I’m not exactly sure how the thread got started. I think it was my friend Maureen who first posted a picture, vulnerably revealing the damage of one of the rooms in her house after a day of momma taking a break and four kids having their way with their energy. The thread was in a private Facebook group with the mom’s in our homeschool co-op, and Maureen’s picture was followed by several others. Dirty kitchens, dirty living rooms, bags of groceries, scattered laundry, some clean and some not, a hodge podge of messes, deposits of living an active life.

It was about a week after the posts, when I was feeling a bit overwhelmed in my own kitchen, that I remembered Maureen and I decided to take my own picture. No lie I took about 10 – 15 pictures. Each time I would capture the disorder in the little rectangle screen on my iPhone and then I would stare at it, blinking hard and then looking up to see the disorder in real life. Something wasn’t working. My iPhone camera just wasn’t grasping the chaos.

I tried backing up. I tried zooming in close. I tried flipping my screen to landscape because portrait wasn’t portraying it correctly. But landscape didn’t help. My camera was failing my eyes. It was as if in the snapping of a photo the mess cleaned itself up. The click of the camera was anti-climactic. I was getting frustrated that my mess didn’t look messy enough.

The external tool just wasn’t capturing the internal waves of overwhelm.

The next time I saw Maureen I thanked her for her confidence to start a vulnerable, “Hey! Look at me! I’m messy sometimes” thread. I showed her my picture. She laughed. “That doesn’t look that bad to me.”

“Ugh! I know,” I groaned, exasperated.

“The same thing happened to me when I was taking pictures too. Why doesn’t it ever look nearly as bad as it feels?”

“Oh, so you noticed that too,” I was relieved. What’s that about?! There’s a lesson in there somewhere.”

Maybe the lesson is that our messes aren’t nearly as big and embarrassing and harassing as they seem. (My friend Teresa would say, “Everything does not have to be a crisis” OR “I will not whine.”)

Maybe the lesson is that our eyes sometimes miss what our souls perceive. And we need to pay attention to the condition of our soul.

Maybe the lesson is that everyone has messes.

Maybe the lesson is wabi-sabi from the forgotten trenches of the Messy Canvas archives.

Maybe the lesson is that when we frame our chaos in that rectangular perimeter, we are erasing all the excess, leaving us to focus on solely one pixel of our life’s display. And one pixel is hardly overwhelming.

And now, with some distance from the moment, I can laugh with Maureen at my zooming and my panning and my flipping of my camera. I can laugh at my anxious activity to prove, “Hey, it’s messy over here, and I’m drowning in it!” I can laugh and shake my head and say, “Really? Is this all? It doesn’t look that bad to me.”

Oh I forgot. I went and snatched it all in close again.

It’s easy to do that out here. Out here on the edge, where madness and greatness collide.

I sunk my fingernails in and said “This is mine and why should you have it, if it is mine?”

Eyes as slits, darting forth and back. Breath darkened down to jealous dissonant octaves.

Vibrations of my vocal chords shorting out the bulbs of light.

I heard my own voice whisper “my precious” like that cave and shadow-dwelling being, and I dripped with the slippery drops of my own fierce fury.

I am imprisoned by my own alone-ness in this greed.

It destroys me when I’m clutching.

God, oh God, though I have engraved my initials with the deep scratching of knife, I am aware now it is Yours, it is all Yours.

And because it is Yours and because You are love, it is ours.

All of ours.

Not just mine.

Free to all.

And if they found it some other way then by me, what elation that they found it at all.

Oh I forgot. I forgot.

Messy moist fingers release grip, and open wide

To failure’s lessons pouring in and trickling clean.

-John F. Kennedy

“You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it is better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.”

- The Alchemist

So I’m afraid- all we can do is pray.
It’s sad to say, but maybe all we can do is pray.
They’re dropping bombs like clouds are dropping rain-
and all we can do is pray.
If all the leaders are insane- what are we to do but pray?
And though people don’t seem to believe it today,
I know that the spirits are with me each time I pray.

- Pray, lyrics from a song by The Waywords

It’s not that we don’t care,
We just know that the fight ain’t fair
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

- John Mayer

“If we really want to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than Osama.”

-Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis quote with the word Osama used in place of the word Gestapo

Oh I am mad. I am mad again. And the anger, though I welcome it for the teaching it brings, it is screwing with my writing. I am tired of writing angry. Of that “angry” word being catalyst to my outpouring. Is nothing else my catalyst? Can there be no fluctuation in my muse? Maybe there is good to this though. Afterall, energy is needed for prose and poetry and art in action, and anger is a sort of energy. I should be so thankful, not aloof to you dear friend. Anger come to me. I suspect you need a chance to be heard. This is the maddening plight of the artist, entertaining rat-a-tat voices of anger day-in and day-out, cuddling the wounded child on our inside that has to be heard if our world is to progress. The ignored are the restless. And the restless make treachery if they do not give themselves a time and place to kick and punch the air.

So speak. Speak you anger. Speak so we can be out of words, to make room for other words, life-giving words to flow in once again. Speak so I can hear without the chaos of noise, your noise, making my ears blank out and the skin mid-eyebrow pinch together in fraught. Have your voice.

I am embarrassed by our country’s band-wagons. The way we jump on so faithfully and ride and ride and ride the dead horse, long past the time where anyone is really saying anything of value. The Osama Bin Laden thing has me angry. And I don’t know why, and I don’t even want to be writing about it. I despise the crowd. And the crowd is talking and the talking won’t stop, and I want to keep my mouth shut about it, simply because I won’t be one more voice of the crowd which has me enraged. We are like those birds in Finding Nemo, those annoying birds who stake claim to an argument and then persist until everyone has had their say, “Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine.” Oh don’t do it Mandy, don’t post a post like this one. Don’t be a part of the crowd. But I feel myself leaning in anyways, despite my best warnings.

The jokes are funny until I’ve laughed so much I feel a bit raw, and I wonder did I even mean to be laughing in the first place? And isn’t it easier to laugh? Isn’t it always easier to laugh then to contemplate, then to ponder, then to dig in and ask questions…questions that may not have any answers? So I stop laughing and then I feel the seriousness weigh too heavy. The he saids and the she saids. Who can be trusted? The Democrats who I thought were pacifists. The Republicans who I thought hated Barak. The religious who have forgotten grace. And the gracious who have forgotten what it feels like to hurt so bad you can’t think straight. The middle-people who stand confused, looking back and forth between the two sides, wondering when the tennis match will end and who will stand the victor.

The stones, the stones. We’re heaving them now, full-forced, at each other. Did you see that subtle shift? Does the voicing of opinions always turn to this? My brother. My sister. And the sarcasm threatens with its thick sugary blanket to smother the seriousness of it all. Oh God, the scriptures. Here they are again. Pulled back out and waved as banners, as proofs, as formulas. And the discrepancies of scriptures revisited with impenetrable murderous stares. You don’t get me. Why won’t you be won over to my side? The right side. The black and the white and the confident answers of how this all should really have gone down.

The armed forces, real family and friends, my very in the flesh neighbors. Closer to wear it hurts. And we feel for them, just like we feel for the losses of 9-11. It’s the feelings, the messy feelings that no one wants to talk about because they are messy and can’t be nailed down to clear formulas and calculations and logic and decisions. But someone, someone somewhere must make decisions. This is how the world turns. This is why our President gives haunting mention to the eyes he must look into giving news no one can understand that husband, wife, son or daughter has been killed in duty, faithfully serving a country that we are all fighting so madly to defend. What about the world we are trying to defend? Does she weep, does she moan? Or is this just par for the course? Has she come to know there will always be two opposing sides and the assumption that the Divine stands on one side as opposed to on the other?

Sometimes we unite. Sometimes not. Sometimes I just want the air to continue to go in and out of my own single pair of lungs. Just me. Just me still breathing even if no one else is. The lungs, my lungs, that can’t possibly assume I know what it is to stand before another human, staring eye-to eye with he who has completed such murderous atrocities and to say with any sort of finality I love you or I hate you. I could say both. On any given day my tides could shift and I could say both. And I suppose I am mad because I think you could too. You want to make it black and white and cookie cutter crisp. You want to tuck it in and put it to bed, and this is why you use your voice, to convince us there is a clean way out of all this. If politicians didn’t lie, if people didn’t kill, if wars weren’t fought or if they were fought harder, tougher, ruthlessly…we waiver it all on big idealistic “if’s” that none of us really could ever sustain. We want it all and we want it all to be so easy, and we don’t understand the half of it. I don’t. I could say both. I could say both I hate you and I love you. I am divided within.

