Learning to Love This Harsh Winter

  A lot of things that I’ve been faced with lately are things that I don't particularly like, but I’ve been learning to love. The month of August isn’t my favorite month of all time. The hot sticky heat, the return to school and life after a long bittersweet summer, and headaches that come from the sun that dominates the high noon hour gets to me. It’s a month that’s too heavy, too thick with sweat. However, in this past year, I learned to love the clingy month. I peaked around its corners and crawled under it’s edged to see what it really was about. What I found were sweet innocents. 

  It’s the same thing that I’m doing now, with this harsh January (I guess it’s now February; the year is flying by, isn’t it?) and the dry, sucking cold is getting the best of me and I can’t seem to find anything I love about it. It’s made my throat and muscles tense, tight, and red. It keeps me bundled up in thick coats and too heavy boots. I have to walk for blocks out in the open, with the dry ice of air being sucked into my nose and into my lungs. I can’t wait until it warms up a little and I can drive with my windows rolled down. 
This is one of those things though, one of those things that I hate but that I’m learning to love.

  Learning to love takes some time and endurance. It doesn’t just happen overnight. When you get into a commitment to learning to love something, you’re in it for the whole nine yards. You’re stuck and you can’t get out until you see the beauty in what’s there. The words eh, kinda, maybe, and sometimes don’t count. You have to give it you're all.

  So, in light of learning to love a season — a dry cold season that has gotten the best of me and I can see it taking a long time to wait and see if I can actually coup with trying to figure this winter enjoyment thing out — here’s a list of things that I’ve learned that are perks, or aspects that I’ve paid attention to and can make little spots for in my spring longing heart:

Thick scarves, long scarfs, windy scarfs around your neck — the ones that you can bury your noise down in to keep it warm.

Red noises —- when one comes in from the icy air and the warmth relieves them, and their noise gets red from the temperature change.

Ice paintings on my car windows in the morning — they are so pretty I almost don’t want to scrap them off.

Warm cups of hot coffee & tea.

Good smelling hand lotion that you get to carry around in your bag to keep your hand from feeling chapped, but also makes you smell good. 

Good conversation — not that this can’t happen during other times of the year, but there is just something about being in a warm place with the cold hugging it’s windows, coats off hanging on the back of chairs and warms drinks caressed in hands, conversations that unfold in this manner seem to have more meaning and truth behind them.

And last but definitely not least, warm homemade meals — soup and bread and numerous other things can only be appreciated enough in the confinements of a draft house on a chilly winters night. 

(list to be continued) 

Monday #1

01. I’m learning to listen, being attentive and present.

02. I’m learning that perfect is never feasible, to just keep creating even if it’s messy.

03. I’m learning that things will come in their own time, just be patient.

04. I’m learning not to spend my days scrolling through social media. 

05. I’m learning the act of constantly praying instead of constantly worrying. 

#mondaysof2018

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 It feels like -12° outside,  in actuality I think it's really 4°. It's one of the coldest New Years days in the books for my home state. 

  There is a fire going in my fireplace but I can't help but wrap myself up in a warm, thick sweater and a blanket. Even with the fire going my house is cold, the floors chilly to touch. With a thick blanket of cold outside on the ground, the day is going to be spent inside. Staying home isn't a bad way to start off the new year.

  I wanted to wake up to the sunrise this morning. That didn't happen, I slept in too late. However, I did get my kitchen all cleaned up and I baked some crêpes. That might become a new tradition of mine, wake up on new years, clean, and bake. 

  2017 was a wonderful year for me. There really isn't a way that I can express it in words. Although there were some ups and downs, like at the beginning of the year I suffered through multiple anxiety attacks, there were some really sweet moments. 

  One of the top things that happened last year (it's now in that stage where writing last year seems really odd), was the trip my mom, brother, and I went on out west. I still have yet to write about that trip much, but it was wonderful. Getting to breathe in the fresh Colorado mountain air, gaze across the planes of Wyoming, and camp in the Black Hills of South Dakota -- waking up the sound of moose in the hills -- will never leave my memory. 

  The year was filled with more than I could've ever dreamed of.

  Although 2017 was good, it left me in slight fear of what's to come. 2018 is filled with so many unknowns. I honestly have no idea, no hunch, inkling of suspicion of what is around the corner.

  I'm filled with hope, though. Hope that no matter what happens, that joy will be found in the mundane and thankfulness will be given in the exciting. That peace will be found in the hard times and rejoicing will be found in the good times. 

