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I write best in times of uncertainty, flowering in harsh winds, struggling to capture the words that have gathered in piles on my back patio. I wrap letters around what hurts, bandaging the stinging lesions. The words form to the wounds, so all that’s visible is the outline. All the while, I cry out for some kind of routine and calm, like the narrow confidence of a country road after traffic on a four-lane highway. I long to wake up early in the morning, actually use my espresso machine, open the local paper and read more than the police blotter. I long for time to make a good dinner, learn to bake a pineapple upside-down cake and change the oil in my car on a 75-degree afternoon.
Then a week comes when I have no evening plans. I leave the office promptly at five o’clock, ready to begin my week of productivity and growth. Somewhere in the ten minutes between doors, I lose the battle with fatigue. I take a nap, eat some leftovers for dinner, sort the laundry. I stare at the novel I started. Chapter Four, Chapter Four, Chapter Four. It’s an empty chapter. Something is there, but I can’t find it. Stephen King says writing novels are like digging up fossils, things that are already there waiting to be discovered. Mine is full of wishing and digging washed out by unforeseen rains.
I expend all of my energy at work being bright and shiny. There’s none left for my nameless character and her domestic challenges. I haven’t written anything substantial since before graduation, I said. What a horrid thing to admit. But the truth is I am swallowed up by uncertainty. I am trapped in a bad dream, floating in a black endless space and I am the only being in existence. There is no resistance in the air, no means of travel, no sound in my vocal cords. I could close my eyes, but the view is the same.
I can’t pretend I’m not here, but I can’t pretend to be breathing where I am. There is no knowing where I am or if I am traveling at all. And if I am in no place, how can I reorient myself? I’m afraid the depth of my introspection is enough to stifle creation itself.
No one warned me of this. If they had, I’d have brought a snack and a good book.
Someone once described it as a giant Twinkie. At first, I didn’t like thinking that I was the filling. But now I see it, now that I’m four years safely out from being the filling again. Now I get in my little silver dollar and travel to school in the mornings by the highway, to college where everyone drives little pennies and nickels and quarters. And if you come to school in a Corvette, shame on you. How un-Christian of you to openly display your wealth around the rest of us who are so humble (okay, maybe we aren’t humble, we just can’t actually afford a two-seater). But if I ever had to go back to the giant Twinkie, I might hyperventilate.
Today, it came rolling down my road when the school district let out at 3:10. I had just pulled into my driveway when I had a moment of hesitation. If I get out of my car, they’ll see me. They’ll all know where I live, I thought. Then I reconsidered. Why do I fear the giant Twinkie as a senior in college? What is it about that vehicle that strikes fear into me? None of those kids even know who I am.
I remember sitting in the brown, fake leather seats, hoping that so-and-so would pass by me and not ask for the seat. Because I never had the heart to say no. I never had it in me to be outwardly mean to someone. I could do it in my head, making up scenarios of what I’d say if the smelly kid made a move on me. Instead I put my bag on the seat next to me and pressed my forehead into the window. And when I’d get off the bus, I’d walk so slowly home that bus would breeze past before the other kids would see where I lived.
I dread the day that my future children ask me to accompany them on a field trip, when I have to make the walk of shame to those folding doors and climb onto a school bus yet again. There’s just something about that giant yellow Twinkie that makes me grateful for my little silver dollar.
A musty fragrance hangs in the air, a mixture of decaying paper and old smoke. Time itself seems to have been paused here, stopped in the middle of my childhood, stopped last year.
Where has the quiet gone?
I climb blue carpeted stairs at a slower pace than I did last year, savoring each step and the soft cushion beneath my feet. The air grows colder as my skin cinches itself around my body. The room at the top is alive, buzzing with little particles of dust that swim upward and downward like little flies trying to escape through the window glass. I try not to disturb the air.
Why are the memories to which I desperately cling the most painful?
The last signs of life are a disheveled bed spread and a fleece blanket neatly folded on top. The room is just as it was thirteen months ago. Thirteen months after he carried his clothes and pillows and television to the spare room. I breathe his scent as I back slowly out the doorway. Toe-heel, toe-heel. I don’t want to be irreverent to the memories.
Why do I wait?
I place my pen to the blue-lined page at the old table. “Sorry I missed you. Maybe I’ll see you this weekend.” Thinking I should pen a note to him, too, I feel the weight of memory pressing a thumb to my throat, salting my eyes with gathering tears. The notebook lies in the sunlight that gathers around it. I leave it there. Distance is a gap that can be closed, I say.