You know fear. Fear speaks in times like these and I get that fear wants to decide and make it clean, so we just don’t have to be scared anymore. Kill him and it ends. Love him and it ends. It just doesn’t end. If there is anything history can tell us, it continues, and we all still have to live together tomorrow. Not just we across seas, but we across towns, and harder still, when the sunsets and the noise goes quiet, we must live with the noise within. The most deafening noise of all. My noise. My anger. My inner-war that says I could say both. I love you and I hate you. What am I to do with that fatal contradiction of oscillating choices?

Sometimes it’s the answers that mock the most. The proposed better solutions to everything. And I’m heavy with feeling the weight of the answers. Everyone’s answers. We are in our corners, high-fiving those who are like us. Dreaming up new enemies. And it’s all because we are scared. A fearful lot we are. And the anger burns within, and I must listen to it. Give it voice. We don’t own one another, but inside there is a swirling I do own. And the swirling wants me to sit with it for awhile. It is only here, sitting with myself that I am soft enough to hear whispers of grace and hope. They echo through bruised chambers, and lay protective layers of healing salve down thick. I think I can loosen clinched fists again and smooth out swollen veins in my tensed up neck. I think there is a hint of smile that is not poisoned by the sting of sarcasm. I think I may feel the vibrations of a unified voice, of the Divine voice, as my heart begins to match heartbeat to mysterious heartbeat, as my breathing begins to slow way down. Once again I have had to return to that lonely but promising place of me. And Someone meets me here. Again.

Thankfully I can return now to the noise. I can hear your rants and realize that you are just trying to muddle your way through fear like the rest of us, like me. Maybe if you’re given the space to muddle enough you’ll be left raw too and seek some solace alone, meeting yourself and your inner questions that aren’t getting answered despite your best attempts to prove otherwise. Maybe this is what is known as humility. A place this post has forced me to go personally. This whole thing reminds me of taking my laundry downstairs. I have a big basket to carry and the basket is coming unwoven, and every single time I think I can grab that basket without getting snagged, but it never happens. Some part of me always gets caught up, scratched, interrupted with inconvenient pricks and pokes. This is how we do life together. Going along fine and thinking that we can live whole without mess. And then something happens. Something always happens. World Wars or civil wars, 9-11 or the OKC bombing, tsunamis or tornadoes, abortion or the bombing of abortion clinics. They’re all snags. Snags we thinks we can avoid. And they are always followed by inconvenient pricks and pokes as everyone shares their opinions, their solutions, their rants. And as much as I hate that my shirt is caught on a piece of you, I can’t help but laugh at myself for being surprised by it. It’s just part of carrying the broken laundry basket. The unraveling laundry basket of humanity. You can hate her, Mandy, but Babe, she’s all you’ve got.

How is your writing going?

A friend asked me this recently. It is good to have friends that know your passions and that check in on you from time to time.

So I set out to answer that question today. In part the way I answered her, and then diving even deeper, like the submarine my brother-in-law is currently residing in as he fulfills his Navy duties. I know there is something under the water’s surface, something hiding in murky shadows. I know my friend touched on a pressure point when she asked the question. Good friends, artist friends, they have a way of doing that, and I am grateful for necessary nudges at appropriate times.

I have been on a journey with my writing no doubt. From writing a novel, to putting myself through writing school (this plan has morphed some to focus a little less on fiction and a little more on non-fiction), to postponing blogging for a bit as I hashed through my own life and did some writing (A LOT of writing) off-line.

So where does this bring me?

Here are the words that come to mind as I sit down to write about how my writing is going:

• Uncertain
• Anticipation
• Vulnerable
• Raw
• Unfocused
• Competitive
• Insecure
• Lonely
• Crazy
• On the verge of breakthrough
• Wordless
• Guarded
• Stuck
• Paralyzed
• Hopeful
• Distracted
• Jealous
• Confused
• Called

The reality is I’m a little unsure as to who I am right now as a writer, and I’m working through that. When you write for so long about truly vulnerable stuff (like I have for a few years on my blog, and for a few months off-line this past winter) it leaves you a feeling frail around the edges. I feel a bit like the antique books filled with pages of yellowed corners that break off when you turn them. I have a collection of little yellowed corners, and I keep sifting them through my hands wondering if they are worth repairing or if they are just par for the course. Is this just what it feels like to be a writer?

Of course I know the answer is yes. This is what it feels like to be a writer…to be an artist. This is the dip to be pushed through. This is the storm after the calm. This is the completing of one project and the beginning of a new. It is hard motion of laying down one thing and picking up another, knowing full well, at some point, I may have to go back and pick up that other thing that had to be laid down for now. And right now I’m trying to pick up my blog again, knowing I am not who I once was in these posts. I am somehow, through this process, a new creation, and still searching for the boldness and proper language to voice all of that through my medium of choice: words.

And there is of course the matter of my everyday life, because this is where the words have to bleed from, sing from, be birthed from. And my everyday life feels a bit sloppy (a bit MESSY) right now as Tony and I wrestle with unsung dreams and patience and learning the art of contentment with what we have been given. Using the resources we have and believing them to be enough.

That’s the real issue, isn’t it Mandy? Letting what is currently be enough. Letting a blog be enough when a published book feels so far away. Letting a rented duplex be enough when you want a magical home downtown. Letting a paid off credit card be enough when you feel school debts barking at your door. Letting Oklahoma be enough when you miss California beaches. Letting married with children be enough when you dream of being a free-spirited globetrotter. Letting grilled cheese and soup and cheap jelly with high fructose corn syrup be enough. Letting Goodwill clothes be enough. Letting mistakes be enough. Letting regrets be enough. Letting the imperfect be enough. Letting this Steward family be enough, without the need to compare and contrast and suppose why we are not like them or like them or like them over there.

With each sentence, I am unclogging a drain. Pulling the deposits of hair away that have wrapped themselves into knots. That hair that my dad used to despise. That hair that goes ignored because it is unseen, but it is down there choking back life with its fake black tendrils, keeping the artistic streams from flowing. Damming up tunnels to expression. And I unwind it with every utterance of the phrase, be enough, be enough, be enough.

So that eventually what will pour out again here will be free-flowing, even drinkable. Water to refresh us as we make our way through this one and only life. This life eternal. This life that has no need for hurry, rush, or envy. The journey is the point. And these words are just as necessary as the posts that come easily.

My writing is going well dear friend. This post, it is enough.

Sometimes I think we discount compliments because we know all the stars that had to align to give us one moment of glory, and we know we can’t sustain that sort of living in each of our moments. We want to make sure people know, “I’m often more of a mess then this would imply.”

We think saying “thank you” in reply to the compliment is nodding an agreement that we will always do so perfectly and thus must maintain the energy to always be at our best. We are ever thinking of the future and thereby miss the celebrations of the present.

Oh to be able to proclaim a simple “thank you” to a friend. To meet them in their overflowing expression of love and tenderly and vulnerably bask in it.

I’m reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance. I’m reading it over and over again, letting each word soak in and find its way to my heart. In the beginning he talks about how as adults we have a divided mind. We can’t just do the thing we would like to do because “we are watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds whose affections must now enter into account.” But children, children haven’t learned yet to taken others into account. They act with one unified mind, to do the thing which they intend to do. They are not limited by protocol. They simply act.

I wrote down a list of some of the CHILDLIKE behavior of children:

• don’t think out responses
• don’t weigh decisions on account of others
• not encumbered by consequences
• not entirely conscious to the realities of our world (naive)
• naturally act as him/herself without apology
• good humored
• curious, exploratory, ask questions, research, challenge rules, authority, social structure
• nothing is sacred or set in stone
• no explanation or defense for actions

Now I am aware that some of this could be labeled as childish behavior. Emerson himself uses the word irresponsible at one point. But it can’t be denied that kids can act so freely because they are disconnected from rules and etiquette. There is an innocence as a child that allows a confidence in action that we as adults may never know again. And since they’re children they are awarded extra grace because of course “they don’t know better yet.”

As I look back over my year of studying and becoming CHILDLIKE, I realize that there are many times I have wished I could do away with the scale of “knowing better.” There is always a better to be known and the fear of that often keeps me trapped as an adult because I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want to act and then be chastised, “How could you have done that? You should have known better.”

In the novel My Name Is Asher Lev, a grade school age Jewish boy named Asher (who is an artist at heart) draws a picture in one of his holy books. As the word gets out he is reprimanded by several adults and ridiculed by his classmates. When questioned he responds that he doesn’t know how or why it happened. He doesn’t remember drawing it.

This story in the book stuck out to me. Poor Asher couldn’t seem to explain or contain his own actions. In this particular scenario, he didn’t draw the picture because he was acting out of angry rebellion, he drew it because he was so freely being himself. When questioned he didn’t have a good explanation. Almost as if he was a newborn being asked, “Why are you crying? Why won’t you stop?” The actions were seemingly innate and out of his control.

There are so many times where I ask my kids in regards to their poor behavior, “Why did you do that?” and they respond with “I don’t know.” For them, there wasn’t a why to it. There was just an action on an impulse that felt true to them.

My biggest question that is coming out of this year of CHILDLIKE, is how do we be mature and yet still foster that spirit of CHILDLIKE freedom? How do we love others and yet not fall into the traps of people pleasing? The closest I have come to finding an answer lies in this quote:

“You learn the rules. You learn the discipline. And then you break the rules to find your freedom.”

-Finding Beauty in a Broken World, Terry Tempest Williams

The problem with rules and etiquette is that if we’re not careful we start to buy into what Emerson would call “the virtue of conformity.” We start to think and live as if we are all the same. We lose our childlike spark of confidence and forfeit the beauty in having a style all our own. “Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right.”

I am at this odd place of trying to break the rules to find my freedom, and I feel like a rebellious teenager, testing my boundaries and questioning my authorities. I am not an anarchist, but I am no longer sold out to the rules that have been laid out for me to abide by. I am appreciative of order, but I question all of it before I accept any of it as my own.

To be an artist, a creator, a scientist even, there has to be some sense of self-reliance. Of doing something because you knew you had to do it, even if it doesn’t make sense according to the rules. It requires imagination. It requires a break from the status quo. It requires a disconnect from what others may have deemed holy ground: untouchable and unquestionable.

And all of this in turn means it requires mess. Have you ever thought about why children are so messy? It’s because they don’t operate according to the rules. If there were no rules, there would be no definition for mess. Things get messy when they seep past the boundaries of what should be, dripping dangerously onto the floors of what could be.

Even the law that God issued for the Jewish people in the Old Testament was not a law that He knew they could keep. It was a law to illuminate their mess. A law to foreshadow a Savior that must come. We are a messy people. Imperfect and wandering and sometimes downright hurtful. But it wasn’t within those rules of the law that God conducted His plan. He didn’t stand back and refuse to get His hands dirty. He jumped right into the middle of the mess and created a solution that existed outside of the rules.

I am an adult that has learned the rules. At the same time I am an adult in conversation with a God that stands above all rules, and I am saying to Him, “Which ones can I break? Which ones don’t apply to me? Which ones were but for a time? Which ones are man-made and life-sucking and which ones are God-ordained and life-giving? Which ones can be bent without breaking? Which ones are making me bitter and keeping me imprisoned? Which ones are beneficial if I am to become the person I want to become?” And He is giving me answers as I jump off the table and dive into the mess of what could be.

I am standing here watching my year of CHILDLIKE come to a close and knowing that I must jump into a year of MESSY. Because it is in the mess, outside of conformity, that I will find my voice and my art and my freedom and the grace to risk it all. There is no perfect formula in the messy. There is just experimenting and faith. Lots of faith.

“These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grown faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.”

“What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

- Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We talked about our voices as writers – how they are strong and brave but how as people we are wimps. This is what creates our craziness. The chasm between the great love we feel for the world when we sit and write about it and the disregard we give it in our human lives.”

- Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg

You learn amazing things about yourself when you dine alone. For instance, what do you really like to eat? Do you prefer something healthy and light or is that just what you eat when everyone else with you is ordering a salad? Eating alone at a restaurant forces you to make choices you might not typically have to make. Where would Mandy choose to eat? Where would Mandy sit? How odd I never thought about the fact that Mandy prefers drinking water from a cup with a lid and a straw, otherwise the cup feels open and vulnerable, more likely to topple its contents out on the table like an overambitious girl at a party who says too much. I prefer not to pray before I eat. Or maybe it isn’t a preference, but just a habit. It is not a statement of my faith, but just an action that never made it into my routine, much like washing my face at night.

I watch the couple seated in front of me. They choose a window seat as well. (Mandy, alone at a restaurant chooses a window seat.) The man removes his hat and I see his head and his wife’s head dip. The woman closes her eyes. The husband probably does too, but I can’t see his face, only the back of his white polo shirt and his graying hair. They pause before eating to pray. I can’t hear the prayer, but am familiar with the posture and with the pause. I am intimate with this concept as my own father used to always ask us to pause so he could pray before eating. I seldom connected with it though. It never felt natural. I felt awkward, as if I was eavesdropping on a conversation of which I was not invited. And my mind and my body, they had trouble slowing down enough to connect with that 30 second pause of prayer. It was an interruption. Inviting sacred into mundane, holy into chaos.

I have never thought of it in that light. Perhaps I need more of that and not less. Inviting God into the mess of my life. Maybe if I did it more it would be more natural. If the bow of my head could become more than fluid motion of non-thought I might consider it. I hate thoughtless rituals. I’m afraid I’d make it thoughtless.

But it is good for me to not limit prayer to my more quiet times of purposeful conversation with God. There, when I meet with Him, we talk. He is my Papa and I His daughter and it feels natural and free and I look forward to it. It is of course a conversation often on paper and it is informal and contemplative and messy. Hashing out thoughts is okay here. Incompletion is okay here. Questions, curiosity, quirks are all welcome. These are the prayers I am familiar with.

Prayers in front of others take my breath away, and not in a good way. They become less about God and more about those I am with. Is my prayer too long? Too simple? Did I even remember to pray for the things I should, like blessings for food and nourishment for bodies and thankfulness like my father was so diligent and persistent to pray for?

I wish I could have heard the prayer of the couple sitting in front of me. I can’t even lean forward and ask them now what it is they prayed for because they have left to go about the remaining details of their day. I wonder if those details will include God as well. I wonder at their devotion. Is that 15 second prayer all they know or is the prayer the reconnection with and the acknowledgment of something bigger in their life? Snippets of spirituality do little to clue me in to the depth of faith, or lack there-of, that they might maintain. Who can really judge the heart of another?

I stand to get a refill on my water. I drink more water when I’m alone. Maybe because I’m talking less? I’m more willing to get up from my chair for refills when I’m alone. Maybe it is because I don’t have to worry about interrupting conversation? I am so much more naturally myself when alone, even if in public. With others I feel constrained to an awkward dance in which the motions have not been practiced and the routine has not been memorized. My arms end up in odd places. My feet step on others’ or trip over stray chair legs those of which everyone else was somehow aware. I walk into unopened doors of conversation or I fail to open doors while everyone is expectantly waiting on me to do so.

I am a Mandy on my own that no one else fully ever sees. I am so much more than flubs and faux pas, so much more than skipped prayer times before meals and awkward spirituality. I hide behind my one cup of soda when I’d rather have two cups of water. I am strong on paper, strong as a stranger, but known, I am weak and squooshy, a plump version of my truly toned self.

You learn amazing things about yourself when you dine alone. And then you seek to implement those things into dining with others. Welcome to the me I am when I don’t realize you are watching. Welcome to the me I am when no one knows me or expects me to be a certain way. Welcome to the me I am unabashed. I drop my keys and am not embarrassed. I blow my nose and think of God simultaneously and smile. I have rice stuck to my lip, and I believe I am a princess. I know enough of the real me to know I am not limited to my imperfections. They do not define me. But you, I’m afraid you don’t know that me.

She is small. Compared to the world, compared to the church, compared to institutions, compared to God. And she appears fragile. She steps out of the hot shower and sucks in air as the cold bathroom chills the drops of water on her skin. She rubs her hand on the mirror in one spot, removing the steam that has gathered there. In one small part of the mirror she now becomes visible. She stands there, naked, and makes herself look, because that’s what her college professor told her she should do all those years ago. “I recommend looking at yourself naked in the mirror each morning. A good hard look. A look that chooses to take it all in, even the parts you’ve been ignoring because you don’t want to see. Those parts are you as well.”

So she stares. The foggy glass fills back in over her face and she feels smothered. She takes her towel off of her body and uses it to wipe away the entire fog. She takes a deep breath and meets herself eye to eye. Her skin seems to hang on her body, her eyes look scared. She realizes it is not necessary that she put herself through this.

She looks closer. She sees the glimmer of white sprouting up amongst the black forest of her hair. She isn’t old enough to have gray hair, she thinks. She isn’t old enough for a lot of things it feels like. Isn’t she just a kid still? Lost in thought her hand reaches to her head and begins isolating the glimmering hairs so she can rip them out. One, two, three. She gets bored with the task. There are too many. She makes a mental note to purchase hair dye yet again.

Her eyes pan back from her head to include her whole body. Her head goes blurry as she observes the muscles in her arms and her belly and her legs. They are noticeable. They have never been noticeable. She wonders when they arrived. She pushes her shoulders back. She is frustrated that they seem more at ease in their hunched state then in their proper elegant position. She realizes that her shoulders pull back her chest and her chest has always been something to hide. A source of jokes in high school. A source of jokes in her own head now that pregnancies and age have left her body unsure which shape it is to fit in. She cursed the college professor. She cursed the mirror. She cursed the fog that she had wiped away. Oh why had she wiped it away?

But her eyes could not be peeled away now. She was enamored by a woman she had lost contact with, a woman who had changed so much she hardly even recognized her. A woman that had opinions now and a voice and a reason to get out of bed, more so then the reasons that everyone else had provided for her. She turned to the side and reminded her shoulders to stay back out of her ears. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. This is who you will be traveling with from here on out. Get used to her. Love her. Find the beauty in her. See past her flaws. You must not let her stay trapped in a mere shell. There is more to let free. There is always more.

Her toes curled beneath her, gripping the floor. The skin on her legs looked pale and splotchy in color. She remembered the scratchy way her fingers felt when she rubbed the cheek of her toddler to say I love you. She felt as if she might have hurt him merely by her touch. She felt raw and scratchy. She felt as if she was not capable of gliding smoothly through life like she desired. Scratchy, dry winter skin and damn wool sweaters. The combination was almost too much. Who invented such an unfair combination? She cursed the inventor.

She knew what she was really cursing though. It wasn’t her professor or the mirror or the dry skin or the wool sweaters. It wasn’t even the boys that had teased her mercilessly in high school, trying to hide the personal attacks under the protection of a compliment. It was the unfamiliarity of her own nakedness. The very act of taking time in the transition from wet body to warm, protective clothes. It was the desire to see what truly existed and yet the uncontainable urge to place hands over eyes, spreading fingers just millimeters apart to peak out timidly. It was all too much to take in, especially when it had been so many years. A lot can happen in so many years.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had looked. Maybe she had never looked. How could she have never looked?

She was quite sure the quickest, most fluid motions of her body were made in the transition from bathed to clothed. She had years of training. Tears welled up in her eyes. Her shoulders sunk forward and shook a bit as the tears fell. “I have grown accustomed to covering the messes,” she admitted half in self-defeat and half in hopeful redemption, because although the messes were used to being covered there was still life in her bones and still time to change.

She stared at the stranger who was sobbing awkwardly. The tears drip-dropping onto the sink counter below her. An occasional one splashed on her still curled toes. She released her toes. She stared at the chipped toe nail polish through foggy eyes. She noticed a few small black hairs on her big toe. She reached for her razor and then stopped. She tried to memorize the imperfect, splotchy skin with the ugly small black hairs. She realized if she didn’t memorize them no one would. Who exactly did she think was going to recognize this person in the mirror if she didn’t? Who else would be patient enough to coax shoulders into place, smooth down crinkly gray hairs or patch up the paint job on her toes? Who else would take the time to notice three little black hairs, sagging skin or muscles that have emerged from hardship and determination? She had thus far spent a lifetime of perfecting the seamless transition from dirty to clean, but she realized even the clean had never been clean enough. How convenient the fog on the mirror has been all these years.

You haven’t looked because you haven’t wanted to see. You haven’t paid attention because you didn’t want to know. You haven’t liked yourself because you don’t know yourself. And others don’t know you.

She surprised herself with a smile in the mirror. Her wet eyes lighting up with a glimmer. “I will love you when you’re naked,” she whispered to herself, leaning dangerously close to the mirror.

“I will study your unedited bits. Your uncovered flaws. The darkness of your details. I will not be afraid to go there with you. And then I will lead you out of here. Your freedom is more important to me than anything in the world. I have lived with you and ignored you. Now I will pay attention and become familiar with your hidden beauty. There is still time.”

I have a black frame that hangs on my bedroom wall. It has three slots, which worked perfectly when I had three kids. Now that I have a fourth, the slots seem sort of strange and unequally fill-able. I choose to use the frame anyway, mainly because my children have not yet asked me why I have three favorite children and one ostracized one.

One day on my way to the bathroom I passed this frame on the wall and really noticed it for the first time in awhile. You understand, I’m sure, how you can live in such close proximity with something for so long that it soon becomes invisible. So it was with my black frame with the three slots. Until this day. On this day I noticed the dust gathering in the deep contours of the frame and that the top two pictures had slid out of place. The pictures were at an odd slant which revealed the cardboard that was supposed to be holding the pictures in place from behind. It looked sloppy.

So naturally, as any decent keeper of the home would do, I removed the frame from the wall, peeled off the backing and replaced the photos to be perfect and neat, filling the slots entirely at the proper angle.

I am lying.

Though I consciously noticed the slanted pictures, I did nothing about them. I continued on my path to the bathroom and proceeded to take my shower.

Sometimes I imagine the water that pours out of the shower-head is really drops of silver ideas that plop on my head and shoulders from my gracious creative muse. An occasional drop sinks itself into my veins and courses through my body, refusing to be ignored. Once the shower curtain is opened the hundreds of ideas that haven’t had time to sink in usually dry up quickly, gone forever. But that’s okay, one can only handle so many ideas at a time.

This day in the shower my mind would not let the slanted pictures go. I thought about how they sum up the imperfect life I am living. How I assume everyone else has straight pictures and that mine are the only ones that are slanted. I jumped on that thought train of self-defeat and rode on it for awhile. I’m not good at taking care of our home. I don’t pay attention to detail, at least not the right details. It’s probably been like that for months, and I never even noticed. I’m a poor decorator. I call myself an artist, but look at the mess…

The thought train pulled into the station, and I exited quickly, running to a platform just a few yards away. There was another train. It wasn’t as shiny, but this train had character. This train had potential. I jumped aboard just in time. It was going the opposite direction, and picking up rapid amounts of speed with each rotation of the wheels.

“Look at the mess. Would you just look at this mess?” It was the silver drop from the heavens that was chosen that day in the shower to sink through my skin and penetrate muscles and bones so it could get to the core of me. Suddenly, “Would you just look at this mess?” shifted in my head from a negative connotation to a positive one.

I was cheering in my head. “Would you just look at this mess!? Would you just look at this mess?!” This mess is proof that I’ve been doing other things. This mess is proof that a writer has been writing. A learner has been learning. A teacher has been teaching. A life has been being lived. This mess is proof that dust is settling other places but it’s not settling on my heart anymore. This mess is proof that there are priorities, that there are lowered expectations, that there are dreams being chased with so much fury that there is not time to stop and straighten pictures from yesterday.

My mind began to race with other examples of messes that have started to show themselves. One train tells me the messes prove my failure and another train tells me the messes are my greatest success. For instance the burnt things. The burnt muffins and cookies. The burnt grilled cheese and omelets. The divided mind that is swirling with words and ideas and stories and questions and art and living and gets so swooped into the passion of it all that it forgets the egg that is getting browner by the second and latching itself onto the sides of the skillet, sulking with abandonment.

“Maybe the Momma better stop writing words and start paying attention.” One train tells me.

The other train counter-offers: “Maybe the Momma is paying attention now more than ever. The words are how she pays attention.”

The shower turns off. I feel all the ideas that are laying on the surface of my skin shrivel up into nothingness. I wrap the towel around me and I walk past the dusty black picture frame with the three slots and the slanted pictures to my closet to pick out my clothes. I smile at those sloppy pictures. They are a statement. They are a reminder. They are a documented proof of the focus and research and exploration that must go into a life well-lived. They are an example of a mess that can be tolerated in the name of the valiant pursuit of truth and hope and love as expressed through art and life.

I am proud to be a member of the club whose members walk around with their heads in the clouds. The doodlers, the daydreamers, the absent-minded professors.

There are two trains that define my mess, one that leaves me feeling defeated and one that leaves me feeling empowered. I have jumped on the latter and am just hoping I have the guts to hang on. Meanwhile I’m sticking my head out the window and screaming in excitement and wild abandonment to all that will listen, “Would you just look at this mess?!”

I am running a race. It is supposed to be a sprint I suppose, that’s why the people beside me have long since left my side and are but blurs ahead of me in the distance. I am not out of shape. I am physically capable to do well at this race. I can jump. I have speed. I have trained for this. Nonetheless as I jog slowly, I realize that I have stopped moving forward. The things in front of me are not getting any closer. They are stagnant and I can’t seem to reach them. They bob up and down to match the rhythm of my feet that are pounding on the ground beneath me. I wonder how long I have been keeping this running-in-place pace? If I’m not careful I’ll use all my energy up getting nowhere.

If you want to really know the problem I can tell you. It’s a hurdle race. There are obstacles all along the path in front of me, and even though I knew there would be and I trained to be able to physically fly over them, now that I’m running and the pressure is on, I don’t feel able. Physically nothing has changed. I am still the strong person that put hours of sweat into learning how to clear such barriers, but mentally, I am unsure. What if I trip? What if I fall? What if my steps are off? What if I jump too soon? What if I don’t have enough speed going into the jump? I feel tired. Mentally tired.

So I stop thinking. Well, not entirely, but I stop focusing on my mind and I start focusing on my feet beneath me. I feel the pull in my muscles as I lift one leg up and then the other. I realize I am capable of lifting my legs. I realize I even feel strong when I lift my legs. I focus on letting my strong muscles pull up my legs one foot and then the other. I make my muscles do it faster and faster and then I feel my core muscles engage, pushing me forward with momentum. The hurdles ahead of me are getting closer now, but I try not to notice with my scared mind how quickly they are approaching. Instead I go back to feeling my muscles. My arms are pumping beside my body. They feel strong. “I am physically able,” I keep saying to myself in a sort of cadence under my breath. And just like that I have leaped nonchalantly and the first hurdle is behind me.

I have noticed this interesting behavior in my artistic life. I think of it as “the click over.” The moment that I transition from running in place to actually having forward momentum. There are times that my alarm goes off in the morning and I lay there and my mind is positive that I cannot get up. I cannot possibly hurdle out of my bed and into my day. And some mornings, for whatever reasons, I am right. I can’t. And I hit the snooze and I sleep longer. But other mornings, I manage to not listen to that part of my brain telling me I can’t, and I feel my muscles in my body telling me I can. I can lift one foot up off the bed and put it on the floor beneath me. I am physically able to do this. I can lift the other foot up and place it on the floor too. My core muscles can make me sit up. I can engage muscles to make me stand and walk and move me into the bathroom. I am able to brush my teeth, to pull back my hair, to smile into the mirror. And then suddenly I realize the click over has happened, and I am engaged and jumping over hurdles without the least bit of resistance.

Sometimes as artists that resistance can be won over simply by engaging our muscles and telling ourselves, “Whether my brain wants to come along or not I could care less at this point. What matters is that I am physically able to accomplish the task at hand.” I am physically able to pick up the laundry basket and carry it upstairs to put the laundry away. I am physically able to open the dishwasher and pull out the dishes and put them away. I am physically able to roll out my yoga mat and open up iTunes to hit play on the exercise video. I am physically able to cut up spinach and mushrooms to prep for supper. I am physically able to open a book and begin reading. I am physically able to open up my writing application and start pushing keys on my keyboard to form words and then sentences and then paragraphs.

I engage my muscles and demand them to move, and sometimes I literally feel like I’m pulling away from myself. Like I’m peeling off a layer of Mandy and stepping out away from my mind. My mind seems to be elastic though. It delays for a moment, holding back, but my  muscles refuse to be stopped and they press on until SNAP, my mind is pulled into the forward momentum too, and I am sailing over hurdle number one with at least ease, if not always grace. And then the momentum is enough to propel me all the way through the task. I can complete a written essay or write a set amount of words. I can prepare a meal. I can draw a picture. I can put clothes away. I can read a chapter in a book. I can finish a workout. And I am stronger because of it. My physical abilities have proven to my doubtful mind that I can do more then I once believed.

You are physically able to pick up a guitar and start strumming the strings; therefore, you can write a song.
You are physically able to pick up a paint brush, squirt out paint and start painting; therefore, you can paint a picture.
You are physically able to turn on music and move to the sounds; therefore, you can dance.

Where do you most need to make a click over in your life currently? Complete the sentence:

I am physically able to _________; therefore, I can __________.

I wanted to share some new things with you about my Messy Canvas Bookstore.

FIRST

I have a brand new e-Book available!

Homeschooling our children greatly feeds into me as an artist. It is inspiring me to be creative, to think outside the box, to chase dreams and curiosities and exploration and adventure and story. It teaches me to want the most out of my today. It makes me live more childlike. It also teaches me a lot about mess and being imperfect.

If you are considering homeschooling or are currently homeschooling, but just aren’t happy with the results, I hope this e-Book will be an inspiration to you. I hope it will empower you and inspire you to do exactly what is best for your unique family, and I hope you’ll have fun in the process.

You can read more about it here.

SECOND

From now until the end of this year (December 31, 2010) all sales of the Angry Homemade Noodles e-Book go to the charity A Beautiful Idea. If you’ve been wanting a pick-me-up as a mom or want to give some hope to a struggling mom, I believe you will find this e-Book inspiring. And now your money goes twice as far, by also supporting a good cause.

THIRD

There have been nearly 700 downloads of the FREE e-Book Messy Canvas: You Are An Artist. What Will You Create? It’s so exciting to hear feedback from readers whose hearts are awakening to what has been lying dormant inside them for far too long. Thank you for sharing the e-Book so generously with your own friends and family and blog readers. Please continue to do so. This creative movement is far bigger than any one of us. It’s fun to just play a part in the stirring.

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There is a book that I can’t get out of my head. I re-read the notes I took from it nearly everyday. I am grateful that a man name Brother Lawrence was able to put into words so much of what I’m feeling spiritually right now.

I’ve been meaning to take some time to really dive into and unpack my notes from this book The Practice of the Presence of God (link to free e-Book). I previously wrote here about how wonderful it is to be allowed to think of our relationship with God as a practice. To realize we don’t have to have it all figured out. There are many wrinkles I am still discovering, let alone trying to iron out. I want to explore some of those wrinkles and let you in on my thought process. I plan on blogging about it until I get some answers for myself. I hope you’ll join in the conversation with me.

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My intentions for one of these blog posts was to show you what it looks like to live a day practicing the presence of God. I had good intentions. As the thought struck me, I lifted my head to see a glorious sunrise spreading across the horizon out my back window. It was a real “presence moment.” I snapped pictures with my camera. My heart said thank you as it beated quickly in my chest. “Bring on the day!”

I honestly can’t tell you what happened next. Perhaps a toddler called “Momma” from behind the bars of his white wooden prison upstairs. Perhaps Tony came down and asked if I knew where his jeans were, the comfortable ones that he got from Target, the ones that fit his thinning waste line the best. Perhaps I remembered I had forgotten to start the dishwasher or to move the laundry to the dryer or to take the trash to the curb. I can’t remember.

Maintaining a thought process that connects me to the presence of God is not easy. So subtly our mind can shift from thought, to thought, to thought. We smile at the painted sunset in one breath and in the next breath we dash up the stairs into a world of “Mommy I need breakfast” and “Mommy he hit me” and “Oh by the way, do you know where I put my toothbrush?” The colors of the sunset fade away into the grays of a day that is not quite going as magically as that last moment had suggested it might.

Here is what I know of my first documented (or not so documented) day in the presence of God:

1. It is a practice. And with any practice, the more we do it the better we become. We will not get it down the first time. We cannot quit after day one.

2. God’s presence overflows with grace.

Brother Lawrence got better and better at turning his thoughts back towards God. Of recognizing His presence in every single moment. But Brother Lawrence is honest that there were times his mind would wander or his flesh would be weak, especially early on in his practice. In these times he soon recognized that when he would get distracted, God would remind him. In these times he says he would “Confess to God [not plead with God] and then return peacefully to living and loving.” He didn’t beat himself up over the matter. He didn’t feel unworthy for re-entry into the presence of God. He just acknowledged, somewhere between the sunrise and the chaos calling from the second story, he had gotten off track, and he didn’t want to be off track.

It is a subtle pivoting of the mind. A subtle whisper from God that says, “Yoo hoo, I’m over here. You’re missing me again.” And it is a subtle realization of grace that leads to redemption and then growth.

In any given moment we can return to the presence of God. And I am often surprised how close by it was all along. How could I have missed it?

I’m practicing so that maybe next time I won’t have to miss it. Not because I’m condemned if I do, but because I’m in awe when I don’t.

The Cave by Mumford and Sons

It’s empty in the valley of your heart
The sun, it rises slowly as you walk
Away from all the fears
And all the faults you’ve left behind

The harvest left no food for you to eat
You cannibal, you meat-eater, you see
But I have seen the same
I know the shame in your defeat

But I will hold on hope
And I won’t let you choke
On the noose around your neck

And I’ll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I’ll know my name as it’s called again

Cause I have other things to fill my time
You take what is yours and I’ll take mine
Now let me at the truth
Which will refresh my broken mind

So tie me to a post and block my ears
I can see widows and orphans through my tears
I know my call despite my faults
And despite my growing fears

But I will hold on hope
And I won’t let you choke
On the noose around your neck

And I’ll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I’ll know my name as it’s called again

So come out of your cave walking on your hands
And see the world hanging upside down
You can understand dependence
When you know the maker’s land

So make your siren’s call
And sing all you want
I will not hear what you have to say

Cause I need freedom now
And I need to know how
To live my life as it’s meant to be

And I will hold on hope
And I won’t let you choke
On the noose around your neck

And I’ll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I’ll know my name as it’s called again

*Special thanks to my new friend Grant who shared this song with me.

I am still scared. I still have words in me that don’t feel safe to let out. Some of them haven’t even formed themselves into sentences yet. They are jumbled and messy and not worth my time because if I paid attention to them I might have to say something somebody wouldn’t agree with.

I am still scared. I still have words in me that don’t feel safe to let out. They whisper themselves to me in books I read or in the scent of a breeze that blows directly under my nose as I walk barefoot to the mailbox to get the day’s mail. They dare me to speak them, to write them, to share them.

I am still scared. I still have words in me that don’t feel safe to let out. They feel like my own isolated words, words in a language that only I would understand. Words that can not be backed up with holy words or university words or politically correct words or eighty-year-old I have lived my life and know what I’m talking about words.

I am still scared. I still have words in me that don’t feel safe to let out. They challenge status quo. They challenge religion. They challenge me to challenge myself. They challenge barriers that I’m not sure are meant to be messed with, let alone busted through.

I am still scared. I still have words in me that don’t feel safe to let out. That is why I am still writing. Because something tells me I can’t stop until they’ve all managed to come out.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to “Say Yes” in a big way.

Back in April, when I was writing a series of blog posts called Taking My Art Seriously, I received a comment from Cindy West. At the time I didn’t know her, but her comment intrigued me, especially since I found out that she had written an entire book on the process of accepting oneself as an artist and making the decision to use art in a purposeful and powerful way. Her book is appropriately titled, Saying Yes. I am halfway through reading it, and I highly recommend it! If you connect with the artistic topics I write about on Messy Canvas, you will spend your time reading this book as your heart nods an emphatic yes to Cindy’s sentiments.

Anyway, last Spring Cindy and I became Facebook Friends and a few months after that, I received a message seemingly out of the blue from Cindy asking if I’d be willing to A.) Speak at an Awakening Artists ArtTalk at Woodmen Valley Chapel in October and B.) Be one of a select amount of artists to travel to South Africa in March of 2011. I was blown away, especially since my dream lists I’d been writing lately were including things like traveling and speaking. I asked Tony his thoughts and he answered, “Yes and Yes.” My heart skipped a beat. This was actually going to happen!

This past Friday, I flew to Colorado Springs while Tony graciously spent a couple of days (Super Daddy Days as we call them) with our kids. Walking through the Denver airport to my connecting gate to Colorado Springs, I contemplated missing my flight and hiding out in the bathroom. How was I ever going to stand in front of people and talk? Who was I kidding? I’m a writer, not a speaker. And while I was in this moment of panic over public speaking, something I haven’t done since my high school graduation or my college speech class, a sense of peace came over me, knowing that God had prepared me for this time and this place and this message. Cindy had asked me to share my journey as an artist, a topic I was obviously well acquainted with and passionate about. I was getting to live a dream, I was getting to talk to other artists and hopefully inspire them. I was also getting to step into a new me. A me that God was molding and shaping. I couldn’t miss this opportunity.

The weekend was amazing. I plan to spend this week blogging on the people I met and the thoughts that impacted me. My talk wasn’t perfect. I started with a shaky voice and shaky knees. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I was too nervous to stop and take a drink of water to un-stick it. I left out a few things I wanted to say, and didn’t articulate a few of my thoughts clearly, but all-in-all, when I finished I was on cloud nine. It, like so much in my life, was not about a PERFECT talk, it was about an IMPERFECT submission to a stirring inside of me.

At the end of my talk Cindy had me remain up front and there was a time for the other artists to give feedback and ask questions. I was honored to glean their wisdom, blown away by their encouragement and compliments, challenged by their questions and humbled by their emotional connection to the words I’d just spoken. Cindy said, in front of everyone, that I was not just gifted in the written word, but the spoken word as well.

Her words were a gift. Something transpired in that 35 minute talk that was bigger than me. Me, the girl who wanted to hide in the airport bathroom, and pray no one ever came looking for me again. I approached Colorado Springs last Friday as a writer, not a speaker. I left Colorado Springs last Saturday as a writer AND a speaker. And quite honestly, the only part I had to play in my amazing transformation into a new creation is that I said, “Yes!” to the Master Artist who is forever making all things new.

And so I ask you, are there areas in your life that you need to say “Yes” to, so that you can become someone new? I would NOT want you to miss out on the amazing alteration that can occur in your own life.

We rub shoulders with talented people everyday. People who seem to be living their dreams, who seems to have life figured out, who seem to be successful beyond measure. But we try to measure it. We try by reading books that explain how someone achieved success. We confuse what someone is doing with the why of what someone is doing, and we think if we could just do exactly what they are doing then we will have success. We measure success on how others define it, missing entirely that success must be measured on what our heart is telling us and how God has wired us. We are looking for a completion (looking to step directly into a success) instead of looking for a passion. We are going about it all backwards. And quite honesty it leaves us feeling bitter towards those who are making something of their life.

We run around and each person we interact with we say, Will you show me the way? Will you give me the answer? Will you tell me the rules I need to play by? Here’s an example of how I’ve done this in my own life.

I believe the scary thing and wonderful thing is, the answer we are looking for is actually inside us, carved into our very being from the beginning of time.

Don’t start with looking at others. Start with asking yourself questions like: Who do I want to be? Who would I be if money wasn’t an issue? What are the things I longed for when I was little…and do I still have a longing for parts of those dreams?

It’s much easier to just try and piggy-back on someone else’s success and dreams. Really digging deep into who we long to be is a painful process because it requires getting MESSY. But the alternative is a life spent wishing we could be something and trying to be everything we’re not. I’m learning I’d rather take the messy imperfection of MY OWN DREAMS.

I believe Church Online is going to address this very topic in the message Chazown next week. It starts on Saturday, and you can see all the times here. Find one that works for you and check it out.

If you like this post you might also Stepping Stones to Our Dreams, A New Direction, Selfish or a Steward Part I & II, & my FREE Messy Canvas e-Book

I was driving my car this afternoon and ended up on a road that is near a college campus. I slowed down to let a guy with a backpack make his way across the street. I took in his overgrown hair, his laid back attire, his calm stride that I would label a mosey. There was an heir about him that flashed me back into my own college experience, remembering what the students were like, remembering how I was hardly ever comfortable in my own skin at the time.

Students would go to coffee shops. They would go to the Waffle House. They would make plans. They would sit on the hills of our campus and play bongo drums or strum a guitar. They would hike trails or cook meals together. They would live life.

I didn’t go to college to live life. And that stemmed from the fact that I didn’t go to high school to live life either. In fact, I wonder when it was that I did exactly stop living life? Now let me be quick to say, this is not an anti-study rant. I believe that I am certainly wired to enjoy learning and reading books and researching and writing. However, it was rare in college that I was reading and researching what I wanted to be. Who has time to do personal research about coffee flavors or the Appalachian outdoors or to read one novel after another simply because you can’t get enough of Bronte or Steinbeck? Certainly not me. I had, at times, as many as 5 syllabuses to conquer, and I wasn’t about to leave a single detail out.

My last semester of college was spent at Focus on the Family Institute in Colorado Springs. I remember so clearly the message the faculty tried to get across to us the first day. It went something like this:

“Your application process to get selected for this program proves that you are all smart, proves that you all are achievers, proves that you are all some of the best students at your respective colleges. This is going to make it hard to hear what we’re saying right now. Try to hear anyway. This semester is not about getting A’s. Your identity cannot be wrapped up in what grade you get. This semester is about learning to become a leader, learning to live your life, learning about yourself, following your heart, valuing community. We have purposely given you more work then you should be able to accomplish for each class. Please don’t attempt to do it all. You will have to pick and choose what you make time for. There will be times the wiser decision will be having a one-on-one conversation with a friend or going out to do something with a group, or doing something fun for you rather than doing an assignment. You’ll have to be the judge of that.”

I found this one of the most shocking and confusing moments of my young adult life. And to be honest, I didn’t do a great job that semester of figuring out how to let some assignments go. But it was the beginning stages of a change in my life. A look into the legalistic way I’d been living out my faith and a look into the unsatisfying way I had been living my life. I did things because I was told to do them with little regard for what my heart had to say about it.  There were many things I was missing out on because I was letting others dictate what had value. I remained a back-seat driver in my own life, scared to speak up when I thought we were heading in the wrong direction because, afterall, I wasn’t the one in charge.

As I watched this college student pass before me today, crossing the street in his attractive mosey, I had an odd feeling settle over me. I wished to be in college. Even though I am 32, I feel as if I never lived that part of my life. At least, I didn’t live it in the way that attracts me now. I wish now that I had read a few less chapters out of that boring, dry history book, and traded those hours for a coffee with a friend or reading a novel that wasn’t assigned, but that my professor spoke of so lovingly, or going out to listen to a band play.

I felt my life was on hold at the time. Maybe it was because I was wanting to get married. Maybe it was because I was in the wrong major. Maybe it was because I was split between different locations to call home. Whatever the case may be, I was in survival mode, please the professors mode, check off the to-do boxes mode. I was not in living mode. I did not hang framed pictures on my walls. I did not get to know the community outside of my college campus. I did not engage in society. I was just a walking student ID number, making sure I didn’t draw attention to myself by messing with the status quo.

Today that moseying college student with his torn jeans and flip flops called my bluff in a blame game I have been playing for some time now. My problem was not with my education, like I preferred to believe. My problem was with me and my desire to get good grades. I realized today why I was always jealous of those B, C and D students. Because many of them were having fun, while I was busy doing the right thing. If only I realized the pursuit of passion, the living of a life. If only I realized that acquiring knowledge out of a love for learning and a love for life was worth the messy imperfection of a few well-earned C’s.

At 32 I’m going back to school, and I’m learning from what academia would call those “average” students. The students who chase what they actually love instead of what they are told to love. My professor is an oblivious shaggy haired 20-something and he’s teaching me an imperfect mosey that my rigid muscles are testing out a bit at a time. He is teaching me to learn what I love, to focus on what ignites me, to care less about the rules and more about the passion. I don’t write on my blog because some syllabus told me it’s time to, I write because I can’t help myself, and I hope it’s why you’re here reading. Life is too short to live for straight A’s or to do something you either don’t agree with or don’t give a rip about.

First it was my computer, then it was my knee, then it was a cloud of depression, which followed on the heels of a phase of no energy and a wave of low self-esteem and shadow hiding. I was off course. My plan was thrown off. My schedule was throw off. Suddenly it didn’t matter that I had tried hard to have things in their place because it was as if someone had slammed their fist on the shelf of my life, causing things to topple over and crash to the ground, while leaving the shelf at a slight angle, making it near impossible to return anything to it’s “home.” At first I tried anyway. “Maybe if I place it slowly it will balance,” I thought, but then I would watch it slide, picking up speed until it reached the edge and I would catch it just in time. I felt like I was losing ground I had previously gained. I needed a plan.

I adjusted. I made changes. I found a new shelf, a new schedule, a new balance. I took away some things that were no longer necessary. I added things that I hadn’t considered before. And before I knew it I began liking the new shelf even better than the old one. I took the old one off the nails, removed the nails, patched up the holes. I thought of it fondly, even with it’s cracking and sloping, because the cracking and sloping led me to even greater discoveries.

Sometimes the best thing that can happen to us is to be led into a place where we have to make changes. To be stirred to re-evaluation. To be thrown off balance and to there-by appreciate what balance is in the first place.

When you’re thrown off-schedule or when the plan you worked so hard to develop has to be thrown out the window, ask yourself, “What will need to happen to make the best of this? How can I maintain health and calm, despite the chaos that is now all around me.” Chances are the creative answers you come to will lead you to places your original plan would have never taken you.

And slowly you learn to trust the mess.

I am told that people doing yoga often refer to it as their practice. I would imagine this is because it leaves room for error, room for imperfection, room for improvement.

I read in a book once that you should go after tasks in life as if they are experiments. In doing so you are giving yourself the much needed breathing room to adjust if things don’t go as planned. There is no pressure to “get it right.” The success is in the trying, the adjusting, and the trying again.

My daughters came home with a worksheet they completed in their homeschool co-op zoology class. One of the sections of the worksheet asked them to make a hypothesis. I had forgotten all about this word. It’s a wonderful word meaning an educated guess. What might you assume to be true based on the facts you have on hand? Hypothesis is a word with margin for error. It is a word for testing out the waters, trying something out, supposing, even imagining.

The word hypothesis stirs up another word from my memory – variable. It was a tool that allowed for the unknown. A tool that suggested a mystery in need of solving. A tool that suggested the hope of a solution, but was content in holding it’s place until that answer was found.

Today I re-read the book The PRACTICE of the Presence God. (I have to write some more blog posts on it alone.) It’s a short little book by an uneducated cook in a French monastery who might have remained a no-name, save for the Abbe de Beaufort who managed to save some of his letters and record some of his own conversations with Brother Lawrence.

I see in this book the beauty the word “practice” has (much like the word experiment or hypothesis or variable has) when applied to our relationship with God. I see how simple and yet how rich our spirituality can become when we settle into our own imperfection and allow it to be imperfect because it is eclipsed by the perfection of He who created us, believes in us, loves us.

And so I begin this practice of marrying God to everything in my life, even the most ordinary of moments. Of melting my heart into His. When I practice being in His presence, I am not hard on myself for a wandering mind, a weak faith, a strained moment, just as in my new encounters with yoga I am not hard on myself for lack of flexibility or shaking limbs. It’s my practice. It’s my journey. It’s part of the joy. The knowing I can come back again tomorrow and have a fresh start at it all.

There is motivation in the living proof that I am getting stronger and more flexible with each attempt. And there is wonder in the mystery of a variable still to be discovered. I make a new hypothesis about God, and I watch it unfold in everyday life. I come to know Him more. I am at peace with this process.

Learning about silence and noise pollution through this interesting interview.

Learning about love from Scroll II in The Greatest Salesman In the World.

Getting some wise advice from my husband that being an artist/writer is partly about the business of creating/writing, but largely about the business of influence.

Reading through the interesting comments in a blog post by Randy Elrod about the people you wish you had known. For the first time in my life I’m thinking that it would be fun to read biographies in order to listen to the stories of other people’s lives.

Listening to these powerful lyrics from a song by Sara Groves, passed onto me by Amanda Sims. Realizing how hard it is to push into a new me. Wanting to run back to the safety of what was comfortable and yet realizing I wouldn’t fit that version of Mandy anymore:

I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt
Leaving out what it lacked
The future seems so hard
And I want to go back
But the places that used to fit me
Cannot hold the things I’ve learned
And those roads closed off to me
While my back was turned

Having an impromptu adventure with my kids and being fully in the moment with their little excited bodies. So glad to have them in my life because of their contagious passion for life.

Sitting in the presence of a tired friend and momma who has a baby in the hospital and gaining perspective on what matters in life.

Sitting in the presence of a friend who knows me and knows my heart and asks me all the right questions and gives me time to talk and things to consider.

Taking in the “mess” of my home and accepting it. Letting it teach me that I am not behind, I just “am.” Letting the days and nights blend together into one long process. Taking the next step that is possible and knowing that there is always time to do what matters most. Breathing through the imperfections of that.

Moved by the lonely little life of the girl Beatrix Potter. Understanding her words in relation to creating:

“I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result” and “I do not remember a time when I did not try to invent pictures” and “I have just made stories to please myself.”

Listening to my body and its physical soreness and off-kilter emotions. Trying to push through to find a rhythm in life again that has been lost over the last week or so. The reading, the writing, the discipline, the focus, the passion – it’s waned. Why? Listening. Trying to hear what changes need to be implemented. Knowing things are changing and trying to embrace that. Trying to be patient with myself and this past week’s awkward dance, where I keep hitting my elbows and knees and wishing everything was smooth again. Trying to love the bruises for what they teach me. Feeling the need to just go and sit in nature. To go and sit with God. To be beside still waters and have my soul restored. To catch my breath and then be sent off in the right direction.

This is the writing of a terribly insecure girl. I would say woman, but when I am face-to-face with Insecurity the maturity of the title “woman” does not seem appropriate, and the tiny title of “girl” feels right and safe and fitting, much like my gray wool sweater that I hide in during winter.

I don’t like having Insecurity sneak up on me unannounced. This happened last night. I’d prefer she call ahead and give warning, allowing me time to dust and mop and straighten a picture frame here or there. Showing up at my doorstep and ringing my doorbell though, without even so much as a text ahead of time, just doesn’t seem fair. Sometimes I’m not even fully dressed. And then what? I rush to hide the naked parts of me because I am not prepared to share them.

Caught off guard, I am a bit raw. I find myself back pedaling, tripping over fear once again. Fear because I can’t prove myself or my choices. I am little more than a free-spirit, chasing after what I believe God is telling me in whispers. But even that seems far-fetched.

“You hear from God?”

“I do. I think I do. Although God’s voice sounds a lot like mine and it’s in my head.” Now I’m starting to feel like I should be laying on a couch, having this head of mine analyzed.

I feel emotional and unfounded and fact-less when faced with a world that demands proof and scoffs at theory and “perhaps” and philosophy. I am trying to nail this jello to the wall, but it is in a constant jiggly motion. A chunk falls through my fingers and lands in a SPLAT on the floor below me. That chunk, of all things, was the piece that made sense yesterday. That chunk was the one I thought for sure I had solidified. And I mourn the strawberry mush at my feet, because it is a creative idea that didn’t turn out as I expected.

I loathe Insecurity because she reminds me that I am not perfect, and at times that feels like my greatest fault.

I become defensive when questioned, not because someone may not trust my answer, but because I realize I may not even have an answer. I’d do much better to respond with a simple “I’m not sure.” I’d do well to learn the fine art of elegantly flaunting the “I don’t know.” To wear such words with confidence instead of regret. With anticipation instead of dread. To be content with riding an ever-changing wave. To trust the mystery that is ever un-folding and to welcome with open arms that nearly everything is at all times open for debate.

Instead I stare coldly, with squinted eyes at Insecurity as she peeks in my front porch window. I try to devise a plan that would allow me to pull the blinds without her seeing me. To talk in shushed words so she can’t hear me. To keep the lights off so she thinks no one is home. I wish I understood that she just needs a little gentle hospitality. A warm porch light turned on, an arm around her shoulder, a cup of hot chai tea with honey and milk or maybe even a cold beer. I wish I could sit down on the other side of the couch and hear her out once and for all. I wish I knew that she could be tamed with but a little acceptance, a little leeway, a little room for mess. Instead I wrap my gray wool sweater even tighter around me, hoping if I ignore her she will just go away, and I return to time-consuming activities, like nailing strawberry gelatin to a wall and become increasingly embarrassed at the sticky floor beneath me.

I like a made bed. I mean truly, who doesn’t? There is something complete about a day when, at the end of it, you can slip between the cool sheets of a neat bed. I try hard to make the bed everyday. I’m laughing at myself as I type this because I know for a fact that my bed is a mess currently. Some days other things win out.

I remember one day I was upstairs rushing to get my shoes on, so I could run out the door. My family was waiting for me in the car. I ran past the bed and then stopped. I glanced at the strewn covers over my shoulder. “Well, maybe if I do it really quick.” I grabbed the blanket and sheet simultaneously and tossed it on the bed. I tucked the bottom edges, fixed the pillows and then realized I’d put the sheet and blanket on sideways. They only came about three-fourths of the way up our bed.

I knew I didn’t have time to fix it then, but I decided I’d get to it later. Then another thought hit me. What if I just left it? What if when Tony and I climbed into bed we giggled about how our blankets only came up to our belly buttons. What if the imperfection paved the way for a much needed light-hearted moment? Why would I want to rob us of that?

Some imperfections are just worth going un-checked in our lives.

Sean: My wife used to fart when she was nervous. She had all sorts of wonderful little idiosyncrasies. She used to fart in her sleep. I thought I’d share that with you. One night it was so loud it woke the dog up. She woke up and went ‘ah was that you?’ And I didn’t have the heart to tell her. Oh!

Will: She woke herself up?

Sean: Ah…! But Will, she’s been dead for 2 years, and that’s the shit I remember: wonderful stuff you know? Little things like that. Those are the things I miss the most. The little idiosyncrasies that only I know about: that’s what made her my wife. Oh she had the goods on me too, she knew all my little peccadilloes. People call these things imperfections, but they’re not. Ah, that’s the good stuff. And then we get to choose who we let into our weird little worlds.

~ Robin Williams as Sean Maguire, Matt Damon as Will Hunting

When I was reminiscing recently about a math teacher from high school, my mind lighted on a little idiosyncrasy of hers. It warmed my heart to think about how some part of her body always seemed to be covered in chalk dust. At the time I felt kind of embarrassed about the chalk on her nose or smeared across her brow. It was sort of odd. Odd like my English teacher that would stir his coffee with his metal ruler or if that was misplaced, then with his metal scissors. But now, removed from those things, I find them warm details that make up a magical story.

I started to think about my own quirks. The things that feel odd about me, the things that my closest friends or family may tease me about, the things I do or say that are my own unique “imperfections.” Perhaps they are things I notice and try to change or see and try to hide. Perhaps they embarrass me. Perhaps they are things I’m oblivious to and others just accept as part of my Mandy-ness.

What seems odd in present life will someday be the very thing that makes our story live on after we are gone. Our quirks are not imperfections. They add color to our messy canvas. They liven up the present. They are the “good stuff.”

This morning I was faithful in rising early for my carved out writing time, but all I could seem to write about was how I can’t seem to write about what I need to be writing about. I am blocked towards fiction writing right now. I can’t seem to make myself write a short story or even a short paragraph about someone other than myself.  So I journaled about why I am scared to “go there.” What is holding me back?

I am partly overwhelmed by the greatness of other novelists. I enjoy mulling over their beautiful word choices and take for granted, as I’m reading them, that words must come easily. Then when I go to pick up my own pen, those great words sit on my shoulders and dare me to write something better or even comparable. I never can seem to.

I like writing, but I like it when it’s flowing naturally and coming freely and feels easy. Fiction writing does not feel easy right now. I’m scared to commit to something I’m going to have fumble and bumble my way through. I’ve stared this demon down before. Can you say IMPERFECTion?

I am reminded this morning of something Tony has told me in regards to lifting weights. You know you are getting a good workout in when you are lifting to the point of failure. You do enough reps until you find yourself physically unable to lift the weights another time. Your arms or legs get shaky. They throw their hands up and wearily admit defeat. It is through this process that our muscles break down. Then we rest them, giving them a chance to repair and heal. They become stronger through the failure.

What if I were to live my life this way? Much like lifting to the point of failure, what if I am living to the point of failure? What if growth is really only occurring in the times that I am writing to the point of imperfection. Sure, I can write endlessly about myself, but it comes easily at this point. Too easily. I’m never seeing shaky limbs. I’m never feeling winded. Could it be that I’m not pushing myself?

Instead of seeing failure in my fiction as a sign that I will never be good at it, what if I was able to see failure as the sign that I am getting better at it? Perhaps the creative block would dissipate if I would face the fear of my own failure and embrace the imperfect journey.

Are their areas of your life that you need to allow yourself the freedom to live to the point of failure?