Babies

Sometimes it baffles me that there is still so much to-do about a baby born a couple thousand years ago.  We get all excited and sometimes lost and overwhelmed in the preparations for this holiday, but when it comes down to it - to this moment - there is an air of anticipation.


I grew up going to church and this day, this Christmas Eve day, is my most favorite of church-going holidays.  Waking up on Christmas Eve day means the promise of baked treats wafting from the kitchen.  It means getting  my hands dirty doing what I love: helping prepare the traditional Swedish smorgasbord food we eat every year.  In the evening we go to church, where we finally still ourselves; we sing the traditional carols under and amid dim white lights.  Quietly we leave, back into the world for the brief time it takes to retrieve ourselves and gather 'round Mom and Dad's fancily-laid table, steam rising in front of everyone's plate.  After our taste buds have remembered that once, long ago, they hailed from Sweden, the anticipation yet lingers.


I suppose as a child, this anticipation may have centered on the presents under the tree, the promise of tomorrow's gifts for me.  As an adult, I anticipate the Christmas morning present-opening tradition in the Johnson household as a culmination of the months of deciding on the precisely perfect present for each beloved person.  There is still another cause of anticipation, however.  It is the gift of a little baby's birth that we celebrate.  Whether it's Jesus' birth, or your birth, the birth of your child or a stranger's, each baby is a promise of a new and ever-unfolding gift.  This is the miracle that I celebrate tonight: the mystery of each person's contribution to our world.  This is why I love my work.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

I'm a teacher.  I recently had a conversation with another teacher, who expressed appreciation for parent-teacher conference conversations in which the parents are emphatically concerned with the question, "Does my child respect you and other teachers?"  I also appreciate parent-teacher conferences in which the parents ask about more than a student's academics, but something about this conversation has continued to gnaw at the back of my mind (not in a migraine kind of way, just a bit of unsettling of my soul).


I stand with my back against the countertop, hands wrapped around a mug of warm water - known in my family as silver tea - scanning the busyness of the room.  On the carpet, a couple boys build towers with the knobless cylinders, a potentially potent, but for now peaceful, mix of personalities and material.  I become enthralled watching Zoe work with coloring pencils and paper on the table by the fish tank.  Minutes pass; she and I are "in the zone," Csikeszentmihalyi's flow, we are absorbed in our work.  As she dutifully arranges her pencils above her paper and settles into her seat, I note her determined, focused, concentrated countenance.  From somewhere deep within her, she felt the need to do this work - the outcome of which still remains a mystery to me.


Each day I watch as children engage in freely chosen work, unveiling more about their inherent personality, more fully owning skills that propel them into the future, as they will continue to become distinctly beautiful human beings.  Watching Zoe at work, absorbed in her peaceful inner drive, peace settles on the shores of my soul; I understand my respect for the child far outweighs the child's need to respect me, for as she creates a meticulously multi-colored abstract drawing on that blank piece of paper, she acts to create herself.

What is Aura?

A migraine envelops three stages: prodrome, the headache phase, and postdrome.  Unique symptoms mark each of these stages, which are sequential for most migraine sufferers, excepting chronic migraine sufferers, of which I was one last spring.  For the chronic migraine sufferer, the symptoms of any of the three stages can present themselves at any time, uniquely or overlapping.  Having chronic migraines is like swimming in the alphabet soup of migraine symptoms.  And I don't know how to swim.

This autumn, I've experienced migraines again after a summer respite.  Thankfully, my migraines have not returned with the ferocity with which they attacked me last spring.  I do not have chronic migraines now as I did then.  This new migraine experience has allowed me to distinguish the symptoms of each phase of a migraine and I can now predict when the headache phase will hit me like a ton of bricks because the prodrome symptoms present themselves distinctly from the headache and other ensuing symptoms.

During prodrome, I often experience a melange of the following symptoms:

-aura

-flashes of light or color

-blurred vision

-partial loss of sight

-numbness or tingling on face and/or arms

-partial paralysis

-weakness and perceived heaviness of limbs on 1 side of the body

-problems understanding written and spoken language

-mental confusion

-disorientation

-mood changes

-irritability

-lethargy

Aura?

