Some of my Asia people (Photo by Gonzalo Santillan, 2012).

Gratitude & Asia & Colorado

November 24, 2015

I once lived in Asia. I remember the night we arrived, how we all trooped into the first apartment at midnight, how we took in every bright and dusty and unusual detail. How we had a few names and phone numbers, but we didn’t know anyone, not really, and we didn’t know this city.

Three months later, we didn’t just have our favorite restaurants and transportation success stories and the ability to navigate any dish with a pair of chopsticks; we also had friends. We wrote down the names of these people, the ones we spent time with in living rooms and cafeterias and zoos, the people we ate chicken feet and watermelon and birds-on-a-stick with, the people we invited over and out, the people who understood a little of what we said and those who understood a lot. We filled three sheets of paper with their names. We had them, and we had each other.

So much can happen between spring and summer.

So much can happen between one winter and the next.

Photo by james j8246 on Flickr's creative commons.

Advent of Restlessness

November 21, 2015

I have a bit of a crush on Advent.

I buy things for Advent and I daydream about Advent and I want to spend as much time with Advent as possible.

And every year, I am disappointed. This isn’t because Advent stands me up, however, but because I make Advent stand in the snow, and put a Santa hat on her head, and fill her arms with enough books and music and art and calendars to make anyone topple.

Photo by Toma Toshi on Flickr's creative commons.

Choosing the Freefall

November 18, 2015

Choosing to be brave is choosing the freefall.

It is the moment when you sheepishly return to the party you left 20 minutes ago, the one where you hardly knew anyone, the one where you stayed your usual amount of time and then slipped away. When the door closed behind you, though, you realized you didn’t actually want to go home, that you weren’t tired, that you weren’t quite done, but you kept walking because you had made your choice and that was that, right? But then, halfway home, you turned the car around and changed your story.

It is the moment when you say, “Yes, I do have something to say, can we talk?” to the person who intimidates you, or the person you might disappoint, or the person who would rather not hear what you have to say.

It is the moment when you pull your car to the side of the road and call the friend you just said goodnight to, the friend you’ve never prayed with before, and ask her if you can maybe come over and pray.

Live Coals and Broken Places

November 14, 2015

When a live coal sits atop a piece of wood, powered by breath and prodded by sticks, the wood eventually becomes a coal too. And with enough time, the heat begins to chip away at the wood.

The fire and I, we made a bowl yesterday.

A few hours before, I was sitting in my car, vaguely aware of a headline, picturing a building or a street corner or another place surrounded by police tape and contained. Then I switched on the radio and learned the truth: of a restaurant and a stadium and a concert hall, of AK-47s and explosives, of death and fear that could not be contained.

I used to think _, and now I think .

November 4, 2015

I used to think in black and white.

There was nothing in the dark to be redeemed, nothing to be recognized, not even a smattering of stars to show me my own spindly hand in front of my face.

And in the white and bright and hot, I was always squinting and burning without realizing it. There was too much gauze and glare to illuminate anything of substance.

The Spiritual Practice of Reading Sarah Bessey {a book review & giveaway}

November 2, 2015

I read the last half of Sarah Bessey’s newest book, Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith, while lounging in my messy bed in my messy room. It seemed fitting.

You see, she starts her book with the analogy of a rummage sale — of laying out everything we’ve believed and inherited and carried with us, and deciding what should stay and what should go. So is what needs to happen when we reach that “out of sorts” place. And it doesn’t just happen once.

Through her writing, Sarah has been a constant companion of mine for more than two years. I’ve fallen in love with what she writes and how she writes it. And most importantly, I trust her.

Photo by stockmonkeys.com via Flickr's creative commons.

Running into Shame and Grief

October 25, 2015

I ran a marathon last week, and it broke my heart.

"It was hard, but at least I finished," I tell the people I don't know as well. With others, the words "excruciating" and "demoralizing" and "disappointing" might make their way into my answers. But I'm still smiling as I list the reasons why my race was all those things.

I'm not very good at letting people see my grief. I know this because sometimes they've laughed when I've told them about my race, and I'm sure they thought they were laughing with me.

One week ago, I was shivering in shorts and a T-shirt and marveling at the colors in the morning sky. It had been a long week and I knew it would be a hot day, but I had no misgivings, no latent fears that my body might fail me.

