Moving the Couch Part 3: Moving

If you read my initial angsty post about the difficulties of making friends with teenagers on a choir trip, you heard me say that my home was hundreds of miles away. Turns out that home is an ill-defined term and any level of ambiguity is helpful when you’re doing your best to not offend anyone in anyplace that you deem home-worthy. Because otherwise, you know, tears.

Now, I fake moved out from my place in Chapel Hill about a month ago, before Crossflame tour, because the original plan was for me to move out then and because I like even vestigial plans. All I had left to pack was the odds and ends before my little brother came to get my bed, but I took about a week so that I could revel in the joy that is my own space. I mean, I have my own space at my parents’ house, but, as anyone who’s moved back in to their ancestral home can tell you, there’s a whole different set of expectations for your “own space” at your parents’ house. Plus, I adored my little room at Tottenham. I had a chalkboard wall and fairy lights and nerd posters galore. 

I also had some goodbyes to say. I’d already had my work goodbye and my church goodbye and there’s no reason to redo those, but I had some friends in town that I wouldn’t mind another week with. We watched TV and talked and went to movies and cooked and drank and that’s about all I need from life, I think. We went to go see that Disney movie about feelings and I have to say, you do not feel the extent of that movie until you’ve watched it with your friends on your last night in town. 

And then I came home. Well, I mean, then I packed everything I had left and it was just an absurd amount of stuff that barely fit in my little car and then my brother came by and we put my mattress and box spring and other sundries in the back of his truck and he put a tarp on it that I had acquired and thirty minutes down the road I realized that we had forgotten the bed rails for my bed and had a minor emotional breakdown and I am surprised at how often those occur when moving. Goodness knows where my life-couch is now. I may have left it somewhere along exit 266 on 40 west. I’ll start looking soon.

See, I never really moved. I mean, I moved into Tottenham three years ago, but we had the storage pods that they drop off and pick up and drop off and pick up and all you have to do is load your stuff into it and that’s so much easier than getting a mattress into the back of a pickup and driving it a couple hundred miles across the state. And I know I must have moved my mattress into my Rock Creek apartment the year before that, but I don’t remember that at all. Maybe we had a van? 

But I never did the pack-up-whole-rooms-of-the-house-and-pray-you-can-see-out-the-back-window kind of move. And I never crammed a whole comfortable life back into my room at my parents’ house, which already had its own established comfortable life. 

Moving is… hard, you know? Leaving people you care about and may never see again and will slowly lose touch with as you both go about your lives even though there’s the entire internet to help with that. Tearing down a place that has been your comfort in exchange for a place that hasn’t felt like yours in years, even though your furniture and pictures and awards and books are all around. Figuring out what to do with your time and how to explain to your parents that so much of what you want to do with your summer off involves a computer and a set of headphones. Not knowing whether to be sorry or persistent about that. It’s all those readjustments on top of digging through yet another box of clothes to find one decent tank top that makes you squirm in your new old bed, uncomfortable on the down and in deep desire of your own sheets and comforter and tiny, flat pillows. 

You lose a little bit of yourself when you leave. And I’d heard that, but I’d never felt it. That’s really the definition of my life experience. I’ve heard that leaving is difficult, but it hadn’t been for me. I’ve heard that you need other people to care about you, but never lived that need. I’ve heard that people cry when they think they’ll never see each other again and… well, that still hasn’t happened to me, but expect me to blog about it when it does.

As a segue, I’d love to introduce you to my new blog, Allowed. It’s still finding its legs, but I want it to be a little more focused than I’ve been. I’ve got a journal let’s be real it’s a diary where I can chat into the ether about my feelings and hopefully you’ll get the more processed version of that. There’s a lot of nevers that are going to get knocked off my list in the near future- I’ve never been to California, I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon, I’ve never gone to a gigantic nerd conference about Youtube, I’ve never moved to another country, I’ve never gone to school in a castle, I’ve never written a thesis. I want to take those things, those first time feelings, and situate them in light of what I think I can be and what I’ve found I’m allowed to be. 

So yeah. The writing continues. The thinking continues. Because if we’re talking about homes, the one I’ve always known is the one I've carried around in my head, and, no matter where I physically end up, I’m pretty certain I’ll always have one here on the internet. 

Thanks for that, everyone. 

Moving the Couch Part 2: Crossflame Tour Continued

(Missed part 1? You can read it here: http://blackbirdberry.blogspot.com/2015/07/moving-couch-part-1-crossflame-tour.html) 

I’m a problem solver. I pride myself on that. I’m a strong person. I pride myself on that too. Pride, really, is the dolly upon which my life-couch rolls. I’ve crossed many a rough terrain with the help of my pride.

I almost lost it on the Saturday night of Crossflame tour, but there was a concert to do and smiles to be smiled and if there’s anything I can do, it’s smile in front of a group of strangers while keeping the bitterness locked behind my teeth. What I can’t do, apparently, is skip dinner in order to cry aggressively towards the ceiling, do a concert, stay up until 1am to make sure no middle schoolers are up on their phones, do two services on Sunday morning without breakfast, and have three people ask me if I’m okay. Two, apparently, would have been fine, but after the 9:30 service as I was sitting in a pew waiting for lunch, the third came in the form of a youth who wouldn’t take yes for an answer, probably because tear streaks and a shaky voice are the least convincing bouncers for the emotional state to ever exist.

The whole situation spiraled until I was sitting with another adult leader and the youth pastor, with guest appearances by the choir director and Cry-Inducing Questioner #3. And I’m laying out my whole sob story, how I’m, just, so exhausted (we all are), how I feel useless (a cry for affirmation of the work I’ve been doing), and how it’s a waste of time for me to get to know these kids who clearly don’t want to know me (I’m really just afraid that they won’t like me). I’m kicking things off my couch left and right so I can curl up with my Pillow of Existential Doubt and my Blanket of Defensiveness like I’m used to.

