Fly

I'm tired of reading the same page of my life recurrently.

http://youmeandcharlie.com/daily-inspiration/fly/


Thanks to You, Me, and Charlie.

2CELLOS

To be able to find something you love this much, and to be this connected to it...if only.

http://youmeandcharlie.com/daily-inspiration/mastering-your-craft/

Thank you, You, Me, and Charlie.

Wounded Healers

"And I had heard that term before: Wounded Healer. Yet I had never applied the term to my life. It makes you wonder, doesn't it, whether or not God calls specific people who have specific pain into the authority of empathy? Experience is, after all, the best education. We are the ones...who will mentor others through the difficult journey of life, perhaps rescuing them from what we have been rescued.

"I knew...that if these people in South Africa who had suffered unconscionable wrongs could rise in dignity, God would expect nothing less from you and me, having encountered lesser pain...if John and I have a prayer for you...it is that we would not be arrogant victims, but wounded healers." -Donald Miller, To Own A Dragon

All I Have To Give

Speaking of Glee...

On tonight's Michael episode Artie said something that struck a chord in me.

He said all he had left was his pain. That's all he had left to give.

I won't be able to get that out of my head or heart, especially because that concept, that way of life: it will either make or break you. And that's frightening one moment, and empowering the next.

When Desmond Tutu was asked for his opinion about who should be asked to be a part of apartheid, he "responded, essentially, that the commission should be comprised of victims, of people whose lives had been ripped open by the horrors of oppression. But not arrogant victims, he stated, not people looking for vengeance. Instead, Tutu said softly, these should be people who have the authority of awful experiences, experiences that educate them toward empathy, and yet still have within themselves hearts willing to forgive...These people will be wounded healers." -Donald Miller, To Own A Dragon

Glee may seem like a silly fad to you. But this was essentially their interpretation of Michael Jackson's life and work: to be wounded healers and not arrogant victims seeking nothing but revenge. It is a beautiful show if you look with your heart and not pop culture hype. Glee is the real deal. Making the marginalized feel loved, liked, and maybe even cool. They are a group of wounded healers and I'm proud to be a Gleek.

May any and everything inspire us to give our pain back to the world in a positive way.

You, ME, and Charlie

If you don't know about this website, well, then you aren't a Gleek and you don't use twitter, but I am here to bring brilliance directly to you--so, none of that matters. (Well, it matters, well, Glee does, but Twitter? Eh.)

http://youmeandcharlie.com

is an amazing website that is full of life and inspiration. It's the perfect site to lose a day to, and even then that's not enough. Trust me when I tell you that you need to check it out. It's...well, it's fun, but I believe it to be important fun.

You're welcome.

Apologetics: Conflict and Clothes

"We understand conflict because we experience conflict, right? But where does conflict come from? Why do we experience conflict in our lives? This helped me a great deal in accepting the idea of original sin and the birth of conflict. The rebellion against God explained why humans experienced conflict in their lives, and nobody knows of any explanation other than this... Without the Christian explanation of original sin, the seemingly silly story about Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no explanation of conflict. At all." - Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

"I wondered why it was that when people talked about the fall of man, about the Garden of Eden, they never talk about how people went around naked. If you ask me, the most obvious thing that happened after the Fall was that people started wearing all kinds of clothes. Just go to the store and look around, and you will see people wearing clothes. Everywhere you go you see people wearing clothes...I mean, evolution may explain how we came from apes, but it does nothing to explain why we wear clothes." - Donald Miller, Searching For God Knows What

It is important to not just be able to say what you believe, but to be able to know it well enough to defend it. If you can't defend it to someone else, how will you survive the Devil's temptations in the desert like Christ did? Christ had God's answer for every trick the Devil threw at Him.

"There is a vast and important difference between a Pauline creed and a Pauline life...Paul was a seeker and a finder and a seeker still. They seek and find and seek no more." - A. W. Tozer, Keys To The Deeper Life

Know what you believe inside and out. Keep asking questions. Keep seeking answers.

Romance

I cried within the first two minutes of Moneyball. I expected to cry, but within the first two minutes? That's incredible...But beautiful.

"How can you not be romantic about baseball?"

Miracles: Rare, But Real

Every once in a while God does something so amazing, so perfect, you can't even bring yourself to believe it's true. It just overwhelms you how much He loves you. He gives you exactly what you needed-- even and especially if you weren't aware how much you needed it. It may possibly even be something you never thought would happen. I mean, how could it? But it did. It's so unbelievable you wonder if the world is playing a trick on you. It feels too good to be true. But, you wake up every day and it never goes away. You are living proof that miracles really do exist. Maybe not in the way we think they do, or want them to, but they do nonetheless.

