Category Archives: Southern Re-Immersion

Ungoverned

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I drove through the roughest rainstorm I’ve ever encountered on my way home from work yesterday.  Torrential downpour doesn’t begin to describe it.  Sheets of rain and hail pounded the roof of my car.  I was stuck at 30 mph, likely an irrationally high speed given the conditions.  I could barely see the taillights of the car in front of mine.  My windshield wipers were on their highest setting.  I kept hitting puddles and skidding a bit as my tires sprayed walls of water in every direction. Then I watched a lightning bolt hit a transformer.  Sparks flew up in the air and I wondered what it meant…until I looked up and saw the traffic light ahead blow out.  Flatline.

In the split-second before whatever backup system was in place kicked in and the light changed to flashing yellow on my side, I felt a jolting combination of freedom and panic.  Freedom, because I was no longer expressly subject to traffic laws.  Panic, because no one else was either.

I think one of the biggest mistakes we can make in life is to abide by the idea that “that won’t happen to me” or its cousin, “that just isn’t us.”  I remember talking to people right after I got engaged about wedding planning and listening to their horror stories: late-night fights, desperate tears, occasional bloodshed.  I heard stories of caterers who didn’t show up, bands who were late, in-laws who were a chromosome short of pure alien.  I listened politely, nodding my head and wincing with the storyteller in the right spots.  Then walking away and thinking to myself, How sad.  To get that caught up in one event.  I’m so glad we’re not them.

Oh, how gently but heartily God must have laughed.

If the first test of married life is getting married, I need a remedial course.  I have made a business of majoring on the minors and making mountains out of molehills and, generally, losing my shit over every tiny detail.  I have uttered phrases that, were they to have come from someone else’s mouth, would have left me at best rolling my eyes and at worst, throwing up in my mouth. Phrases like “I feel so alone” and “I do everything.  Everything!” and “BECAUSE CHICKEN FINGERS ARE AN AWESOME FOOD, THAT”S WHY!”  My self-obsessed delirium reached a head last night and left me waking up in a state of pure yuck, leading to a car prayer time full of grace and tears.  Because sometimes, He opens my eyes to what life would look like if the storm knocked all the lights out, if redemption hadn’t happened, if I were the one in the drivers seat.  If it really were all about me.

And it is ug-uh-LEE, as my grandmother used to say.  It looks like a home that is a place to escape from rather than a refuge.  It looks like a lover who becomes foreign rather than friend.  It looks like a wall of mistrust.  It looks like having no place to go and no one who understands you.  It looks like navigating every storm alone.

This really isn’t about wedding planning.  I’ll be honest, I’m not going to apologize for wanting things a certain way when I have waited THIRTY-THREE YEARS for this day and this man.  (Although on a good day, I will admit that there is usually a more graceful way to go about letting my opinion be known than whichever way I chose.)  What this is about is life.  About all the ways I’m being asked to deny myself for a reason I can’t see through the rain.  Usually, for someone else’s good.  Being in a relationship, whether it’s as a lover or a wife or a parent or a friend, means constantly choosing to be better than I really am.  Because, just like John Casey told Chuck, the bad guys don’t take a day off.  And I refuse to be a sitting duck at target practice. Thirty miles an hour may be slow as hell, but at least I’m moving in the direction of home.

Laughing My Ass Off

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One of the many things the BF and I have in common is, THANK GOD, our sense of humor.  As day after day of a life together goes by, I am grasping just how important this possession is.  We even have a similar laugh: one that peals out suddenly and rises decibels above any other noise in the room, occasionally drawing the stares of those around us.  We both have the tendency to guffaw at everything, which means we have a laugh for any circumstance: the “That’s truly funny” laugh; the “I feel awkward right now so I’m just going to laugh” laugh; the “You’re not really funny but I’ll be conciliatory anyway” laugh (I’m working on striking that one from my repertoire as I rid myself of people-pleasing compulsions); the “You’re a crazy person but I love you anyway” laugh.

Actually, that last one is more his than mine, given that I unwittingly offer up so many occasions for him to use it.  Because there’s one thing the BF and I don’t have in common, and that is How We Clean Up Our Messes and Put Our Toys Away.  And the second I hear a crumb or a splash hit a surface where it doesn’t belong and I look up and rush to the scene with a Swiffer/paper towel/dust buster, I get that last laugh from him.

The thing is, I never felt like a clean freak until we started officially sharing the same space.  In my old apartment in New York, I could live with some mess–water stains on the faucet, slight ring around the bathtub, strands of hair on the bathroom floor–because it was my mess.  I had a gauge on the situation and I could control how out of control things got before I swooped in with a sponge and a bottle of bleach.  But now that the mess is shared, and now that we actually have a new and beautiful living space, I have entered freak status.  And though the results may be gleaming, the journey can be ugly.

