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As I Grow Into These Things

24 May

I have had a few memorable birthday moments.

Anything before my teenage years is mostly a blur. I remember my 5th birthday because there is an old VHS of me wearing my burgundy flowered shift and an awful mullet-ish haircut. My dad dressed up like a clown, a creepy clown from 1990. My friend Hannah was terrified of him. I knew he was just my goofy dad so it didn’t bother me.

My mom made an organic carib cake and gave the girls potted flowers for a party favor. The boys got hot wheels.

Everyone I knew that was between the ages of 3 and 9  was at that party. We played pin the tale on the donkey and had balloon relays.

My 16th birthday my boyfriend got me a hamster. Yes, that is what I asked for. That night I had a girl’s sleepover with my best friends. This meant prank time. We were all nervous to fall asleep because we couldn’t handle the cruel and hilarious things we would do to each other. My friend Leah fell asleep first and  ended up with inappropriate things written in pink cake frosting across her face. She wasn’t happy when she woke up with a rash.

The year I turned 18, I was in Romania. I danced with gypsies in the tower of a restaurant that was  the birthplace of the evil ruler from whom the legend of Dracula was formed. This was before vampires were cool.

On my 23rd birthday, I jumped off a white limestone cliff into the depths of Lake Whitney.

My 24th birthday I woke up in Texas after a few months in New Hampshire  being in a whirlwind dysfunctional relationship I knew deep down wasn’t going to last. I was staying at a friends who picked me up from the airport the night before, and saw a book about Mother Theresa on my bedside table. Something in me shifted, and said “That’s what I’ll do. I’ll go to India.” Suddenly, I was free.

A few months later I met the (real) man of my dreams. A year later I came home from two and a half months in India, a different person. I spent that birthday on a rooftop overlooking the city at night, eating delicious gourmet Tex-Mex after living on rice and dall.

My 26th birthday, I outran a tornado. I was at the movies and the power went off. I went outside to see black swirling clouds. I was with my boyfriend and his parents and we quickly raced back to the house, seeing the destruction from the Tornado on the way.

A week later, I left the ministry I was working at. For the first time since 2004, I wasn’t under some sort of umbrella of a ministry.

And so I spent the year writing. I found myself, a writer. In nine months a book was formed. This is what I’ve wanted ever since before I was that 5-year-old running around popping balloons eating carib cake.

I tend to favor even-numbered years, but I have to say they are all pretty amazing.

Last night I was driving home from work after a long rather frustrating day. I was emotional and on edge. I’d been looking for a dog for months and nothing was working out.

I walked in the door to my apartment right as the clock turned midnight and it was my birthday.

My boyfriend and roommate were standing there. So was a perfect Boston Terrier puppy with a red ribbon around his neck. He ran to me and I dropped to the floor and cried, the puppy kissing my face.

When I was thirteen my parent’s gave me Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul. I am sure I would laugh at it now, but at the time, it spoke in a language I didn’t realize my soul was parched for.

I remember one essay well, about how we grow old in layers like an onion.

So when we are 12 we are 11, 10, 9, 8.. etc, etc.

I carry all these ages in me. Having a puppy makes me feel 10, like the little girl who wanted nothing more than to be with animals because they taught me how to be human.

All these ages I carry inside of me. It has made me who I am.

That is why I no longer fear growing old.

There are beautiful things in life to grow alive to, and many of them take time.

Love. A sense of community and home. Being ok with ones selves. My writing. A deeper sense of the presence of God all around me. Daily thankfulness and contentment.

I look forward to growing into these things as these things grow into me.

So bring it on, 27.

Slowly, I Open My Eyes

14 May

“Open your eyes wide,” he says intensely, lovingly.

I don’t look at him. My tears are hot, formed by some unknown frustration and anger.

He knows me. Well. We’ve had this conversation more than once. It used to be often. Not lately though, lately I’ve been fine. 

But something made it’s way into my soul, some discontented itch I can never scratch.

That deep seeded longing, that feeling like something needs to change.

It’s a feeling I’ve grown to hate. I don’t know how to shut everything up and just go through life happy.

I start to feel trapped.

“But what about…”

I start blaming him, blaming my time in ministry, blaming my own fear,  blaming the future I was so sure of when I was 19 or 22.

