Redemption

There's got to be redemption somewhere in this story. Redemption, salvation, mercy. My whole life has seemed distantly sad to me, and now...well, like I said, there has to be redemption somewhere.

I've lived under this shadow of watching need overrule love, outrank selflessness, and smother relationship. I am watching the final threads of some tapestry that I looked to as my modal of marriage and family unravel. And I am spent. I have carried this burden for so long. Thinking that their fate would be mine and that somehow I am them and that I am responsible. I have tried through manipulation, through yelling, through thickened silences to cause movement, change to take place. Obviously I am not God.

Obviously I am not God and I cannot save. All I want to do is find the line in my heart and live my own life, not own their mistakes. I think I used to think that I was the only reason that my parents were married. That God really wanted me born so he had to get them together. And now that I exist it dissolves the vows that were made. That was years ago, but here I am again fingering this thought like a familiar blanket.

It seems that I am trying to make sense of the shattered pieces that have been around for so long. We've weaved our way through them gingerly, caring to not cut our feet. But there's been a strong wind lately and they are not out in the familiar pattern, so blood is being let and I am wondering.

How do I care without carrying? How do I love wholeheartedly and yet not take responsibility? How do I let them be them, and keep me as me? I think that I have been the parent for so long that I don't know how to just let them make these huge caverns of hurt be what they are. I was always the interpreter, the defender, the go between. I was never suppose to have that role. I am the daughter. The one who should have been defended. I think I just want life. I am tired of all this death around me. It's been after me since the day I was born and it's tried to take me out many times. But I am not dead yet. I haven't really lived yet either, but I want to at least try. Not just try but thrive.

This is what I want redemption to look like in my life. I want to thrive, as my friend told me to do recently. I want to take risks that I've feared for so long. I keep saying this. But what am I doing about it? Stuck in a revolving door of debt, I feel trapped.

29 years.

Oh God. Help.

these summer nights

I think of you. I hold the dark glowing embered clove between my fingers, the evening summer wind caresses the nape of my neck and I think of you. I wonder where you are. I remember those perfect summer nights with fine wine and even better company. My body shudders with a deep sigh: confession of a lingering love. I don't think one ever "gets over" a love like that. We move on, we grow, we live. But you were a part of me, pieces of you are still stuck in me and I'm quite certain you get whiffs of me when beauty strikes your heart a certain way.

Do you remember those leather seats with the wind whipping through your car? You hated the wind, I loved it. You and I, fire and wind. We were a constant contradiction, but somehow for that brief season we complimented, we completed, we were.

I hope you are healing. I am healing. I am seeing the things in me that you reacted to, the pieces of me that hated you for being born a man, and me for being born a woman. I am seeing the season, the goose chase, the difficult tenderness that was so confusing, I am seeing it for what it was. Nothing more, nothing less.

You opened up the beauty inside of me, even if you never meant to, you did. I'm not sure how it all works, I just know that I don't understand. I don't understand how years later I have a clove and the smoke and summer wind pulls me into this tender place of reminiscences. This is how memory is suppose to be. I am very aware of all the things that were terribly dysfunctional about us. But I am choosing to remember you in those moments of overwhelming revelry, discovery of beauty. I am choosing to remember how I felt beautiful, ironically, because of you.

Do you remember that conversation, I think it was in May, before we graduated? We were sitting on that wood deck outside of the Annex and we realized that we were healing from the same disease this whole time. I still think that we are healing from the same disease, we just couldn't do it together anymore.

I hope that the poison from feeling abandoned and betrayed has not marred your memory. I hope that there are moments of reprieve in which you remember with clarity the pure enjoyment of life together with people who loved you, and whom you loved.

After all of this time, I've come back round to love. The grief has run it's course. I hope to see you again. I hope you let me past that mask you wear so well, so convincingly. I hope you forgive me, completely, permanently.

I hope you are enjoying these summer nights.

Bounderies

How the hell do you have them? For a person suffering with co-dependancy I do not know! How do you not leak yourself all over an unsuspecting person? How do you not allow a person leak all over you? Worst of all, how do you forgive and let go if someone through their and your brokenness end up hurting you?

