"Every package has somewhere to go and the contents remain a mystery. Occasionally, I'll find a box where the address has been written by a child. I used to put these boxes to the side until the end of my shift so I could study the penmanship and compare it to Leo's. In a child's handwriting, language is exposed as the pained and crooked medium it really is. Since loosing Leo these packages are like shards of glass."

"I miss autumn-- the sason when summer takes on the memory of its own mortality. And then winter. And the the miracle seaosn, when everything begins again fearlessly."

-- Simon Van Booy, "Distant Ships," (from "The Secret Lives of People in Love")

My new journal has been christened by the first splash of clumsily spiled coffee. I caught the edge of the saucer, tipped the cup and sent the creamy lifeblood to distant reaches. The man at the next table responded instantly to the unmistakable clink by turning to the opposite side and somehow I knew he was going to hand me a napkin soon. It seems often I drop a pencil, spill a notebook full of paper, dump my coffee and everyone else wants to clean it up while I find little reason to jump up and clean it. The mess is okay for me.

I waited a few minutes and forgot about the man's search in his packpack until he produced a single white napkin-- a kind gesture, but inadequate for the spill. I set the napkin upon the saucer and turned back to my book, unconcerned. I found the passage, copied it out, replaced the bookmark and glanced at the cup, saucer, and napkin, surprised. The lily white object residing somewhere between paper and cloth now took on hue, value, and saturation of the still considerably-full cup and the saucer now mirrored the past purity of the gifted napkin. Strange how, bit by bit, all is changed.

I've been fighting in the trenches of children without enough time with their parents for one year and thirteen days now-- approximately speaking. People ask me that question of questions: "What do you do?" and immediately I feel the gigantic pocket of airlessness in this gap. The What I Do-ness seems 80% irrelevant to the real question, which is: How does your daily activity encapsulate who you really are? I feel guilty or empty or something, so I don't say what I am really thinking, which is "I am waiting for my life to begin," because this seems like a stupid, shallow, disconnected, discontent, un-spiritual, and faithless thing to say-- I feel immature in thinking that . {And actually, I do say this sometimes, but I still feel all of these things, so I immediately try to take it all back, stuffing it back into my pack, and walk away in true accordance with the failure that I feel in its truth}

But I am working on a bit of a personal project, which is the endeavor to stop hiding from things that are actually true. That is, stopping the urge to pretend that I don't feel the things I really feel deeply, quitting giving into the temptation of guilt for wanting the things that I really want, putting an end to pretending like I don't think things that I do. I've decided that even the unmet desires are better acknowledged for what they are than the excoriating pain of killing every good thing from the inside out.

So I'm not doing the things that I really want to do. My day job gets in the way of my real life. I hope for things that I've been trying to deny myself for a million years. I'm giving in to the urge to stop doing things that my mind screams I must do at the expense of listening to my need for sleep and beauty and relationship.

I'm doing what I want to do when I want to do it, despite the condemnation that comes pouring in the form of "what if's" and "your faults."

I keep having dreams that people give me new cars-- totally undeserved and unrepayable gifts.

I've started expecting men to hold open doors for me and I've started walking through them like I deserve it.

I used to be really good at pushing down my heart and convincing myself that I am not only okay with, but "really enjoy doing things by myself." I'm not good at this anymore and I have legitimately stopped telling myself that I like it. I've started admitting that I have chosen not to do particular things because I simply didn't want to to it alone. I've started to choose not to do things because I don't want to do them alone. I've given in to the temptation to simply grieve it instead.

I've started telling the truth: I don't like being alone. I hate it in fact.

Which leads me, inevitably, to the thought that perhaps, I don't have to keep telling myself that I'm alone and that's the way it has to be. I've started to accept the reality that I am worthy of being known and that I don't have to sit through the pain of running from the fear that I may yet be found unworthy.

I was falling asleep in Old Chicago at midnight when I had a bit of a personal epiphany. I spent the evening caught between the disconnect of my exhaustion and need to be refilled. Too tired to speak, but deeply needing to be heard.

"I spend the day making sure everyone is feeling loved and cared for," I said-- mostly for my own hearing. I realized in that moment that all I wanted was to be seen, but free of demand. And then, the thought went through my head, or maybe it emanated from my heart, I'm not sure which: Is there really anyone to make sure I am feeling loved and cared for? Sometimes it is so hard in this parched desert to hold the small droplets of water given. I hope for the day when the famine gives way to feast. Refreshment.

But, I realize, like my now-brown napkin, that so much is given-- the desires of our parched heart-throats-- through small processes of osmosis, the permeable membranes crossed slowly by ongoing contact. And, before we know it, the fibers are filled to the brim and the mess of our spilled-upon saucers are restored to their pure whites. Neighbors pull napkins from backpacks and men hold doors for women. College graduates endure hourly jobs until hopes are met in opened positions and people who recognize the worth in our faithfulness-- even when there are wrenches thrown in our plans, even when the coffeee spills, and we find ourselves in that gap between hope and dream and there are only crocked letters scrawled by children-- we find a way to hold our purple, wounded hearts open and He comes in.

foreign languages

"Attachments occur when we take the risk to allow someone else to matter enough to us to hurt us if they choose to."

