A sudden flash of Sehnsucht:

When I was a child, moments of wonder, moments when I truly felt down to my deepest self that life was a grand fairytale and I was living in its pages, were not uncommon.

I remember clearly one day when such a moment occurred. It was the middle of winter, and even the air felt grey. My sisters and brother and I had gathered at the edge of our lot for some kind of crazy game, and as we stood looking out across the paddock, the winter breeze came up and swept across the field. The vast crop of tall lucerne was transformed into a wild, rippling sea of vivid green. The shimmering sea swiffled and quivered and rose and fell with each gust of wind and our response was to rush into it, as though we could ride the waves. Even then, as a much younger person, I felt that here was something wonderful, something beyond the realm of the every day. There was an ache in the back of my throat, and a sudden urgency to experience the moment entirely, fully, with my whole self. Then came the startling question: how much more of myself can I give if I am here, living the moment already?

I think children are better at finding those moments than the rest of us. I’m not sure whether it’s a gifted ability that we lose with age, or simply that the crushing weight of the momentary so bears us down in adulthood that there is little time to consider anything else. I only know that when those moments come to me now, they are startling and unexpectedly lovely. They hurt, and they heal.

I will be reading something wonderful and living and true, and the beautiful sentences will take hold of me so that for a second it is hard to breathe from the wonder and the goodness. Or my tiny niece will bury her perfect round head right in the baby-sized hollow where my neck and shoulder meet, and nestle there. Another time, such a moment will arrive through a piece of music. A composer somewhere in the ages of human history, a person I have never met, will have taken notes and movement and dynamics to transform a shapeless cloud of feeling or memory into a note- picture that is visible and recognisable to me. Or I will be sitting on a faded rug under the crisp light of an autumnal Queensland sun, and the people I love most are gathered around me, and for the merest instant I see my life as if from a distance. I see it for the movie that I get to watch as I live it. I am struck with a thunderclap of sudden, complete knowledge of how good things are even in the brief upsets, how golden the hills are between the valleys of challenge and confusion and small heartbreaks.

I suspect that, as children, we often keep these instances of everyday illumination tight within ourselves. I know that if I thought about them at all then, it was with the vanity of childhood, the sort of conceit which believes that no one else could possibly have felt like this, ever. We don’t consider these things to be universal. We think they are ours alone, and sometimes that realisation is like a hug or a glad secret, but at other times it makes us lonely. What a happy wonder, then, to discover that others have felt these things, too – that, even more than this, people have recorded them, spoken of them, and thrown their experience into the vast pool of relating that reminds us that we are humans together in our human-ness.

L.M. Montgomery called such moments ”the flash”, and she put the flash into words in the experiences of her semi-autobiographical heroine, Emily of New Moon.

It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside – but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond – only a glimpse – and heard a note of unearthly music. This moment came rarely – went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it – never summon it – never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days. 

C.S. Lewis spoke of a similar experience – or, rather, a similar feeling – but a feeling for which he felt there was no true English word. Instead he settled upon the German word, Sehnsucht, which can be translated as a yearning, a craving, or a sense of missing something incredibly deeply. Lewis called this Sehnsucht an “inconsolable longing” for a thing we cannot identify. For him, too, it visited through unexpected clashes of beauty, calling it:

…that unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.

I fumble for my own right word to describe this sensation. The search is fruitless, but I find something akin to it: inspiration. And inspiration is not the right word or even almost the right word, but it is a cousin feeling. For inspiration is a gift and a beauty in and of itself, but it is not satisfied to simply be. It wants to move, and it will not be content until it goes somewhere, until it works itself out in some kind of art or response or worship. Sehnsucht afflicts us with the same irreconcilable tension. We experience these brief moments when suddenly the ridiculous constraints of time and gravity and history open up for the merest slit and we get to see past it all into something beyond, something that – even though it is unfamiliar – we recognise, and we long for. And there is a collision of satisfaction and longing. As with inspiration, my heart is full, yet it is hungry.

