CrookedTree and Me

Christmas & Birthday & Moving Oh My!

2012-01-18T07:25:00.000-08:00

Banner's first Christmas morning and we were so much more excited than she was. This picture is basically us wigging out and taking pictures of her first thing in the morning and her wondering what in the world Mom and Dad are so excited about..

We set up her tent and tunnel in the living room. She loves climbing under things and through things and we knew she'd love climbing around in this...

She didn't...

She still hasn't tried crawling through the tunnel, but as you can tell from the look on her face here, she's saying, "but I like the piano..."

She and Dad played around on it and she really seems to like it. Plays a little bit every day.

Saige got a new castle for Christmas and Banner wasn't afraid to join her and Sawyer in there...

This is all the cousins (minus Cooper) at Christmas with Grammie & Pa. They are all getting so big. Its so rare that we all get together, but always a lively time.

Next thing we knew our sweet baby was turning a whole year old! We had a little party for her and some cousins and friends came to join. Again, she had no clue what was going on...

She tried a cupcake for the first time...

And liked it!

We also moved in the middle of this madness! Its been a whirlwind packing and unpacking and in the middle of all of it, Banner got Hand, Foot, Mouth. Poor thing. She was a trooper and loved all the boxes everywhere.

We love our new house! We're just trying to settle down a bit and prepare for our new arrival. We've finally decided on a name for our Peanut.... Piper Joyce! We can't wait to meet her! Then again, maybe if she'd wait a little while longer we can get a few more things done. :)

Growing & Changing

2011-11-23T09:28:00.000-08:00

Banner is growing so fast these days. Her crawling and cruising is putting her closer to the "toddler" category. Though I'm not quite ready to admit that yet. She's understanding more and more and chatting it up with us in her own jibber jabber.
Here's some recent pics...

We had some friends in from out of town that she enjoyed watching and trying to keep up with...

And... we were so excited to find out that her cousins are moving here very soon! They got some great play time at Grammie & Pa's last weekend. We're so thankful that these times will be more of the norm in the near future.

A video of one of her favorite things... dancing.

Home Photo Shoot

2011-10-04T08:42:00.001-07:00

We took some pictures of Banner around the house that turned out pretty great. She's been so fun lately as she's been learning new noises every day. She's not crawling yet, but scooting around and pulling up on everything. Her fourth tooth just started popping through and as you can see, her hair is really growing in.

Also, we just found out that Banner is going to have a sister! We've been trying to wrap our brains around having two girls in the near future. Lots of fun ahead for sure!

Peanut

2011-08-31T09:02:00.000-07:00

Introducing our new Peanut!

Due March 12, our next little bundle of joy! Its hard to believe we're starting all over again, but the more we've gotten used to the idea, we feel like it will be perfect timing. We'll have to really soak up our time with Banner because she's not going to have much time where she is the only child.
This is her friend Rebekah in Tyler. Its fun to see them a little more interactive each time they see each other.

Her other friend Eva from Portland came into town and they finally got to meet each other.

Eva enjoyed Banner's jumper more than she does.

Its been fun lately to introduce new flavors to her. She enjoyed a popsicle at Mimi's and is loving pretty much any baby food she tries.

She's sitting up so well! She looks so big sitting and playing by herself.

Lastly, I'll share a video of her playing with Ari. She's loving the dogs these days, though she does try to rip Ari's ears off in this video.

Firsts

2011-06-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

First time swimming. She loved it! She justed kicked and kicked.

First 4th of July! We didn't do much, just stayed around the house. At least she had a cute outfit so she could be festive.

First Ranger's game!

Notice her first outfit is not the one she actually wore to the game. Last minute wardrobe change...as usual. Good thing she has two Ranger's t-shirts!
And lastly, this is the first picture we have of her new teeth. She's not too happy here, but her teeth are lovely. :)

Chicken Pox: The Dreaded and Feared

2011-06-17T07:39:00.000-07:00

Don't know how it happened, but Banner got the Pox. She would get the immunization at 12 months, but alas, she didn't make it that long. We had a rough week as she looked into our eyes and pleaded for relief that we could not give her. And just when we thought it couldn't get worse...it did. But, she is a champion and got through it and is once again her normal cheerful self.

Cousins and giggles

2011-05-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

Banner and I spent the weekend with the cousins and Aunt Sheala while Randy was at the Ranch celebrating Michael's last few days as a bachelor. Now we have joined up with Dad at the Ranch and are enjoying a week away. B is acclimating well to all the travel and new places. Just wanted to share a few new videos and pics with ya'll. She is making some delightful changes, including growing a few teeth, one poking out and another one on the way.
We're getting big smiles from her...
She loves her new bow...

Saige loves her new cousin...

Banner's might need to warm up a little to all the love...

Sawyer found all of her binkys and was very helpful in making sure she had it whenever she wanted it.

And last of all, a special treat. We got her laughing the other night and had the most fun!

Easter!

2011-05-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

Banner looked lovely in her Easter dress!

With the cousins after the egg hunt. Notice she is holding her basket all on her own!

An introduction to solids... Banner's thoughts on rice cereal...

"I'm not so sure about this, Mom..."

"Worst day of my life, I can't believe you would do this to me!"

"Um, by any chance can I get some milk?"

"Ahhh...much better"

We sat outside this weekend and watched Dad work in the yard. He's planting some stones for a nice fire pit area. Notice what a big help Uzi is!

And lastly, it turns out we love bows! When I found out I was having a girl, that is the first thing people said..."You are going to love putting those bows on her!" I thought I probably wouldn't. I mean, I don't wear bows. Got one as a gift and put it on her just to try it on and I never wanted to take it off. I have officially converted.

And Banner wanted to say a few things to close us out...

Catching Up

2011-04-20T07:28:00.000-07:00

My hope in this blog is to post the most up-to-date news and pictures of Banner for family and friends. So far, I've been about a month behind. These pics will catch us up and hopefully my next entry will be Easter pictures...next week and not in June. So month 2 to 3 of Banner's life has also caught us up on something very precious and sweet...an old friend...sleep. She has answered our prayers in so many ways, but as much as we prayed for her to be healthy, we probably prayed as much for her to be a sleeper. The 10 to 12 hours of sleep that have become the norm for her are nothing short of God's grace on us. We feel like normal functioning citizens of society and we are kinder and more pleasant than we have been for a while.
She loves her sleep!

She loves her Grammy..

She loves her friends...

She loves basking in the sun...

She wasn't sure what she thought of St. Patty's Day...

She loves her milk...

She loves going on walks with Dad...

and the dogs...

And we're caught up. Have a great Easter!

Settling Into Her New Home

2011-04-15T07:28:00.000-07:00

Banner is acclimating to her new home quite well. As new parents we seem to go back and forth between this feeling so natural, like she is just an extension of ourselves, and feeling like we have no clue what we are doing. I feel like a little bit of both is good. I've been reading some books (mostly during feeding times) that are supposed to guide new parents. The first one I read was "Baby Wise". I read it in about two days and was trying to figure out when we could start implementing some of their practices. The next day I went to the Pediatrician and he asked if I had read the book. I was proud to tell him I had just finished reading it, feeling like an equipped mother. "Oh," he said, "I was going to suggest that you not read that book." Soooo, back to square one. I asked him if there were any books he suggests and he said "What to Expect the First Year." I've been reading this book and it has a shocking lack of advice. It seems that its only purpose is to give you broad parameters of what your child might experience over a range of time. It guess our role as parents is not to force our child's ways to fit our ways or to find out how to gently mold her into the child of our dreams, rather to watch her grow and learn, don't let her starve, keep her head from falling off when we pick her up and make sure her poop is the right color. I feel like much more of a spectator at this point. I know some day we will have to discipline and play a large role in molding her character, but for now, I love learning a little bit more every day all the little things that the Lord built into this little girl. Like how she always touches her face with the back of her hands and how sheopens her eyes really wide when she hears a new loud sound. Every day its something new. I can't wait for tomorrow.

The First Few Weeks Cont...

2011-03-28T15:53:00.001-07:00

Sleeping on Dad..
Sleeping on Mom...

First bath

squishy face is funny

The First Few Weeks

2011-03-09T06:49:00.000-08:00

Punkin

Meeting the Fam:

Mom and Dad looking a bit tired but totally in love with the tiny bundle of joy:

Introducing Banner Joellen Bartley

2011-03-02T07:35:00.000-08:00

Its been so long since I have blogged. Writing has become somewhat elusive for me over the last few years. I'm looking forward to using this site now for updating friends and family on my sweet baby girl.

Banner Joellen was born January 6, 2011 at 10:08pm. She was 20 days early but still weighed in at a healthy 7lb 14oz and 20 1/2 inches long.
Hospital pics:
Grammie!

Cousin Saige & Paw

Mimi & Papa

Bonding with Daddy

Ready to go home!

