Of all the places

Today I surprise my parents. By the time this blog is posted my family and I will have stood around my new bedroom in my new house and explained that I'm not actually visiting... I'm staying, man.
That is scary. This week has been an overwhelming one. I'm from here- this greater Chicago area. I've also been back here countless times after I moved away into the world of traveling gypsy. This is different. This time I am over-sensitive to my surroundings. After having lived in Estes Park for eleven months (a big feat on my part- The Drifter) my surroundings have become not only a place my body is, but a place my spirit is and a place my spirit feeds off of. Mountain after mountain lined up, just miles away from where my feet were planted, huge snow caps. When the darkness falls it still does not cover the majesty of the mountains; the moon will shine and the snow caps will still glow. The bears and foxes come out. In the day time the elk gather in massive herds, and all things feel as though they should be.

Then I hopped in my car and changed my life. How did I change my life? I don't know yet, I just have this deep feeling that this coming year in life will be a big one. A huge one. Probably not and easy one. But here I stand in the middle of too many cars, busy roads, and an over-stimulated culture. I am overwhelmed. A pretty big part of me just wants to be back to where I am comfortable. Back in nature, where I can just walk to the base of most of those mountains from what used to be my front door. I miss my dear Joanna, and I miss going to work at probably one of the best jobs I've ever had. The reasoning for that being the people; the people I worked with who I keep so close to my heart, and the people who would come into our store for their caffeine fix. I have a whole lot of love for them.
But now I pray for continuing trust, and peace. If I didn't have either of those things to begin with I wouldn't be sitting in my new house, in my new living room, right across the street from my sister and her family in Wheaton, Illinois. Wheaton... of all places. Of all the places in the world I have lived, of all the beautiful things I have seen and done, of all the ties I have and places I could be, here I am.
The Lord is doing something exciting. I'm actually a little scared. I feel like I am sitting here in the dark waiting to have a glimpse of light be revealed to me about what I am here for. Right now I know nothing. I just trust.
A fitting week this is to move here: Holy Week. I've attended some of the services at my new church here and already have had an inexplicable flood of emotions come from just a couple of powerful evening services. These services are meant to mourn the death of Christ before his Resurrection. How fitting these services are to my emotional state here, now. I feel as though I am also mourning a death of a part of myself, eager to have a resurrection of my own.
Until then, I sit in the quiet darkness with my God and I trust him. In that I find comfort.

Mother Nature: Mama Hater.

Driving home in the cold night air, thinking about how wonderful my two-hour massage on Thursday is going to be, and how so very much I need it.
I pull into my neighborhood that is well-known to trap vehicles into the abyss of the mountain hills for a long, long time. So I gun it. Thirty miles an hour and I make it to my driveway, the deep snowdrift in my driveway not phasing me because my mind is not in the snow. It's in the clouds. Until a snowball hits my nice little daydream and my car stops.My car is severely stuck halfway into my driveway.
Temper ensues. Rage. My dirty sailor mouth tells Mother Nature how I really feel about her, and instead of her giving me a little gust of wind behind me to boost my fruitless slander and smashing my gas petal, she laughs at me in anger. Mwah ha ha.
I get out of my car, wind thrashing my hair into my eyeballs and whipping the straps from my backpack in my face (sweet revenge from Mama Hater). Every step I take balances gently atop the snow drift, and then my foot plunges deeply to the depths of the ground beneath me almost sending my face to the snow every time. "EFFF YOU WIND! EFFF YOU SNOW! YOU SUCK MOTHER NATURE!!!", my voice lost in the roar of the wind. I kick the snow at her with no avail, and almost fall again. Snow fills my boots, wind in my face, cold darkness surrounds me, and my front door seems like it's 97 miles away.
The door slams shut an hits me in the butt. I throw my keys on the counter and pout like a little girl.
Joanna's suggestion: A flame thrower. But she doesn't suggest a flaming torch to melt the snow in our driveway; she quietly knocks on my door with a soft voice, "Sarah," and I open as she shares her idea of a flame thrower complete with motions as if she's holding a machine gun, feet planted, torching our hellish driveway with what it deserves. Death. Flames. Melting horror! All I see is Joanna outside in her pajamas with goggles on, fiery glow in her face, holding a giant torch, laughing heartily, hot wind blowing, and melting away the evils of what Mama Hater has brought upon our household.
We fall to the ground in exuberant laughter.
Mother Nature, why you hatin'? Next time you bring this upon us Joanna and I will indeed flame your ass.

Shame, I have naught.

If you take Ex-lax, this is what will happen:

You will probably take Ex-lax at the end of your shift at work. A co-worker has some; she says it works like clockwork, so you willingly go along with these heathen-istic actions. What were you thinking? Shame.

What’s going through your mind is that it’s only 7:30pm, and you don’t work until noon tomorrow so you have a perfect window of opportunity to let the Ex-lax do it’s business, or rather, let it let you do your business. Everything should go smoothly as planned. Yah know what I mean? Right?

The problem is that Ex-lax is actually against you, you silly person. It has a demon soul. The problem is that you will swallow these laxatives, and then pull into your driveway only to find that there are many, many cars there. Your driveway is… clogged, if you will. Much like your bowels. And your house. Bad. 

