things I don't do (& the things I want my life to be about)

I want more adventure: the kind that both thrills and terrifies me, the kind that takes my breath away. I want the kind of adventure where I spend the whole time white knuckling it but look back and can only whisper "If that wasn't beautiful, I don't know what is"
I want more love: the kind that makes me forget how to breathe. I want more hand holding and being held close, more family dinners and times spent laughing with friends
I want more joy: more things that make me throw my head back in laughter, more surprises and moments bursting with happiness where all I can do is stand back and wonder how I was blessed with all this, more late summer nights and watching the sunrise and stars and poetry
I want grace: more and more grace, the kind that never runs out. I want to always be aware of that which I do not deserve but am so grateful for.
I want strength and bravery, courage and humility, equal amounts of softness and loudness
I want more people, more road trips where we drive too fast and take turns picking music, more nights staring up at the stars, more flowers in vases, more walks through the woods, more sunshine and coffee and poetry
...
I was thinking recently about what I want my life to be about. School is in it's final days, and I'm left to contemplate on all I've received here.
I was sitting in the sunshine earlier this afternoon, thinking about how I've been changed here. There are the obvious: the things I've learned about God, and grace, and trust, and love. The new relationships, the head knowledge, the heart knowledge. I learned how to forgive and let go and say yes and embrace. I learned how to be softer, gentler, louder, stronger.
At the beginning of the year I said I wanted this year to be about love. I wanted to know for certain what I believed and I wanted to love better.
Both of these things have happened, as I've learned what kind of God I believe in (a magnificent God) and I've been given ample opportunities to love until there is so much inside me it threatens to break my heart wide open.
And now, as I go into the summer, I'm thinking about what I want. And not just for this summer but for my life.
I want adventures and love and grace and strength. I want to not lose my fire, but to also allow myself to be soft sometimes. I want wildness and to forever be becoming something.
I heard it said once that a definition excludes all potential for change so I decided I don't want to be defined by anything. I want to always be changing, growing, becoming more of who I am.
...
I read an article by Shauna Niequist in which she was saying everything she was not. She's not a gardener, or do major home renovations. She doesn't make the bed in the morning or change clothes because simply because she's leaving the house, blow-dry her hair on a regular basis or bake. This is a list of things she was willing to not be in order to be and do what she really wanted.
I think of the things I'm willing to not be in order to be who I really want to be
I want to be full of love, so at some point during this year I realized that pain and love aren't the same thing, and therefore I had the choice not to surround myself with people who just stole my energy and light. I realized that not everyone is going to like me, but I've found the ones that do and am so grateful to them for that.
I want to go on crazy adventures, so I say no to the things I don't want to do and yes to the things I do, even if the things I say yes to scare me. I'm surrounding myself with people and things that make me brave, and push me.
I want joy so I'm counting my blessings and not my complaints
I'm not superwoman. I'm not the honor roll student, or the social butterfly. I've cut back on wearing makeup simply because I like sleep in the mornings, I don't routinely spend time with people who steal my energy so I have more time to spend with people who fill me up, I don't spend hours working on homework because I think the education I get from living is more important than the one I get from books.
I'm willing to not be things in order to be who I really want to be, and do the things that are important to me, and to spend time with the people I truly care about.
For a moment there was absolute panic over not being everything to everybody. Sometimes there still is.
But I think there's also something freeing about it. There is work here that is only mine to do, which includes loving my family and friends, building into these relationships and telling the stories that are mine to tell.
I guess what I want from life is to live my story well. I want this story - which is constantly being written and rewritten by God's very hand - to reflect how I used what I had to love well, to live fully, to laugh often and to enjoy this beautiful life I was given.

It's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.

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

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.

community

Yesterday I sat cross legged on the floor in the gym, surrounded by people yet in that small space entirely alone. We were given five minutes, time carved out to pray. And as I sat there, the first words out of my mouth were Well here I am, God, in the wrestling ring again
October has come to me quietly, much like the changing of the seasons. It is testing my relationships, taking hold of my human characteristics and pointing out the flaws in my selfish desires.
This process of examining my beliefs, my thoughts, my relationships is bittersweet.
I have a longing for hours spent curled up in front of the window, basking in the sunlight, for closeness and poetry.
But life slows down for nothing, and in this place I feel like everything is always moving at rapid speed. The last few nights I have been sneaking off to bed early, crawling beneath the covers, emotionally exhausted.
I feel a strange mix of look how far I've come and yet still look how far I have to go.
The struggle is never ending, there is always more, and nothing is quiet what I thought it would be.
Living in community often leaves me feeling vulnerable, like one wrong move will leave me shattered. And when something comes up, an internal struggle that turns into an external conflict, my instinctive reaction is to pull back and draw within myself.
When I am exhausted, when I am overwhelmed with everything I am learning, when life doesn't happen the way I think it should the first thing I want to do is pull back.
I want to stubbornly hold myself away from the body. The hardest thing to do is to keep being honest, keep loving and extending grace and offering up parts of myself.
One of the main themes I've heard discussed in all my classes this month has been unity, and the body of Christ.
This morning I sat in one of my classes while my teacher spoke on this very topic, emphasizing that none of us are individuals. My failure to grow and dream and love and be the person God intended for me to be doesn't just affect me, it affects everyone else within the body. My struggles, questioning, wrestling doesn't just affect me, but everyone around me. I am not an island.
And maybe I used to think I was. Almost exactly a year ago I wrote for about a month on the idea of being an island, separate.
But I'm not an island. I'm part of this body, this community. And while the easiest thing to do when I'm wrestling out what I believe would be to withdraw, my job is to be here and show up and keep working towards extending that grace and love. I don't get to be off by myself because that's not where I'm put.
The strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf
In these tender moments of wrestling out what I believe, I have been so blessed by the people who have come around me.
Things like going on an adventure only to end up changing a flat tire in the dark,  long walks with good friends, a sweet encouraging note from the girls in my care group, it all reminds me that I am not alone.
Being in community means there are people here, to make me laugh and share in those good moments with and also just to come alongside me and walk with me.
And it means that I get the privilege of coming alongside them as well, sharing in the moments in which they burn the brightest but also stepping into their darkness.
Not one of us is an island.
It is in these hard moments that I begin to truly understand what community is.
It means being here, for the good and the hard. It means standing by your people, and letting them stand by you. It means sometimes getting over yourself to realize you are a part of something bigger.
It means choosing grace and love and to be honest even when your heart is aching.
What I do doesn't just belong to me, but every other person in this community, in this body.
Together we stand, divided we fall

“We don't learn to love each other well in the easy moments. Anyone is good company at a cocktail party. But love is born when we misunderstand one another and make it right, when we cry in the kitchen, when we show up uninvited with magazines and granola bars, in an effort to say, I love you.”  

