The Waiting Room at the Base of Mount Sinai

A couple of days ago, Tyler and I were talking and we reached the conclusion that everyone over-spiritualizes something. You can over-spiritualize anything from purity and following the rules to freedom and open-mindedness. And sure, God is in those things. But God is not nearly as invested in those as most adherents are.

I have been turning that conversation with Tyler over and over in the back of my mind, carrying it with me until I knew what I was looking for. Today, I stumbled on it.

I over-spiritualize learning. It is how I define success in my personal life and success in my religion. Am I still learning? Because learning equals growing and growing equals not dying (or giving up) and not dying equals success. Am I right? That and, at bottom, God doesn't demand that we are perfect in a day so as long as we are moving towards that goal, we are "walking with him" and that is salvation and the very point of Christian existence. Right? I mean, how else do we interpret verses like "continue to work out your salvation" or James's piece about faith being evident by deeds?

Besides, I love learning. I really do. And I think God does too. But maybe he doesn't need me to always be learning the way I need me to always be learning.

Learning for me has become the biggest reassurance that I am on the right track. God is teaching me, therefore where I am is good. As if, God is not also the one who teaches me when I really blow it. As if I am not learning just as much when I am behaving my worst as when I am truly doing my best. See, in reality, learning just means that I am still paying attention to my actions, their consequences, and any other details I observe. But accomplishing observation hardly tells me about the quality of my life and my choices.

Granted, this has been a hard year for measuring success any other way. Moreover, I literally have no idea what success means anymore. Or if I care. Am I successful? feels like the most irrelevant of queries. As if you asked me if I was a bird. Who the hell cares if I am a bird/successful? What matters is that I am trying, I am changing, I am learning. Or so I thought and I mostly still believe.

Except, I have been trapped in this desert for so long now and there is only so much that the wind and the sand can teach you. I do not think I am learning anymore. I do not think God is speaking to me any new truth or even any old truth that I have forgotten.

Throughout high school and most of college, I have loved who I thought I was becoming. I knew it was a gift to be able to accept myself as I became myself. Sure, I really struggled to extend myself grace, but it was largely because I so wanted to be my future self already. All the same, I was excited for where I was going and who I thought I would be.

I am not excited anymore. Why? Because I cannot pretend, imagine, or predict what is coming. I know this may seem quite silly to you. But I am a creature whose main form of survival is adaptation. On a level very near my DNA, I think I can learn fast enough and rearrange myself quick enough to be whoever I need to be on a given day.

Sure, all of you with Bible degrees, more life experience, or just a good dose of realism see the fault in my armor, the Achilles' heal, the base I haven't covered. And I do too. But carrying that burden of learning justifies ever season of life I find myself in. It makes me just the right amount of busy to really feel successful. And, there are so few negative side affects to being passionately over-committed to learning.

That is, until you get stuck. My life literally hasn't changed in 6 months. When I said, I was a creature who adapted for survival, I meant that I adapted as most humans breathe. Not changing feels like suffocation. Sure, I have gotten engaged, had job interviews, traveled etc. etc. etc. But my view of next week always looks the same. It always looks back at me with more questions than I can ask of it. Sure, I fill my time. But I am not convinced that I am going anywhere. Like God got busy and put me on hold and now I just live in the waiting room at the base of Mount Sinai.

Of course this is all horrible theology. But this is what the best of my senses perceive. I am not learning any new big thing about the world or God or myself. I am just here. And God is here. But He only says that He loves me and then moves on to the next person. And I know that if I was a good Christian, it would be enough to be loved by the God the universe. But I want so badly to have a purpose. And that blasted Westminster Catechism just plays in the background "man's purpose is to obey God and enjoy him forever." As if that tells me what to do tomorrow, or next week, or at all.

Though it is the most hypocritical of paradoxes, I am learning how to not always be learning. I am learning not to over-spiritualize or over-emphasize learning. It is one my less graceful lessons. But I challenge you, what do you over-spiritualize? It is not an easy mirror to look into.

I have been playing with an idea for awhile now. It is kind of silly in that I have been slow to accept it even though its truth is apparent and obvious to probably everyone but me. Ready?

I will be misunderstood and that is ok.

I have treated that fact with an inordinate amount of contempt. I have dedicated my entire growing up to knowing myself as best as I can with severe honesty so that I can explain myself plainly to others and escape miscalculation. I have not yet succeeded.

