The Truest Friend

 It's been a minute since I've posted anything. I have better things to do with my life right now. But sometimes I'm not sure they're actually better. Just busier, more urgent, more... something. This year has been full. Parenting and schooling and being married and ministering and trying to be a good friend... juggling all of it sometimes makes it hard to do what I actually want to do. And on another level, a lot of my life recently hasn't really been the kind of stuff you publish onto the internet. It's been hard and ugly and good all at the same time. Because good things often have hard before they are good.

That's been on my mind the last few weeks. My best friend from high school died unexpectedly, and left me reeling with so many questions and doubts and a looming sadness that I can't shake. We weren't best friends anymore, which is probably its own post. These things happen. I'd found peace with that. I'm the kind of person who wants to hold on to friends forever. Probably because I spent so much of my life not really having any. But not everyone feels that way, not everyone is built that way, and that makes it hard when you have to reconsile your desire for that forever friend with the reality of most people not really feeling that vibe. Anyway, back to my friend. My best friend. The hard that came before her good happened twice. Once before I met her, and then during a period where we lost contact.

Maybe it was an unrealistic expectation. To have "that" friend, the one who spends the night at your house on weekends, goes to the games with you, likes the same things, and sees the world like you do. But that was what I wanted. ever since my elementary best friend Stasia got put in another class and I spent all of fourth grade with literally no one to talk to except a couple of nerdy guys who liked drawing cartoon characters (they were great guys but they never saw me as their friend, just a girl who was around and liked drawing like they did). I spent 4th through 8th grade wishing for someone at school who would just understand me, who cared about the things I did, who wasn't the freak smart kid who no one liked. I just wanted one friend. One.

Twan was God's answer to my prayers. I really had prayed over and over, just one friend, Jesus. One friend who cared about the things I thought were important and wanted to hang out with me sometimes.  One friend who could laugh at the rest of the world with me, not care how weird I was. I met her the first day of school. We randomly took a seat next to each other in science class at a table for two, and honestly the rest is history. She was quiet but not an introvert, and we soon found out we had things in common. Our birthday being one. Our weirdness being the other. By weird, I mean wacky. We both liked childish things and found humor in similar things. With four classese together every day and lunch, we spent a lot of time together. Slowly figuring out just how much we had in common. Slowly realizing that we just "got" each other. We were by all senses of the word, best friends. she had other friends, I had other friends. We had mutual friends who we spent time with also. We both hated math class and we both loved our science teacher. English class was so bad she ended up quitting it (that's another story). But all through high school, we found time for each other. We fought some battles together, like her first car accident the day she got her lisence, like hating some teachers that sucked the life out of us, like that angsty friend who actually seemed to want to fight with everyone. We were almost always just on the same page about it all. 

That's why I never actually figured otu what changed. We both moved on in college. I got married and I think that made it hard for her to relate for a while. Her worldview morphed into something different than mine. We were also in completely different parts of the country so we never saw each other, and the online communication back then was sketchy. So we drifted. I always, always missed her. My house and my memory boxes were full of reminders that always carried a sadness when I lifted the lid, remembering that person who really meant so much to me that I'd somehow lost, pushed away unintentionally. I never forgot, and I don't think she did either. She even admitted how her past and her parents made relationships difficult for her. So I don't blame her for what happened between us. I just spent so much time wondering and wishing, hoping we'd run into each other somewhere in town and remembering that sparky connection, embrace and start again. Pick up where we'd left off.

That didn't really happen, but we did reconnect. She found me online by accident. she saw something I'd written in my blog and it helped her undrestand her hurt toward me. We reconsiled as much as we could, and we stayed in touch after that. Every year we've sent each other birthday gifts. Written letters and notes, commented on each others' social media. That was the best we had after that, but I'm so thankful for it. It laid to rest so many questions and insecurities I'd had about what went wrong. We talked about writing and reminised about the dumb things we both loved. We were in a good place.

