walking small.

Hey friends.

For the past ten days, I've been out of town on an adventure/vacation.  I have some  backtracking to do, but this is what's in my brain right now and I want to share it.

This summer has been a different type of adventure for me--not marked by motion or movement, but by staying.  I continue to wrestle with a sense of purpose, and direction beyond my time in school.

My childish impatience and tendency towards self-reliance would tell me I'm not doing enough, going enough, being enough, moving fast enough.  All of these thoughts collided together when wrangling my family through an airport tonight.

My two year old nephew insists on walking by himself.

He has trouble with his knees so he walks in this weird-wobbling-way, like an arthritic toddler.  You can tell his legs hurt, even from far away.  He's stubborn and fiestily independent, almost to his own detriment (sound like anybody you know?  haha)  He can't even speak in full sentences yet, so he strings together declarative commands to talk.

walk!  by myself! WHOLE WAY!

That's all I heard most of the day, spent in two different airports.  After vast amounts of walking, you could tell  he was exhausted.  Eventually my brother picked him up and put him on his shoulders. Instantly, my nephew started crying, screaming, and flailing his arm around.

walk!  by myself!  whole WAY!

But after a few minutes, the boy calmed down.  He started liking not having to walk on his tired legs.

"Lizzy!"  I heard him say my name and looked up to his big, toothy grin.  "Small!  Small!"

"What's small, Max?"

"Small!  People!  Daddy tall!"  And in an instant, I understood.  Everything looked smaller when he was on his father's shoulders.

Instead of having a knee-eye view of the people coming at him, he could suddenly see over them.  He didn't have to walk around people or bump into them anymore.  All of the obstacles he had been fighting to get around, he was suddenly carried above.

I think grace is like that.

So often I insist on walking in my own strength, and I grow too stubborn to let anyone help me.  Somehow I've been programmed to believe that self-reliance equals independence when nothing could be further from the truth.  I walk and stumble, trip, and bump my way through life, when all along my Father is trying to carry me.  He's trying to help me.  He's trying to love me, and I fight Him.

I want to walk. by myself. WHOLE WAY.

When I choose that, my problems and challenges can seem so intimidating and daunting.  And yet I insist, even demand, the knee-eye view of life.  I walk stubbornly, exhausted and worn-out, when infinite strength is right beside me.

When I climb on His shoulders, all my questions shrink.

My fears seem silly.  My worries collapse in on themselves.

Oh, how small everything is in light of the bigness of my God!

 His infinite wisdom.  His loving ways.  His passion for people.

Even in my seasons of change and big-decisions

I am still being carried on His shoulders.

And I wonder with a shiver of giddy anticipation-

can I even comprehend where He's taking me?

kite flying

Dear friend,

The moon is full and so vibrantly bright tonight; it feels like a birthday present from God.  Today is my birthday, but more than that, it's a day of hope and celebration and people.  So many good, encouraging people walk beside me in all my doubts and fears and faith and crazy dreams.  These people make me who I am, and if you're reading this you're one of them.

Below is an old poem I wrote for a dear friend.  It's more silly and less structured than I usually am, but I hope you find the goodness in it.  I hope you have people that know you and are known by you.  I hope you feel loved and celebrated and accepted.  I hope, I hope, I hope.  I could write a book about all my hopes.  Maybe one day I will.

for steph.

Sometimes I dance in the aisles of the grocery store

And I remember pieces of who you used to be

A cage full of dreams and wings,

Yearning to be set free.

Rewind and freeze

Back to when we thought pop tarts were dinner

And a 401k was a marathon

And tables

Were strictly for dancing upon

And we took the long way because we weren’t in a hurry

"Busy" was an old person word

Right after mortgage

And just before worry

It wasn’t so much about the destination back then

The 9-5 paycheck to paycheck of making ends meet

Because if you have to pencil me in

If you spend all your time waiting for life to begin

If your goals turn into a means to an end

To a means to an end

It’ll never end

It’s in the journey

In between squiggly highways on maps

It’s the whisper of wind that says

Make your own path.

It’s the second you release a kite to the sky

And it grows wings and soars

So much higher than you thought it could

Or ever even expected it would

And suddenly, you realize that your hope is in flight.

You stop where you stood

Because your mind can’t wrap around

That while your feet are on the ground

Something beautiful is alive

And somehow it is tied

With a thread

back to you.

The truth is

That these are our days

You gotta shake yourself out of this haze

Dear friend,

If you keep worrying about what comes next

You’re gonna miss the best part of the movie.

Meeting life with breathless anticipation

Coffee and good friends and grand central station

Frayed jeans and loud music

Sometimes the best motivation

Isn’t money

Or success

Or seeming important

It’s dancing and exploring

And recklessly living

It's in having the grace

to be wildly forgiving

It’s in knowing that losing

Can be the best kind of winning

And having the strength to start 
from the beginning

when you

just

want

to quit

I don’t want to go down the checklist

Of graduation to college to fast-paced career

I refuse to live my life based off the fear

That when you color outside the lines

It’s not okay.

There’s freedom in knowing the whole world isn’t gray.

There will be

people in this life that will scoff at your dreams

But if we can’t see the forest for the trees

Maybe our broken eyes need to relearn how to see

Because

It takes much more courage to believe

Than to break.

Giving up is easy but

hope?

Hope takes the biggest kind of strength.

