When in doubt . . .

When in doubt, look back. When was the last time your spirit felt whole? When you found yourself at peace on a more regular basis. Mine was at 19. Life was different, of course, but there is a chord - a thread - that remains within me, that links me to her (younger me). Even as life changes and we develop and grow up or older, we harden or become softer around the edges, we shift from right to left and back again, or not, and expand and contract within our beliefs about God, love and the world, even within all of that, we stay the same in some way. A chord that keeps you YOU or me ME. And when I follow my chord back, it is to a simpler time. A 19 year old girl, new to university, living with her sister, constantly re-arranging her apartment and seeking a peace in her soul.

At that time what was I doing. A little bit of yoga. A LOT of humor. Yes, many tears and heart break (and drama) but to feed my art and soul, to remain unblocked, I wrote. But I was writing with instruction and intention. I was reading Julia Cameron's the Artist's Way. I was doing morning pages. And when you purge in stream of consciousness for 3 pages, for 30-45 or 60 minutes and then DO NOT re-read it or worry about it but turn and close the pages of your notebook or put them away in an envelope for a few months, you realize that your day is different. Whining, decreases. Pettiness decreases. Productivity and efficiency improves. You become free from the muck that was cluttering your brain. You are taking a vacuum to your unconscious and letting yourself go.

I was also reading SARK. She is a flamboyant, wild, art loving, brilliant woman. She is knocked for possibly holding to new ageyness, but really she is trying to exude life and walk in healing - allowing us to confront pain and see our connection to the rest of humanity.

In those days I liked bright colors. I liked being outside. I did not stay inside on days I could just because I could. I embraced things. I was still depressed sometimes, but I don't think I was so ruled by fear as I am now.

So when in doubt . . . go back. Back to a time that was successful. A time where I felt whole. Whole will feel differently now. My bruises are different. My hurts tell a different story. My entire story has been written and re-written so many times. But I can go back and pick up those pieces and make them part of a new mosaic. Sitting in pain and accepting it, even labeling it, is good. Embracing and living in it, is not.

For me, I have to loose my hold on other things. Like perfectionism. "Perfectionism is a pre-requisite for pain" (Tara Branch). And I am tired of seeking out pain - academically, relationally. I want to live with intention. With love. Not frustration or bitterness. I do this, but not like I CAN, but I also live up to the negative expectations people have of me. My friends who treat me like I am mentally ill (intentionally or not and who probably do not even know it - because I have not told them) often get a broken or down version of me. Because I choose fear, I choose to not be LIVING and I feel that they will not see me beyond the gray version of me they have cast before their eyes and I give them that girl. She is so familiar, but she not who or ALL of who I am. It is painful, but I rise to this bleak occasion. It is painful that I am treated like I am different and painful that I engage.

Anais Nin wrote, "People who live deeply have no fear of death." Living deeply is a choice. I can't promise to make it daily, but I can find the time that sparked that depth. It feels like ages and ages ago. But I can reclaim myself because no one else can.

Icicles & Airplanes

I was staring out the window yesterday. It was covered with the moisture it collects throughout the night - it is the coldest room in the house. But despite the cold I opened the door to take in the chill. It gets so hot these days, which makes no sense. The trees don't turn these day. Which makes no sense. I hide inside these days, which seems the same and always makes sense - because I like to see the world through my single pane glass and not through walking along the concrete. I walk if the trees are throwing their leaves down at me. I walk if my steps fall on crisp colors and moisture damaged leaves. I watch the parking lot. I miss my old home where I could watch the birds and squirrels and trees and bundle up. My apartment, 15 degrees lower than the outside world, but refusing the insanely high electric bills I layer up and sit at my desk. I read. I write. I look forward. Chased by memories. But everything is the same and yet everything had changed.

There were no icicles hanging from the airplanes, they simply flew high high away and like giant birds they took up too much space. They sped through clouds and passed the sun. I stared up from the ground in amazement, pulled my coat around myself, watched the skies turn gray, felt the rain fall, blurring my vision. I thought of finding an inside to hide, but sometimes there is no need. The icicles just melt around me.

Darkest Before Dawn?

People say platitudes all the time. Things are darkest before the dawn, you'll be better in the long run, things are all going to be okay, it builds character etc. etc. But what get's to me, today when more and more is crumbling around me and the people I love, is this: The idea that it is darkest before dawn rests on the assumption that dawn will come. What if it doesn't? What if it will - but not for a very long time? What then? Dawn is relative.

