Hope

It's the second day of the first week of advent - the week of hope. Advent is one of my favorite times of year, when everything feels still and quiet. Advent is also a season of waiting.
This past week has been full. I taught Sunday School, and watched little eyes fill up with happiness as we made stars for our Christmas trees. I set plates in front of men and women and babies who may not know where their next meal is coming from, and the sheer gratitude in their eyes was enough to melt my heart. I celebrated my 18th birthday surrounded by friends, and so much laughter.
In all of it, I saw hope. Glistening, shining, shimmering hope that beamed radiantly into the darkness.
All of these sacred little moments, these tiny glimpses of what I imagine heaven to be like, I stored them up, treasuring them.
My heart felt spread open, and I remember standing on the edges of the banquet that night, watching people file into their seats while the band played and the table I was assigned to serve getting more and more full, and all I could think of was "I don't know how to do this."
I don't know how to keep loving when my heart is so full of the heartache of others.
Sometimes I don't know how to keep reaching for hope and finding the sacred when my own heart has been wounded so profoundly
For one of my classes, I participated in a 10 day spiritual practice, one where I spent time with God in a way that was easiest for me and one way that was hardest for me, each for 5 days. My journey circled a lot around the idea of guilt. Often there were nights when I would go to bed exhausted physically and emotionally, where I would sleep for 10 hours just to wake up and go back to bed 2 hours later.
Hope? Really?
Hope when I feel empty
Hope when I stand there and watch him walk away and something inside of me snaps
Hope when I am asked to give and give even when I have nothing left to offer
Hope when it all seems too heavy and hard
Hope
On Sunday in our church there were a few people who came to speak about Hope, one of them being my dad. And as he talked about hope, and friends gathered around me, reaching for my hands, I reflected on the hard plains that my family has toiled, and the strong legacy of the people that have come before me.
I feel blessed to come from such a strong line of men and women, people who were weak and human but strong and brave when it mattered
"She did put one foot in front of the other. This can be the biggest brave"
This Advent season, a season of waiting, a week of expectant hope, my heart is full: of the sacred and the substantial, of anticipation and the ache.
I am attempting to stay open, to stay spread out, because this is how hope begins to bloom
From the roots, from the soil, from the aching and laboring and loving and living and believing
I watched the sun rise this morning, delicate wisps of gold across the sky. I wonder if it always hurts to become, if the moment before the colors sweep across the sky the sun holds his breath in expectation, in hope, of all that is going to burst forth into the darkness.

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

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

Where I stood

The sun warmed my shoulders as I sat at the kitchen table, listening to Missy Higgins and writing about nostalgia and hope and grief and everything beautiful.
March has been good to me, in a way I never expected.
The first words I wrote this month, as it came to me full of untold secrets, were "I'm not great at ending things."
It began quietly unfolding as I wrote of bad haircuts, watching Julia Robert's movies and saying goodbye. I wrote about grief, pain, still (always) trying to analyze the hole in my chest that came from losing too many people and things that I love.
I fought with myself, constantly wrestling against the idea that there had to be something more, examining my pain under a microscope and trying to make sense of it.
I tried to find myself amidst the unknown, often stumbling over my own edges.
And then there came a moment, and maybe they all come something like this, where I tripped over myself and fell into what I had been looking for.
For a brief moment in time, there was nothing left to say. No apologies sneaking out in the form of poetry, no love letters slipping out of the pen every time it hit the paper. There was just the sound of my heart, and I was learning how to listen to it.
During this month of March I often fought between my heart and my head. I felt like I needed constant reassurance that everything was ok and that I was ok.
And I encountered something I am still trying to explain, and can only describe as radical grace.
In my running away from myself I ran face first, full speed into radical grace, radical faith, radical love and hope.
I had some real, honest conversations with people about my life and where I've been and where I want to go, and maybe I was a little bit surprised by the responses I got. Because sometimes if you give people a chance, they will surprise you and it will be great.
For the first time in forever I realized how loved I am (even if that's something I am still trying to understand)
I laughed and cried and struggled and fought against myself and for myself a lot this month. I got real, got scared, got excited, got honest, got loved.
And I made some big decisions about my future, which are slowly unfolding into something beautiful.
For me, I think March was about beginning that journey to find myself, and listening to my heart and being honest about that. And while that's been my intention I definitely experienced it in a really real and crazy way.
Listening to Missy Higgins and writing in the sunshine was a perfect way for me to wrap up this beautiful, crazy month of grace.
And while I don't know what the next month or few months or year will hold for me I can only hope it involves more of this radical kind of love, and grace and faith. I can only hope it involves more of this being cracked open, because this, I am learning, is how the light gets in.
Even if it's painful
Even if it's hard
I am learning to open myself up to the light and to love and to others and to myself


Sit down on the top there. After all, you climbed all the way up. You did that. Not me. Not your past. You: here and now. It was a steep climb and you almost fell but you didn't. Go on and sit down. And when the trees ask you to stay awhile, tell them "yes, yes, I plan to. In fact, I have always been here. I have always been the light

