I was meant for Your heart

Maybe it was the full moon, wrapped in shimmery silver wisps. Maybe it was the resounding sick to my stomach feeling that followed a fear factor care group event. Maybe it's the weather, once again turning cool and reminding me to bundle up.
Whatever it was I seemed to crave connection like a quilt to wear around my shoulders on those chilly early February days.
I spent hours sitting on couches, sometimes talking and other times just sitting pressed up against the people I love.
I thought about how my life is changing. I've said it a lot recently, but it always feels true. It feels like I'm on this train going 200 miles an hour and the view is great and the trip is good but there are times when I just want to get off and catch my breath.
Just give me a minute. Time to process, and understand, and breathe.

Twice Paul whispers it: "I have learned..." Learned. I would have to learn eucharisteo - learn to live it fully. Learn it like I know my own skin, my face, the words on the end of my tongue. Like I know my own name

We were sitting in Chapel today and we were asked to reflect on grace. Grace. I say it often, that in this current state I'm in I'm overwhelmed by grace. Literally, physically and emotionally I feel ransacked by grace. But in this moment of stillness I heard a whisper: If you really knew the extent of my grace, you would know what it means to not be left standing.
If I truly understood grace... It is grace enough that I'm alive, that there is breath in these lungs and blood pumping through my body. It is grace enough that I can talk and walk and eat and exist. But to be attending college, to be surrounded by so many people who care about me, to be given this opportunity to love, is this not too much grace? How is it fair that I am given this many grace days all in a row?

Now in the Bible a name... reveals the very essence of a thing, or rather its essence as God's gift... to name a thing is to manifest the meaning and value God gave it, to know it as coming from God and to know its place and function within the cosmos created by God. To name a thing, in other words, is to bless God for it and in it.

The past few days I've struggled against the idea of identity. I know who I am, but what happens when everything shifts? Just slightly, and not bad, but still noticeable.
At a school this size it's impossible to avoid the labels, and for the most part I enjoy the ones I've been given. But there are moments when a slight comment makes me cringe, when suddenly people act differently because you have become labeled by your relationship.
I wonder what it is that makes these labels stick. I wonder why they matter so much to me.
I wrote a list yesterday of all the things that I am: daughter, sister, friend, girlfriend, student.
And in all of the naming I whispered tiny prayers: "Thank you, God, for family and friends, for new connections, for the ability to learn."
I said them over and over, until the words were no longer things that I was but things that I was given. I am not the labels, but I have been blessed with the opportunity to be a part of each of the things I listed.

Joy is the realest reality, the fullest life, and joy is always given, never grasped. God gives gifts and I give thanks and I unwrap the gift given: joy

My gratitude list is growing, and my heart is becoming gentler still.
The way she grabbed my hand this morning and on the back of it drew a heart
The way life seems to unfold gathered around the table with the people I love
Laughter echoing and good morning texts and clean laundry
Red roses and friend dates and the way a short sentence has the power to change the way I think about life
I find I'm craving the beauty - the real, deep kind. I name the little things, and in them give thanks, and it is in this living my life as the offering held high that I begin to understand the gift.

Eucharisteo - it's the word Jesus whispered when death prowled close and His anguish trickled down bloody. He took the bread, even the bread of death, and gave thanks

A friend said something to me the other day, which is that we don't stay because it feels good, we stay because it is good, with those words reverberating off of something inside of me.
Where I am right now, it is good
I may be feeling too many things and not thinking enough. There are days like this, when the only way to truly feel is to let the emotion wash over me in waves. All of it comes, and I acknowledge it in whatever form it presents itself.
Happiness, overwhelmed, confusion, fear, a desperate longing to control the future, a feeling as though life has shifted ever so slightly and I need to once again regain my footing.
All this feeling has me fluctuating between needing silence and solitude and yearning to be close.
I've spent hours clinging to the mighty hand of God, echoing a cry similar to Jacob's when he prayed "I won't let go until you bless me."
I've spent equally as much time sitting on the couch, sometimes needing the chatter of conversation while other times asking friends to just sit with me.
In all of this I find that sometimes the only words that make it off my lips are "thank you."

Life change comes when we receive life with thanks and ask for nothing to change.

My life is unpredictable these days, crazy and the kind of beautiful you have to fight for, fast and all kinds of lovely.
I never imagined I'd be here, surrounded by so much grace.
I am grateful
May nothing change

Quotes from 1000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp

What I learned in January (all is grace)

The first month of 2015 has slipped by, quickly and quietly.
January was gentle, and soft this year. It was full of firsts, full of magic and moments that stole my breath away and full of grace.
I was thinking last night about how the month began curled up listening to Noah Gunderson and wishing for this year to be full of bigger and better things, and it ended playing Uno and holding his hand and all the moments in the middle felt as though they were whispering grace.

