The gift of being a burden

 A few days ago, I gave birth to my second child, who I carried in my body for nine long months. The bigger she got, the more of a burden she became (mostly on my hips!). Now that she’s out in the world, she’ll continue to be a burden to many areas of my life for decades to come: physically, mentally, financially, emotionally, spiritually… etc.

Yesterday my precious newborn had a bit of a health scare and we rushed her to the ER. Fortunately, she was perfectly fine, but for awhile I was hysterical and terrified that she was not. In the big unknown of what was going on with her (was she deathly ill or were her unusual symptoms completely innocuous?), the question couldn’t help but slip into my mind: what if I have to live my life without my daughter? That possibility filled me with panic and dread. I instinctively knew that her death would devastate me to the point where my life would be turned completely upside-down. And I thought, how strange is that, that someone I just met and who has caused me so much physical pain, can have such a tremendous impact on me? She is absolutely a burden and yet undeniably and unswervingly worth it to me. 

So today when I saw a social media post meant to inspire the reader about how “you’re not a burden!,” I actually found it grating. I’m a burden. You’re a burden. We’re all burdens to the people in our lives and the planet we live in. But our souls are so precious that we’re worth it all. Worth so much that the king of the universe would lay down his life for us. What a burden! What a sacrifice! But he made that choice and he’d make it again because We. Are. Worth it. 

Put another way, I found my backpacking trip (now nearly ten years ago!) to be one of the most difficult and rewarding experiences of my life. I didn’t have the resources or knowledge to make my pack ultra-lite as many backpackers try to do, so my pack was fairly heavy. In it was food, clothes, toilet paper, tent components (the various components were split among members of my group), and my sleeping bag. It was a literal burden I carried on my back for many miles. But I absolutely wouldn’t have discarded any of those items because they were absolutely worth having for both my comfort and survival.  

I feel as a mental health counselor, I shouldn’t be telling people that they are burdens. It feels like that would be a damaging thing to say. But for those who feel like a burden, slapping false positivity on them and denying what they inherently know to be true just isn’t helpful. What is more helpful and honest would be to say, “yes, you are. But you’re a burden worth carrying. “

SDG. 

Home is Where the Heart Is

Just over two years ago, very shortly after moving across the country with no home and no job and no solid plan, I wrote the poem Finding Home. Several years previously, when I was still in college, I remember saying to a friend that I wasn't going to use the word "home" anymore, since no matter where I lived, I'd be only a temporary resident; a foreigner on planet Earth. Removing "home" from my vocabulary only lasted about a week, but I admire my younger self's efforts at preserving the integrity of the concept of home. It's funny how I have played with the idea of "home" over the years. I still do.

Now I'm a newlywed (and loving it!), sharing a bed and a home with a man for the first time. Home is redefining itself for me once again.

Evan and I enjoyed tropical paradise for our Hawaiian honeymoon. It was divine. We thoroughly enjoyed the mountains, the plants, the fowl, the beaches, the weather, the waterfalls, the food, the culture, the novelty of being married, the luxurious resort, and most of all, being completely alone together for a whole week.

Sharing shaved ice. More than just a snow cone.

Lexi told me before we left that I once I was there I wouldn't want to come back. I told her that's what I was afraid of, then joked about the possibility of just...never coming back. So when Evan tried to joke and daydream with me during our trip about moving to Hawaii, I surprised myself with my lack of enthusiasm for the idea. I wasn't even interested. I shut down his imaginings with logic, saying things like, "It's too expensive here," and "We'd be too isolated." He always admitted that realistically I was probably right but I think I frustrated him a little by not at least indulging him in fantasizing about building our lives together in a jungle wonderland.

Staff at the resort apologized to us that we wouldn't have a view of the beach from our suite. 

This is the view we got. No complaints. At all.

I surprised myself again when we were returning home. As Evan's parents drove us home from the airport and I gazed out the window at the dusty, dry bluffs the flew past us, I felt so nostalgic and happy to be home. Home? Is this home now? I've only lived here for two years. Can it be? True, I'm more emotional when I'm sleep-deprived (as I certainly was that day), but I couldn't deny the contentedness I felt at returning to familiar landscapes and familiar people.

I was talking to Lexi about this whole idea on our first hike together upon my return. How could I be disenchanted by a place as (admittedly) spectacular as Hawaii while still holding places like Jamaica (higher crime) and Alaska (colder) so near to my heart?

Only one answer makes sense to me: people.

And all this time I thought I was drawn most to nature; God's beauty.
Lexi and I moved out here for the mountains two years ago.
My heart is still very near to the mountains, sea, and glaciers in Alaska.
Every day in Hawaii we were stunned by spectacular views.
I feel very close to God when I am still in Creation, experiencing all that he has made for his beloved children, for me.

So why didn't Hawaii capture my heart and refuse to release it? Why don't I have a new obsession for it? I was right that I am initially drawn to landscapes, but what keeps me is the people.

I loved Jamaica because of the relationships I created and built while I was there. I talked to several dozen Jamaicans about the most intimate parts of their lives, so while I only spent a week there (the same amount of time I spent in Hawaii), years later, I long to visit. I loved Alaska for the same reasons, only more so. And I was content to come home from my honeymoon because that's where many of my friends and (new) family live. Of course it makes sense, but it really caught me off-guard.

The phrase, "home is where the heart is," is almost 2,000 years old. My heart is spread across multiple states and cities. The number of places I can lay my head and feel at home is growing, but I'm also very happy to stay right here.


S.D.G.

Workout Money

There are now less than twelve weeks until my wedding and my plans to work out three times a week have basically failed due to lack of motivation. It's just really hard to get my butt out of my warm bed in the morning and go running in below-freezing temperatures. In those moments, it's easier to just resign to being fat.

Not that I consider myself fat. I just would like to trim up a little before the big day(/night). I was talking to Lexi about it at length, about my frustration with being unmotivated. She made all kinds of suggestions about what I could do to motivate myself, but the only thing that I know has consistently worked for me historically has been having someone to work out with.

The problem is no one, including my fiancé and roommates, have a similar enough schedule to me that they could work out with me. I'm in this alone.

(By the way, I'm focusing more on working out than changing my diet since I think that's where I'm lacking more at the moment. Also there's a much smaller chance of me even being able to pull off drastically changing my diet right now considering the absurdity of my schedule. The only diet plan I have is a vague goal to drink more water.)

Then Lexi made a brilliant suggestion, and I think it just might work. She said I should "pay" myself every time I work out and then spend the money on something special for my honeymoon.

I was instantly excited about working out again. Here's the specific plan I came up with:

Earn $10/hour for heavier workouts (such as running, doing Jazzercise, or lifting weights)
Earn $5/hour for lighter workouts (such as hiking)

My goal is to earn $15/week total, whether by doing three 30-minute heavy workouts, three hours of hiking, or anything in between. At that rate, in twelve weeks I should be able to earn $180 to spend on something fun on my honeymoon. I think it should be something rewarding that we can both enjoy, and Evan thinks it should be something that would encourage me to stay active. Hopefully we can think of something that meets both our criteria. He suggested a pretty dress that might normally run small on me (so I'd be motivated to continue to fit into it).

