Slip into Spandex and Live Your Live

Texting a friend overseas today about the life-crushing "disorder" of perceived self-rejection.

It's a topic currently dominating her life and one I am not unfamiliar with in the least.

My childhood was full of love, but I was not a happy child. In fact, I spent the majority of my first 17 years wallowing in a depressive state I could not escape from. I was utterly convinced everyone hated me, thought I was ugly and stupid and were talking about me. I didn't get invited to the parties and, when I was, I was convinced they invited me because they pitied me.

One of my "life philosophies" is the theory of capacity. I've mentioned it before, and it's not complicated or wise. I just think about it a lot when I'm processing past actions.

At each stage of life, though many choices may be available, I believe that you are only capable of making a select few of those many choices based on your emotional/spiritual/psychological capacity at that time. And, unfortunately, it takes making some "life growing" choices to increase that capacity. Good doesn't always feel good.

When I was 17, I saw a sign advertising a new sport in my high school. The word saber was mentioned. For the first time in my teenage life, I went alone: autonomous action. Not one person in that meeting understood why I was there, as they were all band members, and I had no connection to their world. I joined. The next two years were full of spandex, face-hits from wandering flags, and mockery from classmates that I would be involved in something so absolutely ridiculous. For the first time, though, I did not give one flying crap what they thought. Winter guard made me indescribably happy. There was mockery, but there was not shame.

I felt more comfortable dancing in a blue spandex onesie than I ever had in my own skin. My freedom started to seep into my real life, as I was happy. I was truly happy. Clearly, I was a teenager, so happiness is relative to whatever mood swing was going on that day, but it was a marked difference in personhood. I began to believe good things and behave out of that perception. The last two years of high school were fun.

Sometimes, the solutions to problems come in unconventional solutions. I wasn't in counseling or doing any mental exercises. I was doing something silly that had no direct or obvious "purpose."

The devil doesn't always speak to us like a trenchcoated man trying to sell contraband in a dark alleyway. Sometimes, he helps us "focus". And we focus and focus and focus on the problem until we can't see the solution without somehow spiraling deeper into the problem.

Alleviate. Escape. Breathe. Do things that scare you, that inspire you, that refine you.
Stop trying to force a solution and start letting yourself live your life.

Pooper Scooper

The bathroom is a weird place to think about your brother.

And yet, that's the place mine comes to mind.

Whether it was toting me around with him in the truck to SNAC with the teens after church on Sunday or letting me pal around at Sharpe's while he was working or showing up on Valentine's day with a flower even though he worked ridiculous hours or sneaking me some cash before I left for Belfast or giving me a car for my 16th birthday, my big brother has taken care of me for as long as I can remember.

Maybe it's because he is 14 years older than me, but he's just always taken special care to show not tell love.

I have a different relationship with each of my brothers.

The youngest one and I have always been the most tumultuous, as he went from tormentor to best friend to the adult constantly trying to mentor me. The last part is what turned me back into my original relationship role of thorn-in-side sister. I like to think of myself as the one designed to keep him humble and mindful of his humanity.

It's hard to keep super close to a sibling who lives very far away, but the middle brother and I always enjoy one another. He's got a big, booming personality that keeps people from realizing how soft and squishy he is on the inside.

The oldest is the one I always find myself being the most gentle near, perhaps because he's always been the "safe place."

But growing up is hard. Jobs in different states and a year overseas can't help but make me feel distant. Marriages, babies, preoccupation. The closeness between siblings looks different over time.

Then, two months into my engagement to my husband, we bought Cliffhouse, which turned into a renovation project I honestly just did not anticipate.

It was through this project that I was punched in the chest of what adult sibling and family love looks like.

Weekend after weekend, parents on both sides, friends, and two of my brothers and their families showed up.

We tore up floors, tore down walls, painted, cleaned, disinfected.

At the heart of it all was the bathroom.
We used to call it the hobbit hole; the door wasn't 6 feet tall.
The floor sloped in.
The floor was covered in a strange purple-ish concrete.
The vanity was starting to rot and was covered in mold.
The window was rotting.
The shower head came to my chest.
The door hit the toilet.

Yes, my love for this house was clearly blinding.
And yes, I did intend to leave it like that.

Until Jacob.
I don't know if it was the third or fourth time he smacked his face against the door, but next thing I knew, he was up in my attic inspecting the capacity for expansion.

Exploration turned into confirmation which turned into tearing off the concrete of the floor which turned into a flurry of destruction and revolution.

Firemen took care of removing/replacing my failing floor (without telling me) and moving my toilet (without telling me) to prevent the door situation.