And I suppose that such moments shouldn’t surprise me. If, as C.S. Lewis says, we are souls who have bodies rather than bodies who have souls, then my soul is the realest reality, the most real part of my self. Should I wonder, then, that sometimes the lacy veil of the temporal lifts and, just for a second, I get a glimpse of the eternal? I should not.

Neither should I be troubled by the irreconcilability of it. We are hemmed in on all sides by finiteness, but these bodies we wear, like the clothes of our souls, will one day be outgrown. And once we’re free from their constraints, once we’re out in the broad infinity, everything will be turned loose to find its reconciliation. The flash, Sehnsucht, inspiration – these will all make sense in the Someday.

For now, though, I watch. And if I am set on fire just for a moment by a thrilling and unexpected glimpse of what Annie Dillard calls ‘the corner where eternity clips time’, then so much the better. It helps me to remember that this life is not all there is. I thank the God of infinity for that.

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Conversations:

• I am loving all your comments and reblogs and c. on the giveaway! You've still got ten days to enter so be sure to at least get up in there. I mean, BOOKS, you know?
• Asea -- I approve of your methodology in singlehandedly disproving my remarks about commenting etc. Nice work! Oh and I worked out why I'm ahead in Hawkeye -- I've been buying the individual issues (digitally) rather than the collections. So individual issues are up to #18, but the compilations haven't got that far yet. I'm beyond keen for #19. Where is #19? I need #19!
• Katie -- isn't it crazy that LiveJournal and commenting and even long emails feel like part of the old media? It takes serious, disciplined intent to continue to cultivation real engagement in others' worlds and even in social media. It's something I want to commit to doing more because I think it's important and it would be a shame to lose the wonderful community generated by the early days of blogging and LiveJournalling.
• Mama Essy -- and well glad I am that Jess was here.
• Meaghan -- aw get out with you.
• Milliebotreads -- thanks for your awesome comment! I agree with you; I think so much of the makeup of social media lately is about the cursory glance or the brief engagement. There is not as much time inherently built into the task of perusal and reply. As we keep finding shorter and shorter ways of granting our approval or disapproval, it's inevitable that we will cling to those shortcuts instead of going about things in a more time-sucking manner.  

(If this post seems familiar, it's because I shared a snippet from it in 2012.)

All the things we don't say:

Do you ever imagine what your life would be like if you gave voice to all the things you only think? Do you wonder what kind of person you'd be? I do. There's so much that goes unspoken in our world, and I don't even mean the deep, dark secrets of the soul that only ever get shared with one or two safe people (or a listening God). I mean the ordinary observations that run through our minds that are never sounded because they'd label us as weird or presumptuous or just too real. No one wants anyone to be too real, right? It just gets awkward.

For example: I am so unintentionally uptight about taking liberties that I will rarely use a person's nickname if I am not directly related to them or unless I have known them forever. But that doesn't stop me giving them nicknames in my mind, affectionate little titles that reflect how warmly I think of those people. What if I used those invented nicknames? Like, actually out loud? Would the sky fall?

And what if I actually, calmly and in an extremely measured fashion, told that woman at the florist the other day that she was being rude and unprofessional, and really had not earned any of the massive sum of money that we just handed over to her?

What if I told the checkout guy at Woolies that I was having a really pathetic afternoon and was feeling exhausted and fragile, and then his chirpy smile -- and 1950s hairdo and the way he laughingly watched my brother ride off through the mall on the shopping trolley -- all made things feel about 68% better?

What if I told that father that the way he treats his son is cruel, that it's bullying and there is no justification for that kind of behaviour?

What if I let the guy at the video store know that he is my favourite shop assistant there because he asks "How has your day been?" and then seems genuinely disappointed if I don't immediately go on and actually detail what's been happening? What if I told him that people don't usually care about strangers any more and that it's a remarkable thing that he does?

What if I said to the person I am only just getting to know, "I have never met anyone like you and I am intrigued by the way you experience life."?

Maybe I'll never be the kind of person who can offhandedly say these things. Maybe I won't ever use someone's nickname unless expressly requested to do so. Maybe the world isn't ready for all of us to become manic pixie dream girls.

