Lost Stars

I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again
I can never walk straight when the stars are out. My boyfriend always laughs at me because we'll be walking somewhere and he'll have to pull me along because I'm so busy staring at the sky I forget to walk.
I think I've always been enchanted by the stars. The twinkling lights know all my secrets, have seen my midnight tears, reminded me of the stardust in my own veins when I threatened to forget it.
Something about them has always seemed vaguely poetic to me, hauntingly beautiful. And during long, sleepless nights when my heart was aching the stars became my companions in the wee hours when the darkness threatened to overtake everything.

I have loved stars too fondly to be fearful of the night
In April I wrote 30 poems in 30 days.
I ended my first year of college, and said some of the hardest goodbyes I've ever had to say
I think I cried more in April than I have any other month this year: in closets and hallways, in the arms of the stars and the arms of the people I love, in malls and concerts and hospital rooms.
April is a strange mix of salty and sweet, of toughness and softness.
It's a month of writing, which also means it's a month of feeling.

Underneath the stars you met me and underneath the stars you left me, I wonder if the stars regret me, I think they'd like me if they only met me, at least you'll go of your own free will
I've been feeling slightly off balance these days. Sometimes I think I'm scared of the dark, other times its the light that leaves me afraid.
I feel the need to find myself again, to hide among poetry and under the night sky until I remember how to breathe, to curl my body around this ache until it subsides into something softer, something tangible.
I had a moment where I was crying earlier and the only thing I was able to say over and over again was "I want to go home."
And I realized in that moment that home didn't mean a place, or even in that instance a person. I think home meant to myself.
I'm ready to come home to myself now, home to the sky and the earth and the water and the fire and the breath.

The stars look like they would take such good care of you

Circling the Wagons

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles of where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. If he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly so that his place should never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat

This morning I stayed home from church, curled up in the corner chair with my tea and my journal, and listened to a podcast by Shauna Niequist.
Something about her words hit me, and I ended up crying and scribbling down notes in my journal, pausing and replaying different sections of the message because something about it hit me.
It took me until this morning to admit that this past week has been hard.
It's the first week away from PRBI, and I'm trying to adjust to a new normal. My home team has now been dispersed all around the country, I'm now committed to making my relationship work long distance, and my life has entered a season of turbulent uncertainty. And I kept buying into the belief that I should be stronger and I should be handling this better and things should be easier.
And then this morning I had a revelation.
It's allowed to be hard
For the past week, and probably even before that, I've been pushing and trying to make the whole transition season go away and get back to the happy season.
I've been wanting my old life back, the one where I had learned to become happy and safe and comfortable, not wanting to have to trust God. I fell into the lie of believing that I did my hard time, now life should be easy. My life still is very beautiful, and I am richly blessed. But under the desire to grow was a layer of fear, and selfishness, and faithlessness, and an unwillingness to let myself be changed.
It took a lot of guts to actually admit that these past few weeks have been hard. My life is beautiful and great and how can it be hard?
But it is hard. Its new and its different and its challenging me in new ways and the stretching is uncomfortable.
I've been telling the story recently of how hard it is. Ask my mother, ask my boyfriend, ask my close friends. But that's not the whole story. If I'm being honest the story includes the part where I'm failing to live with courage and hope and have instead chosen to live in a place of whining, of fear, of closing my eyes and just waiting for things to get easy again instead of letting myself be changed by the hard place.
That's not the story I want to be telling.
I was writing a blog post today for teen girls about failure, and as I was writing to them I also felt like I was writing to me. I know a lot about failure. Unfortunately I don't know a lot about coming through failure and being stronger for it. The main thing I said to them, and to me, is to remember who God says you are.
Easier said than done. Because right now the world is screaming at me that I should be better and I should know what I'm doing and I should have it all under control. Bottom line is I don't.
I want to scream back at this world "Its allowed to be hard! I'm allowed to not know!"
I keep forgetting to plug back in to the one voice that truly matters: the one that says I am still loved, that I am valued for who I am not what I do, that I am enough, I have enough, I do enough, period.

