We'll Keep Warm

It's cloudy outside, and I love it.

Now, if only it were cold.

I'm still in the process of moving out of "my" apartment and into "our" house. But somehow I feel that I'm already home. I have a cozy, warm nest of a husband. Our love could warm the world a thousand times over. It inspires me to tactile beauty, to simple little ways of displaying my daily joy, our sweet and unfussy life.

I'm going to stay home and watch movies and take baths. I'm going to bake some yummy thing that smells like heaven. I don't know how, but I'll figure it out. I'm going to light candles. I'M GOING TO READ and read and read and read until my heart breaks. I'll go to the used bookstore in the Village wearing my winter jacket and a scarf and colored tights and mary janes. My nose will be cold and pink. I'll wear my hair down. I'll come home to him. It will be dark outside. We'll keep warm. It's going to be lovely.

It already is.

Happy

We leave for South Carolina today. For our wedding, which is on Saturday---the two-year anniversary of the day we first met. Talk about coming full circle.






















I am so happy---I'm afraid I might explode.

Available Light

Nothing she did
or said

was quite
what she meant

but still her life
could be called a monument

shaped in a slant
of available light

and set to the movement
of possible music

---from "The Grandmother Cycle" by Judith Downing, Converse Quarterly, Autumn

Fear and Loathing (at a Target in Memphis)

(Me, Adia, Cara, and Kelly Tilghman)

Love Story

What is life without drama?
What is romance without a little pain and struggle?
What kind of bullshit story has a climax with no conflict?

Every story needs a conflict. It's the rules. Even fairytales are filled with drama, heartache, desperation, and suspense along the way to happily ever after. What fun would it be if Cinderella had it easy? No fairy godmother, no glass slipper, no nothing. There has to be a conflict for there to be a resolution.

But those stories are for entertainment's sake, you might say. They can't be taken seriously.

Okay. Then take the Bible, for example.

Drama, heartache, desperation, suspense. Conflict and resolution. Brokenness and redemption. And, yes, even the promise of a happily ever after.

Can there be redemption without brokenness?
Let me rephrase that.
There can be no redemption without brokenness.

Today's resolution makes yesterday's pain so worth it.
I like redemption, so I'll take the brokenness. That's fine by me.

I love my love story.

It's mine, and I'm sticking to it.

A Leap of Faith

Suppose God tells you to do something that is an enormous test of your common sense, totally going against it. What will you do? Will you hold back? If you get into the habit of doing something physically, you will do it every time you are tested until you break the habit through sheer determination. And the same is true spiritually. Again and again you will come right up to what Jesus wants, but every time you will turn back at the true point of testing, until you are determined to abandon yourself to God in total surrender. Yet we tend to say, "Yes, but— suppose I do obey God in this matter, what about . . . ?" Or we say, "Yes, I will obey God if what He asks of me doesn’t go against my common sense, but don’t ask me to take a step in the dark."

Jesus Christ demands the same unrestrained, adventurous spirit in those who have placed their trust in Him that the natural man exhibits. If a person is ever going to do anything worthwhile, there will be times when he must risk everything by his leap in the dark. In the spiritual realm, Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold on to or believe through common sense, and leap by faith into what He says. Once you obey, you will immediately find that what He says is as solidly consistent as common sense.

By the test of common sense, Jesus Christ’s statements may seem mad, but when you test them by the trial of faith, your findings will fill your spirit with the awesome fact that they are the very words of God. Trust completely in God, and when He brings you to a new opportunity of adventure, offering it to you, see that you take it. We act like pagans in a crisis— only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God.

---Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

My Apologies

I am done apologizing (to myself and others) for:

mixing metaphors

repeating myself

allowing laziness to thwart my creativity

allowing fear to edit my honesty

using too much restraint

not using enough restraint

my affinity for uber-melancholy music

my decisiveness

my personality

the past

blushing and fumbling when I'm made to talk in front of a group of people

not liking very many people

loving the shit out of Drew

eating what tastes good

talking about God

talking too much

my introversion

who I am

who I'm not

being wrong

changing my mind

not apologizing

That Words Cannot Express

Lately, life has been too big to write about.

Typically, when it comes time to write, a blank white page is vast and inviting. A wide open space. A king-size bed with clean sheets. An empty beach at sunrise.

But today, this little white blog box that appears on my screen has a fence-like quality. Tight and cramped. Like any piece of my heart I put in will sit there, caged. Trapped. Minimized. Tame.

I don't want that. I don't want to corral my life into neat little sentences and tidy little paragraphs. I don't want need to make sense.

I want my thoughts to run.

