WANNA GO WITH?

"Y'all know I love nature and all, but there's a wicked loud bird outside who only knows four notes in the same order."

I tweeted that this morning.

And then I looked at it and thought to myself, "Lo, you put y'all and wicked in the same sentence."

My mom told a story once about how she was visiting friends in Ohio and their neighbor was visiting as well. After some polite conversation, the obviously studied man asked my mother what town in southern Bucks County, Pennsylvania, she was from. She probably sputtered out her drink that a perfect stranger in the days before google was a verb could pinpoint her origin so specifically. See, she was precisely from southern Bucks County, Pennsylvania, born and bred.

Apparently this gentleman was a linguist and the southeastern Pennsylvania dialect is a noticeable and memorable one. We didn't know this of course— too busy were we making fun of the accents on the Beverly Hillbillies and To Kill a Mockingbird, to notice that we ended sentences with prepositions and every O was formed with perfectly round Marilyn Monroe lips, drawn and quartered into a song of its own.

When I moved to New York the word wicked became an intensifier instead of an adjective, as in "This mountain is wicked high" and "Those trees are wicked colorful." I also learned that prepositions with no determiner attached to them were lazy, "Finish your sentence!" my friends would say. Others pointed out that my Ls were swallowed, that I said "saut" instead of "salt" and "faught" instead of "fault." So while I was unlearning how to swallow my Ls, I learned to enunciate and elongate my NGs, as in "eloNGate."

This mostly happened without my noticing.

A few years later I moved to Tennessee and slipped y'all into my vernacular. I also flattened my perfectly round Os into a more acceptable singsongy sort. Others still pointed out that my Ls were swallowed.

Yesterday my mom posted a photo to Facebook of two pages in her address book (I think it's cute that she still uses an address book because it seems that the rest of us have forgotten that most people still have physical addresses where they can be sent actual mail (which she also does a standup job of (see, there I go with my prepositions again.).).).

It was the F page. Ferguson. There are eight siblings, but only four of us spanned these two pages. Residences represented were New York, South Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Iraq, Afghanistan, and also our native Pennsylvania. My address had been scribbled out five times. From the addresses contained it would seem that she's only had this specific book about six years.

I have moved more than twice that in the past six years. I have had ten addresses. Ten homes. No wonder my tongue is tied. No wonder even my mouth doesn't even know its home. I haven't even been in some of those places long enough to change my address.

I've been on Meadow Lane for 18 months now. Two different houses, but the same street. I consider this a mild success.

Texans consider that I say "y'all" now a grand success. But as for me, I will still slip "wicked" into casual conversation (to piss off the evangelicals) and pass the saut when you ask for the salt, and occasionally attach a perfectly fine sentence with a preposition onto.

(All my Bucks County friends can read that last part without any trouble. In fact, they're probably still wondering what's wrong with it.)

How many times have you moved? What lasting effect has this had on you? 

THE BOOK RULES

At some point, maybe when you are 31, maybe when you are 25, you realize you have been sleeping on a mattress on your floor for one and a half years. It is not something that surprises you, because, in fact, it was no oversight that left you without a bed-frame. You sold it in a fury of adventure one and a half years ago for $25 and haven't missed it since. But now you are 31, or 25, and your name is not only the primary name on your lease, but, in fact, the only name.

It seems you're to stay put for a while at least.

So you make plans to buy a bed-frame, an inexpensive one that you won't feel badly about selling for another $25 in your next fury of adventure. You begin to move your furniture around your small room, cursing under your breath about the fact that you have accumulated so much in one and a half years.

But it is your bookshelf that you curse the most.

Your rule is simple, only own books that fit on this shelf.

You impose this rule on yourself because one and a half years ago you had two floor to ceiling bookcases packed to the edges and stacked to the brim with books. Your life savings in page form. Worth a fortune to you and anyone else, but also sold in your fury of adventure for pennies.  

Pennies.

You have no plans of reenacting that particular adventure again.

So three shelves on a simple wooden bookshelf bought in 2006 from an overpriced thrift store in your small college town.

The routine is familiar (if you cannot have a real adventure, you create adventure monthly by rearranging your bedroom furniture once again) and all the books have to come off the shelves before it can be moved. This is not because you are not a brute of strength, because you are, but because that bookshelf has seen nine homes in its life with you and it cannot bear the agony of a burdened move again. It will be sure to crumble under the weight of those books and so you brace yourself with each move for the end of its life.

