fish and chips, flowers, and clearance sales.

Yesterday was a wonderful day.

Sun-- real, warm sun, not the winter sun that shines but is still cold. 

Shorts and flip-flips for the first time in Seattle this year. 

Hugs.

Driving with windows rolled down.

Sunglasses.

Fish and chips and the pier. (with no fried bread!)

Pike Place.

Beautiful flowers from Pike Place.

Holding hands to shove through crowds.

Attempts to find my favorite kind of tulip I saw at the Tulip Festival.

Carkeek.

Relaxing in the sun and not getting hit by the remote control airplane.

REI clearance sale and new hiking gear.

Not having to sit in the train car at the Spaghetti Factory.

A boy who eats the pistachio out of the spumoni ice cream (because I don't like it) and gives me the rest.

Getting to be with my favorite person.

Not wishing for one second I was in Maui with my roommates :) .

dry

I've been feeling more like a shell lately than a person. My days are blank, just dates on a calendar with hours I am busy and not much else. I am an outline that can't seem to get filled in. I find myself searching every aspect of my life for the hole that has drained the life out of my days, but I can't seem to find it. I push and pull at events and activities and people, trying to squeeze a few more drops of meaning from them, meaning that I know is there but just cannot reach. It eludes me at every turn. And when I do find it, it is not enough. I am not full.

Sitting on my bed in the quietness of the evening, hearing only the faint sounds of leftover rain finally finding its way from the leaves to the ground, I could do nothing but stare. Nothing felt satisfying. I am so numb that even sleep is not appealing, since even temporary unconsciousness cannot refill what I have lost somewhere. Eyes wandering around my room, they stopped a moment on my copy of Eugene Peterson's "The Message".

It has been a long time since I opened this book. In college, frustrated with the way that the modern church seems to find it necessary to dumb down the Bible to reach the mass market, I chose to prefer the translations that didn't make Bible passages so cut-and-dried. Yet once upon a time I bought this book for a reason. Sometimes wading through the language of the Bible obscures the simple truths that lie in its passages, and occasionally I need a reminder of what is at the core of this Story I am a part of. Tonight was such a night.

Flipping through Psalms, I landed on The Message translation of Psalm 42:

"A white-tailed deer drinks

from the creek;

I want to drink God,

deep draughts of God.

I'm thirsty for God-alive."

a few verses later, it continues:

"These are the things I go over and over, 

emptying out the pockets of my life.

I was always at the head of the worshiping crowd,

right out in front, 

leading them all,

eager to arrive and worship,

shouting praises, singing thanksgiving--

celebrating, all of us, God's feast!

Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul?

Why are you crying the blues?

Fix my eyes on God--

soon I'll be praising again.

He puts a smile on my face.

He's my God.

When my soul is in the dumps, I rehearse

everything I know of you,

From Jordan depths to Hermon heights,

including Mount Mizar.

Chaos calls to chaos,

to the tune of your whitewater rapids.

Your breaking surf, your thundering breakers

crash and crush me.

Then God promises to love me all day, 

sing songs all through the night!

My life is God's prayer."

How long has it been since I "fixed my eyes on God?" I have certainly spent the last few weeks (or even, to be honest, every moment since graduation) fixing my eyes on everything but God. I have tried to find meaning and identity in jobs, in grades, in relationships, in the future. Everything but my Father who has promised to love me unconditionally and never let me go. As my friend Andrew once told me, God won't let me fall off the map. Perhaps my restlessness, my yearning for something, is my soul telling me that it needs to be fed by the One and only, and until I learn to seek that, I truly will never find satisfaction. It isn't emptiness that I am feeling. 

It is thirst.

I want to drink God, deep draughts of God.

I'm thirsty for God-alive.

God of peace, of love, of truth, fill me where I have become empty. Pour your life into my soul so that I may feel alive, so that your love runs in my veins and your truth resounds in my mind. Fill me so full that I have no choice but to burst from the sheer abundance of life. Teach me what it means for my life to be Your prayer.

plummet

I say that I believe all the time.

I believe in God. I believe in forgiveness. I believe that He loves me. I believe that my family loves me. I believe that those I care about really do love me. I believe that everything will be okay. I believe I believe I believe I believe.

But I don't.

It isn't exactly that I don't believe those things, that I don't think of those things as true. More accurately, I don't think that I have committed my entire self to believing those things. I hold part of myself back, just in case it isn't true. There is a portion of my heart that I reserve to always keep a watchful eye out in every situation should one of those beliefs suddenly be disclosed as false and my suspicions confirmed. That allows me to get out while I can without getting too hurt. If I never fully commit to an idea, I will always be able to recover when that idea doesn't work out.

And this nice little plan of mine worked for a while. A long while, in fact. I've been protecting myself in such a fashion for virtually my entire life. But in the past year, two very important series of events have made me realize that I can't go on anymore with one hand always on the doorknob, ready to retreat at a moment's notice. First, I graduated and had every plan and sense of comfort pulled out from under me. And second--and those of you who know me, please forgive me for mentioning something that I normally don't go in depth about, being as afraid of feelings and warm fuzzies as I am-- I fell in love.

