And Just Like That, And Now I Am

Human sin and weakness is sooo funny because it's like. The deeper you are in it, the more desperate you are to keep anyone from seeing it and defining you by it. It's unbearable for someone to think of you as "the person with That Problem," and it feels more unbearable the uglier and more public That Problem is, so you scramble to hide (even when it's stupidly obvious you're hiding something, making you "person who Hides Things"), and you cut off relationships where you become too vulnerable (making you "person who Runs Away").

What's so funny is that you only actually get free of being "person with That Problem" (because that's who you are to yourself) when you stop fighting it and accept that you're in Christ, even with the problem. As soon as you can say "I do have That Problem, in fact I have Problems, but I can still be known and loved because who I am is in Jesus and not in myself," you've accomplished what you were after in the first place: being defined apart from the problem.

Today I am overcome

Such art, such joy, such satisfaction

It has come right back around

And become sadness

The only joy with any depth

Is tempered by grief

A study in contrasts

I weep over Peter Pan

I drink cocktails

I wander alone through a foreign city

An awfully big adventure

I remember the tragedies

I stare at the paintings

I read and hum and try to keep it all in mind

Why must emotion hurt?

My stomach is in knots

My cheeks are sore from smiling

I’m getting crows feet from squinting into

The bright sun on my face, on my skin

It is warm and I am beyond expression

Too lucky to believe this is my life

This is the escapist fantasy

And yet it is not enough

I remember the God-sized hole in my heart

The Lord has promised good to me

His word my hope secures

He will my shield and portion be

As long as life endures

I am obsessed with the passage of time

Clocks and watches and cycles and things

Why must new experiences

mean new endings?

I’m falling in love with being alive

With God’s creation

Art from sinners

Of the saints

Beauty makes my soul ache.

Mood of The Night

listen. that feeling where you have a cold or something and suddenly your nose is all plugged up and you have to breathe through your mouth all night? and then it dawns on you that you took your nose for granted this whole time. yeah that feeling. cursed

Nose is stuffy I cannot know peace please Thank Jesus all you with clear sinuses, love, your unwilling mouth breather

Hal Borland / M. Cumulus Life, Illuminations / Mary Quant / Unknown / Take a Load Off, Joanna Franklin Bell / Unknown / The Wild Marsh Four Seasons at Home in Montana, Rick Bass / July Moon, Louise Townsend Nicholl / VSCO: vxdb / The Months, Linda Pastan / Instagram: KJP / Lot, Bryan Washington / Tumblr: nobodysflower

And it’s summer again

Sun like tangerine juice

Sky as blue as candy

Days are long and lazy

Speeding to an old song

Flying down the highway

Palm trees in the rearview

Sink into the ocean

Sparkles on the surface

Oldnew freckles darken

Grass is green and dying

Want to skin my knees by

Running on the asphalt

Close my eyes and breathe out

Sweet tea, sticky fingers

Melting ice cream, longing

Sprinklers, seafoam, swimsuits

Everything is all wet

Undercurrents, secrets

Wild, charged, electric

Whispers, laughter, screaming

At the top of my lungs

Sand between the bedsheets

We’re alone together

Only in my mind’s eye

Heat stroke made me drowsy

Home at last, I’m woozy

Piano in a dim room

Fingers fumble, keys sing

Journal then forget it

Playlist, dance, cry after

horizontal body

Everything becoming

Young, but now I’m older

Want to be a kid and

Want to be a grown up

Somewhere in between, though

Endings are beginnings

Time’s a shifting seascape

This enchanted country

Infinite and dreamy

invincible in sunshine

Weak knees in the moonlight

Nothing so romantic

As a joke and shy grin

from a boy with straight teeth

Learn the lines in all things

think I might’ve found a

Paradise right here, now

All divine, eternal

Suspended in summer

Surely it won’t end, right?

Is anyone else like frantically and painfully nostalgic for the fall of 2013, which was TEN YEARS AGO??? Unbelievable

Guys I actually played the piano today at a level of competence tolerable to my ears I am funky fruity fresh thriving

Today

I laughed until my abs ached with a coworker over silly emails. I wrote texts in iambic pentameter at the bus stop for the fun of it. A baby leaned on my chest like I was the safest place in the world, and another stretched her arms up to me to be held like I could bear her to the moon itself. A book about emotions during Holy Week written for toddlers moved me so much I read it twice. I walked briskly, squinting into warm sunshine, the brightest in days. I saw Jesus more clearly in the character of Moses by reading Acts 7 as if for the first time, I empathized with Paul as I reflected on this murderer going before his old enemies to declare his new allegiance, the shame, the fear. I marveled that Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God, a Chekhov’s gun I recalled in my class this evening, which, by the way, was the best I’ve been to so far. I realized it’s all about the long slow work of building a community. All of it. This is the work of God Himself. And we image Him in a thousand little ways, with our singing and storytelling and desire to create beautiful, uncorrupted things. Tears pricked my eyes as I realized this. I cooked myself a delicious dinner from scratch while singing Sondheim with my roommate, and put away leftovers for tomorrow. I ate peanut M&Ms and pineapple upside down cake, and felt food freedom and joy in my body. This body can hold two hefty babies at once. This body can sprint to the bus stop and jog up the escalator. This body can do a silly little dance in the kitchen and slide on the tile in socks. I felt seen in my botticelli shirt, known as people recognized that not once but twice I’ve worn artwork. I gave Abby a big hug. I spoke of church without shame in my class, though my heart raced before. I puzzled over the poem mine own John poynz on the metro, missed my stop, and had to backtrack. I read Dracula and chuckled at how girlhood hasn’t changed in 100 or 1000 years. Humans have always laughed and cried and shared salacious stories with their friends. I fretted over what to wear to the movies tomorrow night to see my friends all together. I felt useful and accomplished today. I felt so, so human today. I nearly cried euphoric tears while washing dishes. What greater joy could there be than to be alive on a Wednesday? What greater hope could there be than a realer, truer, freer life to come?

There is no poem that I could write to say

In better terms than this plain journaling

The wonders of existing in the world

Embodied, in community, and free.

I’m weak and I’m decaying, sure, that’s true

But I will never be this young again

And never have more clarity of thought

Or lightness in my heart than I do now.

Great God, what gift you’ve given me to see

That greatness isn’t some ambitious goal

Or changing the whole world, just baby steps,

and loving others through the little things.

Miss Lois told me that and she was right.

Amen and glory hallelujah, Lord!

Per sognare nell’estate

È una volte splendissima,

Il piú dolce, il piú gioiosa, sempre allegra

Voglio dormire sotto il caldo occhio della grande blu

E stare inutile e pacevole al fine del giorno

Trying to stay motivated with my Italian this summer, so I wrote some small verse using only words I already knew. Notably I could neither remember the word for sun nor sky, resulting in the strange little metaphor above. If someone more learned than I notices an error I would be ever so grateful for a correction, even a snotty or disdainful one! Arrivederci, amici, bacci!