Why do I want the pain back?
Where did it go?
I hate wet socks. So whenever I come home on a snowy winter day, I immediately unzip my boots and step gingerly out away from them as if the floor is lava and I am seven years old again. Today I wore my boots to class, preparing for the worst-case scenario: a slide-off or worse… a broken bone. Rumor has it that four different students broke bones during the last winter storm, which really wasn’t even bad enough to slow down the high schools.
Tending to over-prepare for days like these (people are calling it “snowmageddon”), I stuff my car with spare clean clothes, the usual granola bar, water, a flashlight, two pairs of shoes, gloves, a car charger for my cell phone, and of course, my homework. This may someday be my downfall, considering carrying a forty-pound backpack might not be a good way to prepare to fall on the ice. At the very least, my thousand-dollar laptop will break my fall.
Most other students don’t take the biting cold and wind-blown sleet seriously. They wear Chuck Taylors or skimpy flats. Boys wear hoodies and stuff their hands into the front pockets instead of putting on gloves. I don’t get it. I wear my waterproof zip-up snow boots that come ankle high, just enough to keep my socks dry and my feet firmly planted. They’re the most comfortable snow boots I’ve ever worn, probably because they’re lined with neoprene, which reminds me of the life jacket I wear in the lake in the summertime. Unfortunately, they’re rather ugly. All black leather except for an orange stripe down the sole on the side, they are pleasing only a little more to the eye than to the ear.
These boots not only squeak on linoleum and smooth concrete surfaces, but also on the carpet. I hate walking down quiet hallways in them, the squeak-crunch notifying everyone of my arrival. Rmph, rmph, rmph…
But I wear them anyway. Why? Because I like being over-prepared, even if it means carrying a forty-pound backpack. I like the feeling of risk and the counter-feeling of that risk being the survival kit that is my backpack. And my grandma bought me those boots. So I should probably wear them.
If only I could cook like I write. Hopefully I don’t write like I cook. I guess I don’t know for sure. How does one know when they are successful at something? Certainly it’s not the way I’m going. 50/50 doesn’t seem like great odds to me. Those odds are even worse when I’m behind the stove.
Let me crack an egg, fry some sausage, toast bread. I can make breakfast. Pancakes, waffles, you name it. Oh, and pasta. I’ll do pasta, but don’t ask me to do vegetables. I don’t know the first thing about vegetables, especially if they aren’t being cooked in the microwave. Steamed broccoli? Peas? Sweet carrots? I have no idea. Leave me out.
My family is known for its good, heart-stopping southern cooking: Granny’s gingerbread and fried bologna, Aunt Brenda’s chicken and noodles, Aunt Lisa’s corn casserole. The women in my family have the taste buds and the instinct to cook. They know spices and herbs and meat temperatures and how to moisten up a chocolate cake just right (mayonnaise, I’ve heard). Not me. I can’t feel the process like they do. Once I used a whisk for brownie batter—from the box! I learned quickly that I have no ability to bake. Let me work a skillet or a frying pan; I can handle that.
I like my words the same way. I can work with the surface level things, the commas and diction and structure. But when it comes to the big picture, the baking, it all falls out of my control. I struggle to see what exactly I’m trying to communicate. I can’t order things, can’t see the coherent thought process, probably because my thoughts are hardly coherent in the first place.
I want to cook, just like I want to write. But somehow I feel less qualified as a woman, a future wife, and a valid citizen because I can do neither. No one thinks of me and remembers that one terrific dish I fixed for that one special dinner, neither will anyone publish my poetry. In time, my friends and family say. In time, I think pessimistically, I will discover that I have been wasting my time trying to do two things that I was never born to do: cook and write.
Responsibility is scary. Not in roller coaster adrenaline kind of way. More like a this-might-affect-my-eternity kind of way. As I sat in my cushioned $28,000 lecture classroom seat two days ago, I felt the weight of this responsibility in the syllabus in my hands. Ashamedly my reaction to this feeling was immediately hitting the brakes and trying not to fly over the handlebars. The feeling, strangely, was new to me.
See, I’m not the kind of person that receives a challenge sheepishly. I might not boast about my abilities, but I will certainly not backpedal. Last year I contracted a case of mono that kept me out of school for three weeks. Professors were asking if I was going to withdraw, if they should keep giving me homework while I was sick, or if I was even well enough to make that kind of decision for myself. With two weeks left in the semester, I returned. I caught up on tests, quizzes, papers, and other assignments and ended up with a 3.8 GPA for the semester. I think I finished just to be defiant, to show my illness that I could not only beat it but bury it, too.
