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What to do When the World Falls Apart

17 Apr

1. Turn off the news and go outside.

Get lost in the woods.

Or even better,  your lover’s arms.

 

2. Be honest with yourself. If you hate the world right now, say so.

Let the cynicism rise out of you, your words creating a spiritual detox until you’re drained.

 

3. When you are finished, replace the void by drowning yourself in hope.

Do whatever you can to remember that there is still goodness in humanity. 

Play with a child.

Use your imagination.

 

4. Anger is necessary, but you must breathe out the toxins before it turn into bitterness.

Only you know that moment. Catch it and then let it go.

 

5. Do something good for someone. Anonymously.

 

6. Put your hands in some dirt and feel around. Splash water on your face.

Trace the lines on the back of someone’s hands.

 

7. Lose yourself in a beautiful song.

 

8. Scribble a picture or write a poem.

 

9. Eat your favorite food. Taste every bite, with no guilt.

Think of nothing but the miracle of your taste buds.

The miracle of life.

 

10. Pour another glass!

 

11. Let yourself laugh.  Or weep.

Or both at the same time.

 

12. Ask yourself, “Where is redemption happening right now?” When you find it, rest your eyes there for a while. 

 

13. Know you are loved.

And tomorrow is another day.

 

concrete

 

 

 

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Crossing The Sea

19 Mar

The page feels extra blank today, and I think maybe I have nothing to say.

But that is a lie, because the thoughts don’t stop rolling.

I try to live in the present, but my mind takes me far in the future.

 

To the smell of salt on skin, and tiny hands pressed into mine.

To walking by a paperback, my heart printed and on sale for $9.99.

To a place a young girl can rest her head, now only haunted by nightmares not reality.

To bad days and good days, love growing and an aching missing.

To emotions I can’t anticipate, or I will be overwhelmed now.

To all the things I’ve wanted so bad finally coming to pass, only to want more.

 

To wondering at the woman I have become, and I who will continue to be.

Hopefully stronger.

Hopefully less afraid.

Hopefully less prone to believe the bullshit and the lies,

or to put up with them.

 

Hopefully more myself than ever before.

In love and content.

Creating and thriving.

A peacemaker and a fighter.

 

Today, this is as vulnerable as I am going to be.

Hinting and scratching the surface of tension that floats upon the great wide sea within me.

But the question remains: How do I cross this ocean, that separates my dreams and my reality?

 

The only thing preventing me is a a few hours of time, and a few miles of fear.  

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Rise Like the Sun

15 Mar

It’s a strange world.

Trying to figure out how to be human in only one life time.

We suffer until we reach the split where we have to decide if we want to continue to live or not.

Whether the suffering is widely known, or completely internally hidden, whether deemed “small” or “enormous” we must all reach this point of our lives.

The split.

The moment where we know we are dying or perhaps already dead.

The moment right between darkness and morning.

Where the pain is so great we wish for numbness,

Or the numbness so great we wish for pain.

Either way, we have to decide to live. 

sun

We have to choose to rise like the sun in the morning, evaporating the cold dew on the ground of our conscience.

We do this by opening our eyes and seeing the world beyond ourselves,

A world that splits and suffers and grows numb and shines with incomparable, hopeful beauty.

A world full of kindness and goodness.

We do this by embracing love, a Love outside of our mere bodies.

If my writing has themes in different seasons, the current thing  I can’t escape from is, see the good.

And I know the quality of my life is nothing more or less than choosing to see the good. 

So I will see the helpers,

Open my eyes,

And rise with the sun.

Today.

I will not live in fear.

I will not cower to pessimism.

I will let love win,

first and foremost in my mind. 

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A Short History of Roads

6 Mar

Sometimes I have flashbacks of certain roads.

Maybe because I have spent so much time with them.

Living on them. Loving them. Hating them.

Wondering where certain ones will lead.

1.