But there are a few small ways I am trying to say the things that remain unsaid. I am trying to answer honestly when people ask, "How are you?" I am learning to be more bold in saying, "I'm sorry; I don't know what that is," when of course I'd rather sit tight and seem smart (even if it means shocking all the older women in the room because I haven't remembered who Prince George is, for goodness' sake). And I'm trying to be more confident about saying various incarnations of, "I am really glad I know you," even if I'm not certain we're 'at that level' yet. But I am really glad for the people in my life, and I want to be bolder about expressing that.

How about you? What would happen if you started speaking out the things you don't say?

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Conversations:

• Emily Dempster -- it's so much fun when someone digs out a past blog post and interacts with it. I loved your list of book that have shaped who you are! Thank you so much for sharing <3 li="">
• Asea -- how I wish I could be a fly on the wall during one of your days. Your work (and study and social) life intrigue me so much!
• Meaghan -- ha ha, I'm not brave; I'm a wimp! And my fear of heights seems to get worse as I get older. Now I'm at the point of closing my eyes when there are scenes shot from great heights in a movie, for crying out loud.

Words take time:

My sister Lauren shared the following quote recently on her blog:

A culture that is rooted more in images than in words will find it increasingly difficult to sustain any broad commitment to any truth, since truth is an abstraction requiring language. -- Kenneth Myers

It explains, far better than anything I could come up with, the radio silence that's been beaming loud (heh heh) and clear from my corner of the internet.

I am a big fan of images, and one of the reasons I love the internet so much is that it gives me access to this massive treasure trove of gloriousness from all around the globe (my reblogging tumblr account is basically a collection of everything I find pretty pretty, lovely, wondrous, or cool). Plus, in my own sometimes pathetic way, I get to contribute to the treasure trove. I can add to the discussion with snippets of my life, and pictures are so easy to capture and share that it can happen in just a few moments. All of this is good and lovely. But I've been realising lately that "snippets" were never the original intent for my blog. Originally, the guiding principle that my blog bounced from was Socrates' idea that 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' I think pictures enhance life and capture life, but -- for me, at least -- to really examine life requires words, and words take time.

So that's why it's been a bit echoey in here. I sort of told myself I wouldn't post again until I had something worth saying -- no, not worth saying, because that's far too great a burden to bear. Who among us would say anything at all if we were forced to weigh our words in the balance every thing throughout history that has been most worth saying? Let us just say, instead, that my goal is to post when I have something worth thinking about. And that doesn't necessarily mean something grave or heavy; no, just something that requires a little space to stop and pause.

I rush to add that in a war between words and images, there is no winner. We need them all, and no single form of artistry is greater than another. That's why I'll still be sharing pictures here, but as accompaniment to my words, not in place of them. For the other little snippets of daily life, there's my tumblr. (Oh, and I finally got around to creating an "about" page -- which goes a long way to destroying everything I've written here about finding things worth saying. Never mind...)

Breathing to death:

It seems like a cruel irony that the times when we most desperately need to step outside the circle of clamour in order to pause and examine are the very times when it feels most impossible to do so. Things can be so pressing -- one Thing, then another Thing, and another and another and another -- that it becomes easy to forget an even bigger Thing: that this is life, and we each get only one of them. Maybe it's hard because it's important. The most important stuff doesn't usually come easily.

There's a line in a song by Lecrae which says, 'I ain't living; I'm just breathing to death.' It gives me a little shiver, a shudder of kind of unfamiliar recognition -- like I'm on the verge of finally understanding something I should have known all along.

It's terrifying, this thought that it's possible to go through life without actually living. And I don't mean living in the floaty sense of I'm-just-going-to-spend-my-time-and-money-doing-whatever-I-can-that'll-make-me-feel-happy. I mean, sucking the marrow out of life while looking outward, facing out to the people we love and up to the Creator who made us. We owe it to him and we owe it to them to live fully and live well.

Just gotta work out how to turn down the noise occaisonally and actually do that. How do you strive to be more present -- more alive?

