A Time I Once Believed

What happened to the stories
I heard of as a child
The ones about the savior come
To save me from the wild

Or is the wildness
Really just a part of my own guile?
My own demons cast out the hope
I clung to as a child.

Black and white become
The mattered grey that fills our lungs
From cigarettes and past regrets
And lies upon our tongues

I run up to the table
To feel I still belong
Sluggish, weary, bearing
All the wrongs that I have done

But can the Bread and wine
Remind a sinner there in need
That I am not alone
Even if I don’t believe

What happened to the fairytale?
Why did it come to this?
Funny how a drink can make
A cynic reminisce.

Love is hard, regardless of the relationship

"So we stood there not knowing either how to stay or how to go, and felt the weight of that failure. We felt sorry for Roy who was a quiet, smiling, unhappy man and sorry for Cecelia who was a beautiful, unhappy woman, and sorry we could think of nothing that would help." Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

This is a song by a guy named Bob Franke. Not the best voice in the world, kind of hokey at times...but man, I think this song has something to say to everyone.

Hard Love

And I recall the gentle courtesy you gave me as I tried
To dissemble in politeness all the love I felt inside
And for every song of laughter was another song that cried
This ain't no easy weekend, this is hard love

It was hard love, every step of the way
Hard to be so close to you, so hard to turn away
And when all the stars and sentimental songs dissolved to day
There was nothing left to sing about but hard love

So I loved you for your courage, and your gentle sense of shame
And I loved you for your laughter and your language and your name
And I knew it was impossible, but I loved you just the same
Though' the only love I gave to you was hard love

It was hard love, it was hard on you, I know
When the only love I gave to you was love I couldn't show
You forgave the heart that loved you as your lover turned to go
Leaving nothing but the memory of hard love

So I'm standing in this phone booth with a dollar and a dime
Wondering what to say to you to ease your troubled mind
For the Lord's cross might redeem us, but our own just wastes our time
And to tell the two apart is always hard, love

So I'll tell you that I love you even though I'm far away
And I'll tell you how you change me as I live from day to day
How you help me to accept myself and I won't forget to say
Love is never wasted, even when it's hard love

Yes, it's hard love, but it's love all the same
Not the stuff of fantasy, but more than just a game
And the only kind of miracle that's worthy of the name
For the love that heals our lives is mostly hard love

I don’t think it could have been a warmer, January mountain trip than it was this past weekend.

Friday morning we set out with the Woods and Westerholds for Gatlinburg and the Murphy’s joined us that evening. We stayed in the River Rock lodge of Chalet Village. It ended up being a really cool place save the fact that the walls were so thin I think all of the couples had to make good use of their pillows or socks at some points if you know what I mean. We pretty much spent the whole time doing one of the following things: reading, playing chess/ pool/ video games, making and eating delicious food, drinking adult beverages, smoking, relaxing in the hot tub, climbing the two story river rock fireplace in the living room, looking for hidden treasure, and dancing in the kitchen to hippity hop music. I actually have video of the entire group doing a drunken version of the chicken dance from arrested development. Yes…..

It was a fantastic time, and as usual I learned a couple things I didn’t know. In no particular order, here they go: sometimes my directional skills are somewhat lacking and I have a hard time deciphering between Highway 411 and 441, apparently it is a good idea to bring at least one set of summer clothes on a mountain trip in January as it may be 70 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, Abby Westerhold is way better than me at chess, my husband cannot scale a two story river rock fireplace without the help of some friends pulling his ass over the rail at the top, and last but not least Brian T. Murphy is a pool shark. I don’t care what anybody says, he may seem like all he’s good for is tickling the ivories, eating babies, and sporting green and yellow plaid shirts, but no, he is a damn fine pool player much to my dismay.

Oh, and how could I forget: the meaning of the term hand***. Ha.

To see some more digital photographs of this weekend and others, visit my flickr.

How do you trust God when you don’t trust him?

I have this thing that I do, or sometimes just want to do and don’t do even though I want to REALLY bad. Pretty much as long as I can remember I have wanted to save people. This is not in the “saving the soul” kind of sense, but more saving people from making bad decisions. I realize that this facet of my personality, while [sometimes] good intentioned, can have terrible repercussions.