When you simply get up every day and live life raw - you murmur the question soundlessly. No one hears. Can there be a good God? A God who graces with good gifts when a crib lies empty through long nights and bugs burrow through coffins? Where is God, really? How can He be good when babies die and marriages implode and dreams blow away, dust in the wind? Where is grace bestowed when cancer gnaws and loneliness aches and nameless places in us soundlessly die, break off without reason, erode away. Where hides this joy of the Lord, this God who fills the earth with good things, and how do I live fully when life is full of hurt? How do I wake up to joy and grace and beauty and all that is the fullest life when I must stay numb to losses and crushed dreams and all that empties me out?

I remember the moment when I thought life would never be ok again. It was the day after he died, and I fell on my knees in the horse pasture and inwardly screamed, feeling the breaking taking place inside of my chest violently. In that moment, it felt like God turned His face away. In all of the black moments that have swept over my life none felt as bereft of His presence as this one.
That year was a silent "No, God." It was burning with white hot anger and the dull ache of emptiness.
I say that year broke me, made me question all I'd ever believed. But looking back now I can see how that year of hell on earth was also the year I began to hear His voice.

His intent, since He bent low and breathed His life into the dust of our lungs, since He kissed us into being, has never been to slyly orchestrate our ruin. And yet I have found it: He does have surprising, secret purposes. I open a Bible and His plans, startling, lie there barefaced. it's hard to believe it, when I read it, and I have to come back to it many times, feel long across those words, make sure they are real. His love letter forever silences any doubts: "His secret purpose framed from the very beginning is to bring us to our full glory" (1 Corinthians 2:7). He means to rename us - to return us to our true names, our truest selves. He means to heal our soul holes

I spent a really long time being the one who wrestles with God. Even now I'm the girl who'd rather wrestle it out, live from the honest core. In this past little while I feel as though I was broken at the strongest part of myself. I was brought to the wilderness time and time again. But it's not like I once thought. It's not because in my ugly brokenness God is hiding Himself from me. It is so I could learn to listen to His voice. It is so that through my soul holes I could experience the fullness of Him. Once you've been broken down, the gospel isn't just the good news, but the life news. His death and resurrection sits not only as a story about life and more life but of radical redemption.
I stood face to face with the darkest parts of myself, desperate to change my story, to have more to offer.
Until He reminded me that I did. Until He spoke into my black and made it the holy night. Where the black was His hand over the rock, because He was near.

And maybe you don't want to change the story, because you don't know what a different ending holds

There are days I still wish I could change my story. I'm grappling with accepting the bad, and the good, and calling both enough. If I was writing this story... I inwardly rage.
Then what?
It was the dark night that made me brim with full gratitude for this goodness, to see it all as grace.
Once upon a time I never imagined I would experience this depth of grace. I never imagined He would remove His hand, and I'd see His back.
All of this - these strings of grace days - are more than I ever knew to ask for. They are beautiful, and I'm savoring each one and as we drive down the back road I say to myself "Are you really going to say this isn't how the story should go?"
The emptiness made the fullness that much better. I don't understand, but I have been given the promise that even this is not the end.
There is always more, and looking back on all of it He says "Do you see in all of it how I provided? How you lived off the mystery, the manna?"

That which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart aching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave

I am overwhelmed by His grace, sustained by His manna, savoring His sweetness. There is so much I don't yet understand. I am learning to live with an open hand, from a place of honest truth, and be grateful

All italics quotes from 1000 gifts by Ann Voskamp

Reaching for Beautiful

The past few days my heart has been raw. Not bad, just different, expanding and changing and pressing up against my ribcage, stretching and shifting.
I've never been one to adjust easily, and I feel like more often than not these days I find myself reaching for things to wrap my fingers around.
I feel like God's been nudging me. Not harshly, but in a way that says, "Hey, little daughter, do you trust me? It's time to take that step."
I'm the girl who's afraid to step out of the boat.
I'm the girl who's spent so long wandering around in the wilderness, learning what it means to listen to His voice, to see His hand in the darkness.
Now I feel like He's saying, "Come on, sweet one, you can't stay in the wilderness forever."
Existing in the light is scary. It means trusting and taking risks and being open.

But I am not a woman who ever lives the full knowing. I am a wandering Israelite who sees the flame in the sky above, the pillar, the smoke from the mountain, the earth open up and give way and still I forget. I am beset by chronic soul amnesia. I empty of truth and need refilling. I need come again every day - bend, clutch and remember - for who can gather manna but once, hoarding and store away sustenance in the mind for all of the living?

I'm living off His promises. I am ravenous, constantly reaching for the manna, the blessings. I count, I cry, I pray, I savor. I am realizing in these precious days how much I need the constant connection, the manna.