An errant crumb or drop or scrap of paper sets me off because , unlike the rest of the world, it’s something I can control.  But by God (and isn’t He the ultimate one who gloriously escapes my clutches?), though I can’t control who the president is, I can damn sure make my stovetop shine.  And so I set about making my (oops…our) corner of the world sparkly and safe.  Then the BF comes in, blissfully unaware of my preordained vision, and trashes it all.

Last summer he had attained Likely Lifetime Partner status and was therefore invited on our family vacation to the Outer Banks. This tradition, three years old, involves my mom and I along with my sister and her husband and his family (some of the best people on earth) along with anywhere from two to four small dogs and a bar’s worth of alcohol.  Good times.  One morning, I came in from my Come to Jesus time to a mini-uproar in the living area.  Turns out that the crew had just solved the Mystery of the Socks on the Counter, perpetrated and confessed to by the BF himself, the newbie who had inexplicably left his dirty athletic socks perched right by the coffeepot.  The transgression earned him the nickname Socks and a story in our family’s canon.

Despite being highly organized with the bigger-picture stuff and nearly perfect otherwise, the BF’s negative tidy factor confounds me not just because it doesn’t align with my obsessive need to attain a flawless veneer but because I don’t understand it.  In what world would it make sense for five minutes in the bathroom to produce hurricane-like amounts of water on the countertop and floor?  Why is it easier to leave the hand towel in a tangled mess rather than hook it neatly over the rack provided for that purpose?  How do we reach middle ground between dirty dishes piled in the sink for days on the one hand, and my not being able to finish a thirty-minute sitcom without washing them on the other?  And to think…ours is one of the most functional relationships I know.

Which brings me back to the laughter.  I was watching a retrospective of The Cosby Show this week (this is what people do when they don’t live in New York) and was struck once again with how comforting a depiction of a good family being real is to my soul. (I’m also looking at you, Eric and Tami Taylor from Friday Night Lights).  The idea that good people can live together, have kids, and still laugh gives me hope for my own domesticity.  Because underneath it all, one of my more abiding concerns is not how good a job the BF is doing putting his toys away, but how he manages to deal with the much bigger issues that I bring to the table. I may keep a clean house, but what about that temper/residual childhood anger/identity struggle/need for constant affirmation? And such.  Oh well.  I can always find assurance in the fact that we laugh well together.  And that were he ever to leave me, it wouldn’t take long to track him down. I’d just follow the trail of crumbs.

Now excuse me, I have to go clean underneath a coasterless glass.

The Fellowship of the Ring

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I’m growing aware of how easy it is to become sedated by stability.  How quickly I can be lulled into half-consciousness by the same route to work every day, receiving a jolt of adrenaline only when I look up to see red taillights and once again test my brake pads in response.  How a normal workday with normal hours and normal expectations can carry me through a week without rapid emotional fluctuations between anger and tears.  How a beautiful home with a beautiful man (ha–he’ll love that) allows little discrepancies from beautiful, like crumbs on the floor, to seem bigger than they are.

Such issues did not exist in New York.  My walk to work involved dodging homeless people and dog poop, so alertness wasn’t an option so much as a survival tactic.  Working with the country’s richest kids one day and the world’s least motivated students another provided no shortage of both frustration and stories–and trips to the wine store on the way home.  And no matter how well they’re renovated, life in pre-war apartments and dates with pre-grown men do not lend themselves to spotless interiors.  New York was a constant alarm clock where a walk around the block required–and maintained–all five senses at their limit.  Life in Atlanta is…slower.

Which is good, because one of the reasons we left the city is because we didn’t want to live in a state of perpetual exhaustion.  The thought and effort required to maneuver around that tiny island demanded all of me.  Until I met the BF, I was happy to give it. Then we began to plan a life together and realized we were looking for some things the city couldn’t give.  Of course, leaving it means we will always miss some things that only the city can give.  But when we thought about the family we hope to have, New York City made more sense as a place to visit.

This weekend, we drove out to Vinings to buy our wedding rings.  As we made the purchase of the symbols of our lifelong commitment, I realized we already are a family.  The building where the jeweler is located has windows overlooking much of Atlanta, and I gazed out of them at our new skyline.  More compact and slightly shorter than the old one, but surrounded by green.  Room for us to grow.  And as we do, as we become a God-sanctioned family in a month and continue to be one through a thousand other points in our future, I’ll look back at our story so far and the thousand places where it began and grew.  A glance across a church lobby.  A conversation in a crowded bar.  A proposal on a rooftop under the lights of the Empire State Building.  A ceremony on a beach.  And…the thousands of days after those. Days of early-morning alarms and sleepless nights, of crying kids and dirty countertops, of laundry piling up and toilets stopping up.  In the sedation so easily produced by monotony, I can imagine the risk I face of majoring on countless minors, of letting life fly by my car window, of gripping the dust buster more tightly than my partner’s hand.  I pray I’ll be awake enough to grace to take a moment and enjoy the view of all that got us here and all that we’re building.  The function of daily life sustained by commitment.  The structure of monotony fueled by persistent love.  The city surrounded by green.

