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lunch tray.

Lord God, before the fire of your consuming holiness, in the light of your shining glory, at the mystery of your threefold being, I fall to the floor and cry out: Woe am I! I am small before you, O Lord, I am unworthy in your presence, my lips are unclean and my heart impure; have mercy on me, O Lord, have mercy.

[a prayer for Trinity Sunday from  Living the Christian Year]

Compartmentalize: To separate into isolated compartments or categories.


I currently have my life down to a schedule, a science, and it leaves no room for beauty or spontaneity or deep connections. 

Everything in my life is its own separate entity, out of touch with everything else.  The books I read.  My work as a nanny.  My appetite.  The music I listen to.  Art. Relationships.  Faith.  In my mind, in my way of living, they all stand alone.  When really they're all crashing about, colliding with each other, flowing in and out of each other, changing, strengthening, becoming one another.  The art I like and the art I make, the work I do, my various appetites - food, books, music, community - they're all connected.  And over all of it, the mantle that is my relationship with my Father. 

As I'm writing, I just keep imagining my life as a school lunch tray: applesauce here, green beans there, raviolis in the big section.  Obviously, if I mixed my applesauce, green beans, and raviolis all together  the result would be disgusting, a disgrace to three delicious foods.  I'm just going for the mental picture here though.  Or, another food analogy: it's like I'm constantly eating cake ingredients by themselves - flour, sugar, egg, vanilla, baking soda, salt, cocoa, and so on.  Appealing, right?  I'm hungry so the food analogies just keep coming, but I'll stop here.

Synthesis: The composition or combination of parts or elements so as to form a whole.

I've made this realization about myself on several occasions and then, of course, I always vow to start living my life like it's one big melting pot and get really good at making connections across all the lines that separate the different aspects of my world.  I read once, somewhere, that people tend to compartmentalize their lives because they can't handle everything all at once.  If everything is separate then we can wrap our minds around it; it's comprehensible, it's safe.  If we get rid of the lines, destroy the walls we've put between everything, we'll have to encounter it all at once and figure out how it fits together.

At first it feels a bit like taking fragile, delicate things and smashing them together.  Like cherished knick-knacks in the grubby hands of a five year old.  Sometimes it feels contrived, like you're trying too hard to make it all fit together.   You wonder if there's even a single person out there who has figured out how to live this way.  But then there are moments of light and connection, and you can see just below the surface where the thousand planes of your life meet and shake hands, coalesce, transcend into something much more beautiful and mysterious and fulfilling.  Something whole.

meditations II

I.

Grow us slowly, persistently, and deeply, Lord, to be people who watch without distraction, listen without interruption, and stay put without inclination to flee. Amen.

-from Morning Prayer for June 1, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

II.

"This is a fitting time to open ourselves anew to the indwelling presence of God.  Ask the Father to fill you.  Ask Jesus to breathe on you.  Ask the Spirit to intoxicate you.  This week be still and receptive.  Freely seek the benefits and gifts that Jesus promises and Paul describes.  Above all, ask for love to increase in you."

-Living the Christian Year

III.

"As we pour ourselves out for God and others, God graciously pours himself into us."

-Living the Christian Year

IV.

"In the work we have to do it does not matter how small and humble it may be, make it Christ's love in action... What matters is the gift of yourself, the degree of love that you put into each one of your actions."

-Mother Teresa

meditations.

So coinciding with this sort of creating and putting-out-there hiatus, I've also decided to do a sort-of fast this week (today, May 25th, through next Friday, June 1st).  I haven't yet decided what to call this fast, so I'll refrain from slapping labels on it.  To give you an idea though: it would be called a "secular media fast" by some, but I don't really believe in the word "secular" in the sense that we tend to use it.  I don't believe there is a single thing that is devoid of the divine, I don't believe that art is temporal.  It's more of a "I'm not listening to music that doesn't bring God to mind in some sense, I'm only reading books that edify me spiritually (This is a big deal. It is not because other books are bad. It is because I have starved myself of the spiritual in the literary world for a very long time and I am in desperate need of some spiritual edification by way of one of my favorite things - books.)" kind of fast.  In other words, a "Sufjan Stevens/M. Ward/Jon Foreman-listening, Bible/faith/art book-reading, meditation time."  Don't ask about the M. Ward thing; I couldn't explain it to my mother, so I won't try to explain it to you.

Anyway, I figured I'd post some of the things I've been reading and listening to and meditating on in lieu of writing about myself like usual.  I don't expect them to be (necessarily) as earth-shattering to you as they have been thus far to me because the Creator of the universe has tailored them specifically for me.  How absolutely beautiful and outrageous and scandalous does that sound?  Lets just take a minute here for that to sink in.

I.

Come Thou Fount of every blessing,

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.

Streams of mercy never ceasing

Call for songs of loudest praise

...

Here I raise my Ebenezer,

Hither by Thy help I come;

And I hope by Thy good pleasure

Safely to arrive at home

...

Let that grace now, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love.

Here's my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.

-bits and pieces of my favorite hymn, Come Thou Fount.  Emphasis on the last section.  My favorite version is Sufjan Stevens',which you can (and should, if you haven't) hear a live version of here.

II. 

"When worship is our response to the One who alone is worthy of it - Jesus Christ - then our lives are on their way to being turned inside out.  Every dimension of self-centered living becomes endangered as we come to share God's self-giving heart... Through the grace of worship, God applies the necessary antidote to what we assume is merely human - our selfishness.  Worship sets us free from ourselves to be free for God and God's purposes in the world.  The dangerous act of worshiping God in Jesus Christ necessarily draws us into the heart of God and sends us out to embody it, especially toward the poor, the forgotten and the oppressed." - The Dangerous Act of Worship, as quoted in Living the Christian Year which I am currently reading and highly, highly recommend.  

III.

"Those who can let go of the day, including its slights and sins, enter the next day forgiven and free.  Those who fear the grave as little as their own bed become available for bold and creative living...we sleep well, as we live and die well, knowing that we are in God's embrace." -Dorothy Bass, also as quoted in Living the Christian Year. I keep picking quotes that are quoted in this book because it's much easier than quoting the entire book, which I would end up doing if I tried to narrow it down to some little gems.  

IV. 

