The Annual Birthday Blog

This year its differant. This year there is hope and spring in the air. This year I am not holding my breath waiting for something spectacular to happen. It's happening. I'm living for the first time in my life from a deep place in my heart that was recently brought to life by the Living God and there really is nothing more to say about it.

So much has happened in the last 3 months (I've only been here for 3 months!!!). I feel like my life is just beginning. Like I have so much potential and hope for that potential to actually turn into reality.

I am thankful. I am 29. Amazing.

I can't sleep

So, here I am again. It's late. I want to sleep, but it is not happening for me at the moment. I say and FEEL such dramatic things when I am PMSing. I end relationships, I cry about things lost, I make broad sweeping statements that may or may not be true...oh wait...I do that all the time.

As you may have picked up: I am PMSing. It really is amazing. Some people think I should get on birth control because I have such intense PMS. I, don't think of me as sick, sort of like my broad mood swings. It sort of defines me. I cringe as I write this. Am I going to hate myself in the morning for what I am saying now? I already sent a myspace message tonight that I am going to regret (speaking of ending relationships) later.

Anyway, as I was saying. Mood swings. If I can warn people in advance perhaps they are not so bad? Okay. So I know that ALL of my roommates would STRONGLY disagree with me. Even if you warn people that you are PMSing or whatever, feelings still get hurt. But why should a person go on meds just to prevent feelings from getting hurt? I don't know. I don't think that it is the solution that I am looking for at the moment. I think I need to eat better and stay away from artifical hormones that are snuck into our foods.

I did have milk this week. That must be it!

What can I give that is extravegent, but not self-gratifying? Is it possible to give without feeling a sense of self-gratification for giving? I hate that about myself. Here's a little tidbit: I love to give because it feels so good. But when I can't give something, I often times can't figure out my role. I give when I don't have anything to give, because I at least have a role. Sick. I know. What is even more sick is when I realize this about certian people in my life that I have been doing this to. I often times have no other foundation for relationship with those people and when my ability to give is taken away or limited, I become insecure and usually don't have much desire to relate with that person anymore. Yes. I am that shallow. When there is nothing left for me to give, more often then not, I walk away.

I think that the older I get the less I want to play ball. Meaning. I have less and less patience for relationships with the opposite sex. Period. Don't get me wrong. I throughly enjoy the opposite sex. But I am rarely impressed, and I like to be impressed. Not that any man is wanting to impress me. I just appreciate the novelty of being impressed by a man. Of getting a glimpse of the Image that he is bearing (or trying to bear in honesty). I think I also get very annoyed that "guys" my age are still playing the game with girls that are younger and younger. I am annoyed that I get so annoyed about it. Who cares? I guess I do. I want them to have to grow up too! I feel like my leash has been considerably shortened, why not theirs? And here I am again trying to play Holy Spirit.

Do you know that I have had almost every single guy from my bloody past contact me in one way or another in the last year? Like obsure crushes too. And every single one of them has gotten promptly booted out of my life. It's like I've had to cut every single tie. Severely. I hate admitting this, but I think the older men and woman get, the less they are really allowed to be "friends". Unless there are some pretty clear bounderies. But "buddies" doesn't cut it after a certain age. I guess I'm just too interested in sex to play stupid mind games, and be "buddies" with anyone. Hence the great CLEARING OUT of my sorted history.

Here's to a clean slate and no more "buddies"!

Proximity

I should be in bed, but I figured I'd write a little something. Something about proximity and what it has done to me.

I have been back in KC for a little over a month now and oh what a change. I was talking to a friend the other day about proximity. About how it amazes me that so much can change due to it.

There is so much that I don't understand, but still, in a much more profound way, somehow I am resting and trusting more than I have in a long time. It's like when you've just been through a battle and all you want to do is rest and you don't care where or how. That is sort of how I feel. I've had pictures of myself in this season. It's one of a child that is dirty and shell shocked. Rubbish all around, disoriented and deaf. I know that might seem a bit extreame, but, I suppose, in matters of the heart its very subjective.