What I know for sure (You are loved)

There are days when I wish I could write a thank you letter to the world, sign it your not so secret admirer.
But if I sat down to write a thank you letter to every single person and thing that has made me happy over these last few days, I would run out of room.
It would sound a lot like this:
I'm thankful to my little group in English class, who makes waking up early and coming to school every morning that much better.
I'm thankful for the Melodic Caring Project, for making me feel like a rock star. They are a beautiful organization that I am so proud to be a part of (You guys should check them out. I just wrote my first piece for their blog, and I'll post the link once that's up)
I'm thankful for sunny days and good hair days and days when I get to go shopping with my mama
I'm thankful for poetry and Starbucks and dirty feet from walking barefoot
...
She asked me why I don't seem to get stressed, and something about the way she said it stuck with me all day. She said I always look so calm.
I told her I do get stressed, but just about different things.
If I'm being totally honest, the idea of someone seeing me as calm is a beautiful one, because it's taken me so long to get to that place where I do have these moments of serenity
It's taken so many sleepless nights, lots of yoga, lots of being still, lots of being loud, amazing friends, poetry and having lived through those dark days
And I'm not naïve enough to think that there won't be more
There will be
There will be days when it feels like my entire world is collapsing in and I cannot breathe due to the weight of it all
But I've also experienced silver linings, happiness in the little things.
Maybe if I was writing this right now from a place of depression it would sound a little different. But just having come out of one of those places, one of those periods of being so fully aware of your own brokenness it gets hard to breathe, I know that while the brokenness exists, painfully so, and it is overwhelming at times, you have to believe things can get better than they are now.
This is a letter to everyone who has ever felt broken. This is a letter to myself, because I need to hear it.
She said she's not so sure she believes in love anymore, and I've been there too
Just a few months ago I probably would have said something similar.
But right now I know love is the only thing I know for sure.
I so often forget, but there are days when I am overwhelmed by it.
Love is what I know for sure.
It is something I have to keep reminding myself of, something I don't always feel like I deserve. It's like the wind: I can't see it but I know it's there.
If I had one thing to say to my friend, it would be this: You are loved, more than you can imagine.

Sunday Dinner

I imagine hosting a Sunday dinner
Autumn leaves delicately balancing on branches and the sun beating down on my shoulders
The table is set with potato salad and apple pie and lemonade
It feels like coming home
Someone will play guitar and we will sing, loudly and off key.
There will be dancing, and we will spin until we get dizzy
And as the sun sets, we will sit before the crackling fire and exchange stories and drink hot coffee out of tin cups
I am learning there is something unspeakably beautiful about being in the presence of someone who loves you
There is something unexplainable about speaking your truth, the best and the worst parts of yourself, without trying to justify or explain. And if you give people a chance, I am learning sometimes they might surprise you
We will sit under the stars and tell our stories, one after another, words rolling out of our mouths. It will feel something like becoming holy, something like being reminded of who you really are, something like stepping into sunlight after so long stumbling in the dark
I pour you another cup of coffee
There is something about being here, in this place, with this food and these friends, that makes you feel nourished, feel like you are perhaps becoming whole again
You, my love, are so much more than broken
Remember that, okay?
I have many things in my heart, many unanswered questions
but when you lean in and ask
How are you?
I will watch you, memorizing the colors in your eyes and the love radiating into my body and I will say
good

2013 Reflections

On New Year's Eve of 2012, I received an email from a friend. I was feeling unsocial, uncomfortable in my own skin, and anxious. Her message ended up becoming a mantra of sorts for my year: Wishing you Poetry and Stars.
And, looking back on the year I had in 2013, it was filled with poetry and stars, just not in the way I expected.
One thing I tried to do in 2013 was to write. And I did, almost daily. I kept a running tab, wrote entries filled with whatever I was thinking about that day. Some months I wrote every day, and other months I wrote only a few times per week. But looking back on those entries, on the music I listened to in 2013, on the mementos I kept pinned to my wall and on shelves in containers, I get to see how far I've come in the last year, how I've changed, how I've grown.
This is my sentimental reflection on 2013, a goodbye echoing out as I ready myself for a new hello.

January
January began with hope, the desire to be better. It began with metaphors and stories and wishful thinking, the way January usually begins. I thought a lot about redemption, about the meaning of home, and struggled with finding peace within myself.
January was a month filled with hope and the promise of new beginnings. I was blissfully happy, learning to find myself in the world.

February
February began with thoughts of love and the transformation into a lion hearted girl. I was still wistful, happy in a way I couldn't quite understand. By the final day in February, my world began to crack. I didn't know then it was in preparation for the break that would upend my life.

March
March was grief, and brokenness. It was falling to the floor screaming and standing beside a grave with no explanation, only anguish. It was everything I didn't know how to understand, and everything I never wanted to have to learn. It was discovering the meaning of strength, daily. It was a time when my heart was broken, shattered into a million pieces I didn't know how to fix.

April
Looking back, I barely remember April. The days seem to run together, one moment fading into the next, none of them feeling real. I was still broken. I craved darkness, silence, solitude. I was restless, and angry. I tried to write through my pain, most of the words leaving my body bereft, inconsolable, and fierce. I watched too much television in an attempt to ignore the world that miraculously kept turning in despite of my brokenness.

May
May felt like another round of bad luck, like the blackness had swallowed me whole. The wound I had been trying to heal in April felt split open again, and I was bleeding all over the floor. I cried more in the first part of May then I remember doing before: in a parking lot, on the kitchen floor, in a doctor's office where suddenly the roles were reversed, and too often, in my own bed, crying myself to sleep. I held onto hope like if I curled my fingers around it tight enough, then it couldn't be broken. I went inward, taking stock of my life, bracing myself for the pieces of my world that kept falling in.

June
June was for rituals, for clinging to ceremonies. I was desperately searching for a way to be full again. I did a lot of yoga, ate well, and searched for people who were bravely walking through brokenness. Words weren't as easy to come by, and if I sat in the silence for too long I started to feel the voices in my head begin to take over. I chased sanity as if it was something I could grab, locking my fingers around it and holding it tight.

