Protective Shell.

"I have learned in the last year you have choices to respond to hurt. In my hours of waiting [for Josh], I went from vulnerable and willing, to being a turtle crawling back inside its protective shell and relinquishing trust, words I'd shared, and trying to be beautiful..."
~ Edited paragraph from an e-mail sent to friends entitled Cinderella & Pollyanna

And instead, what I have come to, what I have concluded, is my heart's desire and truth, and embossed stamp on me: that God cares with deep love, with deep respect and commitment and worth. And what he does then, in this, is he cares deeply enough to dream big dreams for me, to make purposeful plans, to cut out nameplates over me with his insignia: chosen, beautiful, adopted, redeemed, beloved, Lily of the Valley, and purest bride.

It is His cross I wear. It is His name who comes off my lips. It is His heart that is spread across and on and over me, and it is to his best that I pray, and cling. So back under his wings I crawl, I take refuge, I find my home. In my rock and my redeemer, and underneath, my protective shell, once again.

Raw & Vulnerable.

Dating Josh makes me raw and vulnerable. To a way that I can't even put words to. There is a sense of ripped open heart amidst the hope. Two parallel universes colliding and meeting all in this swift experience. It's the talking to someone everyday again, the opening my heart to vulnerability, the willingness to let someone inside, the begging for trust once again. It tears at me and makes this week one of the hardest weeks I've had in a while. More tears have been shed, more anger displaced, and more anxiety in my chest than the previous months combined.

It's all the tender places in me being exposed again. It's all the softness in my heart being carefully unwrapped again. Its the naked willingness to...be.

My mom loved so unconditionally. Never questions, never hesitations, never analyzations, never wonderings. She was pure, common, captivated in love. I have story after story, card after card, lyric after lyric to prove it. She was so... good. So genuine, so true, so trustworthy in the way she guided and guarded and loved and protected and pushed and released and kept open arms ready for hugs all the way through and since.

I can't expect of Josh what I knew of her, I know that. But I also know I have tightened reign on my heart and emotions and love and people this year. I have learned. I have had to. I have come up with discipline, with systems, with the smallest pores few can get through to protect myself. I have had to learn to build up walls, to pour heavy and structured concrete through them, and manipulate them and truth in order to keep them up and not fall down. It is a matter of emotional survival. To get the truest me now, you have to really work at it, and be constant and pure through it. Otherwise, you, like everyone else, get the guarded eighty percent of me, but I still withhold the deepest depths of the twenty for me, for God, for those closest of friends I dare expose and allow into. They hold it like wheat and chaff and take me each grain, and I trust them completely and honestly and vulnerably in it.

But this unearthing with Josh is new. It is risky, it is fearsome, it is SO challenging! No one ever told me that love could be so scary at the same time. I've never been more afraid in my whole life. He's worth the willingness to dare to do it, but most nights, I still cower for a moment in my bed and wonder how I'm going to get to the point of trusting him, and if he really is worth and willing walking into my wilderness now. He's said so, but to show that he does is a risk he's going to have to jump cliffs to take -- he's going to have to ask and listen to the depths of who she was, what trials were like, how my family as discarded itself since them. He's going to have to know and go through that with me. Because he's never going to have access to my heart without walking through the depths of the Jordan with out it.

I'm literally scared out of my mind. I get to see him tomorrow (thus why all this boils to such tension now that I'm willing to put it here on paper). I just want to hug him and hold him and lay on a blanket for hours under the sun talking and being with him. He's incredible, he's amazing, he's like a puzzle piece to me. As I said to my friend Kate earlier this week about him, "Could God really be this good?" And she said yes. But I'm still scared. Because I know I don't want to put pressure on him that shouldn't be there... but it's still there. It's there because of who I am and what I've been through. It's there because I've already had scary late-night phone calls and jump when it does the same now. It's there because I've already risked my heart, raw and vulnerable, and don't know where he's willing to walk in the softness of the hot blood of that... and how much more I can bleed before I just simply can't bleed any more. It's there because I'm ripped open already, raw and vulnerable.

