confines of the one month a year it is socially appropriate for me to listen to Mariah Carey's Christmas album all day every day, and I don't intend to waste one more day of that precious allotment with any more cranky.

So Happy December, everyone. Here's to Mariah Carey, Christmastime, and feeling finer every day.

the right kind of home

Today I am going to San Antonio. Today I also realized it's been a couple of weeks since I wrote anything. In light of those two realities, I was brought back to this post I wrote the last time I went to San Antonio, and now I am reposting it because it rings true even still. In so many ways. So here you go.

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 lazy or we're settling or 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 I know my house will smell like pumpkin for almost the entirety of Autumn. I like the ease and comfort of sitting over coffee with someone who knows me, and who I know back. And I like it that when I step off the plane in San Antonio and feel the nasty humidity blow through the jetway, it sends me right back to the years I spent here. I take a deep breath of wet air and I am walking home from the Kappa house on a Friday night. I am heading to the Murch study lounge to write a paper on the role of the femme fatale in Hitchcock films (best paper ever) and laugh with my friends all night long. I am walking to Marble Slab on the Riverwalk with a bunch of high school kids. I am at the Taco C drive through with The Power Six at midnight, drinking Bella Sera in a papasan couch, cheering for the Spurs, and getting thrown into the Trinity fountain on my birthday.


Let me be clear: I genuinely 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 do in Zumba class. 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 over time, when a person became familiar, they were rated as more attractive than they were initially, when they were unfamiliar. Their appearance hadn't necessarily changed, but [psychologically speaking] knowing their face made the subject perceive them as better looking, somehow. I remember thinking that's kind of beautiful. Knowing a person makes them more attractive to us. Intimacy breeds desirability. Familiarity has an effect on us.

I don't think it's a trick our brains are playing on us. I think it's not that we're settling or getting too comfortable or being lazy. I think it's because we were designed for knowing and being known, so the connection between knowing and liking is in our wiring. I think it's because familiarity makes us feel at 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.

a small price to pay

There's a thing I do, sometimes, when I get bored or tired or burned out on normal life; when I need a minute to rest, to get away, to not worry about things I worry about. For a little while, I pretend I'm not me. I put on a little show, in fact, and it goes like this:

I go to a coffee shop like the one I'm in now, I order something soy, I find somewhere to sit. I'm quite picky about my placement - I try to make that unspokenly clear to other patrons watching me choose. I find a place that will suit me, I sit there. I've worn something I like, usually, and made sure my hair is pretty good that day. For some reason that's important. Sometimes I wear glasses, but they're not real glasses. I'm telling you this because I trust you won't judge me. I trust that some days you wish you could pretend to be someone else, too. And if it's as simple as donning a $10 pair of fake glasses, I mean, can you blame me?

Anyway, I sit. I have great posture, maybe prop my leg up on the chair opposite me sometimes. I open my MacBook, plug in my headphones and choose something cool to listen to. The Avett Brothers today, I think. It's important that I wouldn't mind if someone knew I was listening to it, should they ask, though I know they won't. I drink my soy whatever and I tilt my head thoughtfully, as I am doing now. I look discerningly at my laptop screen as though to let onlookers know I am carefully choosing my words, which I am, but I want it to be apparent. I do this sort of consciously, actually, as though I think I have an audience, but I promise I know I don't. I know I am only performing for one person, and that person is me. Because I am being someone different today. Nobody here has any idea, how could they, so I guess I want to make sure I know it.

As I sit and sip and tilt, I write. Because in this scene I am a writer. A writer who spends my nights at coffee shops and writes things that are important and meaningful and poignant, who wears glasses, sometimes, whose hair is good on all days, not just this one, who is thoughtful, chooses words carefully. Here I am not a person who's job it is to worry about other people's problems, here I am not a person who has sadness, or grief, and if I am, I am the kind who knows exactly what to do with it. Here I am not the kind of person who cares what other people think. Here, in fact, I am sort of demure and glamorous, mysterious, in whatever kind of way someone wearing a hoodie can be. Here I am the kind of person who doesn't wear my heart on my sleeve, I am someone people wonder about instead of just knowing because I probably already told them. Because, I remind myself, head tilting, here tonight, I am not me.

Eventually, though, I will get sleepy; because I am a person whose job it is to worry about other people's problems, who cares what other people think, who wears my heart on my sleeve, and those things can be tiring. I will stay a little longer, even then, but eventually I snap my laptop shut, take one more swig of soy and pack up my things. It's time to be me again. Maybe just slightly more like the girl in the coffee shop than before, just from the practice, but mostly still just me.

That might sound depressing to you. At first it did to me, too, but I think instead it's actually kind of hopeful. Because I like to think that even though I am me, even though I am set in a lot of ways, I am not stuck. I am me. But the girl from the coffee shop is also just me, in the end, aside from the glasses which I already admitted aren't real. I am a writer. A writer who is also a lot of other things too, things that can be tiring, but who can sit in a coffee shop with a pair of fake glasses on and forget about all that other stuff for a little bit.

