stand by your _____

tonight i got my ticket for seattle. so it's back to the pacific northwest in april for me to munch on the newest little abare's cheeks. a baby boy that will have me as googly-eyed and nuts as ava did.

i wrote my sister-in-law (newly pregnant and due in june) a letter trying to explain to her (someone who isn't prone to an automatic and assumed love of babies or children in general) my adoration of wee ones, and obsession with those that share my last name. even for me, a lover of words and explaining things on paper, it was difficult to adequately portray just how nuts i am. so i'm sure i did a pretty inadequate job, but today i read a quote in this book i'm reading in order to complete my doula certification.

this book is interesting, but also written by a feminist who sort of comes off like a psychotic private investigator who thinks the world/hospitals/health care providers are out to get pregnant women.

"babies, i speculated in that peculiar mystical state, are sort of leaky little understudies for God. with each baby the human species gets the chance to break out of the self into the service of something so "other" that the reasons for conditional love can give way to faith in unconditional love. most of us ordinary mortals can't manage that invitation to unconditional love on a daily, ever-renewed plane in the form of looking after the poor, the dispossessed, or the outcast all around us. but with babies, we get the chance to take one manageable baby step on the long hard path of the saints. - naomi wolf (misconceptions)

this really shared a little of what it's like in my heart. i remember jamie asking us to write something for ava's baby book before she was born, and me sitting there writing this letter to ava before i even knew what her name would be and telling her how much i love her. there's nothing i wouldn't do or give to protect her or make her happy. i get all sappy and teary just thinking about it now.

when i was in a relationship with a guy, i always understood it as a parallel to the love God had for me. which is why i had a hard time after he split - was God going to split too? when ava came along, she really wrote a pretty redeeming and beautiful story about what unconditional love is like. and she's not going anywhere. i won't let her! she gave me faith in the kind of love that is crazy, big, dramatic, ridiculous... the kind of love that will spend money and time (and did i mention money?) and travel thousands of miles sitting next to a fat gum chomper just to get to squeeze that chubby little body.

it scares me to think what it will be like if i ever have babies of my own. because i simply can't even imagine loving any harder than this. oh did tammy wynette know what she was singing... 'sometimes it's hard to be... a wooomaaan.'

who's given you the faith to believe in unconditional love? go on now, give 'em a squeeze.

church bells and icky feelings

i've been thinking a lot about feelings and choices and why we do things and why we don't do things and why we should do things that we don't and why we don't do things that we should and why we don't do things we shouldn't and why we do things we should. tracking?

it's probably good to have a healthy balance in your life that consists of doing things you don't want to do and doing things you do want to do. for instance, i don't like waking up at 5 something on mondays, but know that if i want to live where i do and eat and have fun - i need to rake in that cash. another example of this would be how i sometimes don't feel like going to the Y, but if i don't want to look like the spawn of paula deen and john candy, i need to burn off the calories that i swallowed in the process of spending the money i had to wake up for.

also good that i just make the decision to act on things that i know are good, because i don't trust my feelings 100%. do you?

i just watched that really depressing movie "blue valentine" (the only thing not depressing was realizing ryan gosling can't even be unattractive when he tries). in a flashback that michelle williams's character is having, she is thinking out loud on the potential to begin a relationship with ryan gosling's character and she says, "how do you trust your feelings, when they can just disappear like that?"

i've been on the receiving end of so many assholes (for lack of a better word) who felt like trusting their feelings was going to get them to where they needed to go in life. it doesn't feel good. in fact, it leaves you feeling emotionally raped and utterly helpless. when other people make decisions that affect your life so negatively, it brings you to a dark place: stripped of the confidence and power you thought you had over your own choices/heart.

i feel like i've only recently been able to let go of the rest of the pain i'd been carrying around - placed there by five trusted leaders in the church i went to. and that's only happened after taking a seriously long sabbatical from church - moving to another city, counseling, and being plugged into an actually healthy church.

and i'm not the first in my family to be burnt by the very place people actually go to seek refuge. just talk to my parents! my problems were nothing compared to theirs/my family's.

right now i'm listening to a song by gungor called "church bells":
____________

Let church bells ring
Let children sing
Even if they don’t know why let them sing
Why drown their joy
Stifle their voice
Just because you’ve lost yours

May our jaded hearts be healed
Amen

Let old men dance
Lift up their hands
Even if they are naïve, let them dance
You’ve seen it all
You watch them fall
Wash off your face and dance

May our weary hearts be filled with hope
Amen
____________

so it's important to me that i've put people in positions in my life who will give me a reality check when it looks like i'm calling shots based solely off of feelings. because i know how much my feelings can affect others lives.

but wait! there's more!