But the talk coming back to me was completely opposed to my pillow and my blanket. They were happy for me to air my grievances but their solutions were different than mine. Just get to know three kids today, it’ll be a start. Sit back and let someone else handle things for an afternoon. Let the kids see you be vulnerable- it’ll show them that it’s okay to not be strong all the time. As if every tear wasn’t rusting and aging the wheels of my pride, bringing me closer to panic by the minute because without my pride, I’d be stuck. Let them love on you, they said, like that was a perfectly acceptable option and not a red flag sign of weakness.

But eventually, there were no more tears because there was no more water in my body available to leak out my face. I went to the bathroom to fix the clown makeup that crying creates out of my regular face, realized that I couldn’t, and went to lunch where half the choir, kids I couldn’t even name, came up to me and hugged me and proved that there was some water left in me after all. And as much as I wanted that to be that, this was the start of the long pleasant/painful process of making friends, something I haven’t ben in need of doing in years. I’ve always been pulled in. I never had to invite myself before.

But then Wednesday night rolled around and we were all sitting around a bright campfire, lit with skill, dedication, and a tampon, with people opening up and hugging and caring and affirming, and you could see the exponential growth of this family. We passed around a donated glow stick and listened as people talked again and again about the kindness that had been showed to them and that they had been able to show. When it’s done right, a group like this is blessed with love. We did it right. 

I only held the glow stick for a minute, but it was to thank them all for doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself. That’s all I had. It’s an experience, letting people care about you and for you. It’s an experience, too, to actually sacrifice your time, a part of your life, and have it pay off in the end, to remember that the original option was never to carry your couch alone. It was to have a family. 

So add another to the list, I guess. Crossflame Tour 2K15, family #12. 

Moving the Couch Part 1: Crossflame Tour

Life is like moving a couch. You can't do it alone.

Or no. You can do it alone, but it'll be much more difficult.

Eh. Maybe you could do it alone easily if you have a lot of money to get a robot to carry it for you, but then there'd be no one except the robot to talk to you at the end of the move and they don't have much personality yet.

What I'm saying is, you've got to have a family.

Family doesn't mean blood kin, though it can, and that's a wonderful thing. Family means the people who can drop everything to come help you, who'll hold you when you cry, who'll support you in love and kindness and force unwanted but necessary hugs on you.

That's all well-trod, known information but it bears restating. Family is people who love you. And you need that.

Now, I always knew, on some level, that Crossflame was family. It's the youth choir that I planned my weekday and summer schedules around for ten years, people I looked forward to seeing, a wonderful, comfortable place. Crossflame was the reason I first went to Scotland, so for that reason alone I'm grateful. It was one of many families I’ve had over the years- marching band, camp staff, SAI, planetarium staff, various church friends. For my whole life, I’ve never felt alone or like an outsider, even though I keep myself to myself. I’ve got a great blood family and many more besides.

But then Friday night, day 4 of this year’s Crossflame tour, rolls around and we’re sitting around this fire pit with no campfire, sharing and passing around my phone with the flashlight on, and I know I’m not a part of this family, such as it is. The kids I do know I haven’t seen since they were in kid’s choir and the rest of them have only ever seen my heightened self, the loud leader who knows the plan and how best to make it happen. That person is efficient, functional, capable, and I cling to her positive qualities because they’re all that get me through days like these. These kids don't know me. My family isn’t here with these children sharing halting stories about the profundity they think they’ve seen; it’s hundreds of miles away with my real friends and my internet and my bed and my home. I’ve made a place for myself over the past couple of years and I want to run to it. I’ve never in my life been homesick like this before.

It’s not like God’s helping either. That’s what we’re sharing- God moments- and the deity has been distressingly silent towards me for a while. All I want is a confirmation that I’m doing the right thing, the peace that I used to have, the anointment that David got. If that cheating, murdering SOB can get the full blessing of the Holy Spirit, surely I deserve at least a trickle of affirmation. And so, long after the kids have departed from the cold fire, feeling like they’ve bonded (and in some ways, many of them genuinely have), I’m sitting and staring up at the trees, silently begging and accusingly the sky for reprieves and of crimes I’m not sure I even understand. I’m angry.

By now, my life-couch is sitting firmly on the ground, piled high with wants and needs and desires and frustrations and abandonment and stubbornness and anger draped like a blanket over all the rest. Anger that I’m wasting my time with a bunch of kids who clearly don’t need me on a trip that could be running without me when I could be warm and comfortable in front of my TV. Anger that this transition is so hard, that my life is packed in boxes and I don’t know where I’m going to live come September. Anger that everything I’ve been doing since the 10th grade could have been a mistake and nobody told me. Anger over past hurts. Anger over omission. Anger over perpetual loneliness. Anger, anger, anger.

I could have tried to carry my couch, but why bother? I’d just have to move it again anyway. So all of Saturday, I sat in front of my life-couch, knees pulled to my chest, perpetually ten seconds from tears. 

(Worried that I'm going to leave you with a sad ending? Don't worry! Part 2 is here for you: http://blackbirdberry.blogspot.com/2015/07/moving-couch-part-2-crossflame-tour.html) 

Thoughts on Church and What We're Supposed to Be

I didn’t go to church this week. I ended up worshipping at the Church of the Holy Comforter, as my friend calls it, otherwise known as “accidentally sleeping in because you’ve had an exhausting week and got off work after midnight and forgot to set an alarm.” It was great. 

And you know, I made it through the week just fine. I’m not here to tell you that there’s a mystical recharging of the spiritual batteries every week when you attend service and I’m not here to tell you that God, like a petty, jealous significant other, is going to be upset with you when you miss your designated time to hang out with God and God’s family. Prior planning and a high comfort level with your current circumstances are going to carry you through the regular late spring days on a gentle breeze. In many ways and in the most profound of senses, you’ll be okay if you miss church. Plenty of you have been doing it for years and you’re still doing well.

But I will tell you what I did miss. I missed the chance to make music for free with people I enjoy being around. I missed the opportunity to see people across generations who I like checking in with and who support me in everything I do and through any season of my life. I missed a typically thoughtful lesson on something I care deeply about, Christianity and its life in the world. I missed my weekly reset, the time I take to remind myself that I hope for something bigger and better than anything I can do or make to come into this world.

