“Maybe the first time you saw her you were ten. She was standing in the sun scratching her legs. Or tracing letters in the dirt with a stick. Her hair was being pulled. Or she was pulling someone's hair. And a part of you was drawn to her, and a part of you resisted--wanting to ride off on your bicycle, kick a stone, remain uncomplicated. In the same breath you felt the strength of a man, and a self-pity that made you feel small and hurt. Part of you thought: Please don't look at me. If you don't, I can still turn away. And part of you thought: Look at me.” 
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

Prayer XVII

On a hard futon bed in the home of a Chinese lady, I give myself to you God. I listen to the empty space in the room. I listen to my heartbeat and my ocean of blood inside my sack of skin. I listen to the ocean as it tells me there is no greater joy than you. That the pain of being here and the happiness of being here is nothing compared to how big you are. Help me know it and give in, to You.


"I said what do you do with the pieces of a broken heart? And how can a man like me remain in the light? And if life is really as short as they say, then why is the night so long?"
Chinese Translation, M Ward

rocky mountain heart

There's this smell and feeling of camping from when I was a kid that I try to recreate sometimes.
It happens especially in October.

The air comes through the window, a little cold but not menacing, and you can close your eyes and think you're in a tent, and think the world is yours, and think that you're alone but safe, and hear a fire crackling somewhere and that your parents love you and that you have a raincoat that you can put on that is four different colors and sneakers with Velcro and that when you get out there, there are pine cones and dirt and that this is real happiness with your family, and Poptarts, and it took so long to drive here and you can dry your sneakers on the fire if they get wet and the air smells only like conifers.

Right now I've got the window open and I can feel the rain coming in and--

I'm behind on all my homework from being lazy.
I'm behind on all my friendships from being sick.

But I feel safe and loved and safe for a minute.

and my love, my darling
I reach for you.

Dialogues with Izzy

Me: Poor guy, I mean God bless his soul, but--
Izzy: No, I'm done thinking God bless his soul.


----


I think of all of my friends as if I was sitting next to them in a class.
I wouldn't talk to any of them.
Not even you.


---

Emma: No, it's from Hamlet, and he doesn't know it. Poor...poor...poor somebody.
Me: "Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well."
Izzy:.........Sure.

Had a dream about N--- last night: we were at a swimming pool or a high school football stadium, but we were together holding hands was all that mattered. Woke up to my alarm, and in my sleepy fog, I was surprised he hadn't texted me. Once the fog wore off, I remembered he was never going to send me midnight texts again.

I took a walk around the block. Drank in Utah October, the air cleaned up from the rain. Thought about all the things I will never get to do with him that I always wanted. Thought about camping with him and talking his ear off. Thought about the planetarium and the aquarium. Thought about Southern Utah and the farm, and thought about my little bridge over the canal that I wanted to picnic with him and throw crumbs to the ducks. Thought about the songs I would never sing along to with him, and thought about how weird it is now for us to build our lives separately.

And then I thought about that imaginary camping trip, and how I would say
"I just can't believe all the stars."
He'd say something scientific.
I'd say
"What a gift from God." I'd sigh deep. He'd roll his eyes in the dark, stoke the fire.
He would say something about his version of science.
I'd question his proof, and then I'd question his proof for the proof.
He would try to change the subject.
I'd already have started crying.
His face would become a wall.
I'd cry my mascara into his white t-shirt, like usual, whispering, Please God, I don't know why You don't save him.
He'd say we're going to be just fine and he would get up to find a log to throw on the fire. And it would go like this for a lot of years.

Which is why--

Which is why now and which is why the planetarium and the crumbs and the ducks will have to wait.

God be merciful to me

Redeem me Father.
Save me from the noise.
Keep me in the garden.
Close my eyes.

I want to go everywhere, and I want to take you with me.

i don't really mind being a star crossed lover.
during the day.

"I've gone and quit my worshippin' of the false gods and golden sins, 'cause we made love in the Tower of Babel and it fell down." 
Jenny Lewis

a life that's good

I feel like I am constantly drinking from this full cup, that keeps getting better. I never knew life like this before. I love my job. I love my friends. I love my God and hold nothing against him anymore. I stopped worrying about the things I couldn't control and here I am, excited to get out of bed each day and do another one. Not ticking days off the calendar, hoping God takes me home. Instead I hope that God uses me, and I look forward to all the seconds I get to be on the court for the game.