For the past day I've been saying that, "it isn't all going to be okay." I believe that this is not me being negative, just realistic. See, I'm not a nihilist or even a fatalist, just sometimes a realist. I believe in the reality that, as much as people don't want to hear this: life is hard and then you die. I DO believe you should live intentionally and vitally in that time in between (not miserably or negative). But I also believe that when the dawn isn't coming - or at least isn't likely to in the foreseeable future - that it is acceptable to believe feel in the non-existential sense, that we are screwed. When you cannot pay your rent, buy food or maintain housing. When the people you love are unsure how they will survive between a & b, who has the right, or the gumption, to sweep in with platitudes?

People say platitudes aren't real until you experience them - but even that is a band-aid to a deep wound - and another platitude. Don't misunderstand, I am happy that many people I love are currently protected, have some semblance of security or even safety nets - but in those nets their well meaning compassion and desire to make it better is sometimes not what is needed or even wanted. It's hard to say that because everyone wants to offer hope, no one wants to say, "Wow, it sounds like you really are screwed. Sucks." So it is hard to throw this out there, but it is also hard to hear "it will be fine" when there is no promise that it will be. There is no "how" in that statement, so I wonder where will it come from? Now this doesn't mean that eventually it won't be, but right now, in the muck, in the eye of the proverbial storm - it isn't.

Anyhow, here are my non-optimistic platitudes for the day:
The well has dried up.
It is the calm BEFORE the storm. (i.e.; there's a storm)

I am feeling like reciting Elliot's The Hollow Men, which is never a positive thing.

It's been a long time . . .

It's been a long time since I have really written here. I was doing really well for a while, and am still in many ways, but I am slipping. I am mainly just afraid. I am really afraid financially. I do not know how I am going to make it. The loan I was going for - the high interest private education loan that I did not want to take out but was going to so that I could pay bills - fell through. I am scared. I need a job - a real (an almost) full time job.

I often wonder what I was thinking by going back to school. I have learned so very much, but I am so in debt and it feels like it gets worse daily (well, technically it does with interest). I wonder that I couldn't have found a better full time job than what I had (where my soul was being eaten) and chosen to stave off grad school for a while longer. But there is no sense in going down that road - aside from the fact that I cannot change what is, would I want to? Choosing to go to George Fox, while an exercise in significant financial mistakes (let's not think of the loans of 2008 - aka horrible, horrible, stupid decisions), it has been a guide to finding the passion of my heart. I am thankful - but right now that is being out weighed by my fear.

What do I do? I guess I go to my interview in the morning. Then I do the other things I have for the day and at every free moment apply for jobs. Apply. Apply. Apply.

I hate applying but mainly because I hate cover letters.

"Life is not what it is supposed to be. It is what it is. How we cope with it is what makes the difference." Thank you Ms. Satir. But sometimes it feels like "what is" is very close to "what will not be" on account of not being able to afford rent . . .

I want to say, embrace life, it's an adventure. Or say, God will take care of me. But to the first I think, yes I want to do that, but this part is less adventure more . . . unemployment, lack of a roof over my head. To the second I think, who am I to say that??? Does that mean that all the people (20% of Oregonians?) who are unemployed are somehow NOT being taken care of by God? No, that is not true. I do not blame God for the state of things, nor will it be God's fault if things go from questionable to bad to worse. It is what it is - we change what we can, we don't change the presence of God, we try to change our own circumstances.

Well, that went off track.

I'm tired and worried. Better sleep so I can be up early and READY for my interview.

The Proposal

It was anything but a dark and stormy night – in fact it was one of those nights where everything looked and felt so perfect that you couldn’t imagine it getting any better, and then it did. We were spending my birthday in Washington with Kyle’s family so that my younger sisters, who have been visiting, could meet them, go out on the river, hike, eat vegetables straight from the garden, and play with some farm animals. His aunt, who we were staying with in Chehalis, said that since we would be there on my birthday she would insist on having a family BBQ to celebrate. And so she did – most all of the family was there and I suppose there were signs that it was more than a birthday party but I didn’t want to believe them because I thought I would just be reading into things and then not be able to enjoy how great the night was on its own.

