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All of Us Strangers Sitting on a Footstool

June 5, 2013

threeSomewhere along the way I forgot I had a story.

It is more accurate to say somewhere along the way I forgot I was living a story.

There’s so much noise these days and I don’t know how to shut it out and down and over and out. Our home is a quiet place, filled with simple things, but it is a small place, and there is no hiding from life’s noise. The coming and going, the phone calls with family, the boyfriends, the dishes piling, and the laundry. Some have said the single life is simple, but I dare anyone to say that to me who has had 32 roommates in a dozen years. As soon as I learn the rhythms and graces of one, she marries or moves and I plunge into another lesson with another girl. I cannot complain and do not: these girls have been family to me, each one of them slipping into her new life while I mourn her leaving, she has been family to me.

One and I are walking yesterday and the sun is setting, “You’re going to move with me?” I ask her, because we will close up shop on this house soon I think. She tells me she doesn’t know how to process the invitation that I would want her to meld her life with mine. I feel a sense of Naomi in that moment and she my Ruth: where you go, I’ll go; only I am the one saying to her: where I go, you come. (Ruth 1:16)

It is foreign to us both, the togethering that happens with strange people in a strange land. And we are all strangers, I think, we just haven’t awakened to its reality yet. Or life has been kinder to you than to me. Or perhaps, after all, it has been kinder to me than to you. We shouldn’t bother ourselves with such things.

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I am scrubbing the laundry room floor tonight and I know I ought to feel at home in this place, but it feels more a placeholder to me, a dog-eared page, a bookmark: Don’t Forget What God Has Done Here. And I don’t know if He means this house or Texas or this world, but it could be any and is all. We are all so enamored with making a place for ourselves when it is He who has made a place for all of us. His thumbnail is the sliver of moon, heaven is His home, the earth is His footstool, dare we even imagine we could build a place for Him? (Isaiah 66:1)

The air catches beneath the tablecloth as it settles centered, dust particles float, and I put the broom in the corner. The dishwasher and the washer both run, their steady hum sounding steady with the air-conditioner. It smells like lemon furniture polish and maybe the grapefruit in the bowl on the table. We have made a home here, placed ourselves in the center of our story. The doors revolve around us, the world revolves around us, and I wonder sometimes how little idea we have of His grandness and this home a vapor, our lives a breath, our whole story His.

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In abiding, beauty, Family, heaven, home, identity, peace, seasons, time, Uncategorized
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Shelf Life

February 4, 2013

shelf

I have a shelf life of two years, three years max. Once I overheard someone say of me, “She’s obviously wife material, my only fear is her aversion to commitment,” and the words replay in my mind.

A friend told me last week the lies she tells herself the most are always in second person: you aren’t smart enough, you aren’t pretty enough, you aren’t enough. I tell myself the truth, though, when I use the second person: you won’t stick around long enough.

A man put his hand on my head many years ago and spoke these words: “He has given you a flexibility of spirit and there are those who will see you as a flitting butterfly, going from one thing to the next, but remember this: He has given that flexibility to you, He has made you adaptable and transient.” I looked up from under his hand into the eyes of someone who knows my soul well, knows its propensity to fly the coop. I smiled; she smiled. But she still cried when I last left her house on my trek back to Texas.

The blessing of my singleness has been flexibility. It is moving quickly and easily, changing careers every few years, worrying little about accumulation of things or resources. It can be a selfish existence, but it can also be the quickest way to remember every single day this place isn’t home and ought not feel like it.

The curse of singleness is the same curse on everyone—for man it is to work, to toil, and to commit; for me it is to birth, to nurture, and to commit. A pregnant friend told me once it wasn’t until after the shock of knowing a child grew within her wore off, that she realized she had to be committed to this. Nine months of her body shifting and shaping, with an alien thing in her that would come out—the labor process terrified her. But she was committed not because she chose to be every second of every minute, but because the blessing is also the curse: it’s a long painful commitment and there is no going back.

Though no child grows in me, and perhaps never will, I understand the angst of long, painful commitments, of nurturing when I feel like running, of entering in when I long to draw back. At times I feel unwilling to do this, to stay, to prolong my shelf life—I just want to go home. This week I want to go home to the northeast corner, some weeks I want to go home to my hometown, most days I just want to go home.

This morning I stopped on Romans 8 and stayed there, committed to it:

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

I rarely think of corruption in the way I think Paul meant it here. To me corruption is Wall Street businessmen and the Russian mob, politics and big government. But it also means to crumble, to rot, to fall apart. This is what we’re doing, friends, all of us. Our shelf life is crumbling, rotting, and falling apart. We’re bound to do it, all of us.

But.

But the redemption of our bodies is not long off, not at all. And this, oh this, I can count on and commit to—it’s coming. If we’re His children, it’s coming. He’s coming.

And He has no shelf life or homesickness or fear of commitment—He’s in, all in, forever and ever.

 

In abiding, balance, fear, heaven, home, identity, Uncategorized
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The Remembering Room

December 20, 2012

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In Texas they build homes with north facing windows, which is the exact opposite of the North (where we build homes with south facing windows), but which is a very sensible thing to do here. The only window in our home that gets any sunlight at all is the laundry room and so I have found my morning coffee tastes best in here, so long as I can keep lint dust from getting in it.

I sit on top of the dryer, my feet spread across to the washer. The sunlight falls on my fingers and I wish we didn’t need appliances and that this could be a sitting room, or a quiet room. At the very least it is a sunlit room, and for that I am grateful. Even if I am surrounded by detergent bottles, tool boxes, and ironing boards, and it smells a little like Downy Fresh and less like line-dried clothes.

