I Carry It In My Heart

On the first night of the second week of my third summer of Camp, I was a counselor in Bowfin, the littlest girls' cabin. On Sunday night as we were tucking our girlies into their bunk beds, the tears came. Some of the girls had never spent the night away from home before. Some girls were just tired, which expressed itself through crying. And then when a thunderstorm started, so did the wailing. 

It terrified all of the little girls and nobody could sleep. There were four counselors in Bowfin that week - three group counselors and one counselor-in-training, and we had eight campers, and each of us took care of calming down a bunk bed of girls.

That night was its own very specific kind of pandemonium: high school and college students rushing around a dark cabin in very hushed voices trying to get a bunch of little girls to peace and sleep. It was the kind of situation where I took a second and stopped and thought about what I was doing and smiled. I was surrounded by bawling baby girls, and I loved it. I was simply thrilled to be where I was in that one short moment.

One of our girls in Bowfin that week was a short, slightly chubby girl with blond hair. She was eight and a half, a little older than most of the other girls in our cabin. She was shy, but shy quickly dissipates at Camp when a group of eight girls and their four counselors do absolutely everything together and love each other so much. But it was only the first night, and her shyness was still there.

She was scared of the thunderstorm just like the other girls, but she wasn't crying. I thought she was asleep because she wasn't making any noise, but she asked me to come and just sit with her. She was scared and she was lonely.

And so once all of the other girls were settling down, when there were still sniffles but no more sobs, I went to sit with her. We whispered so quietly and she talked to me. She told me that her mom didn't live with her family anymore, and she lived with her dad and her brother. She really loved them but she didn't like being the only girl. Her brother was also at Camp that week and every time she saw him, she hugged him. He didn't love it, but he let her do it, and I think he secretly did kind of love it. She asked me what my dad was like and I told her that he was goofy. She said her dad was too sometimes.

At the beginning of that week, we were very close. She called me Mama and I called her Baby. As the week went on, she needed me less - she bonded with the other girls and was silly and fun with them. Her shyness faded. But still sometimes, when we were walking somewhere, she would suddenly be next to me and holding my hand. It made me smile.

The week went by quickly - they all do. On Friday night, I was helping her pack up to go home. In one of her drawers I found a red plush velvet heart that said "Be mine."

It wasn't well-made, but it was soft and sweet. It was the kind of trinket that would have been just a trinket if she had not given it meaning.

She gave it to me. And I didn't want to take it from her, but also I did. I tried to convince her to keep it, but she wanted me to have it. I kept it. Then the next day was Saturday and she went home. After she left that Saturday I worried about the heart - it was so small. I was afraid of losing it. At Camp, I live out of plastic purple trunks, and they're filled with children's books and socks and Reese's wrappers and stationery and crafts that campers forgot and I wanted to keep to remember them by and pens and sunscreen and toenail polish bottles and beads. I knew my little heart would get mixed in with all of those things and I was afraid of it not appearing when I unpacked at the end of the summer. 

But then it did appear! And once school started back that fall, I put the heart in my backpack, along with my jar of peanut butter, and carried those two things around with me everywhere I went.

Later that year I stumbled upon this e. e. cummings poem -

As I read it I thought of the heart that I physically carried around - the heart of that one little girl, and the other little girls that week, and the campers from that whole summer, and the campers from all of my years. I thought of how they each had my heart, like a horcrux, a soul split into a million pieces and spread all over the world in beautiful and sacred places. I thought about moments like the one from the first night of the second week of my third summer, where around me so many things were happening and there was really not time to pause and relish joy but I did because I was nothing but serenely delighted to be where I was, in happy-busy times, in times of running around but also times of singing and holding a hand or two. 

The following fall semester, I had the opportunity to speak at a Sertoma Club meeting. I skipped a biology class to go with some other counselors to promote Camp to the Sertomans (Sertomen?). One of the questions I was asked was how Camp had impacted me long-term. I was nervous talking in front of all of those people, and even more so knowing that what I said could impact how they viewed Camp, but the thing that came out of my mouth was the little red plush heart given to me by a Bowfin who called me Mama. I told them that I kept the heart in my backpack with my peanut butter and that I thought of her and of all of my campers so many times every day, and that I felt that they were near when I carried her heart with me (in my heart).

