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Esta Doutrich

Esta Doutrich

Category Archives: 3 am moments

Just mostly tired

16 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by Esta in 3 am moments, canoeing, the wilderness

≈ 5 Comments

The other day I was talking with my Mom about people who write their lives out on blogs so you never have to wonder what is happening.

You always know were they are and what they are doing.

“Well, that is definitely not your problem”, she said.

Which is true, I guess.

I won’t say I’ve been neglecting my blog, because it’s not neglect when you only have an agreement to write only when you can.

I feel nothing would be relevant or make sense.

But that’s what I always say.

And maybe that’s why unconsciously I’ve pulled away from many of you.

After so long, it’s not really the thing anymore to write facebook messages asking for prayer when something traumatic happens. That was sooo last year, when it all was so new and fresh.

I can’t really write about daily life, as I’ve said before. And I can’t really discuss current topics since I don’t really know what’s current and trending. Is it still the thing to makes those cute little flowers for your Sunday cardigan or was that soo last year, like my frantic prayer requests?

I am still in Slate, just in case you didn’t know 🙂 And will be until fall for sure, though beyond that is unknown.

And I drink tea out of bowls now.

Um, so the black flies are back.

Also, I joined 11 other Slate Falls community members in an 180 km walk for prescription drug abuse awareness two weeks ago. We made memories to last a lifetime and I did my share of crying and laughing. It was amazing.

 I still canoe once in a while. And I help cook for potlucks and still remember how to clean fish from last summer. Imagine that! 

 I’m really tired a lot of the time and jump every time someone bangs on the door. Or when the phone rings. Or when someone gasps or yells my name.

Did I mention I’m tired? 

But I have lots of stories to last for many years and memories to savor someday when I won’t have think about the phone ringing or jump when someone yells through my doorway.

And I’ll probably smile and wish it all back.

Freak out sessions

05 Saturday Mar 2011

Posted by Esta in 3 am moments, laughter, life dirt, ranting

≈ 3 Comments

 I come home and God and I have freak out sessions late in the night.

Or, I guess I should say, I freak out and God lets me.

Last weekend we sat in leather couches and told of what life means for us now, and how we need prayer.

So in the sunlight I write down the prayer requests and mostly there are words like surrender and unknown, and loss of focus and inside, where they can’t see, I know my selfishness. 

I don’t want to hear about surrender and focus and giving up self.

I don’t want to hear about it because I know all about it in my head, but that hasn’t seemed to make any difference.

Letting go. Opening the hands. Surrender.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 It has been a life-long, gory battle, and, frankly I just wanted off.

It wouldn’t be such a big deal if it was just one of those spiritual ideas that you can mull over and nothing in the real life of messy rooms and baloney for lunch would be effected.

 But you can’t laugh at yourself when you are making fists and if you can’t laugh at yourself you are toast. Or at least I am.

So here I am freaking out and trying to pry open fists while packing for three months and taking final exams

and finding one of my best friends is getting married

and I am too opinionated with my family

and don’t mind me, but I think I’ll just go join a convent and sell hippy buses for a living and wear dragon fly anklets.

Agh.

Would someone please tell me a good joke

or kiss me

or throw a glass of cold water on my head.

 

p.s my dear friend Kristin is hosting a lovely giveaway over here!

*photo credit*

Pippin and Maté

24 Monday Jan 2011

Posted by Esta in 3 am moments, life dirt, nursing, silly fears

≈ 1 Comment

I do know a few things.

I do know I would rather wear my red flannel shirt than any piece of clothing I have ever owned.

I know my nose is crooked because I was just as bad at dodging softballs when I was 14 as I am now.

I know that my maté gourd is named Tika, after a black and tan hound puppy that I loved more than any dog I’ve ever met.

  

 

I know maté, a good friend, and a guitar is a hard combination to trump.

 

So if someone asks me why my checkered shirt is missing buttons, or why I talk to my yerba maté, or why my nose looks lopsided, I can tell them.

But no one asks me those kinds of questions.

