Category Archives: silly fears

Stalled, but at rest. I think.

26 Friday Aug 2011

Posted by in canoeing, nursing, silly fears, slate falls

≈ 3 Comments

I am supposed to be writing from Slate today, but I’m not, due to complications of various natures.

Complications that are frustrating, but nevertheless have hints of Divine Intervention.

I should be up there by the beginning of next week.

While I am living up there I will not be giving specific updates on here. Due to the size of the community and the field I am in a blog is simply not the place for that. I will continue to post, but nothing too specific about daily events and occurrences. For that type of update, email me and I will put you on a group email.

For now, I am relaxing and soaking in my last quiet moments before the ride begins. Like I said, Divine Intervention.

And, every evening, this is my soul food.

Those old boots

22 Wednesday Jun 2011

Posted by in silly fears

≈ 3 Comments

High fashion is forgetting those girls who laughed at your brown, high-top boots with the scuffed leather.

Forget them,

because before they giggled

you dressed to the deep

notes that made your feet dance,

not theirs.

Today you walk through the mall after a winter of saving money and then living beside the lake where you pulled on what was clean because no one cared. Not the black crows, or the jack pine, or the people.

Today you discover that those scratched brown boots are the hottest look. Along with those mis-matched prints that you rocked back in your free days.

I say, girl, forget fashion.

Drama Rapid

06 Sunday Mar 2011

Posted by in canoeing, silly fears

≈ 3 Comments

It has been brought to my attention, as they say, that some may assume that Esta is having a life crisis, due to the last post.

Can I clear that up?

(Also) I have canoeing fever at the moment.

“Freak out” in my world does not equal depressed, despairing, sad, or horribly traumatized.

I can trot merrily through life, and have sporadic moments of “AH!!!!”, without life function being drastically altered.

Actually, it’s fairly common for me. As the eldest brother always reminds me,

“You just gotta feeeel, Esta. Like seriously, chill.”

I am placid about as often as Justin Beiber rips apart a wild bear with his hands.

As much as I try to “just chill”, still I blaze awkwardly through life, spinning emotions like disco lights, looking like I’m always teetering on the edge of drama rapid.

So what may look like white water to you is just a kiddy pool that Esta dips her toes in when she gets overheated.

And so, really, I’m fine, happy, alive, and kicking.

Surrender is hard, like learning the J stroke was hard—in that every time I paddle I have to remember how it feels. And it can be frustrating, because you learned this already.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will keep trying, possibly getting soaked in the process, but who cares since I always end up with water in my canoe anyways.

 And so life will hum, oh-la-de-dallying along, even if Esta is wrinkling her nose a little at her silly self.

I just ate way to many little Japanese candies while writing this post.

And I have no idea how disco lights got in there or Justin Beiber for that matter.

Does that help?

A crack in the perfect, singing

21 Monday Feb 2011

Posted by in life dirt, silly fears, the wilderness

≈ 19 Comments

My red mug sings to me tonight, and I notice and laugh, because red mugs rarely do.

But this one does, after I pour the water and climb the stairs with it clutched tight. A noise sputters and hums and I look below the colored liquid and see a hole in the smooth enamel, down to the clay, where the steam must be laughing. 

And the paper, laying beside it reads in messy black

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire

–David Whyte

The darling, beautiful singing mug that makes me grin while I check my emails, because it lost its perfection.

 And they say to write about what you know, or don’t write at all. Well a red singing mug is my territory, because I know what it is to sing with a crack in the enamel.

I was the daughter of a couple who lived the gospel with skin, and left home to give that gospel, and I was raised outside of sewing circles and smooth church benches and volleyball on Friday night.

And I wore long skirts with clashing sweaters

and showed up to church in eight-year-old bare feet, when all the others had crisp white socks with the fringe of lace above shiny black shoes.

My hair swung tangled and wild around my shoulders

and some thought I was boy crazy, but it was only because the boys didn’t whisper about my feet or my hair and I could laugh without being thought of as loud.