 I think it's important to be strict on what I'm earning money for. Whatever I choose to buy, if I don't work for the money, I don't get the thing. I simply won't have the money in the funds for it, even if I technically have money in the bank. If I don't follow this rule, I won't work as hard.

This has been the first week of my "working" for myself and it has gone very well. I've already earned $25, mostly from hiking. I think so far I'm pushing myself to get out and moving more than I normally would.

Of course, my goal is still to earn $15 a week, so even though I earned $25 this week doesn't mean I get a pass next week and only have to do one 30-minute workout for $5 the whole week. My numbers drop back to zero each Sunday, so I will have to keep pushing myself.

The reasons I'm telling everyone this are 1) so that I can be held accountable to more people, 2) because I'm excited about this, and 3) because I think it's a brilliant idea (thanks, Lexi) and hope maybe someone else can find motivation the same or similar way.


God bless.

Dollhouse

I recognize and apologize that I've been so MIA. I'm not sure if anyone really missed me but here I am. I'm back. I'm still alive. To be honest, it hasn't just been my blog, it's been all of social media that I've been pretty absent from, and even a good chunk of my actual social life.

I started graduate school in January and am still working full time, so needless to say I've been busy being a grown-up and haven't had as much time to spare for fun stuff like blogging. Or hiking. And since I live next to beautiful mountains now, hiking usually wins out against sitting inside typing away, which I'm doing plenty of for school already.

But this morning I'm chilling in my pajamas and slippers, sipping coffee and munching scrambled eggs. It's a good morning for blogging.

ANYWAY.

In Sunday school a few days ago we talked about The Fall. In case you're not familiar, the Fall is the part of the Bible where God created the world and then the humans ate the forbidden fruit and ruined it for everything and now we live in a rotten universe because of it. You'll hear all about it in Genesis 3.

So for someone who grew up in church, I'm familiar with the Fall and I'm no stranger to the pain and suffering of the world. Nobody is. We've all suffered, simply because we're all part of the post-Fall universe.

But what I hadn't thought about as much was how so many people react to the Fall: they pretend like it's not real, or at least they try to. They make blanket forts in their rooms and take their little dolls and create their own tiny universe that the "bad" stuff can't get into.

I was surprised when my mind went to the home magazines I'd seen recently. (At work during rec therapy I need to watch the patients but can't really get anything else done at that time so I often sit and skim the magazines they have available.) Some of the magazines are more for the laywoman, with DIYs and decorating tips. Some of them are far more upscale, with thicker pages displaying photos of elaborate living rooms  and classy-looking dining rooms and mansion-cabins on a mountainside and the occasional ad for a six karat diamond necklace.

To be completely honest, I love looking at those thick-paged upscale home magazines. Even the writing in them is more luxurious. Reading them, I can be transported into a fantasy world of wealth and glamor and perfection. If I lived in a home like that, nothing could touch me. 

But when I step back and think about the people that live in those homes, and how many hours they cleaned (or hired someone to clean) that kitchen until it was spotless, or took great care to arrange the vase of fresh flowers and that little pile of books on the marble coffee table, all because they knew the photographer was coming tomorrow, I have to face the truth that even these beautiful homes probably look lived-in most of the time.

And then I think about how these homeowners got their five minutes of fame for being in a fancy magazine and maybe they feel a little self-congratulatory about how well they played off their glamorous dollhouse under the blanket fort, as if their world is perfect and protected.

Of course, it's not just with homes that people do this. Middle-class people who don't have that kind of money have to fake it in other ways, by portraying a perfect social life or a perfect family or a perfect job or you name it.

One thing I've noticed, though, from working with people in the lower class, including some homeless people, is that none of them are under any illusions that their world is or could be perfect. They are forced to face the fact that they are poor, struggling, and hurting. Some of them may imagine a more perfect world if they had more money, but many of them are wise enough to scoff at that ideology. They know what the Fall looks like first-hand and they know that it touches everybody.

I guess I'm okay with what church people call "pushing back the effects of the Fall," i.e. doing good and showing kindness to make this world a little better and a little brighter. We can't undo the evil that we've all been plagued with, but we're promised total redemption through Jesus someday, so I don't think a little temporary redemption through our feeble efforts is in vain.

What I'm not okay with is selfish pretending. I'm not trying to call out the rich folks of course. I myself am often tempted to believe that if only I had [blank], everything would be better and I wouldn't have to worry anymore.

It helps that I am faced every day through my work with the brutal truth of suffering. But where is the balance between total despair and covering my eyes and ears screaming LA LA LA EVERYTHING IS PERFECT!

Where is the in-between that fully recognizes the Fall but realistically asks, what can we do to help?

I'm searching for that place.


God bless.

The Dream

Her florescent cubicle
Illuminates the dark circles
Under her eyes and she feels
Her blood pulsing slowly
And steadily through
Her limbs.
She rests her chin
On the palm of her hand,
Fingers curled in,
And blinks methodically
As she turns her gaze
To the blue sky
Out the window
Which has sparse clouds
Drifting through
That blue nothingness.

After work, she drives
In her sedan
To the junkyard and finds
An old van
With beige curtains,
An old man
With beige clothes
Who has a history
Of mechanics and he offers
To help her
Get it up and ready
For the road.

For two months,
While her van reaches
Its new prime,
She collects stones and bones
And a friend with dreads
Who recently became homeless
With a duffel bag full
Of the oddest things:
A cassette player, a Bible,
A tennis ball, an unopened
Package of incense,
Three keys, a jar full
Of what she says are frog eyes,
A smoky fedora, five smelly tie-dye socks,
And a blue ukulele
That rattles inside.

She and her friend set off.
They go west, due west.
With the stones and bones
She makes rings and earrings,
Five dollars apiece.
They sleep in beds
In the van
And camp off the grid
Cooking over fires
They make in random fields
Laughing and reading poetry,
And when the stars came out,
They'd sing,
She with her husky alto,
The friend with her sweet soprano,
And the rattled ukulele notes
Drifting up toward
A dark heaven.

They travelled like this
And found secret treasures
In the land:
Waterfalls, canyons,
Bluffs, foxes,
Caves and creeks.
Every Sunday they left
The van on foot
And found a hike
With no trail or a tree
To climb
Or a little oasis to jump
Into with no clothes.

On a roadside in the rockies,
They found a small brown dog
With big brown eyes,
A collar with no tags,
And a ribcage that showed
Some of the nature
Of his life's struggle.
They named him Summit
For his power and obscurity
And he followed at their heels
And licked their faces
And she loved him
And he loved her.