There are a lot of factors that have robbed me of my success. First, there are the sciences which teach that people are liars above all in their self-perception so you must disregard what people tell you about themselves. Second, there is the plain fact that many people are liars and so experience also teaches a wariness of other's opinions with a high value set upon the observer's limited view. Thirdly, people are human. They will see what they want to see, what they are afraid of seeing, and they will draw judgments when they should draw up a chair and ask more questions. We are busy creatures who contract business with misinformation as our currency.

And I am learning that all of this is ok. I thought that I needed to be understood; and I have benefitted greatly from that belief in what I learned from myself in order to correct the generalizations that I was saddled with but never fit.

The truth is, for the rest of my life I will fit the average American's definition of a man more than that of a woman. I will have the psyche of a oldest child crossed with a middle child and I will be a little bit culturally confused because of my growing up and it will defy the definitions people try to dress me in. I will always be confused about my socioeconomic classification. The truth is, I will always disappoint those who live their life under the rule and reign of stereotypes and generalizations. Part of me will always answer to a name that is not actually mine. And I am aware that that is just fine.

I am not the first to have to learn to survive in a world that is not built for people like me. I will not be the last. It is a lot to expect the world to drop their presumptuous habits, their hurtful ways of speaking about what is obviously true for "people like us" as I look over my should and realize that "us" means me and I don't identify that way. I often wonder what happens when they realize that, if it is either "us" or "them", I live in a different camp than them. The truth is, I do not suffer the worst of this assumption and presumption. In many cases, the identity I am handed is one of a privilege that I barely understand much less know how to use. Therefore my grievance does not cause me the suffering that it could if I was assigned a different descriptor.

I am still misunderstood, but I am learning that this is the rule not the exception. I am learning that people live and build their identities in the cracks between the names that cultures and societies give us. When you do not expect to be understood, the sting lessens and the disappointment fades. And those who do understand you and who take the time to know your real name become that much more valuable. It is then that you realize the gift they have given you and stop taking it for granted.

If it is encouraging, let him encourage.

Life has been hard lately. My life has never been without obstacles and challenges and I have not regretted it. I have often had to decide to be happy in the middle of the mess rather than just waiting for the mess to get cleaned up. And I have been happy. But these last few months have been a new kind of hard. That is, they have been some of the most ostensibly discouraging. I was neither the cool kid nor the awkward one who got bullied. Rather I was often if not always the quiet one no one really talked to until they had to. Lately, I have felt like I'm back on the school playground at recess again. I guess that's the working world? Or the industrial world? Or just my world?

The primary means of communication has turned out to be a solid mixture of sarcasm and complaints. When people stop complaining about you, they've stopped caring about you. When they've stopped caring about you, you are about to be fired. Therefore, if you find yourself barraged by unreachable demands and stinging sarcasm, take heart because you are probably doing well. They would not criticize you if you couldn't take it. It's a form of respect to be torn down daily.

I have never been so thirsty for kind words and encouragement in my entire life. I am trying to find the syllables to ask friends for what I need... but I am far away, physically, from everyone. I feel out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, it seems that the people I do find are also experiencing a drought of encouragement. We are brittle and hollow and trying so hard not to break. I keep finding more people who need encouragement.

This is not my gift. I am not known for my kindness and certainly not for my gentleness. The closest I come to being encouraging is praying for and with people and being really willing to share people's grief and believe long after faith seems vain. These attacks, however, require so little faith. They do not speak to grief. They do not in any way engage my strength. Rather, they speak to my false sense of humility that whispers variants of "you are not doing enough" and "you don't know what you are doing" over and over until I am deaf to anything else.

I am resilient and strong. ...but only to a point. At this point, I have to choose if I am going to keep feeling or if I am going to be strong long after I should have broken. And so, I break. A lot. Frequently.  Again and again. It is not quite like bleeding. It is more like letting sand slip through your fingers--a sort of letting go of the quest to be stronger than rock. I crack open and I slip and pieces I cannot identify blow away.

They tell me that I wont make it in this industry if I am so sensitive. They tell me that this is what it is to work in a man's world. They tell me this is the way things are. They tell me I am wrong in at least a thousand ways. And then they laugh at any question of health and how things should be. We are all wiser than those dreams. No one is healthy here, only strong.

It would seem that I am being taught how to be an encourager in the strangest of schools. Everyone I work with is so thirsty for encouragement, but so untrusting too. Like they have been given poisoned water so many times that they are afraid to drink from even the most honest oasis in the middle of the desert. We are all strange creatures.