“That God can and does, on occasions, modify the behavior of matter and produce what we call miracles, is part of Christian faith; but the very conception of a common, and therefore stable, world, demands that these occasions should be extremely rare.” - C. S. Lewis, The Problem Of Pain

God, L--, I love you both! You both are two of my favorite miracles.

The Thing About Sexy Carrots

"Sometimes the things we want most in life are the things that will kill us." -Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz


A Story About Don Rabbit

http://www.donaldmillerwords.com/images/DonRabbit.pdf

Mosaics

Debby Ryan is the Disney Channel's new star, but before you go jumping to conclusions, you might want to learn more about her. Her mind's creativity seems unparalleled and way beyond her years. How do I know this? Well, i love the Disney Channel. I mean, once you reprogram your sense of humor to their target audience, it really is funny. Plus it is so hard to find appropriate television these days, and I love napping with the Disney Channel on quietly in the background. For some reason it is some of my best sleep.

But there was something about Debby--ok, Disney is very good at find young stars that steal the camera and interest you. And Debby is yet another. Except there is something different about her, and I couldn't figure it out so I googled her, and found her music blog. She is not who I thought she was. She was much more impressive.

She is an intelligent, wise young woman, but one still senses she is young enough to see life's light and beauty before and more often than life's darkness. She never seems to be without her gleaming smile. Even if making a goofy serious face, it comes from a place of pure and young never ending hope. I was like that once, when I was her age. I dream of being more like that again, but with a wiser perspective on reality in relationship to hope. Either way, I just wanted to soak up every artistic and poetically written observation or opinion she had about life, God, music, and art.

Her blog's "theme" is mosaics. And that concept hasn't left me. . .

I was watching a tv show called Life Unexpected on Netflix. The daughter said she felt so broken inside she didn't think anyone or anything was going to be able to fix her.

I know that feeling, well and often. And I pictured all the broken pieces of my life: my health, my spirit, my dreams, my social life, my...my everything. I saw every piece of me on the floor broken into a million different shards, and I cried. I too often wonder if there will ever be a person, other than God, who could put them back together. And if they could, would I let them? Would I allow myself to burden them with that task? I honestly don't know.

And I came back to Debby's theme a second later: Mosaics. And I thought, what if they don't need to be put back together perfectly, like a puzzle, but what if we can take all those broken pieces and turn them into a new me. And like a stained glass window, when God's light shone on me, all my broken colored pieces would come to life.

And I thought to myself, and to God, that even though it would feel good to throw away all the broken pieces and just start over, I don't want to. I couldn't be more curious to find out what God, my friends and family, my life's loves, my dreams, life itself, and I can turn all my broken pieces into. I can't wait to see my mosaic at the end of my life and to have God' light shine on and through it. It's truly going to be beautiful.

But the mosaics idea: Well done Debby, well done. Keep it up kid. God bless you.

"I thought maybe I wouldn't feel so bad if I didn't have such big pieces of Pammy still inside me, but then I thought, I want those pieces in me for the rest of my life, whatever it costs me." - Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

So, if you are feeling broken, look at all those pieces on the floor, and imagine all the possible mosaics He could make with them. Don't you see all those colors? The bleeding reds. The empty blacks. The lonely blues. The simple whites. The cautionary yellows. The loving pinks. The jealous greens. The exuberant oranges. The proud, artistic purples. They are all there. Waiting to be picked up and placed by God into the new you.

Lord, let Your light shine on us! Don't let us throw away a single piece. We never know which piece You will need next. But we believe You will take our brokenness aside and make it beautiful, absolutely beautiful (All Sons And Daughters).

The Sentient Life by C. S. Lewis

"I once read the sentence 'I lay awake all night with toothache, thinking about toothache and about lying awake.' That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. Do these notes merely aggravate that side of it? Merely confirm the monotonous, tread-mill march of the mind round one subject? But what am I to do? I must have some drug, and reading isn't a strong enough drug now. By writing it all down (all?--no: one thought in a hundred) I believe I get a little outside it." - C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

C. S. Lewis, I love you. What would I ever do without you?

The Laziness of Grief

"And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job...I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much." - C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Buffy Lessons

From The Wish, Season Three

Buffy: World is what it is. We fight, we die. Wishing doesn't change that.
Giles: I have to believe in a better world.
Buffy: Go ahead. I have to live in this one.

Anya: [as Anyanka] You trusting fool! How do you know the other world is any better than this?
Giles: Because it has to be.

You Have Something!

I've always tried to tell myself, "If you have something to complain about, you have SOMETHING."

But I couldn't be more bored. I never used to think it was possible to be sick of watching tv. Well, it is. And of Netflix, and even of watching Ellen! It's ridiculous. And yet, it makes me laugh.

I can't color--I can barely type this--because my hands, wrists, and forearms are so sore and inflamed. Holding a book hurts. I can't help but laugh, it's just so...crazy. Who would have thought, you know?