I'm overwhelmed by joy. It feels like falling in love each day.

Quotes

"Will you have a drink sir?"
"Certainly, I will have 10 drinks."
 Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms


"This olive oil better be from olives imported from Italy and pressed locally."
-Celisse, at a hipster restaurant

Mom: There's more champagne if anyone wants some!
Judy: But you might need to be sober for Jeopardy.

"My room smells like musty adults."
-Celisse, apologetically

"All of my time off gets used up in out-of-state weddings. I mean, I know it's for a good cause, but..."
-James K.


"Noah used to sit under the kitchen table and eat sugar out of the sugar bowl and--"
"Fish Oil."
"No.  Tums.  Because you thought they were candy."
"Oh I still eat Tums to this day for that reason."
- Emma and Noah

"I drive a stupid Camry that smells like the Pentagon."
-Christine

"I think he, even, is surprised that he has five kids."
-Ashleigh

Me: That girl is wearing the same shirt as me.
Celisse: What, that homeless guy?

Little 5 year old girl at Walmart: Can I lay on the bag of salad we're getting? Salad feels so good.

"But the old man always thought of (the sea) as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them."

-Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Quotes

"I'm a little bit paranoid about pot lucks, at best."
-Karen

"I was so alone that everyday was like eating my own heart."
 -Junot Diaz

I visibly cooked some one else a dinner last night.

Today I went to the dentist and the hygienist was awful. He was so nice and over educatory. I immediately thought up ways to avoid getting him in six months for the second cleaning. What I want is someone who won't try to talk to me at all. Give me that girl from three years ago who doesn't understand how they make decaf coffee beans, because I don't either and I want HER cleaning my teeth. 

By noon I was sitting up tall in my chair at work and really taking care of business. It's easy to feel overly confident when you pull your hair into a pony tail and all the guys in licensure pause to listen to what you say from your side of the office.

"I miss you," is what I whisper. I miss your freckles that I only noticed on Thursdays. I miss telling you what I heard on NPR on my way to work. I miss you when you haven't moved in chess for a few hours. When an Arby's commercial comes on. 

I start to write you a letter, twenty times a day, that says I was wrong and we're kidding ourselves to say we can meet someone else good enough. Like a politician, I pretend I like other people's babies. I eat healthier. I decline comments on how I spend my free time. Like a politician I stop writing the letter for the good of us both. For what we signed up for. For the long run.

I sigh, even though I sit up so straight, and the sigh becomes all the hours of my day. And when I finally drive home, I want to drive home to your house. To your mood swings and your diatribes and your bullet points. To your balcony, to your steak dinners, to setting our silverware out, to feeding the cat. 

I'd do the last night over if I could. 

Wouldn't argue.

I'd hold hands and smile and think it was the beginning again. I'd choreograph every moment so that the words would  never  come  out.

Quotes

Christine: I just want to go to Dubai.
Philip: I just want to go to Montana.

*Bad Romance comes on over the speakers*
Lori: Dan, this isn't your music is it?
Dan: This is my music. But...

"What if you were ribs, and you were done and then someone else took a whole extra two minutes to get there and let you out of the oven, and you were like I'm done I'm done I'm done, and you were just sitting there in 400 degrees?"
- Nate

"It feels like it's fall because there are so many people here and I'm wearing pants."
-Izzy

Ann: You are the only person I've ever married.
Dana: I mean...I haven't seen proof.
Ann: What? Google Me.
Dana: I have.

*Sitting around at dinner*
Noah: Man, I found these sweet jean shorts of Danny's, they're soooo comfortable. So comfortable.
Mom: Let me see them....HEY, these are mine!
Noah: Well, Mom, you've got some comfortable jeans.
(Izzy sent that one)

You're a fighter forever, until one day, you're not, and there's nothing to throw punches at because someone stood up beside you.    I wish this was better news.

