a grand and beautiful adventure

I haven’t missed Florida until tonight. 

Between coming home, and camping, and having surgery, and getting sick, and packing up my life again - I haven’t had time to think about this summer, much less miss it. It is strange, yet honest to say that I haven’t had time to feel. 

That is, until, 4 am on an early sunday morning. Later today I will be leaving here again for another there, for another year. But it’s not just any where, or any year. It’s my other home, it’s my senior year. 

I used to think, before this summer, that what I longed for was wandering. I used to think I was made for adventure, that my being trapped to North America wasn’t by choice but by unfortunate happenstance. I used to think that I didn’t need ‘home’ when I could have a journey. 

I used to think that I wouldn’t miss places I had been as long as there were places to go. 

And yet, on the eve of yet another adventure, another new beginning, another journey - my heart is heavy.

Tonight, I just want to be on my porch swing, in the humid sultry night of Florida, listening to the hum of insects. Tonight, I want to be curled up on Star Rock, in the middle of the Sierra Nevadas, watching stars fall. Tonight, I want to be sitting on the floor of my sophomore year apartment, laughing with Steph and Rachel, eating cake batter and watching stupid movies. Tonight, I want to be sitting in the church parking lot with my three best friends, talking about silly things and stupid things and hopeful things and things we aren’t sure of yet. Tonight, I want to be in the prayer chapel, looking at people who - for all that became of them later - in that moment were precisely who I needed to be with. Tonight, I want to be in Mexico, hugging my knees and watching the moon rise. 

And I could write about how I need to stay present, and that I need to be grateful for the fact that these things happened once. I could write about how anxiety about tomorrow doesn’t make for these kinds of memories. I could write some upbeat lines about adventure and journey and wanderlust, about moving on, about looking forward. 

I could, and I will - write, stay present, be grateful, be still, have more adventure, move on. 

I will. 

But tonight, I’m taking a few moments to feel, to remember, to, perhaps, say goodbye. If my sense of hope is always grounded in what’s next, then it is not rooted in much. Though they bring sadness tonight, these memories provide foundation for hope. They point to times in my life, both big and small, where I have been given the chance to appreciate what I’ve been given. They point to God’s faithfulness, and people’s goodness, and my personal strength. They point to beauty and to truth and to justice. They prove that those things exist. They prove that love is worth it, risk is worth it, hope is worth it, God is worth it, life is worth it. 

This past year has been hard. It has been full of changes - I have become a different person physically, mentally, spiritually. I have had many homes, created and torn down sacred spaces with each move, and I’m a little worse for the wear because of it. And yet, I feel all the more capable of loving, of living fully, of being free.

Because of this past year, I know that, with my God and my community, I can face what lies ahead. Because of last summer, because of High Sierra, because of this past Spring and all the conversations and conversions that took place then, because of Florida - because of living more fully alive than I ever have before - I am ragged and I am ready.

I have been torn open, and my arms have been flung wide to welcome in the next. The next journey, the next stranger, the next question, the next hard night, the next opportunity, the next challenge, the next doubt, the next hug, the next kind word, the next critique. The next whatever - the next grand adventure to be had. 

I have lived here for three months. 

In 36 hours, I’ll be boarding a plane back to my coast, back home. I remember this girl who lived three months ago, dreading the plane ride to Florida. She couldn’t imagine what this summer would look like. She had no idea that there would be that there would be more than one story that would shake her to the core. She had no idea that she would sit on a park bench and talk to God face to face. She had no idea feel most at peace on a creaky porch swing, surrounded by love bugs and mosquitos. She had no idea that she might actually feel at home somewhere else. She had no idea she could save a life. 

She had no idea that she would meet four of the most ridiculously paired people. She had no idea there would be a place for her to be her nerdiest. She had no idea that there was a world apart from school - and she wasn’t prepared to not be perfect at it. She had no idea that she would learn much more about her weaknesses than she thought there was to learn. 

She had no idea that the reality of community is a lot more messy than it ever seems. She would have never guessed that she would willingly enter conflict just to fix the tension in the house. She had no idea that she would have to grapple with sadness and bitter loneliness. She had no idea that the struggle would help set her free. She had no idea that she would grieve the loss of people she never met before. She had no idea that grieving them would help her heal. 

I remember this scared child. I recognize her. I smile at her. Our heart beats - no longer racing with anticipation. Tonight, our heart is beating with the bittersweetness of saying goodbyes, of seeing hard work taking on a life of its own, of endings. Tonight, our heart is full, full of the joy and the healing and the sweetness I found here. 

Tonight, our heart is calm. This has been a grand and beautiful adventure indeed. But oh! on to the next adventure we go. That scared little child and whomever I am now, we walk hand in hand, holding this experience close between us. We venture forward. 

I don’t have all the answers - not to my own questions, not to yours. But this I have learned: joy doesn’t follow anyone. Rather it is chased after, laughingly, hungrily, boisterously. It is pursued like a child who, chasing fireflies, ends up with handful of starry sky. I have learned that we deserve the chance to change. We deserve to give ourselves permission to clamor after joy without shame. We deserve to give ourselves permission to accept love. 

A note to self: you’ll never guess just how much of an adventure each journey will be. Just take a breath and board the plane. And we will make it through. 

This is my answer 14. My next answer. Maybe, my only answer. I want to live in knowledge that those snapshots, these answers, all those stars are Holy. Holy. Holy. 

I want to live to seek joy, not trap it. I want to live the spectrum. I want to live without crutches, but I do not want to live without support. Without beautiful friends who will speak to the exuberance and the excelling and the madness and the glory within.