Yes, things and people appear to glow, as if they have multi-colored halos.  When the carved words on the benches at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden suddenly became illegible wavy lines, I knew a migraine was settling into my body.  I walked down a hallway another day last week and at the corner, where the wall should fall in one continuous line from ceiling to floor, I saw a discrepancy of about 2 inches about waist-high, the bottom half of the wall jutting into the hallway beyond the top half.  When I dazedly ran my hand along the corner joint from top to bottom, though, it made one continuous smooth movement.  But it disappeared from sight for a bit right where that discrepancy appeared to me.  Kerry glows purple.  I smell phantom smells - rotten eggs, natural gas.  Aura is weird because it can be my normal.

This Thanksgiving, I chose to give thanks for sickness and for health.  In art class last year, I learned that Van Gogh suffered from migraines, too.  "He actually saw the world differently," a fellow student announced, and he painted his world.

Rattled Cage

I heard a sermon a few months ago that rattled my cage, as the pastor forewarned it might.  Just as I was settling into the idea of a new home, this guy comes along and challenges me:

Q: Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?

A: NO!

The following week, I contemplated how to know when and where to move.  On a bike trip, every turn in direction can be a big one; it is important to me not to take a "wrong" turn, lest it result in unintentionally adding many miles.  In my at-home life I'm not so much afraid of the added mileage, but I live in the knowledge that there are wise and unwise decisions.  I try to make the wisest, and I find that these are made in silence and contemplation.

On my wall, I've posted a little note to myself:

Wait here.

The Spirit is "in the World."

Discover stories.

Ask questions.

Be a learner.

Be courageous.

I also added a little footnote:

Migraines / Paring

We took the house.  I moved 2 miles from my previous residence and it has been a long journey.  A sociology student in undergrad, I am beginning to feel the meaning of the term "slumlord," though our neighborhood is far from the slums, our landlord is by no means, well, good at fulfilling said role, nor at respecting our personhood.  Yet patiently I've waited.

Infrequent migraines seep slowly back into my life, and I wonder: what does that mean for me?  I've altered my diet, I keep a ritual bedtime.  Is this the time to move again?  Already?  So soon?  Now that I've written it, it seems too soon.  I want to wait awhile longer, for more proof that This is the time.  But I have an inkling my headaches will only increase.  Do I stay or do I go?

I haven't slept well this week.


I had a ball dancing last night with my roommates.  They didn't so much, but I did.


I woke up Monday night between 1:00 and 1:30 am panicked that I'd overslept.  These waking periods repeated themselves every half hour until my alarm finally beep-beep-beeped at 4:45 am and I excused myself from under my covers.


On Tuesday night I overcompensated and each time I awoke (mimicking the previous night's pattern), I calmed myself, "No, not yet."  Even when my alarm beeped in my ear I quieted it and thought, "No, not yet."  Oops!  Rush, rush, rush to deliver all my Star Tribunes not-too-late. Then Rush-rush-rush to school.  On time, whew.


Wednesday and Thursday nights I repeated the sleep-wake-sleep pattern but I roused each morning with my alarm and put my feet into my mildly chilly slippers, pattered down the stairs into my running shoes and out the door on time. 


I love dancing.  I climbed in bed euphoric last night, endorphins pumping through my bloodstream.  This is my Sabbath day.  Despite a late night (ahem, early morning), I awoke by 7 am after an uninterrupted night of sleep, eager to hop out of bed and cook and bake up a storm.  Today is my Sabbath day; I wait patiently for inspiration to come to me, to feel the Spirit moving within and without me and to join in - to follow its lead.  At the end of the day, I hope to go to bed with similar contentedness, to know that I've danced, smiling and laughing all the while; to have given my number freely to that which the upcoming week may hold.  I anticipate the day I hear the Spirit calling me into a new adventure.


Wait, wait, go.

The Lord's Prayer

Admittedly, I wander.  Usually when riding my bike I feel completely full of bliss and think to myself and sometimes say aloud (now that everybody's car windows are closed), "I feel so happy!"  Sometimes when I stop, when I stand still, I feel confused.  I want to go but I don't know which direction to turn, if at all.

