History in the making

I remember as a kid hearing people talk about where they were when JFK was shot. I remember how weird it seemed to me that they knew where they were when they heard the news. Then 9-11 happened. Everyone I know who was around then can tell you where they were, me included. Almost 20 years on and I still can recount most of that day at will. Like wise I have always been intrigued by the world wars, and what it must have been like. That level of collective focus and loss. The rationing and shear disruption to normal life. But here we are, smack in the middle of a global pandemic. Experience is an excellent teacher

I read a great note recently about kids during this season. To have them journal about it, to record their experiences. So that in 40 years they will have a first hand account to share with their kids. This is history in the making after all. So I guess that is what this is. My daughter is two. For her this season will be a flash in the pan. Something she hears stories of but doesn't really remember. So for my children, and grandchildren. Here is my experience of the pandemic of 2020.

This isn't war. But a month ago I started realizing I understood a little of that feeling. The fact that nothing happens over night. In December there were the beginning notes about a virus in China. In January the first U.S. case appeared here, in Washington State. But it was just one. Then started to escalate from there. I remember so clearly the feelings of disbelief as it began impacting daily life in March. My sewing machine was in for repairs when my small town announced all non essential business had to close. The repair shop was just over city line, and I was so grateful to get my machine back the next day. Not long after the whole state went on "stay at home" orders. As the impact has increased so has the fear and panic. Toilet paper hoarding has become of the most ridiculous examples. But as everyone scrambled to stock up on food incase of a lock down shortages across the board have popped up. 

In the last few years I have increasingly enjoyed making things from scratch. From growing sprouts, to knitting my daughters sweaters. Right before all this I started sewing a few of my own clothes and got a sourdough starter to start down the rabbit hole of baking our bread. What was supposed to be a once in a while loaf has now morphed into me baking all of our bread (plus pancakes, biscuits, and all manner of tasty bread related items).  Both now seem almost ironic in a season of panic buying and shortages. A few weeks ago, as the CDC expanded mask wearing recommendations to the general public, I started sewing face masks as well. It still feels surreal.

More another day. Its late

Bad Pizza and Sisyphus

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

Its a idea I have rolled around in my head enough times to circle the earth. A truth I have loved, hated more, and mostly tried to ignore like the pizza in the back of the fridge that went bad weeks ago. I am in a season of change. As if anything in life is ever constant, but since relationships, job, school, and family are all shifting at the same time lets call this one special. And hope in this season seems to be trying to find its footing.

There is the hope for better for some of those dearest to me. Because in the end it's easy to destroy your own life. Watching someone you love do the same however is another story. The last month provided a front seat to the fallen depths of three, and the fragil rise of one. In my gut I know, nothing is over till life is. God doesn't give up on people, and change is possible as long as breath is. But that is my gut. My heart is a little more beat up.

There is the hope for the end of school and the dream attached to it at the hip. Tenacious is a bit of a thing with me. Life taught me years ago (around the same time it made me a fighter) that giving up gains you little and costs you much. But I am slowing down. The trudge up hill in peanut butter I lovingly call school has worn on me. These days I find myself wondering if I am Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill I will never see the top up, and am just to stupid to see it. They say there is a fine line between brave and stupid. I am not sure which side I am on anymore.

There is even the hope that my past will one day, eventually, truly leave me the fuck alone. Nelson Mandela once said 'There is no such thing as part freedom'. In the past few weeks I have felt that truth resonate in my bones. Right now the wars of fathers are still leaving casualties at my door on a regular basis.

Please don't misunderstand me. I have seen the beauty of life that hope fulfilled brings. Every morning I wake up, breath, and remember that life didn't always look like this. The frail girl that should have died turned into a woman no one saw coming. The horizon has a ridiculous amount of light leaking over it. All by the grace of God. At the end of the day I am simply tired. Not fatally or irrevocably, not to the point of defeat. Just tired. Hope deferred makes the heart sic. And my heart is currently in need of a little chicken soup

Because I will never say it better

I made a choice some time ago. The conscious active kind that always holds more weight then you even expect. The choice was a simple one; to not be a woman who only talks about the lack. I had spent to long watching (and being) a single women who could only talk about what wasn't. I was tired of watching it make those around miserable. And more tired of missing life in the waiting. So I chose. The result is I have had incredible adventures, and experiences with God I wouldn't exchange for the world. But it also means there are things I don't speak about, even to my journal. I have never even tried to articulate the ache that has gradually settled into my chest. What would be the point?