July
The discomfort I felt inside my own body grew heavier. I slept in hotel rooms and thought about death, and life, and living. My body felt broken, my mind felt broken, my heart felt broken. As many strings as I pulled, hoping to hold my life together, it kept unraveling. I felt like a stranger in my own skin. I had a restless mind and a restless heart, and I didn't know how to sit with myself and not run away from the pain, in some way or another.

August
August was for lusting after life, trying to swallow it whole. I tried stupid things and not so stupid things and did what made me happy. Maybe it was covering some deeper issue I still had, maybe it was well done denial, but I felt alive for the first time in months. I felt like the world was begging to be noticed and I vowed to take advantage of every moment.

September
September welcomed new things. It began with a desire to be brave, to experience life, and ended in quiet reflection. I was introduced to a world that challenged me, intrigued me and mystified me (and still does.) It was my first introduction to some amazing people. I wrestled with myself, asking a lot of questions, some that didn't have answers.

October
The broken heart was analyzed as more losses fell, reminding me of the grief that had draped itself over my life. It was death, and letting go. It was also welcoming new life, stretching to make room to accommodate it all. It was driving down back roads and listening to loud music and falling in and out of love daily.

November
November was for fiction, for distractions. It was poetry in dark closets and too many hours spent staring at the wall. It was the month when I turned another year older, which was both exciting and something I dreaded in the same moment. I was stuck in my head too much, as I always am. The world felt like it was moving too fast for me to keep up. I felt helpless to stop the spinning of my own mind. It was also a month of gathering stories, memorizing faces, collecting moments.

December
December was the apology I never knew how to write. It was days upon days lived in a perpetual state of fear, of panic, of grief. It was losing my mind slowly. I didn't try to understand it all. I went through the motions. I didn't write, didn't let my mind run away with the endless possibilities that were churning inside of my skull. I didn't let the brokenness of the month, and of all the months that have come before it, catch up with me.

2013 was a year of firsts, a year of being completely broken open. As a whole it was probably filled with more tears than any other year, more grief, more moments I didn't know how to comprehend. I told my secrets to the stars and wrote poetry on the side of coffee cups and crawled my way up out of the grief.
I'm coming out of 2013 not at all the same person who walked into it. I've been forever changed by the things that happened this year. I questioned my whole life, and am on a quest for answers. I cried, screamed, felt and wrote my way through this year. Because sometimes that's the only way you can do it.
I carry more anger now, am more jaded, more scarred. The world doesn't make sense to me anymore, not in the way it used to.
But, despite all the grief I carry with me from this past year, it was also full of good things. I felt the world inside of myself, and started (As I always am) making peace with it. While I lost people, I also met some amazing people, people who make me laugh and fill me with hope and encourage me to be a better person, to "write with blood" and to experience life. I had moments when I felt truly alive. I fell in love with people, with things, with the world despite it's brokenness.

"You'll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else. You will need other people and you will need to be that other person to someone else, a living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe in better things"

"Sometimes its the smallest things that save us: the weather growing cold, a child's smile, and a cup of excellent coffee."

The Land of Enchantment

I've been thinking a lot lately. Writing a lot of poetry, collecting quotes and photographs. It's an interesting time for me, one full of so much sorrow and heart ache but also full of peace.
I might not have the words to process everything right now, but I have words to make stories, and I guess in a way my creating stories is me processing it all. So here's something I wrote with the inspiration I gathered from this post

4 times in 5 days. That had to be some sort of record, even in it was only a personal one. And the tears had to be some sort of reflection of the burdened state of her heart. They were poetry in their own way, speaking when no more words could be said.

The hardest word to say is goodbye. To the man you loved with all your crooked heart, to the tiny babe who held a piece of your heart, to friends and grandparents and those barely human but very much alive. Goodbye never gets easier.

She thought about this as she walked down the road that blistery October day, her toes and the tip of her nose growing colder.

A coffin the size no coffin should be, belonging to a tiny girl who was there that day when her life changed, a girl so loved by so many who had never met her. And it reminded her of a bigger coffin, one she stood over in march and sobbed over words unsaid and promises that didn't have time to be kept. And it reminded her of the others, the coffins she never saw but the lives of those behind them that had taken a piece of her with them as they passed on into the great perhaps.

The cruelty and brutality of death must be met with the gentle hand of hope for without it everything crumbles.
Loss had put years on her. Her forehead was slightly wrinkled now, her feet colder, her body more fatigued and frail.
Being berated time after time, being forced to say the hardest word until there are no more words left, only aching sobs, it takes a toll on one's physical body.
If she were to write the names of the deceased up her arm the total would be over two dozen.
It is said there is one living person for each dead 14 and she felt she had more than her fair share of names tattooed on her skin of those who had changed her and died too soon.
When she was younger, her aunt, a seasoned veteran of life herself, used to tell her stories as she brushed out her hair. She spoke of unicorns and fairies and once she spoke of the land of enchantment.
She said the sand there was holy, and there were healing springs of life. She collected sand in plastic bags and water in tiny jars and she gave them to her friends back home. One to the divorcee, one to the motherless child, one to the ill and dying. She offered these items to her loved ones, and also offered herself.
She said perhaps we are all collecting things, filling our bags and jars. We fill and collect the offerings of others and when we are finally full we pass on.
It isn't painful, she said, rather it is more like being underwater, a breath and then as one world slips away a new one takes its place. For those left behind, though, her aunt said, when they have offered up pieces of themselves that are now gone, its the most painful thing imaginable. Suddenly you are without this part of yourself, however large or small, and you must figure out how to let it go.
People help. so do long hot showers, coffee so strong and hot it can make you wince, poetry and tears.
But in the end the only cure for the unbearable ache of saying a permanent goodbye is time itself.
One day, even if it seems unthinkable, the smile will return.
Her heart was broken. She had offered up herself to those who had gone to explore the great perhaps and the agony of living with a fractured heart was almost too much to bear.
Goodbye seems to get caught in the throat, sticky like peanut butter, and the idea of time healing all wounds seems laughable.
The idea of venturing into the great perhaps seems more appealing when you're lying on the bathroom floor with a broken heart.
But, her aunt had said, there comes a time when you must get up. Take that hot shower, stomach a cup of piping hot coffee and put one foot in front of the other. Collect moments of your own that will sustain you for a lifetime and then some extra to stow away for your own journey, when the time comes.
Swallow the hope. While it tastes sickeningly sweet in the mouth in the stomach it is a helpful remedy.
A scar will form, a reminder of the one you loved and the part of the heart that was given away, one for every unspeakable goodbye.
"Don't be afraid, my dear," her aunt had told her. "Your heart knows how to heal, even when you deem it impossible. You are a vessel, giving and collecting love. This is life."
And so, with red rimmed eyes and pale skin, she decided to get up. To shower, and make that pot of coffee and pray her aunt had been right, that over time the ache would diminish.
Besides, there was still much more loving left to do.