I am so eager to arrive at a destination I am beginning to reconcile may be unknown, or not entirely known.  After a good chat with the 

I feel convicted.  I need to relax. I need to let beauty unfold before me, to allow beauty into my life.  I rode my bike hastily and purposefully through the city streets.  When I feel lost, I ride.  On long rides, I lose myself.  Only when I lose my current self do I feel the hope of incarnation.

It's nearly impossible to get lost on the streets of a city I intentionally make my home.  I found myself instead at a coffee shop, where I hoped to descend into a state of meditation.  Plugged in I perused previous blog entries and found a comment from my cousin Joe.  His voice urged Slower, more Present living.

Slow down.  Accept beauty.  Create space for the unknown.  Listen for the voice of conscience.

I walked away from my boss this afternoon, pointing toward my own head, "Shut up, Emily," I pleaded with myself.  Allow for beauty and live into it.

Injera

Today, I'm making injera:
Or, more accurately, THIS WEEK I'm making injera.  It all began on a particularly autumnal day, perfectly suited for a big bowl of nice warm stew.  For some bizarre reason, I chose to make an Ethiopian Stew, Yemiser W'et, from this cookbook.  At the end of the recipe it said, "serve with injera (see page 525)."  As Minneapolis is a hub for many east African immigrants, I could run to just about any local grocery store and pick up a batch of injera (this recipe suggested 3 batches), but here was a recipe staring me in my face like a dare. Little did I know it was a double-dog dare.


I'd already started the stew.  I began to mix the injera.  Eight cups of flour in, I realized I'd need a bigger bowl.  And that was only the first ingredient.  I poured my dry ingredients into an even bigger bowl.  Now I needed to add 12 cups of warm water.  And the biggest bowl in our kitchen had about an inch remaining of unfilled space.  Hemm.  Hah.  What shall I do?!?!


Oh, look, Ruth's cake carrier:

Pour, pour, mix mix mix.
Read the recipe: "Let rise 3 days at room temperature."
3 days!?!?  I put the lid on.


I ate my stew sans injera.  It was deliciously perfect for the crisp autumn weather outside.


I washed my many dishes. I revisited my mysterious injera and realized that if it had to rise for 3 days(!),  even this upside-down cake carrier was not nearly capacious enough.  I fetched my freshly washed mixing bowls and filled each about half full with injera batter, covered them, and began to wait.


All the next day at work I worried about my injera.  Would I return home to find a dough explosion all over my kitchen?  How much would my roommates hate me, should that happen?  (Un)fortunately, when I returned home my injera hadn't risen much.  Was this due to the lack of heat in our house?  I worried about my cold toes; Evie, Ruth, and I brainstormed all the warmer places we could be while wearing our heavy jackets inside.  Quietly, I gave a slightly concerned thanks for my un-exploded injera.  Three days passed without tragedy.  


Bread is funny that way, how it needs to rest.


Today is my first vacation day since school started after Labor Day.  Big plans for the day: clean the Teachers' Shelves at school; shop for linens; rearrange my room; put on storm windows.  But first, there's a video lecture I've been waiting to watch.  Oh, and my injera is NOW about to explode.  So I take my laptop to the kitchen and begin to fry (?) up my injera, one quarter cup of batter at a time.  The first few resemble pancakes (they should look more like crepes).  Mmm! Pancake!  I take a pinch of one.  Not sweet. Not a pancake.

Injera in the pan

Four hours later, the injera batter and I have become friends.  Not one thing has gotten crossed off the mental to-do list I'd begun accumulating for this single day a month ago.  I've spent the morning in the kitchen sipping coffee and water, pouring quarter-cups full of injera batter into a pan, one at a time, waiting, and repeating.  I made a second batch of Ethiopian stew (a different recipe this time) and a quart of vegetable stock to freeze for winter.  I've watched foot traffic come and go from the garage sale across the street.  But mostly, I wait.  The injera has begun to speak to me.  It likes the burner set at 2 and its edges begin to pull away from the pan when it needs me to lift it from the pan.  But mostly, I wait.


