Advent on a String.

In my room, there strings a long line of white, bird-stamped cards with gold etching. Each is clothes pined delicately in a row, and dangles in numerical succession. Champagne J.Crew ribbons dangle from each end, with their softness casting the simplest of poetic beauty to the chain of light.

It's a gift from my roommates. Twenty-eight numbered cards, each with personalized messages in scrawled handwriting. One for each day of advent.

They schemed behind my days and plotted their gift as a surprise, each dividing cards and ideas, to offer the blessing to me this season.

They knew this year would be hard.

But they intended to bring a small piece of light, of beauty to each of my days of advent. To offer grace, love, mercy, and care abounding during this season. To serve as infinite reminders that they are present and care.

The delicate notes paint everything from Puritan prayers to personal messages to personality traits they see in me. In their penmanship and partnership with me these days.

I am gifted by them. By the golden hue of birdsong cards. By the three women who crafted them.

Rebuke.

Explaining my frustration and escapade of the church/prayer situation last night, I was kindly rebuked and reminded of something Rob Bell spoke in a teaching years back. That if it is a church, the Holy Spirit is at work there. Therefore, one must not be critical or critiquing or hardened. It's okay to not attend there, but to outright judge or demean is to put down the name and people of Christ. This reminder, serving as a kind-hearted rebuke, was good for me. And for the Church.

Take Me As I Am.

I went to a church tonight. Everyone was dressed in their suits and ties still, at six pm. The lighting was spectacular, the hymns mimicking, and the area dignified with gold bows and ornamented wreaths. The sermon was on prayer. About how prayer is to be reverent, dignified, and the leader should speak slowly and precisely when conducting community prayer.

I leaned over to my friend and said, "Do they ever pray without being articulate here?"

She looked at me as if it was heresy to ask that.

And all the prayers were just that: articulate. They were precise, well-spoken, glorified in language, and pattern.

Anger boiled within me. Prickling through my furrowed brow and contorted face. The pastor quoted prayer passages from the Old Testaments and New, all of them rehearsed prayers and spoken at the synagogues and used as patterns for the congregation now to model.

A sermon on prayer. And no speaking of the Psalms. No honesty heart cry. No murmur or protruding screams of the soul. No deep movement of the Spirit.

Just reverence, rehearsal, precision. Well-spoken.

Surely, there is a time for this.

But there is also a time for heart cry, for blustering words, and moments of wordlessness.

This was me, this is me.

The close of the evening was for the suited, red-tied pastor to lead the congregation in corporate prayer, them echoing his sentiments on their own in the solitude that he left between sentences.

You cannot ask a girl who lost her mom to conjure perfect prayers. You cannot ask for words and sentences to be rehearsed so they sound well-spoken and refined.

I made it half way through the solitude/corporate prayer. Until I quietly, masked by a pleasant smile, dismissed myself from the pew, scrambled to my car, and fell apart with my head hitting the steering wheel, tears busheling down my painted cheeks and inaudible sounds screaming from my soul. I wrenched with tears, I wrenched with prayer.

Not dignified or refined. Not rehearsed or precise. Not well-spoken or beautified.

Just me. Cut out and dried, crying and bent over my steering wheel in the dark, shaken, angry, and heaving.

I sometimes wonder from an 'outsider' what it looks like to be in a church, what the reactions would be.... like what if I would have walked up their to the staged pulpit carved of perfectly sculpted wood and just fallen on my face or knees, and cried out right there in church with whines and my fallen self.

I would have like to see the startled faces and reaction of me, this women spread and fallen and crying in pained prayer.

