Just be.

It's the simple moments that make life worth it. We are so preoccupied trying to construct happiness for ourselves that we easily forget that true joy comes when we allow ourselves just to be free.

So I saw as I watched my three year-old niece run in her bathing suit through my in-laws' sprinkler yesterday afternoon. Timidly at first, she ran around the outer arch of the water, but soon she was running headlong into the middle of it, unheeded by its coldness or the grass that stuck to her as she tumbled across the lawn. Then she was squealing and begging us to join her, and just like that, it was everyone's turn - mommy, Unca Matt, papa, gramma-mommy, Auntie B - to run fully clothed through the sprinkler as if we were only three, too. In my sodden jean-skirt I sat down in the sun and watched as she ran and flung her slippery little arms around my sister-in-law's neck. 

These are the days we live for.

Do What Gives You Peace : Write.

I was in the midst of an enthusiastic email today when I realized how rarely I speak to myself in such a way. A very very kind colleague of mine recommended me for a new writing opportunity and as I wrote my email submission, I was saying,

Writing is my life passion, it's what I live for! 

when I stopped and thought to myself,

If that's true, then why am I constantly constraining myself whenever I feel the urge to write? 

The urge comes so often and so naturally that my first instinct is to sift through the thought and pick it apart rather than immediately writing it down. I self-edit before the words even reach the page. If my brain were visible by computer screen, the cursor would move back and forth so fast that hardly a sentence or idea would ever reach completion on most days. 

I continued writing the email and submitted it, but the frustration with myself stuck with me. Add it to the list - there is a lot in my life to be frustrated about at the moment. Finances. Family. My grossly unkempt apartment with week old dirty dishes and laundry that's clean but unfolded and receipts scattered everywhere. Time feels like a farce when it runs faster than your mind can keep up with.

This is the drama that is my life. In the midst of everything that is truly sad and scary and strange that I cannot control, I allow the one thing I have going for me, my true passion, to be to an insecurity, something to fear. And because it has the vast potential to transform my life and I know it, I allow my dream to become entangled with all that I am terrified to hold fast to, and also to let go of.

When I let myself do it, it gives voice to unspeakable peace. Yes, it is a paradox. The things I cannot say, the feelings that I live with and the fears and worries and also the irrepressible, naive, cock-eyed hope and faith that I carry with me can be uncovered and unpacked and analyzed and laid to rest, maybe even with the chance that it will grow and flourish into something new, if I only let it.

In the midst of my frustration, I read a post by one of my favorite writers, Shauna Niequist, this morning about her process of learning through writing. She's on her third book now, and she says,

"Once again today, I’m reminded that writing is more about learning than telling, more about discovering than reporting, more about revealing than pronouncing. I’m showing up today for the first time in a long time, humble before the page, or the laptop as it were, ready to learn, ready to discover."

I self-edit because I think I have to have it figured out before I say it. In some cases, that habit works to my advantage, but in writing it squelches my creativity and exposes my self-consciousness.

If the only constant in life is that we are all learning to live, then as I write about living, I am in a process of learning. And I can be at peace with that.

Thanks for reminding me through your reminder, Shauna. 

The Rain.

Driving home from Michigan yesterday I finally found an exit that took me to the lake shore. I've tried before and gotten lost in loops of highway exits and side roads as my GPS chirps in the background, "recalculating, recalculating..." This time I muted the thing, took an exit I haven't taken before and discovered the road I remembered from our honeymoon to St. Joseph, Michigan. In my memory the water gleamed blue with sunshine as husband and I said good-bye to the only vacation we've taken since we married nearly two years ago.

I stopped and got out of the car, grateful to stretch my legs and let the breeze air out my shirt, drenched in sweat from a drive with no air-conditioning in 85 degree weather, and to reflect on my trip home and the road ahead of me - what I was returning to and what I was leaving behind.

The aquamarine waves lapped quietly, disappearing into a hazy sky. With the sun shining and calm winds, it was hard to fathom the ominous storm forecasted to strike the midwest. Supposedly I was headed straight into the thick of it, but from where I sat things looked peaceful and incapable of being disturbed. I wanted to sit there forever, the sun and I defiantly waiting for a sign from the darkening sky to prove the weatherman right or wrong. I know that meteorology is a science, but for how often they are wrong I wanted to believe that the storms wouldn't come.