i noticed an ad on the train the other day for the kindle maybe? whatever it was for, it held 1,400 books. and i just sat there thinking about who would ever need to put 1,400 books on one electronic device. i don't think i've ever even met anyone who has read 1,400 books in their entire life. but then i thought - well, there are some special people out there who probably have. their skin is probably as white as mine (only from no exposure to the elements) and they may or may not still be breast fed...

this lead me to the trail of inventions that are made for the most extreme of situations/individuals. kindles that hold 1,400 books. computers that have the most space. cameras that take the highest quality pictures. and everything just keeps getting "better" and "better".

when i got the iphone 4, only because i had shattered my 3, i felt like i had finally caught up. but no, no. then i shattered that and flashed a little skin in the apple store and got another 4 completely free and thought ok maybe NOW i'm caught up. nope. and i never will be. my laptop is still the white clunker. it has chips out of it and is not really so much white as it is off white with what would appear to be my finger prints after being taken to the police station. but i like it and it works for me.

so today on the train i'm thinking all of these ridiculous thoughts while i look around at everyone's version of "what works for them" i realize.. our culture is pulling apart the wires God so meticulously organized in us: the desire for beauty, the ability to live in an extended period of contentment; or better yet - joy - and replacing it with seeds of unfinished business and a yearning for newer versions of meaningless things we've already acquired.

we want, want, want with no sense of satisfaction. God created us to want him, and given the fact that he makes himself readily available to anyone and everyone, we really can be satisfied with just knowing him.

what do you have that satisfies you? or who?

cat calls

how easy for you is it to delight in the Lord?

i feel sick to my stomach thinking about how easy it's been for me as of late. so i ask myself why i feel sick, or why i feel like it's been so easy... the answer i come up with is that life is incredible right now. i feel like i'm where i'm supposed to be, spending time with people i'm supposed to, doing what i'm supposed to be doing, and hitting wide open gates of favor at every turn. i don't want for hardly anything, and i'm provided for, loved, and cared for well. like really well.

so is it easy for me to delight in the Lord because i feel like he's blessing me in the ways i've always wanted to be blessed, or because i believe at my core that he is responsible for these blessings? either way i'm brought back to bumpy ride on top of a mini bus in haiti; throwing candy into the road for kids to chase after. candy pieces flying, kids screaming, women jumping out of the stream they're bathing in to run naked down the road after us for some measly pieces of candy. that was the highlight of their days. maybe their years. maybe their lives.

but i've mentioned it before... they have this happiness that emanates from them - even outside the context of being given candy, food, necessities. they had all the symptoms of persons who delighted in the God that blessed them with life, but in a place where that life - just being born - feels more like a curse than a blessing at times. a life filled with need. but i know, that i know, that i know God is delighting in them as much as they are him. he delights in the fact that they look to him to fulfill their needs.

J.P. de Caussade said, "all he wishes is to be the sole object and only enchantment of our hearts." when there's not much more to be enchanted with, the gospel is pretty dang fine option.

so do you love your life and delight in the one who gave it to you, despite its many flaws or "not-the-way-i-saw-it-happening's"? or are you single and all you can think of is a love life? are you poor and all you can think of is more money? are you rich and all you can think of is a break to enjoy what you could actually afford?

"instead of living lives we savor, we are in danger of living superficial, sound-bite lives that we barely notice." - edward hallowell

so make the long hair of your life wavy and luscious and put on your tightest pants and walk the metaphorical streets of washington heights, if you will. live a life worthy of head-turning and be confident in not only who you are, but who made you that way.

missing the mark that isn't. until we put it there.

i got the newest hillsong album, but have only been listening to one of the songs (has a rich mullins chorus, so... duh) on it due to the latest issue i have with the church, the worship music industry (because i think it's different from the christian music industry), and myself.

my deductions after tasting recent worship songs:

recipe = 1/2 cup self loathing/woe is me, 3 cups guilt, 1 cup belief that Jesus actually does hate you when you don't sing about how terrible your life is without him, 4 cups drum solos to inspire/make you feel closer to the God you sound like you should probably just hate if your life is really as awful as verses 1 & 2 say, and 20 cups key of G.

these worship songs bring me back to my high school days. too much time spent in an unhealthy youth group setting where our relationships with God were gauged by the amount of emotion that poured from us before exiting. if we hadn't spent a good portion of our night crying, we felt like we had this plateau "time" instead of a mountaintop "experience" with God.

hindsight is 20/20, obviously, and i now see how detrimental that was to my soul-searching days. feeling like i hadn't connected with God if i didn't walk away from any time spent with him feeling like i had my entire life sorted out because i saw it in a flash... somewhere in between singing some verse about me being terrible and completely alone in the world without the help of God to get me through.

when here's the real deal: i can make it without him. people do every day. i have an amazing family, great friends, an awesome job, and incredible opportunities.

