#write31days

[bravegirlwrites]

30

What sounds fun to you right now.

Yikes, you guys. Grace, please. That’s all I ask. I meant to write earlier today, but then I got really into carving pumpkins with my kids and somehow the whole afternoon disappeared while I was scooping out slimy guts and making jack-o-lantern magic. (They turned out awesome, by the way). And now it’s late and my mind is done working until tomorrow, so this post is going to be some kind of bullshit. Eh, oh well.

1. an entire day of roaming the aisles of Powell’s bookstore in Portland, Oregon by myself with a gift card worth roughly all the money in the world 2. dancing in downtown Seattle until the wee hours of the morning, preferably to hip hop music and also preferably half drunk so I can feel like I’m really good at it

3. reading a book so good I keep turning the pages even if I’ve had to pee for the last twenty minutes 4. being alone in my house when it’s clean 5. opening up a brand new puzzle that’s just the right amount of hard and sitting down to work on it with a steaming hot cup of tea 6. going for a bike ride 7. cuddling on the couch with my husband while watching an episode or four of Friends 8. taking an art class or a writing class or most any kind of class, really 9. going to watch a comedy show 10. Taco Bell, because eating is fun to me. Sometimes the most fun.

[bravegirlwrites]

29

The three people (living or dead) you would invite to a dinner party.

First things first. Scratch the dinner party. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for inviting people into my home to share a meal together. It’s just that I’m more of a paper plates and takeout kind of girl, and if I’ve been given the power to raise the dead for this little soiree, I think it’s safe to assume I can also opt for a coffee table strewn with pizza boxes instead of something more formal. Fingers crossed the guests don’t mind.

Emily Dickinson is first on my list. A thousand times over. (Insert lengthy pause while I struggle to find words suitable to describe my love for her here). I’m serious, you guys, I’m obsessed. I love poetry because of Emily Dickinson. I know what it is to read words crafted by someone else’s hand and find bits of my soul that have never before been named because of Emily Dickinson. She was a genius and a visionary, a beautiful gift of a person. Also, she was familiar with pain and a lot of it was tied into her relationship with her mother. In a letter penned to one of her many literary mentors she once said, “I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” So yeah, we’d have a lot to talk about.

I’d also ask Peter to join us. You know, the one from the Bible. His story is one of radical change and I think it’s absolutely fascinating. Peter left everything behind to follow Jesus, only to eventually deny Him three times over, and then he ended up being one of the boldest preachers of all time. He was a straight up emotional roller coaster and so again, quite a bit to talk about.

Lastly, I‘d invite my younger self, my inner child. After welcoming her with warm, open arms, I would make sure she got the most comfy spot on the couch and had her fill of the cheesiest slices. And then I’d give her every bit of love I’ve fought to find inside of me. She’d have my full attention. I’d hold her and tell her she was beautiful exactly the way she was, that she was created by a God who called her good and only wanted her to be herself. I would tell her that it was all going to be okay, that she was so much stronger and braver than she could imagine and that one day she’d find Love.

[bravegirlwrites]

28

If you were stranded on a desert island, what would you miss most about your current life?

Can I be really honest with you? Being stuck on a deserted island all by my lonesome sounds pretty damn delightful right now. I know, I know. I should probably answer this question with some sort of talk about missing my children’s laughter or how their tiny voices are pure perfection when they call out “Mama.” Or the way it never stops being funny to me when my husband says its my turn to be the big spoon in bed and how I’d miss that and every other little thing he does that reminds me I am not alone in this crazy ass world. But right now? At this very moment? I just want to call a time out and take a break from life and if I could do it all by myself please and thank you that would be great.

I’m just tired is all. I’m tired of having to throw so much frigging energy into each new day in order to simply be okay, to find some sort of halfway healthy baseline. I want to be living my best life, fully engaged and present and kicking negativity in the butt while I take step after step towards The Promised Land of emotional and relational health. I want to thrive but it’s still so many days of pulling at my damn bootstraps just trying to get through. And I’m tired. Maybe a little bit sick, too. Sick of the struggle, the never-ending fight for freedom and peace and love and rest.

So yeah, can we make this happen or what? Any old God-forsaken island will do, as long as I’m allowed the following requests: two dozen 1,000 piece puzzles (no kitten montages or fairy landscapes, please), all my favorite teas, the rest of the second season of This Is Us in advance, each and every book I’ve been meaning to read, several hundred bags of Boom Chicka Pop kettle corn, and my laptop (complete with charger) so I can finish creating the photobook that’s taking me a literal eternity to put together. Oh, and also, there would have to be a pizza place within close enough range that they’d deliver.

[bravegirlwrites]

27

If you were presented with a time machine, where would you go?

I was going to write about the present moment, the here and now, the very place I struggle so much to seize and embrace and enjoy. I was going to write about facing the pain I’ve carried since my earliest years, the pain that’s haunted me day in and day out and held me hostage within myself, a prisoner to my past. I was going to write about the future God has called me to, the dreams He’s spoken into my heart that often seem so far away and impossible, and the way I can lose myself in trying to figure out how the hell it’s all going to happen. I was going to write about the small strides I have taken recently in claiming my life and the present moment that are actually not all that small because it turns out to be fully engaged in the here and now with your whole self is EVERYTHING. And then I was going to say something along the lines of thanks but no thanks to the whole idea of a time machine and leave it at that, heading off to live out the next moment and then the next.