  Each day is just one piece of the giant puzzle. Being present, fully alive in each piece, each moment is what I'm going to focus on in the next 365 days. Going after change and action is something I've done in the past and I think, in certain cases, it's necessary for you to do. However, I think if we grasp at too much and try to change and make things go our own way in our own time, messes happen, brokenness happens. So instead, I'm just going to sit and wait, be an open instrument and wait for the Holy Spirit inside me to speak and tell me where to go and what to do. He will change me from the inside out, in a way that I will never have suspected. That's what happened during 2017, I was changed without even realizing it at the time. I was changed and events that I didn't even dream of happened. I know it will continue to happen during 2018. And I want to hone in on it, paying attention and being intent in each second. 

  Far too often I seem to be zoned out, either on what has happened, what is going to happen, or what I need to do in order for things to happen. Rarely am I focused on the present. Being thankful for the now, appreciating the frost on the windows, the full moon that is outside in the ivory night sky, or my brother sitting across the room. Days, weeks, and month blur by me and I wonder what happens with my time. 

  Someday, these things won't be here, someday the mundane will change. Appreciating and being present at this moment is something that I need to work on, and I think will make a good anthem, a good call for 2018. 

  No matter what happens during the next 12 months, I know that, even though they are filled with fear and unknown at the current moment, they will reveal themselves one by one, each with moments that will add up to memories. Each created by a God that only has the best planned out for me, you, and everyone else. Onward we go, into the great unknown. 

The Process of Being Human

 Last night I found a page in a journal that I’ve kept that has my hopes and goals for 2017 written down on it.

  It came as a surprise to me when I stumbled on the page. I clearly remember writing this list even though I’d forgotten about it most of the year. It was scrawled out in a fashion that marks that time period in my life.

  The white cream pages hold the black inked words of grow friendships, listen, speak more French, and keep a room clean.

  At the end of this list, I wrote: Know, at the end of 2017, that I’ve grown and changed and learned and failed in wonderful ways. That I went through a process of getting older and wiser, that at the beginning of the year I wasn't perfect, and that’s ok.

  I wrote that on December 30, 2016. Today is December 30, 2017.

  One year later.

  As the year is now coming to a close I’ve been reflecting on just that, what my past self-wrote to my future self. I was going through some rough spots during that time. I was always beating myself up for who I was and what I did. Alway calling myself stupid, or not enough. Always wishing I was older, wiser, and better. That the past me would hide in shame for what she didn’t know and the decisions that she made. I ridiculed and judged myself. And sometimes, I think that's the worst kind of judgment.

  Although I wrote that to myself at the end of last year, I kind of forgot about it and didn't even realize that I was subconsciously, slowly, learning how to stop judging myself so harshly.

  This is what I’ve learned, subconsciously, within the last year: Who I was last December is ok. That girl is ok. There is nothing wrong with her, she was learning and growing. Don’t hate her, love her and let her know that she’s going to grow. More and more and more. She’s not stupid. She’s not shamed. That girl is accepted and loved, and because of that, her future self, me right in the exact moment, and be at peace and content and loving. I'm growing, constantly learning, and accepting that I don't know everything. I will never know everything, and that’s ok.

  Giving yourself permission to love and accept your past self, to not judge yourself for what you didn't know, puts you in a better position to accept yourself and grow more now, today, here in the present moment.

  My heart is at rest knowing that I never have and never will be perfect, so why always put the stress on myself, why try to act like I know everything when everything is too much for anyone and everyone to know in the first place. There is a process we all go through and we can't judge yourself when we go through it.

  I'm far from perfect, I always will be, and even though I won't stop improving myself, I'm not going to harshly judge myself for learning, becoming, and creating myself, faults and all. We have to learn to love the process of being human.

Just a few thoughts that have been on my mind lately: 

Regret doesn't come to my mind when I think about the things I did do, it comes to mind when I think about the things I didn't do. // 

Sin and humans are two separate things. Jesus loved all humans, He hated the sin. He loved them despite their sin. //

 We're all humans with beautiful yet broken stories. None of us are innocent, even though we want to be, we're not. So just go ahead and live, not sinfully, but fully. Don't worry about making mistakes or messing up. That's what grace is for. You can't get any more messed up than what you already are. //

Trying

I'm trying, trying so hard. Trying to write, trying to love, trying to live and take hold of this present moment. All I keep saying is try, try, try. Enough with trying, start doing. Don't try to write, just write, even if it's shitty. Don't try to love, just love, even if it hurts. Don't try to live in this present moment that has been handed over to you, just live, just do. Just be. Even when you mess up, it's all a part of the ever winding story that is you.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

These twenty-six letters are my safe haven, my way of cultivating. 

I use them to reveal parts of me, a mountain range under a withdrawing sea. 

I want to show truthfully and intricately the stars that are in me. 

Writing has become my century.

A vanity of shorts, where the pages can be folded into to mirrors of reality, 

reflecting the world as I see it.