"Plato spoke of the necessity for divine madness in the poet. It is a frightening thing to open oneself to the strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go our self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting it go is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit."

"And as I listen to the silence, I learn that my feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable. To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory. It is what makes me respond to the death of an apple tree, the birth of a puppy, northern lights shaking the sky, by writing stories."

"When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

But before he can listen, paradoxically, he must work. Getting out of the way and listening is not something that comes easily, either in art or in prayer.

Before I can listen to God in prayer, I must fumble through the prayers of words, of willful demands, of childish "Gimmes," of "Help mes," of "I want..." Until I tell God what I want, I have no way of knowing whether or not I truly want it... The prayers of words cannot be eliminated. And I must pray them daily, whether I feel like praying or not. Otherwise, when God has something to say to me, I will not know how to listen. Until I have worked through self, I will not be enabled to get out of the way." 

-selections from Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water: reflections on faith and art.  For the record, she is the author of my absolute favorite book growing up, A Wrinkle in Time.  So discovering that she also wrote a book about Christianity and art made me totally freak out.  I searched every...single...bookstore I have been near in the last month before finally giving up and ordering it on Amazon.  I just started reading it today; it has already been every bit as wonderful as I had hoped it would be, and more so.  So, if you like art and find it to be firmly bound up with your faith, GO FIND THIS BOOK AND READ IT. 

V.

I mentioned earlier a book called Living the Christian Year: time to inhabit the story of God by Bobby Gross.  Essentially, it follows the liturgical year, giving a little bit of the history and significance of each season in the church calendar and providing devotions for each week of the church calendar.  Having grown up Episcopalian and Anglican, I've been surrounded by the church calendar and the liturgy my entire life.  I've found it too easy to dismiss it and deprive it of its importance and beauty.  Whether you've also experienced this, or the liturgical year is somewhat new to you, this book is absolutely amazing.  It too is new to my reading list, and it is definitely taking up permanent (or at least semi-permanent) residence.  

Anyway, this coming Sunday is Pentecost, which marks the beginning of what is called Ordinary Time, which is basically the six months where nothing big like the Son of God being born or dying is going on.  Ordinary Time, as Gross describes it, is the season of flow, of rhythm, of being filled up with Christ and pouring it back out on the world around us.  In terms of the liturgical year, it begins with Pentecost, where the disciples received an outpouring of the Spirit, and follows the story of their ministry, of the early church.  It is a time for taking in the Spirit and pumping out light and life and love into others, much like your heart takes in and pumps out blood.  An even flow, a constant rhythm.  So in terms of meditation, I've been thinking a lot about what that looks like and practicing how to constantly have both of these things in my life - Christ in me, Christ flowing out of me - rather than my usual schedule, which is a lot of neither of those things.  Ordinary Time, I feel, is the perfect season for me.  Because the idea of the rhythm is tantalizing to me, and also because I am terrible at it.  Also, the liturgical color for Ordinary Time is green, which is my favorite color.  My Abba Father loves me outrageously. 

IV.

Reaching, always reaching
Never reaching solid ground

Seeking always seeking
Never seeking what I've found Baptize my mind
Baptize my eyes
Baptize my mind
For a seed to give birth to life
First it must die

Both my hands are filled
With guilt
(Give me absolution)
Both my eyes are blind
With filth
(Give me absolution)-lyrics from Baptize My Mind by Jon Foreman.  Listen here.  

an accidental hiatus

So I've been taking an accidental blogging hiatus.  Well, kind of a general writing hiatus actually.  At first I resisted it and tried time and time again to write anything - poems, oddly rhythm-ed prose (I guess technically still poems, but I discount them), trite bits of scenes...anything - but it all sucked and it wasn't real so I stopped.  I didn't get why I couldn't write.  I thought it was because I'd reached my limit...that I'd already said all the things I had to say and I was done, my time was up.  But that's not true.  People like me, (much to the vexation of folks who haven't got the time to read the flighty soul-wanderings of silly girls) we never stop talking/writing/coming up with things we think are important to say - if only for our own mental health.  Then I thought it was really because I'm not an artist, that there isn't one single artistic bone, cell, atom, whatever's smaller than that, in my body or soul.  But then I started thinking about what an artist really is and how there aren't really any specific requirements and all that.  My current working definition of an artist is just somebody who likes to create things with purpose.  So I realized it was unfair to say there is nothing that makes me an artist, because I'm a kid who likes to create things that have or serve a purpose.  Sometimes that purpose is just to get things out of my brain and onto a thing - a canvas, or a computer screen, or a doodled-on crumpled-up piece of paper - so that I can see it and figure it out.  Sometimes that purpose is to understand the world around me a little better and put my understanding out there in hopes that maybe someone else will understand the world a little better too.  Sometimes - though, honestly, not nearly enough...and when I say that, I mean rarely ever - it's to glorify God, this absolutely creative and beautiful and breathtaking Being that, for some reason, chose to imbue me, this punky, lame, flighty kid, with an appreciation for creativity and beauty and soul-excavating through art. 

[Here let me say that there is no such thing as "enough" when it comes to glorifying God.  I really suck at it.  I'm trying to be better at it, but really, I suck.  What happens to me sometimes though is that I'll start out writing to my own personal end and then somewhere after the first couple sentences, God graciously takes over and redeems my selfish attempts at creating.  I still don't get why He does these things for me sometimes, but that's just that indelible grace.]

So I decided it wasn't that I had reached my quota of things to say, or that I'm not creative, or that I simply suck as a human being.  I've learned a couple things in life, and one of them is that there are seasons.  And I'm not talking about the weather.  There are human seasons - relationship seasons and well-being seasons and empty seasons and creative seasons - and they can last weeks or months or even years.  For me, there are probably two different kinds of creative seasons: there's the give-and-take, where there's an almost-constant in and out flow of art, and then there's the be-still, where everything I try to create is a flop and I find myself having to sit out the game for a minute and take gulps of the art around me.  The latter is the one I feel I've been in for a bit now (though I've occasionally managed to spit out a post here and there).  I resented it and fought it and tried every trick in the book to get over it, but to no avail.  I'm like a child resisting a nap, fighting and trying to run away, but ever so needing the rest.  And then there's my Father, comforting me: "Shh, shh, Beloved.  Be still.  Rest now.  Attend yourself to My ways, to My art.  Take some time to just sit back and learn, before your work loses its meaning entirely.  Let Me lead you in this rest and then let Me lead you when it's time to start creating again.  Learn to listen to the creative murmurings that I place within you." 

