Monthly Archives: February 2011

Open Book

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The other day I sat down to do an exam on a patient with Asperger’s syndrome.  As I put on my gloves, he asked lots of questions.  He wanted to know exactly what I was doing, and with no socially-motivated filter in place to halt his verbal barrage, I got an earful.  I headed toward him with the fluoride, explaining that I was about to put vitamins on his teeth.  To which he replied, “Okay, but just don’t get them on my tongue.  If you get them on my tongue, I’ll get really riled up.  And I’ll start doing this–” (he waved his arms around emphatically)–“and kicking and stuff.”

That is one self-aware kid, I thought upon leaving the room.  And I considered how the inability to posture oneself according to social norms, how an excess of natural honesty, can land one in the “disabled” column of our culture.

A few minutes later I received an expression of ostensible concern (layered over discomfort) about one of my recent blog posts.  My musings had apparently been discussed among a panel of reviewers and deemed depressing, and now my well-being was called into question.  From my perch overlooking the promise of spring outside, I assured the reader that rumors of my demise were greatly exaggerated.

Since I try to wait until after 5 pm to bombard The Husband with the estrogen-soaked issues of the day, I rang The Sis for an assessment on whether my words actually convey the hope in which I believe. And, as usual, she was a voice of reason–my unflappable alter-ego, the Me I would be with four inches of height added and the temper subtracted.  She pointed out one of the real issues at stake, which is that going public with my thoughts will inevitably lead to their being misunderstood–this is the price paid for transparency.

I don’t know if it’s a Southern thing (I tend to blame my dysfunction on either the South or my family, scapegoats that are diminishing in power as I become ever-more aware of and reconciled to the facts of the Fall and this broken world), but for much of my life I have been surrounded by, and have participated in, a group effort to promote conformity at the cost of creativity, to squash imaginative efforts with ridicule when they make me uncomfortable or point out truths I’d rather keep denying.  I remember when I arrived on the New York scene and couldn’t believe the celebration of individualism, the variety of conversations that spanned beyond football and hunting, the encouragement of artistic endeavors, the absence of words that reduce a group of people to a color or sexual orientation.  I remember thinking that this was what the world looked like when it wasn’t just white, Christian, and conservative (three things which I still am, minus the demand that everyone else be too…most days…), that I could be anyone I wanted here in this place, most importantly myself.  And how being that person didn’t look like it had back home: trying, working, measuring, acting.  I looked different–more free, more real, more honest.  More flawed.

The journey that began when I climbed out of the U-Haul on 92nd Street and First Avenue has led me to ever-increasing points of openness, both with myself (hard) and others (harder).  It has led to a blog that discusses depression and struggle, sometimes at the expense of a roundtable on whether Carrie should have married Big.  What I believe, and what my faith confirms, is that vulnerability is the shortest road to community, because the work of evil is to leave us thinking that we are the only ones facing This, that we’re the only ones guilty of That.  An isolation defined by the singularity of our shortcomings rather than the commonality of them.

Now that Spring is upon us and my mood is lifting, there may very well be more posts about makeup and laughter, maybe even a review of Sex and the City 3: Did I Leave My Dentures on Your Nightstand? But the fact remains that who I am is all broken bits and rough edges this side of eternity, and it would do me well not to deny that in thought or online.  I am on a path that has left me a different person than I was ten years ago and will lead to even more changes down the line.  What remains consistent is my ever-present fallibility.  What remains more consistent is the ever-present grace that meets me in those broken and rough spots, filling holes and smoothing edges and doing so in its own perfect timing and way (which is to say, usually not mine).  Last night, in a fit of the anger that seems always ready to be tapped just beneath the surface of this broken world and my fallen heart, I slammed the uncooperative dishwasher shut so hard I broke a glass.  The flu-ridden Husband rushed over, picking up my broken pieces and meeting them with love rather than judgment–and better at it than I may ever be.  And I realized that the Gospel was written for people like me, who fail so often but at every point of that failure are met with love.  And that is a LOT of love.  I am not where I will be, but I’m not where I was–and I’ve got the words to show it.

Entropy

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Idol exposure is some painful business for the recipients of its chisel.

Time and again I am reminded of what a failure I am as a human being.  Anger, self-righteousness, grimy iPhone screen. I can’t escape it.  And time and again, I attempt to–to prove my worth, polish my image, look to have it all together.

