The water was always clear and there was never any sand – real white sand. The one beach on our “tropical paradise” was a beach names “the Ferry Landing.” We had been stationed on the rock known as Gitmo – known to the rest of the world as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for the last two years with at least another two in our sites. Family day consisted of a jaunt to the beach or the pool, cleaning rooms, picnics, whatever the mood struck. For 40 miles of space including the bay, there was only so much one could do with their free time. My mother and father always seemed to be creative. A day at the beach was always something fun and exciting, even when it was just our family who went. For only 40 miles we certainly had a number of beaches to choose from. Each coined with a cute nickname for some physical characteristic. Glass Beach was named that because it was the best beach for snorkeling and diving. Once you were snorkeling, you could go to the bottom of the water, where a multitude of worn, smoothed glass shards danced in the light under the waves.
My brother would collect these great treasures and put them in a cup. My mother would ooo and ahh over them like a good mother would and then when unloading our gear and treasures from the day she would gently and slyly discard my brother’s treasure chest of a cup until the next adventure to Glass Beach, when he would do it all over again.
On one particularly quiet Saturday my family, consisting of Ma and Pop, my 5 year-old younger brother William, and I, loaded a lunch and our beach gear in our car and took off for Ferry Landing beach.
Ferry landing beach was the only beach on the windward side of the island that had sand. There were a few beaches on the leeward side but you mostly had to take a boat to get to those. The Ferry Landing was the port for the ferry that took you from the windward side to the leeward side. A bay of water separates Gitmo. The majority of the families along with the commissary, Navy Exchange, movie amphitheater, pools, and the McDonald’s were on the Windward side of the island. On the Leeward side of the island, freedom lay in wait. The airport, along with military combat training was located on this side of the island. Guantanamo great to live there, but everyone missed the comforts of the main land. So unless you were on your way to the airport or your neighborhood was called to travel for Defex (practice for when Castro could attack), you pretty much stayed windward.
The other appealing aspect of Ferry Landing Beach was where the brine overflow and wastewater concentrated water would drain back into the ocean from the desalinization plant that made our water as drinkable. The best water you’ve ever tasted. I, to this day, have never tasted water as clean and sweet as the water there. It was a large long spout averaging at about 7 feet in width that sent warm water back out. It was like going to a hot spring to lounge in the water. You could float off its current and the amount of salt.
This particular Saturday my family and I were floating in the current, laughing and joking around. My mother, who has always and remains, squeamish sat perched on my father’s lap. My brother and I were bouncing childishly around them. The sun was high and the sky as always was so blue you felt you could get lost in it. We looked out from the shore and saw lots of splashes.
“Gary, what is that?” My mother asked a little on edge already.
“Oh, it’s just a school of fish being chased by some Red Snapper.” My father answered her, tightening his grip around her.
My brother and I thought it was cool.
“Ok, well I am going in. I don’t like fish.” She tried to get away from my father’s tight grip around her, but he wouldn’t budge.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Mona Lisa
I was sitting in a coffee shop waiting on a friend. I came in and sat down at a table next to a woman who was well put together. Her nails were short and round with bright red nail polish. She kept putting more and more jewelry on. First it was a bracelet and then it was a large costume ring. Then she put on another bracelet.
She ordered her coffee and some food and came back to her seat. I was reading the bible and taking moments to reflect on what I had read and this lady started to catch my attention. At first I thought she was just talking to herself randomly. I am guilty of doing that from time to time, but her body language changed. Captivated, I spied on her from the corner of my eye. She turned her body to the right at an angle as if there were a person there to focus her attention on. It was then that I realized she was talking to someone.
Whomever she was talking to I couldn't see; I know the guy at the table next to mine couldn't see them either – but this lady legitimately saw someone. She spoke with intense expressive hand gestures and she responded with laughter, sometimes a louder laugh. She wasn't disruptive, had someone actually been there the conversation was quite normal for the environment and she seemed very content with herself.
