Are These My Glasses?

They gave me that look and those words, critiquing my lodging arrangements on our trip. She stood in the middle of the street and started singing beautifully, and I realized she would always be better than me at everything. She came up to me and touched the mole on my face, the one that sprouts black hairs.

Two nights ago, I dreamed all those scenarios, one right after another, and what an insecurity bath it was!

Sometimes my confidence is off-the-charts, and I love being me, and “weird” is a badge of honor. Then my world opens up a bit more, or I’m plunged back into an earlier time with earlier people, and it all comes back.

I’m not invincible; I’m fragile.

Two autumns ago, I knew the steps and I walked in them. Literally. I knew that writing helped me understand myself. I knew that walking brought clarity to thoughts and prayers. So I did both often, and the steps were simple, and life was sweet.

But it was easier to carve out the space for these life-giving habits then. I had just returned home from seven months abroad. I was reunited with my cats and the majority of my wardrobe, and everything looked a little newer and fresher than it had before I left. I was afraid of this return, afraid of falling back into depression and old, hated patterns, but I was healthy, the world was new, and I had time aplenty on my hands. And so I slid smoothly into the new rhythm.

But once you slide out of it, as I did after a few months — gradually and imperceptibly — it’s hard to regain that footing.

It’s been almost a year and a half now since those (perceived) idyllic days.

It terrifies me how fragile this is, how fragile I am, how easily I can and have lost my way on the slippery slopes of self-loathing and comparison and laziness and many others.

Writing again has been like exchanging someone else's glasses for a pair that's actually my prescription. I’m grateful to be able to see again, but I’m also fearful. What if I lose them or break them or forget them somewhere? What if I forget to clean them and they get all smudged and blurry and I'm so used to the new normal that I don't realize it's time for a reset?

And how do I even know these glasses are the "magic formula" for seeing? What if there's a better, sharper pair somewhere else, and I'm unknowingly settling for ones that may work for a while, but will give me headaches in the end?

The License Plate Game

The License Plate Game (if that be its official title) is a legend of road trips, right up there with the Alphabet Game. At least it's a legend on my road trips, as I try to catch definitive glimpses at the cars whizzing by in the opposite direction — or, if I'm lucky, at the ones  creeping past me in the left lane, slow enough for me to get a good, long look at their markings without endangering anyone's life.

Years ago, I adapted the Alphabet Game for the dentist's chair. Now, I've turned the License Plate Game into a month-long adventure. How many states, I wondered, would I see in 31 days while simply living my life in the town I grew up in?

Forty states and counting.

Granted, I did go on a weekend trip to Washington, and once I drove slowly around the Bethel Church parking lot, but still. I'm amazed at how many out-of-staters I see on a regular basis. Every day I see between five and ten different states represented on the backs of cars and trucks, and not just border states (well, obviously not just border states, as California only has three of those), but some from rather far-flung locations.

Here's what I've learned as I've kept my eyes open: Adventure is all around me.

My one year of being back at home is stretching into two. The trees and mountains look the same, the streets and buildings look mostly the same. When you don't expect much, you won't see or seek out much. Over the last year, I've gotten to know people who are new to my town and excited to be here, and it's made a world of difference. There's so much I didn't know about this place and still don't know. No, I will never be able to view my town through the fresh eyes of a newcomer, but I don't have to view it as the place where dreams and adventures go to die. Because it's not that place.

No place holds that power, unless you give that power to it.

I want my life — wherever I am — to be like a License Plate Game. I want to be straining and slowing to see if there might be a hidden opportunity at that event, a potential friend in that person, unwrapped joy in that stepping out and starting something. Maybe there won't be. Maybe it will just be another California and I'll purse my lips and turn back to the road. But I will keep going, and I will keep looking, because there are more cars. There's always more. And anyway, there is a time and place for Californias, and Oregons, and Washingtons, and I can learn a lot from them.

But one day I'll just be driving along, ever-watchful and ever-present and ever-hopeful, and New York will appear and my heart will beat faster and I'll realize that this, this is what life is about. Life doesn't just happen out there on the road on set adventures. Life happens here. It's full of routines and it's full of familiarity, but it's also full of surprises and newness and unexpected blessings. It's full of people and its full of God, and that's enough.

Wherever you're doing life can be a place of adventure, if you let it.