These are my recent questions, as I wrestle with the idea of bounderies. Idea, because that is all it is to me at this point in my life. An idea that I am really wanting to become a reality.

I was talking to some friends last night about the wrestle I've been having for the last 10 years about confronting a woman in my life that did great hurt to me. A large part of the wrestle, I finally realized, was that I was anticipating her response to my confrontation and was feeling responsible for it. Whoa. Stop the presses. No wonder I've agonized over this for so long. I think that some how I can say just the right thing, just the right way so that she will be confronted and feel loved at the same time?? How is that my responsibilty? It's been ten years! Over a third of my life letting this person still have power over me because of saying the "right" thing. I'm not going to say the right thing. It will never be exactly perfect in its presentation! But what I am responsible for is me. Is my response, is my own letting go of my expectation of how she is going to react. Of forgiving and really meaning it, really letting go of my hurt. Of course I would love it if she saw all of the things she did to me as the horrific acts of mental, emotional, and spiritual abuse that they were, and owned up to them, not only in my life but in the lives of other people I love. Realisically, I know that she probably won't. But I don't have to worry about that side of the letter. (did I mention that all this agony is over a letter??) I am here on this side. Although I have an uncanny gift to hear how a person is hearing me, it's not my place to hold myself and them in a prison of unforgiveness. It's time. It's time I let my Father take care of me on that end. I don't know how it's going to work out, but:

I am going to write the damn letter. I am going to close this damn door that's been gapping open for far too long. She doesn't scare me the way she used to. I don't dream about yelling at her and telling her that she can't treat me "this" way anymore. She's withered up into a sick and broken lady who happens to need love and forgiveness as much as I do.

Forgiveness. Who am I to withhold what has been given so freely to me? This is my humility.

The Dress

It was an amazing find, this dress. Trunk show, insane amounts of estrogen flowing through the vents of the venue. Curvy women strutting their stuff. Grabbing, like only women can, at material sewn in flattering but very stylish ways only for them. It was a lesson in female bonding. I couldn't help but laugh at the mayhem and join in myself. I found a random room, packed to the gills with stuff. I had only a small wedge of floor space on which to try on practically pilfered dresses. The first dress was a smash up top, but a disaster down below. The second dress: unbelievable. I could tell it looked awesome just by the way it felt. The peoples faces when I stepped out of the wedge room attested as well. No question here, even though there was no mirror, it was coming home with me! And for such a price! My roommate was getting swept away in the surf of large breasts and flabby arms reaching, pulling, vying for fashion that would suit them. She was digging, I was digging, once we both pulled ourselves out of the racks to find that we had picked up the same exact dress in our respective sizes, independent of one another, we laughed, then I proceeded to try it on over all of my clothes. A sight to behold, but like I said: mayhem..

Having my fill of my svelte peers I pressed toward the check out line. All around me women. Women all around. Such costumes! Such makeup! There isn't a script for this. It was like for one brief moment, we all got to leave our "other-than-perfect" body image issues outside and were just simply women. I didn't feel judged, I actually felt beautiful. That's not a feeling I experience very often. It was nice.


I am going to be wearing this dress in a wedding in about 5 weeks This weekend we are adding length to the bottom of it so it is floor length. I put this dress on and my heart starts beating loud. I have this rush of emotions. Part of me thinks, "wow! what a dress", the other part of me is mocking my attempts at wearing it. It is this intense tug of war between what my eyes see and what my heart sees. I know that I should wear this dress, no matter the ripples that show that have nothing to do with the material. The voices that periodically run through my head, the ones that made me want to be invisible, I am still so afraid of those voices that I feel guilty for putting people through the agony of seeing me. Not just seeing me, but noticing me. The angel on my left shoulder tells me that it is good for me to risk and to accept myself the way that I am right now. The impostor, on the right, tells me I should just call Alecia and accept the label of failure because people were right when they said that no one would ever be attracted to me because of the way that I looked. Interpretation from a little heart: They'll all be grossed out, I'm repulsive. Better not ever be seen like that. Keep a low profile. Maybe if my personality is big enough they won't notice that I'm fat and ugly.

