Into the Fold

I cried at work today.

We were doing our morning devotions, and today, we decided to do a devotional thought over "O Come O Come Emmanuel", which happens to be my favorite Christmas song.

It also happens to correlate with my favorite Bible verse, which had been weighing on me heavily for the past week or so. This is what I shared and what brought me to big tears of remembrance and of thankfulness and humility.

It re-appeared in my heart last Thursday. I was sitting there beside my boyfriend, our mothers, and our fathers, in the Candlelight service at my university.

As I sat there, I marveled at how far removed and redeemed both our families (and us) had been in the past two years. In the past two years, both our parents had been at places where they thought they had lost their children to darkness forever.

We had thought the same about ourselves.

And in the past two years, we have been restored to joy, to God, and to our families. Granted, more work is yet to be done, but God is so good.

My heart felt full to burst, and the words of Psalm 126 pushed their way into my thoughts:

When the people returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon, they became as those who dreamed. Their hearts were filled with laughter; their tongues with shouts of praise. The people of Earth said to them, "The Lord has done great things for you." Indeed, the Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.

That's the verse I shared this morning after we sang.

I reflected on my own "return from Babylon" two years ago tomorrow.

I was broken. I was ugly. I was beyond all reckoning.

And my parents opened their arms up and loved me. My aunt, my uncle, my cousin, my grandmother. They loved me and took me as I was: broken. ugly. lost.

And yet, and yet!! the Lord has done great things for me. 
Though Decembers cause me to get way too deep in my head and heart and ache with the past woundedness, I know too of the deep joy of restoration to hope and light and life.

The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.

In Decembers

In Decembers, I miss God.

I recognize that that's an odd sentiment to share (and to have) but it's the closest way I can think to communicate how I feel.

Belfast and I have reconciled. We are good friends now. My second semester there was beautiful in every way, and even the first semester was necessary.

But in Decembers....I get in my own head. Can't shake it.

Decembers taste like unending, UK-attempted green bean casserole, apples, puzzle dust, cold tea, grief, and vomit. It smells like I need to shower. It sounds like "Merry Christmas, Here's to Many More" and "Dark Horse" and songs I still can't listen to. It feels like darkness crushing into each cell.

Last December, I spent my time with friends at graduation in Belfast, laughing with my housemates, loving and being loved by my handsome boyfriend, holding my family. It was a good time.

This December, I'm so happy at work, at home, in Tulsa. I am so blessed. I am so happy.

and yet.
and yet.

In Decembers...I feel it all. As though nothing present were present.
As though I were still there.

Still alone.
Still dying.

Which, I recognize, seems like an incredibly hyperbolic thing to say. But I never felt as dead-souled as then. In all the other months, I don't think about it, I don't feel about it, I don't write about it. In this month, though, it is around every email, song choice, nap, bend in my drive.

You know when you're sick and all you want is your mom?
No matter your age or situation, your mom is your first instinct to call out for. You want her. You need her.

Even though I'm better--wonderful, in fact--that's how I feel. I feel sick. My mom wasn't there, couldn't be there, the first time it happened. The one who took care of me--geez. the only one in that whole stinking country who cared about me, it seemed at the time--was God.

So now, when I feel sick at heart and soul from feel-backs and uncontrollable sentiments, I miss God. We aren't separated, but we aren't together in the same way.

My mom and I talk all the time. We go shopping, we enjoy one another, but our relationship is very different when I'm ill.

It's the same with God. We spend time together, but it just isn't the same kind of need.

Either way, here I am. Feeling. Sick at heart with no reason to be. Missing God, and thankful for my savior. Thankful to have been saved and loved and have my life and my favorite country redeemed.

We Made Them This Way

Last night, I went to a college night in a very small town that I'm sure is very nice, but I've only had weird experiences in.

Sometimes, Arkansas lives up to its reputation and, unfortunately, this is one of those towns that keeps the stereotypes alive.

The reason I admit this is because it became very clear that it isn't personal prejudice--this is what they are seen as by the general public.

How do I know this?

We were put on a panel and each "college" spoke for 3ish minutes on the highlights of their schools.

Each and every one of them talked about their welding programs, their mechanical programs, their 8 week programs, their agriculture programs. Even the non tech schools focused the entirety of their elevator speeches on their technical programs.

Two of them even told the kids in prettier terms that college wasn't meant for them and they would drop out/fail out if they tried.

Ultimately, the message being sent to these kids from 20 different presenters was: "You can be anything you want to be!!!!...in the technical industry."

What I have disliked about these kids before last night is that they are undisciplined, they've got gnarly test scores, they are rude and loud and crass, and they seem to just not care about themselves at all.

What I realized last night is that for their entire lives, these kids have probably been sent the message that they aren't smart or good enough to succeed, that they are meant to be future garbage collectors, mechanics, chicken collectors.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with those careers, no shame in them at all. However, when they are presented to you as your only aspirations, I get this twinging feeling that something is wrong.

Maybe it's the millennial in me that says, "No! We can do anything we want to do!" or maybe its the deep seated sense of justice and fairness in me that thinks that maybe if these kids were raised to believe that they had worth and meaning and the capacity to learn and grow and be then they would maybe take more time with their studies and personal care.

Speak words of truth and hope always, to old, to young, to those you know you'll see every day after, to those you know you'll never see again. Never allow yourself to contribute to the self-fulfilling prophesy of worthlessness in another person's life.

Because no matter their age, no matter their station in life, no matter how sticky or stinky or snarly a person is, everyone has value and purpose, even if they don't see that yet.

Prozac Nation: A Confession of Allegiance

Today, I am starting anti-depressants.

It's a decision I have made willingly but have a history of staunchly refusing for the majority of my life.

No, I'm not depressed, but episodes of depression, headaches, nausea, and a whole host of other symptoms have added up to a long, frustrating history with chronic anxiety.

Whether it's social anxiety or the anxiety disorder I've been struggling to conceal since I was a child, anxiety has dominated most every conversation and interaction and self-reflection I've ever had.

I have long feared making this decision because I feared the consequences of what would happen if I were to go off of the medication. Would I be plunged into an even deeper pit than before I started them?

I think I was also scared of feeling "normal."
I've never felt normal.
My happiest moments in life have all been tinged with anxiety. Happiness in itself scares me. I've always worried that if I'm happy, it just means that unhappiness is about to catapult itself toward me in the subsequent moments.

I've gone to counseling, I've joined support groups, I have an accountability partner from group I don't even know the last name of, I've coped, I've exercised, I've gotten fidget tools, I've taken homeopathic helpers, I've prayed. It. Doesn't. Help. Not long-term, at least.

There's a weird mentality about being Christian that if I am a good enough Christian, if I pray hard enough, if I am prayed over, then this will subside. There's a mentality that this is spiritual warfare, not serotonin.

The truth is, this doesn't have anything to do with my faith:
I love God.
I lack the necessary amounts of serotonin receptors.
It is as uncomplicated as that.

I've never wanted to start them in the midst of a major depressive episode because that would be admitting defeat. If there's one thing anyone knows about me, it's that I'm tenacious. I'm insanely tenacious. If I can fix it, I will fix it.

Another frustration in friends and family pushing pills is that they don't deal with my anxiety. They may deal with the effects of my anxiety, but they have no idea what my disorder feels like. They just want me to chill the heck out.

You aren't taking pills! You don't know!!! Don't sell me on something you know nothing of other than researching them.

A year ago, I joined a support group. It's all online, just enough to troll through responses and whatnot. Through that, I met Lubs. She and I are similar ages, struggle with the same thing at the same level of severity, and get on really well. I never went back to the forums after that; we communicate, commiserate, and collaborate.

Her symptoms temporarily subsided around 6 months or so ago, and we lost touch.
Last week, she reappeared and we started our talks again. She had tried all that I had as well and finally had given in to trying medication for her anxiety.