———————————————————————————————————————

When I was small, I made up stories in my head constantly. While I ate cereal, I would picture whole groups of tiny people living in my bowl, a cheerio as a flotation device like in the terrifying scene from Honey I Shrunk the Kids. But a bite wouldn’t kill them, it would just force them to move, to set up home inside my stomach like Mrs. Frizzle’s class in The Magic School Bus learning about digestion.

Lying in bed at night, I’d stare into the darkness until I saw shapes and colors. I convinced myself I saw things, people, spirits, other worlds. I was sure that that’s what was real.

When I took a bath, I’d put my ears under the warm water close my eyes, leaving my nose in the air to breathe. The world would fade away and the only thing I’d hear was a deep methodic pounding, like ancient drums calling out to me. Sometimes I’d think if I listened hard enough I would be able to decipher it. Those thumps would quicken and I was convinced that it meant in my sleep I’d meet some horrible monster or be stuck in a pit without being able to get my legs or my voice to work.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized it was just my own heartbeat.

—————————————————————————————————————–

I still make up stories in my head.

I project myself into a future where I am blissfully happy, or exceedingly miserable.

I romanticize moments in my past where I think I was more myself, more alive because I was doing this thing in that place, having some adventure.

Of course, I exclude from my memory the times my heart ached, the times I wanted to give up, the times I just couldn’t wait for it to be over.

———————————————————————————————————————

I turn to him, frantic.

“Life is so short… I just want to have an adventure.”

He smiles.

“You are an adventure.”

He reminds me of the good, shows me the beauty.

Slowly, I open my eyes wide.

 

Let Me Tell You A Story

3 May

I am sitting down to write this morning because that seems to be the way I get my lungs and heart to work.

Writing sometimes feels like riding a stationary bicycle. You approach it with resistance, maybe a little boredom. You don’t really feel like you are getting anywhere, but later you feel the ache coupled with a sense of accomplishment.

You are getting stronger.

On better days you feel more like Captain Cook traversing over unknown lands, embarking on great adventures to go where no human has gone before.

At least, that’s what it seems,  until you see footprints in the snowy tundra.

Because really, there is nothing new under the sun.

But I don’t say that cynically.

The world can always be seen as new, it’s all a matter of whether we open our eyes or not.

So, as writers and artists we dare to portray ancient truths in new light. To make connections, build swinging bridges over deep and dangerous chasms.

We write to make sense of life. 

When you forget this, you begin to live like life isn’t very extraordinary. You begin to get into this routine, chugging through hours and days, waiting for something exciting to come your way.

You forget that being a writer and being an adventurer go hand-in-hand.

You realize you can make your own way,  so you do, slashing through thick proverbial jungle green, pointing out that bright yellow bird along the way.

“See that? Look at the way his feathers shine. Look! Look how those droplets of dew glisten in the sun on that green bud!”

 

 

And the party you are leading, (because you are never on this journey alone) “Ooh” and “Aww” because they were so focused on the mosquitos and overwhelming foliage they couldn’t see the beauty right in front of them.

And so eventually you come upon a clearing in a valley. Inevitably, somebody starts a fire. The weary travelers take off the loads they have been hauling and rest, staring into the flickering flames.

And you all feel like maybe you are just like  generations of people who lived this way, who found themselves journeying and  suffering and reminding each other of bright birds and water droplets right in front of them.

Then someone stands up, energized by thoughts of those that have gone before them, and speaks, those sacred, exciting, life-giving words,

 ”Let me tell you a story…”

Then all goes silent.

Words tumble out, dancing upward with the firelight.

And the world becomes new.

Windows Are Rolled Down

25 Apr

Last night I was driving back from work. I enjoy my shift, starting at 3:30 and getting off at 11:30. I never have to sit frustrated in bumper to bumper traffic. Especially when I get off and midnight is approaching, it is a different world.

I roll my windows down.

This, my soundtrack:

The lights are soft, even slightly blurry because of the tiredness in my eyes. Luckily, the drive is only fifteen minutes and the air is cool on my skin.

I look around at the lights, at this familiar road that has quickly become a well-worn path.

and I know I don’t have to run away.

the thought splits open something inside of me, something deep and painful.

Some longing, some dissatisfaction I have always known to be there.

I have always just thought it was a part of me,

that it was my lot in life to wander,

that I couldn’t be me without constantly changing locations,

that I could never ever settle down.

but lately, I’ve felt a rare sense.

A sense of coming home.

And I know it has nothing to do with my “status” in life.

