A Moment to Feel Blessed

Yes, that photo to the left is the view I get to see from my window in my new apartment every morning.  It may mean nothing to most New Yorkers, as the panorama of the skyline is nothing special to us.  But for me, it means the beginning of redemption.

For the last five months back home, I've been extremely lost, and as an indirect result of that, bitter.  I felt as though I couldn't make a plan to save my life.  I had been dumped in a hole, and just couldn't climb out.

This is how I wanted life to go:

Girl finds dream job (without having to try so hard), move to said town dream job resides in, and everyone loves girl and girl's work.  Mentor at dream job recognizes girl's wonderful skills / wit (and latent charm).  Mentor encourages and hones them, which then inspires girl to go beyond the scope of the position to affect the community.  All the while, girl lives in  dream apartment that is not only cozy, but affordable and within walking distance from work.  Girl makes new friends that are awesome and somehow coincidentally interested in all the things she's interested in.  Friends recognize girl's skills / wit (and latent charm), and they encourage each other in loving words to become better people.  And that skilled, witty, charming girl in my imagination is happy, fulfilled, and feels blessed.

This.....is how things actually happened:

Girl with skills / wit (and latent charm) realizes how unskilled, un-witty, and un-charming she is at challenging job that has nothing to do with what she studied in school, and nowhere close to what she dreamed of doing.  In fact, job brings out an aggressive side of girl that she is afraid of, and stretches her (often beyond her means) as she struggles to somehow teach herself how to perform well in the position, and secretly goes home at night suspecting that she is very cold and mean at work.  Girl lives out of suitcase for five months, sleeps on mother's sofa, then is asked to leave because mother wants to sell house, finds refuge in kindness of her friend, and sleeps on friend's floor for a couple of months.  One night, girl either has swallowed a dust ball or possibly a bug while sleeping on floor and wakes up choking, then wonders how life got so sad and where God is.  Girl continually loses most expensive material goods, already feels poor, and now feels as though she can not own any nice things for herself.  Girl realizes she can't escape her past, people still think she's reckless, irresponsible, flaky, can't be trusted, and starts to feel as though she really hasn't changed much.  Girl feels like a loser, gives up on ever thinking God is going to answer her, and decides that having dreams may be a waste of time.


Sad isn't it?  But not really...as promised in the title, this is a moment to feel blessed.

Let's take a deeper look:

Scenario one is a quick way to feel as though you've come out on top in the rat race, but as William Sloane Coffin keenly observed, "the trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat".  On the surface, that dream scenario seems awesome, and it encompasses all the deepest needs humans have.  We want to be loved and recognized.  We want to feel encouraged, and to know our lives have meaning, that people see us and listen to us.  To feel as though we have an impact on this world beyond an inconsequential life.  We want to feel fulfilled through the works of our hands, stable, sustained and comfortable.  Deep down inside, I know these are things God wants for us too.  But this path only provides the illusion of those deepest needs fulfilled.  It is the quickest way to becoming a white-washed tomb; clean and perfect on the outside, dead on the inside.  It is the path that shows the world we've got all these things, but it's only a magic show, a sleight of hand intended to make others feel envious of what we have.  It's an accumulation of worldly success and external accolades that doesn't force someone to journey within.  It's impressive, but it's an illusion.  And sometimes impressive illusions just aren't enough.  I want something amazing.

This is what scenario two offers; the opportunity for amazement.  It's sad, and hard.  It involves struggle, unhappiness, obstacles, discouragement, and a lot of ugliness.  It can bring out the worst in someone through incredibly uncomfortable situations, but it is an accurate portrayal of what life is like for most people. And here are some amazing things I'm already seeing in the midst of it all.  As unskilled as I am at my job, people still keep me around.  Every day I recognize that its not my skill that keeps me going, but the invisible force of grace.  As mean and cold as I can be, I can see other people's graciousness  come through.  I express my unhappiness and instead of being asked to leave or find another job, they work with me to make things better.  In my bitterness, my friend's still want to be my friends.  They put up with my complaining, crying, yelling and often times hopeless rhetoric.  I may not be impressive, but they don't care, they still love me.  And we may not have the same interests, or always share loving words, but we challenge each other to become better people, inside and out.  And despite all the times I've failed my family and the times they've failed me, we're still a family, no one has been disowned yet.  Thank God the only things I've lost are material goods, and yes, it's sad, but at the end of the day it's stuff, and it can be replaced.  I've realized that the good things I want are things of permanence, lasting things.  And then there's sleeping on the floor.  Sometimes sleeping on the floor is....well.....no, it's just sleeping on the floor.  But God knows that.  So he takes you from the ground and brings you to the 11th floor of a rent stabilized dream right across the street from Central Park, five stops away from work, where every morning you get to see that view.  And you take a deep breathe in, despite the life you live that is nothing like how you'd imagined it to be, and you come to the realization that you are on the path towards something amazing.  You realize that it's the perfections of life that are the true distractions and not the obstacles.  You realize that your messy existence is in no way an indication of your short-comings, but a divine set-up for your redemption.  You decide that being a white-washed tomb is not enough, so you very reluctantly take the path of the fool since it is the only alternative, and you hang on.  You wait, you struggle, and hope there's a pay off, because the word of the Lord says that God chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and the weak things of the world to shame the strong, and you choose to believe that.