Only grace can save me from both my failure and my constant efforts to avoid it.

Running as been a barometer for my life since I took it up fifteen years ago.  I wasn’t good at it, so I quietly sought to conquer it.  I grabbed the dog, poor low-riding basset hound, and jogged down the street past the cute guy’s house.  I attacked the circle around my college campus, pounding the pavement solo or with girlfriends as last night’s beer and pizza spun around our stomachs.  I stretched beside the Central Park Reservoir and put foot to gravel.  But the starting and finishing lines began long before I took up this sadistic hobby.  When I look back, I know that all my life has been spent running.  Though I imagined myself headed towards a goal, I was actually running away from everything I feared: low self-worth, unpolished image, appearing to not have it all together.  If I could conquer this thing (school, career, love life), I would be okay.  Except the ticking off of the items on the list didn’t bring peace, and the unaccomplished items carried devastation.  Nothing was ever enough.

And yet everything mattered too much.

Last week, I was reminded that I will never be immune to idol-building, this side of eternity at least.  A series of shitty runs left me feeling like a novice, and I realized that the thing I was afraid of this time has always haunted me.  Followed me around from location to location, from Montgomery to Birmingham to New York to Atlanta.  Followed me, me, grown-up me, with the husband and the house and the diplomas and the sparkling floors and iPhone screen.  Followed me to mile two and left me gasping for air, that singular fear:

I am a sham.

And everyone will soon know it.

This is literally what came to my mind as I walked home feeling the big L etched into my forehead, walked home like a girl. I was afraid of exposure.  And I don’t even post my runs on Facebook!  And then the universality, the insidiousness of it all, hit me: there is nothing that this world, that I, won’t ruin.  The floors will attract crumbs like a magnet and the bathroom that was sparkling yesterday is speckled with water stains hours later.  The smile of a child gives way to the cynicism of an adult.  The heart wears down and stops beating.

There is only one whom decay dared not touch, not after three days in a dank and dark tomb; not after forty days of fasting and taunting.  Evil will ultimately succumb to one alone, and it is not me.

My lifelong efforts to be someone I wasn’t had to fall apart sometime.  This is the way of the world, fault lines and fissures.  Only one can never be what he isn’t.

When I finally let it go, this pressure to be perfect, to run the farthest, that’s when the truth broke through.  And I saw that what I had always secretly believed to be God’s bullying–bolstered by an ignorant yet world-sanctioned misreading of that Book, especially the part with Job–was anything but.  He was never the mean kid on the playground who stole my lunch money for laughs.  Those things I felt were taken from me were never mine–they only kept me from him.  And he didn’t take them, because here’s the thing:

Nothing in this world was ever meant to bear my full weight.

Nothing–not marriage, career, children, legs. Because everything of this world, even the world itself, was (intelligently) designed to send me to him, not take his place.  And every last one of those good things will crumble and die under the pressure of my expectations and need.  My bottomless, ever-present need.

He is not taking away anything but the mask.  He is in the business of revealing. And as everything else in this world follows the timer of its own demise, only he remains as he started, never to change.  This is what I was made from, what I will return to.  The only thing that holds up.

 

The New Poor

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My life in New York was many things, but most of all it was a story.  And as I’m writing that story, I remember beyond the romance and the friendships to an especially difficult part: my steady financial decline throughout five years there.  I remember getting my first paycheck, seeing how much was taken out for taxes, considering how much I was paying for rent, and realizing, This will just not do. So I found a friend who was looking to move and we became roommates a little further downtown in a much smaller space.  My new apartment had no view of the Chrysler Building or the East River, but it was a thousand dollars less a month for me, and there was a perfectly good subway to take me to Central Park whenever I wanted.  I was back on solid ground.

Then I wasn’t.  When my first tax season in New York hit, it hit hard.  All of a sudden I found myself having to question and defend my reasons for being there, and if they were worth the cost.  Because, there in front of me in black and white and with IRS stamped on it, was the official bill that the city was charging me for life upon its island paradise.  And that bill was STEEP.

I called the Dad crying, I found a friend-recommended accountant, I prayed.  And somehow (hmm…wonder how that could be?) I made it through April 15th, year after year.  But only by the skin of my teeth, as I found myself–a letters-behind-my-name, higher-educated professional–budgeting for gum and toilet paper. New York giveth, and New York taketh away, but that balance remained in the positive column as I found friendship, love, and faith surrounding me daily.  I grabbed my bottle of Trader Joe’s Two Buck Chuck, threw down my towel, and sat on my fire escape as the world walked by my window.  And I was happy.