No, actually bad is when you walk into your door absolutely mortified to see that your home is full of very attractive men. About ten of them. All of whom are currently drinking beers and having a jolly time, being attractive, and scruffy, and mountainy, and climbery… and will be sleeping all night on your living room floor. I repeat: what were you thinking? This mortification will promptly be followed by approximately two glasses of wine to try and ease the pains of… the pains. The stomach pains, that is. Instead, all you get from the wine and the devil drug is a night full of bad dreams of sharing bathrooms with good-looking mountain men, and standing in god-awful lines to use the toilet. Every once in a while you will wake up from these dreams in cold sweats, grasping your stomach because it begs you to just let it do what it wants to doooo.

A cold shower at 7am will not work. Promise.

What you will think, though, is that since they are off to do some ice climbing for the day they will be on their way bright and early. Not standing around, leisurely making breakfast and coffee. But you are wrong. They will be standing around all morning, leisurely making breakfast and coffee. More cold sweats to follow. In this situation, pass on all offers of coffee and any fibrous foods. Don’t. eat. anything.

Finally, the only thing you will be able to do, thank the heavens above, is to jump in your car, smile, and tell them you’ll be off to work early today… to… umm… use some of the resources in town. But Ex-lax can outsmart you, you see, because as you head down the hill from your house, your car will surely get stuck in the ditch, and you will have to grasp your stomach in excruciating pain while walking back to all the attractive men to ask them for help to get your car out of the ditch. That’s bad, until the car that comes to rescue you from the ditch also gets stuck in the ditch. I know you didn’t believe me that Ex-lax has a demon soul, but you do now. Ex-lax knows just how to humiliate you and keep you in pain all day.

Don’t think that one trip to that porcelain is going to make everything go away and feel better. Expect some terrible stomach cramps, light headed-ness, and the feeling of wanting to essentially rip out every single one of your intestines so this will surely never, ever happen again.

So I say, after this day has finally come to a close, you too, will fully understand the meaning of “Holy Shit”. But do you really want to understand the meaning of Holy Shit? Just say no.

Drink some prune juice for heaven sakes. Ex-lax came from hell, I tell you.

nylon death straps

You know those times when you go home and do things you used to do when you were kids, like lay in bed with your sister at night talking and giggling? It’s actually a wonder I ever get to sleep in the same bed as Julie anymore since Josh can barely take his hands off of her. They are in ooey gooey mushy love, and they’ve finally mushed their gushy love into a bun in the oven. But let’s not get into those details. 

My last night in Illinois a couple weeks ago Julie and I went to bed and the comfortable feeling of lying there together kicked off our nostalgic (and not-so-nostalgic) childhood reminiscing.
“Remember when we lived in that white house?” I asked. “I was four, and you were eight, and mom worked waitressing at Potters in town.” Of course she remembered. But I was eagerly and bitterly getting to a point here.

“Remember that time you wanted to go see mom at work, so you thought it would be a good idea to ride bikes? Only, we weren’t riding bikes. We were riding bike. Singular.” In fact, Julie strapped me to the back seat of mom’s adult bike. May I remind you of our ages? Four and eight. Do you know an eight-year-old who can ride and adult road bike with a child strapped to the back? Me either.  This is early independence at its finest, folks. Where was our supervision? Julie laid the bike down on its side, strapped my silently terrified self into the seat atop the gravel driveway, mounted the bike upright, and thrusted forward with her eight-year-old legs on either side. We wobbled back and forth for a second while Julie tried to gain balance until this leaning tower of child-on-metal came to a crash on the gravel. Julie escaped. I, on the other hand, being unwillingly strapped to the bike like a four-year-old prisoner, had nothing but my teeny little hands to stop my head from bouncing off the gravel road. Crying and looking at the blood on my hands is my last memory as a four-year-old. I’m sure repressed memory syndrome had a lot to do with it. I did learn to hate that bike. Other lessons though, took me longer to learn such as thinking about what my sisters were trying to get me into before I brainlessly followed along. I’ll bet I was fun little sister.

That’s the thing about time. It heals all wounds. (Mostly). Perhaps that’s why we were able to lay there and laugh hysterically in the dark, picturing our sad little selves laying in that gravel driveway. However, I’m still a weenie about falling off a bike.

The bad bike memories don’t actually stop there. Add a couple of years, replace Julie with Kimberly, and keep that same awful bike. But that’s a story for another time. 

I vow on this day to never strap my child into one of those terrifying plastic seats with nylon death straps. No no no.

Remember how January kills? How it sucks all things good and well from all good people?
January 6, 2010 - My car was stolen with everything I own in it.
January 15, 2011 - My sister find our her unborn baby isn't going to live for much longer. Two weeks later Jonan passes away. My first love leaves on a train forever. My car breaks down for two months and since the Pie Shop never paid me, I don't have any money to fix it.
January 1, 1012 - My brakes on my car go out while I'm driving downhill on a windy road in the dark and I'm supposed to drive to Chicago in two days to have a family Christmas, and I find out I can't find my drivers license.
Can we please skip January this year? January 1 is not off to a good start so far. 

