Unnecessary Campaigns

A strategy brought into play in our tangled tango of words;

a calculated counter measure to your step forward.

Even your backwards movements require protection.

Repetitive use has caused problems.

An inability to sense.

A distorted image of self.

A heart that has learned to brace for the worst,

knowing that the truth is always costly.

Side-stepped compliments and ill-timed humor,

Even omitted wisdom,

They’re all just defense mechanisms. 

In My Annotated Life

I was recently asked to map out a timeline of my last year, detailing all the highs and lows that occurred. At first I thought it was a good idea; that was until I started thinking of the last year. After agonizing for at least five minutes, I had only thought of five or so major things to put on my timeline and none of them felt like they were worth much with the exception of helping get Mosaic off the ground. So like any mature and rational person would, I ignored the “project” until the next week when everyone was supposed to share. At our weekly gathering we started talking and a couple of people read their timelines. One person’s timeline was filled with pregnancy and the birth of their first child. The next person’s detailed a year of physical and mental struggles due to a major injury. As I listened to both of these stories I thought to myself, “How in the world do these people remember this stuff?”

When it got to be my turn I freely admitted that I hadn’t done the exercise and resolved to have it done for the next week. My intentions were good, I swear, but as I sat down again I could not do it. I thought maybe it was because I’m not a feeler. Relatively speaking I never get too high or too low and the so called even keel-ness isn’t good for timelines. Or maybe it is because the life I lead is just really boring. The reality is probably a combination of the two but I came out of the questions with a different outlook.

You see, my annotated life just looks a little different. Instead of milestones there are little moments that make my life rich and eventful. My improvised timeline looks something like this:

May ’10: Beat Nathan at tennis and felt totally BA.

June ’10: Enjoyed countless barbeques with my family and laughed uncontrollably at inappropriate dinner table talk.

July ’10: Spent 4^th of July scaring the living daylights out of my friends and laughing until the point of nausea.

August ’10: Made a lot of jokes about “pulling the goalie.” Slow clapped for teenage girl too scared to cliff jump into the lake (Got scowled at by said girl).

September ’10: Had beers and smores with a great couple while throwing flour into the fire and saying Harry Potter spells. (Highly flammable and highly entertaining)

October ’10: Started actually enjoying hanging out with women and had some of the best coffee dates of my life.

November ’10: Had a really great unexpected phone conversation with an old friend that reminded me how much I love them. Developed a new friendship over gmail chat and twitter.

December ’10: Planned stellar NYE surprise with the best co-conspirator and had more quality conversations that I could count.

January ’11: Read Little Women for the umpteenth time and loved every word.

February ’11: Got a couple letters that made me feel like one of the most special people in the world. Cried for the first time in forever. 

March ’11: Had a blast in Chicago surrounded by a lot of love. Shared an amazing week at sea with my husband and our friends. Read a Nora Roberts book against my will and didn’t hate it.

April ’11: Hugged a new friend for the first time, one of the greatest hugs ever.  Shared tons of witty banter via email. Reignited my passion for sunflower seeds.

Nothing special, no major milestones, but from the looks of it, I had a really great year. 

Delicate Reassurance

I rocked a baby to sleep on Sunday evening.  I held her little body in my arms and quietly hummed a mishmash of lullabies as she balanced delicately between asleep and awake. When I was sure of her slumber, I called in my husband and we prayed for her. We spoke quiet intercessions over the little girl we have grown to love. We asked our Father to give her peaceful sleep and happy dreams. We asked for little things that on the large scale don’t mean much. We prayed for her parent’s guidance and then we ended as we always have with a request that she would grow healthy and strong, to serve and love Him.

She didn’t move a muscle the entire time. Normally she fights the sleep and fusses when I transition from the rocking chair to the crib but not this time. The only noise she made was a gentle sigh when I laid her down, a small surrender from her tired little body. It was beautiful, and I left the room feeling refreshed and thankful. I was thankful that she went down easy because to be honest, I was tired too. Thankful that we had the rest of the evening to relax and that her parents also could relax on their night out, knowing that she was fast asleep.

I didn’t realize until later that for the first time in five months of watching her and putting her to sleep once or twice a month, I left the room not feeling wanting. Prior to this evening I had always fought a hint of jealousy and dissatisfaction. As hard as I tried and wrestled, I always felt frustrated and sad that I didn’t have my own child to rock and hum to, to pray over and protect, to shepherd and love. That night however, I left the room with peace and joy and thankfulness and I realized that the gentle sigh, the small surrender that she gave as I laid her down was not the only one that took place. I had made a small or maybe not so small surrender of my own.

As I mulled it over I remembered something that the little girl’s mom told me recently. That God would give me the children that I’m supposed to love, a truth that she had clung to when she was in the exact same position as myself. At the time I had brushed it off, thinking to myself that it was easier said than done. However, as I sat there in my small surrender I thought and believed that if this was it that I would be okay with that. If this is the way I’m supposed to love Your children then so be it. 

Quiet Steps

I recently stumbled upon a song I’ve loved for a long time, one that never really gets old. However, for whatever reason, it felt particularly poignant this time and every time after as I listened to it on repeat. More than once in my life I’ve awoken to find myself in a serious state of disarray, as if someone turned on a light and illuminated just how far I’ve wandered. I know I should be more surprised when the realizations hit. I know I should feel worse but in reality succumbing to guilt isn’t something that I do well.  But it’s different now. I’m in a new stage of life, one that details very little control and extreme vulnerability and it has certainly illuminated my current state of disarray.

I know how I got here, living life one calculated risk at a time mixed in with a compromise or two. The lines of the aforementioned song say it perfectly.