And that's what I intend to do.  It may be that the understanding is the beginning of the end of it.  It may be that I'll be in this season for a while longer.  I'm not sure when I'll get put back in the game.  I'm okay with that. 

However, in the near future, The Prismatic Life will be taking on some changes and maybe even a new home, so be on the lookout for that! Stay real, folks.

basics.

I am scared of rules. I am scared of expectations. I am scared of work and demands and responsibility and school. I don’t know what I want to do with my life because I am lazy and because I am afraid that if I start off in a direction I’ll end up deciding I don’t want to do it anymore and then I will have wasted time and it will be too late.  I am scared of people depending on me for things.  I am scared of structure and discipline and the cold reality of business. I am scared that one day I will revert back to the same person I used to be.  I am scared of not using up every single drop of life I’m given.  I am scared one day I’ll get sick of feeling vulnerable and I’ll close up and stop shining the love of Christ out of my very visible cracks.

I just want to make art and be around people.  I want to learn things from everyone around me.  I want to make a little more beauty in the world.  I want warmth and buzzing activity and creativity and good stories.  I don’t want to be stuck in any one career or job sector or place.  I want to foster community and creativity and raw honesty.  I want to be young forever, but I also want to get old.  I want a family and a home and people who become a part of me.  I want to see the beauty and love of Christ in everything – in the hills, the sunrises, in laughter, in tears, in the stories of rad people.  I want to live a life so full that it overflows and drips over the side of the cup, runs down, floods everything.  I want to run in a thousand different directions all at once.  I want brightness and authenticity and redemption and beauty and justice to be my way of living.

the search for authenticity/new skin

I.
I don't like what I write anymore.

It's unfortunate, a bit surprising, and most definitely chaos-inducing.  This revelation has thrown my brain into quite an uproar, one side demanding an explanation as to why my voice isn't authentic, the other shouting that this is just a phase and accusing me of abandoning my writer-self.  There are a lot of Sarah-selves running around up there, each auditioning for the part of my writing voice.

The real problem is that I read over several of my recent posts (basically since I moved here).  It's not necessarily that I dislike the things I write about and the words I use.  It's more that I don't feel that it rings true, it seems as though I've tried too hard to be authentic and ended up over-shooting.  My words sound hollow to me, my conclusions too final, too immovable.  I tried to end most posts with some redeeming sentences looking forward from each stopping point I reached and none of the little glimmers of hope that I ended with ever took root - they never affected me after I published the post and shut down my computer and went back to my life.  Not one of them.  And while I fully meant them at the time and they gave me hope as I was writing them, they seem fake and empty now.  Like I was putting up this facade and trying to convince myself that I was going to change my life based on some revelation I had.  And I never did it.  Life has remained this pretty steady stream, slow-moving, a little stagnant, wondering when the fresh water and the rapids and the adventure will come in.

Maybe the problem is that I'm in a growing season (well, I guess that isn't exactly a problem, but whatever), one that I hadn't expected, and I've begun to move away from that sort of thing - those moments of trying so hard to be real, feeling like those little bits of hope are necessary to a body of mostly somewhat depressing words and thoughts.  The thing about moving is that it strips you of every bit of your image.  You know, you had your people and they had their ideas about you based on what you had shown them of yourself.  Once you get past those initial weeks or months or whatever, you don't have to do too much work to maintain your image with these people, so you kind of chill out and nobody asks anymore questions.  Being in a new place, nobody knows you.  They don't have any preconceived ideas about you because they don't know anything about you, they haven't even heard of you before (crazy, right? Like who hasn't heard of me on this planet?).  So basically you start out brand new.  Not that you reinvent yourself necessarily, but you more or less get in touch with parts of you you had maybe closed off before you moved because you didn't really need them anymore.  Or at least that's how it's been for me.  It doesn't hurt that prior to moving I was kind of being forced into this mold I didn't fit in (thanks to the sorority) so lots of little parts of me became almost unnecessary and even got in the way sometimes.  (Ridiculous that I let something rule me like that, but by the time I realized it I kind of didn't have a choice anymore.  Judge me as you please.)  And now I'm in a place where no one expects me to behave or talk or dress a certain way and I'm free to rule myself as I choose.  It's freeing and exciting and a bit of an adventure...while at the same time making me feel vulnerable and unprotected and just out there, alone.  Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't.  But I've started to grow into this other person, this person I haven't been yet that's some interesting and surprising amalgamation of all the people I have been.  I think that's what's supposed to happen when you're turning 20 (which, by the way, is weird. Two whole decades on this planet and I'm just now figuring out where and how who I am and who I'm supposed to be are supposed to meet?).

II.
I've written before about how being in a new place means that pretty much every situation is new and uncomfortable (which you can read here) and it's still true.  I've got some things I do regularly now - nannying, small group, church - but still nothing is entirely comfortable, not that kind of comfortable where you sigh contentedly and sit back into yourself and just enjoy everything without worrying about how much you should talk and trying to smile a lot.  I have some friends...well I guess I do.  It's funny: there is no point where you officially become friends with someone, you know?  No time where you both say "hey so we're friends now, right?"  It just kind of happens.  Which is a beautiful thing and also a nerve-wracking thing, because for a while you're both kind of wondering if you're friends or not yet and what's acceptable based on the answer to that question.  But then all of a sudden everything's cool and you start letting all your weirdness come out and you have jokes and you remember to ask about situations in each others lives.  New friendships are really cool to watch grow and mine are constantly reminding me of grace and beauty and humanity.

I think that I've been in survival mode since I moved here.  Like an animal about to go into hibernation*, I've been continually packing layers around myself for insulation.  Like I'm afraid of the pain associated with leaving some of the people I love most dearly and the city I grew up in and charting the territory of a new city and the new people around me.  And I've packed these layers so tight that they deaden every blow.  They stop every emotion before it hits and soften it so that it barely affects me.  While useful for the pain and loneliness and discomfort associated with moving, this practice has wounded the strength that I think is most important to women - emotion.  And I hate it.  I can't stand it.  And I can't do anything about it, really.  It's not like I can just start tearing these layers off of me because I've done a really great job of securing them - someone else has to do it for me.  And I have to let Him, which is perhaps even harder than it would be to do it myself.  It's scarier, certainly.  Like how terrifying does this sound:

Father, please, I'm begging you, tear this insulation off of me.