I have run because I long for beauty like a mania, a woman leaving dinner, running in apron for the cast of the moon. When I can't find it - is that why my soul goes a bit wild, morose, crazed? Strange - I hadn't even noticed that I'd been hungry for Beauty until I ran for the moon

Today, in the midst of all my mind's circles, I sat cross legged on the floor with my beautiful friend and discipler. We were talking about relationships, about the ever present root of my own brokenness. She read me the story of the woman by the well. I've heard the story so many times, but it's still one of my favorites.
As she was reading, something in my brain clicked.
Jesus asked this woman for water. We think of her as the lowest of the low, a woman caught in sin, a shameful individual. But Jesus asked her for a drink. He knew her story, knew her past, but still He thought she had something to offer.

How? How could I have forgotten how badly I wanted this? To bow down and rightly worship

Long truck rides driving to no where and town dates with the girl next door and holding hands and being held and gathering around the table and sharing the struggles and the joys, laughter and rest and the feeling of fullness as I walk away from the room with my Bible and journal spread open on my bed knowing that this is how I get full, all of it seems to be a whisper from God saying, "Do you see? Do you see now, my girl? Do you see how much I love you? Do you see that I will complete the works I have began? Do you see that in all of this I had a plan? Do you see that I will not leave you in the wilderness nor will I let you starve? I have called you to bigger things."

I am filthy rags. Is sight even possible? I've only got one pure thing to wear and it's got Made By Jesus on the tag and the purity of Jesus lies over a heart and His transparency burns the cataracts off the soul The only way to see God manifested in the world around is with the eyes of Jesus within.

I am captivated. I am reaching for the beautiful and pulling it close. I am finding sustenance from His manna. His voice says, "Trust me."
Even though it's hard and new and scary, and I've become accustomed to the darkness.
Even when the stretching and growing threaten to steal all my air
Even when I feel like the woman at the well with nothing to offer
He says, "I see you. I love you. I chose you. Trust me, daughter, and come partake in the feast of Manna that abounds. After all, didn't I say you would never starve?"

In the burn of the ache, there is this unexpected sensation of immense moon slowly shrinking and God expanding, widening and deepening my inner spaces. Is that why joy hurts - God stretching us open to receive more of Himself?