It has nothing to do with my location I set on my facebook, having a job, or whether my suitcases remain packed or stored in the closet.

It has little to do with a steady, committed, loving relationship, though I know that has changed me in ways I can’t even describe.

I know I don’t need to run away because I am finally ok with myself.

I am at peace.

I have everything I need.

Because you see, this Grace that found me, it swallowed my life-long fear.

It has settled my anxious wandering heart that is always hunting for the next thing, the next place, the next person that I thought would ease my pain.

“You don’t have to run away,”

I whisper to the night air on the highway, to myself, to the little girl in me that longs for home.

And I finally believe it.

Finding Happy

16 Apr

Sometimes waiting is overrated.

Like when you are trying to find happy.

There is a waiting in patience for things to come,

But there is also a taking a holding and receiving now.

Lately, I’ve been asking myself this question:

If you can’t be happy now, when will you be happy?

When you are married?

When you live in a certain place?

When you have a dog or a child or a new job?

When you are a legitimate published author?

When childhood dreams finally come true?

I am sorry for this kind of thinking. I battle it every day, and yet I am sorry for it. It’s part of being human but it doesn’t need to rule your thoughts, haunt you, turn your discontentment to misery.

Some would say, “You want to be happy? Be thankful.”

Thankfulness is necessary, but it can’t be forced. When you feel obligated to count your blessings, or you try to use it as some kind of formula to feel better about yourself, you seldom move much farther from where you started.

How can you be thankful for that which you do not see? Or maybe it’s there, right in front of you, but you can’t believe that it’s yours.  Or maybe you feel like you owe someone something for the good things in your life.

Blessings are not blessings if they come with a sense of guilt, the weight of feeling indebted. Because then your thoughts turn back to you, the receiver, instead of the Giver.

“Ok, I understand you gave this to me… now what do I have to do to pay you back?”

This sounds offensive but the Giver is never offended. He just reassures you,

“Nothing. Life is a gift.”

Unhappiness comes because you wish your circumstances were better, but what if everything was already the best it could be?

Discontentment comes because you wish you had something that you do not, but what if you already had everything you need?

Not just everything you need, but everything you as a human being could ever want or dream of.

I am not talking about an object itself, but the  joy that object can bring once you lay hold of it. Only this joy is not fleeting.

I am not taking about selfish desires like power or fame, but the root of those desires before they turned rotten, the need to be known, to be loved, to partake in some kind of glory outside ourselves.

What if we had love that was complete and full, that brought out the best in us, that never manipulated or had one bad motive?

What if we felt fully alive in every sense of the phrase because we were?

Then, maybe, happiness would finally be ours.

It feels to good to be true, and that’s exactly what makes it good news. It is true.

Jesus has given us his life. 

The very life of God.

The very life of Pure Love.

It is there. You don’t need to do anything. You don’t need to conjure it up.

You just simply need to believe.

When you believe, a death will come. It will be a beautiful death, not the sort of death we mourn, however painful it may seem at the time.

It will be the kind of death where a seed has to die and fall to the ground for life to spring forth.

The kind of death where a shell of a person is exchanged for a radiant, glorious, perfect being.

Where there is complete satisfaction at the core of who we really are.

Where we are not waiting for “someday,” in the “sweet by and by,” because new life begins now.

It goes without saying I am not promising material wealth or that all your problems will be no more. There will be pain. There will be heartache. But deep down there will be a security no one can shake. A joy. A peace. You will know you are loved.

This is why, after years of struggle with this weird broken thing called Christianity I can say that I still believe. This is why, even after years of “being in ministry” and seeing a lot of broken promises and broken dreams, seeing people get run over and turn their backs on the church, going through real pain and despair, I still have hope.

This is the gospel. It’s Jesus. He is what makes living worthwhile.

He is living.

He is what we are all searching for: joy, happiness, glory, love.

He is it.

There is nothing else.

Hey You! I Need You…

13 Apr

Do you ever have those moments when you forget you’re an adult and still feel inside like you are six years old? I am not talking about wanting to eat out of the frosting container with a spoon or to make up soap opera’s with your stuffed animals, though sometimes I want to do that too.

I am talking about feeling tiny and extremely awkward, like you are the last person in your class to go through puberty. Like you haven’t figured out how to grow up yet.  Like you stop in the middle of signing tax forms or picking out shower curtains and say,

“Wait… I am a grown woman…?”