Dying clothes with plants
Harvested off the grid
And eating salads of the same,
Meeting strangers on the run,
And seeing hundreds of sagging
Old buildings in small towns,
Was just beginning to become
A little hum-drum
When they were at a gas station
That smelled like cow poop
And cigar smoke
And she happened to look up
To see sitting on the curb
A man
Eating a sandwich and drinking
A bottled iced tea
With khaki pants with holes
In the knees and a brown
Bushy beard
And a tan nose
And mayonnaise in his mustache
And a blue bike on his right
And a large green backpack
On his left.

She watched as he pulled
A book out of the top
Of his large green backpack
And start reading, amazingly,
The Little Prince.
She walked up and asked him
What part he was at.
"How to tame a wild fox,"
He looked up at her
And grinned,
Licking the mayonnaise
Off his mustache.
"Where are you going?"
She asked.
"Everywhere I can,
Seeing as many things
And meeting as many people
As I can
On this big beautiful continent."
"Join us for a stretch"
She invited,
And he did.
And she
And the friend
And the dog
And the man
Ate meals cooked over fires
And sang songs under stars
And went exploring on Sundays
For a few weeks.

He said,
"It's been nice riding along
But my bike misses the road
And I miss the wind."
And she turned her face away
When a tear rolled down her cheek
When she said goodbye.

Three months later
The friend told her
About being accepted
Into the peace corps
And she'd be leaving for Morocco
In a few short weeks.

She dealt with the losses
By taking Summit
And changing directions
From west to north
And driving past mountain lakes
And driving through gray
Summer rains
And singing songs
A cappella from inside
The van and Summit
Just looked at her with his
Big brown eyes.
And on Sundays she usually
Climbed a tree
Or hung her feet off a rock
Or hiked through the rain
Getting wet and muddy
And rarely seeing
Another human face.

Finding temporary refuge
In a small town in Alaska
With mostly natives
And a few whites
She bought jade for her trade.
There she went hunting
For salmonberries and chanterelle,
Dandelion and chickweed,
When she spotted a broad back
And brown hair
Hunched over
Sitting on a rock
Which had a blue bike
Leaning against it.
Summit barked and ran
In that direction
And the man with the brown beard
And tan nose
Turned away from his book
Toward her
And beamed.

Their travels didn't last much longer;
Neither did their loneliness.
He build a small home out of cedar
In a forest of spruce
Next to a mossy creek
Where Summit could roam
And he carried her over the threshhold
And for fifty more years
He played his guitar
And they went out under the stars
And sang in harmony
Her in her husky alto,
Him with his sweet baritone,
Laughing and reading poetry.

After all this,
She blinked again
and turned her eyes
With dark circles underneath
Away from the window
And back to the florescent cubicle
To make another buck.


God bless.

To be still with you

In solitude,
In quiet stillness,
I long for a companion:
you.

To sit in socks
Across the room
With separate books
And occasional glances.

A cup of tea,
My feet in your lap,
Wordless,
Content.

This is my eveningdream.

But then you're here
And the quiver in my heart,
The tingle up my spine
Compel me, rather, to leap
Into your arms.

In joy of you, I play.
I tickle, I joke.
You grin at my youthfulness.

And our laughter is anything
But quiet
Or still.

Thank you
For the wildness
You awaken in me.


God bless.

"Solo" Backpacking

I did my first "solo" backpacking trip this week. I put "solo" in quotations because I was a solo human, but I did have a partner: Lexi's 8-month-old golden doodle puppy, Juneau.

Juneau and me at the trailhead

The trailhead

I was planning to be gone for two nights but only ended up staying for one. I was hiking in a location I'd never been to before and I wasn't sure what the landscape would be like, although I did know that the weather would be warmer and sunnier than where I live. I guess I should have done more research.

Getting some sun felt amazing. As you can see, the trail is pretty wide-open and there wasn't a lot of shade. A jumble of trails near the trailhead made navigating difficult for me at first (as I am not great with directions and when backpacking with other people I am usually not the one in charge of the map). When I couldn't find one of the main trails I was looking for, I had to find an alternative route.

Happy hiker

From there, the trail steepened and narrowed and I started to feel my body's inadequacy. I had to pause to catch my breath a few times on some of the uphills and Juneau would always turn back and look at me like, Why are we stopping?

However, I was rewarded multiple times with stunning views.

Looking back on the hill I had just hiked up

I am smitten by the snow-capped rockies in the distance.

Glad I'm only at 7-8,000 feet in elevation! No 14ers for me (yet).

The snow glows in the sunshine.

Just thought this was a neat-looking hill

Because our location was, as it turns out, pretty desert-like in climate, there were lots of cacti hanging around, one dead piece of which Juneau stepped on. He paused to pull it out of his foot with his teeth and then started walking again, limping. I sat down and tried to get him to sit next to me or on my lap so that I could pull out the remaining spikes. After pulling one out, he would have no more. A few minutes later, we started walking again and he stopped limping so I figured, oh well. That was, thankfully, the only injury either of us suffered.

The trail widened and leveled out again and the sun was getting low. However, none of the creeks promised on my map had made themselves known; in fact, everything I saw that looked like a creek bed was dry as a bone. For being so early in the summer, I was surprised that there would be so little water. I didn't have enough to last me two nights or really even one, as I had been counting on being able to find some in the alleged creeks in the area.

The low sun made me nervous about having enough time to set up camp, so when I got to a fork in the trail, I climbed a hill in between the "tongs" of the fork, hoping to look down and spot some water. The trees blocked my view, but there was a wonderful camping spot up on that hill so I decided to just park it for the night and then figure out what to do the next day.

My body was ill-prepared for the hiking and weight-bearing required for backpacking, but I have all the skills and knowledge necessary, so I was pretty pleased with myself that I was able to set up camp and cook dinner over a fire with no issues. Juneau was wonderfully well-behaved and occupied himself with a jawbone he found.

It was pretty brittle and made a nasty crunching sound when he chewed it.

The sun was down and I had run out of things to do to keep busy. I lamented being "alone" and having no one to talk to. Contemplating this, I decided that I didn't really care for solo backpacking. It gives me a nice sense of autonomy and self-accomplishment, but I am too much of an extravert and need someone to talk to (who talks back). I settled down next to the fire with my bum in the dirt and started reading "Jacob have I loved."

When it was about 9 or 9:30 it was too dark for me to continue reading even with the light from the fire so I went to bed. I saved a little bit of water for both of us to drink in the morning, but I was almost out. I brought my ENO hammock instead of a tent and tried out the new 15-grade sleeping bag Evan got me for Christmas.

Meanwhile, Juneau was attached with a long cord and harness to one of the trees my ENO was strapped to. Lexi had prophesied that he probably wouldn't sleep much nor even want to lie down on the ground because of his aversion to being dirty. She was right about him not sleeping. I had trouble sleeping simply because I was in a hammock and unable to sleep on my belly, but Juneau was busy playing watchdog all through the night.