I have never built something so much out of my own need before and it is exhausting. I think I will like who I am when this is done and that gives me hope. But for now, I am so aware of my own fragility, my brittle edges, my own weapons that I use to cut down when I should build..it is hard to feel like giving when so much is being taken and stripped away. That reminds me of a professor as he spoke on the book of Romans. When he came to chapter 8 where Paul lists peoples gifts and tells people (redundantly) what to do with their gifts, he stopped to explain.

I was surprised, seeing that these verses seemed to me the easiest to interpret of the whole of Scripture. You know, leaders should lead and servers to serve and merciful people should show mercy. Teachers should teach and so on. But he stopped here and I will never forget what he said with genuine weakness in his voice and the beginnings of tears in his eyes. He said these were hard commands to keep because it would seem that we are to do these things regardless of our circumstances. Our gifts are given to us to use and therefore we are obligated to use them. He asked the class, "who encourages the encourager? If the encourager is discouraged, does he or she stop encouraging?" And with all of the pain of the many years of his tired but still encouraging body had, he said, "the encourager is still supposed to encourage even when he or she needs encouragement." In a perfect world, someone would encourage each encourager...but we will never find that world and we will never resemble that world if we wait for eternity's perfection. 

I am afraid. If I am telling the truth, I do not want to encourage because I feel so empty inside some days. (It will be 5 months of verbal attacks next week.) I do not feel strong or equipped or ready. And I do not want to be. I want to be taken care of and healed. It is hard when the most encouraging people are hundreds and thousands of miles away...besides my boyfriend, but he is one man against a torrent (he never was supposed to be my only strength). But these are the walls of the room I live in. These are things that I do not know how to change. I do know how to be honest and hopefully I will learn how to encourage.

Skin to marrow to unexplored soul.

How do I explain this?

Fall makes me... restless. In a good way.

It makes me seek changes I have long been putting off. But fall in the city feels off beat. Fashion changes first. Then Halloween paraphernalia comes out. Then change grabs a few leaves or the air temperature. It feels funny. And I ... get stuck. Like a lizard trying to shed old skin, but not allowed out.

I'm not sure if that was a helpful metaphor.

But I am itchy. Skin to marrow to unexplored soul. There is no salve I know for this. Only the need to lie still out somewhere where I can count the space between passing cars in minutes, in breaths taken and released.

Yes that is what I need... a forest full of release.

There is nothing which *mandates* that my most itchy days be lonely days. It is just... that I become picky about my company. And the company which I would choose is typically unavailable on these days. Or they do not understand the importance of them. Either one. Justified or unjustified. I am at a point in my life where I do not wait for people because the longer I wait for people who are very likely going to misunderstand... the itchier I get. I can come very near to manic if I wait too long.

I do not know why.

There is pressure pushing me from an unknown direction. It is not meant to be lonely or to make me antisocial... It just is and it does.

I would bring people if they would come, but schedules are treacherous things. You need to be good at them, but not too good. Or else the itchy days will get you and gnaw on you until you blow off the really important things. In view of the week I have planned, I should not go. I have homework and preparation to do. In view of the week I have planned, it has to be today.

So South it is. Lunch is packed. Camera is charged. Notebooks still have space. Books are yet unread.

Grab the keys. It's time to go.

5 of 10 *Note: I did not know who this metaphor was for or where it would be used, until today.

The bottles clatter outside in the trash can.
I know you are home and what you are doing
Before I ever see your face.
I feel the plates of our world buckle and bend.
I hear the rumbling of tectonics,
The shifting of the way things are.
When you finally stumble in, fall up the stairs,
Everything I already know is confirmed.

And I smile like nothing is different
Because, in a way, nothing really is.
You must feel like a Greek god
When you move the Richter scale.
At least, that is what I figure.
I know, much more than you realize,
How hard a man has to fight for control
And what it feels like to have the world against you.

But that will never make you right.
You are sorry every single time
And that helps.
That helps until the next.
There always is a next time.
More bottles. More words. More shame.
Yet, it only takes one good night's sleep
In the arms of forgiveness to forget.

I should probably thank you though;
But I think that you would assume
That I was making fun of you.
I mean it though.
Your earthquakes have taught me
So many things like what disaster really is,
How to pray, where exactly I stand,
And the deceitfulness of ideas like security.

It has taken years of growing up,
But I have finally learned
How to be more than a survivor.
That, also, is something I am thankful for.
Getting by was never enough for living.
However, I am not fool enough to thank you.
You, sir, cannot take all the credit.
May I remind you, that things do not have to be this way?

