When saying goodbye is painful, it means that we’ve done something right while we were together. It makes the pain seem more purposeful, but not less intense. It still hurts like open-heart surgery minus the anesthesia.
I’ve said goodbye so many times within the last couple weeks, I think my heart has shut down until it can find time to process them all. I’ve hardly been able to cry. I suspect there are tears buried inside that need to find their way to the surface one of these days in the near future.
I didn’t expect saying goodbye to Lee to be so hard. There were more than a few moments over the last four years when I didn’t want to be there. But looking back, I am grateful for each of those broken and beautiful moments. God gave me what I did not know to ask for. My experiences at Lee have shaped who I am, peeled back the layers of who am not. They have been years of formation, laying foundations, establishing myself within the Father’s heart. Learning to trust Him has enabled me to embrace my own heart with all its messy spots and insecurities and allow God to show me what I love and give me the confidence to live within it.
Being so far from the comfort of home has forced me to find God in new ways, to recognize that His love and character stay the same even when circumstances and worship environments feel strange and unfamiliar. I’ve learned that God was never small enough to fit inside my boxes. He loves so many different things, and there are infinite ways to approach and find Him.
But the strongest thing I unlocked during my time at Lee is my love for words. There I became a writer. And the voices and faces of my peers and professors in my writing community will be forever etched into my heart and will bleed out in my words. I found people who believe in me, who were willing to invest in my life and my stories. Stacey, my writing professor, lost sleep and sacrificed her own writing time to aid her students to succeed, and she cried as she talked to my parents at graduation and hugged me goodbye. That was the moment when I knew God had given me something beautiful.
Right now, I’m relishing in the beauty of these gifts and simultaneously mourning the loss of them. They are not gone, because I carry them inside me, etched into my identity and my stories. But they are no longer with me the same way they have been—the reason I need to cry, to adjust, to allow God to carry me on to seasons next.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Judgment Day
The following is an excerpt from a fiction piece I worked on this semester for my senior writing project. It's 32 pages long, so I will not be posting it all here, but if you're interested I'll email the draft to anyone that asks, with the understanding that it's still a work in progress. The premise is based off a true event that happened in Norfolk last December.
Doris stared upwards. The smoke hid the sun, but the day was bright. The sky was cheerful, almost welcoming the column of blackness creeping ever upwards, unaware of how the murky cloud blotted its complexion. Tendrils of smoke were curling towards her, like the gnarled fingers of an old witchy hag, but they couldn’t reach her yet. She estimated she still had at least a couple of hours.
The flames were roiling across the field underneath a 30,000-gallon propane tank, slowly cooking the gas inside like a burner heats a teakettle, only this one didn’t have any way to let off steam. If the gases built up enough pressure, the whole tank would explode. That’s what the radio announcer said anyways. Normally she wouldn’t trust what some quack on the radio said, but since she was staring at the flames herself, she figured at least most of it had to be true.
Doris hadn’t been this close to a fire since before she was married to Melvin. She’d been working as a secretary for Mr. Lory, a bank executive at Tyson and Loan, and living in Mrs. Halloway’s boarding house. One of the boarders on the first floor had too many drinks and forgot to put out his cigarette before falling into bed. The unfortunate man went up in flames along with the rest of the house. Doris thought she was destined to burn alive as well. She was sleeping in her attic room when she woke to the sound of muffled yelling. The floor felt hot when her feet touched it. Mrs. Halloway was down in the yard with the neighbors, gesturing frantically. The air was laden with smoke and it crept into her lungs every time she took a breath. She turned to flee, but a blast of heat knocked her over when she opened the bedroom door. The stairwell was in flames. She broke the window open with a book off her nightstand, but there was no way down, so she turned and sat with her back to the window, curling her knees up to her face while she stared at the flames. They were crackling, cackling, laughing at her fate. They knew she deserved to feel this heat after what happened to her family, that God was finally calling her to judgment.
