Minor Key

Here’s something strange about me…

I hate the smell of roses. Sometimes I think I’m breaking some sort of unwritten rule for the entire female population. All girls love the smell of roses. But I don’t. I haven’t since I was eleven.

            When I was eleven I saw a dead body for the first time. It was my aunt. She wasn’t very old. In fact, she was very pretty and young looking for a woman at the age of forty. I didn’t know her very well, but I remember that I always thought that about her.

That day, I remember that I really didn’t want to be there. Not because I was sad, but because I was bored. Instead of sneaking into unoccupied rooms with my cousin in hopes of finding something spooky, I was stuck following my mom around and shaking hands with people I pretended to know. It was all very uninteresting to me, except for the flowers. Red roses- supposedly my aunt’s favorite. Those were very pretty.

            I remember the moment I saw her. I don’t know if eleven year olds are supposed to be able to process seeing a dead body, but I don’t think I could. There, lying like a Barbie in a box was the shell of a beautiful woman never to talk or laugh or sing again. I couldn’t say I was sad because, honestly, I didn’t know who she was, but I remember almost wetting myself when I saw her. Looking straight at death from across the room scared me more than the Chucky movie I sneaked a peek of over at my friend Heather’s house. I never wanted to see people that I loved scrunched up in a box, painted like a pale porcelain doll, unable to wrap me in their arms and hug me again. I hated death. I also hated the smell of roses.

*

*

*

            It’s sort of funny how God does things in our lives. I think He does too and He enjoys being a sneaky rascal. He seems to take the very things that make me squirm in my seat, fight back tears, or run screaming in the other direction and have me come face to face with them again in order to do something beautiful. I guess I should see it coming, but most of the time I don’t.

            The most ironic thing God has done with me so far is given me the gift of counseling people. I love it so much that I’m earning a degree in it. And you probably saw this coming, but I have discovered that the people I deeply love to listen to are  people lamenting some sort of loss. I have fallen in love with grief.

            I love it because it forces us to be raw. Completely naked before God. Throwing our hands in the air and weeping from the deepest part of our soul is one of the most authentic things humans can do. And it’s necessary. Without grief we can never experience the complete brokenness it takes to make us fall to our knees at the feet of Jesus. It’s one of the most beautiful things God has given us. It’s as beautiful as music.

*

* 

*

I have this friend named Julia and, in my opinion, she can sing better than anyone I have ever heard. I might be the only person who thinks this because her music is sort of unusual. I think that’s why I enjoy her so much. If I had to use words to describe it I would use words like delicate

and haunting. Her music literally gives me chills kind of Johnny Cash does. One time I asked her why her music doesn’t sound like the girls on the radio.

“I like to play in minor key. It gives the song an eerie feel, but it’s beautiful all the same,” she told me.

I think grief is like beautiful like this. Cold and somber but having the power to deeply move us. Maybe lament can be one of the most intimate ways we can communicate with God. Maybe grief is worship in minor key.

*

*

*

This past weekend I had some of the best food I have ever put into my mouth. Maybe I was just flying high because my entire family was together sharing the meal with me, but it was probably the food. If you’ve never had vegetable stew made from vegetables grown in the backyard you seriously do not know what you’re missing. All forty of us were packed into my grandparent’s house in Tennessee. I spent the weekend catching up with cousins who have moved far away, looking at pictures of new babies, and blowing dust off of my dad’s old yearbooks in the basement. The reason that all of us put our lives on hold to come together was because my grandma died.

            We all came to Tennessee to weep and mourn together over the loss of the most vibrant, caring, animal print-wearing woman we all loved. But it wasn’t all sad. As we looked at old pictures of her, we laughed and told stories about all kinds of outrageous stuff she did in her life. She was, hands down, one of the craziest ladies I have ever known. As I was looking at old pictures of her I looked around at all of the people stuffed in the small living room.

            None of us would have ever come together if it hadn’t of been because of tragedy. None of us would be laughing and hugging and getting sloppy wet kisses on the cheek from Aunt Mary. It took death to create this moment.

