She

She's a teal haired beauty
Gypsy soul
Carries leaving in her bones
Friday night scene-stealer
Rolling Stone
Always somewhere new to roam
So she runs
Like heaven itself is chasing her
Jesus, hot on her heels
And she steals
Mostly kisses
Sometimes hearts
She leaves them broken on the side of the road
She knows the devil loves to dance
And she'll gladly take her turn
Gives lessons on things she refuses to learn
Blazes trails through cities
Just to watch as they burn
And in turn
She'll plant a field full of wild flowers
Rebellion blood boils in her veins
A free spirit, chained
And oceans roil in her womb
Filled by fists
Friendships
Final words
She tastes of chaos and serenity
And whole worlds are present
In her battlefield eyes
Enough space to swim for eternity
In those midnight skies
Californian by way of Neverland
Citizen of nowhere
Chew you up, spit you out
Leave you discarded
She had it decided before you even started
Skinned knees
Tanned skin
And a rhythm in her toes
She was made for the places no else knows

Special thanks to my muse, the ever-stunning Miss Melissa-Anne de Obaldia. And to Jesialex Photography for the use of her AMAZING photo. Be sure to check out her page; she's doing a series this summer of girls with out-of-the-ordinary hair coloring and every shot is beautiful!

I am still...

Feeling so unbelievably inspired right now, but the words won't stick. They're rushing through my brain a million miles a second and I can't grasp them. I think I'm sleep deprived. I'm stutter stuck. The air outside is the kind that tastes of stories and whirs with life. It is as heavy as electricity and as light as forever. It dances. I smell victories in the breeze and I am reminded of what it felt like to be young. I am still young. But there is added gravity with each passing year and I'm struck by the distinct feeling that 24 is a 10,000 years from 23. And 25 is only 20 million heartbeats away (give or take...). I miss being carefree. Top down, driving way too fast down a dirt road, hands up, hair loose, heart open. I pay too much attention to stop signs now. When did I discover speed limits? I am still racing towards nothing. Staring into darkness, I know the barren fields are there, behind this house. Knee high by the fourth of July, and I am always running wild through them. Daffodil pollen coats the inside of my nostrils and I am home. Bold enough to grow wherever there are roots. I want this. I am still wanting him. Bonfire smoke is in the wind. I am blazing like the embers, dying while I'm trying not to burn out. Trees with fingers like corpse hands gloved with green reaching up and out and away. I know the feeling all too well. We were children here. When did we grow so far apart? I am still finding out where I fit. So much more than mere memory, cotton candy sticky sweet somethings. Stumbling through the alley in the dark. Baseball diamond strip tag. Sleeping bags on top of the school. Rolling down a hill in a green plastic tube, singing "I WILL SURVIVE" at the top of our lungs. The air is restless. I am still.

Real friends are the type of people who will fly across the country for no other reason than to share a few moments with you. They are exceedingly rare. And they can make all the difference in life.

Sunny day girl

While the Michigan air is still crisp, the summer sun is returning. Warm and light on my skin, it makes me miss your fingertips. It's the same sun I fell in love under. Has it really been 3 years? I wish we had taken pictures. Captured moments in more than just memory. I wish I'd let you know my friends. I wish I'd let you know me. Sometimes, I wonder if you exist outside the confines of that time bubble...sometimes, your face still dances across my eyelids in the middle of night and makes me wonder upon waking if it wasn't all just a dream anyway. I am always someone's secret. But this isn't about you. Not anymore. It's about me. Isn't it always? I'm not who I was, and I'm trying to reconcile that. There are days when I still feel like that sunny day girl...brighter, softer, newer...but so much has changed since then. I am the transitive property; still trying to figure out how to connect A to C, while perpetually hunting down my connective letter, B. My resolve is weak. I stop looking before I even start. But I'm learning not to question happiness. To let it come and go as it pleases. To smile, but only when I mean it. To cry, even when there are more important things to do. I still get lost in the mud and the muck on occasion, but I don't live there anymore. I'm working on loving this mess of me. 10 fingers, 10 toes. And wasn't that always the point?

Shakabuku and I

This past Sunday, one of my pastors challenged everyone to share their stories, their Shakabuku moments. This is something I've been dancing around doing for a while now, always finding some reason or other why I shouldn't or didn't need to, but as I sat there I was struck by a strong sensation of hypocrisy. Here I am, this "changed" person who knows that no man may judge me, as my judgement lies wholly in the hands of God, and yet...and yet I am STILL terrified of being judged. Of being thought "different". The truth is, I am different. We all are. And I shouldn't be ashamed of my story, messy though it is, it is also beautiful. It is the road to my salvation. So, here it goes...(note: There are clickable words throughout this blog. So many people/things/events have impacted me greatly, I tried to make more information about each one easily accessible for those who would like to know more.)