Tell my love to wreck it all, cut out all the ropes and let me fall.
Bon Iver

We meet in the kitchen by accident, taking pills in the dark, trying not to wake our family. My sister selects Tylenol, and I take 3 ibuprofen with a side of Mylanta and a shot of Captain.

We wonder what will happen.

We lock the door, and wonder what's next. I wonder what's next for me, for her, for John C. Reilly, for the state of Utah, for the valves in my car, for the valves in my heart, for the emails I'll get and I'll give, for what our hair will do in the summer-Illinois-humidity. In pursuit of God's best, in reluctance we try to sacrifice everything else.

In one year these problems will be a joke. Maybe. We'll still be moving forward unless murder. Unless tornadoes. Unless rapture. Unless it works out for true love or fake love or job opportunities and new addresses. To new life that gets newer and more complex in the changing biology of choices.

quotes Friday Tuesday

Me: I'm completely sober right now, but I can't get my iPod out of it's case to hook it up to my speakers and make it a white noise machine.
Roy: Bring it here. I'll help ya out Margie.
Me: Can that be my other nick name?
Roy: Do you like eggs? And also, do you like solving complex murders?

"I hate to namedrop, but I've been in Scottsdale."
-Judy, leaving me a voicemail

"I should carry contact solution and cases around with me, but then I guess I'd have to wear a fanny pack."
-Trox

"It's just like, how many Mongolian Empire leaders can you know?"
-Philip, watching Jeopardy

Wish I coulda been in my 20's in the 80's.
Wish I'd never met you.
Wish I could reconcile, wish I could sit still.
Wish I'd be strong and tall and stop spilling coffee on my shirts.

Love that I can't sleep, love that there are new mysteries left.
Love that I met you.
Love that I keep standing up to leave the room and that my legs keep carrying me forward.
Love that I'm messy and emotional and still feel something.

And Lord have mercy on me.

She looked up at him. "You really think the painter made it back to see her?"
     "Oh yes," Pasquale said, his voice hoarse with feeling.
     "You're not just saying that to make me feel better?"
     And because he felt like he might burst open and because he lacked the dexterity in English to say all that he was thinking--how in his estimation, the more you lived the more regret and longing you suffered, that life was a glorious catastrophe--Pasquale Tursi said only, "Yes."
 -Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter

I've been reading, running, watching excellent films. I've been drinking 5am French pressed coffee and then sticking the French press in my desk drawer. I've been missing school, been not missing school. I've been falling in and out of love each time he walks by me. Been praying. Been day dreaming so long that I stop blinking and my contacts fog up. Been making lists and been so afraid of the future that I have to get up and leave. Been calming back down. Been saying answers to Jeopardy questions. Been trying to wear socks to bed and then kicking them off in the night. Making mix tapes and then starting over with new songs. Been swimming a mile, and then starting over and swimming another mile.
And the heartburn has a life of it's own, I'm a monster, but I'm learning.

If everybody's thoughts showed up in a bubble over their heads, you'd find out a lot more people loved you than you thought.

Noah: How does my hair look going this direction?
Me: I knew you were going to ask me that, I was counting the minutes.
Noah: Yeah, I know. So I'm thinking about getting a solar panel.


Garrett starts putting on his coat.
Holden: Garrett, do you have a way to get home?
Garrett: Yeah, I drove here.

freedom

Sometimes I can't believe I'm 25 and still finding new things to surprise me and new people to love. Or old friends that you forgot were so wonderful and remembered all your best attributes. The air feels light, and my hear is racing from caffeine and being so happy. It's like waking up after a few years of thinking the style of the movie was going to stay a drama forever and now it's more like a BBC comedy.

A new kind of alive. Not in love, this is not about love. Or at least not romance. Just about new life.

Don't give up.

The last post I wrote was probably before I went to the doctor; she told me to lie down on the table, and then when I was pretty naked she started giving me chores to live better.

The stress starts to accumulate throughout the weekend, and then on Sunday morning I'm crying into my salad and so homesick for the farm that I fall asleep after work thinking I've suddenly gotten in the car and driven there while I'm asleep. Let go of my jobs and let the 100-year-old farm house wash my sins away on creaky bunk-beds, and the steadfast and hearty-spiritual feeling of drinking my grandfather's coffee that has grounds in the bottom of the pot. He is blind, he doesn't know about the sediment.