When the criticism starts you need a group of people around you with their hands up, keeping you safe and reminding you to 'do your thing'

I need people around me reminding me to do my thing. My people are scattered all around the country, and I could sit and be miserable until I get back to what I know or I could reach out. I could reach out and say "This is hard, and I don't know how to do my thing anymore, and I need you to help me."
I need people to circle the wagons, to create a circle around me of warmth and safety.
I'm not really sure how that's going to look right now, but I also know that one of the things I've been craving madly this week is community.
Life is hard, and new things are hard, and I need my people. I need the ones holding their hands up and keeping me safe and encouraging me to do my thing.
If you're out there, and want to circle up around me, let me know.

This morning I realized how much I need to lean in. If I try to stand and face this, I have no doubt it will smash me to bits. But if I let it change me, let it carry me, let it transform me, I believe beautiful things will come of it.
I want to unclench my fists and let the beautiful right now happen to me, trusting that there is something to be gained from this hard place.

#ChooseBeautiful

He's told my every day for the past multiple weeks, watching me with that crooked smile and when I ask him what he's thinking I already know.
You're beautiful, He says.
He says he'll keep telling me until I believe him and I think I'm starting to believe him.
...
I know it’s hard to accept compliments as anything other than lies. but when somebody blurts, “you’re beautiful,” take a breath. think of your dog, panting happily and covered in mud. think of your mother in her bathrobe with her hair in tinfoil while the dye sets. think of your best friend with her face streaked with tears and makeup. think of your little brother when he was sick and his face was a red puffy mess. think of how, even then, your heart swelled up with love of them. this is I think where compliments come from: when they look at you, no matter what, they see somebody beautiful, not some body, beautiful.
...
My friend sat across from me today telling me about her breakup. Tears filled her eyes and I wrapped her in my arms and held her as tight as I could and told her she did the right thing. Sometimes leaving, however hard and seemingly impossible it is, is the right thing.
And I feel that way as the final days at PRBI roll into one another and I'm forced to pack up this room I spent 8 months living in and say goodbye to the people I never expected to find myself loving and enter into the great uncertainty which is the next 4 months.
I am afraid of the future, of the unknown, of separation and saying goodbye.
As my friend and I sat together, crying and accepting the inevitable as it washed over us in waves, I decided that sometimes this kind of bravery is beautiful.
...
I think you become beautiful when someone loves you. At least that's how it was for me. Or maybe I was beautiful before but I never began to understand the words until recently.
I'm not beautiful when I have it all together. The hair and the makeup and the clothes don't make me beautiful.
I've been thinking for a while now of the moments when I feel most beautiful, when I feel the happiest.
I feel the most beautiful when I make him smile, or when he watches me like I'm magic
I feel the most beautiful when I'm sitting in care groups with these amazing girls reflecting back to me all the beauty and honesty and love
I feel most beautiful when I'm feeling authentically and living boldly and going on brave, new adventures
I feel most beautiful when I'm laughing, or taking time to be grateful, or when I'm creating something I'm proud of
...
Dove has a new campaign called choosing beautiful.
In the video, women are forced to choose whether they want to walk through a door labeled beautiful or one labeled average
I was thinking about which door I would pick.
A while ago I would have walked through the door called average without hesitation. I'm nothing special.
But now... now I see the doors and I think of all the people who love me, and the moments that make me feel most fully alive, and how all of these things make me beautiful
And I think the door I would choose has changed

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.