For me, now, the timing is perfect. I'm still striving against my anxiety, but I'm not debilitated. I have a friend who is starting this process with the same struggles I do. I have camaraderie and I have sensibility. No one is pressuring me. It's finally my choice.

Shocker, I'm worried.
What is life without anxiety? Or rather, what is life with chemical stabilization?

I guess I'll find out.

In the Office and Off the Road

My travel season (the main portion at least) has finally ended.

The odd thing about travelling is that while the months seem to go extraordinarily quickly, they finish leaving you feeling as though you have lived 8 months.

That's actually a pretty fair assessment since you're (willingly) dragged from city to city to hotel to hotel to school to college fair to random restaurants and crappy fast food joints and awesome holes in the wall. Thousands of people, thousands of stories.

Then home, you hope, to breathe, breathe, breathe, but in reality it's to attend meetings, answer emails, answer the phone, facilitate preview weekends and tours and visits, drop by local schools on your list, eat food you froze knowing you weren't going to be home long enough to buy more groceries, see your housemates and workmates and "special friend", and go home to crash every night.

My schedule this year was pretty nice because I was basically on a week, "off" a week. However, since I have local schools, my weeks off were spent out of the office as well. At least I got to sleep in my own bed, though.
Another counselor was out of the office for nearly 6 weeks straight.

Even then, though, we have it so good. At fairs--which we love because we get to meet other counselors who understand the job and don't say things to us like, "Oh, your students see you as professionals? I thought you were, like, student buddies"--we talk with one another, and it always makes me cling so tightly to my school when I hear them talk of how they are set out on the road for 9-12 weeks at a time.

When we're on the road, it's hard to remember our office and real lives are still existing without us. We miss announcements, jokes, fun local events, birthdays, etc. What we gain is time with our applicants, our soon to be applicants, family members of our applicants and soon to be applicants.

We love it. I think the time that we realize just how much we missed home is when we turn the car toward the barn or when we get that first hug and can't seem to let our loved one go.

On the homefront, it's a season of deserts and floods.
You try to cram in all the love and snuggles (and emails) you can before you leave and in those intermediary pieces between trips, then spend all the time on the road subsisting on text messages, crappy internet connections, and promises.

Now I'm home. Time to settle back into routine as well as I can, buy some groceries, re-learn how to spend appropriate amounts of time with my friends (reassuring myself that I can see them again the next day), do my chores, and sleep.

Struggles to Human

Let's talk plainly about social anxiety.

Personally, I find it frustrating.
Yes, also debilitating at times, but frustrating.

For me, I gt so angry with social anxiety because social anxiety feels selfish to me.
There's an event, usually very casual, that's designed to be fun and easy and you, because you just can't handle it and just can't help it, make it about you.

At the same time, I recognize that it isn't something that I can think myself out of, though I have indeed tried.

There have been some methods of coping that I have learned and have imparted to other of my socially anxious friends. Things such as going to check out that restaurant/school/baseball field/shopping mall before you have to go there with a friend or date.
Things like searching on the internet for a campus map if you're visiting a university friend or a museum or a hospital.
Knowing the name of the person you're dropping by to see: "Hi! I'm here to drop off materials for Angie Smith".
Doing anything to get acclimated to the new surrounding.

For me, a lot of my social anxiety is over-stimulation.
I can handle brand new location if I'm with someone I'm very comfortable with.
Or, I can handle a brand new person if I'm in a location I'm comfortable in.
I can even handle brand new location with brand new people so long as I have one solid person I know.

It's when everything is new, everything is unstructured, everyone is new that my ears drown and I can't hear what anyone is saying to me and I can't differentiate shapes and shadows and my heart starts racing and my nails start sinking into my palms and I have missed that gap in time where I can recover and cope and have disappeared into the dark place where I need to run away and cry and find solitude and silence.

It's embarrassing. It's selfish. And yet, at the same time, it isn't intentional even a bit, which is a key aspect of selfishness I think. More than anything, we'd like to feel like we were a part of the wallpaper, able to observe without the pressure of engagement. Able to exist without being noticed too much but still kind of noticed. Noticed enough.

It's a struggle I sometimes feel I've learned to manage.
And it's a struggle that still knocks me completely flat and bepuddled when it isn't on my radar to prepare for.

Pregnancy, Weight

Though it's called the miracle of birth, and we get so excited when we learn of a friend's pregnancy, there's something sinister about pregnancy.

For some women, like my mother, it actually has the potential to be kind of a miraculous experience. My mama and her birthing hips had a lovely time during pregnancy. 

For others, not so much. 

Currently, all of Siloam is pregnant it seems. 

I've got a whole theory about the role that essential oils is playing in this (they are not an alternative to birth control, friends), but nevertheless, cute pregnant bellies fill the streets here. 

A friend of mine (home birth types) just gave birth (in a hospital) after being more than 2 weeks late and after more than 48 hours of labor. 

Another friend has been ill every evening at 5pm since she first learned of the human in her belly. 

The wife of a professor friend--the one responsible for getting myself and Julius initiated and integrated with our church--has horrible pregnancies. Horrible. 

He is a compulsive coffee drinker. I remember as a student in his class during her last pregnancy that he made his coffee on the porch of his house because it would make her vomitous. 

During her last three pregnancies, she's been ill to the point of hospitalization. 

This one was awful as well. But with pregnancy, unlike other diseases and abnormal growths, there's a heightened layer of joy and anticipation to pair with the anxiety and nausea. At the end, you'll have a squirmy life. 

However, though she was an invalid for a couple of months, she found joy and comfort in the fact that through pregnancy acupuncture and other homeopathic remedies, she had been able to avoid the hospital and had finally made it back to church and most of her normal life. 

Today, we received a short email from our pastor--The family mourns the loss of their unborn child...pray for her as she'll have to go through delivery soon. 

I've heard mothers compare labor and delivery to a lot of things I can't unhear, like volcanic eruptions, dinosaurs escaping, being dipped in acid. 

None of those are comforting images. 

Again, though, they are mixed with this peace because it's worth it. It's worth it to finally be with this creature that you and your beloved have created together, procreated in the image of God. And it's beautiful. And it's valuable. And it's good. 

I've just got this image in my head, though, that I can't release myself from. 

We are not meant to grieve like those without hope. 

But finding hope in more than "We'll be together one day in Heaven" is surely impossible in the midst of excruciating pain that will leave to the inevitable delivery of death. 

Today is a reminder to be thankful for children, thankful for nieces and nephews, thankful for our own lives and the lives of the women who gave birth to us. 

Some miracles become people. Some, hidden miracles I suppose, are an opportunity to grow closer to Christ, as that is the only option, the only source of true reprieve when our hearts feel like they're being torn out. 

I Only Dog Paddle

All I've gotta say is that something's in the Texan waters this year and applications are pouring in.

We are already at 50% of the total number of applications that I received last year and it's only September.

Yesterday, I was on the phone for four hours calling prospective students.

45 new applicants just this week as well as 13 meetings so far just this week and travel planning galore.

You could say that I've been drowning just a little bit, but it's the very best kind (minus some of the meetings. Really. So very many meetings could be an email).

Our first call to a student is known as an APN call, APN standing for APlicant Not yet contacted.

When we call them, it's this bizarre interaction knowing that there's a chance that this may not just be a phone call to a student, this may be the start of a year long relationship with a student, ending with orientation leaders swarming their vehicle and moving all their belongings into the dorm.

It could end with the start of a new life here at John Brown.

On Tuesday, I took one of my new Freshman students out for coffee because she was feeling a bit homesick and needed to see a familiar face.

While we were talking, I couldn't help but think that I had known her longer than anyone on campus. For more than a year, we have talked once a month at least.