Things do not have to be the way they are.
God forgive me, then remind me,
If I ever, ever let go of that.
And the way they are is wrong.
This constant shifting but never changing
Will not be forever.
You may be the Greek god of plate-tectonics
But no one worships the pantheon anymore.

Transitions. Life. Moving. Change.

I think I will leave those words on the virtual page for at least a day. Treat them as if they have ink that needs to soak in and dry on the page. There's been so much of all of that happening all around. It is a whole season in and of itself.

I want to write a poem with a central metaphor of plate-tectonics, another about painter's tape making my worlds make sense, one about my alarm sounding like a siren (which is actually just about done), one about limitations, and a few other's about nothing in particular. It is quite possible that a few of these may bleed over into each other. For that, I am excited. Until then: letting the words above dry. And yet, by the time you, invisible reader, find them... these words may be well past dry and much more towards stale.

This is what I am listening to today between one responsibility and another. It's all very interesting and only vaguely pertains to my ever continuing pursuit of trying to figure out what it means to be wholly human and live the life that a healthy functioning human being should. She has a tattoo which I have thought about getting ...or something similar to it; go figure. I like her talk though, especially the last few minutes.

Meanwhile, I have been hiding in coffee shops trying to study enough, leaving my computer at home. It is not my norm. I like to work from home when I am stressed. I like to come home to that safe place, shut out the world, and dig in my heels until I can push past and through whatever challenge is looming. Lately, however, my focus has waned. I am not trustworthy. I cannot stay home because I will cook, clean, talk to people, make art and all manner of other good rebellions will find me. Even now, as I type when I should be reviewing, I realize I am quite possibly misusing my time. My normal default of bookstores will not do either. I am sure I will be found in the arms of a book which has not the slightest thing to do with mechanics or airplanes.

And so the coffee shops find me awkwardly trying to recall what it is to order drinks that are always only three sizes but which are never called the same name. (I don't know if it's a tall, just give me 16 oz. of something hot...please.) Then there's the awkward turn around as I fumble to find a seat that is culturally acceptable (Portland is a city of misanthropic, space conscious people attempting to look intellectual... at a distance). I am incredibly out of practice.

I found myself, on one occasion, in a coffee shop that I had only been in one other time and that time belonging to a different life. It was sometime in my first few weeks of moving to Portland, to college, to this new life that I have made and grown so used to. I was sobbing. My RA was asking me about myself, trying to get to know me and finding herself ...in over her head. Even then, I could discern that she was in no way prepared for my tears or for the wounds which I then carried with me everywhere.

It was strange, is strange, to me to stumble upon such an isolated memory and to know that who I was then... is gone. And yet, I am still her. If anything, I am more her than I was then. I am who I was then only yet becoming. In the months and years that have filled the space (only 2 years...and yet a whole 2 years!), very little of my externals have changed. I am doing what I said I would be doing. The things that made me ache, bleed, and ... sob are still very much a part of my life, without much change in shape. When I am honest, they can still bring tears; but they are not the same tears I poured out in that coffee shop. I do not know if I am capable of explaining the difference.

Most simply, I am not who I was. I am more myself and less my weakness. Perhaps it is in the gradual separation of pain and identity. It is easy to take a wound and make it your name because it is all that you can see and feel. It is much more difficult to hold pain in an open hand...to let it hurt and make you cry until it heals and dissipates. The latter takes a good deal more practice, band aids, and time.

under siege

Do you ever have thoughts attack you, waylay you, nearly asphyxiate you with their constant proximity and weight? James 2. That's the one that finds me.


When I travel downtown.


Or to the grocery store.


On the way to school.


In city parks.


If I happen to catch a glimpse of the news.


When I see old photos, tell certain stories, or hold memories above the chasm of forgetfulness.


Words I innocently memorized in middle school to appease a teacher who never could have imagined how I would be tormented for what is turning into the rest of my life come back in torrents to flood a mind that is struggling to be made up.


What good is faith that has no deeds?
And again: If you say "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?


How is one supposed to function with words with weight like that pounding, throbbing... burning inside?


It does not matter how I choose to cope with whatever rhythm that pounding creates because the bottom line remains: I am not doing enough. My well-intended words exit my mouth only for those same phrases that always find me to take up residency in the space left over. What good is it...when you do nothing? 


It does not matter that I do not know what to do because those are hollow excuses and I have been burning with the weight of this challenge long enough now. Long enough to feel the urgency and long enough to be friends with despair as she echoes you aren't big enough and there is no way for you to be big enough.


