Holes

… I’m reading Keep Your Love On! by Danny Silk, and it’s been more revealing in the last day, then I was ever prepared for. The buildup happened just in time for the fall, because suddenly it wasn’t just my wall that had a big hole in it, and it wasn’t just my room that needed cleaning out. 

Unrealistic expectations, pressure, the reality of everything from hope to failures… toxins, it all fell at my feet in one emotional heap. At some point while I was gritting my teeth and hiding my face, trying to stop the tears from coming out and feeling my face get Warmer and redder by the second, I realized that this isn’t all on me. My name isn’t carved into this, so why did I sign for it? 

At some point I learned that I was the fixer. I was the shelter. The safe one. And there is nothing wrong with this, it’s a gift. The only time it works against me is when I realize too late that there are things, too many things, I can’t fix, and even more that I can’t do all on my own. It took an interruption of control within my inner world, an accusation, and a tired hearts old fears, for me to begin to see a piece of what I need, and for me to break just enough to let some air in. 

It’s a big enough hole, a window size exit that will be patched up at some point in the “near” future. But its presence in my mint coloured calm and my 9-5 reality, has shaken things off their sandy foundations.

“Sometimes it has to pour till you realize it’s been raining for a while.”

The truth is I’m no ones savior. I’m no ones definition of perfect. I can’t fix you, and I can’t fix me either. I’m not strong enough to carry all your expectations, I can hardly hold onto my own. What I can do is take the pressure off, stop signing my name where only your signature can go. I can breathe. I can let the interruption into my world be patched up by hands who know what they are doing, and I can let God handle my questioning heart. 

I was made to love you, to hear you well and to listen to your heart. I was made with a voice that can ease your fears and voice my own. But beyond all of that I’m just me, someone going through my own mountains and forests filled with hidden quicksand… I’m someone who still needs to learn how to ask for help. 

I can’t do this alone. I’ll help you carry yours, but I’m going to need you to help me carry mine. And understand that sometimes I may have to let go. I’m not God. Thank God. 

Joy

So today at work I was thinking about some friends of mine and all the fearless things that they’re getting up to and all that I’m not, when a sentence bulldozed into my life: “Don’t be ashamed of your joy.” I sat there for a second in a daze while cleaner fluid ran over my hands and the words played over in my head. It was like Jesus was making extra sure I heard him. The whole thing turned into a bit of whispered worship while I folded the laundry, but damn.
People who know me also know my quirks. They know I can go beat red at the drop of a hat and that I’ll cover my face by any means necessary, whether I’m embarrassed, happy, or there happens to be something in my eye that may of may not have anything to do with Pixar related emotions. They also know that I’ve got joy (where? 😉 ). But in that moment of being crouched on the floor despite my leg muscles feeling like they’d been put through a shredder, I realised that I’ve been embarrassed about my joy. Shame seems like a pretty strong word, but it’s truer than I’d like it be, because only the few who really know me and who I feel comfortable around, get to see my weird. Get to see my unabashed happy. And the reason for that is simple embarrassment. A fear of being seen as nothing but silly has stopped me from being genuine.
All that being said, I’m not going to suddenly start dancing every time I feel the urge to, or smile teethy smiles at every stranger I see, but I am going to work on it and take a few steps in that oh so terrifying, yet completely appealing direction. Because joy is nothing to be ashamed of.

The creative itch

My hands are starting to itch. It’s gathering and building in the palms till finally I have to make something, anything, to feel a release. It’s a strange piece of who I think I must be. Created to create, made to build and join this and that till there’s something from all these bits of nothing. For me it’s fabric, colours that no one else thinks should go together, I join and stitch into large messes till suddenly, maybe, it all makes sense. It keeps you warm, it covers your cuddles. Other times it’s a pen or pencil on daunting white pages, far too big for me till fill. The page in all it’s crispness tests me, challenges my will and determination to risk what can not be erased. Sometimes its bake-able clay that covers my hands in white and goes a weird brown colour when you bake it too long. It tries to make life harder for me, giving up the shape I gave it behind the closed oven door. Sometimes the itch is a picture my camera needs help taking, needs my eye to see before the shutter can be pressed.

Creating is something that doesn’t always come naturally to me. Sometimes its amazing, everything just falls out and comes together like it was always supposed to be, and other times it looks like some random kid threw up over everything. But I love art. I love the feeling of starting out, knowing or not having a clue what you’re going to find in the end. I love having paint all over my hands and pencil smudged on my fingers. I love threading the needle and being able to sew for hours at a time.

