I am pretty content with my life. I have a home that I have slowly made into something I enjoy resting in at the end of the day. I have incredible friends, family who love me, and a fulfilling job.

Most days, it’s enough.

But of course there is that nagging desire. That wish for marriage and a family of my own. I don’t deny it, but I do try to maintain it. Try not to get so tangled in the wishing that I forget about the living.

There are things that I know will make my singleness feel like a burden. Moments will it weighs on me. Weddings and baby showers are bittersweet. When something breaks in my house, I know I will wish I had a husband to fix it. When I have to make a big life decision, I know I will desire a mate to discuss it with.

But sometimes, I am blindsided by my singleness.

That happened to me tonight. I had just spent some time with a friend, and we parted ways in the parking lot. As I walked to my car, the wind felt colder. The walk felt longer. The loneliness felt overwhelming. Literally, seconds before I had laughed with a friend. But the burden of coming home alone, to an empty house, with no one to talk to made my throat close up. I felt the pin-prick of tears as I started the car and held my hands in front of the vents as they blew out hot air.

It’s just the reality of where I am in life. Walking alone to my car can feel like a moment of crisis.

I say none of this to invoke your pity or sadness. I say it only because I think we’re all blindsided by longing. Delayed blessing can lurk in the shadow, stepping out when you least expect it. A word spoken, a memory, a lonely walk across the parking lot, and we’re left limping along.

My prayer is that you and I see the limping, and offer a kind word, or even just a smile. A bit of defense against the blindside.

I fail.

On a regular basis.

That is hard for a people-pleaser like me to admit.

But it’s easy for someone with my insecurities to admit.

I am a walking, tripping, talking, pretending, breathing, wheezing ball of missing the mark.

But my failures remind me of grace. Abundant grace. Grace that washes over me with such force that I am gasping and drenched.

I fail my friends but they love me anyway.

I fail my family but they love me anyway.

I fail at my job but my name badge still lets me in the building.

And that grace continues, staining my fingers with its messiness.

And my fingerprints of grace smudge the world around me.

My friends fail me. But there is the smudge of grace. Forgiveness.

My family fails me. But there is the smudge of grace. Love.

My job fails me. But there is the smudge of grace. Perseverance.

I am stained by grace. And I pray, if you get close enough to me, my grace will stain you.

Beautiful, messy, thumbprints of grace.

As far as the eye can see.

*I am terribly unmotivated lately…so I have deemed it the season to go back and finish up the “drafts” in my posts folder that I never got around to finishing. You are welcome*

July 12, 2011

Tonight was a strange night. A little fender bender (honestly, it wasn’t even that bad, my fender is not even bent) shook my thinking a bit.

I’m not usually thankful for car accidents. And when I felt that other car thud into mine, thankfulness was the furthest thing from my mind. I pulled over, dreading the damage. But when I walked around the car and looked, there was nothing.

I know I didn’t imagine it. I could still smell the burnt rubber.

The guy who hit me stood next to me. “I guess I just hit your tire,” he said.

I guess so.

A few inches back, would have been my gas tank. A few inches forward, major damage to my car. Damage that would have spent me spiraling from the simple logistics of getting my car towed and getting a rental car and entering the purgatory that is insurance world.

But none of that happened. Just a tiny scrape on my tire that wasn’t even worth contacting the insurance folks for, much less calling the police and reporting the accident. So I climbed back into my just fine car, and drove home, hands shaking a bit from the closeness of disaster and the blessing of inches.

The blessing of inches. It’s not something that I bother to be thankful for very often. Close calls make me feel more nauseous than blessed. And so often I focus on the not-misses. The things that went wrong. The damage that wasn’t avoided. And I wonder, where were the inches there?

I will never, ever be able to answer the question of why was this disaster missed while this one wasn’t. Never. It makes my brain hurt to even think about it. But what I can do is be thankful in those moments of “thank goodness” and persevere in the moments of “this sucks.”

I need to live in the inches.

Tonight I found myself at Old Navy, trying to find THE PERFECT outfit for my trip to Virginia this weekend. There was only one problem.

I seriously don’t know how to dress myself.

I mean, yes, I possess skills like buttoning and zipping and tying my shoes.I did, after-all, graduate from kindergarten. But much past that, and I’m hopeless. I don’t know what colors to wear together. What shoes go with what skirt? Tights? No tights? Can I do stripes? Do you have to be skinny to wear skinny jeans?

*HEADEXPLODE*

Often, while shopping for clothes, I often enlist the help of my poor, unsuspecting friends. I basically stand in a dressing room while they bring me clothes and then refuse to come out when I don’t like how things look. It’s totally loads of fun for everyone involved.