All those interactions--going on a tour, calling when I got her application, a text upon reception of her transcript, seeing her when I visited her school at lunch, her acceptance call, a note on her birthday, ecstatic texts and calls when she raised her test scores to scholarship competition eligibility, a hug at scholarship competition, lots of tears and hugs when she shocked everyone and won the scholarship, class registration advice at early registration, a welcome at move in--became a year.
I've gotten to see her grow up a lot, as I have many of my students as they've gone through the process.

Each one of my APN calls has the potential to become part of our future.

While it may feel right now that I need to just desperately reach out for contact with my enormous list, it's worth the dog paddle, taking my time, feeling the potential gravity of the 5 years ahead.

Mind Your Mind

Today at work, it was my turn to do the devotion.

It is not my habit to sign up, but someone was covering a college fair for me, so I took his devotion day for him.

It is also my intent to choose a day for devotions in which I am feeling particularly holy.
This is not that week.

It has been nearly 7 days of stress and frustration.
Overlapping travel planning with the final details of student move-in is a lot more work than you might think. There are also people everywhere, and my introverted self is just not used to it.

I could give a series of excuses, but the end of the story is that I'm just being short with people because I feel a little overwhelmed.

Yesterday was really bad.

Work was bad, tried to go to yoga and came across an unexpected face so I left before it started, went to a girls' night with some people I didn't know, then ended up just going out with friends.
There didn't seem to be any sources of relief for anxiety.

So I wake up, right, and I have to come up with something inspiring and holy to say.

First, I checked Oswald Chambers, but that just wasn't really apt, so I glanced through my bookshelf and found Jill Briscoe and a section in one of her devotions entitled "Doing Yesterday".

It fit.

My devotion of the morning, using her words, was about the tendency of ours to replay yesterday over and over and over again, how we could have done different and said different and all the bad things. We avoid God and just try to talk with ourselves, knowing full well we do so just to avoid the words we know are coming to us from God.

It's over.
Move on.

As a writer, I recognize the capacity of one chapter to be six different things depending on perspective. I can change the entire story just by giving it a revision of outlook.

In the same way, each day we are given the opportunity to look back on our words and actions and the words and actions imparted to us. We are given the opportunity to filter them, judge them, color them however we do so choose.

I can look back on yesterday and see the aggravations and set-backs or I can look back on the hidden pieces--like the gem of a student who appeared last-minute and, despite his financial setbacks, is going to make college happen. Or like my sweet housemates who have become to me inseparable friends and confidantes. Or like church friends who seek me out. Or my sweet boyfriend who is willing to be gracious and give me the benefit of the doubt when my hurt communicates messages I don't intend them to mean.

In any situation, there is so much good underlying.

Jill's prayer is for the Lord to help her mind her mind and for the Lord to mind her heart.
It is up to us not to forget and move on or push out of our minds but actively choose to see the world just a little differently and revise our yesterdays just a bit more constructively.

Change what you can change, apologize for any misplaced words or actions, learn what you can, then look forward.

David and the Golden Finch

The British don't say "You're welcome".

Unless of course they're greeting you as you enter their dinner party or church or unless they've just done you some unfathomably good deed.

In fact, to say "You're welcome" is nearly offensive, as it connotes to a Brit that you are nearly pompous, that what you've done for them is, actually, an unfathomably good deed.

I had a British friend explain to me that even if her mother had cooked an enormous, extravagant feast, she would still not say, "You're welcome".

So when they do say it (and it's not an arrogant fool of a person), you understand something deeper about the character of the person speaking. It shows, through pomp and circumstance of a small phrase, what they value, what's of pristine importance to them.

I have often spoken before of my man David in Belfast.

David the quiet.
David the humble.
David the steadfast and hardworking.
David the kind.

When David spoke to me or showed me something, he had my entire attention, such was the unobtrusiveness of the man. If he requested my focus, it was important.

One day, David was in the kitchen, which had big sweeping windows all along the side wall looking into the front garden, and called me in when he heard me close by.

"See them finches there in the tree there? Them's golden finches. Haven't seen 'em here for ten years near."

"Uh...oh? That's great."

And he told me about the finches. And then he was done telling me about the finches.

I was half out the door back to my books when I remembered to thank him (as one should always do when a non-share-er shares) for showing them to me.

From the kitchen, I heard a quiet, "welcome".
You could have pushed me over with a bird bone.

It was the first time I had ever heard David say that word.
And it was said over finches.

My next text was to my mother, who was equally nonplussed till I told her what he'd said after.

The finches are a big deal.
Nature and creatures and creation is of great value to my master gardener friend.

He notices the living world with acute detail and stores it up.
To be let in to what fills his heart most was a great honor.

I didn't know it was an honor and a privilege until his final word, though.

In an episode of "The Office", Andy Bernard says (in my recollection of the quote), "I wish there were a way to know you were in the golden years when you're in them".

There are moments when the opportunity for connection is right there and we don't realize it. Sometimes, if we jump fast enough, we can catch them. Other times, though, they fly away like finches.

It was a lesson to me to listen, not just to the words but to all the pieces of the context and the speaker I'd gathered before.
Listen with your whole self and mental history. Hear behind the words when your people speak to you. Hear their hearts and values and interests. Hear them.

Happiness is: Haley

I've known my best friend Haley for two decades now. 

Fairly, the first was spent in bitter enmity. She'll recall my bossiness, I recall her wild ways.

When you grow up, though, sometimes the things that prevented friendship are the very parts that keep it together.

Tempered, my bossiness turned into a general maintenance of stability.

Tempered, she learned to understand when to whip out the fun.

Together, we can go out or stay in and make a party out of anything, keeping it small (for me) but raucous (for her).

My mom loves when Haley is around because she's the only person who can evoke a true gut laugh from me, and so easily.

I love when Haley is around because everything seems to have more sparkle and sun when she's with me.

It's been a really long time since we've gotten to hang out but have pieced our long distance together through phone calls and Pinterest and the single hour we shared in person a month or so ago when she was down for her sister's wedding.

It was a great relief and great joy, then, to hear she was coming down from Denver and coming over to me in Arkansas for a day.

I got off work early, we girl talked, went grocery shopping, made enchiladas, went on a run to Goodwill for a Twister search that ended in a blue sequin spandex onesie, had friends over, ate ice cream on the kitchen floor, played games, and talked late into the night.

Growing up can be especially hard on friendships, as you move around or move out of them.

It makes you especially thankful for those friendships which grow with you, flex and form and flow.

It's Good to be Smart

It's better to be kind.

The wife of my smallgroup leader, a lady named Heather, was a teeny tiny, quiet woman with a gush of energy inside her, helpful considering she has two boys and now a sweet little girl.

My second semester in Belfast, Heather really took after me, bringing me over for tea, getting me little gifts (like a measuring cup with American conversion rates on it, so I could bake easier), and just showing me kindness.

In small group, she didn't talk a whole lot--I would definitely put her on highly on the introvert scale. But one-on-one, she really connected well with others. I was most thankful for her.

One time, when we were talking about her older son who is wicked smart, she told me that with her boy, she is often drawn to tell him, "It is good to be smart; it is better to be kind."

Being someone who has been born into American competitiveness, a culture where getting ahead by whatever means possible is the only way, this was kind of shocking to me to hear a mother praising her son's braininess but pushing him toward a lifestyle characterized not by wits but by wisdom and gentleness.

In a month, I'll have all 58 of my new students (450 overall oh my goodness) arriving on campus. Some of them I know to be both very smart and very kind. Some are very kind and lack in educational prowess. Others, I know to be intelligent but I have some doubts as to their inter-social tendencies.

I guess as an education facilitator, I'm supposed to cheer on the smart ones. That makes sense. They're the ones who supposedly will do best here.