Maybe that's what life is, in the end, maybe growing up just means being what you are and practicing the things you'd like to be more of until one day maybe you are those things too. Maybe one day I'll discover I'm a little bit glamorous. Even slightly mysterious. Maybe one day I'll realize I care a little less about what other people think and even though I'll probably always worry about other people's problems, I'll always have coffee shops and fake glasses to fall back on when I need a break, and that's enough to keep me going. Yes. Hope. That's what that is. And as dumb as I felt buying those stupid hipster glasses, I'd say it was $10 well spent. A small price to pay [and by "price" I mean both the $10 and the pride I had to sacrifice to own fake glasses, no matter how cute they are] for an evening of rest and hope every now and then.

do the next right thing

Children are very concerned with justice, I've noticed. Or maybe not so much justice as they just always want to be absolutely sure that whatever is happening at any given moment is 100% fair. If he got a cupcake, I should too, and it better be exactly the same size and flavor with the precise same amount of frosting on top please. And if she got 6.75 minutes on the swing at recess then SO SHOULD I IT'S ONLY FAIR. Playgrounds are a veritable court of law. At some point though, we stopped talking about it. We stopped claiming things weren't fair or telling people they should do something because it's only fair. But I thought about it recently and I'm not sure we really did stop. I think we stopped saying those exact words; we realized at the very least it made us sound immature and kind of petty, as grownup people, to say those things. So usually we don't. But did we stop worrying things may or may not be unfair? I think we absolutely did not.

The thing about fairness, I think, is that worrying about it isn't terribly productive. On a given day there are any number of facts about my life I can't change. I am 27 years old. I've made countless choices in those 27 years, some good and some not so. I will tell you from experience that I could spend entire days going through all of those poor choices one by one, regretting them and wishing them to be different, but my past remains a fact. While I can move forward, I can't go back and change any of it because whether I like it or not, it happened. I can spend even more days thinking about the things that weren't my choice, hard or life-altering things that happened to me, and I can think about how those things aren't fair. They may very well not be. My point is, I could sit and dwell on how things aren't fair for some serious amounts of time. How there are things I can't change and how much I hate that. But, to recap, it's not a terribly productive strategy. Because after the days of dwelling, everything remains just as it was before I started. The alternative to that - and I thank the good Lord there is one - is to accept those things as true, if unfortunate, and then [this is the important part] decide what to do moving forward.  I think I can accept what is true about my past while refusing to accept it as my future.

It's really easy to get stuck there - in thinking life sucks and believing the unchangeable truths about our lives are too much to overcome. And you know what? It really does suck. A lot of it really isn't fair. It's easy to feel like we are trapped by our circumstances with no way out, but if only for my own survival's sake, I need to believe that's not true. And when I stop and think about it, I have to wonder if the only circumstance trapping me anywhere isn't the one where I decide I'm trapped and live the rest of my life as if it's true.

When you're faced with a past that is riddled with mistakes and poor choices and missteps, when you're forced to look at the facts of your life and you don't always like what you see, or when you've just screwed up for the hundred millionth time and it seems like you'll be screwing up forever - in those moments, all you can do is the next right thing. Sure, you could sit in your bed or office or car for another 3 hours being mad at yourself, mad at the circumstances, frustrated with your whole life, and maybe you need to for a minute. Get it out of your system. Pitch a little fit. But then you have to get out of bed, accept the facts as they are, take a deep breath, and do the next right thing.

I think on paper this concept can sound really negative and traumatizing, but acceptance is freeing in a way you maybe wouldn't think it'd be. Take it from me - someone who spent a lot of years wishing a lot of facts weren't true. The minute I stopped wishing for something different and asked myself instead what I could do differently, even if it wasn't terribly fair, everything changed. Some days I still feel trapped. Those days are less productive, but sometimes I think I need them just to prove to myself that I don't. And after they are over, I get up and I do the next right thing. The lovely thing about the next right thing is it's always an option. It might look different every time, but even if you've just done 37 wrong things, even then - it's never too late to do the next right thing.

[A moment of honesty - I wrote this yesterday. I believed it with every fiber of my being until I read over it this morning and I found I was less convinced. I'd started spiralling down through a litany of my wrongs, of the wasted years and days and hours wishing that things were different. Even though I am as we speak living the next right thing, I felt inexplicably terrible. Hopeless. Sad and full of regret for the years wasted, and the the unfairness of it all. And then, for what seemed like no reason at all, a little something popped into my head. I remembered a verse I wrote down once from the book of Joel - Even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart. I remember feeling the comfort of those first words, as though the Lord knew my litany and even still, even now [even though these facts of your life are true,] return to me. I read on, just because, and I read and re-read 100 times to let the beauty of this next part really sink in. Further down chapter 2 of Joel, the Lord makes a promise.

I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.