Attachment, or boundedness, is our deepest need. This is because it is also the deepest part of the character of God.

The Bible goes so far as to identify the very nature of God with love: 'God is Love' (1 John 4:8). Love, which comprises the deepest part of who God is, determines what he does: 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son.'

God is pro-relationship and anti-isolation.

The existence of emotional attachments in our lives is not an option; it is not a luxury. It is a spiritual and emotional necessity. We are designed for it....

It's a sad fact that Christians who have ever been able to be vulnerable with their needs for connection sometimes are then drawn to fellowships where true bonds were trivialized-- or, even worse, dismissed as 'trusting man too much,' The fact is that having relationships with God and other persons is not an either-or proposition. It's a both-and necessity. The heart has a deep need for God, who placed eternity there. The same heart yearns for the satisfying and safe human attachments in which we can be truly known and truly loves, that we may all be one."

"As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment, heaven was opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, 'This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."

"This is my son, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life."



And now, for a personal conversation {taking place in my head}:


"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Hurting," she said.

"Why?"

"Because that is what I do."


It's gut wrenching, I am pretty sure. I ask myself why the year is passed and I look up from my lunch and see failure written without color on the whiteboard across from me. Who wrote that? I ask myself and then immediately wonder how many times I've read it over and over and over again. Now that I've looked at each letter and it's stabbed me in the heart, I think I might be ready to erase it.

It's depressing, I know. My finger reaches for the backspace.

But I think about why I feel this way and begin to consider whether or not I've been trying to look through a thick sheet of pain for approximately one hundred years, wondering if it isn't as easy as I thought it should be because I've stopped burying the hurt and started bearing my heart.

Sort of like when they say, "I'll make your headache go away by kicking you in the shin." Something like that.

"Let the people of Sela
sing for joy;
Let them shout from the mountaintops
Let them give glory to the Lord
and proclaim his praise in the islands
The Lord will march out like
a mighty man
like a warrior he will stir up his zeal
With a shout he will raise
the battle cry
And triumph over his enemies

For a long time I have kept silent
I have been quiet and held
myself back
But now, like a woman in childbirth
I cry out, I gasp and pant
I will lay waste to the
mountains and hills
And dry up all their vegetation
I will turn rivers into islands
and dry up the pools

I will lead the blind
by ways they have not known
Along unfamiliar paths I will guide them
I will turn the darkness
into light before them
and make the rough places smooth
These are the things I will do
I will not forsake them"
Is 42


"For the father loves the son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he wil show him even greater things than these.
For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it."
Jn 5

"However, it is written:
'No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
No mind has conceived
what God has prepared for
those who love him---'
But God has revealed it to us by His Spirit.

The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. for who among men knows the thoughts of man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. We have not received the Spirit of the World, but the Spirit of God, that we may understand what God has freely given us...

... Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's spirit lives in you? Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a fool so that he may become wise... So then, no more boasting about men. All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos of Cephas or the world, or life of death or the present or the future-- all are yours and you are of Christ and Christ is of God."
1 Cor 2&3

"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
-- Anais Nin

"somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gestures are things which enclose me
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me,
though i have closed myself as fingers
you open always petal by petal myself as spring opened
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in my understand
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands."

-- E.E. Cummings


"Love one another, but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."
-- Kahlil Gibran

I've been thinking about writing something really intelligent here for approximately 3 days, 5 days, 7 days. I've been thinking about deleting this entire thing for a few months now. Why do I keep coming back? What is this black elixir that seems to have addicted these flying fingers. why why why? I started the habit at 17 and now here I am, submitting these white words to the black abyss again. reasons I still can't name except the opium of its secret thrill. a strange literary endorphin.

I've been thinking about writing something intelligent about truth and hunger and seeking and all sorts of things like that. Really good ideas that might make you change your mind about things that you thought before.

But I think that I might be lying if I follow through. I mean, not by saying words that aren't true, but laying down bricks to keep me from putting down my heart. Keeping secrets. A tactic of control rather than an act of truth and vulnerability. fake fake fake. why bother pretending to have answers when I really just want to let some air out through the sides of my questions.

I sat here three weeks ago. Wrote a few things in purple ink over my lunch break. that was the word in fact,
break break break break break.
Written over and over and over again. Its all I could think of. break. broke. broken. lost.

I write it again here and I wonder how many different ways I'll be misunderstood, misinterpreted. I'm already anticipating your probing questions that I'm sure I'll find a way to evade out of frustration or maybe just disdain. I probably shouldn't be saying that either. ohwell. now you know. save your questions for the next witness, I guess.

anyhow-- the writing was on the wall. or was it? I'm not sure. But nevertheless, I mixed a little more magenta into the bottle and wrote it anyway.

have you ever been squeezed so tight you thought at any moment you might loose the whites already floating in fluid in your sockets? A pending explosion of all the tension that's been held in by your held in breath. How long until the flood gates burst and destruction ensues?

