Tears In The Bathtub, Peace In The Chapel

I love this small, simple chapel.

It beckoned to me when I first saw it. My students had just finished performing music at a retirement home near their school. After their performance, a friendly resident took me by the hand to show me around the building.

"This is where we have chapel every Thursday afternoon at 1:30," she commented, as she flipped on the light switch in the upstairs room.

"Ohhh," I breathed. "It's beautiful."

It was beautiful. Small, but quaint and inviting, with a communion table and beautiful stained glass window of a cross that still appeared triumphant.

The Tears Of Change

Change.

My heart aches tonight, and I'm not sure why.
Probably because of that word: change.

I'm not opposed to change. I can often adapt easily and with flexibility. Sometimes I don't even feel the pangs of change until after it has happened---running purely on adrenaline in survival mode when I am in the midst of it. And I have many things in my life changing for the better. I am about to relocate my piano teaching studio---positive change. But the reasons behind it---hurtful, disappointed change.

Watching friends go through situations that I keep hoping and praying will improve for them, but don't seem to be---sorrowful change.

My boyfriend is possibly in the middle of a career transition, and I'm trying to assist him with some of the steps I've navigated before in that process---hope-filled, turning-point change. But seeing the pain on his face as he still deals with being in the middle of the process---heart-breaking change.

Why Being Invisible Sometimes Feels Comfortable

Even when I was really young, I was very thought-conscious for a child. My elementary school teachers often told my mom, "She's a great student and always makes Distinguished Honor Roll. But she's bored. She's a really deep thinker and likes to be creative. She gets bored with some of the worksheets and assignments we have to do."

In second grade I wrote what I remember as my first "poem." I wrote it in December, as I eagerly anticipated the upcoming holiday. Shyly one morning, I walked up to my teacher's desk with a copy of my poem behind my back and quietly handed it to her when she looked up at me. She was a tough teacher, large and intimidating, not the nurturing or welcoming type, and she quickly began reading my piece of paper without much expression. Then her eyes flickered at me, and she looked back up suddenly. "Did you write this?" she asked abruptly, inflection in her voice. Without making a sound, I just nodded, my hands behind my back and my feet shifting awkwardly, then watched as she walked past me up to the blackboard, my poem still in her hand.

The Soothing Stillness Of Snowfall

Just a couple of days before the Thanksgiving holiday, I was driving to my afternoon job when the heavy clouds in the sky began releasing soft white snowflakes, dancing through the air and falling to the ground so far below. Most people wish for a white Christmas, but snow wasn't even on my mind that Monday before Thanksgiving.

I am usually not a fan of snow, mostly because slick, icy roads have placed me in frightening, dangerous driving conditions in the past. I hate being cold and having to bundle in layers just to walk outside. When snow begins melting, with patches of the dead, dry earth making the ground look like a shoddy, poorly stitched patchwork quilt, I dislike the messy appearance it leaves behind.

My 7th Grade Thanks To The Soldiers

I was not even school-age when they came to the church I grew up in---the new pastor, his wife, pretty daughter, and mischievous son. Years later they would tease me about being so shy that I would hide my little toddler self under the kitchen table when they came to my house to visit. They pastored our small church for at least twelve years, long enough to become family to the church members of the quiet town, long enough to watch me grow from a toddler to a teenager.

When their son was 21, he was deployed to Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm, which struck at the beginning of my seventh-grade year---a personally turbulent time for me. I had lost my aunt right before beginning 5th grade, then lost my grandma the summer before 6th grade. Now I was beginning middle school, the emotional hormonal roller coaster of puberty; my grandfather was having serious health issues that he would discover to be cancer, and our pastor's son--the teasing "big brother" to all the younger kids in the church--was being sent across the globe to fight a war we could sit and witness on our TV screens.

Called By Name

I sit at the piano bench in the campus dance studio, where I sit twice a week to accompany ballet classes part-time. This job isn't like some I've had in the past, where I gather with co-workers in the break room to chat about the weekend or laugh at their jokes. Instead, I greet the instructor with a "Good morning," play for a classroom of college dance students, then lock my music books in the cabinet, place the piano bench on top of the piano, roll it against the wall, and walk the approximate mile back to my car, parked on a side street downtown.

The male instructor is fairly new, strict with the students, but nice---in a professional, formal way of being nice---thanking me after each class and shaking my hand, unless he is otherwise bombarded by questioning students.