Pursue My Heart.

My friend and I roll over about what it means to have your heart pursued. She's been through a few relationships in the past years, most ending because the guy stops pursuing her heart. He stops chasing after her, stops coming after her like a lover, stops taking the time to know, to plan, to create, to encompass all of who she is with a willingness to love and care and risk and be patient to unlace her. Her words come back to me often these days; I can hear her in my ear through the phone, "He just stopped pursuing my heart. He just stopped really trying to get to know me, to really get to know who I am. He stopped pursuing my heart."

Her words always break me, but in a good, hard way. In a way that echos her sentiments and makes me wish I could send her love like that. Wish I could grow up a man for her with all that strength and courage and desire to know her and dig deeply into the heart of her. To see the incredible woman and survivor and writer and thinker and lover that she really is. When a man gets to unravel all of that, he will grow to desire her like a persual that will cleave to take his whole life to get to chase after her.

I want this for her. And I don't want her to grow okay with anything less than that. She won't; I know her heart. But I wish so deeply for someone to care so passionately and intimately about her that he never stops, never cares to do anything less than to pursue her heart the rest of her days.

I gathered an incredible letter this morning, pouring over it with coffee and muffins in my little kitchen with blooming peach roses engorged with color and blossom scent, like partaking in a love so deep that it is Divine. The letter was mapped out in pen from God, written through my hands, but in His words for my journal. He coursed through His love for me, His desire for me, the worth of my heart, the value of my soul. He spoke of His pursual for me, over me, and to me.

God pursues me. He chases after me. He lingers at my doorstep, he sends prodding messages through the day that make me long for Him. I long to sit with Him, to drink coffee with Him, to dig in deeper to the chemistry of the glory of who He is. He wants to know my soul, he chases after my heart.

I long for another lover to do this. Another man sent from God but in human flesh to model His love for me as a husband, so may I as a wife. I wonder what this looks like in a human form, in earthly behaviors, in fleshly attitudes. Our dwellings are here, but God has created us with longings in his image. I long for a man to pursue my heart in a way that shows his intimate joy in my pleasure, in my depth. To take the time to calculate and plan what things would make me happy and to know responses to my hardship that allow me to unravel. To pursue my heart.

I know, we are in human form. We are flesh-like creatures. We are fallen glory. But my heart still longs to be pursued this way. Just as I wish this deep, empassionate, fleshly love affair encounter for my friend, so I long for it for me; and for all of us, from God. And this morning, God crept right up to me with blooming roses, creamy coffee, and a letter of love from the depths of his heart to mine. This morning, He pursued my heart.

Just Let Me Cry.

"Don't do anything, just let me cry!" were Garrett's words this morning, under the covers at 11:30am. He's been having fits all week, so on edge with all the adjustments; I think he can feel the stress of his family and mom and baby and all. And he's living in a way that has every nerve tense, so he screams and cries and rebells and pushes boundaries at the drop of a hat.

But his words were fitting and profound today, as I tried cuddling to him, tried holding his hand, tried singing hymns and lullabies, tried snugglign stuffed animals, wrapping in favorite blankies, telling stories. In the midst of red rubbed eyes and swollen noses and cascading tears, he screamed in a way that could not be argued against: "Don't do anything, just let me cry!"

Isn't that the way life is sometimes? Aren't there just moments were you want to scream out to the world "Don't do anything, just let me cry!" and have your hand held while you weep, and let it be okay?

What peace this child brought with his words today.

Rainbows.

So, if you read my post from yesterday, you know I was in need of seeing God. Literally, I went for a walk and asked Him for a rainbow, yeilding somehow a sign from his promises.

But then:

1) I got Love, from Taylor.

2) I got a phone call from my dear friend Missy... who, I forgot about during the hoopla of weddding events yesterday. But she was calling to remind me of our date today.

