recovery

Today was Be-Blessed-Thursday.

Yesterday seemed pretty overwhelming (at least to everyone else on the internet? and at my small group? I think the person who won the most depressing day ended up being Tim, whose coworker got hit by a car and died yesterday morning in front of students from the school he was jogging to, to work). Celisse and I went and got crappy pho after small group at the only restaurant that was still open at 9:30 and then stood in the kitchen and listened to the guys talk about creation theology, and I wanted to say words but I just kept losing them while I stared into space.
I eventually drove home after midnight and sat in my driveway and cried for Tim's colleague. I cried because he didn't know he was going to die when he woke up yesterday morning. I cried because I know I am not doing enough with all the short time I've been given. I wept for Emily, and Elaine, and replayed my earlier conversation with Emily during our lunch together, and how she keeps looking for fulfillment in one empty avenue or another.

I don't have all the answers. But I do know that going to bed alleviates a lot of the pressure that we accumulate via coffee and dwelling on evil and making right and wrong decisions all day.

Today there was rest.

Surely goodness will follow me.

tiny adventures

Source: little-people.blogspot.de via Betty on Pinterest

That's what I do all day long.

 I have many little mishaps at work while drinking very small cups of espresso that make my tiny blood vessels pump miniature red blood cells in fast-forward. I change each customer's life in a momentary way that wears off after an hour, but they keep coming back for me anyway.

I have a tiny adventure of a nap in my soft bed with my beautiful comforter, and a tiny spritz of lavender in the air makes it a tiny, dreamy moment.
 
I have a tiny adventure to the gym, and you don't know what will happen. I have a tiny adventure in the rec room with Krista where we literally almost pump iron, but all the weights are made of plastic now.

I make myself a tiny glass of wine and cut not-so-expensive cheese into tiny cubes and pretend I am in Beaune.

But I am writing one page stories in my head all day, where I am the heroine, and if I was illustrated out, I might even be a tinier little girl.

And I just try to take a step back and sigh because I am so happy about it sometimes.

high tide

Ken, Doll you got my life in order.

Well. Sort of.

I think all the running around and building cool muscles, got me feeling pretty right with the world. I am really getting my act together. Writing things down. Mailing overdue letters. Framing prints that have been laying secretly between pieces of cardboard and waiting to be loved on the wall.

Show up to band practice. Check.
Invite coworker to church. Check.
Donate to charity. Check.
Write down Bible verses. Check.
Make your bed and open the shutters so your plants get light while you are at work. Check and check.

It is not that hard to be content, I guess.
And this may be a swelling of the tide. This might be the high tide, and a later season will leave the shore exposed and my bones exposed on a hot, dry beach next to a sandstone cliff.
So I hope I have strong faith then, and that I use this time to reinforce my foundation.

And may it be at least eight years before I ever take a child through the doors of Ikea, Lord.
And may I never go to sleep next to a man who wants to talk about football statistics or politics, Lord.
And if it is your will, Lord, let my legs keep running and climbing and jumping as long as I live, Lord.
I love You.
To God be the glory alone, for a personal trainer who likes to get paid in coffee. For a clean car, and for dates with best friends, and for a place of worship where we are still not condemned by our government, yet.
Amen.

run run run

I was dumping coffee from a ladle into the grinder this afternoon, standing next to Emily and Elaine and watching Philip make drinks on the other side of the room, when I was struck by a horrifying thought.

What if it gets to be February and I still don't really want to apply for other "real" jobs?

But I shut it down, because we will take care of that when the time comes, and I love to feel in love with the people I spend so much time with and pray for, and get paid to laugh with, for so many sleep-deprived hours a week.

In other news,
as usual, I am perfecting my bathing suit bod in the depth of gingerbread cookies and snowfall and "holiday" party time.  Why couldn't I have looked this great in a tank-top during summer?

I made a goal for myself to not buy any more fall/winter clothes until I had run 50 miles, and I am at 48 miles as of tonight, and will finish the 50 tomorrow morning. This, along with our PT sessions with Ken, and just not really eating crap all day will hopefully help me fit in my next bridesmaid dress that should hopefully come soon so I can find out if I need to surgically remove a few ribs before Jackie's wedding in January.

Also, adding a VIA pack to your protein shake is the bomb for those who have only been sleeping 5 hours a night and working a hundred shifts a week.

50 miles in 35 days. Now again, faster.

slow down

"They say I'm the world's poorest president. Let me tell you that I'm not poor! Poor are those who need too much..."

"I discovered the keys to this in the jail cells, when I couldn't read. If I hadn't spent those years there, I wouldn't be who I am, because one learns more from pain than from bounty," he said. "That's why, the night when I had a mattress, I felt happy. How is it possible, therefore, that we spend our lives poisoned with desperation to buy a new car every two years? If I could, I would live much more simply."

- Uruguayan President Jose Mujica (excerpt taken from this recent NPR article, but it was cooler hearing it in his voice on the radio)

It gave me such hope, that a 77 year old man who is president of a country, drives a really, really old Volkswagen Beetle, and washes his own dishes. 