Walking on a rocky dirt road with thick jungle to my right and a trash covered beach to my left.  My sense of adventure is heightened after hearing tales from an expatriate in a hostel of a black panther that stalks his home.

I am 23, and once again letting go at the life I thought I had. My hair is carelessly short, and I don’t do anything to tame it. I have no money in my bank account or future plans, other than a lofty desire to change the world through what I write.

I sit on the beach and write poetry. The words are naked and beyond me. The ocean waves break into my mind, affecting the cadence.

I have never felt so free.

2.

The road is ambling,  full of potholes and bumps from the harsh New England winters. The dirty river, which imagine to be chocolate, is eating away at the bank, causing the road to grow narrow as I grow taller.

I am eight, and my imagination takes me everywhere. I am an explorer, a sailor, an astronaut. I am abandoned on a deserted island with nothing but tree bark to survive on.

I am strong. I am well-loved. I am going to change the world.

3.

A decade later, I walk down a path in East Texas, intoxicated by fragrant white flowers that grow wild on bushes, their scent pushing its way into my broken heart, my guilty mind. I mutter prayers to myself, everything and anything, so desperately seeking God to make me better. I make my way into the pine woods, oblivious to the lengthening shadows and the dozens of things to accomplish the next day.

I am hungry, deep in the pit of my stomach. I am desperate to be more.

They say life is a journey, and I understand why.

I see my life so far in moments.

In places.

In walks down roads.

It is not a straight path or a  neat track where you can time and measure and compare your position to others before you cross a finish line.

Instead, it is a crooked path down a series of roads that seem sporadic and misguided, and if analyzed too deeply I may come believe I am lost.

But when I stop my analysis and close my eyes I once again become the first eight-year-old astronaut,

And as I blast off above the atmosphere, I take my gaze off the stars ahead and look down and see,

All roads interconnecting and intertwining and leading me to one place:

Here and now.

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The War On Hate Control (The Only Way I Know)

18 Feb

badnews
We see children killing children,

and the grip of handcuffs tighten until our hands turn blue

cutting off circulation, till nothing new can be made.

This is not a new era, this is not the end.  This is the history of humanity.

Hate and loneliness and revenge and “justice” and a crazy, throbbing lust for violence.

It’s all shoved into one empty space: where love is lacking in the human heart.

So we dictate and legislate, we fight the war on evil with more laws,

But we know we’re bringing wide-ruled paper to a scissor fight.

This thing.

This thing that eats away at all of us:

Madness and chaos,
Anger and fear.

A disease we treat with drugs masking symptoms, but never healing at the core.

(Side effects include: no room in your mind to make your own decisions, loss of appetite, purpose, and freedom.)

Control.

It’s how to run the world when love is absent.

Decisions made in fear may seem safe but always produce bondage in the end.

So what is the answer?

Solutions may look like education or money or resources or science or politics or religion,

Yet with all these things in order, we can still stand by and watch our children get slaughtered.

And even if we being moral citizens, hate still resides in our hearts.

What if,
What if the cure was so simple,
Yet so radical, it took nothing but a short Story and a little bit of belief?

What if,
What if we  told this story like it is what pushes air into our lungs, only to realize it is?

airtrees

What if,

What if shooters

and crack whores

and angry preachers

and suicidal beauty queens

and rapists

and gamers

and bitter housewives

and abused homosexuals

and discontented 9-5′ers

and corrupt politicians

and bullied children

listened to this Story and what they heard was this:

 

“There is a love greater than you,

A love you can’t conjure up on your own.

A love that replaces your hate and your hurt,

that surgically removes your heart of stone.

A love that awakens and makes all things new,

A love that destroys every lie, and sings a ballad of truth.

A love that doesn’t stay in some other place and time,

But enters swiftly and rearranges everything inside.

A new heart, whole and soft and clean,

Full of love, fully redeemed.

This love can’t be bartered for, bought or controlled,

It can’t be manipulated, added to, or sold.