For me it happens the most in social situations. I spent a lot of time avoiding them. Certain people might be surprised by that statement. If you really know me, you won’t be at all. In certain situations I have forced myself to be friendly and outgoing, but it can be very painful and frightening. Sometimes I just don’t know what to say.

So I shut off. Or run away, mostly.

Sometimes I fear I come off as being a snob. I’ve had people who later became my friend nicely say they thought I thought I was too good for them. 90% of the time it was really because I am insecure and don’t know how to make friends. If I get the slightest vibe that someone may not like me I back off immediately. Even if you are friendly, it takes a lot sometimes for me to let you into my inner world. I am very much an all or nothing person with relationships. I have this wall I guess, and you are either in or you’re not. Once you’re in, there is nothing to hold me back from telling you everything. I guess it is a strength as well as a weakness.

If you have known me for more than a few years, you will also know how far I’ve come. I spent my childhood not talking to anyone. This is not a cute exaggeration. I literally was too afraid to talk to grown-ups as well as a lot of kids. I wouldn’t even answer the phone, because I didn’t know who it was.

I am thankful for friends in my life who have helped pull me out of my shell and for Jesus for freeing me from the fear the choked the life out of my for so long.

Anyways, I am not trying to make this post all about me and my weird social habits. I am just trying to say that,

I need people. Really. Not just one or two, but a whole community of people that come from different places in life and may see the world opposite then I do. As much as it’s easy to write that, it’s another story to live it. I know the word “Community” has been thrown around a lot especially in Christian circles.

As an introvert, I don’t always feel the need for people. More then often, it’s the need to be alone that overwhelms me and makes me feel like an insane person until I have some solace. I need to be with myself and write to figure out life. I forget that often the same thing can happen in an open honest conversation with someone. I forget I need people.

Quote by Bishop Desmond Tutu. (What a cool guy. And what a cool name)

I put this picture on my bathroom mirror to remind me every day that I am not an island. I need to engage with people and truly see them. Those moments that I do, it’s really like choosing life. It’s choosing to see God in people. I can’t survive without it.

I know this is nothing profound. But often I forget to live like it’s true. I forget that I actually need you.  That life is about people.

Loving people.

Taking care of people.

Letting people love and take care of me.

Experiencing God through our interactions.

Through a hand, a glass of water, a washcloth, a smile, a hug.

Thanks for listening to my rant on Friday the 13th. I needed someone to listen. :)

A Visible Hope (AKA Lunch with Joseph Kony)

8 Mar

I watched the Kony 2012 video today, as many others did (20 million and counting.)

Of course, it touched me deeply.

But I wrestled with a few things, including feelings of cynicism, questioning if the video’s popularity isn’t more due to the fact it was brilliantly done and manipulated my emotions, than because of the issue at hand.

This is too complex to be this easy, right?

Or maybe we make it complex.

Maybe it’s as simple a 4-year-old sees it: the bad guys need to be stopped.

But what struck me with this video was something on a  larger scale, something incredible that is hard to put into words.

It wasn’t just about one man and his 20+ years of crimes against humanity.

Yes, the atrocities he has committed are horrible, and he needs to be stopped.

Yes, the lives of those children are precious, and they need to be saved.

But what got me excited was something bigger than Invisible Children, than Kony, then the country of Uganda.

What I saw was:

People are coming together for good to try to change something without getting anything in return.

99% of us will probably never meet a Ugandan child that was rescued from being a forced soldier. Yet people care.

People care. That’s what makes me hopeful.

Throwing aside political arguments and agenda, and actually focusing on something everyone agrees on: Children everywhere deserve a chance to have an innocent childhood.

What amazes me is the sheer power of this facebook age, globalization, a world without borders.

Suddenly, it’s no longer about how different we are, but how connected we are.

Invisible Children has tapped into this. This is what makes it powerful. Unifying under a cause of love.

If  ”ordinary” middle-class collage kids from America can stop a warlord in Africa, what else can happen?

What if every pimp that led children into sex trafficking was treated like Kony?

What if social justice is just a trend? So what? People are doing something. They are looking beyond their own selfish desires and actually caring.

They are joining the winning side, because good wins. Love wins. Actually, it already has because God is love. He’s won, we just get to be a part of making that reality in heaven match the reality on earth.

I am the least competitive person in the world. I am also a pacificist by nature. I hate any sort of conflict and I want to believe the very best about people, even the most evil people.