More than anything else, going to church every week grounds me. It keeps me tied to a world outside my job and my home and my pop culture intake. Twitter might update me with news around the nation and around the world, but that’s always something happening somewhere else. It’s news being told to me in 140 characters or less, a brevity that can typically only draw me in with complete honesty or sensationalism. And still, it’s a story that I read. But going to church is different. I meet people who have different walks in life than I do, different struggles, different victories, and different metrics for both. I meet people who share their stories, the minutiae of their daily lives, and it opens up places in my community for me to see and feel and hear and do. Being there with other people forces me to go outside of myself, which is key for me, a person whose inner monologue is more than enough to keep me company. 

And there’s this thing that ties us all together, though each person sees it to a different degree. We all agreed to be here to follow, as best we can, the teachings of a man who died because he was trying to overthrow the damaging religious elite of his time, who told us to care for the poor and the orphans and the least of these, who told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, who flipped over tables in the face of a system that was separating people from their hope for better times. We all came here to be a part of a movement that is supposed to be this man’s body on the earth, now that he doesn’t have one here, to continue his good works for him. We’re supposed to be this wonderful thing, the greater fool who sits here investing in the earth and its people because we think it’ll be better down the line, that with help, we can choose to make the sacrifices that will make this place a good place for our children and our children’s children to live. There is strength and desperate hopefulness implied in what we choose to believe and somewhere in our Sunday, we all catch a glimpse of that, no matter how tiny the sliver of light is for any given person.

Or that’s what it should be, anyway. I know that church isn’t that for most people. I know that church isn’t always that for anybody. I know that this world can drag us down and make us forget what could be driving us. I know that people can be just the worst thing that ever existed and I know they can break your heart or, even better, slowly wear it down until you don’t know what this shriveled fig is in your chest, but you’re certain you just misplaced your real heart somewhere else. I know that people can ruin lives. I know that churches, built of people, have ruined lives. I hate all of that with a fury fueled by a well of deep sadness about our brokenness. The world is a rough place with injuries that aren’t going to be healed with WWJD bandaids. If the church is going to be any kind of useful, we have to be better than that. 

I just saw Tomorrowland and I’m not going to spoil any of the plot, but at one point, one of the characters is describing what could be and why we find certain things so appealing. It’s because it’s “a future that expects nothing from you.” Oh, let’s be better than that. Let’s allow some expectations to be placed upon us and let’s meet them. Let’s work. Let’s grow the goodness to be found in the world and stifle out the bad. Let’s be better.

I’ll set my alarm on Sunday. 

How Things Have Been Done

When I was a young one in youth group, there were all these high school kids who seemed like whatever the early 2000’s version of the bees’ knees was. Probably something along the lines of, “Just the coolest.” The adults loved them, they walked naturally into leadership roles, and they all hung out together. They were this picture perfect group, the kind that you send to conferences as a representation of your youth group or send to interviews as a positive sampling of your youth choir. I guess they were the popular kids, just like any group has popular kids. To me, at the time, it just seemed that this was How Things Were Done, and you didn’t question How Things Were Done. 

Some year, I was probably in 8th or 9th grade, there was a meeting of youth choir directors at my church, and they had a kind of panel with some kids from our youth choir. It’s beyond me to say what the purpose of the panel was- maybe they wanted to hear what we liked or disliked about our choir and then take those insights and questions back to their own choir? Who knows. But I remember making a comment about how we had had these older kids who seemed like rock stars to me and how, after they graduated, we didn’t have that anymore (it was a transitional year), and how that was a tragedy of sorts. In response, one of the choir directors told a story, as adults who speak to children and teenagers are wont to do, about how when some of those strong voices graduated from his choir, the choir as a whole actually got better. It turns out that those strong voices had been singing flat.

As a Christian, I live and die by understanding the hidden meanings behind parables, so of course Middle or early High School Me would have read the meaning behind that statement. It was probably maybe about working better as a group even though the leaders had gone and finding new leaders or something. But, in fine Christian tradition, I misunderstood the parable, at least at first. It never occurred to me when I was a kid that the older popular kids could have ever been at fault. I  completely missed that bit of the story, the part with the flatness. 

Now, on the flip side of history, looking at that weird mess that is teenage life from the adult side, I see the same things happening. But now I have the problem of liking the popular kids. I weirdly seek their approval. This is something I completely don’t understand because it’s the opposite of what I would have done in the past. When I was growing up, I couldn’t have consciously cared less about what someone else thought about me, other than grown-ups. I was too busy reading or practicing or helping out adults to be worried about what people my own age thought. I got called an old soul and I want to claim that title, but I don’t know that I deserve it. I think I was just a focused soul, one that couldn’t be bothered with people her own age. 

But then I got to college and post-college and suddenly the people my age were people whose approval I wanted. I wanted friends who liked me and I wanted strangers to walk away with a positive impression of me and I wanted to excel at work because money and resumes and the future, and also, I want people to like me. I started to think more about how other people perceived me and how I measured up to others. And, as the story always goes, I started to see how much I fell short in those comparisons. 

That’s a shame, because I like the person I’ve become, with the exception of a few items that have left room for improvement. (I promise, Body, we’re going to start jogging again and taking multi-vitamins. Stop whining so much.) I have friends who like me. I have friends among the kids at youth group who like me. We’ve found the weird things that make us awesome and just embraced that. Given the option, of course I’d hang around with these kids.

And I want to tell them to say, “Screw it, I don’t need you anyway,” when the popular kids come around, but I also know that the popular kids have the ears of the adults. The popular kids are in positions of leadership. The popular kids can sway the direction of the group. If the popular kids don’t like you, even if they aren't vocal about it, you’re left to fend for yourself and that’s hard in teenage-land. The problem here is not with my wonderful little weirdos who’d be friends with anyone who walked their way with a smile on their face, it’s with the popular kids who know they can pick and choose and that others watch their picking and choosing. It's that they don't choose to wield that power for good. 