I was one of those.

But was I kind?

At my core, kindness and gentleness toward others is something very important to me. The manifestation of that, though, is something I have had to work hard to express well.

You see, I can't make myself get on-board with the smarties. Life is more than being smart. University community, not just high data GPAs and test scores, is what makes being at college "the best four years of your life".

Curious, kind students who want to learn and connect beat out brilliance.

Naturally being the best can lead you to believe that you don't need help, that you don't need to connect, that you don't need contribute and respond. And the worst part is, you don't even see that that is hurting you longterm. You see it as a point of pride that you have all that you need tucked inside you.

The thing is, that doesn't stay inside the classroom.
We aren't as compartmentalized as we would like to believe.

Who we are inside BBL_3003 directly relates to who we are at home or church or work.

It all comes down to who we believe we are.

If you believe yourself to be someone entirely self-sufficient, when push comes to shove in your relationship, will you not pull away, throw up walls, and cut out your significant other from relating to you, helping you, or making decisions with you? Will you not turn away from God in the rough times because you can fix the problem better yourself? Will you not miss out from good ideas from coworkers when you are working on a new project?

We are build to relate to one another and to fail and to learn together.
It is good for us to be smart, but it is better for us to be kind.

F is for Fitness

And other words.

My two housemates and I are often on vastly differing schedules from one another, and that often causes us to pass like ships in the night. If we didn't like each other, this would actually be pretty nice, but we do like each other.

For this reason, M and I decided to go on a run last night, despite the fact that it is 1000 degrees of humid outside, and neither of us have run in over a month and never super consistently before that (save my training for my 5K).

And, because we love her, we invited S, too, who apologized profusely for how slow she was, for how she trots instead of runs, and how she was going to inevitably slow us down.

M and I assured her that our "running" was really more of a meander, how our ideal run involved 3 minutes running, 3 minutes walking.

S started the canter straight out of the gate, and we didn't stop until we reached home 3.4 miles later.

We lost M after mile 2--it was a valiant effort.
I'm not sure how I held on, but I'm putting it to sheer curiosity. I really wanted to see how long S was going to hold out for. Forever is the answer. I'm pretty sure she could have gone farther and faster than her pace due to me.

When we turned on to our street, she told me she was going to speed up a bit. That's fine, I thought, I'll speed up a bit too.

She disappeared in some kind of time warp.

When I reached the house, the two of us turned around and walked to go find M.

The moral of the story is, when someone makes apologies for their running, ask more questions or you will end up on an impromptu 5K.

Yard Work and Summer Good Feels

At Glenwood Gables, our yard owns us.

A few months ago, I attacked two of the three enormous bushes (fondly known as Monster and Devil).
They grew back.

We poured poison on them, chocked their roots full of epsom salt before a rain storm, hacked at them.

They grew. In fact, our efforts seemed to fuel them.

Monster grew back with a vengence and took over a huge section of the back corner.

And then there's Demon.
Trunk to tip thorns, and it was growing by the day, gaining speed and covering an entire kitchen window as well as part of the gate to the fence.

I don't think they would have bothered me so much, but from my spot at the kitchen table, they were all that I could see.

I needed them dead.
I needed backup.

Enter: The Julius.
We put our bets on him, and we were proven correct with our choice.

Down went Demon.

The garden was a whole other situation, and Makayla (and some me as well, but I mostly handled the irises and a strange buried stack of bricks that was preventing mowing) tackled it with perseverance weeding, cutting down the outer levels of grass, and mulching.

We're all very busy and usually stressed (the life of an introvert doesn't take much to overwhelm) but finally our house is starting to look less like a fairy tale villain lair and more like a cozy cottage, complete with gnome.

Then, with our two-day yard work extravaganza done, we went to the pool, put together some delicious homemade pizza, played games, and napped.

Happiness is: friendship and achieving goals.

Wish Says, 'Gotta Keep Movin'

My Aunt Joycie used to be integral to the coordination of an event in Tulsa called the Wish Lemons run.

The run was designed to raise money for missions, and it fit Wish well because he himself was an avid runner. On all the cups and t-shirt designs, his mantra, "Gotta Keep Movin'" made you feel like you could actually accomplish something.

Moving isn't running, isn't sprinting, isn't jogging. Moving is determined progress in an intentional direction.

You may be wondering if this is a post about running (it isn't, but I'll get there), since I've mentioned my running progress more than once recently, though I did, in fact, complete a 5K with my coworkers without walking once:

It was on the coast of Florida, and it felt like I was chewing my oxygen.

My stamina is pretty pathetic generally.
It took two months of training with the Couch to 5K app to be able to do it.
Have I run since?
No.
Running is the worst.

More to the point, though, building stamina through slow determination and a time-oriented goal can be really helpful.

If I had been asked to run a 5K in a week's time, I would have been miserable. Miserable miserable miserable. There would have been shin splints, vomit, walking, stopping, and a lot more complaining. Because I hadn't run in multiple years really. At least not with any consistency.

The app started me slow. Lots of walking, with spurts of running, just short enough that they were doable, but just long enough that they winded you.

By the end, I could do it. I did do it.

Reading is something that has been important to be since long before I could actually read. Words, movement of language, poetry, the poetry of communication, the communication of poetic experience. I love it. I have felt more known by books and language than by other people for most of my life. It's interwoven with my identity.

Then it was tidal waved out of my life.

There comes a point of fear when we realize that what we thought was a temporary phase of complacent mediocrity has become a sturdy "normal".

My diet of philosophy, history, historical fiction, modern poetry, creative nonfiction, and science fiction became replaced by pinterest, twitter, and facebook status updates. Neither my eyes nor my attention span could hold on for much longer than 8 or so seconds.

Scroll scroll scroll.
I missed movement, but I couldn't move.
Depression robs you of all you love.
Worse, it  makes you feel as though you weren't robbed but rather have made a choice to abandon.

Perhaps because that's easier than admitting the truth. It's better, you think, to claim you have power, even if in doing so you're communicating that you knowingly want to make the choices that your life is now characterized by.
For me, that's been lethargy, apathy, and mass consumption of the digital world.

Where I had read nearly 60 books in 4 months, the next 4 were only 20, reduced to 8 in the 8-9 months after.
I can't even tell you how many more I started and failed to progress past the first chapter. Didn't even make it through the first chapter, actually.

My pen was just as dusty as my bookshelf. I used to fill pages a day with thoughts and curiosity and updates.

There's not a record of the existence of this past year. I have nothing to say.

Frustration with myself grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.

Is there a point in frustration that frustration becomes your new identity?
Where your words about your inabilities become who you are?

Yeah.

There is.

I also wasn't being very fair to myself.
The books I was choosing were either far above my "reading level" or so far below that they were children's books that I had already read.
Neither are something to build momentum on.

Then, I don't know, I chose one that looked fun and easy, but it was new and interesting, too.
And I finished it.
In two weeks.

After that, I finished A General Theory of Love, which I had started in October and a bunch more technical. The next day.

Two days after that, I finished a book on the history of JBU, which I had started a year to the day that I had started both the book and my work at JBU.

Then I started a totally new one last Thursday, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. And finished it yesterday.

That's more consistent reading than I have done in more than a year.
My pen has been more active, too, beginning to fill up the final pages of a tiny journal that's taken me more than a year to fill a quarter of.

It's now been a year since I moved back to The States.
This is the first time in that space or even more than I have begun to feel a return out of the ditches of my dead mindedness and back to me. I'm starting to feel ebbing relief in knowing that the part of me I love most isn't lost for good.

I no longer feel defeated. I feel like moving.

Remember Your Editor

I have now worked at JBU for exactly a year.

It's fitting that today I should find myself helping to train our new counselor: sending her informational emails/templates/codes, helping her learn the day to day and mark her calendar for different fairs and school events.