Judy

2009-03-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

I try to avoid spiritual allusions as much as possible when I write. I am a deeply spiritual person, but in writing it comes out sounding trite. There are certain phrases that are so overused that they become plastic. For better or worse, I would rather have a deep understanding that God’s hand is orchestrating every part of my life and never mention it than say something that makes God seem small or cliché…or even that would give the impression that I am some spiritual elite. I am, of course, I just don’t want people to know I’m A Team.
That said, I am going to attempt a story that needs to be told. Its probably the most remarkable thing that has happened in my life…or has been revealed to me at this point. Its about a girl named Judy… at least that was the name her first English teacher gave her. Her real name is Ji Jing Jie.
I have written some about my path to China. Like many people who go overseas, I felt inadequate to go. Like I wasn’t at the level I needed to be. Funny, that makes me think of Mario Brothers. I was at level three and somehow found a way to make a hole in the roof, breezed over the top of it and next thing I knew I was at level eight…without fireballs…and I was scared. Honestly, I never had a heart for the world. I still don’t…not really. I had done a missions class for a semester in college where I learned about all the things going on in the world, but mostly we just listened to stories from real people about their experiences. I truly believe, no amount of pleading for the souls of people, or descriptions of poverty and bereavement would ever have convinced me to be a missionary. Unfortunately, I’m not that compassionate. But when I heard story after story about what God was doing all over the world, people who had suffered and been tortured for the gospel, it got me excited…not to save people, but to get caught up in the flow of His mighty works in this big world.
I would go back home to my little world of business classes, sorority meetings and movie nights, and I knew there was something much bigger out there if I had the guts to try. Ultimately we all live in our own little world, whether its in Slovakia or Corsicana, we’re just little people. I just wanted to witness God in a bigger way…catch a glimpse of His glory with a wider lens. But I was afraid about any expectations there were about MY role in all of this. There are certain underlying assumptions that people have about missionaries…that they have a mission, for instance…or some deep love for the nations, or at least the specific people they are ministering to…or that they are ministering at all. These things made me nervous.
The week before our team got on the plane for China, we had a briefing in California. Hundreds of young people from all over the States gathered and prepared to go to East Asia. They gave us a whole day to be alone and in prayer. I went down to the beach and had a long conversation with the Lord about what was going to happen. I don’t remember much about it, but what I do remember was asking to be used by him like a tool. I was very aware that I didn’t have much to offer and the thought of going over there to save people didn’t sit well in my soul. A hammer can’t do anything without a person to lift it and exert some sort of power behind it. So I just asked God to do big things…and if he got around to it… to use me to do it. I was already going to be there anyway. The whole idea that God would use me, when he could just use a sunset or a rock to speak of His love and grace for the world, was pretty humbling. I’m not sure what I expected, but I knew even with the best training, ultimately I was me. I also asked God to make His work evident, because I tend to take credit for a lot of things He does.
Fast-forward about a month and I’m walking around on my new campus, trying to ignore the heat, and looking for Chinese girls that I could meet briefly and write their name and number in my little book. Little did they know I would eventually create an excel spreadsheet on a hidden drive in my computer with their Chinese name, English name, class, dorm number, room number and phone number, with interested? and not interested columns beside them. This was for efficiency and effectiveness of the mission. It seemed a little CIA to me, but what the hell did I know? They were all just strange faces to me and I was doing my job.
Then I would go back to my dorm and start sorting. Freshman or Sophomore? Highlight and add to the spreadsheet. Junior or Senior? Ex out. There was a strategy and juniors and seniors don’t have the time we need to grow them into leaders. One name, I don’t remember it now, went into the sophomore category with a star to give her a call. I set up a tea at a quaint little tea house near the campus. She decided to bring eight friends. The nine of us sat around a table eating wasabi peas and drinking tea while they practiced their conversational English. I asked them questions like…”What is your favorite hobby?” “What is your major?” “Do you have a boyfriend?” and “Where is your hometown?” Finally I tried some deeper questions. “What is success to you?” Most of the girls said money. If they can have more money that will show that they are successful. One girl, who was not very outspoken until this moment, said firmly “I do not think money means success. There are many things in life more important than money.” I found out her name was Judy as we talked more on lighter subjects. The next day I sent her a text to see if she wanted to meet for lunch.
A few days later we were at a little soup place near campus eating a bowl of noodles and pig liver soup. I gulped down bite by bite with a fake pleasant smile on my face and tried to get to know my new friend Judy. I asked about her family, where they lived, are they close...”I know many Chinese are Buddhist, is your family?”
“Only my grandmother, we are taught in school that there is no God, just to believe in ourselves.”
This is a phrase I had heard a few times already. “Judy, is this what you believe?” I ask.
“No, I do not think I believe this.”
I’m intrigued…”What do you believe?”
She answers, “I believe..” long pause as she searches for the english word… “Christianity.”
My spoon drops into my bowl and I try not to appear shocked as I try to get to the bottom of this. I ask if her parents are Christians…no…does she have friends who are Christians…no…does she know or has she known any Christian believers…no. Huh? Her dad knew a Christian once, maybe they worked together. He came home one day with a Bible that his friend gave him. She didn’t think her dad ever picked it up or looked at it. But she couldn’t help herself…she started reading it. And then an amazing thing happened…she believed it.
As I’m piecing together her amazing story, I feel my spirit pull away from myself and look down on the two of us at a soup place..in a random city…in China…and I wonder what God is seeing. Tears filling my eyes, I tell her that I am a Christian too, and that means we are sisters. She smiles, her calm sweet smile, then her brain starts working, “Can you teach me the Bible? There is so much that I don’t understand.” I only spent the last six months praying, preparing, raising $30,000 and training for this exact scenario. “Sure, I can probably make some time in my schedule for that.”
Over the next few months I walked her through the verses that tell you about personally receiving Christ into your heart…what that means and looks like. Then for the next year and a half she would come over and study the Bible with me once a week. She would soak it up and she grew in wisdom and maturity in faith so quickly. She is the quiet leader type. A soft and compassionate spirit, with a firm solid belief and a quick, intelligent mind. She’s the kind that fits twice as much in her day as everyone else, but is half as stressed. She is calm and sure. I learned so much from her.
By the time I left, she was leading friends and classmates to Christ and during her senior year, when I was back at home, she lead her own Bible studies and trained other girls. She is still involved with some campus ministry and volunteers at an orphanage regularly. I can’t believe I got to have her in my life. When I look back on that prayer I prayed in LA, I couldn’t have imagined how God was going to answer it. He did all the work, I just got to be there to witness it. He knew he had a daughter stranded alone in a dark city, so he picked me up out of America and plopped me down in front of her one day. Kristyn, meet Judy. Judy, meet Kristyn. I’ve been preparing you both for this day.

The Sound

2008-11-05T08:53:00.000-08:00

Ever since the election last night there has been this sound in my head. What is that sound? I watched last night as John McCain graciously accepted his loss to Barack Obama, and though I don’t think McCain is the perfect candidate and though we were prepared for his loss, it struck me afresh what a great President we are losing.
And then I watched as Obama stood in front of hundreds of thousands of people and accepted his election. As the cameras panned across the audience of starry-eyed youths, proud black voters and Oprah clinging to the man in front of her and swaying to the music in her head, my emotions were stirred. I decided at that moment to rejoice with our nation in our first black president. I soaked in the stories from grown black men with tears in their eyes saying they never believed it would actually happen, and the story of the 106 year old lady who lived through segregation to see a day when a black man is the leader of our country…and she was able to vote for him. I rejoiced last night, but still the sound in my head remained. What is that sound? I never doubted whether a black man could be a great president, not the way I have doubted whether a woman could be a great president. It warmed my heart to see what seemed to be the entire nation in united celebration over an Obama victory. But I can’t help but wonder if in their blind pursuit of a historic moment, they missed what he was saying all along. Have the stars in their eyes kept them from seeing that he stands for things that America has long fought against, and in fact, they themselves find abhorrent?
When I listen to Obama, I too want to fall behind him. He has often been compared to a preacher, but then again he seems to disdain all things related to the church and Christianity… which I can honestly relate to, though unlike him I am unwaveringly pro life, among other things. So I like to think of him more like the leader of a service organization. I think Barack Obama would be great as the head of Red Cross, The Salvation Army, or the Peace Corp. He has great ideas on helping people, and a true heart of charity…something anyone would want in a president. But when you start infusing these ideas into the government, that’s when things get a little screwy.
The desire to end world poverty and hunger is shared unanimously by everyone across the globe except a small percentage of narcissistic a**holes. Wouldn’t it be great, as Obama says, to take the left-overs of those with too much and hand it to those without enough? If there is enough wealth for the whole world to be satisfied, why would we put up with poverty? But what happens when my government wants to give to something it deems as a charity, but I don’t agree. I want to extend charity on my children’s college fund, or on the local women’s shelter. But I don’t have that right anymore. The money I earned is not mine to spend. Those in charge…the elect know how to spend my money better. We elect people to make our decisions for us, right? Maybe I’m scraping by and barely able to make ends meet with two jobs and it dawns on me…I can quit my jobs and let the government take care of me. Ambition out the window…I am staying home all day. Workers aren’t working, the bosses are having to cough up the money they earned working eighty hour weeks and long nights to support people who just don’t put in any effort. Read economic crisis. Wealth stops being created…poverty grows on a larger scale than before.
Spreading the wealth around has never been an American ideal. In America, you work hard, knowing that hard work pays and its there for anyone. In America, we are free to compete with each other because competition creates better and more efficient products and in turn creates more jobs and a better economy and a better life for all who are a part of it. In America, we choose our churches of any faith and within that church we organize to end the poverty around us…because most (not all) faiths have a dogma of charity. But that is our freedom, just as it is our freedom to be narcissistic a**holes who never give a dime to anyone but ourselves. And you know what? That’s fair.
Again the sound…like a giant vacuum. This morning the sound became clear. That’s the sound of many of the freedoms I have long taken for granted being sucked away. My world yesterday was a lot more free than my world today. My small business is in more jeopardy today than it was yesterday. When I saw John McCain walk off the stage last night, a war hero, a dedicated and proven American to the core, and a highly experienced politician, defeated…I could not help but think “Oh God, what have we done?” But pushing all that aside and facing the fears that lay ahead of me I will pause and be thankful for our new black president. I still have a twinkle of hope in my eye because I know he is a good man.

The Montage

2008-09-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

Just got home from the ranch. Home smells sweet and feels a lot let stuffy than it did when I left. I was only gone for three days and yet I feel like everything is different somehow. I have a slightly new perspective on life and a desire to set some goals for myself.
Life has been a bit foggy lately. I still don’t know how to sort through the stuff going on in my head. Like a montage in a movie. You know, the brief period in the story when the key song in the soundtrack turns up and you watch the main character doing an assortment of things in different clothes or in different seasons to show the passing of time. Like in Notting Hill when Hugh Grant is going through the market to “Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone.” There are no concrete details of their life, but you get the general idea that time is passing.
I guess I’m going through a montage phase. Not a gloomy montage like the one in Notting Hill, though. And not necessarily a happy cheery one, like in 13 going on 30 when she walks through the park eating ice cream and generally enjoying her adulthood to “A Good Day.” I would just be working at the shop selling coffee, enjoying my job and talking to people, sitting on patios with friends, laying by a pool, walking by the lake. And in the mean time, nothing really is going on in my head that I can make any sense of. I’m just sort of floating into this new phase of life. Maybe I’m learning the new rhythm of my life and I have to check out for a while before any of it will make any sense. It’s all so different but it’s becoming my new normal.
What would my montage song be? Maybe “Dazed and Confused” by Led Zeppelin, or “You’ve got a Friend” by James Taylor, but probably “Everything Has Changed” by Lucinda Williams…though its probably a little more somber than I actually feel.
So I’ve returned from two different trips. One was a quick trip with the girls to wide open land, a star filled sky, and an audible silence. The other was the trip my mind took about a month ago to the Land of Fog. Life is fresh again. And it’s starting to make some sense. I can’t let these times pass me by…they’re all way too precious.

