Love, And How Little I've Known

This past weekend, I visited my sister Susie in Phoenix. She has pancreatic cancer, and it's wreaking havoc on her body.

Out of everything I could write or say about it, for right now, I only want and am only able to talk about this:

Love, and how little I've known of it.

I spent most of my time in Phoenix with Susie's husband, Mike. If you had asked me a week ago if I loved people well, I would have given some humble version of a "yes," but in my mind would have thought, "Of course I do." Mike has me reconsidering that.

While my sister is in the hospital, he handles everything else--the kids, the bills, the taxes, his work. He goes to visit her in the hospital and holds her hand and no matter how tired he is, he asks in the most gentle voice, "What do you need, baby doll? What can I do?" He gets on the hospital staff when something's not going right--not because he's a jerk, but because it's one of the only things he can control when it comes to this cancer business. He'll do anything, even if it's a tiny thing, to make this better for Susie.

This weekend, I realized that for most of my life, I've only played and splashed around in the shallow end of the pool of love.

Mike has dived into the deep end of love. Submersed himself. He holds his breath there and lets it burn his lungs.

I'm thankful for a guy who loves deeply like he does.

I have so much yet to learn.

Feature photo ©2013 Oscar Cortez

The Songs That Save Us

On Sunday night, I saw one of my favorite bands play in a small bar in Philly.

The band's name? Paper Route.

The show? Blew my mind. (I can't say enough about it, really, so I'll just say this--go listen to them, and if you get the chance, see them live. They do it right.)

I was only a few feet from the stage with a couple of good friends by my side. There's something special that happens when you get to stand in front of a band you've listened to for hours and hours and hear the notes come directly from their fingers and mouths. And when it's so loud it rattles your organs, even better.

That night, as I hoped they would, they played a song that means a lot to me--it's called "Better Life."

In dark times, there are certain songs that save us. Do you know what I mean? There are songs, even whole albums, that speak to us and heal us.

"Better Life" is one of those songs. The Peace of Wild Things is one of those albums.

Through some beautiful stroke of grace, Paper Route intersected my life at just the right time. I'll forever have a deep appreciation for and connection to the band, the album, and that particular song. It came to me in the toughest season I'd ever had and said, "A better life is waiting."

It saved me. It gave me hope when I had little hope. It brought me light when I hadn't seen light for a long time.

I'm sure we all have some songs like this. It's what I love about song--it takes the power of music, combines it with the power of poetry, and creates something with limitless potential to move people. It's been done for who knows how many thousands of years, and it never gets old.

Just before he began the song, the lead singer, J.T., said, "I believe the words of this song today even more than when we first wrote it."

Me too, guys. Me too.

***

Better Life

All this trouble that I know Every swing I take and stone I throw All the bridges that I've burnt All the new ways that I hurt

You gave up and I lost track When you love someone who don't love back It don't matter who's at fault Nothing matters now at all

I might have said too much I might have said too much I won't forget your touch I'm saying too much

A better life is waiting...

And what is done is done Piece together what's been broken Can you ever give up someone? A better life, a better life is waiting

All this fire in my veins From a heart that's trapped in my rib cage Burning through my fingertips Burning everything I kiss

All the memories that you live in Are just another door that I'm closing In a hall that's infinite But at least I can admit

I might have said too much I might have said too much I won't forget your touch I'm saying too much

A better life is waiting...

And what is done is done Piece together what's been broken Can you ever give up someone? A better life, a better life is waiting

Oh, I know I'm saying too much

Monday Confessional: I Want to Run

You can read the previous Monday Confessional here.

***

Confession: I've been seriously considering a move to the west coast.

Just before 2015 started, I sat down in front of my journal and began to write down all of my hopes and dreams and goals for the year. Some of these goals involve places I want to go (Europe), what I want to do with my money (save more/give more), activities I need to do more (snowboard/rock climb), and how to love people better (don't be an idiot).

Among those items on the list is a question: Is it time for me to go somewhere else?

It's a scary question. It's one that kept popping up for me, and I finally worked up the nerve to write it down.

On a side note, I've found that writing something down, even if it's for my eyes only, makes it so much more real. Terrifyingly real. If I can keep it as a mere thought, it's more like an imaginary creature, say a unicorn, flying around in the land of pretend inside my head. No consequences, no implications--just rainbows and sparkles, and I can make it all disappear with a snap of my fingers. The second I write it down, though, it's like poof! and I'm staring at a real, live unicorn in my room and I'm thinking, "What the heck do I do with this thing?" I don't know the first thing about unicorn care. What do they eat? Do they bite? This unicorn doesn't look as jolly and fun-loving as he did in my head.

And we're back. Ever since I wrote that question down, I've wrestled with it. I've locked arms with it, and I've rolled around in the dirt with it almost every day.