But that’s me, a white upper-middle-class female who has never faced the threat of homelessness or had to choose between paying the bills or eating.  I knew that, with all the financial difficulty life in New York presented, I was choosing it for myself and could ease the strain whenever I wanted by simply leaving.  I was poor, but only by Manhattan standards.  Maybe I sat in the rear balcony for Broadway shows, but I still saw them.

And then when the BF proposed becoming The Husband and we said those vows, he did it with the understanding that not only was he gaining no dowry, but he was actually acquiring debt when he took me on.  I owed the Dad some bank for his sponsorship of my New York Assistance Program, and I had spent six years in those hallowed academic halls racking up student loan debt to go along with post-name letters.  So he said I do to sickness, health, and the opposite of wealth that day on the beach.  Good thing his debt was less than mine and his savings greater, because last year we shelled out for our share of the American dream: two cars, a house, rooms (to go) full of furniture, a Georgia dental license, a honeymoon, a down payment (literally, and on our future).  When he opened our tax paperwork a couple of weeks ago, I saw the calculations whirring around his head before he asked it: Where did all our money go? But he knew, and I knew: we were standing in it, were surrounded by it.  In a year, we had gone from an engaged New York couple with two banking accounts, one anemic and one healthy, to a married suburban couple with a joint account that had been left ravaged and gasping for air.

The Sis quoted Ingrid Bergman to me the other day: “Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.”  It made me think of how much of my life was spent heading for something, a race to a finish line.  How after all those years, I finally reached that self-constructed endpoint and was left wondering what life was supposed to look like beyond it.  When so many of the big questions have been answered, we are left sitting on our sectionals in our living rooms and driving around in our cars listening to XM radio as life goes on, stability replacing drama and routine replacing angst.  Each generation amasses more stuff than the one before it, counting vacation homes instead of rationing sugar.  We are overeducated, overfed, over-stimulated, over-blessed.  And we still look around and wonder what more there is.

I know what it’s like to go from thinking that God is good because of all you have, to knowing he is good because he is all you have. To hit every rock bottom there is–emotional, financial, spiritual–and be lifted back up by a faithfulness that includes and exceeds all forms of practicality and imagination.  It wouldn’t be fair, or nice, to wish that kind of descent on anyone else, but what I do hope for is that regardless of the road we each take, it is a path beyond our efforts to keep control and bigger than our prior planning would allow.  Accompanied by a faith that knows the one outside ourselves not as ATM or executive assistant, but as everything.

After the honeymoon, I drove to Wells Fargo (nee Wachovia) and closed my account, receiving for my efforts a sad little check that I deposited into our new joint account across the street at B of A.  Five years, plus the twenty-eight before it, on a sheet of paper to be combined with what he had saved.  All of him, plus all of me.  It may not have looked like much–but it was everything.

BeLoved

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Being single most of my life, I was never a big Valentine’s Day fan.  Being prone to cynicism still, I remain unconvinced of its historical credibility and more certain of its commercial value.  BUT…I have opportunity to reflect on love, what with it all around me in flowers and cards and songs (and that’s just at CVS). So reflect I will.  Just in a non-Hallmark way.

The Husband and I had to part ways during our recent run.  A couple of miles in, it became clear that my body was not going to cooperate with that physical venture, and I grabbed his shirt.  “I can’t!” I wheezed, exulting in my relief and agonizing over my failure.  And so the student became the teacher, as I gave him permission to go ahead and I headed home to a warm bath and the temptation to beat myself up.

But on the way to both, I decided to call The Sis.  She’s been a runner for awhile too, and my sister for forever, and besides all this is one of the most practical people I know.  Girl-wise, anyway.  I told her about my crappy run, my frustration and discouragement, my fears over the health problems this all could signal–the tumor eating away at me, the aneurysm on my doorstep.  Yes, this is where my mind goes when it’s left to its own devices.  The Sis listened, and then she answered.

“You know I’ve heard all this from you before, right?”

I paused, taken aback and confused that she wasn’t offering advice from her medical background as an NP.  “Huh?”

“You called me the last time you were training for a half, all the time telling me about your sucky runs.  And then you ran the race and it was fine.”