All You Need Is Love

She set her head on the desk and leaned her cheek against the smooth surface and closed her eyes, for a brief minute falling into a world where nothing hurt.

 The legs of his chair banged against the floor as he moved to sit as close to her as the plastic surfaces they sat on would allow, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his cheek against her shoulder.

And this moment was like a drug to her, like an intravenous drip running into her veins restoring her faith in humanity and kindness and beauty and the world slowly and all at once. And his arms around her were like a shelter, a fortress that when the winds raged outside of her windows and the rain beat against the panes and the world was carrying on as if it was in the middle of a hurricane, kept her safe and dry. And inside his arms the world made sense and sometimes when the world is hard all it takes to give you that push to keep going is knowing that someone is on your side.

It’s a pair of arms to go home to after a long day and it’s the hand to hold as you walk through the hallways of a place where everyone is trying to convince you to be someone other than yourself. And it’s those eyes that return you to your center, even when you feel as though you’ve lost your island and you’re lost in this storm with the raging winds and the rain. It’s having a person, someone who believes in you when you don’t quite believe in yourself and someone who reminds you of all the reasons why you’re worth loving when you seem to have forgotten them.

And it’s the harbor and it’s coming home and to her, he was all of that. And as he wrapped his arms around her and ran his fingers through her hair and kissed her pale skin, he was reminding her of the million and one ways she deserved to be loved.

And sometimes the world hits hard and the raging storm becomes a hurricane, a force of nature like no other, and it’s all anyone can do to stay standing. And sometimes the harbor cracks under the pressure and it just becomes two children lost in a storm. And so she cradles his head in her hands, pouring back into him the strength he infused into her. She moves her hands in small, meticulous circles over his ink black hair and her lips are moving but I can’t make out the sound and all of it appears to be like some kind of secret promise. Because when the world hits you hard and knocks you down and it’s all you can do to get out of bed in the morning and still believe in the good and the beautiful, you find safety in company. And where his heart was jaded and broken fit perfectly with the scars and jagged edges on her own and as his strength bore into her, her strength poured into him and it was this dance, a tender game of give and take.

And she sat up and looked him in the eye and she lifted her fingers and placed them on his chest, in the very spot his heart is. And his heartbeat pounded against her hand and in these life giving beats she was reminded of how beautiful life is and of the fragility and tenderness of being tragically human and how sometimes all it takes to believe in yourself is having another person believe in you.

Like two children in a storm they huddled together, creating their own force of nature, their own shelter from the incoming hurricane. With broken pieces and jagged edges and the jaded fragments of themselves that didn’t belong, a safe harbor was built.
With his heartbeat under her fingers and his arms around her waist, she found the courage within her to calm even the deadliest sea. She found a thread called beauty and a string called hope and a piece of ribbon labeled love and she used them to stitch up whatever had been inside of her that had broken.

And I guess they had been right when they said all you need is love.


Sometimes you have moments when you lose yourself. Among piles of homework and crowded halls and the lack of sleep and the infection that is taking its toll, you become someone you didn't know you could be a few months ago. Instead of thriving you're merely surviving and life becomes a gauntlet run of sorts, an obstacle course, something just to get through.
I woke up this morning not wanting to wake up. I hit the snooze button a few too many times. My stomach was in knots as I sat in my first class, untying the knot that had been made of the apron strings.
And in these moments, when life becomes just another task to check off your to-do list, you can forget about the beauty of humanity and the beauty in the world and all that has the potential to stir something within you and make you scream "Yes! I felt that. And I am more than just a collection of cells and tissues, I am a person."
I was sitting in the library, looking at a text book I wasn't reading, when I saw them. Two people sitting a few yards away from me. And inside of me they sparked a story.
They reminded me of the most beautiful thing, something I had forgotten as I paced in the trenches and was tossed around by a life that feels like you're juggling too many plates and sooner or later something is going to come crashing down.
They reminded me of the beauty in being tragically human, in being vulnerable and being fragile. And I felt something stir inside of me, something that reminded me that I, too, am a part of this human race and within me is the potential for that kind of beauty and that kind of love.
And life is hard and exhausting but it is also beautiful, if you look.
And I want to look. I want to see people that make me stare, unable to look away, and that make me fall in love with the world all over again, that stir within me stories and feelings that remind me that yes, I am human, and yes, this is what it means to be alive.
Sometimes, in the middle of an ordinary day when life seems un-ordinarily  heavy, people come around who spark within you a fire that you can use to warm yourself and regain strength. They remind you that life is beautiful, and they make you fall so in love with the world and these people and this moment and this feeling that you can't even breathe.

So, to the couple in the library, thank you. Thank you for reminding me of the beauty that still exists, and for lighting a fire of strength and passion inside of me when I felt like I was slowly losing (myself, this battle, my hope, passion, strength and love).
Sometimes, if you open your eyes and look up, people will surprise you. There will be beauty, enough to remind you that you are human and of the reason that you do this day in and day out.
Become a beauty seeker and see love, and be love, and let it penetrate your being and then reflect it back out into the world.
Because sometimes all you really need is love.

I was asked to do a guest post for my friend Crystal's new blog with the topic "Keep Walking." It was published today, and you can check that out here