But Melvin had other ideas. He was a new fireman recruit at the time and saw his chance to prove himself and become the hero. Climbed a ladder to her bedroom window and carried her to safety. They’d married the following summer. Doris never viewed him as her savior, but she had accepted his strong arms that snatched her away just as the flames began to lick at her feet. When she’d finished hacking up smoke and breathed in gulps of clean air, it felt like God released his grip around her throat. She supposed as long as Melvin was alive, it was God’s way of saying he’d deal with her later.
They’d had twenty-six semi-peaceful years of marriage, born one son and two stillborn daughters. All three of her children were pieces of herself—some alive, and some frozen in time. It was as close to happy as Doris ever aspired to be. Then one morning Melvin just up and quit. She woke up with a dead body in the bed and knew God was free to strike whenever he wanted from then on. Every morning she wondered if that day would be the day of judgment, like her own personal coming of the great and glorious day of the returning of Lord. So far he’d let her wonder for twenty-three more years. Secretly she’d felt when the day came it would be a fire—one to finish what the other didn’t. As Doris stared at the new flames across from her house, she knew the hour of reckoning had finally come. She wouldn’t let herself be snatched from this one and forced to wait another twenty-some years. Looking at the flames, she could almost feel the heat of the fire from the boarding house, the smoke piling up in her room. It would only be a matter of time until these flames were licking at her skin too. She coughed just remembering, but maybe it wasn’t memory. The air was thickening, a haze settling into the yard.
The radio said there was an evacuation. Everyone within a mile of the fire was supposed to leave. She could see small lines of cars on the roads across the field from where she sat. People panicked so easily. But this situation was grave. Even the firemen were scared enough to leave. Earlier they’d been running around the blaze this way and that. From where she sat they’d looked like kids who tried to dress up as construction cones for Halloween, bright red and yellow blobs covered in strips of reflector lights. She’d watched them work over her breakfast. But now the field was empty from every living thing, excepting the fire that lurched and devoured as if it were alive. It was odd the firemen had come and then left. Either the situation was really that hopeless, or God had somehow told them to leave to ensure Doris would face him alone when he brought her judgment. There was a steady stream of water shooting through the air and pouring onto the tank, but it was operating mechanically and didn’t seem to be doing much good. The flames weren’t subsiding. This wasn’t going to end pretty. Devastation, the radio called it. An explosion would steal a whole portion of the city and leave devastation. Doris gritted her teeth. It didn’t matter.
To be continued...
Doris stared upwards. The smoke hid the sun, but the day was bright. The sky was cheerful, almost welcoming the column of blackness creeping ever upwards, unaware of how the murky cloud blotted its complexion. Tendrils of smoke were curling towards her, like the gnarled fingers of an old witchy hag, but they couldn’t reach her yet. She estimated she still had at least a couple of hours.
The flames were roiling across the field underneath a 30,000-gallon propane tank, slowly cooking the gas inside like a burner heats a teakettle, only this one didn’t have any way to let off steam. If the gases built up enough pressure, the whole tank would explode. That’s what the radio announcer said anyways. Normally she wouldn’t trust what some quack on the radio said, but since she was staring at the flames herself, she figured at least most of it had to be true.
Doris hadn’t been this close to a fire since before she was married to Melvin. She’d been working as a secretary for Mr. Lory, a bank executive at Tyson and Loan, and living in Mrs. Halloway’s boarding house. One of the boarders on the first floor had too many drinks and forgot to put out his cigarette before falling into bed. The unfortunate man went up in flames along with the rest of the house. Doris thought she was destined to burn alive as well. She was sleeping in her attic room when she woke to the sound of muffled yelling. The floor felt hot when her feet touched it. Mrs. Halloway was down in the yard with the neighbors, gesturing frantically. The air was laden with smoke and it crept into her lungs every time she took a breath. She turned to flee, but a blast of heat knocked her over when she opened the bedroom door. The stairwell was in flames. She broke the window open with a book off her nightstand, but there was no way down, so she turned and sat with her back to the window, curling her knees up to her face while she stared at the flames. They were crackling, cackling, laughing at her fate. They knew she deserved to feel this heat after what happened to her family, that God was finally calling her to judgment.