Sehnsucht:

It can come from anywhere -- out of the blue -- though I suspect it appears more when you're actively looking for it. Today, it was in the words of Annie Dillard, whose lovely sentences made my stomach muscles hurt from the not-breathing. Other times it will be something else -- a picture of one niece's impossibly-long eyelashes resting on the curve of her cheek, or the moment when my other niece buries her tiny round head right in the baby-sized hollow where my neck and shoulder meet. Or hearing a piece of music that takes an emotion I have felt, or that I have known others to have felt, and pulls a tune from that emotion, taking a shapeless cloud of feeling and forming it into a note-picture that is visible, recognisable. Or I will be sitting in the sun with people I love and for the merest instant I see my life from a distance. I see it for the story that it is, for the movie that I get to watch as I live it, and I realise how good things are even in the brief upsets, how golden the moments are between the challenges and the small heartbreaks.

LM Montgomery's Emily (of New Moon) talked of this thing she called The Flash. CS Lewis borrowed a word from the Germans, Sehnsucht. And I wonder if they were both speaking of the same experience. When I think of Emily's "flash", I think of how, occasionally, we have these brief moments when suddenly the ridiculous constraints of time and gravity and history open up for the merest slit and we get to see past it all into something beyond, something that -- even though it's unfamiliar -- we seem to recognise. And Sehnsucht, well it can be translated as a yearning or a craving, even an intense missing -- whether or not we know what it is that we miss. For me, it's a great and irreconcilable clash of satisfaction and longing. In one moment it heals and hurts. My heart is full, yet hungry.

In a way, it reminds me of inspiration. Inspiration is a gift and a beauty in and of itself, but it is not satisfied to simply be. It wants to move, and it will not be happy until it goes somewhere, until it works itself out in some kind of art. And when I say that Sehnsucht -- that longing for a far-off country we know but can't quite pinpoint -- is irreconcilable, I only mean that in the sense that we are hemmed in on all sides by finiteness. Once we're freed from those constraints, once we're out in the broad infinity, everything is turned loose to find its reconciliation. It will all make sense in the Someday. 

For now, though, we watch. And if we are startled by a thrilling and unexpected glimpse of what Annie Dillard calls 'the corner where eternity clips time', so much the better -- because then we remember. This life is not all there is. To steal the words of another: we were meant to live for so much more.

* * * * * 

Conversations:

Carla and Alastair -- YAY first and beloved commenter! I love you, and I love that you love me in spite of my overthinkyness. And no, while I might feel shy leading up to a visit if it's ages since I've seen you, I could never be shy with you in real life. You are almost family!

Meaghan -- random fact #14: I learnt any awesomeness from you.

Charis -- thank you for persisting with commenting even though the internet is convinced you are a cyborg. Please don't terminate me. Is it weird that I am sort of happy that there is another person out there like me whose special talent is nervousness? I feel your pain and yet I love that I've got a buddy in this odd affliction! Ooh, I love quippy and fast humour, too (THE WEST WING!) and I hate watching others' awkwardness in real life. I can only handle it if I know it's made up. 

Andrea -- you should know by now I like quirky, conventionally daggy things, right? :D

Sarah -- aw, it's tough when you have big assignments all due at once! I hope you come through it unscathed! And I still haven't posted your questions and my answers, but it's on my bloggy to-do list :)

livingintheshadowlands -- if Atticus Finch was a living, breathing, non-fictional man, I might even propose to him.

Laura Elizabeth -- YAY you actually get this! Somehow, talking about what you'll be given after a grandparent passes away seems so morbid and -- yes -- mercenary, but in actuality it turns out to be quite natural and even funny :D. PS. I loved seeing Avengers with you yesterday. It feels like ages ago already, though, because it's been a really busy 24 hours. Boo to time passing too fast!

Jess Axelby -- so if we ever get a little hangout together again, Office marathon y/y?

Elizabeth in Alaska -- thank you, dear friend! x

Perfectly resolved:

I am -- sadly -- too lazy and too frequently hemmed in by deadlines to be a true perfectionist. And even though my head is often in the clouds, I can be quite pragmatic about taking my hands off something and realising I could polish and polish until there's nothing left.