Last night was acoustic night at SheBrews. It was a chaotic mess of trying to run the coffee maker between songs, getting everything ready so the moment the music ended and the applause started we could flip on all the machines.
It was almost like a dance, but the kind full of awkward, clumsy movements. I spilled the milk and dumped the coffee beans, and this one drink was remade three times.
The routine movements that usually bring me some degree of comfort that night felt frustrating and foreign.
But the moment when one of my talented fellow students would pick up a guitar or step behind the piano everything fell silent.
It was like the whole room was just holding its breath for this beautiful creation to be birthed into existence.
...
I was reading last night over some old blog posts. The large latte I'd made in an effort to make myself feel better was keeping me awake, and my mind was running restless.
I was reading something I wrote nearly a year ago, and somehow those words I wrote then, in an entirely different phase of my life, spoke to the person I am now.
I imagined myself like those musicians. I don't curve my spine over a guitar, moving my fingers over strings. But I do hunch over my paper with a pen and write the world into order.
I know it hurts to become, to create, to birth this dream.
I feel the weight of it in my hands and they shake.
...
After the coffee shop had cleared, the drinks had been made, she told me to go sit. I felt a bit like a child entering into a room marked with a no entrance sign as I pulled up a chair and sat down beside the remaining musicians: the boy with the guitar and the girls who sang.
He began to play and they began to sing and I hesitantly added my voice to the song, my heart echoing every word.
I feel like I'm not allowed to say life is hard.
Because it is so good, so sweet, so beautiful.
But it's hard. And my heart is hurting for reasons I don't fully understand and my hands shake so violently I am frequently wrapping them around his to remain steady and I'm poking at the people I care about just to ask them to notice me here and it's the little things that set me off.
Life, in all its sweetness, carries a flavor of bitterness I desperately wish wasn't there.
As I sat before the music that night, letting it unfold before me, I felt a small bit like Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus.
I was here, sitting before that which was feeding my soul. Before friends and creativity and the sound of the guitar I was spread open.
...
I've been kind of a weakling recently.
My sweet friends keep telling me how strong I am, but I still have to squint to see it.
When I stand in front of the mirror my reflection is strange and uncomfortable because all this stretching, it's changed me.
I want romance and sunshine, laughter and a good night's sleep and an afternoon to spend cooking and dancing in the kitchen and writing.
Even more than that, I want Him.
I want Him to know I'm willing to be made weak.
I want this weakness, this delicate season of becoming, to bring me closer still to the God who calls me enough.
...
The song we sing, it's more of my heart's plea. In this crazy, unpredictable time when I'm not even sure if I can trust myself, I sing it and I feel every word.
I need you, oh I need you
Every hour I need you
My one defense, my righteousness
Oh God how I need you

The Poetry of Pain

Most of the magic in my life has happened when my heart is shattered
Yesterday I was bracing myself for impact.
The exhaustion and weakness and subtle sadness were there, but I had this idea that if I could just keep pushing, just keep moving forward, I could narrowly escape their grasp.
After all, it's not supposed to hurt anymore, right? Or maybe it's supposed to hurt but only for them, not me.
It is in these moments I deny myself honesty. I put on the brave face of "I'm ok" and keep walking. Or I smile and say "It's a rough day" but don't actually allow myself to be cared for.
In the moments after supper, I snuck away to an upstairs room. It was the only place I found that was quiet, the smell of coffee beans still in the air. I curled up on the couch, looking out over the setting sun, and began to write.
I'd been in hiding for a while before he found me. All curled up there, I felt smaller than usual. He kept asking me what I was thinking and I didn't know. So many thoughts were inside my head, some loud and pressing others quiet and aching.
Randomly I would laugh, about something dark or something random. I think it's the body's way of coping, when you produce an excess amount of one emotion the body produces a great amount of the opposite emotion to counteract it.
In all of it I was feeling less and less like myself, but unable to fully understand where myself had gone.
He sat with me, and she came and brought with her Kraft Dinner, which we ate on the couch straight from the pot with two spoons while listening to really bad pop songs.
And something about this made it all ok.
In this moment I wasn't trying to justify what I felt, or hide it, but instead I was sitting directly in the middle of it.
I had written earlier that I felt like I was trying to hold both the light and the dark, but these two conflicting emotions cannot sit with each other and so I am forced to pick one, but even though I pick one it doesn't mean the other doesn't exist.
Just because I choose to focus on the positive story doesn't mean my heart doesn't break over the darkness. And just because from time to time I must sit in the darkness and allow it room to exist it doesn't mean the light is not just over there.
My friends make me honest. They sit with me in my darkness, and feed me and laugh with me until I'm ok again, until the shadow has passed. They make me brave, brave enough to sit in this moment and not try to change it, or shelter myself or anyone else from it.
And I don't know if they will ever know how grateful I am for that tiny moment.