All italics quotes from 1000 gifts by Ann Voskamp

And all the good things

It was on my to-do list for today: blog. Right after unpack boxes, check answers for assignment and spend 30 minutes in prayer for my part of the school's 60 hours of continual prayer.
I was thinking about what to write, my head spinning with all kinds of ideas.
But as I sit here with my laptop open, the sound of the train in the background, I realize I don't know what to write.
Not because there isn't things going on I could write about. In fact, it is in this very season that my heart is more full than it's ever been. It's because in this tender, precious season of becoming I am treasuring tiny moments, savoring the sweetness, giving gratitude for the grace days.
...
I was talking last night about writing.
"I might write about you," I warned him.
Because I tend to write about things. Good things, bad things, things that matter and things that don't, all of it gets written down and documented and saved.
But I haven't been writing things down as much as I normally do. I write down moments, memories, the sound of voices and the reflections carried in a set of eyes and things that make me laugh, but it's a more personal kind of writing. It's not to document, not sinking the memories in formaldehyde to try and preserve them for as long as I can.
No, this kind of writing is more about savoring, about taking all these moments and pondering them in my heart.
...
Last night I worked in the coffee shop. It's crazy and busy and sometimes incredibly fast paced and the whole place smells like coffee beans and milk and there's usually music playing and I love it.
There's something about using my hands to make the coffee to fill the cup to make the design on the top to give it to the person on the other side of the counter.
But it's more than just giving someone a drink. That isn't the moment I love the most.
It's not the smell of ground beans or the little accidents that we laugh off or the way we get to have fun while we work.
It's that one moment of eye contact when you pass someone their drink. It's that opportunity to; make something and make it with love because that person you're making it for is special and valuable and I know you can't say all that with a coffee but sometimes I try.
It's the way people connect. It's the opportunity to serve and nourish the people I care about.
Last night when I was working someone asked me if I liked working in the coffee shop. I've only worked a couple of times, and am still learning, and there are often moments when I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing.
But I said yes. Yeah, I do love it. Because I love seeing people brought together, and being given the opportunity to care for people in coffee cups.
...
This week is Spiritual Emphasis week at PRBI. It means every day we get a special Chapel, and then on Friday we have no classes and instead have day of prayer. During this week, we also were given the opportunity to participate in 60 hours of continual prayer.
I signed up for 2 half hour slots. I didn't know how I was going to fill half an hour, but decided to give it a shot. After all, how hard could it be?
Today I didn't feel like praying. My mind was spinning, my heart was full. Lots of changes have been happening in my life recently, changes that I'm pondering and mulling over and figuring out.
As I set out on my prayer walk I slipped on the ice, fell in a puddle, decided I probably should have worn a thicker sweater and my mind was too preoccupied to focus on prayer.
As I walked, I began to whisper. Not extravagant, beautiful prayers all dressed up and neat but humble pleadings and questionings.
I don't know the direction my life is headed in. Whenever I am given grace my first instinct is to be afraid of the moment when it will be taken away. It's too good to be true, I reason.
I went down winding streets and up old dirt roads and the whole time I was mumbling and murmuring. I felt afraid. Afraid of the future, and the unknowns, and even of the happiness that seems to be invading every corner of my life these days. I was afraid of the what if's, and the maybes, and the possible rejections and endings and that in all this goodness I will become lost.
I was walking and I hit this spot of sunshine on the bridge and I was just standing there, and for a single moment I felt seen. I felt heard, and noticed.
I felt a small whisper inside of me saying, "Do you not see that all of this you have been given is just a reflection of my love for you?"
I've been letting my fear be bigger than my faith.
A friend called me on it the other day. She said that all these new changes in my life are just adding. They just mean more love, more good, more happy. And I can't fully embrace the more if I'm still stuck in the less. I can't be full of faith if I'm listening to the lies of fear. I can't be happy if I'm still insistent on being right about the lies I've told myself all these years.
I want to be that kind of person who chooses addition over subtraction. I want to silence the fears and enter into all this crazy love that is being offered to me.
I was reminded of an Elizabeth Gilbert quote as I was walking back that says "Sometimes it is necessary to lose balance for love."
Sometimes it is necessary to put all those old beliefs and fears and the desire for control on the shelf so that you can fully embrace love.
...
These days I'm finding myself grateful. My life is all kinds of beautiful. There are so many moments I can't write about, not yet, as I am still savoring them myself. I was sitting by the window the other night staring up at the moon and I was completely overwhelmed with grace, and how even these first few weeks of 2015 have richly blessed me and how this kind of overwhelming goodness is rich and beautiful and scary and wild and thrilling all at the same time.
And how I'm so grateful. My heart is so full it feels like it might burst. And how this new stage in my life is about learning and growing and loving and embracing and becoming. It's my own personal journey of becoming that is expanding beyond myself and is creating something beautiful.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
In the moonlight I made out the words of the text message: Cards?
Yeah, my life is pretty good

The Salty and the Sweet

I've been sitting here for the past half hour, trying to figure out something to write when I realized there isn't anything to write that I haven't written before.
I'm grateful...
It's not a secret, but I whisper it like it is. I whisper my joy like a small child, eyes twinkling.
The past few days have been a series of grace days, days where it's easy to feel joyful. They are days when everything in life feels like a gift, when I want to capture it all and save it somewhere special, just in case. I become a hoarder of this grace, clutching it all to my chest, waiting for the moment when it will run out.
I was reminded the other day of baking cookies. I walked into the dorm and the sweet smell of baking cookies met me, and I couldn't help but smile. I was reminded that, when baking cookies, you need both the sugar and the salt. Deprived of just one and the cookies won't turn out.
In the same way, it is the salty and the sweet that make a life.
I've been learning recently how to fully embrace each moment. I wrote a note and stuck it beside my bed, a reminder that each moment is a gift waiting to be noticed.
The joy moments are a gift, brimming with happiness and waiting to be celebrated.
But the salty moments are a gift too, a different kind of gift. The kind that sometimes takes longer to appreciate, the kind that promises that growth won't be easy but productive none the less.
I've been collecting moments, both salty and sweet, and storing them, pondering each separately, then together. Each one I hold in my hands before releasing it into the mixing bowl that is life and I'm learning to say thank you, even though at times I wrestle against the small words as they stay lodged in the back of my throat.
Sometimes I'm not thankful, but I'm trying to be.
Because eucharisteo always precedes the miracle
In care groups this week we're writing down 5 things a day that we're grateful for. As I wrote down my 5 things, I realized that gratitude transforms the mundane into the marvelous.
The everyday waking, sleeping, eating, breathing life becomes a sacred experience.
Meal times become fellowship time and sleep becomes serenity and every breath is a blessing. And I'm not always good at noticing these acts but when I do I want to document it. I want to stop and say "If this isn't beautiful I don't know what is."
I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.
I was talking the other day about the ugly beautiful blessings, the kind that appear in the darkness. In the moment even acknowledging the ugly beautiful feels like a crime. I've been living a lot of my life this way. Because in the moment the pain is so real and consuming and the need to feel it fully is real. I need to run it over in my hands, document each inch, then I can move on to the next emotion.
But I was reminded of Jacob, the story where He refuses to let go until God blesses him. He is broken down at the strongest place in his body, and the pain is real, but he refuses to let go until he is blessed.
I want to be like that. I want to cling tightly and wait for the blessings, and the grace days, and the beauty that has been promised me. I may not understand everything that happened in my life but I want to be the Jacob warrior, want to shout out through my exhaustion and confusion "I won't let go until you bless me."
I won't give up, won't walk away, won't let go until the blessings come.