Pause again.  “But are you sure it’s not something chemical–”

“NO!  Except maybe you should eat less fried chicken.  But it’s mental.  You have to stop putting so much pressure on yourself.”

“But the last time I trained, I don’t remember ever having this much trouble–”

“You did.  And I heard about it all the time.  AND THEN YOU RAN THE RACE.”

Her words, epitome of tough love that they were, were also just what I needed.  I walked into our house, the one planned and saved for years in advance by TH–this man who wants to make a home and a life with a crazy person like me.  I looked around at that life, at the glasses by the sink and the cloudy film and fingerprints on them, signs of ourselves that I am always only too anxious to wipe away or trade for a shinier version.  I realized that the greatest evidence that I live in a broken world is me: my ability to major on the minors, to turn everything into an ordeal, to take a blessing and twist it into a burden, to dabble in and perfect the snide art of meanness, to in so doing make a mockery of all the love spent on my behalf.

Dear God.  Is there no end to his patience?  To the patience of those who put up with me alongside him?

I turned on the TV and Sex and the City lit up the room.  I thanked God that even in the crassest trappings of our pop culture–some of which I just love–he shows up.  He’s not above any of it, if we’re willing to look for him.  Because he lives in stories. And I laughed hard as I told him–“I am such a Miranda.”

And then there’s my Steve, setting out a giant card to greet me when I came downstairs this morning, arranging for flowers to be waiting on my crazy ass when I arrive at work.  The husband I wanted for so long and looked for under every gross rock I could find, until I gave up and was re-met with a love that transcends even vows and cake and heals me daily, makes me whole as I am broken so that even in my utter brokenness, I do not rely on that husband for life.  I rely on him for so many things–laughter, warmth, Thursday night comedy partner, finishing the leftover food on my plate–but I did not step into this relationship with a need for him to give me an identity.  My wholeness rests in the realm of eternity, where moth and thief cannot touch it.

I wrote his card last night, telling him that I still can’t believe we are each other’s, and I realized that this is the ground in which so many of my problems grow: in unbelief.  Not believing that I could be loved so much and so well by him, or by the God who made me.  My inability to stand underneath it, to receive this love that is so relentless it is almost too much for my heart to take.  And then I realize that it’s these moments–when I am staring this love in the face and finding I can barely stand it, that it’s so great my heart tries to hide–it is these moments when I am finally beginning to see love as it was meant to be.  And I will run to it.

Rest for the Weary

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I’m still actively blaming winter for the unyielding tiredness that’s been upon me recently. Sleeping in, napping at weird hours, drooling on our new couch. Weariness has been the wet blanket on my back for weeks now, one that I can only hope will be discarded once the groundhog is proven correct and spring actually shows up.  Until then, I’ve decided to be nice to myself, a difficult goal for a Type-A control freak whose every day can easily devolve into a series of tasks to be accomplished rather than moments to be lived.  Self-kindness is an act of vigilance for me: not beating myself up about crappy runs and extra cupcakes and immersion in the Travel Channel.  Lingering over coffee, pulling the sheets up around my neck for five more minutes, moving at a pace that doesn’t match that of the Road Runner, not going all Tiger Mom on my own ass.

The Psalmist wrote of “moments of refreshment,” and what winter lacks in sunshine it provides in opportunity: the ability to slow down, while everyone else is huddled inside by the fire and can’t see, and be still.  To remember how it feels to stop performing, to not worry about my tan, to not participate in summer’s Parade of Flesh and Weight Comparisons.  To settle into my own skin for awhile and remember that after years of pulling and stretching and trying, it actually fits just right already.  Being at home in my own life was, for so long, an unreached destination. Now it is a point easily taken for granted, tossed aside for games of Keeping Up with the Joneses (or, God forbid, the Kardashians) if I don’t remind myself of the truth: that what really matters can’t be quantified or acquired or summarized in a status update.  It must be tended to and gazed upon and lifted up in thanksgiving.  But that’s just me–I’m not a natural at gratitude.