Instead people look past my nose, into my eyes, and the most-frequently-asked-question comes in a tone that says they are really interested.

“So Esta, what are you planning to do after graduation?”

Leans forward. Expectant look.

Blast. Blast. Blast.

And I look them in the eye, like I only can when I’m being real  and I say,

 “I don’t know”

I have a thousand ideas, but a thousand is sometimes worse than two because it’s hard to find Waldo, that is, the one to be found, in a crowd of a thousand.

————————————————————————————–

 “ ..and we are like visionaries who know every road in town but cannot find their way home…”

 – Jean-Pierre De Caussade

————————————————————————————–

I guess I could just tack up all the ideas and then play Pin the Life on the Plan

Except that would  be pulling back the control again and, goodness knows, if that lesson hasn’t resonated in my thick skull by now, I should be the one that sits on the thumb tack.

I don’t know 

Plus, I’ve throw out the idea of pretending, like the old apple core under my bed.

Please tell me it’s much jollier, you know, to be a Pippin, and toss ones curls at the unknown and the somber assembly of heroes  and chirp,

“Where ar’we going?”

Mess and silence

24 Friday Dec 2010

Posted by Esta in 3 am moments, friends, life dirt, unreasonable hope

≈ 2 Comments

 We heard it on Sunday. How there was silence. 400 years of Divine silence. Before the flesh became the Word—and the Word flesh and darkness broke to light. 400 years while Israel listened to the silence of God, and the noise of their own mess, and if there ever was a lack of answers it was then. And Christmas promises that despite the silence and our mess and unanswered questions—sometimes in cold, smelly places our world sifts toward light and, like a teen girl in labor, when we feel the most out of control is when true life begins. And living is being messy and broken ALLtogether, when everyone thinks we just look cute standing under a lamp post.

 

We are all a mess this Christamas. Every last one of us. You are, whether you know it or not, and I am also. We are all messy–or the mess is around us or in us–but Christamas means that we can laugh despite the mess. Because the silence was broken once and will be for us too, once the fullness of time comes. 

 

(lamp-post photo credits to Japheth Stauffer)

When you want to run into the wild

20 Wednesday Oct 2010

Posted by Esta in 3 am moments, books, canoeing, life dirt, realized dreams, the wilderness, unreasonable hope

≈ 1 Comment

Of my Top Four Passions—

Christ,

People,

Travel,

and Wilderness

—the first and second always trump the third and fourth.

I feel the tension deeper sometimes, like now, when fall blazes and swirls yellow leaves around cattail skeletons.

The best of all seasons never lasts long enough, at least here in Canada. It’s the texture in the drying out and dying of everything that makes it so haunting. I’ve never been able to fully absorb fall before it disappears underneath the snow and ice of northern winters.

It has become even harder since moving south into the city.

Life is ironic. Ironic in a funny, aching way.

I have talked to so many girls who just love the city. Girls who think living in the city would be a dream come true. They love the people, the bustle, the color, and the millions of adorable shops and stores hidden everywhere. And, truly, I have become more like those girls the last four years. I do love my city. I do love the people. And there is something to be said about being able to ride the street car to your favorite used bookstore, tucked beside a convenient little coffee shop. Yet, if it wouldn’t be for The Call, I would not be here.

No way.

It is worth it, yes. A million times over.

But it still aches.

Because my “dream” life, if only orchestrated by me, is very different.

I cannot, and never have, describe to you the feeling of  coming alive that happens when I paddle a canoe or sit by a camp fire. Its as close as I ever get to what C.S. Lewis describes as what he thinks heaven will be like. A sudden, clear,  “Ahhh, so this is where I have always belonged. Now everything makes sense”  kind of emotion.

It is moss and tall white birches and blankets of tangy pine needles. It’s fierce red leaves and silence and the call of a whippoorwill. Its bare rock and paddles and a cedar strip canoe. It’s the smell of wood smoke and the sound of a snow machine, and the way the snow squeaks when its cold.