I'm staring at my Lego box that is taunting me. My beautiful tv is taunting me. And Amanda can testify how pretty it is...oh, the guitars: tormenting me.

There's this song by The John Butler Trio; I can't remember which one, but here's the lyric:

"the grass may be greener (on the other side), but it's just as hard to mow."

And it makes me smile every time I hear it. It gives me perspective.

There are, there really are, a lot of people who envy my life, even if just for a second. They wonder what it would be like to have nothing to do. I don't blame you; I just think you are crazy foolish.

There will never be any form of art, ever, to explain to you the withdrawals there were for years. It was like a detox from being busy.

Every time you do something it sends a specific chemical to your brain. The more you do that something, the more your brain gets used to that chemical. And so it wants more. And more. And more. Suddenly, you are addicted, well your brain is, to that chemical, and thus to whatever you were doing:

Be it shopping (the pleasure center loves lighting up when we go shopping)

Be it exercising.

Be it over-working. Being too busy.

Whatever.

I was addicted to multitasking and being busy. I didn't know how not to. And then suddenly I couldn't anymore. I couldn't and cant multitask for the life of me. It was hell.

It's gotten a bit better over the last seven years, or maybe my brain is addicted to the slow life, but that doesn't mean it doesn't suck. Too much of almost anything is a horrible thing. And I feel, here and there, as if I'm drowning in boredom. In a complete lack of everything. It hurts. Not physically of course--I actually couldn't tell you what it hurts...I just know it hurts. It saddens me. It depresses me. But I'm not foolish enough to think that if I got my old life back I would be much or any better.

We always want what we don't have. We always think the grass will be greener if only this and if only that. But I've learned enough sitting around doing nothing but staring into corners over thinking and over analyzing life to know, it really is just as hard to mow, no matter what life you have.

So, stomp your feet, cry out to God, get those emotions out, complain. But then, take a steps back, realize what you do have and don't obsess over what you don't, and then just smile. It's all going to be ok; in fact it probably is. I guarantee you there is something wherever you are that has the potential to make you smile. You just have to find it, and let it.

The last post was deeply emotional. And that's ok. There is a time for that. But, don't allow it to be all the time. And there is a time to be logical, but don't let yourself be logical all the time. Don't let your brain get addicted to one more than the other. The key is balance. The key is perspective. The key is not to beat yourself up. The key is to, well, be emotional first, and logical second. And to hire someone to mow your grass. I think God could use some more work. Try asking Him. Take care everyone. Realize whatever that SOMETHING is you are complaining about and realize it is still SOMETHING. Think of all those people who have nothing.

My husband never cleans up after himself! (At least you have a husband)

I worked so much overtime this week! (At least you have a job)

My sister is so annoying! (At least you have a sister)

My mom and dad are so embarrassing! (At least you have a mom and dad)

My student loans are never going to get paid off! (At least you got an education)

This house is such a mess! (At least you have a house)

I'm too tired to make my bed--this was mine! (At least I have a bed)

I'm so bored! (At least I'm free to make my own decisions)

My body is so sore! (At least you are alive)


You get it, right? I ask you play the complaining/something game for a bit right now. It will change everything.

WHY? Logic vs. Emotionalism

God, I know how much You love me. I know exactly what Your plans are for me. I didn't deserve or need to live my dream job for five and a half weeks; You did not have to do that, but You did--because You love me. But...

I will never stop loving Athletic Training. I will never stop saying "we" when talking about Athletic Trainers...and that hurts so much.

I miss it every day. I can feel it in my veins...I feel it in me begging to be used. Just the thought of it brings me back to life.

Because whatever this is I'm doing, it doesn't feel like living very often. It feels more like surviving...

It's not Your fault. I know that. I know You were saving me from myself. Athletic Training, well, it probably would have consumed me. I wouldn't have been able to find the right balance. And, well, it might have literally killed me considering how many steroids it took to get me through the 15 hour days. But, knowing this rarely makes me feel better.

God, why are we "driven by (our) sentiments, (our) logic trailing behind our emotions as a pariah" (Donald Miller, Searching For God Knows What)?

Why can't my mind tell my heart what is real, what to feel? Why are our emotions a double-edged sword? I don't want to be mad at You for doing the best thing You could have done for me. I don't want to be so stuck on what I loved that I can't discover or realize what I love. I don't want to cry at the mere thought of how much I love and miss Athletic Training. I don't want my emotions to cloud Your Truth, to pull me from You. I only want my emotions to bring us closer. So why Lord? Why am I crying? Why do I love tape, and pre-wrap, and bandaids? Why do I miss treating blisters? Why do I miss making ice bags? Why do I miss...all of it? Why did You make me to love these things so much? Why? What is the purpose of loving and missing Athletic Training so much it makes me cry?

Highlighters

On Reading Truth that has Eternal Value:

If the most money I spend on one thing in my lifetime is highlighters, I will die happy, content, and sure of where I am going when I die.