It has withstood the test of time, six years worth, you count in your mind as you reorder those books on those three shelves. You have about a half a shelf left to fill before you've reached your law of allotted books. So there is not one book on these shelves that doesn't matter to you in some very deep way.

In the Great Book Sale of 2010 you only let yourself keep the books which changed you in some way. You were not allowed to keep books you had never read. No keeping books that could be found at any used bookstore easily. No keeping books with which you hadn't had some impacting moment. If they were underlined, scribbled in margins, and had multiple dog-eared pages, this was a sure sign of a keeper.

Sometimes the books on these shelves surprise you. You find yourself disagreeing with things you once wept through. You find yourself disappointed at directions authors have since taken. You really don't even like the writing in some. You know a few of the authors now and you know that they are just people, just like you. But sometimes, when you have finished shelving the last of the books again, a memoir or book on writing, or your favorite book of poetry, you run your finger down the length of them, across the bindings, remember every used bookstore from which you have gotten them and every tear that has been wept over them. You push against one side of that rickety bookshelf, half-willing it to crash and fall under the weight of so much richness, but you are comforted to know that it doesn't.

It, who has moved so many times, and had so many adventures, and carried so many good books, it stands. It bears. It holds, solid and firm.

Soon to be coupled with a simple wooden bed-frame to adventure alongside.

AT HOME in FEBRUARY

When it is February—my least favorite month—I have to climb out of bed and start my car in my pajamas and boots, because it will take as long as I take to get ready to melt the layer of ice on my windshield, or to, at least, soften the snow that has piled on it in the night.

When winter is between a lion and a lamb, or a lamb and a lion, the streets are thick with a carpet of snow, the sidewalks pebbled with footprints, the streetlamps glow yellow, illuminating the falling flakes in orbs around them. If you walk, it is not graceful, it is a trudge because there is no other way to walk in winter but to trudge.

The skies cannot make up their minds right now—piercing blue one day, so cold my tear ducts freeze, and warm grey the next, a blanket come down on our cold county.

At night on lit ponds and lakes and rivers and driveways, boys and their hockey sticks battle for small black pucks. Skates are sharpened, flashes of gleaming light.

On cold nights at home, after the stew has been put away, and the rooibos is brewing, I lay under the baby grand in the living room and she plays Sunken Cathedral by Debussy and all is right in the world for those minutes.

We sit around the table made from boards that slaves once slept on, and we play card games and we laugh too loudly, too late. I am competitive, but I never win.

People like to stay home right now, go straight from work because it is dark already and still. They stay in, wrapped in afghans and heat from the woodstove.

In February, she and I roll our eyes to one another because all the mamas are at home with their babies, enjoying winter, while we have to start our cars at ungodly hours and work all day in an office that still cannot regular its temperature. (But we still wouldn't trade those hours.)

This is the time of year when my cheeks smart in the morning when I come unburrowed from my down comforter, and when I turn the shower water on ten minutes before I get in. This is the time of year when I breathe the warm shower air, hoping it will sink so deeply into my lungs that I won't feel the biting cold when I step out in a few minutes.

It never works.

At home, February is my least favorite month.

And still I miss it.

 table set for dinner: lentil stew

SECRET GARDEN

We have a quiet backyard, our own secret garden I called it when it first took my breath away a few months ago. This was nestled next door to our flat, empty, brown lot? This quiet haven filled with trees and rocks and stepping stones? And it could be ours? Our own secret garden?

It is a quiet backyard. We have filled it with a hammock, a clothesline, a firepit, chairs and a pedestal table. We are putting in raised beds for vegetables soon. I feel too lucky when I come from work, a mere one minute drive or five minute walk, and can hide out here where the birds chirp and I feel safe.

But to be truthful, we have a train running through our town, its whistle blaring in 15 minute increments. Our neighbors have their own little zoo brewing, made up mostly of barking dogs. And we live inside a triangle of traffic with three main highways bringing the DFWers home in every direction. So though I can imagine real quiet, what I really hear is incessant barking, constant traffic, and a jolting whistle.

I've been thinking about boundaries these past few weeks. Psalm 16 says that the boundaries have fallen for us in pleasant places and I cling to that some days. I'm surrounded by good gifts, this I know, but sometimes the path He's put me on feels anything but pleasant.