Making Room

Recently, I was asked to write a guest post for the blog of author Nancy Rue. Every time I am asked to do a guest post, I am honored, and this time was no exception. The topic I was asked to write on was forgiveness.
When I got the email asking me to write this piece, I was in a place where I needed to forgive myself. Not wanting to deal with the topic of forgiveness at all (and come face to face with my need for it) I put off the post for nearly a week. But the idea of forgiveness kept popping up. Someone would write a status about it on Facebook. On Pinterest there would be a quote about forgiveness. In a newsletter I subscribe to, in other blogs I read. I couldn't seem to escape the idea of forgiveness.
So I sat down with my computer one night, determined to write about forgiveness and get this thing off my plate. I'd dealt with forgiveness many times before, and I would just write about one of those experiences.
About halfway through my writing, I noticed a shift. I don't know if it was noticeable to anyone reading it, but I felt it.
I'm human. I am tragically flawed. I make mistakes, some I'd rather not own up to, wishing I could just sweep them under the rug and move on. And, being human, when I make some of those mistakes I beat myself up over them for days. As I was writing this, I began to observe the very tender balance between forgiveness and forgetting.
I read an article by one of my inspirations, Jennifer Pastiloff, the other day about forgetting. She raised the idea that we don't forget anything. Our memories, everything that has happened to us, is stored somewhere, unable to be forgotten, even if our mind is not consciously aware. In having this storage room of sorts, Jen says that we can let go of all the things we are holding on to that don't belong to us or no longer serve us, knowing that they are kept safe in this storage room and are not gone. This way there is more room to hold those good things in your arms, the love and the laughter and the sunny Saturday's at the lake.
This was in the forefront of my mind as I was writing the article about forgiveness. As I came face to face with my need to forgive myself.
So I made a mistake. a big one. If I hold on to this mistake, keeping it in my arms, pressed tight against my ribcage, I am taking up room I could use for holding close the people I love, or the memories I don't want to forget. Part of my fear is related to the quote that says if we all let go of our problems and saw what everyone else has we'd scoop up our own. I have this fear of letting go of my problems and letting people see them. I am learning that people won't always react like I think they will, and that really my problems aren't problems that are totally new to the human race. When I forgive myself, I can let go of everything that isn't mine that I've been holding onto- the pain and the blame and the hurt and the anger and the negative self talk. Those things don't serve me anyway.
Letting go doesn't mean forgetting. It doesn't mean that it doesn't matter or that there's nothing wrong with what happened. It means I'm making more room for things that really matter, like the people I love and the memories I can wrap around myself like a blanket on a chilly day.
I'm not forgetting. I'm not throwing my heart and all it holds on the ground and stomping, letting the pieces fall where they will. It's all still there. It still belongs to me, the memories, the good and the bad. I'm just making room.

If you feel like reading the article I wrote on forgiveness, you can check it out here

And then it was time to let go...

And then it was time to let go
It should be the name of a season, or a day of the week, at the very least.
Saturday, Sunday, Monday, And then it was time to let go

This is what I've been thinking of these past few days.
And then it was time to let go
Time to let go of dreams that aren't happening for me right now
Time to let go of pieces of the past I've been holding on to a little too tightly
I don't know why I hold on to things so tightly, but if I had to guess I think it would have something to do with fear.
Fear that if I don't do this, if I don't go with them, if I don't chase down this dream and pursue it and manifest it RIGHT NOW then I'm not going to matter.
Fear that if I let go of the past then it won't matter and it will just fall forgotten along the shores of life.
Fear that if I stop being who I'm pretending to be and if I lay down my stories and my titles and these dreams that I had for myself since I was a little girl I won't matter anymore.
But that's the thing, even if I have nothing I matter. You matter. That little kid in Africa matters and that homeless man on the corner matters and we matter.
And its nothing I did or didn't do and its nothing I said or didn't say and its not because of which stories I held on to and which ones I let go of.
I matter. My being here matters. My story matters and my pain matters and my life matters.
And yours does too.
And then it was time to let go
You know its time because you feel it. You get tired of carrying around this thing that isn't yours to carry anymore. And, for me, I believed I mattered even if...
Even if I let go of the pieces of the past I've been hauling around behind me for far too long now.
Even if I choose to be here in this moment, accepting that this dream I once had isn't happening for me right now and that's ok and it's even ok if dreams change.

I get attached to things, to stories and to dreams and to people and things. With every step closer to letting go, I wonder if I'm making a mistake. Even if my arms are heavy and my arms are tired, I will hold on to this thing or this dream or this story or this pain or this whatever with white knuckles.
I'm afraid to let go because I'm afraid of the unknown.
I like predictable and comfortable and even if its painful I know what's coming. I'm not one to really enjoy surprises and curveballs and I like to be in control.
But that's the thing, I can stay in the comfortable and the predictable and the known but it is only in the different and unpredictable that my life will change.
Change takes place when I am ready to let go of what I know and walk full speed, face first in to the dark. That's faith.
And letting go requires a leap of faith. It requires trusting in life and in yourself and in a God who works everything out for your good and His glory.
And then it was time to let go
And I knew this because I could feel it. It was something deep inside of me, making me believe that even if I let go I mattered. It was knowing that change happens in the unpredictable, the things that rock my world, and it is trusting in a God who loves me and knows everything that is on my path. It's the feeling in my chest, the antsy-ness I get when I know it's time to move on.
I only have so much room in my arms to hold things. And I get to decide what I hold. And I choose people. I choose love and joy and hope.
And in order to make room for those things that I want, I need to let go of what no longer serves me.
The journey that wasn't meant for me to take yet
The story I've been holding on to for too long, letting it define me
And then it was time to let go

Jump

I've been thinking a lot lately about love, and bravery, and honesty. And my people, and who I am and life in general. It's summer and late night conversations and getting together for Starbucks seems to pull these kinds of things out of me, one following the other, like a magician and his scarves.
I've been thinking lately about how life is short. I mean, it's not, it's long and the days seem long and the months seem long but looking back there somehow wasn't enough time for me to say the things I needed to say before it was too late.
A few months ago, I made a promise. Under a March sky with the snow crunching under my boots and horse hair on my coat, I promised I would learn from my mistakes. Instead of thinking about the words I never got to say, I would do something about it. I would say what I needed to say because the only thing guaranteed is this moment.
I'm learning the value of relationships. Within the past few days I have had friends challenge me on the topic of honesty. And I'm learning being honest isn't a bad thing. Saying what you need to say isn't wrong. Even if you have no idea how things will turn out. Even if it changes everything, and even if it changes nothing. Honesty is brave and speaking your truth (over coffee or late night texts) is brave. Not letting a moment go by without letting the people you love know that you love them, that's pretty brave in my opinion.
Sometimes that's life. Standing on the edge of a cliff and jumping, even if you don't know what's waiting on the other side. I heard a quote once that said "You don't know where to go but you know you can't stay here."
And so you jump.
Even if you don't know what comes next, you jump.
You have to jump into people and trust they'll be there to catch you
Even if you blurt out your thoughts in a way that isn't pretty or neat or polite
Even if you tell them the deepest, darkest parts of your story
You have to say what you need to say and take that jump, trusting that people will catch you when you do.
You know what people I mean. They're my people. They are the people that accept my random outbursts with grace. They're the people who give me a huge reality check when I need one or tell me to get some sleep, saying things will look better in the morning. They're the people who help me remember who I really am. Sometimes they're the people who keep me from doing something really stupid, and sometimes they do the stupid things with me, things we can all laugh about years from now. They put up with me writing about them all the time. These are my people.
And I'm learning to let them in. I'm learning to say what I need to say and trust that, in the end, they'll still be here. Because they love me, not who I pretend to be.
So that's where I am: being real, being honest, being brave, loving wildly and fully and learning to trust that my people will be there even when...
I'm learning what it means to jump

