Faith in Freedom

The sky is gray, I think it will rain soon
But the clouds are polite
And unassuming
The sun has just about gone down
That shady dusk lingers.

I look at that vast gray ocean
From inside my car
I'm parked at the top of a hill
I've got my window down
And my head is out
And it's resting on my folded arms.

Power lines stretch like
Horizontal prison bars
And they're blocking my view of that ocean
They're blocking my flight
To what is all unbound
Blocking my flight
And I am not unbound

Right now, I've got to have faith in freedom
Right now, I've got to have a little bit of faith
In freedom for me
There's got to be some freedom
From myself,
This life.

When I was a girl, I loved to sink
Into deep water
With my eyes closed
Sink into deep water
With my eyes closed
And every muscle relaxed.

When I released and
Surrendered control
When everything just everything had all been let go
I felt safe
I felt peace.

This is the blog where I tell you about what I did on January 1st.

I wrote that poem a couple years ago, the year I lived in California.

The other day, I told my friend that I felt like driftwood in the ocean. "Like... I bob, and I get tossed back and forth and all over the place... But I'm still AFLOAT, you know? I haven't SUNK yet. And I have no control. The funny thing is though, is that I've always associated the ocean with the idea of God, and of peace--"

My friend made a noise like she'd had a THOUGHT, and said, "You've given up being anchored."

And I thought, "Well."

"That is sort of true."

Last New Year's Day was about getting back to "me," getting back to center, getting back to Him. This New Year's was not about that. I have me. I have Him. This New Year's was about letting myself be blown blown blown about and rained rained rained upon and tossed tossed tossed around, and saying, "Okay. I can hope. I can believe. I can trust. I can let go. I will be okay. I can keep going."

But I didn't realize that when I woke up on January 1st.

When I woke up on New Year's, I felt the same as the day before. Maybe not quite the same. Maybe an inch different. But not leaps and bounds different. Not transformed, different. Not a whole new calendar different. And I thought, "What. Lame. This is my big new start. What the heck."

And I looked out at the weather and it was AWFUL. It was dark dark dark, like oppressively dark, and COLD, and rainy, and windy. And I thought, "Ew. I don't want My Big New Year's Walk out in that. That will not be a sparkly walk."

So I took a long time eating breakfast, and I took a long time getting dressed, and I took a long time looking out the window, and I took a long time playing my guitar, and I took a long time getting my plan together.

I'm not sure if I want to tell you the plan yet. I might keep what the plan was a secret.

I took a long time, is my point. And finally it was 12:30pm and I knew that if I wanted to make My Big New Year's Walk happen, I needed to get going. The plan this year was to get to Golden Gardens, which-- I would discover-- is about 11 miles away from Grandpa's house. I had already decided that the walk would probably not be as incredible as last year, because last year's walk was just like a zip-line into the land of rainbows and fairy dust and sparkle lollipops and baby sea otters that wink. I couldn't expect that to just replicate itself. So I made the plan more about what I would DO at the final destination.

That part of the plan is what I haven't told you yet. I still don't know if I want to tell you.

I got my backpack together, and bundled up, and left.

I saw people and waited for last year's twinkling to happen. "Happy New Year!" I called. But they did not become my instantaneous friends. They gave me a bemused smile, or a nod of acknowledgment, or a short, "Hello." "What...??" I wondered. "Why are these not fabulous New Year's interactions...?"

I did not see silly men pulling rick-shaws on bicycles, or the ladies in their matching track suits. I ran into no friends at Starbucks, and I gave up taking pictures just out of my neighborhood. The day was just DRAB. I knew it wouldn't be last year, but it was just ESPECIALLY drab. Annie called at one point to ask how it was going and all I could get out was, "Well... It's just not very magical!" And then I cried.

(I know. Silly.)

But I kept walking. And walking. And my legs started getting sore, because I really don't make a habit of being physically active, but I knew the dark day would get ACTUALLY dark at an earlier time than usual, so I picked up the pace and hurried up hills and down hills and up hills and down hills. And finally, I reached Golden Gardens.

Golden Gardens, for those of you unfamiliar with Seattle, is not really a gardeny place at all. It is a beach. It looks like this:

Kind of like a normal beach.

And I made my way out onto rocks that led to where the water was deeper, and I took a glass mason jar out of my back-pack. And I took one more look at the duct taping job to ensure the jar would be water-tight, and I took one more peek through the glass at the letter inside. I thought about what I'd written.

And then I chucked the jar out into the Pacific.

That is the part of the plan I've only decided to tell you about just now.

Environmentalists: forgive me. The romantic notion overrode more realistic musings until the jar was already bobbing away from me. I know that it may very well end up just down the beach. I know it might hit a rock and break and sink. But the throw and the arc and the release of all those soul scrawlings was such a breath-filled feeling. It was a physical representation of letting myself be unanchored. Off I go, and it felt like flying. I don't know where it will end up, nor do I: me. But after years and years of begging for answers, and grasping for control, and clutching at the future: it was such a good feeling to just LET IT GO.

When I was a girl, I loved to sink
Into deep water
With my eyes closed
Sink into deep water
With my eyes closed
And every muscle relaxed.

When I released and
Surrendered control
When everything just everything had all been let go
I felt safe
I felt peace.

I felt faith.
I felt freedom.

Self-Portrait

This is, I think, my favorite picture of myself. It's a self-portrait-- I took it last New Years Day.