Rip apart my self-defenses, my cocoon.

Dismantle the casing I've put on my heart.

Repair my deep connections to life and people and myself.

Let me feel everything again.

It's asking for vulnerability, inviting pain and sadness and rawness.  But it is also asking for depth, inviting Joy and peace and new skin and new relationships to grow.  To make this my prayer is to acknowledge that there are deaths in living, and that there is always life after  those deaths.  New skin always comes after the scab, it's just marked by a scar.  And scarred skin has every bit of life that the skin before it had.  But now it has a story. 

*I don't know if animals actually pack layers around themselves when they're getting ready to go into hibernation, I just thought it sounded like a good analogy.

if you're feeling uninspired

I wrote this letter to myself awhile back when I was having a hard time finding words to write. I haven't written in a million years, so I'm back in that same place again. Fortunately, I remembered this little gem. Here's to hoping it will kickstart my creativity again.

Dear uninspired me:

Please stop checking facebook.  Please stop picking your split ends.  Pinterest won’t give you any more inspiration than the view out your window.  Just start creating.  You aren’t feeling passionate today?  Create anyway.  You don’t know just exactly what to say?  Create anyway.  You forgot your headphones so you’re sitting at Starbucks being aurally assaulted by coffee orders and weird music that’s not yours?  Create anyway.  The sky’s whitegrey and you haven’t done a single thing today and you’re feeling like a messy lump in a world moving at a slower pace than traffic on Mopac between 5 and 7 p.m.?  Create anyway.  Because that’s what you’re here for.  You create for yourself, yeah, but that’s not all.  You create to glorify the God of the universe because that’s what He made you to do and it pleases Him when you use the gifts and passions that He gave you.  You create to bring a little hope and a flickering light to the world.  You create to bring a little sanity to yourself.  So stop caring about what’s going on around you and what’s going on inside you; stop feeling like a mess because you haven’t been productive today; stop blocking out the artistic murmurings in your brain and your soul and just MAKE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL.  Please.  The world needs it.  And you need it even more.

catharsis

I suppose I should apologize for not writing sooner.  When we left off last, I was frustrated and numb and wondering why I couldn't be sad about anything.  Well, probably two weeks ago, I finally cried.  Yes, dear reader, I was blessed with that delicious NaH20 mix finally.  (For those of you who don't remember your periodic table, Na is sodium...)  What was so sweetly fitting was that it was a picture of the Memphis bridge, not the glamorous, all-lit-up sideview picture that goes on postcards but the take-the-photo-from-the-front-seat-right-as-you're-driving-up-to-it view, that incited my blubbering mess of a cry-fest.  It's ironic because I've been telling people that I didn't even cry when I moved, not even when I went over the Memphis bridge.  And as I am a cliche and emotional person, I should have most definitely been shedding some mad tears at that point in my journey.  But I didn't.  I was reading (read: stalking) a family friend's blog (it's creepy, sure, but I'm not ashamed because she's a fantastic writer and I read her stuff hoping some of her awesomeness will rub off on me) and she and her family had passed through Memphis on a trip and they wrote about it.  It was a really sweet post, about all these different Memphis-y things they had done.  So I'm blubbering through my tears, "I never even went to the Civil Rights Museum once and I lived there for 12 years!" and laughing because they are funny people and madly craving a classic pulled pork sandwich and sweet tea from Central Barbeque.

 I miss the South.  I miss twangy accents and southern charm and hospitality, big trees and cotton fields, real sweet tea (the good Lord knows Texans just don't know how to do it right), and my places: Muddy's cupcakes and sweet, busy Republic coffee and getting six donuts for $1.40 after 11 p.m. at Gibson's.  But I've been met with a huge expanse of sky that's made up of different colors (nearly) every single day, "y'all"-users aplenty, some of the kindest and coolest people I've yet had the privilege of meeting, and what's possibly the longest list of concerts I want to go to that I've ever written.  I haven't found all my places yet, but I've been enjoying exploring new ones and trying to figure out which ones are the perfect fit.  I've been reminded that friendships take time and work, they don't just spring up out of nowhere.  If you live in a place for any decent length of time, you run the risk of becoming complacent.  You have your friends, you have your favorite restaurants, your routine.  You forget how important it is to step outside of your comfort zone and go on new adventures and do the hard work of new friendship.  It was easy in Memphis because I had my group of friends (the sorority) and whenever I met new people it was always with them, so I never really had to go out on a limb.  It was easy to be charming and funny and outgoing because I was always comfortable.  Now I'm finding I'm rarely comfortable; and that's hard because sometimes you get to feeling like you're an island, you're out there alone and you'll never feel comfortable and at home and charming ever again.  I have to keep reminding myself that I will indeed be comfortable again, and maybe someday I'll even get to be medially funny.  But I'm also finding that being uncomfortable is a huge blessing.  It's awkward and a little bit lonely and it can make you go stir-crazy if you aren't careful, but it also gives you a whole new understanding of grace and how to extend it to the people around you.  Being uncomfortable is so completely and entirely human; it's one of those things we all feel more often than we'd care to admit.  It should be a shared experience, but we're all so wrapped up in trying to look cool and smooth that we couldn't bear to lay it out and share that kind of thing with everyone else.  I wish I could.  Being uncomfortable gives you the privileged opportunity of observing human behavior at an almost-outsider level; you learn so much about yourself and about the way people are.  You get to learn what you want most in a relationship, what you really appreciate about people, and one of the best things about it, I'm learning, is that you get to tell your story and figure out how exactly you want to tell it.  I went to a small group last week and met a bunch of people and the most popular question was "so how did you get here?" or some variation thereof.  How did you get here?  What a beautiful question.  I wish I could talk their ears off for about thirty minutes, because that's how long it would take to tell the whole story.  There are so many things that went into my moving, so many little stories that I had no idea were connected in the slightest that somehow, at the exact right moment, converged into one big story that I was finally able to see in December.  And the obvious, and really the only, option for a next step was to take the jump.  So here I am.  Uncomfortable, awkward, and a little lonely, but going on new adventures, learning new kinds of grace-living, doing the hard work of new friendship, making a home out of a new city.  And living.

as they say, honesty is the best policy

So I've been trying to write every night for the last few nights.  I've posted a couple things, but, really, they haven't fully expressed where I'm at right now.  I tend to try to keep things a bit (well, you know, kind of) polished on here, but life isn't polished.  It's messy and confusing and sometimes it's really sweet, but sometimes it's pretty brutal.  If you want to know the truth it's that I'm rough around the edges and I'm feeling raw and I don't always, okay, I rarely, know what I'm thinking and when I write things I'm usually more or less yelling them really loud in my head as I type them. 

