i think God plays golf...

today i was sitting at Jackson's bistro on 21st enjoying lunch with a dear friend, discussing the ails and joys of life, when i saw a glimpse of God in His shy subtle beauty. i couldn't keep my eyes off of two older men, seemingly homeless, sitting on a bench, under a tree, next to the fussing street... both men sported grey and white beards, had smile lines around their eyes, seemingly content with their simple, wandering lifestyles. They sat quietly, peacefully, waiting, the way i like to think that God waits persistently on me. with a hiss and a welp, a city bus stopped directly in front of the two gentle men. the one sitting to the right gracefully stood up and in one nimble motion he swung a golf bag as tattered as the clothes he wore, half filled with rusty clubs over his rounded left shoulder. as he crept up the steps of the bus, he looked over his shoulder, glancing back momentarily at his companion who responded with a hushed nod as he encouraged his fellow associate to have a good game. as the bus hummed and coughed away, the now solitary man sat on his lonely green bench, waiting for his own bus to sweep him away to the dock where his sail boat awaits...

3:24 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

food, beaches and metal detectors

i left 6:30 thursday morning. it was raining in nashville. not hard, just enough to be annoying as i packed my car with one suitcase and my dog, and as I have learned this week that is all I really need to possess in this world. As the lines past, slowly at first, gaining speed with each mile, the rain gained momentum as well. It hit hard. The sound deafening, drowning out the radio, creating it’s own melody. My heart beat quickly as I lost sight of the truck still only a few car lengths in front of me. I let off the gas and waited to push back into it until I regained sight of the speeding semi. Somewhere past Memphis the rain slowed the stopped. Somewhere around little rock the sun started to fight for attention. It was a beautiful day.

My trip has continued. I have seen faces I have missed, laughed hard, enjoyed the company of friends and been lost in thought… I have driven over 1500 miles in 5 days, and I have the journey home to go… but not just yet…

I am sitting in a guest bed in Houston at the home of my dad’s sister, her husband and their 8th grade daughter. I arrived here Sunday midday to a mess of emotion. My aunt, a minister, seemed burdened. It wasn’t 20 minutes after my arrival that she said she was taking Monday off and were going to Galveston, an island off the coast of Texas. So we packed up, and spent the night in the hotel where she and my uncle had their wedding reception some 20 years ago. It’s funny how life brings you back. One of my favorite pictures is of my aunt holding my sister (6) and myself (3) sitting on the floor barefoot in our dresses with our shoes in a pile as to say, we are okay with us the way we are.

My aunt and I walked the beach, drank wine, laughed, cried, allowed ourselves to be afraid and vulnerable. And though it was overcast, it was a beautiful day at the beach.

We returned home around lunch today. I had left my dog with my uncle for the night, and upon returning he told me that we needed to talk… my dog ate part of a cat toy, a part which my uncle believed to be metal. me being a great mother just replied,
"oh, he’ll poop it out."

My uncle said, "well… he hasn’t."

insert confused look on my behalf.

"I’ve been out there all morning with my screwdriver, found some rocks
but no cat toy, so i rolled him over and used my metal detector, but
it didn’t go off, so i figure he’s okay."

My uncle legitimately metal detected my dog. When that turned out
negative, he went and got a comparable cat toy and disected it only to
find the part that my dog ate was plastic.

I laughed so hard at the image of my 6’ 4" uncle, an undercover detective turned house-husband, dissecting poop with a screwdriver and the scanning my dog with a metal detector. I love my family.

But I digress…

We were sitting around tonight watching American idol and my uncle stands up, throws up his hand and yells, "I’ve got a bible and Tennessee sour mash, you better listen to me." After regaining my composure my uncle read John 4:34 "Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work." He responded to the verse with, "If you want to be fed, go to a food shelter and feed someone who is hungry. If you want to get uplifted go help a convict… it is there you will find the love of God."

All of those events seem so unattached, but they weren’t… but I think my point in all of this is that love and growth are not found on the mountain tops, but in the valleys… in the sound of raindrops on a windshield and the company of your dog… in the vulnerability of a family member… in the serving of a friend or a stranger… in the loosing of a relationship… in the laughter of one longed for… in the unbelief of the believers.


Life is full of wonder. I am glad to say that I am alive.