In this year, I have learned a lot.
Basics such as how to look like a professional (still a work in progress), how to plan for travel season, how to fill my desk days. I've also learned how to make a shower floor shine white, how to plan a weekly food menu, and how to solve my lava-hot room problem by picking out functional (and cute) thermal curtains.

It's been a good chapter, but it didn't start out that way.

During the first draft, there were late mornings, nose rings, frozen chimichangas, late nights, and a lot of energetic flailing.

Each month, each chapter section, brought changes wrought by many editors: my bosses, my housemates, my family, my friends, my God, and myself.

A good writer recognizes the reality of the "shitty first draft". The SFD is the first go-round of thoughts in the book writing process, and usually the most excitable.
Ink pours out of you, as new characters, setting details, and big picture ideas spurt into your right brain.

There's all this stuff!! All this new!! And for a while, you think it's the best thing ever brought into creation.
Until you meet your editor.

Enter: opposition.

They give you feedback you usually aren't ready to accept graciously (or at all), and you emotionally recoil and fight back vehemently, defending your paragraphs like a banshee.

All alone later, though, you take a look back at what you've created.
There's been enough distance now that, "Oh gosh...my editor was right", and you start implementing their corrections, awkwardly at first until you learn to merge your voice with their ideas. You practice and you correct till it begins to feel natural, as though it had been you all along.

We finish and we forget: this chapter isn't ours.
Without our editors, we would have pages full of microwaveable Mexican food, unprofessional-ism, the wrong addresses, lethargy, loneliness, and exhaustion.

Our editors bring with them momentary anxiety, frustration, pain, and sometimes embarrassment, but they are the ones who turn our outlines into books.

In the Human

People ask me all the time how I spend my days in the office.

If I'm not travelling, what could I possibly be doing?

The answer is, I answer emails, text messages, and phone calls from anxious parents and students trying to figure out all of life's challenging questions like, "Where do I send my shot records?", "Which of my clep courses will transfer as credit?", and "Where is the best place to buy twin xl sheets?"

Even if I've met them before, after that 16th email exchange, it's hard for me to keep my students (and their parents) in my mind as real life people. It makes it difficult to remember to respond to them as though they were human beings with feelings and anxieties.
It's difficult to remember that I once felt similarly, just stuffed with over roommates, refrigerators, and registration.

This past weekend, I tried to play a video game with the beau and, despite telling him that I had never played it and hadn't actually played any video game in years, his instructions were bare minimum. At each turn, I would ask ten more questions, and he would give me answers with words for which I had no foundation of definition, leaving me more confused. I didn't know how to move or shoot or what my goal was in each level or even which direction I was supposed to be heading. And there he was in the split screen below me kicking butt (He may not have actually been, but to someone having her butt kicked, everything above that seems awesome).

We finally paused the game for a tutorial when I got irked at his partial answers and explanations, and he admitted he hadn't played with someone that unacquainted with games in a really long time, so he hadn't thought through totally how basic he had needed to answer.

I'm only so calm about it all now because I've made college my profession. I know all the ins and outs and professors and it came from experience and training. These little greens don't know that. They have no foundation for that and neither do their parents, if this is their first kid headed off to college.

When I answer the phone or the thirteenth text in a row with (what I think are the dumbest ever) questions, I need to remember that I have the opportunity to serve them, relieve their anxiety, get them excited and not afraid, and give them all a sense that they are making the right decision.

Other than a kind email, there is little emotional "return" in my job.
That's okay, I'll keep doing it despite that, we don't need a hug and box of chocolates for being sufficient, but by the nature of my business, sometimes it can feel like nothing we do matters.

You work closely with a family for 11 months and they drop last minute.
You work with them as hard as you can, and they tell you you're their back up back up back up school and they'll come if they have to (local students).
You communicate with them about the importance of choosing a university for it's community and professors instead of major (they're 18. It'll most likely change), and they drop you for some low-grade school you know they'll hate.

This weekend, though, was early registration.
600 people on campus, 319 students registered.
All but four of mine showed up.

And they take selfies on your phone and they cry and tell you how thankful they are for you and they tell you how you've become part of their family and they talk about you at the dinner table. And they're THERE, in the human, not a text, email, or transcript, not a number.

And suddenly, there seems to be a lot more room for grace.

Reimagined Dragons

Tiny humans are the worst.

Not short people, though I'm sure there are some terrible short people, and I don't appreciate it when two heightless people stand on either side of me and talk. I can't hear a dang thing up here in the troposphere. 

I'm talking about small children. 

Walmart/Aldi/Movie Theaters/Parks/Pools just all the things. They're sticky, they scream (oh Lord they scream), and they decide that your approaching car is the perfect moment to run into the street. 

Sometimes, I think, "Parenthood, that sounds like a thing I want in on someday." 

Then I go to the grocery store and see a mom with four tiny monsters running around shrieking like they're being kidnapped because they can't buy a box of sugar-based breakfast food (because they need more energy reserves) and bless God for my current celibacy. 

After my most recent run-in (run from) involving the small jam-covered ones, I decided to re-brand them. 

You know what I think are cute? Dragons. They're adorable. Have you ever seen "Dragon Tales" or "How to Train Your Dragon"? Just the cutest. Baby dragons are all bumping around, accidentally breathing fire, shrieky, and clumsy. Precious. 

Since then, I've started pretending that horrible little children are just baby dragons, and they have become so much more tolerable to me. 

Sometimes, it takes a change of perspective. 

You'll never catch those grammar errors in your paper, you've been looking too long. Change the font and try again. 

You never noticed the homeless people in your own city before but change the venue and they're everywhere. 

It's easier, I think, to notice and to have compassion for that which we have had little exposure to, like the irony in "The Help" where the white women are raising money for the starving children in Africa but neglect to recognize as barely even human the black folk who serve them. 

It isn't right, and it isn't fair, but you may not even recognize the disparity in your thinking. That doesn't give you an excuse, but it does help give some context to what may appear to others as hypocritical. 

I know my baby dragon theory is fanciful and silly, but occasionally, re-branding the familiar (even to whimsical levels) can help you appreciate or "see" just a little bit more clearly. 

Irish Rainbows Unchained: The Marriage Equality Vote

Black and white views and legalism are things which come easily to me.

Maybe it's my education and maybe it's my travels, but I have become what I am sure my family and other conservative Christians would view to be more liberal in my thinking. 

 It's not necessarily that I condone certain thoughts or behaviors but more that I believe a religious order ought not have power to legally regulate behaviors. Following God is a personal choice, followed by all kinds of other (hopefully) spirit-led choices. 

When Jesus came, he abolished the Old Laws. Why, then, do we seem to have fallen deeply back in to law-based Christianity? 

Moreover, why would I believe that it is right to hold any particular country's people to a set of religious bi-laws when religion is both an option as well as an option not held by everyone in the country. It just doesn't sit right with me. There's a difference between legal morality and religious morality. One maintains the health of the nation and one the health of the soul. The latter cannot be regulated from a legal institution. 

When I lived abroad in Northern Ireland, I had to read a ton for my Master's degree. 

Because my coursemates were full-blooded (and hot-blooded) folk from The Republic, they knew the history, political and religious structures, and folklore of the land in which they lived. 

My learning curve was insane. 

I read everything I could get my hands on to make up for my obvious lack of foundation. 

In my studies, I came across layers on layers on religious persecution. Not people persecuted for their religion; people persecuted by their religion. 

My friends could tell me personal stories of the ways in which their practical and spiritual lives were negatively influenced by the Catholic Church. The oppression is excruciating, even in these modern times. 

Now, though, there's this incredible thing happening. 