Lost in our Loss

I realize it's been a while since I've written a post.  In all honesty, I found it difficult to write or say anything in the last month or two.  I'm not entirely sure if it was just a case of writer's block, or the sense that nothing seemed to inspire me.  There was a time in my life when writing was the only way for me to process through all the tangles of my thoughts.  It was the only way I could lay my grievances, prayers, joys, and musings before God.  It gave me clarity in the fog of my mind and an outlet to speak when at times I was too shy, too afraid, and too insecure to use my actual voice.  But there comes a point when words no longer suffice, and there is nothing you can write that could ever convey the depth of emotions you may feel.  There will be a time when even the eloquence of words will let you down.  And there will be a time when you are just utterly empty and entirely lost.  Strangely enough, staying quiet was the only thing that gave me peace from the storms that raged around me.   I had to face God without words, and perhaps He wanted it that way.  Sometimes words clutter our ability to hear His still small voice.  Sometimes, its not just words, but things and idols we have built in place of our worship.    

In the last couple of months, it wasn't only words I had lost.  I seemed to have lost many many things, including my way in life.  It was definitely a season of idol-stripping.  Everything I had put my hope in and worth in, God slowly removed. I could say it all began when, quite literally, my most expensive possessions were swept away by water.  I had never owned much in life, and my electronics were the most valuable things I had.  When I saw my bag sink to the bottom of the river with every electronic device I owned, my first reaction was to do whatever it took to save them.  Sad.  My second reaction was to be upset at the possibility that I could have lost all my work, all my drawings, designs, papers, and stories I had worked on over the years.  It was the only legacy I felt I had to leave behind, the only thing of value my life had produced over the years.  It was my work.  Though I was lucky enough to have been spared the latter, it forced me to think about where I was placing my identity.  It scared me to know that who I was could've been so easily lost. 

As I journeyed back home from England, I knew things wouldn't be easy.   There was no permanent place for me to stay, and with the lack of a job and money, my only option was to sofa surf.  Three months later I am still surfing, still living out of my suitcase.  I haven't been able to unpack or settle into a routine as of yet, though  I was lucky enough to return to the same company I used to work for as a temporary means of survival and source of income.  This very much reminded me of the path Peter's journey took after the excitement and disappointment of following Jesus to the cross.  He returned to the only familiar thing he knew to do; fish.  Right now, I am fishing.  There is still a very vague sense of what the next step in life is, and it's difficult to not completely lose myself in all the loss I feel like I've encountered.  It's never easy when God takes your hand and leads you into the desert to be stripped.  My only solace is to believe there must be a greater purpose.  My greatest fear is that there may not be.

Yesterday at church, we had a Trappist Monk as a guest speaker, and coincidentally the topic was on Psalm 22 and how to deal with suffering.  It seems timely in the wake of everything that has happened in the last week with the storm.  My heart and prayers go out to the families who have lost much and endured such great suffering.  I can't fully explain why life takes us down these roads, or why in our seasons of loss we feel the most lost, or why God will lead us multiple times back into the desert to be stripped.  What I can say is that each time, it gets easier, and our spirits grow quieter.  There is less grumbling and less complaining, and we remember to hold all things with loose hands.  Our tempest-tost souls learn to be anchored in the Lord.  We begin to see how worthless our idols are, and how easily our material possessions can be washed away.  If we put our hope in those things and our value in what we have, then surely we will be swept away along with them.  We are not defined by where we live or where we work.  We are not defined by what we have.    We are, and always will be, children of God.  I have in me the ability to praise and worship the creator of the universe, and even in my loss of words, I can speak of the good news of salvation.  It seemed timely to write something now, in the aftermath of so much loss for so many people.  I understand what its like to not have a home, to lose things you've invested so much time and money into.  It's painful, and it's hard to want to turn to God.  But I can testify with assurance that those who trust in Lord will not be disappointed.  Wait for Him as watchmen wait for the morning, and He will come.  The stripping is never just for the sake of taking away possessions, or even discipline.  He takes in order to give us something much better.  He blinds us in certain seasons so we learn to not simply trust in what our eyes see.  In the lack of my own words to express the deepness of these lessons, I remember those of William Blake's in his poem the Auguries of Innocence:

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro’ the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

 Our worldly possessions are meant to be lost, broken, and swept away.  Even this world is said to be quickly perishing.  It is in the darkness of our nights that we begin to see God's light.  He knows all too well what it means to suffer, what it means to lose.  But He is a God of resurrection and not death, and will rebuild what has been struck down.  The Trappist Monk left the congregation with these words: "Do not waste your suffering".  There are definitely times when I am afraid that the Lord will not show up, and that all the sufferings I've tasted will be for nothing.  It's hard to re-shape my perceptions to resemble heavenly thinking.  I am still disciplining myself to let hope rise in the place of fear.  What I have learned is that God takes our words seriously, and when we say that we will follow Him, he will sometimes lead us to dry and treacherous places.  He will strip us of our idols, of all our possessions.  But we will understand, that even in our nakedness, we have the greatest thing of all.  We have the good news of salvation, and faith to believe that He is good, all the time.

Like Mother Like Daughter

I just have to say, my mom is an amazing person.  I planned on posting a different entry, but this seemed more important to share.  The last few weeks, I've had the opportunity to catch up with my mom, and sleeping in her living room sort of forced me to understand her just a little bit better.  I guess that's the thing with sleeping in anyone's living room, you have to grow accustomed to your host's habits and schedule in a more intuitive manner.  We haven't always had a smooth relationship, and at times, our interactions were just downright awful.  I guess the friction in our relationship made me gloss over the different layers to my mom's personality I just never bothered to see before.  In my younger years, she always seemed like a tyrant, but now I understand that she's a bit like me, or maybe I'm a bit like her.

I guess the first time I ever really saw some soft spots in her seemingly tough armor was the night our ceiling caved in.  This happened just a couple of days after I got back from England.  The tenants upstairs managed to flood their bathroom and the ensuing deluge had nowhere to go but down, straight down into our apartment.  There's never really a good time for this to happen, but in this instance, it happened in the middle of the night.  I woke my mom up, and even though I was a bit panicked, I didn't want to alarm her.  We both just quietly cleaned up the mess and threw away the remnants of what was once our ceiling.  It was the first time I noticed that she was worried and sad, not just angry.  I wanted to hug her, but thought it might embarrass her more.  In reality, I probably didn't want to be the one to feel embarrassed.  Up until this point, I felt as though the only emotions I ever saw her express were anger, and crazy anger.  Sadness was a new one, but it made me realize how human she was.  I always understood that there were things she went through in life that weren't great, but her pain seemed to turn into bitterness, and bitterness turned to anger.  In her older age (though I still think she's young), the anger subsided, and perhaps hopelessness filled its void.  I find myself angry, bitter and hopeless quite often and I understood all to well how she felt.  I am too much like her.

Tonight, she peeled another layer.  She was a writer, you know.  She never mentioned this before to me.  I knew she had gone to college for Journalism, but every time she talked about it, it was with a sense of nostalgia and regret.  I never asked her what happened, and I rue not having this conversation sooner.  She told me about a short story she published in High School.  I asked her what she wrote about.  "Gangsters and girls" was her answer.  No one can argue with how awesome that is.  My mom wrote about gangsters and girls.  This is unbelievable.  Gangsters and girls won her first place in a writing competition and publication, which is how she decided to go into journalism.  So what happened?  I needed to know.  For as long as I knew my mom, she always pressed into me and my sister the need to make money over being creative.  We weren't allowed to be artists, and I had to watch my sister shelve her wonderful artistic gifts in the pursuit of stability.  I was less permeated by the money making brainwashing but more so because I needed to rebel.  It was crazy for me to see my mother as a lover of writing and philosophy.  She told me about how she loved thinking and reading, and all she wanted to be was a journalist.  It broke my heart to know that the need for money suffocated her passions.