"No, sorry ma'am, that patient hasn't been here since 2011, their prescription is expired," a heavy Louisiana accent comes back to me, and I realize I've been breathing heavily on hold for two minutes, and that the call is recorded. I know it will later be audited (probably by Matt) and the auditor won't know the heavier sighs are coming from the homesickness, and he won't care.

But then comes a  new  prescription, and in small, happy letters, the words Scranton, PA flash across my monitor and I have to smile. God gives you happy little things to keep going. God is the auditor hearing my sighs and knowing how many days that I'm not going to get hit by a truck that is going through a red light on my way home.

And that's enough.

don't tell anyone I'm here, I've got Tylenol and beer.

Life is sweet, and pretty restful right now. 

I'm a force to be easily reckoned with. I sit around eating oranges in the extra hours that I get to myself. I am doing laps on easy street. I even do yoga sometimes before I stretch myself out under a new, bright yellow duvet in the afternoons after company subsidized steak-lunches. I know the next part could be fierce, and I will be strong when it comes, but it's really nice right now to drink coffee and listen to a book on tape and take the day off on my days off.

I'm living out my college dream of sitting in my room drinking tea and being an editor at 2:45pm on a Monday afternoon, and now my grown-up dream is to go back in time and become an accountant or an analyst or something where I'd have pants on at 2:45pm on a Monday afternoon.

hemingway and me

You promised I'd get to be a sailor, after I did all of the hard things we've all gotta do. You said we'd get away and eat fish raw from the ocean, and lay out on the deck under the big huge moon and drink wine til 3 in the morning. You said you'd cook me eggs for breakfast and we'd read in our bunk and every day would be Saturday in the same way that every day'd be Monday in all the good ways and all the bad ways that come of working hard and working with your hands and taking leisure very seriously and being in love and making someone else belong to you.

When you wake up, there are pieces missing from the story, and you're so thirsty for water and you have to pee and find yourself crying in the bathroom and you want the dreams to go away and everything smells like Lysol and there are pillow lines on your face.

In the real life we went in different directions for good reasons. You--too much a liberal and smirking, thinking me naive. Me, trusting in God supremely because I see the world dirtier than you do. The questions would have come up later, but I made them come up right away so we could save time getting back and used to being by ourselves for breakfast and lunch  and under trees and in hallways and having the whole bed to ourselves.

We won't get to go fishing, I think. We won't get out, even in a small boat so that we don't sink a ship.

so I could be happy

I feel pretty lighthearted today.
The weekend was good, the time change was hard.

I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep quickly on Sunday night, and that's always the time that you think of everything, right? I miss the farm so bad. I miss it, and I look forward to it, and I get up and make toast and coffee and go to work for it. The love of being home in the green hills and with my grandpa, and the smell of hay and grass, the way the sun sets in bursting stars through holes in the walls of the barns. Slipping away to eat an ice cream sandwich in the cellar. Finding a frog got into the bathroom from an open window. The thunder and lightning keeping you up at night and sharing a room with five people you love so much. The love of the sadness, the history, and how it keeps moving on as we lose people who go to our real home to be with Jesus. Patsy Cline at dinner time and drinking wine til 1 in the morning with a soldier and his Iraq baggage and his hopes and his fears. Running down gravel roads with cousins.

Those are the only dreams that I want to dream at night.

But God has given me gifts here too. Movies til 2 in the morning. Strong coffee. Surprise morning snow when I walk from building to building. A 3 hour conversation with an old buddy who makes me laugh. Rewatching The Office from the beginning. Freedom. Mid-day hangouts with my dad. Sunlight. Running outside again. Fancy dinners with Celisse. How fun my siblings actually are. My job.
The grass is so green, when it comes down to it.
Thank you God for your plan for it, even when it happens one day at a time.

song and dance

"STILL...two or more drinks a day do increase your chances of getting drunk."
-Megan

"They were playing Franz Ferdinand in every store. I was so proud of the mall."
-Izzy

----------------

Some days, the best that you do is to get furious, and then cool down with a third cup of coffee, and not say anything irrational.