Then last month I found out she'd ended her life. I'm crushed. It wasn't really a surprise but it was unexpected. She battled mental health, and she fought so hard. She was a voice to explain issues and things others couldn't put words to. She was the truest friend to so many people. She loved well. And now I'm kind of back to where I was in that in-between time when we weren't in contact. I'm wondering what went wrong, if there was more I should have done. Wishing in the secret parts of me that it was all untrue, that somehow it's a ruse. And I know it isn't. She's gone, and this time it's forever. We're cut off in the longest and most painful way, and it's hard to even settle into that reality. 

Not everyone agrees, but I believe in eternity and I think that our souls connect with others in ways that can't be explained in just fleshly ways. That was us. And I hope that some day we'll be reunited. Maybe all of our relationships are temporary in that light. Even on a shallow level, relationships are fleeting and not all of them are meant to be that forever kind. We change, we move, we need different things. I'm learning that in my thirties. I'm sure it will take a lifetime to overcome the pain of loss, especially this one. I think it will take a long time to even find another friend like that--there's no one like her at all--but one who understands that core person of who I am, not just the things I present as myself. There aren't a lot of connections like that for me, maybe for anyone. I'm thankful I had it for that season when I needed it so badly. I wish it would have lasted forever, but forever on earth is probably an illusion.

A Eulogy for A Tree

We had a giant storm come through a few weeks ago. It did the kind of damage tornadoes do, but it was straight winds stretching across Iowa. Trees got uprooted and torn down, pulling down power lines and houses with them. It was horrible.

My house took a pretty big hit from just the wind. Trees are still small on our lot which was formerly a pasture. 

Trees are not small in my old neighborhood, though. The place I grew up. We moved there when I was ten, from a farm we'd rented and I'd loved with my whole heart. On the farm we'd had free reign to roam and get into all kinds of adventures. A windbreak grove of cypress trees grew on the edge of the yard of that house, and we each had a favorite tree we claimed as our own "fort". Mine had ropes tied around it, an old hose that served as a Bat-pole, and a little tin cup that I pretended was a telephone. Moving to town meant I would have to leave that tree. The house my parents had chosen barely had a back yard, and there definitely were no good climbing trees there. Just two saplings on the side yard. Nothing to brag about.

Moving was hard for lots of reasons, but for some reason I fixated on the tree situation. I eventually acclimated to town living, appreciating the nice paved sidewalks and a few neighborhood kids to do things with. We'd ride through the 'hood, discovering new territory every day. We could get down to Czech Village easily, and occasionally we'd make it to the river on family bike rides. Slowly and surely, that new neighborhood became our home--my home. I walked to school every day for four years up the back alley, through the church yard, and up to Wilson.

Trees are part of our perfunctory view. We don't even really notice them until someone decides to chop one down. The trees all around that neighborhood that we moved to almost thirty years ago are in a large part gone now. They blew over and uprooted and lost limbs, leaving open wounds that are un-healable. The pines in the alley where I could look out my bedroom window and almost pretend I was in the mountains, the oak trees with the acorns that I walked over and cracked on the walks to school, the neighbor's lofty tree that was for sure the tallest one in the neighborhood--they're now reduced to logs on the side of the road, waiting for the city to haul away and turn into mulch and firewood.

The tiny trees in my parent's yard grew through the years. One of them ended up being removed and then the remaining one grew and grew. There was a limb that hung low, and I'm kind of convinced it did because of all the times we hung on it, pulling ropes and trying to swing from it. In the fall we would rake piles of leaves up from that tree and jump off of the trailer top into it. That tree that I hated because it represented the loss of my favorite place at the farm, became shade for the house it stood next to and eventually shade for my own children when they visited Grandma. A part of the perfunctory scenery of that post-war neighborhood where families grew and moved on, and new families moved in to live.