But Melvin had other ideas. He was a new fireman recruit at the time and saw his chance to prove himself and become the hero. Climbed a ladder to her bedroom window and carried her to safety. They’d married the following summer. Doris never viewed him as her savior, but she had accepted his strong arms that snatched her away just as the flames began to lick at her feet. When she’d finished hacking up smoke and breathed in gulps of clean air, it felt like God released his grip around her throat. She supposed as long as Melvin was alive, it was God’s way of saying he’d deal with her later.
They’d had twenty-six semi-peaceful years of marriage, born one son and two stillborn daughters. All three of her children were pieces of herself—some alive, and some frozen in time. It was as close to happy as Doris ever aspired to be. Then one morning Melvin just up and quit. She woke up with a dead body in the bed and knew God was free to strike whenever he wanted from then on. Every morning she wondered if that day would be the day of judgment, like her own personal coming of the great and glorious day of the returning of Lord. So far he’d let her wonder for twenty-three more years. Secretly she’d felt when the day came it would be a fire—one to finish what the other didn’t. As Doris stared at the new flames across from her house, she knew the hour of reckoning had finally come. She wouldn’t let herself be snatched from this one and forced to wait another twenty-some years. Looking at the flames, she could almost feel the heat of the fire from the boarding house, the smoke piling up in her room. It would only be a matter of time until these flames were licking at her skin too. She coughed just remembering, but maybe it wasn’t memory. The air was thickening, a haze settling into the yard.
The radio said there was an evacuation. Everyone within a mile of the fire was supposed to leave. She could see small lines of cars on the roads across the field from where she sat. People panicked so easily. But this situation was grave. Even the firemen were scared enough to leave. Earlier they’d been running around the blaze this way and that. From where she sat they’d looked like kids who tried to dress up as construction cones for Halloween, bright red and yellow blobs covered in strips of reflector lights. She’d watched them work over her breakfast. But now the field was empty from every living thing, excepting the fire that lurched and devoured as if it were alive. It was odd the firemen had come and then left. Either the situation was really that hopeless, or God had somehow told them to leave to ensure Doris would face him alone when he brought her judgment. There was a steady stream of water shooting through the air and pouring onto the tank, but it was operating mechanically and didn’t seem to be doing much good. The flames weren’t subsiding. This wasn’t going to end pretty. Devastation, the radio called it. An explosion would steal a whole portion of the city and leave devastation. Doris gritted her teeth. It didn’t matter.
To be continued...
Friday, April 30, 2010
Transience
Today I am struck by the transience of this world. As I begin to face goodbyes, I realize there are people who come into our lives, rub against us, nestle up to us, and then disappear, perhaps never to be seen again. I have friendships from college that I know will never end. But there are other faces I have come to love—professors that have mentored and invested in who I am, fellow writers I have sat next to in class for at least four semesters—and once I leave this campus I don’t know if I will ever see them again. Some of them will move from my life and I will hardly blink. But others, I feel this stab of loss, sense the desire to linger a little longer.
I don’t believe the human heart was ever created for separation. We don’t have a place in our brain to process the gaps completely. We just learn to cope, move on. Train our hearts to steel themselves and take another step.
I never fully understand what I have until it’s gone. I’ve seen these faces every week for years and taken them for granted. But now, I want to touch them, remember their faces. I want to acknowledge that they have touched me. And I wonder just how much our fingerprints will linger on each other’s souls. I wonder what God had in mind when he sent us all to be in the same place at the same time. I wonder about transience, and if it will all have a point someday.
And as I wonder, I mourn. I’ll be saying goodbye to someone or something nearly every day for the next twelve days. It’s hard. I want to just skip the end, jump in my car and leave it all behind. But I don’t think I can. I’ll carry it with me, in form or another. So I have to stay to finish and say farewell and hope for see you later. I have to experience the pain, and then let God heal my heart to carry me on to something new. I have to know that I am changed.
I don’t believe the human heart was ever created for separation. We don’t have a place in our brain to process the gaps completely. We just learn to cope, move on. Train our hearts to steel themselves and take another step.
