musings.

i was driving with someone who knows me very well the other night and he asked me a question that kind of caught me off guard. he asked me if i knew how to be happy. i didn't really know how to respond. so i just began to think of the things that bring me joy. one of the things that came to mind was playing music, i guess in general, but especially with the sawgrass boys. music and very dear friends... it's a great combination.

tonight we had our first show in like six months or something crazy like that. i can't explain how good it felt. and the people who opened for us were very dear friends as well. i mean... there were a few things that went wrong or were not so great. but for some reason it just didn't really matter. i thought it was perfect. i haven't felt that truly happy in i don't even know how long. i just felt at home in the music...

a wise man once said that the only thing he needed to prove the existence of God was music... judging at least by the way i felt tonight i think he might be pretty right on about that.

things i'm trying to learn from a hellish year...

everyone suffers. seriously, everyone. i feel like this has been a hard year for a lot of people. for some reason it all just kinda hit the fan. it’s been really overwhelming because i don’t know how to reconcile it all in my head. it’s kind of like a flannery o’connor story in that we are faced with these big moments that come, and in those situations we are given a moment of grace. we are presented with these obstacles, and how we deal with them or react to them makes all the difference. the pain can eat you alive, consume you, make you forget to breathe, lead you to bitterness and mistrust. or it can lead you to become the kind of person you were always meant to be. going through the pain can lead to becoming whole again. embracing and dealing with the hurt has a tendency to transform. it is in suffering that we learn how to love. we can humbly rely on each other for comfort and the strength to live. when others come to us, we can reach out, knowing what it’s like to feel alone and in pain.

the conclusion i’ve come to is that suffering is not something to avoid. avoiding it just doesn’t work or help solve anything really. you can’t ignore it by watching lots of tv, playing music, drinking, avoiding relationship with people who want to help you, looking to relationships that are shallow but seem to, at least temporarily, fill some kind of void…

the question at least for me, though, is what does it look like then? what will it mean for me to deal with the pain? do i just chalk it up as a loss and forget about it? do i try to pick up the pieces? i mean i know i’ve learned a lot. i know now what my tendencies are with people. i know now what to push against within myself. but is it all worth it? what good does that knowledge do me if i can’t actually get past all the crap? will "my people" have patience with me and still be around when i come out of it all? i hate that i’m stuck, but i am. some of it’s relatively new sticky, but i feel like a lot of the stickiness goes way back. there are so many layers, and i feel a little lost in them. i need help but don’t know who to ask or even how to ask for it.

countdowns.

thinking about these things is what's keeping me going right now. i'm hoping summer will bring a little change of pace. maybe things will get better.

about a week - classes done.
about 2 weeks - finals done.
about 3 weeks - my friends finally start to come home.
about a month and a half - up to chicago to retrieve allison.
less than 2 months - janelle in nashville! finally!
about 3-4 months-ish - kenz is back.

thank you.

a man without a country.

today humanity lost one of its great contributers. mr. kurt vonnegut was not a man to stay inside lines. he challenged. pushed boundaries. pissed people off. but he was right on in his thinking and diagnosing of society. so much so that it scares me a little. i read his memoirs this summer, and i was totally blown away. it came at just the right time in my life too. i found it exciting that i could connect with someone who thought about a lot of the things that i did. even though our connection was just through words and scribbles on a page, it was a profound one for me. when i think of people like him, it gives me an ounce of hope for society. maybe we're not completely doomed. i'll leave you with some of his thoughts that i've collected here and there cause he says things a lot better than i ever could...

"Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone."

"I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours."

"I am, incidentally, Honorary President of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in that totally functionless capacity. We had a memorial service for Isaac a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, "Isaac is up in heaven now." It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, "Kurt is up in heaven now." That's my favorite joke."

"People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say."

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."

