Confession of a Yankee Doodle Dandy

Early morning on July 4th, after dropping my car off on the roof of a parking garage to secure our prime firework viewing spot for the evening, my husband and I sat at a Starbucks table on a hazy, city street corner. As usual, he read and I wrote. I wanted to share with you my journal entry from that morning as it wasn't only our country's birthday but mine as well. Maybe my heart's ponderings will resonate with yours, too. :)

July 4, 2014

26 years old today. At what point do birthdays become dreaded things? When the promise of friends who want to celebrate and share good food and make great memories isn't enough to ward off the feeling that life is dripping, draining, rushing away. Is it now, when college cannot, (no, it just cannot!) be farther away than the time it took to live it? High school went by slowly, perfectly. I had just enough time to make best friends and lose them and make new ones again. I grew, I changed, I became who I am. At the end of it all, they handed me a Prom Court sash and graduation cap and sent me on my way. College drifted by calmly like leaves on a river while I sat on the bank and formed relationships that felt like family, experienced my first real heartbreak, and eventually fell in love with the man I now call my husband. College promised so many things for the future-- every painting it portrayed was beautiful-- and the river pulsed at just the right pace so that by the time it was done, we were ready to move on. We wanted to climb into our own canoes, paddles tossed aside so we could never go back, charging towards the infinite ocean waiting at the river's end. 

But it was no ocean. Greatly fooled we had been.

It was a waterfall, relentless, thrusting all in its path away at an unforgivable speed. Instantly, college is four years ago but only feels like one. Suddenly, I'm 26 but when people ask my age, I want to say 22 because I still feel like a giddy young girl lost in her engagement and the prospects of new life. 

So, is "my whole life still ahead of me"?

Are there still "things I'll understand when I'm older"?

And sweet goodness, please tell my my "biological time-clock" isn't really ticking away...

I watched a friend lose his life during college and ever since then I've been fine with the notion of getting older. It's a privilege. A gift. Grace. Every year when the Fourth of July comes, I'm fine watching my years go up and up and up. What bothers me is how quickly that holiday comes around each year. The mothers in my life tell me about how fast their babies grow and I think really it's just life  in general that moves so fast, the waterfall raging, propelling all of us out to sea.

A downpour. A burst.

A firework. (It is the Fourth of July, after all. Surely it's only appropriate to include a pyro reference.)

The usual responses you'll hear after a firework display: That was beautiful! That was a great show! I really love the ones that shimmer. My favorite had the sunbursts at the end. It was awesome, just awesome.

At the end of the show, have you ever heard someone comment, "Okay, that felt way long enough. It really should have ended ten minutes ago..."? I surely hope not! If you have, please punch that person directly in the face.

But I think for today, a firework show is the most fitting analogy for my life thus far. It's had really hard times. There's smoke everywhere. I watch things explode. I watch things be destroyed. And if I step too close to the commotion, it only worsens-- hot ash raining down, little fiery pieces of debris from something that once promised to be beautiful.

Yet that promise was kept. Through the blaze and haze of smoke, there was a glorious, scintillating light, cascading over the sky, glittering off the city buildings nearby. I dare not look away, captivated and enchanted, my heart in a trance against the kaleidoscope above, each flash leaving and then coming so swiftly again. Awe-striking. Magnificent. And even though it's covered in fire and carnage, once it's done, all I want is more. It would never, could never, move too slowly, this prismatic concoction of death and vibrancy, which blinds my eyes and crushes my ears and leaves me in a daze. This birthday that came too quickly, this year that flew too fast, this life of bursts of florid light littered in wreckage. Rich, piercing goodness amid deep, abiding sorrow. Lovely, perfect moments among the taxing burdens we bear. Impenetrable, amazing grace flowing out of the garden that fell.

This is a life that captivates me, that will always move too fast. But as long as I have eyes to see, may I be thankful to sit on top of this parking garage and enjoy the show at all. 