Bread is funny that way, how it requires me to rest.

Intentions

I've been meaning to post for several days now.  I've got a good one (or at least I deem it as such, and I'm obviously not the most objective judge in the world) cooking itself up in my brain, astir in my soul.


Have I written about being ill?  I think I did, in my original post about prayer.  I had migraines every day this year from February 22 - June 5.  Every. Day.


Then I went on a bike trip.  On June 7 I mounted by sturdy bicycle and pedaled, one rotation at a time, to visit my sister & family in Nashville, TN.  My migraines dissipated.  This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip for the sole reason that when I sat down with my mom, who saw me through the worst of my migraines, to show her my trip pictures and we came to this one she exclaimed, "You look so healthy!"

Healthy.  Something I didn't feel for a long time, something for which I'd once given up hope.

I spent a blissful summer living delightfully slowly.  I didn't work.  I travelled when the spirit said "travel," I rested daily.  I prepared my own food with my own two hands.  I went to bed early and rose with the sun.  I read or didn't read.  I wrote.

In August I returned to work, to a job that I love and my migraines re-infested my skull.  Like the slight fluttering of angels' wings, I overheard a parent of a new student saying, "My dad used to get awful migraines and it turns out he is allergic to dairy.  He gave up dairy and he's been healthy since."

Good-bye, dairy.  I vowed to "give it a try," to avoid dairy completely for one month.  I'm not good at following rules, but I did it!  From September 1 - September 30, I didn't ingest dairy in any form.  My body felt so capable. So healthy.  I took up running.  School started and I worked 11 energetic hours daily.

It's October now.  I've eaten Macaroni & cheese and pizza and cookies.  I didn't check the ingredients in Sunday morning's bread.  I feel sick.

I can't summon the energy to create a coherent post about anything.  It's increasingly difficult to teach.  It's hard work to be healthy and annoying too.  But its a road I need to travel.

Dear Body,  teach me to listen.  Please be patient with me as I learn.

Surprise!

Have you ever surprised yourself?

Sometimes I surprise myself.  Most recently, this happened after I'd had one or two or three drinks (spread over more than that many hours, so don't get the idea that I was falling all over myself.  I wasn't.).

I sat, with my legs curled under me, in the corner of a friend's couch, talking about my then-upcoming weekend, which has become the present.  I am overnight nannying for a family I've known and cared for since the boy was in diapers.  The girl is in middle school now.  It is an honor to be invited into this home, into this family's life, time and time again over the years.  I clumsily explained why spending my weekend (off from teaching) with two kids appealed to me, a single-and-loving it twenty-something. 

"Sometimes I'm afraid of being forgotten."  The words dripped down my chin as I sat wide-eyed.  Did I hear that correctly?  Did that just happen?  The truth I didn't know hung in the air as I wished to reel them in, wipe the sticky truth off my face and return to innocent ignorance.

Thank you, friend, for being receptive.  For not batting an eyelash.  For letting me surprise myself then letting me shut myself up without requiring me so to do.  Thank you for being safe.

I'm living that upcoming weekend now.  It is simple, it is beautiful.  We know each other well and we are not forgotten.

Homecoming, Part 2

Sometimes coming home is hard to do.  It is awkward and uncomfortable.  You realize you don't quite fit the cavity you left behind.  What then?

I can only think of one solution:

Leave again and bravely plow your own path.

Prayer

 About a month ago, I wrote this post on prayer.


The temperature on this morning's bike commute hovered in the mid-30's.  As I rounded a corner a mile and a half into the commute, I found myself muttering "Sweet Jesus."  Then I remembered my fervent prayer ritual.  When people ask, "How do you do it?" in reference to winter biking, I only have a few responses:

• Long underwear, goggles, a balaklava, and lots of socks.
• Four-letter words
• I pray. A lot.

Sure enough.  Four blocks north of my school, I approach Christian Park.  As my bike glided across the intersection and I began to ride parallel to the park, I began to pray aloud the Hail Mary in Spanish. (It is a long, unfortunate tale as to how I learned this prayer.)  I do this everyday in the winter.  Somehow, it holds me through the last moments of the cold.