Hope has faced disappointment and yet still chooses

grace.

It requires that we wrestle

all our fears and flaws

and still remain

vibrantly courageous
when faced with the unknown.
Keep holding your kite strings to the sky
and know-
everything is possible.
everything can fly.
everything can grow.


including us.

waiting well

You can tell a lot about a person by how they wait.

As I strolled into the Secretary of State office last week, that's what I was thinking.  The room was packed to capacity; over fifty people crammed into folding chairs waiting for a chance to fill out paperwork.  I was number 51.  They were on number one.  It was going to be a long, hot wait.

Most people were playing with their phones, the noise level vacillating between a quiet chatter and a loud buzz.  Some women talked complained with each other.  Most men sat in stoic silence.  A woman with an antsy toddler played eye-spy and cradled a newborn with one arm, while filling out paperwork with another.  A 10-year-old boy offered me his chair, seeing that I had none.

I took it all in; I thought it said a lot about our culture that no one could wait contentedly.  And then I realized that I wasn't, either.

In fact, I'd walked into a room full of real stories with a book in my bag.  I was ready, excited even, to jump into a fictional life when real life was happening right in front of my eyes.  So I took a breath, closed my book, and jumped.
In the next 2 hours and 45 minutes, I found more stories than I ever imagined I would.

The older woman next to me spoke nothing but Italian, and we talked with the help of her daughter.  Language barriers are no match for hand motions and laughter.

The couple near the front had just gotten married.  She rested her head in the crook of his shoulder and in a moment, they seemed like one person.  They carried the hopeful rhythm of people who were figuring out how to share a name and a life together.

The mother playing eye-spy had no one to watch her kids that day, and as she juggled taking caring of them and fighting off their boredom- I admired her bravery and lightheartedness.  When I told her she deserved some kind of cape, her smile came with the bright fervency of someone who goes unappreciated too often.

When I left, still laughing and half-speaking Italian, I was hit with the realization that it matters how we wait.  Because we're always waiting for something, aren't we?

I ache with impatience for red lights to melt into green, high school to turn into college, college to turn into who-knows-what.  I fidget in line, at the store, in the car, filling out paperwork, pumping gas, as if these little in-between transition moments prick like mosquitoes on my skin.  In my sandpaper-motion-whirlwind I often overlook the "little" moments while waiting for something big to happen.  I miss out on good things, beautiful stories right in front of me and simply brush them off in search of something better.

And yet-
life happens in the waiting.

And so often-
I miss it.

I'm so enraptured with waiting for life to begin and big things to happen, that I push past some of the best seasons of my life.  Just one more year until I graduate.  Just two more weeks until my job starts.  Just a week, just a day, just an hour.

The very moments that I rush on past are the same things I should slow down to witness.  Rich moments of human connection and opportunity blossom right in front of me and I want to catch them.  I want to see them.  I want to open my hands to them.  

I don't want to put time in a box and wait for life to begin, when life has already begun.  It's going on all around me, second by second, and I'm missing out on the most beautiful part.  I'm missing out on everything...because friends, there are no little moments or insignificant seasons.  Each comes with its own beauty and responsibility to enjoy it, to live in it, to make the most of it. 

I think it matters how we wait.
And I think it's time I started to learn to wait well.

Here, now.  The coming and the going and the in between waiting.
It's life and it's mine and it's yours, too.
And I don't want to miss it.

we are the rebels.

Dear friend,

There have been a lot of things changing and shifting lately, but I want to tell you about a puzzle-piece moment from this past week.

My grandparents are visiting from out of town.

They are my family's road map-- years of history about who we are and where we've come from and how we got here.  Their don't-rush-life rhythm reminds me to take things slow and let myself off the hook every once in awhile.  In their rare visits, they always bring this sort-of magic with them...this inexpressible magic of living life at peace.

We aren't the most peaceful people, though.

My family is not without their set of faults, as most aren't.  Maybe you have one of those families.

I think it's funny that out of everything, we don't get to choose our families.  We can't control them, just as much as we can't control choosing to be born or choosing to die.  We are given people and time, and it's up to us how we respond to them...with impatience at their imperfections, or with grace because they're ours, too.

All of this to say-- we're given flawed people, and we're flawed people ourselves.  That's what I was thinking about as we sat down for a family dinner a few nights ago, the whole clan.  My grandparents strongly believe in God, but they haven't always.  Just like my parents haven't always, and my aunts and uncles haven't always and some still don't.  But almost all of my family believes in God now, and I was thinking about how much of a miracle that is.

We aren't the most peaceful people, though.

My grandpa will tell you about how he used to live, humbly and honestly.  So will my grandma.  So will I.  We could fill a book with mistake stories and flaws and flat out sin.  We are not the "most-likely-to-become-Christians" sort of people; in fact, we're probably the furthest from it.  As we sat around the table, I took in all of us--ex-addicts, ex-alcoholics, ex-liars, ex-striving-to-be-good-enoughs, ex-everything.

We are the rebels and

we are the flawed and

yet every single day

we are being made new.

Even though there are decades and years between us, my family is a living testament that grace still makes beauty out of ugly things.

And the magic that my grandparents bring with them isn't a peace that comes from being perfect--it's a peace comes from knowing the feeling of being so flawed and yet being made whole.  And that's something we share, besides DNA, besides flaws, besides wild hair.

Grace.  We share grace.