At this point, throwing in the towel becomes not an option. I have just given my motives away. Even though there are moments when I have a panic attack and all I want to do is run away, I cannot, in good conscious, write this and then back out of the wedding. Especially when I am always the one saying that you have to fight for your heart.

Nope. I'm going to wear it. And I'm going to forget all of the "shoulds and oughts" that plague me every day of my life and enjoy myself, and "the Dress", and delight in celebrating what love does to two people who are willing to fight for each other. Maybe I'll even forget myself for a while and dance.

It's that time again

Birthdays. what is it about birthdays that make you take stock of your last year of living life to see if it measures up to some kind of imaginary self measuring stick of loathing you just end up beating yourself with? (I know. it was a run on sentence)

In a few days I will have officially ended my 28th year of life on the earth and be officially labeled, "twenty-eight". What have I done in my twenty-eighth year? I sold all of my belongings (which, let me just tell you...was a hell of a lot), and I moved half way across the country. Something to be noted for sure. I discovered some intense realities of my brokenness. And have become more weak and humbled by my weakness then ever before.

All that to say: my glorious year is over.

I was asking Jesus today about disappointment and hope. And I was sincerely wondering why people hope in the first place. It has seemed to do me little to no good to hope for anything. I feel like the majority of the time it ends up being a complete blow out of a disappointment. Are my expectations too high? That's probably a given. But what should I do? Settle? Settle for the mediocrity that I hate about my life and deal with it. Sounds completely annihilating for my heart. I was wondering about that scripture that says something like, "and hope does not disappoint" and I decided that yes. Yes it does. It seems like that is all it does.

Then I heard a little voice in my head, "Hope in Me."

"Hope in Me"? What does that mean? I feel like I've forgotten the art of hoping in Jesus for the sake of Jesus. Maybe its not an art. Maybe its desperiation manifest through a manic activity such as hope, faith. What does it say? "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" Such a simple sentence, but there is so much that I don't get out of it. So it seems like you start with hope. "Hope in Me". Then from that substance (Jesus?) it becomes faith through Jesus. So maybe its this simple. Hope through Jesus is faith. He's like the great converter, the power adaptor if you will. and Jesus does not disappoint. It may seem like he does, but I found out a while ago that the reason I was so disappointed in God was because I had put a ton of expectations on him he never agreed to. So when he didn't do what I wanted him to, I got all huffy and disappointed. But then it comes to this: hope vs. expectation? Such a tangled web I live in.

"Hope in Me"

She came into work today. I know what happened to her this weekend. She doesn't know that I know. She's just hunched over on her desk hoping that I won't notice that her once full, life-filled belly is now a concave form, empty. The blood is all sucked from her face and has bled into her eyes. They are bloodshot and void, with too much crying and emotion.

They told her something was wrong with the baby. They told her that she would be in danger if she carried it. They told her that her best option was to rid her body of it. I knew all of this the moment she said last week, "I don't want to talk about it right now." What was I suppose to do?

Fashion Sense

Were has it all gone? Portland has a unique style all it's own. Mostly it includes waiting for the next flood and mimicing the trees (green and brown). I didn't realize how far removed from the "fashion world" (the mere idea of me even writing these words is more than a little ironic) I'd be when I moved to Portland. Not that Kansas City is a hot bed for cutting edge by any means, but it's just a differant breed of people.

It is kind of nice not to worry about how you look, but than again, there are no social norms by which to guage how "in or out" one is. I take that back. There are social norms. But they just seem so comical to me that I guess I'll be out on this one. I do ride public transit, that makes me cool.

Bones

The skin of her jaw was pulled so tight that I could see the pores in her bones. Her eyes were big and scared and so was her hair. She slouched like she was trying to be a man, but she was too beautiful to pull it off. I could tell she was running. Running from something very unfamiliar to me, but I am sure it was very familiar to her. Her brown leather shoes were warn thin, it seemed as if she'd been running all her life.