Not Of This World

A Dream Within A Dream

With Stills Disease so much, if not everything, really does feel like a dream within a dream (Edgar A. Poe). Especially my dreams. Not the stories we live in our minds while we sleep--I don't sleep, so I don't have those. If I sleep, they are nightmares, but I digress.

I'm talking about the ability to hope, for a future you desire, long for, thirst for. A desire that will never be slaked until it comes true.

I've talked about this already, about not wanting anything as much as I wanted Athletic Training. Well, my Stills Buddy just pried tonight, and it is the best thing she could have done for me! Truly, it is.

She got me to admit things I dream of happening someday, things I hope for. I didn't think it was possible, but here is this post that honestly scares me and frees me at the same time.

I now finally consciously realized that I had blocked them from my mind to protect myself. I burried them, and she dug them out. It's incredible.

I've lost so much, that I've adapted with the coping mechanism of never wanting for much of anything ever again so as not to break when it doesn't happen or worse when it does and it gets taken away. But, sour punch that foolishness.

In honor of her, with her strength, and for my sake, and...and because the only way to live a story is to want something, I am going to write my dreams into existence, right here, tonight, after midnight, for all of us.


* I dream of living in the Pacific Northwest. In Washington or Oregon, maybe Idaho. I want to live on water, like a lake or a river. The house will have a music room and a reading/writing room.

* I dream of auditing classes any and everywhere. I want to study a bit of everything, for the sake of loving to learn. I wish I could sit in on classes at Reed College just to witness and breathe in their brilliance.

* I want to visit the Athletic Training Program at least one last time. Maybe volunteer, if they would have me back.

* I love photography, especially of nature. I think it would be a blast to drive all over the country, because I love to drive, and to take pictures of all I see that dazzles me.

* On that note, I would love to live Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller, every last page of it, with whomever my Paul is, including living illegally in the forest with hippies.

* I dream of getting to go back to Powell's Books and getting to spend as much time there as my heart so desires.

* I dream of owning and attempting to play the banjo. Yes, I said banjo.

* I dream of softball being back in the Olympics.

* I dream of the world not being afraid to talk about depression and other To Write Love On Her Arms subjects.

* And I dream of a me who isn't afraid to dream anymore.

The Art of Solidarity

So the said girl from the post below and I were just texting and because we have so much in common, which Rob Bell calls "The Art of Solidarity," I've come to be able to tell her anything.

We've been to hell and back, a really rare part of it that you need a special pass to see, and kind of together, and that leaves us able to tell each other things no one else understands. It's a glorious feeling.

I pray you all have something similar tonight and always. I hope you have a 1 in 7,000,000,000 kind of friend. Hopefully even a few.

1 in 7,000,000,000

So what are the chances of getting Stills Disease? 1 in 100,000.

What are the chances of someone finding a blog I wrote about Stills and my faith six years ago? Probably 1 in 1,000,000.

What are the chances that person is a girl, from the city I went to college in/love, and my age? My best guess? 1 in 7,000,000,000.

God, You are too incredible for me to even process right now. There. Are. No. Words.

Truth (About The Simple Things)

I really hate that it is a monumental effort to just get up out of bed and get more water.

The Sick (of Heart)

“Tony the Beat Poet says the words alone, lonely, and loneliness are three of the most powerful words in the English language. I agree with Tony. Those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul.” –Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

When one is sick, one often couldn’t feel more lonely. I would much rather have my joints and muscles hurt than my heart and soul. And I think that is something the healthy can’t even begin to imagine.

I do not, repeat do not want you to give me some homeopathic remedy to help my aching joints--unless it really works. I do not want for you to pray for me to be healed. I do not want to come to your church and have your pastor pray over me…ok, so those things are extremely sweet and caring and I really DO appreciate all of that, I really do, and I understand you just want to help. But what I want even more than all that--if you really want to help--here is what every single sick person in the world would rather you do than try to FIX us:

Just BE THERE for us. Sit with us in the dark and hold us while we cry. Visit. Send cards. Flowers. Toys-like Legos or Action Figures. See’s Candy. A banjo (I really want a banjo). Money—ok, now I am just joking. But I'm dead serious about the See's Candy (I like Scotch Kisses and anything chocolate), and Legos. I love Legos!

But seriously everyone. Just be there. BE THERE. For us. With us. We are lonely. It is our hearts and souls that hunger and thirst the most. Not our bodies. Heal our spirit first. Our bodies second. Please….please.

I’m 25!

“Penny says it is when they are in their twenties that people lose their minds.” –Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

Life: This or That?

You either embrace the pain, or you distract yourself from it. I honestly can’t think of any other option. Can you?