The Republic of Ireland is undergoing a vote to alter their constitution: "The proposed amendment applies to Article 41 of the Irish Constitution. And it wants to insert the following line: “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”

If it passes, the Republic of Ireland will be the first country ever to democratically alter their constitution in favor of marital freedom. 

The Catholic religious order has, for centuries, controlled their people socially, sexually, politically, and educationally. 

Take a moment to see the forest, despite the trees. 

Rob Bell, in his book Sex God, would tell you "this is really about that". 

Yeah, this is about same-sex marriage. 

But it's more than that. 

If this were to pass, it would be a country-shattering stand of the underdog against the schoolyard bully. 

Maybe that underdog won't win every battle against the bully--the people may not immediately be able to shake off the saturation of the Catholic religions order--but this vote would be a symbol that the system which has suffocated them for centuries no longer holds all the power. 

Some fear that this vote is a vote against family and morality, and honestly I can't see it that way. Imposing faith through fear-tactics is soul-destructive. God can use whatever he wants to bring his people back to him. If they're driven his way like whipped slaves, they may follow but they will not love their master. 

It's time to end the rein of the Catholic Church in Ireland. 

It's time to give the people a choice, it's time to shake the foundations, it's time to vote. 

Forge New Roads

Running outside is the worst. Because of allergy season, I've done my couch to 5k training on the indoor track.

Last week, though, I decided it was time to move my long legs to the outdoors.

I left from my office, which connects to both the graveyard and the trail that goes around JBU and Siloam.

It's the same path Noah and I used to circle and circle and circle for 1-6 hours at a time, the same path my sophomore roommate used to make me run every morning from January to March of 2012.

I hated every second of that run. It was so much harder than running on the track! I was out of breath, desperate, and saying more obscenities than my mother would approve of. And it was supposed to have been an easy run schedule that day. As I ran, my head circled with memories of mornings and late nights and I knew how the trail would turn and twist and could anticipate each predictable frustration.

Today, I changed route. Running through the graveyard and into residential zones, I ran places I had never been before with anyone else and had no idea of what to expect. The hills were steeper, the twists were sharper, and cars came from both directions. I didn't know where I was going, but I kept track of my turns.

The run schedule for today was more arduous than last week's, but I found myself energized and capable of doing it without wanting to give up.

Change: I think that's what it takes, sometimes, to find new motivation. Kind of like the saying, "if you always do what you've always done you'll always get what you've always gotten".

I find myself frustrated by people who won't change any of their habits but constantly complain about the outcomes of those habits.

You're overweight but you won't run.

You're broke but you won't give up your iPhone or monthly manicure.

You're friendless but you won't go out to meet new people.

I accuse, but I'm certain I have my own which are blatant to others. 

One of my vices was pointed out last year at this time by a professor I very much admire. When hearing me complain about a recent romantic annoyance, he looked at me and said, "Odom, you're attracted to the wrong people."

What.

But he was right. All my relationships or flings or trysts followed the same trajectory because each person I had shown interest in was basically the same as the last. And I had wondered when they ended why they did.

And that's when he brought me (yes brought me) Julius.

I couldn't have made a list of things I deeply needed in a person because I didn't know until I re-met him. And piece by piece, it became clear that his innate facets fit into mine.

Never would I have chosen a path with him, I had my chance freshman year when we had met the first time.

My road run with him, though, is an easy burden. There's always something new to challenge us and inclines are a thing, but at the end of the day, I'm not exhausted. I feel good. I feel ready for tomorrow.

So whether it's a person, place, or thing, if you've come to a path where the rock always melts just before you reach the summit or the water always drains just as your lips reach its rim, try something new.

I've Got Bins

This past weekend was absolutely a thrill. My housemate Liz is moving to Oregon at the end of the month, so my moving gift to her (really, it was a thinly veiled gift to myself) was helping her go through all of her belongings in every room and dividing them into keep, trash, and sell piles.

It felt like I was living out my dream of being a member of the "Clean Sweep" team. The most wrongly cancelled program ever. It was like crack for the OCD. I loved it.

You take a room (or two) jack crammed full of clutter from all the years and transform spaces. *chills*

It took us probably around 18-20 hours to get it all done, and we still have some more to price and organize for Saturday's garage sale.

Purging.

Like me, Liz is very sentimental. Her purge involved going through not just her bedroom and crap boxes but the large bins in the garage, the place where memories hide.

Notes, tiny gifts, trinkets, pieces of clothes that don't really fit anymore.
Paper, stuffed bears, keychains, that kind of ugly sweater. If you found it in someone else's closet,  you'd want to toss it immediately. None of them are valuable in and of themselves.

Because it doesn't have much to do with the object.
It's the adventure you were on with your family when you found the keychain, the dark place you were in when you received the note, the love that gave you the bear, the sweater that you and your best friend discovered in a thrift store.

We miss the person/place/era. It's a memento from a pin in time that you won't be able to get back to.

Weekends are no longer meant for best friend slumber parties.
Summers are no longer meant for extended family vacations with just your immediate family. You probably don't all fit in the van the same way (babies, wives, husbands).
Hidden presents in your locker from that cute boy you've got a crush on don't happen anymore.
There's just not a reason for ironically ugly matching sweater sets.

We miss our pasts, and when we keep all the crap from them, it's like our way of keeping them just a little bit alive.

The thing is, they're not alive. They keep your present from living and fill your garage with piles of useless, heavy bins.

Throw it away, recycle it, bag it up and take it to Goodwill.
Still too fresh? That's okay. Just be judicious in how much you allow yourself to keep.

"But maybe I'll use this paperwork in the future!!!"
How long have you had it? Have you used it in that time? No? Recycle.

"But I love all the memorabilia I kept from that vacation!!"
Cool. Stick in a jar and make it decor for your home. It can't stay in a box.

You don't have to throw away everything that means something to you, but learn to emotionally distance yourself and let yourself move on. Make practical what you can, take pictures of sweet notes or paste them on to the back of a picture of that friend, make a quilt of old t-shirts, give a cousin/friend the clothes you like best.

Repeat the purge every spring--don't wait for the next moving process (you'll be super overwhelmed)

It's time to let go.

Advice for Aspiring Writers

It's rather ironic that I'm writing this considering that I haven't written creatively in two years now. Nevertheless,

1.) Spend some time each day reading. Read everything. Read non-fiction, fiction, newspapers, smut magazines (People is my favorite), poetry, prose, essays, philosophy, theology, modern, classic, contemporary. Broaden your scope as widely as you can. Inspiration comes from collaboration.

2.) Find a writing friend. My best guy friend for a very long time was named Peter. He is bursting with passion and ideas and words and talking to him is like plugging in to to a supercharger. Every time we would meet up for coffee, I would leave buzzing with residual energy, ready to write volumes of work. Actually, it was after he took me to Panera for my birthday that Woodsy was born. It's my favorite thing I've written, a short novel for a class. Bounce ideas off your friend, exchange pieces with one another for critique and accountability. Friends help you build and keep momentum.

3.) Schedule. Each and every day, whether it's in a notebook or a computer, write. Every day. Preferably during the same time slot every day but at least half an hour every single day. Journal, write a vignette of someone, copy down a conversation you overheard, paint a word picture, music and restaurant and coffee shop reviews, something.

4.) Stay away from screens. Speaking from experience, screens suck out your brain, soul, and creative energy. If you have to be glued to a screen for work, write in a journal for a change of pace.

5.) Get out. Leave your house. Leave the office. Go sit in the lawn and garden section or Walmart, go sit in a coffee shop, go to a local art fair, go to a local flea market, go people watch! Talk to strangers, non-stalkerly watch and listen to strangers, volunteer at nursing homes and talk to old people, babysit, go to museums and make up stories about the people in different paintings or the people who painted them, take a foreign language class at the community college, take a pottery class, go to a wine/painting session (Pinot's Palate is fun). Go, do, collect stories.

