and then she thought

i'll tell you one thing. there are so many girls with lovely hats and boys with scruffy beards and beat up jackets banging on drums, and singing to make something beautiful happen. and there are so many fields that haven't been mowed, and yellow dogs catching frisbees.

and then there are the cowboys, who have really got it figured out. and they lean over their fences and look at you when you pass them, and they've got it, and you know they've got it.

and there are the hippies and the mennonites, and they (respectively) live together and share and ache and break and celebrate as one.

and i'll tell you something else. there's something beautiful, something that they can't wrap their arms quite around, that's pulling them all, and they catch it like a lightening bug in a jar, but the bug suffocates when caught and goes out after awhile. so they search again, with the jar in the field for the bug. with the guitar and the horse whip and the music and the commune. and the truth is, they've got it, at least, a piece of it. they're RIGHT. but still, just when they've caught the bug, it dies.

so they've got to learn, and i've got to learn, to let beauty pass through me like a cool breeze, to inhale but to exhale too, and be okay when the breeze stills, or when the breeze freezes.

and more, they've got to look, and i've got to look, beyond the breeze. beyond the hippies, to what brings them together... to the Source...

wedding car cans.

When I live in survival mode, I coast on top of my days, unable to really dig my heels in. Unable to stop, to soak, to lift, to stretch out a bit.

I do NOT like to live in survival mode. I think I'd rather eat chalk than chase my day like the cans tied to the back of a wedding getaway car. Those sad cans. Eyes brimming, heart swimming love just a few meters ahead, coasting smooth, and they just bump and jolt and slam along, never quite able to catch up. Then, when the car finally does stop, they're too tired and banged up to be of much use. Oh! That's quite perfect. That stop- that arrival, that's my friday. My week is the wedding getaway car, and I am the cans, hopelessly chasing it down.

So then Friday comes. This Friday, for example, I woke up, and felt it, knew that the week would stop today. So I got up and went to substitute teach for the first grade. In the first hour a child projectile vomited all over the classroom (he had told me he felt sick earlier and I told him he was fine and to please sit down). In the second hour a child spit on me (purposefully, while screaming "I HATE THIS SCHOOL.") In the third hour, while reading the bible, I read one phrase at a time, in between telling children to stop coloring, picking, jumping, tickling, poking, etc. You can imagine how conviction and worship welled up in the hearts of the children by the sentence, "And then God said to David-- SIT UP AND STOP TOUCHING THAT..."

I made it to 3:30pm. Scoreboard read: Kids- 1. Miss Lorenc- 0. And I drove home, slouched in body and heart. I don't remember putting them on, but I found myself in my pajama pants by 7pm. Like the wedding car cans. The car had stopped. And I was worthless.

Thankfully, a friend called and asked me to get root beer. I sensed myself getting to a very bad place, the place where I convince myself of the utter worthlessness of my life and look at prices for one way tickets to developing countries with hammocks and mountains. So I decided to take her up on her offer. I spent the evening half asleep at the Alligator Cafe, content at least to be around jovial, contented people who didn't seem to be convinced that they were eighty-year-olds in twenty-five year old bodies.

AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE?! Boys should KNOW, they should just KNOW, not to tell girls they look tired. Why?! How is that helpful? I heard it three times in three days. The third time I cried, but in a bathroom stall by myself. Ick. Boys. Please if you can remember, it is nice when you open doors and don't tell girls they look tired. So nice.

Today I filled up on beauty. Spent hours in a coffee shop with lovely friends and books. Cooked. Listened to peaceful music. Drank tea. Curled up in the library. Prayed with a godsend of a friend. And now I'm sitting with thoughts and music and three candles. And I'm thinking about how I know God, and He loves me, and keeps me. And how if I don't point up to Him every time, then what am I really doing?

And I'm thinking that He'll be faithful always, and one day, I WILL be with him in a way that is different than now. And I'm hopeful.

Berbery

Context: 1) I work as a receptionist at an AMAZING school. 2)Berbery is a very strong Ethiopian spice comparable to Turmenic, or Curry.

I had reached my capacity for weird at 1:15. It was little things, really.

A fourth grader called the front desk to inform me that he was terribly sorry but would not be coming to school today.

A certain high ranking government official came to the school, I welcomed him and asked him to wait one moment while I got someone, and his body guards (there were two) looked at me like I was ridiculous, and let themselves right in. By the time I picked my jaw up off the floor he was in the cafeteria.