I frequently heard him growling and even barking, sometimes from right under my hammock, at things I could or couldn't hear. I was terrified of a mountain lion smelling our food and coming into camp. With mountain lions, you're supposed to make yourself look big and talk to it in a low, firm voice. If Juneau saw one, I was sure he'd foil my attempts to ward it off by barking and possibly attacking, which would result in both of our deaths, so I was a little freaked out. I never saw or heard any humans or animals larger than a bird the entire time, though.

I had heated some rocks around the fire so when it came time to go to bed, I put them under my hammock to keep me warm. It worked pretty well for a couple hours. Here's a video on using hot rocks if you're interested.

At some point, shivering in my sleeping bag, I peeked out and realized it was morning. I sat up and saw this:

Juneau had gotten tangled around a cactus bush and, lacking the logic to get himself untangled, he nevertheless used problem-solving skills and Houdini-ed his way out of his harness. Turning to look for him, I saw him in the near distance looking at me stock-still with his head cocked. I called him and he ran over as fast as he could and proceeded jumping on my hammock and biting me.

When I was able to keep Juneau off of me long enough to get out of my sleeping bag and put on my shoes, I gave him breakfast and we finished the little bit of water we had left. I had decided that without any water and no guarantee that there would be water further up the trail, the safest and smartest thing to do would simply be to head home. We packed up and were on the trail by about 6:45 a.m., going a different way than how we had come in.

The view from my campsite at sunrise. 

Camera batteries died so this was taken with my phone.

On our way out, we passed a tiny flowing creek and I was able to get some water for the rest of the hike. It was so tiny that I could see both where it started and ended from one spot. My mind had been made up about going home so I didn't consider getting water from it and then turning around and camping somewhere, nor did I consider camping by the creek as it was so tiny and only about 8:00 in the morning when we found it. I don't know what I would have done all day just sitting there. Napped, I guess. Juneau was too thirsty to wait for me to filter water for him and he drank heartily directly from the stream. He seems to be suffering no ill effects.

I reached my car at about 9:20 and was home by around 11. I'm disappointed by the pseudo-failure of my trip, but I learned from the experience. My body was pretty sore the next day (yesterday), so I'm also glad I didn't push my body to do more than I was really prepared to do. Still, I hope I can go out again soon, next time with a (human) friend.

God bless.

Ten-years-ago Me

I had what might be considered an out-of-body experience today in which I saw myself from my 13-year-old self's perspective.

I was driving, with the warm sun shining in on my arms and face and the mountains in full view on my right, a cool song I'd never heard before playing on the radio. From my current perspective, it was a slightly above-average experience, however the fact that I was driving to the shop to pay $130 on a car repair for a problem that had no drivability symptoms neutralized the moment significantly.

Suddenly, I wondered what ten-years-ago me would think if she could see me in that moment, and realized I was the epitome of coolness. I looked cool: I was wearing cute shoes, dark skinny jeans, aviators, and my favorite teal tank top. My red hair was braided down the back and my double-pierced ears were decorated. I was in my very own car, driving parallel to snow-capped mountains, jamming out. And I was doing cool things: being an adult getting car repairs, spending adult-sized money, working, going to grad school. My 13-year-old self was dazzled. She was thrilled that over the next ten years she would become so awesome. She couldn't wait for that one moment in the car to come.

I think people tend to get really down because they compare themselves so unrealistically to others' "ideal" lives. We look at all the cool people and we're jealous of their coolness. We look at our future and despair with the fear that it won't all turn out like we hope. We daydream about the things we want to do but don't have the time or money or even motivation for and conclude that our life is useless and stupid.

But I think looking at yourself from an outside perspective can help. What would ten-years-ago you think of you? What have you accomplished that you never thought you would? What are you doing right now, in this moment in your life, that would impress someone younger and less experienced? Something as simple as working a full-time job is noteworthy. Something as normal as renting your own apartment and furnishing it yourself can seem incredibly grown-up and cool to someone who hasn't left mom and dad's yet.

Your life isn't perfect, obviously, but neither is the person's next to you. Be optimistic: if ten-years ago you is impressed by present you, think how cool present you would find ten-years-from-now you. I like where I am now, a lot, but I'm excited to meet 33-year-old Maryann. She is probably super awesome.


God bless.

Rain in the Cabin

When I was a counselor at church camp, we had code words for letting other staff know that there was an issue we don't want the kids to know about. For example, if we saw a stranger/intruder at camp, we would tell another counselor that we saw "a penguin" over by cabin 5. Or, if a camper wet the bed, it "rained in the cabin."

But we didn't always sleep in the cabin. Once a week, we would gather up all our sleeping bags and a tarp, make foil dinners, and hike out to a campsite in the woods for a night under the stars. I looked forward to "out-posting" ...on nights it wasn't rainy.

While the campers played games and gathered kindling, we counselors would labor over the fire (some of us being more experienced than others), and lay the foil dinners on the coals. We called them "hobo meals" before that term became "offensive" and we had to start calling them something nice and sweet and P.C. I think they tried to implement "dragon dinners" since that is obviously way cooler than "foil dinners," but it never got off the ground while I worked there.

Here is the recipe for hobo meals/foil dinners:

Ingredients
foil
potatoes
cooked ground beef
carrots
onions
celery
a "liquid" to keep it from burning (either ketchup or concentrated cream of mushroom soup, depending on your preference)
salt & pepper
some other spices maybe
a permanent marker
fire
tongs (this one is very important but is the one that you will probably forget, in which case, use sticks)

Chop up the veggies.
Make two layers of foil with the shiny side up so that the heat reflects back onto the food. Make a little bowl in the foil with your hands.
Put all the food into your foil bowl, with potatoes being the most prominent because they are cheapest and they fill you up.
Fold up your foil so that nothing spills hopefully. If the foil tears, add a layer. Just like they do at Chipotle.
Write your name or initials on the foil dinner with permanent marker so that you know which one is yours when you have at least a dozen other people making hobo meals. You don't want to mix them up because some people prefer ketchup over cream of mushroom soup for some mysterious reason, or maybe someone put the spiciest spice on theirs, or maybe someone likes onions even though they're gross.
Make a fire and when you have hot coals, put the foil dinners on there until they sizzle when you hold them up to your ear with tongs. Don't forget to flip them at least once.
Put them on the ring of the fire to cool.
Can be eaten with forks (or not). Mop up the gravy stuff left in the dents in the foil with a dinner roll or your tongue.


One particular out-posting night, we were out there with middle-schoolers and the raccoons were particularly bad. Raccoons had the tendency to terrorize us at dusk all over camp, as they like to scavenge the food the kiddos drop (or put in the trash cans), but would apparently rather have that food handed to them on a silver platter. Running at them and making noise usually gets them to run away temporarily, but like I said, this night was particularly bad.

