Day 7:

Community

Prompt: Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

I think I've actually lost my sense of community this year. Last year many of my friends got married. My small group dispersed after doing the All Church Journey, Swing was overrun by couples, and though I participated in a number of races and became a part of the running community, it's more in a general sense than a specific sense.

Online community (saying this makes me die a little inside) is relegated to facebook stalking, as more of a way to get a fix and an escape from real life versus keeping in contact with people.

Boy, this is depressing. Maybe I'll come back to this one.

Day 6:

Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

The last thing that I made was a cork board. As in, an actually cork board. Made from the corks from wine bottles. One of my good friends has one, and I loved it. So I scavenged a used cork board from the neighbors trash (don’t ask- but people throw away amazing things) and started collecting wine corks. Most recently, I discovered that Whole Foods had a drop off cork recycle box, and people dropped bags of corks into it. I stopped by once and someone had conveniently deposited whole grocery bags full of corks, so all I had to do was nab the bags and voila! A few hours with a glue gun, and I am 98% done. I need to make one more trip to Whole Foods and I’ll be good.

I also found a half-finished scarf that I knitted. I think I was making a scarf to give to a family friend for Christmas of last year. Woops. I’ve started working on it again so that I can give it for this year. It’s not much, but I really like making things for people, and knitting is something that calms me and makes me feel productive when I watch tv or go to movies. Yes, I sneak in knitting to movies. J

Day 5: Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

I let go of a person. How I hate saying that. How I hate reliving that.

I let go of a person.

I also let go of some… conventions. Accepted norms. I let go of my friends who got married and moved away. I let go of the idea that I should have reached certain milestones by now: marriage, children, a home of my own that I can do with as I please. I let go of moving forward the way I am expected to.

But mostly I spent the year letting go of a person, and trying to find myself through that.

I don’t feel like going into great detail about how losing someone caused me to die a little inside. I forgot how to function there, for a little while. I merely managed to exist, and move through each day, and I lost 11 pounds in two weeks. I spent a lot of time being held, and going out to dinner with a friend, and writing letter after letter to get all the death and destruction out. In doing so, I started to lose myself. But not in a bad way. I let go of making excuses. I let go of irrational hope. I let go of the Joy who takes the abuse and walks away feeling unworthy, unlovable, and sad. I let go of this person and I refused to let him take me too. I found myself. I had moments where I felt like I was becoming the person I always wanted to be. I had moments where I felt like I was loveable, and had worth, and that he was the biggest, stupidest asstard to ever walk the earth.

I was sad to let him go, because he took 4 years with him. I recently (within the past week or so) discovered that he had severed every single online connection with me. It made me feel sad for a brief moment, and then I let that go too.

Day 4:

Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

My first thought was to say: Running. Oy vey, ALWAYS with the running. I think that came to mind because I started running outside relatively recently, and there is something really quite awesome when you run along side a rabbit, or a butterfly, surrounded by flowers. It’s a beautiful thing.

But here’s my real answer. I cultivated a sense of wonder in my life most especially because of Anne Lamott. I found one of her books for two dollars and devoured it. I had always been a little hesitant of Anne; a single mother with a penchant for showing her lady parts to the neighborhood who supports abortion and loves Jesus? Um…is that even POSSIBLE? Well, yes. Apparently it is. What I found in her writings was someone just as screwed up (if not MORE SO) than I was. She was crazy. Irrational. Overzealous. And I wanted her to be my friend. I bought as many of her other books as quickly as I could, and I ate them up too.

One of the things I love about Anne is that she incorporates poetry and phrases into her stories. Through this I have belatedly been exposed to the poetry of Rumi and Mary Oliver. I found M.O.’s “Evidence” at the library and fell in love. Her poetry made me want to go out walking in the woods behind my house. It made me appreciate that rabbit I ran with for a few moments, or the butterfly who drifted along on my air currents as I ran through the park. She taught me to look at the world around me, to go out and experience it, and to let it soak into my very being. Nature is one of the few places where I feel close to God, and can believe that He loves me and wants good things.

Wonder is hard to maintain, so I enjoy the glimpses and the moments. I bought a Mary Oliver Anthology. I make a point of staring up at the stars and the moon on a clear night. I run outside as often as I can. And I try to remember that God is not only found in autumn days with a cool breeze and a bright blue sky. I remember that all of everything is a wonder.

Moment.

Yesterday's prompt from Reverb10.com is to write about a moment where I felt alive during this past year. I tried to put a lot of thought into this, but moments that came to mind were all moments I experienced when running.