Annnnnd now commencing the honesty/excavating-my-soul/digging-deeper-than-I-probably-should-and-unleashing-it-on-you business.

I cannot, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, cry.  I keep trying.  Yes, I've become my own bully, but in a sappy way.  I keep reading stuff and hearing stuff and watching stuff that makes me want to cry, you know just that spontaneous overflow of emotions junk, and I CAN'T.  I even got really bad allergies after going running one day and my eyes watered to maximum, but nothing past that happened. Tears tingle the back of my eyeballs, glaze over the front of my eyeballs, even well up, but they just won't spill.  Maybe it's silly, but all my hopes are riding on this.  No, seriously.  I feel like if I could just cry, life would do a 180, maybe with like a kickflip for style.  Like if I could just feel that salty H20 mixture running down my chubby cheeks, I would magically get motivation to do life and inspiration to make a good story out of it.  Like if I could just get my emotions back, everything would be right in the world.  Maybe it's not so silly after all.  See, the way I see it, emotions, feelings, passion - those are the things that make the world go 'round.  And right now I don't have them.  So my little world stopped spinning.  I sleep a lot now.  And mindlessly listen to music.  And write sometimes.  I clean the house on Fridays (that's my rent).  I run at the park some mornings.  And I talk about what I'm going to do.  And ignore texts from my friends. 

See what I'm doing right now, that's not living.

And I could sit here and write about what living is and what it means to be alive and how cool that is and how we should all live deliberately and really, all you've got to do is just get up and do!  But it's actually a lot harder than that.  I know there is a point and a purpose and a Will in all of this.  I have to believe that because I don't serve a passive God, I don't serve a God who acts according to His whims without meaning; I serve an all-loving, all-powerful God who is at this moment painting a dark spot on the canvas of my life.  A canvas that, when done, will glorify Him.  You can't appreciate the bright if you've never seen the dark.

creative bit: free

It happened at a stop light.  He had been told it would one day, and it did.  Like a flash of heat lightning, unexpected and violent, the feeling overtook him.  He wanted to be free.  He knew he was not who he was supposed to be, where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to be doing.  And he wanted out: out of the city, out of his car, out of his body, out of his mind.  The light was still red; he could go nowhere.  He felt suddenly as if he had broken out in hives (though there was no physical manifestation of this supposed ailment) and he began to itch his skin furiously, secretly thinking that if he could just scratch it off he would feel satisfied.  His lungs felt too big for his chest cavity, his heart wanted to jump right through his shirt.  He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel nervously, waiting for the light to change.  Those lights held so long...  He felt as if everyone was staring at him; he just wanted out.  A second later the red switched to green in what seemed to be slow motion.  Finally.

[Ending 1 (the realist)]
His foot timidly touched the gas pedal and shattered the feeling.  He relaxed back into his seat and his skin and drove home.  Maybe another day he would get out.

[Ending 2 (the romantic)]
He tried to act casual, but failed miserably.  He threw his foot on the gas pedal and sped through the intersection and then onto the highway and then past the exit for his parents' house.  He didn't know where he was going or what he was going to do when he got there, but he was out.

failure/happiness/ministry

I.
So I've learned a few things about failure in my short life.  The hard way of course (I mean let's be real here, how exactly do you learn about failure the not-hard way?  You have to experience it to know anything about it).  There are so many different kinds of failure: there's the personal kind, where you let yourself down; there's outward failure, in which you let the people around you down, be that your family, employer, friends, whoever; and then there's just flat-out, complete and utter failure, and it doesn't matter who got let down because the world is literally ending, the light's gone. (I've yet to experience utter failure, but if lives are like movies, I'm guaranteed to feel it somewhere around the middle/second half of my life - that's the climax of course, right?)

I've learned plenty about the little failures, like getting a bad grade on an exam (College and I have had a rocky relationship; I only make good grades in classes I really like and there isn't an abundance of those. I really take for granted the fact that I live in a place where education is so accessible because I'm incredibly lazy.  That's another reason I decided to take the semester off.)  I've also learned a lot about what it's like to let your parents down in numerous ways (college, man...).  I've learned to grow numb to failing grades and I've learned to stop and think about what I'm about to do (often before proceeding to do what I know is wrong anyway, having rashly justified it in some shabby way).  I've learned what it feels like to just sit in what feels like a dark pit, thinking about all your failures and having zero motivation to get up and move forward because you don't even really know where to go.

But I've also learned that failure is not a prison, that it holds no power over us.  Experiencing failure allows you to be free in ways you would think are too beautiful to be a result of something so painful.  Failure provides you with the freedom to do things without fear of failing.  It's kind of ironic, really.  The more you fail, the less you are afraid to fail.  It's almost like failure befriends you and you're able to live without the constant fear of it.  Mind you, the ability to be afraid of failure will probably never leave you.  But what I'm saying is that if you really let it affect you and you take it all in and you push forward, it can free you.  J.M. Barrie always makes me feel better about myself: "We are all failures, at least the best of us are."

II.
I've been thinking a lot lately about happiness, and I've been reminded of how seriously, probably annoyingly, innocently happy I was a few years ago.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm still a supremely happy girl, I've got a lot to be thankful for.  But now I think I'm a bit more cynical.  To support that old cliche, I've seen a lot more and been exposed to a lot more, and a lot of that lot more ain't that beautiful.  I mean, people are broken and they do hurtful things, and that sucks to have to witness.  And then there are those times you get confronted by new things and (this echoes back to part of that failure bit) you stumble a little and you become someone you would have never expected for a little while.  And those things stay with you.  They weigh you down and slowly infect everything; they become that little twangy afterthought, that voice that quietly tells your heart to behave itself and your mind to stop soaring.