I feel with sudden but thorough certainty the edges of the rabbit hole I stand above. There is a whole world down there; and, if I let myself fall, I may never come back. I will never be who I am right now and my eyes will never be able to see the world the way they do right now. And it is not a fear of being too small and too weak to handle the change (I am both of those for sure), but the knowledge that the way is shut once I enter. 


Did Alice ever really leave Wonderland entirely behind? Or did she take it with her everyday just behind her eyes like a filter or perhaps a buffer that used to exist between her and the world until everything changed?


It is knowing that I have absolutely no control who this will make me if I keep following my white rabbit. But the change is sure to be real, permanent, and terrifying. Oh yes, and I think good. But it is not the only rabbit hole I could choose to fall down. How do I know *THIS* is the one I want? Do I even get that choice? If I don't like it, can I choose another? All of that to say: how much do I give myself to homeless ministry? 


I already know the answers to all of those questions. Respectively: because it's bigger than me. Yes, but no: I already chose a long time ago. Yes and no again: it wont leave me the same even if I leave it. As much as I am allowed for as long as the season stays.


Somehow, these do not bring the comfort that we always expect of answers we do not yet have.

knots tied in between anger, boredom, and anxiety

Task (1): Meet the world each day somewhere between whatever terms it gives me and whatever terms I give it.

Task (2): Remain stress free.

Task (3): Try not to laugh/cry/scream at the combination of 1 and 2.

I have been mulling over how much of stress is a choice and how much of it just is. --As immovable, unalterable fact. It would seem that my body, and human bodies in general, were not made for stressing. They were not made for worry. They were not made for life to be so... hard. We are such fragile creatures for all of our bluffing and hoping and straining.

But how much of life being hard comes from our making it harder than it has to be?

I had a history teacher once who said that the purpose of history was to remind us that just because this is the way things are, does not mean that this is the way things should be or always have been. And ever since those words left his lips, they have followed me. He continued to explain that we need history to tell us that sometimes we need to fight and sometimes fighting is ugly. More than that, sometimes the way things are is, quite simply, wrong; and when it is wrong, we are not powerless. We are not restrained to a passive watching of the world, our world.

Those words have made me bold on more than one account in the years since. Lately, however, I have been really good at refusing to apply this idea. I am not so much the humanist that I can believe that a man's or woman's destiny is in their own hands entirely; but I do believe that the many of us spend too much time reacting to a life that appears to just happen. We are not as powerless as we often feel. We can take responsibility for more than we realize.

Those are dangerous beliefs. They are heavy and ready to add their own layer of chaos to the pile of things worth stressing about. And up until now, I have "turned a blind eye". Yet, I feel it is time to apply the process to the process itself... if that makes sense.

Because apparently, handling stress well is not merely refusing to let things bother you by forcing them into unsee-ably dark corners of yourself. And it is more than cheap denial or delayed reactions. It is not storing it for later to be dealt with when no one else is around. Apparently. Which sucks because...well, I am so good at those. Or I was.

Until my body rebelled. Treason. I had done the hard work of persuasion. Mutiny from the inside.

Now, it turns out, I am not meant to house and store things for later and 'not now'. I am learning to be more intentional about letting things go. Which is strange, because I swear that that is exactly the opposite of taking responsibility and meeting life on its terms and not just being a victim of passive reaction. Yet, it takes so much more effort to say (in a way that my body actually believes), "This is not worth the pain I will feel if I hold onto this one second more."

It is letting go of my right to feel incensed, annoyed, piteous etc. But it is not denying myself emotions, because that also I feel in this seditious wreck. Instead, it is the highest honesty of feeling everything as it comes without letting it rule me. I have never been so aware of my own thoughts or how little true self-control I have. More often than not, it seems an impossible balance to strike; but I guess it is just a more mature version of choosing to feel. To feel without shutting down or being consumed by emotion. To feel emotions in wisdom, if that is possible (and I do not yet know if I believe it to be).

So here I am. Open window blowing peaceful wind across my typing fingers as I try to figure out why I hurt today. All I can figure is that I am pushing myself too hard this week and  my body is too tired to filter out the stressors. I was not always this fragile. But I did love my strength.




Also, art. I have very much enjoyed this photographer over the last few days.

changes, requested and otherwise

For some things to make sense, you need a change of scenery. It's unavoidable at times. Your imagination is not always big enough to handle the static. Your muse is not always inspired enough with the same material. Your mind's eye is not always full enough. Often times, I am entirely unaware that change is exactly what I need to get unstuck. Fortunately, I am not the final authority or even the main person in charge of my affairs.