I normally wouldn't share something like this in this space--something that has so many implications for so many people in my life--but the conclusion I've come to is worth putting it out there.

I'm not moving.

Not now, anyway. I'm open to it, like I'm open to a lot of things in my life. As a rule, I'm trying to stop myself from planning and mapping all of it out.

I realized I'm not moving because I discovered what my motivation was. During this process, I shared my bothersome question with two people total. And each person responded with a question of their own: "Why?"

Great. Frickin. Question.

The answer to that question sputtered out of me one night as I tried, and failed, to bring up legitimate reasons. Out of the incoherent fog of my excuses (even the good ones--the weather, the mountains, the beaches, the lifestyle) arose the true, driving force behind this whole ordeal: I was running away from something.

I wanted to escape.

Here's what I know about running--it's much better to run to something than to run from something.

If I ever move, I want to have something on the horizon, something I've fixed my eyes on, something I really desire, and I want to run toward it with everything I have.

I don't want to leave my painting unpainted, leave my song without a resolving chord, leave behind everything and everyone important to me, because I decided to run away from something.

I don't want to run to escape. I want to run right through my challenges. I want to run to love, to hope, to dream, to build.

I can resolve that question in my journal now.

Is it time for me to go elsewhere? No. Not yet. Not while there's still so much to run to here, where I am.

Healing Feels Like

Healing feels like suffering at first. It feels like pain that comes in pulsing waves that sometimes lap over, sometimes crash into the shore.

It looks like wide-open eyes at night when you should have fallen asleep hours ago.

It looks like friends who know the pain is too great to talk or hug away, and so they simply sit and breathe with you.

It sounds like angry questions you ask God even if you don't believe in him.

It sounds like the same song repeating, repeating, repeating as it sings and sews the sutures that barely hold you together.

It feels like sliding down an icy hill which takes you toward something, somewhere new against your will.

It tastes like the tears that swell in your eyes, roll down over your cheekbones, and cascade over your lips.

Healing feels like awkward transitions.

It feels like the itch of scabs that form over your wound that you want to scratch.

It feels like the fear that chains itself to your ankle and makes you wonder if you'll ever be right again.

It looks like the squinting of your eyes when you first leave a dark room and meet the bright, burning embrace of the sun again.

It looks like the mess of pebbles, rocks, and dirt all over the road and sidewalks after the snow melts.

It looks like the indecision on your face when you wonder how you feel when you see or hear or run into him or her or it for the first time in a long time.

It sounds like the wobble of the chuckle that marks the first time you're able to laugh about the situation.

It sounds like the tapping of your fingers on the table, your feet on the linoleum, your heart on your ribcage, because you're antsy and ready to be over this.

It tastes like the tears that still come, though less frequently, as you ask yourself that nagging question...What if?

Healing looks like time.

It looks like days, weeks, months, and maybe years.

It feels at first like the days have stretched into the shoes of centuries and walk ever so slowly toward specks in the horizon.

It feels at some point like the days have shrunk themselves to the size of a hummingbird's wings and beat several times a second.

It sounds like the swell of songbirds signaling the sunrise of a spring you were afraid might never arrive.

It sounds like Amazing Grace but in a language you comprehend for the first time in your life.

It tastes like tears that slide down your face and around the corners of your smiling mouth when you realize how far you've come.

Healing is a mess.

Healing is a fight.

Healing is time, and time, and time.

Healing is coming. Healing we'll find.

***

Feature photo ©2013 Duncan Rawlinson | Flickr

Monday Confessional: Overcorrecting The Heart

A while ago, I wrote these "Monday Confessional" posts. Then I stopped. This kind of follows a pattern in my life where I come up with an idea and try it out, and then I hate it for a while, and then I realize it might not have been that bad. So after over a year of hiatus, here's the return of my Monday Confessionals:

***

I vowed to myself a while ago that I wouldn't let any one person determine my happiness or worth.

I may have overcorrected.

This is what happens when you overcorrect: you make a mistake or have some negative experience, and in trying to fix said mistake and prevent said situation from happening again, you go too far. Overcorrection is frequently linked with driving.

It happens like this--you're driving down the road, and suddenly your car hits a slippery section of road and begins to slide, out of your control, to the right or the left. This can be a heart-stopping, terrifying experience--you might be going fifty to sixty miles per hour or more (to be fair, it's scary at any speed) and headed right for another car, a telephone pole, a concrete median, or a menacing ditch. In these moments, your gut, your instinct, your body will tell you to slam on your brakes, grab that steering wheel, and jerk it in the direction you want your car to go.

That's overcorrection. And that simple reaction to a bad thing happening and trying to get out of it causes thousands of accidents and deaths every year.

