Ride With Me

Last Saturday I flew over Nashville in a small plane.
I watched the sun disappear to the West from 4500 feet.

Tonight...I will ride in a jeep with no top or sides, hair flying, taking in the fresh night air, next to a brilliant, older and exciting man.

Relax, this kind of stuff happens every day.
Or not.

I Survived: Just Another Week in Middle America

I've had a long and eventful couple of weeks with a lot of exciting adventures, a lot of new experiences and a lot of deep thinking about my future:

I stopped eating pizza at least once a day.
I started drinking a gallon of water every day.
I flew a small plane for a short while.
I made pudding using soy milk.
I found a lunch workout buddy.
I rented a math textbook.
I saved and saved and saved $$$.
I pushed myself into the oncoming traffic of dating.

I survived

Maybe survival is the best I can hope for considering the variety in that spectrum. Maybe it's too much to hope for that I would be thriving in the midst of such changes. The sad fact is that not all changes are good changes---or at least not all changes make your life a fun-ner place to live. Some things hurt, burn, sting. Some risks you win...but some you lose. And when you take a lot of risks in a row you begin to desensitize yourself to how much you're hurting, burning, stinging.

Today I sat at my desk and cried. I cried because I'm changing. I cried because I didn't get something I wanted very much. I cried because I have no Dad. In the end, my tears were not the flag of despair's victory as much as an error message from an overworked program. I simply cried before I had a moment to stop and consider whether I wanted to cry or not. If there was a victory, it was of fatigue and ennui.

Once the sad forest mist cleared away from my mood, I opened up my little travel bible and read a few Psalms, including Psalm 42. This particular passage stood out to me; sort of gave me a lift.

Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God
for I shall yet praise Him
for the help of His countenance.

So there it is, Hope in God.




I shall yet praise Him.

New Leaf, New Trees

The storm is beginning to rage outside. It sounds so far away from this protected world in my room. The rain is hitting the window with a fury, beat by the wind here and there against our house. But it's not much different than the sound of the water on the glass when you take your car through the car wash.

I've had a long weekend of new experiences and full adventures. I'm stepping out on a limb now, trying new things with new people. I'm seeing myself apart from my community for the first time in a long time--as just a single individual making her way in the world. It's interesting to describe myself, as if for the first time, to a stranger. It's interesting to hear myself describe my family, my decision making, my school life.

Some of it sounds boring.
Some of it sounds quixotic.
I'm not embarrassed by any of it, though. It's all me--I feel like I can truly own my decisions-like they were authentically formed and purposefully carried out.

These Legs; Look at the River!

Some weeks ago, my favorite coworker, Becca, pointed to my knee and asked me what was wrong with my vein. She said, Veins are supposed to be straight. That's not straight!

Imagine, if you will, a gnarling, green-blue river that snakes and winds its way up and around the knee to the inside thigh. Had I noticed it before that second? I guess I did--but it didn't really look like that, at least I don't remember it looking like that. It wasn't twisted, for starters, just closer to the surface and really dark. Now that Becca pointed it out, there aren't any moments when I don't know it's there; I'm constantly aware of the tightness and the slow, dull ache of bad circulation in my lower leg.

In case you don't know very much about varicose veins, here's a little lay-medical snippet:

Healthy veins pump blood back to the heart with a series of one-way valves that prevent the backward flow of blood and the build up of pressure. When we are standing there is a lot of pressure pushing blood back down towards our feet. If these one-way valves are not working, blood can pool in the leg veins causing the veins to enlarge. Varicose veins are dilated veins just under the skin.

Ever feel like you just can't catch a break?
Ugh.
Double ugh.
This really messes up that picture of myself at 45 that I have in my head--the one of me in an elite yoga outfit stretching in a mountain range under an expansive blue sky at 6:00 am. A grateful, wise head above me and a strong, capable body beneath me.

I'm doing whatever I can do--elevating my legs when I'm sleeping or sitting for long periods of time and doing funny feet exercises to flex lower leg muscles and increase blood flow. And of course, there's my daily exercise to increase circulation and raise my blood pressure for a small moment each day.

But it's official: I'm going to be that woman--the one who has to have special assistance at parties; chairs & cushion props always nearby.