So I've been wallowing in this little puddle I've made all week, badgering myself and wondering why I lost that freer happiness I used to have, and thinking I'm some horrible person and I'll never get to be like that again, I'll always have a little chip on my shoulder. Which is completely anti-active.  The more you think about unhappiness, the more you become unhappy.  If you think about how awful of a person you are, you stop trying to be better, assuming that you'll never succeed.  My best friend reminded me that my happiness (and all my emotions, really) are kind of irrelevant (here I add though that they are still important, because they are what make us human), but anyway happiness is not the point, living for Christ is the point, and when I am living for Him and communing with Him daily, I get His Joy, which far surpasses my simple happiness. 

So I got two lessons regarding happiness/Joy/living this week:
1. "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me." Galatians 2:20.  Kind of hard-hitting, right?  Happiness aside, my whole point of living is to live by faith and glorify God.  Which is cool, because it removes the need to put Sarah, this girl I don't always think is very cool or good, on the stage and instead I get to put the most beautiful and creative Being on stage.  And if that isn't enough, the Bible promises that if I'm doing that, I get Christ's infinite peace and Joy in return.  Basically it's the most epic win-win situation you could ever be presented with.  So why is it so hard?
2. Do you know how many times the phrase "the Joy of the Lord is your strength" is used throughout the Bible?  It's like back in the day it was their way of saying "don't worry, you'll get through this."  Which is pretty cool; it makes saying "you'll get through this" look pretty puny and entirely inadequate.  So that's what I've been trying to rely on all week, and what I'm guessing will be a pretty big part of my life this semester.  When I'm tired and unmotivated, the world is weighing down on me and telling me I'm not enough and I'm not doing enough, and I don't really know how to get where I'm headed: the Joy of the Lord is my strength.

III.
I was thinking as I was procrastinating finishing this post and trying to gather my thoughts and I realized something about myself.  I'm always discovering things about myself.  Which is kind of ironic to me because it's like you would think that we would know all about ourselves, but I'm always surprising myself with my thoughts.  And I think it's beautiful that the God who created me already knows all this stuff and here I am, having inhabited this body and mind and soul for almost 20 years (which is kind of a long time), and there's still so much I don't know about myself.  But I digress.  I  realized that  I am the kind of person who has to be ministering to be ministered to.  Or at least, to get the most out of being ministered to.  The Bible even says it: "Faith without works is dead."  (James 2:17)  Which can sound pretty harsh to someone who maybe grew up in the Bible belt, where everyone is a Christian because everyone goes to Sunday mornin' church and everyone believes God made the world and Jesus really did die on the cross.  (And by "everyone" of course I mean the majority of the southern population.)  So I'm kind of feeling stagnant in my faith life and I'm starting to think it's because I'm not really doing anything to serve anyone.  Alright so I've made the diagnosis and now it's time for treatment, which is the hard part because it means I've got to get up off my butt and find somewhere to get my hands a little dirty.  So if you're out there and you're reading this, could you maybe add me to your list and pray that I could get a little motivation?

numb/novel/journey

I.
So I have lived here 21 days.  Exactly three weeks, as of tonight.  It's still surreal.  And while I in no way regret my decision to move (and might I here add that I love this city), I feel kind of numb.  Not entirely numb; no, I don't float around with a detached look on my face, nor am I apathetic.  I feel more like I'm just existing on the surface of my life - like nothing affects me deeply.  I haven't cried once, not even when I went over the Memphis bridge.  I haven't been really angry; just frustrated maybe.  I haven't felt lonely.  I've been happy, but I haven't felt that really deep, true Joy.  As a girl who fully embraces emotion, I can tell you that being numb is one of the most annoying and frustrating things in the world.  Because you can see it, you KNOW you aren't feeling things you should be feeling, but you can't do a single thing about it.  I mean, how do you make yourself un-numb?  They have creams and gels and things to numb your skin and your teeth and whatever when you're in pain, but they don't have anything to make you start feeling sensation when you're numb somewhere. 

What you need is a stimulus.  So I've been trying to find something to stimulate me, something to get really passionate about.  So far I haven't gotten anywhere on that.  Sometimes movies help me out when I'm feeling numb-ish.  Maybe I need to watch a deep film that has the whole range of emotions, something that's sad, frustrating, achingly funny, expectant, hopeful; it makes you want to throw something at the screen, clutch your belly in laughter, cry your eyes out.  You know the kind of film I'm talking about: by the time the end credits are rolling you just feel completely human.  It's crazy.  I love those kinds of films.  And they always have a badass soundtrack, crammed with good, Indie songs.  I think it would be a pretty awesome job to get to get to pick out the songs in a movie. 

Although, it's kind of a lame story to tell if a movie does the trick: "Oh yeah, [insert deep movie here] got me back into feeling life."  I want something kind of daring to make it happen, something that will make a really good story.  So right now I'm just getting back into the Word and seeing where that takes me.  As my best friend wrote me earlier, "Christ will lift you out of the mire!"

II.
For years now my family has been asking me when I'm going to start writing my book.  I guess it's no secret that I love writing.  It's just my thing.  I think I kind of lost sight of it in high school (my mom didn't though).  I guess having to write endless academic papers about topics that don't interest you one bit can do that to you, although I very much loved my English classes and teachers; they made me the writer I am today.  I still remember one time in my AP English class my senior year, we all had to read short summaries we had written to our class and get peer reviewed.  After I read mine, my teacher (a beautiful, inspiring woman who seriously loved language and literature and coffee) said, "See, Sarah has this great dexterity with language...she's just not very clear."  I remember mentally freaking out because my super cool, brilliant teacher had just said I was good with words...well, making them sound good at least, whether you could understand where I was going with it or not.  Seriously if you had asked me that year who I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said Ms. Eubank.  (I guess if you asked me now I would just say I want to be Sarah, but that was high school and I was a little insecure and I didn't know how important it was to want to be yourself.)  In high school I was always thinking I was a bad writer, because everyone said I used cliches too much and my stuff was lacking in substance.  I guess you could say I've always been more on the artistic side of writing.  I just didn't know that it was a good thing back then.  I can't write you an in-depth literary analysis of Frankenstein, or compare the transcendentalists to the romantics with strong textual support, but I can write about life and faith and my experiences in hopes that you can glean a little understanding or strength or at least some laughter from them.