The thing is, I’ve been a pretty shady person at times. I’ve done some things that I would not suggest anyone else on the earth duplicate, but I’ve never really called them mistakes. I really believe that if you come out of a situation wiser, then it really wasn’t a mistake; maybe not the smartest shit you ever did, but not a complete waste. Well the older I get, the more I find myself hoping that by sharing my past experiences with people, I can somehow save them from making the same poor decisions. This never works.

I am realizing that people NEED to make poor decisions, they need to fall, need to pick themselves back up again, and all they REALLY need from me is an open ear and a shoulder to cry on when shit gets hard. Thinking back, that’s all I wanted when I was in the thick of all my craziness. Why can’t I just accept that?

When you hit your limit

The day after New Years we moved with help of Changing Spaces movers (they did a fantastic job, I highly recommend them) and also started the process of making the new apartment more homey by painting and cleaning. My mom, my Aunt Terri, and I worked until around 11:30 that first night and got the bedroom done and the cabinets primed. Wednesday we started on the kitchen and the dining room, and last night mom and Aunt Terri finished up the bathroom, the living room, and the hallway. At about 9:00 last night, I was coming to the end of my rope. I was trying to put up the backsplash in the kitchen and needed a Phillips head screwdriver so I put down the aluminum flashing and went to look. I looked everywhere: the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and on and on and on….finally I was in the spare bedroom digging through the boxes in the closet and I just started crying. I felt so…unglued, like the haphazard state of my apartment was a reflection of the chaos inside my head. I was ready for some order, some organization, some sanity! I had finally hit my limit.

Read any poll regarding the top 10 stress- causing events and undoubtedly moving will always be at the top, following divorce and death of a family member. There’s so much that goes in to moving, the organizing, the packing, the cleaning out of unneeded items. I was really surprised at the two things that stressed me out the most though: the amount of dust and dirt lurking behind all of my furniture that I never knew was there, and the fact that we had movers moving our stuff for us. I somehow felt guilty that they were carrying my stuff…even though I was paying them to do so. I can’t tell you how many times I actually apologized to the movers for having to move our stuff down 4 flights of stairs. I would find myself cleaning extra hard or moving small stuff just to feel like I was doing something too. For the past 3 nights, instead of coming in and chilling out after being up early and at work all day, I’ve come home to my mom and my aunt at my apartment working so I immediately began working too.

Through the events of the past few days I’m coming to understand two things: one is that I have a really hard time letting people do things for me. I either come out feeling guilty or like I need to do something of equal importance back. Two is that I’m starting to understand that deep inside there’s a little bit of OCD in all of us. I’m always making fun of Clint because he literally CANNOT relax if our apartment isn’t picked up. He could work a full day at the store, play a gig until 2 in the morning, and if he came home to a messy apartment he would not be able to sleep until he had put everything away. My OCD is more focused on symmetry and the actual cleanliness (read, if it’s not cloroxed or dusted, it’s not clean). And the thing is, a house is never really clean. It’s an endless job, so I start feeling frustrated that I can’t ever really accomplish anything. I could spend all day doing laundry and at the end of the day, the clothes on my body will be dirty. I could do the dishes, but we’re just going to eat again in a little while. I can scrub the bathtub but it still looks dirty ‘cause it’s an old tub.

It’s weird how the older you get, the more anal you get about stuff. I hate it. I was telling Clint the other night that I really want to learn how to rest. I honestly think I don’t know how. I want to learn how to be ok with not always being in control. I don’t want to think at 23, how could I ever have kids? They would ruin everything. Is restfulness a personality trait written in our DNA? I can think of a couple people whom I would describe as “laid-back” people. Were they born that way or did they learn how to be that way, and if so, how the hell do you do that?

Before Clint and I got married we had the talk in counseling about how we would do the whole money thing. I had hoped that we could keep our separate accounts as money is a big control area for me, and said so. Brad (knowing my issues) looked at me and said, “Liz I think that not only should you have joint banking accounts, but I think that you should hand over the checkbook to Clint for a whole month”. I had a panic attack right there in the counseling room.

I think the hard truth that I don’t want to think about is that to learn how to rest is to experience a lot of pain first. It’s like Eustace, the boy in the Chronicles of Narnia who is turned into a dragon and longs to be a boy again. In the story, Aslan the lion doesn’t wiggle his nose or shake his magic wand and the boy is healed. No, he tears into his scales with his claws until Eustace thinks he will die.

So I guess that more than wanting rest, I want to be able to stand the process it will take to get there. I hope that I’ve got it in me.