I found myself lost last December. As I looked ahead to the New Year, I realized I had completely wandered away from the parts of me that I felt proud of; I had drifted from the essences, from the gumption, from the truth, from the deep-down twinkling. Like a cloud in the sky on a windy day, I had shape-shifted and chased after breezes, leaving wispy vapors where there should have been pictures to name. It's a poetic way to say that I had bought into the idea that many single 20-somethings believe: that I wasn't enough without someone ELSE. And in looking for the "elses," I led my heart out onto ledges, onto tight-ropes, onto rotten bridges. I offered it to sky-divers and shark-feeders-- men that made no promises of safe-keeping. I led it so far away that I'd soon lost track of it completely, and I was hazy eyed. I couldn't see me anymore.

My Dad called me out last Christmas; he said that I wasn't the Greta he knew-- the Greta that knew where she was going, that had dreams, and ambitions, and found jokes all by herself to giggle at. He said, "You seem like a ping pong ball, bouncing back and forth between these GUYS." I pictured myself as the metal ball inside a pinball machine: bouncing, and zinging, and making loud noises, and all the while heading for that clanging pit at the bottom.

Dad was right, and it made me cry. I missed me. I missed God, and I missed ME.

New Years Eve, I went out. I got dressed up in high-heeled boots, and a black dress, and drank wine with some girlfriends and all the while felt frustrated and empty. On a whim, I mentioned to one of them, "I think I'll go for a walk tomorrow. A big walk. I think I'll maybe walk all over the city."

As the night progressed, and I danced, and I watched guys shmooze girls that they didn't know and didn't care about, the idea beckoned more strongly. I would take a walk. A big walk. I would walk all over Seattle. I went to sleep just a few hours into the New Year-- tired, but no longer bleary eyed. I had a plan, and it was the most Greta-like thing I'd had in a long time.

I woke up new.

It took miles to find my way back to me; I walked all day. I got up early, and put on an outfit that was for no one to look at. I wore comfortable tennis shoes, a warm jacket, my blue glasses for LOOKING, and a warm hat which had been a Christmas present from my little brother. I filled a back-pack with essentials, and tucked my camera into my coat-pocket. And I started walking.

I found so many things.










And at one point, I found a No Trespassing sign.

And past the No Trespassing sign, I found a long dock with house-boats on either side. And at the end of the dock I looked across the water to a park I often ride my bike to in the summer-time-- but this time, I was on the other side of the looking glass. I was IN the view I normally gazed at from a distance, and this view was transformed. I was transformed.

And I found a house that perfectly matched the color of my jacket.


And that's when I took my favorite picture of myself.

I like the picture because I didn't take it to be pretty. I like it because my coat matches a house and they are both fabulous raspberry. I like it because my hair is covered up with a hat and my mouth is covered up with my coat, and I like it because even though I covered up my mouth to attain maximum pinkage, you can still tell that I'm grinning. I like it because I could have only taken it after disobeying a rule-- which is a very Greta thing to do-- and because I took it after walking on firm ground for miles and miles, and because I took it after having so many fun conversations with so many strangers, and because I took it after chuckling and congratulating God on his funny, beautiful world all day long. I like it because I took it-- I wasn't asking for anyone else's approval, or validation, or opinion. I like it because it was a silly moment. I like it because I have my glasses on, so I know that I was able to see the world with radiant clarity. And I like that, even with the glasses on, you can see that the twinkling is back.

I woke up that day. It was, and remains, one of the best days of my life.

2008 has been a doozy. No sooner had I gotten a grip on me than circumstances did everything they could to knock me loose again. I have hoped, and hurt, and tried, and failed, and guarded, and exposed. I have been overjoyed, and I have been utterly dismayed. I worried over Grandpa through a health-scare. I entered and exited two different relationships. I swash-buckled my way across Europe with Heidi. I reeled through family distress. I became an aunt for the second time. I started grad school in an effort to realize my dream of being a teacher, and encountered the significant stress entailed. It's been loaded. Several times I've said, "I feel the weakest that I've ever been in my life. I feel crazy right now. I really feel crazy."

But through it all-- through ALL the ups and downs-- it's been ME. I've clutched hold of the dreams I remembered on January 1st of this year. I haven't often FELT as twinkly or giggly or adventurous or delighted as I did in that picture, but I've remembered that that's who I really AM, and that that's the girl I belong to. I've held tight to the closeness with God I felt on that walk, and as the world has crumbled, He has grown in strength and immediacy to compensate.

Tonight the sermon was about hope. I thought, "I could give that sermon." Because, you see, after a year of flirting with soul-marring cynicism, I still am hoping. I'm not writing off men, or love. I'm not writing off family. I'm not writing off ME. After a hard, hard year: I have my head up. I believe in so many things!! I DO, I believe in things! My eyes have cried a lot this year, but damn it, they're clear when they look back at me in the mirror. I still understand the deep-downs. I have been crazy: true. But I have been ME-crazy-- if that makes any sense. In the worst of it, I called people who loved me, and hugged them til the crying stopped, and then we prayed together, and then I was ready to try again.

I feel stronger, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Like-- exhausted. But ready to try again. I mean, not READY. But.

Ready to believe I WILL be ready.

And, as 2009 approaches (she noted with a resilient twinkle in her eye): I'm ready for another New Years walk.