Sometimes my soul breathes deep and just asks to be home. Home home. Heaven. Safe and quiet, peace-filled and finished.

Because although the perimeters of my life have fallen in good, true, loving places, outside all it seems is chaos and noise. And that noise gets in my soul sometimes. It starts speaking lies and I feel claustrophobic. I begin to believe things about God, myself, and others that simply aren't true. I begin to feel that my safest and most secret places, the gardens I tend with my blood and tears, are being encroached on by deception and falsehood.

There is that steadiness that remains—that deep knowledge that behind these boundaries, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God, I am safe. Held. Comforted. Known. Loved. Secure.

But in my soul I'm still looking for a new country, a better one.

I'm not sure that that's so wrong.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. Hebrews 11:13-16

Hemmed by Hills

I grew up hemmed in by hills and have lived among them always. I feel safest in them, sitting at their valley feet, breathing in their grey air. I feel small inside of them, aware of majesty, struck by insignificance, brought low by awe.

These are not white capped mountains, these are the simple rolling arcs of the Appalachias, The Blue Mountain Range, The Smokey Range, the Adirondacks—these are the mountains that are laid low, and lowered by time. They are old mountains. Whenever I am tempted to think of the small mountains as young ones, I remember instead that it is the peaked, white ones that are still in their formative years. No, these mountains, the hills of my life, they are old, grandfathered in, green and lush, mature.

When my family was still whole and together, we climbed one of these mountains and I stood out on a rock near the edge, beneath me a patchwork of farms, the hills of Bucks County. Not too close to the edge, my dad said, but I hardly heard him. I was small, but I remember that moment clearly. I breathed deep and was so tall, hulking over the miniature barns and greens. I breathed and was so small, a tiny person on a rock jut at the top of a mountain, a speck to any one of the farmers, if that.

Someone told a story after that, about how a friend had gotten caught in a storm up on this mountain, slept under a rock until the forest rangers found them. I imagined that was me as I hiked down the mountain, spying for rocks that would suffice as cover, looking up at the sky, willing it to rain.

I felt safe on that mountain, standing on that rock jut, willing it to rain. I felt safer then than I have felt much of my life since then.

Now I am always looking for mountains.

Point Mountain, Bucks County, Pennsylvania

Trees don't pass you by

Did I mention our new house has nine trees? Actually there are ten. Yesterday I counted one more; it's stuffed up against the house a bit, so you can understand why I missed it before. So yeah, ten trees.

If you're from home in New York, you probably have acres of wood in your backyard or at least within walking distance, so ten trees sound like a prairie to you. But for a Texan, well, it's a forest out there. We can hang a clothesline, two hammocks, and from the branches too, if we want. It's that sort of wild out there. Appreciate with me for a moment please.

It's been over a year, really, since I've asked for anything. When I left New York I made a pact with God and I didn't take it lightly: God, I won't ask you for anything if you'll just show me your glory. That's it. That's all I want. I'll eat the bread of poverty, drink the water of deprivation if I need to, just don't pass me by.

And He didn't.

But He showed His glory to me in unexpected ways: namely by not answering the myriads of prayers I've prayed in the past. I mean, categorically, I can go down through the things I've asked for in the past years, things I've agonized over, lists I've made, and requests I've made known. I was the persistent widow and He was not the righteous judge. But it wasn't because He didn't want to give me what I wanted.

It was because I didn't know what I wanted.

The other night a few friends were over and near the end of the evening, when the numbers dwindled and the glasses were emptied, one asked me a question: what do you want? I should have been ready for the question, I should have had an answer, but I stumbled, I fumbled, I scrambled for words. And the next day I realized why: I didn't know what I wanted.

It's not that I haven't thought about it in the past or known what I wanted at some point. It's just that, right now, I have everything I never knew I wanted and am all the happier for it.

When I moved here, I moved into a flat ranch house in the suburbs, we had three shrubs and a holly bush. I didn't dare ask for more.

And now, on the flip side, when I think about all God has given to me and done in me, trees are what I'm telling you about. Trees? Trees!

Because here's something God loves to do: surprise us.

Because here's something about God: He's never surprised by what we deep down inside really want.

 (this is one bit of our backyard)

the girls next door

We make a home slowly, because this is how homes are made. It takes a year, but after a year, when we are piled on top of each other, sharing space, sharing rooms, sharing air, when the space finally seems too small, we discover that we have made a home.