Did God feel this way when he stitched the veins into leaves and drew the outline of beaches on the shore? Did he laugh at the platypus the way I do at the doodles I draw? Did he ever try his hand more than once at the stars in the sky as I have with the freckles on my characters faces?

What ever God felt when he put the light in the sky and painted the first and last sunrise, I like to think that it’s pieces of that feeling and that love for creating, that has been sprinkled into my life. That’s it’s God’s love for creation that puts the itch in my hands till something, anything, is made. I like to think that bits and pieces of what caused the stars to be made is in me, in how I look at the pebbles on the beach till suddenly I see castles.

God never wanted to be alone in creating this world, he loves the things we make. He loves how our hands can bless each other, bring communities together and help strangers feel like they aren’t alone. We are called to co-create with the creator of every colour and shade, every sound and note.

We are meant for more than capturing and repeating, so if you want to try to make something new, even if it’s only new to you, do it! Paint that painting of purple socks, sew that life-size shark from Jaws, plant gardens in the shape of the Death star and marvel at the colours that come through the leaves. Creation is everywhere, so go make something from nothing.

Can’t I just have it already???

For awhile now I’ve been asking God for patience. I need it. Patience for people, for work situations, for myself, for life in general. But I forgot how God likes to dish out this gift and life necessity. A friend had to remind me that he doesn’t just hand Patience out like flyers on the sidewalk. Nope. What God does is give you opportunities to “grow” your patience, to work that muscle out till it’s good and strong and nice and firm.

So here I am praying nightly or daily for a free hand out of what I need, and God instead goes and gives me a situation, an opportunity, to CHOOSE to be patient. To TRY and be patient. Damn it. Can’t I just be bitten by some magic spider that drains out all the icky and replaces it with smiles and unicorns? Can’t I just be okay now without having to work for it? The short answer is no. The longer answer is hell no. Nope I can’t. Because anything worth having and worth doing doesn’t come on silver platters or in gloved hands, it comes about when you are willing to get dirty and clean yourself up afterwards. It happens in the moments when someone won’t shut up and you are trapped in a room with them; cleaning other people’s bodily hairs out of a tub or off of the floor… It happens when you still live at home and you’re asked to do something right in the moment that all you ever wanted was to never wake up again.

If you ask for something good, God is going to want to give it you. He’s a good Daddy in that way, wants to bless and maybe even spoil his kids, unfortunately for me and my oh so comfortable life, spoiling doesn’t mean an endless supply of mint M&M’s, it means a word from a friend that tells me I’m not going to sink when all I want to do is stop swimming. It’s opportunities to choose him that God gives. Opportunities to take the highroad, the way out and home, the path over the snide comment and the childlike fit, the detour to the onslaught of mental swearing.

I need patience, and boy has he been giving me opportunities to gain it! So now that I have been reminded that no, life isn’t out to get me, and yes, God in fact does want to help me out, I get to decide how I’m going to respond. To co-workers, to parents, to men, to myself… to life in general. I get to decide when I’m trapped in a hotel room with someone who won’t stop talking, to breathe and respond with kindness instead of full and determined silence. I get to flex my patience muscle and watch it grow, however slowly and painful that growth might be at times.

Numbed out

I had my wisdom teeth taken out a few months ago. It went well enough, most of them popped out within seconds, but one took a few more shots of numbing bliss, and a few more terrifying tugs and scraping sounds before it finally let go. I didn’t have anything to calm me down or knock me out, so I laid there in the chair shaking like a leaf, going cold and colder while the doctor pulled and pushed without warning. But despite all the other details of that experience, the thing that got me the most was how numb my lips and mouth felt. It was strange, the sensation of something being so big that it had to be filling the room, but also so numb that the feeling in my hands was the only proof I had that my lips existed.

The whole lower half of my face was one big, room filling, numbness. And then while I sat there trying desperately not to chomp off a junk of my tongue or cheeks, I had a semi depressing thought; I can’t feel it, but it’s so big that it’s the only thing I know is there… It might be an unfortunate gift of mine to be able to take a dental surgery and apply it to my heart and spiritual life, but I did it pretty easily.

A numbness so big that it’s the only thing I knew was really there. I’d much rather just feel the kiss then the absence of those lips. I’d rather play every card, get the teeth pulled, then wait and wonder “what if”. But sometimes we don’t get the answers we wanted, or any answer at all. Sometimes what we are given is something that hurts, or, if you’re lucky, something you didn’t know you needed. My life isn’t playing out like any movie I’ve seen, I don’t know what’s around the corner, but I do know from experience that choosing to focus on that room filling numbness, trying so hard to never take a bite out of your tongue or cheek, is exhausting.