A semi-autobiography

    i.            Words flow from me like a river. Warm in my belly they sit like soup. Gently, with butterfly like fingers, like soft, flowing ribbons they caress my insides. “Speak your truth,” They whisper to me. I barely have the ears to listen.  Like a river it flows from me, pain like a white, radiant light comes from my spine, my shoulders, and my hips. This pain transforms. It spins me like a spider weaving its web, stitching into me fibers of silver and gold. Stories balance precariously on my tongue and I soak up information, lapping it up like a dog, drinking it in like a traveler in the desert thirsty for a cool drink. Transformed, spinning in this web, I shift and change. Truths are spoken and tiny hands pick up each heel, pressing me onward. Their belief, this radiant form of love, it changes me. With a gentle spirit I open myself upwards to the sun, letting the rays and all their glory penetrate my very being. The babbling brook whispers my name and her laughter catches the wind. I have folded myself into this universe, wrapped myself in the golden rays of the truth. Wrapped in sunlight and silk from the spider’s web, I walk forward.

 

   ii.             The world is not my playground.  Thoughts spiral down, around, thoughts of love and loss and forever. I thought I knew what these things meant, once. But as it would seem, I am an impostor, lying in my own skin. I do not know the meaning of these delicately bound objects. Who does know, I wonder, as I watch the robin build his nest for the coming summer. I feel the sun on my shoulders, the grass under my bare feet. I have it hanging on my wall: love, and yet I am bereft to find the meaning. Because once I thought I loved you, and you were afraid and fled. And I understand, my darling. And yet I dreamt of losing you and I fought against time and space to save you. Your brow is knit tight, your lips pursed closed, and I wonder at your thoughts. I’d throw a penny in every wishing well for you to tell me your utmost desires. What is it that keeps you up all night? What is it that makes your heart sing? What is it, my love? What is it that makes you angry and what makes you at peace? But, like the robin, you are just beyond my reach. And so I will sit in silence, watching, marveling at the beauty that you are. I will watch as you fly away. And I will hope for the day you will come back to my tender garden. I will wait for the day when the beauty of a robin will finally be enough for my wandering heart.

 

  iii.            The memory of you is stored there. Right there, in the pocket of empty space running up my spine, from my tailbone into my shoulders. Some days I scarcely notice the ache from the absence of you. Other days it is all I can think of. The missing is not so much pain, not anymore. It isn’t joy either. I would say it is light grey, like the sun shining through the clouds right before they are about to break after a rainstorm. The world smells fresh and the earth is damp and if I sink my toes into it long enough, I can feel you in the rain. It is stillness. The missing of you is stillness. It isn’t a throbbing absence, not pulsating inside of me. It is more like this empty pocket of space, just there. Most days it doesn’t hurt. It just feels empty. And on those days I’ll put on your sweater, stand on the back porch and wait for rain.

 

     iv.            Soon this space will be too small. I push against the edges of this old box. Like toes in shoes, I am pressed up against the edges. I shift and make myself more comfortable in this space which I am rapidly outgrowing. I feel the tension from being pressed tight, no room to expand. So I must gain courage. I must walk in love, in truth. I must be willing to lose sight of the shore, becoming vulnerable and taking risks. It is there I will taste healing, savoring the taste of solace on my tongue, drinking in marvelous beauty, open to embracing creativity and my truth. With one final push this old rowboat is out to sea. My hands shake as I grip the oars, pushing myself farther and farther away from the shore with each stroke.
Attraversiamo – Let’s cross over.

 

v.            Something always brings me back to you. Like tangles in my hair and the blue heart drawn on the inside of my favorite pair of jeans. It’s a touch stone, I think. It’s like the universe holds it breath in anticipation for this moment, the moment I’ll come back. Because I always do. I’m a gypsy at heart but I can never stay gone for long. I tell myself I’m really leaving this time but we both know it’s a lie. I’m not capable of leaving. I will always come back, floating in on the wind. It’s because you’re a touch stone. It’s because, hard as I try, I can never look into my eyes without seeing the reflection of yours.

 

vi.            And so I wait. For love, for peace, for reunion, for words that last longer than a few moments, for a place my body knows how to stay. I build myself into people. There’s a piece of me there, right under your left ear, and that person has a tiny piece on their big toe. I toss my heart like ashes in the wind and hoping where they fall will be somewhere safe. That’s why I spend so much time running, I think. I’m trying to find myself. I’ve forgotten that here already holds the biggest piece of me.

 

vii.            I ask my empty hands what it all means. I ask myself what it means to love, to let go. I feel the empty space as I sit and I wonder how much longer I will feel the absence like the lack of fluid around my spinal column. I ask them what it  means. I ask them if this time I’m really letting go.

 

viii.            My hands have yet to write the answer.

The Offering of Love

This morning I was surrounded by love.
It started early this morning, before the rest of the world was awake, my room still dark. I got a nudge, and I'm learning that when God nudges you listen, even if it's 6am and you'd much rather be curled up in bed enjoying those last few hours of sleep before your morning class.
Pray
And so I did. As each name came to me, I prayed. As I prayed, I felt such gratitude for the people I was praying for. I remembered moments, moments that would seem small to anyone else, and I saw in them beauty, remembering vulnerability and strength. And I felt blessed.
I heard sounds I usually am not awake to hear. The coffee pot starting to brew upstairs. the morning songs of the birds, greeting a new day. I saw the sun creep into my bedroom window, lighting the room bit by bit.
And I was surrounded by love.
Later this morning, I was checking my emails and one message continued to come up: love.
"Love. Say it. Say it now. Don't worry about what happens next, just say it."
"What are you willing to do for those you love?"
"Offering yourself up for love. Allowing yourself to be used. You are the offering."

Breakfast prepared lovingly, set out on the table - an offering of love.
Conversations before work and classes began, sharing time and stories - an offering of love
Bird's songs bringing my mind to the beautiful early in the morning - an offering of love.
These offerings, so beautifully prepared, and I feel inadequate to receive such gifts. How am I deserving of these offerings?
And so I add my humble offerings, offering myself to love.
Text messages sent out to friends, whispering the words "I love you. I am grateful for you" - an offering of love.
The soft 'thank you' said to teachers as we finish out this year - an offering of love.
Taking a moment to write down these tiny blessings, and expressing my gratitude - an offering of love

On this Monday morning, in the last week of school, on the 9 month anniversary of when I got diagnosed, I am learning about love.
Each tiny blessing is a soft love song and on this day I have been given ears to hear it.
May, each day, we offer up and receive love. Love isn't meant to be kept, hidden away safe. Yes, there it is safe from harm, safe from being damaged and tarnished and ruined. But if love is kept sheltered, locked up, it can never grow. If not noticed, appreciated, offered and received, the heart cannot flourish and thrive, becoming beautiful.
Take a deep breath in and receive this love that has been given to you.
And exhale, offering up your own love, your life, who you are, and let yourself be the beautiful in the world.