To take a win or two where you can get them.

And one glass of wine and a call to your Judy at bedtime.

Windsday

The wind blew me in the front door and he smiled so big I could almost feel the cracks starting in his chapped lips, and a what a horrible punishment for someone so pleased to see me.

In his 30's, my dad said that his short term memory was getting shorter, but he was remembering all sorts of things from his childhood, even back to four years old. I never thought it would start happening to me, but I've started getting these little glimpses of my memories, and each one is a tiny, sweet present, like a piece of candy. And if my 30's come, and I start having more of those, then it won't be so bad to get old.

My weeks flash by so quickly. The wind keeps the air beautiful along the Wasatch, and every morning as I walk across my work campus to get my second cup of coffee, I worship my King for the gift of being here. Nights are hard, but mornings are such a relief and reward.

I pass the time to be with You, my Saviour.
Let my life glorify You, let my days be short, and my joy be from Your mercy and righteousness. The gifts You give me, and the trials You walk me through.

Thank You for clean water, for legs to run, for the kind of family other people covet, thank you for a little boy who is learning sign language and wants me to point out to him Your moon and stars, for smothered burritos, for the dream of going back to the country, for my freedom, for my chains, and for all the mysteries in between that keep me up at night.

rutina de las noches viernes

Every Friday night like clockwork, my old coworker friend Krista sends me a Snapchat of a cocktail with the caption, "TGIF". We never talk otherwise, and I need it to always be this way.

What do I do every Friday night? Typically I work and work, then watch Jeopardy with my parents. Tonight I made bread again and thought what a good wife I would be, because I know how to run a Kitchen-aid. And then I remember that being a wife is more complicated then throwing flour and water in a mixer and that actually I am probably a bad wife because I work 49 hours a week, I buy whatever I want when I'm at Target, I'm terrified of children, and I regularly eat Little Debbie snack cakes for breakfast without caring if it builds a wall of cholesterol around my heart (which my friend's mother-in-law, not even MY mother-in-law sends me regular emails about, and how I'm going to die and that I should really be thinking more about the future and dating guys that don't interest me) and then Jeopardy is over and I go back to work til 8 pm. Usually after this I take a melatonin so that I can pass out before I start stalking old coworkers/high school mates/ex-admirers on Facebook.

Tonight though, I did take Jack on a prayer walk with me, while the bread was rising for an hour.
It's not the same as Rush. Nothing will ever be the same as my times with Rush, but God did give me a breathtaking, icy sunset over the western mountains, and Jack didn't poop which would've never happened with Rush. I did work til 8 pm again, but I finished Hemingway's Garden of Eden and here I am, still awake at 11:30 and having to deal with what I'm actually thinking about like normal people do, as they lay in bed and process their day. I hate to be alone with my thoughts, hence the routine melatonin, Benedryl, Captain Morgan. But here I am without it.

And what I think is:

contrary to what I wanted 4 weeks ago (which was to buy a plot of land in the canyons, become a work-at-home agent, spend all my nights with books instead of people, plot a garden, and build my own cabin) is to keep running hard. To keep being stressed out and dealing with Heavy-Heart-Connor-Oberst-Syndrome, and to keep saying yes to things that I shouldn't say yes to. Continuar siendo un guerrero. 
I'm coming to get it. To get at it.

on the mountain

"I think I'm rooting for the Broncos, but I'm enjoying football."
-Ned during the Superbowl

I'm really happy lately. Not sleeping well, but joyful all the same. Excited about the church plant and everything that will lead up to that point.

And I love my new job, still. Every early morning, I walk through the doors while the lights are still low, make my cup of Via, pour a bowl of lucky charms, and sit at my desk and just sigh. I'm so happy God gave it to me.

This time last year I was struggling with the blues, and trying to hope in the future. But God uses those time to build a foundation. And here we are, finally come out the other side and it is a spectacular view.

Always busy. Always coffee. Always growing more in love with my Christian brothers and sisters, and asking God for a softer heart than I had the day before.

Maybe there is nothing interesting about carrying on.