He will change your heart of stone into a heart of flesh. That sounds exciting. But instead of saying a heart of flesh you say a vulnerable heart. It sounds less exciting. And if you want to define vulnerability as the capacity of being hurt. so I'll change your heart of stone which is protective into a heart where you will be capable of being hurt, that sounds less exciting

This morning in Sunday School we made blessings. I carefully chose a word, a blessing, for each of my precious girlies. And then, as a last minute addition, I allowed them to pick a word for me. Each of them picked something they saw embodied in me, something they wished for me.
Awesomeness
Peace
Honesty
Love

It makes total sense that Jesus would be the Son of God because people would want love to be like unicorns and rainbows. And so then you send Jesus and people go "Oh, love is hard. Love is sacrifice. Love is eating with the sick, it's breaking bread. Love is trouble. Love is rebellious
Love is not a victory march, its a cold and broken hallelujah

Love is found in the moments when people show up. It's blessings spoken over a tired heart by little girls with big eyes and bigger dreams. It's friends who come up just to eat Kraft Dinner and listen to stupid music on YouTube and laugh with you. It's saying yes.
Love is pain too. It's messy. It's the capability for being hurt and when love ends it can feel like the world should stop turning.
Love is a cold and broken hallelujah. It's not always easy.
Entering into another person's brokenness isn't easy. Watching the people you love make bad decisions hurts.
But love, I think, is pretty magical. It's poetry - the only kind I know how to write these days.
It's showing up and saying "How can I help?" and "I'm here."
Love is poetry. Pain is poetry. This week I got to experience both.
And the collision of love and pain in the same instant, let me tell you something, is pretty magical.