Is that not just the very best kind of unfairness?]

Accept the facts, take a deep breath, do the next right thing. It's never - not ever - too late.

an invitation to not be a liar

Once upon a time, I was a big fat liar.

When I was a teenager I went through a phase where I lied kind of a lot. My favorite thing to lie about was school. We refer to this time in my life as "the hiatus," wherein I went from pretty highly ranked in my class to literally just never turning in my Algebra 2 homework. When people ask me why this happened, I'm never sure what to say. I think I worked really hard and took school really seriously and one day I looked around and realized that there were people who didn't do that. And they were fine. I wondered what it would be like to not work hard too, soooo I didn't. I was not, however, ready to deal with the consequences of that. I wanted to try not trying, but I didn't want anyone to actually know I was doing it. So, I lied. I lied a lot. I lied very specifically and strategically so as to keep anyone from knowing what I wasn't doing. I delayed the inevitable, deluding myself that I would be able to figure it out by the time any real consequence came along.

Imagine, then, when mid-semester parent-teacher conferences come around and my parents come in to learn that their star student is not doing so hot. Upon hearing how drastically my grades had fallen, I'm told they were immediately worried about my psychiatric wellbeing, that I'd fallen into a deep depression or gotten into drugs or didn't have any friends. Until Mrs. Thiel looked my mom in the face and said, oh no, I think Megan's feeling just fine. She's just not turning in her homework. Ever. Oops. It wasn't a pretty time in my household, that much I can tell you for certain.

There were other things, too, things I didn't want to face, so I lied. The situations were different but every time I lied it was because I was afraid. I was afraid of being a big screw up who didn't do things right enough or well enough, and I couldn't handle the thought of that, so I made up something I thought was acceptable to myself and everyone else. I thought it would be enough, the pretty life I crafted for everyone to look at, but all it really did was make me a whole new kind of afraid. I was afraid of the consequences of an action, so I lied to delay them. But what I didn't realize was that my fear of getting caught for the lies delaying my consequences was FAR greater than my fear of the actual consequences themselves. It was miserable. I lived my days as a liar constantly in fear that my jig was about to be up, that I was about to be caught. I was constantly calculating and reconfiguring for when the curtain was drawn and I would have to come clean. It was an anxiety I couldn't handle. I'm just not cut out for secrets.

I screw up a lot. I don't do a lot of things right. But I don't lie anymore. Sometimes I decide I don't feel like working hard and I have to face the music. Sometimes people aren't ready for the mess, and they won't stick around, and that part sucks a lot. But any day of the week I will choose being seen for the messy, broken screw up I am over living with the constant fear of being caught in the lie of trying to make things look pretty. Because I meet people all the time whose lives, to look at them, are carefully crafted and artfully worded and beautifully sculpted into something that is pretty to look at. I even feel envious, sometimes, because I am a lot of interesting colors maybe, but I'm a mess. But then I remember that those pretty store-front window li[v]es are flowery, but flimsy. It only goes so far. Once I go even one step inside I see you've got a bunch of junk much like mine. Having been a liar myself, I wonder how long you've worried about being caught. I wonder how long you secretly hoped and prayed you would be. That someone would uncover your big fat lie so you could stop living in fear of it happening.

I understand the appeal of lying, of pretending, of putting on a show to cover up what's really going on if what's really going on isn't pretty all the time, but it nearly swallowed me whole, way back when. Maybe it'll delay your consequences for a while, but the part where you wait to get caught isn't worth it. Or, heaven forbid, you never get caught and live the remainder of your days alone in a tangled lace of secrets and lies. Here's something else I know about lying: it doesn't make the right kinds of people like you more. It's off-putting and unattractive and as well as you think you're hiding it, you're probably not doing quite as well as you think. I'm not shaming you - which is I know what you think will happen if you stop lying -  I'm inviting you. Inviting you to join the rest of us losers and screw ups and enjoy your life. Relax. It won't be easy, I'll never pretend that's true. But it'll be better. Because you'll never for one more day live in the fear that you're about to be caught. You'll be you, broken like the rest of us and facing music on the reg, but you'll be at peace more days than not, and that's something.

Don't be a liar. Tell the truth and face the music and quit living in fear. It'll be really terrible at first and you'll curse the day you ever read this blog, but then you'll survive it and relax and realize I'm right. I'm a recovering liar and you could be too. Join us in the mess. You'll fit right in.

a lady eating soup

[A re-post. Because she is on my mind today.]

I am sitting in a big comfy chair in the corner, happily bouncing my feet to the bluegrass pouring from my headphones, indulging myself in some adolescent 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 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 lined meticulously in front of you, napkin gently resting on your lap, you eat soup. You are still.

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 graceful 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 of now. Or if you're thinking of anything at all.

And I think, I could learn something from you. 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, the 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 a little sigh and sink a little further into my big comfy chair in the corner.

Just ever so slightly stiller than before.

[also, this.]