This poem was shared with me by one such friend in my life. I hope that it performs in your heart again and again. I hope that it makes you come alive. It certainly did for me. 

There are a small handful of people who, when the night is heavy and dark and late, I would dare say a word to. There are very few, one or two really, that can make sense of me when I can’t make sense of myself. Who, at 3 in the morning, I can call and say, “are you up?” 

Andrew is one of those people. We’ve known each other for three years and, despite the turns our lives have taken, I still consider him one of my best friends. Beyond that, he has always been, sometimes annoying, sometimes depressingly, always faithfully, a protective big brother to me. I cannot imagine my life without Andrew - in that same way that I cannot imagine my life without my sisters or my parents. We may not talk for weeks or months, but there is a sense that I draw comfort from him existing. 

While he is my brother (many have asked us whether we really were separated at birth - that’s just how we are), he is also my best friend. It would be one of those sibling relationships you envy, if it were real. He knows just about everything that could be known about my life, and knows me, I often feel, better than I know myself.

He is wise. He is wise in a way that I have never encountered. He understands people, disarmingly so. He once explained to me the way his fiancee thought about something, and I was left speechless. I did not know, I simply did not know, that he paid so much attention to the world around him (not to say he is a distracted person or what not, but I did not know that anyone could pay that close of attention). 

He has his faults, and he knows that. I think that’s one of the things I admire most about him. He recognizes that he isn’t going to always say the right thing, but risks speaking into difficult situations regardlessly. He risks having his words handed back to him in his effort to care for others. 

Andrew has cared for me in ways that I can’t put to words. It has often frustrated me that I could not return the favor, that I could not have such wise insight into his life as he has for mine. But I have grown to accept the dynamic, cherishing the times I have gotten to care for him, learning how to even when I can’t do much else but encourage or choose better words. 

Last night, I was faced with one of those moments where I just needed to be with those few people who understand me when I can’t understand myself. Andrew has been, and continues to be, a person in whom I encounter God. I encounter God when Andrew reminds me of who I am, who I am called to be, and who died for all of me. He said yesterday that he was trying to break his habit of soapboxing, and I understood. I just hope he knows that I listen regardless. He allows me to think aloud, and cross borders between my heart and my mind. He is wise, and brilliant, and can easily keep up with even my most difficult thought paths. 

To be cared for by someone that I do not need to explain myself to is such a graceful moment. To be told wise words and encouraged and challenged and, through it all, be loved and accepted, is a rare gift. And last night, from across the country, I was given that gift again. 

These answers are getting less and less definite - and perhaps that is the nature of the question. Coming alive, after all, doesn’t seem reducible to simple words or still photos. 

Last night, while not feeling very hopeful or joyful or full of life, I could still encounter an answer in the ring of my phone and the voice of a friend who was willing, after all this time, to be there. He was wiling to be there, to show up, to wait quietly while I cried or ranted or cursed or tried to figure out my big questions by myself. He was willing to listen and willing to speak into the mess, entering the fray, making himself vulnerable to my brokenness.

That, only a sliver of what our friendship has been filled with, to me allowed me to find life. It is not only in the caring for others that life can be found, I am learning, but in the being cared for. 

I am learning that this challenge is a process, is a journey, is a way of living rather than a state of being. I am learning that the moments I try too hard to squeeze life out of situations, I end up killing them. I am learning that not every day can have an clear answer, because not every day can be about arriving. 

I am drinking it in. There are days, like today, when life is about the traveling through. That doesn’t mean there is a lack of beauty or that there is less life in these moments than others, it is just harder to spot, harder to express - to myself, or anyone else. 

I think a part of life, and maybe even part of this answer to the question at hand, is enduring. There are times when there just isn’t anything particularly meaningful to say, and I’m learning that that is okay. That tired days are okay, that sad days are alright once in a while, that I don’t need to be happy to practice the discipline of choosing joy. 

 As long as I am seeking, seeking life, seeking joy, seeking the Spirit, I am living this journey, I am answering the questions with my footfalls and my thoughts. I am having patience with the long walk, learning to love the heres and nows rather than the thens and theres or the thats and thuses. I am learning to love the dust around my feet, even if I have to shake it. 

About 10 months ago, I was in the middle of the wilderness with a 50 pound pack and no sense of direction and a handful of near-strangers that would soon become dear friends. It was the first day of TREK, and I was terrified. I quickly found out that I could not breathe up hills, I could not feel my back where the hip belt pressed tight against my spine, I could not do anything about the dull burn of blisters forming inside stiff boots. And yet, I kept going. I kept one foot in front of the other and hoped to God that my lungs would work better and kept my camelback tube in my mouth at all times to prevent myself from complaining (which I’m sure I did enough of as it is). 

And so it went, day by day. We would hike and I would look at my feet and put foot in front of foot and just try to make it through. I would just move forward because I had no other alternative. And then we would get to these beautiful, breathtaking places, like Lillian and Lady Lake, and I would slump down to the dirt and be still in a way you only can be when you’ve forced yourself to move forward for hours. 

That is, until Day 4.

I was leading the group, and we hiked in a straight line over a shifty slate hill. The way was difficult to follow, there was no trail, only roughly staked cairns that were half knocked asunder. The rocks that we marched over were bright white, bleached by the sun, and moment you stepped on parts of the rocks, they began to crumble. I slide and tumbled to the bottom, praying that my team behind me would find traction before they followed me. 

We took a turn at a shady fork, and knowing where we were going, I knew we were close, maybe only 2 or more miles until another breathtaking view. The terrain was flat, and refreshingly stable.  But the trail wound into the forest, and the trees took us back like protective mothers that had lost sight of their children for a little too long. The embrace at first blinded me, as we drank in the cool darkness of the forest. 