This morning we are eating pumpkin oatmeal, sipping coffee, sitting on the floor and she says "I'm sad. I'll miss our small home." We are just moving next door, so please forgive our melancholy--homes are made slowly and we know this.

Someone asks me yesterday what Texas has given me and the answer is quick, without thought: this home, but in particular, these girls. In this home I have known grace toward me and grace inside of me, more than I ever thought possible. Wherever I have lived I have been happy, whether pockets of happiness or streams of it, there has been happiness. I have known community. I have known the struggle of living life beside another breathing, thinking, feeling life. And it has been hard. And it has been good.

But this home?

In this home it has just been good, a steady stream of good. We have wrestled through doubts, questions, crushes, first dates and last ones. We have laughed until our sides hurt, and wept in fear or anger. Here, in this place, we have known Jesus and we have known each other. Here is another thing we have known: that we are not finished yet. And what a comfort that has been, to me especially, to know that this home is a work in progress and we are each too.

I come from a place where the doors are always open and where people freely come and go, and I wished for that for this home. In the beginning I tried to make it happen and was sad when it didn't. Our neighborhood isn't conveniently located, and while it has a lovely downtown, there isn't much to draw people here. I don't know when the shift happened though, in my heart, where I realized that if our home is our primary place of ministry, then the people we share life with ought to get the first parts of us.

This is why, when a friend asked me the other day, why I didn't move closer to where the action is, where my church family is, and where I'd be certain to keep my social calendar full, the answer was easy for me: these girls are my family. I'd rather minister to and be ministered to by these girls than to have a bigger house, or a more central location. I'd rather wrestle through life, questions, faith, and fears within this home than start all over again.

I know my nemesis is a fear of commitment, a fear of locking myself into anything or anyone, a fear that I will be needed beyond what I have to give. And when I signed my name as the primary leasee the other day I checked my heart for that fear, I dug around a bit, pushed on the tender parts of me, checking to see if that fear still lingered.

It couldn't be found.

I know that in this place we are not covenanted with one another, at any point one of us could leave, get married, move away. In the past this lack of covenant has been a source of frustration for me because I want unconditional love and I can't find it anywhere on earth. But more and more I am learning that part of covenant is choosing to love and not loving because you have to hold contract. Loving because it's a decision. Building a home around trust and mutual care, selflessness.

But I find that you can be surprised by covenant--that it's not something you choose with a flourish and a signature. That it comes slowly, the way you build a home. That it is shared, the way you live in your space. That it is binding, the way you care for the wounds of another. That it is full, the way you stock your life.

That it is here, in this home, where we have been a family.

And that it will be there, next door, where we will be more.

We're emptying out.

home(less)

They say to write what you know best, but I suppose I have transplanted too many times to know anything but my own soul best. And so I write about this.

I know this may irk the stay-at-home mom whose life is a series of ebb and flow normality, or the theologian who feels that the soul is a mere mirror and not worth the time I spend on it. It may bore the businessman or collegiate. But I know no other thing on earth well, so from this I build my stories.

I am jealous of the homesteader, the one who has birthed generations in the same house, who has first steps on the same ground as first kisses and then their own child's miracle steps. I am jealous of dialects and regional habits. I want a language that identifies me instead of the mashup of history, people, and landscape that I call home. I say that everywhere is home, because it is, but partly because nowhere is home and to say this out loud is hard.

Christ is home and in this I take comfort, but it sounds more cliche than true, so I'm careful about how much and to whom I say it. You doubt me even as you read that, I suspect.

Because to be homeless, save Christ, is not popular, not even recommended. So go home, come home, people say. But you should know this, when you say that, my soul answers: I am home. Wherever I am, I am home.

Or my soul asks: where is home?

If it is with people I love or people who love me, then I am home. If it is where I grew up, then it is impossible to return. If it is where I grew most, how does one quantify that? If it is with blood and kin, my home covers the globe. If it is a church, a sanctuary, then I am making my own and building it with others. If it is simply the place where I am most myself, then I will always be homeless.

If, however, it is Christ alone, then there is no matter my dialect or my region, I am home wherever and there is never anything to leave or to come.

And so, I am home.

 (these are things)

This is the sort of morning you don't take for granted. You sit on the back porch and drink your morning cup slowly. You put your head back and breathe sweet air. You inhale fall. 68 days of temperatures above 100 change the way you love your favorite season. You always love fall, but now you are grateful in any number of ways.