This is not new territory. These are not new stories to be told. We all went through this. My question, though, is why do we continue to go through this? Why do we, as adults, who know that this tiered structure of high school is happening, do nothing to stop its perpetuation? Is it because we know that the rest of their lives are going to be lived out in some semblance of a popularity contest? Or are we just too apathetic or self-absorbed or afraid to step in and make any real changes? 

I suppose it’s all a little revolutionary, telling everyone they’re equal even if they’re quiet or too loud or don’t know what to say when they meet someone or say the most awkward thing possible or don’t know how to connect with others. It must be really outside of the box to give a person value despite a lack of social skills. We are, after all, social creatures. It’s our default state to value those who can navigate the social waters with perfection. 

Only… can I ask you one thing? This week, this month, this year, use the energy you have to choose once, just once, to do something other than default. Get past that devaluing you want to do. Invest in someone, and not just someone you like. The world will be a better place if we do that. If we all do that.

Stories From the Bells

So I rolled up to handbells last night figuring there would be at least one person absent because there’s always one person absent. We always need a sub and typically that sub is me. Well, has been me for the past few years, as my job has really limited me from being available for bells of late, so the life of a sub it is. But at yesterday's rehearsal, when there wasn’t a place for me to be, I realized I was that person. I was still here in this college town despite having graduated four years ago. I was old. I didn't belong. I hadn’t really ever felt that way before.

I started playing handbells my freshman year of college. I mean, I had played as much handbells as you played in elementary school as a church choir kid (we’re a specific and special breed) and I can read music, but I wasn’t a part of a bell choir until freshman year. I had a campus minister ask me what that was all about. “I mean, you just don’t hear of many people going to college and joining a bell choir.” And if I had been the person I am today, I would have told him that the world would be a better place if you did, but at the time, the question stumped me. I had a straightforward answer: the chancel choir, who sang on Sundays, met on Thursdays and that conflicted frequently with marching band. I couldn’t give up band, but I could replace choir and that’s what I did. 

I didn’t realize that I was just trying to fill my college schedule the way my high school schedule had been filled because I didn’t realize that my college schedule would be under so much more academic strain than my high school schedule. But as other activities fell to the side when the physics major started heating up, I kept up with bell choir. It was a fun thing, an hour or so of my week where I interacted with people outside of my age group who weren’t trying to teach me something, tying me to the bigger group of the church proper.

I don’t know if all church bell choirs are like this, but our choir is full of the fastest wits and the most intentionally sassy women I know. They crack jokes about songs and composers and how there’s no way we could play any of this and after all that, they pull off songs with aplomb. They’re also some of the sweetest and most supportive people I know- for years, one of the members of the bell choir let me stay at her house so I could play at the Moravian Love Feast every December after the dorms had closed. So bell choir practice in and of itself is usually a party and a half. 

Take today for example. Today, as we were waiting for the other member of the bass bells pair to show up, one of the trebles made the announcement that she and her husband (the present bass bells player) were going to have a baby, which was accompanied by the typical shouts and squeals and smiles and questions, and then followed by jokes about why she’d make that announcement without the other bass bell player there. Then he arrived, about five minutes late,  and the father-to-be held up a pencil and said, “I came prepared for bells tonight! Also, we’re having a baby!” And the newly arrived bass player said, “You brought a pencil?!”

Which, yes, cheesy music situational joke, but I love it. I love hanging out with these people. It’s why I found myself on a warm April evening sweating in the choir director’s office, windows open, wondering to which committee one has to submit a request in order to get a fan installed and when they meet. Despite the heat, it’s a comfortable place. Like so many other parts of church, this is home. This is a constant in a university community where so many things change every four years. 

I’ve been ready to go. Just, the most ready to be somewhere else, doing something new. But this is something I’ll miss deeply and it’s tempting to hang on to that kind of thing for all it’s worth. I know there are things I won't want to leave. In my last few days in town, I’ll walk campus and take an Old Well picture and a bell tower picture and think about all the mornings walking half an hour up to class from Hinton James North or Rams Five. I’ll run an eye over the libraries and the pit and my junior year dorm and take that last opportunity to glory in the loveliness of this place. And after that, I’ll be able to let those things go.

But these people, these groups, I’m not ready to leave that. Which is good, you know, it shows that there’s something worth staying for and that I’m not just running. One of the podcasts I listen to takes question suggestions and mine was, “How long do you have to live in a place to be able to say you’re from that place?” and they tweeted back, “It depends on how much you hate where you’re from.” I loved that.

I’m not from Chapel Hill. I don’t think I’d ever be able to say that I’m from Chapel Hill,  not if I stayed five or six or ten years from now, even. Not that I’m ready to run back to Caldwell County (hi, family, I love you!), but this, this was not going to be a place that I was from. It’s good to see that. It’s good to know that. Ultimately, it’s gonna be good to leave that. 

Just not yet. 

Turn Back Time

(Editor's note: I explain the backstory behind this in this months Flight of the Vlogyries video, which you, if interested, are more than welcome to watch here.)

If I were to spend an afternoon with my 4th grade self, I'd take her bowling and rollerskating and to a planetarium and to go see some dinosaurs. I'd show her how to make a salad with spinach and cranberries and walnuts and have her help me make a casserole and a cake from scratch.

The whole time, I'd remind her of the important things, like brushing her teeth and listening to others, really, really listening. I'd remind her that the things we make up in our heads are dreams. I'd leave her with a notebook and a pen and tell her to keep her dreams there.

If I had a day with my 7th grade self, I'd give her a recipe for blackberry pancakes and a grocery list and take her to the store before making her make breakfast. Then we'd commander the TV and watch rented episodes of Buffy and Gilmore Girls and West Wing. I'd take her to buy nerf guns and frisbees and we'd spend the afternoon in the park.

I'd tell her that her body is a beautiful mess that she has to take care of. I'd make her promise, pinky swear, to talk to her mother about bras and makeup and periods and friends and basketball and boys, because I think her mother is just waiting for her to ask. I'd show her how to use a telescope and point it at the Orion Nebula and tell her that she can study things like this, if she wanted to. I'd leave her with a new toothbrush and floss, a copy of Sonnets From the Portuguese, a couple of script books, and a notebook and a pen, because there's a world inside of her that no one is going to know about until she tells them.