I love it. I have always loved it. I have never grown bored of paddling, or hiking a ridge, or sitting quietly by a lake.

I mean, what I would absolutely love, would be one of these.

 

 Pretty much like this on the inside

 With these

 

And my dream—a cedar strip canoe

 

Crazy, eh?

I choose to belive though, that by Grace and a Greater Plan I can be more than content while still carrying my longings honestly.

———————————————————————————-

And if you love the wilds too, here are three great reads to take you there.

   Nahanni Trailhead: A year in the northern wilderness

 

 

 

 

   Wilderness Wife 

 

 

 

  The Spell of the Yukon. (Poetry)

Sometimes it takes innocence

12 Thursday Aug 2010

Posted by Esta in 3 am moments, laughter, life dirt, outrageous love, unreasonable hope

≈ 5 Comments

 Long ago the rest of the house went to bed and, although I combed my hair, slipped off my shoes, and almost joined them, I still sit, wrapped in a warm blanket in front of the blaring air conditioner.

My heart is at rest, but I need to find my spot again. That place where all is well despite the chaos around you. So much in me winces—and cringes in the callousness that sneaks up when your back is turned and the bitterness that hides in the marred surface of our world. I find that just one day living can muss a heart, cleansed in the morning with Grace, back to its wretched state.

The world would let you know that nothing is worth it and that everything is pleasure. There is no option for truth strong enough to hold the heart loyal, love deep enough to trust, or relationship pure. It finds you, this serpent of lies, everywhere. In the blaring of your clients TV screen, in the lewd comment from the clerk, in the heartache of a friend, and in the subtle pull of the prettier-than-you-girl that makes you want to binge on makeup. It slathers the spirit with the sticky weight of discontent, and nudges the cynical smile to life. Just one day and one is weary with the stench of earth soil.

How is one to walk without being exhausted by the sin and the dirt of life?

How to return to innocence? A search for the-way-it-should-be. Sometimes it is not so much a returning, but a rediscovery, or sometimes maybe a gift.

Tonight I found it looking into the wide eyes of the little girl who ran through the rain, laughing. And as I swung her up onto the water-soaked slide and caught her as she sailed down, giggling, there it was, right up close. All the noise that rattles from vain hearts and smooth-talking, hair tossing idols filled with pride and vanity and lust seemed as silly as the reality that they are.

I’m still trying to figure out why that innocent look made all the messy dirt from the day seem to float away.

Or why when I hold a soft puppy, I feel fresh hope again.

 Hope for the beauty of vulnerability rather than coquettish, hard brilliance of today’s femininity. Hope for a life overflowing with the deep joy of contentment, and lying still at the end of the day, always, at rest, without needing to run and fill it with the millions of things our broken culture offers to help us hide.

All that from looking into the eyes of a child and holding a hound pup?

No, not just that. In the innocence I see the horrible mess of my own heart reflected. Then there is not much else to do other than to run to foot of the cross and to Jesus. He is the one who hands out hope, and joy, and second chances to someone as marred and fallen as myself.

Days bring dirt.

May I be innocent, like a child, in my faith, in my joy, in my running to Jesus.

Touching God

31 Saturday Jul 2010

Posted by Esta in 3 am moments, life dirt, outrageous love, realized dreams, silly fears, the wilderness, unreasonable hope

≈ 4 Comments

 The mug is warm and I curl my stiff fingers around the smooth ceramic, holding in the heat with my skin. I lift my head. My hair catches, tugging, fighting icy wind. I feel it—the wind—feel it twirl around my neatly pinned hair and brush along my scalp. My toes curl, burrowing in the pine needles. Their points, dulled by decay, swollen with dew, dance under my weight, tickling my feet. The rain falls, wet on my cheeks.

And I find comfort in the texture—in the touch. In feeling life slide, scratch, and brush its unique pattern beneath my skin. Solace. It’s the security of fingering, of gripping reality. This is here. This is real. All will be well. I can feel it.