And while others printed neat in notebooks and learned grammar I read till my eyes hurt out under the grass and drank tea with strangers and flew from one creative project to another until my room reeked of hot glue and the desk never lost its paint stains. I waded through black swamps until my skin was dyed brown and picked wild blueberries until my fingernails gave up ever looking pink again.

 I was an expert at being imperfect and it was the music that made me alive.

Then, later, I was ushered into the world of “normal”, as they say. And while my awkward adolescent legs tripped around the foreign landscapes of church foyers I discovered that they did not understand and looked blank when I tried to explain what I knew as life.

And I was too loud for the girls and I didn’t understand their jokes and the boys were different from the ones back home, and they thought I was a funny circus show, but not something to stand too close to.

 So I learned how to braid my hair neat and I became silence and all it took to intimidate me was one look across a room.

 I fought hard to dress right and wore the big clunky shoes that were so in, even though I hated them.

And I lied more and slowly my life became an inner vow to never be the odd one and I forced myself to play volleyball, even though I cried in the dark afterward. .

For years I tried to be perfect. And that is the truth.

It’s harder to keep up a façade when others start to notice the lies.

And it’s hard because it kills you inside, and I was still too crazy underneath to die perfect.

 And crazy, singing like a red mug, cubby on the desk with the hole in the bottom, is better than pretending.

Just so you know, my room is never neat rows of sticky notes, lined up straight, and I write essays the night they are due, and trip over my own feet, and hurry my prayers like TV dinners some days.

My hair is fluffy around my ears instead of pulled back straight and I wear slippers to church  and don’t care if you like lattes, because I think they are overrated, as are Mennonite cupboards and neat sitting rooms with potted plants.

And sometimes I feel the familiar claw of intimidation grab my throat, when I stand in a group and feel awkwardness like a sign taped on my forehead.  The old, “What am I missing that they have?” thought flashes.

But sometimes is not always, which is better than before.

And I laugh at myself and others more, because really, who did I ever think could achieve normal?

After all, isn’t a singing mug more chic than a silent one, even if it has Starbucks written on the side?

Pippin and Maté

24 Monday Jan 2011

Posted by 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?”

Terror in a dark alley

12 Friday Nov 2010

Posted by in laughter, silly fears

≈ 1 Comment

If I would not have an affinity for detective novels, walk dark alleys, and wear a jean back pack, my evening might have been quite uneventful.

But I do, and therefore I am thankful that my heart still beats and my eyes remain firmly in my skull.

But let me explain…..

I left school just as the sun was getting to that low place in the sky when it’s not quite setting but almost. The bus was late. It came eventually and I got on with the rest of the college students heading downtown. I have about an hour and a half on public transit. Two buses and one subway. I pulled out my collection of short detective stories and spent the entirety of my journey reading about unlikely murderers, thieves, and bandits hiding in strange places and jumping out at unexpected times on unsuspecting citizens.

By the time I got on my last bus, it was dark. The bus stop is quite a distance from my house, so when I get home late I am apt call one of my brothers to meet me at the closest intersection and have them walk me home. Tonight I mocked my wimpy little self and determined to walk home alone. Time to grow up, Esta.

I felt a slight ripple of apprehension lap at my hyped courage when I saw that a sketchy looking gentleman, wearing a scruffy jacket and a scruffier beard, was also getting off at my stop.

“Goodness, Esta, don’t be a chicken liver”, I argued and got off the bus behind him.

For the first five minutes I walked fast, trying to get as much distance between myself and Mr Scruffy as possible. My mind, still in the hothouse of detectives and wild-eyed jumpers-out-of-strange-alleys, peered down every driveway with doubts as to its quiet peaceful appearance. In detective stories, quiet peaceful places always mean imminent danger.

Despite my paranoia, after a few minutes I relaxed and began to enjoy the moon and the cold breeze and the two stars that dared glitter. I turned down the final dark street and slowly made my way down the row of darkened houses, enjoying the night and the dreamy darkness.

Half way down this particular street there is a junk yard for old cars. A sagging chain-link fence, complete with the rust that is needed for a fence surrounding a car lot, makes a rather pathetic attempt at keeping people out. Just as I reached its deserted parameters, I slowed down for a long look at the glimmering moon.