What I learned about communication from Unicorn books (or the process of softening my heart)

I'm softer these days, I think
Like a fruit, easily bruised, needing to be handled with care
I need warm hugs and kind words and not too much time spent locked away in my own mind
Words meant in jest come off too harsh, and someone slides into a place I thought was mine and I make (another) wee mistake, or a big one, and my heart aches
As part of a homework assignment I've started a 5 day spiritual practice of setting aside a certain amount of time to talk to God, to worship and reflect and communicate.
It has felt like a pouring out of my soul to the Lord. I've made new discoveries, felt God's presence, and then tonight, as I was sitting in stillness waiting for His voice, it felt like I had hit a wall.
All day I was struggling, wrestling with myself. Writing didn't come easy to me and certain comments stung and I felt this barrier.
I fought against myself, crying out and asking God what was standing in my way, what was making this day seem so hard when before it had come a string of grace days.
"It's my own face that obscures the face of God"
It's a conclusion I've been coming to a lot lately, as God is working with soft hands to prune my heart, to create in me an eternal mindset.
In the middle of this teaching, as my heart is becoming softer, I've noticed more of the unexpected blessings.
Like heart to heart chats with the girl who is my kindred spirit, who gets my heart in ways that not many people do
Like being covered with a blanket as I lay sprawled out on one of the couches in the student lounge
Like being handed a coffee as I stumble into class and my sweet cleaning partner giving me the night off and laughter and story time
my heart is a little softer, and most days I feel the need to carry around a "handle with care" sign.
But I love what He's doing in me, and around me
I am convinced that the God I love will not leave me to stumble around in my own brokenness, that even in the wilderness as I wander nothing will separate us.
Even in these tender days, He's holding my heart

Thanksgiving (What I'm grateful for 2014)

Thanksgiving Weekend is coming to a close and I have yet to sit down and write the annual Thanksgiving post. You know, the one where I sit down and write about everything I'm grateful for.
Every time I sit down and try to write this, I end up at a loss for words. Not because I am struggling to find something that I'm grateful for, but because I am trying to find the words to convey the vast amount of gratitude that has filled me.
I remember years when thanksgiving would roll around and I would search for something, anything, to feel truly grateful for.
Life felt like loss, and I wondered if there would ever come a time when I would be truly happy again.
I am grateful
for the family I have just left at home: my dad who makes stupid jokes and sits on my feet when it's cold and I'm too lazy to get socks, my mom who takes the day off to go on crazy adventures with me, my beautiful sister who is filled with more light than most people I know, my brothers who amaze me every single day with new tricks and stories
for this place, the one I never thought I'd be in. Because I was never going to be the girl who went off to Bible School. But sometimes you hit a wall, and your second chance looks like an exit strategy.
and the people I've met in this place take my breath away with how beautiful and wonderful and loving they are.
I am grateful for late night conversations and homework parties and going on crazy spontaneous adventures. I am grateful for these people who enter into the trenches with me, who challenge me and push me and wake me up to things I didn't realize before. I am grateful for those who have seen me at my worst, my most broken, only to say I love you. And I am grateful for the ones who have taught me to be loving, to be gracious and kind. I am grateful for the ones who have taught me what it means to be loved.
I am grateful for my old friends, for those people that first reached into my night and loved me anyway, the ones that taught me it's ok to be honest, to have fun, to laugh and love and make messes.
I look at them now and I couldn't be more proud
I'm grateful for the losses, the really hard ones that knocked me to my knees and left me wondering if I would ever recover. I never did, but I have grown stronger in the broken places. I have grown kinder, softer, gentler, more loving and gracious. I am grateful for the memories, even if remembering sometimes hurts.
I am grateful that I am alive in this moment, that I am here and against all odds I made it
I made it here and I get to experience every single day what it means to be human
I am grateful for this
And you, I am grateful for you
Because you made it possible for me to be here. Your love and support and kindness and encouragement and refusal to give up on me made it possible for me to sit here and write this thanksgiving list.
And while the word itself will never feel like enough, I will say it anyway because it is the only one I have:
Thank you

The Heart of Life

It doesn’t matter how tough we are, trauma always leaves a scar. It follows us home, it changes our lives. Trauma messes everybody up, but maybe that’s the point. All the pain & the fear & the crap, maybe going through all that is what keeps us moving forward. It’s what pushes us. Maybe we have to get a little messed up before we can step up.