He directs the class at a fast pace and dictates instructions through a heavy accent, so I must mentally stay on my toes to keep up with what he is requesting of me. After demonstrating each exercise to the students, he looks at me with a strike of his hand in the air and calls out in a strong voice, "Maestro!" 

And the music, with the four-count preparation, begins.

Those Prayers, And Beyond

I wish I could consistently remain in this place, where prayers overflow from me. For a few days, everywhere I turned, I found myself praying for someone---for an older lady working as a cashier at a discount store. What was her life like? Did she have family? Was she retired, bored, in such desperate need of money that she had to take a low-paying job just to make ends meet?

Or the man working behind the desk at the post office. When he handed me my change from mailing a huge stack of tax bills, I noticed his pink armband---breast cancer awareness. Was his wife sick? A friend, sister, mother? Had his life been affected by a loss of love to a horrible disease? 

The Shame Of Being Human

SHAME?

I had decided to be a good sport and agree to do something I despise: I got my picture taken for the church directory. I hate any activity that sets me up to be analyzed---even supposedly fun things, such as photography sessions, having someone apply my make-up, or attending one of those Mary Kaye parties where the consultant hands out cards that ask the attendees to analyze their faces:

Are your lips thin, full, or both?
Are your eyes close-set, wide-set, or average?
Is the shape of your face square, round, or oval?
Is your skin, dry, oily, or combination?

Those analytical scrutinies aren't helpful to a woman who has spent much of her adult life trying to cast off the self-critical nature she carried around for years. Those questions are even more difficult in a roomful of women who feel free to express their opinions about the appearance of everyone else in the room. I have squirmed under the uncomfortable inspections of unwelcome eyes fixed on me, voices asserting, "I think Misty's face is round. I think Misty's eyes are almond-shaped. I think Misty needs that kind of makeup for her skin color...."

But for the sake of a church directory and since I do play in the church band, I endured the unpleasantness of several awkward poses for the photographer and began to hopefully think I might get through the session without hearing any unsolicited negative analyses of myself.

The White Easter

My heart and mind weren't prepared for Holy Week. The colorful Easter baskets and decorations I annually set out each year were still buried in their bin in the closet. My mind had been preoccupied instead of thoughtfully focused on the season.

Holy Week had been cold, literally, with chilly March temperatures biting the air. I sat at work one day during that week and glanced out the full glass windows revealing the world outside. I felt physically sick, discouraged and tired. Snowflakes had been falling intermittently all day. Not favorable of cold air or slick, white roadways, I'd mostly disregarded the falling flakes and ignored people's disbelieving complaints of "Snow!? In spring!?" After all, it was only the end of March. When did anything in life follow a set schedule on a calendar?

Invisible Opportunities

In the mundane,
routine acts of daily life---

going to work, 
pumping gas into the car, 
trying to keep up 
with dishes and laundry---

I forgot that I am continuously
being presented with limitless opportunities:

to be more than I think I am,
to make a greater impact 
than I think I can. 

At times I only see
what appears
to be on the surface:

my job duties seem
to amount to
little more than
teaching scales and harmonies
that only a few students will ever use;
sharing my music
seems to be a meager contribution
that a mere handful of people might benefit from.
 
But then, I am reminded.
And not only reminded---but corrected.

For He Understands My Thoughts

"You perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out 
and my lying down.
You are familiar with all my ways." 
~Psalm 139:3

Do you have those certain friends whose moods you can gauge within the first five seconds of interacting with them? A distracted look in their eyes, a flattened tone of voice, abbreviated responses....and you know....you know their thoughts are distracted or burdened.

One Word 2013

I wanted to choose one word for last year
 
(http://oneword365.com),

but no particular word ever
'jumped' out at me.

Plus, I had that self-defeating attitude
I sometimes get---
I'm just one of hundreds. 
Who would care about 
my little word anyway?
  
But this year,
I am participating,

mainly because for the past few weeks,
a particular word continually returns to me:

Keeping Christmas

The days after Christmas used to be the most depressing days imaginable to my young mind. I was very enthusiastic as a child, easily excited, and spent weeks---no, months---anticipating that magical day of December 25.