She reminded me of my sister because of the way my sister views life. She has had one of the shittyest lives of anyone I know. And yet she still trudges on. Holding on to some small string of hope that is my very tall, very thin nephew. And of course, my heart aches for her. And I have nothing to say. Nothing to offer either of them. I want to give them Jesus, but that seems so committal. And when life gets hard again for them, and they look to me and blame my blameless God, what do I say? It just seems so unfair to me.

My Jesus doesn't save me from things that happen in life. He cushions it a little, he helps me learn, he comforts me. Sometimes. Sometimes the heart aches and its stays there in that empty place, seemingly all by its self. But I know that he is there, waiting in the darkness with me. I don't know how to explain that to two women who just want to be rescued. I suppose it isn't up to me how they respond to life slapping them this way and that. I suppose it's up to the one who made them, the one who is trying to write redemption on thier bones.

Elements

The wind is howling tonight, and I have been thinking: you can never go home. I am reading a story about a little girl who is learning about life and how hard it is through radical socialist parents in the 30s. I realized that even at that young age we are looking for home. I remember feeling I was always out of place, that I never fit in, even in my family. My shoes were either too big or too small.

And, I can never go home.

Home is a memory, ancient and ageless, one that I was born with, one that I ache with even now. Home is a beating heart inside someone else, home is a ethereal place that cannot be reached on this plane. Why do I ache for it when the wind blows? Is it because the wind is a constant reminder of my wandering heart? Because I am blown this way and that? I have an anchor, but my rope is probably too long and I feel I am getting lost at sea. Home is being known, and resting in love there. Home is knowing just as deeply and trusting and being trusted. Home is a solid place for your heart to be grounded. Home is the hope that keeps me aloft. My constant hope and desire for a home keeps me changing, and asking to be changed. Home is safety and rest. Home is challenge and shelter. Home is the place where you are reminded why you live and breath. Home is where you gain your strength, home is peace.

My response to your Question

I wish I had the ability to make broken people whole. To heal the broken hearted and to free people from the fears that hold them sway. I crave these things for myself and I feel it bleeding from the emotional pores of the people around me everyday. I am aware. I am some sort of incense of prayer in the aching of my soul.

That’s how I am doing this morning. I wrote it because it comes out better when I write.How are you this morning? (Honestly)

Prayer: Stones

Prayer. It weighs on me like a stone sometimes. Most times these days.

It’s not that I don’t want to pray. I just don’t know how. How do I pray? All I really do is cry and ache these days, and call it prayer. What is prayer if it is not birthed from that? I guess there is the faithful prayer, and the disciplined prayer, but these autumn days are filled with aching and crying.

There is a girl that works with me, not in close proximity but on the floor I am on. She wants to be a He. And has taken steps in that direction. She is also only in her early 20’s. She known by a man’s name around the office, but I found out the other day that her real name is Leah. When I heard that my heart just sank and I couldn’t help but ache for her. Ache for my God, the God who is my Father and the Father of everything living to come and be her Father. To come and hold her like He holds me sometimes. To tell her it’s going to be okay and that she is beautiful.

She’s not even a convincible he. I have more facial hair than she does, and my voice is deeper. I’ve had shorter hair and well. Were it not for this tell-tell body of mine, I would pull of a much better man than she. But I have also been incredibly healed in so many of my sexuality questions. So much of my feminity and desire for wholeness as a woman has only recently happened.

My housemate was just talking to me about a woman she knows, let’s call her “Susan”, who was kicked out of her parents house at the rip old age of 13. And was left to fend for herself all these years. She’s in her 30’s now and has a pre adolescent son who has some developmental disorders. She is also the victim of everyone’s rejection of her. To this day. And my beautiful friend was sitting on the couch crying because she doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t even know how to pray for her any more. Susan used to live with my housemate, but the Lord strongly told her that it was time for Susan to have her own house. So my housemate obeyed and stopped (in whatever way) enabling Susan in her brokenness. But Susan has been a victim for so long that she knows no other way of living.