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

Stick

I've got the talking stick, what am I supposed to talk about?
The hours are slow. Most of the time I just stare at the ceiling. It hurts to even breathe.
This is the side of chronic illness that isn't so pretty. It's not butterflies and rainbows and positivity or even brutally honest jokes on pinterest laden with dark humor. This is real. This is lying in bed for hours at a time when it hurts too much to get up.
It's just a flare, I tell myself. It will get better, right? One day out being normal and I'm in so much pain it hurts to breathe, or move, or even think sometimes.

Am I supposed to talk about my feelings? I don't know... I'm good. I feel good. My feelings about being sick... I don't really have any feelings about being sick
Some days are worse than others. Some days it feels like the only noise I can make is harsh and fierce and unprecedented. I just sit there and cry. Not because I'm sad. I'm not sad. I'm just... tired.
I'm tired of living in this body that's broken down and tired of people not understanding and tired of having to defend myself.
Some days I look in the mirror and barely recognize the girl I see there. She's so pale, and her hair is matted to her head and she has no makeup on. Her eyes are kind of empty and sad. She looks fragile. She doesn't look like me.
But, then again, I don't know what I look like anymore.

I can show you. You can touch it, if you like.
See this scar here? This is from where I cut my knee open when I was learning to ride a bike.
And this one here? That's from when he broke my heart.
And this one, this one right here, that one is from the IV in my neck I had when I was a baby.
That one is from the surgery
And that one is from the monsters, the little ghouls that lurk in the dark places of my soul. You don't see them, really. You don't see their scars. But I promise you they are there. I promise you sometimes my thoughts can do more damage than the slice of a scalpel.

They told me I'd be getting sick but actually I'm just getting awesome
Considering everything I'm lucky, right?
I have an amazing support system, fabulous doctors, and the chances of me dying from my disease is pretty slim.
I have this little book I keep beside my bed, and I write down things I'm grateful for. I'm at 600 or something like that.
Want to know what the first thing I wrote in it was?
My crazy sexy chronic illness.
Because I'm grateful, I am. I'm proud of who I am and I wouldn't want to change.
Not to brag or anything, but I think being sick has made me awesome. It's who I am. Or maybe it's just showed me who I am.
I'm Alisha
I'm 16
I'm a writer, a dreamer, a daughter, sister, niece, cousin and friend
I'm a child of God
And, oh yeah, I just happen to have a couple of chronic illnesses
and I'm kind of awesome

Sure, I know that my body is trying to eat itself, but what if it isn't? What if it's changing?
I think I might be turning into glass. I think all my bones and all my muscles and all my skin are turning into glass. Hard, smooth and clean. Fragile, yeah, but strong.
I watched this movie once, about a little glass doll. She was broken, her porcelain legs shattered and the edges all jagged. The powerful wizard, he fixed her using some glue.
She turned out to be really brave. She was made of glass, yeah, but she was strong.

You'll think I'm nuts, but I've got the talking stick

http://www.freshink.com.au/stick/

Born this way

I think there's something to be said for suffering. We live in an age where we are so blessed that we can medicate when we need to; headaches, childbirth, dentistry, fevers, surgeries... But as a result, we've grown to expect less suffering in life - and in death. We even attempt to medicate heartbreak. Don't get me wrong - I've downed more than my fair share of painkillers when I've needed them - and I've dealt with the annoyance and frustration of suffering with migraines that hurt more than my natural childbirths. I've given medications or cough candies to my children... and while I understand that pain is not fun - and, yes, I do try to avoid it - or seeing my children in it, some days I wonder if we're trading off something precious when we make it our goal to avoid suffering completely.

1am had come and gone and thanks to some wonderful insomnia, I was still awake. Staring at the ceiling, journaling until my hand started cramping up and I couldn't think straight enough to finish a thought.
I was thinking about suffering.
In chronic illness, like in a lot of things, I think, there are a lot of misunderstandings. It leaves the patient (namely me, yesterday) feeling alone and frustrated. It feels like on top of actually feeling the physical pain, you have to defend it. Everyone seems to need a reason for why things are the way they are or why I'm feeling the way I am.
I'm tired of hearing everyone's opinions on how I should act or how I should treat my illness and my body. I'm tired of people in general acting like they have some sort of right to how I live my life.
And I feel like, in dealing with a chronic illness, people expect you to make yourself smaller. If you're having a flare, you have to have done something wrong. If you can't get out of bed in the morning or can't take a shower it's because you're not trying hard enough.
I think a lot of people expect patients with any kind of illness to be positive and happy all the time and that's really not true. And I feel like people are uncomfortable when they see that side that is real and honest and that really sucks sometimes.
"Stay in your little closet until you find a cure," They'll whisper, "Once you get a cure, then you can inspire people. But right now you're sick and unless you can pretend like that part of you doesn't exist then stay back."