Before she could finish her degree, my grandmother eloped with another man and left the family high and dry.  My mom being the next in line found the responsibility of feeding a family firm on her shoulders.  She had to work, there was no question.  Livelihood before dreams, food before fancies.  These were the things that buried her passions.  I hate to say that passions die, because I don't believe they do, they just get buried in crap until we forget they ever existed.  She says those days are over, that she'll never have the wandering thoughts she once did that lead to such outbursts of creativity.  She tells me that you never make money doing the things you love.  Journalism wasn't going to give you three meals a day.  I ask her if she'll ever write again, she says not now.  She is still worried, except this time it's about me.  She tells me that she wants me to have things settled in my life first, that I'm able to have a career, get married, and find some stability.  I am too much like her.

These days, I find myself wrapped up in the same worries.  I don't know when the sense of overbearing responsibility creeped into my heart, but it's there.  I worry about money, about where my food will come from, about where I'll live, where I'll work, and everyday seems to be filled with the anxieties of survival.  I complain that I don't have much, and these days it seems to be justified.  I worry about finding a job, because working gives me purpose and buys me a warm meal and small apartment.  I'm willing to bury my dreams for that.  I have buried my dreams for that.  I've waited years for time to just create and write, and when time came, money was absent, so time went to making money.  I am on the verge of sabotaging an opportunity to live out my dream.  I believe that nothing in life is an accident, and this conversation with my mom, this is divine timing.  It broke my heart to know how much my mom sacrificed for her family; for me.  I am ungrateful to say the least, and at the same time, perpetuating the same fate upon myself.  I wonder if it's selfish to want to escape the wheel my mom has been running her entire life.  I've condemned myself to hard work because I feel it is too selfish; too selfish to take what she's given up and use it for myself.  She tells me this is what she wants.  I am humbled.  I am too much like her, she see's this, and she knows that we can spend our days together on the same wheel, or she can sacrifice just a bit longer, just a bit more for me.  I am not worthy, I am too much like her.

She leaves me with some advice before she puts her layer back on that has left her bare and perhaps a bit ashamed.  She tells me that the secret to good writing is to be able to touch others hearts.  She is sensitive, thoughtful, encouraging.  She knows the secrets of life all too well, and will one day find herself with a pen in hand I'm sure.  For now, she says she doesn't have the time.  We share the same philosophy about writing, though I always wonder if this over-sexed, over stimulated generation wants to read about love and all things good.  I wonder if they still want to read about God?  She reminds me to just write things that can speak to people's hearts, and to believe that every heart still needs love, and still needs God.  I want to tell her that I love her, that I am too much like her, and I have never been more proud to be.  

Twice

Drip twice black liquid in the bowl;
submit the body
to the soul.

Drop twice into the metal plate;
a penny for penance
a penny for grace.

Knock twice upon the wooden door;
once for luck
and then once more.

Ask twice, the martyr and the sage
how to live
and die with age

What good is evil in man's mind
when evil has been reassigned.
What use is time when at a glance
we never get a second chance

But he who looks not once but twice
will find himself among the wise
to look beyond the world's surmise
and find a home outside the hive.

[last stanza edit as per Marc]

Ithaka

Birthday presents are fun, but there's nothing better than a thoughtful one.  I received a book today with a note that read, "see page 29 for Ithaka", and it took me a moment to remember the conversation I had with this friend, one of many, where I've talked about how much I long for a  permanent home, a place of rest for a weary well-traveled soul.  I had called it my "Ithaca".  Just last night, I thought about how much I never want to board a plane again, never want to pack another suitcase, never want to rent a U-Haul truck to shuffle from one place to another.  I thought about how much I just wanted to reach "Ithaca", for the journey to be over, at least for a season.  But it's a funny thing, how the timing of good friends always seems impeccable.  As I read the poem on page 29, I was reminded of the fact that life is so much more than just an Ithaca.  It's a journey that may never bring you one, and a well-rested soul is one that has learned that a home isn't what makes you happy, it's happiness that makes you a home, wherever life may take you.  So I thank that friend for her thoughtfulness and her impeccable timing.  It is exactly what this soul needed to hear.  

Ithaka
C.P. Cavafy

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

I should write something...