Sliding into Home

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It’s been two months since we left New York to move to Atlanta, but last weekend I had a chance to revisit and refill my New York love tank.  Since it was my bachelorette weekend, though, some of the details are fuzzy…but I remember mostly everything.

Landing in New York has always carried an emotional weight for me.  I remember when I first moved there and returned home for my sister’s wedding a month in.  On the descent back into the city, I stared at the Manhattan skyline and wondered what I had gotten myself into.  Was I flying away from the possibilities of things my sister had just gained–marriage and home? Would I spend a few months here then skulk back South, defeated by the big city?  I had no idea what lay ahead, and at first that realization left me swimming in anxiety.  As time went on, it was my source of challenge and excitement–and the descent through the sky felt like a homecoming, a return to the only place that ever really understood me.  After a few years, it meant returning to dear friends and eventually, a kickass boyfriend.  Ultimately, I only left and returned to the city with that boyfriend who was now a fiance.  Then we left one last time.

I have to be honest, I expected a more emotional reaction during my visit.  At first I wrote it off to staying in Midtown on 53rd and 6th, which is a stone’s throw from Times Square and tourist central and nothing like my old neighborhood.  So, not much nostalgia there.  But then we hit some of my favorite bars and restaurants and sections of town, and I still didn’t feel a pang.  I looked around and just felt…tired.  And glad that cabs and subways are no longer a part of my daily life.  And on that final morning, when I woke up spinning and more exhausted than I was when I’d gone to bed, all I felt was an ache to be on the couch with the BF, a bowl of grits, and an episode of Chuck.

Ahh…the simple life.

But really.  It is.  So much so that on my way home from work, as the rain came down Southern-afternoon-random-thunderstorm-style, I looked up in the sky and saw a multi-colored banner above and my initial thought was, What the hell is THAT? I guess I don’t recall seeing any rainbows in New York City, and certainly not while driving.  What I remember seeing is light glinting off fifty-story buildings, not covenantal expressions of nature (funny how God’s love doesn’t change, but his expressions of it do depending on what we need).  A couple of days later, I headed to work at 6:15 am (my early day) as the sun was just beginning to rise and black becoming gray.  The world seemed asleep (I did a little, too) and I thought of the last time I saw a sunrise–during my wild and single New York days, upon returning from an extended night out, just as my head hit the pillow.  Quite a different scenario.  Then, I fell asleep beside a glass of water.  Cut to me five years later, waking up beside a thermos of coffee.  In the cup holder of a car.

And today, I was driving south on 400 just trying to get past the two exits that run between my sister’s place and mine, and traffic came to a standstill.  After a few minutes, I looked right and saw what the fuss was about: everyone for miles had slammed on their brakes in a domino effect to afford maximum viewing of a guy changing his tire on the road shoulder.  And two months ago I lived in a town where a homeless man peeing himself on the street corner wouldn’t warrant a second glance.

New York City is where I started a new life, met God, fell in love, and got engaged.  The intensity of my time there was packed into five years over which everything changed for me.  Each day was filled with highs and lows in the span of a couple of blocks.  I saw a tranny in a bra and bike shorts walking the same street where seconds later, I passed Tom Wolfe.  There was an insanity to each day that made it a place like no other.  Now I live in a place with rainbows and sunrises and dew on the grass in the morning. Now I don’t pound the pavement, I pound the brakes.  Now I have to figure out what it means to, after having fallen in love, live in it daily.

Not so simple.

I find myself wondering, now that the City Girl period of my life is over, what to do with an existence that involves more stability than ups and downs, more love than lust, more coasting than struggling.  Ha–I’m the little girl standing at her birthday party in the middle of a pile of presents, wondering what to do now that she has all she wanted.  Poor me, right?

There is a part of me that misses the uncertainty I used to hate, that “what comes next?” form of life before all its big questions have been answered.  New York represents all that to me: that heady rush of sticking my headphones in my ears, walking to the corner, and picking a direction just to see where it led.  Now most of my uncertainty comes at the end of the episode of whatever show I’m watching.  And though there’s monotony in that, there is also another brand of intensity: the slow-growing kind that greets me when I wake up in the morning and have the rest of my life staring me in the face, but loving what it looks like, even as more is added to it.  And loving who is sharing it with me.  Even on that New York corner, when I thought I didn’t know which direction I’d choose, I was already headed to this.  When you believe in a plan, all roads lead home.

Story Time with Friends

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The best stories are the ones that are true.

I grew up on a steady diet of fiction, from the books I held constantly in my hands to the movies I paid half-price to see at matinees on the weekend with an iced Dr. Pepper and a bucket of popcorn.  The stories played out on page and screen riveted my attention and imagination and left me wondering when my life was going to resemble them.  The characters I collected in my memory always triumphed after a conflict that was over within two hundred pages or two hours.  Meanwhile, I was getting older and ticking off goals on a list that should have led to my happy ending.  When it didn’t, and I instead spent two years in (identity) crisis mode, I figured it was time to throw the list away and pursue an adventure in real life rather than watch someone else’s unfold.