I think, as a society, we're so quick to shrug off suffering. There's a quick fix for everything, even though it's not always that simple. One of the problems with this I see is that no one ever teaches you how to live with that pain or how to embrace who you are now.
Yeah, my life changed dramatically when I got sick. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. But I get treated like it is. I get shoved back into the corner, afraid to be myself because I'll be judged or pitied or whatever. I can't be real because that's wrong. I have to just sit there in my nice little closet and say magic words and believe I can get better and be positive all the time and then, once I get better, then I can come out.
I think more and more people are acting like suffering shouldn't be allowed. If you're sick, you take medicine and get better. If you're depressed, you take pills and make yourself happy again. As a society, I think we're uncomfortable with pain and suffering and anything that's different. There has to be something wrong with you and you have to fix it as soon as possible. And you better not inconvenience anyone with your pain. Basically sit down, shut up and smile.
I think this naturally brings me to a question of, "Do I want to be sick?" Well, obviously not. No human being in their right mind would choose agonizing pain and feeling misunderstood and being judged for something they can't control.
Do I believe I can get better? Yes. I totally believe if He wanted to, God could heal me.
Do I think it will happen in this lifetime? No, I don't. It's a possibility, but I don't believe it will happen, at least not in the way everyone expects it to.
But, here's the thing, and it's something I'm still learning too, there's nothing wrong with who I am right now. Being sick has taught me so many things and I've had so many wonderful opportunities and I'm proud of who I am. I don't ever want to make myself smaller or try to fit inside neat little boxes. This is who I am and I'm not going to stop being myself because it makes someone uncomfortable.
Being sick is a huge part of who I am. It impacts my daily life. And while, yes, it sucks, I wouldn't ever want to change it because it has made me who I am today. And I'm proud of that person.
I'm not looking for a quick fix. I'm not looking to make myself smaller and quieter and more socially acceptable. I don't want to hide those real honest parts of me and what I go through and just gloss over things and pretend everything is fine.
It's ok not to be fine. It's ok to be different. It's ok to fight and struggle and cry.
I am open to healing. I'm working every day on getting better and on feeling better. But right now, this is who I am. For the rest of my life, this will be who I am, regardless of whether or not I get a 'magic cure' or not. Every single day of my life I will fight and struggle and I'll have flares and be sick. It doesn't mean I did something wrong or that I could have prevented it. I can't live my whole life in the what if's.
I'm open to all the possibilities my future will hold. Maybe that does mean the doctors finding a cure for my diseases or maybe it means me having less flares and feeling better or maybe they won't find a cure and I'll spend the rest of my life walking this tight rope between feeling good and feeling like I got hit by a bus. And I'm ok with that.
Are you?
I'm doing this my way. I'm doing this honest and real and I'm not stifling myself to make you comfortable. I'm going to shine, either come with me or get out of my way.

The future, memories and an 18th birthday party

For the past little while, I've been thinking about my future.
My life is happening right now and it's big and exciting but it's also scary and there's a million different options and choosing one feels like the slamming of thousands of doors.
I've been feeling like everyone around me knows what they're doing, maybe for college or maybe just for the summer. Everyone's moving forward and I've been feeling like I'm being left behind.

Tonight was my friend's 18th birthday party. We laughed and watched him drink his first beer and scratch lottery tickets and we played games and I realized in that moment that these are the times I want to remember.
When I think back on high school, I want to remember this. I want to remember sing alongs around the kitchen table and bad jokes and the sound of laughter. I want to remember these people and how it felt to be comfortable and for one moment the future didn't matter and the past didn't matter and all those messy emotions didn't matter. All that mattered was that I was there, in that moment, surrounded by the people I love and who love me, laughing and making memories.
The future is here and it's now and it's waiting for me and I'm realizing I'll only have these high school days for a little while longer. There's a group graduating this spring, and then next year I'll graduate and life is moving so fast and all that's guaranteed is right now, this moment.
I want to spend that moment making memories.
I know I'll look back on these years and see the hurt. The time I got diagnosed or the time my cousin died and all the times I fell and it hurt and my heart got broken and scarred. They carry an enormous weight. But I believe love carries an even bigger weight and when I look back on these days that's what I want to remember. I want to remember birthday parties and dance offs and sing alongs.  I want to remember bonfires and baseball games and those people that made all of high school worth it.
I want to remember these people who are sewn into the fabric of my life. They are my family. They've seen me at my worst, and love me anyway. They've held me while I've cried and made me laugh so hard I could barely breathe. These are the people who have claimed me, in good times and in bad. These are the people that are bearing witness to my life.
And that's what family is. That's what love is. It's being there for the big moments, and the little everyday ones. It's putting up with someone's bad qualities because, somehow, they complete you.
Love is a leap of faith and I'm learning a soft landing isn't always guaranteed. Sometimes love is going to hurt and it will be messy and hard.
But holding yourself back, away from that love doesn't make anything any easier. Trying to separate yourself from the people you care about because you're growing up and separation is inevitable doesn't make the goodbye not come.
The brave thing is loving those people and making enough memories to carry you through the growing up years, the moving out and moving on and leaving behind this comfortable high school life. Some things don't last forever, but some things, like memories, do. And I only have one chance to make these memories and I don't want to look back and wonder why I held myself back from love. I want to be there for the moments I can, the birthday parties and the laughter around the kitchen table.
This evening, at my friend's birthday party, I wasn't looking backwards or forwards. I was just losing myself in the here, the now, these moments that are guaranteed and filling them with as much laughter and love as I know how so that one day, when the growing up and the leaving does happen, I have these memories.
Tonight I realized everyone at that party is my family and that I don't want to spend my life standing on the outside, holding myself back from love because I'm fearful of getting hurt.
The future is coming, whether I like it or not. And I want to be excited for it. I want to live and laugh and love with my heart wide open. I want more moments laughing with friends around the kitchen table and making jokes over the chip bowl and having those moments that are so perfect that I think I'll miss if I blink in the wrong instant.
I want to make memories while I have the chance, because the future isn't guaranteed and all I have is right now.
And this moment is made for living and dancing and singing and being brave and opening yourself up to love, even if it hurts sometimes.
In the end it's worth it. In the end none of the little things matter and all those fights and the tears, they don't mean anything. The only thing that matters are the people sitting across from you at the table at the 18th birthday party, the people who claim you and bear witness to your life, and making memories that will last forever.
And it's times like this that give me the courage and bravery to face my future.
The future is coming, looming big and bright
And I, for one, can't wait

The Love List

I've spent almost the whole week trying to figure out how to write this post.
Basically, it goes a little something like this...
I love my life!
I am really happy right now. I have energy again (Yay!) and I feel better and I'm just excited and alive and it's pretty awesome.
So what changed?
I started taking back control and being creative. Whenever I don't have one of these two things - whenever I feel out of control or when I lack creativity - I go into a pretty messy place. I easily get overwhelmed and I start to freak out.
I started eating better (I'm trying to go for a more alkaline diet, starting with the green juice I make and drink in the morning that, around here, we jokingly call my happy juice)  and, at the beginning of January, I started this writing program called 750 words where I write 750 words a day.
I've just been having a really good week.

Here's a few of the things I'm loving this week:
* My parents. After talking to and seeing the lives of some other patients with chronic illness and their families, it makes me really grateful for mine. I think everyone has complaints about what their parents could have done differently, but all things considered my parents handled my being sick pretty well, and I am so grateful for that.
* I love my green juice.
* I love it that the semester is almost over! Don't like studying for finals, but I'm so excited for a new semester and a new start.
* I love this video: What it's like being chronically ill, incase you ever wondered

* And I love my life!