I want my faith to stream on by---not because it needs to hurry up and get somewhere, but because it can. Because that's what it was born to do. Think wild ponies . . . all pretty and fast and free.

I can't express these experiences. I don't even know how.

And that's OK . . .

because I'm learning what happens when your faith outruns your vocabulary. When your soul outgrows your body. When you realize that what makes NO sense to the world makes perfect sense to the Lord . . .

Freedom happens.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The Spirit also helps our weakness . . . the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

---Romans 8:26 NASB

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But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

---2 Corinthians 3:16-17 NIV

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For why should my freedom be judged by another's conscience? If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for?

---1 Corinthians 10:29-30 NIV

The Blue Bonnet

Yay! My new bikey!

los Brazos de Dios

[This is a picture of me loving my job.]

I Am Me

To be alone can be a wonderful thing. The best thing, really. If you let it.

Alone is a place where terminal desires wither and die a slow and inevitable death, making room for the buds of innocent new dreams to unfurl and come to complete and necessary fruition.

It might sound counterintuitive, but Alone is maybe the only place where we can fully relinquish the want to be with someone else and finally discover what it's like to actually want to be ourselves.

It goes without saying that to be yourself is infinitely more satisfying than to pretend to be someone else. And, furthermore, to love yourself is far more essential and sustaining than to be loved by someone else. Loneliness is the soil in which these thorny but beautiful truths take root and flourish. If you let them.

In the midst of loneliness, oftentimes I've fancied myself a student of pain. But I've come to realize that what I really am is a student of myself (and of the Holy Spirit within me). That said, here is what I've learned so far:

I am me.

I am not ashamed.

I am redeemed.

Never again will I allow someone to take that away from me. Or better yet, never again will I give that away.

I cannot ignore the obvious signs that these days are sacred ones in this little life of mine. Blessings are showing up here and there, and for the first time in my life---they have nothing to do with someone else. This is between God and me. This is eternal. This is my own.

I see joy all around, and I receive it. I pick it up and protect it. I take its holiness in my arms and tuck it away all safe and cozy-like in my bed. And I treasure up all these things and ponder them in my heart. Expectantly.

Someday I will have someone to share all of this with. Someone who will be able to receive it, honor it, protect it, love it.

But until then, it's just for me to enjoy . . .

to smile quietly to myself. To know for certain. To roll over and nestle deeper under the covers. To love the Lord. To grow. To be myself. To wake up in the morning, warm and rested, with soft prayers of gratitude the first thing on my mind and my lips.

Grace: Again and Again

YESTERDAY

A friend

nudged me toward freedom.

We laughed out loud, together.

TODAY

I woke up again, alone,

and again I chose:

*life

*gratitude

*vulnerability

*forgiveness

*trust

*love

*courage

I'm going to try it again

if I wake up, again,

TOMORROW.

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From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.

---John 1:16

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Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance.

---Romans 5:1-3

Some Kind of Different

In a few days, I'll be in this place . . .














talking with this man . . .


















and I wonder where who I'll be when I get back.

Re: Stacks by Bon Iver

Pretty Lyrics:

This my excavation and today is kumran
Everything that happens is from now on
This is pouring rain
This is paralyzed

********

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away
Your love will be
Safe with me

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Pretty Interpretation:

"Kumran (usually spelled 'Qumran') is the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947. It symbolizes a personal catharsis. Says Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) [regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls]:

When they found them it changed the whole course of Christianity, whether people wanted to know it or not. A lot of people chose to ignore it, a lot of people decided to run with it, and for many people it destroyed their faith, so I think I was just looking at it as a metaphor for whatever happens after that is new shit.

"The song also hints at a slow shedding of the skin, rather than a complete catharsis. It’s not a 'crispy realization' or a click of a lock in the door-—-a clean break from the past. In the final line he says that some of the past’s love will continue with him, like a pendant or a memory that won’t fade. . . . 'It is not about getting over things and moving forward, it is about going through the sadness, taking some of it with you and being made whole because of it.'"

---from http://wordsworthmedia.wordpress.com/, Bon Iver Excavates Kumran on “re: stacks”, July 14, 2008

Slowly (but Surely) Softened

Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.

---Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

We Do Not Lose Heart

Therefore, since through God's mercy we have this ministry, WE DO NOT LOSE HEART. Rather, we have RENOUNCED SECRET AND SHAMEFUL WAYS; we DO NOT use deception, NOR DO WE DISTORT the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth THE TRUTH PLAINLY we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. . . .