Thoughts from Mile 2

2 years now
I count the days, even if unintentionally. The memory sneaks in, beside to-do lists and busyness. I wordlessly nod to it as I pass.
I woke up early this morning. On a Saturday after a long week when I was counting on some rest and relaxing I awoke early to the sound of showers running and happy chatter and the soft breathing coming from the bed next to me.
I was hot and sticky, tired from a restless night.
It's like that day 2 years ago, when I woke early.
Except this time there are no tears, no animalistic howls coming from a place deep inside of me I didn't know existed.
There is only quiet, soft breathing, the sound of running water.
The trauma has passed but the echo still vibrates.
...
Last night during the PRBI youth rally, my good friend got the call that her grandmother had passed away.
When I found her in a quiet corner amidst the loudness of the evening, I wrapped her in my arms.
And the tears fell. She wept for her own loss and the changes this would mean for her, because loss never leaves anyone untouched. I cried for her grandma, and my cousin, and the cruel unfairness of this world.
...
I wrote last night that I'm in the process of being stretched open.
I've spent days trying to figure out how to write this. Everything feels exhausting and it seems the body remembers trauma before the mind does and I've been wondering why things sting so much, feel so personal, when life is good?
Shortly after the funeral, a friend told me to feel what I feel. I understood that advice then. I tell it to other mourners, the people who are limping after me on this trail called grief. They have blisters and bruises, and every step sends shockwaves through the body. I wouldn't call myself a seasoned hiker, but I'm getting there.
I've been hiking for 2 years now. The bruises have healed, the blisters popped and new skin formed. I have callouses on my feet and the brutal conditions don't seem to have the same effect on me.
And perhaps I better understood then the meaning of being gentle with oneself.
In those early stages, where the wound still bled and bled, I understood allowing myself to feel what I felt.
But now I wonder if this rule still applies to me, a seasoned hiker 2 years out.
I just passed the 2 mile marker, shouldn't that make me better equipped than those just starting out? Surely they need this emergency care more than I do.
But even those of us who have just passed the 2 mile marker feel the pinch of how things are when they should have been different. I shouldn't even be wearing these hiking boots in the first place, much less be accustomed to the way they fit my feet.
Sometimes the injustice of it all has the power to render me breathless. I ache with words unspoken, memories dancing around in my skull.
It gets easier, of course, but it doesn't get effortless. The hike of grief, no matter how long you've been on the trail, is still long and exhausting.
Sometimes you wish you could stop.
Sometimes you lay in bed early in the morning and think of that day 2 years ago when you woke up to your worst nightmare.
...
This week I've been learning I'm not in control.
I know this, and I've learned this lesson before, but somehow it has a way of coming back to me.
With everything chaotic and messy I wanted stillness. Instead I got 80 loud youth interested in checking out our campus.
I was asked to share my life, my space, my friends, my story.
Nothing went as planned, and last night while hundreds of people were laughing I stole a few minutes of solitude.
Life goes on, I realized. As much as I would like to freeze the moment when trauma happens, to still everything until I can deal with what's at hand, I don't always get the opportunity.
This week when I wanted to be filled I was asked to give.
And I wrestled with this, feeling empty and as though I had nothing of value to offer these people who were coming to this place full of expectations.
I'm realizing that pretty amazing things happen when you say yes.
The people who've gathered around me to support me this week have been just what I needed. The way they care for me never ceases to amaze me.
In my effort to welcome and invite I've been welcomed into an even greater effort, and the grace extended to me by those I intended to extend grace to surprised and humbled me.
Last night our drama team did a skit about the feeding of the 5000
I've heard the story over and over, but seeing it acted out made it all real to me. These disciples had nothing, and in their barrenness they questioned how they were going to do what they had been called to do.
Their questioning, their frustration with this seemingly impossible task, their "really Lord?" all hit me in a real way.
I'd just come back in after holding my friend while she cried, after barely making it to my own room before collapsing on the bed and asking "seriously, God?", after finding one of the staff members for a much needed hug because the world felt like too much in this moment.
But the disciples searched for food, finding only 5 loaves and 2 fishes.
I know how the story ends. They blessed it and it fed the people, enough so that there was leftovers.
But this time I saw it. They blessed it, and their not enough became enough.
Their barrenness, their weakness, their defeat became victory and accomplishment and plenty.
I may have cried just a little, at this idea of the lacking becoming the plentiful.
And so in my lack of, in my own inner barren land, in my emptiness and exhaustion when I can barely ask the question of how I'm supposed to keep on going, I give thanks.
Thank you God for 16 years of memories with L, for using him to show me things I never would have learned otherwise, and for the blessings you've brought to me that are only sweeter because of the bitter taste of loss. You've provided in the barren land.
Thank you God for family, and the ones still surrounding me. For sister smiles and holding hands. You've provided in this barren land.
Thank you God for the opportunity to extend and invite, to make room even if it just involves making a bed, to say yes and be richly blessed by all that is falling into place. You've provided in this barren land.
Thank you God for health, and the way you sustain. Yet again you've provided here.
Thank you God for relationships, and for the beautiful people you've placed in my life. Again, provision.
I say thank you, and watch my not enough become enough.
My broken grief becomes slivers of gratitude.
It aches something fierce, but in a way that is preparing me for hard and holy things.
...
2 years later.
I never thought I'd make it here.
I never thought I'd still be standing, still be smiling, still be alive with a beating heart.
Because when half your heart has been ripped out, when suddenly your world is tilted on it's axis and even getting out of bed seems unthinkable, making it to the 2 mile mark seems impossible.
The dull ache of remembering hurts, and I nod to it as I pass by.
I know you, I whisper, I see you. I've never forgotten, because how can you forget something that caused such a profound physical, emotional, mental and spiritual impact? No, I haven't forgotten. I'm still here, still remembering, still aching. But I'm doing something else too, something I didn't think I'd be doing 2 years ago.
I'm still living. I'm pressing forward. I'm extending a hand and helping others who just started on this hiking trail. It's bloody and messy and hard but it's beautiful.
I'm finding those slivers of gratitude.
Because this, I'm finding, turns my barren nothingness into a rich enough.
...
L.M.M - 2 years later and I still can't believe you're gone. You've changed my life, in so many ways, and I'm so grateful for all you've taught me. I love you, my cousin. Until I see you again in all perfection where there will be no more tears, no more hurt, no more sadness, and only the fullest love.