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.

Winter Walk

Last night, after school, I went for a cold walk as the sun went down.

I walked up my hill to the very top, and climbed the stairs of a house that is halfway constructed. I walked through vertical 2x4s marking future walls and I walked past piles of plywood, and I leaned out of the open gaps that will be windows. I found the mountains across the lake, and I found Rainier: breathless, cold, and lavender in the fading light. I thought about climbing, and I thought about cold, and I thought about unfinished buildings. I thought about saws splitting wood that came from the same tree, and of those boards being nailed down in locations far from one another. I thought about leaping, and I thought about flying, and I thought about falling, and I thought about being safe. I thought about past conversations on unfinished walls, and I thought about future families talking, eating, laughing, fighting in these presently plywood rooms.

And then I walked down another road, and I thought about feet being cold, and I saw a mother taking pictures of her babies in a stroller with a fancy camera, and I thought of happy families.

And I tried to follow the sunset over the other side of the hill, because the sun was setting now behind the other set of mountains, and so I ran because it was setting quickly, and the sky was already deep purples and oranges. I found another unfinished house, and I ran up the stairs to get as high as I could. I met the owner of the house on the way up, and he told me to be careful of the 2x4s sticking out over the third floor stairwell, and then he left. I thought of strangers, and I thought of how I must look to people I don't know, and I wondered if he would mind me being in his house if I was something other than a small female in a red wool coat.

I climbed over boards and plywood on the top floor, and leaned out of the vast hole that will eventually be an elegant window, and I offered myself to the air. And the mountains were dark silhouettes, and the city glimmered in the distance, and it was cold, and it was bright. I thought of frost, and how it glitters, and how it is cold, and how it makes things brittle. I thought of Christmas lights and how they feel like bars keeping me out of something this year. I thought of the way that things used to be, and how they have irrevocably changed. I thought of being afraid, and of being too small, and of spinning out of control. I hugged the unfinished wall, and thought of how the sun had already set by the time I climbed to my viewpoint; I had missed it going down, and was only seeing the fading colors of what had been a beautiful day. I looked down at the street, and looked at the sidewalk, and saw that it ended on either side of this halfway built house, and saw a gap of dirt where the path didn't connect. I missed things. I shivered and felt cold.

I climbed down, and went out front, and stood on the hard cold dirt where the sidewalk should have been. I picked up a scrap of wood and tried to etch my name in the ground. I thought of cement being poured, and my mark being hidden underneath, and of people forgetting, and of life moving on, and of people passing through, and of archeology, and of people discovering pieces of lives that have ended.

I walked home in the dark, and I wrote lyrics for a song. And I wished for days that had not already ended, and I wished for a home that was more future than past, and I wished for wings that could carry me away to mountain tops in the distance.

Through the Storm

Last night was a really hard end to a really hard weekend. The big changes are brutally reshaping everything, and I wrote to Annie that, "for the rest of my life, I feel like I'm going to be walking on shattered glass."

This morning I woke up, and it was pouring down rain. I played guitar for a little while in my shadowy room, looking out at the heavy clouds, and the leaves being bent by the steady drops. I wanted to go out into it. I needed that storm on my skin; I don't know why. Maybe I felt that, if the outside felt like the inside, then the inside would hurt less. Maybe the idea of getting soaked in a rainstorm seemed cleansing. I don't really know.

But I put on a t-shirt and running pants, and flip flops and went out. There's a giant hill that leads straight up behind my house, and when you get to the top you can see the lake, and the other side of the city behind it, and the mountains behind that. My friend Aaron and I had watched a lightening storm from the top of that hill just last night. I usually start walks by heading up that hill; my legs like the wake-up call.

My hair was down. I just needed to be in the rain.

I got to the top of the hill and looked at the muddy bleary view; the lines of the city and lake and mountains had all run together. Sometimes getting to the top of the hill is enough, but I felt like I wanted to keep walking.