The storm pushed that mighty tree over, leaving a ball of roots sticking up into the air, grabbing the lines all around it, and also taking out the corner shrub that had been there when we moved in. I wasn't prepared for the shock and grief that happened the day I finally got to see the neighborhood of my childhood, post-storm, littered with the trees that watched my childhood. There are still some there, but it will never be what it was. But even by the time we moved there, it had already changed from what it was in the beginning. Time goes on, and houses and trees fall to the inevitable atrophy that comes in the space we live in as age and weariness pull apart the treads we've woven together to call a community.

I'll miss that tree, just like I miss the way the neighborhood looked in those first days of wonder as I rolled down the street in my old banana seat bike, noting the houses and their inhabitants who were laboring to make their yards feel like home. I'll miss that tree like I miss the neighbors, the Czech ladies who built their lives in the new world and watched their beloved homes make way for new families like mine, kids who walked on their flowers and rode bikes down the street and stayed out in the street lights, hoping for one more day of summer. I'll miss that tree like I miss being able to climb it or any tree, like I miss the moments of my brothers and sister together with the neighborhood kids. I like to think it had a mind of its own in some ways, and it willed itself to grow into the sheltering tree it was in the end. That it made its branches spread while we played soccer and went to band practice and raked the leaves up every fall. Maybe I'm crazy to think that its beauty mattered even a little in a world full of changes and fast-paced decisions. but maybe that's why we hurt a little when the trees leave us, because nothing about them is fast-paced or changing. They grow consistently slowly, they change in season like they're meant to, and they offer for us a view of God who makes all things beautiful in his time.

90's Halloween and the Family that Didn't

My siblings and I grew up knowing that witches were evil and all of the other satanic things that go along with them like Halloween were too. My parents had heard the rumors about kidnappings and satanic rituals that happened on Halloween so we really didn't get to celebrate it like most kids. I'm not even going to argue about that. I still have suspicions. But both of them had grown up trick-or-treating, and my mom, being from small town Iowa, understood that kids kind of feel left out if they're the only ones not doing it.
Which did not push her to get us included. Instead, she just kind of did her own thing with us each year. There was a parade at school in elementary which we never dressed up for but got to be in. Teachers were cool. I never heard a kid say anything bad to me about it (but I was also socially unaware so that doesn't mean they didn't).
Around that time churches started hosting "harvest fests" which we all knew was Christian Halloween. So we'd go to those sometimes. But the epic years were the years when we just stayed home. Being a homebody introvert I didn't really care about missing out on all the stuff. I just wished I could eat candy. (Parents were also sort of all natural hippies so candy was pretty sparse in our house).
One year my older brother had a roller skating party to go to and my baby brother went to bed early, so Mom and I watched Meet Me in St. Louis on TV. It was my first introduction to that amazing movie and to some pretty weird traditions that people (apparently) used to do on Halloween at the turn of the century. It was a good memory for me because I got some rare one-on-one time with my mom. Also my brother came home with a giant bag of candy, which my mom put into a little tin and hid on top of the pantry cupboard and I would occasionally sneak in there and steal a couple pieces.
When we moved to town, we weren't sure what to do, being fundamentally opposed to Halloween. My parents decided to give out candy but we didn't participate in trick-or-treating. That was fine. I was ten anyway, and this way I had unlimited access to the stash. Mom also decided to keep us home from school since it was just a big Halloween party day anyway. She rented a movie (A Christmas Story) and we stayed in watching one of the best movies ever. It became a little bit of a tradition to watch a Christmas movie on Halloween then. We also still watch A Christmas Story every Christmas.
We had a few trick-or-treaters that year, including a couple of guys from my class who we all knew were too old to be out begging for candy. The doorbell rang after we'd shut the light off and all of us gathered by the door, curious who had the gall to trick or treat without a light. A huge figure stood in the door frame dressed in a trench coat and a warm Russian hat. My mom didn't want to answer the door but my brother threw it open anyway. "Trick or treat!" a voice said. A familiar voice. It was my dad. He'd sneaked around the back door to try and surprise us all. My mom spent a while recovering from the heart attack she almost had while the rest of us laughed about it for quite a while.
There were good times together those years when we all stayed home. Once my brother found one of those mutated carrots that didn't get thinned out enough in the garden and it looked like a hand. He would shove it out the door when the masqueraders came a-knocking, making it look like a creepy monster was passing out candy. He also hid behind the bushes a few times planning to jump out at trouble-makers and scare them.
Eventually we all went our own ways and Halloween wasn't a concern as young adults. The first year I moved back to town, though, husband and I threw on some wigs and masks and decided to play a little trick on my parents. We showed up as a cowboy gorilla and a blonde-headed hippie. My mom (again) thought it was trouble, and they legitimately considered not opening the door until they heard my voice and realized what we were up to.
I don't celebrate Halloween with my kids, at least not the way the rest of most of America does. I do still enjoy a good prank, and we dress up for the church's non-Halloween fest. On Halloween night, there's always a movie going at our house. Plus candy. Because no one should miss out an scads of crap poison disguised as colorful treats just because their parents prefer not to join in the evil festivities. ;)