so why do i choose to add someone else to an already great situation? i don't think he's the only means to happiness. i don't think he is disappointed in me on a daily basis, and i sure as hell don't think that singing about my problems for five verses with a chorus about God's goodness despite my crumbling life is something that needs to be happening.

i sway back and forth with the train rocking and look around me at people who may or may not hate God, may or may not love God, or: may or may not even know about God. i think of the unhappiness that plagues so many lives. then i think about my life and just smile. a big, stupid smile to myself like i do often when i think about my family. babies. my home. my city. and i wonder if God has anything to do with it. and then i stop wondering because i know...

he does. so, that's why.

yoga and some big ass elephants

last monday night i was finally able to go to the yoga class my dear friend teaches. holy cow do i love mondays now. loving mondays... an oxymoron, i know. so i got off work and headed over, but was a few minutes early. columbus circle was on my way, so i just decided to listen to this worship song i love and pray for my city. i walked around the statue and had views of streets going up and down the island. i could see central park and all the christmas gift tents. i could see the big time warner cable mall and all the uppity stores. i could see these huge elephant statues that are on display now as you walk into the circle. and i was just overcome with a sense of: "wow the amount of want amidst all this wealth is incredible!"

the song i was listening to said: "your presence is all i need, it's all i want, and all i seek. and without it, without it there's no meaning."

so imagine that playing while i looked at piles and piles of excess and buildings that house wealthy people who like other wealthy people and essentially make our world go round with their earning and spending. but really - where's the meaning? the past year has made me increasingly aware of just how great a difference only one hundred blocks makes in this city. i'm thankful for that vast difference.

i've also been keenly aware of the things that do matter to me in this city:

quality people and a quality church with healthy leadership and a desire to see change, but not at the cost of people's families and happiness.

the women in my life who will sit around with me and laugh, cry, talk, listen.

my amazing family #2 who provides me with a job, but more importantly love and a lot of happiness.

family across the street.

AND those special guys who stand behind you on the train and make no effort to move back at all when you can't hold your body any more still and keep bumping into them with your butt.

JR - french artist who makes me cry

overtime hours in the surprise party biz

every monday and every other friday at around 6:30am i walk down chambers street. and then every monday and every other friday night at around 6:15pm, i walk up chambers street. i see so many of the same people on my commute. it turns out a couple of the guys on my same train downtown even work in the same building i do. new york is so big, but also so tiny.

when i'm walking to the train at night, scattered up and down chambers are older guys wearing these blue smocks that say, "guys and dolls", which is a strip club in the neighborhood. they are passing out fliers and will only talk to men. never have i seen them try to hand one of those papers to a woman.

there's one man in particular that i notice. he's a distinguished looking, older asian man. looks like he is the patriarch of a family of delicious cooks. he used to look at the floor when i would walk past him, or stand next to him waiting to cross the street. you could practically feel the shame just oozing from him. i always wonder how he got to this point. i want to know his story. so all summer, i worked on making eye contact with him. towards the middle of the summer he started to look at me, and by the end of the summer he was half smiling.

today i walked past and gave him a big smile and a wave, excited to see him. i was crying the rest of my walk to the train because of the response i got. his head is almost always down, focused on his task of handing those little fliers out to guys - but when he looked up and saw me smiling and waving - he lit up and started waving back like a little kid. kept saying, "hi! hi! hello!"

there's a song by jenn johnson that we sing at my church called "God i look to you" that i absolutely love. each verse is something you definitely want to be praying and proclaiming each day. but the second chorus says, "halelujah, our God reigns" and just keeps repeating it. i was listening to it on my walk to the train and before i even saw my guys and dolls friend, i started thinking of all the things i want God to reign over in my life and in the lives of others. i thought of all the ways he does reign.

i want him to reign over my sister-in-law and the job she has and hates. i want him to reign over a woman i know who is pregnant and brave and has valid reasons to feel like her baby may never make it. i want him to reign over the neighbor who saw me struggling to get all my laundry and recycle to the basement and said, "it is my privilege to help you." i want him to reign over the girls who are being traded for sex like they are invisible. i want him to reign over the young couple with a newborn who was so embarrassed to be taking a long time in front of me at the grocery store because they didn't know what all their food stamps would pay for.

and so tonight while i'm singing "halelujah, our God reigns", i'm also passing this man who looks ashamed but is probably just trying to put some food on the table. and once again, my heart broke for the people in this city.

one of the verses in this same song says, "God i look to you, i won't be overwhelmed. give me vision - to see things like you do." that has been my prayer for a long time. and let me tell you... i really felt like God answered it tonight in the form of a sweet, old asian man passing out strip club fliers.

God's kind of like a surprise party that works over time.