I never fully understand what I have until it’s gone. I’ve seen these faces every week for years and taken them for granted. But now, I want to touch them, remember their faces. I want to acknowledge that they have touched me. And I wonder just how much our fingerprints will linger on each other’s souls. I wonder what God had in mind when he sent us all to be in the same place at the same time. I wonder about transience, and if it will all have a point someday.
And as I wonder, I mourn. I’ll be saying goodbye to someone or something nearly every day for the next twelve days. It’s hard. I want to just skip the end, jump in my car and leave it all behind. But I don’t think I can. I’ll carry it with me, in form or another. So I have to stay to finish and say farewell and hope for see you later. I have to experience the pain, and then let God heal my heart to carry me on to something new. I have to know that I am changed.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The Rollercoaster
Yesterday, I strapped myself in for the final rollercoaster ride of the semester and my undergraduate career. If I go a little insane over the next three weeks here is why:
I am writing a fiction manuscript about a cantankerous older woman in Nebraska who refuses to evacuate during the threat of a propane explosion. She is convinced that this fire is God’s judgment coming for her, and somehow it is my responsibility to convince her otherwise (through the use of another character of course), without making the whole situation sound cheesy, ill-written, melodramatic, or unbelievable.
Secondly, I just signed my life away to Fringe Fest. Next Thursday and Friday my playwriting class will all be producing the ten-minute plays we’ve been writing this semester. There are nineteen of us. So in the course of the next week I will be rewriting and producing my own play about an abused woman and her sister. I’ll be directing my classmate’s play about friendship and the perils of miscommunication. And I’ll be acting in another classmate’s play, taking on the role of a fairly wild woman who has dumped her illegitimate daughter into her older and more responsible sister’s care. But of course, we are all rewriting our plays through this process, so who knows where we’ll all be in seven days.
So if you try to call me in the near future, I might not answer. Mostly because I won’t be able to hear you over the multitudes of characters living, breathing, and talking inside my head. Some people think being a writer is a boring life, but it only appears that way to those who don’t know any better.
I’ll also be finishing a literature course, studying Chinese, mailing out graduation invitations, researching grad schools, writing a curriculum vitae, planning a menu for an open house, saying goodbye to friends, and packing to move. And we’re off.
I am writing a fiction manuscript about a cantankerous older woman in Nebraska who refuses to evacuate during the threat of a propane explosion. She is convinced that this fire is God’s judgment coming for her, and somehow it is my responsibility to convince her otherwise (through the use of another character of course), without making the whole situation sound cheesy, ill-written, melodramatic, or unbelievable.
Secondly, I just signed my life away to Fringe Fest. Next Thursday and Friday my playwriting class will all be producing the ten-minute plays we’ve been writing this semester. There are nineteen of us. So in the course of the next week I will be rewriting and producing my own play about an abused woman and her sister. I’ll be directing my classmate’s play about friendship and the perils of miscommunication. And I’ll be acting in another classmate’s play, taking on the role of a fairly wild woman who has dumped her illegitimate daughter into her older and more responsible sister’s care. But of course, we are all rewriting our plays through this process, so who knows where we’ll all be in seven days.
So if you try to call me in the near future, I might not answer. Mostly because I won’t be able to hear you over the multitudes of characters living, breathing, and talking inside my head. Some people think being a writer is a boring life, but it only appears that way to those who don’t know any better.
I’ll also be finishing a literature course, studying Chinese, mailing out graduation invitations, researching grad schools, writing a curriculum vitae, planning a menu for an open house, saying goodbye to friends, and packing to move. And we’re off.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
India
I bought my plane ticket for India today. In exactly four months from yesterday, I will be setting foot on Indian soil for the first time. I’ll dawn a sari and pull my hair back into one long braid. I’ll strap on my sandals and hopefully find paths to walk through the streets and the slums, into the hearts of the Indian people and the God who loves us both so strongly. I expect the unexpected. To be shocked, riveted, captured, enthralled. To weep and laugh, dance and rage. To be faced with questions, injustice, and a God who’s bigger than them all. I expect to be awed into silence and to crawl my way out with words. It gives me goose bumps to think about it, because I’ve got a receipt in my inbox that says I’m actually going.