A Million Things

My friend died last week. It's a great loss because she was just a beautiful person with so many things to offer the world, mostly just love. She was so easy to talk to and made you feel like you were known and cared about. I just miss her. And I'm not nearly as close as so many others. I kept thinking about the things that I love about her and I tried to get it out in writing but this was the best I could do. She did a thousand little things that made people feel special and cared about, but the force behind who she was was her love of Jesus.

A Million Things

It's the memory of the moments
that I'm going to see the most
the waves from the parking lot
the smiles in the hall
Encouraging words in difficult times
I can't ever count it all.
The invitation to share
to be known and noticed
The beauty of truth in motion
life flowing out of promises spoken
It's the surrender in worship and service to the Lord
and the way she believed at the end of her days
It's a million things
but it's One Thing
a life poured out for others
a heart full of praise.

Pregnancy Twins

I haven't chosen to talk a lot about being a mom on this blog, but today there's a good occasion.

Today this picture popped up on my social media feed:

I wanted to answer the question, but I don't like using social media as a chance to just blabber about my life to no one's benefit. But then I realized this question is actually complicated. And it sparked some grief for me, in more ways than one. Thanks social media. Instead of stewing about it all day, I'm just going to write it out and move on. That's how we writers mend our hearts.

Who was my pregnancy twin? I always dreamed of it being my best friend Stasia. But she wasn't even married when I had my first baby. In fact, none of my friends were pregnant at the time. My sister-in-law had just had her third child. Another sister-in-law had just had her first before I even announced it. In my closer circles, I was the first friend to have a baby. So my pregnancy twin didn't exist. I didn't realize then that I was actually alone with it, and I would have benefited to know some people who were going through the same things I was. Instead, I just did it.

For my second pregnancy, I had TWINS! I had QUADRUPLETS! I'm not blaming the Song of Solomon series we had in our class, but there were four weeks in a row with pregnancy announcements. One of them was one of our closest friends. My sister-in-law also got pregnant a little after that. Yay! What fun! For once I wouldn't be the only pregnant one. But five months in, that pregnancy ended, and I instead watched my friends have their babies. They were so kind and caring and they knew it was painful, but there's nothing you can do to fix it. The pain of seeing their kids growing up is mostly gone, but the memory of the pregnancy is still hard for me.

The third time around, my other BFF Bethany was pregnant with me. And we even had the same due date! Another friend at church got pregnant with her first, and we got to shop together and go walking and share the general sisterhood of it all. I'm thankful for that. It was a really, really hard pregnancy after losing one. I couldn't exactly share that with people, and I think they knew it too. It was kind of an elephant in the room.

There was a gap in my pregnancies at this point, where I watched lots of friends have their next round of babies. I wasn't super grieved by that; the third baby was a hard one and it took a long time to recover.

For the fourth pregnancy, the joy abounded. I was READY for another one. There were twins. One gal in my weekly small group was due right after me so we got to be pregnant together, along with one of the moms who'd shared that second pregnancy with me. Our kids were all born within a few months, and another close friend ended up adopting a toddler whose birthday was just days before my daughter's. So that was a time when the pregnancy twin thing worked out.