Free donut Sunday at work. Brand new running shoes bright with the promise of the miles I will run this year. Combing my hair. Drinking extra water after giving blood. Singing along to songs in the car with Noah.

Sometimes you try really hard to create something extraordinary that will take you somewhere else and you get lightheaded standing up. But there is reward in being faithful in ugly, slow, boring January seasons.

I looked around the room last night, waiting, and hoping for something to take the breath out of my lungs and to feel something serious. It didn't happen. But when I got home, in the quiet moments with a shot of Captain Morgan, I stood on the back porch in my bathrobe. Izzy had dug out an old family telescope and left it out there, and I tried to find the huge-but-waning moon. In the valley, you can't see much of the stars for the city lights, so I knew it wasn't going to be the Atacama Desert like Moss talked about a few months back but you might always underestimate the Moon that you will find.

The air did get caught in my lungs; and I love that my gut reaction is always, "Oh Father, how magnificent--how big you really are." Because He set the moon in the sky, close enough for us to see. For us to somehow get in a spaceship and visit like a neighbor. How large the universe is-- it keeps going and baffles the men on NPR and in front of auditoriums full of college students. Whether or not they admit it.
I pity Moss, to think he got here by an accident and try to sleep with that every night, and not have a relationship with the God who formed him out of dirt.

The  craters  on  the  moon.
I could see them close as if they were just Provo or Logan's distance away.

Maybe there is nothing interesting in carrying on.
But you put on your pajamas at night, take your pills and brush your teeth, and you get one day closer to being finished marveling in faith. Closer to being awestruck face to face. And it's nice to check that off of the calendar.

(The Atacama Desert. It deserves a trip to Chile.)

she makes the sound the sea makes to calm me down

"You had a bad day, Rachel," he says, looking at the numbers, pulling his mouse unnecessarily high off the desk as he clicks through spreadsheets of red and green.
"I'm kind of discouraged," I told him.
"Powers are really your Achilles heel. You just gotta double check," he turns to me.
To triple check.
I don't know how all of the pieces of life come together.
My dad is standing over a frozen patch of our backyard at this point, and dumping hot water out of the hot tub, to soften the ground. To make another winter grave for a dearly loved dog-friend.

"I can be strong," I say in different ways, sitting in the front seat of my car for two hours with a friend who needs someone to listen to her.
I whisper it, while she talks, to the sun that is slowly creeping towards 4:00p.m. above the mountains.
"And it was like Bill says, the curtain was pulled back and I caught a glimpse of the glory of God, Rachel."

It caught me off guard.

I thought to myself, when was the last time I caught a glimpse? Or even looked for a glimpse? I forgot that those moments even happened, and how many months have I wasted in the last 4 or 5 years not trying to be vulnerable enough to ask for those?

I want to get invested. I want to wake up.
Here I am, Lord. Show me a new thing.

On the Farm

Vacation officially started. Redbox rentals, brand new tooth brush, Aussie friends, Mac n Cheese, Captain Morgan and a beautiful snowy day.

God has richly blessed me.

quotes Friday

"I might have to never remember that."
-Elaine's cousin Alvin, to Moss who was trying to give a science lesson none of us wanted to hear

"Well, babies probably like water, because they're humans too."
-Megan

Me: Has anybody been nice to that girl, that's a girl?
Izzy: Yeah. Emma invited her to live with them.

"I don't cry here."
"Nope."
"I cry at home."
- 3 year old talking optimistically to her mom at Target

------------------------

The state of my life is that I wish I was always working, or always sleeping. I think I will want a personal life again in a few weeks.

I think.

I'm going to take a vacation and stay at a farm for a few days and pretend I'm deeper in the country than I am. I'll feed the ducks and turkeys and chickens. I'll muddy my boots. I'll read books.

It's a good life, and you can really feel it if you breathe in and out and look around and laugh at how hard it is.

This is nothing like it was in my room, in my best clothes

I don't have much to say. The little I do have catches in my throat when I walk down the hallways.

I went back to the early morning shifts and wearing my glasses, and the astonishing, relieving quiet before the sunrise.

I will be the basic version. I'll smile and be kind and hold my head up.