These two things, more than anything in my entire life, had made it utterly clear to me that I have a choice to make. I cannot survive a life of continual uncertainty and change-- the life that I know I have to live for at least a few more years-- without surrendering myself completely to the belief that God is in control, He loves me, and no matter how much I screw up He always will. I have to let myself accept that. I just do. And once I do, I can live the life that God has dreamed up for me, but until then I am only holding myself back from throwing myself at His feet in complete faith. And I have to give up rationalizing and the list of flaws that I keep about myself, and realize that love is not about being rational or being perfect but about loving someone for who they are that moment, and allowing them to love you. I can't keep expecting it all to fall out from under my feet at any moment. I have to throw myself in head-first-- do a damn cannonball into the things that I can't measure or prove via logical methods. I can't be scared of the things that I feel and experience just because their nature demands an element of uncertainty. 

So I'm letting go of all of my objections and letting myself-- all of myself-- land in whatever position life and love have for me. And the funny thing is that, while as with all inward transformations this letting go is a slow and gradual process, I feel as if my life feels like more of a plummet than anything at the moment.

fortunes

last Sunday, on a lazy afternoon plagued by desperate hunger and no desire to expend the energy needed to make food, I settled for some good old, slightly questionable Safeway Chinese food. My sweet and sour chicken-- as greasy-good as I remembered it-- was accompanied by the usual nondescript fortune cookie and cheesy fortune.

"you will receive unexpected support over the next week. accept it graciously."

good, I think to myself. my best friend is across the world with no means of communication. I sure could use some support for the next few days. 

and support I got. from my boss, recognizing that I was stressed out and offering to help in any way she could. from conversations with friends in the early morning slowness of the store we work at. from time spent with roommates I had felt I was growing apart from. from family. from bad jokes told by customers. from always patient answers to my never-ending questions at my new jobs. from small children looking for a friend and a lap to sit in. from firemen, even. from all angles imaginable.

looking back on it now, I wonder: did I see all these incredible acts of support, however small, because I was already on the lookout for them?

if my fortune cookie hadn't set my mind on the lookout for types of support, would I have noticed these things or recognized the value in them? had my fortune cookie alerted me to the possible presence of, say, danger, would I have noticed a completely separate set of events from what did stick in my mind this week?

such suggestion is more powerful than we think. if we are prompted to look at things in a certain light, we are naturally going to find it easy to pick out the things that validate that way of looking at it. if we think our lives are boring and miserable, we are going to only notice the things that validate this view-- and if something doesn't, we will warp it so that it does. if we are told from the start that all homeless people are dangerous and just want money to buy alcohol, every situation or behavior in which a homeless person is involved will be evaluated in that light. if we are told that women are less capable and intelligent than men, we will only notice instances where this is true. and on, and on. 

I wonder if any of us even know what we are being told to notice and what ideas are being suggested to us that influence the way we perceive situations. not everything is written so clearly on a tiny piece of paper folded up inside of a cookie.

what is necessary, not what is courageous

this story from msnbc.com is incredible. 

peace is not made by politicians lying to each other over expensive meals, saying anything and doing nothing. this is the real way to wage peace: face to face, door to door, person to person. step by step, leading by example.

waiting

it all looks like it is shaping up so nicely, falling into place so easily. almost as if everything is going to work out.

i'm just waiting for it all to fall apart.

The things our heart does when we aren't watching

I was miserable for two months last summer. I was somewhere far away (well, far for me-- across the country instead of across the world), without the people I loved, living in places that were vastly opposite from the accommodations I was used to, trying to do something that was not comfortable for me with people that I didn't know. I lived in towns where, at best, my dining options consisted of KFC, McDonalds, or Sheetz (the local chain of gas stations which, if you are unfamiliar with, is glorious). Wal-Mart was the height of civilization, not to mention the ultimate goal for employment for many of the people in the areas I visited. I drove a 15 passenger van with no air-conditioner down rural country roads, some of which barely resembled roads at all, and saw more trailer homes and houses on the verge of collapse than I ever imagined existed in the United States. I hated being away from my family and friends, hated the lack of decent fruit, hated not seeing the Seattle skyline, hated missing the 4th of July with my roommates, hated the humidity, and hated the job I was given. Miserable, I longed every minute to be home.

Somehow, I still miss West Virginia.

While I was there, I never would have thought that I would long to go back just a few months after I had left. Driving toward the Seattle skyline on my way home from the airport the night I got back, I felt completely at peace and ecstatic to be home again. Eight months later, the relief of home has worn off. My mind is free from the stress of my trip and the joy of return. With my heart relaxed into its normal state, I have discovered that, completely unknowingly, I have left part of it in the hills of West Virginia-- in the very trailers and fields and ramshackle towns that my heart seemed to hate just last summer.

I find myself now longing to see fireflies flitting in and out of the thick darkness of a humid summer night. To see the green of open fields against the blue of a cloudless sky. To have someone tell me to "turn on the only paved road and when you see the boat in the yard you're there." To not be looked at funny when I pronounce "Appalachia" the way my friends there taught me to. To get a swirl cone from the Dairy King. To order my sandwich from the gas pump at Sheetz. To drive across a covered bridge. To see Jan and Ralph and Dougy and Dan and Kim and Kris and Mike. To hear Mike describe how he makes the perfect pepperoni roll. To visit Matt and Betsy, and play with Serena and Mia (oh, my heart misses those girls so deeply...) To watch high schoolers replace a rotted trailer floor. To see my tough Sierra try to act so cool all the time. To hear stories. To see love. To be loved.

How did this happen without me even knowing? And now what do I do?