Shortly thereafter I went to one of our student’s parents house for lunch. They are Ethiopian, and know of my fondness for Ethiopian cuisine. What I did not know is that today, January 7, is Ethiopian Christmas, and I walked in to a complete party, where I was stuffed with food, asked to show off every Ethiopian phrase I know, and invited to meet with an Ethiopian priest who can teach me about Orthodoxy. I was also hugged and kissed and patted repeatedly by total strangers. (I liked this part very much.)

As I rushed ten minutes late into my office, my boss noted that she smelled Ethnic food. Her nose led her around the office, to my hair, and to my horror, I discovered that I was a walking Berbery Air Freshener. I started to really be hyper aware of the smell and sat in a corner self-consciously, warning everyone that came to my office to please wait at the door. Then, when no one was around, I bent over in half and shook my hair out with my hands. As I flipped it back right side up (you know my hair, I looked like Diana Ross) I found myself face to face with one of our schools board members. I tripped over my words, explaining that I wasn’t doing anything weird, it was that I smelled like I had washed my hair in berbery lamb shampoo. I thought that would ease the tension. He smiled sympathetically, and walked away.

Then, just before I sat to write this, I had our office manager spray bathroom freshener in my room, and walked through it. So now I smell like steamed Ethiopian lamb bathed in Hawaiian Aloha Hibiscus.

Weird.

Taping My Ears to My Face: the most recent testimony to my neurosis.

Warning: this is kind of gross.

It started about a month ago, when my brother-in-law leaned forward across my parent’s kitchen island with a furrowed eyebrow concentrating his stare toward the left side of my face and said, “What the…?” He thereby sent me into a three second eternity in which I imagined all the things that could be wrong with my face, including a newly formed giant birthmark in the shape of California that would eventually start growing hair. The hair I could of course exterminate, not without a certain amount of nausea, but the mark would grow darker and darker every time I set foot in the sun, and I would be forced to either start a scarf-around-the-face trend or have skin grafted from my thigh and plastered to my face.

Just as I was starting to get dizzy, he finished his sentence, disconcertedly noting that it looked like my earring was about to tear through my ear. Ignoring my indignation at the seeming disproportion of the disgusted look on his face and a lobe pulled down by a heavy earring, I covered my ear turned on one heel, and stomped to the bathroom, where I removed my earring. There, in my mother’s bathroom, facing a mirror that transforms pores into caves and eyebrow hairs into thorns, I noted that sure enough, this was more than a temporary lobe pulled down by a heavy earring. Rather than a tiny pierced hole, my ear appeared to have been pierced by an envelope opener, and I was forced to admit… a problem.

The first sacrifice I made in effort to coax the skin back to unity was to quit wearing dangly earrings, (a sure sacrifice to anyone who knows me, and undoubtedly the source of my new… malformation). I thought surely this would curb the degeneration of my earlobe.

I checked my lobe every day in the mirror, to see if it’s getting better, and while it doesn’t seem to be getting worse, healing is certainly not taking place either. Much to my regret, I confessed my problems to a friend with an imagination, who noted that if my ear did tear all the way through, my earlobe would look like a tiny hoof. I shrank back in horror, visions of my new freak hoof ear dancing through my brain.

Unfortunately, my brain seems to have chosen the hoof image to shove to the front of my consciousness each night as I lay down to sleep. Finally, it got so bad, that I couldn’t sleep. I tried counting sheep, but of course, sheep have hoofs. Soon, thousands of pairs of sheep hoofs were standing in the middle of a field like a drill team, high kicking their little split toes to the tune of “Isn’t she lovely.” I tossed and turned all night long, but got no rest. So the next night, I took a large bandaid and plastered my earlobe to my face. That way I could be sure my earlobe would not move while I was sleeping. Peeling it off the next morning was rough, but the peaceful rest was worth it.

Please understand. My ear doesn’t hurt at all, but as soon as I think of it, I swear I can feel it. For those of you wondering, yes, I am fully aware that the angst leading to insomnia is “all in my head,” (while the earlobe hanging on by a thread on the left side, is actually quite out of my head), and don’t care to be reminded. I’ve got plenty of problems in my head, and being reminded of their locale provides little comfort.