So I guess I do pray sometimes.

Homecoming

Most of the time, I don't know how I feel about religion or deity.


This weekend I visited my grandparents in southwestern Iowa to 'celebrate' my grandma's 91st Birthday! "How different my life could have been!" I marveled as we toured the countryside, seeing the homesteads of my grandparents now-passed peers.  My cousins still live in the same county where both grandparents have lived their entire lives, excepting a brief stint to serve in World War II.  My immediate family passed a couple chapters of our collective life there, too.  But we settled here, not there.


Yet on Sunday morning as we sidled into the "back pew of the front section" of my grandparents' church, I knew I wasn't too far off the mark.  Despite my frequent agnostic tendencies (or maybe I'm just a skeptic?), I was glad to see some familiar hymns listed in the bulletin and surprisingly glad to sing them.  I cherish the opportunity to sit next to my Buddy (grandpa) and Grandma and sing the songs we've all known since childhood, reassuring us of Divine Presence.


When I biked to Nashville this summer, I stayed one night with an amazingly hospitable woman named Ruth in Nauvoo, IL.  The morning after my arrival, she took me to see the sights of Historic Nauvoo, commemorating the original Mormon settlement.  In the Visitor's Center, we sat on a bench facing a very large Jesus sculpture who, at the poke of a button, spoke to us.  "What did you hear?" asked the young missionary staffing the site.  "Love," I said, "Over and over, he urged us to love.  Love is the Way, the only Way."  I felt very vulnerable and simultaneously very guarded.  Suddenly, despite frequent doubt, I wanted to cling to my "home religion."  Yet Love is something I felt we could hold in common, despite religious - or irreligious - tendencies.


I still have more questions than answers and I honestly prefer to live in the grey.  I don't ask my questions loudly.  But I do find great comfort in singing the hymns of my youth and of my grandparents' youth.  I like Jesus.  When I read the Bible erratically I often think "Yeah! I should read this more!"  But I don't.  I live like a pugnacious preteen.  Instead of channelling my Buddy's quiet religiosity, I cling to his orneriness.  I don't know where I am, but I do know I like the feeling of "coming home."


**Caution: this post was written in a state of great fatigue, and is completely unedited.  I can't remember where I began or whence I travelled in the meantime.  But if I don't publish now, I never will.  So here goes...**

Found object

Found this:


salamander in the desert.
farewell, nomadic life,
life on 2 wheels.
farewell adventure
new place to sleep each night
makeshift town triangles
anger, strife, and perseverance
farewell close travel companions
and distant friends.
you are all but a memory now
~growing fainter with each
passing day.
Farewell.


(and counter to my previous post, i drew a line drawing -- a doodle really.  i'm riding a bike in a circle, never leaving. Why?)

Lines Do Not Exist

Last week, I paid a visit to the Minneapolis Institute of Art with my friend Timmy.  As we wandered aimlessly around (but careful to avoid the Asian Art section, where I usually start and then get terribly lost and end up spending the whole day), we stumbled upon the exhibition "Une Cite Moderne: Drawings by Robert Mallet-Stevens, architect."

Immediately my pace slowed as I meandered to one drawing and slowly worked my way around the room, stopping to ponder the sociological implications of Mallet-Stevens' designs. (I love architecture.)

 Tim, an artist, appeared over my shoulder and commented something about lines.

"Tell me more," I implored.

"Lines do not exist," he stated, as if it were the simplest of observations.


Another exhibition I was hoping to see (and we did) was one featuring MN artists.  Here's a review.  I was really looking forward to the movie one, to the opportunity to watch people cross the line from suspension of disbelief to return to reality.  But I was disappointed.  People just got up, chatted a little but incoherently, and meandered out of the theaters.  No extraordinary threshold-crossing.