Is life really that seemingly simple? I really don’t know. But that is how it has felt for the last seven years. And I can’t quite figure out what that means. Is that how life always was, and I just wasn’t aware of it until I got sick? Or is that what being sick feels like?

Life: Is it really This or That? What else could it be? What else should it be?

ART, WRITNG, THIS BLOG, And MY MIND

Art. What an elusive word sometimes. Sometimes Art is just a feeling I get. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it completely overcomes and overwhelms me. But what is it really? Can it be defined? Should it? What do we use to see Art? To feel it? To know it to be true? False? Who is and isn’t an Artist? Is it still Art if it lacks meaning but still produces feeling? How much “Art” these days is pointing us towards nothing but meaninglessness? What does that mean?

“Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term ‘Art,’ I should call it ‘the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.’ The mere imitation, however accurate of what is in Nature, entitles no man to sacred name of ‘Artist’…I have mentioned ‘the veil of the soul'.’ Something of the kind appears indispensable in Art. We can, at any time, double the true beauty of an actual landscape by half closing our eyes as we look at it. The naked Senses sometimes see to little—but then always they see too much.”  - Edgar A. Poe, from “Marginalia” (June 1849)

I like to imagine myself and call myself an Artist. I believe it to be true. I really do. I mean, I am always seeing too little or too much. And if you thought that was a joke, it wasn’t. If you completely understand what Poe and I are saying, then you just might enjoy this blog.

Am I a good Artist? Well, I don’t think that even matters. I never started writing to get published. I never started writing really because I wanted to, but because I had to.

You know, I don’t really plan on getting published. I truly do not want any credit for these ramblings. And I am not just saying that because I know that everyone won’t agree with what I have to say I feel to be true here. I am saying it because these blogs…they are really nothing more than my conversations with God, and I know those books were already written too—that is not what I am saying either.

I am trying to tell you this isn’t about me in the way a lot of people might think it is. This is about me making sense, or trying to make sense of life, of myself, of living a life full of pain and suffering and what that means.

And if I can help, even just a minute amount, one—just one other person, then that is…well, exactly everything I could have hoped for.

And, honestly, you guys, this is the age of the internet; why would I need to get published? Just tell your friends and family, tell strangers, tell anyone about these blogs. I don’t need or want paid to put my thoughts and feelings on a website. Getting published, ask any author, is not the celebration or fulfillment you all think it is. If you write simply to get published…you aren’t a writer. You won’t make it. You won’t last. You and writing will break up before every celebrity couple out there. Seriously.

And if anything gets, well, harsh, or stern, or too serious on here, remember, these are feelings, perceived by my senses. This website is an extension of my therapy, pretty much literally: I needed an outlet, and so this website came to be.

I want it to be about everything that keeps me awake every single night. Be it pain, aesthetic inspiration, frustration, depression, anxiety, spiritual guidance or spiritual inspiration—all of it. All the million of thoughts end on end of one another streaming through my brain and body and spirit and soul and heart every second of every single night since I first felt sick in October of 2004.

I over analyze EVERTHING and I am tired of not getting it out of me. This is me getting the endless analyzing and equivocating and replaying of life, out of myself:

“And there are also the dogs: let’s not forget the dogs, the dogs in their pen who will surely hurtle and snarl their way out if you ever stop writing, because writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained.

“Quieting these voices is at least half the battle I fight daily. But this is better than it used to be. It used to be 87 percent. Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who aren’t there. I walk along defending myself to people, or exchanging repartee with them, or rationalizing my behavior, or seducing them with gossip, or pretending I’m on their TV talk show or whatever. I speed run an aging yellow light or don’t come to a full stop, and one nanosecond later am explaining to imaginary cops exactly why I had to do what I did, or insisting that I did not in fact do it.” –Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird

 

“I am something of a recluse by nature. I am that cordless screwdriver that has to charge for twenty hours to earn ten minutes use. I need that much downtime. I am a terrible daydreamer. I have been since I was a boy. My mind goes walking and playing and skipping. I invent characters, write stories, pretend I am a rock star, pretend I am a legendary poet, pretend I am an astronaut, and there is not control to my mind.” –Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

 

“I suspect that he was a child who thought differently than his peers, who may have had serious conversations with grownups, who as a young person, like me, accepted being alone quite a lot. I think this sort of person often becomes either a writer or a career criminal. Throughout my childhood I believed that what I thought about was different from what other kids thought about. It was not necessarily more profound, but there was a struggle going on inside me to find some sort of creative or spiritual or aesthetic way of seeing the world and organizing it in my head.” –Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird

 

Those quotes are very close to the truth about my mind and how it really works. It is embarrassing to finally admit this, but at least two of my favorite authors are the same exact way. That makes me feel a little less crazy. And a little more like an artist. Not because I strive to be one, but because that is exactly how God made me. I am who He says I am. And so are you.