God I need your help. I need help in knowing what exactly to hold onto and what to let go of. I need help to know that when the medicine wears off it won’t just be pain that I feel, but that hope will follow.

One of the holes still hasn’t closed in the back right of my mouth. Things take time. It takes awhile to be okay, whether it’s a physical hole or not. But the numbness does okay, eventually it stops filling the room and you can feel okay again.

In search of a “Like”

I’ve been posting a bit more on my Facebook lately, got an Instagram account and am slowly becoming more “social”. The thing about this though is that it feels weird and nice and, false…

It’s all pleasantly kept behind a screen, trapped at arm’s length so that I don’t have to deal much with other people’s “issues”, when I have my own stuff going on. I scroll through people’s “lives” when I’m bored and have nothing to do, hoping that maybe I’ll be a bit more popular than I was the day before, maybe there will be a few more likes than electronic silences.

Seeing the little red flags gives me the smallest of boosts, and then they’re gone and damn, I need to find something better to say about myself, but at the same time I don’t really want to.

I hate quilt trips, passive aggressive comments and pity parties. Most of the time I can come up with some kind of comment or response, but posting that kind of stuff just seems petty and unnecessary. Facebook isn’t a watering hole for real and true friendships and relationships, it’s a conversation that only goes one way depending on who’s talking and thus no way to really learn anything new. It’s an opportunity to keep tabs on the almosts and the maybes. A way of rating your life’s success against the ups and downs that everyone else decides to share.

Don’t get me wrong, the longest I can go without checking it and touching it is a week. I don’t expect people to miss me or to notice I haven’t been online, they are too busy checking their scores on the scoreboard. And most of what I post is a rhetorical question, not an invitation for more than a like button hit. But of course it has its good things too. All the friends I have across the world can send me messages and hear back from me within a week if not that same day. If they need prayer they know they can reach me without it costing them a thing. No stamps and no overseas charges. It’s great!

But at the end of the day when I’ve checked for the hundredth time to see who is online and who, surprise surprise, still hasn’t written me back; when I check to see what little piece of me has or hasn’t been liked today, I feel more lonely than met in the privacy of my room.

I don’t care about the majority of what I see online, and yet still I hope that someone will look at me differently. That maybe this won’t be the definition of insanity. Maybe I’ll be liked and not just “liked”.

food for thought

I just inhaled four pieces of cold pizza, and I would have eaten more if that hadn’t been all that was left. The first two pieces were gone in less than a minute and a half. Devoured. I had been looking forward to it all day as I tried to stay awake at work and chew down my apple and banana.

when you are “starving” you eat till you aren’t anymore. you don’t really taste or stop to enjoy, you go on till the hungry isn’t there anymore. Till what was empty is full and you are satisfied.

But if we wait till we are starving we wont be able to enjoy the taste, the flavour. We want immediate results and have no care for possible tummy aches or the disappointment of suddenly not having enough to enjoy because it’s all gone to meeting a need you allowed to build up into starvation. Selfish and grabbing as what’s there in the fridge. You want what you know will be good but can’t even make yourself pause to enjoy it.

“How quickly the world owes you something.” Louis C.K. I wanted more pizza. After a long day at work I deserved that much. I deserved not to have to hide it from my sister (keep it secret, keep it safe). But after all that build up of “empty” moments just lead me to a few jealous seconds of greedy consumption. Then it was gone and I was left not remembering the taste of what I had just eaten.

How often do I do that with other things in my life? How often do I take as much as I can get my hands on, and devour it in mere seconds all because I wasn’t taking care of myself before hand? Because I wasn’t listening to my stomach? Or worse, my spirit.

It had been months since I had last read a good book. Weeks since I had drawn anything or made something with my hands. And like a craving it built into an ache that had to be fed. Thankfully I got lucky. Instead of turning to quick and easy smut that could be read in half a day, I sat and lived in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. I heard the music, I experienced the island and the waiting for a love to come back. Instead of scribbling and wasting sheets of paper, I drew one picture and filled it with as much detail and empty space as I wanted, over time. I enjoyed myself and my spirit was full again.

I’m tired of waiting till I’m almost on empty, before I stop and look around at my life and breath. I’m tired of counting down the days and the hours and the minutes and resorting to looking forward to cold pizza. As if it can save me from myself. From a day poorly or necessarily spent.

Instead I want to be well fed. I want to taste the tastes and feel the feels. I don’t want to wait till it’s convenient or till the need overwhelms every other sense of urgency.