So I did, and my feet were wet because they were just in flip-flops, and dirt was getting caught between the soles of my feet and the sandals, and so I took them off. I took a few steps on the wet pavement in my bare feet, and that felt right. I don't know why. I stepped into a puddle and it felt soft. I stepped on the bumpy pavement and it hurt a little bit, but not like shattered glass. "This isn't as bad as it could be," I thought. And I kept walking.

I thought of me being in the storm, and how most people were in their homes, protected from the rain, or in their cars, protected from the rain, and it almost didn't seem fair to be in the wet and cold. But then I thought of some of the people I'd met in Africa, and I thought of some of the students I'd mentored that were going through really heavy things, and I remembered I wasn't the only one out in the rain.

I saw a woman with her dog, sitting under her porch roof, tucked back into a garden, and I almost went to talk to her, but then I thought that might have been even more strange than being out in the rain in the first place, walking in bare feet. I was sort of praying the whole time, and I remembered how I had thought that, part of God getting my back meant feeling His spirit curve around my spine and straightening me tall and helping me to walk with dignity, and so I straightened tall and lifted my chin and squared my shoulders and kept walking on that wet bumpy pavement in my bare feet. I had my shoes, and I knew I could put them on if my feet started hurting but I felt like God was nudging me. "You've got them if you need them, but I want you to know that you can do this."

So the walk turned into my own personal allegory, and I allowed myself to think about what the different moments coming in and out might mean. At times, I walked on the grass, and that was soft, and I thought that sometimes it will be easier, and it won't feel quite as stark or hard. I passed people every once in a while, and I thought that they probably thought I was a little strange, and I even thought of offering a couple times, "I think maybe I'm just a little weird," just to be helpful, but I didn't, I just let them think what they would think because people will SEE me walking through this, and I can try to be helpful, but really all I can be is me.

By the end of the walk, my feet were hurting, but I thought of Mary Ingles, who is one of my heroes, and who walked somewhere around 1,000 miles through the unsettled Ohio wilderness in the 1700's after she'd been taken from her home by an Indian raid. She walked in her bare feet, in early winter, with almost no food or clothes, and I thought, well SHE did it, and this walk through a Seattle neighborhood during a rainstorm in August wasn't nearly so hard as all that. And my feet weren't hurting badly enough to need my flip-flops yet, but I had them if I needed them, but, it was good to know that I was able to do it even without.

On the last bit, walking back down that big hill, I saw an apple tree and the apples were big, and probably almost ripe, and it was such a surprise, and it was something beautiful. Further along the road, there were summer roses dropping over their fence, and there were six perfect yellow ones, tinged with pink on the edges, fresh and lovely in the rain. They smelled beautiful. When I walked close to the fence to smell them, I stepped on a thick thatch of ivy that had crept over and along the sidewalk, and it was soft on my feet. Closer to my home, I saw a hedge of clematis, which is a vine that my mom has always had in our garden, and the flowers were bright pink six-pointed stars, open to the sky. I thought of how there will be lovely mercies at the end, even as my feet my hurt the most, that there will be cushioning moments and dear merciful gifts to make it easier.

I thought of how I'd begun the walk knowing that there would be rain, but walking in those cushioned shoes, and I thought that that's how I'd sort of begun this whole hard bit: knowing that it would be hard, but maybe walking on a cushion of hope that wasn't totally realistic. And this weekend was sort of like the shoes coming off, and it was really brutal, but there I was at the end of the walk in my bare feet, and I'd been able to get through it and there had been soft spots even along the way.

And I got home, and I was soaking wet, but the storm had woken my skin, and there was a freshness to it, and I opened the door to my house and I knew that it would be warm and dry and carpeted, and I thought, "Well we are going home, and that will be something entirely different from walking through a storm."

It is very difficult to feel hopeful at times. But I am trying. I'm trying to be in this, and acknowledge this, and to trust that there is a Rescuer, and to keep walking forward. Even when it's in the rain, even when it's just in my bare feet.

I'm not sure what else there is to do.