            Even though I still don’t like the smell of roses, I have come to believe that grief has a way of making us see all of the beautiful things in life more clearly. Like the unique bond of family, or the gift of sharing a meal with people, or the miracle of a sunset over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Tears have a way of washing away all of the meaningless crud and free us to let go of things we once had so we can embrace the next gift God wants to give us.

            So who knows what God is going to have me look square in the eye next. It’s probably going to be something that makes me want to run as far away as possible. But if God is as good as I’ve come to think He is, He’s going to make the sweetest music out of it.            

passion.

I want to feel made for something. 
I want to have that moment where there is no where else in the entire world i would rather be.
I want to have something that I fall asleep dreaming about. 
I want to have a fire so deep in my heart that I cannot help but chase it. 
I want that something to feel so right in my soul that I know God wove it in me. 
I want to have a purpose.. a specific purpose that I can follow with my entire life.. and not just     when I happen upon it later in life. 
I want it now so I can devote my whole existence to it. 


I am dying for a dream. 

Love is my identity

Over the past year I have really been wrestling with this whole identity concept. I've heard every college student goes through it, but really I wonder if that's true sometimes. I mean I don't hear anyone else talking about not feeling like they have a place they belong to or a niche.

College is a weird place too if you think about it. We come here with all of these strangers and live with them. There are tons of clubs and teams that people are encouraged to become a part of and everyone makes their own mini life. We have jobs and homes and community and it all seems like we recreate ourselves once we're here away from our parent's home.

But what if the communities we envisioned ourselves becoming apart of don't happen the way we saw it? What if we don't make the team or find out that we're not as (whatever) as we thought we were. What if you can't find that sweet spot that everyone talks about and sees on TV?

It kind of feels like a mid-life crisis... or at least what I think it must feel like.

There's almost a pang of loss or a sense of low-grade grief because our expectations are totally flipped. We try to just pick up and go on.. find a new community or thing to invest in.. but after a while the searching is kind of exhausting. I mean, shouldn't we have found whatever everyone else is talking about by now?

This is the dialogue that's been in my head. Tiring isn't it? It has no end and, really, no hope. And I think it's a little too tragic to be reality.

I think God has been trying to tell me for a while now that my relationship with Him is the only thing that makes me me. All of the other stuff doesn't stick to me the way He does. I can have the biggest group of friends or just one and still feel lonely or unfulfilled. I can be the star in every play, starter on every team, and leader of any ministry and still feel like a stranger to myself. Whatever I'm searching for won't ever become clear to me unless I have God close to me holding the flashlight.

While this not so easy to keep in my head when I start to feel lost, the concept is so simple that I'm ashamed to say I forgot it. I can't feel like me without God! My search for identity in the communities here is meaningless unless I have every intention of growing closer to God and loving other people through it.

It's just like 1 Corinthians 13 says-- I can't do anything without love! Nothing else will last without it. Everything I'm good at will eventually end and my group of friends won't be impressive forever. If I have love the things I do will matter forever.

So this semester I want to focus on keeping my sense of home in my heart rather than in my communities. I want to feel at peace within myself so that I don't feel a need for a certain community to define me. I want to feel at home with God in my heart when everything around me starts to look unfamiliar and lonely. I want my identity to be love.

A burden

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, but I haven't been able to fully put my finger on it. Tonight it became a lot clearer after I watched a great movie called Freedom Writers. Near the end of the movie the main character Mrs. G is experiencing the crisis of her husband leaving her while at the same time discovering a passion buried deep inside her to change the lives of the inner city kids through her english class. She is in the middle tragic loss and incredible and inspiring gain. Her dad tries to comfort her as she's crying and he says, "You have been blessed with a burden. Not many people can say that."

Right when I heard that line it all lined up for me (pun fully intended).