12:25 AM - 4 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

my life is raindrops on the glass

I am aware that my life is not normal. I know that it is filled with strange occurrences. I know that my days are filled with randomness and my nights last far too long. the other night I sat in the jump seat of our tour bus. It is a place where my mind is free, it doesn't worry, it just drifts away with the lines in the road. It was raining the way that they like to make it rain in the movies, right at the climax when boy rushes to find girl or the good guy is in the pivotal fight to the death with the bad guy. I watched as rain hit the windshield, but it doesn't hit like a cars windshield where it hits and races skyward with the slant of the glass. It splats like dripping paint, and steadily falls. Giant wipers flow back and forth acting as a conductor keeping time with the rhythm of the rain. It is beautiful. It is still. It is chaos. I like it there in my jump seat.

9:19 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

if i were a tree on 440w

"God cannot be grasped by the mind, If he could be grasped, he would not be God" Evagius of Pontus

To say that I don't know much is an understatement. To say that I don't love well is a trivialization of the larger problem. To say that I long for more… more love, more travel, more home, more peace, more passion, more stability, more chaos, more beauty, more of a living Spirit… that is the greatest euphemism I can think of at this moment in my young adult mind.

I want to risk everything for love. To leave and experience a wandering, a searching, a quest of my very own… There is a story of a woman who is a shut in, spends the entirety of her days in prayer and solitude. When asked why she just sits there, she responds in a poetically unsafe manner, "I am not just sitting, I am on a journey." Life requires journey, it requires change and not always externally. I am a born wanderer, a gypsy, a nomad with no real home. I cannot explain it. I cannot grasp it. It just is. It is simply complex and perfectly flawed. It is an internal and external journey. There is a huge possibility that there is no "promised land" in this life, and that makes the wandering all the more scary and all the more alive. There is a fear of oneness with this lifestyle, but there is also a sense of excitement in that maybe there are others out there like me. Stubborn, free, alive.

I have a deep love for trees. The way they look, the way each are unique, yet all have the same desire to grow and grace the heavenly skies. My favorite tree in Nashville is on the entrance to 440W from 65. There is a small grove of trees all tall, all straight, all in line. Then about 50-60 ft away from this patch there is one lone tree. It is short, growing at a 45 degree angle, mostly bare and exquisitely beautiful. I smile every time I pass it. It gives me a sense of calm that no uttered words of comfort can. It grows in an awkward attempt to tell me to keep growing. We grow in our own ways, crooked at times, different from the rest, we are small, but in the midst of a lot of concrete and chaos, we stretch upward in a valiant attempt to touch heaven. And the angels look on, and with a whispered excitement beckon to us, "keep growing, keep growing, in your brokenness there is much beauty, keep growing, heaven is near."

So no, there is not much I know about God, or even life, but that is what makes God worth marveling at and life worth living. So I will grow, in my own way, in the midst of chaos and concrete, I will grow in a clumsy attempt to touch a heaven whose distance will never be near enough.

3:14 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

deep, sort of.

I know that some of you are awaiting a follow up blog to the whole Africa thing... honestly, i'm not ready yet. It was wonderful, painful, frustrating, lonely, romantic.... and the list goes on and on....

but to the grit of it... I love my friends. I have some of the greatest friends in the world... and if you don't think so, welp then, i am not even sure why you are reading this blog then. Yes, there are days that we get pissed at each other... will... but i wouldn't trade even those moments.

I have a painting that one of my friends did... in it reads "friend, ripped me, you split me" this pretty much tells the story of our friendship. there is such a great capacity for pain when there is deep love. When we love someone deeply, we risk deep hurt, and we sometimes forget that we risk hurting deeply.

My life lately seems to be surrounded in fears. I love calling late at night and getting responses like, "that's got to be God, that's so fucked up i couldn't even think of that." Oh the laughter that erupted after that. Just a calm knowing that I am loved, prayed for, kept in check, challenged. yes challenged. ha.

Maybe this blog makes no sense, that's okay. Moral of it all, if you are in my life, if i call you friend, i love you. know that.

10:11 AM - 2 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Away to Africa...

So it is finally here. what has seemed like a lifetime of preparation, and in actuality was a couple of weeks worth, is finally coming down to this.

i leave in less than 12 hours to fly to Uganda.

there are so many emotions that go along with it that i can't even begin to explain, so i'll use the most generic ones i can think of. i am excited, nervous, a little scared, but mostly hopeful. i have this feeling in my bones that change is coming. it is like the silence before the storm.

the phrase "means to Grace" has kept popping up this last week. it is such an interesting saying, but it holds so much. life has been chaotic, complex, painful these last few years, but i have reached a point in my life where i am so thankful it has been that way. i have such a great deal of peace. all of the shitty things that have gone down seem as though they were simply a means to grace. stepping blocks to where i am headed and to discovering the fullness of what has been given to me.

so i am off.... pray for me, think of me, i will be home soon enough.