I've been writing a lot recently about trauma. About the intricate way the Universe works together, the soft hum it makes that you can hear if you listen closely and press your face to the ground. I think it sounds like holy ground.
I've been pulled to the idea of human nature, and have seen the brutality of it all that has left me lacking in the belief that people are still good.
When life hits you hard so many times, I think sometimes the easiest thing to do is just stay there.
I wrote yesterday that I want to stay here, with my face pressed to the ground, trying to hear the hum of the holy above the noise that is created.
It is easier to believe in the good down here, I reasoned.
The noise of the world threatened to overcome me. I tasted bitterness beneath my tongue, tasted pain and hurt every time I licked my lips.
And so I put out a status on social media, asking people what the kindest thing someone has done for them was, or what was the kindest thing they did for someone else.
The responses trickled in, one by one.
Baby showers, pictures, vacations, organ donation.
I let it all fill me with the belief that there are still good and beautiful people in this world.
The pain exists, but so does the beauty. So does the good. And I believe you see what you look for. There are days when it is so easy just so succumb to the desperation and taste the dirt. I know this. I have lived in this place, with my ear pressed to the earth listening to the world until I have the strength to live in it again.
But there is also beauty, and it is finding it in these hard days that it matters the most. It reminds me that people are still good. Life is still beautiful. This world is still a good place to live.


Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won't all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good

To the greatest teachers

In seventh grade, my teacher read us a story about knots. Don't ask me what it was called, or why we were reading it (But I believe it was for some kind of book report) but I remember at the time thinking there was something crazy about the story of this boy who had a fascination with knots.
I also felt like I understood this boy.
When I was little I would tie my shoelaces into so many knots, and then race to see how fast I could untie them. I pretended I was the most amazing knot un-tier in the whole world.
This morning I sat down to write a practice English diploma on a source we had just read, a poem. The question was about how situations shape a person's destiny, and the source was about a woman who referred to herself as tangled.
As I sat there in the computer lab, I thought of this story, and my seventh grade teacher. I could almost hear his voice in my head as I sat down to write.


My days consisted of tying and untying knots, always trying to make something beautiful with the strands of curled rope I found lying limp between my fingers. When my seventh grade teacher read us a story about a boy who untied knots, I knew I finally had a name for my turbulence. I called it tangled.


When I finished writing, I turned on my phone only to find the news that Maya Angelou had died. I'm not a particularly familiar with a lot of Maya's work, though I do admire the courageous steps she has taken to create space in the world for women and artists and I think she is a very wise woman.
But I thought of a time last summer, when I was going through a particularly rough season, and I turned on a documentary on Maya Angelou on TV. There was one quote she said, about love liberating, that has always stuck with me. At the time, it inspired me to write my own little piece on all the different places my heart was living at that moment, and how while there were a lot of people who weren't with me in the present moment I could set them free because I loved them.
Still, when I think back on that night, I remember that quote.


I never believed that I wouldn't reach that place where I would stumble upon myself and reach out with open arms, saying "There you are" like all this time I'd just been a little backwards in my directions


Since celebrating grad this weekend, I've experienced the seemingly inevitable low that follows an amazing event. There's trying to become reoriented with my life once again. There's been planning for the future, and a lot of who I thought I'd be by now. In light of the recent shooting that happened, I've been writing a lot, and thinking a lot, about feminism and triggers and mental illness and abuse and the kind of world I want to grow old in.
More importantly I've been thinking about the kind of person I want to be.
I remember something one of the speaker's at my grad said, which is "May you be kind, may you be safe, may you be happy"
And I've always said I wanted to be happy
But I also want to be kind
I want to be loving
I want to always learn and teach and laugh and grow and maybe even cry some and keep creating beautiful things as long as I live
I want to always stay a little bit of the girl that Mr. Brown thought I was, how he taught me to believe in myself even when I didn't feel like it
And I want to always be a bit of the woman I felt like watching that Maya Angelou documentary, which is always speaking the truth and living in love and overcoming the things that wish to overcome you
And I want to always stay true to who I am
In yoga we say something like "We acknowledge all of our teachers, and we acknowledge the heart, the greatest teacher of all"
I have been blessed with amazing teachers, in all different ways. I have been given a heart, which has become my greatest teacher
All that is left is to never stop learning


I am poetry and hot coffee, falling in love too easily and using my heart as a metaphor for too many things. I am still tangled, always tangled, but I’m getting better at learning how to untie knots. And I’m learning which knots to leave tied because these are the knots that point me towards my destiny. 
I am walking towards my destiny at full speed and face first. Even if it means entering the dark for a while. I know now something I didn’t know the first time I entered the dark, and something that has made all the difference.
I now know how to untie knots. 