This weighs on my heart like a stone. This ache breaks my heart because I have no answers. I know the only answer is for Jesus to break through (like I so desperately need in some deep dark areas of my own life) and deliver her from her wretchedness into her true identity as a daughter of the King. But how does that happen when a person (like myself) is more comfortable living in the slop of self-pity and loathing than in donning robes of righteousness and crowns of glory and playing the part of reality?

There really was no answer I could give my housemate as she wept over Susan longing for God to do something. There is no answer because I found myself relating so closely with her description of this broken woman. And I ache for that deliverance in my own temple of flesh and bone, but I’m struggling to let in the light that will make it day.

These muscles of righteousness and purity have been far out of use. I just wonder how it will turn out. For me, for Susan, and for Leah. I feel it is times like this that I become prayer. I am them, she is me. I ache for deliverance for her, I ache for me. Surely one of us, maybe even all of us will see the Hand of God someday. I just hope that I can keep my heart before him and not run away, like I so often do.

i am...portland (8 minute stream)

I hear bells and strings and laughter. I hear the sound of falling water, and engines, and restless hearts. I feel the stirrings of some underground subterranean ache that was birthed long ago in the very heart of this place.

I hear this city. I love this city. I AM this city. So broken, forgotten, abandoned, yet found and tenderly cared for, though it/I doesn't/don't even know it.

I am green, I am a constant drizzle of thought, emotion, turning inside.

I am a cloudy day and oh my god, when I'm sunny, how glorious am I!

I am brokenness, I am healing, I am poor and I am dirty, but I am loved.

I am a childs' laughter, the friendly bark of a dog.

I am the center without knowing it.

I am happiness in running, I am loneliness personified, I am rejection, and I am rejected.

I pray when I ache and ache to pray. I cry, I sing, I don't laugh enough.

I am the beauty in the trees, the seasons become me, though the rainy ones are longer than most.

I am wisdom, I am light, I am warmth, I am a big fat fight. Wouldn't you like to be me?

I am the cramp in your hand when you are trying to write, I'm the music on the page that holds the secret to your favorite song, but you can't read.

I am a loud boisterous voice of profanity, I am the clanging bells of alarm, I am early morning sanity, and late afternoon breakdowns.

I am a pumpkin patch, warm and green, but lumpy.

I am autumn, I am spring, I am winter and I love to sing. Call me summer when you are wet and cold and I'll wrap around you like your favorite coat.

I just need a song

I am working now. I am attempting the travel business again. We'll see how it goes.

I got off work today, standing at my bus stop I decided to hang out in the Square for a while. I was just feeling some stuff.

I bought myself a small latte and sat next to the waterfall fountains and drowned out the noise of downtown for a while. Knitting, of course. Because knitting is what I do now.

As I sat there I watched various people, and there are a varied bunch on the square, I felt this ache, this groan of prayer come from somewhere deep inside. At one point I literally thought about standing up right where I was and singing at the top of my lungs because I couldn't take it anymore. I figured that no one would hear me above the roar of the waterfalls and I didn't know what to sing anyway. (maybe one day I won't have these dismissive thoughts and I'll actually do something that nuts) I just sat there and prayed inside of myself. Not really even sure what I was praying. It's like that verse in Romans (I think) about the Spirit inside of us helping us with groanings too deep for words because we can't utter them. That is how intense it felt.

Everytime I am on the Square I feel this. I decided to go home because I wanted to worship so bad. I am desparate for a piano to play here. We have a keyboard at the house, but it is not the same. Anyway, I get on the bus and it's like this vacuum for feeling. You are smushed together with dozens of people trying to breathe and you miss something about your heart on the way home. It almost feels like this thing lifted once we got out of the downtown area. So by the time I get home I'm not so achy. I ended up telling my housemate that I was in desperate need to worship and as it turns out, so was she. So we did. It was dry and not real refreshing. I felt like I was trying to hard or something. I don't know how to not just go to my default when I worship.

Anyway, all that to say. I am hopeful that Jesus is on His way to showing me about his heart for the poor and the fatherless in this city. I can't escape it. It has gripped me in a way that not much in my life has up to this point. I am scared and excited about this season coming up. These are the city streets he's been calling me into for the last 5 years of my life. I'm going to find him here. In the eyes of the broken, the fatherless, the prostitute, the stinky. I am them. He is mine, that makes me me, and them me.