Anyway. Proximity. It does the heart wonders. I have hope again, unlike many past seasons of my life. I really do feel like some big changes are coming.

The other day I was sitting at the House of Prayer (can you believe it?! I couldn't either) and I had this simple, yet one of the dearest times I've ever had with Jesus. "I am the Resurrection and the Life" he said. And for the first time in a long time, I believe him.

I was sick, but I had to die in order for all the Glory to go to Jesus. He said, "Roll the stone away." It's time.

Roll that bad boy away.

Floating

Do you ever feel like you are floating? Sometimes when I sit real still I feel this turning inside of me. Like I am trying to get out of my own skin. It is a very strange feeling. I feel like that when I'm about to get a migrane sometimes, or when I'm coming down from one. I don't feel a headache coming, but I am exhausted.

I heard about someone I love the other night. Someone who meant the world to me. I heard they were in town (the town in which I now reside, Kansas City btw). I heard they had called an old friend to talk. I have carried them in my heart for years.

I don't think I am safe for this person any longer. But, since knowing them I have wanted to become a safe person for others like them.

I can't live in regret about the foolishness of my youth any more than the next person. I have been living out the consequences of that and much more. I don't know what else it will take for me to become safe, but I am guessing it has to do with me owning stuff and risking and being more open then I have been.

I hear his voice in my head sometimes, scoffing at my attempts, calling me trite. It is honestly the last thing I want to be, but in all of my desire to be sincere and genuine, I still hear it. Why does his opinion matter so much to me anyway? Even knowing that it did would piss him off. I can't please him. I never really realized this, but I've sort of been living a part of my life in the secret hope that one day he won't be indifferant toward me anymore. That he would care and like me again.

It's dumb. I know. He is one fucked up individual. I don't really understand why I should care. But I do. So there.

I'm an addict

Hey. So I'm writing you all of the sudden, because I stumbled across the blog I wrote about you so many years ago. I wanted to send you the best part of it, but also tell you that these things are still true about you. The reason I know this is because the things that were good in me at some point and no longer seem to be, are still good in me somewhere, even though I can't find them.

I just blew up at this guy I just met tonight. He pissed me off and I didn't stuff my feelings, I sort of let him have it. I just went to this seminar this weekend called, "The Genesis Process". It was started as a support system for drug and alcohol addicts, but has since filtered into where it is needed the most, churches. I have been avoiding any form of church lately. I am unhappy and unsatisfied. Sound familiar? I am moving back to Kansas City. I can hardly believe it, but I am dying out here and I can barely breath. I realized that I must have done some growing and feeling in the last 10 years of my life because, whereas before when I lived in the Northwest, so much of the stuff in Portland that makes it Portland wouldn't have bothered me. But now, I feel as if I have experienced more pain and hurt from people in this city then I ever have before. I just realized that I am a different person, not the same edges. but let me tell you some of those edges have come back, because I needed protection. These people are ruthless and mean. I have been ruthless and mean. I blew up at this guy tonight because he was condescending and wanted to pigeon hole my friends into a label, like "emergent church, charismatic" It made me soooooo freaking angry because I didn't feel heard, or cared for (Ironically he is going to be a pastor), I felt like he was just looking for an angle to dismiss what my friends are doing. I got angry because all of the sudden I felt what it was like to be on the other side of my pigeon holing and judgement passing. I literally wanted to scream at him.

I don't know why I am writing you, except that you are sort of this nebulous idea that sort of exists. I know that inside your heart is the same I know it to be. I also can imagine that you might not feel like that. Like you may feel like you are completely lost at sea and have no way of finding land again. I am feeling that way myself. Not to assume or anything, but after living out here for the last year and a half I can imagine that it has been really hard for you to find a safe place to grow and flourish and to be loved.