But other than that, my brother became a monster of help and my brothers and parents decided they would gift the project to me as a wedding gift, footing the bill for materials. It was Jacob (and sometimes his sweet neighbor Mike) who were the hands and feet of the labor.

Soon, it wasn't just weekends but each day after work that I would find his big silver truck sitting outside my new house.
That in itself is impressive. The insanity comes if you know about the normalcy of him working 80 hour weeks, waking up at 4 or 5 to get to work early enough to work a full day then drive to Arkansas and work until 10pm or later.

The vanity was torn out, the walls were torn down, the window was removed, the shower was raised, the rotten studs were removed, new studs were built, the roof was raised, the drywall was replaced, the tiles were cut/placed/grouted, the new vanity was purchased and installed, the new mirror was installed, and the window was replaced by one custom made by Jacob.

Each inch of the massive project of that little room is constructed with love.

I was 24 years old, financial independent, steadily employed, and had both my bachelor's and my master's degrees in a 4 year span of time by the time I was 22.

It sounds terrible to say, but I have a point: my family knew I was okay.

They would have taken care of me absolutely if I had been in dire straits, but I was stable and okay.
That's what made the care feel so particularly overwhelming.

Love isn't just reaching out when you know someone needs to be loved.
Love is overflow. It's replacing floors. It's renovating a bathroom. It's showing up when it's inconvenient--so inconvenient--because you want to take care of your daughter, your little sister; you want to, once again, help her transition into yet another new chapter.

When I walk through the rooms of my home, I see the love of my family.
In the sunroom, I see the dresser that once sat in Jacob's room I would raid every morning for snuggles.
In the den, I see the peach couches that sat in my parent's house until this point, I see the television we couldn't have afforded given to us from Jonathan's home, the circuit board my parents-in-law painstakingly traced the brakers of, the laundry machines they gifted us, and the soft, sweet carpet my parents got to replace the rotted predecessor.
In the garage, I see the cabinets my father cleaned the inches of poo out of (a task he's particularly proud of).
In the kitchen, I see the walls my daddy chipped and chipped and chipped the layers of wallpaper off, the floors that are clean and new, the tile my mom learned how to place and replace, the light my dad and brother replaced, and the sink sprayer we were told would never work but magically the boys brought back to life.
In the front room, I see high, lovely curtains with their rods hung by my mother on walls newly painted by my parents, the big chair passed from Jacob to Joey to Jon to me, the couch given to us by Jon again.
The guest room is a testament to mom's ability to paint color-match and wall patch after the house-raising cracked things up and the bed given to us by my grandmother.
Our bedroom with its wall repairs as well and the bed gifted from the other set of grandparents.
And, at the middle of everything, the bathroom.

I don't get to see my family nearly as much as I used to or would like to, but I do come home each evening. And it's hard to feel distant when each room is intrinsically infused with love.

Even Change

I neglected to spend any time reflecting when my 24th birthday came along, but I did at 23.

Today, I turn 25. A whole quarter, the coin and the fraction of a century.

And, while my 24th birthday didn't leave much to mention, my 25th does.

In the past year I:

1. Kicked off the year by getting engaged to the very best person.

2. Together, through a fantastic real estate agent (the husband of a coworker) we bought quite the fixer-upper and embarked on a ridiculous journey with our entire families of getting it to a state of livability. 

3. I finished my second full year of working as an admissions counselor and decided to stay on for a third year. 

4. We got married, surrounded by our very best friends, our families, and waffles. :) 

                           

                                 

5. We moved in together, made it through a particularly long and brutal travel season, continued working on Cliffhouse, spent Thanksgiving with my three brothers, their wives, their six kids, and my parents in Atlanta, Georgia, and spent Christmas with his parents and grandparents. 

It's been an emotional year, a constantly evolving year. 

I deeply loved living with two of my best friends, Sarah and Makayla, but it's such a feeling of peace to have removed division of my spirit that I felt being apart from Julius. 

This year, I made wonderful friends, strengthened my relationships with my coworkers, and had to let go back to her home in Arizona one of the bedrock friendships that I have had in Arkansas. 

This year was the first that I really felt like I had to take true ownership of my adulthood, much more than I ever had before, though others would probably say I had already done that. 

It's been a journey, but I am happy. So, so happy. 

You never know what the next year will hold. 

The Orange Ceiling

It's been three weeks since the election results, and I still can't come to grips with what has happened.

I woke up on November 9th feeling lost and grieved. Texts from friends across the world flooded my phone with fear and empathy and horror. Oh God, what have we done?

In my office and in my family, I hear people talk of his policies. That's how they justified casting their vote for the Grabber. At best, I hear the phrase, "lesser of two evils." At worst, I hear actual praise of him. My heart is grieved to its very core that this is who we've become.

They say it's not about who they are as a person; it's about what they will do in policy.

