What Wears Well

So here is something both new and not new at all. 

I am someone highly sensitive to this world, and sometimes (read: always) this affects the way that I write.  

Recently, this has made me avoid most writing at all, for fear of doing it terribly wrong.  I've been in writer's block mode for weeks now, and whatever I have written seems paltry and small.  

In person I bet you can tell that I can't hide that I am highly aware of other people, what they need or don't need, and how I feel about it.  Often, it feels like a fault.  I used to feel really dramatic and overdone about this.  Processing life intricately feels like something to hide, and feeling things so deeply for the world doesn't feel safe at all.  Awkwardest of all, most people didn't even ask you to feel that way for them.

The Whole of It

And then sometimes it's really simple, and you fore go the details and say it plain, plain, plain.  

A lot of things have happened. Good.  Awful.  Bitterly beautiful.  Confusingly tied up in one season of life.  I feel cared for by God.  I also feel foggy and uncertain sometimes.   I feel my humanity every day in its raw beautiful form.  (Humbling, this vulnerability.)  

Music and Breathing

Don't you love it when music gets to you?  It strikes you deep down somewhere and calls to life the things you're really about in this world?  I tend to think that when you hear songs like this and love them, it's because they match how you breathe.  

I Knew, Knew, Knew

It's the end of a busy week in April, and I've been quiet.  

No social media.  No rushing through traffic to meet appointments.  No rigid pressure on myself that was never supposed to be there.  More this week I was the glorious mess I always am, and it felt ok.

On Sunday I looked my life square in the face and said, 'You teach middle school.  They're challenging sometimes, exhausting others, and also fascinating and hilarious.  They're draining.  Take better care of yourself.'  I gave myself a talking to, asked people I loved for advice, and then listened to them.   

Stars on the Breeze

Writing has been strange for me lately, like something meant for other people, or something too far away to be enjoyed.  But I have just returned from a walk, and whatever was stuck became loose again.   

Finally.  Finally I remembered it was first to understand the world, little old me and my story with God.  Second of all, everything else.

I spent an hour in my neighborhood, thinking and then not thinking about this crazy world and what it feels like to be mixed up in it.  I walked and breathed and ambled in peace.

Away from all the people I knew, anonymity was a welcome relief.  I love to be known, but I love to be a stranger too.  This is the appeal of travel, because dwelling amidst other strangers gives your mind room for thought.  

But then I thought about the shape of of my life, and what has fashioned it to be what it is.  Right now in this moment on this day.  I am healthy.  I am grateful.  I have people I love and many things which fill my days. (Many.)  I am constantly working and reworking and then resting and resting again in the idea of balance this year.  I've regained again the inner introvert who did not have much of a fighting chance with the schedule I used to live.  I have slowed down, but not settled down.  I think there is a difference.  

In Which I Notice

In Which I Notice 

The things of life I notice
Are timeless, wondrous things
Refreshed, restored, recycled
Now once again, I see

Awkward, charming unsafe ground
Growing, moving sea
Full of angst and all great hope
Middle school in spring

When Your Life Is Nourished

I'm back to school today, and done with Spring Break, a week of my life which set me back on course in all things daily living.  

Last week I didn't dress up and talk about history for 6 hours with kids who are 12.  I organized my home, went to the dentist, and did my taxes.  I saw kindred spirit friends and did yoga.  I hung out with my parents. I thought about eating better food, and then started doing it.  I investigated nooks and crannies of my life, and then cleaned them.

I went to the Post Office during regular business hours and stood in line just to get stamps.  I can't even tell you how soul quieting and good it felt to do this one thing I really had to do. Ordinary is so good.  

Proving It

I've been thinking a lot these days about not having to prove anything, and how when you become an older person you see that more clearly.   Ambition though isn't synonymous with having to prove something.  I think you can still have your ambition and thrive in it and people will love you for it.  

Instead, not feeling the need to prove yourself so much forfeits over explaining something in exchange for appreciating what can speak for itself.  

Order and Mess

Yesterday I felt so American as I sat at my desk at school.  And not in a good way at all.   I was doing everything at once, adopting such a cultural norm in multitasking, and I believed it was the best and only way to be a teacher.  Thankfully though, and suddenly, in the midst of 

grading
attendance
direct teaching
responding to parent e-mails
individual conversations with students 
planning the D.C. trip
and imagining lesson plans for this week 

I just knew 

I had to 
stop.

Questions Wrapped in Grace

Today in life, a book I was reading caught me.  

I stood there in my very own ordinary life, so taken off guard that I HAD to stop and read right where I was.   Lunch was bliss....just me and a peanut butter sandwich and the quiet and this book.  

Deep down, I love to be a bookworm, all caught up in a story.  I have denied that part of my life lately, in the name of progress and efficiency and ridiculous things that kill your soul a little when you forget yourself on that level.  No longer.

This book, the one that caught me in heart and soul and everything, is Found by a woman called Micha Boyett.  (Ironic, I know.)

You can tell she is lovely, and her writing is profound.  I knew it was going to be holy and noticeable and good because of the book reviews.  I have never before underlined something already profound in a book review.  But today I had to.  See for yourself....

