Please. Will you please come back home.

“Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words?”

(Job 38:2)

I’m really afraid it’s me.

When you're gone I just stare out the window.

I will buy the flower shop.

So I bought this tapestry sheet at Gabriel Brothers in June.  It’s originally from Urban Outfitters, and it was $10.  Good deal right?

So anyway, it seemed like it would be great in my apartment.  It’s black, white, and gray with this cool abstract texture on it.

For some stupid reason I’ve let it sit in a corner for two months while I decided what to do with it, and last week I pulled it out to show a friend my proud bargain buy.

Anyway, on this particular night last week I looked at it a little differently, and somehow noticed a familiar shape printed over and over. And then another different familiar shape. And another. And another.  Four familiar shapes, or symbols rather.

This blanket has “FUCK” written all over it in trendy grayscale bubble letters.

Good one urban. Real freaking hilarious.

You can call me Aaron Bird from the way I’m droppin’ Hamiltons.

“And I know that it’s been said before, but you’re my human holiday.”

I don't care to beg your pardon. We should live until we die.

hodge podge.

some random things I’d like to keep in a safe place.

 "Hey, you wanna go to a party with me at my friend Aaron's house?
      I mean, I know you're a big rock star and all...
  but do you wanna hang with some good people looking to have a good time?
   - We're just real Topeka people, man."
-Almost Famous

you come along because I love your face.

“When I was a child everybody smiled, nobody knows me at all
Very late at night and in the morning light, nobody knows me at all

Now I got lots of friends, yes, but then again, nobody knows me at all
Kids and a wife, it’s a beautiful life, nobody knows me at all

And oh when the lights are low
Oh with someone I don’t know

I don’t give a damn, I’m happy as a clam, nobody knows me at all
Ah, what can you do? There’s nobody like you. Nobody knows me at all

I know how you feel, no secrets to reveal, nobody knows me at all
Very late at night and in the morning light, nobody knows me at all
Nobody knows me, nobody knows me, nobody knows me at all “

-The Weepies

“The wounds you have received have come to you for a purpose from one who knows all you are meant to be and fears you.” – Captivating

“Breaking up with your breakdowns
Standing tall in your white gown
You’re going nowhere, you’re going fast
Slowin’ down, but it never lasts
Take your time honey
Take your time

It’s the wrong dream, with the wrong man
With a cold gun, in your wrong hand
Get it right this time, get it off your mind
Let the summer rain bring rest and shame and love

Carve your name in a black stone
Swear to god we won’t let go
If you can’t love babe, then you can’t hurt
We take the good times, with the worst
Take your time honey, take your time ”

-Augustana

Four books look across your sofa.

I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.

I just got home yesterday from my first trip to New Orleans.

It was also my first:

-time in Mississippi, or Louisiana

-time missing a whole week of school

-time spending a whole week in a hotel

-singing karaoke in public

-attending a Southern Baptist church

-spending 17 hours on a bus

-baptizing someone

– teaching VBS

– tasting Absinthe

– hearing/seeing a Jazz band

– experiencing God through 8 straight days of service.

They told us to all dream big, and ask God big requests for the week. I asked Him for three main things.

1. That I could make atleast one new real friendship, and not just a bunch of acquaintances.

2. That I would be challenged to confront my own social anxieties about potential awkwardness, and instead open up my heart and be brave in any possible situation.

3. That something so big and incredible would happen that there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind that it came straight from God’s hand.

All of these requests were answered, fulfilled, and exceeded even by Wednesday night.  By Friday night I was just so full of joy I could not stop smiling.  Not even about anything in particular, but just looking around that gymnasium with everyone engaging and interacting and loving eachother, all you could feel was joy.  God is good, all the time.

Those children were so beautiful and precious. They taught me how to play again. I had forgotten. I had even forgotten that I had forgotten!  They showed me how to come before God without expectation, and how to be amazed and thrilled with the smallest beauties of the world. I am so grateful to them, my tiny teachers.

Thank you Lord for choosing me to show your love to the world.  Thank you for Your call, and for giving me the strength to obey You. All I want in life is to make you proud, and to honor you.  Thank you for not giving up on me, and for not giving up on our world.

To believe You, I have to come as a child.

Five whole years of my life I spent mourning you.

And why? You’re still alive.

But you’re too dead to keep inside.

You take the years, you keep it all.

I finally think I might be alright.

this dizzy life of mine.

I thought your coffee table was more clever than that.