We are leaving last night and the breeze gusts in cool air for the first time in months. I say that I am happy to be a Texan, and I am. (Except I'm still not, technically, a Texan. Small things like driver's licenses...)

I say to someone the other day that all I really want on earth is home, that I always feel unsatisfied without it and he says back that it is refreshing to see the lack of satisfaction doesn't keep me discontent.

And this is true. Truer more than it ever has been before.

The angst in my soul for a home is deeper and more pronounced than it has ever been, but the contentment in my heart is more stayed and solid than it ever has been.

I remember living on Hardscrabble Road and every day I would run past this house on the corner, an abandoned house, and I would dream of making a home there. Fixing it up. Having a garden and a porch swing. Hanging laundry on the line and making homemade applesauce.

Because I thought those things made a home.

I've been longing for heaven these days.

Not in a way that ought to worry you, death doesn't scare me but neither do I relish the thought of just not being. I've just been longing for completeness, satisfaction, fullness, a met expectation. Heaven is the only place where I'm absolutely sure that God will surpass my hopes.

Earth always falls short.

A wise man said to me once: you're always going to be an ambassador, never an immigrant. And those words stay with me, define me, challenge me. He was saying that for some people, earth becomes their home and they become part of it, they plant their roots deep and become what it makes of them. But that will never be you, he said, that is part of what makes you valuable to the Kingdom, that you will never be acculturated--never despise that.

And yet I have.
And sometimes I do.

I've put off changing my driver's license. Time, you know? The lines are so long? The cost? Eh. So many excuses. But the real truth--here's the real truth:

I'm not home yet.

And I want as many reminders of that in my life as possible.

A friend and I talked yesterday, about homes and personalities, places of ministry and selfishness. I'm none too unassuming about my current living situation--I know I hit gold with these girls and I want to spin it for as long as it'll go.

That hasn't always been the case. Sometimes home has been a hard place to come home to, sometimes the person I am when I walk in the door is a person who is seeking shelter from the world's storm, and sometimes the world's storm is behind those doors. Sometimes the weight of what we do here, a covenant people living outside of covenant, is abrasive and sometimes it is the perfect place to hide.

There's something about Jesus that I don't understand and I think the more I live with other people, the more I identify with Him and understand Him less.

Paul said He was a man of no reputation and He said Himself that a prophet has no honor in his hometown and home.

And I think we laud balance and transparency so highly that we fight to adopt that sort of Jesus.

The sort of Jesus who didn't do a miracle in His hometown because they wouldn't believe Him.

The sort that hid when the crowd pressed in.

The sort that asked His disciples to keep quiet about His miracles.

The sort of Jesus who was a man of no reputation.

This rubs against me because I want to be the same person outside these doors that I am inside them. I want to be as extroverted and joy-filled and kind and encouraging within our home, as I try to be without. I want to be consistent. I want to have a good reputation. And I want honor more desperately in these walls than I care about getting it outside of them.

Living with these girls is radically changing me inside. I say to one yesterday that I'm sorry that when I come home I'm quiet, introverted, that she doesn't get the best part of me. She smiled and said, "I like that you're that way at home." I say to one a week ago, "Call me out on my blindspots" and she does. And it hurts.

But here, in this place, where I have no reputation and no honor, I am known.

They know what I look like in the morning and when I haven't had coffee and when I complain about my body or how tired I am or when I rage against the self-checkout at Walmart. They know me best because they know my selfishness, they know my deepest fears and hurts. They've sat in front of me while tears choked me up.

(this is home in my head)

I think Jesus was a man of no reputation because He was known by the only One who mattered.

And He had no honor in His hometown because He knew His real home wasn't here on earth.

I think Jesus was saying that here, on earth, we're going to feel the abrasiveness of living and the inconsistency of life, but that's okay.We 're not really home yet anyway.

I caught myself tonight saying "almost a year."

A year?

I told the story of how I'd totaled my car and yelled expletives at God. How I'd hit February of 2010 and how I confessed while sitting on a green shag carpet that I'd lost my faith in Jesus. I told of my best friend faithfully listening to my doubts and questions, reading through the Bible with me, fasting for 40 days with me.

I told the story of a book handed to me by my pastor. I told of listening to this sermon so many times in a week that I nearly had parts of it memorized. Of buying a ticket to Fort Worth on a whim and no prayer. Rediscovering the richness of a friendship I had thought was hopelessly broken.