I would have like to see this reaction. Take me as I am. As God does. As I am.

~~~
Amendment: I amend this post. Not to change my beliefs or thoughts. But to add an angle on the prism. I spoke this week with my community from this church and found their grace giving. Learning that my friend and I had misunderstood each other in my question about "articulate prayer" and that they believe that the elders would have come around me and wept with me in my distress... So I figured an amendment may be neccessary to temper my outrage.

Moving...Again.

I am so sick of moving. Moving is such a lonely feeling. Its packing alone, driving my car alone, driving a Budget truck alone. Making phone calls to find help alone. And getting little help, so still alone. (I did find someone finally, though, and he was a blessing and helped with a joyful, grateful heart.)

Moving is once again feeling lonesome. Feeling nomadic. Feeling like I'm still not established, and still wandering. Moving is seeing that my dreams seem to never embellish to reality.

Moving is more scratches on my furniture. More chunks missing from my favorite heirloom piece. More pieces of me left and discarded.

I realize I'm not alone. I realize people care and are helpful. And I love my roommates. But my stuff is scratched, it's still in the truck because I have no one to help me unload it, and it's another temporary living situation, again. So I will re go through all of this in another six months.

So, I'm discouraged and feeling it.

Miss Christina Bear

So Garrett and I have these funny moments together. One of them that has carried on was from a few weeks ago. I was walking with him through the park and he was laughing as I would run ahead and yell, "Run Garret Baer, Run!" and repeat this over and over as he would catch up and fall behind, catch up and fall behind.

His last name is Baer, so it fits perfectly.

But, little did that homonym transfer as he ran ahead finally and yelled, "Run, Miss Christina Bear, Run!"

And now, when we are laughing or when he is being silly, he always refers to be in his default as "Miss Christina Bear." How cute is that? :)

Damsel In Distress.

So here's my embarrassing moment of the week. So this guy I know overheard that I needed help moving. I am pretty embarrassed that I don't have even one person who is available on Wednesday to help, so I was asking at church yesterday morning to some friends. Anyway, so this guy overheard, and, despite me telling him I'd figure it out, decided tonight to e-mail all of his friends at the seminary and ask for help for me. So yes, I get this e-mail forwarded from one of them, letting me know that he pulled this crazy stunt. So sweet, yes. Thank you for being the church to me and getting me help. I'm laughing about it still now. :) But still, sending my name off to a bunch of seminary guys and then having them help me move, how embarrassing is that? :)

Make It Special.

As I approach these new holidays, I am trying to find ways to Make It Special for me. To add the simpilicies and details that enamor my heart and soul and make it smile. To create and embelish on new traditions for myself to carry over to neighbors and friends and dollup on every year.

So this year, so far, I'm starting with:

~ Buying a new, beautiful, wonderfully made Christmas stocking just for me. Maybe even splurge on something fantastic from Pottery Barn or another deeply invested store...

~ Celebrating with candles for each moment that I am home. Lighting them over breakfast and dinner and simple times of readinig or discussion.

~ Possible designing and offering a New Years Day brunch to all of my closest friendships and companions. Sparing no expense or detail. Coffees, teas, pastries...

Any other great ideas for me.... for new traditions or festivities or specialities?

Get Me Through December.

"Just get me through December
So I can start again...."
~ Alison Krauss "Get Me Through December"

We were walking through Michaels tonight, gathering craft ideas and sauntering through rows of ideas and ornaments. And for the first time this year, the sadness sank. The Christmas without the love. The just showing up for family gathering and bearing through the changes. The slapping of things together in Charlotte to try and make it celebratory.

I thought it would be fine. I thought that holidays would simply be noted as a 'big day' but since they would be so prepared, that the ache wouldn't be intense. But instead today, sadness is creeping and emotions elusive in me.

I have been trying to think through these holidays. To gather myself together and learn to start to face them this year and knowingly prepare. To grant myself the space to make them special for me, and establish my own traditions. As a single person, moving and floating. As one who bypasses the meaning of home. As a daughter without a mother. As member of a dismembered family. I've been trying to brainstorm and make up good things for me and give myself things to look forward to.

But mom won't have my ornaments on the tree. They'll be sucked still in boxes. Her Snow Villages won't light the mantle. She won't greet me at the door, excited that I've come home. She won't wipe her hands on her Christmas apron with the pine cones and holly. She won't play Mannheim Steamroller. Her house won't smell like cinnamon candles, burning all day long. She won't have planned and prepared something special for us, and be so glad to see her blessed family all gathered together.

No. Instead, I will wonder what I can buy to decorate a temporary house. And drive home to a Christmas party that continues to change dates depending on everyone's values. And be faced with the open ache of my changing family. And I will drive and do it alone. I will think of my own traditions, which have less meaning when they are only for one. I will share Thanksgiving morning by myself and spend the weekend loitering, trying to fill it with something that I could name special.

And I will suck it up through December. I will gouge myself to bare it. To forget all the emptiness, the ache, the need for her hug and love and candle and that she would really care so deeply that I was coming home and clear her calendar to love me.