Happy summer, sweet readers! Enjoy the show before you. :)

Agape,

CC

Thanks for celebrating the 4th and my birthday with us, sweet friends!!
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Summoning the Spring

A wintertime journal entry to start off your spring. :)

February 16, 2014

Do you ever have a moment that you know in your mind you are sharing with a million people but deep in your heart, you feel it was really meant for you alone? A firework bursting can be seen by thousands but what if you, in  that moment, were the only one who needed to?

That's how I feel about the recent snow.

It had been fifteen years since they've seen a similar weather pattern hit the Carolinas (so the newsman said...) and this time it was spreading from Georgia all the way north past New York. We sat at home on the first of three essential-staff-only snow days, watching the TV as one by one all the southern state governors declared a state of emergency. The flakes floating down outside were big, fat and beautiful, while the reporters on the screen were loud, sharp and terrified. We were told to prepare for power outages, to ration our food, get all of our blankets and please, dear God if anything, don't go out on the roads.

Like good little citizens, we obeyed, and spent most of those three days watching movies, reading books, working on house renovations, and admiring the snow outside as it piled higher and higher. By evening on day two, we still had not seen a single snowplow push down our street, but why should we when tomorrow's snow day was eagerly announced at ten o'clock in the morning and the news unceasingly displayed the whited-out highways that couldn't seem to be cleared?

The National Guard they brought in had better things to attend to at the moment than our little neighborhood.

Little do they understand, I believe this all may have been for me.

Why? Because the Lord wanted to show me how quickly he can melt an ice-cold heart back to flesh.

Friday morning we woke up to a sunny, snowy wonderland, our two best friends with a four wheel drive jeep and not well heated home sleeping upstairs in our loft, also being awakened by a bright golden sun. We chatted over breakfast near a window, squinting at the rays demanding entrance through the blinds. Dan and I lamented over it being Valentine's day and how we would most likely be stuck inside again, but smiled when we found we were able to take the car out for a mid-day coffee run. And by the time evening came, a lovely date and our favorite restaurant calling our names, we drove down shining, wet, and absolutely clear roads, a smirking sunset fading in the distance. Saturday was again gloriously golden, and soon the only remnants of our state-of-emergency were the giant snow piles and a few snowman bottoms. It took over a week to prepare for yet only two days to destroy. Completely. The sun feeling betrayed by the way we doubted his rays.

Suddenly, the Carolinas were back, a fifteen year spell broken and erased so quickly it's hard to remember it ever happened at all. But we do remember the sun, warm and bold, prepared to deliver us from our outages and rations, and the great wave of hope that emerged when we saw the first sign of light.

My God works in wonderful, mysterious ways. My God can cover half of a country in a blanket of white and lift it off again faster than any snowplow, salt truck, and neighbor boy with a big shovel combined.

My God clears damages and restores to perfection. With immediacy. Who am I then to believe he cannot do the same with my heart? Who am I to say the sun is not bright enough to cast away all the demons I've kept hidden within? No matter how trapped I feel under the deep, heavy snow, no matter how icy the top layer becomes, he can break through. He will break through.

Because he is the redeemer and healer. And he restores my soul.

And when I'm walking once again down the shining, clear street, there will be no stains left on me from the mess I was just in. No wet clothes to pull down on my skin, no black slush to fling up from my feet, no trace at all of the state-of-emergency for my heart.

But the on beautiful thing I'll be able to recall is the warm, glorious light that so cleansed me of it all.


Happy Spring!
Agape, 
CC

Here's some tulip pictures I took a little while ago. :)

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October 9, 2013

Here's a recent journal entry that I wanted to share with you, written outside a coffee shop with lovely little leaves falling all around me. :)

October 9, 2013

I've always hated watching the summer die. It felt like a part of me-- a wonderful, exhilarating part-- was being stripped away, and nobody could promise me it would stay the same when it returned. What if the sun isn't quite as golden? What if the breezes are stickier, the flowers less potent, the grass a little dryer and the strawberries not as sweet? What if I sleep right through every firework show?