Manifesto: You were made for something more

Hand holding, elbows brushing, hips swaying, feet stomping.

The world has come alive, awakening from it's winter, and I am awakening with it.

I can feel the revival stirring inside of my body, feel the rhythm as my heart beats in time, resounding against my ribcage

I want to be free

I don't know anyone but no one feels like a stranger

There is music, and laughter, and dancing, and the world feels like it has been lit on fire, and I want to be on fire too

I want to glow, emit the light that has been cooped up inside of me for so long

I want to shine like the sun as it peeks through the clouds, warming my shoulders, reminding me of miracles

The hot lemonade is warm on my tongue, but comfortably so. It tastes like honey, like promise and sweetness and hope. It is warmth and comfort.

We watch as people move like they were born solely to exist in this moment, like nothing else matters besides this awakening, and I can feel my heart awakening too

I am coming out of a long, cold winter

My bones are still rusty and don't quite remember how to dance but the echo of my heartbeat (sounds like a symphony) is a persistent partner, always inviting me to dance no matter how many times I step on his feet

She says my confidence is coming back, he says the light is returning to my eyes, and I feel it all as I am shedding extra layers

I want to experience what it means to be alive

I play a game of feeling everything, letting it be absorbed into my skin like it is medicine, letting it wash over me like the promise of hope

It makes me giddy

Reminding me what it's like to have a voice, to break free from the shackles of darkness, to grow my own set of wings

It reminds me of being seven, when I still fiercely held on to my light, when the whole world made me insanely happy

Ten years have passed, and I have become more jaded, hardened by the world, and yet I still feel that same awakening inside of me

the same hope and potential and possibility

this could be the start of something beautiful

And I want to fall in love with this moment, and these people, and myself and the birds and the trees and the hills and the sky and everything that seems to call my name, begging me, for this one moment, to be alive

I am poetess, story teller, belonging to the universe and the One who created it all, created to marvel and wonder and be fully alive in every moment while my heart is still beating like a drum inside of me

I was made to feel something more than the weight of the darkness as it wraps itself around my shoulders and calls itself warmth

I remember a few years ago sitting at a kitchen table in a house that didn't belong to me, writing on the back of a grocery list that I want to be enough for myself

I didn't know then that those words would become my cry as I wandered through these next few years of my life

I was, and am, searching for ways to be enough for myself

I am realizing now I don't have to do anything

I just have to exist

in wonder

in grace

in love

there is nothing I can do or not to do make myself enough, I just need to accept that I am

I was

And I always will be

I'm still learning what that means

I'm coming back to that place where I live in honesty, not belonging to another human being but myself, marveling at the world

Sometimes it's easy to write from this place

It's not so easy when you are lacking connection, when the pieces don't quite fit, when you spill your coffee and spend the afternoon in bed and stub your toe on your way out the door

I am learning this too is it's own kind of beautiful

If this is crazy than I want to be that. I want to fall in love with every moment of my one wild and beautiful life, I want to see heaven and God and the divine nature of it all in everything, I want to finally learn what it means to embrace my enough-ness and be free

I want to use these wings to fly

grace

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” ― Mary Oliver

This week was overwhelming. I learned a lot this week, about high school things like chemistry and english, and about other things too, like love, and where my identity is, and grace.
While I got good news from my doctors earlier this week, there's something bittersweet about the whole thing. It's good and it's happy and I'm happy, but it's also scary and sad and full of so much emotion I can't even describe. I am overwhelmed by grace, because I really deserve none of this. I feel like I'm standing on something that is changing. The ground beneath me is shaking, and the world is spinning and it's hard to stay upright. Change is taking place here, something big, I can feel it. I'm excited, but it's hard too.
This week was the salty sweet kind. Days would come and I would end up crying in front of the TV or as I wrote something on my computer or as I sat in a chair after getting up in the morning. It's overwhelming and I can barely take it all in. I considered hibernation, curling up in a cave and sleeping until I figured out what to do with this beautiful mess I call life. I spend one moment falling apart and the rest of the day piecing myself back together. Slowly, piece by piece, I gather up my broken courage and muster up a timid roar. As it turns out I'm not feeling so brave or fearless these days, just sad. It's not a bad kind of sadness either, just a kind of sadness that takes time.
And so this is it. I must learn how to sit with this space in my head and in my soul. I must learn how to respond to this unending grace in the only way I know how - with unending gratitude. I must learn how to stand on my own two feet and find my courage again when everything is shifting around me and I feel so unstable in where I stand in and in who I am.
But I am keeping this list of tiny blessings, my grateful response to this amazing grace that has been showered upon me. And while the good things don't necessarily cancel out the bad, the bad too, I am learning, is a gift.

