Just be.

by Leave a Comment

summer
It’s the simple moments that make life worth it. We are so preoccupied trying to construct happiness for ourselves that we easily forget that true joy comes when we allow ourselves just to be free.
So I saw as I watched my three year-old niece run in her bathing suit through my in-laws’ sprinkler yesterday afternoon. Timidly at first, she ran around the outer arch of the water, but soon she was running headlong into the middle of it, unheeded by its coldness or the grass that stuck to her as she tumbled across the lawn. Then she was squealing and begging us to join her, and just like that, it was everyone’s turn – mommy, Unca Matt, papa, gramma-mommy, Auntie B – to run fully clothed through the sprinkler as if we were only three, too. In my sodden jean-skirt I sat down in the sun and watched as she ran and flung her slippery little arms around my sister-in-law’s neck.
 
These are the days we live for.

The Rain.

by Leave a Comment

rainy drive
Driving home from Michigan yesterday I finally found an exit that took me to the lake shore. I’ve tried before and gotten lost in loops of highway exits and side roads as my GPS chirps in the background,“recalculating, recalculating…” This time I muted the thing, took an exit I haven’t taken before and discovered the road I remembered from our honeymoon to St. Joseph, Michigan. In my memory the water gleamed blue with sunshine as husband and I said good-bye to the only vacation we’ve taken since we married nearly two years ago.
I stopped and got out of the car, grateful to stretch my legs and let the breeze air out my shirt, drenched in sweat from a drive with no air-conditioning in 85 degree weather, and to reflect on my trip home and the road ahead of me – what I was returning to and what I was leaving behind.
The aquamarine waves lapped quietly, disappearing into a hazy sky. With the sun shining and calm winds, it was hard to fathom the ominous storm forecasted to strike the midwest. Supposedly I was headed straight into the thick of it, but from where I sat things looked peaceful and incapable of being disturbed. I wanted to sit there forever, the sun and I defiantly waiting for a sign from the darkening sky to prove the weatherman right or wrong. I know that meteorology is a science, but for how often they are wrong I wanted to believe that the storms wouldn’t come.
I sweltered the whole way home, watching the sky grow darker and gray, fraught with clouds. In the distance I could see the slant sheet of rain spill over the southwest.
At long last I pulled into the lot of my apartment, and the sky, heavy with thunder, broke open in a downpour.
I stepped from the car, lifted my hands open-palmed to the sky.
For once it felt good to let the cold drops wash over me, engulf me in its soaking breeze, let the rumble of thunder ripple from my spine to my toes.
What else am I to do but welcome it now?

[Photo.]

God Gave Me a Zeppelin Shirt.

by Leave a Comment

engagement photo
I’m not very good at letting myself feel things when I should. At least that’s how I reprimand and rationalize myself when the feelings just won’t stay stuffed down. I’m hard on myself. I think we all are, in different, debilitating ways. We want to function. We want to fulfill expectations with a reality that will make us feel better about the things we just can’t control.
We want to compartmentalize.
Relationships here.
Work there.
Emotions in the corner.
Insecurity somehow slips into each of those tightly bound spaces and unravels everything. The what ifs and the fears and the happy possibilities become tangled into a magnificent twist of confusion and worry.
We understand nothing.
We do nothing.
I do believe, in optimistic and maybe naive moments that we can work our way out of self destructive habits. I want to believe that each of us can learn to live in the moment and see outside of our selves. And I know, like a blind man feels with distinction a tree, a face, a hand of something he cannot see, that God is there, is present in my day-to-day guiding and protecting and providing for me. But I also feel the gravel, the steep hill and rushing currents as I work through the hard, unknowable, incomprehensible things. Each movement forward feels shaky and precarious. I don’t like being unable to see the end of the road and I don’t like not knowing how long it will or won’t take to get there, wherever there is.
It’s these thoughts that catch me when I’m alone and squelch my solitude, my peace. And so last night, there I was, alone in my thoughts, putting away dishes before friends came over for coffee and listening absent-mindedly to Led Zeppelin in the background, when my husband came up behind me to dance – a regular occurrence. He placed his hands on my hips and swayed to the bass beat and for a minute I let him, lost in the song and remembering how exactly we wound up here.

It was my love for Led Zeppelin that made me impulse-purchase a really rad t-shirt right before I went to college. And it was the t-shirt that made Matt notice me from across the classroom way back in the day [2005] when we were just two kids, trying to survive college and find someone whose music taste didn’t make us vomit. And it was those early spring nights when we listened to vinyls and cassette tapes and talked about we had in common that made us realize: there’s no one else that we’d rather rock out with than each other, forever and ever, I Do, amen…

And now here we are, adults, married, dealing with day-to-day life together and wondering, each of us, where we’re headed and how to get there. And it’s not always glamourous and he’s not a famous rockstar [yet] and we’re flat broke, and he sometimes comes home to find me weeping into a couch cushion or zoning out as I stand over a sink of dirty dishes, but we have each other and that’s really good. Because I had no idea that buying a Zeppelin shirt would be the catalyst for changing my life and meeting my future husband. And whatever happens or doesn’t happen – real or in our insecure imaginations – we have that opportunity to stop in the midst of it and see how far we’ve come. God provides, in surprising and subtle ways that we aren’t capable of imagining or orchestrating on our own.
I need to stop, listen, dance in the now, where I’m safe and sound in what He’s already given me.
I am not alone.

[Engagement photo taken by this talented dude.]

Poem : That One Time in the Garage

by Leave a Comment

I stretch my hand to stop you in the doorway
It’s taken me years to find that kind of courage
And I’ve steeled myself now -
Please.
Don’t Leave.
Words, like molasses in my mouth,
spill…
 
A flicker of fear -
your eyes relax,
my breath expels;
for once we draw near.
 
My arm, no longer a bar,
bends to you.
We are enveloped in relief.
You said thank you.

Be Bold and Mighty Forces Will Come to Your Aid

by Leave a Comment

How was your weekend, dear readers? My weekend was a flurry of travel and visits with family in my small Michigan hometown. I’m thankful that I live in Chicagoland where I can work and visit the wide-open arms of its sweeping skyline whenever I want, and that my rural roots are just across the lake. In 4.5 hours [I’m not speeding, I promise, Dad!] I’m able to make the trek home to say hello and spend time with my parents and two younger brothers.
250 miles seems so short when I compare it to being halfway across the world or when I think about how far-flung some of my other family has become. Yet, I sometimes wonder at how far one can get in less than a day’s time. We left on a sunny Friday morning, and before I knew it, it was Sunday afternoon and my grandmother and I were driving the curve back around Lake Michigan to Chicago where I found myself sitting at a friend’s bonfire eating brats and burgers as the sun slipped behind the trees. As with many Sunday nights after a weekend visit, How did I get here? was the singular thought floating around in my head as I crawl into bed.
I’ll be headed back this weekend just to spend time with my mom for Mother’s Day. As you go about your week, I encourage you to take a moment to give thanks for your mom, or any woman in your life that has nurtured you and encouraged your dreams. If she’s here with you, healthy or fighting for her life, be sure to give thanks for the time you have together. If she’s gone, my prayers are with you as you reflect on her legacy and wish that you could tell her thank you one more time. Write her a love letter, because you and I both know that the task of raising you, helping you grow, wasn’t always a picnic, but she put her brave face on and taught you how to live life in this world anyway…