I am open to advice, recommended earlobe surgeons, ideas for gracious responses to being called hoof-ear in the new future, and to being unconditionally loved by my faithful friends, whose love for me is in no way contingent upon my earlobe remaining in tact.

Until I figure out a better plan, my ear will remain earring free in the day and taped to my face at night.

To be continued…

Starting Small

Ann Lammott advises writers to start small when they feel overwhelmed by the white page before them. Specifically, she suggests writing about childhood school lunches. I want to write about SO MANY THINGS, big and small and scary and hairy (actually just one thing hairy, my apartment floor, because we can’t afford a flipping vacuum cleaner), and bursting with passion, but I’m too overwhelmed.

So I’ll just write, for now, about the fact that I am HUNGRY. I have been running around since 5:30 this morning, and I PREPARED for the day. I packed myself a nutritious breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but FORGOT flatware. So my dinner is sitting under my chair in class (yes, I'm blogging from class) because I can’t figure out a graceful way to slurp or scoop garbanzo beans using nothing but… myself. Ugh.

I imagine having a dear friend or parent or spouse in prison, behind the glass wall thing would feel something like this. We’ve all seen the movies, where separated lovers, one unjustly condemned, place their hands against the screen, the comfort of seeing their beloved almost voided by the torture of not being able to touch.

Or perhaps the man who lost his leg in war, but still wakes to feel it itch. He reaches, only to touch the bedsheets where his leg would have formerly rested, unable to experience the satisfaction of a good, scratch.

My garbanzo beans are the condemned lover, the amputated limb. And I. Am. Hungry.

Back to school.

twenty-four oceans

Today was the death day of my twenty fifth year. It dies officially tonight at twelve. Tomorrow, when people ask me, I'll answer, twenty-five. I celebrated this death by waking up slowly and having four cups of coffee with my mother, and then by meeting my beloved sister Ali for antique shopping, walking, talking, and of course, crying in an old historic downtown square. My father and brother-in-law came and met us for lunch, and we just... enjoyed each other.

The funniest quote of the day (and there were many) was a toss up. I mortified myself by exclaiming "MOM, DID YOU KNOW THAT ERIKA IS TOTALLY IN LOVE WITH A MEXICAN?" just as our lovely latina waitress set the tortilla chips on the table. I love Mexico, and meant it in complete eager excitement for my friend, but the timing was... poor. (By the way, congratulations my friend). Earlier at an antique store my mom picked up a doll and moaned, "I have this in my ceder chest! I'm antique!!!" Later my mother (who NEVER shops) bought some jeans called "Not Your Daughter's Jeans" at a store around the corner. When she came out of the dressing room to show them off, my dad whispered in her ear. I'm not sure what it was, but the smile on her face made me sure that the self-doubt caused by the antique store was now quite invalidated.

I loved twenty-four, and heartily recommend it to anyone. It has been a difficult year, full of lessons hard learned (though well learned. I personally would have chosen to read a book about, and fixed myself completely beforehand rather than walk the road, but God in His wisdom had other plans). It has been a year of the Lord's steadfast faithfulness, a year of His power and glory, and a year of His strength in my weakness.

It has also been a year of listening to the switchfoot song "twenty-four" about 365 times, knowing that as of tomorrow, it just won't mean as much.

And now tomorrow I welcome twenty-five with open arms, knowing that whatever may come, He wills it so. I am frightened, of course, of many valid things (or at least, I think they're valid), and then some completely irrational things as well, but at least acknowledging it. That's a start.

God, grant me the serenity, to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Celebration

Today was a day of celebrations. I celebrated with some of my very good girlfriends. We celebrated knowing each other, and being alive, and fall and pumpkins and good books and truth.

We celebrated by walking at the lake, and then by a picnic at the arboretum. We got cold, so we left after a few hours and went to sit by the fire in my apartment, where we celebrated by talking and laughing and praying.

My roommate and I left around five, and we went to meet some friends of a friend whose parents welcomed us into their home. We ate dinner with them, and heard stories of redemption and hope. We talked for hours with Arturo, originally from Monterrey, who had raised his family in the states, and Hannah, my beloved Mennonite friend who I met in Ecuador studying abroad. We listened and laughed and reveled and ate dessert.

And now I'm in another home, lit only by lamps, celebrating just... being... with two very safe people who know me very well and love me anyway. When peace like a river attendeth my way... oh, it is well with my soul.