That is the short version of the story that led me to New York.

I’ve often wondered where I would be now if I had gotten everything I ever wanted, everything I deemed in my infinite wisdom that I should have.  I got a glimpse of that possibility this past weekend, when a friend I’ve hung onto was describing a boyfriend I didn’t, and I remembered what I used to think, oh-so-mistakenly, constituted a good relationship.  I heard about qualities that hadn’t changed, and I thought about all my qualities that would never have changed had I refused to try another path.  How much of an attitude I would have (comparatively speaking).  How broken and alone I would be, how angry and sad. How I would never have met the Guy in a Suit or my New York girlfriends or, really, God.  How I wouldn’t have had my bachelorette weekend in New York City a few days ago.

The Sis and I flew on a tiny American Airlines plane to LaGuardia because it was the cheapest ticket.  We got what we paid for in turbulence and three-second free-falls.  We landed and headed to our midtown hotel, where we met up with two of my college best friends.  The four of us ate lunch at the Burger Joint in Le Parker Meridien hotel, a restaurant that will teach you not to judge a book by its cover once you’ve crossed the palatial marble hotel lobby, pulled back a velvet curtain, and waited in line to order at a counter and sit at a plastic table in a wood-paneled room plastered with rock posters.  Four burgers and two grease-stained bags of fries later, we headed down to Magnolia Bakery at Rockefeller Center for dessert, where I further cemented my fear of living out my remaining years without their buttercream cupcakes.  Then we met up with one of my New York girls, AC, outside of the Newscorp building on Sixth Avenue and headed inside to begin the tour I had pre-arranged with my fellow grand juror from the Special Narcotics division.  You know, another time in my life–in the form of two weeks of obligation–that I resented and fought against…then loved?  B. led us around the building and even into a couple of live tapings, where fears of cell phones and bodily functions erupting on air were never realized but we did learn a lot about production and how those Fox News Alerts run so rampant.

Friday night, ten of us met at Sushi Samba downtown to consume unheard of quantities of the dish I’ve been missing out on lately because the BF views it only as appetizer material and not a full meal.  Cocktails abounded, a DJ spun tunes, and I wondered when I had gotten so old as to notice how short and tight all the girls’ clothes are and wonder why that music has to be so damn loud! After dinner we cabbed it to Flute, a champagne bar in Gramercy that apparently–like Sushi Samba–doubles as a booty-thumping club DJed by a fro-sporting, blue-jean-shorts-wearing white guy.  We entertained ourselves by draining a magnum of champagne and reviewing our knowledge of Urban Dictionary in voices loud enough to be heard over the music.  When our waiter walked up just as BE was yelling, “Doo doo!” I knew it was time to call it a night.

The next day, the Sis, JB, RC, and I had brunch on the patio at Blue Water Grill in Union Square and walked around the Green Market, then we took the 6 uptown and walked to the Met.  For about the third time of the five or so that I’ve been there, I asked at the ticket booth whether we had to pay admission if we were headed straight to the roof bar.  I guess, historically, I’m more a fan of brews and views than paintings and sculptures.

Saturday night was the main event.  AW hosted the lingerie shower at her place, and I was greeted there with a life-sized cardboard cutout of Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen, an array of cheese and champagne, and pink bags full of underwear.  I also got to watch as the Sis, my college friends, and my New York friends’ worlds collided–truly an act of God.  They took turns asking me questions that the BF had previously answered about us, then compared my answers to his.  Being reminded of all we have learned about each other in the past three years, and surrounded by people who have known me anywhere from that long to ten times that long, I was overwhelmed with how differently my life has turned out from the way I planned it.  Here I am, getting married a good ten years after I thought I would (yes, I planned to be a child bride).  Here I am, planning a life with a man like none I’ve ever known or had the imagination (or experience) to conceive existed.  Here I am, hearing the collective laughter of my closest friends, half of whom I would never have laid eyes on if my life didn’t veer gloriously off the course I planned for it in times and places I hadn’t known were dark and small until light and largeness and pink bags of underwear seeped through.

My story has been blessed beyond a two-hour running time.  It has taken periods of two weeks, two years, and every day to tell. And eventually, it will be told in the halls of eternity as I go back and forth about it with the one who held the pen the whole time.

Ed. note: I threw up the whole way back.

Knowing a Little, Believing a Lot

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On one of our many double-backs through the Louvre, the BF and I passed a room partially blocked with a makeshift wall of wood and I peeked inside–just to make sure they weren’t playing a joke on us and keeping the real Mona Lisa hidden.  Instead of her, I saw sculptures scattered about in various states of coverage and repair.  Judging from the amount of wooden crates and plastic sheets strewn alongside the masterpieces, it appeared that I had stumbled upon a museum backlot: Where Sculptures Go to Get Facelifts.  While my fellow passerby tourists snapped photos of legit, purposely presented works of art, I turned away from them all to get this shot.  And thought about how my story has benefitted from a master refurbisher’s hand, and the accompanying periods of quietness rather than adulation.