Trust me, in an ideal world, I could sit down and have lunch with Joseph Kony. Maybe after lunch we’d go on a safari. As we spotted some lions, he would tell me about his childhood and how it was stolen from him. He would open up about how he is so filled with hate and rage that it eats him up, how he doesn’t see a way out. How he sees people as nothing more than bullets in a gun, how it’s all he’s ever known.

And then I would tell him he is loved.

That he doesn’t have to fight anymore. That he doesn’t have to run anymore. That he can stop using people. I would look him in the eyes and say,

“You are better than this. You were made in the image of God. You can be free.”

And grace would wash over him and all of a sudden everything would be new.

If I can’t believe this could happen, I have to question the core of my faith in God. Because love is enough to overpower the worst kind of evil.

Now, I know it’s not a perfect world (yet) and I am not suggesting the soldiers go and love him. They probably wouldn’t get the chance before they were murdered.

My point is, in all things, I want to choose hope. I want to believe that people truly want to choose what is good, and right, and that (by the Grace of God) the world can become a better place.

And we have the power to choose to make it better.

We were given the authority to bring hell to earth like Kony does, or to bring heaven.

So, instead of skeptically questioning and picking things apart, I want to rejoice with any human being regardless of their beliefs or background, who is doing what they can to bring heaven to earth.

You can call me naive, but that’s ok. I choose to believe the best.

How To Kill Your Dreams

6 Mar

So here I am again. Trying to write some kind of truth.

There’s this long blog entry sitting in draft mode in my wordpress dashboard, that I’ve been working on for too long. It’s one of those things that seemed like a good idea to write, but when the words come, they seemed disingenuous.

So I’ll try to be honest here.

Does anyone else get really exhausted when following your dreams?

My dream, since I was three, is to be a writer.

Sometimes it’s a love-hate relationship.

(Maybe everything wonderful and beautiful in life is?)

Obviously, the love is greater than the hate. I shouldn’t even use the word hate, maybe it’s a little strong.. how about passionately dislike?

Does anyone else spend all this time creating something incredible and than have moments where you ha… passionately dislike your work?

Day in and day out I am attempting to craft words and sometimes it’s just mentally exhausting. What’s mostly mentally exhausting is the self-judgment and doubt I allow to come in and take over.

Every so often I imagine what my life would look like if I took the easy way out.

You know, spent my time doing something easier. Something I didn’t necessarily care about, but something I didn’t passionately dislike either. Something I could be apathetic about, not use my mind, just sort of melt into it and do it without really struggling through it.

That lazy part of me feels like this would be amazing. Just you know, to chill for a little bit. Work somewhere where I actually got a consistent income, not be broke all the time, save some money, not feel the pressure to do anything noteworthy or spectacular.

After all, my life has been so intense. I am always jumping from one crazy venture to the next.

It’s like I am always thrown into risk without even stopping to ask myself it that what I really want.

Maybe I am being dramatic. I tend to be that way. What was I even writing about?

Oh yah, contemplating killing my dreams for comfort.

Ouch. That one hurt. (The truth does.)

As I get older, it feels harder to hold on to the energy I had as a youth.

And… the faith….

I used to have no problem believing big things.

Lately, it’s like this weird, older, responsible version of myself is suddenly trying to clip my own wings,

“But Brooke, you need to be practical. Don’t assume things are just going to happen for you. You’ve had your adventures, it’s time to settle down a little.”

I used to yell at this woman, try to strangle her, but lately I am staring at her all glossy-eyed and hypnotized saying,

“Yes… maybe you are right… it sounds nice. I am just going to nap a little bit…”

Forty years later, I wake up and my life has passed me by. All the books I wanted to write someday are just figments of my faded imagination. All the places I wanted to go, all the things I wanted to do, are just stories from someone else’s life.

I don’t want to pull a Rip Van Winkle.

I don’t want to live my life asleep.

I don’t want give in to the invisible pressures of “growing up” and letting my dreams die.

But it’s so easy to do. So easy. It starts with the little things. The moments. The way I spend my day. The thoughts I allow in my head.

How do you kill your dreams?

One negative thought at a time.

One justification at a time.

One obeying the voice of “being practical” at a time.

One minute at a time.

So just in the writing this I am relieved. I am relieved I am currently cognitive enough to realize this as I the words flow out. I am relieved I am brave enough to put this on my blog.

Because the very act of letting these thoughts out is an act of rebellion against that part of me that would slowly let my dreams whither up and die. 