I started to wonder who she was talking to. Not in a judgmental or accusatory fashion, but out of genuine interest. Were they male or female? What they are talking about? Does this person, that I can't see, treat her better than any other relationship in her life? Are they the only one that can see her, just as she is the only one who can see them? Is she talking to God? Is he that tangible to her that I sit back in my chair and assume there is something deeply troubled; all the while the Lord is who she is talking to as she works it all out for herself just like I’m doing? I don't know what this woman's story is. I don't know if she is from money or has always been hungry. Is there someone that worries for her safety and waits till she gets home at night?
Is the devil trapped in her mind to isolate her from her destiny and in that conversation is the Lord reminding her that she is a child of God and that he is always with us even when our mind is different from everyone else's? The least will be first and the first will be last…is she first?
She looks at me and tells me that she likes my hair, this, on a day when it's raining and nasty and I'm dressed as a homeless person in protest to the on coming winter. I tell her, "thank you. It's my rainy day hair." She starts to rapidly run her hand from her forehead to the back of her neck over her hair, back and forth telling me that her rainy day hair solution is to cut it really short. And our conversation ends.
I want to ask her who she is talking too. It haunts me and I start to pray that the Lord will open an opportunity for me to talk to her. To provide a door for me to step through if only to see what I am supposed to learn from her through His eyes.
It never comes.
What comes is my coffee date. We talk and share and explore our revelations of God. I tell her about the lady and the conversation that she has been having with the person only she can see. And then we start to dig into each other's worlds and the lady is forgotten.
Now I am thinking about that woman and wondering about her. Wondering where she is and what she’s doing. Wondering. Wondering about God and his plans, wondering why some of us are healthy and some are sick, why some are called and some are not. Why some can chose the wider road and some of us can only imagine the narrow one. Wondering about how big the world is and how small we are, and how we can spend our whole life in a little microcosm of the universe and miss the big picture and how much we just don't know.
I pray for my eyes to widen and my vision to expand. Expand to see more and experience things beyond myself; to get the words in the right order, to get my life in the right order. However, who defines what order looks like? To the lady in the coffee shop order looks like a figment of your imagination that has coffee with you and makes you laugh.
I’ve spent too much time bound up and boxed in to the belief that order must look like a particular picture, a paint-by-numbers where I have to paint the right color on the right number…but my order is yellow when it should be red, it's green when purple is assigned. I've had to give that picture up. I can't paint in the numbers when I don't hold the brush. Once I’m reminded of that, I see my own definitions of order. It's unorthodox, a little messy from time to time, but the end result is still a well formed picture. I have to strip the paints that I think I should have and let them be painted on their own. I'm not Michelangelo, my Mona Lisa is different and I don't HAVE to make it look like anything but Glory.
She ordered her coffee and some food and came back to her seat. I was reading the bible and taking moments to reflect on what I had read and this lady started to catch my attention. At first I thought she was just talking to herself randomly. I am guilty of doing that from time to time, but her body language changed. Captivated, I spied on her from the corner of my eye. She turned her body to the right at an angle as if there were a person there to focus her attention on. It was then that I realized she was talking to someone.
Whomever she was talking to I couldn't see; I know the guy at the table next to mine couldn't see them either – but this lady legitimately saw someone. She spoke with intense expressive hand gestures and she responded with laughter, sometimes a louder laugh. She wasn't disruptive, had someone actually been there the conversation was quite normal for the environment and she seemed very content with herself.
I started to wonder who she was talking to. Not in a judgmental or accusatory fashion, but out of genuine interest. Were they male or female? What they are talking about? Does this person, that I can't see, treat her better than any other relationship in her life? Are they the only one that can see her, just as she is the only one who can see them? Is she talking to God? Is he that tangible to her that I sit back in my chair and assume there is something deeply troubled; all the while the Lord is who she is talking to as she works it all out for herself just like I’m doing? I don't know what this woman's story is. I don't know if she is from money or has always been hungry. Is there someone that worries for her safety and waits till she gets home at night?
Is the devil trapped in her mind to isolate her from her destiny and in that conversation is the Lord reminding her that she is a child of God and that he is always with us even when our mind is different from everyone else's? The least will be first and the first will be last…is she first?