The Conversation

2008-07-29T23:20:00.000-07:00

I know I need to have this conversation, so I’m going to have it. C.S. Lewis says that if you want things to change, you pretend like they already have and pretty soon they will. Or something like that. This conversation will be an attempt at being someone I’m not…or haven’t been until now in hopes that I will become that person someday. But when I really think about it, I’m not so sure I even want to be that person…or I guess I just don’t know what it looks like on me.
So maybe this is like the dressing room, I’m going to try on this attribute and see how I like it on me.
Things always look better on the mannequin.

In China, the best and worst part of my two years there was my team. We called it the team but we played so many roles in each other’s lives. Family…making cakes for birthdays, sitting at a long table together at Thanksgiving, opening presents together at Christmas, tucking kids in bed, family dinners. Co-workers…taking tasks and splitting them up, working together toward goals, long meetings, hashing through strategic methods and vision casting. Classmates…sitting for hours on end being compared to each other by brutal teachers…”No, that’s wrong. Listen to Zack..he says it right. He is a better student.” Church friends…the nine of us huddled together in a living room singing lightly to the guitar and listening to a recording of our home pastor on someone’s laptop. Roommates…sharing bathrooms, taking turns getting water down the hall, paying electricity bills, who gets the TV, who needs to just talk in the middle of the night. And friends…watching movies together, going to dinner, traveling, riding bikes. Just nine of us…for two years.
We knew each other pretty well.
Each year we had a review done…just like a normal job. It was called the 360 because it was supposed to evaluate everything about you. The worst part of it was that the people doing the evaluation really knew me and everything about me.
The word that kept popping up on my review that kind of encompassed the majority of my issues was “vulnerability.” Apparently I had none.
I’ve spent a long time since then trying to figure out what that really means and what it looks like. I mean, I’m pretty open…not a closed off person. I know how to bond with people and be a friend. What’s the difference between being open and being vulnerable?
I assume it has something to do with pride, which I have been aware of for a while. Not wanting people to know I have problems. Phrasing what I’m going through in ways that make people believe I have it all under control…that I don’t need help. If I let someone know that I have hopes and dreams, that I have desires…and they aren’t met, I will be pitied. I refuse to be pitied.
But as I’ve thought about it more and more, I think it has a lot more to do with insecurities than pride. Feeling that people won’t accept me if they know I have problems…so I guess insecurities hinge on trust. I have to get to a place where I trust people enough to let them into my problems. To think highly enough of others to believe that they won’t run away or reject me….or annoy me.
The unvulnerable person builds up walls around different parts of them, so they can never be fully known. And the one thing they really want…to be liked and accepted…becomes impossible because the opportunity hasn’t been given. No one can accept something they aren’t given. They isolate themselves without even knowing it. Enter loneliness, fear, more insecurities, higher walls.
The vulnerable person is fully known. They let others into their hopes and dreams…then they have someone there when those dreams fall apart and someone there to celebrate when they are met. When one person rejects a side of who they are, they have a whole slew of others right by them who know them and love them anyway.
We cannot possibly build self-esteem on our own. Self-esteem doesn’t have much to do with self, I don’t think. We derive it from others, and more importantly from what we give to others. And the giver is never pitied.
For many, this is probably Relationships 101, but for me this is revolutionary. I feel like I’m getting it down more in my friendships…letting them in and reaping the benefits of closer friendships built on truth. The kind of rock solid friends that will stand the test of time. But I have so much to learn when it comes to relationship with…well…guys. This is where we catch back up to the conversation I need to have. I guess I just don’t trust them as much…which could be part of the whole “guarding my heart” mentality. But what’s so different about that and building up walls? I guess we’re supposed to be so wary of guys because they’re all out to get our virginity. What’s wrong with being open and honest…and there are some guys I really want to have a true, rock solid friendship with. The conversation that I need to have puts me in a very vulnerable position with a guy friend of mine. And I am stepping out of who I am naturally inclined to be in the hopes that I will come out with a great friend and not just a good one. Potentially it could just be very awkward, though. Dressing rooms are always awkward.
In the end, if I can have the confidence to say I’m open to risking rejection for the gain of intimacy…then that will be some real growth. For now, I just need to get through this conversation.

Balance

2008-06-28T11:38:00.000-07:00

“When will I ever find balance in my life again?” That’s what I found myself saying the other day to a friend. I said it tongue in cheek in reference to the fact that I haven’t done yoga in over a month, but after it came out I realized it was a legitimate concern. I’m rolling into about the thirtieth day in a row to work and I’m trying to rest well…knowing that its not going to end for a while. I’m starting to understand more why God created the earth with a 6:1, work:rest cycle. There is a rhythm to life that we need to embrace. Our bodies are limited…we can’t physically go for more than a few days without sleep or food. We can only run so far, jump so high, lift so much weight, cry so many tears….before it just stops.
But it’s the immortal things that God put in us that intrigue me more…the seemingly limitless things that awe me. I have a pretty clear understanding of my boundaries, but it’s the spiritual well that never runs dry, the ever-expanding room in our brains for knowledge, the way our bodies grow and change to accept new circumstances that are the real mystery. Like the man I heard about recently who never really worked out in his life and decided at fifty to run marathons with his handicapped son. He started at a mile and worked his way up and now consistently runs these things pushing and carrying his son. Yes, he was limited…and still is…but the spirit in him pushed that physical boundary consistently enough that the physical gave and shifted and conformed. But it’s the spirit that was stronger.
And I guess our brains are the size of our fists and weigh however much that kid in Jerry McGuire said, but they retain years of memories…smells, tastes, lyrics to songs that you didn’t know were in there until you hear it ten years later at a wedding or on the radio. But each day you add a million new things to that database that the smallest trigger could cause you to recall…and its grey and mushy. What?!
And the craziest part to me is what Jesus said to the woman at the well about his living water that never runs dry. He said “The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” So in us, beyond the flesh, beyond the muscles and tendons, in the deep dark middle of our very humanness, is a source…what I believe to be life itself. Sometimes I think I choke it up with the crud I allow to live there, or I bend it like a hose when I allow everything to tense up with worries. But we have this ability to let it flow over all those things. We don’t have to get dried up and crusty…and we don’t have to portion it out as if it were limited. Oh, that I could give full vent to that living water.
So, while I know that the 6:1, work:rest cycle is by design and in rhythm with creation, I do think that he’s given us an inner balance. An unending source of refreshment that we can choose to tap into. A way to live in constant balance…to find rest in work…to give while taking…a laughter in the raw realities of life. Ahh…divine humanness…the canvas you give us…thank you Lord.

Color

2008-05-11T17:15:00.000-07:00

The front room is Firefly, the back is Rio Rancho. Most of what you see when you walk in is Sweet Vibrations…bright green. I can’t get these colors out of my head. I can’t stop imagining the next few days in fast forward…setting my lens on the workers while they finish tiling the walls, painting the trim and finishing the wood floors. The bathroom appliances are coming in and the furniture is arranged in each room to accommodate the space. Each piece of equipment is falling into place as we put curtains and blinds on the windows. The sound system and security system are being installed as we receive our small appliances, mops, brooms, soap dispensers. Then it comes…our first shipment of coffee. Then the real chaos begins.

I love rain…it comes to wash the world clean, it gives us a break from all the things we do outside and makes us stay in a little more. It calms my soul to hear it falling outside. And the slow rolling thunder reminds me that there is something so much bigger out there than I am. That I am not, in fact, in control.
The other night I was driving home in the rain and I pulled up to a stoplight next to a gas station. The fluorescent light shone through my window casting shadows of falling drops on my arm. I stared at the drops falling one by one down my arm and felt a sadness in my soul. As if those drops were the tears that I couldn’t cry. Not about anything in particular, maybe just the passing of time. I often mourn over time…it dies so quickly and I never appreciate it when its present. I mourn over the past…friendships that have faded because of marriage or location or just growing in different directions…things that have happened when I didn’t do anything or didn’t do enough or really went overboard…relationships that didn’t work out…or even just the good times that are irretrievable. I also mourn over the future, strange as it may be. That I know its going to look a lot like my past. That every decision I make is a hundred decisions I won’t make. Like reading a choose your own adventure and not reading all the endings. That I don’t know it and can’t control it, and the more people I love are the more people I will eventually lose. There is so much more pain left out there for me to feel and I have no idea how I will respond.
These times of introspection are good and sobering but heaven forbid I let them frighten me or subdue me. There is so much fear in life, worries that can stifle us. I choose to plow forward. I only have one life, my life. And if I am going to choose my own adventure I want to choose the one with the greatest danger, which is usually the one with the greatest reward. And take heart that I am not the one in control.

So I’ll spend the next few days watching things change, dreaming in full color, and moving right ahead. Knowing that things won’t happen just as I planned and I’m going to mess up big time along the way. There will be hurt and pain and sweat but I will be living life and not hiding in fear of it.

