Cycles

There isn't much that I have learned
Through all my foolish years
Except that life keeps runnin' in cycles
First there's laughter, then those tears
 -Frank Sinatra "Cycles" 
 

When I was in 2^nd grade, in Mrs. Duerksen's class, we did a project called, “In 12 Years...”. In it, my class full of 7- and 8-year-olds projected what our lives would look like in 12 years in sentences and pictures. All of our submissions were immortalized in a laminated sheet for us to take home. Our aspirations were varied: pharmacists, dino-scientists, gutter repairers, and much more. Apparently, when I was 7, I decided that I would be “marriad” and a movie star by the time I was 19. This is funny on a lot of levels, most notably because I can't ever remember a time I actually wanted to be a movie star, but also because 19 is just so young! Clearly, my perspective on adulthood was a lot different when I was 7. In actuality, when I was 19, I worked as an office manager for a landscaping company very near my hometown, volunteered with teenagers from my church, moved into my first apartment on my own, and ended up working 3 jobs just trying to make ends meet. It may not have been my best year in retrospect.

I found myself thinking about this project last night when I realized how cyclical adulthood really is. For the last 5 or 6 years, I have been very much the same person, with similar joys, struggles, fears, and aspirations and not a lot of change. While my home, job, and community have changed in that time, I am, at my core, essentially the same. As a person who believes that progress is important in life, that leaves me feeling like something of a failure. I have to constantly focus on the “soft” changes in my life, the growth in my inner being, to feel validated. It's especially hard for me when my friends' lives continue to change in leaps and bounds – career advancement, major moves, marriages, children, major purchases and investments.

The cycle I find myself restarting now is about remembering to hold things loosely. Part of being a (perpetually?) single woman is learning to be good on your own. It's something that delights my introvert's heart – to be able to enjoy my own company and sometimes even prefer it to being with others, to be independent and strong – but in recent weeks and months I've developed some relationships that are comfortable and casual, that make time spent with these friends sweet and low-key. I can call in my sweaty gym clothes at 8pm on a weeknight and just hang out and chat for an hour or two with no plan or expectations. It's soothing to have people in your life who accept you for who you are without any agenda.

Progress, though, impedes comfort. I think it might be its sole job, actually. And I'm reminded that the only things you can hold tightly are those that are intrinsic to your person. Everything else is at risk, fleeting and subject to change.

I should probably have mastered this practice by now. Losing Blaine so early in life has made me acutely aware of my own fallibility, of my body's ability to betray, and of the unfathomably unreliable nature of human life. We're born, we live, and we die – and that living part can be cut terribly short. This experience breeds fierce appreciation for those things that I love, whether I act on it appropriately or not.

Now, I just have to move from understanding of unexpected change to accepting and letting go. I will be okay – there's no question of that – but I want to be great. I want to feel only happiness and never loss when joy comes into the life of my friends, and that comes as a result of a selflessness I fear I may never have. But I can try.

And you know the plans that you have for me
And you can't plan the end and not plan the means
And so I suppose I just need some peace
Just to get me to sleep
-Caedmon's Call "Table for Two"

Darkness

you can lock the door, yeah you know how
you can stay alone, you’re so proud but
you can’t keep the darkness out

whatever hurt you, what keeps you mad
wants you to let it go, let it pass
when memories turn to doubt
you can’t keep the darkness out

For as long as I can remember, I've been afraid of the dark.  As a kid, I was afraid of just about everything, fears that led to an involved bedtime routine of checking for bad guys or things and sometimes sleeping on the floor not to mention how I convinced myself that nothing bad could happen to me after midnight because it was a new day and long nights war ching the glowing red clock digits tick through late hours, awaiting the magic illumination of the AM dot before I allowed sleep to come.

When I moved into my first apartment, the fear lingered and led to high electric bills from lights left on all night.  I'm also an avid door locker.  As I've gotten older, these fears have graciously abated some and only rear their ugly heads when I'm most insecure these days.

Now, the fear of darkness is much deeper and much more internalized.  Today, I'm afraid of succumbing to the darkness.  The last few months have been a renaissance of sorts, a time of searching that have led me to a new community, a renewed love for the God of my youth, and, sadly, a resurgent fear that I'm doing it all wrong.  

I feel simultaneously not good enough and also not willing to change because where I am is good.  But on darker days like today, I feel like the darkness that once terrified might consume me.  Maybe I'm not strong enough to hold out for the goodness, kindness, justice that I so desperately desire to embody. Perhaps I won't be able to ever fit into this new community I've come to appreciate so much.  Will my old habits plunge me into the anxiety and depression that once governed my life?  I can feel it; it's a part of my very being and perhaps what once fueled the fears that consumed me.

A friend once told me that he likes to "flirt with the darkness" and, more than I'd like to admit, I understand that.  I don't so much flirt with it as I dip into it for momentary ease.  The habits and pathways that were unhealthy releases for me are too easy to fall back into and still offer reprieve that I shouldn't need.  What's a little giving in when trying is just so. damn. hard?  

