Whatcha Gonna Do When They Come for You?

5 - Swimming lesson instructor.

6 - Teacher.

9 - Famous singer.

10 - Missionary.

12 - Writer.

15 - Married to a billionaire.

17 - Actress.

18 - Mother.

19 - Youth pastor.

21 - Pastor.

23 - Travelling poet through Japan, conquering skyscrapers and scary hairstyles with my devastatingly touching iambic pentameter.

At each age, these were my highest aspirations. Some are still with me (hello, famous singing career, here I come), and some are long dead. I never wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or astronaut or princess, because it was never about the money (except marrying rich, of course); it was about living out what I was passionate about.

So. Self-analysis time. What am I most passionate about at this moment?

...Reading my Bible, making delicious food, making anything really, going on adventures.

Okay. Now why am I doing anything else?

Obvious answer: it's all part of the plan. Finish school, do what's required, I'll thank myself later. And realistically, I'll be done in just over 5 months. That's all. But until then...I'm dragging myself through the mud.

I want a better attitude! I really do. And there are parts about school I absolutely love to bits. But there's the parts that literally take the things I used to love and twist them into ugly representations of lovely things. Too hardcore? Fine. The joy for learning is gone when I'm over-worked and under-prepared and hungover (JOKES) and, in some cases, have already learned exactly the same thing in five other courses (this happens more often than you'd think). And other things still hurt. I think I've mostly forgiven the painful bits from over the last whiles, but it doesn't make the hurt any less legitimate. Sometimes I forget how badly it still affects my heart, and then a reminder stuffs itself into my face and I cannot breathe all over again.

Sidenote: What do you do when you know something that literally no one else on the planet knows except the person whose secret it is to tell, and this information could destroy everything for someone else? What do you do when there is no "sworn to secrecy," but instead a mutual silence? What do you do when you know you should do the right thing, but in the end no one will thank you for it?

End sidenote.

I am fighting through this, but I'd rather enjoy the ride. What's the worst that happens? I don't get A+'s across the board? Unlikely at this point, anyways. I don't graduate with highest honours? ...I'm guessing that I'm the only person who cares if I do that or not. The school I want won't accept me because my grades blow chunks? I take the road set out for me instead of the one that was obviously of me.

I am officially letting go of perfection and instead striving to enjoy this at least a little bit more than I have been. Hello, folks! It's celebration time. Freedom is nearly here. It's taste is strongly overpowering my leftover coffee and midnight cigarette (JOKES...about the coffee. JOKES! Gosh).

Composing a Symphony

I will be the first to admit that I really know nothing about music. I know what I love and what stirs my soul and what makes me wish I had been born without ears, but when it comes to the mechanics I am lost. Part of it is that I get impatient when I try to learn something, even if it comes naturally, and part is that I know that my life has a different purpose driving it. But just once, it would be nice to be crazy talented. Beyond the talent, though, there is a great misunderstanding between me and music. I understand that a particular swell or key change moves my heart, but I haven't a clue about the method behind it. Yet here I sit, composing a symphony.

Breaking my life down into movements is not difficult, as they generally revolve around God. By generally, I mean absolutely. I used to define years, when I was in high school, based on the guys in my life; I look back now and see no difference because they all blend together into a mash of mistakes and brokenness. Then God came on the scene: great in power and satisfying to the massive hole that transcended every part of my being. Holla, second movement. Then, as quickly as He came, He seemed to disappear. I know now that when God looks as though He is absent, it is either I who am absent or He is teaching me something. Or both. I have been floundering in a less than graceful manner ever since. Ebb and flow, high tide and low tide, flotsam and jetsam, driftwood and motorboat. I am a mess of life composition.

Today is a triumphant hailing of this movement's final notes. Life is moving with purpose again and I have never been so excited. I have money. I have a car. I have a career plan. I have the freedom of being nearly done with school for good. I have an expectation of good things to come. I have peace. This peace has been bought at a very great price, but it was worth every agonizing minute that led me here.

Thank you, God, for perfectly timing every second.

Sometimes These Thoughts Are More than Thoughts

You know when you say just the wrong thing at the wrong moment with the best intentions but those intentions are thwarted by a lack of saving grace (i.e. either right moment or right thing to save the one that was wrong) because, despite those best intentions, it is really not a wrong moment or a wrong thing but a wrong person to say it to?

You know when there is that perfect line in your head that will get the desired reaction if said with just such and such an intonation and enunciation and explanation and exclamation, and in your mind there is no fault in it except a delirious desire to be understood and a lack of fear that it could fail because how could it fail and oh gosh what if it fails because that never crossed your mind and then it does because no one line can save everything and because people are unpredictable and they fail too?

You know when you plan the future and it stretches out like a forever expanding and contracting roadmap of months and weather patterns and anticipated events and life seasons that looks like it is without a hitch so you begin to imagine hitches and fallout and easy fixes and really hard fixes, so you wait for the hitches and the hitches never come and with their lack of arrival comes a lack of need for all expected fixes, easy and really hard, and life plays out exactly the way the roadmap said it would and it's confusing and almost frustrating because life has taught that plans never go off without a hitch but here they are and suddenly fear can suck it?