She looks at me and tells me that she likes my hair, this, on a day when it's raining and nasty and I'm dressed as a homeless person in protest to the on coming winter. I tell her, "thank you. It's my rainy day hair." She starts to rapidly run her hand from her forehead to the back of her neck over her hair, back and forth telling me that her rainy day hair solution is to cut it really short. And our conversation ends.
I want to ask her who she is talking too. It haunts me and I start to pray that the Lord will open an opportunity for me to talk to her. To provide a door for me to step through if only to see what I am supposed to learn from her through His eyes.
It never comes.
What comes is my coffee date. We talk and share and explore our revelations of God. I tell her about the lady and the conversation that she has been having with the person only she can see. And then we start to dig into each other's worlds and the lady is forgotten.
Now I am thinking about that woman and wondering about her. Wondering where she is and what she’s doing. Wondering. Wondering about God and his plans, wondering why some of us are healthy and some are sick, why some are called and some are not. Why some can chose the wider road and some of us can only imagine the narrow one. Wondering about how big the world is and how small we are, and how we can spend our whole life in a little microcosm of the universe and miss the big picture and how much we just don't know.
I pray for my eyes to widen and my vision to expand. Expand to see more and experience things beyond myself; to get the words in the right order, to get my life in the right order. However, who defines what order looks like? To the lady in the coffee shop order looks like a figment of your imagination that has coffee with you and makes you laugh.
I’ve spent too much time bound up and boxed in to the belief that order must look like a particular picture, a paint-by-numbers where I have to paint the right color on the right number…but my order is yellow when it should be red, it's green when purple is assigned. I've had to give that picture up. I can't paint in the numbers when I don't hold the brush. Once I’m reminded of that, I see my own definitions of order. It's unorthodox, a little messy from time to time, but the end result is still a well formed picture. I have to strip the paints that I think I should have and let them be painted on their own. I'm not Michelangelo, my Mona Lisa is different and I don't HAVE to make it look like anything but Glory.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Sydney's
Here it is! The next installment of the video portion. I told you I would introduce you to the people in my world.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
@donmilleris Manuscripts
@donmilleris's book Blue Like Jazz changed the way I looked at the dream in my heart. Donald Miller was someone who's writing style was much like mine and he had a New York Times Best Seller. You could get published writing the way that I did.
When I read his books it was the first time that I connected to a writing the way I connect to music. I am in love with the way Donald Miller puts words together. It has opened my eyes to certain aspects of life and how to represent Jesus, and God has used his writing to speak directly to me in an answer to life changing circumstances. Read just the Author's Note in Through Painted Deserts! If you want that story ask and I'll tell you. It's pretty amazing!
Hopefully, by now I have demonstrated my passion for Donald Miller's writing. I need you to understand this as to it is important to the next part of the story.
Miller has a new book coming out this month. Last month he kicked off a contest to promote his new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. The contest?
The Hidden Manuscripts. His concept was to hide 60 manuscripts in cities scattered around America. Each day he would twitter and/or Facebook the locations of two manuscripts and whomever got there first got to keep it! Each manuscript came with a letter from Miller which contained a cell phone number that the winner would call at the completion of the book.
People make fun of Twitter. But I LOVE Twitter. @gnay is hilarious and it promotes this blog etcetera etcetera! In August the contest took off and each day my cell phone would vibrate with the text that contained the coveted location. And each day I would hope that it would come to a town where someone I knew lived and could go get it.
Memphis: I sent an email to my Aunt Linda in Cordova and asked her if she was close to the location would she go get it?
The text came and she was across town. STRIKE ONE!
Nashville: Yeah right, it's the home of Thomas Nelson it took like four minutes for that one to be found
Washington DC: THE best person lived in DC for this challenge and she was one board. She was following @donmilleris and waiting for the tweet...it came...but only stating that it had already been claimed! STRIKE TWO!
One Monday I got a tweet to my phone saying that VA was tomorrow. I was like cool...in my heart though I was convinced that it would be near Liberty or DC or Richmond. Tuesday morning I was in a meeting in my boss's office. It wrapped up a few minutes after 11am and I came back to my desk. I checked my phone and there it was! The location of today's manuscript: 508 Central Dr, Virginia Beach, VA 23454 Suite 106. It was 11:04 and the text was time stamped at 10:47 - had it been too much time? I quickly Googled it and it was RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET.