I’m nineteen.  I’m 19.  I’m still only 19.  Not twenty.  Not 20.

This is okay.  This is good.  I am strangely relieved by this fact.  I have peace when I absorb this fact.

For being the age I am, I am still well ahead of the curve.  I am not behind. I’m not behind. I have time. I have years.

When I compare the time line of my life to that of an aunt, a sibling, a friend, a parent, a cousin I see that I’m not late.

I am not late for my own life.  The things I dream of doing, I will do them.  They don’t need to be done now.  They don’t need to be over.

Living on my own.  Moving some place brand new.  Swimming in the Pacific.  Ordering a martini at the Hard Rock Hotel.  Cliff jumping in Santorini.  Planning a wedding.  Sharing my last first kiss.

I sometimes lose my breath when I imagine my youth ending.  But it hasn’t ended. It’s not finished.  I have years.  These things will happen in years. They will happen.

I have to talk myself down sometimes.  I talk myself down with these quick thoughts. The thoughts tell the truth.

serendipity.

a fortunate accident.

Mike and Julia

Today 29 years ago, my parents met for the first time.  June 2, 1980, in Hilton Head Island.  They had spoken on the phone by pure coincidence, and she decided to invite him over for dinner. She cooked him hamburgers.  This is the short condensed version I heard growing up.  As a little girl I constantly wanted to hear this story, the story of how my idol met her prince charming, my hero.  It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve learned about a hundred other details that led to their introduction, and every year on this day, I marvel at how many seemingly innocuous events occurred to bring them together.  If a single thing had been different just in the few days before June 2, I might not exist.

This anniversary is almost more exciting and more celebrated in my house than their actual wedding anniversary on December 27.  It makes me so excited to think about what story my children will be told once a week before bed, of how their idol and their hero found each other and fell in love.  Time has changed both of them, tested them, and continues to bring storms of dysfunction, but they vowed to God to stay together, and they have no idea how much I respect them for that, and pray that I will be just as strong in my own marriage one day.

God truly and completely blessed me the day He chose me and sent me to Mike and Julia Dunigan.  I know I have a purpose as their daughter. I know that God had this all planned from the beginning of time, and I sing His praises because of it.

planbook wisdom.

“The hardest part of anything is the beginning, and the second hardest part is letting go when it’s the end.”

– J.R. Briggs

Signs that might be omens say I'm going.

sad as blue, and blue as only…

Statistics example joke, 13 years in the making.

In high school I used to write out song lyrics constantly. My notebooks, folders, clothes, notes, everything- were covered in words dreamt up by Chris Carrabba, Robert Carmine, Chris Conley, Matt Thiessen, the list goes on for a while.  There was something therapeutic about writing out the poetry, stripping the hooks of their melody.  I still don’t know why, but something about the words being flattened out, silent, written as sentences, just felt good.

I had a thirty minute break on Thursday, and while I sat on the steps with the option of watching familiar faces walk past, I burrowed my nose in my notebook instead and wrote down lyrics I’ve had memorized since I was 15.

“I’ve been taking what you’re giving, but now I’m thinking I’ve been living in the fantasy of your sweet smile.”

Sure I write out lyrics in this blog, or twitter statuses, etc. but I’m talking about full length stanzas, beginning to end.  I think song writers have to be the most impressive people in existence, in my opinion.  It’s probably the one realm of creativity I can not wrap my head around, it is completely outside my cognitive capacity.

I spent hours painting on pieces of cardboard this weekend with the coolest girls alive, and my favorite one I made isn’t even a painting of anything.  It’s a messy background of streaky green gray, with orange letters that say,

“Love is speaking in code,

it’s an inside joke.

Love is coming home.”

Ever since I heard this song over two years ago, these three little lines continue to be the most evocative, articulate, and inspired string of words.  They are almost more meaningful to hear spoken, than they are to hear sang.  It explains the kind of love that I have, that I have consistently taken for granted in my longing for lust.  This is the kind of love life is about, not lust.  How long will it take me live this out, 100% of the time?

“No, seriously. I really wish you would start painting again. Don’t you ever, just, I don’t know, have an urge to?”

“Nope. I don’t have time.”

“Well, I wish you would.  I’d love to see what would come out of your brain now.”

“Nothing would come out.  Nothing ever did.”

no matter how your heart is grieving.

I’ ve decided that as soon as you try to explain a dream, you lose it.

It instantly starts to seem ridiculous, impossible, and lose its weight.

So I’m never telling anyone this dream.