As a small child I turned to touch for reassurance when I was sick. A stuffed doll,  a Lego block, or a icy freezy pop—I would always hold something. I still remember, closing my eyes, trying to memorize the creases in my hands while my eleven-year-old body fought off influenza. As long as I felt something I was anchored in the truth that my pain would pass.

Mom should know. As she reminds me, I could never walk through a store without touching everything in sight. “Look with your eyes Esta, not with your hands”. And she said it over and over.

Those who know me well would say I’m a touchy-feely sort of person. My personal bubble is very small—tiny—if in existence at all. I struggle to communicate with people if I’m not able to be close to them, face to face, or holding their hand.

I’ve received 20 years worth of gifts from my younger brother. Special, all of them. But none near so treasured as the night he caught me as I crumbled and sat, holding my sobbing head against his shoulder, while my heart fell apart and he offered me his sleeve for a tissue.

I experience life and hope and love though touch—through the feel of the wind, the rain, and the warmth of a handshake.

But sometimes I feel a bitterness creep in, because the Person who I want most to feel close to remains beyond my grasp.

I can’t touch God.

I can’t put my fingers in the nail prints like Thomas.

(Doubting Thomas is one of my kindred spirits)

 I’m horribly jealous of the woman who got to washed His feet with her tears and dry them with her hair.

And it seems the most infuriating thing in the universe sometimes.

Sure, I can stroke the smooth bark birch, cup my hands under the icy splash of mountain stream, and hold the hot, sticky fingers of a preschooler. But I can’t touch the One who made them. And while in my head I know full well that in touching his creation I am communicating with him, at 3 o’clock in the morning it still seems all terribly unfair.

But, recently, the bitterness has left.

Not because I’ve resigned myself to waiting until heaven, or have accepted the limitations of my fallen mortality, or otherwise made myself feel mature and spiritual.

But because something in Lamentations told me not to do any of them.

Awkwardly, very wobbly like, I’ve begun to ask to be able to feel more.

 And honestly, I know it’s the most obvious thing, but I’ve begun to realize that when it says “God is spirit”, that’s what it actually means.

And suddenly the unseen is not “unfelt” like I somehow believed, but felt even deeper than a mug of hot coffee. Actually felt.

In reality, it warms from the inside out.

Really, it really does. And it’s truer than really for real, and honestly serious, not even kidding.

So laugh all you want at me for finally realizing such a simple truth,

But to me its like discovering a whole new world.

A world where you can actually reach out and touch laughter, not just hear it.

 

I'm Esta

/Canadian nurse living in Oregon/ Occasionally I write about depression, womanhood, faith, and other super abstract ideas, while trying not to take myself too seriously.

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It has been five months since physical illness left me unable to get off the couch and triggered panic and anxiety that was unexpected and debilitating. It has been a month since I said goodbye to my cousin/friend @matthewgingerich for the last time. Our grief is raw enough that it feels impossible to be engaged in witnessing worldwide anguish as well. It is overwhelming to hold both personal and collective suffering isn’t it, especially in an age of information? I’m confident that we are all held and sustained, no matter what suffering we face, in His enduring love and goodness, and I rest in that.
It’s been a while since book recommendations have shown up here. And both of these are a little outside of genre for what I typically highlight in this way.
“I think it started with my father. He took me for long walks and explained things to me” ...
I’m a nurse not a teacher. Not by nature, skill, or learned vocation do I thrive as instructor, but here we are another year completed.
“Two trundle beds were pushed against the opposite wall. A wood rocking chair waited by the potbelly stove. A narrow table under the window, it’s paint chipped and faded, where I used to do homeschool lessons with my father, or read books in the dim, flickering light of a kerosene lamp, or harvest the inner bark from red willow branches with my small knife. The enamel percolator, blistered with rust where my father kept his coffee. His blue summer cap hung from a hook by the door. As if time had not moved on or changed anything since I left. As if he might walk in through the door. “
I experienced my first episode of depression when I was thirteen. We didn’t know what it was and neither did we have language for phenomena like Intrusive Thoughts, so it was a very scary and foggy time for me.

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