In my job, I am known as the "face" of the university.
I dress, walk, talk, and make myself think as such. No matter where I go, no matter what I do--especially when I am on the job--I am conscious of  that responsibility.
I may be the best at my job, the most thorough and practically compassionate, but if my words and behavior are ugly, then that is what people see and what people will believe the university I stand for is.

In the same way, the principle is true across the globe. They see him first. They hear him first. My God, follow the man on Twitter if you don't understand my point. We are being led by a hissy-fit of a man.

My Hispanic minority friends are afraid.
My LGBTQ minority friends are afraid.
My foreign friends are afraid.
My female friends are afraid.

Just before the election, I was in a Walmart and was sexually harassed. These guys just followed me through the whole store cat-calling and making comments and laughing to themselves because they saw how clearly uncomfortable they were making me.

When I got back in the car, I had myself a long, angry rant. Right now, we have a president who has made decisions I do not always agree with, but I know, at the end of the day, he is a good man who promotes kindness and mutual respect.
The man who is now our president elect has been caught on camera bragging about how he can do whatever he wants to women because he is a powerful man.

Any God-fearing man who can imagine himself explaining what "grabbing [a woman] by the pu**y" to their young daughter means when she asks and can still put himself behind that man is a disgrace.

Adults should know better. They may use a truly awful man to justify their choices, but kids don't know any better. The leaders of our country help shape who they become. We now have chosen a model for behavior that communicates to them that sexual misconduct and disrespect is normal and acceptable in society, just as long as you're in the power seat.

We have a Republican house and senate. They hate Hillary enough that they would have curbed anything nutty. Now, though, we have an absolute whack-job in the hot seat of the same party. A man who got grounded from his Twitter account in the final days of the election because he was making a fool of himself is now in charge of the nuclear codes.

I hope to God I am wrong. I hope his unbelievably horrendous behavior is beaten out of him as the reality of this new position sinks in. Until then, we pray, we seek peace, we choose not to completely lose it in political conversations with our families, and we hope tomorrow will be different.

On Prayer and Pens

Lately, I've been feeling the crux between who I am and who I could be. 

The could be isn't necessarily a good one. 

I, like all humans, have the propensity for both good and evil. 

Creativity, excitement, book worm-iness vs. numbness, depression, anxiety

Sometimes, I delude myself into thinking that I do not do the good for me because I don't have the time. Time-filled days call my bluff, though. I do not do good because I can't make myself. 

And what's so funny and terrible is that if I would move, the rest of me would follow. If I would move, I would keep moving. It takes practice. 

One good day doesn't mean that the next will be just as productive. But that also doesn't mean to give up. It means to practice, in the smallest of ways, discipline. Be consistent. Be persistent. 

I got a letter today from my friend and now long time penpal Leslie. 

Together we discussed prayer and pens, how difficult prayer can be and how settling and clearing writing can be. 

Several years ago, an author named Lauren Winner came and spoke in chapel at JBU. She was super zany with her big ole butterfly glasses, electrocuted looking hair, and Miss Frizzle clothes. Her content didn't help build a case for her either. The most dynamic moment in my memory is of her holding up an invisible squash as though it were the skull in Hamlet and asking if that squash were prayer. 

That question has quietly gnawed at me for all the years since. 

Was that squash prayer? She had tilled the soil and planted the seed and remembered to water the sprout and weeded the garden and pruned the dead leaves and protected the small plant from bugs and squirrels and then, squash. Was that squash prayer? Well...yeah. 

Does that mean that prayer may be more fluid a concept than we think it is sometimes? 

I think yes. 

The deep breath I take to center myself before a phone call, the conscious mercy shown to a persnickety coworker or friend or student, the serotonin supplement I remember to take, the dishes I put up even though it isn't my turn, the letter I write to a friend, the moments spent reading a book and using my mind, all of that might just be prayer. All of that is pursuing righteousness and godliness. 

And prayer, connection, propels us forward, even if at a glacial pace. 

Leslie ended her letter in a way I found poetic in the most beautiful way, and it works as a "call to action", I believe, in a way I'd like to share (pieces of which are paraphrased). 

I hope life is moving forward for you in the best ways. Writing these letters reminds me that life has substance, structure, and is in need of redemption, though the process of writing in itself presses me to pursue a better ending. And seeing your thoughts reminds me that I am not alone in my inward struggles, that everyone has them; an ever-needed "of course other people live life too" moment is always found when I open your envelopes. 

May we all pursue better endings and good words.

Merci

"I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood." 

The other evening, I was talking to a professor friend of mine and listened as she described a student who had been treating her really horribly.

As she spoke, I had a pit feeling that it was a student of mine.

It was.