We only had a little bit more, I told myself. We only had a little farther until I could look and see and drink in the beauty of nature. I just had to put one foot in front of the other, easily now, on this gentle thin trail. And so I did. Until the stars faded from my eyes, until I started to be able to see, until I realized that the place we were walking through was just as breathtakingly beautiful as any other destination we had stopped at.

There were thousand, maybe millions, of little flowers covering the forest floor. The sunlight broke in through the trees embrace, and shafts of light danced across the bed of buds. The trees were gnarled, in an eloquent way, like old professors who know how to say they do not know. Limbs were clasped in prayer and the reverence of the whole place made my body shiver: I treading through the most beautiful chapel there ever could be. The aisle was a ribbon of dust, and I was walking towards some unseen altar. It was as though the ten of us gasped at the same time.

That Sacred place, that little moment, meant something significant to each of us, even if it also meant something different to each of us. It meant for me the beginning of a new way of seeing. It meant realizing that all the aching footsteps I had taken in all kinds of different journeys - through pain, through recovery, through betrayal, through forgiveness, through self-doubt, through self-discovery - had brought me to this church of flowers and field mice and theologians cloaked in tree bark and the Spirit dancing upon an altar unseen. It meant knowing what hope looked it, there in those quiet seconds of worshipping between the trees. It meant being willing, 10 months later, to learn anew what that place held for me. 

Today is a day that I spent on a slate mountain, shifting ground, frustrated with myself, with my stomping feet that slide around, with my clumsy heart. It was a day of putting one foot in front of the other, enduring, and not doing so well or gracefully, but complainingly, and achingly, and tiredly. And yet, and yet, and yet, up ahead, sometime, in some unpredicted moment, there will be another sanctuary, where coming alive is not a matter of doing, but being, where fullness causes the joints of the place to creak and shatter. There will be days like those, breathtaking moments that I will want to hold on to forever, but be unable to because I am not there yet.

And then there are days like today, that get me to breathtaking destinations and to sacred journeys, and these days matter as much as any other. They matter because living life to the full is not living life to the comfort. They matter because they are part of full life, they are necessary and make those moments when our breath is taken away all the more meaningful. 

And so my answer for today, and for days like this one that are sure to come, is something like putting one foot in front of the other, and something like hope, and something like patience, and something like trust. It is something like that, unnamed moments that make the bright moments bright. 

There is no poetic way to put this: I am simply in love with weddings. 

Some of my closest friends have learned this about me by now, but to most, I think my love of weddings and wedding planning is some what of a surprise. I am not a girly girl. I disdain people who don’t like to get dirty. I played in the mud my entire life - I still do. I cannot wear white - it will surely be stained within the hour. I am a klutz. I don’t like flowers. I think dancing is torture. I cannot stand cliches and do not believe 1 Corinthians 13 should be read at anyone’s wedding. That is a verse that proclaims understanding, and should be read, perhaps only, at 40th anniversaries and above. 

And yet, I am enthralled by weddings. I am enthralled by thinking of the day I hope to have my own. I am enthralled by other people’s ways of doing things, even if they are opposite to my every personal wish. I feel energetic, hopeful, alive when I browse though color swatches and dress styles and theme possibilities and small designs and locations upon locations. I have my own little place for all the possibilities of my own, but I do not need to just see weddings that unfold my way. 

I love weddings because they allow me to fully show up. I can be as creative and artsy as I possibly can be, while still being strategic and a to-do list addict. I have colors and lace, frills and flowers, all those girly things that I never let myself be about growing up. And I have order and schedules and details and planning. Thinking about weddings allows me to do what no other avenue allows for: the creative and the strategic parts of me to work together as a team. 

It is a simple answer, something silly and frivolous that takes up too much time, but it is honest. I may be a scholar, an intellectual, an activist, a feminist, a hipster. But I am not above squealing in delight over lace bodices or the perfectly crafted bouquet. I am not above, nor do I want to be, loving the little things in life.  

I met a girl named Kelly tonight. She was sitting at my dining room table when I came out of my room. It was announced that we were leaving and so, without yet saying hello, we piled into a car and onto the road. I liked her immediately - maybe because she lives in a place I love, maybe because she took control of music from the backseat. Either way, I had the impression that here was another chance to learn to live. 

We talked of Seattle and music on the way to Starbucks, laughing at our shared elitism. The music was too loud and too good to say much else on our way back. It was decided then that the night was open and the beach was free and there was no where else to go but the place we all wanted to be.

The moon was pulled close tonight. It hung heavy, punch drunk with the humidity. While we walked towards the ocean, it cast shadows behind us and lit up the sky before us. A friend said it looked like heaven out there. I silently amended that it felt like heaven right here. Kelly ran to the water, I lingered back pointing out constellations and drinking in the night. But her voice, her moon shadow, her joy dancing in the water came reaching back to us, and I was no longer able to be only an onlooker.  

Waves and sand and stars and moon beams and all the kind of curiosities that meeting new people brings - I was surrounded by it all. There was no where else I could want to be, than there, with my feet in the sand and my mind on the stars.

We talked of adventure and all the pretty things and how it was to travel alone. We were in love with the same cities, and shared places and people and hopes that would carry us on. We talked of how home happened, and what it was like to be a wanderer. I smiled then, because my toes were in the Atlantic, and I felt at home. 

A lighthouse flashed its sallow warning in the distance and I turned my eyes instead to the moon. All a lighthouse has ever said is, “This is where your journey ends. This is where the sea stops and land begins. This is where your journey ends.”