Today my best friend gave me a late birthday present, a book by Mark Batterson called In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. His first chapter was about Benaiah, a man mentioned in 2 Samuel 23:20-21. He had a great resume, which included chasing a lion down into a pit and killing it. He was hired as David’s bodyguard for that reason. Batterson’s thesis using this example (if he had one) was this: “The right place often seems like the wrong place, and the right time often seems like the wrong time.”
I thought about this sentence today as I pondered dropping a class that seemed pointless and difficult. Instead of tapping into my egotistical I-can-do-anything mentality, I decided that this might be one of those God-ordained opportunities. I know better than ever that I can’t know anything or everything. Knowing is for God to do. Trusting is for me to do.
So I’m sitting tight here in my seat, which didn’t really cost $28,000. I just like to say that when I’m irked with my classes.
There was a certain man promised a certain treasure many years ago. It came as a surprise to him, as much of his life was. He was a real guy, down-to-earth, a farmer kind of guy you might say. One day, God said go, and he went.
He killed tens of thousands of people, which apparently was quite a mark of his achievements back in the day. But he started with one and won, hence the big treasure promised to him. There was only one problem…
He was promised a throne. And the throne was occupied.
It’s funny how God often promises to do things we can’t fathom him doing. I don’t mean like winning the lottery. I mean when he says stuff like, “All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands,” when it is obviously the middle of a war. Every man is holding a sword and a spear to protect and defend his own life, but evidently they’re going to be useless. God, after all, did promise he would fight this battle without them.
He kept his promise that day. So the throne was important to this man, because he knew God wasn’t bluffing.
In the twenty-one years I’ve been breathing, I’ve spent most of it waiting on God’s promises. I keep waiting because they’re worth it, but when the throne is a sword’s tip away from being yours, it’s hard to watch it taunt you there.
David waited a good long time before the throne was unoccupied. He had more than a few opportunities to take it for himself. Instead he waited on what Christians like to call “God’s timing.” What that really comes down to is patient obedience in the faces of people who believe you’re being absolutely ridiculous.
The occupant of the throne was literally a crazy man who wanted David dead. He was a backstabber in the truest sense–a man who pretended to be family but pulled his gun when David turned his back. After his first scrape with death in his own home, I’d bet David was thinking about the preposterousness of God’s promise.
I sometimes think about it, too.
But after all that waiting, God provided it, and he didn’t do it through David. Saul was dead (does that mean we can make that ten-thousand-and-one men?). When you’re supposed to be waiting on something, it’s hard not to step in and help it along. David could have maimed Saul at the very least. Or he could have sent his army after Saul’s. He might have won. He probably would have won. But what’s the fun in taking for yourself what someone else wants to give you eventually?
The promise of the gift makes all the waiting worth it. Even with the death threats.
“The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord; I am not guilty of turning from my God.” 2 Samuel 22:21-22
(OK, maybe not the death threats.)
I have been chained to perhaps one of the most mind-numbing, life-sucking addictions ever. It killed any life that was once left in me, any inspiration, any hope for inner progress, and made my world a rather gray apparition. I have been addicted to busyness. Perhaps I still am.
It started with an apartment. The apartment moved me away from the noise of dorm life, but also away from the constant “connection” to the people around me. (I say “connection” because I was rarely connected to anyone besides the people I merely labeled my roommates and suitemates.) The apartment gave me a quiet corner. A corner without a social life, without a single person to know how I was really doing, without someone besides my fellow employees to ask me about my life.
My desk became a conveyor belt of sorts, an assembly line. I moved from one task to the next with quality and efficiency being my priorities. I worshiped time. I always keep a detailed planner. When I work, my best products come when I shut out the entire world and live in this tiny cubicle of workspace. I eat alone there. I sleep next to it. When I am not at work, I am in the chair, doing whatever task needs to be completed next. Rarely was anything more important to me than the time I had. It’s true.
I barely know my housemates, and they barely know me. I have developed little social life, though every year I have hope that somehow someone will actually see me. Someone will care enough about me. You see, busyness, this addiction, it’s just something we do to cover up our pain. It’s just something we do to make ourselves feel better somehow, feel worthy. My addiction is busyness. Some people plug in headphones. Some people fix stuff. Some people laugh a lot. Some people hide in groups. Some people drink. Some people use clothes, accessories, make-up, hair. Some people eat. Some people watch TV. I am not alone.