If This Blog Were A Movie

It would be:

It's Kind Of A Funny Story

Under Pressure by Queen

Mm ba ba de
Um bum ba de
Um bu bu bum da de
Pressure pushing down on me
Pressing down on you no man ask for
Under pressure - that burns a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets
Um ba ba be
Um ba ba be
De day da
Ee day da - that's o.k.
It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming 'Let me out'
Pray tomorrow - gets me higher
Pressure on people - people on streets
Day day de mm hm
Da da da ba ba
O.k.
Chippin' around - kick my brains around the floor
These are the days it never rains but it pours
Ee do ba be
Ee da ba ba ba
Um bo bo
Be lap
People on streets - ee da de da de
People on streets - ee da de da de da de da
It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming 'Let me out'
Pray tomorrow - gets me higher high high
Pressure on people - people on streets
Turned away from it all like a blind man
Sat on a fence but it don't work
Keep coming up with love
but it's so slashed and torn
Why - why - why ?
Love love love love love
Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking
Can't we give ourselves one more chance
Why can't we give love that one more chance
Why can't we give love give love give love give love
give love give love give love give love give love
'Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the light
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure

Literature Is Your Friend

“The reason Moses would [clearly stop writing narrative and begin writing poetry], according to John Sailhammer, is because there are emotions and situations and tensions that a human being feels in his life but can’t explain. And poetry [art] is a literary tool that has the power to give a person the feeling he isn’t alone in those emotions, that though there are no words to describe them, somebody understands.” –Donald Miller, Searching For God Knows What

 

Dear Literature, Art, Authors, and Artists,

Thank you, thank you, thank you for helping me feel less alone every day of my life. You are true friends, true leaders, true visionaries—you are truth in general. God bless you all. May He never let you run out of words. May He never tire of speaking through you. May He never tire of giving you His voice.

Forever In Love,

Zoe

Resistance

There has been an overwhelming amount of resistance lately in my life, and I am tired of it. So:

“I read a book a couple years ago by Steven Pressfield called The War of Art…He also says that every creative person, and I think probably every other person, faces resistance when trying to create something good. He even says resistance, a kind of feeling that comes against you when you point toward a distant horizon, is a sure sign that you are supposed to do the thing in the first place. The harder the resistance, the more important the task must be, Pressfield believes.” –Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years

This quote gives me hope, just enough to want to keep fighting this dark energy just to piss it off and to see what God and I can create together. And that gives me strength to keep fighting today.

I honestly do not know what I would do without books, without brilliant quotes by great authors like Donald Miller, Anne Lamott, C.S. Lewis, A.W. Tozer, Susan Isaacs…and I never want to find out. I wouldn’t make it, that’s for sure.

It’s Lonely Down Here

When you are on your way to the top, everyone wants to come with you. But when you are sick/unhealthy/marginalized and on your way to the bottom, no one, and I mean no one, wants to go down or be brought down with you.

Old Unreliable

“I planned on coming here to tell you that you’ll always come first, but the truth is, that’s not a promise I can keep…But the one thing I can guarantee you, is that when it’s my decision, I’ll always choose you…But if that’s not enough, I understand.” –Eliot, from the TV show, Scrubs

I am the least reliable person I know, because of my health, yeah, but that doesn’t change the fact that I hate not being able to promise anyone anything. It’s one thing if you are a doctor, you almost have a choice, but to have Stills Disease thrust upon you, stealing your ability to be there when someone wants you to or needs you to…I hate it.

What is worse, is that when I finally have a “good” day, do you know what I do with it? Do I spend all day catching up with the ones I’ve been too sick to keep in contact with? No. I don’t. I spend the day doing something I’ve been dying to do for weeks or months: go for a drive, write, something just for me. It disgusts me that I do this every single time, and yet…

I honestly don’t think I could change this, and I honestly think you would do the same exact thing as me if you had chronic pain, chronic fatigue, insomnia, depression, anxiety, and were housebound 350 days a year. If you wouldn’t…you are a rare and impressive breed and you have to tell me how you do it.

I want to be there for the people I love. I pray for that daily. To be able to do something, anything, to show them and tell them how much I love them, no matter how much Stills Disease tries to convince them otherwise. And I do try really hard to do that.

Just because I have all this Time on my hands, that does not--does not--mean that I have energy to do something with the Time I have been burdened with—I mean given.

If I can’t even get out of the house to go somewhere that isn’t a doctor’s office, how am I going to be there for the ones I love? I don’t know.

I just pray and pray they know in their hearts, not just their minds, that it is Stills Disease keeping me from them, not myself. That they know in their hearts how much I want to promise they will come first, but that Stills Disease prevents me from doing so. That they know how much I want to put them first, before my health, but that I can’t. That they know I will force my mind to understand if that is not enough for them, but that my heart tells me something else entirely. And that this kind of pain outweighs any and all the physical pain I will feel in any given day.