I told of hitting walls and crying on the back stairs when I opened a card from my Mom. I told of the week I sold nearly everything I owned, of packing my small car, of moving here with no plan or certainty.

A year?

I told of sitting in the second row of my new church in a foreign city and understanding for the first time what Paul meant when he talked about the eyes of his heart being opened. The eyes of my heart fluttered open as the teacher taught through the first chapter of Genesis. The book of beginnings.

I was beginning. He was beginning me. Again.

What mercy!

I told of provision every step of the way. Times where mere pennies were in my bank account and He sustained. Times where the only thing certain was Him and where for the first time in my life I was okay with that. I said that around every turn He surprised me. He sustained me. He chose me. He wasn't just doing or being good to me, He in the deepest essence of his character was good.

A year ago.

It feels such a short time, weeks even. I still feel new to Texas, unsure, unhome.

It feels ages ago, years or more. I feel such a deep work in me done and still never done.

Happy almost anniversary, we've come so far and have so much further to go.

This is probably not the best book for me to be reading right now, as it's all about leaving Texas and finding some other home. But, still, it's one of my favorites and sometimes says the wanderlust better than I can. Today he writes this:

[This city in Texas] makes you feel that life is about the panic and the resolution of the panic, and nothing more. Nobody stops to question whether they actually need the house and the car and the better job. And because of this there doesn't seem to be any peace; there isn't any serenity. We can't see the stars here anymore, we can't go to the beach without stepping on a Coke bottle, we can't hike in the woods, because there aren't any more woods...We drive around in a trance, salivating for Starbucks while that great heaven sits above us, and that beautiful sunrise is happening in the desert, and all those mountains out west are collecting snow on the limbs of their pines, and all those leaves are changing colors out East. God, it is so beautiful. It is so quiet. It is so perfect... [Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts]

You see why I shouldn't be reading this?

I say to a friend last night, change is my nemesis and my drug. The sure knowledge that something bigger and better is out there, over there, anywhere is what drives me. I know that God makes some people visionaries, but I also know that God makes those same people plant themselves firmly sometimes. So while I do not excuses my desire for adventure and change, I also do not deny that it makes eight month marks difficult.

I think one reason it's hard here is because I am so much of a space girl. I love mountains and water, but I do not feel hemmed in by them. Texas is big, space would not be a problem you would think, but for me, the endlessness of it feels claustrophobic at time. I feel like I need perspective.

Season and I go watch the sun set tonight and my series of photos journaling the set make the sun seem so small. But I crest the hill and there the sun is, a blazing pink orb, next to a tree 1 millionth its size, and the sun looks bigger. I just need a little perspective.

Tonight I sit here and feel the tears smart in my eyes, tangible evidence of pure self-pity. I shake myself and say, "This isn't it. And you're acting like it's it. You're acting like Texas-metroplex-landlocked-hot-suffocating-race is it and it's not. So buck up. Get some perspective."

I love the way The Message puts Isaiah 61:

"Put your face in the sunlight. God's bright glory has risen for you. The whole earth is wrapped in darkness, all people sunk in deep darkness, But God rises on you, his sunrise glory breaks over you. Nations will come to your light, kings to your sunburst brightness. Look up! Look around!"

This isn't it. Texas isn't it. New York isn't it. Tennessee isn't it. Pennsylvania isn't it. Montana isn't it. California isn't it. Europe isn't it. Canada isn't it. The globe isn't it.

The other day I heard someone say that the word Cosmos literally means Ornament. It's just decoration, just something to make the glory of God bigger and better.

And that is the only bigger and better I want to be concerned with.

I realize today while driving north on 377 that it is exactly a year since I stepped feet on this part of Texas. I came to visit a friend, to get some space, to reevaluate and say things out loud. I planned to go home with no plans of moving here. Ever.

Texas is ugly, I said, and it kind of is. Texas is flat, I said, and it definitely is. Texas is hot and suffocating, I said, and it is, especially today. But there have been moments of beauty here, small hills crested that take my breath away, and the evening Texas breeze is unlike anything I have ever known.

I began to say it a few weeks ago, out loud, to myself, to whoever would ask or listen: here I am home.

I've moved a lot, always in search of some place to call my own, something that felt comfortable, me, safe. I have never found it.

Until I stopped looking for it.