However I do occasionally suffer from a kind of perfectionism -- the worst kind, I think. Some perfectionism is helpful; I like the idea of being so bent on perfecting something that one writes and re-writes or continually improves or refines something. This seems helpful. But there is another kind of perfectionism that doesn't result in a finely-honed creation. Instead, it simply paralyses the creator from even beginning. This perfectionism says: "It won't be brilliant, so perhaps I shouldn't even try."

With more time than usual this week to think about things like blogging and fiction writing, I find myself coming up against this stubborn wall of stupid perfectionism. I want to be good, so I shy from expending the energy to produce -- and, much worse, make public -- anything that will be mediocre or -- horror of horrors -- just downright bad. I was talking to my Mum about this today. (She's better than a psychiatrist and way cheaper.) Her advice was common sense and excellent: The only way to be better is to keep on trying.

Of course. Of course. Why do we forget this stuff? Why do I forget that I should be content with my best and simply work hard to make it better? I'm reminded of one of those biting, so-true-it-makes-you-sick phrases I read somewhere: the only way to start, is to start.

What do you need to start today?

* * * * *

Ruth -- a neverending cycle perhaps, but certainly a very happy one!

Bethany -- there are still a few left! I have been very self controlled :).

Jessica -- 225g butter is the same as 1 cup or two sticks, in US terms. And icing mixture is confectioners' sugar. Does that help? Oh, and yes, some blog promo would be lovely. Thank you!

It's the story of my life.

I love those moments when life doubles back on itself and, just for a second, you can look at your life as though you are something quite apart from it. You see things as they are. You see what has become.

It happens with extreme randomness. Like, just yesterday, I was chatting on the phone to my sister. We hadn't spoken for a week or two (it felt like months) and so there was much to catch up on. While she talked, my sister had set up her two little kids with the hose. They were spraying each other and roaring with laughter, and my nephew was coming out with all these amazing words I hadn't even known he could say. As is the way with small people, things turned messy when someone got water in their eyes, and my sister broke away from the conversation to resolve the dilemma. Then it happened. I suddenly thought: my sister is a mother. And it was amazing. Of course, I've known she was a mother ever since she had her little girl two and a half years ago. But I realised it then.

It happened again this morning. I was tidying up around the house and found three small plastic boats -- one red, one yellow, and one blue -- stacked on the ledge of the bath. They were remnants from when my niece and nephew were here last. My niece and nephew, I thought. I have a niece and nephew.

And then, last week while we were in WA, my sister and I took a little road trip north to spend the evening in our old hometown. My brother and his girlfriend met up with us for coffee at a gorgeous restaurant in the ground level of a massive apartment block. When we'd lived there before, there was just a shabby little corner store looking out onto the beach. I pulled up a chair across from Nick and Nat and Lauren and burst out, "Look at us, having coffee together -- we're grown-ups!"

They looked at me with a sort of pitying bewilderment and carried on talking, but for me it was just another moment when, without reason, the curtain between what is now and what will one day be history pulled apart and I caught a glimpse of the story-thread running through my life. I appreciated that glimpse.

Reaching for the words

It's been well over a month since I wrote anything (like a real anything -- not jobs or school or because a deadline was approaching) more than a few sentences. I'm not blocked, really; mostly there just hasn't been time. But when there has been time, a few pockets of it in surprising places, I've been... paralysed.

I know that I don't know enough about writing. I know that I'm not good enough at writing. In the past this knowledge never stopped me from actually doing it. Lately, however, I seem to see more clearly the enormous gap between where I am now and where I hope to be. And it's this gap that looms up before me whenever I go to write. I wonder if maybe I should just live more of life before I even try -- but I am not happy simply doing that, either.

I know the answer to my own unspoken questions: time. Time teaches. Time offers new experiences. Time is an apprenticeship. I know this, but sometimes it helps to type it out loud.

Time takes time.

Making words and toothache, and how they both hurt quite a bit.