Monday, April 5, 2010
One Word Past My Own...
Today I don’t want to write. I’m tired, and I look backwards at all the pages and hours and drafts and semesters, and I wonder, isn’t that enough? Can’t I quit now?
But now is when I have to write. I have to keep going, because it’s after this moment when my words might take on something more than I can give. When I’ve written every sentence I know to write and then I write some more—well God must surely indwell within some of them.
It’s easy to start something. Raw energy, new material, fresh perspective. It’s not always easy to finish, to run mile 25 and 26 when you’re already covered in sweat and your feet ache and you think, “Hey I’ve run 24 more miles than most other people I know.”
Right now I’m staring at a finish line. My diploma is waiting at the end of this season’s race. And I’m going to make it. The question is, will I walk or will I run to claim it? I’m close enough I could slack off, slow down, give just enough to walk across the line and get my finisher’s medal, but what about finishing strong? What about pushing through the pain and running, teeth gritted, head thrown back, heart pumping till it might break out of my chest, full-on run. That’s what I envisioned at the beginning of this semester. I still want it now. But there are a million small moments in the next thirty days when I’m going to have to choose to keep going. And the first one is right now.
I know it’s worth it. I have so many good reasons to talk myself into just finishing. I have no excuse not to finish reworking another draft on my final manuscript other than the fact that I don’t want to. Sometimes it’s painful to rip something apart that you’ve already accomplished, to admit there are flaws, and to believe in the process strong enough to undergo the pain of surgery and correction. And it takes energy and time, when honestly I’d rather go to sleep or turn on a movie… anything that takes less work.
But I can’t. That’s the only answer I have. There’s too much at stake. I’ve worked too hard and come too close to give up now. And there’s something beautiful to be said about finding a nook of beauty beyond myself, of discovering God writing something within that I did not know existed, at coming to the end of my strength and finding God has the muscles of heaven willing to carry me if only I’m willing to take one more step.
But now is when I have to write. I have to keep going, because it’s after this moment when my words might take on something more than I can give. When I’ve written every sentence I know to write and then I write some more—well God must surely indwell within some of them.
It’s easy to start something. Raw energy, new material, fresh perspective. It’s not always easy to finish, to run mile 25 and 26 when you’re already covered in sweat and your feet ache and you think, “Hey I’ve run 24 more miles than most other people I know.”
Right now I’m staring at a finish line. My diploma is waiting at the end of this season’s race. And I’m going to make it. The question is, will I walk or will I run to claim it? I’m close enough I could slack off, slow down, give just enough to walk across the line and get my finisher’s medal, but what about finishing strong? What about pushing through the pain and running, teeth gritted, head thrown back, heart pumping till it might break out of my chest, full-on run. That’s what I envisioned at the beginning of this semester. I still want it now. But there are a million small moments in the next thirty days when I’m going to have to choose to keep going. And the first one is right now.
I know it’s worth it. I have so many good reasons to talk myself into just finishing. I have no excuse not to finish reworking another draft on my final manuscript other than the fact that I don’t want to. Sometimes it’s painful to rip something apart that you’ve already accomplished, to admit there are flaws, and to believe in the process strong enough to undergo the pain of surgery and correction. And it takes energy and time, when honestly I’d rather go to sleep or turn on a movie… anything that takes less work.
But I can’t. That’s the only answer I have. There’s too much at stake. I’ve worked too hard and come too close to give up now. And there’s something beautiful to be said about finding a nook of beauty beyond myself, of discovering God writing something within that I did not know existed, at coming to the end of my strength and finding God has the muscles of heaven willing to carry me if only I’m willing to take one more step.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Through the Eyes of a Child
Last week, Becca and I got an entire week of uninterrupted big sister little sister time. She rode back with me the entire seventeen hours from Nebraska after spring break and braved two plane flights all by herself last Saturday to return home. She came with me to almost all of my college classes, made a new friend with my professor’s daughter, went shopping with me at my second love (a used book warehouse called McKay’s), saw a world-renowned concert pianist, finger-painted, and finished an epic story about two princesses. We had a blast. Everyone this morning at school has been asking where my mini-me has gone.