 Then, very distinctly, I felt my backpack jerked backwards in one firm, determined tug.

I felt, through my shoulder straps, the vibrations of the zipper being ripped opened and heard the zinging as the little tag followed the trail of teeth from on side all the way to the other.

I screamed—a strangled yell of absolute terror.

I spun around and the contents of my backpack flew like shrapnel in a wide circle around me.

But instead of standing face to face with a large man in a ski mask, I found myself staring at an empty sidewalk.

After standing and blinking stupidly for 30 seconds I finally felt my heart start beating again.

So there I stood, on a deserted sidewalk with no felon in sight. Well, not quite deserted.

Books, pens, coins, papers, and one red stapler decorated two lawns, 10 feet of sidewalk, and an old car lot. Some had even ventured so far as to fly out into the street and settle under the wheels of several parked cars.

I turned to start collecting the delicate confetti when I saw him, standing in the old lot. He must have been locking up for the night, but there he stood, staring at me with a frozen expression of worry.

“Hey, you okay?” he yelled across the fence.

Sidewalk cracks should be made to disappear through.

“Um, uh,  I’m fine” I stammer out and hurry to gather up my deviant articles.

I know he is standing there watching as I crawl around on hands and knees, trying to stuff everything back in my backpack as fast as possible. I crawl around, snatching pens from under car fenders and bus tokens from trimmed gardens, all the time trying to understand how I got to be in this position.

Finally everything is back in and zipped up tightly and I scurry down the street. A few yards down the sidewalk I see a portly old man standing in his lawn and I know he must have also seen my exhibition of madness. Sure enough he stares as I approach and continues to stare as I walk past. I know I’m going to start laughing. I can feel it coming.

“Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Don’t even smile. He already thinks you’re a loony”

I turn to hide a wide smile that finally bursts.

Silent laughter begins to shake my shoulders and by the time I’m a half a block away I am laughing like one who finally rolled off the pickle barrel.

Dad looks up from working on the deck to find his daughter cackling to herself as she trundles up the street in the light of the sliver moon.

And so ends a more bizarre evening stroll.

As a follow up, so you’re not worried about my sanity as well, what happened was this:  On the last bus I had noticed that my backpack was slightly opened. Not thinking to close it I had walked the seven minutes home, and since my pack is made of soft jean-like material, every footstep pushed my heavy textbooks harder and harder against the already opened zipper. Finally the whole thing just split open.

And a poor car dealer will always worry about the crazy lady who walks his street.

The leaving of burdens

20 Monday Sep 2010

Posted by in life dirt, outrageous love, realized dreams, silly fears, unreasonable hope

≈ 7 Comments

There is so much to write about. Too much to write. My pen doesn’t move fast enough across my journal these days–and still my brain races to the next thing and I scratch out and scribble in my haste.

I’m home.

I have this strange new, never-felt-ever-before hope and contentment, yet can’t shake a strange reflective mental-churning of the last months.

And all the while still struggling with trust and wistfulness and questions.

Recently I received an email from a close friend with an attachment icon blinking on the subject line. I read..

“….Long, long ago we were both in Virginia. You were…. walking across a field, and there was a tree nearby where people had piled their stuff, and I thought it would make a lovely picture: the princess wanders through the field, leaving her burdens behind…or something…”

The attachment was this picture.

What held me was not so much the picture itself, but the “leaving her burdens behind”.

Those words caught the straggled ends of my thoughts and gathered them into meaning and something my heart recognized.

For that is what these last two years have been—a leaving of burdens. Not physical or relational burdens. Burdens of sin and wounds and lies. Burdens I never knew were there until they began to catch on the thorns and I was snagged, helpless, unless I laid them down. Divine thorns, I think.

A year ago this week, a woman who had looked deeper than most and who cared enough to ask questions, sent me a letter. Not all of what she said, I was ready to hear. But, like He does, God used her words. And at the end when she wrote…

“Whatever happens… in the future does not need to destroy you…you are responsible for your own choices. I am your greatest cheerleader believing in God and your heart as a woman …knowing that the path toward healing will include pain and hard choices on your part…”

…I heard Him. Heard her. And little by little stopped playing safe and nice like I had for so long.