You know when you think so deep and complicated that it hurts?

Yeah, that's right now.

Drops of Jupiter in Her Hair

This whole expression is meant to say more than the words. I am struggling for how to describe even that, so how can I possibly hope to say the volumes beneath? I want to capture a thought so perfectly that it just...clicks into its own place in the universe. Everything held its breath until that one thing for which it has been waiting.

Silly.

True Therapy

My roommate has this awesome habit of letting one simple fallback help get her out of any bummed-out mood. Whether she's too sleepy or too awake, too angry or too passive, or too stressed or too laid back, she has a shower. I don't think I'm one of those people. To me, shower means stress and lots to do and my routine and trying to stay on time and not letting the shower head point in that weird way that sends it over the curtain and trying to keep the curtain stuck to the sides of the shower by not touching my legs. Showers do none of the lovely things she claims. I am, however, an advocate for the after-shower therapy session.

Last year my roommate and bathroommates liked to make fun of me because I liked to get ready naked. I would blowdry, straighten, primp and preen with as little on as possible. Steph even wrote a song about it. Realistically, I was usually more clothed than any of us would ever admit, but it's fun to look back and pretend it was more scandalous than it really was.

But truthfully, I do my best de-stressing when I'm breezy and free, doing the simple tasks of getting ready while jamming out to my fave band of the morning. My favourite activity? Blowdryer dancing. Crazy, I know, but nothing does it for me like that does. I'm hooked for life.

I need more moments like these to grace my days. Even once a day is just not enough, especially when they're either interrupted or have that potential. Hopefully this Christmas break will be the perfect opportunity for just such times. I picked my courses for next semester today, and I'm taking a course by correspondence over the break in the hopes of lightening my over-the-top load for January (self-inflicted of course). I am drowning, and homework will be my lifeboat. And in May? I don't know, maybe more courses by correspondence, throwing myself headlong (and detrimentally) into ministry again, or maybe even a full out break out where I just sit around for four months and write. What else is there?

Maybe I'm Just Making Myself All These Things

Today fit the pieces together and suddenly it starts to make sense. It's probably not your fault. Inconveniently, I don't really think it's mine either. I'm just crazy. Perfect.

God, it's so hard to say that I need You. I like to be strong. But I cannot do this on my own anymore.

Anywhere But Here Without You

There are so many new things to say! How to say them all?

I have a boy. It has been a month, minus a day. We're getting better at being ridiculous in a good way. I also get better at being less dramatic and confrontational...well, I'm trying to get better. Somehow he forgives me every time, and his patience never ceases to amaze me. He doesn't know this, but he inspires me to be better, and heispatience makes me want to be more patient for him.

I'm almost done my first year of college, only two weeks left, and I don't know how I feel yet. I'm excited and scared and nostalgic and it's beautiful outside. The sunshine and warm wind coming through the window has been a constant shift-changer in my life, and I'm subconsciously preparing myself all over again. I don't want to let go, but I also want to embrace the new. Letting go of certain people will be harder than they know, especially the people who will never know, but there's nothing left to say. C'est la vie.

God is working inside me in amazing ways. I LOVE the way He loves on me. Today, Sarah came to me in chapel and just spoke the perfect words over me. It was exactly what I needed to hear, and I never even considered asking Him for them. But they came anyway. I want to eat up the Word and live, breathe, think, beat for Him. That makes me smile. It makes me believe that He will care for me and that, maybe, I can let go.

I've been learning that if I hold onto the little that I have too hard, I will crush those things and have nothing left. But if I just release, God will let me keep some of it. Some He'll take, but that's only to replace it with something better. I need to trust in that.

Making Love Out of Nothing At All

Sometimes I just don't want to blog. Today, for example. I have nothing to write about. There is not a single original thought in my head. I don't pretend to be a revolutionary, but I love sharing something that is really on my heart; I live to share the words that refuse to come out in speech but flow effortlessly through my fingertips.

I'm nostalgic to the max right now. I'm thinking back to months ago when it felt like everything that came out in print was the perfect expression of a moment or a feeling, or an overflow of certainty that nothing could be more right in that second. And here I sit. Nothing. Not a thought on what I could possibly fill this empty space with.

So in my search to discover the perfect words to say, I came across some of my own from September. Gosh I love haikus.


Purple-blanketed
Sunshine singing to my back
Smells of grass and me


I don't know why these seventeen syllables bring me so much joy, but as I read them...I can almost feel the moment again. Maybe that's why I write.

How do you photograph heroism, paint a broken dream, or dictate true love? It haunts me that we have all these emotions and words and senses that are so difficult to capture. So here's my mission: do everything in my power to put these things into words. Faulty, failing, inadequate words, but something tangible nonetheless.

I set out to write about nothing, and I ended up writing about everything all at once. Maybe you can't see it, and maybe this doesn't mean a thing to you, but my heart is beating faster just thinking about the last few paragraphs.