I told my boss I needed to step out for a few minutes and being awesome she said, sure thing. I hit print, grabbed the paper off the machine, and was out the door, praying for favor the whole way there.
When I pulled up it was a little strip building in an industrial/business district. I got out and meekly stood just inside the door. There was a man on the phone walking around who smiled at me and knocked on a door jam just up the hall as he passed. A blonde woman walked out with a warm smile and asked if she could help me.
"I don't suppose you still have the manuscript do you?" I asked her.
"Actually, we do."
"Really?"
"Yeah, we've been waiting since 7:30. We didn't know how it was going to happen."
She and I chat back and forth and tell our sides of the story, all the while I am smiling from ear to ear. She hands me a giant manila envelope and tells me there is a letter to hang on the door once it was found. I smiled at her and thank her as I leave.
I got in my car and tried to text my girls who had been believing and trying to help me get it in other cities. I was shaking so badly out of excitement all I could get out was, "GOT THE MANUSCRIPT!!" Then I called my friend Matty, who I think we became as good of friends as we are due to mutual love of Blue Like Jazz, and hollered into his voicemail that I had gotten the manuscript!
I can't wait to call him. I can't wait to ask him how he does it. How he decides what goes in and what doesn't. I'm so excited to talk with a writer that I love and understand and see what ideas come out of the conversation. I received a lot of flack in college for my content and his content was a best seller. I can't wait. It's like a musician being able to pick the brain of Bono!
I still find myself saying, I can't believe that I found it. That I got there first. But I did and it's exciting and I wanted you to know.
Big week of marriages and engagements...CONGRATS TO ALL!!!!
When I read his books it was the first time that I connected to a writing the way I connect to music. I am in love with the way Donald Miller puts words together. It has opened my eyes to certain aspects of life and how to represent Jesus, and God has used his writing to speak directly to me in an answer to life changing circumstances. Read just the Author's Note in Through Painted Deserts! If you want that story ask and I'll tell you. It's pretty amazing!
Hopefully, by now I have demonstrated my passion for Donald Miller's writing. I need you to understand this as to it is important to the next part of the story.
Miller has a new book coming out this month. Last month he kicked off a contest to promote his new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. The contest?
The Hidden Manuscripts. His concept was to hide 60 manuscripts in cities scattered around America. Each day he would twitter and/or Facebook the locations of two manuscripts and whomever got there first got to keep it! Each manuscript came with a letter from Miller which contained a cell phone number that the winner would call at the completion of the book.
People make fun of Twitter. But I LOVE Twitter. @gnay is hilarious and it promotes this blog etcetera etcetera! In August the contest took off and each day my cell phone would vibrate with the text that contained the coveted location. And each day I would hope that it would come to a town where someone I knew lived and could go get it.
Memphis: I sent an email to my Aunt Linda in Cordova and asked her if she was close to the location would she go get it?
The text came and she was across town. STRIKE ONE!
Nashville: Yeah right, it's the home of Thomas Nelson it took like four minutes for that one to be found
Washington DC: THE best person lived in DC for this challenge and she was one board. She was following @donmilleris and waiting for the tweet...it came...but only stating that it had already been claimed! STRIKE TWO!
One Monday I got a tweet to my phone saying that VA was tomorrow. I was like cool...in my heart though I was convinced that it would be near Liberty or DC or Richmond. Tuesday morning I was in a meeting in my boss's office. It wrapped up a few minutes after 11am and I came back to my desk. I checked my phone and there it was! The location of today's manuscript: 508 Central Dr, Virginia Beach, VA 23454 Suite 106. It was 11:04 and the text was time stamped at 10:47 - had it been too much time? I quickly Googled it and it was RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET.
I told my boss I needed to step out for a few minutes and being awesome she said, sure thing. I hit print, grabbed the paper off the machine, and was out the door, praying for favor the whole way there.