But we have this TREASURE in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be REVEALED in our body. For we who are ALIVE are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

It is written: "I believed; therefore I have spoken." With that same spirit of FAITH we also BELIEVE and THEREFORE SPEAK, because we know that the One who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence. All this is for your benefit, so that the GRACE that is reaching more and more people may cause THANKSGIVING to overflow to the GLORY of God.

THEREFORE WE DO NOT LOSE HEART. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being RENEWED day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is ETERNAL.

---2 Corinthians 4 (emphasis MINE)

Carry Me Home

I'm in the airport, waiting for a flight from Detroit to Kalamazoo---a flight that will carry me home.

I am thoroughly heartsick.

Disgusted to the core.

So full of sorrow I feel swollen. Like I might overflow and just spill out all over the floor here at Gate C8.

But I'm going home, and there's comfort there. Tangible comfort. And people who make sense. People who care. People who are true.

People who are worthy and who don't make me sick.

From Ashes

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains by itself, alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

---John 12:24

Happy Birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Alissa---my best friend and beautiful soul mate. You, Dear, are the precious, shining diamond in the treasure chest of the ones I love.

SICK.

Last night the most disgusting bug on the face of the planet found his way into my house. Ugh. I am still cringing and squirming just thinking about it. Blegh. Ugh. AWFUL.

I was sitting on my couch, checking my email, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A bug. But not just any bug---the hugest, grossest, scariest centipede in the world---running across my living room floor toward one of my bookshelves. It was like he'd been hiding and was suddenly making a break for it, hoping I wouldn't see him before he reached the cover of another piece of furniture.

His size, his sheer number of legs---both completely disturbing---were nowhere near as shocking as his SPEED.

I came unglued.
I absolutely freaked out.
And when I say, freaked out---I mean, FREAKED. OUT.

Blegh! Ugh. So awful!

I didn't know what to do. I knew I couldn't avoid the fact that I was going to have to kill it. This thing could not be ignored and left to creep around my house and potentially into my bed and across my face in the middle of the night. No way. He had to die.

But I couldn't even bring myself to go near where I had seen him disappear under the bookshelf. In a panic, I thought about calling my landlord (my apartment is attached to his house). But I realized that was ridiculous. I can't call my landlord to come kill a bug for me at 11:00 at night. Oh man. There was no way out of it. I was gonna have to do this myself.

I grabbed the thickest, heaviest book I could find (Great Expectations), and started the hunt.

I tiptoed around cautiously, anticipating him darting out and showing his nastiness again at any second. I didn't know if I could handle even seeing this thing again, much less killing it.

UGH.

But I couldn't find him. I looked everywhere. Frustrated. Where the heck can something that big hide?

Partly relieved by not having to face him, but mostly afraid of the possibility that he had made it into my bed, I screwed up my courage and shook out the covers.

Nothin'.

I knew I'd never be able to sleep without this thing dead and flushed down my toilet, so I decided to kill time by taking a bath. I went into the bathroom to draw the bath, bringing Great Expectations in with me---just in case. And, sure enough, as I pulled back the shower curtain and reached in to turn on the water, something on the inside curtain caught my eye.

UGH!

I jumped back and grabbed my book. He sensed his danger and started to run. Before I could blink, he had scooted down the inside of the shower curtain and up the front side of it, where he stopped. For a split second I debated whether to knock him off the curtain and onto the floor---I didn't want to squash him on my pretty new shower curtain---but with his speed, I couldn't risk him escaping. I had no choice. I went for it.

He died with a splat I still shudder to recall, between Charles Dickens and the wall of my tub, leaving a lovely stain on my shower curtain to remember him by.

So nasty.

Today I googled "scary centipede" and it turns out my victim was a house centipede (as if he somehow belonged in my house)---a name which in no way does him justice. His scientific name---Scutigera coleoptrata---suits him better. According to Wikipedia, these things have "15 pairs of remarkably long legs, enabling them to reach surprising speeds of up to 406 mm (16.0 in) per second." They have teeth, and they bite.

SICK.

Real, Regardless

The truth hurts, or so they say.

That's true. It does.

But if you've known or loved or been lied to by a liar, you know like I do that untruth hurts so much more.

Most people lie without malice. They lie in order to avoid the pain of the truth. But a truth revealed, though painful at first, has the power to heal and the potential to save. And lies, while initially pain-free, eventually enslave and always, always damage.

As if it isn't enough that life is full of difficult, painful truths to face. Can't we please do without the lies that, without exception, create additional, unnecessary pain? Please?

Lies make me crazy.

They make me want smash things. Glass, valuables, faces, whatever.

Dishonesty is the most loathsome quality a being, human or otherwise (Satan), can possess (or be possessed by).

That's just my honest opinion.

The lies I've been told, the liars I've known---they've just about killed me.