Lines do not exist.

familiar roads

I have a friend who loves music.  And I enjoy watching music wash over him, how it changes his expression.  Even listening to what he deems "not good" music, I watch his brow slightly furrow as he contemplates each piece of a song's musical puzzle.  After careful inspection, he eases into the mysterious relationship between harmony, melody, dynamics, lyrics, and reality.  Now his shoulders slacken, the corners of his eyes droop and we both know he is awash in a Greater Than.  As he descends into this sub-reality, the Spirit in the music draws his Spirit out of him.  Like particles of limestone washing into the Mississippi River, I see elements of his self suspended in the air, mingling with that which is Greater Than.  Somewhere in that dance, his soul alights.  It soars.

When he catches me staring at him (which I could do for hours), he cocks his head to the right and raises his left eyebrow, wondering at his return to this extraordinarily grounded planet.

It is in the presence of music that he loses himself in order to find himself.  For his sake, I wish he could stay there.

This is what long distance cycling is to me.  I embark on a trip hesitantly, worrying that if I lose myself, I might never come back.

In what or where do you lose yourself?  Do you find yourself there?

Just Know

I once encountered the following closing line of a book:

"Things will be alright.

Sometimes you just know."

And despite a mediocre story, I pondered that last line in my heart, allowing its peace to pervade my soul.

Prayer is fickle.  Sometimes I think, God is fickle.

But silence is golden.

In the silence, I learn to trust.  I straddle my bike and I know to go straight, not to turn.  When I pause on a bridge over the Mississippi River, clarity of character shines like the sunlight glinting off the water.  I sit in church and I hear God say, "Go. Go."

Sometimes, I just know.  I need to trust myself.

...And then

for Holly.


...And then I came to the town of Little York, Illinois.


On the morning of the seventh day of my solo bike trip, a clap of thunder shook the house of my accomplished hosts:

and jolted me from 12 hours of sleep.  Gripping the bed beneath me and the reality of the storm above, I shrugged, rolled over, and fell back asleep.  When I awoke two hours later on the banks of the misty Mississippi River,

I quietly maneuvered through the house, preparing four slices of peanut butter toast for breakfast before slipping out the back door and mounting my beloved bike.  

I rode with the ferocity of my impassioned six-year-old self.  Whenever this indescribable, undeniable emotion overtook my entire self and my only imaginable response was: run (in this case, ride) away, I would rip a banana from the bunch on the kitchen counter with a grand flourish of my arm, announce to my mother and anybody within earshot, "I am running away! I'm going to live in a houseboat on the Mississippi River with Kagney (my then-future husband)!"  I remember repeatedly storming out the front door of our house, knowing it faced east, the general direction of my destination, but when confronted with the blackness of Kansas' small-town nighttime sky, I would slink around to the back of the house, hide alongside the tornado cellar door, unpeel and eat my banana slowly before determining I'd been absent long enough to return with some dignity intact.

I took refuge under the dense, ominous clouds as I rode the bike trail into the Quad Cities and through the Quad Cities.  When the trail ended, it just ended.  I was lost!  As I rode, though, I noticed I was on US Highway 67 SOUTH.  "Well, at least I'm going south," I thought, so I followed it.               

It took me through Viola, IL, where I had lunch.  About ten miles beyond that it veered to the left while a state highway continued straight.  Not knowing which to take, or where I was in the state, I called my dad.  As I drew the map he described in my head, revulsion grew up within my gut.  No maps.  This, inexplicably, was one of the two rules I'd set for myself for this trip.  60 miles a day, minimum. No maps.  And so, as I weighed in my mind the option to veer left and head toward the bigger dot on my dad's map, I rudely excused myself from our conversation and stood at the juncture and silently apologized for bringing maps into this.  I'd pedaled maniacally on frazzled nerves much of the day.  In my gut, as I erased my mental map, I knew what to do.  Before I could act, however, I needed to know  to the core of my being, that I trusted myself.  I stood, straddling my bike frame, at the junction of US-67 S & state highway 135 for many minutes until I stopped hoping for a local truck driver to notice my confusion, take pity, and stop to just. tell. me. where to go.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;"

Without a doubt, I knew I was making the right decision, the decision that went against all advice I'd gotten and all I would potentially get.

"Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same"

After about 12 more miles, I came to a town called Little York.  Just outside the town limits, County Hwy 3 offered yet another option.  This, I was sure, would take me west and back toward the River.  Again, I stood.  I could see the sign welcoming me to:

Little York

Pop. 300

not 300 feet ahead.  While "no maps" was a rule designated specially for this trip, I always travel, per my grandfather's example, "no back-tracking."  If I rode into Little York then changed my mind, would that extra 300 feet become 30 extra miles?  Look. Look.  Foot to pedal. Ride.

"What will I say when I get there?" I wondered, hoping there'd be a staffed destination in town, or someone out mowing their lawn, whom I could ask for directions.  I had no particular destination for the night and I honestly knew not from whence I'd come.  "Where in the grand scheme of the universe am I?" I wondered, realizing that my lonely self was smaller than the speck of ink that demarcated Little York, population 300's location on the map of Illinois, a speck that would never exist on a US or world map.  I am tiny.

"Excuse me," I raised my youngest-child/puppy-dog eyes to the clerk at the post office, "Could you tell me where I am in the grand scheme of the universe?"

"You're in Little York, Illinois."

Then she and I looked at a map together.  She told me how to get over to the River, where there were some state campgrounds.  If I happened upon a farmhouse fitting the exact description of hers, I was welcome to stop in for food and sleep there, though her son did have  a Little League game that evening, so she might not be home.  Look for the truck out front.

I back-tracked to County Road 3, turned left, and rode without stopping for the rest of the day, to an abandoned campground where I pitched my tent and penned in my journal:

"I am where I should be.  I'm a little concerned it's going to storm tonight.  It's been very windy all day, and cloudy.  I'd call this weather temperamental."

The wind picked up speed, howling through my tent as it caused my rain fly to shudder. I stretched my limbs in every direction, hoping my weight would keep the corners from tearing out of the ground and into the air.  

"SHhhheewwww, shheww, Shhewwww," the wind blew.  My eyes, unable to see much, darted from side-to-side as I wracked my brain for distracting thoughts. 

I heard my voice before I realized my mouth was open and speaking, "God, please don't let it storm tonight."   

"SHhhheewwww, shheww, Shhewwww," the wind blew.  

Pound pound pound pound pound pound pound, hail fell upon the fly.  In the dark and in the midst of my continuous prayer, "God, please call this storm," I managed to pack up my belongings into my panniers.  I unzipped the bottom foot of my sleeping bag so my feet were free to run when I heard the tornado siren, 

"WEEewwwweEEEWWWwweEEwww."

I spent the night in a cement-block outhouse.

Pray-er

I'm not a pray-er.  It feels awkward to me. It feels awkward to me to pray, to listen to others pray, to have others offer to pray for me.  Except for my niece, who prays diligently at every mealtime, snack time, and whenever she serves plastic food on plastic plates, to the tune of "Frere Jacques:"

God our Father

God our Father

Once again

Once again

We bow our heads and thank you

We bow our heads and thank you

God our men

God our men

In this case, I crack up each and every time, despite my best efforts to remain politely stoic.

Vignette 1:

This spring I had a couple dates with a boy despite my suffering from chronic migraines.  I liked being with him because unlike my friends, he didn't yet know about my constant pain and when I was with him I could pretend I was normal again; I didn't have to answer the question, "How are you feeling NOW?" several times per conversation nor suffer through a newly developed theory or suggestion of a cure.  I could smile and nod and dance and hold hands as if the thunderstorm raging inside my head had never begun.

One morning after an episode so intense I could no longer conceal my pain, he asked if I'd ever prayed about it.

"No."

Then, over the breakfast table, he held my hands, palms together, between his and showed me how: "God, please take away Emily's migraines."

Vignette 2:

Once upon a time there was a group of friends.  Two of them were struggling financially.  Another, a godly man, offered, "I'll pray about it."

I got up and stormed out of the room to do dishes.  Another of the friends, an intuitive young man, followed.  He stood silently waiting for me to berate blind faith until I rewarded his patience.  "He shouldn't say things like that!  He shouldn't offer to pray or offer assurance of God's provision unless HE is willing to take part in solving the problem, to be an agent of the answered prayer!"

The next day, the two friends who were struggling each found  a $200 check in their mailboxes.