The reason I brought up this Genesis thing that I went to tonight was because in light of going to this inner healing type of a thing I completely lost it with a poor unsuspecting soul that just happened to be the wrong person for me to pass. At the seminar they talked all about neurochemicals and the limbic system and how they effect us at the base human level and cause us to break down and respond by using coping mechanisms, of course I loved that. I also had a memory of when I was a little girl my first best friend stole the jacket from my favorite stuffed dog (we had the same ones together). She lost her dogs jacket and so she took mine. I confronted her about it, but she lied and said it was hers and I must have lost mine. Well, I tried to get my parents to listen to me, but she was the associate pastor's daughter who did nothing wrong, so it turned out that I was the one that got into trouble. I made a vow after that that I would never trust a friend again, to never share what was mine again. Later it became that I would get really close to them, gain their trust, learn their secrets so that they couldn't leave me, so that I could control.

I don't know if it is appropriate for me to apologize again, when I feel like I have done it a lot with you, but after seeing this in myself, you are sort of a safe place to start. Because you are far away and you can't hurt me.

I've pushed almost everyone I love away, systematically. I don't know if I ever told you this, but Amber and I were talking about you one night. This was a long time ago, I was living in the Bristol house. I was relaying something about what was going on with us and she asked me a question that I will never forget. She said, "Anna, what would you have to say to him if you weren't giving him advise all the time and tell him what he should do? What if you stopped giving advised and just talked about yourself?" I actually remember the change I tried to make after her saying that. I don't feel like I ever really trusted you with me. Not that it matters anymore. I am just saying.

So without further ado, here's hope, hopefully, for me and you.
He sauntered into my life a really confused boy who thought that if he could just look good and look like he was always having fun that no one would see the “cavernous depravity” that wracked his soul, mind, heart, spirit. I am astounded at what God can do to a human in such a short amount of time. He opened up his heart in ways he never knew he could and found life there. He opened his life to people on levels he didn’t even know existed and he turned and turned and turned until he discovered that he had been twisted into a horrible disfiguring knot of humanity and then he broke. He broke at the sight of his own bloody mess and found love waiting for him there. Love that began to untie and untwist and undo the years of injustice wrought on him by life and poor broken people who never knew any better. He all of the sudden began seeing with new eyes, it was like he woke up to these amazing depths that had always been there, but just could never have been recognized before. One day my friend got a real glimpse into eternity and he has never been the same again. I don’t know if it was the drizzly night we stood outside of a kinko’s on the Plaza and I talked to him about the God of Revelations, the one enthroned in light, and with fire in his eyes…etc. but at some point he got it. At some point he began seeing that he had an eternal purpose on the earth and that he had a voice that Jesus gave only to him, and that he had a role to fill so that people who were broken like himself could find healing too. He found confidence, and OHHH what a difference that made in him. He began giving out of himself and speaking life into the hearts of people all around him. He brought life and hope to strangers to whom he served coffee. And best of all, he didn’t know it. He had no idea how his life was affecting the people around him. He was never aware of how his negative actions affected people as well. But Jesus is sharing that with him now. He is showing him how to walk a life worthy of his calling, fully pleasing his Father in the process.

Jane Austen Strikes Fear

I watched a OPB special this evening. It is a Masterpiece series on Jane Austen and her works. Tonight happened to be, "Miss Austen Regrets". And OH how depressing. She dies, and there remains in her, till the end, the conflict of freedom vs. attachment, marriage.

My roommates commented on how much I reminded them of her, not necessarily of her brilliance in writing, but of her propensity to flirt shamelessly with ridicules crushes and to use humor as a defense. I have this grip of fear in my gut when I hear things like that. Anything that attaches me to anything I don't want to be makes me incredibly nervous. Somehow I think that the mere suggestion might make it so. It's like when you were making faces as a child and someone said that your face would become stuck there if you sneeze (or whatever it was that they said to get you to stop). I feel like people have power over my future sometimes when they compare. Silly I know, but true nonetheless.