I'd spend a morning with my 9th grade self. We'd go to Target and after racing carts around the store and trying out all the furniture and perusing the music and movies, we'd go to the clothes. I'd have her pick out one outfit and then I'd pick one out for her. We'd go choose one pair of shoes each. I'd explain those intimidating walls of makeup and hair products, if I still needed to, and then I'd drag her home and show her the kind of pretty she can be when she wants. She can be the kind of woman that men want to look at, and that's okay. She can let a boy hold her hand and kiss her cheek- it's not going to crack her armor.

Then I'd take her driving with the windows down and the music up and teach her to sing along loud. I'd tell her that cars are perfect places for deep conversations and that when she meets a boy named Isaac, she should never ask him to try to change. When I drop her off, I'd stop her from leaving the car until she swore she'd ask her daddy to show her how to make a turkey dinner. I'd leave her with a reminder to brush twice a day, floss once, be present in everything, and to slow down when she talks to her elders. I'd put a notebook in her backpack with a list of movies and shows and books and bands for her to experience when she wants something new.

I'd spend the last week of the summer before sophomore year of college with myself because we have a lot to talk about and the hurt she carries can still sit me down today. I think we'd pull out the frisbee again, but this time take kites and sandwiches and make a day at the beach of it. We'd have a nerf gun fight, but I'd make her organize 7 person teams in the park. We'd see dinosaurs and stars and art and plays. We'd go shopping for a good cocktail dress and cosmetic basics and I'd buy her a pair of boots that she will adore.

In between driving the Blue Ridge parkway and listening to the Avett Brothers and cooking Sunday dinner for the family, we'd watch Lost or The Office and I'd tell her about how purpose is an amorphous blob until you find what you love, and that it will bounce you around all the way up until it solidifies and smacks you in the face. I'd tell her that she doesn't owe her Ideas of Who She Is or the Things She Said She'd Be anything. She is not beholden to the sadness she takes on her shoulders. I'll remind her that she is an old soul, one that maybe took too much joy the last time around, but that that doesn't mean she can't have any this time. I want to find her a boy that will spin her around and tell her that she gets to be happy and watch that stupid glorious hope dawn in her eyes.

And while she's distracted, I'd leave her with a set of pots and pans, $500 in a retirement account, a prepaid Netflix account, and a binder with core strengthening exercises, recipes, approximate cost of dental fillings and root canals, and articles on creativity, the large scale structure and fate of the universe, feminism, and false dichotomies. Beside the binder, I'd put a beer glass with a Star Wars toothbrush, the perfect shade of lipstick, and an empty flash drive.

She'll know what to do.

Snow Thoughts

I sat alone a few minutes before I was supposed to go into rehearse for the Ash Wednesday service last week, watching from the inside as the snow covered the windshield of my car and thinking that a year from now, I’ll have one of these things and not the other. 

Tuesday morning, I woke up to a pretty snowfall coating roofs and tree branches and the already frozen ground and as I walked to my window watching the swirls of snowflakes in the air, I thought that I’ll never quite get over my innate excitement when it snows. I imagine they don’t have snow days with breaks from school and runs on the grocery stores in Scotland, but I don’t think I’ll mind it so much; I’ll have proper winter boots and a warm winter coat and gloves and scarves and anyway, ice is the worst part of a North Carolina winter. 

I know that I talk out of my- sorry, I know that I frequently speak with authority on subjects about which I have no actual knowledge. I also know everyone else does that too. So when I say that snow is still going to be magical for me, I need you to put your internal ragemonsters away because yes, I know that it’s a pain going to work in the snow (I’ve done it several times); yes, I know that making up school is a burden on families, communities, teachers, and schools (my program makes its money from visits scheduled at schools during the school day); and yes, I know that after months of snow, I will probably never want to see it again. But in my heart, I want to maintain that tiny seed of joy that was planted the minute I was born in a southern state where snow is an event and not a perpetuality. 

And that’s my problem. For all the faults and failures of my life, I still want to keep it as is. Well, maybe not “as is,” maybe that’s a step too far in the direction of preservation, but I think, for the most part, I’ve become who I was going to be. I’m excited about where I’m going and I’m content about where I’ve come from and I feel like that kind of acceptance of my own personal status quo is a lie my subconscious is telling me. I can’t really be okay with who I am, can I? What am I missing? 

In a thousand quotidian ways, I know I can improve. I can yell less and be confident more. I can listen to my body and actively listen to other people. I can give away more of my possessions and money and time, because I have an abundance. I could care more. I could create more. But finally, finally, finally, I think I have a solid foundation upon which to build. I think I know who I am. That doesn’t help me with my place in the universe and it doesn’t help pay my bills, but it’s nice. It’s nice to know I’m not some bunch of chemicals walking around in a skin sack confused. I’m some bunch of chemicals walking around in a skin sack with a deeper understanding of my mental, emotional, and spiritual state, which, I believe, is an improvement all its own. 

Yesterday, I was sitting in my car getting myself together as I waited for the snow to start falling again and I had a tearful realization which may or may not have been accompanied by sobs, quiet screams, and prolonged pounding on my steering wheel. I was thinking about a lecture I had just been to and how two darling little old ladies had said that the speaker, a full-time professor with a doctorate, was “such a sweet young lady” who “talked so quickly” and “must be so smart to keep all those facts in her brain.” And I was thinking about how sometimes when I talk, it’s like the sound waves dissipated in the air before they ever reached anyone’s ears and how I waste time asking questions that show my insight just so I can be taken seriously at the table and how I let myself be goofy and inept and clueless in front of my friends as a price paid for acceptance and how I can’t take any of that back and how I do not know how to earn value in this world, the kind of value that is paid out in attention and respect, which is really what I want more than anything. I don’t know what hoops to jump through, what tasks to complete, what words to say, how to dress, how to do my hair, how to smile, what I need to do in order to earn that value from anyone. 