Had she known, she probably would not have been so candid.

A few days later, I came across this student and saw him lash out at another professor.

Of course they struggle to love him. Of course they struggle for grace.
He comes across as a terrible person.

But they weren't there on his tour, when I heard his father verbally tear him down for two hours.
They weren't there for the emails, the phone calls, the personal interactions where I saw the light in this kid doused over and again with darkness.

They see the result.
They don't see the context.

There's nobody you couldn't love if you knew their story.

The moment I figured out the student, my heart was burned with mercy because I know him. I know his heart, and I know how much he wants to be good and how much he desperately just wants to be enough.

Over and over in my head, I heard, "He doesn't know. He just doesn't know what he's doing."

Maybe that is how the Lord finds enough grace for us every morning. He knows our stories. He knows our deficiencies. He knows how desperately we just want to be loved and to know that we are enough and to know that who we are is good.

When we are cruel, when we are unreasonable, when we are abrasive, he knows our hearts and he knows that we do not know what we do.

I am not always merciful. I try to be, but I'm not.
What I do know is that I have seen good people let themselves become bad people because there were defining moments when they desperately needed someone to speak truth into them and there was no mercy to be had.
I do know that I have seen bad people grasp fast onto extended mercy and allowed the Lord to revolutionize their hearts.
I know that I have needed that person many times.
And I know that I am called to be that person time and time again.

Airport Music

I'm currently  sitting in the airport terminal of Houston, eating a stupidly expensive burrito, and wishing the wait were over. My perfect spot got bombarded by a mom and child, and I'm trying to drown my ears with music. 

The terminal, though, is also trying to drown us all in what it constitutes as the right noise, as though the blaring sound of humans were not enough. 

Fairly, it's nice music. It just also has a thousand voices yelling over it, which deafens the niceness. 

So I sit here, burrito and phone and earphones and try to some space for inner peace...and Ben Folds. 

Between the waves of songs, there's a little lull in which I can hear the world around me again. And, for a few seconds, I'm afraid I'll have to turn mine up louder. My brain soon focuses, though, and I am in my happy place again. 

The terminal did not quiet, my music didn't get louder, my brain chose which noise to hear. 

In my case, this is good. Tricking myself into believing I have a bubble keeps me calm in the business. However, I can't help but think about the way this is true of all times. 

We choose what we hear. We choose what we see. We guide and direct ourselves, train ourselves, to head in one direction over another. And, once we are patterned, it is hard to break your eyes and ears out of their set gaze. 

I met my husband twice. 

First day, first class of college. 

First day, last month of Belfast. 

My language here is important. We didn't reconnect. We re-met. 

In my mind, Julius appeared four times, and two of those he wasn't even there for. 

Seeing him at the bottom of the steps at a party and thinking how lost he looked (the night he met his first wife), talking to his "girlfriend", learning they were an item, and being totally shocked at the impossibility of that couple, wondering where he was our second year and Facebook stalking him with my roommate (only to discover he had moved away and gotten married to the girl), and seeing him at the bottom of a flight of steps in the student center the semester he returned to Arkansas and thinking how...foggy he looked. Not lost, just...muted. There wasn't an energy there. 

In actuality, he had existed a lot more actively. 

We were in a Leadership program together for a full year, we had overlapping friend circles, we were even in a group project together that first year. He had to show me the PowerPoint to prove it. I remembered the third member of our group, but not him. 

And a couple weeks ago, upon mentioning a game of jenga I had played with the campus chaplain my senior year, Julius said, "Yeah I remember. I was there." 

Shock all over. He had sat at a table with me and one other person for a good while, and I had no memory. 

I didn't see him. 

I was popular and driven and opinionated and clearly had my eyes and ears and heart set in a totally other direction. 

Joking not joking, our buddy Ogle once told me--right before he brought me Julius--that I was attracted to the wrong people for me. 

I can see now what he meant. When you spend your life searching in only one direction, you may deceive yourself the world is flat. 

He hadn't fit my script for what I believed my people were, so my brain erased him, as I'm sure it has so many other truly good, beautiful people, who I could have become so much better for knowing. 

Then Belfast happened to me. 

By the end of that year, all my scripts had been set on fire. 

Then, on my doorstep, a Julius. 

From the moment we met, there was a mutual understanding between us that I couldn't have twisted into existence by my own powers. It just was. 

In Julius, I had a surety that I couldn't explain, despite how broken we both were. 

Sometimes it's good to find your space in big loud places, but don't forget. What you thought was noise may be, hidden by only a few rows of people, notes from a grand piano and pianist alike. I was settling for a copy when a concerto sat before me. Sometimes, opening your ears is worth the inconvenience of connection with the uncomfortable and unknown.