It’s 100% good and completely pure,

It is the only answer,

It is the only cure.

It’s yours if you want it, it’s yours if you let it in,

It’s grace that does so much more than take away sin.

It gives life in every sense of the word,

It’s unconditional, passionate, and even absurd.

It’s the only way to love, it’s the only way to be moral,

It’s perfect and free and  available for all.

This love isn’t anonymous or floating on some other realm or plain,

This love has a face,
This love has a name.“

 

The Story told, the words enter the atmosphere, enter the ears,

Some will turn away in disgust,

Others will grasp cling to it like starving refugees.

And then, one at a time,
Like lanterns lit in a dark alley,

Love will replace hate.

How do you make the world good?

How do you save a broken society?

How does love overcome?

(This is the only way I know.)

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Love, etc.

14 Feb

My Senior year of High School I bought this black shirt that had a velcro strip across  the front. It came with a bag of velcro letters so I could spell anything I wanted to. The first time I wore it was on Valentine’s Day, where I proudly used it as a billboard to show off my sustain for the day,

“Cupid is Stupid.”

I was of course, single. The year before my first boyfriend whom I was on-and-off dating for two years, had finally severed things by cheating on me with my friend (who was his best friend’s girlfriend.) Later, my rebound summer fling had quickly ended after going on a missions trip and deciding I didn’t want to date until God told me who to I was supposed to marry.

“I am not the same person. I just need to date Jesus,” I said over AOL Instant Messenger. (Classy, I know.)

The next day he showed up at the diner where I worked, and waited in line while I wrote down orders for burgers, malts and stacks of onion rings, just to tell me he’d never been dumped for Jesus before. I felt a little sorry but mostly heroic, and slightly martyr-ish, like Joan of Arc must have felt.

Ten years have passed and it’s been a wild ride. All those timelines and deadlines (you know the ones: “If I am not_____by the time I am___, I will may as well DIE!”) I had I threw away, after that age had come and went.

I wished I still had my velcro shirt so I could tell the world how I really felt.

Because human emotions are complicated and deceiving. Also being a female, in this liberated, modern culture where you have the freedom to choose whoever strikes your fancy and you don’t have to worry about an arranged marriage with a greasy, bearded goat breeder when you hit puberty. Too many choices.

Then you are surrounded by all things sexual, or if you are lucky enough to be in a weird Christian subculture like I was, you are surrounded by all things about avoiding sex, all this effort to guard your heart and stay pure and wait on the Lord, while your hormones are raging on like they don’t know your heart has changed. Pressure, pressure, pressure.

Then there are all the expectations. Before I moved to Texas, I didn’t have many options. I came from a small town and 90% of the guys were way below my standard, because they loved country music and chewing tobacco and looked like they needed a shower. The other 10% were drug addicts or just pervy. A whole world opened up when I met my first “godly” man. Even though you weren’t allowed to date during the first year in the program I attended, I thought a lot about THE ONE.

What would he be like?

How would he sweep me off my feet?

When would I know?

And the biggest question: When the hell was he going to show up?

I heard these real Disney-esqe love stories from the staff there, only missing all the teen angst and kissing when they first met and anything really juicy or like real life. Yes. That is what I wanted.

Perfection. I fully believed God loved me too much to “let” me fall in love with someone I wasn’t going to marry.

So THE ONE came… and went…. and came…. and went… you know how the rest goes. It was starting to get embarrassing. I told myself I wouldn’t do it again, and I did. I would get so guilty, so full of shame. Just like I always was.

After years of one heart break after another, I finally smartened up and realized I couldn’t blame God.

I was the one doing the falling.

And then a funny thing happened. I found grace.

When I did, the guilt disappeared. Nothing in my past mattered. The shameful parts became simply stories (and some of them just funny.)

And another thing happened: I stopped believing in THE ONE.