Flying

2008-04-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

I drove up to the High School on the first day of my senior year in my white Camero, found a parking spot, leaned around to the back seat to grab my bag and started walking toward the front door of the familiar school. I didn’t have to go to first period that semester, so I was the only one walking in the parking lot. The warm summer morning air blew across my face, waking me up from my stupor and allowing my first thought of the day. “I can’t believe I’m still in High School,” I said to myself in a self-pitying and self-righteous exclamation of sentiment. I was surely too old…well, too mature…to have to be doing this.
That year I enrolled in a class called Independent Studies. It was only available to seniors who had gone through the Challenge curriculum at our school. Challenge is basically a class for students that teachers see are gifted and instead of putting them in regular or AP English classes, they put them in these classes to explore their creativity. My challenge classes consisted of either the highly intellectual student or one of those really strange kids that draw ligers on their trapper keepers and fluently learn the language of the elves. I was put into the program in second grade, before I cared about popularity and the negative impact being smart would have on my reputation. By the time I was in High School, I enjoyed the class because we could draw pictures for our final exams instead of taking multiple-choice tests, but I didn’t feel like I fit in with the rest of the class. And to my shame today, I didn’t take the time to know many of the other students.
The goal of the Independent Studies class was to have the students work on a project for the entire year, setting goals along the way, keeping a portfolio, and preparing a presentation at the end of the year. The idea was to reach for some high achievement, put a lot of work into it and see that big things can happen when you work hard for it. I wanted to take it because there was no class to attend. I only had to check in with the teacher once a week to update her on what I was doing and turn in my time sheets. Also, it gave me an excuse to try for something that I’ve always wanted to do…fly an airplane. Being eighteen, I had no idea what I was getting into. I had been to driver’s ed, but I knew this would be different.
In hindsight, the idea went over amazingly well with my parents. My dad got his pilot’s license in the 70’s and we were kindred spirits’, so I took it for granted that he would want me to have the same experience. He took me to the flight school and enrolled me in the training program. I had to sit in Ground School every night for a few weeks. No big deal, I was missing High School for this. The flight training was what I really loved, though.
I would go to school until noon then head out to the airport. My flight instructor’s name was Troy. Troy was just out of college and had been a pitcher for his college baseball team…not a bad looking young man for a girl to take flying lessons from. The very first lesson Troy walked me through the pre-flight checklist. We went over the entire outside of the plane then got in our seats. Before I started the engine he told me to yell out the window, “Clear Prop!” to inform any passersby that the propeller was about to start spinning. I looked around the empty area and gave him that look most teenaged girls have that says, “You expect me to do what?” “There’s obviously no one there to warn.” I informed him. “I know, it doesn’t matter, you have to say it…and say it loud.” I tried to alleviate every bit of embarrassment that was seeping up in me about yelling something out the window to absolutely no one. I slowly opened the window, sucked in air and yelled out “Clear Plop!” “That’ll do.” Troy said smiling as my face turned beet red… half with embarrassment and half with anger that he made me do that.
Troy would sit in the co-pilot’s seat while I worked on maneuvers and stalls, takeoffs and landings…brave man. I remember the first time I landed the plane on my own, it wasn’t until the plane was on the ground that Troy turned to me and said…”That was all you…I didn’t touch a thing.” A great and scary moment. Then was the day he informed me that I was ready for my solo. I wasn’t too afraid, I had been doing touch and go’s on my own for a while now and I was confident I didn’t need Troy there anymore. But when he got out of the plane and shut the door behind him, I felt more alone than I ever remember feeling before. It was just me and a humming two-seater Cessna…757WP.
“McKinney tower, 757 Whiskey Pop, request taxi to runway 3-6.” I said into my headset.
“757 Whiskey Pop free to taxi to runway 3-6.”
I had my clearance. All I had to do was chug along to the runway like I had done so many times before. My head was a fog as I pulled onto the taxiway. Who do I think I am trying to do this on my own? I felt like was ten years old, wearing a giant headset, barely able to see over the dash. My childhood was flashing before my eyes. Then my thoughts were interrupted…
“7 Whiskey Pop, that’s runway 3-6 not 1-8”
Turns out I was heading for the opposite end of the runway. I can imagine those men in that tower laughing as they watched the little plane turn completely around and head for the opposite end of the runway… the way masculine men do when they don’t think girls should be doing the things they do. And who knows what poor Troy was thinking. In some way, I guess it was what I needed to give me the gumption to prove them wrong. I took off…soaring through the sky on my own. It was just me, 757WP and two thousand feet of air. I landed the plane just fine as Troy came bounding out of the tower to congratulate me.
I went on to get my Private License that summer. I flew solo to Oklahoma once, jumping out of the plane at a sleepy little airport where three old men sat with jaws dropped as I asked them to gas her up. I don’t fly anymore, except for the occasional flight with my dad. Its turned into an expensive hobby and nothing more. Maybe one day it will fit into my life again in some way that Providence designed from the beginning. I sure hope so. Until then, I will cherish the hours I spent in the clouds.

Crooked Tree

2008-03-31T17:11:00.000-07:00

My best friend and I are starting a business. That’s what Crooked Tree is. I started this blog thinking it would be a record of the ins and outs, ups and downs and general excitement of opening a coffee shop. Surprised even myself that I haven’t mentioned it until now. Current life is never as poetic as the past or the future. But don’t get me wrong, just because its not poetic doesn’t mean I’m complaining about where I am right now. Its just hard for me to write about without getting caught up in technical details about POS systems, the size of under counter fridges, and requirements for grease traps.
This time last year I was putting in my two months notice at the bank. My dreams of the coffee shop were still in the “let’s explore the idea so at least we can say we tried” phase. In between the projects my boss was dumping on me before I left, I was inadvertently searching the internet for commercial property for rent in the area and using our spreadsheets to plug in numbers that might or might not be typical sales figures for the average independent coffee shop. But it was still a pipedream. I was also looking into alternative certification programs for teaching high school students. You know, cast the net far but bring a snack along just in case.
Here I am a year later with both feet in this thing. I am never confident about anything. I can’t even be certain I’ve picked the right restaurant for dinner, the entire way there I’m looking around to make sure I didn’t rule out any options that might have been better. I won’t go into what that says about me and relationships. But I am sure about the coffee shop. Along the way we have run into so many delays and headaches and issues and difficult people and more delays, but never once have I doubted whether I should do this. I feel grounded in the reality of it all. I don’t think any of it is going to be easy. But I genuinely want to do it. I am so excited about the ways it is going to stretch me and keep me growing, the potential the place has… ways to contribute to the community and be a part of efforts going on all over the world.
Of all the hiccups so far the delays have bothered me more than anything. Whenever I talk to anyone about starting a coffee place, the first thing they ask is when it is going to open. In October I would have responded December. In December I would have responded March. Now that its March, its obvious it won’t happen until June at the earliest. I hate telling people something that is not true. Even though these are not intentional lies…there is this unbelievably strong fear in me of being unreliable. I’d almost rather be anything but unreliable.
I also hate these delays because my life is a case study on learning patience. Its kind of a cruel joke to build into someone this innate inability to wait on anything and then constantly give her situation after situation that requires enduring patience. I guess its discipline, like training a dog to race by making an electronic rabbit that runs one step faster. Just when I think I can’t wait anymore or I will burst, someone informs me it will be two more weeks. I go to my jar of oil to find that sure enough there is an adequate amount for today.
So here we are. Starting April with plans for construction, picking out equipment, furniture, food, logos, countertops, bathroom tile…oh yeah, and coffee. We have the house where it will be. Its sitting there empty and waiting. I go there sometimes just to look around again and envision what it will be like. Also, I think, so that it will sink in that this is really happening. The whole thing just seems too big for little me. But just when I’m starting to feel daunted, I get this feeling in my gut. I recognized the feeling the other day and tried to name it…then it came to me…one word…ambition. Its been a while since I have felt it, nothing was really worth it to me. And I look at the old house and sense that it is feeling it too. It was built in 1920 and has lived many lives already. Because it is in the Historic District, it will be preserved. Its pretty old to be starting something new, but I think its ready. I know I am.

The Road

2008-02-11T16:16:00.000-08:00

I live my life teetering on the brink of being proud that I’m more emotionally put together than almost anyone I know and being a complete mess, stupefied that I still can’t figure life out. The last week or so the mess side of me must have eaten a few too many twinkies because I’ve stayed there a lot longer than normal.
Spent the weekend with my “accountability group” talking about our life stories and the road maps that led us to where we are now. I put “accountability group” in quotes because most of us in the group are uncomfortable with that title. It sounds too Joshua Harris or Elizabeth Elliot to be an acceptable title for us. We just eat dinner together once a week and drink wine while we talk about things we want to change about our life but don’t have the courage to do on our own.
I love it. Its real community, you know. Like just people living life side by side and letting each other into the raw realities of who we are. I love it, that is, until the day comes. Then I get annoyed. Why do we have to do this every week? Why do we have to cook, can’t we just get take out? I don’t have anything new to share…the same thing every week and nothing ever changes. All five of us feel the same way. But we all show up every week. One of us cooks and we all sit at the table laughing and telling stories about the week. Then one by one we get into each of us…some sharing more, some less…but we know each other’s weaknesses, the things we dwell on, the thought traps we get into. And I love it again.
This weekend, though, I delved into my past. What growing up was like for me, where my insecurities began, relationships made and lost, high school, college, London, China. I love talking about myself and remembering things, so I thought this would be a breeze. But it was strange as I took all my broken up memories, the pieces of myself that seemed to be so many different people rather than one person, and pushed a needle through them and strung them up together in a line. The pouring out of all those times and places, ebbing and flowing, rhythmically and in meter making up the whole of who I am has been swimming through my mind and haunting my dreams.
I spent at least the first half of my life believing we were all essentially the same and everything was black and white. I’m so thankful to discover the opposite, but confused by it nonetheless. We are individuals with different personalities, tastes and dreams. Life is organic. So I can’t make a combination of decisions and get a certain result. Not studying + early drug use + sexual promiscuity = suicidal overweight trailer trash. Physical exercise + purity + social involvement = gorgeous husband and stable family. Results vary as you input different variables, but they are consistent and predictable. But its starting to feel more like a slot machine and I put my two cents in, pulled the lever and I’m waiting while it spins and spins. The first one seemed to have stopped and I’m staring at it in wonder while I wait for what in the world the next two will uncover.
I know we are accountable for much of what we get out of this life. I still believe in absolute truth and that there is a purpose and reason for everything. I attribute much of the good things in my life to good choices I made and blame myself for many of the consequences I’ve had to experience. But life is looking more organic than I ever imagined. It feels so right to embrace that, and so freeing to know that I am not so in charge of my life. But I’m left wondering…what in the world is next for me?