When I pulled up it was a little strip building in an industrial/business district. I got out and meekly stood just inside the door. There was a man on the phone walking around who smiled at me and knocked on a door jam just up the hall as he passed. A blonde woman walked out with a warm smile and asked if she could help me.
"I don't suppose you still have the manuscript do you?" I asked her.
"Actually, we do."
"Really?"
"Yeah, we've been waiting since 7:30. We didn't know how it was going to happen."
She and I chat back and forth and tell our sides of the story, all the while I am smiling from ear to ear. She hands me a giant manila envelope and tells me there is a letter to hang on the door once it was found. I smiled at her and thank her as I leave.
I got in my car and tried to text my girls who had been believing and trying to help me get it in other cities. I was shaking so badly out of excitement all I could get out was, "GOT THE MANUSCRIPT!!" Then I called my friend Matty, who I think we became as good of friends as we are due to mutual love of Blue Like Jazz, and hollered into his voicemail that I had gotten the manuscript!
I can't wait to call him. I can't wait to ask him how he does it. How he decides what goes in and what doesn't. I'm so excited to talk with a writer that I love and understand and see what ideas come out of the conversation. I received a lot of flack in college for my content and his content was a best seller. I can't wait. It's like a musician being able to pick the brain of Bono!
I still find myself saying, I can't believe that I found it. That I got there first. But I did and it's exciting and I wanted you to know.
Big week of marriages and engagements...CONGRATS TO ALL!!!!
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
My Hippos
These are my hippos. I've had the guy one for about a year. This week I came into work and found the girl hippo on my desk with the dude. I have no idea who gave me the girl hippo, but I'm glad they've found each other. I'm happy for their love.
I haven't written because I have been moving. Here is a shot of my new walls, in my super cool new home, that a team of friends helped me paint. BTW...I LOVE IT!
And lastly, a shot of my headboard that I made with the invaluable help of my friend Matty Turley that was brilliantly mounted on the wall by my Structual Engineer friend Brian Felker. They both were amazing and oh so vital to the success of this mission in their own rite.
Couple other things to look forward to. I got my next writing outlined last night. I had to pull over on the side of the road and get it all down. Thinking it's time to invest in one of those recorders that I can keep in the car; seems to be the place a lot of my writing topics are coming at.
I also got my next video blog. It's hilarious and I am going to introduce you to my sister friend Sydney. I love that girl! It's gonna be hilarious!
Stay tuned good stuff coming SOON!
Sunday, August 16, 2009
cabrio
My friend Darryl suggested after reading my blog, I should make a video section. He talked about how people want to know about the person behind the writing they are reading and with all the reality tv it's evidence that people watch it.
So per his suggestion and all my friends who are funny and do silly stuff we decided to go with it.
Here is the first intro video. It's rough and raw. No make up, no practice just here it is!
Stay tuned. Sillier events to occur.
So per his suggestion and all my friends who are funny and do silly stuff we decided to go with it.
Here is the first intro video. It's rough and raw. No make up, no practice just here it is!
Stay tuned. Sillier events to occur.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Process
If I was told that I had a brief time left on this planet what would I want to make sure I told the next generation to come behind me? We listen to stories and fables that are passed down from generation to generation. The statements that are quoted at weddings, in speeches, in research papers, and in the front covers of books that reflect an encompassing comment resonating deep within our human spirit.
I have always been an idealist, believing in the goodness of life. I am swept away at times with the wonder of this world, and a majority of my “formative” years were spent daydreaming about the type of adult I would be. I wanted to change the world. I had dreams I chased down every corridor of possibility and once exhausted another appeared.
A part of me has always believed there was something deeper within me. My freshman year of college I tired to explain to a friend my feelings of a lion living deep within my chest wanting only to be out. For a season I let myself get philosophical, allowing the naiveté of believing I had even the barest thread of a clue to what life was all about. Always believing that fire in my belly, the lion that longed to break free was just teenage angst. I do believe a large part of the feeling was spurred on by unsettled hormones and growing pains. However, that feeling, no matter how much I tried to calm it, is still alive and well inside. I think I’ve just learned to balance the burden of it and know that things are a process.