As the evening wore on it hadn’t dawned on me that Kyle had not given me a gift until whilst being sanctioned to the dining-room so my hot fudge + ice cream + brownie combo was allegedly being assembled and topped with candles, he came in to say my gift was outside. All day we (the family at the house) had been talking about the fairies in the forest behind her house and he said that the fairies had a gift for me and led me toward the patch of trees. I laughed and as we turned the corner I could see the forest lit up with candles, torches guiding a path and arrows made of glow necklaces and dancing rings lighting up the trail. We walked down the trail and he helped me up onto the little platform that has a table and chairs usually but was now covered with more candelabras and glowing candles and he kneeled down to pick up a frame that was turned upside down, he turned a switch and when he looked up at me from bended knee he held the big wooden frame wrapped in white lights and the place where a picture should be was a big paper that read: Marry Me?

And without a second’s hesitation or room for any other thoughts in my head I said yes. I never knew you could know something so completely as much as I knew right then that every bit of me, to the smallest corner of my heart to the greatest depth of my soul, knew that I want to, will and am so blessed to get to, spend the rest of my life with him.

His family, and his aunt’s camera, instantly descended upon us and he showed me a picture of the ring he designed (that I go in to get sized for, and give final approvals to, today) and in a whirlwind there were toasts and champagne, hugs, giggles, laughs and congratulations from friends and family. Finally we had the hot fudge + ice cream + brownie combo, but no candles; there were enough in the forest already.

Self Control

It feels like it has been so long since I have written. Many nights my mind has buzzed with ideas - many commentary or fiction or almost-fiction, but the thoughts seem to be lost in translation, they do not carry through from my mind to a paper, or keyboard as it may well be. But one thought I have had lately is on self-control.

Self control is something I have always struggled with; be it in food, shopping or all around healthy life choices. There is still VERY much to be worked on and there are certainly areas in which I need to monitor myself better - but one that has drastically improved is in diet and exercise. Yes for a while I have been that annoying calorie counter, the one who checks the box and picks up everything in the grocery store or while waiting and the cue and reads the Calories section. But lately it has worked - and I'm not even starving! Like I thought I would be and like I felt I was at first. It is a difficult task for me to learn to eat better, to notice that something I usually would've eaten any day is actually a special occassion sort of food, or at least a every-once-in-awhile or treat-food. The thing that has helped is accountability. I have to actually track everything. I put it into my phone that calculates everything (including all of my exercises which I am QUITE diligent about tracking)and I can see how I have done - did I meet my goals? Did I go over? What should or shouldn't I have done? Did I make good choices? Did I need 8 pieces of those deliciously decadent chocolate covered orange treats from Trader Joes?

But this is bleeding over - or at least in my brain. For example, I am terrible about tracking money and as my money is quickly drained from my account and yet my bills seem to only go up I am thinking that I need to better track that too. I mean I am far more responsible than I used to be but if I don't find a job soon . . . there won't be money to pay rent in October and September is iffy at best right now -but hopefully my meager financial aid will come through and cover those two months.

I am thinking that it might actually be coming up on the time to panic, but I won't yet . . . I'll just apply for more jobs and have some faith that something will happen. Someone will hire me. . .

But I digress, the point is that having self control has been huge for me. I won't go into the other areas that I have grown in with this but I am able to be a much healthier person - holistically speaking.

Anyway, this isn't the most exciting thing I suppose, but it is a bright spot in what has been a rough couple of months. But I refuse to sink again! Or at least I am trying my hardest not to. I am at risk of it with my financial worries, but if I can keep it up in other areas it will help me be more positive in this one. Right?

I need to be like Indiana Jones, pour out the dirt to show that there is another step there. But for me, it is just believing that there is a step at all. If I am able to learn this though . . . I think I have made one step already.

June 23rd

Three years ago today I almost didn't go to a BBQ . . . and I would've missed out on a life time of happiness.

Three years ago tonight, I met Kyle and I knew about 4 hours into our 8 hours of conversation that long evening, that he was going to be trouble. I also knew that he wasn't the sort of boy I could date because he was the sort of boy I would fall in love with.

It took a while but eventually we got it right. And I am awfully grateful to my friend who kept calling and texting me to tell me coming to her BBQ was not optional which is why I finally got in my car and drove the 30+ minutes to her house. Sometimes it is good to have persistent friends, isn't it?

I'll have to tell you the story of that night later, for now I have to get ready for my date.

For all that is wrong in the world, or in my corner of it, there is one thing that is awfully right. And for that I am forever grateful.