And then I stopped, because the roller coaster had reached its peak and in that breath-taking moment, when the real world had hushed because the clouds were fixing to open and the world inside my head was already silent because a Word had fallen, in that moment I remembered that I already had all the value I needed. I was allotted that baseline worth before I took my first breath and no one can take it from me, though I may feel like that has been true in the past. No one can take away my value. They can only add to it. The amount they add may grow over time or it may diminish, and I might get used to what they added and miss it when it’s gone, but they can only add. They can only add. They can only add. 

It felt like a mantra best whispered at night when ghosts made of misspoken regrets swirl around, but maybe that’s what mantras are for, for saving you from yourself. And maybe my current emotional state is something along the lines of “sitting in the roller coaster train waiting for the drop”, but at least I talked myself onto the ride in the first place. And if I can knock out all those fears and doubts, then there’s nothing left but to enjoy the ride. Sitting at the top, you can see the whole track laid out in front of you, heart-pounding excitement that will throw you around and bring you back with windswept hair. 

That’s exciting. 

And it snowed last night. 

Once Upon A

Why did no one warn me about that spotlight?

Once.

Seriously, I can’t see a thing.

Once upon a time,

Is that Ryan?

there was a castle in a city on a hill. 

It’s so sweet that he came again tonight.

A river ran through the city, 

You know, as a friend. 

past the castle, where children and workers and friends would swim and sail boats and float. All around

Use your hands.

the city with the castle in it were mountains. These mountains kept the city safe. 

The people in the city were very happy. 

Smile.

They had a kind King and a just Queen with many daughters and sons of varying talents, each lovely in their own way. The kingdom was prosperous. All was well.

Remember what Nell said. Don’t give it away again.

No one knew the second daughter was cursed.

In the city with the castle, by the river with the boats, there lived a Young Man of stout heart and good conscience. 

Did Ryan just move up a row? 

Each day, as he watched the guards entering and leaving the castle, he grew closer to realizing

I swear, that’s not where he was sitting before.

how much he would like to join them.

I think he’s smiling at me.

Up, up, up in the mountains around the city with the castle lived a kind Old Woman. She lived with her animals and any weary travelers who needed a place to lay their heads for a night or seven. Each Thursday, she brought a basket of flowers or berries or nuts or tired bits of trees to the market in the city. She would also bring tales told to her by the travelers, stories of monsters and heroes, loves lost and won, families broken and saved. When the woman came town, all the people listened. They shared their stories in turn and the woman carried those stories up the mountain along with the goods she gained from her wares. 

All was well

Oh, for the love of God, did your voice just break? 

Get it together.

until the day that the Old Woman came to the city with the castle with news of that most vicious and hulking of monsters- war. Travelers, fleeing from villages that had been razed to the ground by shadow beasts that none could describe nor defeat, had shown up at her door. Panicked and destitute, they had come across the mountains to seek the shelter of the castle, but unless a force went to meet them and throw them back, the horrible shadow creatures could not be far behind.

The good King and Queen called their councils to order, weighing the woman’s tale. The entire kingdom waited in anticipation, none more than the good people of the city with the castle in it.  The next day, the King called all who would listen to the city square and announced that the kingdom would send out soldiers to fight in this war against the shadows. The Bravest Princess and Prince would go out to fight with them, as a symbol of the King’s commitment to preserving the kingdom’s lands. 

I’ll give it to you, Nell. This is a good moment. 

The gathered crowd gasped

Make them see it.

and cried out and the city square shook with their disappointment and fear, for the Bravest Prince and Princess were well loved by the people. When they rode out of the city with the castle surrounded by the mountains, the roads and the river were covered with white flowers, placed by the people with the promise of remembrance. 

Did that old man seriously cough just now? Way to ruin the atmosphere, Grandpa. 

With so many fighters gone,

How much of a stink eye is professional to give to a cougher?

the Young Man who lived by the river got his chance. 

Seriously, can I get you a lozenge? 

He joined the castle guard

Can anyone get him a lozenge?

and spent his days protecting the Second Princess. He stayed by her side as the war dragged on and the shadow army approached and were thrown back time and again. They followed the progress of the battles together and watched the world change around them, growing less secure and more frightening. He held her tightly on the day they received the news that her brother had been killed in battle.

Eyes anywhere except Ryan.

They fell in love. 

The Queen didn’t approve and the King had hoped for royalty, but together they understood the value of a celebration at a time like this. The ceremony would be small, to reflect the war efforts, but it would be a reason to rejoice nonetheless. The Second Princess and the Young Man from the river were greeted by crowds gathered in the gardens of the castle minutes after they were married and they waved at the people from the shortest balcony on the south wall of the castle, radiant in their happiness.

Oh, Nell, why didn’t you end the play here?

Seasons passed and the Old Woman returned to the city with the castle with the best of news.

Hey, where did…

The war was ending. 

Did he leave?

The monsters, defeated, retreating, had left the villages on the other side of the mountains unmolested for months, thanks to the King’s brave forces. There was a kingdom-wide festival of light and food and color and togetherness, for they had all come through this dark time side by side, hand in hand. Joy was everywhere

Pause. Breathe.

except in the castle. 

The Second Princess’ curse had finally come to life. 

As the kingdom around her returned to normal and bards composed songs of the tales brought back from war, the princess was racked from head to toe with unspeakable pain. The King and Queen had her moved to the top of the highest tower to give her quiet and help her heal and still her screams echoed through the castle, bouncing off the grey stone of the walls. 

The royal family worked day and night to find a cure for the curse. After all, they had just won a war, the Bravest Princess reasoned. Surely this was but another battle to fight. 

The bravadic idiot.

But the neither the Bravest Princess’ sword nor her siblings’ wisdom or charity or tenacity or patience could defeat the curse. None could find a way to rid the Second Princess of her pain. The years wore on and the royal family gave up all hope. 

I still can’t believe Ryan left. 

All except the Young Man from the river. 

There’s like two minutes left.

