Truest Self and 3 Good Things

This morning, today, life is...
1.  good music 
2.  winter weather
3.  new inspiration from women 10 years ahead of me in life and the living of it.   

The ones who remind me of who I want to be. 

 I, like everyone else, drove very slowly to work. It took me twice as long to get to school. But oh well.  Today I didn't care. 

Brick Laying

Recently written, just now posted.....now that we are out of hibernation...

Hello dear person. I hope this finds you well. 

Today life is a written letter.  More like a letter than most days, and I don't know why. 

Maybe it's because despite life and the living of it, I'm learning things in the quiet, outside of recent storms.   I cannot seem to get away from a faraway feeling that is healthy, good, boxing me in.  That this is what introverts do well, and an extrovert like me takes longer to learn.  

God is talking to me about life in feeling far away, and also in conversation with people I know best.

I'm reading a lot, writing a lot, praying a lot, stepping back, getting the good feeling of 'impression' on my life.  Like something good is being pressed onto the shape of my life. 
I think this is called heart work.   I find it lately in me. 

But, reader, before that whole 'reading a lot, writing a lot, praying a lot' vibe gets anywhere close too lofty and abstract to you, let me just say this.  

It has brought me to the end of myself. 

Good Medicine

For many hours today I have been holed up, writing into the word document I talked about in the last post.  The one catching ALL of the unpolished thoughts, as they come to me, unedited and fierce and quiet.  That's the me in winter lately, making sense of life and the living of it.

I have been camped out in this one spot in a café, and at times feeling 'flowy' and forgetful about where I am, so inspiring is said word document.   Other times, I've felt like January is in my veins and breath and bones.  Like the cold is never going to leave, even though I'm warm right now.  It's a mindset.  One that many Minnesotans get used to.   Someone said it like that to me today, louder and with a few more curse words interspersed in the conversation.  I felt I agreed with the statement. 

The other side of me, the side that lives in Minnesota so happily for all of these years, really does love the snow.  Are other things in creation so unavoidably brilliant? 

Maybe the sky and sunrises. But snow is really just amazing on so many levels, and to live in such a beautiful world sometimes stops me in my tracks.  Despite trudging through the snow emergency-esque streets of Minneapolis today on the way into church, I was feeling that snow is still something that makes me marvel at God and wonder.  And I am glad for this feeling because sometimes people DON'T have that and they STILL live here.

The Sinner's Heart and Old Music

Today I felt like I was in high school again.

This morning, on the drive to school, I reached back (literally and figuratively) in the car to the cd case that holds all of the old music.  The music I don't listen to very often at all, things from the early 2000s, when life was different for me. 

This kind of music doesn't take me to a specific place in my memory.  It's more of a feeling.  To a time when I was a much younger Christian, and I realize lately, must less jaded about the world.  Everyone says that.  But it's true.  You're different when you're young.  There's a disparity I feel in this fervor and life and Spirit-filled way that I used to live.  And what I live out now. 

I think I'm facing that sadness.    I also think it's ok because I have turned my face to the beautiful way out of it. 

Where I Am

Hiatus over.  Hiatus done.  I have returned to things public, because vulnerability in this lens is actually very good work for the soul.  Sometimes, as you know, I agree with a lot of people who feel that the internet is overwhelming and strange. 

But I am compelled to write for God, for myself, for others.  That's more of a heartbeat in my life than most things.  When I pay attention to this, things flow.  When I don't, things get stale. 

To date in January I have filled 114 pages with single spaced thoughts.  In a word document.  There it all sits, in a word document that waits for me alone.  There is something exceptionally comforting about typing thoughts and ideas and words into such a small, reserved space.  You edit yourself for good reason.  You are not all things to all people. 

But there is also something brave and undeniably true about sending them out into the world as well.

Busy and Fresh

I feel it is written with the same surprise every year.  But December is so busy.  This season is once again upon us.  Every year I think about Christmas and the month of December and wonder about why it does so much to people in both good and bad ways.

  You see it everywhere in this chaotic wintery world.  People can get really stressed out.  Winter driving conditions can be a legitimate new pace to get used to.  But in Minnesota you just shore up and get used to it again and it seems normal until late March. 

I’m talking more about the inner hype.  The expectation which seems to have come out of left field, and quickly.   When this became really clear to me as an adult, I began to ask why.  Sometimes people have really direct answers, and other times, they stop and they say they can’t think of one thing at all.  I tend to think the question in the first place is the relief.  To stop and wonder about something like that takes you out of the bustlings. 

Astonished Attention to Hearts

I stood at the counter in my kitchen this morning and made coffee and thought about hearts. 

About mine.  About people who I love. 

About the things of this world that so quickly go to conversations of the heart. 

Sometimes the most dynamic thoughts of the entire day come to me when I’m standing there in the quiet, early morning, in the few seconds when I anticipate the coffee.  When the coffee is poured, I am suddenly in the mood for writing.  A few short blinks later, and it is time to get ready for school.  And I’m ushered into the business of teaching, and any quiet thought while pouring the coffee comes back sparingly.  But the common trend is that the mornings always help my little heart. 

Yesterday at school I showed the students This Day in History online…it’s what we do for a birthday… and one of the stories talked about the first pacemaker that was put into a person.  He lived for 112 days with this first artificial heart.  And there it was, on the screen…they showed the chest cavity being opened and this machine being put inside.  Just for a second.  My students gasped.  I stared at it, and felt, once again, this profound gratitude that I’m not in charge of medical procedures.  And this amazement at the actual look of this process.  You hear about pacemakers.  You hear about recovery.  You do not hear about the moment when they lower the heart into the body. 

Hearts can mean so many different things.  It can mean a pacemaker, or the things in the margins on the homework I am grading, which is the common doodling practice of some of my middle school girls.  

It can mean Valentine’s Day, or how you reference the goodness of falling in love, or anxiety which makes it race in your chest.  Or, in contrast, the beating of your heart that tells you that the exercise has paid off and that you are strong.