These are the things that scare me now, not external forces but rather thoughts and feelings that are a truly interwoven part of my being.  How does one truly divorce herself from a part of her psyche and experience?  And if, some time, I move from flirting with the darkness to living in it once again, is there grace for a way out?

there’s nothing wrong with the heart in your chest
it might be heavy but it’s innocent
it can’t keep the darkness out  

-"The Darkness" by Rose Cousins

My Callous Heart

Words crashing through the flames smoke spreading far
And I thought we'd remain free from it's harm
You let the fire out, and it's right in front of me

-"The Fire" by Kina Grannis

Who do I want to be? For all of its downs, moving across the country is a great opportunity to reinvent yourself. I'm not nearly fluid or flexible enough to fake my own personality, but I do feel like I have some leeway in deciding what facets of my personality I allow to come to the forefront. When I moved here, it was all about being free and not judgmental – the opposite of my Pennsylvania self. At my core, I am pretty progressive but there are many of conflicting influences in my head. I've got the religious and familial guilt and a whole pile of cultural indoctrination that rolls around that I've gotten really good at ignoring, but I'm trying, for the first time in a long time (maybe ever), to be informed by the faith I can't ignore and allow my callous heart to be shaped and changed, to allow myself to be vulnerable where I've before only protected, reacted, and practiced stubbornness. I'm not so good at this changing thing.

And then, when I'm most honest with myself, I remember that I'm also inexorably affected by my affections. How many times have I molded myself toward similarity to whomever my heart desired only to find myself with neither the object of my affection nor lasting change? I don't want to be that girl, now or ever again.

So then, when the desired is perhaps closer to transformed than I, how am I to respond when his heart is hurting from our actions but mine is not? Am I not close enough to the mind of God? Am I hardened still to contrition? Is he just more in tune with the heart of God than I am? Are our personal experiences creating the differences in response? Does his own regret and conviction apply to me in the same way in his head? Does he think I should feel remorse?

I feel only glad for the connection and camaraderie, but now another dimension of guilt has been applied and introduced nerves for the future. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why, even in that statement, do I apply a “we” rather than own my own feelings and lack of feelings?

How do I balance this fine line between support and indoctrination without falling off either cliff?

I'm not one for regret, but tonight, I'm trying to find grace for callousness.

Harmony

“Let's harmonize.”

I had no idea as I sat in my folding chair that Sunday morning, slightly disheveled from a late night out, later to church than normal, and distracted by unfamiliar crowds, that I'd hear the words and feel the validation I didn't even know I'd been waiting for.

I'm sure my eyes widened more than was appropriate at seeing his tall, slim figured sliding in to the seat next to me. Black coffee swirled and sloshed in the paper cup he carried. I rushed to move my things from the chair without making a fool of myself – I imagined accidentally covering him in cheap iced coffee or stabbing him with my ever-jingling keys. I'm sure I said something acquiescent, attempting to channel more grace and less nervousness than I actually felt.

He'd never heard me sing, though we'd talked about music several times before and he'd apparently taken me at my word that I could actually sing. This trust created more nervousness in me than was probably necessary, but as the worship began, we stood beside each other and fumbled to hear melodies and each others' harmonies and finally fell into an easy blend as the measures passed.

For me, the sermon passed excruciatingly slowly. Direction from Paul in Ephesians on husbands and wives is always hard for me; it reminds me that I'm not yet married, despite my wish to be, and to sit next to him, our legs crossing in opposite directions and our opposite handedness evident in the way we move, reminded me that I might never be. Because of my uncertain feelings, I'd been somewhat deliberately choosing to avoid showing interest in him because I'd not seen any signs of interest from him. In fact, those words were likely the first ones that I'd heard from him that even hinted at more than just a passing acknowledgment of my existence.

In that, I probably read too much. But nonetheless, my logical brain can see connections where there may not be any yet, and his invitation inspired boldness in me. “It's okay to be transparent about feelings,” I chanted to myself as if I'd heard it in therapy while composing the most succinct email I could create to offer thanks and invite conversation. I've counseled this very mantra to other women struggling to find the balance between modern female empowerment and traditional and Biblical values in dating. More often than not, I'd fallen off one side or other of the fence, and these days, I mostly erred in the cowardly direction. Three sentences and several consultations of a thesaurus later, I sent it, mentally preparing for the worst I could imagine happening.

In truth, the response was neither absent nor disparaging, as my anxiety had projected. It was polite, nonchalant, and an excellent reminder that my existence (and maybe even my talent) was acknowledged and that was all I should expect.

And so, here I sit, basking and over-analyzing in writing a series of events that was likely just a blip on his radar, if even that. Perhaps this will be my own form of therapy as I work to remember that it is okay to be transparent, but that transparency invites the same and can lead to disappointment in much the same way as self-sabotage can, only with less control and more anxiety. Today, I'll have grace for courage and grace for cowardice.