Ok, maybe I didn’t stop believing that there was someone special for me, but I stopped believing in THE ONE as a fabricated fairy tale that was going to fix my life.

I stopped believing THE ONE would be perfect and everything would always look like a happily ever after.

I changed my expectations. It’s not that I lowered them, it’s just that I didn’t hold them tightly or idolize them.

I stopped believing THE ONE would complete me. Not because I finally listened to all those seasoned married couple who told me so, but because I finally realized,

I was already complete.

I knew things were different this time around when I didn’t care if I scared him away with my honesty…. yet he stuck around.

I told him up front exactly who I was and what I’d come through, down to the dirtiest detail, and for some reason, he decided me loved me anyways.

That, is my story, and it’s ongoing. It isn’t perfection, and often I have to laugh because it’s nothing at all what I pictured and everything I’ve ever wanted all at the same time.

Loving him is a lot of things, but it is never boring.

It’s a constant adventure, and it’s beautiful.

It’s too bad I still don’t have that old velcro shirt, because if I did and I wanted to tell the world what I thought about romance, love, etc, I would borrow a slogan from Steve Carell in the film Dan and Real Life,

“You better be prepared to be Surprised..”

 

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Would You Like To Buy A Goat?

28 Jan

I pull up to the nearly empty parking lot.  I take a chug of coffee from my plastic Starbucks travel mug.  I close my eyes for a moment, take a deep breath, and get out of my car.

I walk the path up the slight incline to the doors the custodian just unlocked. It doesn’t matter that I burnt my toast this morning, that my dog peed all over his own paws as I rushed him to go so I wouldn’t be late. It doesn’t matter that my mind is groggy and my back is aching and my make-up can’t hide the bags under my eyes.

I smile widely as I walk through the automatic doors, into the familiar miniature world that is my local mall.

I am not here to check out the clearance at Forever 21.

I am here to change the world.

Change The World. 

It’s a phrase that pressed through me, altered me, motivated my decisions as a girl, drove me to live somewhat crazy as a teen and early 20-something.

A phrase that ultimately became tired and cliché, and all but eliminated from my vocabulary.

Until, it began to creep back in, subtly without force or cause.

I answered an ad on Craigslist looking for people to represent World Vision for a Christmas campaign in the mall. Truthfully, I was sick of my current job and needed the extra money.

But, I also knew that since my India trip in 2010 I was in danger of losing something precious and deep within me. I was so overwhelmed by the pain and poverty I saw, I crawled inside my head.

It’s not that I stopped caring, it’s just that I distracted myself so I wouldn’t care too much.

Because caring too much hurts too much.

So ironically, I found myself  standing in the mall, stopping random strangers who were just there to shop, asking them to care.

“I’d love to share with you how you can change a child’s life today!”

Change the World.

If they stopped I would share with them how sponsoring a child changes an entire community, how they could help build a well or buy a farm animal to be donated to a family,

“Would you like to buy a goat?”

Ordinary people, who didn’t come to buy a goat. They came for a sale on leggings, a new purse, a gift for their sister for Christmas.

There were moments when time stopped and people really listened and I opened up  and told stories.

I spoke on behalf of those I had met face-to-face: a little girl born in a brothel in India, taken out and given an education and a new chance of life.

I spoke on behalf of those I had never met: a small Haitian with two 2 sisters and 3 brothers who likes to play jump rope and read.

I  used my imagination to fill in the blanks. Where the fear in his eyes came from, or the scar above his lip. What it must be like to live in a one room hut and walk five miles a day to collect gallons of dirty water.

A lot of people wouldn’t stop or listen. It was too much for them to make space in their hearts for what I wanted to say.

But a lot of people tried, and did.

A sick woman in a wheelchair, who desperately wanted to go work as a missionary, who said “Thank you,” in my ear as I bent down to hug her, tears falling down her face.

A 12-year-old who spoke like a wise and understanding soul and quoted, “Children are like flowers, they need love and sunshine to grow.”