They smelled the food, even though we were relatively deep in the woods, and came pretty close to us, hissing. We warded them off long enough to enjoy the fire and s'mores, but when we went to bed only ten yards away from where we had eaten, we could hear them going to town around the fire ring. Of course, we had gotten rid of our trash, but there were still crumbs. Let it be, we reasoned. They were just interested in the food, not us.

It was just girls this week, which was nice, because when you have boy campers, the counselors have to sleep in between the boys and the girls as a barrier, and boys tend to kick you in the face in their sleep. But in the morning one of my girls found an unpleasant surprise.
"Why is my sleeping bag wet?"
"It didn't rain last night..."
"It smells like PEE!"
"...Did you pee in your sleeping bag?"
"No... my clothes are dry."
We concluded that the pee on her sleeping bag was raccoon pee. It was the only thing that made any sense. Surely none of the girls had peed on her sleeping bag, even in their sleep, and the only other animals roaming the forest large enough to produce that much urine were deer, which were too shy to approach even sleeping humans.

So when we got back to camp, I pulled David aside and said, "Can you help me wash a camper's sleeping bag?"
"What happened?"
"It got pee on it."
"Sure. Do you have her clothes too?"
"No... They're dry."
"How did she pee in her sleeping bag without getting any on her clothes? Didn't you say it rained in the cabin?"
"No, no... it didn't rain in the cabin. It was a raccoon. A raccoon peed on her sleeping bag."
Well that communication, and the situation itself, was hilarious to David, and he went around telling that story for the rest of the summer.

Me? Looks like I'm still telling that story five years later.
I wonder how long the camper will be telling her version. She had a good sense of humor about it.


God bless.

Boy Scout Beach

I've convinced myself that, although some people tell me that in order to get good at writing fiction I need to practice, I really should never write fiction again. I'm not very proud of my last two blog posts; any fiction I seem to produce seems devastatingly hokey to me.

However, I still want to practice story-writing. So I guess I'll try writing stories that actually happened. Wish me luck.


Last summer, I and 19 other women on Juneau Summer Project headed out to Boy Scout Beach to camp. Technically we were backpacking, because we had to hike a mile to the site with our food, tents, etc. loaded onto our backs. This short hike covered a wide range of gorgeous terrains (as many hikes in Juneau do): forest, open field, marsh, beach. The beach was beautiful; the water stretched out almost as far as the eye could see, but was cut off by snow-capped mountains lining the horizon. The beach was soft with sand and stopped abruptly with a field of tall grass.

I occupied myself with building the fire while the other girls set up the tents and galavanted in the rising tide. The fire was of minor importance, as we had already eaten dinner and the weather was relatively warm, but I had a trick I wanted to share with the ladies that Elizabeth had shown us the previous summer: fire breathing.

It was pretty simple: crumple up a piece of newspaper, shove it onto the end of a stick, light it on fire, fill your mouth with corn starch, and blow the corn starch into the blazing newspaper. The result can be pretty impressive when done well, as all the little corn starch pieces catch fire and spread out in the air like a blow torch. I was the first to demonstrate, and the problem I found was that if you don't blow out the corn starch almost immediately after putting it in your mouth, your saliva moistens it and it doesn't want to be blown. Nevertheless, we amused ourselves with this trick for a good ten minutes.

The tide was rising quickly and it was getting dark (not because the sun was really going to go very far below the horizon, but because it was cloudy). I went out into the water with one of the ladies and timed it as the water level traveled about ten meters in a minute. We couldn't really see a line in the sand where we anticipated the water level would stop. We were camping high on the sand close to the grass, which was too tall to camp in. Behind the grass a ways was the beginning of a pine forest with a clean floor where theoretically we could have camped, but we wouldn't have felt it fair to say we had camped on the beach in that case.

We went to bed kind of late, about 11:00 p.m., and fell asleep without a plan regarding what would happen if the tide got too high. We reasoned that we had camped on this beach the previous summer, when the tide had risen at about the same time of day, and hadn't had any issues with the water level getting too high, so why should it be a problem this year?

I awoke at about 1:00 a.m. to the sound of Lexi's voice hissing my name from outside my tent. I had been in deep sleep and was pretty groggy when she explained to me that she had set a frisbee on the sand about ten feet in front of the tents, and that she had stayed up watching the water level with the plan that if the water reached the frisbee, she would wake me up for collaboration. I started coming to; it was decision time. Do we wake the girls up and move our tents to the forest area? Do we wake the girls up and leave altogether? Do we do nothing and risk getting everything, including ourselves, pretty soggy?

We decided to leave. It wasn't worth the risk, and if we were going to have to pack up and go, we might as well go all the way home rather than try to set everything back up elsewhere in the middle of the night just to say we had camped through the night.

We woke the ladies up and everyone sprung into action. Impressively, we were all packed up and ready to go within ten minutes. The water had risen almost to where our tents had been, and we determined we had made the right choice. While everyone was folding tents, gathering bear bags, and packing their packs, I was handed the can of bear spray and told that I was in charge of warding off bears during our mile hike back to the cars. After I packed my bag and everyone was still bustling around me, I sat there studying the instructions on the can with the light from my headlamp trying to figure out how to operate it.

I led the group on the hike out. The trail had flooded as it had started drizzling during the night, and of course it was dark. I marched through the tall grass beside the trail, trying to avoid the flooding, with 19 women parading behind me. We sang songs and tried to be cheerful. I saw dozens of frogs as we hiked, who seemed to be delighting in the puddles. I warned people of them so that they wouldn't get stepped on. Meanwhile, I was armed and ready with bear spray, on the lookout for a furry midnight attacker.

What relief when we reached the cars! We arrived back on campus at 2:00 a.m., dropped our gear, and fell into bed.

Was our camping trip an utter failure? Yes. Was it worth it? Definitely. Sometimes failing brings out more of the adventurer in you than succeeding. All 20 of us have a story to tell now.


God bless.

Letter #2: Child to President

You may or may not have noticed that while my blog is more or less a place for me to experiment with writing, I almost never publish any sort of fiction.

I would like to wade into the world of fiction by practicing something that I hope will be easy: fictional letters.

Please allow me to experiment as I try this out. Please feel free to comment below with comments or suggestions. My plan is to create two new people each time; a letter-writer and a letter-receiver, both of which you will hopefully learn a little bit about.

I have no idea how this will go, so again, your comments and suggestions are not only welcome, but I ask them of you.


Dear Mr. President,

I listened to your speech last night and I think you did a good job. Your wife is very good at ironing your shirts. Mom said you were giving a "message of hope," and Daddy said that means you're telling our country that it will all be okay.

I'm not worried, though. I know that bombs and war are bad but things always get better. My brother is a soldier in the army and he says all his friends are very brave.

Guess what. Someday I want to be President of the United States of America too. And I will always give messages of hope to people who are sad or scared.