I ought to write something on the last day I'll ever be in my 20's.  Honestly?  There was a part of me that was expecting some switch to go on in my mind that would suddenly make me feel like an adult marking that shift away from those tempestuous years which brought me to over 3 continents, dozens of cities, five career changes and countless mood swings.  I guess there was a malfunction in that switch because I kind of feel the same.  Man, there were some rough moments there...but worth it.  It was certainly a decade where my driving passion for adventure and love of art really had a chance to thrive.  It's brought me a multitude of experiences, plenty of pleasures, and of course, some heartaches.  But I never lost the chance to learn some hard life lessons that made me the person I am today.  It was a decade of cultivating my creativity, of sharpening my mind, and strengthening my relationship with God.  It was a season of sowing, a harsh winter to follow, and the beginnings of a promised spring.  I'm pretty excited I have to say.  This isn't going to be so bad...waving goodbye to my good ol' twenties.  No waxing poetical here about exiting my "chrysalis" phase emerging as a smarter, older, butterfly that's nobody's fool.  I'm still a fool, and here are some things this fool is thankful for that have helped me survive thus far:

Toffee Nut latte's at Starbucks
Sara Bareille's songs
Chocolate and/or ice-cream and/or both
Bad Will Ferrell movies
Good jazz music
An occasional glass of wine
Smooth airplane landings
French pastries
Motrin
Two-ply toilet paper that doesn't flake
Floss
Christmas time in New York
My grandmother's cooking
Anything with cheese on top
Good friends
A sister
The Indianna Jones trilogy (no, the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull does not count)
A cozy sweater
Chuck Swindoll sermons
Listerine that no longer tastes like Listerine
A place to sleep at night

I realize that half of these things involve edible goods...what I can I say, I'm a fatty.  Ok, well that's it, yay to the future! See you there.

Saturday Night Confessions

There is something I am very quickly learning about myself, when I am upset, I can be quite inconsolable.  I'm always amazed at how much God puts up with my temper tantrums sometimes.  Being in Cambridge, though wonderful and truly a blessing, has taken a toll on me emotionally.  As many "highs" as I feel like I've experienced, there were just as many "lows".  These last two weeks have been particularly hard.  I've been sick, tired, sleeping too little, sleeping too much, inconvenienced, interrupted, and just plain fed-up at times.  The chronic eye infections and stomach pains were only a fraction of the things I felt like I was dealing with, and to make things worse, I just felt like I needed to keep going, to push through, to put on a smile when really all I wanted to do was to curl up in a corner somewhere and cry.  I've been feeling empty more often, and getting upset at God for not filling me up again quickly enough.  I feel like I've been fighting for faith and coming up short in my battle.  I'm tired of continually feeling like I have to bury my dreams at the cross, hoping God would resurrect them again, but not being all too sure if it would be in His will to do so.  I've been worried about an uncertain future, the inevitable truth of having to start my life over from scratch once I go back to New York.  I feel directionless, without purpose, without hope, and upset at myself for having these feelings while knowing that I have a relationship with a God who can do all things.  Why is it so hard for me to trust Him?  Why does he feel so far and why does it feel so hard to believe He is working all things for good in my life?  I've been sitting in my bed for the last two hours (despite a looming deadline) just really crying out for God, and in perhaps one of my lowest lows, God did the impossible,  He consoled me.

I was reminded of a dream I had about a month ago.  There was a ship being tossed in the sea stuck in a middle of a raging storm, and I could clearly remember God speaking to me that this would be a season where he teaches me how to be anchored in Him despite my surroundings.  I remember praying that God would show me how to do this, without really anticipating what it would take to teach this lesson.  I've recently been meditating on Psalm 139, praying the words written by David over my life, particular verse 23, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."  I had forgotten that I basically prayed for everything I've been going through.  I was the one who asked God to show me how to be anchored, and it takes a storm for that to happen.  I had let everything around me determine how I should feel.  It's not to say it's wrong to be upset when life just isn't going the way you hope, I had simply forgotten to cast my vision beyond what's happening now.  I allowed myself to get swept away by my emotions, choosing to be inconsolable rather than choosing to trust in God, and in things unseen.  This was why I was loosing the battle with faith, because faith is believing in that which has not come to pass, and trusting in the goodness of God that His promises are true.  If I let the reality of my surroundings dictate what I see in my future, I will surely be discouraged.  I was reminded of all the good things that have yet to come to pass, and to be encouraged in the Lord despite the raging storms.  I feel as though I don't testify enough of the goodness of God.  I am a chronic complainer and serial whiner, but by God's grace I hope He changes that.  I grumble when I'm going through trials, forgetting that most of the time this is what I've prayed for, and the Lord will bring me through.  There is nothing greater than the love God has to offer.  He is always a tender father.  He consoles me even when I feel inconsolable.  He anchors me in the midst of a storm, and delivers me from every trial.