I always wave my family off, knowing what they're expecting is some great novel to come spilling out of my brain onto paper and get published.  I tell them, I can't write fiction - I'm too ADD for that.  I tell them I'll write a collection of essays instead.  I mean you can't just start writing a novel and expect it to be meaningful and coherent and have a clear storyline; you have to have a plan.  You have to know who your characters are and where they're going and what they want and at least a general idea of how you want it all to end, otherwise all you get is a jumbled up complexity of ideas and literary devices, a beautiful enigma.  Lately though, I've been kind of enticed by the idea of writing a novel, of making up my own story and themes and characters and fully developing them over a span of time, not just writing a little snapshot about them.  It sounds delicious.  Although I don't really have any clear ideas as to what kind of story I would write.  But I think I've taken the bait.  Who knows, a novel just might come spilling out of my brain onto paper one of these days...

III.
So I guess I'm kind of on this journey kick.  Or, rather, a books-about-journeys kick.  Currently I'm reading On the Road  by Jack Kerouac (FINALLY) and Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer.  I'm even thinking of picking Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller back up and finally finishing it, just to continue the theme.  I've been meaning to read something by Kerouac for basically forever now.  The staff review of it at my favorite bookstore basically said you can't call yourself American if you haven't read On the Road.  I guess I'm finally on my way to becoming an American.  But really, I agree with the sentiment because it's a completely American journey in all the good ways - the free-ness and diversity and exploring all the vastly different areas of the country, just drinking it all in.  It's romantic, really (not the love kind; think nature, emotion, beauty), just a regular guy, a writer, searching for himself.  I've never wanted to jump in the back of a truck with a bunch of guys all hitchhiking for one reason or another with just a bottle of whiskey to keep me warm (Okay, lose the whiskey. Whiskey just doesn't taste good.) and ride clear across the country under the stars more in my life.  I mean seriously, that's what Kerouac will do to you.  You should read it.

As for Everything is Illuminated, it's so weird in all the right ways.  That is, if you're like me, and you like really unique narrators and appreciate language and style as much, if not more than, the storyline.  I've only read a few chapters and I'm head over heels in love with Jonathan Safran Foer's odd, all-over-the-place style.  Just read the first page to understand.

I'm glad I waited to read both of these books.  Otherwise I'd be trapped in Memphis, wanting to get out, wanting to explore, wanting to be free.  As it is, I'm in a new place and my life is open in front of me.  Seriously, my schedule is completely free for the next several months.  That is all at once an intoxicating and daunting feeling.  My favorite.

retrospect

You know that feeling you get when you're at a point in your life that's kind of elevated, where you're sort of kind of able to see in your mind all the recent events in your life and how poorly you handled them? I'm there. And I can go all the way back to my brother's wedding, a year and a half ago. I was so immature, so selfish, so unable to see outside myself.  I appreciated the day my wonderful brother and beautiful sister-in-law got married well enough, I suppose, but I don't think I truly understood how absolutely beautiful a thing weddings and marriages are.  I think I thought it was sort of commonplace. I mean, everyone gets married. I had just graduated high school.  And it's funny; you think you're so wise, so old, and it isn't until years later that you see how young you really were and still are.  How I wish I could go back to that day and cry and laugh with them more, knowing how much it meant and would mean to get to be a part of it all.

Don't worry, I won't discuss EVERY situation I wish I had treated differently, just the important ones.

My family moved to Texas in December of my first year of college.  They wanted me to move with them; I fought and refused and separated myself.  I thought I was making a mature decision, I just wanted to be independent.  How silly I was.  In this case though, I don't wish I had acted any differently, because I learned a lot from myself.  It took a really long time for those lessons to come in, but I couldn't have learned them better any other way.  I still ended up in Texas.  I hurt my family, which is the only real regrettable thing.  But that's the best thing about families like mine: they always forgive, always welcome you back.  I was like the prodigal daughter; finally coming home after a year of living "on my own," partying, and enjoying my irresponsibility.  I'm so blessed by my family; they love me fiercely and remind me who I am daily and never judge me, even when I wear weird clothes because I think it's cool sometimes.  Oh, and they think I'm funny.

I let this relationship I had go on in my head way after it was over.  To this day, I could not explain that relationship to you if you asked me to.  Sometimes I still wish I could have the answers.  But I'm done with that season of my life now.  I just would not let this relationship die, and it infected everything.  I mean, I was looking back through some playlists I had made during that time in my life and it was obvious just how much it impacted me in every way.  [Side note: that is one of the biggest downsides, and also one of the best upsides, to making music a big part of your life. Songs always remind you of people and events and seasons. And they can either add to the beauty of a song, or taint it.]  It took me forever to realize I just had to let go, that I wouldn't get answers (okay, confession. I never asked for them in real life. But who does that?) and that it wouldn't, like, happen again.  I have this crazy, overactive imagination and I daydream nearly constantly.  My parents even got into calling me Space Case.  It's bad.  So you can imagine how often I come up with new ways for my life to play out.  I think my biggest thing was that there was never really anything there or not there.  It's really hard to explain the psychological implications of the situation because I'm not going to sit here and type out everything that happened. The main thing is that it impacted me, and I allowed it to continue impacting me every single day for...awhile.  There are still some days I have to skip a certain song by The Kooks when it comes on, if only because it reminds me how ridiculous I was.