The words we said were too alive to be interrogated by a lighthouse; these dreams cannot be kept safe by a pallid glow on the ocean’s end. These were stories meant to be illuminated, by moonbeams and waves, by the possibility of the whole dark sea before us that stretches on until it is covered in stars. Worlds are created and uncreated in moments on nights like this. The moon casts shadows. The space between me and the stars ceases to matter. The memories of moments like these stir up words like infinite and impossible and altogether alive. 

In the end, it wasn’t Kelly or the moonlit beach or even the talk of adventure that made tonight into an answer. It was that something unfolded in front of me, and there was a moment of recognition that it could be something significant and that I wanted to pay attention. It was the kind of thing you cannot make happen. Rather, they happen to you as long as you have a certain willingness to let them. 

A silent night on pebbled mountains overlooking the last days of a long shared story.

Laser shows and late night coffee runs and seeing Seattle with four strangers because you are young and you are alive.

Tangled in friendship, with mixing tears and laughter, consorting with the Mexican moon because he brings comfort, making home feel close and far enough away.

Speaking of tomorrows and maybes under paint-strokes of meteors burning their way bright and young.

Toes buried in other oceans, standing next to strangers, believing in all the hopes you are not afraid, for once, to share.

These are moments that happen, and I cannot help but come alive. When I hope with open hands, when I dream and believe that dreams are more than fables and puns, but futures and possibilities, when I allow myself to say hello to strangers, to opportunities, to nights not yet known - that is when moments like these happen.

For when I am willing to attend the feast, even as a fool, the meat and the marrow present themselves abundantly. 

Today, I woke up to this wall and all I could do was smile. Smile because each piece holds part of this summer’s story. Smile because each card and letter holds a little bit of the author in it - those who I love and who love me are here on this wall. To wake up and remember that is the best kind of way to start the day. 

Getting mail is a wonderful part of being away. It has been hard this summer; homesickness has crept up on me in the most unexpected times. But having these letters from dear friends and family has kept me going when all I wanted to do was go back to California. There are words of wisdom on these notes, encouragement, inside jokes, beautiful quotes. Kelsey and Skylar, Laurel and Bri, Sara Paye and Maryellen, my parents, my dear aunt and uncle - they’ve given me parts of them to keep. 

And so, as simple as it is, letters from loved ones is a way I come alive. Holding a new note makes me feel loved in a special way - there is nothing quite like it for me. 

“You see all I really need
Are some ears to hear me dream
I feel like the biggest man, 
the biggest man in Los Angeles. 
Oh I’m home, I’m right where I belong
And there’s no where else that I’d rather be.”

I met Andy Grammar the other day, when he dropped by the TWLOHA office to say hi and play a few tunes for us. While he may be a rising star in music and a personal favorite of mine, meeting him was not an answer to what makes me come alive.

I’ve never had a fascination with fame. I have always though it vain, empty of purpose, unfulfilling, and impossible to maintain. I never understood the desire to be famous for fame’s sake. Equally, I’ve never understood the obsession with being around famous people. I have lived just outside of Hollywood for going on 4 years now, and I have never been down the walk. I just do not care.

What I care about, over names in stars or handprints in sidewalks, more than fake gold androgynous statuettes, are people. I care about people. I care about what makes people hurt, about what makes people work, about what makes people whole. I care about people’s dreams. Their hopes and aspirations and all the answers others have to this grand question I’m chasing after. And if you can sing to me about that, if you can act out that, if you can write that or dance that or build that or surf that, then I will listen. 

I refuse to listen to tabloid accusations, exclusive People pictures, or pre-packaged sound bites. I refuse to watch the antics of fame. 

I welcome the sight of honest faces. I welcome true words, whether bounded by a spine or set loose by music. I welcome the dreams of others - if it has been your dream to sing, to act, to dance, to paint, to write, to dream that this world might be bigger than they told us it was, oh, I invite you into my soul.

With that welcome, my heart has been treated with many guests. I have had the chance to witness talent, sometimes displayed by fame, but always significant only through honesty. And when I invite a song, a scene, a sonnet, a story into my soul, it resounds within me. When I lose myself in another’s art, I always find that I am left more human than before. I am more myself. I am more alive.

Andy Grammar is a man, with a handsome voice and a sweet smile and the fortitude within to keep on jamming even when guitar strings snap. He’s a guy with a story, a song to sing, and a life to live. That is who he is, before and above, his fame. And he has a song (actually a number of them) that I welcome in. His honest words about his humble start and his big dreams do much more than what many are famous for. 

They give me life. 

(FYI: This is me (for the Midnight Premiere) as Rose, Ron and Hermione’s daughter who is leaving for Hogwarts in the Epilogue of Deathly Hallows, Part II)

(And this is me, at the Midnight Premiere of Deathly Hallow’s Part I, as Hermione)

Down to the very number of my answer, I am a Harry Potter nerd. I am a Harry Potter nerd who can tell you every single Patronus made by each character, and the reason why. I can tell where there are differences between the first edition prints and the ones published now. I long for nothing more than for J.K. Rowling to release the textbook, “Hogwarts: A History” so I can pour over it. In my mind, for years and years and years I have walked the halls of Hogwarts, talked with house ghosts, ate my fill feasting on pages. 

While I was one of the first to love the books, I was late to the game for the movies. I never went to one in theaters before Deathly Hallows Part I, and for that, I kick myself. I am a fervent believer that the books far far surpass the movies, but there is something to the culture, the fanaticism that be displayed around the movies. 

Last night, I went to the final movie. I went with my housemates and fellow TWLOHA staff, who, likewise, are absolute Harry Potter nerds. My roommate drunk beer from his Tri-Wizard Cup. Two of the staff members went to Leaky Con, a conference dedicated to the series. I channeled Hermione, studying while we waited for the movie to begin. The theater was abuzz, hundred of people were in costume, shouting to each other by character names. The entire theatre sobbed together, and laughed at inside jokes only true HP nerds would get.