The last time around, it happened in a crazy flurry of other things all around it. The saddest part for me was that I knew it was my last one, and my BFF still wasn't able to get pregnant. I had THREE twins that time around - Two different sisters-in-law on my husband's side, and my brother's wife as well. It was a joy.

It's like I always say. joy and sorrow are tightly strung together on the tapestry of life. I'm thankful that God gave me the desires of my heart for some of my pregnancies, and I'm thankful for the friends that I've had through it all. Being a mom is hard. Being a pregnant mom is hard. And being a mom on social media is hard too (maybe dumb for me).

The Cheesiest movies of All

I love me low-budget movies. I can't help it. I grew up on old Kung-Fu movies and whatever was left on network television during the not-primetime hours my brother wasn't hogging the remote control. The 80's were a different time. We only had two TV's, one of which was black and white. We did not have cable and, living on a farm, received three to five channels depending on the reception of the antenna. They're great memories.

Sometimes, late at night when the airwaves were clear, we could get the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Later in high school it was on most of the time (and we had a second COLOR TV upstairs we could use for playing Nintendo on). TBN's daytime television is a hodge-podge of terribly made children's programs, preaching from your standard Southern fare, and Christian talk shows. But at night, after any good show had aired on all the other channels, around midnight, TBN would unlock this glorious vault of what my little brother and I just referred to as "Cheesy Christian movies". There's no better term for them, I promise. In fact, they're beyond cheesy. They're B or C grade movies with the worst acting you've ever seen, terrible filming techniques, and well... trite messages. I don't even need to explain. You probably know what I'm talking about.

Now, twenty years later, I would call it a guilty pleasure to indulge myself in those terrible movies. While there have been some improvements in the world of Christian filmmaking, it is easy to still find some real winners of the Cheese Award. I won't name any of the ones I've viewed recently, but I will tell you, in some of them, there is a message that shouldn't have been so poorly delivered. There are some script writers who are knocking i tout of the park, only to be defamed by terrible acting or directing. There are, likewise, some actors who are disabled by bad scripts or directing. There are directors and producers who don't have the money to work with to get a good cast going. And there are ideals that keep said producers from allowing the quality that they should. But that's another story. What I actually want to share are some titles that I've enjoyed in my twisted way over the years.

Homerun for Rusty - This gem is about Rusty, a bully-turned-Jesus-freak who gets to experience better baseball playing after he meets Jesus. My sister's camp would watch it every year because... "Jesus, Mama. Jesus." You'll be glad to know you can view this on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM0pmzVkCSQ

The Perfect Stranger - Jesus invites a stressed-out young married woman to dinner.

The Appointment - This is a short movie about an atheist reporter who has a messenger tell her that she's going to die at a certain time of day. She spends her whole day trying to avoid it and you think she does, but... does she?

Time Changer - A professor in the 1800's believes that teaching morals is more important than actually teaching about Jesus. He gets sent forward in time to discover if his theory holds up. I'll leave you to guess whether it does.

The Gospel Blimp - My youth pastor's favorite (he also has an affinity for the Cheese that is Christian cinema). A church attempts to use a blimp to evangelize their town, only to discover... well, I don't want to spoil it. I should add that this movie isn't actually poorly made. It is awesome. And it was meant to be satire with a hard-hitting message.

These are just a few of the classics. I wish I could remember all of the names of the ones I've seen. The list has grown longer than it should be but my memory is getting fuzzy. Also, when you're at the mercy of late night TBN, you don't always get the names of movies that you're watching.

I would be remiss if I didn't share a few winners, though. The Gospel Blimp is definitely number one on this end as well. ;) The winners are more recent, because again, my memory has grown fuzzy about the older ones I saw. But lately, there have been some really good ones (along with better-made cheesy, which I will not call out for fear of a lawsuit or getting boycotted lol).

The Song - This is one of my favorite movies. It's a creative re-telling of Solomon's story with a relevant modern message. Solomon is a country singer in this case. And the music on the show is actually good too.