This process is what I would want to leave behind. A detailed map to leave that doesn’t necessarily provide direction, but more as a cheerleader to encourage during the processes of the process.
What I would want others to know is they aren’t in this alone. The thing about the process is, at times it can seemingly isolate you. The aloneness taunts you with long strokes of pity, offering you a modicum of pride with a lie. The lie? You deserve to feel this way as you are the only one.It is the greatest enemy to our dream and in the process we hit a really hard wall. It’s like life kicks you in the face and then, you keep it to yourself bathing in the misery of it. Before you know it you’re at a pity party for one and everyone else has gone home.
The problem with the isolation during the process is it’s doesn’t begin to complete the cycle until you let someone know what’s going on. At some point most people hit a point and start looking for something else. They determine that life is short and there should be something more to it. There is something that woos us in a grandiose style and creates a craving to see what could be. We stop wondering and start finding out.
And though these processes are meandering and at times repetitive they are building character and displaying grace.
Things change. Time makes dreams from childhood look different when you are actually living them. When I was a senior in high school I bought a gimmicky scrapbook that you fill in with memories and memorabilia to keep beyond high school. I actually did it and I worked on it all year, still have it 13 years later. There is a page in it that asked for an answer to the quintessential, Where do you see yourself in 10 years? question. So I diligently filled it in.
Education: a master’s in psychology and religion working on my PhD.
Career: pastoral counseling
Family: husband no kids soon but not yet
Home: Whatever God grants me to afford
Car: a better one NO Chevettes!!!
Other Important Goals: close with my family still. My brother close to me.
Mom still my help. (Gracious some of this makes me cringe to put it in here) to still be following God, to have been to Amsterdam to see Anne Frank’s house. Not to be ordinary.
Ten years later…
I was about to graduate from college with my undergrad, I was living with my parents, and working at my mother’s bead store. Not much like the picture I had all those years ago.
It is this contrast that brings me to what I would want to leave to the generations. More importantly, if and when I have a daughter this is what I would want to tell her:
I am a daydreamer. The more I tell women about my daydreaming habits they start to share theirs, old stories that lie deep with in them that were all but forgot. They creep out and remind them of the girl they once where. I know that my daughter is going to be a dreamer. I am like my grandmother, and I know that she will dream about life and plan at being older and in one breath I want to tell her not to daydream her life away, because the time when life leaves you carefree and without responsibility is very short. I don’t know why we always dream about when we are older, because honestly, the older I get the more I realize how much fun I had, and how fast life is going now.
But this is great too – the figuring it out part. Where you find yourself at a place where it’s time to start making the choices on your own. When you are facing monumental life changing directional choices that only you can make and no matter how much you want someone else to tell you what to do, it’s all up to you this time. It is there where you realize that it’s hard and each one has a consequence that could change tomorrow no matter what.
In high school I thought I knew what the dream looked like and you know, I honestly thought that was what I really wanted. And in part it really was. I still do not want to be ordinary. I still do not want to live an ordinary life. So I didn’t go that path? This is so much better.
So I would tell my daughter that I know she’s going to dream, but if you’re going to dream, dream BIG. Make the next dream bigger than the last. It’s the dreams that propel you through the seasons in your life. They are your rudder and they steer. Challenge yourself to live bigger, to dream bigger, to laugh bigger, because as you do that you see how amazing life is. How diverse we are and how much we mold the person next to us. Have your daydreams and make your plans, but always remember that dreams are simply the outline of your story. We connect the points and change the direction.
So baby, dream big! Because Life is so much better than I ever could have dreamed it to be. It's real and it’s raw, tragic and beautiful, and it unfolds and flows to the next adventure.
I have always been an idealist, believing in the goodness of life. I am swept away at times with the wonder of this world, and a majority of my “formative” years were spent daydreaming about the type of adult I would be. I wanted to change the world. I had dreams I chased down every corridor of possibility and once exhausted another appeared.