When I went to the premiere of Deathly Hallows Part I, I was surrounded by friends who were, again, just as in love with the story as I am. We had a life-size Hagrid (8-feet tall), a true-to-form Voldemort and Bellatrix, and a Whomping Willow.

At both the premieres, I could turn to strangers and share with them my excitement. They understood me, saw my costume and heard my characterization, and accepted me for entirely normal. We waited on the edges of our seat, together. We, we who were there for the very end, were united by waiting for the beginning. And when I couldn’t stop the tears or hold back the sobs any longer, I was not afraid. I was with people who understood what this story of Harry Potter means to me. 

And so, my answer, my seventh answer (wink, wink), is that moment. That moment when you realize that you are at your very nerdiest and surrounded by people who love you for it. For me, it is Harry Potter (and Hamlet, and Lit Crit and theological debates, and women’s volleyball). It is when I can be absolutely passionate about what makes me most excited, most engaged, most alive, and have everyone else in the room not need an explanation - that is my answer.

When you can be, just be, the biggest nerd, the biggest fan; the biggest lover; dreamer; geek; intellectual; biggest weirdo you can be, and have your environment, the people around you - stranger or friend - take you in with open arms, that is an experience of being fully alive. 

My answers so far have had a common theme. They are not so much things I do, but wonders I encounter. I think that is fitting. I am filled with life most often when I encounter - encounter people, ideas, beauty, impossibilities, words, and God. 

Yet, one answer came to mind tonight that has nothing to do with encountering or interacting, but doing and being. It is about finding my center, breathing in deep, letting the journey take me on its way. I come alive when I drive. And I mean, really drive - not the sort of shuttling around we do daily, but the feeling of whipping through winding mountain roads, losing yourself in the shadows of the trees, finding balance between white and yellow lines, taking hairpin turns that are so natural after so many hours spent on the same road that they are nothing but another chance to feel. 

When I was a child, I was fascinated with machines. I wanted to know how they worked and why, what happened inside airplanes and diesel trains and ships and trebuchets. But I was always always most captivated by cars. Trucks in particular. When I was 10, I decided that all I ever wanted was a Toyota Tacoma 4WD pickup. I never dreamed of my wedding day as a little girl, or my engagement ring. I dreamed of the day I got my license (and oh, what a day that was!), and my future Tacoma.

My father taught me to drive, and drive well. He trusted me, 3 weeks after I had gotten my permit, to drive with him in his car to San Diego (a 8+ hour drive). It was exhilarating. I learned to drive on the 5, on the Grapevine, on the 46.

My father taught me the game - taught me that driving was little more than a highly rigorous game of chess. You can predict, maneuver, strategize out of, and play with most other cars. There are those rouge moments you never see coming and you hope to God that you are never in check (having nearly totaled my car once, I know the risk of checkmate all too well). Driving is like chess, like weaving, like a game of pool. It demands attention to detail, respect, patience, strategy, and skill. 

Ever since that first trip down the state of California, I have been hooked on the game. I would spend nearly every afternoon I could, pushing myself to be better, driving more and more difficult mountain roads, letting myself learn how to become not a driver, but part of the car. It became like breathing to me, and those challenging courses I would set for myself would, in turn, help me to breath. I do not remember a single week of high school going by when I did not take at least one long drive in my ole beloved loaner mini-van that was pushed to its limits again and again.

When I was 18, I got my baby. Zoey is a kickin’ deep teal Scion XB with an attitude of her own. She isn’t a Tacoma, but she’s mine, and is much more practical. Besides, how on earth would I practice handling in a pick-up? Zoey has been, and continues to be, a faithful, fast, comfortable, incredibly spacious (see, I could rave on and on about cars) friend, with an excellent sound system to boot. She’s everything I could want in a car. 

Here in Florida, I live without a car. I have to rely on my roommates to take me grocery shopping or out to dinner. And I’ve realized this summer that my car wasn’t just a place for me to have fun, a place to feel the wind and the risk and the road running beneath me. It was a space for me to breath, to find solace, to sort out my thoughts, to make sense of the world around me. It was a private, safe home for my emotions and thoughts; driving was and is a way for me to chase after life fully, albeit perhaps recklessly as well. As a girl who spent her youth dreaming of driving, my car is a part of me and my identity. 

To drive is to witness freedom, to push on forward, to practice honor and courage, to hold tight, to face whatever is ahead with open eyes, a steady heart, and a lead foot. It is a way I come alive.  

Today, I sat down to chat and have coffee with a wise man I’ve gotten to meet this summer through my internship. His name is Denny. He works for TWLOHA and helps run an art space in town called Brick and Mortar. He has massive amounts of hair in dreadlocks down his back. He surfs, it seems, every chance he gets. And he and I share quite a lot in common; not the least of which is our passion to shoot intellectual shit from time to time. 

Over coffee, we talked about spiritual development, and theological anthropology; literary theory and narrative therapy; conflict and choice and crisis and Christ and how all four are essential to humanity. It is in conversations like the one I had today with Denny that I feel closest to God. And if feeling close to God isn’t one and the same with feeling alive, I’m not sure what kind of life I’m living. 

I’ve been privileged, absolutely privileged, to have had the opportunity to have so many of these kinds of conversations over my lifetime.

A few years after Tess (see answer number four) let me into the world of writing, my fifth grade teacher named Bill let me into the world of debate and dialogue. Bill refused to coddle me in school - refused to let me hide behind deafness or my lisp or my social awkwardness or my inability to spell or my forgetfulness at writing my name at the top of papers.