Love,
Lauralicious

A Happy Middle and a Very Happy Start

To be a senior, one must first be a freshman; a person can't be experienced without experience. I knew that. I just didn't know that I wouldn't be a forever freshman, and that one day I would actually be at the point where I (ready or not!) became a senior and had some life experience. And now, here I am. When I talked to seniors before I was one of them, they said it felt different than it looked. They were right: I feel less noble and graceful than what being a senior looked like. And yet, here I still am.

I am only a two weeks into senior year, but it's the beginning of the end. Endings are sad and hard. I've been in school for sixteen years, and if I teach after this, who knows how many more years of school I'll have. But this sixteenth consecutive year of school is my last consecutive year as a student.

Being a student, I have learned - about school, life, friendships, people, cars, kitchens, money, communication, coffee, and more and more and more. And when I think about this allotted time of learning - "college" - ending, and going to a new, yet to be determined place and making new friends and having a new house and a new bookstore and a new coffee shop, the space in my chest where I normally breathe becomes smaller, and my thoughts ricochet off the walls of my head so much more quickly and disorientedly than usual.

My college apartment kitchen on a clean day. Much learning (usually the hard way) has happened here. 

New things are scary, and it isn't even time yet for me to embrace or go do my new things, but it's time to know that they are in my foreseeable future, and that one year from now, I will be doing something different than the things I've done before. It makes me feel a little itchy. I like old things and familiar things, but sticking to old and familiar things and growing up are mutually exclusive, and I know which one I'm going to choose, and it's not the easier one.

The hardest and most important part of learning new things is remembering them. The scariest part of doing new things is forgetting the old ones.

I want to remember college and I want to remember this. I want to remember being eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. I want to remember my dorm room and my apartment. I want to remember my people - my friends, my roommates, my classmates, my professors, those random people I was friends with for like two days freshman year and then not anymore at all, and the people I've been running into but never actually spoken to for the past three-ish/four-ish years.

I want to remember the places I went and the things I did and all the times I jumped into the lake. I want to remember learning to cook and re-learning to ride a bike in DC over spring break sophomore year and learning who to call when I ran out of gas for the second time in a month. I want to remember the night when life felt like an episode of Friends. I want to remember watching just the Jim and Pam episodes of The Office on girls' nights. I want to remember how much cookie dough I ate late at night when I should have eaten nothing at all, and how much I don't even regret it.

People say, "this, too, shall pass," during hard times, and it makes said hard times seem less permanent. During grand times and during youth and during college, however, people don't say that. I think they should, because hard times are not the only times that shall pass. All time passes, and the speed at which it does so can't be controlled.

A great (and scary-looking) man once said -

There are no happy endings,
Endings are the saddest part.
So just give me a happy middle
and a very happy start.

 - Shel Silverstein

a great (and scary-looking) man

Even if things end well, they end sadly, because endings are fundamentally "the saddest part." The ending of things, although necessary and sometimes a little overdue, is sad. The Head and the Heart says, "all things must end, darling," and they must. If you love something, you should let it go, but that doesn't mean it won't hurt - maybe even a lot. 

I had a "happy middle and a very happy start" to college. And (the beginning of) the end of college isn't the end of life. It's a necessary push, an "umph" to what's next - new places, new roles, new patches of sky. 

Love,
Lauralicious

These Are the Places I Will Always Go

During the last week of Camp last summer, on my last night without night duty, as I was walking back to my cabin to go to bed, I went to Shallow Dock. I sat on a bench in the dark under the trees and the stars. I looked at the lake, I looked at the moon, I looked behind me at the middle of Camp, lit up by nine porch lights. Each porch light was attached to a cabin, and each cabin was holding eight sleeping (inevitably snoring) campers.

I sat on that bench and took in a big long gulp of that night. I thought about how I knew I couldn't be at Camp forever, but how lucky I was to not have to say goodbye yet. I was sad but not too sad about Camp ending because I knew I'd be working again the next summer, which is now this summer, and Camp is now over, and I did not work. Yikes.

When I realized in March that I might not be able to return this summer, there were tears. I have a high level of FOMO, which did not make anything easier. I was so confused about what a summer doing anything except for Camp would be like; the last summer I wasn't working at Camp, I was sixteen. I've told every camper I've ever had that I'll always be back, and now I was a liar and a hypocrite and an abandoner, and I couldn't handle being those things.

My mind could only think in terms of all or nothing - I'd spent so many summers with all of my time at Camp, and now it looked like I had to spend a summer with none of my time there. But it turned out that I was able to visit Camp every Sunday and every Thursday, along with some extra days, too. I got to hug all of my campers and help out counselors and hold roles other than the counselor one I'd always had.

