Somehow and Always

…People…believe they’ll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but…learn it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.

It’s a night in Ohio where a man sleeps alone one week and the next, the woman he will eventually marry leans her body into his for the first time, leans a kind of faith, too—filled with white crickets and bouquets of wild carrot. And the months and the honeyed years after that will make all the light and dark squares feel like tiles for a kitchen they can one day build together.

Not everything is supposed to become something beautiful and long-lasting. Sometimes people come into your life to show you what is right and what is wrong, to show you who you can be, to teach you to love yourself, to make you feel better for a little while, or to just be someone to walk with at night and spill your life to. Not everyone is going to stay forever, and we still have to keep on going and thank them for what they’ve given us.

Some days bleed. Some days are so sensitive, you don’t even want to get out of bed. These are the best days, though. You grab them by their pulse and you keep going, because something is happening in the universe that is making you feel so much. It’s a small glitch, an overflow, and you have been chosen to carry the extra weight. For one, small day, you are the sole bearer of this unnamed pain. You are a spot of light on the map of the world. Anyone or anything from another part of the galaxy will see you and think ‘I didn’t know people could be stars.’

I believe; help my unbelief.

"I think we like to talk a lot about being brave because the actual doing of it is so freaking terrifying. And tiring. And ordinary. It’s my belief that true fearlessness comes from living loved. When we find our worth and our value in Christ, then, as the Psalmist wrote, what can man do to us? I don’t think we can be a people-pleaser or an approval-addict AND be brave with our lives. Perhaps that’s why fearlessness or bravery starts with our identity first, it’s the deep well from which we draw living water, enough for today. I believe that bravery is born in the quiet and ordinary moments long before it’s seen by anyone else. Sometimes it’s as simple and devastating as the moments no one else will ever see – the moments of daring to be honest with our own self, of laying down our excuses or justifications or disguises, of asking ourselves what we really want, of forgiveness, of honesty, of choosing the hard daily work of restoration, of staying resolutely alive when every one else is just numbing themselves against life. These are why our friends matter so deeply: they are witness to the sacred secrets. Not all secrets are terrifying things, some of them are beautiful and transformative.”

You work so hard, just to end up at home crying yourself to sleep; remember you’re trying, you are moving mountains that have plagued you since you were young, and you’re trying so hard. Keep fighting, fight until you have won. Fight until you have found your way home, until the sun comes back and your heart learns to love the mornings again.

when you remember something embarrassing you did 6 years ago

Even if you know what’s coming, you’re never prepared for how it feels.