The Brink

2008-01-18T13:18:00.000-08:00

There are no hills where I live. The good thing about it is that if you get out to the country you can see for miles and miles. I don’t live in the country so I can’t see much from where I am. Sometimes I go visit the hill country and I wonder how in the world those hills aren’t called mountains…they look so huge to me.
On my way home from work there is a part of the road where you curve out of a neighborhood and a scene opens up because there is a slight slope. The view on top of the slope allows you to see almost the entire lake with the city skyline in the background. It occurred to me one day that the view is to the west. I go to a parking lot there sometimes now just to watch the sunset.
I pulled up into this parking lot the other day and I was a bit perturbed that there were other cars there doing the same thing. I’m glad that people are taking time out of their day to watch God paint something new moment by moment instead of watching the nightly news or Seinfeld reruns, but they were in my peripherals. Something in me wants to go to the edge…get as high as I can and right on the edge…nothing to the right or left just beauty and majesty as far as I can see. It makes me feel like Elizabeth Bennett. I didn’t get to experience that the other day but I was surprised at how much I could feel that desire burning inside me.
I’ve never been one to fear heights. It exhilarates me to be at the peak or the top of something. Two of my favorite places as a child were on this cliff at the lake where they put a giant cross and this tower on top of a hill on Papa’s ranch. I would go up there by myself on holidays and sing and pray that nobody below could hear me sing. Its probably why I learned to fly, but I realized that having a giant piece of metal surrounding me takes away from the effect I was looking for.
There were small mountains (probably hills) surrounding the lake in the city where I lived in China. One day some friends showed me the trail to the top. We walked up there and climbed onto a giant rock that jutted out from it. You could stand up there and see the whole lake with all its islands and little pagodas sticking up everywhere and a giant city surrounding the entire thing. So mystic and eastern. The smog swept over the lake in wisps of fog…just for effect.
I knew I had to come back by myself early in the morning and watch the sunrise. So, a few weeks later, I hopped on my bike at 4:30 in the morning racing the sun and hoping I could make it to the top of the mountain in time to see it peak through. Unlike driving, when you are trying to get somewhere quickly on your bike you inevitably get the Wizard of Oz wicked witch song in your head. I locked up my bike and set up the trail. I was surprised how many others were there. Mostly pretty old people… I might even say elderly. As my legs ached I wondered how in the world these old people could do this all the time. But more importantly…why? I got to my rock and sat down on the edge with my walkman and journal. Soon after an old man hopped onto the rock with me…in his underwear. (different culture…you get used to it) I was frustrated with the distraction, but it soon became more distracting as he started stretching and flailing his arms. Then it came..a giant, bellowing yell. He began to yell from his gut out into the openness. More than an ahhhh…it was an ohhhh hohhhh…if you can imagine. He would take a stance, a deep breath and just let it go. It occurred to me as I looked out at the tree-covered mountains to my right and left that there were people all over yelling. What were they yelling at? How did I not know that this goes on? How can people be so weird and different? Why do I want to join them so badly?
Since I was a missionary at the time, I imagined they were crying out for a savior. Like they woke up to an aching body, feeling every bit of their humanness, pushed it to its brink…beat it up to prove that it wouldn’t get the better of them…that there is something inside that is stronger. And when they get to the point that only creation is limiting them to go any further, they suck in the air and cry out to God. “Why?!” “Is this it?!” “Why does it hurt so bad?!” “Do you even care?!” “Save me!”
I wish I was the kind of person who could stand up at that moment and yell like I wanted to. I had some things I wanted to yell at the Lord. But I didn’t. I sat there in my three square feet of American culture listening to Shane and Shane and writing in my journal. I went back a few weeks later with some friends so that we could yell together. We took turns yelling while videotaping it on our digital cameras. Needless to say, the authenticity and emotion were sucked right out of it. I thank God that I have a culture that I can identify with and feel at home in, but sometimes it makes me a little nauseous when I get a glimpse of it from the outside.
I’m on the brink of something big in my life right now. Maybe that’s why I feel like running and running and climbing to the edge and screaming out. I want to physically express what I’m feeling inside. We ache for the brink, that’s why we keep pushing ourselves to do things. When we get what we’re looking for, its never satisfying, but we are all deluded into believing that there’s something else that will satisfy. Its on the brink that we have all our hope stored up. We think its only the beginning of something even better but what if it doesn’t get any better than the brink? As fatalistic and negative as that sounds, I believe its true, but I believe at the core of it is the fact that we were made for something so much more than this world or this body could give us. We get to the brink and we taste it, we hope for it, it resounds with our souls, but the product is worldly and limited. The thought that death is the consummation of all our soul desires makes it feel a lot less scary and though I am on the brink of something so exciting in my life, it helps me to honestly sing along with my fellow believers, “Come, Lord Jesus, Come.”

London III

2007-12-22T18:40:00.000-08:00

Right after graduating from college I jumped on a plane heading for China. There were two teams of fifteen of us from my church that were going to spend the next six weeks together. I knew one girl from my sorority and one guy from my high school. I knew neither of them well. I went because I knew if I didn’t I would probably never go on another mission trip. I had no idea what life after college held for me, but being a missionary was never one of my career options and I needed to put my two cents in before it was too late. Plus I was certainly going to meet my husband right away and start having babies and life was going to be too hectic to think about running off to other countries.
That six weeks was life changing for me in ways that I still have trouble articulating. I learned that I could be very happy even when I am very uncomfortable. For some reason, as Americans, we are so afraid to be uncomfortable. It is the one thing we are constantly guarding against. I was hot all the time and I had to sleep under a mosquito net and sit in a class for four hours straight every day and eat some things that I didn’t know were edible. But I didn’t die and I was very happy at times. I learned that being the first person to speak the name of Jesus to someone is just as profound as leading them to Christ. I learned that being friends with people from another culture is very difficult and it takes a lot of work, but is so worth it. I learned that people who live overseas…missionaries…are just normal people that live in another country. I learned that I was just a few decisions away from being one of those people.
When I got home I was pretty confused about what life had for me and why in the world I got a visa to go live in London. But I went. What else was I going to do? Once I settled in with my new roommates I found a church down the street that was a few hundred years old. It was beautiful. The church is mostly dead in England…that’s what they say…but at this church people weren’t afraid to sing like they are here. People sang their guts out…not in emo charismatic style…but in sophisticated “I have been trained in the art of singing” style. They also had assigned people to come and read the passage of scripture…like reading scripture is a special ceremony and not something you use to prove your point. They would slowly walk up to the pulpit and when there was an eerie silence they would begin with their rich British accent reading slowly allowing the audience to soak in each word. I liked to go when John Stott would preach. He is pretty old and he wore these giant glasses and he had good natured eyes like Gandolf or Santa. Sometimes he would lose a word and there would be a long silence while he searched for the right word. About the time my cheeks were getting pink he would pick up and move forward just as eloquently as before.
My roommate and I decided we wanted to get more involved in this church while we were there. We went to a newcomer’s class to learn more. They split us off into groups and in my group there was a young Chinese girl named Cathy. Cathy explained that she came to the class because a friend told her that she should go to church. She didn’t know anything about Christianity but thought she might want to be a Christian. Talking to her afterwards, I found out that she went to the same university in China that I visited a few months before. For those of you who aren't good with Geography...China is a very large country with many large cities and a population of over a billion people. Just by the way. The next day she called me to come over and make sushi with her. Over the course of the next month we hung out some and she agreed to go to a class at church for people with questions about Christianity. But only if I attend with her. After the first night they announced sign ups for their annual retreat. Cathy said she would go if I did. I got someone to cover my shift and we were off to the retreat that weekend. So there I was in a tiny car with one of the young pastors driving, Cathy next to me and a few other people heading to a castle where the retreat was to be held. The castle was unbelievably beautiful. It was close to Christmas and we were on a hillside overlooking a little village that could be minimized and placed on the mantle in my house on some cotton. I wish I remembered more about that weekend other than being really uncomfortable with a bunch of complete strangers but for some reason the one thing that sticks out in my mind was a fascinating tree in the yard. It was transported from Lebanon as a gift. I wish I had taken a picture of that tree.
I was amazed at Cathy, that God put her in my life. I was praying about whether to go back to China for a year or two. Meeting Cathy in London, when I was ready to let China go, somehow brought me back to the world where China was a possibility. It reminded me that I loved meeting Chinese girls…even when they decide they don’t want to believe in my God. It reminded me that God is working all over the world. People are never too far away to have their hearts joined together, if only for a time. He is working in people’s hearts, teaching them truths about him through other people and in spite of other people. I sat in the internet café near my flat in London and downloaded the application to work in China for a year, filled it out and turned it in. So it was settled. I was going to China via London.

London II

2007-12-18T19:54:00.000-08:00

It was during this time, through this six months in London, that I began slipping out of the fog of my identity crisis and started learning things about myself. I learned that I was passionate about some things…like music…I started going to see shows and I bought a guitar…and books…I spent entire days reading Jane Austin novels and Charles Dickens and Sherlock Holmes…anything British to enhance my cultural experience… tea, going to movies alone, journaling, great views. I learned there are things that I don’t enjoy…most museums, Guiness beer, Tube strikes, people who don’t tip and possibly worse… people who tip only a few cents (or pence), personal space infringement, people who smack.
I waited tables for the first time. I was never allowed to work while I was in school, so my only job experience thus far was summer camp counseling and life guarding. I had images of myself waiting tables, being busy and tired and funny and earning every penny I got. This was mostly my experience but in my vision I was never bad at it. Real life proved different. Being the only Tex-Mex restaurant in London, people loved to order Corona beer to get the authentic Mexican flavor of the place. While not a bad choice of beers, we always served it with a slice of lime stuffed in the top. When the lime is squeezed through the neck of the bottle it mixes with the flavor of the beer and creates a unique Mexican taste. That wasn’t my problem with Coronas. My problem was that the bottles were so tall and the limes were so heavy. I spilled these Coronas on so many people during my days of waiting tables that I would tear up when anyone ordered one. “Let me get this right, you want five..sniffle...Coronas?” Negro Modello is also a Mexican beer that we stuffed lime slices in, but they are pyramid shaped, as if the friendly bottler knew the bane of my waitressing existence.
It was also my first time to interact daily with pagans. And what I mean when I say pagans is people who live their lives with no regard to God. In the Bible Belt there were plenty of people who lived what we would call “lives of sin,” but they did it either in rebellion against a God they knew or apathy to Him. These people might never have had any sort of encounter with Christ. What surprised me most about these people is that I really liked them. My three favorite people I worked with were a girl named Bronwyn from South Africa, Grant from New Zealand, and Maggie from Devonshire. Bronwyn was a gorgeous blonde with a hoarse voice that would sweep into a room and kiss everyone dangerously close to their mouths. I had to pep talk myself into having the maturity to handle her kissing me and not running out the back door. She loved everyone and made you feel like you were one of her best friends while you were around her, then she would just jet and be off somewhere else. I wonder if she ever let anyone close to her. Grant and Maggie lived together. Grant was in his late 30’s and gay. His Kiwi accent was entrancing and once we became closer friends he too would greet me with a kiss. Sometimes right on the mouth. One night we were working very close to Christmas and we annoyed the rest of the staff by obnoxiously singing carols opera style. He was so snobby, but he liked me so it didn’t bother me. Maggie was an aspiring actress and she looked like Catherine Zeta Jones. She was in charge of training me at the beginning and did not seem in the least like she was a fan of the job. She made it clear that I was a pain in the neck and would never be able to handle the really busy tables. Not by anything she said, but by saying nothing at all, and giving me these cold expressions when she chose to admit that I existed.
Some days I would work for thirteen hours straight and forget to eat anything at all. Many nights we wouldn’t finish until 2am. Some of the staff would stick around and have a few drinks together. I didn’t. First of all, why would I want to stay at work when I am not being paid? Second, I was so used to being the one to set the example, abstaining was almost a habit for me. Do you want to stick around for a drink? Just say no…always. One night I was so tired I couldn’t even think about walking back to my flat so I agreed to one beer. At this point in my life I had only allowed myself to drink when someone who could hold me accountable was around. I had to cover all my bases…God forbid I actually do something wrong or make a mistake. I sat in a booth with Grant and Maggie while the two Irish bartenders served us Tecate and called me funny pet names like cupcake. We laughed and talked way too loud and Maggie’s stony exterior melted as she interacted with Grant and slowly warmed up to me. I began staying after work more often and grew to really adore these people.
This was a turning point for me. To have friends outside the Christian bubble I created for myself. I’ve had times where I’ve looked back on those nights drinking beer with those friends and wondered if I should have made a more concerted effort at introducing them to Christ. But that’s the thing…I had spent my entire life making everything a project and everyone an assignment. How do you love people when they are objects…or objectives? It always bothered me in Sunday school when they asked me to think of someone I knew who wasn’t a believer in Christ and I couldn’t think of one. Its like I’ve been on a quest to find people who are missing that element in their lives and make them better. And when they don’t care or don’t accept it I feel like I need to change my technique or I didn’t do a good enough job. What if it’s not my job? What if I’m missing out on loving people because I’m trying to fix them? Is there a chance that Christ is more present when I am being myself and loving deeply than when I am strategizing my next play to win over their soul? Just a thought for the void.