Pffft. I've also started doing weird things that feel like they might make a difference, like massaging the vein upward toward my heart, not really knowing if it's helping or hurting. I'm even cutting down my salt intake.

Less salt?
{Insert groan}
I love my salty sunflower seeds from Trader Joes.
I love my salty Snyders of Hanover pretzels.
I love salty eggs.
Buuuuut, I really do like having usable legs, too.

At the end of the day, there's only so much we can do to stave off bodily decline. I'm trying to incorporate every possible healthy lifestyle habit that I can into each 24 hours that I've been given, in an attempt to hold at bay the eventual decay of this delicate vessel I call home. But after all the hard, responsible things have been done, and these unsightly, unfriendly reminders of the fallen world are still snaking in dark rivers across my leg--it's time to make my way through the crowd and and call out for some intervention from Christ, the Healer. It's time for me to reach out and touch the hem of His garment, as it were.

There is hope of deliverance {an awfully big word for such a small need}-there is hope for me that He can and will restore health and bring life and newness to these damaged pathways.

And that brings me to the bigger picture. One thing I did learn last month is that a person can't ignore body issues.

Remember when you were a child and you covered your eyes to hide yourself from a person, thinking that once you couldn't see them, they couldn't see you, either? Well, death and sickness can see you, even if you put your hands over your eyes. It's foolish to deny the need for help and healing; to hope that it will all work itself out, even when you feel death chasing you and changing you. You have to face these things.

Dad's final surgeon told us that the biggest cause of the heart problem that Dad had was denial. There were things he could have changed or done; help he could have gotten. But he didn't even acknowledge the pain. Somehow you have to acknowledge the sickness before you receive the cure. And no, denial isn't a cure.

I've got to face this pain/ this damage/ this decay/ this brokenness. I've got to pray about it, seek wise advice about it, change my ways.

As my friend Dixon often says:
Pray, God is near.

Discipline, You Undesirable Monster

“Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other people.” --Nido Qubein

For whatever reason, early on in life, I learned to define success as living about two millimeters "just outside" of the danger zone. If things get tight or sticky, I'll move heaven and earth to get to a place of safety and security; I think we all know this game.

But harnessing that momentum into actual goal achievement? That's for the birds, right? Ho, ho, ho--my get up and go is strictly reserved for self-defense and survival, or so it seems.

At the end of the day, someone might tell me, "Hey, look around, most people in our generation are having the same problems." But do I really want to grade my own life on a curve?

Do I want to measure my achievements by what everyone else did or by what I personally set out to do?

This last week has been a triumph in money saving, physical fitness and nutrition. I've been on a discipline roll, thanks be to God.

So it makes sense that instead of keeping that good roll going long enough to enjoy the benefits, I would want to just skip working out and go spend money on pizza at Whole Foods. I'm literally having a 2 sides of the aisle war going on in my head as I type this; one part of me urging for continued discipline on the road to eventual achievement--the other part of me saying, "Stop the horse at this depot, you've gone far enough."

What is my strategy?
Where is my resolution?

Somewhere at the bottom of my laundry pile. As inaccessible and undesirable as Mars right now, for the love of Pete.

Thanks Be to God

I watched a small movie tonight about an orthodox jewish woman and a muslim woman who are elementary school teachers in New York, and who are both expecting to enter marriages arranged by their parents & community. In the movie, the two young women become friends and allies in a very fresh and unique way. Rather than being intrigued by the differences between my culture and theirs--I found myself taking a deep breath of relief as if someone was telling me something important about myself. I feel like telling you about how this movie got me thinking.

Firstly, this movie is a story about orthodoxy on the surface, but in the middle of that story you find out that it's really a story about individual faith. But that story, after you peel it open a little, becomes a story about uncertainty, and the uncertainty opens up to uncover a story about destined relationships. But that story of relational destiny is really just a story about miracles and about God bringing good things to the people who love Him and honor Him.

I'm watching this movie, seeing these layers peel away in the characters' lives and I'm noticing that these layers are like boxes within boxes or rooms leading to other rooms. I see that each of us approaches the miraculous through a series of rooms or boxes, one opening up into another. What is it that our generation thinks about orthodoxy? That's it's passe? That's it ignorance? That it's heretical?

