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.”

“It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.”

― Jean-Luc Godard

“What counted was that I had, after years of running from it, actually sat down and done my work.”

― Steven Pressfield

My husband Tony has made our home into a bit of a haven. You see he has this thing for Sherlock Holmes and the essence of all things Old English Gentleman-ish. This has led him to create a sitting parlor in our living room, complete with bookshelves, artwork, unique chairs, a french love-seat with claw feet and a small dry bar, all centered around a roaring fire in our fireplace. He’s also mastered the art of making a good cup of coffee. All of this is a breeding grounds for inspiration and good conversation. I like to think artists emerge from the mortar between the bricks of our walls. I wish I could have everyone of you sit here with us. Perhaps one day.

Last night we sat together reading, hearing the crackling of the wood in the fireplace, and I told him he has created a magical place. I am fond of artists who get a vision in their head and are able bring it into living color. I know his Sherlockian home will continue to evolve and I’m glad I get to be a permanent fixture in the space.

As he got up last night to pour himself a small drink, and I do mean small because he likes to savor all the flavors he’s learning about, he said of his entire 8 bottle liquor selection, “I bought without knowing what I liked. I just knew what others liked.”

To which I replied, “That’s a good place to begin.”

But in this living room, nothing gets said flippantly. Everything has another layer of introspection available for the peeling if you’re just willing to do the work. And so I peeled back those words, and found another layer there that wanted to speak to me about art.

My friend Mandy said she tells the students in her art journaling class to look at and try a lot of different techniques and see which ones they are naturally drawn to. “It’s important to pay attention to what we’re doing in our art journals when no one else is looking. When no one else’s expectations come on us. These are signs and roadmarkers to where we really want to be.” (You can be inspired more by that here.)

When Bach wanted to learn how to create his own concertos, he studied Vivaldi first. When I wanted to put myself through writing school, I studied some of the greats.

My mind flashed to this old blog post of mine last night, and I was able to see it with a new layer of grace for myself and for my journey. So much of learning to be ourselves comes from studying those around us. Sure, there is an element of comparison that can be harmful, but there is also an element of humility that says, “I’m going to need some help here just getting started, otherwise I’m never going to get started at all.” Once Bach figured out the core elements of a concerto, he had the proper tools to create his own. Tony will eventually figure out his preferred palette with a dry bar, but a wise beginner is not afraid to ask questions and not above using seasoned research as a foundation to build on.

Over the years a certain look of visual art has come to the forefront of my tastes. This has only happened by exposing myself to a myriad of options, by knowing what others liked and starting there. Picasso, Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, etc. But now, I know it when I see it. I know my preferred style, and I want to spend some time sitting with the artists that do it well, so I can learn. So I can refine my palette. So I can key in on what makes a particular piece move me, and so I can figure out how to emulate that.

Let’s be honest though. Sometimes the romantic in me doesn’t want to study the craft. It feels like a dissection of beauty, and once I get to the bottom of it, I will have named all the smoke and mirrors for what they are and the magic of art will be sucked dry. But is it really that that stalls me, or is it the fear of trying to replicate beauty and accidentally making something ugly in the process? Of learning I can’t actually pull off what I’m attempting?

I think it’s more the latter.

And there has to be something to get me over that hump, or I just remain an admirer and never a creator.

I’m wondering if the thing that gets me over the hump is the permission to copy. To copy a craft, so that I might use it as a tool. To realize that in copying a craft, it’s going to be ugly at first. When my training wheels came off my bike for the first time I did a lot of screaming. Just ask my dad. And I remember gingerly picking myself up off the neighbor’s perfectly manicured lawn on more than one occasion.

Why wouldn’t those handlebars do what my mind was telling them to do? Because first my body had to learn the craft. Why couldn’t my soul soar like it wanted to with windblown hair around our little culdesac island? Because first my body had to learn the craft.

I’m not mis-reading my soul when my art doesn’t come out like I had in mind, I am just training my body first to learn the craft. We think we have tongues that can’t appreciate fine tastes. We think we have arms that weren’t cut out for handlebar holding. We think we have fingers that are too shaky to ever make the paint say what our soul tells us it should. Our soul gets fed up and impatient and it starts second-guessing itself because the body is saying it can’t keep up.

I want my autonomous gypsy soul to have patience with my body. And I want to study and learn the craft of the art that moves me without my soul getting all up in arms because it assumes that means I’m dismissing its unique voice. If my body tells my soul, “You are so brave, and I promise I’m working on making your dreams possible,” maybe it won’t be so disgruntled within me.

Maybe I even want to put myself through a self-led art school where I cut to the chase and get into the nitty gritty of my preferences. You’ve got to start somewhere, right? And the point is starting. (My friends would label this #dobravethings and Teresa would call this a #sparklydare. I call it necessary to my survival.)

Once upon a time I sat with my husband and some of his friends in a packed bar listening to a couple called Over the Rhine intermingle their music with the cigarette fog in the air.

Once upon another time I sat in a little 2-story coffee shop, the upper story being more balcony than floor, and I listened to this same Over the Rhine, the woman tossing me in the waves of her vocal ocean and the man pulling my heart strings in and out and in and out with the motions of his accordion.

Once upon yet another time I reunited with a band called Over the Rhine and I let them play their random selections on Pandora as I soaked a tired body in hot water by candlelight.

And when the lyrics shown above fogged up my mirror with their truth and mystery, I pushed a soggy wrinkled finger onto the image of a thumbs-up icon on my iPhone screen, because I wanted to remember to return to these lyrics on a later date (that date is today) so they could “Remind Us.”

I wonder if we know we are all Charlottes.

Have you read Charlotte’s Web? I almost have the beginning chapter memorized. Not word for word of course, but I can see the line-drawings of Fern fighting her daddy with his ax, desperately needing to save the runt pig. And I can see her pushing the pig in a baby stroller, and I can see her feeding that pig a bottle. And at first, you think the book is about Fern.

But then you meet Charlotte. She’s quiet and mellow and talks elegantly and calmly, even when she speaks of wrapping up flies and biting them and eating them. She’s brave and smart and confident. She’s undaunted and unafraid, like a friends of mine. So then you think the book is about Charlotte. And really it is. I mean, the book is named after her right?

But then you see that Charlotte sort of falls in love with Wilbur, the pig. Wilbur, the ordinary runt of a pig that eats slop and sleeps in poop and is so petrified of being butchered he can’t even think straight. Charlotte sees Wilbur. I mean REALLY sees him. She sees a life worth saving. She sees a life worth celebrating, and so she creates art to try and make everyone see what she sees. She spins a web, and with her silver threads she writes the words, “Some Pig,” Suddenly the book becomes all about Wilbur because Charlotte has made it so.

And the people take notice. And the people start to believe. And the people crowd around to see the T-E-R-R-I-F-I-C pig. All because Charlotte saw something nobody else did, and she wasn’t afraid to stand behind that vision and share it.

I met a couple amazing artists in the Oklahoma City area. They have all sorts of creative plates spinning, but one plate in particular caught my attention. They use the app Instagram and a hashtag of #treecult to document with photographs a local tree they fell in love with.

One solitary OKC tree that sits on the corner of a piece of fenced in spacious farmland. These artists, they took notice. They got a vision. They wrote “Some Tree” in the inner-webs of Instagram. People started believing it was a magical tree. Why not?

I ventured out to take my own pictures of the tree, and as I stood there with my car hazards on and my kids sitting in the car cheering me on, and cars zooming by with drivers staring, I snapped my own photos of this T-E-R-R-I-F-I-C tree. I romantically imagine some day we okc instagramers will all convene there, under that tree, climbing the barb-wire fence to get to it and sit beneath its tiny branches and eat a picnic lunch, all because someone believed.

I wonder if we know we are all Charlottes, creating ways to attribute great worth to the people and places and things surrounding us. Creating ways to make someone, some place, something, larger than life.

All it takes is a little soul thread and some passionate gumption to scale the barbed-wire and make something T-E-R-R-I-F-I-C.

Sometimes the Ego part of me wants a chance to explain. I want to explain my actions, my words, my choices, because I surely don’t want to be misunderstood. I don’t want to be questioned. To be disagreed with. To be challenged. And if I am, my Ego begs me to defend it.

Sometimes to appease the Ego, or the little scared girl inside me that just wants to be liked, I unload with a list onto the lines of my journal. It makes me feel heard, valued, expressed. And it helps me do a little less defending in my actual conversations, because I know that at least I understand my intentions. Sometimes it’s enough to listen to yourself.

Other times the list helps me realize there are somethings I can’t explain, no matter how badly I want to because somehow when words get involved something gets dropped in translation. In this case the list is a visual for the things I simply know innately, on a soul level, and though I’d like to explain them, chances are it would take something away from the magic to force it into a nice, neat little explainable package.

Here’s an example of what my list might look like:

I Want to Explain:

• Why I want a break from the box of church
• Why I want to see options I’ve never seen.
• Why I don’t “serve”
• Why enough is enough
• Why I’m tired and limited and slow to commit
• Why I live and die by both/and paradoxes
• Why it’s important I love on myself
• My spiritual beliefs
• The proper time for hugs doesn’t occur to me until much, much later, and truthfully sometimes never. And yet, I love you.
• That I believe in magic enough to doubt it.
• I say yes, but I also say “as you wish” or “it is so.”
• That I am awakened enough to know there is much I do not know.
• That I get messages from God, but I could be making it all up so I can like my life and myself. And I guess I’m okay with that.
• My homeschool philosophy
• My current read
• My book
• My dreams
• My truths
• My messes
• Literature
• My art passion

I had always said I would never get a tattoo. I had always told my tattooed friends that I had the ability to get completely naked, while they were claustrophobic-ally stuck behind their tattoo forever.

OK, maybe I was also a bit scared to commit to the artwork. I mean, what if I changed my mind?

But a friend of ours convinced me that a tattoo is not about your whole life, it’s about one milestone in your life. It’s about recognizing who you are at a distinct moment in time. I suppose in that way it’s kind of like sticking a stake in the ground. (It reminded me a bit of when I went to do this.)

Then I went and wrote a book. A book in which the sole purpose was to give me (and consequently others) permission to hear my own artistic voice and not just hear it, but trust it, believe in it, follow it where it wanted to take me.

There are times (almost daily I’ll have you know) where I have sudden lapses into fear, and I think, surely I must be out of my mind to listen to what is calling within me. To attempt big things. To rebel against convention to give my soul some breathing room. And so I decided it would be nice to have the ever present reminder close that though there is indeed freedom granted to me from a bigger Someone, if I don’t free myself to travel where I need to travel, then I will remain enslaved.

As I was looking for a way to celebrate my artistic voice and my book contract and my daily choice of self-evoked freedom, I came across these words that one of my favorite artists, Sabrina Ward Harrison, wrote in a personal message to me on the inside front cover of her book in 2008. The word “free” was really important to me then because it was my first time at picking a word for my year. Seeing Sabrina’s words made me realize how far I have come, and how much truth there is to that statement, “Free Yourself.” And I knew instantly I must celebrate my book contract with my first tattoo.

You can watch a short video here.

And so I did it. Quickly. Because I think you can over-think these sorts of things, and my soul was screaming yes, and I’m learning to listen to that. My favorite part is that the red is colored outside the lines.

The artist I used was Gage at Beauty from Pain. He did Tony’s tattoo as well, and I highly recommend him.

(The above photo is of a painting he altered.)

A side story to getting my tattoo is that my kids and Tony went with me to get it and while Gage was creating the stencil, my youngest son choked on a piece of hard candy and then puked it out. Gage helped me clean up puke off myself and my son and the floor without even balking. I told him if the tattoo wasn’t enough to bond us for life, the puking definitely was. Never a dull moment.

If you have tattoos, I want to see them. Stories behind them? I want to hear them. Leave links or stories in the comments please!

{*in honor of a friend who is doing something brave today.}

“The mystery only intrigued her; the magic trapped her.”
– From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Although this revelation is golden, it’s not enough to know who my people are. I then must go the next step and figure out how to have some semblance of peace with who my people aren’t, because I don’t want my creative energy wasted on hating.

But once I’ve raged so hard to find my wings, it can be difficult to fly back down to earth every now and then to water the cracking soil of disagreement. I think a brave artist pays attention to the cracked soil from time to time and throws fistfuls of grace-water at it just for good measure.

In classic Messy Canvas form, I give you, a vulnerable list…

Those For Whom I Must Find Grace:

• The apologetics people
• The theological debators
• The black and whiters
• Those who roll their eyes at answer-less just because tears
• The know without a doubters
• The I’m sorry but you can not get to my God-ers
• The grace AND truth clingers
• The memorized answer-ers
• Those who ignore
• The uninterested and unmoved
• The I could care less-ers
• Those who have no eyes to see or ears to hear.

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to write my future self a letter. This was suggested to me by my friend, who also offered to send the letter to me at a later date of my choosing. I picked to have the letter sent to me mid-year, June 1, 2012.

Here are some of the things that will have happened in my life by June 2012:

• Our lease will be up in our current home and we will have decided if we are staying put or moving elsewhere in the Oklahoma City area.
• Tony will have launched a bike shop with partners.
• We will be living solely on self-employed income for the first time in a few years.
• I will have completed my first manuscript with David C. Cook publishing.

I wrote things in that letter that I didn’t know I had in me. Little challenges for myself that I expected to be living out by the time June rolls around. (Apparently I’m going to do some brave things in the next few months. Eek!) And I wrote encouragement, because I know future Mandy will need encouragement. (I always need encouragement.) I also wrote about my “vulnerable” word a bit, knowing it will have changed me tremendously by this time.

Given too much thought, this sort of exercise could have totally paralyzed me, but I was among friends when it happened, and the paper to write the letter was ripped off and put before me so quickly, I didn’t even have time to think. I just started writing a #secretmessage to my future self, trusting that whatever I wrote on that half-sheet of notebook paper would be precisely what I needed to hear in June.

Yesterday I was perusing some of the blogs I read, and I came across a different spin on this letter writing idea. You can read about it here. I especially love the parts where the older version suggests to the younger version to take risks, even those that seem foolish at the time and to give great meaning and value to things like bracelets, because really, I do believe we have the power to create the magic we most need to find. I love that the older version of me can calm my fears about the future, because she’s already living there and thriving.

I find it fascinating that with the letter writing creations we can throw #secretmessages to our future selves and that our future selves can fling #secretmessages back to our current selves.

We are time travelers.

Here’s a list I found in my journal from last year sometime. In an overwhelming moment, sometimes it helps me to list out all the things I do not have to do. Upon completion of writing a list like this, I always feel like I’ve gained some sense of control back. Like I do own my life and my choices, and I’m not being swept away by some chaotic wave.

Right now I do not need to:

• Pick up my phone.
• Check on the world.
• Clean the toilets.
• Wash my spaghetti string tank tops.
• Re-do my toe-nail polish.
• Read the new book that came in the mail.
• Watch a movie.
• Pack for the bike race.
• Brush my hair.
• Share this list on twitter.
• Consume sugar.
• Be on anyone else’s time frame.
• Stay awake.
• Shove one more thing into this already full day.

What would go on your “to not to do” list right now?

So I have this love/hate relationship with rules. I have come to hate them in religion and as an artist. We artists are mavericks, right? We see a rule, we break it. We get a bit squeamish at the word discipline.

And yet, AND YET…

I am finding myself in need of a few of these rules if I am to accomplish some of the goals I’ve been listing out in my journal pages.

I don’t think it’s coincidence that I am slowly reading through The Artist’s Rule and Radical Hospitality, both which make mention of the Rule of Benedict. Are there healthy, necessary rules as means to a certain end?

Maybe the rules I need are similar to what I learned about with mysticism, where we create rules only so we might better experience where we are in life. And when life moves on, so do the rules. The rules have to shift as needed. They have to be both hard-nosed and flexible. Both non-negotiable and sustainable. They have to be rules I’m okay with keeping because I know why I am keeping them, and that “why” matters tremendously to me.

Tony said recently, “If I create too many rules for myself, then I rebel against my own system.” And this, I guess, is what I’m trying to avoid.

How can I create just enough rules to sustain my goals, but not enough rules to suffocate? Just enough rules to create forward momentum, but not enough to make me arch my back and go stiff in defiance?

This is what I’m questioning as I try to put together a weekly plan for how to get the most out of my time.

How have you learned to dance with rules? What signs are you posting on the walls and fences of your life to keep moving you in the direction of your dreams? We can always change out the signs when we need to, right?

When I can carve out a chunk of time to sit still and listen, this is two places I like to go. I always walk away with something inspirational and stirring from these podcasts. I consider these a goldmine, and wanted to share them with you.

APM: On Being

Sounds True: Insights at the Edge

Do you have any goldmines you’d share with us?

This weekend I went to the art store to spend my investment capital.

The money my grandparents sent me for Christmas, well the money that was left after I bought Indian princess moccasins and a feather necklace for my gypsy heart, this money I decided needed to be used to put some dreams in motion.

Recently Tony and I had a somewhat difficult conversation in which I realized some truths about myself that were hard to face. By the end of that conversation, which happened in the car on the way to a bike race, I had come around from wanting to strangle his neck to wanting to kiss him. Love is a strange thing this way because love sometimes says the hard things, and if you’re open to really getting to the bottom of those hard things, you might find some treasure.

Essentially what I learned is that there are deeply buried dreams inside me that keep resurfacing. Some of these dreams don’t logically make sense to me, and since they don’t, I find it easier to 1.) ignore them or 2.) convince someone else to champion them for me, so I don’t have to take the risk. My conversation with Tony was basically an awakening to the fact that I need to own my own dreams. Own the possible failure. Own the possible foolishness. And own the hard work, sacrifice and plan-making that it takes to really go after them.

As I’m talking to Mandy about this recently (sometimes Mandy and I believe that since we have the same first name, we are actually the same person, just alter-egos. We are each other’s Tyler Durden, if you will. And if you don’t know Tyler Durden, perhaps it’s time to watch Fight Club). Anyway, as I’m talking to Mandy about this dream-owning debacle, she laughs and says, “Maybe you need to read your own book. I mean, you practically yelled at us. No, you DID yell at us. You YELLED at us in your book about not making excuses. Maybe you should read it.”

Shortly after I got off the phone with her I took my investment capital to the art store and spent it. I spent it all. And I could not believe how gingerly I had to walk myself through that process of spending all my cash on something that might be a total flop. I kept waiting for someone else to show up and say, “Oh yes, you are doing the exact right thing with this money,” but that person never materialized. Or rather, I had to be that person for myself. And the way the cashier took my money, with an odd little gleam in her eye, well, I’d say she was onto me, and she was laughing as she tucked those bills under the money clips in the register drawer, because they were hers now and no longer mine.

Then I came home and spent the last of my other money I had socked away on a few other supplies I needed off of Amazon. And I nearly hyperventilated, because I’m the person that plays Monopoly and hides the golden $500 bills under my leg, so no ones knows I have them, so when everyone else has bet the farm and gambled their money away, I still have my goose-egg to live on. I’m so responsible that way. I feel so secure. And buying these art supplies did not feel responsible or secure.

How timely that I wake-up this morning to write this post, and my friend Paige has sent me this helpful little article about art being pointless crap.

This isn’t easy for any of us. But we can still do it, even with that lump in our throat.

My plan is to keep up a baby steps list (I think the Right-Brained Planner woud approve), so I can make sure that I’ve done everything in my ability to own this dream, propelling it forward, so it doesn’t stall out.

Here’s to creating risky pointless crap because we must. And here’s to bigger-over-arching dreams that beckon us into foolishness. And here’s to vulnerably admitting, I may just need to read my own book.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be up in this tree. Living my life in thin air, with my head in the clouds. *gulp*

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

-Roald Dahl

I received an email recently from my daughter. All that was in it was this picture and the words following:

Sometimes you wolk in to majek.

The words can be translated this way, in case you don’t read kiddio: Sometimes you walk into magic.

So I ask you, what magic are you walking into today? Some of it will be self-initiated and some of it will find you, if you’re looking, but you have to have a sense of what you’re looking for first. You have to have an idea of what magic would have to look like if it were to sweep you off your feet.

What’s crazy is your heart probably isn’t asking for much. Magic can be pretty simplistic, just a little something special here and there. Get enough of those “something specials” in a row and you’ve got some great momentum for your life. (This all said in the wake of having a pretty horrible beginning to my day yesterday, which kept threatening to suck the magic out of everything. You know what changed the course of my day? A simple walk outdoors and the willingness to embrace the magic of that simple act and come out of my funk cloud.)

I wrote in my journal recently the words Be lucky, because what if the only criteria for being lucky is believing you already are?

And, well, are you?

Let’s say you’ve picked a word for 2012. You think you have the word of all words that’s going to transform the new year. It’s taken A LOT of work to decide on that new word and then you think, “Ack! What do I do with the word now that I have it?” Here are some ideas:

• Look for the word everywhere. I find it shows up a lot when I’m on the lookout for it. Kind of like when you buy a new car and then all of a sudden you see lots of people driving the type of car you have. The word will show up in books, movies, music, conversation.
• Treat your word like a research project and find all you can with that word tied to it. Look up definitions, origins of the word, books with that title, art, etc. Google that word and watch out.
• Write your word. A lot. Paint it. Ink it. Color pencil it. Crayon it. Type it. Spell it out with those plastic colorful alphabet magnets. Write it in dust. Write it on a dry erase board or a chalkboard. Write it on your dirty car. Spell it with spaghetti noodles. Cut out the letters from a magazine and collage it. Just keep writing it.
• Make lists of what you want the word to bring out in you. Why is the word is so important to you? What sort of self-love will that word give you? Make lots of lists. Cast vision so you can step into the word fully.
• Bring the word up in conversation. Let friends and family know it’s your word. In doing so, they’ll keep an eye out for the word as well and give you further insight and research into your word. I like to think that they’re passing you #secretmessages.
• Journal or blog about your run-ins with the word. This helps you process how the word is affecting you.
• Create an entire journal based on your word. This doesn’t mean you have to limit what you put in the journal, but just be willing to looks for hidden threads of how that word is naturally showing up in your life. You maybe surprised to see it weaving it’s way into everything.
• Do not, and I repeat, do not, feel guilty if 3 months go by and you haven’t thought of your word a bit. Sometimes the living with the word happens below the surface. Be intentional to think back over the time that has passed and look for ways your word has been growing roots without your even knowing it. (I like to do this around 6 months and then again at the end of the year.)

I’d love it if you’d share with us other creative ideas you have done or you plan to do with you word.

Standing over the sink on my little white rug that is always in need of a good washing I run the scrub brush back and forth to remove the crusty bits of supper. I watch as the hot water makes baked-on marinara melt off the pan’s edges. I resonate with the melt on some internal level, but my consciousness isn’t interested in the metaphor. I have things to think about, like that dentist bill I keep forgetting to pay and the eye doctor appointments that I haven’t made yet, and the looming approach of childhood fillings, and the gift buying which never feels very fun anymore. How can I make it fun again?

I reach out past my left hip and open wide the mouth of the old-school dishwasher. The spring is broken out of the soap container so the little door remains ever open, but I only complained once to the rental property management and they must have not felt the urgency. I count blessings that there is a dishwasher at all. That my hands aren’t quite as dry as they might be. That I found new soap with less residue. I’m down to the last of my soap though. I probably should add that to the grocery list of more things to buy. I wish I never had to spend money again. Couldn’t I dig soap out of a hole in my backyard or something?

I am aware these mundane moments are opportunities to curse myself, and my life with its, what other’s are now labeling, 1st world problems. I realize this is a chance to usher in guilt on a grand scale. Your feeble mind. Your trivial thought processes. Your useless drivel. But I’m not going there. Teresa says the guilt can linger in the air, but I don’t have to choose to breathe that air. Rain reminds me everything can be “a channel of grace for my needs.” So the dance is my channel of grace right now, and I’m just letting the mind dance hither and yon to the places it needs to, scooping up an armful of responsibility here and a lap-full of worry over there. I collect all the pieces that exist on the outskirts, the pieces I’d just soon ignore because they are not art and they are not epic theology and they are not soul-stirring activities. I’m thinking of that Getting Things Done Dude now and how he once told me just to get it all down on paper, to capture it all, so my brain is available for the real work.

I move slow with the scrub brush and the hot water and the hip rotation to the left and then down to drop plates into holding tanks for impending bath. I feel like a squeaky robot. I keep thinking I should be doing this faster so as to get on to the “good stuff,” but my body is counting its own beats, and there appears to be no crescendo in the measures to come.

I happen to look down at my own body. I am still in my pajamas which double for workout clothes and play outside in the front with my kids clothes. As much as I have embraced the art of fashion and have delighted in the gypsy-esque outfits that I can throw together with reckless childlike abandon now. As much as I wrap myself up in Bill’s impenetrable words, “”Fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life.” Even so, let’s just face it, I spend the majority of my life in my comfy clothes, rotating extravagantly between my gray yoga pants and my navy yoga pants both with white stripes and dawning sweatshirts with logos I have no affection for, but they were a gift and they are warm. In these threads though they feel like the half-baked effort of myself, in these threads I feel the ability to settle. To settle among the dust of necessities and to not be so elitist about the reality that life has these normal rhythms that one simply cannot escape, at least not without the help of some mood-altering paraphernalia for which I’m just not quite sold on. Escape has never seemed to be the answer I am after.

The preparing of food and the cleaning up afterwards. The revolving door of laundry. The appointments. The meetings. The social calendar. The waking and also of course the sleeping. I remember what Mandy told me:

“You know that mountain-top living is not sustainable. Who would want to live up there forever, with the shortness of breath of the high altitude and the fierce whipping winds with nothing to hide behind. And the tree-line below with cold, icy snow. It’s unsustainable beauty. It’s for a radical moment.”

Yes, so I want the valley sort of beauty as well. Patty Griffin’s:

“…peaceful valley
Just over the mountain
The peaceful valley
Few come to know…”

Beauty not only in the rush of sprints, but also in the walking. Lots and lots of walking, in my pajamas, to the beat of my crescendo-less rhapsody. My life is a stitched together song, cycle upon Rilke’s ever-widening cycle and this is only extraordinary if I tell myself it is.

I have emptied the sink into the monster with the broken spring, and I lower my head down close, staring down deep black throat to try and fit the last dish. I try turning the plate horizontal and then vertical, like I’m playing a real live game of Tetris. Just one more piece needs to fit and it won’t, and some day I will think it’s entertaining how heavy this discouragement weighs on me, as heavy as poverty and death of loved ones and wondering if Jesus is just a made up version of Santa Clause. The chipped green plate with nowhere to rest weighs that heavy in my fingers. And you can’t tell me that it’s just small stuff not worth sweating, because I’m still in my pajamas and part of me thinks that means I’m missing out on “real” life.

I shove the plate violently and it gets wedged between two others, sticking up ridiculously too close to the spinning water sprayer. I give the bottom shelf a frustrated shove with my foot, and as it descends into the jowls of the monster, I hear the clatter of plates, I see them shift forward and then back and then I see the chipped green plate fall into place. Just like that everything has fallen into place. And there is a release and my consciousness says, “Okay then, go ahead artist. I’m willing to tolerate metaphors now. I have the space for that sort of thing again.”

So the artist does. She stares at the still open-mouthed monster with its plate teeth sticking up all straight and fierce and she says to her consciousness, “You’ll need to write this down. To capture it. It’ll be on the same list as your dentist appointments and your bills to pay, but that’s quite alright. Write down: ‘The details of your life are the dishes in your dishwasher. ‘Everything shifted and so it all fit.’ One subtle shift and all went back to being right with the world. The pajamas were bearable, the cycles were sustainable, the slow pace was manageable.”

The artist doesn’t demand much. She’s actually wildly patient and cordial. But she is fierce and she will not be ignored and she does come with a bit of quick-tempered and acutely focused energy. She is the chiropractor who feels with warm and slow steady hands before landing on the very vertebrae that needs only the slightest adjustment to set the spine at ease. Pressure, movement, and a slipping of things, right back into balance. The green plate still has a chip, but now it fits. Do you hear me world? It fits!

We had been playing outside. In the course of playing outside for an extended period of time, my kiddios tend to make a handful of trips into the house. Someone needs to go to the bathroom. Someone needs to fetch a lightsaber from their room for the fierce battle that has unfolded in the front yard with the neighbor kids. Someone needs a drink of water. I usually don’t accompany them on the repeated trips indoors. I stay put outside. Keeping an eye on the three-year old who sometimes likes to wander a little too far from home.

So once the playtime ends, and the scooters and balls and skateboards and hockey sticks are all properly returned to each neighborhood garage, we close the big metal garage door and wander back into the chaos that random kiddio touches have caused. Bathroom lights on, play-clothes strewn on the floor while someone went searching for the swords, and on this particular day, puddles of water across the kitchen floor.

“What went on here?” I ask, a little too coldly for someone who is 11 months into living the word MESSY for 2011.

“What do you mean?” She asks, matching me attitude for attitude.

“I mean the puddles of water on the floor and on the kitchen chair.” My eyes are starting to follow the trails of water. “And why are there all these crumbs all over the kitchen table?”

“I cleaned it up,” she says quickly.

“But there is still water everywhere,” I replied.

“Oh. Well, I don’t see any,” she says, frustrated.

“Come on, don’t lie to me. Just finish the job.” I’d rather not make an issue of this, but I can feel that familiar raise in my voice and the racing of my blood.

Why is it so hard to see eye-to-eye. Why is it that we see things so differently?

“I’m not lying. How do you want me to clean up water I can’t see?”

The detective in me surveys the clues and knows what has happened. She’s spilled the water trying to pour it into a water bottle. And then she has reached for the nearest towel, which happened to be the one in a basket on the table that held our chips from lunch. In whipping out the towel she had tossed the chip crumbs in a scattered mess across the table. The wet towel still sits damp on a kitchen chair.

“I’m glad you tried to clean it up, but next time maybe use a different towel. And next time make sure you clean up all the water.”

“I did clean up all the water,” she reiterates.

I think she’s being lazy. I think she’s being curt. I think she’s trying to do anything but clean up the mess she has created. I walk away from the puddles. Away from the crumbs and the table and the damp towel sitting on the chair. I walk over to her, stalling for time, holding my tongue and searching for the breath, wondering why little stupid things always become big stupid ordeals in my brain space.

I stand beside her and look at the mess, only to find it is not there. From where we are standing, me with her, it’s as though the puddles have dried up. The light hits them differently and they have vanished. I am taken aback.

“Ha!” I burst out, shocking both of us with a zap of lightning amidst our anger clouds. “You can’t see the water from this perspective.” She looks at me like with tears welling and arms crossed. She looks at me as though she is not amused with my discovery. She looks at me in the way someone looks when they have been made not to bend but to break.

I walk her over to where I stood when I first walked in from the outside. I can sense by her body language she feels like a baby. This is not a good thing.

I show her the light, the puddles, my perspective, but it’s not enlightening, it’s defeating. She is not filled with awe, she is filled with dread, embarrassment, a sense of failure. “Yep Mom,” I imagine her saying. “Everything is just as you suggested. And aren’t I the idiot for never seeing it clearly?”

Of course she doesn’t say this. She just grabs the towel I’m offering and huffs and puffs her way through the waxing on and off of the remaining puddles. She cleans up water with an heir of brokenness and she sees me as the evil stepmother and herself as belonging amongst the cinders.

I didn’t intend… I didn’t realize… I didn’t mean to… I think of a handful of ways to start the apology that wants to fall off my lips, but she is too far gone now and I know that the teaching moment is meant solely for me. Me who sees so clearly from my own vantage point, but who gets so twisted on the inside when I can’t make her see that my way is right. Me who wants her to clean up the mess, and quickly, well before she even has developed eyes to see it.

Who needs the glasses? Is it me? Or is it her? Or is it both?

I think how funny my daughter would have looked, had she raced off with her towels to start wiping dry ground because she was told that somewhere puddles existed. Should she keep her hands moving in Mr. Miyagi motions because that keeps me happy? Am I raising a people-pleaser? Would she wonder why her towel was never getting wet. Would she wonder if the puddles even really exist?

Who needs the glasses? Is it me? Or is it her? Or is it both?

She is gone now. Off playing with her siblings, and I hold the damp towels, and I touch the water. Her water. Water that I did not want to see in spilled puddles on my kitchen floor, but water that must be spilled if there is ever to be a learning and a living and a realization of perspectives. Let the mess be messy, I remember. The messes have their purposes too and the eye-opening has a time table all to itself, like fresh puppies that squint in darkness for days after birth.

I wonder if eyes are like snowflakes, no two alike. Each created, destined, expected to see something no one else can see…which would mean in turn each equally equipped with numerous blind-spots yet to be discovered.

Who needs the glasses? Is it me? Or is it her? Or is it both?

“Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

- Tyler Durden, Fight Club

“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”

- Pablo Picasso

“Sometimes you have to rage against the machine before you can make your peace with it.”

- Mandy Steward

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

- Walt Kelly

“I say never be complete. I say stop being perfect. I say let’s evolve. Let the chips fall where they may.”

- Tyler Durden, Fight Club

I watched it, finally.

The movie Fight Club has been on my radar for years. Every time I heard someone speak of it I knew it was a movie I would love. Problem is, I also knew it was a movie I would hate. And so I went years without watching because I couldn’t decide what to do with that paradox.

I can remember being little and sitting on the edge of my dad’s bed while he watched a boxing match. “So the whole sport is just to hit another person?” I questioned, grimacing at the contrast of silky blue and red boxers juxtaposed over flying sweat and beads of blood forming along the brown bone.

“Yes, basically.”

“And whoever can’t take anymore hits is the loser?”

“Well, yes, basically.”

I had a love-hate relationship with boxing, with Rocky movies, with Ultimate Fighting Championships. But mostly I had a hate-hate relationship.

My classmates and I were gathered in small clusters outside the brick walls of the back of our high school. It was during some sporting event that was going on inside the gym, but word had gotten round that there was going to be a fight, and so I had reluctantly joined the trickling of my friends who were sneaking outside to watch. I could feel the burn of vomit in the back of my throat. I could taste the surge of teenage angst and human pride mixed with our frailty. I had to swallow back the nausea of hopelessness. My jaw dropped at the sight of this real life, skin-to-skin, and unfortunately sometimes steel-toed boot to skin, battle. I was not close. A football field’s distance away perhaps. I couldn’t get any closer. I couldn’t look away.

We can’t just stand here, I kept thinking. “You’re going to stop this thing, right?” I yelled over to the huddle of boys. These were supposed to be his friends. These were supposed to be the people who had his back. “Please!! Can’t you guys pull them apart? What’s your problem?!”

Should I run inside and get help? I wondered. Where were the big people? The principal, the vice-principal, the adults with their arms crossed in disapproval? The law that set things back in balance when things go askew? Why was no one stepping in? Was the Earth off its axis. Was evil going to win?

I was desperate and they just yelled back at me, none of us taking our frozen eyes off the fight, “He wants to fight! He wants this! Leave it alone.”

“I’ll try to stop it then, if none of you will! This is stupid!” I said, making false promises, threatening with my shaky voice and tear-filled eyes while my feet remained motionless.

“Shut up, Mandy,” one of them yelled back at me. And I knew I would do nothing. None of us would do anything, but watch our friend make an eventual fall to the dust. Him too, motionless, as the other guy made one last kick in the ribs and then walked away.

Want to know what I remember most though? My friend’s unrecognizable swollen face at school the next week, bragging to me about how he could have won. And the vomit burned again in my throat because I couldn’t understand why enough is never enough. What is rock-bottom and who are we if we never hit it? Who are we if we never come to the end of ourselves?

My brother-in-law grabbed Fight Club off of his bookshelf. He wrapped up the movie for me, in pink pastel paper with black polkadots, which only added to the paradox. He wrote in sharpie marker, “For a time of great strength.” I was touched that he believed someday I might actually unwrap the thing and watch it.

And then that day came. Tony agreed to watch it with me, afterall, it’s one of his favorite movies, but he said, “I think you’ve made this into a much bigger deal then it is and you might be disappointed.”

I wasn’t. I wasn’t disappointed, and I wasn’t over-reacting towards how the fighting would make me feel. That reminiscent sting of vomit when he says, “I felt like destroying something beautiful.” And the looming, haunting question of “How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?

The novel takes it a step further and says, “I don’t wanna die without any scars.” I wanna get MESSY.

I have a page now in my journal with that ripped out piece of wrapping paper. I’ve glued the words, “For a time of great strength” in the center, and around it I’ve written the quotes from Fight Club that were their own proverbial gut punches to my Ego.

But what I can’t make sense of is why my Soul longs for paradox so much. Why it wants to die so it can live. Why it wants to stare at something hard even when it knows it’s going to get squeamish. Why it wants to have a time for war as much as it wants a time for peace. Why “losing all hope is freedom.” Why “it’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”  Why “only after disaster can we be resurrected.” Why in order to live “first you have to give up. First you have to ‘know’…not fear…’KNOW’…that someday you’re gonna die.”

I don’t want to be “trapped in my lovely nest.” I don’t want to pretend answers are working for me when they’re not. I don’t want to be sheltered from the punches life is serving out. If meeting me is gritty and it’s hard and it’s dark, I wanna do it anyway. I wanna know that I faced every demon.

The mantra Tyler stands on in Fight Club is an artist’s mantra. It’s why my friend sees disturbing and disrupting as a service to humanity. “We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them and show them courage by frightening them.” That’s what we seek to do as artists, right? It’s the bait and switch. The ultimate reverse psychology. Because most people will do all they can to avoid a fight. “Stop rocking the boat,” they say.

But if what if we don’t stop? Will people come alive again? Like Raymond K. Hessel when he has his knees pressed into the earth and a gun to the back of his head. All of a sudden he is sure that he has the gumption to chase his dreams and pay attention to his soul’s desire if only he can be given one more shot at life. “Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel’s life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.”

We set gun to head, we set fire to our strongholds, we die, and then somehow our eyes are opened and we awake to a new life, perhaps to true life.

“I don’t like it. I don’t understand it. This is stupid.”

But for some reason there is another part of me yelling, “Shut-up. I wanna fight. I want this. Leave it alone.”

I’ve decided getting involved is MESSY. And even though I’m edging into my word for 2012 already, I’m trying to accept that there are still MESSY things I have to learn.

I remember being in my college journalism classes and hating the required homework of reading news articles. I didn’t understand most of what I was reading. Politics? War? Economics? It was like they were speaking another language, a language I had no desire to put the effort into translating. Why should I care about Libya? Plus, who needs one more thing to worry about?

A number of things lately have drawn my attention back towards “the news.” I went to visit my sister and brother-in-law recently at the birth of their first baby. My parents were there as well, and one evening as my dad turned on the news, we got into a discussion about his choice to watch the news every night. Is this a generational thing? I wondered out loud. I can always remember my grandparents having the news on in the evenings when we would visit. They would also read the newspaper, something I’ve never given much attention to, except for when I had to do it to get a good grade in college.

But it wasn’t just my journalism professors that thought I should be aware of the news, it was one of my favorite English professors as well. The one who was feisty and feminist and who somehow believed fine literature had direct correlation to the current events of our day. Like Dorthy Day seemed to say of the classic novels she read, “There’s a sense of the human race as one family in those books and the interdependence of people.” My Short Story Professor saw a crossover I wasn’t yet able to make, between story and world news, humanity and trending topics, poetry and politics. Eleven years after college, I’m friends with her on Facebook. She makes me take notice.

I watch The Daily Show sometimes with Tony. I am thankful for a chance to laugh at the news. I think it helps ease me into the muddy waters. Helps me tolerate hearing something I so often don’t have the patience to try and understand. I find myself somehow smiling at the dust we are all made of, welcoming that reprieve from seriousness. But still, the humor makes me take notice.

I have a childhood artist friend who posts songs on YouTube each week. He talks about current events, sings about humanity and stirs interesting conversation in a Facebook Group he manages called Sundays With Slim. I have been drawn more and more to hear what he has to say. He bridges the gap between two worlds for me: current events and art. He has me taking notice.

One of my favorite artists, Anne Lamott, has an interest in politics, in social justice, in being active instead of passive. It bleeds through in her writing. She makes me take notice.

I write on a team of talented writers for the blog Deeper Story. The sub-head for the blog is “Tales of Christ and Culture.” I am pricked a bit lately, wondering what I am doing on such a rich team when I’m often so confused about Christ and so oblivious to culture. And yet I believe in story. Stories make me take notice.

I’ve been studying a lot of artists over the past year or so. One thing I’ve learned from the artists that inspire me the most is that they pay attention to what’s going on around them. To the current events, to the pulse of society, to the things that humanity is fixated on. They pay attention and they let themselves be stirred by it. They let it take root in their gut and let the branches unfurl as they may until it’s evident that their voice can’t be silent any longer. They create from the tension.

I think I’ve always known this, to some extent, but what I thought was that their getting involved must look a lot cleaner than mine does. They must have clear answers. They must know their political affiliation. They must have the world’s geography memorized. They must have cared to engage in history class instead of just memorized the facts to get good grades. They must see things as black and white. They must have a lot of time on their hands. They must have Divine revelations on whose side is the right side. They must not have families to care for or laundry to do or yards to mow. They must have focused agendas, and muddle-less brains and hearts.

Because when I go to get involved I see that not everyone believes like I believe. And when I see they don’t believe like I believe, I get overwhelmed. And if I’m overwhelmed, I must be in over my head. And if I’m in over my head, I must be somewhere I have no business being. Right?

It’s much easier to stay uninvolved, hands clean. You certainly look less stupid. It’s easier to pretend that the world is not broken or at least to pretend there is not a single thing I can do about it. It’s much easier to believe that those feelings of vulnerability and helplessness are signs that I should bail out rather than push in.

Last week I had this epiphany moment – getting involved is messy, and when things get messy I tend to bail. My artist’s heart is so idealistic and when it meets raw reality it’s been saying, “Screw this. What’s the use in trying?” I get angry that I can’t understand things well enough to fix them. I get angry that humanity is so sordid. I get angry, and I runaway. But last week I started to realize maybe I don’t want to run away anymore. Maybe I do want to fight. Maybe I do want to soak in what it means to be human in our world. To open my eyes to the number of ways in which that plays out. To stop putting hands over eyes and to maybe even see myself in the depravity of others. To sit across the globe at this messy sandbox and attempt to share my toys and not throw dirt.

You see, if I know too much, then I feel responsible. And if I feel responsible, but feel ill-equipped or unable to put an immediate and active stop to the turmoil of current events, then I become embarrassed or ashamed or even fearful. But I’ve decided I’ll just sit with those vulnerable feelings for awhile. Let the tension have its way with me because I don’t want to hide from the truth anymore.

Darkness doesn’t scare me quite like it used to. I don’t runaway simply because something is far messier than I had hoped it would be. I’m less scared to ask questions that have no answers. I think darkness brings you to the end of yourself. That gnawing feeling that I am not as together as I had once hoped. And when you’re able to face that, you’re able to face fallen humanity as a team player.

I want a part in this redemption. I want a part in this paradoxical fight for peace.

I suppose I think of faith as a pretty personal thing. Something that an individual must own and work out for themselves, an internal pilgrimage that incorporates attempted communication and interaction with God. And really, I like it that way. Solitary, mysterious, secretive, exciting.

That is why when people have asked me, “What does your husband think of the struggles you are having in your faith right now?” I have thought, “Well, in many ways, it is a person internal journey. So a lot of it is worked out in my head and my heart and my soul and my journal. A lot of it is worked out in hushed whispers with God. And a lot of the questions aren’t ones I’m necessarily wanting my husband or others to answer. They are questions I’m just trying to live with for now.”

That being said, I am aware that my spiritual life is not a clean cut division from the rest of my life. What I believe about a Higher Being most certainly does trickle into my marriage as well as my parenting, my art, my friendships and my day-to-day motivations and decisions. So Tony does get to live up close to a woman who at times is flailing a bit in her faith. (*Side note: I think we are all flailing a bit in our faith, it’s just whether we choose to face that or not.) He asks me questions to check on me, and I share my roller-coaster faith as I feel so led. Today I’m depressed. Today I finally feel hope again. Today I’m confused. Today I can’t believe in a God that would do X, Y or Z. Today I love Jesus. Today I’d like to climb in a hole.

As I have had more and more conversations with others about what Tony thinks of all this, I have come to find I am in a very unique and blessed relationship with my spouse. I want to highlight a few of the reasons this is true.

1. He gives me space.

He told me one time, “Mandy, I trust God with you.” This is huge. This has allowed me the freedom to wrestle with God and with Christianity and with the Church in my alone times. To say whatever it is I need to say, question whatever I need to question, rant whatever I need to rant about, cry about whatever I need to cry about. It has also given me the confidence, at times, to believe that I really and truly do hear from God personally and that I need to use my artistic voice to express that. I do not feel like Tony is constantly trying to spy on me to see if I’m upholding the rules and regulations of what faith should be. Never once have I felt judged or shamed by Tony. In fact he will say to me, “I’m enjoying being on this spiritual journey with you. I’m okay being beside you.” And there is great peace in that. He doesn’t expect reports from me, but because he doesn’t I feel free to share with him from time to time how I’m doing. When I touch on bits of theology he doesn’t agree on, we state our thinking as best we can, and when in my questioning I don’t have the spiritual legs to stand on firmly, he doesn’t crush me with answers.

2. He is a pastor.

This word has never meant so much to me as it does right now. I’ve never really felt in need of a pastor because I’ve never really felt lost enough to need one. I have felt a lot of lostness lately. The good kind of lostness. (Not lost in the sense that I want someone to show me the way out. I’m adamant that I don’t want easy answers or faith tied up in nice neat bows right now. I don’t want to be escorted out of the darkness, because I do believe the mystery of God is often explored in dark places.)  But I do have this desire to be reminded every now and then that I’m okay. That I’m not going under. That true life is filled with the most glorious mind-boggling paradoxes: in death we find life, in fear we find courage, in darkness we find light. A pastor, as I see it in Tony, is one who has strength when my own strength is waning, and who draws more fighting breath out of me when I was sure I was going to be swallowed up. He prays, out loud and silently, for me and for our family.

The other day he came home from work on his lunch break and had us sit down all together on two couches facing each other. This was after a morning of two of my kids screaming they hated me and me deciding I should have never become a parent to begin with. Sitting there staring at each other I felt a little wiggly. How could I look at my children and not love them? And as Tony prayed I felt anger fall away, and as Tony talked about an enemy wanting to destroy I felt a welling in my chest at the realization that this pastor husband of mine was fighting for us. He believes in redemption, fighting for free hearts, the love that binds, the on-going access to the Divine. Sometimes I feel like he believes enough for the both of us. That he is able to carry me for a moment until I can catch my breath.

3. His love is God when God is foggy.

The way this man loves me is rich and full of grace and fierce. He is on my side. He is for me. He may not be into the details of all the things I’m into. He may not want to sit and paint with me or hear me talk for hours about the powerful imagery in a novel I’m reading, but when it comes to helping me carve out space and time to do the things I love, he is all about it. He champions my artist’s heart and believes in me. He has always believed I am a writer, a creative, a poet. He believed in my silly dreads as much as I did. And so when the details of God are foggy, I think, yes, “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” The love of God is so often displayed to me through other humans, and lately that has happened powerfully through my husband.

4. He is human.

Tony and I are united in our humanity. In our messiness. In our trippings and fallings. When we were first married I NEEDED him. I NEEDED him to fill the empty places in me. I needed him to love me because I couldn’t love myself. I needed him to be my fix and my new set of rules. This did not go so well.

With time, somehow, I’ve managed to see him differently. Maybe it’s because I see myself in him. I see my own shortcomings and my need to be accepted anyway. I see my own limitations, and my desire to be worthy and valuable anyway. I see we are both just trying to do the best we can and sometimes that “best” seems to come up shorter than we would like.

Tony tells me, “True independence comes from a foundation of comfort and intimacy in those you depend on.” And I think he’s right. I can depend on him because I know when I accidentally spend $100 more than I need to on a car rental, he’s going to let it slide even though it’s infuriating and messy. And this helps me to be independent because I don’t have to cling to someone to fix me and all the mistakes I’m going to make. I become free to accept myself mistakes and all. Tony and I do this for each other. We embrace and unite in our humanity.

I don’t think this sort of relationship is limited to a spousal relationship, although the spousal relationship is the most intimate form I have found. I think we can also find these sorts of friendships in other areas of our life. I have a few artist friends (that I CAN paint with or talk about the powerful imagery of novels with for hours) that give me similar support. I have found it vital that I have these sort of people in my life. People that “get me.” They give me space for my wrestlings, they come along side in the darkness and they pour love on thick. It’s not perfect, but it’s necessary. It satisfies a spiritual need in ways words can only touch on.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friend, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

-Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson

“That is why we need to travel. If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; our ears don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. Don’t let yourself become one of these people. The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances the traveler has to take.”

-Letters to My Son, Kent Nerburn

“I’m thinking about taking the kids and driving to Colorado to visit friends for a week while you are in Australia,” I said to my husband, Tony. What do you think about that?”

He hesitated. I wondered what he was thinking about. He couldn’t have a doubt that I hadn’t already had. Money, safety on the road, my energy level – I had already been through all the reasons it wasn’t a good idea for me to go.

“I’d be fine with that,” he answered.

That was all the support I needed. You see, it seems on every dream list I write, travel becomes a part of it. I have this desire for wandering.

This need to explore. This urge to be around something and someone different than what I am always around. This need to be challenged, stretched, to have my horizons broadened. And this was a chance to own my own dream list and satisfy a bit of soul-longing that needed to be heard. I ran downstairs to email my Colorado friends of my intentions and to work out lodging and dates. I had to do it quickly before I talked myself out of it.

The trip, which I took the end of August, included stops in Colorado Springs, Boulder and Fort Collins. And for me, it turned out to be a bit of a pilgrimage. A trip I felt pulled to take.

There were conversations I had to have, sights I needed to see, a calling I had to answer.

The tension with travel is reflected in the two quotes I shared up above. Traveling is great because it allows you to get out of your normal routine and to see things in a new light. It can awaken your senses. It can have the sensation of bringing you back to life. However, traveling doesn’t let you get away from yourself. You are always with you, and if you think that by traveling you’ll be able to escape all the baggage you haven’t quite worked through at home, well, I’m here to tell you it’s a lie.

If your dreads feel a bit sloppy on your head at home, that feeling of sloppy will only intensify when you wake up on day 2 of your trip and realize you’re still you. If your kids only occasionally wet the bed at home, you can be sure it will happen in the most beautiful pristine guest bed. If you are unsure of your parenting and whether you want to lay down the law or give your kids free reign to explore, you can bet all boundaries will be tested, which will include being screamed at in public and possibly even kicked.

If you are floundering for your spiritual footing, you can bet those questions won’t escape you just because you’re in a new land (as I found out when my book agent asked me, “So, what, do you do with Jesus?)

If you are questioning where you fit in the world as an artist, you can bet your head will be all the more spinning with possibilities and insecurities as you rub shoulders with some greats.

As much as I wanted to gallivant with confidence into my Colorado adventure, the humble truths of my own limitations were very present reminders that I was still me, and that I was going to have to decide if I was okay with that or not.

Another chance to love myself. To accept myself. To allow myself to vulnerably unravel in the sunshine of the unknown.

The travel was messy. There were awkward moments I just soon not have had to face, but with them came this raw feeling of being alive.

This feeling of looking at myself in the mirror and saying, “You’re enough, even in your brokenness, you’re enough. And I’m listening to you. You want to travel? Well, here you are. You’re doing it! So what are you here for? What are you going to take home from this?” I was so proud of myself for having the courage to continue stepping through each unplanned day and to not lose touch with my soul-talk even though I was playing single-mom to four kiddios.

When I started to feel my energy wain and my patience slip away, I tried to look for secret messages to get me through.

And when I couldn’t find any, I would create my own. I was determined to find some soul-food so my artist’s heart wouldn’t wither up or cave in. It took every ounce of my self-awareness.

Sometimes it felt like I was holding on for dear life; it was invigorating.

Sometimes I felt like laughter was the best medicine.

Sometimes I just wanted to melt into the moments.

But then of course, when it’s time to go home, well…there is no place quite like home. Reuniting with Tony coming home from Australia wasn’t so bad.

In all seriousness, I’m still processing the person that I became on this journey, and on the majority of my current days where travel is not an option, I am thankful I can curl up to the warmth of these rich memories.

I have proof for my gypsy soul, “See, I listened to you, and when the time is right, I promise to listen again.”

PS Here’s another post on traveling I really enjoyed reading.

I want to have people into my home regularly.

I want to sit together over a meal and laugh and hear the clanking of glasses and silverware and hear the everyday ins-and-outs of what it means to be dark and to be light, to be human and to try and live full.

I want to watch movies with girlfriends or talk about good books. I want to hang out on couches with no particular place to go.

I want my kids to know old and young, wrinkled skin and skin of different colors, to know rich and poor, Christians and those who would not call themselves such.

And I want it all, at times, to unfold in the comfort of my home.

But the sticking point I keep running into is that home is not just comfort, it is also vulnerability.

I ran into this again recently. But first some back story:

It was in junior high that I came across a woman with chocolately smooth skin, long swaying dreadlocks and a diamond stud nose piercing. She was in a band that opened for a musical artist that I went to see. Following the concert, I saw the woman close-up, and I was sort of mesmerized by her unique beauty.

Since that time, on different occasions, I have run into people with their hair locked, and I would ask excited questions like, “How do you get your hair to do that?” and “Won’t you have to shave your head when you don’t want them anymore?” and “I’ve heard that bugs can get stuck in your hair and you won’t know it, is that true?” I was fascinated with dreadlocks, but I knew all the reasons why to talk myself out of them.

A couple months ago the desire to have my hair locked came back in full force. I can’t explain where it came from, or how it crept back into my dreams, but there it was, looking me eye-to-eye, and I knew I was not going to be able to run from it anymore. It was simply time.

So I humbled myself and did what I so desperately wanted to do all along. I invited people into my home. I decided to throw myself a birthday party and ask my friends if they would help me begin the process of locking my hair. This was all well and good in theory, but it wasn’t long before the vulnerability part began to unnerve me.

I need to feed my friends who come. I want to honor the time that they are giving me, because locking your hair really is an all-day affair. But food preparation and hospitality really aren’t my thing. While I love the thoughtfulness and artfulness of Martha Stewart like party decor, let’s just face it, I am far more MESSY than the likes of her. In comparison my home is the hang out in your sweatpants and get comfy sort of home. And I like it that way, until I have to let others in.

I started to panic. I could feed them lasagna and salad. Oh, but do I make vegetarian lasagna or meat lasagna? And when will I make the lasagna? And oh, how I hate making lasagna. I could make them a salad, but what if I get the bagged salad because it’s quicker and no one likes the chunky pieces of romaine stalks? I’ll buy wine, but what if I can’t afford to buy quite enough for my guests, or what if the kind I get breaks some sort of wine etiquette rule that I’m clueless about? And oh, will they mind that we have to drink out of plastic cups because I don’t have enough real wine glasses?

The self-conscious ramblings of a woman with big dreams and countless fears are not pretty. And if you let them, they drone on and on and on. What movies will I pick for us to watch? What if my home is too small to seat all my friends? Or worse yet, what if none of my friends show up? What if the things hanging on my wall are childish or clashing? What if they find a dirty sock in the couch cushion or a piece of crusty old waffle stuck to the floor? [The picture above is of all the stuff we found down the back of our couch recently.] Or what if one of my boys has a miss-aim in the bathroom that morning and they fail to tell me about it? What if my friends are offended by my audaciousness to ask them to do my hair?

But oh, dear, I simply cannot do this alone.

I cannot do this alone.

And that is the conclusion I am coming to, not just for this one upcoming dreadlock birthday party, but for all of life.

I want people to be a part of my life. I want to make friends. I want to be stretched by the interactions I have with people who are different than me, and I want to grow close with those who speak my artistic language. I want to have someone to clank silverware and glasses with. And I want it, even if they have to see that I am MESSY. I want it especially for them to see I am MESSY, because though I fear it, ultimately I long to be fully known.

For any of this to happen somebody has to offer the invitation. Someone has to ask the question, “Here’s what I’d like to do, so will you come along?” Maybe that someone has to be me. Maybe that someone has to be you.

My friend Abbi recently threw herself a karaoke birthday party. She invited a bunch of women to dress up in costume, complete with wig and to accompany her to a neighborhood karaoke bar for a few hours of fun. For the first time in my life, I was given the opportunity to stand on a stage and sing Walk Like An Egyptian in full Gypsy Rose costume. I am so thankful that Abbi invited me into her own vulnerable dream, because what I received from it was a rush that I can actually do things I thought I was too scared to do. That’s empowering.

I’m beginning to think this vulnerability piece is key to actually living out the dreams you long for. How can you receive if you never ask?

So let’s throw big {for us} questions out into the universe. Let’s offer big invitations that are vulnerable and risk everything. Let’s conjure up junior high dreams and live them out in our big adult lives. Because I’m finding when we do so there are plenty of people who scoff or laugh, but there is also always at least one silently sitting on the sidelines wishing for just such an opportunity to dive into.

Who’s going to do the inviting (even before all the details are solidified and all the RSVPs are secured)?

I’m not really here. I am still on blogging sabbatical. This post is a figment of your imagination. And hopefully since it’s your imagination, it’s something you’ll actually want to read.

“She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves…They belonged to her and were her own, and she entertained the conviction that she had a right to them and that they concerned no one but herself.”

- Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.

What’s wrong with allowing others a little mystery?

Why is it necessary to poke holes in a life philosophy that calls for an occasional secret fort, adventurous mission, fierce spy, exotic beauty or mystical shaman every now and then?

We pose probing questions: Where are you going? Why are you doing that? Who are you going with? What will you be doing there? Wouldn’t it be better if…?

In our attempt to be “in the know” we sometimes steal from another the slightest hint of magic. If the details are all laid out do we leave any room for the mystery to blow through and take someone’s breath away?

I love it that when I go out for some time away from my family, Tony never asks me to recount all the details. I can share them if I wish, but in the end they are mine. And somehow, in not sharing everything, something magical from the evening remains intact.

We love secrets.

But when did keeping secrets become such a dirty thing? Certainly not everything that happens privately and intimately is shame worthy. Does everyone need to know everything? Why do we feel so obligated to divulge?

I think of Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan. They are sharing stories and one guy asks Tom Hanks to tell him about a specific special memory of his wife and Tom Hanks says “No, that memory is for me.”

Perhaps one way we can help cultivate the mystery in our lives is to let some things remain just that – a mystery.

To hold close some of our deepest thoughts.

To not be so quick to spout off our biggest dreams.

To believe there is something happening within us that is so wonderful no one would believe it if we told them.

Because I adore the book Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, I’m participating in the #Trust30 Challenge. This post is inspired by this prompt.

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name;—— the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Moments of clarity can come to us in the oddest of places. I was standing in a town-square when I had my major epiphany.

It blew in out of nowhere, like the cool ocean breeze used to do when we crowned the final hill going into Laguna Beach and rolled down our windows to taste the air, breathing it in deep like an asthmatic’s drug.

The grass was greener and thicker than it should have been, like an astroturf carpet, though far less scratchy, had been flown in specifically for this one great island in this one tiny town.

I was responsible for two two-year-old boys that day, and felt divided as they raced in opposite directions threatening to infiltrate the border of curbs. At moments, I completely forgot about my three other children, so lost was I in toddler wanderings and futile attempts to keep all danger at bay. I was a sweaty, ragged mess of a thing, my eyes darting like I was watching an intense game of battle-to-the-death ping-pong. Prior to his race, Tony noticed my strung-out mannerisms and promised me all sorts of succulent rewards like manicures and massages and time alone sipping on lattes and sucking on chocolates while doodling in my journal. (Which reminds me, I’m not sure I ever cashed in on said succulent rewards.)

The cyclists swished around us, the bee-hum of the pack droning and then fading and then droning again when they came back in sight. I think I watched the race that day, moments of it anyway, in between re-hydrating toddlers, cleaning up melting popsicle situations and retrieving over-launched frisbees from asphalt.

It was there, in my inability to be all that I needed to be, in my divided mind, in my hands wide open for help and in my surrender to my plight, that I tasted life in deep. It came and rested on my tongue, like pop-rocks, zapping taste buds with momentary shocks before pouncing to the back of my throat where I could swallow it down quickly so it wouldn’t escape. This was it, a moment of savoring, and I knew it would blow through as quickly as it had blown in. I felt as if my feet were growing roots down into the vibrant, green, soft island-blanket and those roots were barreling through the ground and shooting up to connect me to the feet, like synapses, of each and every person in eye’s distance.

The threesome of women with tan skin, boy haircuts and plaid shorts.
The girl and her dog who brought us treats.
The mom of three, the smallest of who was running topless and rubbing her little hands over her chest and tiny bump of a belly.
The blonde pigtails of tiny girls, swishing back and forth and back and forth as they ran.
The girlfriend who fished wipes out of my black hole of a diaper bag, so I could wipe away sticky ice cream drips.
The beards and the tattoos and the JCrew perfections and the thick muscles and the single parents and the older couple admiring the clouds and the crashes and the milling of the crowds.

We were all connected, all one, and I fit in just exactly as I was. I didn’t need to shrink back or lunge exuberantly forward. And they fit in, just exactly as they were. I didn’t need to convert them, upsize or downsize them, convince them or tweak them, own them or dismiss them.

It was all just right and natural and unforced.

And I laughed. Right out loud I laughed, as the epiphany of ocean breezes gave me goosebumps and I shivered in the high, 90-degree weather as I chased red-cheeked toddler boys up and down and around concrete steps and bronzed statues and felt as if for one moment we were all suspended in mid-air where we couldn’t hurt each other but could gain a sense of our true unity and catch a fleeting glance at the majesty of our true anti-gravity identity, and have ears to hear the drone of hearts beating passionately all at once, all for One.