I am so richly blessed.
I don't know why God picked me to have a full belly, and strong, working legs, and a car to drive and a house and family to live with, but I am thankful every day.

something good this way comes

Source: Uploaded by user via Frances on Pinterest

I am having a really happy season right now.
It's called "I don't work at a bank, and I don't have 10 page papers to worry about and it's going to be Christmas time so soon, and let's eat turkey and be thankful for everything we've got" season.

When I graduated in May, I think my heart started to warm up and I thought God would magically produce a perfect boyfriend for me who wore some kind of uniform and would like to go running with me, and he would be a good leader, and push me to greatness, and he would be goofy and make me laugh like a cartoon.

And then when it didn't happen, I was like, what the hell, God? Help a brotha out. I'm ready to get crackin' on a family and homeschool some little kids and grow a garden.

But after a long, hard summer I think I am back to a place of medium. Like for 2 years, marriage grossed me out, and then for six months, marriage was all I wanted, and now I want marriage in a medium way that is really easy to wait for, and to barely care if it really happens or not, because I will find things to do with the days that my maker gives me.

I am having a 10 out of 10 week. My gym owner is one of my regulars at Sbux, and he has been giving me, Emily, and Krista free personal training, which has drastically raised my serotonin or whatever. It is a good replacement for my Crossfit life. And now it is snowing and gorgeous outside, and I'm starting to get almost a full night's sleep most nights, and I love my unimportant little retail job.

Everything seems manageable again, and it is such a blessing from God. 
I will enjoy this season of rest while it lasts.

Source: domesticexecutiveonline.com via Mary Nell on Pinterest

on repeat

Maybe it's the election, or getting my cavities filled (and old ones replaced...am I age 50?) that is really reminding me that I am not experiencing everything for the first time anymore. I am watching LOST and getting to the last episode (again) and finding myself calculating that if I watch one episode a week starting January 1st, I won't have to watch Sun and Jin die again until late 2014.

Maybe it was Radio West. This guy was telling Doug Fabrizio today about these moments while he was out hunting that surpassed those moments that only get to happen once in your life, better than putting a ring on someone else's finger in your own  wedding ceremony, or graduating college, or any of those moments that you already know what the picture will look like. He was talking about those moments that you don't expect, and you are wide awake for the whole thing, and think, "This is really happening, and it will never happen again," and he was talking about caribou. But I was thinking about my own moments that I get to have, like that.

Whether it is sitting across from Celisse in her car, and hearing her admit a secret that she really didn't have to tell me.
Whether it was that night, two weeks ago, that I was driving home from a closing shift and all my friends were doing something way cooler, but I slowed down my Jetta and watched people launch chinese lanterns across the park, and across the sky.
Whether it is meeting the love of your life, and having your breath catch in your lungs as you realized that he really understood you--like only in the way that a family member or your very personal God knows your soul--only to watch him slip away after 7-Eleven dates into the blue abyss of hipster/atheistic/rockstar territory.
Or watching your father cry, and finding out that he really loves you crazy.

What I have to look forward to are those moments. For the next 40 years, or whatever.
So I've got that.
There's that.

waiting

The summer I lived with Judy, I would wake up every morning before the paper delivery guy would drive by the house and before the newspaper would land (THUNK) on the porch. Somewhere, a baby would stir in its crib, but not wake up, and the mother would stir in her bed, and say a thankful prayer that she did not have to get up this time, and she would wonder why anyone still got the newspaper delivered when there was the internet now, before falling asleep to a dream about an old coworker she used to rely on to make her feel like she had real friends..

I would wake at 3:45 or 4am, and wait patiently for him. The absence of him would leave a quiet white noise waiting in the air. It would kill me, sometimes, to wait for him. And then his car would drive obediently towards our house, I would hear the beloved thunk of the newspaper on our porch. I would pull myself up in the bed and look out the window to make sure he got back in his car and that he wasn't crawling up the side of the house to my window. I would lie there, awake for another minute, consider what my murder might actually be like. I'd get up to go pee and then sleep a few more hours, before I would bring Judy her ice packs, and start the coffee maker and bring said newspaper to her spot on the couch where we would eat breakfast and plan our leisure time. (All of our time was leisure time). And in those days, I lived happily ever after, whether or not my murder was just around the corner.

I think of how easy it would be to make a phone call, and be back there for good.

But I think that life is supposed to be harder than that.
And I think that even my life here is much, MUCH easier than life for practically everyone else in the world. I wish I could take some of the suffering of my brethren onto my shoulders to relieve them, and to feel like I was doing something.
But God mapped this all out, and He knows, and I don't, and I just have to be patient, in the silence before the newspaper shows up. To be thankful, for now, that I am not the one delivering the newspapers at 4am, under an angry full moon.

meet me in Montauk

Source: Uploaded by user via Today is that rainy day. on Pinterest

Me: How are you?
J: I am twelve days sober.
Me: That is awesome!
J: Yeah, I am only smoking pot now.

It would be very easy to become a psychopath. I am on a steady plan to become one, and it has involved not sleeping all week, and then trying to work while still in a dream state, and with a lack of red meat in my diet.  Add Eternal Sunshine to all of this, shake with espresso and eggnog, and add Halloween makeup and not taking a night off from anything, and there you go.


"I found your life's most perfect butter sauce."
- Chef Celisse