Growing up, the head of our household was not an Asian mother, but its close second–a conservative Republican father.  Rightly valued were the virtues of hard work and achievement, and were it not for the support of my parents I’d likely be on the reality show circuit right now, praying for a shot at the next Bachelor. I still believe in the American dream and the parts of it that are currently losing favor, like personal responsibility and tenacity to the point of discomfort.  But it’s possible I take this to extremes (like I do…oh, everything else in life).  The other night, I was discussing my work schedule with The Husband.  I explained to him that after a lifetime (twenty-something years) of schooling and studying and testing, I had worked hard enough to take a break.  It was time I settled into my place on Easy Street–as in, call me when the maid finishes up, the yard is mowed, and the dishes are put away.  You can reach me at the spa.  Every day.  While buried in them, I believed that years of three-hour biology labs and dental board exams were my ticket to a life of luxury.  Maybe some light tennis. But much like Social Security, that dream doesn’t always deliver.  There is always work to be done: dinner to be cooked, stains to be scrubbed, teeth to be filled. And only when I stop seeing it as work will my resentment abate and joy take its place. Only then will I focus less on TH’s coaster-less glass and more on the fact that he always does the dishes when I make dinner.  Or that he’s slaving away over our taxes (another asterisk-laden part of the American Dream) while I watch Samantha Brown traipse around Scotland.

The rest that I observe for myself pales in comparison to that provided for me. As TH’s role has expanded from friend to BF to life partner, my eyes have been opened to what a provider looks like–how he cares for me unfailingly and with enough of a sense of humor to put up with my metronomic moods and still want to take me to lunch.  Then there’s the one this all points to, the one whose invisible nature challenges my faith in a way I often don’t realize until he reveals it–the sense that because I can’t see what he’s doing, he must be taking it easy up there.  The fear that because he’s not submitting a monthly report, he must not really be my advocate.  Then I walk to the front of the gym that doubles as a sanctuary on Sunday and take the bread and the cup, offered by a pastor who knows my name: “Christ’s body and blood, given for Stephanie.”  And I know where my true rest will always be found.

 

(Sub)Text Me

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The shirt to the left was a gift from my best friends from college, who gave it to me at the wedding shower they threw for me and The Husband last year.  (His shirt-gift was a little less family-friendly so will not be pictured here.  But it was awesome.)  These friends of mine–who have known me across fifteen years, one thousand-mile moves (mine), babies (theirs), and the self-growth that (hopefully) accompanies the movement from teens to twenties to thirties–are one of life’s refuges for me.  With them I do not have to pretend to be something I’m not: warm and fuzzy, proper and decorous, respectful of etiquette.  Instead, I can be the girl who puts this shirt on every two weeks, armed with sponges, spray cleaner, a Swiffer, and a bad attitude.  I can alternately dance and stomp around my house while my favorite classical channel plays in the background and simultaneously bless our ample square footage and curse the mess that builds up in it. I can walk about my life bra-less and bleach-stained and altogether inappropriate, knowing that even with all my flaws, there are people out there who are still willing to celebrate me.

That, my friends, is grace with flesh on it.

And then there’s the alternative.  The soul-eating, heart-exhausting business of keeping up appearances.  Switched.com recently posted an article called “Facebook Makes Us All Sad Because Everyone Is Happy But Us.”  Crux of the matter:  most people stick to posting only the positive aspects of their lives on social networking sites, to the point that we don’t really know each other as we’re represented online because that is not the real us.

I’m just as guilty as the next guy of telling the FB community about my great run or sharing a picture of the awesome dinner I just made.  But as a dear friend recently told me, “Facebook is bullshit,” and, let’s be honest, it is.  What better forum to reinvent ourselves and not be held accountable?  Negative comments can be erased with a click!  We can be whomever we want to be!  Too bad we spend so much time wanting to be perfect.  Haven’t we all learned by now that we’re not?

We human beings live suspended between the infinite sadness of living in a broken world and the infinite joy of knowing there is hope beyond brokenness. (If you, in fact, believe that.  And most of us do.  Mine happens to have a name.)  When we make perfection (or the appearance of it) our hope–and dear God, how I have over the years–we shortchange ourselves of the community engendered by comparing battle scars, of the company to be found in admitting weakness.

There is not much life to be discovered when we start being polite and stop being real.

I don’t know about you, but if there’s one person I don’t trust, one character I will not be inviting to my dinner party, it’s the asshat who types incessantly about his/her flawless kids, wife/husband, job, life.  THERE IS NO SUCH THING!  Can’t we all just drop that act and admit that life is this world is both glorious and defeating, invigorating and exhausting, shiny and covered in grass stains?  Can’t we drop the mask and be ourselves, warts and all, instead of using mass communication as a means to market our fake selves?  Whose approval are we working so hard to attain?