I do some things well: organize, speak sarcasm, crack inappropriate jokes, lose my temper, drink wine.  But I’ve allowed my confidence to be crumbled over the years by the things I haven’t mastered: rejection, disapproval, patience, the unknown.  These are the issues over which I end up in the workroom.  In that quiet, alone-plus-One stillness, I’ve been scrubbed down and brushed up and whispered upon and prayed over.  The workroom has taken on various appearances over the years: failures, residency, New York…life.  Once, it was a car trip from Birmingham to Atlanta during which I missed a turn and ended up taking a two-hour detour through Chattanooga. He always finds me when I need to be found.  For some reason only He can see perfectly, I am worth the effort.

Anytime I’ve mastered one thing, I realize my complete inadequacy in another area.  I realized today that I’m learning my way around Atlanta (a conclusion reached when I drove to work without nervously peering at signs and got from there to the mall with only one U-turn).  Then I went to get gas and couldn’t find a pump that worked (a conclusion reached when they all had the amount of the last purchase still up and I was convinced my card would be charged for that gas).  I went inside and told the owner I needed pump 5 cleared.  He furrowed his brow and said, “They’re all clear, Sweetheart, you just put your card in and pick up the nozzle.” Thinking to myself, That’s what she said and don’t call me sweetheart, I and my red face returned to the functional pump.  Later I went back to work, where yesterday was good but today was even better as I’m learning the flow and getting to know everyone. After a particularly great experience with a patient, I stepped back into my office and sat down, smiling to myself. Then I realized that I forgot to put on deodorant this morning.

I will always be inept when it comes to something; I just hope that something isn’t laughing at myself for being inept.  Because my faith really took off once I learned to do just that–and around the same time realized that God would never laugh at me, but He sure does enjoy laughing with me.

Speaking of people who screw up a lot, I’ve been reading the book of Acts this week.  And loving it.  First, because of how history went from death to life-giving life in a matter of days.  Second, because the disciples had absolutely no idea what they were doing. And in their total lack of expertise, they were totally blessed.  My favorite part so far is at the end of the first chapter, when the eleven of them are trying to find a replacement for Judas.  They’ve narrowed the candidate list to two, and they begin to pray about which guy they should pick: “Lord, you know everyone’s heart.  Show us which of these two you have chosen.”  Next verse?  “Then they cast lots.”  And that was how they made their final decision.  Because when we don’t know, the least we can do is ask.  And when we still don’t know, we can trust that there’s no such thing as a gamble when Someone has always known.

All Things to All People

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I’ve been forced to answer, in various forms, the question “Who are you?” a lot recently, and with the effort of answering has come some soul-searching.  I’ve filled out applications for a license to practice dentistry in Georgia; I’ve read variations of wedding ceremonies and considered which one most closely reflects me and the BF; I’ve engaged in Church Search 2010, sitting in chairs and pews all over the greater Atlanta area, listening to music and preaching and waiting for my soul to feel at home.  Much of the changes in my life over the past few months have resonated with my sense of identity and left waves skimming across the surface of my mind in the form of questions: Who are you?  What do you like?  What do you want to be? What do you want to change?

I just wrote a brief bio for the website of my new job, and I thought to myself that if someone had asked me five years ago to complete this task, I would have struggled and sweated and thought about copying someone else’s and eventually, I would have made a list of the things I’ve done in life.  Then I would have subtracted the bullets, added articles and pronouns and commas and periods, and pressed send.  I am no stranger to describing myself on applications and resumes, but I always had the most trouble with the Interests section, with the part that’s supposed to convert me from a list of achievements into a real person.  Most of the fleshing out process occurred in New York, after a demolition in Birmingham, and at times it was bloody.  But it happened.  And here I am now.  I think we will always, at points throughout our lives, be asked by someone just who we are.

The answer, for me, is no longer Whomever you want me to be (see: demolition and fleshing out processes).  I’ll always struggle with making my identity a mirror image of the person who asks for it, will always work away from making People-Pleaser my default setting.  But as I’m growing older and hopefully wiser (ha!  I just accidentally typed wider), I am realizing that proving myself is less a part of my gameplan than being myself.  I prefer to take curves slowly in my car so that I can get home safely to the BF rather than go bungee-jumping to impress an audience.  I appreciate wine more because I (most days) have one glass over dinner and DVDs rather than a couple of bottles over the course of a night of bad choices.  I say no more often (sometimes, violently).  I laugh only at the jokes I think are funny, usually (awkward silences are still painful).  I roll the phrase Esse quam videri (to be, rather than to appear) around in my head and let it make a home there.