Yesterday I pulled out my paints and made a big mess of colours. It was the first time in a long time, and it felt good. Also a little scary. Plus it gave me time to think.

That morning, I'd rather unsuccessfully squeezed out about 750 words (250 short of my daily required quota, if I'm to fulfill my writing pledge for this year, and let's not talk about the fourteen days I've missed writing already this month). Every one of those words was painful. Getting them from brain to fingers to screen felt rather like trying to run a marathon through quicksand. The sludge kept pulling me down.

At lunchtime, I took refuge in a little paperback mystery novel. The supposed powers of distraction only added to my misery. The book was nothing earth-shattering, certainly never destined to be a classic or even a top seller, and yet it was immensely more readable and more real than anything I've ever been able to shake from my pen.

That's an agonising realisation to make, but it was also strangely enlightening. I realised that the reason I've been finding my writing goals so hard to reach is not because it's hard to spew a thousand words onto a page every day (it's not; plus, a thousand words usually takes more than a page, in case you were wondering). Rather, it's painful because it's horrifying to write a thousand bad words a day. Bad writing is painful. Understanding that one is making bad writing is even more painful.

It couldn't have been just coincidence, then, that I read Justine Larbalestier's latest blog post that night. She said:

There’s a certain misery in the air right now. I’m reading it on other writer’s blogs. I’m feeling it myself. Seeing it in tweets. Hearing it in late night conversations in bars. It’s kind of everywhere. So many writers I know, or who I follow on line, or in interviews, are grappling with their own self worth as writers. If I’m not selling am I still a writer? If I can’t get published am I still a writer? If my contract got cancelled am I still a writer? If my next book doesn’t do as well as my last book am I still a writer? If I don’t win awards am I still a writer? If reviewers hate my books am I still a writer?

Obviously, she is speaking particularly to published authors, the people already considered by most of us to be already making good words. But her advice rings true for anyone. It rings true for me:

All you can do is write the very best book you can.
It will get published or it won’t. It will find its market or it won’t. It will sell or it won’t. It will win awards or it won’t. None of that matters if you’ve written the best book you can.

Every act of creativity involves taking a risk. We don't really know that what we're undertaking will turn out lovely and beautiful. Well, maybe Bach had that kind of confidence, but most of us don't. Most of us just jump out into the water and hope we'll remember how to swim. Not even gracefully; we just want to stay afloat.

All I can do is try to write the very best words I can. I might not make something brilliant, but the question at the back of my mind asks, "Will you be able to stop, even if you stink?" The answer is: most likely, no.

I take courage from that phrase about genius (was it Einstein or Edison who said it?): genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Since genius isn't what I'm aiming for (I gave that hope up long ago), I figure the equation for making something really, really good might be half a percent inspiration and 99 and a half percent perspiration. Inspiration is everywhere; the perspiration bit is up to me.

I wish --

Some days -- like today -- the wishes come thick and fast, large white clouds across the blue of my skyline.

I wish I could create something, anything, that would make people smile and go on their way with their heart a little lighter.
I wish I saved my best smiles and frowned less for the people I care about most, instead of offering the smiles, out of politeness, to people who don't know me as well or care as much.
I wish I had the courage to wear quirky things in spite of what fashion says.
I wish I could string words together so the sentences would make someone's heart skip a beat or their breath catch in their throat.
I wish I'd remember more often to go outside and kick a ball around with my brother.
I wish I could see the storybook elements in my own life instead of assuming that other people's worlds are more fairytale than my own.
I wish I had never wasted a minute of what God has been doing in my life so far.

I wonder: will Heaven be the ultimate fulfillment of our unsated longings, or will they perhaps be swallowed up in a greater, overwhelming, glorious fulfillment unlike anything we've ever imagined?

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conversations:

Tegan -- your comment was such a delight! I love you, too, precious friend!

Beth -- thank you!! Sometimes I embrace my inner curl :).

Staish -- AAAhaha!! I'll be sure to tell Lauren to bite me sometime in the future. ;)

Aunty Nell -- hee! Thanks :).