"What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured."



thank you for who you were and are.

echad.

tonight was one of the best nights i've had in i don't even know when. i hung out with katherine and margaret and her siblings. (allison and rachel were present in spirit.) and i know i talk about these people all the time, but whatever... these people... i can't even explain how much these girls mean to me. when they are home, i feel like a more complete and whole person. we think each other's thoughts. we feel each other's emotions. maybe that's weird and bad... i don't know. but i do know that they bring beauty and hope back into my life, which i desperately need. even after all these years and years, even after we've each grown up a lot, even though we've each experienced some parts of life in such different ways, even though we don't agree on everything anymore, there is still that closeness that i cannot understand but am oh so grateful for. oneness and unity through our differences are great things.

this all also makes me excited cause i think i know what my next tattoo might be.

thinking out loud...

if you know me well, you will know that community is a big deal to me. if you're in a healthy and good one, it's in community that you can find beautiful things like redemption, healing, honesty, forgiveness, love... i think that one way the gospel is shown is in how we have relationship with one another. it is no easy task, though. it is so difficult to not want to judge or be vindictive. but when lived out well, it can be the most incredible thing you've ever been a part of. i am who i am today because of the people in my life. there are certain people who are a big part of who i am.

but then that is also becoming really scary to me. i mean it always has been, but i guess i'm just realizing more and more how essential community is. but it's scary to me cause what happens if someone leaves? what if for whatever reason some person is either removed from your community or has to play a different, lessened role? maybe i'm just super sensitive, but i think that kind of change can be so hard to process. maybe i just don't deal with change well. (well. ok i know i don't deal with change well.) but that thought is just really scary to me for some reason. it leaves me feeling empty and unsure.

i guess the risk is part of what makes it so good, though. and to me it is so worth the risk. to have people in your life that know you, and i mean really and truly know you, and love you and have patience with you despite and even because of everything... it's unreal.

thank you.

i really like my major.

ok, this probably won’t make much sense to you if you don’t know me that well, but that’s ok. and i’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable to read this, but i think sometimes discomfort might not be such a bad thing. this is just me processing a book and how it made me feel…

so for my child welfare class i had to read this book, a child called it. it was undoubtedly the most intense thing i have ever read in my whole entire life. it’s the story of this boy who was severely abused by his mother. i mean severely. his case was the third worst reported child abuse case in California. (that kind of terrifies me cause i don’t even wanna imagine anything worse than that.) now i know my experience growing up was nowhere near as bad as that. but i still was able to relate to him in some ways. one of his greatest longings was to feel like he belonged somewhere. (one of the ways his mom abused him was to basically make it so that he was this sort of non-person in the house. his brothers were even forbidden to associate with him.) he just wanted to be a part of a group, a family, that loved him. unconditionally. that seems so huge to me. to not feel like you had to be a certain way for your mom to love you? that would be incredible.

i was talking to a dear friend tonight, and i was saying how it always surprises me when people really do care about me. i can never really understand it. this is especially true with women who are older. i feel like it’s weird for them to be even taking an interest in me. i got to see one of these women this weekend because she was in town visiting her son. i cannot begin to describe to you how it felt just to have her ask me how i’ve been. and then when i was talking about stuff i’m learning in my classes, there was almost a glint of pride in her eyes. (maybe i’m just stretching there, but at least that’s what it looked like.) i kind of didn’t really know how to handle it, but it felt pretty great. one thing i do know, though, is that all of this makes me so excited for my future…

i cannot wait to be a social worker. i wanna work with kids so bad! (special needs kids and kids who have been abused… my mind changes all the time.) (and i’m not saying this to be cocky or come off as some great person or whatever cause i know i’m not. i just get really excited about it.) i want to share in the suffering of the people around me. i want people to have hope. i want people to know unconditional love. i want to encourage. and even more than in social work… i cannot wait to do that as a mother. i can’t wait to be a different kind of mother. it scares the shit out of me cause i don’t wanna be like my mom, but i don’t think i will. redemption is a sweet thing.