The happiest robot of them all

I think it's been 2.5 years since I've been this happy. It didn't take my wildest dreams coming true, it just took a change of scenery and free waffles.
My heart feels new. It feels nothing difficult.
I let go of the air quality, because I can't change it and God still calls me to live here.

I will treasure this winter.

My dad hates made for TV chick flick movies, but we've been watching them all day to get out of football.
These are the Sundays I'll remember, actually, in my later life. Frying stuff and making fun of Lifetime Christmas movies.
God has me in a perfect life.
I wish I could say all the things on my heart but I'm just not any good at writing anymore. Maybe in the next season of trials. I'm resting and not looking too far out of the windows.

of melatonin and snow

When I start to feel exhausted and not smart enough for this new job, I just drive past my Starbucks and that's how I keep fighting to make it work, because I do NOT want to go back to serving coffee.

Very busy with work, trying to workout, and trying to visit all friends all the time. I keep saying, "I'm going to take a week for just ME, to catch up on MY stuff and go on a run every night til my body feels good again." But it's too gratifying to spend time with friends.

I went to Provo last night to finally see Kelsea since it has been months, and saw Abel walking around like he's six years old or something. So cute.

We had dinner and then watched Caleb play a soccer game, and it was just hugely relieving to be with her. 

I say a thankful prayer every time my car gets me to-and-from anywhere in this cold, and I'm enjoying knitted presents from dear friends. Coffee. Electric blankets. Hot tubbing. Calling people with southern accents. New coworkers. Next year's dreams of the Midwest and maybe going back to the U and perhaps a spring half marathon.

It's just plain weird and wonderful to be happy all the time.

I blinked, and a week went by.

for the time being

When I love you
I love you very much.
And when I don't, it's a missing ocean in my life.
Happily landlocked I build cities and towns far away from you. The main feeling I feel is used-to-it.

What did I mean the most?
Between all of this: the very much used box of Kleenex and bottle of cough medicine...
Between beloved dogs abandoned for holidays in Arizona.
After I gave up my weekends, after I started the 60 hour work weeks, but before I became a real grown up.
Between reading fiction books, and then reading nonfiction books.
Between becoming and dissolving.
Between clocking in with my fingers, and clocking in with a picture of my face to a little magnetic sensor.
Between drinking candy for a living, and eating salads for lunch.
Somewhere in there is where I am now, and what I mean the most is that you can stand up tall. You were made clean, at least, somewhere in between 1988 and 2013, for better and for worse.

We might get our heads chopped off by everyone, or we might find romance and that thing of settling down in a house with a compost pile and, God-forbid, a minivan.

For now I'm just happy when the dogs are snoring, because that means they're not awake.

Good night, Ms. Clavel.

I am--of course--starting to get reflective, as it is the end of the year.
Six months ago, or even six weeks ago, I would have said that this was a year packed with hardships. Everything from my dog dying, friends moving away, that unholy flu,car problems, job rejections, The Internship; there were days when I thought I was having a hospital-worthy meltdown.
But coming out the other side of it, with the gift of hindsight, I can't believe how good God is, and how much He rewards those who find peace in Him supremely. I don't know how nonbelievers can do it.

I got to see Judy. I am crazy in love with my new job, I'm still getting to do proof-reading (is that what I went to college for, I think?), I'm paying off the little debt that I have left, I'm starting to eat healthier and sleep more.

I learned more being thrown into the fire, than the peaceful year after graduating that I was just watching every TV series that Netflix had to offer.
What a glorious end to a tornado of a season. Now if we have a nice white Christmas and I don't fail any tests at my new job, I could see it being a very peaceful month of rest before the crazy upheaval that is in the forecast for 2014.

God will still be good though, either way.