158. Dr.M
159. Eating at the Olive Garden

162. Stable


169. Heels that click when I walk

172. Overwhelming grace
173. PJ day
174. Laughter
175. Understanding
176. Hot Bubble baths
177. Accomplishment
178. Grey's Anatomy nights
179. space
180. frog socks

183. aha! moments
184. The reminder that I am enough today

186. Bowling
187. Friends
188. A day spent in town with my mama
189. discovery
190. finally catching up on some school'
191. blonde
192. love
193. Kendall's blog post
194. Friday

Stable

Sunday, February 3, 2:22pm: Voices singing along with the radio, calling out, asking for deliverance, proclaiming hope and truth as we enter the valley of the shadow of death one more time...


Monday, February 4, 10:30am; I kind of love my doctor, like a lot.

4:00pm

#retail therapy

 

 

 

Tuesday, February 5, 11:43am: The word stabilized never sounded so good

 

2:05pm: 

 

 

 

8:53pm: I am home. I am stable. Both of my doctors agreed I look good. For the first time in a long time I heard the words, "stable." I am stable. my disease is stable. i once heard this period of stability with a chronic illness as being a stabilized remission. i like that. i am in stabilized remission.

 

 

 

The Small Victories

Sometimes I forget how blessed I am to have such amazing people in my life. I was reading a blog post written by my friend Courtney tonight, and she just reminded me of how there is victory not only in the big things, but in the little things too.

I've been so focused on the things I can't do, the things I've lost, all the negative things, and tonight I was just reminded of how much of what I am doing right now is a victory.

I'm eating when a few years ago they thought I never would.
I'm going to 'regular school' this year for the first time since grade 7.
I'm walking and talking and awake when I never should have been.
I've met the most amazing people because of being sick, people who continue to inspire me every single day, and are there to pick me up when I fall.

It's so easy to take the little things for granted. When life is one big battle and winning doesn't even seem possible, it's so easy to forget all these little victories, the things they said I could never do and that i am doing.

When I was at my doctor's on Friday, He told me that I could do whatever i wanted to do, that each step I'm taking is a small victory and to not let my conditions or having GSD or having Dysautonomia hold me back.

It's in the small victories where the battle is won. It's so easy to look over the things that seem so little because there is so many hard things, but these things really are victories, little battles that I keep winning day after day.
The fact that I am here is a victory, a battle I have won. The fact that I am eating is a battle I have won. The fact that I am able to go back to school this year (even part time) is another small victory.

It's not in the big things that the battle is won, but in the small victories.

I

Seeing Miracles

Today is the last day of Invisible Illness Awareness Week. Tomorrow it will be one week since I got diagnosed.
Today I want to write about miracles.
I think, for me especially, I forget about miracles when I'm thinking about my illnesses. I think about how hard it is, and occasionally about the things I've learned, but how often do I stop and think about miracles?
This morning, I was holding my friend's newborn daughter, and she reminded me about miracles. She reminded me, with her tiny tiny fingers and her ten tiny toes and her eyes that watched me as I held her, that miracles happen. With her life, she reminded me that miracles are out there. She reminded me that I am a miracle myself.
When I went into my coma, and came out alive, it was a miracle. Everyone told me it was a miracle. There were people praying for me around the clock, I woke up, I had seen heaven and angels and come back to earth.
And then, when everything began to happen and I first began experiencing symptoms we would later find out was part of the Dysautonomia, I became angry. I told God if this was my miracle, if this was what I was going to get, if I came out of this coma and survived only to pretty much go through hell on earth I didn't want it.
I hear stories of kids who somehow pulled through, and came out fine, and are fine. And I got sick. And yet, that doesn't make me any less of a miracle. Even though my brain was injured, and I ended up with another chronic illness, it doesn't mean God was any less faithful.
I am alive, and that is a miracle.
I know of so many children who were sick, and their families prayed, and people prayed, and still these kids didn't make it. And it's not because God was any less faithful. It was a miracle that they were here at all, that they lived, that they fought and defied the odds, and then they went.
My life is a miracle. Your life is a miracle. Every life, no matter how short or long, is a miracle.
Today, I remembered that life is a miracle. I believe miracles still happen, even though sick children still die and miraculously healed kids end up sick. I believe miracles still happen, and I even saw one today, as I held baby S in my arms.
I know God has a plan far bigger then my own, and that He will use this unexpected sickness to bring Him glory. He will use death and loss and sickness to bring glory to His name.

This week, one thing I hope you saw was that miracles do happen. Every life is a miracle, every life a gift, every life precious. More then I hope for awareness and a cure, I hope this week was about seeing miracles.