I imagine Aladin in Jafar's transformed serpent clutches, his little legs sticking out of those white balloon pants. He was a liar too, full of false-pretense, used fake words to avoid the real ones. A whole new world. I suppose, it was, of sorts.

But that's not the point. Well, actually, it is sort of the point. A whole new world.

Its been 31 days plus 28. The whole world seems to be flipped on its head and all I can seem to account for it is age. Happy birthday. or something like that.

Maybe I'm just tired, worn out from this unexpected intermission in my life. Spending the day sorting out who is the wrong-est when I had nothing to do with it-- I was just trying to pass Comp 101 and find a part-time job.

But the truth is, I'm tired. Exhausted. Wondering how much longer I'll be Aladin and he'll be Jafar. I'm tired of putting on a good face, projecting an illusion of strength when I think I'm just doing what I can to hold it together until enough time passes for the truth to become clear to someone.

It's June. I sat there, green plastic lawn chair dug into the pebbles, two and half hours from home, rain getting ready to pour down all around the shelter of our tent: You are lifting weights, she said. I already knew that.

How long is it again that someone can train before their body just stops? I'd like the excuse of muscle atrophy.

I was reading about Jesus and the four thousand. He had compassion on them for they had come a long way and were hungry. He feared they might collapse on the way back. And I think I saw my face in the group photo taken at the picnic.

It seems as though I've been keeping a thousand secrets. I wonder if Mary felt like that, treasuring up all of those things in her heart. Did she hold them all inside for 33 years? or was there something else to it?

I feel like a precious vessel that's been dropped on the floor, and through some internal energy, I've been holding all the shattered pieces together on my own. What I'd really like is to let go and let all the shards fall to the floor. Sit in a relaxed position and do what I want to do. Close this two and a half inch gap between us.

I wonder how long before you'll allow the truth to set me free.

Because I need to say outloud that, as hard as I try to keep it a secret, I've never done anything so hard in my life. As much as I'd like to hide behind unmet goals and less significant hurts, the truth is that it simply takes everything I have to hold it together in the midst of the one thousand things that I can't understand. The world's greatest discrepancy.

I've started to work on trying not to hide the truth from myself so much. And part of that is admitting the things that I want, another part resisting the urge to kill everything, a third part putting a stop to the thought that I could actually control the uncontrollable. Just accepting a thing or two and letting it be true, regardless of the repercussions.

And if I write here the truth rather than the masks and lies that tempt, I have to write the truth that it is all so hard. I want to make it simple and straight-forward, but the honest thing is that most days it feels like my insides are pulled apart, shred upon shred. And I can't do much more than hope that someday these small loaves will be turned into basketfulls of leftovers and that, by some miracle, there will be something more for me on the road home than an inevitable collapse.

I was perusing the Reader tonight and was struck by some really essential thoughts from my friend Jessica. I couldn't have said it better:

Do you remember that Jennifer Garner movie...13 Going on 30? I do. And unlike the beautiful Jennifer Garner, my age progression does not seem to be going forward.

I was reminded last night, in a frustratingly and beautifully honest voice, that I am still a work in progress. Every time I think I've found solid ground, something shifts, or changes, and I come to realize that no matter how hard I work, or how far I've come, I'm not done growing up.

In some ways, I'm glad for that. I don't want to be static, or stagnant, or stunted before my time. I want to be pushed and challenged, I want to grow and explore. And more often than not, I don't have the time or energy, and more often than I'd like to admit, the courage, to push myself in more than a few ways. I've spent the last few years pushing my body. It's far from perfect. But it is by far better than it has been. The mental challenge that this requires has changed me too. And while I appreciate my new found physical and much quieter emotional strength, there is still work to do.

The person that pointed out this not quite fatal but still detrimental flaw is someone I have not known long. But nonetheless, someone that has become important to me very quickly. I hate the double edge sword that relationships sometimes seem. In order for you to know them and them you, you must open yourself. Unfold the layers of guilt and hurt, of memories and experiences, and try to share them. Not explicitly, by telling story after story of your life up until the point you met, though some of that does inevitably happen. But rather in your actions and person, through who you are and HOW you are. And it's sometimes ugly. Really ugly. How do you know if sharing what you are and how you got that way won't make them turn heel and run? You don't. How do you know you won't peel away the layers, hoping to replace those with fonder memories and lovelier things, and they won't be bandaged but instead scrapped away. We don't. And I guess that's the risk we take when we love. It takes a strong person to love, and a stronger person to let themselves be loved.

And also from her blog, this gem that I find quite poignant:

"One does not fall in love. One grows in love, and love in him." Karl A. Menninger

Thanks, Jae. Right on.

• How Deep The Father's Love For Us by Owl City

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