Peace, Be Still

This week I've been restless.
I ended up in a busy hospital, once again being reminded of this fight that I'm in.
For days I tossed and turned, in physical and emotional pain, repeating to myself over and over that this shouldn't be my life.
But it was and it is the life I was given and as thoughts raced through my mind of all the things I should get done and all the things I should be doing I realized something.
I've been lacking peace.
I read an article about something called guilt away. It's an article I keep coming back to because I tend to have this issue with guilt.
I also tend to be pretty hard on myself, somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to having everything in a neat little row. I thrive on stress and chaos but I have to be able to manage the stress and chaos.
So last night I was lying in bed thinking about all the school work I'm missing and how I should have been back out there a few days ago pushing myself and how if I really tried I would be fine. (If you couldn't tell, the voices in my head are pretty critical. I'm working on that.)
And I realized that I, in no way, need to feel guilty, about anything. The world will keep turning without me being involved in every little part of it. Teachers will be gracious and friends will understand and the work will still be there when I return. What am I feeling guilty about?
I felt guilty for a really long time. I still feel guilty a lot of the time. And I'm tired of it.
So this morning I was going through that eternally long list of things in my head that I should be doing and I was nudged to check out this blog.
I was feeling pretty restless, pretty anxious, wound up, and the video I watched was on peace.
Peace, be still.
Everything sort of fell into place and I felt myself breathe.
This, life, isn't about anxiety or guilt. And yet I've been stuck in that place.
I've been stuck in a place of anxiety, of trying to micromanage the world and control things, and I forgot about the peace I am promised.
A peace that passes all understanding.
I am quick to forget. I am quick to get caught up in the hamster wheel in my head that spins madly.
I question and I struggle and I fight against that when I finally let peace wrap itself around me like a blanket it feels like an exhale.
This is where I belong. Not in a place of anxiety and control, but in one of rest, one where I can sink back into the provision, the comfort, the promise.
Peace
I am here for a reason. Here, in this place, in this situation, for such a time as this. And when I get wrapped up in where I think I should be, what I think is wrong, not feeling good enough, I am robbing myself of peace. I fall back into what I know: anxiety, fear, guilt.
How long will it take until peace becomes a habit? Until in every moment I can find that golden glimmer of peace that I am promised, the one that feels like an exhale and whispers to me Be still.
Be still, for when life feels hard and trying there is always hope
Be still, for when you do not understand there is a peace that passes all understanding that will cover you
Be still, for in the dark seasons of your heart there is this tiny green shoot called joy stemming from the barrenness, waiting to be noticed in every moment
Be still, for when you feel anxious and tied up in knots, lacking in understanding, there comes love to gently remind you of the truth.
Peace is what is promised to me. It is what transforms the slave into a free man. It is the whisper to my heart in this season.
Peace, Be still. Be still and Know.

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 Greatest Thing...

So I read Eva Markvoort's blog these past few days. All of it. From when she started writing in 2006 to when she died in 2010.
I don't know why I started reading her blog, or why when I started I read through it all.
Pages and pages, so many entries written by a vibrant red headed girl.
She wrote about having CF, about her lung transplant, about rejection, about life, and love.
And I read all these entries. I read them as I was sitting in front of my computer after Taylor's memorial chat on SBW and when the pain in my stomach was so bad I thought maybe my appendix had burst.
I read them on my phone by the bathroom light as insomnia and pain kept me from sleeping.
I read them in the afternoon's, when I was too exhausted to do much and I wasn't sure why.
I finished reading them tonight...

I am amazed by this girl. Reading through her entries, she's gone some of the same places I have. I wonder, if I go there again, I could catch some of her crazy strength. I want some...

***
It was US Thanksgiving yesterday, and I've been reading posts by my US friends sharing what they're thankful for. Even though Canadian thanksgiving was a month ago, I am still so grateful.
I am thankful for love.
***
I was pondering this thought during my late night reading of Eva's blog. Eva loved, a lot, which maybe was what got me thinking about love.
I'm loved too, a lot.
These past few days I'm just feeling it. This love is giving me hope and strength and courage.
I've had so many people reminding me in this past month that I am loved. Being loved makes me happy.
I made this little collection of cards on my wall. Eva had one, which is what gave me the idea. It's my wall of love. It's filled with cards and pictures by people who love me, and little things that remind me of being loved. It's pretty small right now (a dozen or so cards) but every time I look at it it makes me smile. There's cards my parents made for me in the hospital playroom when I was little, a birthday card I got in the mail today, letters and cards my friends made for me when I had my scopes last November, a birthday card I kept from my 9th Birthday that my Grandma wrote a poem in, a big huge card everybody at my old school signed for me when I came out of my coma, a card my 2 friends from SBW sent me. There's the little string of old bravery beads I used to tell my story when I was in the hospital the beginning of this month.
They all make me feel loved. It's pretty awesome.
There's not really a point to this post, no meaningful message, just love. Maybe love is the most meaningful message of all.

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return