On my way to Camp that first Sunday, I felt so anticipatory. I wanted the counselors who had my old campers to be not nearly as good as me. I wanted them to have static personalities and no pizzazz, and I wanted to stand out in everyone's - campers, returning counselors, new counselors, supervisors - memories and current minds as the epitome of a compassionate, perceptive, thoughtful, perfect counselor. It felt very important to me that I stand out and be flawless, because if I didn't, I had no reason to be remembered or present.

However, when I arrived, there was no competition or preference shown by campers. I met the new counselors, and I liked them. We became friends. We shared funny stories about our campers. We became less and let campers be more, and I had no more need to be the shining star.

I had been worried before that my campers would feel like I neglected them by not being their counselor again this year, but they were delightful and happy to be with me for as long as I could be there. It was only natural for us to be together again.

While it was hard and it hurt for me to not be fully at Camp this summer, it showed me that I fit there. When I first started working and for subsequent summers, I wasn't sure if I was really a Camp person. I loved my campers with a strong emotional affection, which is what kept drawing me back to Camp, but during those times, Camp was merely a conduit for togetherness with my campers. This summer I bonded and saw new parts of Camp as a bigger picture. I had doubted before whether my personality was the kind that had much to offer to Camp, or if what I had to offer to Camp was at all valuable.

But when I showed up and saw that my help was helpful - that pouring eighty cups of water sped things up, or that I already knew where cleaning supplies were kept, or that I had two free hands with which to assist certain campers in walking from place to place - I saw that I was the reason I'd felt inferior before, and that my being at Camp was worthwhile for campers, Camp, and myself. Before I'd thought I was only beneficial for campers. I saw that I hadn't arbitrarily stumbled there in 2010, but that I was meant to be found there, and that Camp is in my blood. Seeing that was a huge relief to me.

On that night last summer when I sat at Shallow Dock in the peaceful dark, after I looked around and thought on the goodness of the things around me and the place I was in, where the lake is always green and the friendships are always gold, I thought about how, like a horcrux, a portion of my soul would always be right there.

No matter how far I go, a piece of me will always be seventeen and a CIT and feeling like Cinderella, loaded down with piles of wet bathing suits to put on the clothesline. No matter how old I get, a piece of me will always be eighteen and at the Hope dance, sweating and singing and swinging arms with smiling campers. No matter what I do, a piece of me will always be nineteen and getting up before the crack of dawn to hide treasure for my cabin to find on a scavenger hunt later in the morning. No matter what happens, a piece of me will always be twenty and running across Camp in the middle of the night because we are out of toilet paper and can't wait until morning. Again. No matter how many more summers I have left, a piece of me will always be twenty-one and crying on the shoulders of my campers when we are finally reunited and it is of the utmost happiness.

I always told my campers that they wouldn't have to have a last day of Camp if they stayed forever. However, campers can't stay forever (I know this but I'm still not completely sold on why?) and neither can I. But summer happens every year, and Camp happens every summer. And Camp is a place I will always go.

Last Monday night, I said my last goodnight to my campers. Here is what I know, and it's what's keeping me going: goodnight is not goodbye.

Love,
Lauralicious

Pretty Paper

The way to my heart is through the US Postal Service. The most hopeful part of my day is when I check the mail, because just maybe in the midst of bills and advertisements and things addressed to people who don't even live here, I'll find an envelope with my name on it, written by the hand of a person who knows me and wants to share words with me.

Because letters are not a face-to-face, live-action event, facial expressions and body language don't contribute to the reading or writing of a letter. Words are the only conduit of information from the writer to the reader, and this is a big task. It means the content of the letter is condensed down to just the words that the writer finds valuable and most fitting for what is being described, and the things described in a letter are not arbitrary or something to talk about to bide time. No one writes a letter on accident, and that's why I like them. Even if a letter (sent or received) is weakly worded, it's still genuine and intentional.

The thing about writing letters is that it calls for stationery. And the thing about stationery is that it's pretty paper. Good stationery is intricate and colorful and endearing. When I write on good stationery, I imagine that my writing is award-worthy.

But once I've used most of a set and I only have a few sheets of stationery left, I turn into an anxious miser. I clam up and choose to not write any more letters ever, because I want all the stationery in the world to always be pretty and perfect and unblemished and mine.