6.) If you're a recent college graduate especially, get a job straight out of college that has absolutely nothing to do with your english degree and don't take any crap for it. Work as a dental assistant, waitress, night guard at a museum, do something that will force you to build experience outside of the pages of a book. Collect stories. Make up stories. Re-vision stories you have lived.

7.) "Write shitty first drafts" (in the words of my college writing professor). Don't worry if what you're writing is worth a Pulitzer prize. It's not. Accept it and have fun creating without self-consciousness. You can revise and redesign later.

8.) Write everything. Write poems and prose and non-fiction essays and fiction chapters and short stories and children's stories. Write about the construction and maintenance of garage doors, about the men who maintenance them, about the families of the men who maintenance them, about the hopes and dreams of the kids in the families of the men who maintenance garage doors, about the adventures of imaginary friends in the hopes and dreams of the kids in the families of the men who maintenance garage doors, about the glitter pony unicorn pets of the imaginary friends in the  hopes and dreams of the kids in the families of the men who maintenance garage doors.

If you run out of creative juices, remind yourself that you are a creative person because you were creatively made. It's in your genes, in your very DNA. Sometimes it just needs be a little teased out into the open again.

I guess that's where I am, in the phase of telling myself, "I have written, I can write, I will write again."

Rising to Requirement

I've taken to picking up the mail in order to get me out from behind my desk. Yesterday, there was a large package for one of my bosses needing to be taken across campus back to our office.

Instinctively, I hoisted it and the tray of other mail up on one hand above my head just as I had learned to do when I waitressed.

When I did so, I recalled my training days and how intimidated I was at the idea that I was not just encouraged but required to carry each tray full of food with one hand above my head, grabbing a tray stand with the other and maneuver my way to the correctly numbered table.

Some of those trays were 30 or so pounds or more--don't even get me started with fajitas for a table of four.

Muscle is not something I've ever prided myself on. Ain't no pictures of me flexing in front of a mirror. This task was my personal fear factor. Images of dropping hot plates of enchiladas on children and the elderly danced through my head during my entire training. How was I going to do this?

But I did.

Fajitas and I never became bosom friends, but I got some very nice shoulder muscles and learned to do my job quickly and efficiently, with a smile on my face.

It's amazing how much capacity we have to rise to the occasion even when, at the start of a project/semester/job, it's easy to become overwhelmed and discouraged.

When I began my MA program, it was 5000 word papers that caused anxiety.
Waitressing brought "big tops", timed everything, and tray carrying.
Admissions brought travel season planning, events coordinating, and dressing like an adult every day.
Running brought running.

We rise to requirement, whether that's psychological, emotional, spiritual, physical, or mental.

The times we don't, I truly believe it's because a piece of us doesn't want to or doesn't believe we can.
Sometimes, like obedience, the actions come before the feelings.

If I think about running, I won't go. If I think about the distance that I need to run, I will give up.
If I had let myself ruminate on my papers when I was coping with my depression, they wouldn't have gotten written. I'm still unsure how they got written in the first place, but they did.

Looking at the whole can be wholly exhausting.
One step, one phone call, one mile (or one lap), one tray, one chapter, one paragraph, one outfit.
Small achievable goals.

And someday, you'll be walking across your own quad with a heavy box above your head/walking across the stage to receive your Master's/finishing up 6 weeks of travel for work/running 3 miles for the first time/effortlessly pairing a business casual ensemble for the 3972 time (or whatever your equivalent is) and think to yourself, "I can do so much more than I can imagine. Thanks be to God".

I Pick You

My front garden turned from drab to fab, with these giant purple irises.

They're beautiful, but it's difficult to compare when I have a history with flowers loved on and planted by David: see here . 

When I pulled open my door, though, I saw this one, and a memory with David sprang back to life. 

 It was a damp, sunny spring morning in Belfast, and I was running late to school about to miss the bus. Running through the kitchen, I saw a beautiful tulip on the counter waiting for me. 

I lived alone, so it wasn't as though someone had picked a tulip for themselves. 

It was a present for me. From a man who knows I love flowers, a man so proud of his flowers (but so British he would never have been able to say it) that he wanted to give one to somebody he knew would appreciate its beauty as much as he did. 

The flower was lovely, but it was the man that made it precious to me. 

David, my man, hardly spoke at all, pleasantries at most, but there were many days where I felt as though David was my very most dear friend. He took care of me in such a practically compassionate way. 

At Christmas, he brought me out of my darkness to decorate. 

In the spring, he wanted to show me the flowers. 

He put up a shelf in my room. 

He teased me when I would make my entrance to the world at noon or past (and always made sure to be extra quiet if he thought I was asleep). 

He took me to uni when the bus didn't come that late day in April. 

He made pleasantries with me. 

He showed me the golden finches. He loves the golden finches, "First time in ten years they come back here, them". Even said "you're welcome" when I thanked him. Yeah, it was a huge deal to him to share the finches. 

David is gentle and kind, without a bad word to say about anyone. The one who gardens in his pleated trousers with button-down shirt, sweater vest, and loafers. 

Tireless. 

Humble. 

A big fan of tea. 

I ran out of the house to catch my bus that day, and David was hard at work edging the garden. When I called out a thanks, he told me he had found the tulip downed in the garden: "Musta been a nail or somethin' break it...Thought you could talk to it."

An american would have been making fun of me, but not David. 

He had entrusted one of his broken baby flowers into my care. And since I know David's love for his flowers, I felt the love of the gesture. 

Ear-Splitting Offspring: When Faith Fails

Last week in Bible study, we talked about the 400 year period of time in which God was silent with his people.

Silent.

Have you ever gone through a period of your life in which you felt the absence of God's voice?

Do you feel as though maybe you've never heard his voice at all?

Then you know the confusion/doubt/anxiety/stress/hurt that comes along with hearing nothing.

Looking back through the histories, we see the way in which God worked it all out for his glory, his good (Oh Jeremiah 29:11, how you plague me), but that is a very long time.

My question back to my bible study leader was this: "How did Christianity survive?"

His answer made sense to me, but I am still pretty cynical about the whole thing.

Christianity survived because there were those who kept up, with obedience and faith, the practices of the church.

But for 400 years?

Of COURSE there were Pharisees by the time Jesus came around, and how could we blame them? They had centuries of works with no relationship to spur them on. Eventually, yah, wouldn't that lead you to legalism?

They explained this as well by telling me that there were both Pharisees as well as those still truly filled with hope, holding fast to the assurances of the scriptures.

They kept up their faith on a promise, though they didn't have firsthand knowledge of the content of that promise.

Once, when I was in Belfast, I met an ex-Christian. It was a rough day, and I was in no mood for a fight, but maybe I needed to have that semi-fight.

In the midst of him telling me how silly I was to believe in a God and questioning why I would, I told him that sometimes, you just need to. Not out of compulsion but because, sometimes, you need the lifeline possibility that there is a reason for:pain/suffering/death/divorce.

That “sometimes” introduction can be the beginning of a really beautiful thing. Not every relationship has a book-worthy beginning. Jesus doesn’t really care how we come to him, though. He cares that we come at all.

What happens when faith fails, though?

What should our response be in the times that suddenly everything feels false, where prayer feels one-sided, when we ask for a sign/answer/direction and receive nothing?

I don’t know.

In times I have felt that way, I have continued to pursue all options on the hope and determination that God will start shutting doors if I just start moving forward. 
But what if all the doors open.
Or all the doors close.
What then?

Should I assume that the answers are all around me already if only I would sift through my own perceptions and bias to see them?
Should I assume God will bless wherever I choose?
Should I assume that the correct doorway has yet to appear?

When faith fails...it's time to redefine faith. Or, rather, to give thought to the definition of faith.