At work the other day I introduced myself to the mother of a new patient and sat to talk with her and get some information.  When I suggested that she should be helping brush her four-year-old’s teeth, she gave a tinkly fake laugh (I recognized it from my old repertoire) and said, “I don’t think you understand.  She doesn’t need my help.  She is independent.” While she spoke, her daughter grabbed items off the desk and did a handstand in my face.  I plastered on a fake smile to match the mother’s fake laugh (it’s okay to be fake if it’s for a job and you can recognize irony and your own self-growth–check the rules) and thought to myself, “She’s an independent brat and if you don’t start being a parent she’s going to turn into an independent asshole.”  But I just mentioned our blue plaque-revealing dye and made a vague reference to seeing what we would see (it’s okay to use cliches if you know you’re being ironic).  I walked away, amazed once again at the inner struggle I feel to go with the flow, agree with people, even when I don’t particularly like them.  I considered the difference between politeness and truth-telling and realized that they are not, as I once thought, mutually exclusive.  And that much of life and growing up and becoming myself has been learning how to do both, at the same time: honesty and grace, equal portions.  Not sparing people from the truth just to prevent a conflict.  Not dumping it on them with judgment just to make a point.  Just the honesty and grace from my side, then the faith that no matter what their personal relationship to truth is, I’ve done my part and can let go.  And not stay up that night wondering if they like me.

The familiar anxiety that rests as a pit in my stomach is my personal alarm system warning me that I’m getting away from living out of my personal relationship with truth and depending on something else to prop up my identity.  The funny thing is that the more effort I expend, instead of resting in that truth and relaxing into who I am because of it, the further I get from the best version of myself.  And the further I get into a performance that doesn’t deserve good reviews.  My favorite character in Sex and the City was Manhattan, and I didn’t make the effort to see the newest installment once I heard that the plot revolves around the girls traveling to Abu Dhabi.  New York was the heart of that story, and they traded in identity for a dollar.  Look how well that worked out.

The opposite of the aforementioned anxiety was what I felt last Sunday as the BF and I walked into a midtown church, passing a homeless man in the pew, and heard our favorite hymn being played.  The sincerity of the voices, the lack of performance, pierced me and I felt my eyes water.  This feels like Redeemer, I thought.  This feels like home.

Sunday Morning Breath

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Yesterday morning I called home to wish The Dad a happy Father’s Day. He wasn’t there, The Mom informed me.  I prepared to leave a message with her and quickly finish getting ready for church, but she went on to tell me that he was down at the golf club’s sauna.  I paused in my closet (yes, I can actually stand inside my closet these days, as opposed to the closet I had in New York, which I could only stand in front of).  “The sauna?” I repeated, certain I had misheard.  She went on to explain that The Dad likes to hit the sauna after the gym, or just hit the sauna period, then shower at the club.  Recently he pointed out to her that their water bill had gone down since he started this routine.  I had to laugh, thinking that my family is headed toward starring in a reality show that no one watches.

After that call, the BF and I set out to accomplish another first for us, this time in the form of visiting a new church.  This process is fraught with complications for me.  The first is that we are coming from Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City, home of wonder-pastor Tim Keller, a name known well outside the evangelical community, author of the New York Times bestseller The Reason for God and multiple other books.  Redeemer’s presentation of the Gospel, and Tim’s preaching in particular, converted my faith from a performance-based achievement ladder to a daily walk of reliance that I love.  Tim quotes Sartre and Camus almost as regularly as the Bible.  He always brings it back to the cross.  He’s an intellectual.  Listening to his voice doesn’t give you the feeling of being on a roller coaster: up, down, up, down.  He is even-keeled and logical.

In short, everything most Southern ministers are not.

I’m something of a Southern anomaly.  When I was younger and heard of the magical land of New York City, I was intrigued. Buildings touching the sky, lights canvassing every square mile, Broadway shows…but what appealed to me most was the rumor that in New York, you could be walking down the street and pass within inches of someone and not even have to say hello. To my Southern mind, such behavior was unheard of.  In the Southern etiquette handed down to me by my foremothers, such crassness was not permitted.  But for my painfully introverted personality, this possibility sounded glorious.  A place existed where I could spend an entire day surrounded by people without being expected to acknowledge any of them.  I think that’s when the seed of desire to live in Manhattan began to grow for me.

In addition to my eschewing of etiquette for comfort, another non-Southern thing about me was my constant need to know why things were the way they were, and “because that’s the way it’s always been” was never a sufficient answer.  I never saw the need to place a doily beneath every damn drink served, and “bless her heart” began to sound like an insult the more I heard it. And as far as the “Jesus loves you” routine went, that was fine by me until the life I planned began crumbling before my eyes and Jesus began to look less like a Good Shepherd and more like a Mean Bully.

What to do with the girl who can’t find her place below the Mason-Dixon?  Expatriate her to an island full of similar misfits and watch as she either sinks or swims.