But tonight was a last minute trip, so I was flying solo. I wandered around for a solid 30 minutes with one gray skirt in my hand. It was a cute skirt. But I had no idea what to pair it with. That’s when a poor, unsuspecting employee approached me and asked if I needed help.

“I can’t dress myself,” I told her. She laughed. Then she realized I wasn’t kidding.

“Well, you could wear a lot with that skirt. Purple, or pink. You could do stripes. You could do a nice mustard yellow.”

I stared at her blankly.

“Or, um…” she trailed off.

“Oh,” I said, “I need you to actually pick something specific out. I seriously cannot dress myself.”

She was nice enough to pick out a few things which I happily purchased. As I walked out of the front door, she waved.

“Good luck.”

I’ll need it.

Church and I are taking a break. Just for a month, anyway. For the month of October, I’m trying to spend my Sundays, my Sabbaths, praying and reading and writing and wondering…what am I looking for in a church? What caused me to leave my last church? What has left me in tears at churches I’ve visited. What am I bringing to a church? What am I lacking.

It’s complicated, but sometimes, it’s not. This past Sunday, I jotted something down in my journal that I have been desiring when I’ve visited new churches here in town. I almost didn’t write it down. It seemed silly. But I did write it. And then I underlined it.

I want to go to lunch.

At every church I’ve attended, I’ve been invited to lunch. To share a meal with others. To eat and talk and laugh and fellowship. Lunch, to me, had become an extension of the Church. Just as important as the sermon or the music.

I went to a church in Nashville where I regularly went with a group to a local pizza place. The food was excellent and the fellowship is something I still crave.

I went to a church in Missouri where I often went to a Chinese buffet after the late service. The food was mediocre, but I loved feeling part of a larger family.

I’ve gone to Mother’s Day brunch with a family who saw how hard it was for me to not have family in town. I’ve eaten burritos and wrestled over theology. Slurped soup while sharing struggles. Pushed back from a friend’s table, my stomach full of roast and my heart full of belonging.

So when I leave church and go home to my empty house to eat a sandwich alone at my table, I just feel like something’s missing. Five times, in the five years that I’ve lived here, I have been invited to lunch after church. Once a year. I miss the fellowship of those shared meals with the people I worship with.

Please, please don’t think this is a pity party. And for the love of all that’s holy, don’t feel like you have to invite me to lunch if you see me at church.

But maybe invite someone. The person sitting alone. The single mother. The college student. The new family.It just might make their day.

“Food is our common ground, a universal experience.”

In no particular order:

-The perfect pot of coffee

-Spiced cider

-Laughing with Friends

-Sweet babies

-Wheat thins with laughing cow cheese

-A cozy fireplace

-Unexpected snow

-The yellow leaves on the tree outside my living room

-Sharing food with people I love

-Ponytails

-Pumpkin cream cheese muffins

-Naps

This past weekend I went to Nashville for a conference (which I will post more about later, as soon as I finish mulling it over).

Nashville holds a special place in my heart. And this trip back, in particular, felt very nostalgic for me. I drove down streets shadowed in memory, and thought about the broken, confused person I was when I first came to the city.

In May of 2002 I packed up everything I could fit in my green Ford Escort and drove alone down I-40, the windows down, my heart all at once heavy and light. My stepfather had died less than three months before, and I arrived in Nashville still saturated in that grief. It was the first time I had lived on my own, and I can’t help but feel like I arrived in town just a baby. Learning to walk, but careening forward with no balance. Crying for attention, but never able to communicate what I needed. Always unsure, always scared.

I think this was the first time I had visited Nashville and felt like a truly different person. Like I had shed so much of who I was as a 22-year-old. I still have miles to go, but I finally feel like I’m growing into myself. My heart feels more light than heavy now.

But on this fall weekend in 2011, as I drove past the spot where I had my first car accident, down the street where I used to drive slow to enjoy the sun dappling the inside of my car, I felt this deep, exceeding shame. As I talked to people who I had known nearly a decade ago, I felt my cheeks grow warm with embarrassment. I felt like I needed to apologize for that sad, lonely, awkward, hurting girl I was before. For the poor decisions I made. For my neediness and brokenness and awkwardness.

That shame laid heavy on me for most of a day. Made it hard for me to look people in the face. Stooped my shoulders and weighted my spirit.

Shame can do that to you.

But by the evening, I was beginning to feel some sympathy for that lost girl who came to Nashville. Sure, she was sometimes silly, and most of the time needy, but she loved deeply, and she laughed freely. Just like she does now.