I won’t.

I won’t.

I won’t.

Because if I do, what’s the point of even existing?

“Hold fast to dreams, For if dreams die, Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly, Hold fast to dreams, For if dreams go, Life is a barren field, Frozen with snow.” -Langston Hughes

Once Upon A Book

21 Feb

Eight years ago I was participating in a required fasting retreat. (It’s bizarre to think I ever did that.) Even though I had to break it early and eat crackers, It was Valentine’s Day and it snowed, so it felt like a sign.

I was inspired to write a book.

It was called More Than Enough- Finding Completion at the Feet of Jesus.

Then I spent two and a half years living on a bus, and a lot of things changed, including the name of my book. It became Finger Paintings and Truckee Sunrises- The Beautiful, Messy Adventure Of a Surrendered Life.

My awesome 2005 graphic design skillz

I’d sit in the front on the steps of the bus, looking out the glass doors at the road going by, my trusty old beast of a Dell on my lap, type-type-typing away.

I thought it was awesome. It wasn’t.

I read it now, and my first reaction is, “Dear Lord, I was a weirdo. And I have the spelling of a fourth grader.”

I was a little legalistic, I guess. A little naive. A little intense. But I appreciate my passion.

I went to Writing School in 2007 bound and determined to be the next Donald Miller- only female.

But life would happen as life happens, I got busy backpacking in China and Central America, and I never pursued publishing it. Instead I self-published a collection of poetry, originally to raise money to go live in Kyrgyzstan.

Now, I am so glad I didn’t publish Finger Paintings or move to Kyrgyzstan.

Honestly, my beliefs changed over the next few years about things that would have been “written in stone” had I attempted to get it out for the masses to read.

Who knows, maybe all young writers have that issues as they leave their early twenties and began to figure out what they believe and who they are…

Maybe all people do.

I mean, written words they stick around. Does that scare anyone else?

The sheer power in publishing… You can’t go back and re-edit or recant what you said.

(Which is why I am reading this post over for the tenth time even though I am tired and probably going to miss several typos I never see until I after I press publish. I apologize in advance.)

I am not saying I hate everything I wrote before.

I know we all grow as we learn our voice and what we want to put words to.

I am not saying I need to have everything in order before I publish, obviously you can tell by this blog I am not a perfectionist.

However, I don’t really feel like the same person I was. Not that I didn’t like her, but I like me better.

I guess the thing that mostly annoys me about that nineteen-year-old zealot self, is that while some words were genuine, many were just regurgitated rhetoric that she was taught…

And I realize, I’d rather write worthless garbage and have it be true, then be on a best-seller by faking it.

When I say true, I don’t mean non-fiction. I am actually writing a fiction book, and realizing that fiction can be truer than non-fiction, in a sense that every good story should portray universal truth.

What I mean is, if it’s not truly me, I don’t want to put it out there.

It’s like what my friend and co-author of The Wizard of God always reminds me, “You don’t need to make anything up. You’ve lived this. Write what you know.”

So that’s my new purpose in writing. Be honest. Write what I know.

Write like it’s what is going to be inscribed on my tombstone.

Write like I have one chance to tell the world what matters.

Write like It’s the only thing I’ll do that’s ever going to mean anything.

Write like I am not afraid anymore.

Because the truth inevitably sets people free, including the person writing it.

Now I am going to share a blip from that old manuscript of Finger Paintings.

This is honest. It still is something I believe, something I actually need to remember…

Maybe I should stop being so self-conscious and start being God conscious.  I look at my flaws and insecurities and fears and imperfection and then I try to find a remedy to fix myself. I got to a point a few months ago where I was so overwhelmed by the mess that was my insides.

Sometimes I feel like a finger painting: mismatched colors, random shapes, and scribbles. Others see it and don’t quite know what to make of it. They squint, trying to categorize it, trying to decipher the unknown language.

My heart is a lot like that. Vibrant. Messy. Colorful. All over the place.

Like a proud parent, God looks at this mess and calls it a masterpiece. He seems the abstract emotion. He sees the purpose behind each abnormally shaped line, each hue. He sees the picture hidden among the scribbles. He puts it on His fridge and calls it beautiful.

