behold: i am of small account.
behold: the Man.
behold: the Man.
from a girl that i lived with one summer.
“So, friends, let us not hesitate, but leap into the unknown…
Pack up your bags and move to a castle in the middle of rural England.
Let a boy hold your hand.
Get lost, just because.
Look at the stars for so long that your eyes hurt.
Stay out past curfew.
Surprise a friend.
Say yes.and dwell in the peace that comes from the acknowledgement that the entire universe is taking care of you.
”
from a girl that i lived with one summer.
“Teach me that I am finite. Carve it into my soul so I remember it—into my heart every time it breaks. Beat it into my feet every time they cramp up when I’m running beaches, into every vertebra of my spine so that i know it every time I stand on tiptoe and stretch up to hug a friend.
Why do people only pay respects to the dead? We, so full of life, so ready for adventure, our every blood vessel and nerve and tendon vibrant and awake, love and live and cry and laugh apart. But should my hearts splutter, falter, or stop.. you’ll be at my side. I am no better than you! As long as your heartbeat stays constant, I take it for granted. But if it stops, no other sound—no other heartbeat—nothing else will take away the loss.
Sometimes I don’t sleep. And at 3AM, nothing much can be done to ease the panic. By then I have texted and read and wandered and written and daydreamed and stretched enough—too much. So I lie in my bed, feeling every square inch of the ominous depth of its emptiness, of my awakeness, of my aloneness. And I listen to my heartbeat. I feel it in my chest and, seconds later, in the bruise on my foot, in the headache behind my eyes, in my clenching and unclenching fists.
I lie awake and listen to my heartbeat.
Somehow, my scarred insecure judgmental 11-year-old self got scarred and calloused. Driving home yesterday, a friend’s abandonment hurt me so much that my little rhythmic heart gave up, almost. But I breathed in and out, watching the blur of lights and cars and buildings and yellow lines.
But every night, sometime between listening to my heartbeat and waking up slow the next morning, the depth of my inept humanity meets the passionate mercy of Christ’s blood. But nothing heals. Every wound in me callouses and closes. I feel the stiffness. I know it’s pride. I know that there are truths waiting for permission to sink in. I know there’s more to this. I know that a response is expected of me.
My heart doesn’t know how.”
I’m in a different place than I was 365 days ago. well, I am in the same place. but my heart has changed.
today was a beautiful day. it was filled with beautiful things.
this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbQBEHCEDfQ . It’s called “The Wedding Song” by Angus & Julia Stone.
Also: paper pinwheels. I have made a dozen of them in the past few days.
Also this: http://www.chicago-l.org/ads/1920sPosters/posters/BoulMich.jpg. There are only 1,000 in the whole world. It’s a limited-edition lithograph. And I OWN it. It is my favorite work of art of all time. And I own it.
Also this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRrZD6HZAto&feature=player_embedded. The Velvet Underground has been one of my favorite bands since junior year.
Also: Romans 15:13, which has been tattooed on my wrist for about 3 months. Not really tattooed. Just pretend.
Also: I cooked today. Successfully. I made zucchini bread and black bean burgers from here: http://everybodylikessandwiches.com/. The burgers were for lunch, the bread is for freezing and keeping in my freezer at school to eat sometimes.
Music + food + art. :)
“The little cracks, they escalated You’re moving too fast for me -The Swell Season Mmhmm.
And before you know it, it’s too late
For making circles and telling lies
And I can’t keep up with you
Maybe if you’d slowed down for me
I could see you’re only telling lies, lies, lies
Breaking us down with your lies, lies, lies
When will you learn?”