Trees

2007-12-05T15:06:00.000-08:00

I love my house. I love where I live. I told someone the other day that my house is my favorite thing about life right now. I was immediately embarrassed at how materialistic that sounded. I hate when I make bold statements that aren’t true. It makes me feel like one of those people that you know you can never trust what they say. My house wouldn’t mean much to me without my roommates or the dinner parties or the movie nights or the rich conversations we have there.
But I do love my house. I never tire of running down the same streets and looking at the old houses with the giant old trees towering over them. I have secretly named some of the trees marking the path that I regularly run. Each tree has its own personality, jutting out here, winding there, knobs, dangling limbs, firm and strong at places, appearing to defy gravity in others. Leaves are falling now, marking the stage of life this year is in. The trees have seen so many more years than I have. All from the same spot, the same perspective. Like one of those videos where the camera is set in place for hours and hours. Played in super-fast forward you can see the gradual change of things as they happen. The things we are too limited in our humanity or impatient to watch. And the things that go by quickly are a blur. I think this is how trees see things. They could care less about the cars driving by, or the runners…they care about the things that are going to stick around. The flowers that bloom, the grass that fades and turns green again, the children who grow up and move on. I think trees love children, even when their rope swings dig into their branches. Maybe especially when they are injured by rope swings. They forever carry these injuries with them, proudly displaying them like a battle scar, holding memories that only they and the grown children know.
My house has been there for almost seventy years. When they built this neighborhood they really knew how to make houses. They are all small because people knew back then that we all need to be close and more space only makes us more lonely. They made each house different and unique because they know how bored we get with what we see. Some are made of stone and look like little cottages and some have siding with shutters on the windows and some are made of brick with roofs that peak like a gingerbread house. They have great yards, though few of them have swimming pools. Just lots of birds, beautiful gardens, hanging plants and squirrels. They are starting to tear down some of the homes in my neighborhood to build new houses. I don’t have a problem with the houses they are building, but nothing in me wants them in my neighborhood. These houses look like something you would find in any other neighborhood in the suburbs. They are monstrosities taking up what was a large backyard with lots of trees to add a few extra bedrooms and a kitchen with a wraparound counter. Like the rest of the city, uniqueness and quality are being swallowed up by big, pretentious and generic.
Another thing that makes me sad is a phenomenon that is so common where I live. People are re-doing their houses. That’s not what makes me sad. My house was redone beautifully. And with all the home makeover TV shows these days, who doesn’t want to make their life more full by refurbishing old furniture or changing the color of the dining room walls? What makes me sad is that almost every time I see a house improve drastically, a For Sale sign inevitably follows. They don’t fix it up to live in it, they fix it up to sell it. There are so many parallels to life that I could draw from this, but I will spare you. But it does make me think about the areas of my life that I do this. What mediocre and dilapidated things am I living with every day? What am I putting off for some future day that I could be doing now…living now to the full?
I want to be like those trees, taking in life, letting it become a part of me, showing the scars and loving the memories. Not big, pretentious and generic, but solid, knobby and unique. I want the passing things to be fleeting thoughts and to really care about the things that are going to be around for a while.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

Went to the ranch for Thanksgiving. Its not the same ranch we grew up going to. Its across the highway from that one, much smaller but still very much adored by our family. The Frio River runs through it. It was really full this time, due to the floods during the spring and summer. The water is almost fluorescent blue, flowing over the road that crosses it. Legend has it that this crossover was the same one used by Santa Anna when he took the Alamo. Right there on our land. I heard that for the first time this Thanksgiving.
I spent two days there and got to see my entire family. I got into my car to head home and immediately started crying. What is it about being with family that makes me feel more alone than anywhere else in the world? My immediate family of six…my parents and four kids…has blown up to sixteen now that everyone has families of their own. I have seven nieces and nephews ranging from six months to 14 years old. I love getting to hold babies and having all the kids running around.
I was looking forward to seeing everyone so much before I left. I am completely baffled that I was so disengaged while I was there…avoiding conversations, engrossing myself in a puzzle as if it were the boyfriend I never get to bring to family gatherings, always so sleepy. When I get with family I feel like every bit of energy is sucked out of me taking my entire personality with it. Then I leave wondering why I feel like no one really knows me.
I used to blame it on the tryptophan in the turkey, but recently found out that I would have to eat an entire turkey in one sitting to have the sleepiness attributed to it. So I think I will have to admit that there is some stress, however unconscious it might be, that is related to being with family. They say stress manifests itself in different ways. Some people get panic attacks or high blood pressure. It seems I tend more toward narcolepsy and binge eating. Like when I used to get overwhelmingly sleepy during finals at school or when it was time to sit down and do a research paper. All of a sudden that leftover piece of cake in the fridge is calling my name and I’m pretty sure if I just go to sleep now and get up early the next day I will have much better clarity of mind to write an entire ten-page paper.
I am so happy to be where I am in life. I think I can truly say that. I like being on this side of my identity crisis. I feel much more secure in who I am and the flexibility that comes along with that. I know that my personality is not set in stone, will continue to change over time and in fact changes daily depending on my work schedule or the weather or any other number of variables. I am finally comfortable with it, like a worn out sweatshirt or running shoes. The people who know me best find me predictable at times, which makes me feel sane and irritated at the same time. The people who know me best like me for me, I can finally accept that. They know how corny I can be, that when I say certain things I really mean something else, that when I’m really sweet its usually because I’m angry and when I’m sarcastic, I’m having the most fun. The people who know me best are not my family.
I think there’s something about being the youngest that makes that pretty hard. I grew up as a spectator. My siblings are some of the most amazing people I know and I got to grow up watching them become the unique people they are. The four of us are so different. We aren’t just in different places, we are the four directions on a compass rose with arrows that point to the never-ending expanse that separates us. I went to countless basketball, baseball and football games, studying them and keenly aware of everything. I didn't study them like I studied for my finance tests. More like the way we study a hobby...or the way American culture studies movie stars. I watched in awe as they prepared for their proms, walked across the stage during graduation, got married, had children. I soaked it all up and it was part of my identity. Since I was young, I have had this way of losing myself around my family. I remember being asked a question once at a family function and before I could answer I had to remind myself that I existed and was actually present in the room.
My family loves me. I have never doubted that. But sometimes I wonder if they love some version of me that doesn’t really exist. Often they ask me questions and don’t stick around for the answer. I don’t blame them. I mostly feel that their lives are so much more interesting or pressing than mine, how could they be expected to stick around? I think my singleness and my lifestyle are an enigma to them. They don’t understand it, and so they aren’t comfortable with it. I can’t possibly find the words to explain to them what life is like for me. I can’t open for them the amazing personalities of the people I do life with or give them glimpses into the dinner parties we have, laughing around a table. I visit their lives, they don’t visit mine. That would just be silly.
Birth order is an interesting study. I don’t think older siblings are as wrapped up in each other as the younger ones. I left the ranch while they were all still there. They’re parents now and so they are distracted. I got fleeting goodbyes as they ran after kids or fed babies. I felt so alone when I got in my car and headed down the road. The first two of the six hour drive were a pity party. The closer I got to home, the more normal I felt. I talked to a few friends on the way and realized that my life is very full. In fact, I love my life and I am blessed. I just can’t take it with me on holidays.

Papa

2007-11-24T11:10:00.000-08:00

Papa was one of the most impressive people I have ever known or will ever know. He was tall. When he wasn’t wearing a suit, he would wear his starched shirts snuggly tucked into his starched slacks, his v-neck undershirt barely visible. He always smelled of aftershave and he always, always wore boots and a cowboy hat. He was a South Texas rancher. He was a South Texas banker. This was not a 50/50 identity, it was 100/100. There was no part of him that wasn’t a rancher and there was no part of him that wasn’t a banker.
He had jowls. I don’t think I ever notice jowls, but that’s the first thing I remember when I think of his face. His jowls shook when he hocked lugis. He could hock a lugi like no one I’ve ever met. He always had gum. He had a million numbers stored in his head in file cabinets with a sharp-minded personal assistant that could retrieve them at any moment. He slurred his words in a distinctive lisp that he had since he was a child. I’ve always wondered if he was made fun of for it when he was young. I can’t imagine anyone making fun of my grandfather. He made a lisp seem distinguished and almost elegant.
He had a pet leopard, was best friends with a former governor of Texas and once played tennis with Bill Cosby. He called his wife Babe until his dying day, kept a sawed off shot gun hidden under his desk at work and went to Wimbledon and the U.S. Open every year he was able to. He grew up with red hair but it was grey by the time I knew him, his hands were strong and elegant…so appropriate for a rancher/banker. My oldest brother has the same hands. He went to his ranch after work everyday…to feed the leopard and check on all the exotic animals. Driving around the ranch around sunset feels like the movie The Lion King has come to life. One time a Saudi Arabian prince came to hunt on his ranch.
He grew up a poor farm boy, the fourth of five kids. He learned how to work hard. It became so much a part of him that it was a chronic addiction and he required it of all who were around him. He went to the war, returned to his hometown, married his high school sweetheart and made his living from the ground up. He lived to provide for those he cared about. His hard work gave countless people opportunities they otherwise would never have had.