He would come to his wife’s side each evening when her throat was too raw to do anything other than moan, just before the healers put her to sleep. He would hold her tightly, as he had held her in her loss, and say over and over again, “I love you, I love you, I-

love you.” 

RYAN?! What the... you can't just...

Annabelle, you're a professional. Be cool. Be cool.

Because her husband was so devoted, he was the first to see her on the morning that

they found the cure for the curse.

Are we really doing this? 

Nell really isn't going to stop…? 

All right.

The second princess couldn’t believe it. After years of immense pain, it seemed like hope was at last in sight. 

The cure required a quest, a long journey to search for the ingredients. The Young Man volunteered right away,

leaving his wife,

in order to save her. 

I NEVER NEEDED YOU TO SAVE ME.

The journey took two years, four months, one week, and one day, but the Young Man from the river returned with every ingredient in the amount needed, completely safe and sound.

Unfortunately, during that time, the Second Princess had

forgotten who her husband was. 

Because she died. She dies, Ryan. She DIES. Saving her cheapens the story, wraps everything up in a bow, misses the point of this play, the play that I am doing night after night as a favor to my friend, a favor TO MY FRIEND, and you have missed the point that just because you win one war does not mean that you win them all. SHE. DIES.

But he remembered. 

He remembered her hair and her face and her laugh and her smile. He remembered how they’d fight over the most useless things, 

Ryan…

but how they’d come back together

Ryan, step back.

with a kiss. 

A kiss can’t save every story.                                                                    A kiss can’t save every story. 

He could only hope that it would save this one. 

...

...

The Young Man came back on a Thursday. 

Take my hand. 

That night, as the Old Woman travelled back to her home in the mountains, she carried home a story different from the one she had expected to tell. Instead of the deep purple cloths of mourning, she carried the bright yellows that announced a new festival. The story she carried, 

it was a story of rescue,

a story of chances, 

chances that wouldn’t be wasted. 

Twice. 

I can't believe you. Honestly, I can't. 

Now bow with me, you glorious mistake. 

God, that light is bright. 

Stories and Nets

(The sermon series we're doing right now is following the lectionary through the Gospel of Mark and this is inspired in part by the passage from this morning: Mark 1: 16-20. The sermon may have made this exact point, but I wasn't listening as much as I should have because I was too busy being distracted by my overly dramatic, slightly tortured inner monologue. Sorry about that.) 

There are stories that we tell over and over because we love them. A hero fights a monster and saves the day. A lost soul in search of love finds it through mishap and adventure. Against all odds, the most unexpected person triumphs. These are our fairy tales, our fables, our novels, our movies, our bedtime stories. We come back to them time and again. 

There’s a story that we love to tell in the church. It’s a call story. It’s when the hero of your tale hears God’s plan for their life clear and true and willingly follows. It’s the story of Abraham, Moses, Samuel, of the fishermen who became disciples and the Christians who followed after. Sure, everyone has bumps along the way, but everyone picks up and follows the Lord when he calls. That’s what we’re meant to emulate; we’re meant to be faithful and obedient on a life-altering scale for the good of the people around us and those who will come after.

But we all know that the stories we tell don’t always reflect the realities we live. Some souls don’t find love and spend their whole lives wondering what was so wrong with them, when the fault really lies with the people who assume love is water and not wine. Some heroes fail to slay the dragon and the townspeople have to find a way to rebuild away from the charred remains of the only home they ever knew. Some giants win. And sometimes, when Jesus calls, we stay behind to tend the boat.

I have a lifetime of practicality behind me, the kind of practicality that worries about that worship leader’s microphone cord wrapping around her ankles as she spins in the Spirit on stage, the kind of practicality that thinks about how much it must cost to build those houses we’re sending our mission team to build. I look at the numbers, I think about the logistics, and I ponder what would happen if we all dropped our nets to follow Jesus because in all practicality, we can’t do that. Someone’s got to pay for the upkeep of this building. Someone’s got to bankroll your ministry. And if we had success beyond our wildest dreams and gathered every human together on this earth in a faithful crowd, someone would still need to leave the communion table to bake the bread and crush the grapes. We need people to do the jobs that need doing. Mary could take that break to listen at the feet of Jesus because Martha was working. 

That’s why so many of the stories I’ve been told during my life worm into my heart and rankle me. How did Papa Zebedee’s fishing business fair when James and John left the boat? If we let the dead bury the dead, how many carrion birds will burst from overeating? And in these hero’s quests, when someone goes out to find themselves or whatever their goal is, who takes care of the tasks they had been entrusted with before they decided to leave their town? When you go off on a journey, you make more work for other people who can’t go because you just left. It’s a simple task to spin these tales as stories of selfishness, perpetrated by dreamers who never really understood the value of the work they did in the first place. 

I know it’s an easily solved complaint. We all have different gifts and some are meant to follow while others stay behind. Everyone can’t change the world- we’d cancel each other out. The best faith, I think, balances the practical with the knowledge that some moments pull us out of the necessary into a glorious impracticality. It’s good to have a faith that looks out for that. And I guess I’m not really mad at those who leave the boat for putting the rest of us in a difficult position; I’m mad because I want to be one of them. 

Every time I hear or see or sing one of those call stories, my heart pounds. I want to leave everything and go somewhere new, to follow a leader, a cause, a dream, anything that takes me away with a purpose. I want to throw my life at something and hope that it sticks. Theoretically, I know there’s another person who can do everything I do and that this life I’ve been leading, it’ll be fine when I go. I’m not leaving my net abandoned in the water. The practicality is satisfied and I can go off on my well-earned adventure. I know that, I know that, I know that and yet I still chase my fears around in circles until we’re both exhausted, collapsing in a pile, looking up at that shiny thing that is a call and a purpose and wondering why there isn’t one there for me. 

But not everyone’s story is a call story and not every call story is the same. We play with our narratives, bend them into an arc that follows our lives just a little more accurately. I know that I’m still a work in progress, that this is not the time to sit back and reflect on the journey thus far because there’s not much journey to see yet. But there will be.