And here's the thing about these times in life when you're able to see things for what they really were and evaluate yourself for who you really were (and are) and you think of all the things you wish you had done and thought and said differently: it happens, and then you turn your back on it and keep walking forward.  It doesn't help a thing to sit and wish you had done things differently.  I think God gives us these times of retrospection to see and understand our lives and ourselves and then apply what we've learned to the next few steps.  These aren't times to hate on ourselves, they are times to learn from ourselves.  So next time, we really participate in and allow life and love to affect us, we shut our mouths and listen to those who have our best interests in mind, we let go of things that have run their course.  And we move forward.

creative bit: bilingual (or, how to maximize profits, minimize humanity)

we all speak two languages: money and sex
with that aesthetic twang.
yeah, she's got a pretty voice;
it rings like the bell on the stock exchange floor,
soothes like the kind of love you pay for.
when he talks, dollar signs roll off his tongue;
yeah, they'd sell their souls just to hear one syllable.

we'd sooner see a man enslaved
than abandon our business practices, nice sweaters.
comfort > humanity



*possibly unfinished

"it's like you've just fallen into God's grace"

It's wonderfully crazy to me how true the title of this post is at this very moment.  My best friend wrote this to me in a message: "I'm so jealous of you. It's like you've just fallen into God's grace, and even though technically, your life is kinda crazy at the moment, it just feels still."  She's right.  And it's so ironic because I spent a year and a half in the exact same place: living at the same house, going to the same school, knowing the same people, doing the same crazy things, and it never felt still.  Every second of every day, my life was rushing past me and the world was swirling around me; I couldn't keep up.   The closest I got to stillness was the time I spent writing and painting and listening to music and thinking at ungodly hours of the morning, the only soul awake in a house full of women.  And now here I am: I've just moved 660 miles away from the city I grew up in to a place I love, with no plans, no friends (close in proximity, that is), and no idea what to expect.  And it's delicious.  Gilda Radner writes, "Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.  Delicious ambiguity..." 

I think I spend most of my life planning it.  [That is the biggest understatement I've ever written in my life.]  I sit in my room and think about what I want to do and try to picture myself doing different things, just to see if I can, and I make lists and lists - bucket lists, pro/con lists, to do lists.  And I've been convinced by society that this is normal, expected, even.  That I have to have a plan.  That that's what God wants.  But really I think God wants me in the exact position I'm in right now all the time.  I have no idea what is going to happen this semester.  I don't even know how to go about planning it because there are so many unknown and unfathomable factors.  I already tried once to plan it out.  My brain started hurting.

And I had a revelation.  I could plan out the rest of this month, this semester, this year, even my life and none of it may ever come to fruition.  No matter how much planning I do, if it's not God's will, it's not happening.  And what's funny is that I sit here and make all these plans that sound pretty badass in my head - all the cool things I'll do, the cool people I'll know, how cool I'll be in the future after I grow out of being lame - and they're actually pretty puny compared to the awesome plans God's already made.  Let's break this down: if I, Sarah, this crazy, irresponsible, lame girl can come up with plans that sound really cool and exciting, how much more awesome can the plans of the most creative, most imaginative, most beautiful Being be?  I mean, it just sounds like He can do a better job than me.  Plus, on top of all that, I don't even have to do a thing to plan it all out.  All of this thinking and planning and working-things-out is futile.  God doesn't ask us to sit in our rooms and write about the things we want to do and make lists and plan out the next year.  He commands us to follow Christ and to do.  I can't glorify Him and love His people by isolating myself and surrounding myself with my ideas and my calendar and my views of the world. 

So here I am, I took the biggest leap I've taken yet in my short 19 years and I'm caught right in the middle of God's grace.  I know something big is coming this semester, I can feel the winds of it, taste the sweetness of it.  It may be something big and meaningful and groundbreaking that I'll do.  Or it may just be a new way of living.  Whatever it is, my prayer is something that another friend of mine sent to me the day I moved: that I will open my heart to all the new experiences I will have.  They'll break me and remake me, inspire me and free me, foster my spirit and change the way I see things.  And every one of them will give me a little taste of God's grace.

so I put my hair up and I make coffee and I write

I.
So I'm moving. In four days. It's odd, but it's right.  I feel weird being in Memphis now, like I'm not supposed to be here. And my room is a half-empty mess, my paintings and odd assortment of inspirations the only things left untouched thus far, which makes me feel even less like I'm supposed to be here. And I hate goodbyes. But not in the traditional sense. I don't mind the fact that I'm saying goodbye so much as the length of time most goodbyes last.  I kind of wish I could just pack up my car with all my friends standing around and then hug everyone and give a little wave and put a good CD in and hit the road. And I'm secretly hoping no one will miss me.  I know that's weird, but it's easier that way. I'm such a people-pleaser that I feel guilty for moving.  I don't even really feel that sad, I just feel guilty, like I'm letting everyone down.  I keep trying my hardest to hide the fact that I'm excited for the new adventure Texas is about to provide me with.  I mean I'll miss everyone here a lot, some more than others.  But I'm not worried, because the people I'll miss most are the ones I know will be in my life for the rest of it, no matter where we are.

For the entire last semester I felt like I was in this dark place and I had no idea which way to go.  So I just kind of stomped around in a little circle, feeling my way around, trying to find the light switch or something.  For the first time in...a really, really long time, I know I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.  I guess you call that being decisive.  This is one of the few times in my life that I feel decisive.  And it's ironic because I'm doing something I never would have thought I'd do, something I used to judge other people for doing.  I'm taking a semester off of school.  I used to think that the kids who did that had no life goals and weren't going anywhere.  Funny how God works.


II.
Sometimes I feel kind of anti-social, like I just don't want to be around a lot of people.  It didn't used to happen very often, but as I get older it gets more frequent.  I like to just chill out, maybe with some people I'm really close to; you know, the ones you don't necessarily have to talk to the whole time you're hanging out.  Sometimes I just want to sit in my room and drink coffee and listen to Sufjan Stevens and write or paint.  Some people can't, for the life of them, understand that.  And it makes me a little sad for them, because they'll never really know what it's like to be alone with themselves.  Being alone with yourself is a beautiful thing sometimes.

III.
There are nights that I just feel the need to write.  So I start writing a bunch of random stuff, waiting for the big, important thing to come to me.  Some nights it comes and I end up writing something interesting and cool.  But some nights it never comes, and I just end up with this odd, non-cohesive bit.  I think tonight's post is in the latter camp.  So if you're reading this, you're probably thinking, "Wait, that's it?  What?  Did I really just waste three minutes of my life?"  The answer to all of those questions is yes.  I'm feeling a little American post-modern tonight.