1:55 AM - 7 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

dancing with snapping turtles

The excitement of the coming days is almost overwhelming. There is a sense of worry that comes along with it. I lay in my bed last night, my stomach churning with my mind. I couldn't sleep for fear and for delight. I woke early this morning, well early for me, shortly after seven and I lay awake in the same state I had fallen asleep only hours before. I put on some J. Moss and the world seemed right. An overwhelming moment, consumed in the goodness of the Almighty Creator of all things. There is an old saying that what the devil brought, God sent. I am amazed at how situations that I didn't want, didn't plan on, didn't even hope for are the ones that have molded me the most. I lay there without the capacity to cry due to the joy of it all.

In life there has been pain. Not in the "I stubbed my toe and I am kind of pissed off and embarrassed"… the, someone just tied me to a bed of rusty nails using flaming rope and told me to cuddle with a few snapping turtles while they dug through my chest cavity with a jankity spork in a conquest to discover hidden razor blades in my heart that just suffered a massive heart attack." Yeah, I has felt a little more like that. But we move on. And the deeper the caverns of pain the deeper the multitudes of joy. There is a rapture of the heart in a sense, but we will miss it if we stand dwelling over the offenses against the heart. There is much delight to be had. There is much rejoicing to be done.

I am excited for life. I am thankful for friends. I am hopeful for the unexpected. 22 days. Then 29 more. Life will be different. I will see things I haven't before. I will see the things I have know in a new light.

I will praise. I will tremble. I will dance.

9:24 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

love is like burning coffee

What is there to say of a love that is felt so deeply that to truly love someone is found in the heartbreak of letting them go?

What is there to say of the immensity of hurt that comes with loving someone the best that you possibly can and then watching as they hide, secretly trying to numb a hatred for themselves?

Love is an immensely painful thing. It is inescapable yet indescribable.

I sat in Fido last night, minutes before close, in a conversation with a friend about how love in this town seems almost like a night at the theatre complete with plot twits, character development, tragedy, surprises, but after a while it almost feels like being trapped in a room with just smoke, lights and mirrors as your true companions. And as I took a sip of my coffee that tasted of burning my thoughts wandered to the fires in California, story after story of homes and a small handful of lives lost in the flames path, and my heart ached for things laying ruined in the ash. My mind swirled around thoughts of the fires and situations in my own life… I was overwhelmed by an impending conversation, one that felt like I was setting fire to my own heart, watching as it painfully scattered to smoldering ash, hoping that something was being refined in the process. Clinging onto a prayer that He would bring beauty from the ashes.

I looked back on a week that was filled with my past, recalling how I felt so deeply every day, feeling like the hours just crept by. It all seemed to go by slower than a month long stay in hell. It was raw. It was uncomfortable, yet there was something so tender about it.

I was asked earlier this week if since I was such an independent woman if I thought I had the capacity to be loved… what an awful question. My heart broke. I could only tearfully respond that it is all I hope for, I think it is all any of us hope for.

An excerpt from a journal written this week:
"If pain is inevitable why do we try and avoid it? Why do we masochistically try and stop others from hurting us? Why do we cover wounds of the heart, our bleeding souls with electrical tape? Is it really easier to remain numb? The avoidance of pain is not only selfish, but it is self destructive. It is in the pain and torment of the deepest and darkest places in our souls where we come face to face with a choice to either retreat into nothingness or stand as we are whipped over and over, thrown to our knees, beaten, bloodied and feeling beyond repair as we stare down our demons. Then in a glorious broken moment when we realize that we have taken on the task of thrashing ourselves, we drop the whip and we lay still and silent, broken in the hands of the Almighty, we allow Him to begin the painfully, magnificent restoration process."

Love as I have known it is a beautifully written tragedy. A poetic injustice, a redeeming failure. A broken promise and a hope for tomorrow.

10:53 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

where have all the cowboys gone???

Dear good men of the world,

It seems a funny thing for a single woman to say, but I sit here tonight writing a love letter to not one, but many men. To write this letter to just one would be silly, for it isn't just one man that has been so great to me, but several. Thank you. Thank you for being Men and not boys. Thank you for treating women decently and honorably. Thank you for being wonderful for no reason other than being wonderful. I do not expect any perfection out of any human being, but when greatness enters a room you can't help but take notice. I am blown away by the great men in my life. So the gratefulness must continue.