First, Second, And Third Drafts: Why Writing And Life Are Coterminous

“…shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts…” -Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird

I truly and honestly feel like the first eighteen years of my life were my “shitty first draft.”

“The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through onto the page.” –Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird

The problem is that everyone did see my first draft—although most people who knew me during my first eighteen years of my life would be shocked to think I believe those years were my child’s draft, but they saw how I seemed, not who I was. But I know who I was and so does God, with the perspective of who I am and who He/I want me to be.

I am tortured by my first draft every day of my life. Most days it just sucks. But it also makes me eternally grateful for the opportunity to keep writing my story with God’s help and guidance. Not everyone gets a second chance. So though it hurts and haunts me, it is also a reminder of how blessed I am.

But, honestly, how one could call childhood and adolescence anything but “a shitty first draft” is lost on me: they are delusional and in denial. Just admit it: we didn’t know anything about anything, and yet we thought we knew everything about everything. That always leads to trouble. To mistakes. To “a shitty first draft.” Just thank God everyday if you have past 18 and are still writing.

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up.You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.” –Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird

I have to say that once I was diagnosed with Stills Disease I was thrust into my second draft. And I am still here, and that is encouraging because I have past the first draft, but to be completely honest, one of my biggest fears, if not the biggest fear, is that I will die before I get to write my third draft—of my life, my story, of me. I do not want anyone, especially God, to read either the first or second drafts of my life. I want nothing more than for everyone to read—to know, me, as the third draft. Dear Lord, please let me write a third draft.

The Middle of Your Story

“The reward you get from a story is always less than you thought it would be, and the work is harder than you imagined. The point of story is never about the ending remember. It’s about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle.” –Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years

This is not only discouraging, but exhausting just thinking about it. And yet, I want nothing more than to live a beautiful and meaningful and memorable story in which I am different at the end than I was at the beginning. Geez, am I crazy? I know I am exhausted—already! But it’s a beautiful idea isn’t it? To be different at the end than you were at the beginning?

To be calmer, more appreciative, more loving, more peaceful, more understanding, more joyous, more wise, more content. I can’t think of a better way for this life to end: to have survived the middle, to let it change you.

“So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing that the last lines will speak of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualification.” –Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

The Purpose of “The Funk”

“We have to stay in our own anxiety and funkiness long enough to know what a Promised Land would look like.” –Anne Lamott, Plan B

How long, exactly, is “long enough” Anne? God? Because I feel like seven years is a good long old time. Just sayin’…or rather, just feelin’. Stupid emotions.

The Myth of Utopia

“If you think about it, an enormous amount of damage is created by the myth of utopia. There is an intrinsic feeling in nearly every person that your life could be perfect if you only had such-and-such a car or such-and-such a spouse or such-and-such a job. We believe we will be made whole by our accomplishments, our possessions, or our social status. It’s written in the fabric of our DNA that life used to be beautiful and now it isn’t, and if only this and if only that, it would be beautiful again.” –Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years

I’m still not sure if knowing this makes me feel better or worse. It’s often both. But I am extremely grateful to, at the very least, finally know the truth.

The Truth About Utopia

“The truth is, we can make things a little better or a little worse, but utopia [happily ever after] doesn’t hang in the balance of our vote or what products we buy.” –Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years

Open Space

“Each mile driven lessens the weight in my chest.” –Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

Nothing makes me happier, more full of hope, more content or “at home” than when I am on the road in open space.

Every drive my parents take me on feels so beautiful, so perfect, it almost always brings me to tears.

I want to live on the road. The open space is so freeing. Like my soul and I can finally, as if for the first time, stretch out and breathe.

“…and today there is a man in shepherd’s clothes, a hippie, all dirty with a downed bike in the circle lawn across the street (from Palios Coffee in Portland)…He is tapping the cup against his leg, sitting like a monk, all striped in fabric. I wonder if he is happy, his blanket strapped to the rack on his bike, his no home, his no job. I wonder if he has left it all because he hated it or because it hated him. It is true some do not do well with conventional life. They think outside of things and can’t make sense of following a line. They see no walls, only doors from open space to open space, and from open space, supposedly, to the mind of God, or at least this is what we hope for them, and what they hope for themselves.” –Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

“There are places in our lives that only God can go,” and the open road is that place, that special little space that I know God will be to meet me there (Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller). If I could take anyone on the road with me, or drive anywhere I wanted to, it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t feel God there, right there, with me, as we enjoyed being dazzled by all He made, did, and is doing for us.

Purpose: The Difference Between Life and Death

I was born with a work ethic. In Junior High I began figuring out my thirty year plan. Back then it started with Stanford. No pressure. And, mostly, I kept to the plan well. Well, until freshman year of college.