In the midst of all our adventures, I found myself stopping to ponder the difference in perspective between my eyes and the ones of my nine-year-old sister. For one thing, it reestablished my appreciation for quiet and stillness. Becca was always moving, even when she sat, pumping her legs up and down in the chair and fidgeting this way and that. She was also constantly moving on to the next thing, asking what was next when I was still trying to finish the last. At first I wanted to chide her, inwardly thinking that she needed to slow down to fully appreciate things, but then I thought that perhaps we just appreciate life in different ways. Becca, she races to take in everything at once. I think she constantly moves because she doesn’t want to miss anything. She has eyes and a heart that are open to just about any and every adventure. Me, I have come to the realization that I will never be able to see it all, so I’d rather slow down and savor a select few things, soaking up all their riches. I like to pull up a comfy chair and settle into a moment, perhaps sip on a cup of coffee while it passes (only metaphorically of course; those closest to me know that I would never venture to drink the stuff in actuality, but I like the smell and idea of it).
Secondly, I noticed how easily I felt like silencing her voice or prompting her to sit down and behave properly when I was around my professors and peers. But they enjoyed her spirit, the carefree dreams of a nine-year-old writer and animal-lover. I realized that I’ve settled a bit too far into decorum, have lost the touch of innocent adventure and excitement of enjoying the little things in life, the child-like things perhaps. And I miss that. I miss being able to skip through a park or sing at the top of my lungs without worrying about someone looking, or dreaming without being squelched by the reality of logistics.
But mostly, she came into my world with the capacity to love what I had deemed unlovable. That is what humbled me the most. The heart of a child so willing to accept, so able to look past grievances and love what needs to be loved. I’m praying for the strength to reach that point too. I’m praying to see this person and situation with the eyes of God rather than my own. Perhaps with the eyes of a child, the faith of a child in a strong God. A God who does not differentiate between who and what he will love, unlike the struggling hearts of his grown-up children.
In the midst of all our adventures, I found myself stopping to ponder the difference in perspective between my eyes and the ones of my nine-year-old sister. For one thing, it reestablished my appreciation for quiet and stillness. Becca was always moving, even when she sat, pumping her legs up and down in the chair and fidgeting this way and that. She was also constantly moving on to the next thing, asking what was next when I was still trying to finish the last. At first I wanted to chide her, inwardly thinking that she needed to slow down to fully appreciate things, but then I thought that perhaps we just appreciate life in different ways. Becca, she races to take in everything at once. I think she constantly moves because she doesn’t want to miss anything. She has eyes and a heart that are open to just about any and every adventure. Me, I have come to the realization that I will never be able to see it all, so I’d rather slow down and savor a select few things, soaking up all their riches. I like to pull up a comfy chair and settle into a moment, perhaps sip on a cup of coffee while it passes (only metaphorically of course; those closest to me know that I would never venture to drink the stuff in actuality, but I like the smell and idea of it).
Secondly, I noticed how easily I felt like silencing her voice or prompting her to sit down and behave properly when I was around my professors and peers. But they enjoyed her spirit, the carefree dreams of a nine-year-old writer and animal-lover. I realized that I’ve settled a bit too far into decorum, have lost the touch of innocent adventure and excitement of enjoying the little things in life, the child-like things perhaps. And I miss that. I miss being able to skip through a park or sing at the top of my lungs without worrying about someone looking, or dreaming without being squelched by the reality of logistics.
But mostly, she came into my world with the capacity to love what I had deemed unlovable. That is what humbled me the most. The heart of a child so willing to accept, so able to look past grievances and love what needs to be loved. I’m praying for the strength to reach that point too. I’m praying to see this person and situation with the eyes of God rather than my own. Perhaps with the eyes of a child, the faith of a child in a strong God. A God who does not differentiate between who and what he will love, unlike the struggling hearts of his grown-up children.
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