And one day, I’ll tell that story. 

Cadence

Figuring out where you belong is an odd thing. 

We live in a world where many people can see outside of their hometown with ease. We know that there is an entire globe of new places out there, beyond the city limits of the place you grew up. So for people who don’t want to stay in the place where they started their life, they know that there are options. There are other places to be. You just have to get there, through varying degrees of difficulty.

Many of us go through school finding friends at our school or in our neighborhood or on our sports teams or any other of the dozens of extracurriculars we try throughout our life. We find a group in high school (or we don’t) of friends who have similar interests to us. Sometimes we keep those through college. Sometimes we reinvent ourselves. Sometimes we find friends at work or… I don’t know how you meet people if it’s not through an activity, actually. 

But how do you know what your interests are and how to do you serve those interests as they change? You are constantly becoming the person you will be and I wouldn’t want to go back to anyone I was in the past. I’ve come far. I’m happy with myself as I am right now. The changes haven’t been dramatic, but now that I know who I am, how do I know where to be? 

Do you listen to your gut, which is influenced by how much you ate that day and how you’re feeling that week and how much sunshine you’ve seen recently? Do you listen to your brain, knowing that the logical choice may not be the choice that makes you happiest? Do you pursue happiness? When do you take momentary sadness for the greater good, for your greater good? I pride myself on practicality, but I know that my practicality is cushioned by my feelings, my hopes, and my dreams. 

Amelia Earhart once said, “The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure. The process is its own reward.” But this was said to be heard by the people who have the privilege of following their dreams, who have the luxury of time and education and the feeding of their desires. I do feel as if I can do anything I decide to do. So how do I decide what to do? 

I don’t want to limit myself, to disavow myself of a privilege because others don’t have it. I’d rather use my privilege to help build a world where everyone has that privilege, where everyone has a chance to do anything they decide to do. But those are just words and I don’t know how to shape those words into actions. I don’t know how to turn anything I’d want to do into something that actively improves the world and the situations of the people in it. And I can’t settle, I can’t decide where to be until I know that I’m helping. I am restless with the guilt of my station. 

I know what I’m doing next. I know where I’m going. I’m confident in that. I will pursue a degree with tenacity, and after that jobs, and after that, a career that is helpful, but I feel the need to pause, to take a rest, before I dive in. I need this beat to view the course. Is this what I want? Is this what I should be doing? Why? 

I wish there was a process for this, a checklist that I could run down and answer with honesty and clarity, that will point out my blindspots and assuage my doubts. I want to know what I don’t know and I want to address those things. But it’s just life. This is how we do things. This is how we carry forward. And I can only hope that at the end of this road, I will find a settled place, somewhere I know I can belong.

To 2015

I’ve been thinking about this past year. I’ve been thinking about memories and how they change over time. I’ve been thinking about spaces and how they hold onto ideas you never wanted them to have. I’ve been thinking about events and arcs and other people’s stories, real and imagined. I’ve been thinking about 2014 and what it will mean over the course of the rest of my life. 

It was quite the year for me, for my friendships and my family and my future. I realized exactly how much each of those things can mean, and how much each of them can hurt you, and how helpful each can be in your life. You get to decide, you know? You’re not just a ship tossed about by waves. You have a rudder. You have a compass. You can find a map. 

In maybe February or March or April, I read the Dear Sugar advice column #64: Tiny Beautiful Things. Even though the column has much that I can’t relate to, I can’t get the image of purple balloons out of my head and the wisdom in remembering that you do still have a right to such tiny beautiful things. Situations may take you a plethora of places that you didn’t want to ever be and didn’t realize you should have steered away from, but no matter how far away you are from what you thought was good, you still deserve good things. Like forgiveness. And love. 

In May, I listened to The Debate, one of Welcome to Night Vale’s live shows, in a blanket fort I made in a hotel and I napped in the afternoon sunshine, basking in this current definition of my life. Night Vale relishes the weird, the odd, the creeping scary stories that we’d tell around campfires if we weren’t so afraid of the night and I love that. There is a robust fragility to humanity and I am perpetually reminded of that fragility and that strength in me when I listen to these stories. It is a twice-monthly brightening of my life, something to pull me out of where I’ve been, over and over again. 

In June, July, and August, I had a weekly two-and-a-half hour meeting with Interstate 40, east then a few days later, west, between North Carolina exits 266 and 123. My life arrived at the point where I no longer considered the drive a road to be travelled but a location at which I found myself for five hours in a week. Maybe the vehicle or the music changed, but the feeling was the same. It was an isolation of space from location, the same thing that I felt at my last Avett Brothers New Year’s Eve last night. We might change venues and the people around me may be different, but this feeling, this sensation, it’s the same. I know how it feels to be here, even though the coordinates of here have changed. 

In August and September and October and November, I thought about the person I wanted to represent myself as being and I wrote that person down and I hid the doubts and the lack of confidence in my plans, as one does when one is desperately trying to change one’s situation, and in December, I did my best to figure out what you do with yourself once your most unreasonable dreams have been realized. 

In general, 2014 wasn’t stellar. It was an exercise in getting by, in succeeding with the resources you have available to you and hoping that those resources and your wit/skill/gumption will carry the day. And that getting by, that doing my best with what I had, that went on for so long, I forgot what it was like to just live. To just exist. To have enough and not to feel stretched or squeezed by existence. 

I’ve got some clarity back, some space and some time, and I remember what it’s like to live your life, and how it’s different from getting by. I want to keep this feeling. I know there will be highs and lows, times of plenty and times of difficulty, times of renewal and times of giving. I’ve seen the difference between faking it ’til you make it and actually having the skill and energy and ability to move forward without being shattered into a million pieces. I know the difference between trying (when trying is all you have) and performing. 

I much prefer performing. 

So here’s to a year when we don’t just get by, but we live.

Here’s to a year when circumstances allow us to do our best instead of to try our hardest. 

Here’s to a year when, if again circumstance breaks us down, the people around us catch us with the grace and competence given them. 

Here’s to 2015.