My friend Katie said if she were president she would make sure all the orphans would have mommies and daddies to adopt them. And Doug said if he were president he would make sure everyone had ice cream every day for free but I told him that was stupid because some people are lactose-intolerant.

Anyway I have to go feed my dog, Rocket now. He's a golden retriever.

Love, 
Teagan 

Letter #1: Woman to ex-lover

You may or may not have noticed that while my blog is more or less a place for me to experiment with writing, I almost never publish any sort of fiction.

I would like to wade into the world of fiction by practicing something that I hope will be easy: fictional letters.

Please allow me to experiment as I try this out. Please feel free to comment below with comments or suggestions. My plan is to create two new people each time; a letter-writer and a letter-receiver, both of which you will hopefully learn a little bit about.

I have no idea how this will go, so again, your comments and suggestions are not only welcome, but I ask them of you.


Nate-
I don't know if I'm going to send this letter yet or not. Part of me just wants to vent, but the other part can't help but be -kind of- grateful. You've ruined my life and given me everything. Can you even begin to understand that?

You led me to believe things about you that simply aren't true: your trustworthiness, your faithfulness. You didn't bail when things got a little difficult, like when I got the flu and couldn't come to your parents', or when we got in that fight when you came home stinking of booze and weed. We always seemed to make it work somehow. We always said sorry and we always did our parts to fix things. But I guess Mallory was too much for you.

You didn't just leave. You disappeared. I came home from a twelve-hour shift to find the apartment half-empty. No note. Nothing. I found out from a mutual friend that you had moved to Chicago. What? I mean, WHAT?!? Do you realize how heart-breaking that was for me? Do you realize how alone and confused I felt? I am estranged from my parents and friends because of you, and now I'm on my own. I blamed myself for awhile, but it's not my fault. I know it's not my fault.

Eventually I realized that you don't deserve Mallory. I'm glad I finally figured that out.

To be honest, I thought about an abortion. Then I thought about adoption. It was terrible making all those decisions on my own. But if you had stuck around, there wouldn't have been a decision: she would have been ours. The thought of raising her on my own absolutely terrified me. I work full-time and don't make much money. I'm paying rent by myself now. I can barely keep my own life together, let alone take care of someone else's. Why would you put my through this? You perceived the "freedom" to take this situation or leave it, but I never had that freedom. I don't have a choice but to deal with this.

I wonder if you miss me. If you ever wish this had never happened so that we could still be together. Are you happy?

I can't say motherhood isn't kicking my butt. I want to scream 98% of the time but I don't because then I will wake up or scare Mallory and that will just make it worse. Financially, I'm barely scraping by. I still don't have friends or my parents. I lost my freedom. But maybe it was lost all along, from the day I met you.

BUT. Listen to me, Nate. I am so happy to have Mallory. She is my world and my heart beats for her in a way that it never did for you. When I feel like completely giving up, her precious toothless smile brings all meaning back to my life. I live for her. And you would, too, if you would just catch one glimpse of her beautiful blue eyes or her tiny, tiny fingers. I'd send a picture, but you don't deserve that. If you really wanted to love her, you could come see her for yourself. You know where we live.

The other day, my coworker, June (remember her? Sweetest person ever.), asked me innocently if motherhood was worth losing you. The question took me aback because I really haven't talked about the situation much at work. It was really a pretty bold question for her to ask, but she's sweet as honey and I know she was being genuine when she asked me that. I asked her what she meant. "Well, maybe that's not what I meant. Maybe I'm asking if being with him was worth it, rather than losing him. I like you, Shelly, but you made some mistakes, I think. It seems like that guy was no good but you dove into the relationship head-first and now you're suffering the consequences. Easy come, easy go. But you were also rewarded for enduring his abandonment: you have a beautiful daughter. Was it worth it?"

Yes, June, it was worth it.

Yes, Nate, it was worth it. Good riddance.

-Shelly

Pursuit

For her you planted fields of blooming silk
And with your palette and brush,
You set that field ablaze.
She drives past.

For her you sculpted a body;
The purest pearl as a home for her soul
With dark wisps for eyelashes.
She beats and neglects it.

For her you took your fingertips
And gently lifted the sun
Into the glory of morning.
She turns on her mattress.

For her you created sound waves
That she might joy to hear and to sing
And perhaps return your affections thus.
She would rather weep.

For her you brought yourself to shame
By being slaughtered like cattle,
Letting your blood and tears intermingle.
She forgets to thank you.

Your tortured longing,
Your screams for her
To notice and accept your love
Go ignored.

But you found a servant,
A Jacob for a Rachel,
Who offered all he could to her
And lifted her chin to the heavens.

She turned to you and asked,
Can my Lord love me more than this?
So she bowed and sang
In fields of fiery silk.



God bless.

Overwhelmed

I had a thought this "morning." (I put "morning" in quotation mark because since starting night shift, it would seem that my mornings have become everyone else's afternoons). Anyway, this "morning" I had a thought. I suppose I will tell you what it was:

I recognize that I am young and hopefully have much life to live yet. However, I am slowly getting older and one of the things I find fascinating about getting older is that the more I live, the more pain I see, but also the more beauty I see.

Pain and beauty have been here all along, but in my experiences of them thus far, not only am I more exposed to both of them quantitatively as my life passes through time, I feel the weight of them more strongly.

After having this thought, it came to life in a song called "Mad World," originally by Tears for Fears, but Pandora decided to give me the Jasmine Thompson version. Although this song speaks of almost unspeakable pain, I found it to be profoundly beautiful.

A significant part of my life is devoted to music, but it's not every day I am overwhelmed by it, when I don't feel that I can bear the beauty of it. That was one of those aching moments. The beauty wasn't in the pain of the lyrics; the beauty was in the music in spite of the lyrics. Not that the two do not complement each other extraordinarily.

Anyway. This isn't much of a blog post and I don't really know how to end it. I wish I had the skills to put my thoughts to poetry in this instance but at the moment I find myself incapable. I feel that to put to poetry something that I found to be absolutely overwhelming, my poetry must also be overwhelming, and I'm afraid my writing skills aren't quite there yet. I'm sorry this is all you get. But still, can you relate to my sentiments?


God bless.

Seven Things I Learned

A year ago today, I committed to fast from dating for one year. I have mentioned it several times on this blog but have never written specifically about it. Now that my year has ended, I would like to share with you some of the things I've learned over the last twelve months (in approximate order of when I learned them).

1) How to not be lonely
An adage I heard once goes, "Lonely single people turn into lonely married people." This lesson stuck with me and it was one of the only lessons I actively tried to teach myself during this last year (as opposed to the ones that I accidentally learned or rather, left the door open to be learned).

There are certain target times for loneliness to strike: when you're alone at night, when you have nobody to share your thoughts with or hang out with when you're bored or accompany you to this or that event. It's easy for single to people to bemoan their singleness in these moments, but if your tendency is to bemoan, it will happen when you're in a relationship too. Even when another person knows you better than anyone else ever has, they can never know you fully, so in a way you will always be ultimately alone. Always.