People can see me through the words I pour out onto the page, 

but when they see too much, I can suck them back into my

lungs and lock them there, safely. 

I live between the lines of A&Z.

a little something I had to write for english class

She -- a long curly haired, porcelain skinned, twenty-something -- is one of those people you might see in the corner of a small coffee shop. She’d gaze over the lid of her laptop, then type fast as though the words from within her can't make it out quick enough, then gaze again. A notebook beside her, open to a page covered in a slightly sloppy cursive that one could barely read, even if they tried. Her coffee, cold and forgotten, sits there in a melancholy state and her phone, buzzing like a busy bee waiting for replies. She still types away.

If you look up from your book and watch her long enough, you might see her crack a smile as she writes. She just got to a good part. Enjoy that and let her enjoy that. Enjoy it before the anxiety comes back and strips it away only to leave fear of the words not being good enough to satisfy the readers on the other side. If you knew her well enough, you’d know that she has a too high of a respect for the art of literature. That whatever she makes she scrutinizes harshly. Her words barely make it out into the light of the day. 

Lifting her hands away from the beaten keyboard, she combs back her hair between her fingers away from her face and rolls up her indigo sleeves a quarter below her elbow. She stares at what she has just produced on the page, neither pleased nor dissatisfied. Looking around, she comes out of the story and back to the room. The clamor of small talk and sent of roasted beans makes for a nice welcoming back into reality. 

She grabs her bag, closes her laptop and notebook, and stuffs them away. Realizing her coffee that was left for the cold, she takes a last sip and dumps the rest of it in the trash. The bells on the door cling as she opens it, and out she steps, into the cool October air. She walks away.

You almost go back to your book until you see a little slip of paper on the table where she was sitting. You get up and nonchalantly walk over to see what it says. You can tell it was from her because it held the same sloppy cursive that was between the pages of her notebook. It reads:

I saw you watching me. Don’t worry, I wrote you into my story.

You look out to see if she’s still in sight, but she's gone. Lost in the wind, an author by any other name.

Week One of College

Be messy and complicated and afraid and show up anyway.

Glennon Doyle Melton 

That, my friends, is how I felt about this week. My first-week of school of my last semester before I graduate with my associate's degree (that’s a crazy thing to write down, by the way). On Monday, knots were in my stomach, not because I didn’t particularly want to start school, but because the thought of starting school meant that I’m moving one step closer the next part of my life and I don’t quite know what that next part holds. I’ve been itching to get out of this season that I’m currently in, but now that I’m actually on the verge of doing so, I’m back peddling.

Why am I doing this?

Why and I swimming back upstream when all I wanted for the longest time was to move faster down it?

To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t know why this fear grips me so tight. I think it could possibly be the unknown. The fact that, even though I plan and have an idea of where I’m going to go or do what I’m going to do, it’s never for certain, there is always the possibility of things falling through. There is also the fact that it could not be like I imagine it would be once I get there.
Never the less, all these feelings came up on the first day of the last few months before things change. This is the time before it changes. The calm waters before the hurricane. And Just thinking of it all made me afraid.
I showed up anyway, though. I showed up, even with my messiness, my complicatedness, my afraidness. All of it. And you know, moving toward a new area of life isn’t so bad ( and my French III professor is this nicest one professor you could ever have).
So all of this is to say, I made it through, the first week, at least. And I’ll keep making it through, through the normal and through the change and through the new. Through all of this life, I’ll make it.

You will, too. Despite the mess, the complex, and the fear show up anyway.

Colorado - The Royal Gorge

Ridges and red rocks surrounded us 360º, and we were in the center of it, dangling from a little gondola,  1,053 feet above the ground. The little gondola slid along as I snapped pictures of the scenic view. The mountains were hues of blue in the distance and the red canon rock flamboyantly showed off its splendor. Below was the Arkenswa river, rushing past, making white caps while the water pushed past the rocks. And amongst it all was the bridge -- the largest suspension bridge in America -- standing its ground, tall and proud. 

While walking across the bridge you could look down and see through the crakes between the plants. It was kind of insane to think about how such a structure could keep that high you up and let you view for miles. 

Around mid-day, we made the climb down the gorge, through the mountains and out to the plains. The thing that's cool about being out in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains is that when you look North, you see a big rocky wall that ripples and winds. Yet, just turn your head to the South and you can see as far as your eyes can see. There's nothing for miles and miles. I can definitely say that this day was one for the books. 

Evergreens

The ripples 

and folds --

hues of blue

gently flowing down

the stream

amongst the rocks and sticks and muddy seams.

Though they are quite and soft,

they hold secrets of the past 

of tumbling 

down, 

down,

off the edge of the cascade,

free falling.

No one would know just by a glance

that the ripples were once wilds,

roaring into the evergreens.