Faith: noun: complete trust or confidence in someone or something. 

Complete trust or confidence. 
Man, I think the last time I had complete trust or confidence in someone was before I was aware enough to realize what I was doing. 

As a baby, you may not consciously decide to put all your cards of faith in with your parents but, given your behavioral responses to them, it is evident that you do. 

As babies, when we get hungry or are afraid, we cry. 
If we did not anticipate a response of food or comfort, we would not cry. 
Because we trust in the goodness and consistency of our parents, though, we know intrinsically that our tears will bring them immediately to our side. And, if not immediately, we know they will be there as soon as humanly possible, if only we will hold out for them. 
The times our parents don't come are when they understand their children's tears enough to know when a response is not required, when it would ultimately serve their child best to self-sooth, even if it kills mom and dad to hear them wailing. 

Maybe that's how it is with God. 
Maybe he hears us cry and knows its time for self-soothing, to be empowered with the training he has already given us to reach our own conclusions. 

For now, then, that's how I'll answer. When God seems silent, my spirit should reflect and turn quiet as well, looking, watching, and waiting for something I may not otherwise be able to perceive in my hysteria. 

The Israelites cultured a spirit of faith, fed with promises, to sustain them. 
Then, as he said that he would, their father, Jesus, came to soothe, save, and sanctify. 

Crucified at the Crux

We are a culture and a people of extremes.

Obese or anorexic.
Unshutupable or brick silent.
Dramatic or dead pan.

When I go to my work twitter or Facebook and read all my students posts, they are full of the feels. Just...all the feels. All screaming, "Notice me notice me notice me!!!"

They post about:
Loneliness
Not fitting in
Feeling stupid
"Love"

I am not saying their posts don't reflect their reality, but I think they make us believe that we're seeing the total reality.

Because the kids we're hearing from are the ones we expect to hear from, because they're the ones who never stop whining about how lonely they feel instead of wiping off some of their makeup and trying out their own skin. A lot of times, it's part of their identity to be misunderstood.

Don't get all huffy; I'm not being a jerk. If you find me offensive, it's probably because you were once one of those kids. I work with kids, I was a kid, I am a kid. I know kids. Let me talk.

What we don't get is the honest look at the structural identity of other human beings.

We either stigmatize to the point of normalcy or we cloister problems into oblivion.

Let's have an honest discussion about what happens when you come to "the crux."

"The Crux" has been on my mind today because we have been going through our promotional material for re-vamping. Several of the smiling faces on our shining boards are students I knew very, very well.

And they aren't here anymore.
They didn't graduate.
Their cruxes crucified them.

That doesn't make them lesser people, and that doesn't make them failures. They just lost that one particular round of mental monopoly.

Yet there they are, smiling, holding a stack of books, pointing to a white board, reading with friends, about to sing another original song.
They are literally our poster children.
I'm sure they can think of nothing more ironic.

In one sense, it's the perfect example of "putting on your church face".
We obliviate their stories with glossed on smiles, whether that's our goal or not.

At the same time, I don't find it ironic at all for them to be our poster children. I actually love that we didn't choose all the seemingly perfect students. Because that's not who we are. We're all broken people. Their "cruxes" just made that more obvious.

"The Crux" is the moment when what you have been taught and raised to be drops off, and you have to grow new skin all on your own. The Crux is when you are faced with something so personal, so intimate, that 20 years of "life lessons" are insufficient to suffice for an answer.

We search. 
We listen.
But who do we listen to?

Though we would like to say, "God", like a good Sunday schooler, often we can't.
It's hard to admit, but we can't listen to him. We aren't ready.
More than that, maybe we truly do not yet have the capacity to hear the decibels he's speaking in.

Who do we listen to?
Them.
Whoever our "them" is.
And we "run to the things they said could restore [us]//restore life the way it should be".

And it doesn't work.
It doesn't work and doesn't work and doesn't work, and we're trapped in this horrible Dante-esque second circle of Hell running running running .

It breaks us.
It broke my friends.
It broke me.

Brokenness is ugly and unspoken.
In our shame, we hide because that's what feels correct to do. Because a snide "nobody loves me" comment on Facebook is one thing, but the genuine vacuum in our hearts, the kind that feels unrecoverable, isn't one you can post.

We publish the present.
We present the version of ourselves that we feel reconciled with, even if we don't love it. We can deal with it. We can stand by it.

The intimate pain is something we can't own because its muchness has too much muchness. That means, when we are sucked under the current, drop out of school, overdose, attempt suicide, no one sees it coming.

In times I have felt the most alone, the most broken, I have ached for someone to tell me they've been there too and not another God-awful repetition of Jeremiah 29:11 or a "I felt sad once, but I'm better now".

I wanted to read someone else admitting, with humor, hope, and honesty, that they were there as well.

At the same time, I am most usually unwilling to be that person for other people. The closest I've ever come to it is attempting to speak the truth of myself in my posts.

We're broken, but we retain such a capacity for forgiveness, for partnership, for love, and for redemption. We are capable of connection, to make pain into partnership, to turn someone's "I hope I can do this..." to "We can do this. I know we can do this."

How often do we opt to halt our thinking about our public images in deference to thoughts of how we can love other people through letting them in on the truth of our pain and of our regrowth?

We need the in-between.
That's what we're missing.
No more attention-seeking, connectivity-defying Facebook statuses of how nobody understands but no more hiding either.
Rather, with patience, with humility, and with discernment, let us all practice letting people join us where we stand. Or sit. Or kneel. Or are crawled up in.
Let's practice letting ourselves be seen.

Get Squeamish: Blood and Guts

I'll bet the majority of women spend their periods wondering how it is that women, for centuries, have been able to survive such a substantial amount of blood loss each month.

I was thinking about periods today as I was reading about the woman who bled, who reached out to touch Jesus, and who was healed in her faith.

Bringing up "that time of the month" can be really uncomfortable. Even my sweet daddy, who has been married for a bazillion years to my mom, gets stuttery when he tries to be polite and ask me if I need to pick up any "personal things" at Target when I come home to the "big city" and get stocked up on life supplies (small town struggles).  

I'm sure I lost many readers in the opening sentence even by mentioning that taboo subject (Is she really writing about THAT?).

The Bible sure doesn't shy away, though. It brings up Aunt Flo several times throughout its 66 books. That brings us to the gospels, Luke 8, and the woman who bled. 

This lady had a straight up 12 year period. 

What a miserable existence.

And often, I'll bet, that's where our thinking about her ends, with her blood and with her faith.

God never just stops at the physical though.

You ever pause to think about what her plague entailed?

Women in those days were considered unclean during their periods, banned from the intimacy of relationships. Periods are good, though. They represent a woman's capacity of inhabiting life, even if they didn't take that month's egg up on the option to. 

For our Luke Lady, though, it was a 12 year symbol of death, separation, and shame.

Can you imagine that?

We have nightmares of being turned down for a date, of standing naked in front of the class, of being singled out for our big noses, but those are all pretty fleeting moments of shame.

Picture being known by your qualifier for more than a decade. For her, being known for being "unclean" for 12 years and what that must have done to her personal sense of identity.

Men are thinking, "I don't have a uterus. I can't get there to empathy." So picture just this much: No physical intimacy for 12 years. Nothing. 

It hurts to the bone to go 12 days, 12 weeks without so much as a hug, I would know.

How excruciating that must have been.

And yet. (With God there's always an "and yet") And yet, how beautiful, how wonderful, what an ecstatic sense of relief and glory it must have been to have had that bloody old self ended in one desperate touch. In one desperate move toward hope.

That is the promise of Christ.

That is what we live for: to know that no matter the degree of our unclean existence or removal from dignity, humanity, God is capable and willing to touch us, love us, bring us back to complete selfhood.