Man. These guys hit it. And when I say "it", I mean that they have such well thought out ideas on race but also education, media, and the value of people. Fantastic. This is invaluable perspective.

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 woke up with the burning need to write something. This happens. It is like thirst except things tumble out of your throat and out over your tongue instead of being drawn in through your mouth toward your gut. It happens most often while I am driving. Sometimes I speak the words that I would write so that they exist at least for a moment with me in the car like condensation evaporating.

If I have ignored writing for too long, I wake up like today with half a dozen rivulets flowing in different directions but knowing that my hand will only travel the tide of one voice. The rest will likely be lost. Sometimes, I can dam up a tributary and hold it by the head like a snake. I will write down the location to the headwaters of an idea. Too often, though, when I pass back by that idea, it has dried up and no longer know what I meant, why it was important, or where it would have taken me.

Today, I woke up to find the headwaters of several disparate rivers in my mouth. Every thought came out in prose. The shower was alive with rumbling of words. I have saved up introspection just for this.

But today, like every other day, there is only so much time. Already, the tributaries are waning.

Do I write about the ants who have sent their second wave of scouts into my kitchen and penetrated my defenses much more thoroughly than I would have thought possible on a Monday morning? All weekend, there was no movement and I let my guard down. No casualties as of yet, though they would carry off the sugar jar if they were strong enough.

I have a prompt that I have been saving that starts, “When you are a White American, no one asks you where you are from or how long you have been in the United States.”

Or do I want to explore the constant companion of discontentment? I do write about that a lot in my attempts to out run dissatisfaction, create understanding, and engage a new season of life.

I am constantly mentally writing a detailed analysis of Dan Simmons’ twin works Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. What he accomplishes in regards to an alternate science fiction universe, his characters’ relationship to time, and the question of what kind of relationship between God and creatures should exist is phenomenal. He very much deserves all of the awards that his work has received.

I have a half thought out piece on how living with no regrets is bullshit. Unless you either love the people in your life perfectly or don’t really love them at all, you are going to mess up and hurt people that wish you didn’t. Trying to chase the cliché of “no regrets” just makes you unrepentant and arrogant. I understand that it appeals because it wards off a certain degree of vulnerability, but invulnerable people tend to be selfish jerks. (There’s a reason I haven’t published that gem yet. It could use some polishing.)

Or do I attempt to sort out all of the confusion I am carrying around about my health, my present, and my future?

Oh! I could write up a list of unhelpful things that people tell you when you are planning a wedding. And what I think planning a wedding is really about.

Lastly, do I finally start that food blog that I keep threatening to make?

In reality, I need to go make some food, get to an appointment, go grocery shopping, have my first visit with a Western doctor, and attend the gardening class that I (apparently) signed up for. It’ll be a good day. But the desire to write remains unsatisfied. And so, I leave this bit of angst for all of my good intentions that never do satisfy myself.

This is a poem about rape culture. I found it poignant and accurate. Some of you shouldn't watch it because it will hit too close to home. Some of you really should though. When minorities ask the majority to listen, it is things like this that they are asking to be considered because things like this can help create understanding. Poems are rarely flawless arguments, but they can share a wealth of valid experiences. Also, a word to everyone who has ever told me that rape doesn't happen that often: as I get older, the number of people (men and women) whom I can count who have not been raped, sexually assaulted, or almost raped dwindles. If you can find evidence for sexual abuse being infrequent, you are among the privileged.

I have met regret and she looks an awful lot like me.

There are things that no one told me about being engaged. To be fair, I do not think a warning would have prepared me.

As promised, I have been invited onto an emotional roller coaster and I am clearly not the one driving. 

People told me that making a guest list is the hardest part. I think they meant because you want to invite everyone but can't or because you and your parents AND your fiance and your fiance's parents all have different ideas of how big of a wedding and who is important. This has not been my experience. Rather, I am finding that in the last 6 years, I have lost people who I thought would share this day. Best friends in high school, my grandfather, and even a few college friends. 

It is a new aspect of an old grief. My friends from high school have been the hardest. We dreamed up fantastic and purposeful lives for ourselves together. As I pass mile markers in my life that used to only exist in the future, I miss them. I want them to see how things turned out, to laugh at how wrong I was about some things mostly. To marvel that somehow this or that did not cause the end of the world. And I want to know where they are at in the process of becoming themselves. But, I do not know anything. Some of them, I do not even know what city they live in much less how to contact them. 

The dreams and the nightmares are the worst part. It is ridiculous, I know. But that guest list has brought up untold guilt that I did not know how to save that friendship, did not try harder, was not wiser or stronger or more patient...that I did not love them tenaciously enough. And that I could not protect them from the trauma none of us have ever recovered from. My two best friends were assaulted in high school. And it is as much a part of this world's curse that it didn't happen to me as that it did happen to them. What I mean is this, there is no reason why I survived high school unscathed and they didn't. People try to tell me that God protected me which just about boils my insides because I cannot understand why God would protect me and not them. All I can figure is that the curse of Eden is made complete in the injustice that falls with unequal weight on us. The fact that I am made alone by surviving and that I had to watch them shrink into themselves is another injustice in and of itself. It is the same curse, but it falls uniquely on each of us and often makes us believe that we alone are cursed or that we deserved it.

