One day at a time. One. Without worry or an unrestful eye on all the rest of the days that are likely to follow today.

This is not the first time I have been taught this lesson. This is, however, the first time I have felt the least bit successful in learning. I know what it is like to suffer because I am holding all of my days like hot water in hands that were never made for such a thing. I have often recognized this scalding even as I persist because I did not know what it was to let go.

Success feels different than I would think. There is no victory celebration, but there is also no feeling of exhaustion from having arrived too late. It may sound simplistic but all I have felt is ease. To be sure, the ease is largely due to the previous struggles, the wrestling of my will, the learning of foreign movements. And yet, I am surprised. There is a lightness to living…and I cannot help but greet it with just a little confusion.

I do not trust things that do not test me. At least, not usually. But this? This is breathing. How could I stop or protest without punishing myself? There is something stronger than relief here. It is rest or peace or something else. I wonder if this is just a season or if that is my distrust talking. I often make life so much harder than it has to be just by trying too hard. It’s kind of funny. I am sure that I will find myself back in that place, but I think I will spend most of the rest of my life trying to figure out how to make this ease flow into the working, planning, and sweating parts of life.

It has been a long journey and I am only just now beginning to feel like I have come home to myself. 

Waiting for the Exhale.

I cannot tell you with what great agony I begin yet another paper.

I have been diligent. I have been as focused as my body will allow. I have been committed. And yet, I still only have 3 days to read about and write a rather large paper on the book of Revelation. I finished a different large paper yesterday and turned it in. Today is a new day! And a new paper.

My mind is explosive.

I have exactly the minimum amount of time to do this. If I use my time well...if I keep trying...if I push hard, I can do this and all the other tasks which demand my attention.

But there are tasks which will never make such demands. Those are my favorites. They are not pushy because they are fragile and will quickly be trampled and drowned if they assert their own importance in the ocean of errands. They are kind, giving me more than they ever take away. They do not seek to be my master and they know only a little of discipline, of struggle, and of pain. They are polite...always respecting whatever decisions I make and never holding my lack of wisdom against me.

These tasks are labors of love and imagination. They are not concrete or physical and they cannot give me a leg up in the world. What they can give me is all that I want and it pains me to deny them space and time to be. I make empty promises which I hope to be able to fill knowing that merely wishing it were so changes nothing.

These empty promises grow hungry and gnaw upon me from the inside.

I become vacuous.

What was once going to explode begins to shift, turn inward, and give me new fears. The mass of my hopes, fears, and promises may be enough to draw me tightly to my core in one final inhale as I implode.

I'm just waiting for tomorrow, whenever tomorrow comes.

Luck Runs Out

I am not a lucky person by my own standards or anyone that I know. I don't find $100 folded up on the ground when I need money...or even $5. My health is not a constant. When I don't study for tests, I don't pull A's with made up elegance. No pots of gold. No four leaf clovers. The wishes I make on stars, birthday candles, eye lashes, and in tunnels are all still in the works if they are coming at all.

On the other hand, I suffer from no great amount of bad luck. The mirrors remain in tact. The things I do on Friday the 13th prosper. Black cats are ... just like white cats except, well, black. And so on.

But it takes a lot more than luck to get by. Luck runs out. It leaves. It wears thin. It turns sour. And yet... yet I continue to make it. Despite all of the "almosts" and close calls that have filled the pages of my life daily, I am still here and still heading into some kind of future. It bewilders me. It is not by my amazingly strong will either. Many a time my stubborn will has been determined to go in what turns out to be the wrong direction.

I think it is called it blessing. I think it is named grace.
...I think it makes me want to paint again.

And I would. But I cannot yet breathe. My lungs are full of water ...or mud. Better yet, my lungs are vacuumed shut and emptied. Yes, that is the feeling. And I keep wondering if I will ever breathe again. Oxygen would be so sweet. Like sugar. Or maybe less sweet and more like fine salt. Or cold. Like snowflakes. I forget just now. What's worse is I feel myself arguing against it. "If I let myself breathe again, it will consume me for the rest of my life."

But I forget how naturally it comes. It does not distract from the rest of life. It is no threat. So what if it consumes my life? Without it, there is no inhale.exhale. rhythm. Without it, I am certain to forget how easily luck runs out and how gently grace finds you when you stop running.

Tea with Mr. Wilde and God

I like my life.