Texas was not meant to be home and looking back, I don't think any place I have been has been home. I am too uncomfortable with myself to be comfortable anywhere else.

What I mean to say is that the itch of homesickness will always be present. The tears come quickly this week, as my dear friend and I have swapped places, she kayaks on my rivers, sits with my favorite people, takes pictures of the startling blues and greens of my home. The tears are every present as my best friend is climbing new hills with a new best friend of the male persuasion. The tears are there when I remember that the people with whom I have shared my life are graduating with their doctorate in medicine today, having faith and babies named Gideon this summer, being wed this fall. All things bright and beautiful, all things I am missing because I have chosen Texas as home in this season.

It is so hard to miss things. So hard to know beyond a doubt that you are exactly where you are meant to be and yet feel still the gnawing in your soul that says: not home yet.

Not home yet.

When I was 21 a father in my faith explained the Already/Not Yet theology and it is a comfort to me since. We are already finished and not yet finished. We are already saved and not yet fully saved. He has already established His kingdom and is still establishing His kingdom. We know God and yet we do not fully know Him.

We are home and yet we are not home.

So in the meantime, and there is plenty of that, we comfort ourselves with this: everywhere is home until we are home.

Everywhere we plant our feet, everywhere we see glimpses of Christ, everywhere we preach His word with our words and our lives, every door we open and every door that feels closed, this is home.

We are home.

And yet we are still headed home.

I'm sure you haven't been wondering, but I'll tell you anyway:

Between this, this, this, this (singles), and this, I feel like I'm going to be a fat Christian conference hopper. I'm going to just thank Jesus that I live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, that I work for a non-profit with amazing connections, that I go to an amazing church who gives amazing discounts for weekends with stellar line-ups. But seriously, seriously? The Groaning Cosmos is the one I'm the most excited about. They'll be teaching through the book of Romans and it will be packed full of the gospel. I love that. I promise I won't get fat on conferences. I don't really like conferences. I'm just grateful is all.

This is Season, my roommate. Isn't she pretty?

Almost every day for the past few weeks, my two roommates and I have found ourselves sprawled out around the living room, on someone's bed, perched on counters and chairs, wherever really, just together. We've laugh hard, sometimes we've cried, we've been astounded by how good God is and how He shows that goodness to us, we've mourned, we've counseled, we've helped, we've encouraged. Sometimes I just marvel, I sit and listen to them when they think I'm not (like right now for instance), and I just marvel at how blessed I am.

This is my other roommate, Jenna. Also so pretty. (Also, I stole this pic from Seas.)

One of said roommates and I have been doing a (mostly) raw food cleanse for the past few weeks. It's been good. I've been eating mostly vegetarian for the past few years (for various reasons, ie. money, health, bleeding heart), but eating an almost entirely raw food diet is quite the experience. But I love green smoothies. I love them! Many of you know that about seven years ago I got pretty sick and since then have had food issues (let's just say that I pretty much constantly have an upset stomach). I also have had the worst allergies down here that I've had in my life. Well, just a few weeks in and I have not had ONE sinus headache and for the most part my stomach has been super agreeable. We'll see how this works long-term!

This was my Easter dinner! Spring rolls! Apropos, no?

Our green smoothies aren't the only thing green around here. If grass can be describes as mammoth-sized, let's just say ours is. It's hard living in a house you don't own and not really feeling a total sense of ownership over the lawn, especially when lawn care runs around $40 a week. None of us want to put that sort of monetary investment in this rough Texan...grass? weeds? viney-carpet? I don't know what one calls the stuff that covers a lot of the lawns here in Texas, but it sure isn't the pretty soft grass I envision when I think of summer. Tomorrow though, the other roommate is going to pick up a lawnmower that someone gave to us! Cool eh? No more mammoth grass.

This is a weed. From our yard. No, not that kind of weed. A regular old one.

Unfortunately the weeds that grow up around my heart are not so quickly dealt with. For the past four months I've been taking a class at my church called Steps. All I knew about Steps before I signed up was that 1. It was hard 2. It was good. I'm not one to shy from hard and I like good things, so I signed up. Let's just say that the past four months have been very telling to me. Last week I sat in Starbucks with a friend and shared some hard things about my fear and pride, things I knew were issues for me, but I'd pushed down, ignored, for a long time. The whole point of this course is to bring us to a deeper understanding of the gospel's finished work in us. That's it. Finished work. Finished. I have a hard time finishing anything. And so it's been such an amazing discovery for me to realize that I don't need to finish it, it's already been done for me. I love that.