God, I miss her. Just get me through December.

Simple Pleasures.

Sand crunching beneath our feet, morning mugs in hand, we strode in sneakers and the sea. Playing the question game, and all taking our turn to share. This particular Saturday morning, the question was: What are your simply pleasures? My roommates embraced the question on our walk on Myrtle Beach. We flitted and flirted with our answers, having so much fun and enjoying the day. My list warms my heart with just the thought of the goodness there....

Good Bread
Pearls
Flip Flops
Dresses & Skirts
Cottage Days
Coffee & Tea
Good Meals
Playing Piano
Good Conversation with Friends
Sleepwear
Bath & Body Works (Lotions, Candles, Body Wash)
A Well-Written Book
Looking Forward to Sunday Morning Worship
Local Cafes
Baking Breakfast
Real Mail

Quotes.

Taken from Oswald Chambers, My Upmost for His Highest:

"Launch out into reckless belief that the Redemption is completely...." (June 21)

"When once the call of God comes, begin to go and never stop going...." (September 27)

"The test of the life of a saint is not sucess, but faithfulness in human life as it actually is." (November 16)

Or Reject Him.

"The position was not, as I had been comfortabley thinking all these months, merely a question of whether I was to accept the Messiah or not. It was a question of whether I was to accept him -- or reject. My God!" ~ Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy, p. 98

How clearly this text severed my wandering. How clearly it stated my compelling to carry my cross.

Inklings.

I've been reading and drinking in Sheldon VanAuken's book, A Severe Mercy, and this afternoon, was craving the beauty of his pen pal relationship with C.S. Lewis, writing each other letters of deep self and thought, though they had never met, and keeping each other then, persistent in prayer. The character of C.S. Lewis comes through and is astounding to me, as it was to VanAuken, as he is a busy professor and acclaimed writer already at that point, mirrored and quoted by numerous theologians as the most influential contemporary of the time. But yet, Lewis writes these incredible, almost in a romantic sense, poetic narratives to VanAuken, offering open discourse regarding the Christian faith, or furthermore, the essence of belief. It is beautiful, the display of discovery woven through an intellectual literaturistic style in these letters.

As the book sat coddled on my chest, myself wrapped in blankets and nuzzled in this cold, wet afternoon with tea, admiration and desire wells with in me for friendships as such. To sit with Lewis' companions, the Inklings, and discuss theology and terms amongst a stirring glass of wine or simmering tea. Or to read such personal, provocative, and honest letters regarding the search for belief and faith from another.

There are some where I have this now, this stirring shared through in qualms by email or blog space, but a returned desire for the essence of this intellectual, bookish, theological community is awakened and drawn. It begins with Lewis and VanAuken and a realism in pen pals, and comes to fruition in what clever antidotes I can conjure up in my daily communities.

Paradox of Me.

I was writing and thinking and talking and explaining myself... constantly trying to interpret all the things that make me, me. And then the last week, trying to find a way to divulge all that I am onto paper, and finding myself unable to write or articulate, or even put language to my world and thoughts. But again, I turn to my friend Kate R, and remember her words -- you need to write, even if you just start writing about the weather, and eventually it will flow out of you. You need to write to process.

So this morning, I'm writing in reflection of her, and understanding of me. As I meet so many new people, I try to explain myself and my position here in Charlotte. I live in the bustling, wealthy suburbs of a beautiful city, covered with landscapes of trees and hills and parks. But I also screech at it at times, needing just to get out. To see the country side, to bask near the water, to hike and be dirty. I don't fit a world with suits and ties and everyone driving Lexus' and Volvos. I'm a girl who thinks nothing is more sexy than a pick-up and a Cowboy... but I want him to drink coffee sitting with me at Caribou too :)

So I make a point to get out. At least every weekend. I drive to a lake, I drive to a big park, I drive to the mountains. To release, to explore. I dig my hands in a garden of flowers and dig in, feeling the earth and letting it coat my hands with Creation.

Like Kate, I'm a country girl. I'm at home with space, with rolling hills of green grasses and John Deer tractors and deer wandering in the back yard. I love the slowness of rocking with my mom on the wooden swing and living in a house that never locks the door.

In explaning to friends, I say I grew up on twenty acres in the country, but my dad wears Nautica. So many things are a statement here. I could add that he works construction and comes home concrete covered, but drives a red corvette convertable as his main car. Or that on our twenty acers we had a beautiful underground pool, pulled each other behind snowmobiles and quads, but served more than a few feminine tea parties. There is the contrast of my family: boating and gardening and mowing acers of grass and dirty in dirt and exploring farms, but vacationing to Hawaii and playing a baby grand piano and seeing the sympohony at Pops in the Park. This is my world. This is me.

But always, the paradox. When I was looking for my first teaching job, my one rule was: there has to be a Target or Starbucks within a half an hour of wherever I am.

Because I'm a country-singing, cowboy-loving, powder puff playing, git-her-done, country girl, who... still... basks in foreign lands and travel and good coffee and nights gracing the theatre and plays downtown. Who wears pearls and dresses and heels and Rum Kiss Clinique. Who is saturated with so many things, and digs deep into all of them. That is the paradox of me.