Earlier this year I went for a solo run at the park near my house. This park has amazing fitness trails, and it's one of the biggest bonuses of moving back with my parents (besides the free rent). Anyways, I had stopped off in September to run a few miles, and I decided to try the outer loop. This loop takes you out into fields and farmland, and removes all of those things that tend to be distracting and detracting from nature. Namely, people, houses, and cars. The only people you generally see are those who are like you - people running or cycling or walking.

On this particular day the sky was a brilliant blue and was punctuated with lovely, fluffy white clouds. The fields still bloomed with the last of the summers wildflowers, and the breeze was soft and cool. I think I ran out a mile or two, smiling the whole way and almost rejoicing in the beauty around me. That sounds a little cheesy to say, but it's the closest I can come to describing how much a refuge it was for me, after being overwhelmed and overstimulated by work and people and life.

I think this is the moment I will choose, although I remember other moments, brief or long that made me feel that I was alive, and happy, and whole.

What gets in the way of my writing? (Day 2)

And, can I eliminate it?

Hmmm. Often times I use writing as a catharsis. When I am most down, most sad, most wistful, most angry...I need to vomit words more often. When life is good...not so much.

But what gets in the way of writing. Tv shows. Work. The gym. Fear of people reading what I write and reacting badly. For a while, after my break-up, I wrote in a journal. I still carry it around with me, as my lifeline. I haven't needed it in a while, but I like to know it's there.

One Word.

I am supposed to pick one word that encapsulates the year of 2010 for me. This is much more difficult than I thought it would be. "Disappointing" comes to mind. Or "awful." There have been so many steps backward and forward this year. That's it; I think I found it. "Bittersweet."

There have been so many things that have gone wrong for me. Painful break-up, learning to live half-alive, moving towards becoming the person I always wanted to be, moving back home to save money, becoming a runner and challenging myself to do races, stepping out of my shell and flying across the country to answer some questions despite the less than stellar outcome...yep. Bittersweet.

And what is my word for 2011? Hope. Or Hopeful. Whatever. I am stepping out and hoping that this year will finally be a good year, one of challenges and new opportunities and maybe a little bit more happiness than I've experienced in the past few years. Here's to Hope.

reverb10.com

My, has it really been over a year since I last wrote in here? Since I seem to only write about my failures with men, let me continue that trend briefly, although I shall skip over one or two that don't really warrant any discussion. Since I last wrote in here I have gone through Garbhán (meaning "rough"). I wish I could find a name that means "two faced" but "rough" works well enough, as he was very rough on me. The best part of that whole relationship was that I lost a shit ton of weight (which I have obviously gained back. Woo hoo). Then there was Leannán, meaning "sweetheart" who was amazing but moved off to the Windy City and subsequently stopped talking to me in order to prevent losing me entirely. And so now I am lost to him. I awoke the morning of December 31, 2008 and knew in my heart that it was done. And so it is, and ever shall be, amen and amen.

Possibly there will be more to the story, if he should ever get up the gumption to actually call or text me, but I expect nothing from him.

Other than that, I find myself desiring change. In all aspects of my life I desire some form of change. I'm not big into New Years Resolutions, but I find the beginning of 2009 to be an excellent time to start over.

1. Obviously, the traditional diet and exercise resolution. Although technically, it should be more of a resolution to EAT...eat healthier food, in smaller portions, but not deprive myself of the beauty and deliciousness of consuming all the vast yumminess that there is to experience. I'm going to rely on fitday.com as well as attempting to be more active and make food from scratch.

2. Spiritually I wish to make some changes as well. I will attempt to do this by reading more, thinking more, and participating more in my local church, Crossroads. There's a lot of cool things coming up, and I want to get involved. I am tired of being bitter and cynical because life has not turned out the way I wanted it to.

I am sure there are more. I can feel them swishing around in my head...but all I can really say is that I want things to change, and I can believe now that they will.

~Isa

She sat down, alone, in the middle of the row of chairs. Chapel was going to begin soon, and she didn't know anybody, so she sat alone.

If my life were a story, someone would notice me sitting here by myself and would come over and talk to me, she thought. Sometimes it was a curse to be such an avid reader. A side-effect of reading fiction was that you get the notion that all of life is one big story, with one big plot, and the Author is writing each move with a destination in mind. Too bad life doesn't work like that. She considered this as she sat in the cold chair, hoping that no one would see her, and yet at the same time hoping that someone would notice her.

People were milling around her, taking their seats in the rows of chairs, their voices rising into a crescendo as people struck up conversations with familiar faces. The girl still sad alone, with her head down, and tried to drown out the voices and the rising panic that was settling into her chest. She was reaching a crisis point when she heard a voice, speaking to her. She froze. Was she in a story after all?

She looked up into the friendly face of a boy she had never seen before.

"Are you new? You can come over here and sit with us."

So she rose, and joined him.