I think that's where I am.

Wanting to avoid slamming into the tree that's threatening to snap your car in half isn't bad. Wanting to avoid placing anyone on a pedestal and pinning my happiness on them isn't bad, either. It's good, actually.

It's a lesson everyone has to learn if they're serious about having healthy relationships. If we think a person--a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, friend, boss, coworker, fan--is responsible for our happiness, we'll find ourselves wanting. We'll find ourselves, at some point, the opposite of happy--we'll be miserable and disappointed because no one can be our happiness. No one can live up to that responsibility.

After I hit enough telephone poles, relationally speaking, because I placed my hopes and dreams in a person, I decided to hit the brakes and turn that steering wheel away from disaster. It was my gut reaction, my instinct. At first, it seemed to work.

I told myself there is no person out there who can fix me and my issues. I worked on living my life in a way that allows me to pursue my passions and what breaks my heart. I committed myself to decrease my focus on my problems and increase my focus on helping and encouraging the people around me without the expectation of being treated the same way in return.

I became independent. Which is great. Mostly great. I go where I want to go, when I want to go. I don't need someone else's permission, nor do I have to wait for someone to join me to feel validated in going. If I want to go camping in the Adirondacks, I go. If I want to visit Niagara Falls, I go. If I want to drive to the beach at 11 p.m., I do it. If I want to see a movie, I don't need to call anyone and figure out which nights and times we all have free. I can just see it by myself. Some of you might read that and think of other words to describe me other than "independent" (loser), but if you have the freedom, both of schedule and self-confidence, to see a movie by yourself, then you've made it in life as far as I'm concerned.

All of which can be good. But sometimes, we can take independence too far.

When your car starts to slide out of control, experts say to fight your instincts--fight the urge to turn the steering wheel hard and fast or slam your brakes. They say to let off the gas and the brake pedal, to slowly and carefully turn the steering wheel in the direction you'd like to go until your car settles back on track and into the proper lane.

Which is easy to do when you read about it, and much harder when you're making split-second decisions at seventy miles per hour with your heart in your throat.

As I've corrected myself toward independence, I may have had the steering wheel to the side a little too long. Perhaps I've pumped the brakes a bit too hard. I haven't stopped at simply being independent and content.

My heart has become stone.

In my attempt to fix my past mistakes, to free myself from the lie that some other person holds the key to my happiness, to keep my heart from spilling out all over people who don't want it, I've sealed it up.

I find myself thinking and saying, "I don't care what this person thinks. I don't care what this person does. I don't care."

To say that a person doesn't determine my worth or happiness is one thing. A good thing. To say that I simply do not care, to clamp the valves of my heart so tightly so that I don't feel anymore--that's different. That's an overcorrection.

Lately, I've refused to let anything that even smells like validation or rejection from anyone jump over the moat that has slowly surrounded me. I don't care who calls me or doesn't call me to hang out. I don't care who responds to my text messages or not. I don't care who remembers my birthday or not. I don't care if someone compliments me or not. I don't care when someone does compliment me. I don't care who checks in on me or not. I don't care if you care about me or not. I don't care if you respond to me. I'm going to do me, and I'm going to do it with or without you.

Because I

will

not

let

you

make

me

feel.

I will not let you make me feel anything I don't want to feel. This is not, "I'm independent." This is, "Forget you--I won't give you the chance to put so much as a scratch or dent anywhere on me."

The difference is hard to detect. I'm not quite sure of the exact moment I crossed the line from healthy to shut off. It was probably a slow process, the way that bread shifts from soft and fresh to stiff and stale a little bit at a time.

I feel lucky that I'm catching it now, before I make any stupid decisions or hurt someone significantly in the process. Maybe I have already, and if so, feel free to call me on my nonsense. If I've learned anything from my past, it's that people who don't allow themselves to be hurt will inevitably hurt the people around them. The defenses you set up, the barbed wire with which you line the doors to your heart, will cut and damage the people who try to breach them.

I don't want this to be me.

I know better. I really do. To love, to experience life in its fullest capacity, I have to let people hurt me. It's part of the deal. One of my favorite bands, Sleeping At Last, has a song that says, "We can't...fall in love with a heart that's too strong to break."

I think that applies to all forms of love, not just the romantic sort. We can't love and be loved without being in a position to have our hearts broken from time to time.

We have to fight our defensive instincts sometimes.

We have to resist the urge to jerk the steering wheel away from danger.

We have to restrain our feet from pushing the brake pedal into the floor.

We have to finesse this. Keep our eyes fixed on where we want to go. Ease ourselves back in that direction.

And sometimes, we'll still hit something.

It's okay.

It's how life and love work.

***

Feature photo ©2010 Niels Linneberg | Flickr