Fortunately I think I learned how to not bemoan my aloneness; how to not be lonely. While sometimes I may have felt utterly alone and unknown, I reminded myself that God knows me fully; more fully than I know myself (Psalm 39). Turning to him in those moments brought me comfort. I also turned more toward friendship. In a society that glorifies romance, the wonder and strength of friendship often falls by the wayside. Reaching out to friends on nights when I had nothing to do, sharing my deepest thoughts and secrets with them rather than with a romantic interest, brought a vibrant shade back to my life.

In moments where I could not bring myself to be comforted either by God or by friends, I simply prayed and let myself feel lonely. Sometimes I even tried to find enjoyment in my aloneness. I suffered through and am the better for it.

2) How to say no

This was another lesson that I planned to learn. I'm not sure I was successful, however, but I thought it deserved to be discussed.

I mentally prepared for what would happen if someone asked me on a date during my year of fasting from dating. Depending on how I felt about them, I decided I would say either: 1) No, sorry, I'm not interested, or 2) No, sorry, I'm not dating for now, but maybe you can ask me again in August!

I never had to use either of those, though, and I think the reason is because I learned (accidentally) how to imply "no."

3) How to imply no

One of the biggest reasons I made this year-long commitment was because I have dated a lot in the past and knew something was wrong with that cycle. I couldn't really tell why the cycle was happening. I just figured it was an idol of mine that I should purge (which was true, but not the whole picture).

The problem was that I was consistently making myself "available" to date without realizing it. I flirted and I gave men one-on-one attention whether I was interested in them or not because I liked the attention I received back. I was more than willing to be alone with a guy friend and share deep thoughts and feelings with him because I wanted to feel cherished. My behavior made me available.

However, when I had no intention of dating anyone, the way I treated men started to change. I drew boundaries. I pursued my friendships with other women rather than trying to dive deep into my friendships with men. I stopped flirting. I don't think I even realized this change was happening until I started questioning why no one seemed to be interested in me.

Being closed-off can go too far, but in my case I found wisdom in being more careful about who I opened up to.

4) What it's like to be addicted

This is probably the biggest and most important lesson I learned throughout the year. It colored the way I looked at my sin and my past and my year-long fast.

I clearly remember the morning at church when I realized my problem was an addiction. My church didn't often do topical sermons, but in this case, they were doing a four-week sermon series called "The Problem of Pain." This week happened to be on addiction. I sat there during the whole sermon wondering what on earth my "addiction" could be, since Pastor Nick insisted that everyone had some sort of addiction, even if it wasn't substance addiction, even if it was subtle, even if it was socially acceptable. I sat there wondering and for the whole sermon, couldn't put my finger on it.

During worship afterward, though, it hit me like a brick wall. My addiction was relationships with men.

I realized in many ways how much this addiction resembled addiction to substance abuse. I realized how real it was. I clearly saw the ways I jumped through hoops to get my fix. I saw how I shot up, got high, and when I came back down, everything was about my next fix, and I knew how to get it. I knew how to get the attention, how to get guys to like me, how to get the attention I craved.

Then I realized that my year of no dating needed to be more than a behavioral change. I needed to undergo a deep and thorough heart change. I knew if I treated this term like "jail" (i.e. strictly behavioral change), that I would just go back to my drug as soon as I was discharged, just like so many jailed drug addicts do. Rather, I needed to treat my year more like rehab, where I learn how to function and succeed in a world where my drug is all around me, tempting me. I didn't really have a way of doing that except to, like I said before, passively open the door for God to work, but for me that was enough.

5) The Awesome Test

It's been hard for me in the past to decide how much about a person should be a deal-breaker and how much I should let slide; how strict I should be in my "qualifications" for a man. Lexi and I recently found a list of "husband qualifications" that I had written sometime in high school and we had a good laugh at the absurdity and rigidity of my standards (which of course my high school self did not abide by when a prospective relationship presented itself). In many cases, I've settled for less. (Briefly, let me say that some of the "settling" I've done may have been more a symptom of my pride; i.e. "I'm better than this person and deserve someone more at my level" rather than allowing that person dignity and humbling myself to recognize that the problem may have been me.)

At any rate, I realized that I needed to both throw away my checklist and yet be unrelenting in the most important standards. It was then that I developed The Awesome Test. It's very simple, only four facets, but I believe it covers all my bases. Here are the four facets:
1. Does this person find me to be awesome? Do they get excited about who I am as a person?
2. Do I find this person to be awesome? Do I get excited about who they are?
3. Does this person help me to see Jesus as awesome? Do their words and actions help me to become more excited about who Jesus is?
4. Do I help this person to see Jesus as awesome? Do my words and actions help this person to become more excited about who Jesus is?

I have never dated or met a guy who passed all four facets, which is why, I believe, I have so far never had a successful relationship. I now swear by The Awesome Test and concede that if I find someone that passes, I will probably marry him.

6) What it means to "like" somebody

About halfway through my year of no dating, I got a crush on someone. Because of my inability to truly act on my feelings, I spent a lot of time just thinking about it, processing through it with friends, and trying to decide where to go with it. That's when I realized that there is a big difference between being attracted to somebody and really liking them.

I realized that with this particular man, I was merely attracted to his appearance, his skills, and what little I knew of his personality. I realized that this didn't necessarily mean that I liked him. But I didn't know what really liking someone did mean.

Then, a month or two ago, in talking with Lexi I realized that, at least for me, the distinction between attraction and liking someone is whether or not I truly cared about the individual. This may be obvious to many of you, but for me it was incredibly liberating. The man I had had a crush on several months prior, I didn't care about him and his well-being all that much. I just cared about what he could do for me, all the good feelings he could make me feel. It occurred to me how selfish my crush on him had been.

This will help me a lot in the future, I think, when I find that I'm attracted to somebody but don't actually care about him, it will be easier to let my feelings for that person slide away. And when I am both attracted to someone and care about them, I can take my feelings for him more seriously.

7) I can't stop

I have talked about my lessons learned and my little improvements but one of the most terrifying things I've found is that when it comes to my sin, I can't stop.

This area of my life has been being sanctified slowly for several years, not just for the last year. But I face the dreadful truth that I'll never get to the point where I will never slip back into old sin. I will always be tempted to idolize, lust, gorge on attention. I will continue to disappoint, hurt, and fail people. I may improve, but the struggle will always be there, for the rest of my life. It won't be until I've moved on from this planet that that will change and I will finally be completely free from sin.

Of course, in the midst of the grave fact of my unrelenting sin, there's grace. No matter what I do or whom I sin against, God will always forgive me and give me another chance. If I get married, I hope to be married to a husband who also forgives me again and again. And sanctification will continue, even now that my fast has ended.


God bless.

Writing A Book

Behold, I have a dream! A dream of writing a book. I would really just love that.