I got sick, deathly sick. And diagnosed before the extremely rare disease killed me. But the disease was still able to kill. Yeah, I’m alive, and I couldn’t be more thankful for that, because I get a second chance to live a better life, a more authentic, honest, loving life. And, to be honest, I’m scared of what would have happened had I died at 18, because I can look back and be immediately disgusted with who I was. But Stills Disease killed. Trust me, it murdered plenty.

Ability to play sports: dead.

Ability to live my dream job: dead.

Ability to go to school: dead.

Ability to be independent: dead.

Ability to have friends and family be around me: dead.

Ability to live instead of survive: dead.

Ability to dream, to hope: dead.

 

One of the many thoughts that tortures me is that I have no real purpose in life, no way to aid or be a part of society. Nothing to do all day but get out of bed, take my meds, and then get back in bed. Those are my only goals: to not be hospitalized today. That’s it. And this fact kills parts of me and my spirit every moment of every day.

But what am I supposed to do? How can I want for anything if I can’t do anything. I mean, literally I can’t do anything. The constant physical pain, emotional pain, fatigue, lack of sleep—there is no way I can come up with something to strive for, to want for that I know I will be able to do. And so…and so I want for nothing.

I have NO IDEA what to do with my life, with my days, with my time. When I ask myself, “What do you want to do?” I have no answer. There is this dull blank ache. This complete emptiness. An endless void of nothing.

You know that feeling when you find/figure out/realize the thing you were born or made to do? Like sing. Be a doctor. Dance. Play sports. Teach. Coach. Paint or draw. Write. Mine was, Athletic Training (sports medicine). And I got to live my dream job for five and a half weeks before Stills Disease took it from me. Just long enough to get a taste, to know I was not only good at what I loved, but that I really did love it. It was the first time I was excited to learn. The first time I got to study what I wanted to study. It was perfect. And it’s gone.

And when I try to think of something that makes me feel as excited as Athletic Training did, the thing I look forward to doing the most, the thing I love doing the most…the only thing I can really think of is driving. To just drive around and see…well, “it”. Life. Earth.

It’s that one thing that becomes this…place. The place that feels like home. Like you are found. You are understood. You are joyous. You are content. You’re known and you belong. And you could do this one thing every day for the rest of your life, for the rest of time, and everything would finally make sense. Everything would…harmonize. You, God, Earth, your family, your friends—everything would finally fit—be the way it was made to be: complete. Whole. Full.

When we do what we were made to do, God is not only with us, but He is in us, and we are in Him. He is finally able to join us, untainted by our sin.

Our spark of Him, that is us, can finally be one in and with Him. Even if just for that one moment—that moment is a taste of what is to come: a taste of heaven.

God and heaven become tangible in that one little moment in time. In that one little moment it actually feels as if there is no sin.

I love and live for those moments because they are so rare and perfect. I thirst for them daily because I am so dry. And because we are human it feels as if nothing, no amount of these moments, will ever slake our thirst for Him.

But it is in these moments, when you do what you love, what you were made to do, that He fills our cup and allows us to drink deep. And I guess all I really want, is to make these moments my life.

And the only way I can think of doing that is to drive. To be with Him. To see this world He created to dazzle us, with Him. To be in and of the Earth that He created for us, and not on top of it. I just don’t know how I am supposed to do this when Stills Disease killed my ability to drive.

….melancholia.

A New Home, The Real Me

I feel like everything here, in Northern California, is who I was. Everything. And I hate who I was…

But the Pacific Northwest…somewhere new—I could finally be who I am. Or at least discover who I am.

But seven years ago, the ability to dream was stolen from me. I mean I dream. I hope. But not in the way the rest of America does. It is just this novel idea, this…picture that pops into my head, but one I highly doubt will ever come true. The future seems…well, actually, quite often hopeless.

I just can’t shake who I was here. I can’t move on, move forward. I’m being held back. I’m stuck. Stagnant. Frozen. Lost. Who I want to be is so imprisoned, so buried. So lost. I’m so afraid that if I never make it out of here, I will never get to be who I am. And I want so desperately to be who I am, and to never be who I was ever again.

A Love That Endures

It says His love ENDURES forever…

 

Endure:

1. To suffer

2. To undergo

3. To regard with acceptance or tolerance

4. To continue in the same state-to last

5. To remain firm under suffering or misfortune without yielding

 

What does His kind of love say about us? I mean, really? And if we are to love like Him? This is a kind of love that we never talk about. But if you look, really look, at the world we live in, this is exactly the kind of love we need to learn. Because if we don’t….we won’t make it. I mean, I know I won’t make it unless whatever kind of messed up version of love I currently think love is, is immediately corrected into a love more like His. Dear Lord, help us all.

Our Heart’s Mind

How do we overcome our heart’s mind-all of its memories. Like of who broke it, what broke it, and how? It never forgets, does it? What is forgiveness, if you can’t forget?