Celeste -- so glad it was a blessing! *hugs* [ps. where did your blog disappear to?]

Hope built on nothing less (or mine should be, anyway)

Last week was a busy one. Busy hands, busy feet -- and busy mind. Curiously, although it seemed strangely detached from what was actually going on round about, the mind stuff was the most exhausting of all. I (repeatedly) came up against something I've struggled with a lot during the past eighteen months: insecurity.

In this day of self-esteem and self-talk and, yes, self-infatuation, insecurity has become a word that we all hear a lot but don't always understand. It may be something different to everyone. For me, it manifests itself in a complete lack of confidence which undermines my ability to make decisions, be courageous, welcome new experiences, and even interact with others. When I am feeling insecure, I want to become a hermit. (Seriously.)

Moving from Western Australia to Queensland early last year launched me full-speed into this journey of insecurity. I had thought, before, that I was a secure, capable, confident woman. What I didn't realise was that I felt secure, capable, and confident -- mostly because I was surrounded by people, places, and a lifestyle that was familiar and comfortable. Moving to an entirely new state, a new city, finding a new church, and having no regular form of income -- it stripped me down to myself, and I realised there wasn't a lot there. I had become my home, my friends, my church, my money (however little of it there was), and my lifestyle. With all of that taken away, I felt like a shadow.

God has used this season -- and continues to use it (more than conquerors, anyone?) -- to remind me that the only true security is God-security. Even knowing ourselves, having "self-confidence" or a good concept of our own "self-worth", is not security. It's empty and as vain as a puff of wind. If I cling to any of that, then a bad hair day or a thoughtless word spoken in anger can shake me from my settledness.

At a Bible study a little while back, the very wonderful Anastasia challenged we little handful of girls to write who we are, without defining ourselves by our work, our appearance, our family, our history, our possessions, or our roles. It was incredibly thought-prokving (not to mention hard!), and it reminded me yet again how much of my identity tends to be wrapped up in what I do rather than who I am -- or, more importantly, whose I am.

Last week, slopping around in the mire of identity distraction, God used some amazing lyrics to help me re-focus. I walked into the room where my sister was sewing (the grey cloud over my head was almost visible by this time), and this was playing:

I'm not the clothes I’m wearing
I'm not a photograph
I'm not the car I drive
I'm not the money I make
I'm not the things I lack
I'm not the songs I write

I am, I am, I am who I am
I am who I am

There are true things inside of me
I have been afraid to see
I believe, help my unbelief

Would you say again
What you said to me?
I am loved I am free
I believe, help my unbelief

I'm not the house I live in
I'm not the man I love
I'm not the mistakes that I carry
I'm not the food that I don’t eat
I'm not what I’m above
I'm not my scars and my history

To your love I’m waking up In your love I’m waking up

There are true things inside of me
I have been afraid to see
I believe, help my unbelief

Would you say again
What you said to me?
I am loved I am free
I believe, help my unbelief.

(JJ Heller, True Things)

It all comes down to two things: we are loved and free in Him, and to seek our identity or security in anything other than this truth is unbelief. I want to remember this. Lord, help my unbelief!

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also:

• Happy, happy birthday, oh lovely Caitlin!

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conversations:

Beth -- hooray for literacy indeed! (Scooting over to read your response to the meme now...)

Caitlin -- books that are challenging to the point where it hurts sound super. I must read me some Jerry Bridges!

Staish -- :) you make me feel like my little words aren't just going out into the great void of the interwebs. You are awesome!

Bethany -- nooooo! You could never sound like an idiot! I thought that a meme was simply a little thingummy that the blogging world has bred. But according to Wikipedia, the concept extends far beyond blogging and refers to any idea or behaviour that can pass from person to person. With regards to the internet, it mostly denotes a little survey-ish type form that is passed from person to person to share ideas on a similar theme. Since most memes are kind of self-centred in tone, I pronounce it me-me :), but the real pronunciation is, I believe, closer to 'meem'.