Well, I didn’t sink, and Redeemer provided my best swim lessons.  Which is why I’m having such a hard time returning to the region of my youth and hearing messages about self-improvement cloaked in hymns and dressed up with stained glass.  To me, faith is so much less about me than most people preach it to be.  Also, down here, I’m finding that the Six Flags over Jesus movement is catching on with a fervor.  Which means that the BF and I are going to have many more Sundays like yesterday, when the church service began with a light show and a rock concert.  The music leaders were covered in sweat and tattoos (the ink actually appealed to my Manhattan-honed sense of rebellion).  And, printed on the back of the program, was the following:

Warning for Epileptics: This service contains flashing lights that may cause difficulties for people with photosensitive epilepsy.

Oh, how I ached for Tim and the plain black shirt and khakis he wears each week up at his unadorned podium.

Okay, so hear me here: I don’t want to sound like one of those “Um, YEAH I lived in New York for like five years, whatever, who the eff are you and where is my twenty-dollar glass of wine?  Aren’t this town and its customs so quaint!”  jerks. The fact that Jesus had to haul my ass a thousand miles north and onto a tiny island to get me right in the head (and heart) is the stuff of humility, not a bragging right. But I will always struggle with monitoring my own inner commentary and praying for the grace to make it less about judgment than observation.  I’m also learning to not jump to the conclusion that earnestness is always a cover for something else just because my starting point is most often jaded sarcasm and earnestness, for me, has been more reflective of a people-pleasing nature than a sincere one throughout my years.

All of which is to say, that the next time I walk into a church and hear the bass thumping, I will try to remember that God is big enough for all kinds of music; that he travels between solemn austerity and blatant excess while managing to avoid both; that heaven has room for people who use doilies and those who do not; and that JC is neither solely Southern nor totally Yankee.  Just like me.

The First Day

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I am not big on first days and new things.  The first day of first grade, I cried when The Mom dropped me off at my classroom door.  The next day, when she waited with me for the bus, I cried again.  Then the bus pulled up and she told me to get on it.  I remained planted on the sidewalk despite her persistent urging.  Eventually, she had to pick me up , carry me up the bus steps, and put me on the green vinyl seat herself, where I refused to bend my legs and sit down.  I think she ended up driving me to school on day two.  (Later that day, I would find it hard to sit down for other reasons.)

This week I visited the office where I’ll be practicing.  First days now don’t allow for tears, unless they are the kind produced quietly in a bathroom stall.  But beginnings still provoke anxiety and sleepless nights for me, because that is apparently who I will always be: the girl who struggles with the unknown.  I turned off the radio and turned on the prayer line for the ride in, and as I expressed (to the one who made me, flaws and all) my nervousness and my frustration with my nervousness at the age of THIRTY-TWO, for His sake, I felt the responsive truth descend upon my heart in its familiar conversational tone. Reminders about my fear of incompetence and how that comes from a self-imbued need to prove myself, to perform according to others’ expectations.  Re-realizations that my competence comes from a deeper place than board scores or handiness with a drill. And the inevitable worst-case-scenario-follow-through: that I’m protected beyond what any job can provide.

So I felt better.  Enough to turn on the radio and listen to people talk about the oil that is slowly creeping up to the section of beach where I’ll get married, at which point I had to smile at yet another reminder of how little I ultimately control, and how little that fact matters when I trust the one who does run the show.  I pulled up to the office and wandered (ARGH!) around the parking lot until I found a spot, then walked in.

The day went well.  Although I had to pull back on my own reins a few times, like when my boss conducted the morning meeting, orchestrating the efforts of a room full of women, and I freaked out that I would be doing that one day.  But not today, jeez! I told myself, and I think I heard God laugh.

Later that night The Sis called to get the First Day Update and, to her credit, listened to my glowing report in full.  Then I asked how her day went.  “I hate my job.  I want to quit.”  Hers had not been a first day, but it did involve tears, and she is ready to get on up out of that place.  When I reminded her that my niece will soon be her ticket to ride, she made a jump that sounded like my move at the office meeting: expressing her uneasiness for the day when the nurse hands her the baby and sends the new family home, and she won’t have any idea what to do.  “Just like everyone else who goes home with a baby for the first time,” I said, because no matter how few people are brave enough to admit it, there is not enough literature to read or intelligence to possess that makes you ready for a tiny life in your hands.  “And also, let’s just stick to today for now,” I added–for both of us.

I’m not out of First Days yet.  I’ve got one down, but a few big events approach beyond it.  No matter how much I try to prepare, though, most of what matters in life is learned on the job, in the day-to-day.  And all of those days have to have a first day.  I can think of a particular period of time that looked devastatingly different on Day One than it did on Day Three.  There’s always a square one–every friend starts out as a stranger; every epic begins with a word.  So call me Ishmael, and let’s do this thing.

Get Lost

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“Not all those who wander are lost,” Tolkien wrote.  Doesn’t apply to me.  I am not much of a wanderer.  I like to know where I am at all times, along with where I just was and where I’ll be in the next few minutes.  I rediscovered this trait last week in Europe as the BF led me around London and Paris with his nose for navigation, which I would give a 70/30 success rate, and I simmered more and more violently over not being told exactly what he was thinking.  And planning.  And, often, doing, for crying out loud.  The occasional times we had to double back and head in the other direction led me to grab the map from him, spend approximately fifteen seconds trying to read it, then hand it back to him in a huff.  Maps, like instruction manuals, are written in a language I don’t understand, a language that just makes me anxious, much like movers taking over my apartment.  I just want all the up in the air-ness to be over so I can be at the intended destination, preferably with my feet propped up and a glass of wine in my hand.