Photo by Javier Rodríguez on Flickr's creative commons.

Embers

October 7, 2015

Work might be saving my life right now.

On one side of the weekend, the happier side, I sigh and let go and sink backwards into a soft chair. But then I don't get up, not really. The loneliness and the depression are always waiting to welcome me back.

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here

Photo by Fe Ilya in Flickr's creative commons.

Running into Grace

October 1, 2015

I am standing at a street corner in the predawn blue. A gas station to my right outshines the few remaining stars, and behind me the green-yellow-red rhythm regains its usefulness. We are all waking up.

Ahead, the sidewalk curves into a trail along a river, where I will see deer and rabbits and ducks, and I will keep looking to the right, past the highway to the eastern horizon, and I will be grinning.

Most runs aren’t like this.

Mumford & Sons in concert at the Gentlemen of the Road stopover in Salida, Colorado, on August 22, 2015.

Of Souls and Long-term Memory (a Mumford & Sons reflection)

September 6, 2015

I’m not much of a concert person, even less a music festival person.

The soundtracks and stages of my youth were limited, and it was a long time before I fell head-over-heels in love with music. But fall I did, and for no one more deeply than Mumford & Sons.

Start a conversation about their craft and technique, and I wouldn’t be able to do much more than agree with every good word. But bring up their lyrics and ponder what their music means to people? I would be so full of thoughts. It comes down to their incredible ability to express the deep longings of the human soul, I would say, and for that reason they have sunk into my whole being and I have carried their music with me for years.

Their new album came out a few months ago, and I made it my (somewhat belated) mission over the first few weeks of August to learn and fall in love with it. Even with the banjo gone, it wasn’t difficult to make room for these new offerings.

But when I saw the band in concert two weeks ago, it was what was in long-term memory that made the deepest impression.

Of Magic and Memory

July 11, 2015

Six months ago, she hugged her family goodbye, and the page turned as they went upstairs and she stayed downstairs.

The night before, the first night, she lay on the blue-and-white rug looking up at the ceiling, knees pulled to her chest. She won’t remember most of her thoughts from those early days, but she’ll remember these:

There are so many memories waiting to happen in this little house, in this big city. I know there will be days when I’m lying on the floor looking at the ceiling and I won’t be able to stop laughing. Other days, that view will be blurry with tears. Now, though, everything’s a blank slate. Anything could happen!

Photo by Molly Stoddard on Flickr's creative commons. — *Photo by* *Molly Stoddard* *on Flickr's creative commons.*

Streaked with Grace

May 22, 2015

I don’t mean to dip my fingertips into the wine along with the bread, but in that dimly lit basement, it sometimes happens. And I’m always glad when it does.

Within seconds I’ve chewed and swallowed, but my fingers are still streaked with light purple. It feels like a measure of grace, like my skin has mingled with something holy, like that holiness is moving down my hands and up my arms and into all of me.

We are speaking and listening together, standing and sitting together, breathing in and breathing out, and I look at the hands that held the bread and still carry signs of their participation in the Presence.

Photo by Magdalena Gmur on Flickr's creative commons.

Forever Unraveling

May 17, 2015

Three years ago, I told my roommate, “I don’t know who I am.” She didn’t understand how that could be. But it is a journey I am still on, to find the threads of desire and movement, of the words that leave my mouth and those that shrink back, of fear and freedom, stillness and noise, and follow them to their points of origin.

I try to solve me like a riddle, but I am Rubik’s cube that’s stuck; I am an instruction manual with half the words missing. The threads are knotted and intertwined and frayed. So it is with all of us, I think.

I sit in the library or on a plane and write pages and pages, and then exhale from the deepest part of me and think, There. I’ve figured it out. I’ve discovered what makes me come alive and what crushes my spirit.

To Be a Part of the Mystery

April 15, 2015

In a few days, I will be offering to others something that is not mine. I won't be able to take credit for a single taste, for the mystery that's among us, for any trembling hands or averted eyes, and I don't want to. The body of Christ, broken for you, my friend, for you, my neighbor, for you who are hungry. The blood of Christ, shed for you.

I tell people I've found a church in Denver, but most of them don't understand how big of a deal this is for me. They don't know the backstory of doubts and church-weariness and all the sharp points that started poking out of my skin two or three years ago. This church I've found now, rich in liturgy, gentle in spirit, a meeting of the old and the new, is a gift in my rocky faith story.