For most of my life, I did not believe in God. Truth be told, I was combative and many times outright hostile to those within the church. Growing up, my parents never made us go to church, never force fed us religion. That being said, we had plenty of family members who did. They would seize every opportunity to tell me that I should be saved. And being from Southwest Michigan, I also had a fair few friends (and their parents) who felt the same. Every experience I ever had with Christians and religion taught me that I was the problem with the world. The way I thought, the way I dressed, the things I believed. In every interaction I had with them, I felt judged and outcast. I had read the Bible (I've also read the dictionary, an almanac, and an encyclopedia...I'm just curious!) and felt that these people who claimed to follow it where nothing like what they ought to be. I made the generalization that Christians were hypocritical, closed minded, judgemental, conservative, assholes. And this caused a great rift in my life; I was on one side with the liberals and the homosexuals and, a million miles away, perpetually looking down their noses, were the Christians. And Rush Limbaugh. Things came to a head my freshman year of college. By this time, depression had been building in me since as long as I could remember. I had been doing something known as ‘cutting’ for around 2 years, and while that dulled the internal pain I was feeling for a time, it was beginning to not be enough. I was in a pit so vast that even the brightest beams of sunlight (my friends and family members) couldn’t pierce the murkiness that surrounded me. I very seriously began to contemplate suicide. So seriously in fact, that I had picked out a day, a place, and means by which to carry out the act. Having resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t long for this world, an eerie sort of peace settled over me. All of the “not good enough”s and the “not pretty enough”s and the “never going to be enough”s that had constantly nagged and gnawed and clawed around inside me seemed to revel in the glory of having won. They danced around my brain and sang themselves into my heart. One day, about a week away from what would have been my last day, I was wasting time between classes on the then –popular website, MySpace. As is the way of social networking sites, one click led to another and I found myself on the To Write Love on Her Arms page. I had never heard of TWLOHA, but the name intrigued me so I started to look around. I came to find out that it was a non-profit organization whose mission was to bring hope to, and shed light on, the diseases of depression, self-mutilation, and addiction. Interest peaked, I decided to read their blog. Therein, I found the story (if you click no other link in this blog, click that one.) that had started it all. It was about a young woman named Renee who suffered from all of the aforementioned issues and how a small group of friends, some she hardly knew, banded together to help her heal, give her hope, and ultimately get her help. In that moment, reading that story, something began to shift. I found solace, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, I had found hope. The blog had been written by a man named Jamie Tworkowski. His words - his beautiful, simple, soulful words – made me want to live. In that blog, and many others Jamie writes, he mentioned God. He also mentioned Donald Miller and his book “Blue Like Jazz”, and since I was entirely too uncomfortable with the notion of God outright, I settled for reading some Don Miller. Reading "Blue Like Jazz" (which has since been made into a movie, one that I helped fund and am quite proud of. I believe with my whole heart that you should see it.) was a life altering, view changing experience. And thus began my realization that not all of Christianity was a group of closed minded, extreme conservatives who would look down on me and judge me. I began, however slowly, to want to believe.

Fast forward almost exactly two years later to the fall of 2008. I was still in college and still not a believer. In the two years that had passed, I had done a lot of reading and a lot of soul searching. And still, I did not actively believe in God. However, my emotional state was a complete 180 from where it had been; I was relatively happy. I struggled on some days, fought fingertips that still twitched for razorblades. But at the end of the day, all I needed to do was go re-read one of Jamie’s blogs or write one of my own to feel renewed and uplifted. Back in 2007, I had started reading the Twilight series (go ahead, laugh it up!) and had gotten pretty involved in the fan community. In October of 2008, I ended up winning a trip to see the entire cast of the first movie at an MTV event in California called ‘Spoilers’. At the time, my best friend Sarah was living in Los Angeles doing Youth With a Mission. The plan was for me to stay with her on base and for her to be my plus one at the event. So many wonderful things came out of my time under the California sun; I got to see celebrities, made some truly great friends, became a vegetarian, saw the ocean for the first time…but nothing comes close to what happened in a small classroom, surrounded by strangers. One morning while I was there, Sarah asked me to come to worship with her. Uncomfortable with the idea, but not wanting to seem rude, I agreed. It wasn’t my first encounter with worship, but it was the first I ever enjoyed. The songs they sung felt so vibrant and real. It was as though they were having a conversation with God and I was shocked to find that I wanted to do the same. Seemingly out of nowhere, I felt a change in my heart. It literally took my breath away. Suddenly, I knew God was real. I began to cry unstoppable tears. I was prayed over by Sarah and some of her friends, and body shaking, eyes pouring, nose running, I accepted Jesus into my heart on that day. 