He called me out, and he called me up.

He was the first of many to do so, who continue to do so. He spoke to me like an adult, he asked what I thought and he genuinely cared about my answer. He wanted me to learn to think, to question, to wonder about big ideas, to challenge, to debate. I remember arguing with him for the first time, as he stood patiently (now, I recognize that he stood also with a slightly bemused look to his face) in front of my desk and let me sputter out my thoughts. He wouldn’t leave me alone - at times I hated him (though I have always hated, at times, the teachers that I grew to love the very most). Bill would deliberately highlight my weaknesses; he refused to let me get away with poor math skills (sadly I still failed in that department), he was ruthless in his spelling quizzes, he would not let me turn my back on science. He was, in retrospect, a phenomenal mentor, as well as teacher. He called out and up my whole being.

Later, I would have youth pastors who would do the same thing. For almost three years of high school, I met almost every week with Todd and Melinda, and in those meetings, I was radically cared for, unconditionally loved, and absolutely challenged. I spent so many hours sitting on a sunken in couch, staring at awful orange carpet, being given truth and grace and patience. It was through those conversations that I began to learn how God loved, through many emails and text messages that I caught a glimpse of how I might be loved, might be significant, might be okay. The two of them showed me again and again that my questions, my doubts, my struggles, my enemies, my messes were not too big for God to handle. It is with those two friends that I get to celebrate each year that I get to live - pursuing life and healing and wholeness and truth. 

In college, it seems that from two mentors became many. An explosion of people who wanted, were willing, who desired to have the kinds of conversations that help me thrive. Every semester carries me to another person, most often a professor, who feeds me with wisdom, clothes me with patience, visits me in the prisons of my own sorrow, prays for me through lectures and lengthy emails and Facebook chats. I have been surrounded by brilliant people, men and women that truly care, truly desire to be about the lives of their students both in the classroom and without. I cannot name all here, but I must mention a few more.

From the first days at APU, I had Professor Bruner who would set me straight again and again, while Professor George Haraksin let me wander in his turf of philosophy and pastoral wisdom. I encountered Chris Adams early in my college career when he asked to sit next to me on the red trolley the day I (almost) quit APU altogether. It seems, he hasn’t left my side since. The three of them, Bruner, George, and Chris would form an unlikely trio who helped me fight through my first, difficult year of school. They were, and have continued to be, the ones who have seen my darkest hours, held my heaviest thoughts, and who have again and again let me borrow hope from each of them in turn. Their wisdom and brilliance fed my soul; their pastoral care has helped heal it. 

After a tumultuous freshman year, I met a professor who, though I very much doubt he knows it, changed my life completely. I was 8 years old when I began to write; I was 19 when I finally realized that I was a writer. Dr. Allbaugh taught me, reminded me, called out of me the truth that writing was what I was made for.

And again, it was about the relationship, the conversations that we had in our writing conferences that made all the difference. He cared about my work enough to let me know where it desperately needed work (a truth not at all to be considered in the past tense). He gave me a way to tell my story; taught me a genre that I have since fallen in love with. It was his Creative Non-Fiction class that I lived for during my lonely fall semester of my sophomore year. It was his class that whispered back to those mornings of Writer’s Workshops in the third grade. It was his class, his care, his critique, and his calling me out that reminded me of who I am, at the very core, has always been a writer. 

Because of his class, I was lured back into the English Department - a destiny I had tried so hard to avoid. While his class baited me, Dr. Glyer shut the trap. Tess and Dr. Glyer have, a part from my own brilliant scholar of a mother, been the most influential women in my life - and I mean in my entire life, not merely in my academic career.

Dr. Glyer modeled to me how to fully live and fiercely love, and how both of those words are better understood as verbs. She is a force to be reckoned with. She demands respect, not by being overbearing or disciplinary, but from the sheer power of her love of what she teaches. She taught me to fall in love with Story, all over again. Our World Literature Honors class was less about the reading or the papers or the writing (though I don’t know if I’ve ever worked so hard for any other class ever), it was about the life that we all found in those three hours each Tuesday night.

Whether she knows it or not, she helped me rebuild. She helped me heal, reclaim an innocence and a wonder I had lost. She opened my eyes to the importance of the stories we are. She lives in a way that makes you understand that your story matters, and that it matters a great deal to her. She is shocking and vulnerable in a way that does not undermine her, but instead allows me to respect her all the more. Her ability to dream is infectious, and her steadfast belief in me has made me, more than once, doubt my own doubt.

There have been long afternoons I’ve spent with her, chatting over her work-worn desk, that is always covered with her ideas and her mess that she’s not afraid to show. She is, to me, a picture of hospitality, of brilliance, and patience, and how teaching can look when you let your studies and your students dance within your soul. I have never left her office without a deep, abiding feeling that my life is aching with the weight of fruit that she has helped bear in me. It is the only way I can express it. 

I cannot tell tales of them all, but Tess, and Bill, and Todd, and Melinda, and Bruner and Cheryl Crawford, and George, and Chris, Dr. Allbaugh, and Dr. Glyer, and Dr. Noble, and Craig Keen, and David William and Rob Simpson - along with others that for space will go unnamed - they have carried my answer number five to me. I have no name for it precisely, for mentorship or conversations seems too broad and too superficial, but to be surrounded by people who call me out and up, who demand the best from me and care enough to make sure I give it, gives me life and life to the full. 

(If you have made it this far, I hope 1. either you are some sweet, dear friend who will be mentioned soon in another answer or 2. you are one of these people that I’ve been so privileged to be surrounded by. If you are the latter, the following (yes, even more) is for you.)