Thank you for… opening doors, loving Truth, giving me your jacket when I am cold, telling me that I look beautiful in my dreary grey and black work clothes, telling me that toolbelts are actually really hot on girls and "no that doesn't make you look like a lesbian," telling me that I am allowed to be both complex and extraordinary despite what others may think, saying please and thank you, for holding my hand when I am scared, letting me cry in the middle of a bar, helping me lift things when my shoulders hurt, praying for me when I can't, getting angry and protective when someone breaks my heart, defending me, letting me defend myself, hiding banana flavored laffy taffy under my bunk pillow because they are my favorite, making me feel like i have immeasurable worth, petting my head until I fall asleep, going rollerblading slack lining and rock climbing, looking into my eyes, calling me names like Peanut and Sweetpea and Poet, not getting upset when I beat you at a game of pool, offering to sit in the corner of a coffee shop while I confront a painful past, buying me ice cream just because, throwing a Frisbee with me, telling me I am beautiful instead of "so damn fuckable," listening, teaching me that there are more flavors than vanilla, telling me I am wrong when I am while being kind enough to do it gracefully, writing bad songs about how our ex's make us feel like eating poo just to make me laugh, telling me that I look amazing in the mornings even when I tell you to piss of, not making fun of me when I eat more sushi than everyone at the table, carrying my burdens with me and sometimes for me when I can't do it on my own, just sitting with me until my migrane passes, playing in the rain, laughing at my bad jokes, sitting in my driveway with a shotgun and a pittbull just to ease my worried mind (that is homeland security), really loving Jesus, practicing what you preach, refusing to preach and just practicing well, crying with me when I am hurting, loving me beyond my body, dancing with me because I have had a bad day, going to waffle house because I can't sleep, being kind to strangers, just being kind, talking to homeless people, loving your wife and kids more than any other earthly thing, but most of all, thanks for being you.

This world is a mixture of beauty and pain. There are so many people in my life that I would be lost without. People who have loved me deeply and who I love deeply. People who have helped craft the person I am. Tonight I celebrate good men. They deserve far more attention than the bad ones.

So I raise my metaphorical glass o' wine to you good men and I toast to all that you are.

Love always,
one thankful songbird

1:42 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Am i seriously homeless again?

Home. It seems such a simple concept. Defined as a place where one lives permanently. Well. I am homeless. It's official. Living out of the back seat of my car. Luckily due to the nature of my profession (being a roadie that is) I get to sleep on a bus most nights of my life… by the way, it is pretty remarkable to live in a place where your backyard changes every morning. When I am in Nashville though it does make things quite interesting. I have been so amazed by the outpouring of people who have offered me their houses to stay at for a while. Thank you to all who have offered…

The thing is… this blog is not about having a physical home. I have come to realize that I have never felt at home anywhere, rather I feel at home when I am with certain people. Someone once told me a story of the late life of Adam. He was asked if he ever missed the Garden of Eden, his response was that when he was with Eve he was in Eden. When I am with certain individuals, I am home, I feel heaven on earth.

Tonight I watched as a girl friend of mine ran into an ex-boyfriend at a bar, and as they left hand in hand I wondered if we will always love those we have loved deeply. I wonder if there is no return once the heart has been opened, no matter how deeply it has been hurt. Love is a complexly simply thing. It is too deep to fully explain, yet there really is no need to, we all understand it, we all understand its' absence. We are all drawn to it and fear it. We all need it and we all have it. God is kind enough that when we don't understand, He draws us stick figures. It may come in the form of a gentle tough, or a kind word, or laughter, even silence, but love is love and it will always be.

I have been craving a spiritual home lately, more than ever before. (As some of you know, and some of you don't, I have not been a part of a "church" for a couple of years now. It is a long and winding path to the explanation of why, and I would be more than willing to tell anyone, but it is not relevant for this blog.) I came to this realization fully as I was flying out to LA last Monday. It was a 6:30am flight with a connection in Cherokee, NC. I hadn't slept at all the night before and as my eyes grew weary with the coming dawn my mind filled with raw fear of driving myself into isolation. And just as He often does, He quieted me. My eyes were cluttered with both tears and one of the most remarkable things I have ever seen. The sun began to embrace the smoky morning mountains. Light cascaded. Fog surrounded. I looked down at what looked to be a raging sea churning around jagged islands formed one after the other for what seemed like eternity. But as the sun rose it revealed truth. Those were not islands at all, and those waves were clouds and clouds are again and again throughout the Bible used as a symbol for the presence of God. As the light rose and poured over the Earth I realized something. We are these mountain tops. Jagged stones that in the dark believe they are alone, separate of each other. But as the light of Truth rises over us and the Spirit of God moves around us it is revealed that we are not islands at all, but really a continuum of souls joined together by our valleys and our valleys are the places of growth and life.

It was a sleepy realization, but it made me so thankful for those who surround me and have allowed our "valleys" to join. It is in the valley that I have found my home.

3:09 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment