Remembering to Breathe

by Calliopejen1, from Wikimedia Commons

I'm standing on a worn wooden floor, marked with dents and silvery grey streaks. Two walls of this large room are lined with floor to ceiling mirrors, and the outside wall is covered in large picture windows. It's an unusually warm spring day, and I can feel sweat on the small of my back from the warm-up. I snap my heels together à la Dorothy Gale, and the steel taps on the bottoms of my shoes click pleasantly. The sound blends in to the other clicks around the room as the rest of the class fidgets between songs.

Eliza Doolittle Day

By William Bruce Ellis Ranken (1881-1941)
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

"What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What's to become of me?" 
(Pygmalion Act 4, Line 51)

Eliza Doolittle's words echo regularly in my mind. This is my refrain in young adulthood. No longer a child, still establishing myself as the mythical Adult, I wonder what is to become of me.

Like Eliza facing her triumph at the ball, I look at my own list of accomplishments and wonder what comes next. I am a member of Sigma Tau Delta. I have a BA. I'm earning an MA. I recently joined the NCWA. I'm married. I have two jobs. I have a car in my name. I have student loans. I have a cell phone bill. I pay for insurance. I'm a pet owner. I have houseplants that are still alive.

give thanks

"Eucharist [thanksgiving] is the state of the perfect man. Eucharist is the life of paradise. Eucharist is the only full and real response of man to God's creation, redemption, and gift of heaven."
-Alexander Schmemann

I am working through Ann Voskamp's book One Thousand Gifts: a Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are which my mentor gave me a few months ago. I'm only a little way into the book, but it is very powerful. (I cried through the entire first chapter.)

If, like me, you've made cynicism into a shield you carry between yourself and the world, perhaps you might consider picking up a copy?

Snowkissed

This is the first time that I want to kiss you.
I look at the snow fluffed around our feet in soft mounds.
My breath escapes my lips in wisps and clouds, mingling with yours.
In a moment, this space will be gone,
And I will have lost you.
A snowflake falls on my glove, brilliant and perfect.
My eyes look up to meet yours, but you look past me.
You're far away, and I tread the waves of what could have been.

Confession: when I first found this poem tucked into a folder on my laptop, I did not recognize it, but I know that I wrote it, probably a couple of years ago. I don't write poetry often, but here ya go.

Kyrie, eleison

In the midst of tragedy's fallout, I feel like my own words are useless. How do I take this language I grew up speaking and use it to describe the horrifying powerlessness victims experience in the face of natural disaster? Nothing I say will raise the flattened buildings, bring the dead back to life.

And I don't understand the devastation. I live nowhere near the path of the tornado that ripped through Moore, Oklahoma, yet I feel a spike of terrified awe as I read about the two-mile wide twister. I cannot bring myself to view footage of the storm, and I cry with each new development I read.

There are parents who still do not know if their children are dead or alive. I cannot fathom their anguish. I cannot imagine having everything taken from me in one day's time, and my heart grieves for those who have lost so much this week.

I am reminded of a friend's response to the bombings at the Boston Marathon--I don't understand. Lacking the words for an original prayer, I offer this: Kyrie, eleison.

Lord, have mercy.


If you are looking for ways to help the victims of Monday's tornado, please go here.

Northwest Christian Writers Renewal 2013 - a personal recap

Have you ever noticed how easily we tune ourselves out? I know that in some cases, it's incredibly beneficial to silence our inner critic, but sometimes, we end up shutting down our deepest desires at the same time because we think, "Such and such isn't practical."

So we take those activities that we enjoy and shove them into a hobbies box, running the risk of forgetting all about them. If writing (or painting, or playing the cello, or tap dancing, or gardening, or--you fill in the blank) is merely a hobby, it is easy to prioritize something else on top of that or to equate it with other hobbies like watching Netflix or surfing the internet for cat .gifs. (Guilty...)

I will post more tomorrow, but...

...here is a photo from the lobby at Overlake Christian Church to hold you over until I can better wrap my head around this weekend.

Spoiler: the weekend was WONDERFUL!