It is small and quiet and often times difficult. I can't really afford much, but there is always enough, every time. I have a handful of close friends here and the circle gets smaller every time life changes. There are healthy good byes and less healthy good byes and there are a lot of far away people that I love very much. But my handful of people that I hold here know me and I like to believe that the depth of love and the miles of life we have covered together is more than a fair trade for the small number. I am ever so slowly learning how to be a healthy human being before God and learning enough about myself to figure out where I want to go. The questions are not all answered, but I am sure that I will have them when I need them. I really do like my life, the people in it, and where I am going.

I need to remember that sometimes. It is so easy to forget in the natural process of moving forward and changing and growing and striving. It can be so easy to lose sight of such a quiet feeling while I am reacting to deadlines and people I like and people I don't especially when those two people are actually the same person. But right now, in the Sunday quiet of my house with too many too busy people, before all of the trying to be who I am becoming starts, and before I begin to take on all of the descriptors for the roles I will play today, I want to remember that I really do like where I am at.

I think life would be a lot less stressful if I could hold onto that while I race through my days. I think I would be better at remembering that if I gave myself the time in the mornings that I promised God I would. It's like he knows what I need, like he's on my side trying to help me first, be healthy and second, stay healthy. Weird.

But I am fighting so hard to be so good that I forget that I do not have to fight him. In fact, most of the fighting I do is fighting that he would gladly do for me if I would just stand on the promises he has made and let him fight for me. As long as I am fighting, however, he stands aside so he doesn't hurt me... so that I know he is there after I beat myself up. I do a fine job of that even during this part of my life that I like so well.

Today, I woke up two hours before I needed to be awake after a whole night of dreaming that everything that I need to do in the next three weeks needed to happen and be finished tomorrow. I was so frustrated and anxious that I could not sleep and then I realized that I was probably going about life wrong again. I was probably fighting too hard when there wasn't really a fight to be had. So today here is what I need to remember (and what I will likely need to know again and again for the rest of my life):

I am loved and I am learning how to love. I am loved by God and by the people he places around me and most days, I don't get to know why. But I do get to know that that is enough. "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

One final thought for the rest of today, "Who being loved, could be poor?" [Oscar Wilde]

You steal gravity out from beneath me,
Let it slip down my quickly swallowing throat
And ask me to speak.
But my words have too much added weight...
Instead of flowing up and out of me,
They fall and fall hard
Downwards.
Inwards.
Up and down have moved
And somehow my lungs or my heart or both
[I cannot quite tell which yet]
Have become the center
Of my known universe
Threatening to suck everything inside
Until the hungry desperation subsides
And I burst.

8 of 10 "Rooms"

The kitchen and the bathroom are my two favorite rooms. 

If I could only have a house of two rooms, 

those would be them. 

The kitchen for loving. 

And the shower for forgiving. 

The kitchen to remember, 

the bathroom to forget. 

Bedrooms are dangerous if you leave your dreaming 

always and only for night. 

They just might swallow your ambition.

Hallways are passages just long enough to get lost in. 

Stairs are easy enough 

to push or be pushed down 

in the rush for fulfillment, success, 

and getting what’s yours to be had. 

But kitchens, 

they are for giving, for sharing. 

And the shower is that requisite don’t-forget-to-breathe 

and permission to be. 

Kitchens are for the mess of life 

with all of the wonder which that should bring. 

Showers are for getting clean, 

for letting go, and for moving on; 

because, when you are done, all you have left is you.

So take a bottle of soap.

Cry as mush as you like while you scrub.

No one else will be bothering you for awhile.

It is the bathroom after all.

Send all of the bad days down the drain

into that mysterious plumbing.

Living rooms are deceitful.

They would have you think that life

is only what you have when you are not working.

But living does not happen only in those particular four walls,

I would hope.

Dining rooms are liars as well.

They make you think family

is who sits around your table

and hospitality is what happens

at a quarter to 7:00.

Keep the sharp things in your kitchen,

knives, scissors, cheese graters and other divisive objects

which require discretion.

And keep the soft things always nearby:

towels, tissues, and a clean set of clothes.

If I could have a house of only two rooms,

these would be them.

A kitchen for loving,

a bathroom for forgiving.

Not just for loving and forgiving others,

but also to forgive and love yourself.

tealish blue

Could you point me in the direction of Up?

No? What about Down?

North? South?

Anywhere solid where I may sit awhile...

Because I feel that I have lost them all.

Forces like magnetic poles and gravity have all been wiped clear.

My directions are empty

And my map is a paralyzing white.

I am sure that, next,

I will forget how to breathe.

I have been falling far too long.

Twisting. Dropping. Struggling.

I am always hurtling toward something

And I feel that you must know

Something I do not

Like how to stop.