I want to slow down and chew.

Looking for the jellies

Sometimes I get too caught up on where I want to be and on the less than perfect things about where I am at. I’ll stare at the ground beneath me as I walk towards what I want, thinking about the future every step of the way, searching for something that could trip me up. I’ve looked for the jellyfish. Those big globby masses beached on the sand.

I tried so hard one day while walking along a beach in Scotland last year, to not step on them. I wasn’t sure if they were dead or not and didn’t want to add to their discomfort or cause their demise. At first they were cool and weird. I had never seen a jellyfish up close and in person before. I marveled at all the details trapped inside the translucent bag of skin. But after a while they stopped being awe-inspiring and started to look like abandoned loogies. Gooey gobs of gunk. Shiny messes that I felt bad for and tried to dodge. But they were everywhere, and soon enough it happened. I had looked away for just a moment when I heard and felt the squish. I had ripped one in half. Staring at the mess beneath my feet I felt horrible, shrieking in disgust and concern. Later I would end up leaving a shoe print in another, possibly dead but still unsuspecting, jellyfish. Didn’t matter how hard I tried to avoid them or how much I focused on stepping around them, I still couldn’t get off that beach without leaving behind some trace of my clumsy presence.

A few months later and I’m sitting on a couch being prayed for and I’m given the word of “not looking for the jellyfish, but to instead look for the good”. The bits of promised gold, not what I could end up stepping in. I laughed.

One of the things that I took away from the whole thing, was that no matter where I am, what I am walking through, or trying to walk around, I shouldn’t be focusing on the things that could maybe or definitely, make my trip and journey worse. I shouldn’t focus on all that once was good and turned out icky. On the things that stick to me and sting a bit but inevitably rip apart beneath my feet. I should be looking for the good.

There was beautiful sea glass, sea china, and sea shells on that beach. Wonderful bits of colour and specks of reflected light. Things to marvel at and not be disappointed by, and things to treasure even if only for a moment.

There is more to where I am at and to what I am doing then these “jellyfish” with their dead stingers and gooey bodies. There’s more than just things to try to avoid, there is also gold to be found. I encourage you to look at where you are at as if there is something better for you. Something in the midst of things to make the day worth living and being in. If you can’t find anything at all then maybe it’s time to move on? Or maybe God wants you to find the things unseen, to look for treasure in the hidden parts of yourself. We all have jellyfish to walk around and step on, but we also all have shells and bits of smoothed and coloured glass, to claim.

Something weird/No one to Impress

As a young woman who somehow managed to survive her teen years, and was always developing a crush for someone real or fictional, it’s interesting to now be able to say; “there isn’t anyone to impress.”

I’m in a place in my life right now where there just simply isn’t anyone present and accounted for, to try to impress. I get up in the late morning and put on whatever is clean and comfortable. And the days where I actually get to go into work, I wear the exact same thing I did my last shift, with my hair pulled back into a ponytail or a very “couldn’t care less” sloppy bun.

It’s not that I don’t care how I look or go around in a brown paper bag, there’s just no longer this overpowering need to be “attractive”. To catch anyone’s attention.

This feeling comes and goes because to be honest, I live in a province and in a world, where your outsides are far more important than your insides. The shoes you wear aren’t meant to take you places, they are meant to show us how you’re doing.

Do you care about shoeless children in other countries? Do you worry about the environment? Are you trying to make your butt look smaller? Are you fit? Are you pretending to sell something few can afford? Or are you just poor?

Nope. I just have sensitive feet and can’t go walking around barefoot… that and I’m “poor”.

Is it sad that the fact that there are no men around me that I am interested in, or will become interested in, is finally making me feel like showboating just really doesn’t have to be my thing? Maybe. But it seems to be true at the moment.

Before I go into town if I look like I was hit with the ugly stick, I’ll stop and think to myself; “this needs to be fixed.” So what do I do?I run a comb through my hair, put a bra on and maybe a shirt that I didn’t sleep in the night before, and I go to town. I don’t completely change my clothes or scrub the garden dirt off my knees, and I don’t put makeup on. I will admit I have the luxury of living in a farming community, no one is offended by a bit of dirt or a sunburned nose. No one’s got time for that.

But even though I still HAVE to shower every other day, and I still HAVE to make sure my jeans aren’t sagging, instead of stopping myself with the thought; “You could run into “him” today.” or “He might be able to smell you coming…” I shrug my shoulders and tell myself that there is no one to impress.

Am I comfortable? Am I reasonably presentable? As in, not flashing anything the good Lord gave me or sporting something that would traumatize a small child? Am I thinking about the day’s purpose, or about that guy with nice eyes and cute smile?

I’m not saying you have to look like a truck to feel like and express the fact that there isn’t anybody to impress or anyone for you to please at the expense of your own comfort. But it is kind of liberating. My own sort of rebellion against the system that shoots out more photoshopped magazines then it does ways to actually make life better.

Just as long as it doesn’t become a new kind of invisibility, or a way of keeping every man who may ever look at me, twenty yards away, then I think it’s okay. I simply have no interest or patience for trying to attract something I don’t want. I am perfectly fine with this small town not being able to give me what I want. And I don’t mean to say none of them are good enough or that no one here is worth trying to Barbie for, I’m just not interested. And that’s weird.

I’m not getting twitterpated over a complete stranger or Facebook stalking any old acquaintances. My mind is somewhere far away and my heart is being settled into God’s hands. There’s no interest for a “in the meantime” fling. No desire for a “to stop the boredom” pursuit. I don’t care if I still have pen markings on my skin from last nights imaginary liposuction, or if my shirt still has a bit of flour on it from the homemade brownies. I choose to wear shoes that are almost 8 years old, and the right one will be more concerned for the wide feet inside them, then the holes and duct tape holding it all together. And right now there is only one person to impress, and all He seems to be calling me to is rest.

No more crushes that go no where. No more men who become strangers. No more heart burns and headaches. No more looking in the mirror and thinking; “I need to try harder and be better if he’s ever going to look at this.” I have been given the gift of a season, of only having to try for myself and for God. And God could care less about my shoes, as long as they don’t mess up my feet for the walk He has in store, then they’re more than good enough to get me there.

Practising Honesty

We were standing in David’s Tea looking for a present for a friend. Something that tasted good and was just hipster enough to help us pass these new social norms. We were looking for something expensive without knowing it.

The lady who helped us was friendly and talkative, telling us all about the millions of flavours, all with names like: “Adventure is waiting” and “coconut bliss”. As we all sipped the carbonated tea that she was kind enough to sell us, we exclaimed how good it was, how “unique”. We left with a canister of tea for my friend, the smallest sized bag they had of another kind of tea, for ourselves, and the carbonated, slightly urine coloured, drink.

We didn’t make it a block till the truth came out, till the thoughts I knew had been swimming around in my Mom’s head spilled out onto us. “That was the most expensive thing of tea I’ve ever seen… the smallest bag was 20$…” My sister sipped at the drink and made a face as she passed it on to me. “I’m never getting that drink again, tastes so weird.” I walked along in what I can only remember as silence. I’m sure I said something, made some kind of noise or remark that could stand waveringly beside theirs. But this is what I think now; why didn’t we just say at the first sip and gulp, that we weren’t all that impressed? That it wasn’t our “cup of tea”?

Its the salesperson’s job to sell you things. To say this tastes good but this is even better! They want you to buy those shoes or that dress, to eat there sub and to leave a tip. Regardless of what they really and truly think, they’re job is to sell you something.

Now sometimes you get the person who tells you those pants don’t do your ass justice or that the shirt makes you look frumpy. Now and then you’ll get the eye roll as you all order the same thing, suddenly making you feel like you aren’t adventurous enough when really, you’ve all had a long day and just want to pay for something you know you’ll enjoy eating.

Why can’t I find a nice way of being honest? Even in the everyday little things? Like the woman waiting outside of my changing room demanding to see how the dress she picked out looks on me. You know what, no. No to the dress because I know just by looking at it on the hanger that it’s not the right cut for my figure. No to coming out of the changing room in something that I don’t feel comfortable in. No to letting you assume I’m any other size than the one I know that I am. Just nope.

There are times when we agree with people, whether they be the sales clerk or your mother, just to make things easier and to be “nice”. We buy the thing because they worked so hard to meet our needs, we say we loved it when really we hope she doesn’t try making it again. The risk we take when it’s someone we know and see just often enough for them to be part of our lives, is that at some point they find out what we really think.

They see themselves in the mirror and find that bit of spinach stuck in their teeth. They make that casserole and hear the groans in the background and are instantly disheartened. Why not tell the clerk that today you just want to be left alone, you appreciate their service and will find them if you have any needs or questions, but right now please leave me be?

Why not…. why not just say something. Be kind, choose words that don’t sound like you are trying to pick a fight. Be aware of your tone. Say something and maybe you won’t leave the store with an overpriced and urine coloured drink. Maybe you won’t ever have to eat that caserole again.

Say something.