Roots

I think we must lose ourselves now and again to find ourselves that much stronger, to know ourselves that much more. To have the ability come back to who we were made to be we must be in tune to the fact that we have forgotten who we were, and to come back to who we were made to be we must take the time to remember who that person was, and why. When we take the time to remember who that person was, we inevitably discover things that have been hidden, lost, or completely undiscovered yet. What a wonderful thing to peel back the things hiding us and find the core of ourselves, our heartbeat, our colors. Every time we lose ourselves, we come back a little bit brighter. When the winter melts off the trees and the leaves grow back we’re finally able to see what kind of trees surround us, what kind of leaves they grow.

Before a tree dies for the cold winter season they lose their leaves and leave them at base of their roots. Not an accident, I’m sure.

Find the dancing colors

I think our lives are dependent on beauty. Beauty means that things are living, growing, being noticed and taken care of. Ugly brings death. Beauty brings life. But lack of beauty has been evident in my life lately. Ugly has infiltrated itself into my life and blinded me from good things. Good things that bring joy, like looking out into the brisk mountain air through the window and seeing flurries of snow dance around the waving tree branches while I sit comfortably in a blanket of warm, peaceful air; letting the beauty of sounds, whispers, music, and every day voices be my soundtrack, my comfort, my home; allowing the scents of my surroundings bring me to a place of peace and excitement. Instead, I use my senses to drift me slowly into a nostalgia of days more sorrowful, more joyful, more familiar times rather than living in the reality of the moments I find myself in, feeling all the feelings my Lord has given me, and then thanking Him for the great gift of these senses.

Now I learn to take joy in the feeling of my soft blanket on my skin, engulfing me through the night and keeping me warm from the chilly mountain air, the sounds of my keyboard beneath my fingertips typing out my thoughts and tapping me into the reality of the beauty that surrounds me. I take joy in the thin, subtle smell of cold air, and the sight of the mountains at night when the moon is full, the snow-caps glow softly in the midst of the black sky. Lastly I bring myself back to the simple flavors of a good cup of coffee, or homemade bread, good whiskey, or a good ol’ stinky cheese. These things that once brought the colors to my happiness I have so quickly forgotten to notice.

Today I will notice, and I will soak in every color I can find. Colors make our eyes come alive. Colors mean the light is dancing, and God is Light. To notice the beauty is to notice God. He makes things beautiful. He made my life beautiful.

Remedies

I walked up to the counter at the BBQ place wearing pajamas, a hobo hat, and tennis shoes, and plopped my elbows on the counter that reached just below my chest which made the little skinny girl who hadn’t eaten in three days feel even punier. Looking at the hostess with a reserved joy about finally gaining my appetite back I asked, "Can I place an order to go, please?" After sitting down and looking through the menu for that one thing I wanted, I ordered with my soft, sickly voice, “Can I have a Taphouse burger with Swiss cheese.. and bacon… and fries?” Let me inform you that the Taphouse burger without the bacon is already 1.2 lbs of meat. “And, can I get all the sauces on the side too?”

I pay the girl at the counter and she tells me it will be about ten minutes. I started filling the little sauce containers she gave me with all the sauces. I dab one, taste it with my finger, and squeeze it in until it made a farting noise. I farted some right onto her counter even. “I’m so sorry, I spilled some”. And she cleaned up after me.

Ten minutes later I was handed a giant bag with a giant Styrofoam box filled with a giant burger and a giant mass of fries. I walked out groggily dragging my feet and picking my wedgie. A real lady I am. Now, here I sit in my room, drinking my juice box, watching a girly movie, and eating a big fatty burger. I say this is how you get rid of strep throat.

To be heartbroken

I don't think being heartbroken happens all of the sudden. It's a slow process of one thing after another digging to the deepest spots of where your heart is most tender.

Four steps forward, and three steps backward. It's progress, but it's slow.
Love hurts.

Steady Hands

There’s abounding joy so deeply embedded into my heart. But I have a sadness that drips from my eyes. Even when my eyes are filled with smiles. It’s a longing. I’m joyful for things I know and understand, and I’m deeply sad by things I know, and do not know at the same time. 

It’s a longing in my heart. 

For things to be good and right. 

To feel a hand holding my own. 

To be caught up in a moment that will follow the joys of my heart for the rest of my days.

Music gives me that longing. Music.

What is it with art? There is something deeply spiritual going on that goes much further than an artists fingertips to her work. Maybe it’s the same between God and I. Perhaps there is a place I long to be that I have yet to find between God, the artist, and I, the work of art. Perhaps. 

There’s something I don’t understand going on. I’m still part canvass. He’s not finished me. Will He? I still feel so much of me is blank canvass, and so little of me has been created. I know without doubt that God has a few quirky ideas up His sleeve about what He’s going to make me into. I feel as though He’s just standing there now, though. Maybe He’s not. Maybe He’s working on the most intricate parts of me right now, His hands so steady that it feels like endless stillness. 

I feel impatient. Yet He is so patient. God, teach me your patience. Teach me to be steadfast. Comfort me and teach me to look to you only for my comfort.