I sweltered the whole way home, watching the sky grow darker and gray, fraught with clouds. In the distance I could see the slant sheet of rain spill over the southwest.

At long last I pulled into the lot of my apartment, and the sky, heavy with thunder, broke open in a downpour.

I stepped from the car, lifted my hands open-palmed to the sky.

For once it felt good to let the cold drops wash over me, engulf me in its soaking breeze, let the rumble of thunder ripple from my spine to my toes.

What else am I to do but welcome it now?

[Photo.]

God Gave Me a Zeppelin Shirt.

I'm not very good at letting myself feel things when I should. At least that's how I reprimand and rationalize myself when the feelings just won't stay stuffed down. I'm hard on myself. I think we all are, in different, debilitating ways. We want to function. We want to fulfill expectations with a reality that will make us feel better about the things we just can't control.

We want to compartmentalize.

Relationships here.

Work there.

Emotions in the corner.

Insecurity somehow slips into each of those tightly bound spaces and unravels everything. The what ifs and the fears and the happy possibilities become tangled into a magnificent twist of confusion and worry.

We understand nothing.

We do nothing.

I do believe, in optimistic and maybe naive moments that we can work our way out of self destructive habits. I want to believe that each of us can learn to live in the moment and see outside of our selves. And I know, like a blind man feels with distinction a tree, a face, a hand of something he cannot see, that God is there, is present in my day-to-day guiding and protecting and providing for me. But I also feel the gravel, the steep hill and rushing currents as I work through the hard, unknowable, incomprehensible things. Each movement forward feels shaky and precarious. I don't like being unable to see the end of the road and I don't like not knowing how long it will or won't take to get there, wherever there is.

It's these thoughts that catch me when I'm alone and squelch my solitude, my peace. And so last night, there I was, alone in my thoughts, putting away dishes before friends came over for coffee and listening absent-mindedly to Led Zeppelin in the background, when my husband came up behind me to dance - a regular occurrence. He placed his hands on my hips and swayed to the bass beat and for a minute I let him, lost in the song and remembering how exactly we wound up here.

It was my love for Led Zeppelin that made me impulse-purchase a really rad t-shirt right before I went to college. And it was the t-shirt that made Matt notice me from across the classroom way back in the day [2005] when we were just two kids, trying to survive college and find someone whose music taste didn't make us vomit. And it was those early spring nights when we listened to vinyls and cassette tapes and talked about we had in common that made us realize: there's no one else that we'd rather rock out with than each other, forever and ever, I Do, amen…

And now here we are, adults, married, dealing with day-to-day life together and wondering, each of us, where we're headed and how to get there. And it's not always glamourous and he's not a famous rockstar [yet] and we're flat broke, and he sometimes comes home to find me weeping into a couch cushion or zoning out as I stand over a sink of dirty dishes, but we have each other and that's really good. Because I had no idea that buying a Zeppelin shirt would be the catalyst for changing my life and meeting my future husband. And whatever happens or doesn't happen - real or in our insecure imaginations - we have that opportunity to stop in the midst of it and see how far we've come. God provides, in surprising and subtle ways that we aren't capable of imagining or orchestrating on our own.

I need to stop, listen, dance in the now, where I'm safe and sound in what He's already given me.

I am not alone.

[Engagement photo taken by this talented dude.]

Today.

Today. It's just one of those when I wish with every fiber of me to do something - an impossible, unstoppable, heart-in-my-throat, no-turning-back thing that will express the breadth and depth of what I cannot say. I'd dye my hair pink, quit working, move to a foreign country and go sky diving in some breathtakingly beautiful place I've never been. Today I would go back to Interlaken, Switzerland and capitalize on the "adventure capital of the world" and go bungee-jumping, without a worry about safety or cents or holding down my lunch. I'm young, right? Let's do it now before I'm not.

Today I would swim in the ocean even though I'm terrified and not very good at it. I'd reach out and touch things I've never seen before and roll around in the waves just so I can feel out of control. Because I am. Everything is. I would do it all if I thought that it would expel the breath I'm holding. Today it is hard for me to breathe.

[Photo.]