I thought I had grieved those years already. I thought I had forgiven myself and moved on. But for the last few nights I have dreamt of high school. I have relived things that I could not stop even the first time and I have loved good friends that I could not save only to wake and find it all long gone. The curse remains though. For the first time in my life, I have found something I regret enough to wish that I could talk to my younger self, touch her mouth and give her better words, let her look through the lens of my memory and see if she can't find the solution that escaped me. And so I dream. About the attackers. They stab me and, oddly enough, I recover better from that then from the dreams that come next. In them, I know I am dreaming. I am hanging out with my friends doing nothing in particular, but it is excruciating because I know it is not real. I cannot wake up but I cannot accept the dream. I don’t remember what happens in the dream, only the last scene before I finally open my eyes. When I wake up, we are all strangers who used to be friends and reality seems just a little bit cruel.

I have been living in a fog these past few days as I have tried to piece together why I am dreaming these dreams. The emotional weight that I awake with is immense. I feel old and worn out. It must be the guest list. The roll call of important people that should be. That and, I miss them.

Tonight I am home alone in my tornado of a house with something akin to free time. So I pulled out a basin, filled it with soap and warm water, and moved everything out of my kitchen so I could get a good honest look at the floor. It is a little odd, I know, to enjoy washing the floor as much as I do. However, there are few household tasks that I enjoy more than mopping the kitchen floor with a rag on my hands and knees. A lady I nannied for gave me her electric mop…it just was not the same.

The kitchen is servant and slave to the rest of the house. The floor bears the bulk of this inglorious business while the household takes and takes from it. My floor in particular is speckled with tea and wine, the occasional run away pea, and grains of rice that managed to escape. I find smatterings of frosting and batter flecked from the mixer that got away from me. There are foot prints from every shoe I wore these past few weeks (more honestly, months) as I dashed in and out for this or that; they are outlined in cranberry sauce and cumin, pie crust and cilantro leaves.

I forget that I like this. I forget that I benefit from this ritual, this washing of my kitchen’s feet. It is silly that I forget because I so often tell people that a person can tell how I feel by the state of my kitchen. If it looks unused, I am not taking care of myself. If there are stacks of unwashed dishes, I am trying desperately to keep up and remember all of the pieces of my health. If you cannot see the counters and the sink, well…pray for me because there is likely little else that you can do to calm my brain and heart once such a tumult has taken center stage (unless you are one of the few who can roll up your sleeves and help take care of the mess without stepping on my toes or putting dishes away in the wrong cupboard).

Anyway, this is my way of managing to do more than live on the surface of my environment. Somehow that is really important to me. To live deeply rooted in a place without destroying it. I do not know if that makes sense.  Let us just say for now that I have taken care of my house and it has taken care of me in return.

These last few weeks have blown me in every direction. Tyler proposed and I accepted. I feel like that shouldn’t have changed anything all that much. After three years of dating, we knew we wanted to get married and we were working through all of the many things I was afraid of or unsure about, rational and irrational. Still, I was surprised and it seemed that my brain had fallen out the back of my head. Any ability to analyze, sort, or prioritize information was crippled and metaphorically bedridden for a little over a week. I am indeed delighted but, if I am honest, that was not the singular emotion riding my synapses that first week or so. Some days, it was not even the dominant emotion. I am such a timid creature until I am certain of something. I struggle against an inner compulsion to meet every expectation put in front of me and I shrink back the second I realize I was not made that way or do not wish to meet that standard or might not be totally capable. Marriage terrifies me in a deep and unsettling way.

Tyler and I have been examining this fear for awhile now. Basically, it is the same pet fear I keep around all the time but amped up with a new mask and a thousand extra expectations that I have no intention of meeting. I know I as a woman am supposed to want to be beautiful, but I do not. I mean, sure, being beautiful sure beats being ugly. But I have always felt beautiful excepting the intermittent trespasses of the unhelpful man or ignorant woman. I do not want to be more beautiful enough to fear failing. What do I want? To be capable.

Can I tell you something? 2014 hit me hard where it counted. Evicted. Fired. Four months of unemployment. Folding t-shirts. Largely unable to communicate to my coworkers because I couldn’t remember all of the Spanish I had learned, couldn’t relearn fast enough. I was in and out of depression. I couldn’t explain to friends what was wrong or why I needed them. When I went home to Montana, I spent so much of the time explaining myself and defending my beliefs it was exhausting. I was just following God around a desert that I often felt like was made out of my own ineptitude. And the gut punch? I have no idea how far away or how close flight school is. But I took most of that in stride…kind of a drunken stagger really. But, I was upright and still trying. Marriage is extra terrifying because of my fear of not being capable. A fear that, after 2014, seems a lot less irrational than it did previously.

I have heard all of the quaint things that people can say about how no one is good at marriage and so on. Odd as it may seem, those statements *are not helpful*. I am more likely to panic than to be comforted. In that panic, I have found just a few friends who are truly helpful and a partnership with Tyler that continues to encourage me that marriage does not have to end in disaster.

Tonight, as I clear the clutter from my kitchen, I feel like I am coming home to myself. I have no idea what the next few days or weeks or months have in store. Quite certainly, the Panic will find me again. But it will also leave again. Each time, it stays a little less long and I am glad for that. I know myself to be mostly capable. If I can add humility and grace to whatever skills I have, I think marriage will be good. 

Coming up... A month of drawing. I guess it could be construed as a New Year resolution but really this was bound to happen and I just happen to find myself in the first month of 2015. My biggest problem in making art (besides finishing projects) is just getting myself to sit down.

Hopefully a dedicated month of drawing will help. If not, well, we will have to see.