It takes courage to live orthodox for any faith in a world that praises and rewards the indifferent and apathetic. Having the courage to live orthodox gives us the freedom to explore our faith without first passing it through cultural and psychological filters. This is what we do sanctifies us so that we're strong enough to ask ourselves if this is who we are.

The courage it takes to live out our faith, in purity and honesty before God, with faults, blemishes and shortcomings open not only to God, but to our own, searching eyes--makes it possible for us to encounter true uncertainty about the things that terrify and disturb us in our deepest cores. We enter into a clean, white room in our hearts where we can drag from the dark corners of the world everything black and grey and putrid smelling--and the white room closes in around us and pours water over those things for hours, sometimes days, sometimes years--until we understand them rightly, not as we first saw them, but as they truly are.

The uncertainty keeps our hearts open to hear from God--keeps us in a waiting, listening posture, as we search out how things truly are and how things truly should be. Each opportunity that arrives, like a messenger bird, carries on its legs the object lesson and answer from heaven. Or at least we think it might; we're looking to see if it does. Brushing by a stranger in a grocery store is destiny. God is intervening. Getting a letter from a brother in the mail is destiny. God is speaking. Feeling an urge to call a family member late at night is destiny. God is working. In subtlety and obscurity we're experiencing these sparks of destiny lighting our way down some eternal pathway.

The path is a miracle. The miracle isn't obtained, but lived. These rooms that enter into other rooms. This guided life: a miracle. Not just healing of the woman with an issue of blood or the cleansing of a leper. This life, these destined interactions, this hope trained by trusting: a miracle. The last door, to the outside world, armed with love and guidance. Filled with trust and patience. Guarded by orthodoxy. Inspired by faith.

It's not that I don't care about what we think of God or how our world-view defines us among our peers. It's more that I want us to ask ourselves how God would have us honor His presence in our lives, because I think He should have a say in this--I'm asking us to approach holiness as He has defined it and us, with open hearts and determined purpose. Not to receive a miracle, but to live the miraculous lives that are the mark of the people of God in every generation.

Suddenly I'm grateful for small things and receive them as miracles. Suddenly I'm asking God to lead me far away from temptation. Suddenly I hear myself saying, "Your word I have hidden in my heart, O Lord, that I might not sin against You," and thanking God for His Holy Spirit.

These are my thoughts for tonight, in total. Nothing more or less. Thanks be to God.

A New Leaf

I was so sure that I would turn this blog into an intellectual mining company. I could smell the oil greasing the drills.

But in the very deepest part of me, as it turns out, and as my closest friends probably already knew...there is no David Brooks lurking around. There isn't even Chesley Lately, or whatever that funny late-night woman's name is.

If I dig down really deep, I most often will find a Far Side joke or something that resemble a Some E Cards postcard.

But this is my life, not someone else's, and it's best that I settle into the fact that I'm not as smart as I would like to be and I'm too smart to be comfortable where I'm at. I want to say extremely relevant and informative things, but I just don't have any things like that to say.

End of story.

But on a brighter note, I called Cameron in Cape Verde this evening and got to hear his dear voice for approximately seventeen minutes before my money ran out. Seventeen minutes. I suppose someone else could say a lifetime of important things in seventeen minutes. But I just stood silent outside of Mafiaoza's, listening for the sound of his voice, wanting him to tell me the way everything is for him. What is his island like? What are the color of the walls in his room? Will it ever rain there? Is he scared or maintaining sanity or feeling crazy?

Seventeen minutes is longer than it takes me to shower or cook breakfast or drive to the freeway. But it's not very long when Cameron is on one end of the phone and I'm on the other. This Peace Corps thing is a good idea. It is. It is. It is.

Losing two people at once, it's hard to understand distinctly the loss I'd feel if they vanished in different periods of my life. Right now, I have this colored mixture of grief and sorrow, partly for Dad, who I cannot accept is gone at all, and partly for Cameron, who I cannot believe is gone. I feel the loss of Dad anew every time I sense the loss of Cameron in my daily routine and I sense the loss of Cameron most painfully when I'm surprised with the realization that I've lost Dad.

The only thing distinct is the ache itself.
I mean not to write about Dad. But I think about him.