An old army vet who told me his story of picking up a homeless woman on the side of the road and how she changed his life.

A 19-year-old who took the time to ask, “What’s your passion?” And then prayed encouragement and love over me.

A cynical and humorous young woman who bought some gifts in her brother’s name because, “He’s a heartless bastard,” then proceeded to buy three more for, “Other f$%#in’ jerks who need to learn some selflessness.”

A gangster looking hispanic guy with a teardrop tattoo who I almost let pass by, who ended up donating to give a cow. When his friends came over to make fun of him, he just brushed them off and exclaimed excitedly, “I just bought a cow!”

I love how every stereotype and prejudice I had arose to the surface and quickly died. Those I judged as caring usually didn’t have the time of day for me. Those I thought were too poor or too naive, gave.

Then I would play reverse psychology with myself and switch it around, and be wrong, again.

You just never know a person’s heart until they show it.

Sometimes I would surprise myself at the way I opened up and the things I said.

And the more I spoke, the more these children became more than just stories. 

I would bring myself to tears, remembering, feeling, caring deeply. Digging out the passion that I’d buried deep hoping nothing would stir it awake for fear it would cost too much.

The more I shared, the more I began to believe my own message.

Change a child’s life, change the world. 

And as I watched a beaming young couple walk away with a packet containing a photo of a little girl from India with a face weathered from hardship, and eyes black with eyeliner, I knew that I was.

Tiny Lights, Tea Cups and Snowflakes

27 Dec

The other night I went to a Chinese Lantern Festival in Dallas. I walked through scenes that looked like something out of Alice and Wonderland or Willy Wonka. Beautiful lit-up sculptures looked ordinary until you got closer and realized they were made of out teacups or thousands of tiny vials filled with colored water.

Chinese Dragon made out of China

Things look different when they are filled with light. 

At 2 am Christmas day I cried tears of frustration during a rainstorm while sitting in my car in the middle of the road on a hill about a mile from my apartment, after in my busyness of last minute christmassy to-do’s, I  forgot to get gas. Then I laughed for awhile, because what else can you do while waiting there helplessly for your rescuer?

Stranded.

Later in the morning I cried again in the shower after hearing my families voices on the phone, water running over my head, mixing with my tears making them obsolete.  And I thought on how I bury my emotions, how I talk myself out of missing people, how I think I can make it alone.

“Sometimes you need to let people take care of you,”

A wise, close friend spoke, a simple statement in the context of a simple conversation, but it hit my chest and exploded in my heart.

Sometimes you need to let other’s light illuminate your own dark places. 

And I drove on Christmas day through rain, thinking melancholy thoughts, trying to allow joy in, wondering about the hows and whens of unforeseen days. Everything outside was soaked and shivering, grey and cold.

And I almost stopped breathing as I exited off the treacherous highway to a familiar road, the closest thing to a consistent home I have had in my inconsistent life the past few years. In a moment of unexpected Christmas magic, raindrops turned to white flakes, as if by exiting I had entered some secret portal into a giant snow globe. The white stuck to the ground, cleansing the surroundings and allowing hope to barrel into my heart, like a child flying down a hill on a sled.

I let the day unwrap before me, a gift of exquisite design in the form of familiar faces, breaking crescent rolls, warm and smooth choclate-y drinks, hugs, unexpected laughter and kind words.

I allowed my mind to dwell on these moments, to shove out the age-old worries and fears, anxiousness about life’s timing.

From now all your troubles will be out of sight. 

And I appreciate that Christmas is at the end of the year, because it is, in a way I understand more and more, a wrapping up of a year of bounty, a celebration of light and color, a glimpse of hope for the coming year.

We all know the story behind it like we know the over-sung tunes, but how this story of grace unfolds looks differently.

Sometimes it looks like thousands of ordinary household dishes, sculpted carefully together and lit up with lights to make something extraordinary.