I got to the point I couldn’t take myself anymore. I was in Truckee, California at the time, a small scenic town near Tahoe. I was staying at a beautiful cabin with five amazing girls, but I just needed to get away. One morning I got up when it was still dark and braved my way into the frosty mountain air. I made my way up the road and across a field to the edge of a cliff that overlooked a small valley. The sun was just beginning to slowly peek over the mountains in the distance. I sat on a cold bench on the edge of the cliff and watched the fog lift over the towering pines and the sky turn a brilliant shade of pink. It was there in Northern California I decided something for the first time.

I am done trying to figure myself out. 
I am way too complicated.
I will lose all that I am, and throw everything into who He is. 
Because He is more than enough.   

I see the journey I’ve been on and I can’t help but smile.
There will be many more miles and many more words.
Many more attempts at being honest.
Many more cliffs and sunrises.
Many more books.
Thank you, dear blog reader,  for coming on this journey with me.

Dry Toast, Distractions, and Racing Deer

31 Jan

You may be here because you can’t possibly fathom how anyone can write a blog post with a title like that.

And  I am here trying to write something.  Anything.

I’ve been feeling bone-dry lately.

Sometimes writing is an overwhelming spring of revelation and glorious thoughts, bubbling up out of “The Brook(e)” within me.

Sometimes, it’s more like scrapping the bottom of an old smelly yellow tub of “I Can’t Believe You Think This Tastes Like Butter.”

Thoughts thinly spread on dry toast with a dull knife, barely giving it any flavor or moisture.

My mind becomes fragmented, everything is rushed. My consciousness becomes split, no longer whole but the world seen via blips of images, tweets and half-finished sentences.

I don’t know how to st———-.

Is it just the world we are liv———-?

Did I develop ADD or am I just going cra——– Oh my gosh, I hear a donkey outside!

Today I went for a walk. It was gorgeous out, but I hardly took  it in because I was thinking of the googling jobs in Fort Worth, or changing the banner of website for the book I’ve been writing.

(I did both by the way. No jobs yet, but here is the site. I had to put a little promotion in here.)

What a shame. What a shame I didn’t notice how vividly green the grass is for it being the last day of January.

What a shame I didn’t notice the lone baby donkey staring at me from the other side of a fence, wondering who I was and why I was walking down his road.

What a shame my mind was so scattered I forgot to stop and see  the sunset, to let the colors melt over me and seep inside of me and change me, maybe giving me some consistency, some flow of thought, some together-ness.

I am so sick of being distracted. Distracted from beauty. Distracted from LIFE.

When your mind is in multiple places, you can’t take everything in. You can’t be still and know, you can’t realize how much magic is in the day.

Oh, distraction is the devil!

The other morning I was driving to work.

(This sounds like normal sentence. But the fact I am driving to work is an anomalous thing for me. My last job, I rode my bike to work. Not because I am a hipster, but because I really couldn’t afford a car. Now I have one, although it’s like this strange purple/grey/maroon color. I digress.)

I was driving to work down a winding country road and my mind was full of random thoughts of things to do, worrying about my finances, etc, etc. blah blah blah.

Distractions. 

I decided to talk to God, briefly.

(I love the line from the poem  ”The Vision”  “Our feeble half-whispered, faithless prayer.” I often feel those are the only prayers I can pray.)

“Help me

to see

all the beauty

around me…

Like a child.”

Done. That’s it.  That’s as “spiritual”  as I get lately.

( And to think I used to intercede for the nations until my sweat turned to blood. Ok, not really.)

And then, as my prayer ended,  a deer jumped in front of me.

I stopped.

I wasn’t in danger of hitting him, really. I was going slow enough.

We stared at each other for a moment.

I managed to get this photograph

I managed to get this photograph

Then, he bounded the rest of the way across the road, leapt over fence that had to be at least 6 feet tall, and proceeded to frolic down a path running parallel with the road.

“Race you!” I said out loud, laughing uncontrollably, feeling like a psycho, but letting it all go.

I slowed down to make it a fair race, until I was going the same speed as Mr. Deer.

And we traversed side-by-side for a while, I in my funny colored car, and Mr. Deer free in the wild.

Then he disappeared into the forest. He had apparently won.

And I was left feeling somewhat like Lucy after she met Mr. Tumnus for the first time.

Feeling something like clarity.

Like my scattered worries disappeared quickly as drops of dew in the morning sun, leaving no trace.

I felt a little like I could see,

The grass. The baby donkey. The sunset. The deer.

I could listen,

to the something going around all around me,

outside my computer screen, outside my head,

Something called life.

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