For my part, I’ve learned that my struggle-ridden posts generate much higher readership and many more comments that those singing with joy.  And while we should be free to share our happiness and not fear that we will consequently be left sitting by ourselves in the lunchroom, abandoned by friends who only operate by a “misery loves company” mentality, I sense that the showboating is much more widespread and detrimental than the my day sucked posts are.  We suspended humans can surely find a way to function in the realm of honesty that lies between despair and delusion.

So, in that spirit, here you go: this morning I went on a run, and it totally blew.  The air was frigid, and I felt like puking the whole time.  And on days like this, the end is the only good part of the run.  But the end, even when it comes sooner than I’d like, has home and warmth and coffee waiting.  And that is huge.

That’s what she said.

Meaning-Full

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Februarys are rough.  I remember my first one in New York, back in 2006.  I was walking home from the subway after work and felt a weight of sadness that I couldn’t explain.  Sure, I was broke and perpetually single, but I was living in Manhattan!  I was happy!  And I’ve never been given to the downward swings of depression (just irrational anger and defensiveness).  Where is this coming from? I thought as the frigid air surrounded me on the pitch-dark-at-five-o’clock streets.

Soon after, I read more about the aptly named and now relevant-to-me Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and wished I had money for a trip to a tropical island, or a heat lamp.  But just knowing the cause of my emotional heaviness made it slightly lighter, and I forged ahead into February with an uplifted heart.  Then I remembered that Valentine’s Day was right around the corner.  Sigh.

Earlier this week I felt that familiar winter disillusion.  I woke up and looked out the window and everything was wet and gray.  Gone was the white novelty of snow, replaced by cold rain.  On days like these, spring feels further away than a reason to celebrate Valentine’s Day did to me back in 2006–far enough for me to answer Shelley’s “if winter comes, can spring be far behind?” with, “Hell yes it can, Percy.  You and that groundhog don’t know shit.”

That’s where I was a few days ago, cursing dead poets and helpless animals, and so I decided to pray.  It went a little something like this:  I feel dead inside.  I know it’s based on weather and not truth, but it feels like the most real thing in my heart.  I want it out.  I need…to be inspired.  I want to feel alive.

Yes, Jesus hears even melodramatic prayers.  I climbed into the car and headed out of the neighborhood for a most decidedly uninspiring yearly doctor’s appointment, my bag of emotional weariness on the passenger seat beside me.  Then the music came on.

Looking back you know
You had to bring me through
All that I was so afraid of
Though I questioned the sky now I see why
Had to walk the rocks to see the mountain view
Looking back I see the lead of love

That was all it took, really–and why not?  What better place for God to show up than in music?  I put Caedmon’s Call on repeat and, yes, shed a few tears at the commonality of all biographies that don’t share you or me as the author, and are therefore personalized by love beyond measure.  Stories that matter not because of what my hands reach for, but for the hands that reach me.  Tales that include an inspiration not scratched and clawed at, but freely given.

I love my story.

I have forsaken the South in many ways over the years: refusing to wave at every person I pass on the street (The Husband has taken that mantle up for me and he’s not even Southern–oh for shame!), moving to New York, not making Junior League membership a top priority.  And loving winter, at least until February comes and I want to kill it.  But until then, I love cozy sweaters and stylish outerwear and snazzy boots.  I love visible breath and wood-burning fireplaces and packed snow.  I also love the orange leaves of fall and the first green of spring.  I love the seasons, all four, because there is something so necessary about each of them; something so natural and orderly and renewing about marking the passing of time with birth and death and life again.  And I have to remember all that when Shelley’s spring feels unreachably buried beneath Doppler forecasts swathed in green.  I have to remember that the seasons are as faithful in changing as the one who made them is in not.

But I don’t have to do the remembering all by myself.  He sends plenty of reminders–some set to music, some not.  Reminders in the form of a warm, dry restaurant and a table surrounded by people who have known me since college and are pouring sangria.  Reminders in the form of Post-It Notes from The Husband.  Reminders in the Much More to life that I happen to believe in and rest my soul upon.

I left the doctor’s office the other day and headed to my car in the parking deck.  To my left, I noticed a bank of ice left over from last month’s snowstorm, hidden in shade and clinging to life despite multiple rains and last weekend’s seventy degrees.  There are places in me like that, where light and life and truth take extra-long to reach–but they always get there.