What!? YES! Praise Jesus! RAINBOWS! She was coming to Columbia, SC for a China event with her boyfriend and I've been planning to meet him (uh, them-- smile!) for a couple of months now in Columbia today. But alas, in my self pity and swimming of a day yesterday, I forgot when I was writing. And then wham, God slammed me with a Rainbow. Stickered right there on me.

Missy is here! Missy is coming to Charlotte! Missy is going to be my friend, my Love today. Missy is going to eat dinner with me, do some great adventures, see my new place, and share her Love, her boyfriend, with me.

Praise God for pre-booked plane tickets and precious people and Rainbows!

Love, From Taylor.

So today I got a gift from God. I stood outside Barnes and Noble and a woman said, "Taylor? Where is Taylor?" And I got loved.

You see, most of you know this, but it has been a hard week with floods and packing and moving... Add to that Garrett and I living in his neighbor's house every afternoon because of showings to sell their house, and my roommates wedding events last night and all day today, and you have a girl on Zantac, Celexa, Pepcid AC, Xanax, and Tylenol PM. Yep, all of 'um. With a little bit of Vitamin B Complex and coffee thrown in just to keep the blood in my veins.

So I grabbed my Taylor T-shirt. The gray one sent me to me when I got accepted, worn all these years and still soft and cuddly and my favorite. It is home to me. It is love and memories and hugs. It's couch-sitting in Olson, coffee stirred at the Jumping Bean, meals at the DC, chapels, laughter, tears... Friends. Love. It is the women who still today, I call when I just need someone.

And today, I needed someone. I came home from the wedding and cried. Spread right there on my bed in my dress and pearls and tears streaming down my face, my Morgan dog under my arm (from Garrett's naps), and my Jesus Calling book in my hand... and cried. All I wanted, more than anything in the world, was one of my friends or family to just show up. To have booked a plane ticket this week to come here and just show up and and suprise me and be present and somehow pour love on me. To show up to protect my heart from more isolation and conjured strength and independence. I just wanted to be loved.

(Now, realistically, I know this is ridiculous -- people do love me, they do fly here, they do drive here, they do call, they do write, they do send things, they do pray... they DO love me... I know!)

But I crumbled. So I covered myself in my Taylor T and stumbled over to Barnes and Noble to steal Internet since ours is still disconnected.

And this woman met me at the door, and asked about Taylor.

And then said she was a Taylor grad! She was joyful, and I was emotional. And we just connected and melted. She savored her memories; still meeting with friends from the class of 1985 every year, the last weekend of July, rotating houses. Through births and deaths and weddings and transitions, they have held together. I was so encouraged. And then the Lord added the special blessing -- that she goes to my church! So tomorrow, I will eat lunch with her and her husband.

When she left, I hugged her. Standing right there, outside of Barnes and Noble. Just the Taylor name is a logo, a stamp of approval, a sign of common language and commitment and understanding. A comfort. An encouragement. And I left with tears overflowing from my eyes, but a hug from her and from God and, in a way, from all my Taylor friends, in my heart.

Oh, P.S., did I mention she stayed in Room 115/116 (?) -- the EXACT room on First West that I lived in, directly across the hall from the bathroom! Sacred Space!

Do They Get To Cry?

One other trickle has coursed through my mind the past few months... but I haven't been able to put words to it yet... I wonder: Do they get to cry?

Do the women in poverty or war who lost their child to famine or disease get a chance to cry? Do the children who are orphaned so early due to AIDS or attacks or trafficking get the opportunity to mourn? Does anyone hear them? Does anyone care? Does anyone hold the hand of the young, struggling mother who cannot nurse to her breast? Does anyone sit and cradle the child who stands now alone? Does anyone carry them through those first days, those years?

I am 'allowed' to cry; I do cry. The comfort and prodding of others suggests so, that I face mourning, that I grasp the reality of loss.

But sometimes I wonder... is even that a privilege? Is the ability, the opportunity to mourn, to grieve, to wail, to cry, withheld as a right given just to people like me? Or are they too, given the space, the friendship, the community, to be undone and cry some days too?