Another two and half years sprinted past with nothing much to mark them aside from the constant internal battle I felt within myself. I had to come find that what I had thought to be the biggest hurdle, believing that God was real, was only just the beginning. I still felt that I was on the outside of Christianity looking in, and the people on the inside would never accept me. I allowed myself to fall back into the familiar pattern of self-doubt and ridicule. “If Jesus is real and He was perfect and without sin”, I’d say to myself, “how could He ever love a mess like you?”. I allowed my belief and the hunger inside of me to know Jesus to be quieted by my fears that if He did know me, He would look down on me and judge me as unfit. I put my faith on the back burner. Until March 3, 2011. On that day, I watched as a moment of pure elation turned into a deep sorrow that I will carry for the rest of my days. After scoring the game winning basket in overtime to cap off a perfect 20-0 season, Wes Leonard , my brother's friend and teammate, collapsed and suffered from sudden cardiac arrest. Losing Wes broke my heart in far reaching and complex ways, many of which I am only just beginning to realize and deal with. On that day and the ones that followed, I was forced to see many of the people I care the most for suffer without being able to do a thing to ease their pain. Wes' passing left a hole in me. It was a hole with gnawing edges; constantly threatening to widen until it engulfed me entirely. I sank into a deep sadness and nothing I did seemed to draw me out. And then, some months later, I picked up a Bible that had been given to my father by a customer of his. I flipped it open to Matthew and the second verse I read was Matthew 5:4. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.". Reading those words sparked something within me, an ache I have never experienced before. I wanted to truly know God. Though I had never before felt welcome or comfortable in a church, on September 11, 2011, I decided to go with Sarah and her parents Tami and Joe. Walking into Lakeshore Vineyard Church felt like coming home. I knew no one aside from the three people I went with, and yet felt as though I was among friends.
The initial feeling of ease faded quickly. Even though I felt friendly towards everyone at LVC, I still felt separate. I was hiding who I really was, out of fear of being ostracized. So while I loved Sunday services, I still felt as though I was missing something. Tami had been trying for years to get me to come to an Alpha, and I had always had some excuse not to: I have class, I have to work, I don’t have the gas money…and this time was no different. “I can’t”, I told her, “my boss golfs on Wednesday nights and there is no one else that can run the store.” So Alpha started up without me, and I still felt empty. Before what would have been the second week, my boss came up to me and said “By the way, golf is ending this week and I think I want to join a bowling league. If I do that, I would need you to work Thursday nights instead of Wednesday nights. Does that work for you?” As it turns out, it worked out for me very well. I started going to Alpha and found that I enjoyed it immensely. I learned answers to questions that I didn’t even know I had. I listened to the stories of the people in my small group, and I came to realize that I wasn’t alone. As the weeks went on, I began to open up and truly feel not only accepted, but loved. However, it wasn’t until the group went on a weekend away, that my heart completely changed. I learned so much not only about Jesus and faith, but about myself. I realized that God did know me, that He always had, and that He would love me regardless. In Him, I was beautiful and perfect and worthy of all things. I decided to be baptized and have spent every day since seeking to live my life for the Lord.

I believe Jesus has always been after my heart. Actually, I believe He is after everyone's. Looking back, I have come to realize that even in the moments I felt most alone, I never was. He was there. At times waiting patiently, others loudly knocking, but never far from my door. I think if you find yourself reading this, He is asking you to pay attention. You do not need to feel broken. Or worthless. Or less than. Or alone. The enemy is real and these are the lies he would have you believe. God is something bigger. There are many a line that Donald Miller has written that I adore, but none that I have found truer than this: “...to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can't accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people...That is why God tells us so many times to love each other." Allow me to tell you: You are beautiful. You are worthy. You were made to dance, and laugh, and grow old secure in the knowledge that your life has meaning. You are here for a reason and you are valuable. Don't be afraid to share your story because you never know who may need to hear it. And remember, whether I know you very well or not at all, I love you. Jesus loves you. Hope, healing and salvation are real...if only you are willing to open your eyes and your heart enough to let them in.