If I'm planning a surprise (or am just aware of one that's being planned), I can hardly contain it. When I made plans to secretly go home over fall quad break, I couldn't tell my family, so I told everyone at Gordon that I possibly could. It was like the emotion was too much for me to physically contain, and to process it I had to let some out, a little at a time, by giving it to others.
Secrets, joyful or sorrowful, are like that. They carry weight, and sometimes that weight is too much for one person to carry. That's how they get told. From then on, every person that receives the secret carries a bit of that weight too. Whether they like it or not.
That's why it's so huge to be the caretaker of one. You have to decide. Do you carry the weight alone... forever? Or do you burden others with it for their lives too?
Having both been burdened and been the one to hand that burden others, it's hard to say. But I don't regret having to carry some things. Today I could feel someone else's weight from hundreds of miles away, and in a small way I am with them in the carrying, even if they can't feel it themselves.
I think trusting others to carry our secrets makes us brave. Holding them inside ourselves forever robs others of the chance to test their strength, and after so many years our shoulders just get tired.
As your guardian, I was instructed well
to make sense of God's love in these fires of hell
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Friday, March 13, 2015
Things I Love With All My Heart
My hair the morning after a good shower: deliciously soft, mussed up, wavy, still damp in the back.
The sound of a man shaving with a non-electric razor: the scrape of blade against stubble, like light sandpaper.
Similarly, the sound of long hair being cut with scissors and the crispness of each snip.
When I am burrowed deep into my comforter in the early hours of the morning, before the "get out of bed" guilt has set in, and it is wrapped snugly and folded up around and against my back, the perfect amount of cushion, and somehow the extra padding against my spine makes me feel utterly safe and calm.
When I am trying to massage my own neck and I press on just the right knot and it sends delicious goosebumps down every inch of my skin.
The way I can listen to Future of Forestry and hear the nights in the fall of 2012, walking the lonely streets of suburban Stafford, or hear Jukebox the Ghost and be transported to wintery car rides with Grace senior year, or hear the acoustic version of Painting Roses and see the sunny back roads through a windshield when I go home on breaks and realize I missed being alone almost more than I did being with people.
The smell of cinnamon, anywhere, anytime, especially on top of coffee.
Picking up things with my toes
The way I can go for a walk and take the person that I am around every other person in the world and shed her like a jacket. There's a whole other Self hidden underneath that comes out to play, and I'm the only person she's met and we like it that way.
Poetry about air travel (as someone who's probably spent more of her life in airports than out of them, it feels like home)
When the little strand on the left side of my head curls by itself
Having the realization that an embarrassing love for something is actually just some adorably quirky part of me that I can be proud of instead
The sound of water boiling and the knowledge that my macaroni will be done soon
Concocting incredibly elaborate unrealistic movie scenes (starring myself) to the music of another film score and pretending that if that movie was made it would still have that exact music
Being in wide-open or high places during a storm that involves heavy rain without wind, accompanied by thunder and lighting, while listening to dramatic instrumental music
Surprising people I haven't seen in ages by being somewhere they don't expect me and the look on their face and the endless hugging that ensues
The little butt-wiggle that cats do before they pounce on something
Being carried without having to ask
The sound of a man shaving with a non-electric razor: the scrape of blade against stubble, like light sandpaper.
Similarly, the sound of long hair being cut with scissors and the crispness of each snip.
When I am burrowed deep into my comforter in the early hours of the morning, before the "get out of bed" guilt has set in, and it is wrapped snugly and folded up around and against my back, the perfect amount of cushion, and somehow the extra padding against my spine makes me feel utterly safe and calm.
When I am trying to massage my own neck and I press on just the right knot and it sends delicious goosebumps down every inch of my skin.
The way I can listen to Future of Forestry and hear the nights in the fall of 2012, walking the lonely streets of suburban Stafford, or hear Jukebox the Ghost and be transported to wintery car rides with Grace senior year, or hear the acoustic version of Painting Roses and see the sunny back roads through a windshield when I go home on breaks and realize I missed being alone almost more than I did being with people.
The smell of cinnamon, anywhere, anytime, especially on top of coffee.
Picking up things with my toes
The way I can go for a walk and take the person that I am around every other person in the world and shed her like a jacket. There's a whole other Self hidden underneath that comes out to play, and I'm the only person she's met and we like it that way.
Poetry about air travel (as someone who's probably spent more of her life in airports than out of them, it feels like home)
When the little strand on the left side of my head curls by itself
Having the realization that an embarrassing love for something is actually just some adorably quirky part of me that I can be proud of instead
The sound of water boiling and the knowledge that my macaroni will be done soon
Concocting incredibly elaborate unrealistic movie scenes (starring myself) to the music of another film score and pretending that if that movie was made it would still have that exact music
Being in wide-open or high places during a storm that involves heavy rain without wind, accompanied by thunder and lighting, while listening to dramatic instrumental music
Surprising people I haven't seen in ages by being somewhere they don't expect me and the look on their face and the endless hugging that ensues
The little butt-wiggle that cats do before they pounce on something
Being carried without having to ask
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