I will spend this week, like this past weekend, in the hospital waiting room. It is a microcosm of the broken world we live in. Doctors struggle to understand what is happening to my grandmother’s broken body; we struggle on our knees and lean against one another’s shoulders; the staff struggles to be patient as all 10 of us Meyers & Forsythes filter in and out of Nana’s hospital room; Grampio struggles and looks lost as he wanders around the room. I watch hands. Nana’s hands are cold and puffy: we hold them, hide them under covers, take them out to pray, put them back when the doctors come in to check her vitals. Grampio’s hands go in pockets, on shoulders, following the lines of Nana’s bed, running through her hair. They do not know where they should be. I watch light: sun setting through the blinds and shining in lines against the walls, and we turn off the lights in Nana’s room and sit in the dark to pray. I watch the light through the stained glass of the chapel. The hospital smells like chemicals and piss and plastic. We cannot escape the smell. We come home, leave our shoes in a defeated-looking pile by the door, and shower and try to shake off the smell and the memory. It lingers. My phone does not stop ringing, and I gratefully have the same conversations to all the same loving friends who cannot go a moment longer without asking “How are you?” I answer, I hear the smiles in their silence while I describe God’s faithfulness. We pray together, there on the phone, hundreds of miles away, before I close it shut and go back into the ICU. In every room there is a different story. In the marathon tunnel between the waiting room and Nana’s room I have to pass by the same writhing, hopeless, lonely man who lifts his hands to me and opens his eyes wide at me. I stop. I stand and look. I wave, one hand lifted but kept close to my side so the nurses don’t see. He smiles, relaxes, leans against his pillow and closes his eyes. His hands are still. We eat crap out of vending machines, get to know the women who work in the coffeeshop. We make jokes and recall memories, laughing and wondering why we only bond like this during a crisis. When we are home, we stick close: listening to Sally’s country music even though we hate it, making coffee non-stop, washing dishes we’d normally walk past. I sit late on the front porch steps looking at that single star above my head, on the phone trying to describe the beauty and agony of the day, talking about God’s sovereignty and human brokenness at the same time, wishing we could hold hands as I hear the voice break mid-prayer, and recovering: “Just be with her to comfort her, when I can’t.”
What is the measure of strength today? After months of praying about who I want to become, I have had the chance to see who I am. I have seen who I’m growing into as a woman, a sister, a daughter, a granddaughter, a niece, a friend, a mother, a lover, a wife, a child of God, a slave to Christ, a leader—and I am becoming a very strong woman.
“ ‘you are hurting yourself,’ she said.
‘hurting myself? i do not hurt myself, it is they who are hurting me. my own son, my own sister, my own brother. they go away and they do not write any more. perhaps it does not seem to them that we suffer. perhaps they do not care for it.” his voice rose into loud and angry words. ‘go up and ask the white man,’ he said. ‘perhaps there are letters. perhaps they have fallen under the counter, or been hidden amongst the food. look there in the trees, perhaps they have been blown there by the wind.’
she cried out at him, ‘you are hurting me also.’
he came to himself and said to her humbly,
‘that i may not do.’ ”
cry, the beloved country
these lyrics are from the antlers, from one of my favorite songs ever called “kettering.” i’m sure they’re talking about a girl. but they always make me think about the first time i met Christ on my knees, and how every time feels like the first time - because every time, i know him better than i did before. every time i meet with Christ, i think “did i even ONCE understand the Gospel before?” because it gets more worthy and i get less deserving each time i think about it.
the day i got baptized, my dad told me that it was the most important day of my life. more important than any graduation. more important than the birth of my first kid. more important than the day i made a down payment on my first house. more important than my wedding day. of course that’s true. the day i got baptized was the day i declared: “i submit to you of first importance what i also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”
i wish that i had known in that first minute we met the unpayable debt that i’d owe Him, that i already owed Him the day He carried the Cross up that hill, that i have owed and will owe Him for eternity.
“ i suppose there’s no chance,” she asked hopelessly, “that howl could be properly in love this time?”
“i was afraid you’d start thinking that,” michael said. “but you’d be deceiving yourself.”
“how do you know?” said sophie.
“did he forget to spend at least an hour in the bathroom this morning?” michael asked.
“he was in there for two hours,” said calcifer.
“there you are, then,” said michael. “the day howl forgets to do that will be the day i believe he’s really in love, and not before. ”
howl’s moving castle