Grace Unplugged - A girl who longs for the spotlight in the music world is at odds with her father, who had already lived that life before he met Jesus. The struggle is real, and the story is good. Until the end, because it wraps it all up with a perfect Christian bow. Still worth watching, and since TV actors were engaged, the acting is not cringy.

Mom's Night Out - This one was actually funny, not just Christian humor that falls flat. A good story about an over-worked mom who's wondering if her life matters anymore. She meets up with two other mom friends for a night out, only to get ushered into a comedy of errors that ends up showing how, even though being a mom is hard, it is worth it. My kids even enjoy watching this one.

All Saints - This was based on a true story about a pastor of a dying church who ends up with a flood of refugees filling up the pews. He sets up a plan to help them, and help the church at the same time. They suffer all kinds of twists and hardships, and the pastor's faith is challenged as he has to fight nature, the community, and his denomination to grow a garden to serve his congregation.

Those are a few of my favorites. There are definitely more, but consider this your introduction. And if this is a subject you enjoy discussing, join the Sacred Arts Revolution page on facebook.

Ruts

I was born in one of the towns that was literally named "The Middle of Nowhere", meaning it was a ridiculous distance from any significant population and surrounded by giant wheat fields and homesteads spread out across acres and acres. I didn't end up living out there where my dad grew up in Eastern Montana, but we would go back to visit every summer.
There's an old road that leaves Grandpa's house out the back. At one time it was gravel but over the years, the rocks have gotten pounded back from whence they came, buried in the mud during the spring rains and pushed in further by tractors and trucks that dared to take that back route. It became more of a machinery entrance, even though it was probably a shorter distance from the county road than the actual driveway was. One summer when I was there, we couldn't take that old road in a car. The ruts had worn so deep, and the wild brown grass that grew between them had grown so long, that any car would high center trying to make it through. Even in a truck or van, you had to take it at a pretty quick speed to ensure that you didn't get jammed somewhere up there.
Those are ruts, worn away by years and years of the same thing happening over and over and over again, and no one taking the time or energy needed to rebuild the road. No one taking a few minutes to dig up that center and relay the gravel.
I've been noticing ruts in my own life lately. It started in January on the youth group retreat when I started to wonder if I was even connecting with God anymore. I felt so distant, even though I was "doing" the right things. I'm not a super emotional person, so an emotional connection isn't even what I was feeling was missing. It was just... lacking.
On that youth group retreat God revealed a couple of lies that have centered themselves in my heart.
Over the last the couple of months I've been asking the same question, in those rare quiet moments that I have to talk to God without interruptions. On Sunday we sang this song called "His Mercy is More", and I just realized how truly sinful my heart is. It's one thing to say it and to know it, but to really see it again, to just have the excuses and lies stripped away to reveal the truth inside there, and see that you really don't have much of anything good to offer right now, is something different. It was something I needed.
Because the sin in my life is a rut. It's places I drive over and over, routes I take the same way every day, and I've stopped noticing the way my wheels just settle in there and follow the tracks because it's just become part of me. Part of what I'm used to.
It was probably an epiphany on Sunday, seeing that some of the patterns I've become accustomed to are what is keeping me from God. From experiencing the power He's given, from the life I am so used to having. I don't even know how long it's been. I don't know what all needs to change, either. I just know that I need to examine the patterns I've put in place, even the routine of my days, and see which ones are pulling me into those tracks that lead down the wrong road.
I guess it's what the Psalmist was talking about with the whole "search me Father and know my heart, try me and know my mind. See if there be any wicked way in me and lead me into the way of everlasting."
I think it puts us in a better position to know God when we can see ourselves for who we really are without His transforming. And it puts us in a place where we can see Him work in our lives better.
We have ice ruts on our driveway right now. Big ones that happened during a quick thaw that became slush covering everything, and then a second freeze that still hasn't broken. every time I drive through them and feel my stupid van get tugged down into that icy hole, I think about where my heart is and how I want it to change.