Pray for me to be brave. To be "bold with strength in my soul" Ps 138. I know that one day I will sing on these streets. I just need a song.

Explanation

"If you don't know what an extrovert is thinking/feeling, you haven't listened.
If you don't know what an introvert is thinking/feeling, you haven't asked."

Simply

“Help me to simply live”

This is the last line of the journal entry I just made. I am shedding something. Something complicated. Shedding some false sense of self, of security, of pride. I realize that this means that a lot will change. I’ve been waiting for it. Expecting it. Afraid of it, and excited for it all at the same time. Maybe this is the Kingdom of God being birthed in me. I’m ready for it. I am pregnant with Hope. Maybe I have been all this time. Maybe its time for her to be born. For Hope to become a substance in my life. Hope is the very thing I have hoped for. For a reason outside of myself to live, for something to give my heart over to.

So here it is. The change of my life, to carry and foster Hope inside of me so that others can meet Her. To let her be alive.

Excerpts from Galatians 4.
But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir…My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you…Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son." Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.

panelled room

It's not what it sounds. Or maybe it is exactly as it sounds. I am living in a fully panelled room right now. For the next few days as things are being rearranged in my new house I'm downstairs in a room that is floor to ceiling (and ceiling) panelling. It smells like fir to me. I could be wrong. My nose is off these days.

Upstairs if the doors are open it smells like cedar. The ocean must be tied to every molecule of cedar because when it's wet it smells like the salty air when you get close to the ocean. I'd forgotten how the trees up here retain that salty smell.

I must admit: I'm a chicken.

lines

The lines on my face say more than I would like them to some times. There has been a gradual downward shift in the shape of my mouth over my years here in Kansas City. I noticed it a few months ago and wondered about it. What had changed in me so much that caused my whole face to be more attracted by gravity than it used to be? I don't laugh as much as I used to.

My friend Kristen told me that my contagious laughter made me bearable, because I am so melancholy the rest of the time. But when I laugh, the whole world laughs with me. I don't want to lose that part of myself. I have felt this last year in Kansas City weigh on me more than any other year I've lived here. I've become serious. And I guess I am sort of torn between serious and "grown up". I'm not that comfortable with being "grown up", and truth be told I pretty much suck at the refinements of it, i.e. suitable conversation for parties, making people comfortable when you first meet them, etc. Neither am I comfortable with being serious, in general. I guess I can't help but make jokes at every turn, sometimes it becomes compulsive, and I can't turn it off.

There is this new person I met. A brother of a friend of mine, and I don't know what my problem is, but I keep attacking, I keep pushing, and making combative verbal gestures. I don't mean it! I don't want to do it! Why can't I just be a normal 27 year old female that can "be", and not act like a threatened little 12 year old. I really like this guy, he is hilarious, doesn't deserve my abuse. Don't get me wrong. He said: "sarcasm is my love language", so he is sort of asking for it.

I am a witty and charming person. I enjoy being with people, especially funny people. There is a switch that flips, less now than when I was younger, and turns me into this bitch-machine that become inarticulate and combative, reduced to cussing and crude hand signals. WHO IS THAT? The worst version of myself, that's for sure!


This is me right before I moved to Kansas City. My dad was taking pictures of me and my best friend Missy. I don't even remember what we were laughing about.

I miss the people in my life that make me laugh like this. They have all moved away, and I will never live in the same city as them again. I hate that about life. I'm sorry but I do. It just makes me want to get to heaven all the more. I have a great theory that when we get to heaven (after a millennium of freaking out at how beautiful God really is) we will have these private screening rooms of different events in history. There is going to be a whole room of "funniest moments" and I will be howling and rolling on the ground with Jesus at some of these moments in my life and in other peoples lives. At least there I won't have to worry about peeing my pants.