A part of me has always believed there was something deeper within me. My freshman year of college I tired to explain to a friend my feelings of a lion living deep within my chest wanting only to be out. For a season I let myself get philosophical, allowing the naiveté of believing I had even the barest thread of a clue to what life was all about. Always believing that fire in my belly, the lion that longed to break free was just teenage angst. I do believe a large part of the feeling was spurred on by unsettled hormones and growing pains. However, that feeling, no matter how much I tried to calm it, is still alive and well inside. I think I’ve just learned to balance the burden of it and know that things are a process.
This process is what I would want to leave behind. A detailed map to leave that doesn’t necessarily provide direction, but more as a cheerleader to encourage during the processes of the process.
What I would want others to know is they aren’t in this alone. The thing about the process is, at times it can seemingly isolate you. The aloneness taunts you with long strokes of pity, offering you a modicum of pride with a lie. The lie? You deserve to feel this way as you are the only one.It is the greatest enemy to our dream and in the process we hit a really hard wall. It’s like life kicks you in the face and then, you keep it to yourself bathing in the misery of it. Before you know it you’re at a pity party for one and everyone else has gone home.
The problem with the isolation during the process is it’s doesn’t begin to complete the cycle until you let someone know what’s going on. At some point most people hit a point and start looking for something else. They determine that life is short and there should be something more to it. There is something that woos us in a grandiose style and creates a craving to see what could be. We stop wondering and start finding out.
And though these processes are meandering and at times repetitive they are building character and displaying grace.
Things change. Time makes dreams from childhood look different when you are actually living them. When I was a senior in high school I bought a gimmicky scrapbook that you fill in with memories and memorabilia to keep beyond high school. I actually did it and I worked on it all year, still have it 13 years later. There is a page in it that asked for an answer to the quintessential, Where do you see yourself in 10 years? question. So I diligently filled it in.
Education: a master’s in psychology and religion working on my PhD.
Career: pastoral counseling
Family: husband no kids soon but not yet
Home: Whatever God grants me to afford
Car: a better one NO Chevettes!!!
Other Important Goals: close with my family still. My brother close to me.
Mom still my help. (Gracious some of this makes me cringe to put it in here) to still be following God, to have been to Amsterdam to see Anne Frank’s house. Not to be ordinary.
Ten years later…
I was about to graduate from college with my undergrad, I was living with my parents, and working at my mother’s bead store. Not much like the picture I had all those years ago.
It is this contrast that brings me to what I would want to leave to the generations. More importantly, if and when I have a daughter this is what I would want to tell her:
I am a daydreamer. The more I tell women about my daydreaming habits they start to share theirs, old stories that lie deep with in them that were all but forgot. They creep out and remind them of the girl they once where. I know that my daughter is going to be a dreamer. I am like my grandmother, and I know that she will dream about life and plan at being older and in one breath I want to tell her not to daydream her life away, because the time when life leaves you carefree and without responsibility is very short. I don’t know why we always dream about when we are older, because honestly, the older I get the more I realize how much fun I had, and how fast life is going now.
But this is great too – the figuring it out part. Where you find yourself at a place where it’s time to start making the choices on your own. When you are facing monumental life changing directional choices that only you can make and no matter how much you want someone else to tell you what to do, it’s all up to you this time. It is there where you realize that it’s hard and each one has a consequence that could change tomorrow no matter what.
In high school I thought I knew what the dream looked like and you know, I honestly thought that was what I really wanted. And in part it really was. I still do not want to be ordinary. I still do not want to live an ordinary life. So I didn’t go that path? This is so much better.
So I would tell my daughter that I know she’s going to dream, but if you’re going to dream, dream BIG. Make the next dream bigger than the last. It’s the dreams that propel you through the seasons in your life. They are your rudder and they steer. Challenge yourself to live bigger, to dream bigger, to laugh bigger, because as you do that you see how amazing life is. How diverse we are and how much we mold the person next to us. Have your daydreams and make your plans, but always remember that dreams are simply the outline of your story. We connect the points and change the direction.
So baby, dream big! Because Life is so much better than I ever could have dreamed it to be. It's real and it’s raw, tragic and beautiful, and it unfolds and flows to the next adventure.
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