I've inhaled that same sweet air in the written word too, in those men and women who write blogs and books that remind me that I am not alone in the questions I ask, in the injustices I see, in what I'm frustrated and passionate about.

Photo by Jasleen Kaur. — *Photo by* *Jasleen Kaur*.

House Church

April 9, 2015

Please be my people.

Almost every time, I leave their house feeling lighter than when I got there, even in my work clothes and work grime and work weariness. What was dormant in me is now stirring; what was dull is now reflecting bits of light as I walk back to my car on another Wednesday night. It's been two and a half months.

One week into my new city life, I was pressing send on an email to an unknown person. I was feeling around in the dark for an open table, for other hands that would reach back, for faces that weren't hiding behind plastic or paint or cliches. It was a hopeful search for the truest kind of community.

I think I've found it, but I'm not sure it's found me ... or that I've let myself be found by it.

Photo from Nathan Siemers on Flickr. — *Photo from Nathan Siemers on* *Flickr*.

It's time to change the song

March 24, 2015

The same song echoes in a new room. The acoustics are different, the walls are a brighter blue, and though there are familiar faces in the lopsided pictures hanging between windows and corners, the faces belonging to those who are tangibly here are new additions.

I can breathe easier here. The windows aren't stuck and I don't feel claustrophobic. With all these changes, it's easy to think that the music filling my ears is different too. And in some ways, it is. A couple new stringed instruments are in the group, adding a richness that wasn't there before, and the new vocalist is bringing something to my words that wasn't there before.

There's more experimentation, more stamina, more fullness, but the longer I listen, the more the novelty fades and I understand what a new environment can and cannot do.

Photo by David Goehring on Flickr — *Photo by* *David Goehring* *on Flickr*

A First Homecoming

March 17, 2015

“There isn’t a cloud in sight,” they say, though sometimes there might be a few wispy white things on the edge of the horizon, hovering above housetops and distant mountains. And while I can’t see those distant mountains from here, I looked around, squinting, and there truly is not a cloud in sight.

I’m home.

I’ve lived here for two months now, but this weekend was the first time I left town, stayed away for a few days, and then returned, groggy, with a bag of dirty clothes and several dozen pictures on my phone.

If the 17 pages in my journal sporting new writing are any indication, this trip was steeped in thoughts and feelings as well as faces and experiences. Someday, I’ll write more about these revelations, but for now I’m simply soaking up home.

Now is the right time

March 7, 2015

It needs to stop, this wanting to write but never taking the time.

It needs to happen, this writing I keep talking about.

This is my corner of the Internet. Facebook can feel too much like being at a family reunion, with all the aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins asking me what’s going on in my life in that big city twelve hundred miles away. Twitter is like a party with all the cool kids: a lot to stimulate and energize, but too much going on and too many people I don’t know to really feel comfortable there.

When the Darkness Wins

January 25, 2015

Today, I’m mourning the loss of a man I never knew.

I read line after line about the impact he had on people, about their love for him, about his love for them. There was so much more to him than the brokenness in him and around him. There was kindness and faith, there was a love of Mumford & Sons and Raisin Bran, there was a whole person-sized ray of light.

Then, he returned to his hometown, where he was murdered.

It breaks my heart that he died, and in such a horrible way. That the darkness won.

When You Say Goodbye

January 8, 2015

You hold out your autograph book, the one with the multicolored pages and the dinosaur cover, the one you got when you were a child. You hold it out with pride, not embarrassment, for the decade and a half of memories it carries — of names and notes, of crossed-out words and hard-to-read cursive. You’ve taken this book overseas twice, and you safeguard it in ever-increasing ways after each pen or pencil addition.

Latest Posts

Featured

Dec 31, 2019

Thirty, Flirty, and Falling: How Making an Audio Drama Saved My Life

Dec 31, 2019

Feb 7, 2019

Awake and Asleep: Joy and Discovery

Feb 7, 2019

Jan 29, 2019

Awake and Asleep: Depression and Loss

Jan 29, 2019

Aug 16, 2018

Adventures in Odyssey: Moments Like These (written in 2008)

Aug 16, 2018

Jul 26, 2018

Future Dead Girl

Jul 26, 2018

Subscribe to Receive New Posts Via Email