Taking Myself in Hand at a Time of Transition

Take this in-between, through-the-cracks moment, and be quiet:

You are a person made of dust.

If there is glory to be had, don’t reach for it.

If the office is quiet, and the internet is down, go ahead and breathe.

Work will come, or it won’t.

Remember tea in Lachelle and Brian’s kitchen last night?

Remember sleeping in that big bed for the last time?

Remember entering the dorm office, the air scented with something that harkened you back like laughter continuing from a distant room of friends you’ve just left?

Remember that it’s time to go, and that’s right.
Leave now.

You won’t be alone along this road.

But even if you are alone for a while, and your fears materialize: (they haven’t,  yet, but supposing) your car battery fails, and your phone is maddeningly right where you placed it last night and trustingly left the house this morning---supposing all your first and second plans don’t pan out, I mean:

just wait a moment longer.

Your job becomes simpler: breathe and remember.

Someone has jumper cables. You’re someone’s son, someone’s daughter.

The only real disconnection is separation from God. And, thank God! That’s 
something you can remedy even now.

But back to the car: just know that a thousand possibilities swirl around you in times like these.

Raise your head in wonder, reach up, and pluck one star.

You can keep it.

A Sparse Month

So much for blogging in the month of May.

Readers, I did write a poem that I'm proud of. But I like it because it's true and close to my heart. So close, in fact, that I cannot yet share it here. So please accept this placeholder until the day when I am far enough removed from this moment to fill the empty space below with the only thing I will then be able to offer you: a vintage rendition of feelings long past.

• 

June

It's beautiful: being overcome
by simple exhaustion at the end of a school year.

[Breathe.]

It's beautiful.

Notebook Exploration

These are from fall of 2007, my one semester at Houghton College.

I found this haiku in the front of my notebook for advanced composition with Dr. Susan Bruxvoort Lipscomb:

If at first you

Can't count to five syllables,

You're probably me.

I found this letter to God in the back of my notebook for English literature survey with Dr. Wardwell. That was the best class I have ever taken. During finals, I was pacing the lengths of the bookshelves memorizing slices of poetry and their authors. When I wrote this letter, I had just taken a long look at Gulliver's Travels and was about to move on to The Rape of the Lock. But my mind stopped. So I began:

I want to tell You all about it by a shimmering stream, beneath a cerulean sky. But I have a light brown study carrel with a light that hums next to a window and a heater. And I have a very serious amount of studying to do for my final in two days. But, God, I'm just so SO--! I want to tell You under a starry sky, with the world beneath You and I together. We'd watch each star as it watched us, and You'd tell me a secret and I would make You laugh.

But I have a hundred (or two dozen) goodbyes to make. And who knows for how long it will be? One year? This lifetime? All eternity? Jesus only You could know... I'm just so--! So mad and clueless, expectant and helpless. So scared and tired, excited and weary. And not busy. Like I should be.

Even though I walk the shores, all the mountains, town after town, one city, then another, even though I see Your creation right beside all that of man, I will always listen for Your voice. It always calls me here. To begin again at the beginning, while I'm in the middle of everything busy, getting ready to make a change. I'll start with You. And I'll end with You.

A Little More About Love

A prayer to the Father about my father:


It is no use.

I will go on loving you.

I am not only okay with the pain these affections cause
as they cut to the quick of my soul,
I am absolutely convinced
that they are the love itself,
Growing upward, toward light,
straining with every last ounce of breath,
Each fiber pushing caution away
and reaching up to touch the

particles of hope that must be above!

I am convinced that that is the shape of my love.