But then I thought about Jesus.

If someone gave me a time machine, like an actual legit one that wouldn’t blow me up or get me lost in some black hole, I’d most definitely travel back to 30 AD or whenever the heck it was that Jesus was walking around the earth. Assuming the machine delivered me somewhere near His general vicinity, I would immediately begin to run around and cry out His name, bellowing into every nearby crowd and cluster of people within sight. My search would be so impassioned that I just might end up in a Bible story: The Parable of the Girl Who Ran Around Like a Crazy Person. I think I would recognize Him as soon as I laid eyes on Him, not because I know what He looks like but because I imagine His gaze would make me feel so deeply seen and loved that I couldn’t help but know it was my Jesus.

I don’t really know what would happen after that. It wouldn’t matter though. You know, because I’d be standing before the greatest Love of my life and everything. He’d welcome me, open up His arms and let every bit of me fall into Him. Maybe I’d ask Him some questions and maybe He’d have some answers (or none at all), but most definitely everything would be okay inside of His embrace. And I don’t think I’d ever want to go back.

[bravegirlwrites]

26

Your most important short and long term goals.

Goals freak me out. When you make one you officially have some skin in the game. They’re kind of like the starting line. Shit gets real. I know they’re supposed to be all about bettering yourself, focusing your efforts and unicorn rainbows and what not, but my brain sees a goal and the alarm bells immediately start blaring. Suddenly there’s a clear cut way for me to fail. When you’ve spent your life under the impression that you do not measure up, it’s quite terrifying to think about setting a goal and then not reaching it. Some might say this is where the power of positive thinking comes in, but it happens to be rather difficult to drum up optimism when all you’ve ever known is negativity. It’s hard to shape the day to day into our dreams, the vision we have for our lives, without a goal or two (or eight hundred) though, so fear and negativity be damned. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

Short term goals: Stay sober. Don’t cheat myself out of the opportunity to process through all my shit and grow and as a person by seeking easy (and super temporary!!) relief in beer or weed or half a pepperoni pizza. Resist the urge to numb out and stay present to myself, those around me and the rest of the whole wide world. Be kind to myself and give myself the love I deserve. Don’t let my brain beat myself up and follow my heart. Stay connected to myself and then seek out connection with other people. (I’m in the market for friends, people. Spread the word).

Long term goals: Raise my two sweet babes into healthy, integrated adults who love themselves, are self-assured, engaged in the world around them and eager to live out their own, unique passions. Raise myself to be the same. Be published. Reach people and bring light and love into their lives with my words.

My short term goals are simple in that while I may be tempted at times to tell them to fuck off, I know what I need to do to make them happen. My long term goals, not so much. I have no idea how I’m going to pull those off, only that God does and that can be enough for now.

[bravegirlwrites]

24

What makes someone beautiful from the inside out.

Some random thoughts because I’ve just had a string of sleepless nights and so bits and pieces are my best right now…

Inner beauty is a tricky thing because sometimes it looks like absolute shit on the outside. Take right now, for instance. My hair is matted and a bit oily in places. I’m wearing the same clothes I had on yesterday and the day before (though new underwear, praise the Lord). The bags under my eyes that I can usually keep in check with the occasional dab of brightening cream have gone full blown haywire. I look every bit as exhausted as I feel, but I also feel calm and centered and grateful. And a whole bunch of other positive things I’ll keep hanging onto thank you very much because even though I’ve just gotten home from a three day hospital stay with my sweet little boy, I’ve spent every bit of that time extending love and gentleness to myself so that I could do the same for him.

I think inner beauty shines brightest in those who are most at home within themselves. There’s just something straight up attractive about a person who knows the ins and outs of who they are and is comfortable in their own skin. Real, true beauty is not specific, it doesn’t look a certain way. It simply comes from making friends with your whole self, all of your light and all of your dark, and facing each moment of every new day with a deep acceptance of what you bring to the table.

I have a hunch this is why there are some adults who might not be so pretty on the inside, but I’ve yet to meet a kid who isn’t beautiful through and through. Kids are just themselves.

[bravegirlwrites]

10

A past love who had a significant impact on who you are today.