A dear friend sent me a link this week. A blog she thought I might enjoy, even if it did hit close to home. It isn't every day I read my heart in someone else's words, the good and the bad of it. I was crying by the end, suddenly aware of the personal cost of my choice. "There are stories we consume in the telling...And there are stories that consume us when they're not told" - Chuck Palahnuik

So since I will never be able to say it better:
http://sayable.net/2012/03/sleeping-alone/

Eggnog lattes and fictiv kin

Its the holidays. My little down town is decked out in festive white lights, four out of five of my car presets are now dedicated to Christmas music, and red and green seemed to have exploded overnight. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a season about family and friends, giving and receiving, and indulging in the latest holiday coffee concoction.

I sat on Thanksgiving, with a new friend, at the home of a couple that she lives with. We were surrounded by their family of eleven, complete with grown children, spouses and teenage grand kids. Somewhere in the pre-turkey socializing we fell into talking about our own families. For both of us that included being in a separate state, and more importantly, having reasons not to go back for the holidays. Looking at the rowdy, laughing, teasing, and utterly welcoming group around us we also talked about the importance of adoptive families. One of my psychology books calls them 'fictive kin', the families and individuals that take you in as one of their own, despite the lack of genetic encoding to bond you. The conversation ended up being one of those deep moments that happens when you aren't expecting it, with setting adding a weight neither of us intended.

This year Thanksgiving struck me so poignantly. In the six years I have been in this state I have been blessed to have three different families adopt me, especially for the holidays. I have also spent a couple of holidays home alone, as those same families gradually moved out of state themselves. I have been attending the same church for close to two years. A place I love and have probably eight plus friends that I see weekly and hang out with outside of church. Of the three invites I got for thankgiving, none came from those closest to me. One was from a dear, but out of state friend. Another from the couple I work for. And the last from a new friend.

I want to state now that I am not writing for a pity vote. Nor am I writing as a rebuke of my church and friends. I am writing as a reminder, to all of us. It is to easy, in a season that has become as much about presents under the tree as those around the tree with us, to forget that not everyone has either. It is to easy to categorize the lonely or lacking, as only those individuals in homeless shelters, or at the other end of a toy drive. And forget that they are just as likely our neighbor. If we are to be called the body of Christ, we must take our eyes off the decorations and our own family challenges long enough to truly see those around us. Jesus offers love and acceptance. How often do we pass that on?

"By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" John 13:35

twenty five years and two months

Two months ago I walked into a courthouse, and walked out twenty pounds lighter. The name change wasn’t the actual change, merely the end cap. Changing the label on a jar that changed contents a while ago, all be it a very heavy label. Last night I stumbled onto a journal from my first six months in WA... six years ago. There are few people in my life now who know the depth of change my life has held in that time, especially the last couple years of it. I am finally accepting that there is simply no way to explain. But the small eight entry journal buried and long forgotten reminded me of the reality of that depth.

One of my favorite quotes is by Jonathan Swift: May you live all the days of your life. I love it because it reminds me that its not a given. You can keep breathing, keep paying rent, all with out ever being whole. I know too many people who live their whole lives as functioning wounded. Healing is not necessary for life. I read back through that journal thinking, there was never a guarantee that my life would change. As much as I wanted it to, as much as I was constantly striving, there was no fine print that assured it would. There was only God.

I cried through the whole thing. Not the beautiful single tear down the cheek kind, but the blubbering - snot flowing -trouble reading the next line - kind.  A mixture of regrets, and an overwhelming awe of all that God has and is doing. A friend called it a cathartic emotional roller coaster. Years ago an amazing lady said that is was like I was buried in plaster, dulled and hidden. It isn’t until now, being wholly free of that cage, that I can see the chipping away that had begun long before I sensed fresh air. 

Its been two months since I legally became Isabela, two months since the official end of the season that consumed twenty five years of my life. And I still don’t know, how do you come to grips with finding what you sought your whole life? I keep thinking about the Proverbs 13:12: ‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life’. The first half of that verse was the mantra for most of my life. I knew the truth in it, I lived with that sickness daily. For the first time I understand the later half. I have seen that tree, sat under its branches with a fresh breeze blowing through.