An Honest, Unabashed Letter of Gratitude to all my mentors, and all my teachers: 

I hate the words, “thank you”. It is so… so… insipid. Uninspired. It lacks the sort of zest that you all have put into, and demanded out of, my soul. To some of you, I have said many thanks. I have said it into hands burying my face, shouted it in place of anger, typed and texted its many variations. I have worried whether I’ve said it enough, or too much. I’ve wondered whether any of you have any idea how very grateful I am. 

You - you are the reason I’m alive. Not just living - but alive. You are the people I think of when I dwell on words like “hope” and “mercy” and “love”.

You have taught me things unwordable - you have cared for me in ways I do not even understand. You have kept my heart safe when I couldn’t, you have read to me words of truth when I all I heard, believed, knew, trusted were lies. You surrounded me when I was weak, fed me when I was hungry - hungry for knowledge, for healing, for truth, for calm. You have prayed for me, you have been the physical manifestation of an invisible God. You have been Jesus to me; even if you don’t know or like Jesus whatsoever. You taught me to believe, to trust, to laugh, to sing, to dance, to dream, to hold on tight, to let go, to fight, to let God fight, to study, to learn, to read, to listen, to be open, to make beautiful things, to write, to be free. You taught me all of these things. 

Do you know how very important you are? Do you know how many of us, children like me, have been impacted by you, by your words, your actions, your grace? Do you know that we could never have been that we are were it not for you? Do you understand that you are that necessary? Because you are. You have kept me. Your words and lessons and time and care has kept me, and I have kept them too. I carry you forward, you drive me each and everyday to become more and more like all of you - more and more loving, welcoming, caring, open, patient, kind, brilliant, encouraging, challenging, and impacting. Because of your sacrifice, your wonderful gifts of time and care, your absolute trustworthiness, your humility, your grace, I have learned to make my own sacrifice, give time and care, be trustworthy, learn humility, be lavish with grace.

This is the kind of zest that should be behind words like “thank you”. This is what I mean, these are the unsaid words, behind every moment of gratefulness I have for you. This is what I think about, when I wake in the morning to care for others. You are who I think about when I stand in front of peers and teach. You come to mind when I am exhausted and do not know how to keep writing, keep believing, keep fighting, keep learning, keep living. I carry you, I carry you - people who taught me to love by loving me - in my heart of hearts. 

With all the words of thanks I can muster and then some, 

Me (by whatever name you know me)

I was a messy child. I was a hard child to be around. I was a child who couldn’t hear and couldn’t seem to control her limbs and couldn’t sit still. I very rarely could listen with my hands weren’t occupied with something else. I was always talking. My mind, then and now, stirred endlessly. Most of my life, all I remember clearly is the running dialogue I had within. Very few people, if any, know the extent to which I was in a constant state of thinking - come to think of it, very few people even now know how incessantly my mind wanders. 

One person who I believe truly understood me as a child, who understands me still to this day, was my third grade teacher, Tess. Tess is, by far, my very favorite teacher I’ve ever had. I have been blessed with incredible professors, and teachers, but Tess - Tess is far and above been a constant encouragement, and instructor of my soul since my first days of third grade. Tess knew my mind. She knew that I could not sit still so she gave me a seat that moved. She allowed me to sit in front near her because she knew that comforted me. She knew that I had to, I just had to, make sense of the world around me and so, she gave me paper and a pen. 

She was the very first person who ever called me a writer. And I will never ever forget the day she told me to write. It was like she had told me to live, and told me how. 

But my answer is not, at least, for today, about writing, or even altogether about Tess. The same year that Tess told me to write, she invited me (and the rest of our class) into a story that would come to change me, save me, hold me, be my friend in my times of loneliness, be a constant in a changing world, be, at times, my whole reason to believe. It is my favorite memory - the first time Tess read to us in a darkened classroom about the boy who lived. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone had just been released, and Tess would read chapters of it to us each day after lunch. 

From the very first pages, I was captured. My mind ceased to wander, the story had my full attention - it was, perhaps, the very first thing that had ever managed to make my mind mind. 

As the story goes, a famous line reads, “and the wand chooses the wizard”. For me, for that year that I was given my own powerful weapon of the pen, the story choose the writer. I was (and Tess knew it) enthralled, and Tess encouraged it. She knew I had encountered a story that was everything I needed - hope that I was not insignificant; promise that even with deafness, I could do great things; a sense that no matter the pain of the past or the present or the future, with community and teachers and a sense of self, I would overcome. I furtively believed JK Rowling was not telling a fictional tale, but was uncovering some deep well of truth. I had to believe that Hogwarts was real - and I never longed (even still today a part of me longs) for anything more than to be welcomed into that place.

Throughout my life, I would grow up with Harry, Hermione, and Ron, considering them, in all truthfulness, as some of my closest friends. It would be a hiding place for when I did want to face the world, a source of wisdom for when I needed guidance, a community of friends when I craved companionship. It became an entity in my life, not books or even words, but a place I could always go to, a familiar face I could turn to - Hogwarts was always waiting to welcome me home.  

When I was 8, I, like Harry Potter, faced death - for me, it was the first time, and whether anyone at the time knew it, it rocked me. My grandfather’s death seemed strange, and it was to Harry Potter that I ran to explain it to me. It was the first of many times I would run to the stories to explain my own self, my own experience, to me. 

I would run back to them again in middle school when I had lost all my real friends - knowing I had ones waiting for me between those pages. I ran back again and again in high school, when faith in Harry and the magical world made more sense to me than my own fledging faith in God. When I had severe moments of doubt in both humanity and God, I would remind myself of the kind of faith I had as a child, in Hogwarts, in Dumbledore, in three friends who survived despite the worst of odds. My freshman year of college I returned to these familiar pages, in need of a reminder that no matter what, rescue is possible.