When I started to see how busy I was, how horrifyingly terrible my life had become in college, you know what I did? I got busy again. I told myself, “But these things have to be done. I need to be a good student. At least I am being a good student.” And I started planning in my head at what time I need to start writing this paper and when I should go to bed, if I should be on the internet while I work or if it will be too distracting. And busyness, though it was a good excuse, could never replace what I could really be doing. Busyness could never heal me.
So sometimes I feel really hopeless. I think, if I wasn’t busy, would I be doing what I know I should be doing? I don’t think I even know how. That intimidates me. I tell myself, I would rather be alone. I would rather be alone than keep reaching out to people for friendship and keep getting hurt. My heart is not the elastic kind. My heart needs my hard exterior because it’s so soft inside.
Time–no, life–is so precious. Every moment I live is the only moment I have. A week of lying flat on my back helpless showed me that.
But sometimes I feel the same helplessness on my feet in a crowd of people. I feel helplessness for things to be any better, for me to be any better. Then hopelessness. Then tears. Then anger.
And God breaks me, because the busyness, it kept me from Him. I was too busy working to let Him tell me that my heart’s not right. Sometimes my cubicle isn’t big enough for God. I miss God’s knocking. Then I get a little upset, because I haven’t heard from God in a long time. Wait… that’s my fault.
I wish I could end this by saying I’ve fixed the cubicle or gotten rid of it. I wish I could tell you I’ve defeated my addiction. But I haven’t. I can tell you what I know: good faith brings God’s grace.
A new dawn breaks every morning.
I wrote this poem as a journal entry one night, sort of as a prayer but mostly as an overflow. Enjoy.
What if grace came in gusty winds
that blew sand onto my skin
blasted me raw and open
and salty spray of sea burned clean
my wounds, my sin, opened me
wide or instead
just blew me
away…
What if none of me was left to see
but a light that cannot be moved
by wind or damaged by sand
or washed away by the flood
And You a light inside me
showed grace by giving what no one
else could,
yourself.
Grace flooded, gusted, opened deep
my soul and washed it
like river rocks, smooth,
no trickle will do
to save me from myself
No grace comes in sprinkles
no grace feels comfortable that is real
for it is sovereign, heavenly;
a tornado,
a tsunami,
a cross,
a death,
and then blinding light.
I learned something about grace once, sitting on a concrete wall listening to music. Their voices sang together a familiar song whose words sailed unnoticed past my ears, wrecked, and sank into the crevices of my heart. So much of my life has been spent trying to explain the deepest movements inside me, those that I cannot see, not even with my soul’s eyes. In poetry, in prose, in measures of 4/4 time, my mind struggles to translate the tides that roll in and out, spill over the barriers of my eyelashes and cut rivers through my cheeks. The tide was whirling out of control in some unpredictable torrent. I choked it back again and again.
Each time I saw another cause for the disturbance in my soul. Abandonment. Apathy. Worry. Pressure. Loneliness. They fell on me, threatened to drown me in the waters of my soul. I felt like a bobber, under and up, under and up. The fish had taken the hook and I was in for a wild ride. There was a chance I wouldn’t surface next time. And there was a chance I’d make it back to the tackle box. That evening, the odds seemed against me. I begged and pleaded with the maker of my soul to sweep me away from that place in any way possible. Even failure and death seemed to be pleasant alternatives to the hellish turmoil that churned inside me.
That night, grace came in a way I did not expect. I drowned. I died. I found myself at the very bottom of the glass that day. The glass was so full, the glass was abundant and alive. It was alive for all of the other people singing, at least. I sat alone on the concrete wall suffocating in sobs. It was cool and dark. The stars were out, like God, but the lights above us kept us blind to them. I felt he was just beyond the atmosphere–the atmosphere of my mind, my heart, my planet… Though I suffered my turmoil alone, I felt he was nearby. Not next to me, not above me, not in front of me or holding my hand. He was in me, whispering in my heart in a language that only I could understand, nothing I could vocalize.
Grace came that day. Whatever grace is. I know it came because I lived, though at the bottom of the glass. I cried alone under the stars and a God who were not physically evident to me but were instead a movement within my being. I did not understand it, but with a word, the swirling tide calmed and I was drawn from the silty bottom, a bobber, a doormat, a girl. I was alive.