She stared at the ground a lot. But when she did look up, she noticed the sunshine dappled through the trees. Just like she does now.

She needed the love of others, but didn’t always know how to receive it. Just like she does now.

She had a broken heart but light spilled forth from the broken places. Just like it does now.

So, to that little lost girl in Nashville. You will move. You will grow. You will lose friends. You will make friends. You will be awkward. You will laugh.

And you will find a place where shame has no place. Live there, lost girl.

Live there.

So last weekend, one of my very best friends in the world got married. I could not be more happy for her and her new husband.

But friends, I fail at toasts.

I had thought a lot about what kind of toast I would give at my friend’s wedding, if the occasion arose. Enough so that I crawled out of bed at midnight a few days before the wedding to put some thoughts on paper.

But then the day of the wedding arrived, and the reception came, and my little scrap of paper still sat in my car. I considered running out to the parking lot to get it when they opened the floor for toasts to the bride and groom. I listened to people say lovely words about this couple whom I love dearly.

But…what if I said something stupid? What if my words were not meant for public consumption? What if there was silence when I finished?

Or…what if I made this too much about me? What if I was too concerned with the presentation of my words than the heart of them?

You guys. I what-ifed myself right out of that toast.

So instead I wrote those words on a clean piece of paper and gave them to the bride and groom. And here, I will give a virtual-toast to Krissy and Spence. Because the world should know how much they mean to me

(And I like to pretend that they’re looking at me in this picture as I give their toast )

I Wish for You…

Let Joy into your home. Often he will fly in on the wings of laughter. Sometimes he will be the life of the party. But other times, Joy will limp in, battered and confused. When Joy flies in, celebrate. When Joy limps in, offer him a place to recover.

I pray that Peace will slip in your back door, walking softly through your home. Quiet like a mother checking on her precious children, her cool hand on your fevered brow. As Peace slips by in the night, grab the hem of her robe. Hold on.

Let Faith be in every corner of your home. Let him strip away doubt, boldly painting over it with the vibrant colors of hope. Sometimes you will not understand Faith. But trust him. Faith always has a plan.

When Grace enters the front door, selfishness will hastily exit through the nearest open window. The two cannot exist together. Make Grace comfortable. Watch her. Learn her language. Follow in her steps. Grace is a patient teacher.

But the greatest wish I have for you, of course, is Love. Fling open your doors, your windows, for Love. Let her fill your home until it is ready to burst. Let Love cover you, surround you, protect you. Let Love in, and she will never leave.

About a week ago I submitted my first writing packet for grad school.

It. Was. Terrifying.

The night I emailed it my mentor, I had a dream that she called me and told me I should drop out of school because I was a terrible writer.

Look. I know I’m not a terrible writer. I even think I’m a pretty good writer. But having someone read my writing still makes my stomach knot up. Yet I feel compelled to share my writing with others. It is a conundrum, my friends.

So anyway, today I got my initial feedback on that first writing packet. And the feedback was really good. The word “terrific” may have even been used. In my state of euphoria, I posetd on Facebook about my mentor’s kind words.

And when I checked Facebook again a few hours later, the majority of the comments were of the “I told you so” variety. Which kind of made me laugh. How are my friends and family so sure of something that I doubt on a daily basis? How are they so confident when I am so unsure?

But to me the real question is, is that fear, that uncertainty just part of the process? Does every writer deal with that? Does Stephen King have nightmares when when he sends a manuscript in to his editor? Does Danielle Steele’s chest heave when she meets with her agent? (Sorry had to go there.)

I guess I feel like if there were no nerves, I would feel like I’ve “arrived.” And I never want to feel like I’m the best I can be. I want to constantly be growing and evolving and becoming a better writer.

So I guess I will just have to put with lots of “I told you so” moments. I must need lots of telling

I’m at a bit of a cross-roads with my blog. For the past month or so I’ve been debating what to do with it. Kill it off? Hibernate? Extended vacation?

You see, fair readers, lately writing has absolutely consumed me. I write all day for work. I go home and write for grad school. I read my books for class. I write on discussion boards. Read, write. Write, read.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I LOVE my program. I love how challenged I feel right now. But I fall into bed with a brain full of words. I have nightmares about split infinitives and double negatives.

And to be honest, the thought of blogging has just kind of felt overwhelming to me. But here’s the thing. I really enjoy my blog. So while I thought about shutting ‘er down, I’ve decided not to. I won’t be blogging as much. Maybe not as well. But this little blog is here to stay. Hope you’ll keep reading!