I feel like my whole life I have been fed up with my life. It's not that I don't like my life or that I'm not grateful. I am so thankful for everything because it has been a gift and it's all made me who I am. It's just that I feel like I've been given too much. A year or two ago I would have wrote a blog about this that said some things like, "Why is it that Americans have so much and don't care about the poor?" and "We are so selfish in this God forsaken country" and blah and blah. I would have probably used exclamation marks to mark my frustration as well. People have made a lot of money writing books that say all of those same kinds of things. It gets people fired up I think.
But you know what? After reading those kinds of books and talking in my "Christian groups" like that you know what makes me feel like?-- a cynical know it all. Sure it fires me up, but at the end of the day I feel terrible and ignorant and I probably haven't done anything to fix the problem.
Im sick of feeling bad that I have so much and then tearing myself down for it. That's not healthy and it doesn't get anything done.


What struck me about what Mrs. G's dad said was that he was pointing out how she had been all wrapped up in her students lives. She woke up everyday thinking about them and worked all day to help them become better people. She wore expensive pearls that her dad gave her everyday to class, and she still changed those kids lives dramatically. She could never relate to the kids in her class that lost their parents and friends to gang violence. She had probably never gone a day in her life without a good meal, and she had certainly never been looked down upon for the color of her skin. Plainly, she was definitely more blessed with material things than her students and that did not hold her back.

I have spent so much time and energy worrying that the stuff I've been given is going to hinder my dreams of helping people. I want my life to so wrapped up in a purpose my wealth is forgotten unless God tells me He needs it in the plan. If God can use the poorest of poor then certainly He can use me.
I just have to be confident that I can do it.

I probably have way more to learn about this before I can nail all of it down, but looking forward to seeing what comes out of this new perspective and I'm going to be keeping my heart open for a burden.

blogging is absurd

I'm starting to hate this blogging thing. I mean really now... why did I think that what I wrote would be seen by millions of adoring viewers who commented regularly and always with praise? AND thinking this, how did I muster up the courage to put my mind in digital characters for all of those potential readers to read? Who does this?

I hope that because I have no regular readers that I can actually do this thing without being paranoid that's it's not entertaining enough. I'm pretty sure I like to write. I wouldn't be taking random journalism classes if I didn't right? And I think I must be decent at it to get A's. It would seem that I would enjoy blogging with or without lots of readers...

hm.

Well I guess I don't have a new years resolution yet and this seems kind of doable. I'm going to do this thing. I am going to blog and do it well. I'm going to pretend there are no people out there and pretend this is my paper journal. I'm going to try to keep in mind that this is for me.. to make me a better writer and thinker.. not fame or whatever.

here goes something..

The Beauty of Lattes and Colors

  

Sitting on the sunny porch of the Big A coffee shop, I feel a chill in the breeze. I look around me and see bright oranges and yellows and deep reds instead of the usual spring greens. The world around me is slowly approaching the death of winter, but in the process, is becoming more brilliant than ever.

There’s something deeply beautiful about that.

In this short transition season, we enjoy the vivid colors of the trees, cool weather, and warm pumpkin pie lattes and we don’t even think about the death in all of it.

I think that’s what makes this season my favorite. It’s not the apple cider and butternut squash—it’s the hopeful paradox of beauty and death.

The flowers and trees know that the death of winter is coming, but instead of solemnly creeping along in their existence until then, they burst into vivid glory and live their last days in brilliance.

In these last days of nature, I am surrounded by the call to live vibrantly through the times in my life that feel like they’re approaching a sort of death. My walks to class remind me that God makes my life colorful and breathtaking even when all I can see is lifelessness and all I can feel is coldness.

Through this season, I’m learning that these darker times in my life are the perfectly crafted moments where He chooses to make my life colorful and comforting—if only I decide to notice it.

This fall may you see all of God’s brilliant colors around you.

Okay again

What is it about Scripture that makes everything seem okay again?




It's like when you're a kid and some bully at school says something really terrible about you and you go home and there's warm chocolate chip cookies on the table.


Or when you're the bully at school all of a sudden and you say some really terrible things about somebody. You come home and you're mom says it's not the end of the world but that redemption needs to happen. It's encouragement with a kick in the butt.


Or it's like when you get to college and you don't know who you are and you think some really terrible things about yourself and you come home and are reminded that what you're good at doesn't matter nearly as much as you think it does.




Lately Scripture is all of this for me. I wish i could say that it always has this affect, but honestly, i don't run to it as much as i need to. I have this new desire to read the raw Word and it's like coming home.