I've been catching myself falling back into a pattern of works recently. I mess up, I shudder, I hide, I make excuses, I lose my joy, and I fear. God feels far from me and I feel even further from Him. The thing about grace is that some of us believe that it's too good and so we keep the law in front of us, to keep us in check. But some of us think we're too bad, and so we dismiss it entirely. The truth is that it IS too good and that we ARE too bad. And I love that. Because it doesn't make sense. I keep coming back to it. It surpasses my understanding and that's what makes it amazing.

Oh, and I bought a bike.

What shall I name her?

I know, friends, I know. How does any self-respecting blogger just abandon their blog after such a good stretch of writing? I don't know. But I can give you a few inklings and some photos to prove it.

1. I went back to NY. I know I already wrote about that a bit here, but I didn't really tell about all of the beauty of it. It was a good, good week. I scheduled myself pretty tightly and by the time I got on the plane to come back, I was content to stick in my earphones and ignore the world for six hours. And so I did.

Sunset from the plane.

While home I saw lovely children, had amazing fellowship, spent a whole day in the mountains with my favorite person in the world, ate a slice of real New York Pizza, caught of case of Volvo lust (the Hulls let me borrow their Volvo for the whole week!), had great conversations with my pastors (and wives), drove nine hours to Pittsburgh with a lovely friend for a wedding, and so much more.

The Adirondacks from Lake Placid.

It felt like just the right amount of time to love and be loved by some of the best people I know.

And still, when I got on the plane to come back to Texas, I was ready. I was ready to come home. Home here. I don't know if I'll ever feel like a Texan, but I know I feel like Texas had gotten me, caught me and is keeping me.

Keeping in the sense that I feel kept here, cared for, loved, encouraged by the goodness of God that I've finally come to see.

2. I'm finally feeling a sense of place and belonging at my job. While I was home I was surprised to find that most people still have no idea what I'm doing beyond graphic design. All true, folks, all true. I'm still freelancing a bit (picking and choosing carefully), but I'm working full-time for Sower of Seeds International Ministries. It sounds noble when I talk about what they do (putting water wells in India, and rescuing and rehabilitating trafficked women from the red-light district in Mumbai) and it is noble. For sure.

My desk at work.

But mostly what I do just feels lucky. I get to spend my day sharing an office with yet another favorite person playing with colors and shapes and looking at amazing photographs of what is happening in India. God is near to the needy and He is near to me and I feel this acutely every day.

We also have a lot of fun at the office.

3. I have spent a lot of years attempting to practice the art of thankfulness. What I mean by this is I knew that the exercise of being thankful has a spiritual element--we shout our praises and we begin to see more things for which to be thankful. I know that what we sow, we reap.

And yet, for almost all of my Christian life I have found this to be a fruitless discipline for me. Here's why: there would be momentary gratefulness ensuing, but it was short-lived and almost always followed by a longer season of disappointment. Most times it was because as I would list the things for which I was grateful, I would be so much more aware of the things I possessed or didn't possess. I would then begin comparing my life, my possessions, my station, my spirituality with others. Many times I felt like I had to be thankful for the scraps it seemed I was dealt, and so these 'scraps' seemed to be the only things I would see at all.

Random: golf ball sized hail from last night.

You can see how this would be fruitless, eh?

I still believed in the sowing and reaping principle though and so I couldn't figure out why this wasn't working for me. It's biblical, therefore it ought to work, right?

Last fall I heard someone say that we do not discipline our children into loving us and we would never dream of disciplining spouses or roommates or friends into loving us, so why would we assume that God does that with us? For me, the overwhelming, overflowing, abundant love that I wanted to have for God was non-existent and so disciplining myself into feeling it felt like the only option.

Random: Dinner tonight. Yum.

But now I'm seeing how thankfulness can only grow out of an abundant heart and how easily it flows when that is the case.

I'm sure there are still scraps in my life, any casual observer could pick a few or a few dozen, but I don't even notice them anymore. I don't place any credence on them and I don't judge the love of God for me by them.

I love Him because He first loved me. All the gratefulness I can conjure up won't out-love Him. All the thankfulness I can muster won't make Him love me more. All the blessings I choose to see won't make the biggest blessing more true.

He's that good.