Summer always seems to be a better thing when I'm longing for its return. When June finally arrives on my doorstep, all wrapped up in shiny paper and daring me to dream, it never quite plays out exactly as I believed. I never end up running through the woods as often as I planned. We don't grill out every weekend as we ought. I end up doing my hair too nice and too often to roll my windows down for each and every drive. And though the beach is just an interstate away, time and gas prices make it more inviting to stay. In fact, by the time summer is over, I feel what I desire looks significantly like another summer. Those drawn-out heated-up days don't satisfy the way I want them to. 

When I was in college, I hated the fall the way one would hate their elementary school bully. My arch rival, it was. My greatest enemy, keeping me from all things beautiful and good. One September day stands out vividly in my mind. Racing down the stairs, slightly late to class as always, I opened the front door to greet another sweet Ohio morning, but instead felt an instant tearing on my skin. The breeze, cold, was clawing at my bare legs, demanding I go back inside and replace my skirt with something warmer. Fall had come. And it had killed my sweet shining summer swiftly overnight. The anger and sadness I felt clung to my chest like chainmail, defending this Yankee-Doodle-Dandy through the harshest of frosts, rusting all over once the snow began to fall, and breaking apart in the spring as the flowers broke up the ground. I walked through fall and winter blinded, not seeing or hearing but feeling only. Cold. Each day getting colder and colder. Crimson leaves on the ground were a reason to be bitter. Snow-covered driveways were burdens to be cursed. 

In the fall, everything died. In the winter, it was buried until the spring brought new life. And I, in my Miami sweatshirt, was very much one of the dying things. 

Salvation came in the form of a Southern job offer, a diamond ring connecting it to me, and a sweet new city with summers, oh summers! that are vibrant, fragrant, scalding hot... and forever long. Oh the elation! How much time we would share, sweet season. How many memories we had to make. 

But before the move came, I did something that would forever change my friendship with summer. I wore a white dress down the aisle of a church, we packed all we owned and took it down a Southern highway, we spent a week together roaming the beach and whispering late into the night. Settling into our apartment in our new home, I had so much love, so much joy and gratefulness surrounding my life that there was no room left for bitterness to cloud over my eyes. I went into that fall not blinded, but wide-eyed awake and alert.

There, in my newly-wedded bliss, ambling down the streets of a foreign city, finding "The World's Best Sweet Tea" in every restaurant we passed, I saw everything. I saw towering oak trees erupt suddenly into a bonfire of gold, littering the ground below with sunny yellow ashes. I saw a sea of burgundy lining the horizon, shifting in the wind like the tide coming in. I saw the endless blossom of the crepe myrtle, lining boulevards in an array of pink, white, pink. The breeze carried a different scent than its northern ally; it was no longer rotting, wet leaves but bonfires in backyards and smokey barbecue suppers. And the cool, crisp whisper of the breeze asked my hands to find another who would hold them, an arm that would wrap itself around my over-sized, knitted sweater, enticing us to stay close long into the night. The weekend after our honeymoon, I flew home to finish packing and say goodbye to my parents. In Ohio, the glamour of fall was already gone. One week. My wedding pictures show bright green trees almost blocking the view of the sky. One week, I returned, and the leaves were all on the ground, brown and broken, a few rough thunderstorms prematurely tearing down any type of show Autumn had hoped to display.

But here in the Carolinas, sweet tea in one hand and a man's palm in the other, Autumn laid itself out gradually over time. Each little colored leaf held onto the hue and the branch for weeks. September came and went. October as well. And by the end of November the fall began to sweetly dispel. Inch by inch and piece by piece, discarded confetti blanketed the ground, the naked trees declared finally that winter could start its rounds. And one young newlywed, in the midst of it all, wondered how she had ever ascribed ugliness to summer's dying in the kaleidoscope of fall. 

Even in the Night...

"What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity." Ecclesiastes 2.