I used to think that all my burdens were wounds—hurts that I carried around like unhealed scars. Indeed yes, some of them were and still are. But I am learning that somehow, somewhere along the way, I’ve made my wounds a bigger issue than my sin. Wounds only exist because of sin, because of someone’s rebellion against God. Sin creates wounds, wounds do not create sin, like I always imagined. And, suddenly, I couldn’t blame my sin on my wounds anymore. My wounds made me want to hide and in the hiding I rebelled against the One who said “my grace is sufficient for thee” and the burdens piled up over a lifetime.

Never more so than this year have I realized how fallen and sin-crusted I am. How good and perfect and sweet I tried to be, and how dishonest and sinful the shell was.

There was so much in me that needed to be crushed.

How much needs to be crushed still.

How many burdens still clank around, and how the sin still creeps in everyday.

And yet, now, there is hope for being gentle since what she said, I think, is true. One can be unhidden—because hurt is reality, but nothing has the power to destroy the heart that rests in being forgiven.

And as broken and fallen as I now see myself to be, I have more hope.

If He can forgive my hiding and hold my shattered pieces together than He is big enough to take the control from my fists and I don’t need to fall apart.

And so here is to a God who forgives, and lifts burdens, and gives unreasonable hope.

Truly He is the reason.

Truly He is good.

Truly He IS.

Touching God

31 Saturday Jul 2010

Posted by 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.

 

kissing boring men and hot pink aliens

14 Friday May 2010

Posted by in family, laughter, outrageous love, silly fears

≈ 4 Comments

“ I just think it would be the greatest tragedy to have to kiss a boring man” 

I almost did clumsy nose dive into the sink of dirty dishes I was washing. Its not every day you hear a close friend utter such a mind-boggling statement. She was quite serious too.

 Despite that fact, I laughed.

And laughed.

And laughed until I was bent over, trying to breathe in the air that wasn’t there anymore.

 The statement had come popping out in the middle of an frustrated rant on God’s inevitable choice of her future partner.

Most likely He would choose someone solid and good. Someone entirely lacking in color. Besides, she reasoned, those were the only guys that would ever fall for her anyways.

I laughed, wheezed, and ran to write down the quote in my journal. And our chat continued as we finished the supper dishes.

While I do think she might need to reevaluate her definition of “the greatest tragedy”, I heard her. No, I don’t worry about kissing boring men—never have, and, hopefully, never will need too. Other things keep me awake at night. But they follow the same thought pattern.

At times, at least to me,  life seems far too much like one of those big toy machines at the mall. The big square plastic boxes filled with stuffed animals. They were the big thing when I was a kid.

You would put  two dollars in the slot and then attempt to maneuver the long arm inside the box, trying to snag the cute stuffed bear at the back. Those things are dream killers for a five year old.

For some reason it always grabs the sick looking, hot pink toy alien at the front and plops it neatly down the slot into your waiting arms. I hate those things. At least with a gum ball machine you know your going to get your gum.

Sometimes, just like a five year old, we dare to dream and our eyes sparkle with the possibilities.

Then, plut, ploop, smash……

….. life comes with its big clumsy arm and grabs an hideous looking situation and plops it down—squishing our silly hopes to nothing.  So we learn, like I did, to stay away from those big toy machines. Don’t even look at them, cause you know that those cute little teddies are only there to entice you into giving up another two dollars.

So we trade in our dreams for what we call reality.

And we become afraid that we will only get to kiss boring men
and be stuck with hot pink aliens for the rest of our lives.

tragic…

 

 “There is no fear in love: but perfect love casts out fear: because fear is agony….God is love and he that abides in love abides in God….……casting all your cares upon him, for you are his charge…..and he fed them according to the integrity of his heart; and guided them by the skillfulness of his hands. ….And the Lord direct your hearts in the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ …..For this God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our guide even unto death

  Thess 3:5,  Isa 42:16, 1 John 4:18, Psa 48:14, Psa 78:7