If I save beautiful things like stationery for only myself, I'm depriving everyone else of it. And if I am stingy with what I decide is beautiful, I'll see fewer beautiful things outside of what I possess.

When I become an anxious miser about my stationery, it really isn't about the stationery, but about my heart. The heart wants what it wants, but the brain knows it isn't right.

Pretty things are to be shared. Stationery is meant to be used, not hoarded. I learned at Camp a lot of things, but one I think of almost daily is: die empty. It means to not be parsimonious with joy and while it acknowledges that the giving of self requires sacrifice, it requires the giving of self, and rewards it.

In terms of writing a letter, dying empty means I take stationery out of its pristine box and write on it, and that means the stationery is less perfect because my handwriting is lopsided and loopy and I cross words out often. It means I invest my heart into my words, even though it's scary to put my heart on paper. It means licking the envelope (and thus investing my saliva, too) and blowing a kiss to the mailbox before I send the letter on its way.

Letters are read and re-read. They are used as bookmarks and placed in shoeboxes under beds for long-term keeping. Letters become dog-eared and coffee-stained. Letters are cited in biographies, or they are thrown away without a second thought after being read.

Sending a letter is like saying, "I love you," in that it comes from the heart, and things that come from the heart are scary but worthwhile. Letters and "I love you" don't always get the recognition the sender may think they should, but that doesn't mean letters should never be sent or "I love you" should never be said. If no one sent letters or said "I love you," the USPS would run out of joy and color and the world would slowly turn to ice.

Love,
Lauralicious

A Spirit of Not Hiding

I started running recently, after being convicted by my running shoes. I just started feeling so much guilt for never using them and realized that I was depriving them of their one life purpose, which is to run and to go places. I realized that I didn't want to be the kind of person to deprive anyone or anything from fulfilling its purpose in life. So I put my running shoes on my feet and I started running in that moment. 

It was an ideal running situation: winter had just turned over to spring (my favorite) and I needed a way to handle my school stress. The running was going well until I realized: I hate running. When I run, I feel like I'm constantly tripping but never actually falling, and that is miserable.

But, from running, I have learned about life. I'd never thought of myself as the kind of person who a) regularly engaged in physical activity or b) learned valid lessons about life from it. But life is full of surprises and the Lord works in mysterious ways. 

What I've learned from running is that I don't like to work hard. I don't like to challenge myself or do anything that I think might maybe be hard or scary. So before I run, I have to tell myself how far I'm going to run, and that I'm going to run the whole way - if I walk a little bit, I'll end up walking the rest of the way. I have to run past the excuses and shortcuts and whinings I hear that come from inside my own head. 

In life, when something seems like it might be hard or scary, I want it to not exist anymore. I want to be a child who doesn't know about complicated things. I want to close my eyes and not be able to see things and for that to mean that they don't exist. 

Over many years and many daunting situations, I've told my dad about how I want scary things to go away and leave me alone. And my dad has told me over those years and in those situations to desire not a spirit of simplicity, but a spirit of maturity. 

Here are some things I find scary: having conversations with people who are more confident than I am, being vulnerable, being wrong, and running. None of these things are guaranteed to not go wrong, and if they do go wrong, I'm (almost) guaranteed to get hurt. 

But a spirit of maturity means that I can get hurt and it won't be the end. It means I have a realistic view of life: that not everything is fun and that there are things that sometimes I'll have to just do. 

A person with a spirit of maturity isn't instantly mature, but knows that maturing and having a spirit of maturity is a really long process that is maybe never done. A person with a spirit of maturity is prepared to face things that are intimidating instead of squirming away from them. A person with a spirit of maturity has the Holy Spirit inside, to overcome timidity and to go everywhere together. A person with a spirit of maturity can see that "hard" and "good" are not mutually exclusive. A person with a spirit of maturity welcomes the Holy Spirit to bring a spirit of maturity and a spirit of not hiding.

After every run I take, I walk into my apartment and I get down on the tile floor. The coolness of the tile calms down my heart rate a little, and I usually lie there for about nine minutes, breathing and sweating and not thinking about what I need to do next. Then I'm recovered and rested, and I feel very chipper and strong, and proud of myself for doing something I resent so much but surviving  - like all that sweaty, panting running was worth it.

Even though I can't so much choose what hard things happen in life in the way that I can choose to go on a run, I have learned how to handle those hard things from running - mostly I've learned that wishing things away isn't a thing. I have become more dependent on Christ, because only He can take running and turn it into something tolerable and good. 