I was journaling about this verse this morning, particularly the line about the heart that can't even rest at night. It just spoke to me so much-- how many times do I lay in bed at night, not grateful for the day's graces but mulling over my endless to-do list, worrying about our house and Dan's grad school and whether or not I'll ever get to go to grad school and on and on and on?....

And I realized at the end of my journal that I sort of had a little poem-ish type thing as a conclusion. And, it's about lighthouse (which I adore lighthouses!). So I thought I would share it with ya'll. :)

Lord, be the lighthouse for my heart.

When the sun has fallen behind the trees and my eyes are slowly closing, 

When a fog of worries rises up off the seas, send out your light to keep me sailing.

Let it be like a siren's song so that I cannot steer away,

Then lock me safe in your harbor's home and keep me until day.

What's this? A very good excuse to post some lighthouse pictures from spring break? Don't mind if I do! ;)

Huntington Island Lighthouse, South Carolina
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View from the top!
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Thanks for stopping by!
Agape,

CC

Jeremiah 2:13

I was reading through Jeremiah 2 the other day and was really convicted on this verse: 

"for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
    the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
    broken cisterns that can hold no water."

You can't really have one without the other, can you? If we forsake the Lord, we will replace him with something else. It's in our humanity; we will always serve something, be it God or an idol, but something in our lives will be our focus of worship.

So I began meditating on this and asking the Lord to reveal areas in my life where I was leaving him for another god. What are my broken cisterns, Lord? I didn't get a concrete answer that morning, but God did show me just how much I love my 'cisterns' and just how faulty they are. 

In result, a poem. :) I hope you enjoy. And I hope the Lord will gently point out areas where you are replacing him as well, because we all are, and he is much too gracious and merciful to let us settle for less than his everlasting provision. :)

Jeremiah 2:13

I carry with me a cistern, broken, water dripping down the sides but I don't seem to mind. The cistern is mine, you see. I built it slowly from the most lovely things. What a beautiful creation indeed! Ah, the creativity of me.

And when another leak sprouts, I'll patch it up with cardboard and paper and old magazines.

Nevermind the drops that plummet yet to the street. Nevermind my soaking clothes, the sodden shoes on my feet.

The cistern is mine.

The cistern is fine.

When the paper melts, I'll wrap it in the finest silk and cashmere and chiffon, not once believing that they will absorb little, that they will not hold, that soon I'll be wading through a flood in the road.

The water.

Is cold.

Carry on, I'll believe, preaching loudly to myself. Ignore the rivers, the oceans, the deep-drenched mess that once was my dress, as I cling close to the cistern, press it tight against my chest. Looking up to the skies, shielding soft subtle cries. It's only the rain, the rain! I'll say, And one day soon it will all go away!

While my cistern, at last, shatters through. And gives way.

The pieces in my hands.

How fast it fell apart.

And the flood in the city destroys all.

Leaves it.

Dark.

My poems aren't normally so morbid! :)

Agape,
CC

Blue, (Orange, and Yellow)

I have always adored blue, orange, and yellow together. It's my favorite color combination by a long shot. Yellow happens to be my ultimate favorite color and orange is my husband Dan's. And we are 'those' color people. You know, the kind who buy everything in their favorite color when possible. So we always saw orange and yellow together as sort of our "thing." When it came time to pick a palette for our wedding, the choice was obvious: blue, orange, and yellow, please! 

And the other day I went about writing a poem for my sweet spouse, and without even trying, the result was fairly colorful :):)

Blue

 You were made of orange.

 I was built from yellow.

 And blended together we crafted a deep sea hue. Blue, you and I.

 Thirst, me and you.

 I tried building you a sandcastle from marbles I found but when they rolled into the tide for the ten thousandth time, you found me. Crestfallen. Your bare feet standing on my beads of glass.