There are a few things that stand in my way of this dream:

1) I have no topics that I feel both competent enough in and passionate enough about to use for an entire book.

2) I lack the writing skills. This blog, however, is a testament to my efforts to change this.

3) I lack the life experience. Whether I write about my own experiences, try to impart wisdom or knowledge, or even write a fiction based on my own experiences, I doubt I will have anything worthwhile to say until I am a few decades older.

I consider myself to be a writer, but a writer must be an expert in something in order to write anything worthwhile. While there are innumerable topics a person could be an expert in, there is one topic everyone is an expert in: our own life.

But a biography about a boring life is not really worth reading.

My goal is to write a book, but my other, more important goal, is to live a life worth writing a book about. Even if a book never gets written, at least I will have lived a worthwhile, productive, adventurous life.

Who knows? Maybe when I am old I will have something to say.


God bless.

Life Competence

Last night at Bible study, Page said something along the lines of, Jesus much preferred to being around people who were honest about their lives being messed up to people who pretended like nothing was wrong in their lives. I had honestly never made that specific observation before but it's something I really like about Jesus.

Conversation continued with how the Church is supposed to be a people who are honest about their sin and shortcomings, but since we're generally not, people don't feel welcome into our clique.

And I thought, why would people want to come into a place where they knew nobody had their act together? That's no way to sell a product, so to speak. If people want to learn about how to live their life and figure out what their soul is and what to do with it, shouldn't they go to a place where they feel people are competent in those areas?

For example, as a musician, I would hate to walk into an orchestra where everyone is frankly really bad musicians, and not only that but really open and honest about it. I would think that these people are a bunch of clowns and don't take their music seriously or professionally. It would seem to me that they weren't trying to improve. I probably wouldn't stick around. Who wants a church like that? I would find another orchestra where people had their act together, where the conductor was the only one to point out others' mistakes and everyone else just quietly improved their skills in the practice room, where no one else could judge them.

But then I thought of something I am definitely interested in but much, much less competent in: ultimate frisbee.

One of the biggest reasons I don't make any efforts to even go to pick-up games is because I'm so intimidated by others' skill and so afraid of their judgment of my lack of it. Sports can be kind of unforgiving because of how competitive people get, and even if I don't get directly hollered at for making an error, other players will subtly start avoiding me.

But what if there was an ultimate team where everyone sucked as much as I did and that was okay? What if there was a team where I got gentle pats on the back when I made an error and everyone threw the frisbee to me all the more in hopes of improving my skills? Where everyone else was working to improve their skills as well but happily admitted their many shortcomings? Is that a team I would join? ABSOLUTELY.

So that's how it clicked for me. People who are interested in ultimate frisbee but suck at it feel comfortable learning around other people that suck. And people who are interested in playing in an orchestra but don't know one note from the next are going to be much more comfortable around people who aren't naturally talented musicians either. And people interested in figuring out their lives and souls but don't know where to start are going to be much more interested in walking into a church where everyone else is trying to figure it all out too. No one is competent in the area of life. No one. There are only those who feign competence.


God bless.

Comparison of Three Books

Yesterday I finished "Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller, and before that I read "A Walk Across America" by Peter Jenkins and before that I read "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" by Mildred D. Taylor. Needless to say, I have a lot of time on my hands lately.

These three books have very little in common of course. "A Walk Across America" was definitely my favorite, followed by "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry." "Blue Like Jazz" was mediocre in my opinion. It took me awhile to get used to the fact that it was neither a novel nor a book on Christian living, but rather, a collection of seemingly thrown-together blog posts with no real continuity whatsoever and a healthy dose of ignorance and pomposity. (Is it possible for a writer to ever come across as unpompous?) But there were a few things in it that made me think, which of course I enjoy and which made it worth it.

The thing that tied these three books together for me was that they all sent a message: everybody matters.

"Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" told me that black people matter.
"A Walk Across America" told me that poor people matter.
"Blue Like Jazz" told me that non-Christians matter.

So I put the last book down and think, what's God trying to tell me here?

Who am I treating as though they don't matter?

I'll have to think on it.


God bless.

P.S. Next on the list is "Same Kind of Different As Me" by Ron Hall and Denver Moore. I don't know much about this book at all but maybe it will carry the same theme.

Silent Noises

I parked my car in the driveway
To the sound of my engine turning off.
I heard the sound of the car door closing.
I heard the sound of my keys,
My footsteps as I entered my kitchen.

I pulled out my dinner and listened
To the microwave whir
And the mocking beeping.

My fork clinked against the plate.
The silence was deafening.
I sighed.

I opened my computer and heard
The sound of my fingers
Banging the keys as I typed.
My mouth felt lonely and dry.

I heard the leather couch squeak
I heard my little sips of beer.
I heard the glass being set on the table.

Noiselessly, I went upstairs.
I turned on the shower.
Silently, I heard the water
Hitting the tub and my body.
I heard the pat of my wet feet
On the bathroom floor.

I heard my bed groan.
I heard my breathing as I fell asleep
Alone in a dark room.

The next day was the same,
And so was the next.
Quiet.
Alone.
Silent noises.

Eventually,
A firecracker was lit under me.
I yelped and I ran
Until I found my place here.

Love and friendship are magical,
Shocking,
Thrilling.

Today,
silence shirks me.
I hear myself singing
At every turn.
Don't ask me how.


God bless.

Dear One

Dear one,

I'm sorry I've been ignoring you but it's really my only option. It doesn't mean I don't care, and it certainly doesn't mean I've forgotten about you. I will not and cannot forget.

Directly communicating with you is dangerous. Stirring up old emotions would only set both of us back in our quests to move on. Perhaps it's an unfair assumption that you have this same quest as me, but you ought to. Moving on is imperative.

I wonder if I ever fully will.

Our love story will never be published. Its incredible drama will never show up on a movie screen. It's a tragedy that is seared into our minds forever, but once we die, our story will die with us. But we both know how remarkable it was. Love like ours is once-in-a-lifetime, and one of my greatest struggles in my efforts to date others has been the sinking fear that my one-time chance at love is gone.

But that's a lie. We can both fall in love again. We can both live love stories with happier endings. And we should try to allow that to happen rather than constantly looking over our shoulders at the past.

Finding romantic love again is not the most important part of life, though. Finding ultimate love is. I don't know how many times I've told you but I'll tell you again: Jesus loves you.

Not only does Jesus love you; Jesus is blown away by you. He adores you and values your life more than his own. He cannot get enough of you. He pursues you relentlessly, whether you're paying attention or not. He has saved your life, literally, multiple times.

My love couldn't save you, and neither can the love of any other woman. But know that you are loved, and able to be saved.

Please listen to me because I care for you.

Reach out for help from someone if you start to feel hopeless. Do not be ashamed. Your life is worth it.


God bless.

-Maryann

P.S. Thank you for serving homeless people. I am so, so proud of you.