My perfect life’s path would consist of a straight line, with signs along the way providing ETAs and bathroom information.  My life’s path has been nothing of the sort.  (Insert God’s loving laugh here.)

Now that we’re back in Atlanta, I am again confronted with an unfamiliar system of roads and locations along them, and this time I’m not leaving in a week; this time, I have to pay attention and remember what I’m doing.  Learn from my double-backs. Today, the BF and I were to meet at noon at the tag office so we could get lovely peach plates for our new cars. Helpless child that I am, I asked him (accusingly, a little–it was early) before he left for work how to get to the office.  He pointed to our kitchen island (!), where he had printed out a map of the route I would take.  I huffed until I picked it up and found, underneath, written instructions that even I, with my Directional Allergies, could understand.  He really is picking up on this Taking Care of Me business.

So a few hours later I headed out to meet him.  I felt lost the whole way, certain I had taken every wrong turn possible (I hadn’t), unfamiliarity-produced anxiety burning a hole in my stomach.  Each drive, be it a five-minute one or an hour one, is an exercise in faith for me (at this point, though, what isn’t?).  I exit the car with a blood pressure substantially higher than that with which I entered it, and my shoulders level with my ears.  It feels like the landscape is an obstacle course laid out with the ultimate goal being my confusion.  The world, as usual, is against me when I’m not in my comfort zone.  I have a feeling that God and I are going to have some interesting conversations in my car.

The drive home was a little more eventful than the drive there.  My new tag resting on the seat behind me, I navigated using the map I had memorized from the BF’s phone until I realized I didn’t know which final turn to take.  Trader Joe’s, you bastard, are you on the right or the left? I had been so proud of heading in the correct direction on two three-digited interstates, and even getting my fifty cents in the basket on the toll plaza, and now this.  I went left.  And soon realized I should have gone right.  So I busted a uey and redirected.  After leaving TJ’s I had one more thing left to do before heading home: my inaugural gas fill-up. Getting gas is like drying my hair: one of those things that I hate to do, but if avoided the results are disastrous.  Why I passed by all of the five hundred gas stations directly on my path, I can’t tell you.  What I can tell you is that there are no gas stations in the immediate one-mile-radius of my apartment.  Nor are there any in the area I drove to next, headed west under the interstate.  I entered what must be the largest neighborhood in the whole damn city, a gas-station vacuum of mythical proportions in a town with millions of drivers.  Maybe I’ll get a look at some potential houses for us, I thought, my frustration not yet reaching blinding levels; then I realized that the other thing besides fuel options that this neighborhood lacked was any residence under 5,000 square feet with a non-castle facade.

Seriously? I asked God, foreshadowing the way most of our cartalks will begin.

I made it home unscathed other than by my default frustration with myself and the world for not running more smoothly, i.e., according to my specifications.  Tomorrow I get to tackle another path, this time to my new job.  8 am rush hour in Atlanta on the first day of work.  What could go wrong?

On Saturday, the Yankee Mom and The Mom were in town and we accompanied The Sis for crib-shopping.  After passing over multiple options, she saw one across the store and made a beeline for it.  “This is it,” she said, and everyone approved.  The salesman came over and confirmed that it was available in her preferred color.  Everything was going right.  Then it came time to sign for the final order, and I had a flashback to five years ago as The Sis said, “Do you think it’s the right one?”  Cut to us, same quartet, in a bridal shop a few miles away.  The Sis had just tried on her dream wedding gown, and its designer just happened to be in the store that day.  She okayed the alterations that The Sis suggested, and The Dad even okayed the bill.  The final transaction was about to occur when The Sis turned to me and asked, “Do you think it’s the right one?”  Knowing that she and I are the type who painstakingly arrive at every decision we make after careful consideration of all options, lists of pros and cons, anxiety and tears, then at the end still feel like we’re leaping off a huge cliff, I told her the truth–and what I know she secretly needed to hear.  “Yes.”  I repeated the affirmative response at the crib store.

I was the type who, growing up, would have fingers holding multiple spots in Choose Your Own Adventure books because I couldn’t stand the thought of choosing wrong.  I read the last page of every book.  I study spoilers for my favorite TV shows. Recently, unfortunately, I discovered the website www.moviespoiler.com.

I don’t like wandering.

Then I think back on all the decisions I’ve made, at varying points of stupidity (at worst) and ignorance (at best) in my life, and how some choices felt well-founded and some haphazard.  But none felt free of uncertainty.  I’ve wandered throughout life whether I felt lost or not, and somehow I’ve always ended up home.  Someone is pretty good at this Taking Care of Me business.