Love,
Lauralicious

The Feet of Crows

There is a time coming, and when that time is here, I won't want people to think I'm older than I look, and my jokes about being an old lady won't be funny because they won't be jokes, and when I'm deciding which shoes to buy, I'll care more than I currently do about arch support. It's the time when I'll have crow's feet.

I have a lot of days coming in my life, and one of those will be the day when I'll look in the mirror and discover some new wrinkles around my eyes. I have no doubts that I will have crow's feet; I smile a lot and I squint a lot, so I'm basically asking for it. They'll slowly take their time to settle into my face, and then will come the day where I notice, and maybe do a double take, and then accept it. This is for that day.

I want to always be twenty (I've said that about every age since I was seventeen) and I want to always have the assurance of a forgiving metabolism and friends who will let me talk their ears off or be wordless, but love me in those and in between. I want to always have my own specific coffee shop where I can go to retreat from life when it's being heavy. I want to know that my dad is my financial advisor and he won't let any major disasters happen. I want to know that if I feel like I'm drowning with life, it's only until the semester ends. I want to always have girls over on Monday nights to watch tv and do homework and talk to me while I make my meals for the week.

But change is coming. This school year is wrapping up and winding down, and it has me thinking about how, in the foreseeable-ish future, I'll be on my way out of here, to a place in life where I'm no longer a student, where I don't live within two miles of 95% of my social group, where life is more ongoing than a semester system. I will be in the world of grown-ups, even if I don't feel like I'm worthy of that term.

I've always been young and small and growing, and I'm confused and curious about how I'll be one day when I'm just not anymore. I want to know what I'll be thinking at the moment I find crow's feet on my face. I want to know if I'll ever feel less like a girl and more like a woman.

There are a lot of things to learn between now and when grown-up life hits me. Anne of Green Gables says, "Isn't it splendid to think of all of the things there are to find out?" It is.

And it's splendid to think of all of the things that will happen in life. I'm young, and the thing about being young is that it's all plans and hopes and things. I'm so interested to see which of the things I want to happen in life do actually happen, and which ones become obsolete, and which ones fade into nuggets of memory by the time the feet of crows are found on my face.

Love,
Lauralicious

All You Need Is

Think about the qualities of toilet paper: It can be tough. It can be soft. It can run out at the moment you need it the most, which ruins everything - or it can make a bad day that much less bad. Substitutes for it exist, but they really are just not worth investing in. Sometimes people waste it, which is not cool. Sometimes it runs out and then you're just sitting and feeling abandoned.You always need it, but there are times in life where you need more, or a different kind. And sometimes you have to ask for it, which is humiliating, but there's not really a way of getting around that. At times you have to give it to people when they ask for it or if you just think they might need it. It has been present in some moments that you never ever want repeated. Sometimes it breaks, and that is not great - the emotional consequences for that can be long-term. If you don't need it or use it, that's a problem. Sometimes the way it's packaged makes it look incredibly appealing, but once you have it, it's mediocre. When it's distributed in bulk, its quality is lower. You have to be taught and also learn from life experience how to use it wisely and well. 

The same things are all true of love. Not the kind of love that is of God, but the kind that humans can do. Each has a cost: for toilet paper, it's money, and for love, it's your heart. 

A heart is a lot to give. I'm often conflicted because I know that if I didn't have a heart, things would be easier. I wouldn't be distracted or slowed down by emotions. And it's the same with toilet paper: if it didn't exist, and if the reasons for needing it didn't exist, things would be easier. And maybe grosser. But God is love and love is good, and so is toilet paper. These two thing exist for a reason, which means to use them instead of wish them away.

But even the greatest toilet paper eventually will run out. And that's how we know that God's love is greater than our love or any toilet paper: His love can cast out fear, and nothing else can. Toilet paper cannot cast out fear because eventually it has to run out. Human love cannot cast out fear because humans are sinful and skewed and can't be everything another human needs. Both human love and toilet paper end, break, and disappoint, but God's love never ever will. 

And so true rest is found only in Christ (and not in the bathroom). In Him we can take the deepest of deep breaths. There is no hygiene product to which to compare Him. He is greater than the finest two-ply.  

Love,

Lauralicious

Hope and the Holy Spirit

There's a certain depression that comes on beautiful days, because I know I can't keep them. Springtime is so lovely, big, blue, warm. When it's like this outside, there's one minute where I forget all of my responsibilities and worries and stressors and I'm just happy. And then I remember that I have things to do, and then I resent all of those things because I want nothing but the thing I can't have: spring bliss, forever. 