He says your name from somewhere nearby like he's trying it out again. (But he's not trying it out, he's got a girlfriend. He's like a suit, he's like---all the mystery's gone.) He just stands there looking great in a beard and hoodie and you think you have pesto in your teeth but you smile and try to hug him but bury your face not-in-his-shoulder---but why are you doing this so weird, you're just friends but you can't think of what to say after two years and the embrace isn't the same as that day you walked around downtown for several hours dancing carefully around the blisters in summer sandals, and he wanted to be with you back then.  Was good for you back then. When you had a strong chin and you had the glow of college and love notes from men in their twenties-not-thirties-or-forties. But you gave it up for the long-term plan. You held up your end of the bargain, and then what? You had to learn a new life and you got to be the one quietly carrying some baton and driving home so late at night that the early morning BBC news is on, but you can't hear it because there is no one in the passenger seat to laugh along with you to the funny things that some Vietnamese man is saying on the radio. You gotta be a different kind of strong than before.
Every day the strong becomes an electrifying, terrifying new thing that won't be easy to explain and the island you're on is a good enough home, because God is good, dammit.

God is great and He is holding up His end of the bargain, even though every day is a different hard, with different joys and hurts, He gave you mercy, so sacrificing everything should be an easy ordeal.
But you go away, and it's a different kind of richness that you miss. Not money, but being known and loved by another human being in a sack of flesh. You miss it and remember what it was like to doze off in the arms of a man who wanted to protect you and cherish you.

Walk out into beautiful cold weather. The mountains so close you can touch them or see them crystal clear. There is grace, there is grace. "Get behind me Satan," you whisper to the feelings, and tomorrow you'll be a better soldier and dodge bullets like a pro.

Happy everyday.

What a nice life.

Been hallucinatin' you, babe

I wish
that
someone
else was
awake
with me.
(And other things that make it hard to be here.)

WELL. Monday finally came.

I have the opposite schedule of most Americans, and I love when the weekends are finally over.
I started my new job today, and I am ecstatic about working for this company and all the perks. By lunch time, I couldn't believe that this is my real life. I am hopefully going to slowly let go of all my extra jobs (I worked my last 5 hours of The Internship this week) and be able to actually have a Sabbath in a couple weeks.

Excited for the future. For work. For Christmas. For fellowship. For running faster miles. God has blessed me with so much.

God willing and the creek don't rise

It may be time to retire from house/dog-sitting as I don't need the money anymore, and I seem to attract the worst problems to me (and other people's property.) I could write a book on my house-sitting misadventures.

This time around.

-First night, one of the 5lb Pomeranians ate two grapes out of my bowl when my back was turned. Well, grapes are poisonous to dogs, and I spent an hour googling "Is my dog going to die from eating grapes" and trying to do the math of grape poison in grams to dog weight in kilograms. Ratios. Ugh. I tried to get him to throw up for the next hour (my mom suggested a teaspoon of salt on his tongue, tried that one, didn't work) and I read that burned toast does something, so I burned the only bread I could find in the house, and he gladly ate it, and still didn't throw up. So I went to bed praying really hard that God would spare his foolish little life. And you know what? 24 hrs later, he was just fine. Not even diarrhea.

-Second day, I accidentally left the fridge slightly open, and all the cold air escaped and went unreplenished as fridges do not like their doors to be left ajar. I came back four hours later and very sadly threw away lukewarm bacon and roast beef. I did, however, move the expensive cheeses to the freezer immediately, and I have been eating them and I haven't died yet.

-Third day: really cold. This couple has been using space heaters instead of the furnace to heat the house since it's been a sunny 60 degrees in Utah since, like, September. So I had the space heater on, and warmed my coffee in the microwave at the same time, and tripped a breaker. Stood out in the rain trying to figure out which one it was on the side of the house, one by one, and ended up giving up and flipping them all. Now all the clocks in the house are blinking.

Same day, I finally text the homeowner to say are you sure you don't want me to turn on the furnace? i.e. are you worried about your pipes at all? She says turn on the furnace, but then I come home from church (earlier than I normally would, thank God) and A PIPE HAS BURST. The ceiling in the downstairs bathroom is bulging with water.

So that is my weekend. I hope you are all binge-watching Scandal or LOST or something so I can live through your free time vicariously...

Judy

"You know how sometimes the leaves are dead but they haven't fallen off the tree yet? I'd like to just go light the leaves and see if the whole thing would burn like a candle."

"Grandma!"

"What?"

"That is not what I thought you were going to say!"

"It would be so pretty, like a giant candle in someone's front yard."