So I wound up in the desert.

I was born there, allegedly. Well, not in this particular desert... but pretty close actually. It is really a small matter of borders and names... how does the government decide where one national 'forest' or park ends for another to begin? Anyway... I was not raised in the desert. Though I love the hot weather and the colors and the sunrises/sunsets of the desert... I love water entirely too much. And mountains. And clouds. And trees. Tall trees. Even if they block some of the stars. But the desert has its beauty (like how far you can see and how amazing that rare storm is) and its things to teach.


It was there that my chalk pastels made sense. And faces made sense. I have not a clue why faces made more sense in the desert, but I know that the colors of pastel that I was working with suddenly just worked.



Color. Texture. Shape. Lines.

It is not that I have arrived. But it is the feeling that now I have somewhere to go. I could not see where I was headed for such a long time. And even though I have left the desert and have no intention of living there; I see beauty from a new perspective. And taking that home with me gives better light to all that I see where I am.

And then it was June.

Life has a new rhythm.

It is a good one too, despite the apprehensions that try to persuade me otherwise. Leaving my apartment was more... emotional(?) than I thought it would be.

It was my first apartment all unsupervised and pretending to be grown up. My first time not living with a stranger in some capacity in over a decade or so. It was the healthiest living situation I have ever had. I guess it makes sense that I would be attached, but the depth of that surprised me.

For nine months, I built life and living and home with my roommates and they are family. We did not just live together and occupy the same space. We shared our dreaming, our loving, and our growing. It is weird to me to think of that apartment as it was after they left and I was moving

out...devoid of all the fondness I had attached to it. And I knew I did not belong there anymore. I could look out the windows and see the same things I always did, but it was not my home anymore.

It is exceedingly strange to me that we should spend so much time pouring hope into a place. (I swear the walls and carpet are saturated with it.) Hope for where we would go and who we would be and what we would do. And then we outgrow it.

We leave to build new hope. To be those people that we hoped we would be or even those people we did not quite dare to be while in that former place or possibly those people we always hoped

to escape.

Whatever it is that we do after, we are forced to build or rebuild hope, because you cannot keep old hope alive in the face of change. At least, not as it was. Hope has to grow with you. Or else, it begins to stifle your own growth. By its very nature, it must elude your present abilities.

Perhaps that is what it means when Romans says that "hope that is seen is no hope at all". This frustrates me because it seems to negate any idea of rest or peace. Is that really life? To always be running and never arriving? I think so.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that it is not without its triumphs. My discomfort comes from my continual battle to appreciate and respect things (especially myself) in process. Just because I know where I should be does not mean that I am yet equipped to be there. It is often far more acceptable to take time in transit than I make it seem.

Yep, still learning how to be a balanced, holistic person which apparently means moving slower than I think is reasonable and going about things the long way. It is a good thing. It makes hope less harsh though the striving and elusiveness continue.

full sails and painted toe nails.

There is something cathartic about leaving.

Not running or hiding.

Just the act of leaving. I think it's about freedom and the ability to move forward regardless of where 'forward' is. Especially in good company, but even with no company. Often, it gives physical form to what I feel I am doing in a more holistic sense.

So I've painted my toe nails for the wedding I'm going to. The wedding came at a perfect time for changing the color. It's silly and totally ridiculous, but it always makes me feel like I'm moving into a new season when the color on my toes gets changed. Possibly to the point that, when I am really ready to move on and out of a particularly burdensome or old season... I go home, shower, and paint my toes.

Here I am. Moving from gold to white. Whatever that means, I think it is best to decide after I am there. Too often we focus so much on the leaving that we do not take time to prepare for the act of coming that must follow. And for a blessed change, I am peaceably excited for whatever that is.

For now: road trip!

occupied

This is home.

And I do not get a choice in that.

It is both comforting and terrifying

To have the corners of my heart

Occupied like a once-peaceful country.

Someone is speaking for me,

But I do not know what I, they, have said

And none of it has been worthwhile.

Almost.

Your silence means everything.

I want to be angry.

I want to go looking for a fight.

I want to swear until we are both deaf.

But I cannot.

I cannot because everything...

Everything tells me this is home

And I am in love with it.

Nowhere else will have me.

You smile because you know

I am right.

Against my own sad will,

I belong here.

I do not even know why it makes me

This way.

I should be happy

Or, at least, not unhappy.

But when I think about it,

I realize I am just surprised.

That,

And I am so used to fighting,

Too used to fighting to be loved.

But the surprise goes deeper than that

Because even that is changing.