Once, and just once, I had the perfect spring day: I plopped myself down on Bowman late in the afternoon on a Wednesday, ate the most delicious apple that's ever been in my mouth, and I watched people run around in the glory that is the sun. For the rest of that day, I felt like Cinderella: waltzing instead of walking, singing instead of talking, and blissfully ignorant to bad or sad things, because my contentment was bigger than those things. That day became my standard for spring days, and now I live in pursuit of that same exact day again. 

This is what goes through my mind on spring days: joy joy joy joy and then: pressure pressure pressure pressure. 

I feel joy because dogwoods are here and I can smell them. They don't smell sweet or especially appealing, but they smell like nostalgia and they smell like it's not winter anymore, and that gives me a huge deep breath and some peace. 

I feel joy because I think maybe I am Anne of Green Gables. Maybe all of the mistakes I make are charming and endearing and everybody is enamored with my constant charisma. Maybe my sins are really just logistical issues and cute idiosyncrasies.

I feel joy because my skin can feel warmth now, and that warmth is a vessel straight to my heart. I want everyone to be my best friend, and I want every meal to be a picnic, and I want to be a human embodiment of springtime.

I feel joy because life isn't stagnant after all. Things I thought were perpetually brown or dead are suddenly daffodils! And everything around me is pretty, and full, and important - flowers, grass, weeds are all beaming. And then life events that I thought were doomed are suddenly less so. Everything looks like it's on the up and up. 

I feel pressure because I have things to do. I have assignments to complete, sleep to sleep, an education to somehow get, food to make, friends with whom to talk about things: sometimes good and sometimes hard and sad. I want so badly to put a pause on my whole life and be outside until I'm filled up to the brim, but I never will be. There is not enough spring for me to ever not want it anymore. I feel mocked by each of the choices I made previously to right now, because they are the reason I have to say no to what I want to do so that I can be inside and be "productive." 

I feel pressure because I'm the one who was whining and begging for spring. And now it's here but I still find reasons to complain. I tell myself that nice days are an opportunity for extrinsic joy, and if I can't take them up on that, then I'm being wasteful and ungrateful. 

I feel pressure because what if I'm never as happy as I was on that one Wednesday? What if I've already received the maximum capacity of happiness that was allotted for my life and now all I'll ever know of joy are affectionate, reflective memories?

I feel pressure because I'm really not Anne of Green Gables. I knew it the whole time; I was just hoping that spring had erased my imperfections. But Anne is fiction and I'm nonfiction. I'm a real person, which means my sins are actually sins, and they are innately depraved moral issues and bad decisions I make daily, not just logistical mishaps. It's disheartening.

I motivated myself through winter by saying that spring would be here and that it would be everything, and that's why I'm so internally conflicted now: I expect it to be perfect (hence the pressures), and it's not, but it's still better than winter (hence the joys). I'm overwhelmed by joys and pressures and every emotion feels urgent.

I spent winter holding my breath, hoping that when it was gone, I'd be warm constantly and always, and I'd be able to breathe. And I can breathe, but being able to breathe doesn't mean life is cured. 

When spring came and the world was still broken, I was so confused and sad. But the thing I forgot about all winter when motivating myself through it was that spring isn't the same thing as Heaven. Spring is on the earth, and the earth is a broken place. Heaven is still far away from this place. 

This is all I know to do: have hope. Hope is a belief, not a wish. Hope and the Holy Spirit perch in the soul. Hope knows that a perfect place exists, and when I get to be there, this won't be an issue.

Love, 

Lauralicious

Making Connections

In stories and songs and movies, strangers make connections so easily and so often. People's eyes meet across a room and after just a few seconds of eye contact, they're bound to each other forever, in deed or in memory or in imagination. 

This happened to me. It was not romantic. It was typical of life: abrasive and confusing and inconclusive. 

Here's what happened: I was driving through the parking garage, looking for a spot. I was rounding a corner up to the second level when a longboarder was rounding the same corner from the other direction. With no notice, we were face to face and body to body: face and body of car to face and body of boy. Thank goodness for reflexes - he jumped off of his board and ran out of the way as I smashed on my brakes. After it was clear that he was safe, he looked at me and I asked out of my half-open window if he was okay, and he nodded. 

