happy spring from my hummingbird friends

I've been hanging out with these two in the evenings... Well, more like sitting very still for long periods of time, waiting till they grace me with their presence for a few seconds while I frantically adjust my manual focus. ;) My fingers get cold hovering ready to press the shutter when the sun starts to go down, but it's good to be out in the fresh springtime air hearing the chickadees sing their mating song and catching oh-so-brief glimpses of these little flying jewels.

easter at home

I got to spend Resurrection weekend with my family in Goldendale.... a place where the blue-sky dawn is ushered in under the yellow bellies of meadowlarks, and welcomed by the sound of their distinctive ballad. Just as the sun crests the eastern horizon, its pink light hits Mt. Adams in the west and makes it glow. The horses' breath mists from their nostrils in the still-frigid air and catches every ray of buttery light; the new calves begin to frisk and play "king of the hill" by the feed barn as the stillness of the world awakens to birdsong and breeze.

happy spring + goals for a new season

 Photos taken at Priest Point Park, Olympia, Washington.

It seems like winter has been eternal this year. If it had been a proper winter, with long stretches of frigid clear days and blankets of snow, I don't think it would have bothered me... but no, it was a western Washington winter, and not only that but the wettest western Washington winter in decades (at least). Rain and gray for months on end has worn me out.

But yesterday and the day before we got just a hint of springtime, with sunshine in patches and temperatures in the 60s. Sam and I hiked at Priest Point Park and strolled through downtown Olympia and worked in the yard and it was like I finally started to break free of a winter-long depressive state. It is time to make things new.

Goals, spring 2016:

- spring clean my life

- plant a lot of flowers

- get involved in women's ministry at church

- get my name out there

- go hiking as many weeks as there's sunshine to do so

- line edit my book

- actively love my church family

- listen to a hermeneutics/Bible lecture every day

- keep doing daily yoga

- balance my eating habits

- get a lot of fresh air and exercise

- get out of my comfort zone

i am not as fine as i seem

I'm scrolling down my screen and it's filled with names. These are my friends, I'm told. Facebook points out which name has shared this and which name has liked that, as if I'm expected to care. But the more often I see a name typed across the screen in dark blue, it seems, the more fake and far away it becomes. These are not friends. These are not even people to me anymore. They are just names, just symbols of my popularity; I wait on their likes and comments because I think maybe that means they care, but I know that's not what my own likes usually mean. So why should I expect it of them? This social media phenomenon, this invention that was meant to draw people closer together, has become no more than what its name implies - a book of faces. Faces that mean less every time I scroll past them. Faces that hide stories and struggles and real lives, faces that overshadow souls and sins and the image of God. Faces that are more like facades.

I have one too. A facade. My profile picture is always smiling so you wouldn't know that behind it is a heart breaking with loneliness. I post Bible verses and pretty pictures and all the while I want to scream, "I am not as fine as I seem!" But that does not seem safe when I am surrounded by people as fake as myself.

I think my dad got social media right all along. He calls it Farcebook. And that's petty much exactly what it is.

Friendships aren't created or maintained on Facebook. Ministry isn't sustainable on Facebook. Discipleship is impossible on Facebook. A tenuous connection, yes, maybe that can survive; but in truth, the more time I spend among my 200-something virtual "friends," the more terribly alone and empty I feel.

But maybe it's not all Facebook's fault. Maybe it's mine... maybe, over time, this would have happened regardless of my social media presence. Maybe (gasp!) I am by nature a sinner, a selfish human being who wants to appear whole and righteous and desirable to those around her even when the cost is destroying herself with loneliness. Facebook was made to make connecting with people easier, but I think what it has truly made easy is the ability to appear connected while keeping everyone at an arm's length. Responsibilities like accountability and relational investment - which are nonnegotiables of functioning as a biblical part of the Church - are removed when you are able to erect a charade of virtual spirituality. Post enough selfies at a coffeeshop with an open Bible - #blessed - and you can deceive yourself, along with the believing community around you, that you're a healthy and fruitbearing branch that doesn't need training or equipping or the asking of hard questions. Post enough Bible verses and holy-sounding thoughts, and I can maintain a comfortable bubble of space between myself and the probing spiritual edification of those around me, who might discover in the end that (what!) I'm not perfect after all.

But the reality is... if I'm honest, the kind of relationship that comes with probing spiritual edification (even, and especially, the kind that knows me for what I really am) is exactly what I most intensely crave.

i can’t find the words

 

I’m not sure I’ve ever found writing so hard. Even to put down a few feeble sentences, I have to shut off my computer monitor so I won’t have to see how stupid the words look coming from my fingertips. Once, I could fill whole notebooks with a dull-tipped pencil that didn’t even have an eraser, never questioning the worthiness of a single sentence. I thought I was supposed to be good at this... were my eyes closed when the synonymy of “ability” and “ease” broke?

time hurts

 

I wish I could bottle up that smell, that beautiful combination of tilled earth and fruit blossoms, of prairie winds and fresh dew. It’s the smell of walking to the irrigation field at sunrise and of jeans wet to the hip from trudging through tall hayfields. It’s the smell of crisp blue skies held up by white mountain pillars on every corner. It’s the smell of home, a smell that transports me back to a strange amnesic state in which the last several years are erased—in which I fully expect to open the front door and find all four of my siblings still at home, Amy still a toddler, and Lenny still alive.

Time hurts today.

now i just sit in silence

 

There are many untitled drafts lying in my Documents folder, crisp and white like the pages of books that everyone likes to look at but no one cares to read. It seems months since I had a heart-to-heart with my own soul; January and February were some of the loudest months of my existence, though cloaked in dense fog and layers of snow. Then March—married, settled in a new place, and suddenly there is so much silence that I sometimes feel like I’m being screamed at. So I pack a few more things into my daily planner and get busy with trivialities; after all, there is no greater discomfort to a Jonah soul than the quiet that reigns before the storm.

Daily, I pick up my Bible and read. Daily, my eyes skim across words that don’t seem to penetrate the barricade of my stubbornness. Daily, I fight the shame of a hardened heart, caked in the filth of resentment against a God who was supposed to be following my agenda—was supposed to have ended the wilderness wanderings by now, given me some kind of tangible calling.

But then—what calling ever comes to closed ears? It’s always been hard to hear His voice when I’ve stopped up my heart to the silence.

Hands folded, eyes closed, ears opened. There—in the darkness behind my eyelids I can see Him.

He is looking out from my husband’s kind hazel eyes.

Silence.

The blinding light of revelation.

The quiet days of grocery lists and dinner plans, workouts and photography experiments—all permeated with the undeserved joy of being loved and led by a man whom I respect without reservation.

“This is your calling.”

seventeen days

 

My fake fingernails are falling off, leaving my roughly-filed real ones looking pathetically thin and damaged. Maybe it’s the dishsoap, which seems to be drying out the skin of my hands as well. I like that there’s a window above the sink; I watch the light play behind the yellow-blooming shrubs, and sometimes it’s so inviting that I have to drop my to-do list and go outside to breathe it in.

I’ve been married for 17 days. It’s so good not to worry about reception details and RSVPs and tulle yardage. It’s nice to see temperate March sunshine streaming like ivory ribbons through the windows. It makes me so happy to catch glimpses of Mt. Rainier between the trees, stretching white and blue crags up to the sky; I even like the heavy gray days when rain splashes down in buckets on the pavement. I still haven’t really met anyone new—my husband, his sister, and his former roommate are pretty much the extent of my acquaintance here—but I’m rather happy to be at home experimenting with Pinterest recipes on a willing husband’s palate! :)