Graciousness

Have you ever noticed that your inadequacies tend to be glaring to everyone, including yourself, but that the solutions to them are only obvious to others?  This fact is infuriating.

I don't have a ton of friends.  I have very few, actually.  Sure, there are lots of people in my life peripherally that I could casually call a friend, but the number of people who know me at my core, who love me despite the weaknesses they are well acquainted with - it's small.  Like count on one hand and have room to spare small.  And I hold them tightly because vulnerability is the hardest thing for me and when it's given, it isn't lightly. 

Today, though, I envy those who can have many friends, lightly held.  I think it lends itself well to accepting change and moving onward. 

Today, I want to learn to be gracious rather than true to myself.  I'm a polarizing force, as people in my life keep reminding me, and I want to be gracious when the magnets don't attract.  Truth has become easy for me, and instead of being true, I want to extend kindness and mercy and welcome when I don't feel any of those things.  I want to emulate Christ in this way, but I don't know how. 

Today, I need the grace for graciousness.

Proper Noun People

I like words, especially new ones or ones that are familiar and old, but recently unused.  There is a tangible feel to words in my mouth.  Several years ago, I wrote a piece on the feel of someone's name on my lips, how foreign it felt after so long, scraping and awkward to form and project.  That imagery is somewhat literal to me, at least in the way I experience it.  The best words, though, are the ones that roll off my tongue, cascade to their new home - on paper, on someone's ears, on dead air - and feel like they were meant to be there, natural, willing.  These words - usually proper nouns in my case - are a comfort to me, something that doesn't require work or effort, something to be enjoyed. 

In my life, I have people who are like these words - familiar, comfortable, unassuming.  Though they are few, they are as important to me as anything I can imagine.  I am not naturally inclined toward social acuity.  I miss cues.  I am, and always have been, too honest; my cynicism exacerbates this problem but covers it with humor.  I can get along as well as the next person, but I am not fluid in my relationships - they take work and effort that I'm not always ready to offer.  It is with these people, my Proper Noun People, that I can be myself - unfiltered, unapologetic, unafraid, and unedited

For the last few days, and weeks really, I have been in serious desire for this luxury.  The great part about a big life change is that everything is new.  The awful part about a big life change is that everything is new.  For me, especially considering my penchant to avoid vulnerability like the bubonic plague, this means that literally EVERYONE that I interact with on a regular basis knows virtually nothing about me - they have no measure to understand what I'm trying to say rather than what I actually say, no basis to interpret my intentions from my actions, no way to know what actually matters to me or how to reach me at my core.  Maybe they have no desire to - that's always a point to contend with.  I'm craving the repose that comes with being known and being loved because - or perhaps, in spite - of that.

There's grace for this.  I know this as well as I know my favorite words.  There's grace for the growing vulnerability that I'm positive God is calling me to (though I fight it mercilessly, still).  There's grace for those people who truly don't have any interest in knowing me.  There's grace for the awkward moments, the scraping words, the defense mechanisms.  I'm working on finding all of those graces.  Maybe that grace will become a Proper Noun "Person" to me too.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life? 

Change is hard.  Especially when whatever you're changing from is pretty good.  The control freak in me sees a change coming and does whatever it can to micromanage before it comes, but too many times in my life, I haven't been able to stop it.  I guess because of that, I'm learning to accept it.  Things change.  People change.  Relationships change.  And that is really, truly, honestly okay.

My recent change in workplace has been a great change.  On the surface, yes, it's great to not be on call all the time.  The ridiculous amount of vacation is nice.   Really though, I like most of what I do, or at least that I'm turning out to be okay/good at it, and I really like the people I work with.  They're intelligent and hard working, at least for the most part, helpful and approachable.  It's a great environment.  Even though my brain rebelled against the change, it's been a good one.

Other changes are harder - relocating, losing friends, evolving faith, illnesses.  These things require flexibility that most people have a hard time with and, for me, faith that I sometimes lack.

The hardest part of my life, though, is when it doesn't change and I want it to.  Sometimes I feel like I'm standing still in the middle of a drag strip, watching the people around me speed toward the next goal, next prize at the drop of handkerchief.  And there's nothing I can do but wave to them in the distance and rejoice with them from afar.  I'm glad to say that I can actually do that - there was a time in my life that jealousy kept me from enjoying the seasons of other people's lives and I'm grateful to be past that.

It's hard though.  Being okay with standing still is hard when you get caught up in the thrill, the excitement, the cheer, the acceleration all around you.  I haven't mastered it yet.  Today, I'm seeking grace for the dichotomy - the balance between happiness and a little bit of emptiness and disappointment. 

Today, I need to find the grace to move beyond my own insecurities and be selfless, to be Christlike.  I wonder if Jesus ever thought he was missing out on anything. 

You have a Father's heart
And a love that's wild
And You know what it's like to lose...
Sometimes I don't know
I don't know what You're doing
But I know who You are