Then we made eye contact and shared a moment of relief. It was clear that we had both been so scared in that tiny moment. His eyes seemed sad. Neither of us said any more words, and I thought we should, but what does one say in that situation? So he picked up his longboard from in front of my car and then he walked to Pita Pit. I parked my car and then curled up and sobbed. 

I sobbed because what if he had died and it wasn't my fault but it was kind of my fault? I sobbed because I was scared, and because I was tired, and because if that day had been a war, the day would have won, and it still wasn't even over.

I composed myself. I got out of my car. I walked through downtown, knowing how splotchy and pathetic my cry-face looked. I wished I didn't have a face. I walked by Pita Pit, and in the window I saw the guy who I had almost just hit. He wasn't crying, nor did he seem very terrified. I looked away before he could see me because I didn't want to make eye contact again. 

And now, even though neither of us decided to, we have a connection. He and I and no one else have this specific mutual experience of being so very frightened for his life. I don't know about him the normal things I know about a person: his name, or if he's a mountain person or a beach person, or what kind of pita he ate, but I know that he didn't die at 6:00 on Tuesday, which is significant and more than I knew about him before. 

So stories and songs and movies were right: a connection between two unlikely people can be made out of nothing in a small amount of time and with little to no verbal communication, and that connection is not readily forgotten. 

After this happened, we each continued with our days. Everything was okay. And that's all. 

Love,
Lauralicious

The Truth Doesn't Squash Me

Some people stretch the truth, but I find myself doing the opposite. I shrink the truth. The truth is heavy, and it's a lot to handle, and it looks like it will hurt me. I'm scared by it. So I get as close as I comfortably can to it, remaining independent and avoiding vulnerability. I tell myself things that are almost true, but not quite - like that all I want is to be adequate, but nothing more, or that I'm almost completely self-sufficient and if I try just a little harder, I can get there and be fully free from needing anything but myself.

But those things aren't the truth. The truth of my need for Jesus does not go away if I avoid it, and trying hard and wishing do not give me the things I want if those things are anything that isn't Christ. 

I tell myself that I want to be adequate and that's all and that's not so much to ask, but I know that I want more. I want to be everything. I want to be the standard that everyone else is stretching to reach. I want to exceed all of the expectations and overcome all of the challenges in the world and be an inspiration to all people. I want to win, and then dangle my superiority above the heads of all the peasants below me. 

And I want to be self-sufficient. I want to not need Jesus or any person. I want to be able to take care of myself - physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I want to not know what loneliness is, because I'm all I need. I want to not have to feel.

These things that I tell myself are okay to want and strive for are so close to the truth that they're far away, because to get to real truth from there, I have to back up and change everything: primarily, my motivation for living. And if I had those things, I wouldn't know joy or grace. All I would know would be me, and I'm just not God, and nothing I can do will make me Him.

I do want Jesus, and I need Jesus, and I don't realize how much. He is joy and grace, and I can't be those things for myself. He forgives me for thinking I can be Him, and He shows me how wrong I was. 

The truth is that I need Jesus. I need Him more than I needed braces twice in elementary school and more than certain celebrities need psychiatric attention (I mean that in a kind but honest way). The truth is that I am free from feeling like I need to look out for myself and use solitude as a defense mechanism from vulnerability. The truth is that I am free from trying to be all I need. The truth is that I am free. The truth is that I'm Christ's.

Love,
Lauralicious

Faithfully and Well

The common thread uniting most of my worries is helplessness and lack of control. I can't fix the things that are broken. I can't make the terrible things stop and I can't make the bad things improve and I can't push the potential good things enough to make them happen. 

When I say "broken" and "terrible" and "bad," I don't mean trivial, not-great things like only wearing two pairs of socks when I meant to wear three or four, so my toes are a little chilly. I mean irrevocably awful things, like that sinful people trick themselves (ourselves) into thinking that they're (we're) competent without Christ to live life, and then ruin everything. I feel helpless because I'm timid, because I'm insecure, because I am not in charge. 

I skew myself into thinking that I if I just had a little more authority, if more people listened to me, if I were a little bolder, if I were a little more confident, things in the world could be a lot better. I never admit to myself that I am a sinner and contribute to problems in the world. I keep coming up with more solutions for how to fix all of the problems that the bad people cause. 