But, the truth is---they've also INSPIRED ME. My distaste for untruth: RENEWED. My desire for uncompromising integrity: REFRESHED.

Words are how we know each other in this short life, people. Use true ones.

I'm sure as hell going to try.

I don't know where honesty will take me. It may invite judgment and rejection. It may grow my already giant vulnerability. It may cause people to shift in their seats or roll their eyes. It may lead me to cry in front of a group of strangers.

It may or may not bring me love, but I'll take my chances.

Regardless, I know this much is true: the love I give is and always will be . . . REAL.

Moment of Truth

Last night I cried in front a group of strangers.

I didn't mean to.

But see, we were talking about God. We were talking about wonder. We were sharing about moments in our lives when we have experienced wonder and awe.

People shared stories of hiking in the Grand Canyon, walking across the stage to receive a diploma, an exciting victory in a track meet, praying in a beautiful church in Spain.

Then it was my turn.

My moment of awe happened on Wednesday.

I was driving around town with my broken heart. Spring was everywhere---pink trees and warm air. Then---all of a sudden---a song. The perfect song at the perfect moment and my emotions started kicking all around the car. And somewhere deep within, light years beyond skittish, scattering emotion, my soul began to stir. The sound and the lyrics, though meeting my emotions for the first time, somehow felt like familiar old friends. A supernatural bond was afoot.

God sent me a song. Like some highly intelligent missle launched from hundreds of miles away, programmed to hit the small moving target that is me. A direct hit. He blew me away.

My emotions swelled with this recognition of Providence. God sent me this song with these words at this moment in order to reveal truth to me.

I drove and I looked at the color all around and I listened to the song that was for me and I looked within at my desires. Suddenly I had eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to understand. My breath quickened, and a revelation began to take shape . . .

I have ached for the man I loved to pursue me.
I have searched for a man who would blow me away with his song.
I have feared that I will never be loved, that I will never be adored, that I will never fall in love again, that I will never get married.

But God put His spring-air arms around me and spoke to me in a song and SHOWED ME . . .

Oh, how I've settled. I have loved and longed for a set of frenetic blue eyes when there have been a Pair set on me all along, reflecting every color of the rainbow---and Their gaze is steady.

All that I have ached for, I have. All that I desire, I already have. All that I have feared I would never have, I HAVE.

He knows my soul better than I do. He doesn't lie; He awes me with truth. He doesn't leave. He plays the perfect song at the perfect time. He is the Author of beautiful stories and infinite metaphor.

And there's already a ring on my finger, because this love is FOREVER . . .

Cup of Sorrow, meet Cup of Joy.

What's funny is that I've known this all along. I've known. But the difference between knowing and experiencing is vast. It's the difference between religion and faith. It's the difference between a fearful boy and a courageous man. It's the difference between shaking hands and making love. It's the difference between my life before and after this epiphanous moment.

A love song on the radio and all of a sudden it was about HIM instead of him.

So, strangers, that's my story.

My Moment of Awe happened on an ordinary Wednesday, a spring afternoon in a southern town where I drive and live with a broken, healing heart. It was a Moment of Truth: the moment I fell in love for the first time---with the Lord.

[Perfect Moment by Darden Smith. Take a listen.]

Oh, You

When fear shapes our lives, safety becomes our god . . . Can the safety lover do anything great? . . . accomplish noble deeds? For God? For others? No.

The fear-filled cannot love deeply.

The worship of safety emasculates greatness.

---Max Lucado

Aha Shake Heartbreak

Funny how a breakup can light a fire under you.

It's an unstable energy, though---a chemically induced, too-much-coffee kind of feeling. In the back of your mind, you know at some point you're gonna come down, and hard.

Emotions take turns, and I'm alternately spunky and sullen, pleased and pathetic, confident and crushed, brazen and broken.

If you're like me---single, in your twenties, and notoriously boy-crazy---you've probably (like me) spent a majority of the past ten or so years in the midst of a breakup or recovering from a breakup.

It's exhausting. It's exhilarating. It's exhausting. It's exhilarating.

Heartbreak gives me the shakes. My soul. My brain. My voice. My hands.

But this ain't my first rodeo, and one thing I've learned: a broken heart can SHAKE YOU LOOSE. If you let it, it will rattle and wrestle you right out of a rut, shake and shove you from your precious, stupid nest.

My FAITH isn't shaky. In fact, it has wings.

And there you have it.

I can crash and cry all I want, but Baby, it's time to fly.

The sun has set.

Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,—farewell!—the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The color and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

---Edna St. Vincent Millay, Only Until This Cigarette Is Ended