After chapel was over, the boy gave a friendly wave and scooted off to class, throwing a "See you around," over his shoulder at her. She slowly followed him out the door, immersed in a sea of students, all unfamiliar and eager to get to the next place, the next point in their story.

She was forgotten.

That feeling of panic was still lurking under the surface, she knew. She was in a new school, with no friends, and the only friendly face had quickly darted off. She was alone, and she was lonely.

The girl wandered over to the cafeteria, hoping that she could fill the empty time before class by lingering alone over some food. She walked in the door and stopped in line. And she waited. And waited some more. No one noticed that she was waiting to pay for entrance, and as she stood there she saw all of the faces of the chapel-goers, and heard again their voices rise and fall as they happily conversed over food. And still no one saw her.

The panic rose and overtook her, and the girl turned and ran out of the cafeteria and quickly looked for an exit. The tears were pooling in her eyes, and she hated to cry in front of strangers. She ran out the front doors, her face turned to the ground. She had long, dark hair, and found that her hair provided an effective curtain from prying eyes...if anyone could even see her. So she hid behind her hair, and ran.

She brushed past a person and headed swiftly for the parking lot. Once she felt far enough away, she let the tears fall. She knew that her life was not a story. No one would come.

And then she heard the sound of approaching footsteps.

**

He barely glanced at the dark-haired girl as she moved past him. He caught a glimpse of dark hair and a bookbag, but didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. His class was starting soon, and he needed some lunch, so he took a few steps toward the cafeteria.

Go after her.

He stopped and glanced around. Was that really a voice? There was no one around him, but he had heard the words as clear as day. He glanced back in the direction of the dark-haired figure, hurrying away towards the parking lot. He heard nothing else, so he took another step towards the entrance of the building.

He heard it again.

Go, talk to her.

He stopped again, and after a seconds hesitation turned and sprinted after the girl. He didn't know why he was running after her, but he knew better than to question the voice. There was a reason for it, and so he went.

The sound of his footsteps reached her before he did.

**

Damn, she thought, as she quickly tried to restrain her tears and sobs. It was difficult though; once she started crying, she had a hard time stopping it until it had run its course. Hopefully the person would just run on by her, without noticing her. The last thing she wanted was to be seen in this condition. She kept walking, hanging her head so that her hair covered her face.

Unfortunately, the footsteps slowed to match her own. She glanced up, hesitantly, to see that the boy beside her was looking at her in concern.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

His words brought down her tears, which slipped silently down her cheeks. They also brought down her guard, and words started to slip unbidden from her lips.

She poured out her sadness and her loneliness to him. Of all the people on campus, he seemed to be the only one who could really see her. He listened silently on the sidewalk, and waited for her words to abate.

"Where are you going?" he gently asked her.

"Wendy's," she sobbed.

He looked at his watch. Half an hour until his class started, but then, it didn't really seem to matter anymore.

"I have some time, how about I go with you?"

She looked startled. She thought hard for a few seconds, searched for any evidence that he was unsafe.

"Alright, sure." She hiccuped, and they walked together to the parking lot.

Later, at Wendy's, they would talk. He would tell her how he had come to see her. How God had told him he should follow her. How he had no idea why until he saw her tear-stained face. She would be shocked, thinking that he had followed her because he had somehow seen her tears, wondered if she was okay. Awed because, for an hour or so, her life had been a story, with characters written in, a plot developed, and a happy ending.


***********************************************************************************

And so, for an hour, my life WAS a story. This really happened. It was my first day at a new college campus. I had no friends, and I was thrown into a situation where I had never felt lonelier. I really had a panic-attack and ran for the hills, and he (His name is James) really heard a Voice from God tell him to go after me. He didn't know why, but he also didn't hesitate, and that spoke more to me than anything about who James was, as a person. And then I was thrown off guard when he offered to go eat with me.

If it had been me writing this story, perhaps I would have continued on to match them romantically. They would have dated, fallen in love, and married, a perfect ending to this rather extraordinary story. As it was, I didn't Author this particular piece (just recorded it as best I could remember), and the story stopped shortly after Wendy's.

I only saw James in passing after that, although we continued to greet each other fondly. I found new friends, a new place at that school, and soon many of the faces became familiar, and I was seen. James graduated.

I don't know where he is now. Half the time I don't even know where I am now. I've never experienced anything that even comes close to that hour. I have been reminded time and time again that my life is most definitely NOT a story out of one of my fictional novels. But, for an hour... it was. I have often thought that if I have nothing else to give as a testimony for the hope that I have (as little as it may be) I will point to this. It is enough.


p.s. The first boy became a familiar face around campus, too. I think his name was Brandon, and he on occasion would take the time to introduce me to people, or stop and say hi. Of all the Christians I have known, Brandon and James are the only two who modeled their faith to me in such a way.