A laundry room is a catch-all and I think that must be written in the bylaws of laundry-room-dom. We have a garage and I suppose that is a better place for hedge- clippers and drills and toolboxes. We have a pantry where, if we moved things around a bit, we could stock the plastic cups and spoons, and paper plates that we only use when there are too many people over, which is rarely, and so they go mostly unused. There are two baskets of laundry in here, both filled with towels because towels are an orphan thing in a home where nothing belongs to everybody.

Continue Reading over at Antler: Because Our Words Matter

 

 

In home, life
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Perfect Life in a Perfect House with Perfect People

December 9, 2012

All I wanted for my birthday was a day with my three favorite people in Texas, my two roommates + recently married roommate who still counts. Today we went to go see Lincoln together (because I’m a history & constitution nerd) and then came home to home that smelled of the chicken and turnips in the crockpot ready for us to eat by candlelight with wine, followed by my favorite pumpkin pie and a fire in the fireplace.

Perfect. I know.

More than one person has told me that my photo stream is a constant flow of perfect images that make our home seem idyllic and warm always. I usually laugh and tell them it’s partly true, that IS how our home is. But it’s also true that our bathrooms get dirty and sometimes we have miscommunications and sometimes people are sad or mad, even if I don’t frame that moment in a filtered photo.

I took the opportunity tonight to take a photo of our less than orderly table with a less than proper roommate digging into the roast chicken. Just to say, hey we’re not perfect—but we’re okay with that.

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Here’s why I write about my home so much, and why I take photos of it, and delight in it:

It’s very tempting, for single women particularly, to place deep stock in the future home. To dream about what it will look like, to stockpile images and Pinterest boards and magazine pages, to wish for what is not—and lose sight of what is. And what is might not be what you dream about it being. Maybe you don’t have the crockpot you want or the set of knives all your friends got when they got married. Maybe you’re waiting until you marry Mr. Right before you light candles for the dinner table or use a tablecloth.

It’s also very tempting to place our worth and security in our home today, to indulge ourselves in DIY projects or keep up with others in terms of decor and furniture—to own whatever we can in place of what is not ours to own today. It is tempting to feel that since so much seems to be withheld from us today, we are going to grasp and grab whatever we can in the meantime.

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So as much as I’m able, I’m going to write about my home and keep a steady stream of beautiful photos of it.

I treasure my home. I do. I treasure the people who inhabit it, I treasure the moments occurring in it, and the meals shared in it. I treasure the small touches, the artwork from all of our international travels, the thrift-store finds, and the teakettle we use every day. I treasure it, but I do not own it and I do not let it own me.

And I want to communicate that to my unmarried sisters and brothers. I want them to know that these days are numbered, whether marriage is your future or not, your days are numbered. Singleness is not an excuse to let life pass you by while you mourn what is not your portion for today. But it is also not an excuse to indulge in creating a self-made kingdoms of you.

My challenge to you (and to me every day) is to evaluate what you’re treasuring and to find beauty in today’s portion—it’s there and it’s yours for the enjoying. Don’t wish yourself living in my home with my roommates eating at my table—where is your table? Who is sharing your life? What is treasured in your home?

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Photo filters make everything look better and the gospel does the same for us—the ordinary becomes extraordinary, the mundane becomes beautiful, the normality is filled with joy, and the everyday is special. It’s that way because our hope isn’t in today, it’s in something much greater, much deeper, and much fuller. It’s in the hope of heaven for tomorrow and the sufficiency of Christ for today.

Go and fill your Instagram up with beautiful things. Real things. Happening right now, today, to you, in your life. Find them, they’re there.

In home, identity, joy, life, singleness, Uncategorized
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Table Manners

November 20, 2012

tableA handful of the last of the basil from our garden tossed with some chicken and mushrooms, some cheese I call Money because it’s worth so much, and we eat dinner around the dining room table.

One might think all I write about is tables.

But if it was a small fruit feast that fell us into death and it will be a fine full feast that ushers us into life eternal, I suppose I can write about all the tables we’ll sit around in the meantime.

My roommate Season is getting married in three days. In June she told me about her “summer crush,” in September she said yes to the ring, and now she will stand beside him and marry him.

And so our table is gone.

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The past few weeks things have gone missing from our home, small things, a rug, a chair, a vase. They go missing from our home because they now belong in her home. And our table, the one we’ve had for two years, the hand-me-down one from Ikea with the broken chair and the wobbly leg, it now sits in our garage awaiting its trip to her home too.

In its place sits a solid new table with three chairs and a bench. It’s bigger than our old table. It doesn’t fit in the breakfast nook. We’ve moved it three times since it arrived and now it’s found its home—in the divide between the living room and the kitchen. Centered and topped with a tablecloth, a bowl of fruit, and two taper candles in brass candlesticks. It has found a home in our nearly fractured home.

I have done my mourning already. When all three roommates find love within three months time, one cannot help but get her mourning done quickly. I have let my sad sit deep and my jealousy weed out and my fears brought near and I have heard God say, I’m still setting a table for you if you want it.

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We gather around our table, more so in times past than times now, but we are gatherers. We enjoy one another and I have feasted at this table, this table and the old one. I have feasted in this home and am not ignorant of the blessing it is to have feasted so fully.

On Thursday we will gather sixty and more in a lodge in the Ozarks, we will give thanks for our nation and our history and for family and for marriage and for my roommate and her almost husband. And then on Saturday we will feast again after the vows have been given and spirits are high.

And then we will come home, to the monotony of life and school and jobs and chores, and we will feast around our new table. We will feast on apples and carrot sticks and peanut butter and jelly, and we will feast on chamomile tea and coffee in the morning. We will feast with one less person in our family, and that’s sad, but we know it’s not the end.

It’s just one more table of our meantime.

And people will come from east and west,
and from north and south,
and recline at the table in the kingdom of God.
Luke 13:29

In beauty, Family, home
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