It was the day we celebrated the mysterious birth of a baby in a manger,

the morning following Santa's fascinating slide down our brick chimney (where he emerged out of our wood stove, I was convinced) to leave an array of surprises under our Christmas tree,

the day we drove the curvy countryside road to my grandparents' house, where dozens of laughing family members crammed into their little white home, feasted on more food than we could finish, then gathered around their tree where I always opened a package containing some sort of beautiful doll. Then my brother, cousins, and I played happily with those new toys while laughter and Christmas music filled the background.

While On The Way

I drove through the countryside
on the Friday after Thanksgiving
to a celebration
at my cousin's house.
Eager to see my family,
but with a struggling
heart and body.
The past six weeks
have been heavy ones.

Yet the scenery
all around me was peace---
open fields with cattle and barns,
treetops swaying in the wind,
a sunset splashing
vibrant colors across the sky.

Like Jesus

None of us can be just like Jesus.
I am certain.

But sometimes I observe familiar qualities in other people and know I am recognizing glimpses of him.

My mom is a beautiful woman who looks like she spends way more time and money on her appearance than she actually does. When she gets her hair cut, she doesn't go to a fancy salon or an expensive stylist.

She goes to Rose.

When I Don't Want Fireworks

A part of me exists that longs for
excitement and adventure---

trips to faraway places and fast-paced cities,

grand opportunities.

But sometimes, the simplest things
make me the happiest.
  

On October 31, I went through the same routine I go through every year on Halloween. I pop my old VHS tape in the VCR (yes, a VHS tape in the VCR) and watch "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" as I began stepping into in an inexpensive costume, mostly thrown together from my closet. I excitedly hop in my car to make the approximately 23-minute drive to my hometown, where I first pull in the horizontal drive of Ms. Margie, the 90-year-old woman who alters my clothes and is the mother to my aunt-by-marriage. It doesn't matter that she really isn't related to me. It feels certain that she is. Since she doesn't drive, I take her the half-mile through town to my Aunt Martha and Uncle Steve's old white house, full of warmth and coziness and memories.

Untangling Broken Zippers

I remember snuggling into it on that cold winter day. Was I five or six years old, maybe? It was my favorite winter coat, blue with a fuzzy lining, a warm hood, and those mittens that ran on a string through the sleeves so they didn't get lost. My favorite aunt sat at our kitchen table visiting my family, and I bundled up in my room to proudly show her my favorite coat before going outside to catch my breath in the brisk, cold air.

I happily buttoned my hood around my face and excitedly began to zip up my coat when---uh-oh---the zipper was stuck. I tugged---and tugged again--- but it wouldn't budge. I looked down at my coat and saw that a tiny bit of that precious blue fabric was hung in the zipper.

Inspiration on Blah-Mondays

That was exactly how I felt when I woke up this morning--blah. That was exactly how I felt when I went to bed last night---feeling the blah Monday before the day had even started.

After a few days off work spent out-of-town with family---some of that time hectic, yet some of that time relaxing with a mother's home-cooking---I was not ready to return home. Not ready to face a busy schedule of work and deadlines. Just not ready to get back in the groove of things.

Whispers And Screams

Saturday morning I packed a small bag with snacks, my camera, and my journal, then headed out for a "Misty" day. Friends had been unable to join me, so I set out for a day of solo adventuring. But, knowing it often happens on my solo adventures, I hoped he would show up.

At a nearby park, I hiked down towards the river that ran underground into a cave---not a hike with the intention of achieving a particular heart rate or feeling the burn in my muscles---I simply desired to walk towards him. The breeze brushed my skin, and the coolness of underground air wrapped around me. I breathed the woodsy scent of trees and nature and paused to look upwards where the sun shone through an opening of treetops.

One Of The Strangest Prayers I've Prayed

The past week I have spent my reading time before bed getting wrapped up in some of the most interesting books I've ever read in a while:

my journals.

I've been re-reading entries I've written over the past eight years. And let me tell you, in all seriousness, they have been page-turners. Better than some novels I have read. I should probably publish those babies and make some serious money---if not for the utter humiliation they would bring me.

Some of the entries were quite lovely---filled with beautiful prayers written carefully in my best penmanship, thoughtful poems, and original song lyrics---things I would even re-read when I need to give myself some encouragement. I wrote some of the same thoughts over and over----requests for God to bring me to the other side of the most recent heartache, or to help me with the music I was learning that week. Other entries were, well, not quite so poetic.