This is a list(not comprehensive) of the funniest people I know, in no particular order:
Jeremiah Gonda
Jeremiah LaCoille
Amber Fannin
Heather Ayres
Gretchen Bourquin
Bret Bourquin
Rachel Liegghio
Samuel Sullivant
Colin Walker
Jason Henderson
Luke Sullivant
Joel Sorge
Prestidge Boys (I'm assuming the ones I haven't met are just as funny)
David Blackwell
Adam Short
Sarah Cox
Pamela Merwin
Kristen Curry
Tikva Twomey
Shannon Vinson
Gabriel Kellmer
Alissa Parker
Nate Haas
Greg Buckman
Jesse Robertson
Donald Carter
Jim Walker
Linda Walker
Missy Lee
Karen Stacey
David Rosen
Chris Dupre and Gary Wiens (together)
Stuart Graves
Leah Morgan

this is a short list of people that have made my life more bearable by making me laugh hysterically at least a few times, enough for me to consider them funny.

Best of all. Anna Walker. I make myself laugh more than anyone knows.

a whole lot I don't know about yet

Man and Wife, just say it, Man and Wife...

They never said, "I do".
richer, poorer, in sickness and in health, thick and thin, babies, death, lies and forgiveness...however it goes.

I am disturbed. I have become accutely aware of the lack of followthrough in relationship lately. I don't know how I am going to say all of this, I apologize for it's roughness.

I have cried over my friends marriages more in the last week then I have ever thought possible. For the first time I am seeing with differant eyes the lies that we are brought up believing are truths. And as I watch the unravelling effect that reality has on real life marriages it makes me sick.

Ideals. Optimisim, "hope", "faith", all these words that might describe someone who is nieve enough to think that the princess gets her prince and they live happily ever after.

Let me state: I am getting the cynisim knocked out of me right now, even as I attempt to write some thoughts about this. It all started last week after I watched the interaction of a married couple that I know in front of all these people at thier daughters birthday party. I ached inside when I left. I groaned. I got angry. I began spouting poison about how marriage never works and how its all a big sham from the beginning. God never meant it to work out, it was just pain and brokenness magnified. As I was spewing these vile lies I felt deep inside of me this tug to go to Jesus about it and repent for accusing God of not being good.

I broke down in my car. drapped over my steering wheel weeping, repenting for taking the imperfect and blaming God for it. I set my heart to live and not to take in the poison that I had been from my childhood watching my own broken parents struggle with what marriage was.
I think something changed inside of me. I think that God flipped a switch in me. I prayed for mercy on my friends who were hurting each other. I begged God to protect them and to show himself to them.

a day later, on my birthday, my friend got a phone call from her boyfriend and he broke up with her, stating something like insanity for his case. (thank you very much for your perfect timing) And it began to strike me that something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong. I had an appointment with my counsellor on my birthday and it was something we talked about. About marriage and relationships, etc. and the piece of massive truth that has since been totally unravelling me was this: At the moment of seeing sin (someone procreating sin in someone elses life, etc.) there are two options for a response. The first, being the godly one, is that you can see the situation as it is, feel the impact of sin and fallenness in people's lives and grieve, with Jesus, about it...which often times I have discovered leads into intercession for those people/that situation. The second, being the ungodly response, is that you take what you see and you swallow it whole as "life experiance", and you let it sink deep into you. Usually this produces a deep anger and rage about the unfairness of life, about the seeming lack of God's providentual hand in our lives, and worst of all it becomes a part of you in deep levels that you don't understand and you begin to create a world view around these things you percieve as truth, and cynisim sets in. Oh the depths of depravity that need Jesus!

I have done this my WHOLE life up to now! It has literally mutilated my body, interfered with my relationships, with family, with my hopes for the future, and I haven't trusted God because of MY persceptions of a situtation (as though I have the ENTIRE picture!).

Since I ran face first into this wall of truth I've literally become a ball of mush. You could poke me and I would probably start crying. I've known for a long time that grief (and my avoidence of it) was a big part of my healing, and now it is as if the perverbial snowball has begun its decent down a snowy mountian.

The amazing thing to me about all of this is how absolutly freeing it is. In the moments that I have been faced with the choice of whether to grieve about something or get cynical and I choose greif, I have experianced such an amazing lightness of heart afterward. It is as though I do not carry it, whereas, every other time in the past because of my ungodly responses I've become the bearer of a burden that was never mine in the first place.