I have yet to learn that I am the one with the power in my own life. You wouldn't think it so hard for a woman of almost thirty to figure that out. And yet I still wonder who will say that magic word that will turn me from an ugly duckling to a swan. That moment when someone will hear me singing and call for me to let down my hair.

I was thinking about living in the present moment today. Something I am not good at, at all. I was thinking of what it would be like to finally have the opportunity to live where I want to be right now. I wondered if I would ever be satisfied with the present. I think one must become comfortable within their own present state before they ever become comfortable with being in a moment with anyone else.

The wisest, most profound and powerful people I have met are people who live their lives in such moments. The mundane moments, the exciting moments, the sorrowful ones, as well as the joyful. Here they live. Experiencing the fullness of life, while I just wish and pine for something better. These are the people that scare me. The ones that can look the moment dead in the eye and embrace it. Cherish it. Put it in their pocket and carry it, fingering it from time to time. Moving from one to another with grace and ease, with poise and confidence.

Jane Austen strikes fear in me, because I fear that I am like her. I think she created people and moments in her head that never had the chance to walk off the page.

unrequited love

am I a victim of a serial disease? This strain, this frustration, this longing? Or is it an addiction to pain and lonliness? My "crushes" have been the stain on pages and pages of my journals. Annoyingly persistant and pessimistic. I know going into it that: a: I can't be trusted, and b: you will have to turn me away before the end. This is my disfunction. My disease.

One of them at least.

How do I get out? It isn't like an abusive relationship with someone I can walk away from. It's me. I have to live inside my own skin. I have to deal with these thoughts and emotions daily. I have to all at once stand up to the abuser (read: me) and stop abusing (read: me). Talk about confusing and constantly dangerous.

I live in fear of myself. Of my sexuality, of my fierceness, of my double-mindedness. I think that this past year of my life has drug me to the lowest places I have ever been inside myself. I don't see a way out. I'm trapped in here with no light, with no door. It's dark and cold and lonely and I'm not great company when I am afraid.

I am afraid to move back to Kansas City. I am afraid that I will end up in some "friendship" with a guy that means more to me than it ever will to him. I am afraid that I will not be able to say no. I am afraid that I will always end up in this pattern and never find out what it is to be unafraid and fully loved. I am afraid to move back because what if I don't really belong there either? What if I am just going back because I couldn't fit in here. Didn't want to fit in here. What if all of this is a trick? I don't know where to go. I don't know where I belong.

I had a dream that I keep remembering. It was a long time ago. I drempt I was in this building where I used to go to church. I would sit down in one seat and a few minutes later I would find something wrong with it and have to get up and move. I did this for a vast majority of the dream. The only other thing I can remember from it is that at the end I was painting the back of a school bus with red paint.

I used to do that in church. I couldn't find the right seat, so I would move. I can't just do that in my life anymore. I realize now I have been doing it for years. Even when I lived in Kansas City. I would move communities like I moved seats. Then I exhausted all of those options and I moved cities. There are no attractive communities that I have found here which is why I want to leave. But now I am too afraid to leave because of my past.

All of this probably has some deep connection to my obsession with pain and lonliness. With my attachment disorder and the reason why I attach myself to guys that are safe because they will never attach back.

Hello, my name is Anna. I have deep mother wounds that have kept me moving around my whole life. What's your story?

Sickness and disappointment. Similar diseases. Each letting me like leaches on my skin. I'm too weak to fight either of them alone anymore. My chosen partners are no where to be found. Too far away to know. I'm stopped up inside because of all of this. Not knowing where I even belong anymore. So tired of running from here to there. Looking for some kind of home, or simblence of home. I'm trying to rest inside, trying to accept what has been left to me by my storm beaten life. Trying to weather this next storm, these raging seas inside tumbling, twisting, churning. Don't know if I will make it. Don't think my ship can take it. tired of fighting, am I.