These are the books that walked alongside me in my own journey of recovery, instructed me in how to be courageous without being untrue to who I was. This is the story that saved me, and taught me that I was filled with something ‘magical’ too. 

It all began in a darkened classroom with the teacher who told me, from the beginning, that I too was made to do something special. Harry Potter helped me grow up, heal, hold on to faith, forgive, and fight off my own enemies alongside my friends. It taught me the power of story, the power of writing, the power of that magical pen that Tess had given me so long ago. 

And so, as I finished the whole series again for what feels like the millionth time, my fourth answer is: The story of Harry Potter - both the very pages, the characters that I know so well (and who I feel know me), and my own story with this story, my lifetime of finding life in the midst of it’s wonders. 

My third answer to the challenge question is: colors. 

Yesterday (I was crazy busy, and couldn’t get a post up, so this counts as yesterday’s), I went to IKEA with a few co-workers/friends. It was a blast, as always, wandering around the maze of sensory overload. It’s the colors that I love about IKEA. The bright yellow bedside tables, red stools, blue couches, violet bedspreads, orange walls - a daring homage to a spectrum that we are so often afraid of. 

I think, as Americans, we are too afraid of colors. Living in Florida, I feel like I’m somewhere foreign half the time, because the houses are pink and bright yellow and shocking blue, and have lime green shutters and turquoise porches. Maybe it is the tropical light, or the humidity that hazes the air, but these colorful houses around here work. They aren’t overwhelming, they don’t stick out, or create an eyesore, or do anything any of the homeowners associations across the country might think they would do. They are just joyful, colorful, welcoming homes that line the streets and make it an adventure to walk down. 

I think the wonderful and sad thing about color (and about many other things, like joy, love, or even healing) is that we get to and have to choose to have it in our lives. I think that’s the great challenge - to choose to have color, joy, love, healing, or even life in our lives. I am so often afraid to choose those things, to choose colors that are bright and shocking and beautiful, because I’m afraid that I will stick out, be an eyesore, be a burden, be ugly, be overwhelming.

And yet, these streets in Florida that I walk down everyday rebuke those very thoughts. Perhaps, then, this is the perfect place to practice choosing color, vibrancy, life, joy, love, and healing. Perhaps this is the perfect place to start again, to bask in turquoise porches and red shutters and pink flamingo statues and let the colors that surround me, in my setting and in the people around me, start to color me anew. 

I was a canvas stained with dirt, stained with washed out versions of who I thought I should be. I was a canvas waiting to be colored, waiting to be chosen. I am no longer pale white - I’ve chosen to bathe in purple, scribble in teal, bloom in orange, stomp in lime green. I refuse to refuse color any longer, trying to wait for someone else to choose how I should look. 

I choose to come alive. I choose to be colorful. I choose. I choose. I choose. 

My second answer to this 50 Day Challenge is: 

I have always belonged to the stars. 

I have always always belonged to the mystery that stretches out before us, above us, around us. I have always believed that there is where and what I was meant for. I still do. 

I was born the same year that the Hubble Telescope was launched, and those groundbreaking pictures of space defined much of my childhood. Hubble’s pictures of the Andromeda galaxy - swirling with light and questions, mimicking our own galactic home - nearly swallowed me whole the first time I saw them; the photos of Horse-head nebula canters still ceaseless in my soul. The wonders of space was the very first thing that ever captivated my attention. 

I found God at 4 years old, when I stood outside, silent and still, looking at the stars around the moon. I decided then and there that Someone put all of it together. It became my mission to find out Who It was. I wanted to go there, and see it, see if I could find the person behind the dark cloak of space. It is my earliest memory - the night when space taught me who my Maker was, and gave me a ceaseless drive to know how and why and who Made me and all this beauty I could see. 

Following this calling to discover, at 5, I decided I was going to be an astronaut. Immediately, I set myself to first become an Air Force Pilot. I spent hours memorizing the fleet of airplanes and drones that the military currently had in its arsenal and learned what would be required of me to become a pilot. 

At 7, I changed my name to Marz, refusing to answer to anything else (which has resulted in it being my name now for 14 years). The same year, I received a very-quality telescope from my father and became the youngest person (by 20+ years) to be a committed member of the SC Astronomy Club. Stargazing with my father and the rest of the SCAC in the middle of a neglected airport field became my absolute favorite memories of my childhood. And when I attended Space Camp for a week at 8 years old, I knew that this was exactly what I was supposed to with my life. 

But then, all the sudden, it was like the whole world wanted to tell me no: I was too deaf. I was too tall. I was too fat. I needed glasses. I didn’t understand math. I was not, in any way, shape, or form, astronaut material. 

And yet, today, I left my office at 11 o’ clock and went down to the shore with some of my fellow interns. I had one hand on my camera, and one holding my phone as I watched and heard all the proceeding departure preparations. I was captured by the wonder of it all - the words I knew from my childhood of study, the roaring of the rockets coming to life, the final countdown, the launch, the spiraling jet-stream, the sonic boom that told all of us watching that humanity had once again breached its bounds. I lived that moment - I felt totally and completely alive. And I realized then, even beyond space itself, another answer to this challenging question. 

What makes me come alive is acknowledging the wonder in the midst of a cynical world. What makes me feel alive is witnessing impossibilities - whether that’s man going into space, or characters becoming real through writing, or a hurting person stepping into treatment for the first time. What has always captivated me is the questions - the mystery that slouches right behind the stars, behind poetry, behind another’s eyes.