 Then you pulled strands from the sun and left them scattered on the ground. Holding each flare high, dripping with light, droplets of gold gathering puddles, sliding down your forearm, over your wrist, off your hand. Of course you didn’t burn; even your eyes are made of coal. Ashes caught in the caves around your teeth. Sparks fly from your sputter as you stutter starstruck sighs.

 No firehouse great enough for your bonfire insides.

 You drank my tsunami dry. 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

 My castles, my glass, the moat of coastlands at my grasp. I only wanted to make something shine but broke myself trying. Failures falling through my fingers.

 You found me there, lying on a mattress of dead shell dust, dripping sun and fire back into my palms. Striking matches in the sand so I could see. Holding back the tsunami so I could breathe.

 I saw you before we left hurling my marbles into the sea.

 I saw your footprints char, carrying me away from the beach.

 When I could finally stand, we ran, bolting, streaks of light across the plain.

 To the mountains.

 To the icebergs.

 To the blizzards which once curdled our courage into sawdust remains.

 Fear is no longer a word we can say.

 We are flames drowning moths, bursting the balloons inside logs. Running. Pulsing.

 How were we to foresee we’d melt the entire tundra?

 Laying on the snow with your sunstrands underneath us, our bodies glowing amber and gold. The sparks in your mouth, the melting marbles in my hand. We watched the snow thaw back into water, sizzling against our scorching selves.

 And when all the flakes had dissolved we were back where we began.

 Mortal matches in the sand.

 Floating in our ocean home, where foreboding is no longer a word we will know.

 Each new avalanche we’ll catch in a basket, give heat till it’s vanished, add to our collection of water in the sea.

 There with you; here with me.

 You are orange and I am yellow.

 And together we make a deep sea hue.

 Blue, you and I.

Our blue, orange, and yellow big day J (Click to enlarge)

Ballad of Privileged Time

My cousin underwent a rare tragedy about a year and a half ago. One of her friends from college went missing and was later reported to be murdered when her body was found in the woods.


I've posted links to articles about her case if you're interested, but the real reason for this post is to show what a grieving heart looks like from the inside out. I never knew Jenni-Lyn, but I did have a front row seat to my cousin healing. Recently, she sent me the following poem about Jenni and then I wrote another in response. The first is obviously more accurate, whereas mine includes some fiction, but I hope it will remind you how beautiful it is to be given time on this Earth.


Never fear getting older. It is a privilege denied to many.

Jenni’s Winter Farewell

-Claire Hinde

The word was “missing.”  I didn’t understand it.

1 year ago “missing” meant like on a milk carton.

1 year from a girl who brought me more than I imagined.

Friends, pieces of her own heart that would have been hidden without the glow of her.

Creativity.  Choreography.  Courage to push the limits

Gumption enough to struggle in a city.

My very own aftermath.

I’m so grateful to her, and I can’t believe it’s been 1 year.

Since “missing” like on a milk carton.

A full year since texts I didn’t understand, and a knot of worry, and posters.

1 year since there was cocoa thermoses in the dance space and too many counselors.

1 year since Matt’s voice.

Since Matt’s glasses.

1 year since he and Duzen sat calmly next to me so that I wouldn’t be alone as I wrote myself raw.

Onto scraps of paper. In books.  Letters. On cards. Cocktail napkins. On my friends.

1 year since Mr. Gleason broke my heart.

1 year since I could hear her in music, and feel her in class. 

1 year since I had to learn to say the word murder.  Learn how clumsy that word is in my mouth.

1 year since Fr. Frances.

Nicole stopped wearing make-up. What was the point? We all cried it off before lunch anyway.

1 year since I spoke with cops at a funeral. And I was glad.

Because they were clean, not trying to make me say anything. 

Or feel anything.  Confide anything.  Heal.

“I didn’t know they were engaged.” “Ok, thanks anyway.”

1 year since her winter farewell, and Jenni moved into the snow.

I’m so grateful, because it was beautiful.