The Things I Learn, pt 1

I am a very slow learner. It takes me years to grasp emotional concepts like attachment, devotion, commitment. I believe it is because I am a thinker generally, though when I feel, I feel deeply. I am like a tree. I have this mind, like branches and leaves, that sticks out there, that people can see, that I can see. Then there is what I consider my core, the trunk. Then I get to my roots, my emotions, my histories, my heart. It is this vast network of arteries and capillaries, veins and life. I rarely know what is going on down in my root system. You might be surprised at how much I surprise myself when I find out what I am feeling.

I have spent years to even get as far as I have connecting my head and my heart, and still I feel like I am still so stunted in my ability to understand what and how I feel.

Then sometimes, the light goes on inside me and everything that has been so elusive, so painfully nebulous comes into sharp focus and I see. I understand.

someday

Someday they will not walk out of a room to find someone else. Someday I will be interesting and beautiful enough to captivate just fine. Someday I will be hailed as irristable. Someday I will be able to give my heart to someone who will be worthy of it. Someday I will figure out that it is Jesus. Some day I'll stop wishing I was someone else, somewhere else, with some other person. Some day I'll be happy. I'll be satisfied. I'll be content.

"Amusing"

They call me "amusing" because, well, I am amusing. Some have called me hilarious, some funny, some even witty and charming. But what it is about these labels that I have gathered collectively in my caldrun of disappointing words is that they fit my behavior so well.

I am a funny person. I was born with a funny bone. My first cognative memory was of me laughing before I was even a year old. But I use funny as a mask, I use it like any other tool a person might use in their self-defense "bag of tricks". I love to be funny, but I also loath it. It seems to me that I have just become an icon of funny fat girl. And that doesn't do me justice. But it is the fault of no one but me. I am the one that turns it on in full force when someone is around that I can throw some wit at or bantor with.

What is the real issue here? Can I be accepted in whole for who I am without having to ham it up with the newbies? Am I still trying to get them to laugh with me instead of at me? The whole thing makes me a little ill. Even though it is good clean fun, there is some weird sort of let down when the person who was the reason all this wit was flying around leaves, and there is a large vacuum. Why the let down? Why the slap on the forehead or over the mouth in horror of what just insued. It was mass hilarity, but at what expense? Do I think that I can try to get someone to look past the way I look and decide that they can deal with having me in thier life because I am funny? Because otherwise, as one of my roommates said (before she was my roommate), "your contagious laughter makes you bearable". Yikes. How'd you like to go around with that hanging over you? "Be funny, laugh, people will like you" "get them to laugh with you, before they can laugh at you" These words still haunt me, said so long ago.

Guile: Craftiness, the quaility of being crafty...or just plain shadey.

I don't know why I feel like that word fits, maybe it is just all the things that I am working through lately. One of them being my exchange of hope in truth to guile. I always knew I had guile in me. I think that you always have to watch a person who is crafty with the turn of a word or dry wit. Those people often times have too much in their head for thier own good. You've probably never met a really innocent person who is witty or has a knack with dry humor. Those types have some unspoken, uneasy treaty with the world. One step to far and you are rude, insensitive and inappropriate. Not far enough and you are just dumb. It isn't like I sit up at night thinking about this stuff. Well. Except for tonight.

I want someone who will love me for my sharp mind and wit, for my impecible timing and singing voice (read: modesty). But those are obvious externals. Were someone to press past these things that often times make me "one of the guys", "like a kid sister", "who is your friend? Will you introduce me?", they would find the deep well that is my heart.

I don't know if I will ever reign this part of me in. I really enjoy a good round with someone in the wit ring or sometimes the silly circus. But often times I don't think they know what to do with me. I get put into the "safe" catagory because I am not a viable threat in sexiness. But you know what? I don't want to be safe anymore. I am sick of people taking me at my inital actions with them, thinking I am that way all the time. I am even more sick of myself when I fall into autopilot.

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.