People

2007-11-05T14:27:00.000-08:00

I love it that I’m working with people so much now. My job at Starbucks is constant interaction. Its stretching at times…like when I get in the mood where I am focused on what I am doing and don’t want to be disturbed, or when I am frustrated and don’t want to smile at a customer. There are people who are looking for problems and use unsuspecting baristas as their guinea pigs. I think these people work in buildings all day and are looking for drama anywhere they can find it. People make me madder than anything. I never got that frustrated in my cubicle at the bank.
I turned to my manager Brandy today, as I watched Elizabeth (grande hazelnut no foam latte) leave the store and get into a bright yellow mini cooper, that I wish I knew everyone’s story. She is a beautiful middle-aged woman with grey hair and a soft voice. I love it that she drives a canary yellow mini cooper. I wish I knew what she does everyday after she walks out with her drink. What is her job? Is she married? Does she have grown children? Grandkids? Is she from here? What twists and turns has her life taken to get her here?
A little later a blonde woman is getting out of her SUV and my fellow barista Josh comments that this woman was a former neighbor of his. He said she has a young son, an artificial leg and used to walk around her house naked without regard for open windows. Sure enough she grabbed her son from the back and limped to the door.
On my second break today I was looking forward to the ten minutes I had to sit outside and read this new book I am enjoying immensely. A little black man with a baseball hat that I recognize as a regular customer (short coffee, marble pound cake) is sitting at the next table and begins to ask me questions. There is a battle that goes on in me when this happens. I feel my natural inclination to answer quickly, make it obvious that I want my time, but be friendly enough so as not to appear snobby. There is another part of me that knows that other people is where the life is. If I don’t allow others into my life, how can I complain about loneliness?
I choose to engage in conversation with Cheeshah (no idea how to spell his name.) Cheeshah is from Ethiopia and has lived here for four years. I recognize his English abilities are far superior to four years in America. He said he learned English in Ethiopia and that anyone with a high school or college degree there learns it. He had studied Political Science and Economics and spent fifteen years being a television journalist. This was before he spent five years in Kenya as a refugee.
Now he lives here with his family and cannot find a job. Before he was a television news reporter he worked as an operator of television equipment. He says that there are no jobs available like that here. He seems restless to find something to do, some way to prove he is educated and worthy of contributing to something.
I ask if he has refugee friends that were placed here too. He then explains that his best friend was the one who was killed down the street last week. I had not heard of it. I looked it up and his name was Abate Z. Hailu, he owned a Fina down the street and was shot during a robbery. Cheeshah said he was very educated and wealthy. “He was my best friend,” he kept saying.
Tears welled up in my eyes as I listened to this little man talk. I wondered what in the world he has seen in his life. How a man like his friend can escape war in Ethiopia only to get gunned down in America. I wondered how hard his parents worked and how much they sacrificed to make sure that Cheeshah was educated in their poor country, for him to end up bursting with talent in a place where people like him are so easily overlooked. I tried to imagine him reporting news in Ethiopia, walking down the street in his suit, microphone in hand as the camera followed him, viewers hanging on every word as he articulately gave the latest on some of the gravest situations our modern world has ever seen.
When my break timer went off, he was talking about a book he has started about political science. I was hoping he was going to say it was his own biography. He asked if I would mind editing his rough draft, to make it sound more American. I would be honored.
So, yeah, I guess there is more life in people than in burying my head in some book.

London I

2007-10-26T09:06:00.000-07:00

What does a person do when they graduate with no plans, no husband, no sense of identity and a finance degree? They move to a foreign country… alone. I found myself walking along the streets of London, alone and swept up in the crowd. Hating myself for buying a round trip ticket that would not be headed home for six months. I had no job, no place to live, no friends but I felt this unwavering sense that the Spirit of God was with me, in me… and excited. I was horrified and lonely and scared but the Spirit was full of anticipation and I could feel it. It was the fellowship of the Spirit. I had to be that alone to experience it.
I literally wandered the streets for two weeks. I was living in a hostel, filling out applications to wait tables and looking for an affordable place to live…umm, in London. I walked around in a daze most days. I lost a lot of weight because I couldn’t get comfortable eating alone in restaurants and I didn’t know how else to get food. I just walked and walked and consistently found myself in internet cafes. I would write out my misery to my friends. “Me again…I haven’t heard myself speak in two days. Wondering if its going to come out in a British accent.”
I stopped one day in a coffee shop, and not knowing what else to do, I started to journal. This entry read like a prayer. I basically wrote out my wish list to God. I want to move out of the dirty hostel and live in a place where I can unpack my bags and don’t have to padlock them when I leave. I want some friends…actual people that I can talk to and maybe eat with. I would like a job so that I can make back some of this money that I’ve been spending. Ummm…anything else?...no, that about covers it. I looked at my list and I thought about how helpless I felt, then that newly realized friend, the overly excitable Spirit in me, asked me a few things.
“What do you expect from this time?”
“Um, I don’t know, something different I guess.” I answered.
“Do you believe that God is in control here?”
“Sure.”
“You want to have some fun?”
“Always.”
“What if you let go of the list?”
I had never felt so helpless in my life, so I figured, what could I lose? I ended my prayer by saying. “You know God, this list is what I want and feel like I need for survival. But let’s forget that…I want what you want. Do whatever you have in mind and I’m along for the ride.”
This prayer initiated a sequence of events that I could never have guessed. That very night I sat down for dinner in the home of one of my high school teachers…my mom’s friend who had moved to London a few years back. She lived on Abbey Road in an apartment that felt like an American home as soon as you stepped in the door. She had a knack for dinner parties and laid out a spread complete with hors d’oeuvres, grilled fish and warm rolls. She and her husband patiently listened to me ramble on and on, letting out all the words I had pent up in me for so long.
I told them of my adventures at the hostel and finding a place to live. That morning I had visited a potential living arrangement. It was a good part of town, not too dangerous. I would be living with an elderly woman who used Jesus Christ as her favorite expression of angst. She smoked and we would be sharing a bathroom. She hoped that I wouldn’t be cooking much because she didn’t want to share her kitchen. I guess it could be worse. It was the only affordable place I could find in the safe parts of town. My mother’s friend wouldn’t hear of it. She invited me to stay with them until I found a place of my own. The next day I checked out of the hostel and stayed in a warm bed in a home.
The Texas Embassy Cantina finally gave me an interview. Their manager had been in America for the last few weeks and he was the only person who could hire anyone. Upon his return, I sat down with him, answered his questions and started training a few days later. I was finally going to fulfill one of my dreams…to be a waitress.
The office where I got my visa was out of the way of everything in London. From almost anywhere you had to take two different trains on the tube then walk five blocks turn the corner onto a small narrow street, walk under scaffolding and enter a discreet black door. Inside, you would find many young people from all over the world busily trying to find a job and a place to live. There were postings all over the walls and people scrambling, using computers and printing out resumes (CV’s as they call them in Britain). I started going up there with no excuse other than a little social interaction. I had looked at all their postings for places to live and wasn’t comfortable with any of them. Is it so strange that I don’t want to live with guys I don’t know? Does that make me square?
I sat across the table from a girl that I later found out was from Texas. She was busy looking for a job and a place to live. She came with a few friends from college. What a novel concept...bring friends with you…stupid. We exchanged numbers, but since she already had friends in London I did not expect her to call me.
Later that night in my cozy home on Abbey Road I got a call from my new friend. She and her two friends would like to know if I wanted to live with them because having four people would lower their rent. Umm…I think that would work for me too. We found a tiny apartment on the third floor of an ancient building. (pictured above) Below us there was a hip hop record store called Major Flava. It was on the corner of Oxford St. and Tottenham Court Rd., within walking distance from my new job.
That is how I found myself where I was for the next six months only days after I prayed that prayer. Lets check the list again and see what God had compared to what I had…
1. I want to move out of the hostel…
God gave me a warm home that night, and an affordable and safe place to live in the next few days.
2. I want some friends…
God gave me three friends and roommates, all from Texas, all Christian.
3. I want a job..
God gave me the one job I really wanted. I was going to be a waitress at the only Tex-Mex Restaurant in London…right in Trafalgar Square.
While I don’t believe that God’s will always gets us all we want and more… God’s will sometimes has nothing to do with what we want. I do think that He delighted that I listened to His Spirit and that in this case it was His joy to be my provider when I had no one to take care of me. If its not too irreverent…I feel like he was a dog that knew just what he wanted to do, was even salivating over it, and as soon as I threw the stick of my own control, he set off with his mission. He could have done it either way, but He really wanted me to trust Him with it. I jumped out of a plane and instead of making sure I was paying attention to altitude and pulling the cord at just the right time, I just strapped myself in tandem with the Lord and enjoyed the ride. And this was only the beginning.

Flower Girl

2007-10-19T12:18:00.001-07:00

I believe I was six years old when the thought came to me… “I have never been a flower girl.” The idea of a flower girl was so deliciously sweet and wonderful I had to find a way to do it. I wasn’t getting any younger. I thought of everyone I knew who was of marrying age. My aunt Jana… she’s nearly thirty! The next time I saw my aunt I casually asked her about her plans for marriage. You know, her time table. No reason, just wondering. “Honey, I don’t know if I’m ever getting married.” Blast that selfish woman! Doesn’t she know she’s my only hope of being a flower girl?
The image in my mind was a beautiful young girl…me of course…in a little white dress gently skipping through a crowd of people. She reaches in her basket to reveal it is full of flower petals. She lightly tosses them to either side of her, sprinkling the aisle with a pretty array of soft petals, giving the bride a beautiful path to walk down. The flower girl is a symbol of youth and beauty, purity and freedom. She captures people with her lovely radiance and her seemingly endless basket of beauty sprinkling the room and preparing it for the woman, the beloved. Like a fairy with her fairy dust. Oh that flower girls could have little wings and flitter about the entire room!
About a year later, I got my chance. Jana said yes to her boyfriend’s proposal. It was my golden opportunity. I was given a dress that was almost identical to the bride’s. Almost entirely lace with a big bow in the back. It was perfect. Everything was going as planned. Until the wedding day. We had rehearsed, but when the doors flung open and the music began, every head turned to look at me. I put my head down, walked step by step, trying to remember the pace that we practiced. I reached in my basket and dropped a few petals to my side before taking my place on the stage. Afterwards, everyone said I did a great job and that I looked beautiful. I knew somewhere inside that I wasn’t living up to my potential. It didn’t look anything like my vision.
I still relate to that little girl. Some weddings I have attended, the flower girls play the role to a tee. Completely unaware of themselves they twirl about, caught up in the beauty that is around them and in them. They capture the hearts of the audience, but, really, that was never their intent. They are simply enjoying being beauty. Granted, this usually happens with much younger girls, maybe four or five. Unfortunate. But I can see it in some women. You know the type. She wears her hair or clothes in ways that the rest of us can’t get away with. She has a scent that might be perfume or its possible that she emits a floral scent from her pores. She is not afraid to laugh loudly in public or cry…her makeup will not run. She is the first person you think of when someone talks about beauty. I think that every woman deep down wants to be her, its just part of being female. I am not that woman, but not for the reason's you might think.
I was running this morning and I came up behind an elderly woman. She was so enchanted with the hillside to our left that she was walking with her head completely turned to the side. Coming from behind her I noticed that her legs were so marked with age spots it was almost repulsive. How could she wear such short shorts? When I passed her she smiled at me with the most charming, youthful grin and said hello so warmly, I knew she was one of them. So unaware of herself that she exuded a beauty beyond the physical.
I am so constantly aware of myself. I am one of those that can’t pass a mirror or window without looking into it. Its not vanity, its that I’m checking my nose or my blemish or that piece of hair I couldn’t get to settle that morning. Maybe it is vanity come to think of it. I was praying this morning that the Lord would guard me from the darkness of fear, doubt and shame and replace it with love, kindness and generosity. Interesting that the first three are self-consuming and the last three are self-denying. Its so counter-intuitive that pouring out would actually fill us up.
That’s the power that the woman of beauty holds…its not that she was apportioned more beauty than the rest of us. Its her inability to see herself. Jane Austin would say she is unaffected. Most women, like myself, are not this way. We are absolutely affected. Starting at an impossibly young age we take hold of the idea that to be beautiful is to be lovable. We grasp and cling to anything that will make us more beautiful not realizing that the grasping and clinging are the ugliness. We apply and cover up and pierce and wax and clip and curl and straighten and nair and suck and boost all to get that natural look.
I’m starting to feel like I’m writing something I’ve read a million other places. I don’t have a problem with trying to look beautiful. That’s not my soapbox. My problem is with myself for holding back out of fear, doubt or shame and not taking the road of beauty…the road of life…not taking a chance. I don’t want to be the flower girl I was at seven. I want to take the vision of the woman I could be and live it…not with my head down…not half heartedly dropping petals. This life is my golden opportunity. In every situation I want to ask…where is the life?...where is the beauty?... and abide there. I will never be that woman of beauty; I think I try too hard. But I can dare to love, I can offer kindness and I can show generosity and there is so much beauty in that.