Work

It's official.  I'm ready for school to start.  I miss my students oh-so-much!  I've seen three of them in the last couple o' days, and it affirmed in me the joy I find spending time with these little people.


I feel so lucky, to have fallen into a job that blesses me everyday.  When I walk into my classroom, I feel calm.  When I see the children absorbed in their work, happily transferring pinto beans from one container to another, I feel happy.  I feel complete when a child spills her water on the floor and without hesitation or reminder, she fetches a clean cloth to wipe up the spill.  When a child's entire face: eyes, smile, rosy cheeks, lights up from putting together the sounds C-A-T to read the word "cat" for the first time or the fifth, my heart skips with joy.  And oh, the excitement, when we all remember that "Oh no! We can't have ten tens! Ten tens make 100 -- Let's exchange!!!!"


The first day of school is still more than a month away. But I'm excited.  Monday, I'm going into the classroom to clean, clean, clean. To reacquaint myself.  To prepare.


Dear children, I can't wait to discover the gifts we have in store for each other.

Sometimes in the warm weather, we work outside.

Moving & Staying Home

In my 24 years of life, I have lived in 15 different homes.  In the past six years alone, I have moved ten times.


When my family arrived in Minneapolis 15 years ago, as we idled in our blue striped 15-passenger van at the top of an exit ramp, I knew this was it for me.  This is where I would spend my life, indebted to this city for welcoming us home.

Where I first fell in Love with this stretch of River

But I find my heart has fallen in love with elsewhere.  Every curve of the road along Wisconsin Highway 35 south of Prescott takes my breath away.  In each town, regardless the heat, I want to kick off my shoes and snuggle deep into overstuffed furniture wrapped in a comforter.


I visited Alma last weekend with a friend, and texted my sister from our lunch table on a patio overlooking the River.  It is because of her & with her that I discovered these towns at all.  During a quarter-life crisis, we considered buying a bakery here, relocating.  She wrote me back on Saturday, "[A]lma, town of deferred dreams."


I wonder: Are they deferred?  Will they ever come to fruition?  What about my life here? Is it possible to love one place so much it makes your heart skip yet to live in another, fully, wholly?


I believe it is and I am determined so to do.  And maybe someday soon, I'll rediscover myself in this place too.

Avoidance

Avoiding
Avoiding past
Avoiding the present
Avoiding future
Avoiding


I'm ready to go back to work again. I'm ready to need to be needed.


Sleep descends upon my soul
Like a slow fire
Rising up, raging, all-consuming
Birthing something new & long-forgotten
Latent since the glaciers scratched
the surface of this buried earth.
Giving rise to history & future
In one fell swoop.
Amen.

Vulnerability

At the recommendation of more than one friend, and as a self-pitying victim of the oppressive heat this week, I undertook to catch up on the entire season thus far of The Glee Project.


I am independent.  I am a writer.  Of the first, I've been aware for most of my life.  I am still coming to terms with that second identity statement.  Yet as the two co-exist with the fact that I am also an external processor, I have a compendium of significant and not-so-significant life events recorded in stacks upon stacks of mostly spiral-bound journals.  There are periods in my life in which these tomes go silent.  These are times, I know, when I am so extraordinarily close to someone that I my external processing occurs verbally rather than through the written word.  The second half of my year at Bible College, when I suddenly became deeply good friends with my roommate Stef.  My first and second bike trips with Ruth:

In the tent together after a day of biking

.

Since I've been home, I've written in my journal, but I haven't written much:

"...the words don't come..."

"I still feel... without."
"Still at home. Still uninspired."


My favorite episode so far of The Glee Project is Episode 3: Vulnerability.  While I commend all these "kids" as the producers call the participants, pay attention to Damien's plot line. 


Ultimately, Damien wasn't Numb.  He simply denied himself the Painful Truth, resulting in his relative listlessness.


I wonder: What will it take for me to find my Joie de Vivre again?

Wide open spaces?

Children?  

One thing I know for sure.  It's not going to be singing on TV.

(Oh, and check out the next episode of The Glee Project.  Listen carefully for the producers' comments about Damien again.)