I’ve only been in love the two times. There was my first boyfriend, Aaron, whom I met when I left home and moved down to Salem, Oregon for my first year of college. We started dating only a few weeks into the semester and somehow it lasted the better part of a year even though I was a fair amount more batshit crazy back then than I am now. We spent the majority of our time together holding hands while watching Family Guy, listening to music (John Mayer will forever make me think of him), and faux studying in my dorm. He was cute and adventurous and said the funniest things over AOL Instant Messenger. I really cared about him and he was only ever good to me, but our love for each other was too young and too little to last through something like my complete mental breakdown. Hypothetically speaking, of course. And then there was my second boyfriend, Jerod. I loved him so much that after nearly two years of dating I married him. We were set up by my brother Ben and his wife Alex (his fiancée at the time and also a childhood friend of Jerod’s) because we had both been trudging through the pain of heartbreak and I guess they thought we might as well be sad together. But I wasn’t quite over Aaron yet and Jerod still hadn’t moved completely past his lost love either, also named Erin by the way because life is just too weird, and so when they invited us both over to hang out around the fire pit on the back patio of Alex’s folks’ house, there wasn’t a single spark within either one of us. Butterflies on my end maybe because Jerod is an effing attractive man, but still no connection to carry us past that one encounter. We didn’t see or speak to each other for over two years after that. Until one day I randomly messaged him on Facebook (I know, no shame!) and invited him to come over and watch the Miss America pageant on TV with me later that same week. Here’s the really unbelievable part: he agreed to my crazy invitation and then actually showed up. I guess you could say that was our first date because after that we were kind of just always together. We watched football games on his friends’ couches, went out to all the local pubs, danced late into the night on weekends and worked our way through his extensive DVD collection. Jerod was constantly making me laugh and when I was around him I felt like the girl I wanted to be. Weeks into our relationship he told me he loved me, and then he also made sure things didn’t get weird when I didn’t say it back. I was scared to open up my heart, and not just because of any past break up, but because a lot of the love I’d known all my life had deeply hurt me and made me think that maybe I wasn’t so worthy of it. To take his love in and make it my own and then to love him back, it all felt a bit risky. So I hid parts of myself and pushed him away, even as my feelings for him grew, because I couldn’t seem to stop being so afraid. One evening in particular, after the mile high walls around my heart had made it nearly impossible for us to enjoy being together, we got into a fight that was nothing short of fierce. Somewhere along the way in all our arguing, just about every last one of my defenses was stripped down and I went to sleep that night feeling exposed, vulnerable and completely unloveable. I thought for sure that things were over. The next morning I woke up and went downtown to open up the restaurant where I waited tables. While I was standing at the counter busily refilling the sugar shakers, I looked up and there was Jerod standing in the doorway. I knew right then at that very moment that not only had I been wrong, that things were not in fact over, but also that I loved him, this man who saw the good in me even when I couldn’t see it myself yet, who continued to lean into me despite all of my walls and wariness. And though our relationship since then hasn’t been without struggle (we’ve been married seven years now and have had two babies and he’s not perfect and I’m reallllly not perfect), I will always be grateful to Jerod for showing me just how beautiful and good love can be.

[bravegirlwrites]

9

Your favorite friendship memory.

I’m not big on regrets. I mean, I have them of course. I’ve made the unfortunate decision to cut my own bangs without giving myself the proper amount of time to think it over and then spent the next three months wearing all manner of headbands and hair clips trying to grow them back out without losing my mind. I’ve come to the realization that some particular aspect of my parenting could use tweaking no fewer than a hundred times or so (mostly just because I have no idea what I’m doing) and it’s easy to wish I’d gotten that bit figured out much sooner. There’s also the time I thought it’d be no problem to walk the entire length of Waikiki without stopping for a drink of water. I don’t think I’ve ever been more sorry. My brain has yet to find a way around the occasional foolish decision, imperfection seems inevitable, and so I suppose I’ll continue having regrets. I’m just not big on keeping them around is all. There’s only one good thing to do with a regret and that’s to let it go.

Except when you can’t. There’s one regret I carry with me (though thankfully the load is shared by my brother Ben) and despite the fact that it stems from an opportunity we missed out on over ten years ago, so deeply embedded is our remorse that we still talk about it to this day. Only a grade apart, Ben and I were best friends all throughout high school. We had all the same friends and wherever we went it was usually together. The two of us logged hundreds of hours driving around in my 1990 Mazda Protege, the volume turned all the way up on the top of the line CD player he’d had installed for me just a week into his first job at Best Buy. We loved all the same bands, knew all the same lyrics by heart. Jimmy Eat World and Taking Back Sunday were our favorites back then, and in the spring of 2005 they just so happened to tour the country together. Only we didn’t go. Four years later neither one of us had found complete forgiveness for ourselves just yet and so I determined to do something about it. We couldn’t see both bands play together, that was no longer a thing, but I’d learned that Jimmy was about to embark on a ten-city tour to celebrate the tenth anniversary of their debut album. We were going to go, I was going to make it happen. There’d be no missing out this time, never mind that not one of those cities happened to be within any sort of reasonable driving distance from where we lived. I felt our profound regret from before warranted extreme measures though, so I purchased two tickets to their final show in Tempe, and then I bought two plane tickets too. As soon as I had them in hand, I met up with Ben to surprise him with the plans. We flew down to Arizona at the ass crack of dawn the morning of the show, and both being too young to rent a car, had walked around aimlessly for the better part of the day until we found the venue. After that the three hour wait in line felt straight up heavenly. The show was a welcome relief as well, the three hour long set making up for what we’d missed out on all that time before. It was every bit as amazing as I thought it’d be, seeing the band that had created the soundtrack to our teenage years play live, and we definitely left the Marquee Theater that night having made good.