“I don't remember one jump or one leap;
Just quiet steps away from your lead.”

I’ve taken quiet albeit deliberate steps in the wrong direction because frankly it is just easier. It is easier to go with what feels “right” than to be diligent to deciphering the “right” direction. It is easier to shut down the more sensitive sides of myself than to feel disappointment and heartache. So here I stand cold calculated steps away from reality, far from where I want to be and even farther from where I should be.

Call this an admission of guilt of sorts, maybe even a step back in the other direction. The only question I’m left asking myself is, “Is it worth it?” Is the journey back towards reality worth the time of naivety and false assurance? Or would it have been easier to stay put?

Disarmed

I’ve never been one to go along easy or take the path of least resistance. I like to fight and grapple with real or self-made obstacles. I’ve spent my whole life building fortresses and sharpening my weapons of mass destruction. If you are one of my friends, you know that I don’t take kindly to criticism of any kind even though I say I welcome “constructive criticism”.  Truth is even when I solicit advice, I narrow the responses I’d like to hear and if you respond outside of what I want then I brush your advice aside like garbage.  I choose from my arsenal of excuses to divert myself from the truth no matter how beneficial it might be. I tell myself things like “they just don’t understand” and “if they were really hearing me they wouldn’t be so judgmental.” Its tiring, all this fighting, and all my defensiveness wears thin on my relationships.

However, recently I’ve engaged in some of the best, open conversation that I’ve experienced in a long time. It comes by way of a gal I’ve only known for a short amount of time but she already feels like a close friend. The best part about her is the way she totally disarms me. Without lacking any honesty she strips me of any reason to be hostile and through the course of conversation I find myself laying down my weapons of defensiveness. I don’t need to make jokes because I feel insecure and I don’t have to hold back the truth for fear of rejection or shame. Sometimes I feel a little naked knowing how much she knows but more often than not the freedom that comes with feeling known outweighs any amount of awkwardness or discomfort. She is teaching me how to love well in relationships and my hope is to love her well in return. 

Tears

I read once that all my tears are collected and recorded, counted and kept safe. If that’s the case my jar is probably close to empty, a thin salty layer evaporating into nothing. I haven’t added to it in what seems like forever and to me that feels normal but to others not so much. I tell people that it’s not the way I function; that my sorrows are expressed differently and that’s true for the most part. It’s also true that on the occasions when my chin begins to quiver and the lump rises in my throat, I fight to hold it in. I’m afraid to let a few loose, knowing that if I do it would take a small army to pull me back together and I hate that feeling of not being in control, weakness. And, to be quite honest, I’ve never felt like my tears were important enough. The majority of the ones I’ve cried have been over held back anger and my bruised ego, certainly not something to be cherished.

However, the ones that fell swiftly from my eyes last night were different. Instead of being accompanied by short breaths and sniffles their only companion was silence. They made hot streams along my cheeks and eventually pooled on the red Egyptian cotton of my pillowcase as I tried to find my sleep. Normally I would have mulled it over, dissecting all the reasons causing me to feel this way but I didn’t need to.  I knew these were tears of deep sorrow and repentance; born out of a tired heart.  I didn’t fight it and the minutes accumulated quickly, however, I knew that they were serving as a lullaby of sorts. I don’t know which came first the ceasing of my tears or my dreamless slumber but as I awoke this morning a single tear escaped each eye and then they were gone with as little fanfare as when they arrived.

Those tears, the hot silent variety, are the ones worth cherishing. 

Lyrics

Prompt 13

I’m a sucker for one-liners. I like to hear people zing witty banter back and forth and I love hearing short, profound sentiments. I think that’s why I love music so much. Every day I listen to music, all day. I’d like to think I have a healthy appreciation for most genres, and consider myself a music aficionado. However, the reality is I just latch onto musicians that other people like and based on their lyrics and sound, love them or leave them.  That has been the case for my most recent musical obsessions. For example I found my love for Mumford and Sons and The Civil Wars based on (cower in shame) episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, and my love for Sara Bareilles based on this blog post.

I find so much satisfaction in listening to these artists sing sweet melodies and spill out poetic verses, hooks and bridges that seem to explain where I’m at so perfectly. It’s as if they stepped right into my mind and plucked out how I feel about Jesus, my relationships, and the direction of my life. Often the actual subject matter of the song has nothing to do with what I’m experiencing but somehow these artists use a few lines to sum up the pages and pages of my Moleskine that I’ve filled trying to decipher what I feel.

Won't somebody come on in and tug at my seams?/ Oh, send your armies in of robbers and thieves/ To steal the state I'm in I don't want it anymore

I know that she is singing about a man and pleading to get over him. She calls herself a basket case and gives examples of why she loves him. That couldn’t be farther from MY situation except for maybe the basket case part. I have a loving and faithful husband, but those lines are closer to home than I’d like to admit. I NEED to be moved out of the state I’m in; I’m pleading in a similar way to be pushed, pulled or dragged into a better state of mind. Truth is for months I’ve been struggling to mutter a prayer for myself other than, Please, Father be patient with me.

I’m balancing between a desire to dive deeper and thinly veiled apathy. I want to be robbed of fear and insecurity. I want shameful and painful memories to be stolen.

I hold on to worry so tight/ It's safe in here right next to my heart/ Who now shouts at the top of her voice/ Let me go, let me out, this is not my choice

I’d rather stop worrying and move forward in freedom. I want what I should believe to be what I really believe instead of cluttered with questions and doubt. I realize it’s all a bit dramatic but I’m okay with that. For now, I’ll sing along to popular songs and plead their melodic prayers until I feel closer to where I need to be. I'll rely on poetic verses and concise lyrics to say it better than I can because something is better than nothing.