I am on the verge of becoming one of those obnoxiously happy people. The kind I spent most of my life annoyed at, or was it jealous of? But not because life is perfect or simple or close to easy right now. But because aside from the slightly alarming amount of good in my life right now, I have seen first hand the fierce love of God.

Soli Deo Gloria

Free spirits and reliable cars

I started reading a book this week that a good friend recommended. Fiction among other things has become the antidote to my persistent textbook overload. Its a decent story so far, straight laced main character nudged out of her ordinary world by a quirky free spirited aunt. Its a decent story because despite the slightly cookie cutter characters the plot is quirky enough that I want to see where it goes. (Have I mentioned how badly I miss being a real writer these days?... just checking). But as I read the description of the aunt I found my self wondering if the those people, in all their stereo typed glory, really exist. And if they truly feel free.

I have known two free spirits in my life. Both fit the bill; they loved life, traveled often, and fell towards the less reliable side of the scale. But the more I have thought about them the less sure I am that they are free. Both had deeper issues that drove much of their lives. At least for the first it wasn't a desire to fly but a fear of landing that kept him aloft. I also started thinking about my own vagabond days. For three years stability disappeared from my vocabulary. I moved a lot, traveled a ton. For over a year I didn't even have a physical address. In my current life I look back on that season with rose colored glasses. Right now I am in the middle of a college degree, a year plus into a job I love, at a church that has truly become home, living in a town I adore and have now lived in for over two years.

Life is stable.

It is why every single spring break, winter break, or long weekend I bolt. Out of county, state, or as far as my reliable car can take me in the time allotted. Anything to feel the joy of the open road and a little bit of the freedom those three years taught me about. Don't get me wrong. I love my life. It is actually the best it has every been. But for me, the process of reaching for the sky, has required the addition of a heavy back pack and a few bills. I miss the freedom of those years.

But when I started this book I started thinking about those glory days. Turns out when I look closely, I look with out the rose colored glasses. That three years season also included some of the hardest times in my life. It taught me about the provision of God for my next meal, and bed. It taught me that sometimes the dreams you imagine as a kid actually do come true. It taught me that what I thought was normal, was not mandatory. But I also remember that by the end, all I wanted was stability. Some of the best things in my life right now, are a result of having stood still for a while. The relationships, the progress, all come at least in part from the stability that half the time drives me nuts. And if you asked me, if I was more free then, or now... I would say now, when out even a pause.

There is a freedom in the open road. In a lack of bills and limited commitments. But their is a different kind of freedom in real friends I can call at any hour. In a life that is seeking more then survival and the next scenic bypass.

At a loss

I have loved words for almost as long as I have been able to read them. My dad clams its my seventy five percent English heritage. I think it is just because they are pliable. I remember the moment I truly fell. I was somewhere around ten when my mom handed me a novel I had stared at on the family bookshelf a million times. She thought I would enjoy it. It became the reason I am a writer. There is a point in the story that had me so tense and engaged that I forgot to turn the page. Only to get frustrated wondering why the story had stopped. I remember thinking, if you can do that with words, I want to play.

There are over a quarter of a million distinct words in the English language, if you count distinct senses there are closer to three quarters to a full million. Words that can be mushed together, or worn dull from over use. They can tangle your tongue, or flow like water. Dance or stutter, bore or excite. Strung together by the right hands and words can be nonsensical, like Dr. Suess. Or they it can be powerful, like Martin Luther King's letter from a Birmingham jail.

We demand a lot of words. They convey out deepest emotions, our humor, and the information that lets us function in everyday life. And we understand when one word isn't enough to convey the scope of something. In Hebrew there are eleven words for what English calls love. I think Biblically there are over 100 names for God. Many more if you count titles. We cram a lot in a few letters placed together. And most of the time, they accommodate.

It is why it amazes me when they fail.

There are times when what I want to say, what I need to say, no set of words will hold. It isn't from a lack of vocabulary. There are just things that no amount of letters or words can express. I try anyway, with anything from a page long rant to an over used phrase. I love you. I am sorry. I miss you. Congratulations. Ouch. But life doesn't always fit into vowels and consonants.

Sometimes, words fail.