Frost

-CC

It took a couple of days for Jenni to die, but if you had asked our logic, it would have told you her death was immediate. The word ‘missing’ should have in fact read, ‘not here,’ ‘not living,’ ‘not existent,’ ‘not a chance.’ But nobody asked logic, did they?  It was hope they sought, and hope they found as a fainting ember, clinging to every tattered string of evidence. People can survive in freezing temperatures. Her last text message wasn’t sent from very far. There is no body, not yet, not yet. And we’d breathe slowly on the embers every few hours, trying to preserve what warmth we could.

Then the police went into the woods. And the dogs found what went missing, yes missing, and then we were certain the phrase was a lie.

Murder. What an easy way to turn acid into a word.

But the snow? Preserved her very well.

Suddenly it’s three days later and Claire is crying on my lap. I whisper sweet words even though I can see them roll off her cheeks and break apart on the carpet below. I hold her hands. I feel her tears. They’re cold, like ice, and I realize now that she, like Jenni, is covered in snow. I see her fingers still, hear her breathing slow, feel her heartbeat stuttered and stop, frozen as it is in grief’s trap.

Suddenly it’s three months later and Claire calls me on the phone. “I choreographed a dance for her. We all did.” “That’s wonderful,” I say. “I know,” she replies, “but I can’t bring myself to watch it.”

Suddenly it’s six months later and there’s a memorial service. Claire won’t return my calls, but she does send a single text message with a single word: Breathing.

Now suddenly it’s a year later and Claire sends me her own memorial in the mail. A poem. It’s lovely and I cry.

And after the words move past my eyes I see it. There, there in the corner. A spark. A glow. An ember! And as the frost begins to thaw, I hear a single heart beat pulse again into the air.

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/11/body_found_believed_to_be_jenn.html 

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/02/steven_pieper_admits_killing_j.html 

Confession of a Lizard Person!

I went to the doctor's this morning. (Gee, Carrie, why did you go there?) Well… I have… a… wart! Oh, I know, it’s so gross! I feel like a lizard person or something. You know those ‘wart kids’ you were in class with growing up that were always picking at warts on their thumbs? Well that was never me. Never! And here I am at twenty three and the Lord apparently decides this is an opportune time to stick one right on my heel.

And wouldn’t you know, I learned something from it. Guess the Lord was right. Imagine that.

You need to know something about my dermatologist. He’s absolutely amazing at freezing warts because— oh how should I state this?— he has no mercy. He doesn’t use one of those misting guns, oh no no my friend. He soaks a q-tip in liquid nitrogen and then smothers it all over your wart. Like glazing a turkey or pouring syrup on pancakes. It kills! And normally the wart dies on his first attempt.

But today, I had the pleasure of receiving a fourth round of wart-marinating (lucky me!) My sweet husband Dan always accompanies me so he can help me hobble back down to the car afterward, and this morning as we were walking out together I thought about that little wart and how well it paints a picture of sin. My wart is barely the size of a dime. He’s a little guy. Yet when I leave him untreated for a few days pretending he’ll just disappear on his own, I find I can’t walk. The pain is too great and I have to limp around and put all my weight on the side of my foot. I can’t run or work out. I can’t walk around the classroom constantly like I need to be doing. Suddenly this little dime-sized bump is causing vast disorder in my life all because it’s situated in the perfect place to do so: my foot.

The same goes for sin. It may seem little and insignificant at times, like telling a white lie or casually slipping my needs in front of my husbands’, but the problem is that sin lives in our hearts, the perfect place to cause mass destruction. And if left unchecked, everything else in our lives is affected, not just work outs and classroom management but friendships, marriages, our priorities, our witness, and most importantly, our walk with God.

There is no dime-sized sin in the eyes of a Holy and perfect King. He wants it all frozen and killed, no matter how painful it may be to us. It never feels good to be stripped of our idols but the Lord always replaces it with Himself. We may hobble around for a few days, but He knows that once its healed, we’ll be better able to run. J




PS... I don't care how fun and 'touristy' it seems, never ever ever walk around barefoot in Fiji.


Agape,
CC