I Like Poems

It's been a long time since I've written things here or used this space because sometimes I am afraid to write.  Who knew THAT could be so scary?   I didn't....until I made myself write it.

The days have whooshed by me lately, and instead, my soul has dwelt in less life-giving things.  No writing here, and a complete avoidance of what I affectionately called 'the clickety clack', which is to say space to write and the time to enjoy it.  I have felt this keenly.  I do not know why I have avoided it.

I am changing lately, so much, and I feel it all of the time in whatever I'm doing.  Change is shocking and scary and other times unspeakably good.  Wonderful, refining, and life giving.  More often than not it's the woozy feeling of both, which is right now the look of my life.  I don't think you can see it on me from the outside looking in, because of course int he daily 'walking around life' there are many things to do, and I am mostly good at tricking people about these things.  Not always impressive, but true.

Lit With Hope

It's simple today.

In a big, gigantic hurting world like this one, there is sometimes nothing more comforting than coming home to your very own place.  I walked out of my school tonight with a pile of papers, through the flurries, through the traffic, and straight home to peace.  Pajamas, a candle, my fireplace, the tree.  I am delighting in Advent at home.

I have a lot of papers to grade tonight, but I took a minute to just enjoy that I am safe and warm and that even when I have that one last push of work, that one last stack of papers to grade, I can still settle in to the mystery that is Christ.  Emmanuel, God with us.  He even sits with me while I grade.  

We need Him so deeply, and today I feel it.  Distinctly, a heart ache and a hope, and a light in the darkness.

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices. 

Cadence

I don't intend for life to be heavy on this blog.  Sometimes when I begin it feels this way, but maybe that just being honest.  Or maybe it's the poetry stuck in my throat, dislodged by the clickety clack of typing. 

Or maybe heavy is sometimes really goodness considered from all sides.

Mercy Love of Old

It's hard for me to write to anything lately, at least anything meaningful.  I am full to the brim with unpolished thoughts.  Today I'd just like to share this song, and it's a good one.  And lyrics are poetry and music, and that really helps.  Ellie Holcomb's 'Place My Hope' is beautiful and comforting and some of the realest stuff of my life.  Enjoy.

White Winter, Rich and Full

Snow and winter and winter and snow.  
I like today. 
It is blissfully quietly introverted time. 
Just flannel. 
Just the quintessential 'Winter Song'. 
Just a little white cup of coffee, and on it the letter 'j'. 
Just one white candle which somehow blends the scents of mint and winter.  (MAGICAL THING.) 
Ticking clock. 
Cozy home. 
Day full of challenges suited to my calling. 
Challenging, for sure, but interesting and purposed nonetheless.

Changing Winds

November has arrived, and I welcome it. 
(See related post in previous Novembers.   This is an unapologetic trend.)

Every year I feel a relief in this month, because the world quiets down.  I find my cadence as a teacher, and the days move seamlessly.  I can take a breath.  I remember my place.  

Sometimes at school it's astonishing to me that it takes so long for everyone to find this rhythm to life.  Other times it's astonishing that it all comes together so fast.  It's only been a few weeks (of reckoning moments, awkward moments, brilliant hopeful moments, tiring moments, confusing moments....etc....) with kids, and now they are my people.  I know what need.  They know what I mean.  Relief.  

Joy, Small and Holy

Let me tell you a story about something small and refreshing in this world.

Last week I was visiting my sister and brother-in-law in Texas, and I was inspired at Chipotle.  We had the best time. (I mean, in general on that trip...outside of Chipotle too.)  On the Chipotle bag, there are now Cultivating Thoughts.  It's some good, thought provoking ideas getting magnified in concise and interesting ways. 

My Twin

So. Wow.  This week I discovered a blog called 'Love, Teach'.  I'm inspired.  There is someone out there who is creepy similar to me in all things teacher. 

Reasons why....

Quiet, Slow, and Thrilling

Today is a day for big thoughts.

Last year my sister met and began to love Levi, and today I finally board a plane to see them.  We've been waiting for this.  And guess what?  Sometimes life really is like a movie.  Call me sentimental, but I say that 'slow motion happy' is very real.  Tonight the comfort of my homey childhood will fill me up, just standing there with Levi and Jenna for two seconds at the airport.  And tomorrow morning I'll be having coffee with my sister in Texas.  This is quietly thrilling. 

Sometimes life is big in the minutes you wait through too.  Each minute this week is 'stolid, all things a century' to me because I'm waiting for news of a friend and her baby.  

New Page

I am doing that thing again where I stop and start, stop and start again with writing. (New page, new thoughts.) I think you call this writer's block.  Or 'scattered teacher with a complex that writing isn't as valuable as everything else you love'. 

Of course that's not true.  And that's what I must first declare in order to writ anything else past this one singular sentence.  A pause, a breath, an anchored thought is very worth the time.  What follows this of course is further stillness in chaotic, frenetic places. 

You level out and become more yourself and live in the world more freely when you give voice and credit to the thing you really love.   When you inhabit what you are passionate about, it stills things that needed to be stilled and enhances the rest of the story you're supposed to live.