Sometimes it looks like waiting in the pouring rain at 2 am and realizing yet again I am helpless on my own.

Sometimes it looks like pure white covering a barren ground,

or one tiny twinkling light, a part of a strand of a thousand, overcoming the darkness.

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These are the Beginning Times

2 Dec

I am sitting on my balcony, having a staring contest with the moon. I am sure he is winning. I am wearing shorts and a tank-top and I am not the slightest bit cold.

I am here in Hurst, TX. I am living my life. I am living in the future, at times. Imagining days that feel more bright or free or romantic. Yet they will have their pain and boredom too, I know.

I didn’t write on Thanksgiving, it felt too cliché. Write what I am thankful for… A list felt incomplete. How do you express thankfulness when it is a state of being? It happens naturally, without pressure when I am at peace.

And peace comes when believe everything is all right, that I have all I need, that people are lovely,

That my life is beautiful.

My dog is staring at me along with the moon now, and it’s fairly quiet around my apartment complex for a Saturday night. I smell that warm and spicy baking smell drifting in from my kitchen.

And it’s hard to believe on nights like tonight that there is so much conflict and hate and anger and suffering.

It’s not that I am not aware of it, it’s not that I don’t care. Sometimes I care so much it physically hurts.

It’s just that I need to be reminded that peace is a stronger reality, that love already reigns.

I am working at my local mall for World Vision, trying to get kids sponsored and people to buy gifts for families living in extreme poverty; gifts like medicine, clean water, or a goat.

goat

Click Here to Give a Gift

It’s funny, how my life goes, standing in a mall watching dozens of people pass by, trying to get them to care.

I am not angry or surprised when they don’t care. What is tangibly right in front of them is those shoes they’ve been wanting to get for their child. But when people do care, it always surprises me, in a good way.

What also surprises me is when I continue to stereotype people and they continue to prove me wrong. When a tough hispanic gangster-looking dude with a teardrop tattoo stops and listens, really hears me, and ends up buying a cow to help provide milk for a hungry family.

I love getting to help people make selfless decisions. It makes me want to make more selfless decisions.

I know that we may have bad days where we watch too much news and think that everything is building up, that the whole world is about to break, and people in Christian circles may throw out phrases like,”End Times.”

I can just smile and be thankful. Because when you live inside of peace and Peace lives inside of you, it’s hard to see the bad even if you are looking for it.

The world is full of awful people, but it is also full of so much beauty and kindness.  Your reality really is what you are looking for and what you believe.

So despite the naysayers and constant bad-dayers, I can know in my heart every new day is new and full of people who want to care about another human being, maybe they just need to be pointed in the right direction.

Maybe these are the “End Times,” but so what?  They are also the Beginning Times.

newbeginning

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The Beauty of Past Tense

8 Nov

Today yellow leaves drift downward and scatter upon the parking lot outside my window.

I read a few sentences of words the God-man said once, words he still says, over and over.

“Take heart, for I have overcome the world.”

“Have overcome.”

Not, “Will overcome.”

Never has past tense felt so comforting.

Never have words been so real and so able to spread  across generations and lands, thick like homemade blackberry jam on bread.

And we eat it and are filled. And we know it is not just a cute little saying, but reality for us, now.

When the systems of the world with their strangling owed bills and dooming predictions began to feel like they hijacked your day,

Those words will speak out, through the yellow leaves,

They will ignite and burn and leave you knowing that today is not only bearable, but sacred.

And when the faces of people around you look like statues and you are convinced the future will leave you full of widening cracks and alone,

Those words resounds through a moment of heart-connecting conversation, soft lips, a hand in a hand.

“Have overcome,” they say, “We are not waiting for someday, when the weather feels sunny and perfect and we lose all our silly human flaws.”

We, like the trees letting go of their leaves, can lose the idea that our someday will be our redeemer. 

Because we are living in the present reality of the past-tense.

Our redeemer has already redeemed.

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