My desires for the world are valid. My motives are clean and make sense, but they aren't comprehensive of every contributing factor to the problem. My desire is to be God and to fix all of the things I see that are broken. I want to smooth over all of the effects of sin in the world. However, the reason that the effects of sin in the world are visible is because sin is present in the world. It's not my role or responsibility to fix this problem. I can't even see the whole problem. 

I keep a list entitled "Other People's Words," and it's a long list of just that: words that other people have written or said that aren't relevant to me but I think are beautiful or true. I write them down when I hear or read something that I never want to forget. I scrolled through these the other night when I felt like I was at the breaking point of my sadness and weariness and helplessness at the sad things in the world. I read through one quote slowly. It said, "He loves the people I love more than I love them." This is significant. 

This makes a difference in my attempts to fix and control the world, because this means that there is a plan, and it's not my plan. My plan is self-focused and choppy. This plan is God's plan, and it's for the whole world, and it's graceful and good - "good" as in pure and holy, not just as in fine or adequate. 

And because He loves the people I love more than I love them, He has their ultimate good in mind. He enacts His providence on the lives of all people, and He doesn't ignore something because He doesn't know what to do about it. Providence means provide, but in more than just a food way. Providence means God's in charge, and that's great news. 

He even loves me more than I love me, and He loves me better than I love me. The plan I have for my life will not happen, because the plan that He has for my life will happen, and it will be greater than I could have planned. He knows what I need, and I only know what I want. 

God's providence for my life, for the people I love, for the world is trustworthy. His plan for the world is much vaster than I can imagine, and it isn't my job to try to micromanage Clemson. I can find relief in knowing that I am unqualified, unable, and unfit to run the world. I can find rest in knowing that God can run the world, and that He does so faithfully and well, and has been doing so even before I realized it or was alive. 

So everything can be okay.

Love,
Lauralicious

Pantyhose, Not People

I don’t buy new pantyhose often. I don’t know how often normal people are even supposed to buy them; I only know that I will buy them when and only when all of my other pairs are completely ruined. Last Sunday morning, I had to open a new pack of them because of unfortunate ripping and runs in my best black pair. I was eating breakfast on my couch before church (I like to eat on the couch way better than at the table) in my fuzzy bathrobe and new pantyhose and looking at how nice my legs looked in these new hose. They looked shapely and smooth. I thought about how disappointed I had felt about my old pantyhose needing to be retired. As I was sitting there, relaxed with my tea in the still and quiet morning low-lit living room, I heard myself think, “These pantyhose will never let me down.”

This is that kind of moment where it is necessary to preach to oneself instead of listen to oneself think.

It’s true that one of the more disappointing feelings I’ve felt is that of realizing that a pair of pantyhose is no longer wearable. It isn’t personal, but it feels personal. It feels like they just couldn’t handle me anymore.

It starts so simply: they catch on something, anything. (It’s usually me who subjects them to whatever it is that begins their ruination). And I always pretend that they didn’t, and that they’re completely okay and unaffected and that nothing at all happened, because I want them, and I need them, and I like them. Then they run. And the running part is the saddest part, because I can’t look away. It can’t be hidden. It’s dishearteningly public. And then I have no choice but to throw them away, because they are unusable. They are obsolete. I think that obsolete is one of the most defeated things to be.

So then I open a new pair. And I think that this time it will be different. They will stay with me forever. They will be with me still ten years from now, when I’m in my thirties and actually know how to be an adult. We will go through so much together…but in reality, these will last me a few months at most.

And this time, on Sunday morning, just as every other time, I convinced myself that it was different. This pair was lovely, just so beautiful. Or maybe I just felt so beautiful in them. It had been so long since I’d had a new pair that I forgot what it was like to have a pair that wasn’t stretched out, and it took me a few extra minutes to get them on, but then I did, and they were secured, and together, we made a team. I was hoping that we would be inseparable (not physically, but emotionally). They had a control top, which I don’t particularly need, but I like. When I have a control top, I feel like nothing can go wrong (I forget that the “control” refers to just my stomach and not my whole life).

The new pair will let me down. It’s guaranteed. It would be unnatural for this pair to last me ten years. This pair is just as likely as all of the others to catch on something I walk into and run until I feel like it made a conscious choice to run away from me because it knows me. Maybe when it leaves me I will find an even better pair. Maybe I won’t. Maybe pantyhose are just pantyhose and they are all the same level of completely neutral items. I probably won’t remember this pair of pantyhose as distinctive from any of the others that I’ve owned in my lifetime. That makes me kind of sad.

But then I remember: these are pantyhose, not people.