As I said before, this is all very rough, which I guess everything I write is. I hope you'll forgive my lack of articulation, and hear the heart behind this. I hope that Jesus can get to the places inside of you where you've become the unlawful bearer of burdens that were never yours to begin with.

And I really hope that this really does radically change my entire life so that people who know me will be in total awe of what God can do. Cause if he can make me compassionate and not cynical, than you ought to know it is a miracle!

Ah, the great Mundane...and Superhero's

These are un-extraordinary times. It seems to me that life goes on tick after tock, breath after beat, and there is no accounting for taste. I am sure someone somewhere is experiencing some exhilarating portion of life. Maybe my friends in China. Maybe people in Africa. Maybe it’s just the Adam Cox’s in life that get all the good stories.

I want to live. What does it mean to live, really live? When will I find the thing, the people that win over my heart indefinitely and cause me to live inside? Maybe I am the problem. I feel somehow that it is not likely. Seems that everyone I know is struggling. It used to be so exciting when I was younger. So much of the world seemed conquerable. Now, I am conquered. By some weathering force of time, I feel as though I have become a part of the worn away terra where I exist.

Confession: I want to be a superhero. I want super powers and I want to save the world with them, and I want all of the attention, for at least a little while. I’ve wanted it my whole life. Zorro, Mighty Mouse, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aqua Man, Spiderman, He-Man, She-Ra, Wolverine, Rogue, Storm, the list is extensive. I love comic book movies and I always look for hidden meanings in them. Maybe God will talk to me through this one, and tell me that I am going to supernaturally have a healing web come from my wrist or a super utility belt of truth and justice will fall from the heavens and I will have the cure for redundancy all at once.

Homeward Bound, an Increadable Journey

Cheesey title I know. What can one do? I am going to try my hand at posting something to this blog of mine. It's been a while. My creative juices have been all but non-existant lately.

I have made a decision to move back to where the trees are higher than pride, where the earth smells like the garden of Eden, and where I was formed from it's dust and ashes. Not to the "exact" place of my formation, but near enough to it to be a short journey for a visit.

My 7 plus years in Kansas City have been...amazing. As I sell all of my possessions in a rash move to clear my life of clutter, I can't help but try to wrap all my memories, lessons, relationships, joy and pain into one neat pile. It doesn't work. I have to resign to the untidiness of history and how it doesn't all just iron out neatly when you look back.

Ophelia, my piano, was moved out of my apartment today. I played her one last time this morning, tried to sing, but my voice is so jacked up from being ill that I could barely squeak out some notes from some familiar songs. They came, those three broken men, to take away one of the only things that has kept my heart alive in the last 14 months. I am scared. I am nervous and excited. Like a little kid going to 1st grade for the first time. The anticipation of a new city, the big questions about my future, the fear of risking BIG again. I could just pee myself at the enormity of it all. But I'm graduating out of my graveyard, I'm sheding my fears and insecurites like a butterfly sheds its cocoon that has been so safe and transforming. I'm going to live. I AM GOING TO LIVE!! I AM GOING TO LIVE!!! SO HELP ME GOD!

Back to where the trees know me by heart, back to where shore air mingles with my sighing. I have never lived like this before. Never trusted like this before.

Leaving Kansas City is like leaving a family behind. I came here orphaned, and I am leaving fathered, mothered, sistered, brothered. There are going to be nights of racous laughter, and intense weeping this summer. As I say goodbye to my own memorial, to my own shrine. I'm leaving with regrets of the people I loved badly and hurt with the best intentions, I'm sorry. I'm leaving with a legacy of shedding a hard shell. I hope I'm leaving hope behind. Kansas City is not the end. You don't just come here to die and be left. There is a resurrection!

I hope that what I have learned here stays with me along with all the people that have loved me so well here.

My failures are abundant and not hard to spot, but I hope that from them comes strength and grace.

Colin, I'm moving to Portland. You wanna come??

Love always,
Anna Joy Walker