Jump

2007-10-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

So I’m at the bank. I was going to give it six months, then nine months, then a year sounded good. Something was bound to come up…it always had. My first plan of marital bliss and babies wasn’t happening for me. Funny how we think we can plan those things when we are eighteen. It was becoming obvious at twenty-six that I was going to need a new plan… one that I had more control over. Control is a funny thing…when we think we have it, we realize we don’t at all and when we try to give it up we find ourselves taking it back before it even leaves our hands.
Growing up I spent countless hours jumping on the trampoline. It was solace to me. I would jump and jump and try with everything to jump straight into the sky and never come back down. I would jump until I had no breath to breathe then lay there looking at the sky, heaving and daydreaming. One day I would have a house where all the floors were made of trampoline. Of course it would have to have high ceilings and the floors would have to be dug out at least four feet below. I had thought of everything.
I learned many tricks as I prepared for the first Olympic gold medal in trampoline for the most back flips in a row. My record still stands at 32. But my favorite thing to do on the trampoline was to jump as high as I could in the air and lay out horizontally spreading my limbs as far as they would go out to the side, stretched to all four corners of the earth and wait for the impact of the canvas. As I allowed my body to receive the canvas it in turn threw me back into the air and on to my feet. I would do this over and over trying to embrace that sinking feeling.
This is what I felt as I continually tried to give my career to God during this time. I was ready to “let go and let God.” “God, you are so much more capable to make this decision than I am, I trust you to bring something perfect along and I give up complete control.” I kept getting confused when I found myself back on my feet again. Without the effort it took to jump there was no way to figure out what it feels like to fall.
I felt as if I was supposed to make the decision of what I will do with the rest of my life. I knew I could plan for the next year or the next six months even, but I wanted to ensure that I would never be in this position again. I’ve never been the type to know exactly what I wanted to do with my life, or even what I was really good at. I’ve been careful all along to make decisions that would provide me with more choices. Go to college so that I will have more career choices, go into business because there are so many different opportunities, finance has so many options for women and more varied career alternatives. That’s what someone with no plans or dreams other than getting married and having babies does. It was more of a waiting game than a path to something.
During college I also had the unfortunate timing of going through the phase of life where I have no idea who I am. I guess its all part of “coming of age,” but for me it was a true identity crisis. How do you make the decision that will forever be the answer to the question “What is your degree in?” when you are going through a phase like that? I had no defining sense of self; my choices were based solely off of what others were doing around me. I tried to convince myself that I liked my sorority and the date parties that came along with it. But I think they only fed the insecurities.
I made the friends of my life while I was in college. I am continually baffled that they saw anything beyond the false façade I was throwing out for everyone. I wasn’t purposefully trying to be fake, I just didn’t know what else to do. I prayed often that God would allow me to be myself, or even reveal to me who that is. It’s almost impossible to find any value in yourself when you don’t even know who that person is. I felt like a shell and I was ashamed.
But that was college. Sitting there at the bank four and a half years after college, I was well aware of who I was. I was so keenly aware of who I was that going to work everyday sometimes hurt. I would put on my suit and heels, dressing the part, but feeling more like I was dressing for Halloween. I worked hard, so hard that you might get the impression that I cared about my work. I would try to do as much work as I could possibly fit into my eight-hour day, knowing that every spare minute felt like an eternity. I guess a few people there got the idea that I was ambitious about my future at the bank. They started changing my title so that I would feel more important. Like Dwight… “Assistant to the Regional Manager to Assistant Regional Manager” I’m pretty sure I got the same promotion twice and they forgot they already gave it to me.
Eventually everything came to a head. I’m patiently waiting on God’s perfect timing (i.e. Crystal Ball) to reveal to me my future. More accurately stated, I am not doing anything toward changing my future because I’m preoccupied with daily life. Meanwhile, I start spending hours in the office of my boss’s boss’s boss. We keep having these discussions about my future at the bank…where do I see myself? He gives me some amazing options there, that timing and circumstance just randomly opened up. I start wondering about timing and circumstance. Day after day he calls me into his office and continues to question me and finally after a month or two of blowing smoke up his ars, I decide to be honest. “I could give this a shot, but you probably want someone in that position who is going to care more, who wants the job and sees a future in it.” I tell him I would love more than two weeks to figure out what’s next. He agrees to two more months.
Walking away from the bank at the end of May, I still had no job. I had a few irons in the fire and some hope for the future. This hope, though not as steady as a paycheck, provided me with so much more security. Ahh... hope. That old familiar friend. I floated from there…falling, falling, falling…embracing the sinking feeling. I anticipate landing on something that will not hurt or crush me. An impact that will accept me, the real me, and envelop me and throw me back onto my feet. But first I had to jump.

Suckers

2007-10-11T19:40:00.000-07:00

The word sucker keeps popping into my mind lately. Its a label that kids put on people to imply that person has fallen for something that is less than something else they could have had. And the worst part of being a sucker is that its usually said behind your back…you don’t even realize you could have more. One of my worst fears is to find out at the end of my life that I spent most of it being a sucker…taken in by my culture, my surroundings…completely oblivious to true reality.
I open at Starbucks most days, which requires me to leave my house at 4:45 in the morning. I’m usually grabbing my green apron and my keys as I race out the door, hopefully remembering a banana or granola bar because my first ten-minute break won’t be for a few hours. That’s usually when I stop to realize that I did in fact wake up that morning and make decisions to get where I am at the moment.
The other day I was racing to work…not obeying the speed limit because after all I was the lone car on the desolate street. I come across a red light at which I obediently screech to a stop. My subconscious is annoyed, realizing the ridiculousness of stopping at an empty intersection, but there is a distinction in my mind between breaking traffic laws by speeding and breaking traffic laws by intentionally running a light. About that moment two tow trucks approach from the opposite direction. One makes a command decision to disregard the red light altogether. It speeds through the intersection as the other one slowly comes to a halt. There is a moment where the stopped tow truck and I seem to have a brief meeting of souls. Like when you accidentally make eye contact with someone from across the room and you both grin before looking away. “Hi, I see that you exist and I choose not to ignore it like most people. I’m of the friendly type and I see you are too.” In this case we are both the law-abiding type. We stare at each other for a brief moment. Then, in the same moment we are both hit with it…”We’re the suckers!” We simultaneously run the last few seconds of red light.

I decided to quit my job at the bank. I was only a measly credit analyst. Though you have to have a finance degree for that position, it is usually held by newly graduated students and they pay you as such. I was above it…I had graduated three years before I got the job. I had real world experience…three whole years of it. Most of my real world experience told me I would never like working at a bank. I took the job with my eyes wide open to this fact. Almost taking it as proof to myself, or my parents, or to society as a whole that it would never work out…me and corporate america. “See, I tried it! Now leave me alone…societal pressures.”
I worked there for a year and a half…no… a year and nine months. I felt trapped…by the windowless grey walls and the grey fabric of my cubicle. I felt taunted by the eagle in the picture framed above my desk that read “soar to new heights.” Next to my cubicle there were floor to ceiling file racks that we locked every night and unlocked every morning. They rolled on wheels through a groove in the floor and had a large spinning handle to separate them. Sometimes I felt like I was standing in between the walls of files and someone was slowly spinning the handle. It was probably Barbara, the eighty-year-old woman who decided my first day that she didn’t like me. As the walls came closing in around me I kept frantically looking for some way to escape, then wondering if I could find something to jam in the wheel to slow it down, then wondering if it was even worth it and I should just let it envelop me.
I quit four months ago and I am currently a Barista. I make lattes and sweep floors and exchange people’s money for sustenance. I am always moving, its fast paced and I love it. I love making the drinks and talking to the people. There is so much more life there than in my old cubicle. There are a few things, though, at Starbucks that make me feel like an underling working in the food service industry. My all black all leather shoes, the ten minute timer that we have to take on our breaks because we are not responsible enough to time them exactly and taking out the trash. The dumpster is around the side of the building and we have to roll the big black trash can behind us as we carry as much as we can in the other hand. It usually takes at least two trips to get all the stacked up bags out on a trash run. It is a humbling experience for me.
The other day there was a group of young business people standing on the sidewalk as I lugged the garbage along behind me heading for the dumpster. I had to ask them to move out of the way in order to pass. I glanced up and saw pity in the eyes of the good looking young man that just ordered a grande vanilla latte from me ten minutes before. For a brief moment I began to feel pitiful. But a few minutes later, as I walked back past them empty handed watching them try to impress each other and say just the right things to the right people, I said in a barely audible voice that sounded like Nelson from the Simpsons…”Suckers!”