Back from the wild... for a moment

Back on home soil for a mere thirty-six hours before heading off again for many, many hours, the precise number of which I am just a bit too lazy to add up.

It's been a whirlwind five days composed of multiple hugs with multiple relatives, lots of reminiscences, and the overwhelming understanding of what it is like coming back to a place where you have a history and where everyone knows everyone else. One evening, as I lay on the familiar bed in the familiar guest room at my grandparents' place and stared up at the familiar green and tan of the fern-covered wallpaper, I wanted to take a picture. Yes, of a corner of a room. I got out of my bed and ran my fingers along the wall, looking for the place where my uncle once wrote a verse of precious scripture in biro, somewhere among the tiny scribbled declarations of young love and teen humour. And I was struck by the delightful restfulness of knowing a place and a neighbourhood inside out. Living all over the country and soaking up new experiences is a wonderful thing, but so is being rooted deep into a community.

On the long journey home, there was lots of time for reading. Normally my consumption of books is a chapter or half a chapter here and there; having a few solid hours to read (in between family convos and laughing at my dad's crazy show-off dancing-whilst-driving routine) is like a giant revolution for my brain.

I read some more of Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz and decided I would really like to be a hip and snappy American thirty-something capable of spouting brilliant reflections on life and love and faith. Then I realised there was no hope of that and instead I ought to be the best me possible and just love Jesus and people more. Which is pretty much likely to keep me busy the rest of my life.

I don't agree with all of Miller's (Donald's? Mr. Miller's?) statements but I love how his 'emergent' thinking is really just a back-to-basics look at what Jesus was and is all about. Plus, he really cracks me up. Anyone who can talk passionately about the gospel and make me laugh at the same time is super in my book.

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conversations:

JessieSue -- You're so sweet; thanks for your kind comments. Are you newly blogging? Yay! I'll be bookmarking your blog :).

Bethany -- we did, indeed, get to visit the cutie herself! And she's grown up so much in just two months! And thank you for the tag -- I'm honoured. Answers coming soon!

Off into the wild blue yonder

Off, off, off into the horizon, along the coast, and across the seas. That's to be my family and I over the next few weeks, and I am looking immensely forward to it. I've gotten past the part where I feel like spinning out and I am thinking now, instead, how delightful it will be to have a few weeks where the only work is making one's bed, washing up, and deciding what to do in the daylight hours. Sounds grand, if you ask me.

I had dreamed of having the funds to purchase a replacement camera (my old one having died unceremoniously and at only middle age) before we headed off, but that thought remains, alas, a dream. I will simply have to abscond with my sister's camera every now and then and take some shots to share with you on my return.

I might get to pop in a few times while away, but I'm not entirely sure and therefore I make no promises.

Instead, I will leave you with this sobering contemplation: if they say evolution is true, then why is humanity still consuming cauliflower? This ultimate and final disproving of Darwin's theory came to me tonight at the dinner table. Three guesses as to what I was eating.

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conversations:

Caitlin -- siblings' sayings are the best ever. If only there was time enough to record all of them!

Genius, unfulfilled. And that's okay.

When I was small, I used to take comfort in the possibility that I might, one day, become a genius. I think it was L.M. Montgomery books and Little Women, mostly. All these spirited girls brimful of imagination and snappy conversation, bursting out onto a world waiting with held breath (and corsages of beautiful roses) for their genius to emerge and shine on everyone gloriously.

Now I am (pretty near to probably) grown up, the harsh realities of my own inadequacies remind me constantly: no genius here. I've always known it, I think, but you know. When you are twelve you can dream.

Just lately, when I seem to see my own infallibility lit up around me like Las Vegas, I've come a little closer to understanding what the genius dream was all about. I think. And what life is showing me is that this genius thing was not so much a desire to be really brilliant at something, but a desire for people to think I'm really brilliant at something.

(Did I really just type that out loud? Ouch.)

I see the threads of this thought pattern hanging around even now. I compare my work to someone else's and, instead of simply being impressed by their greatness, I wish I was as good. Or someone offers an opinion that contradicts mine and I shrink into insecurity and decide my opinion must surely be the inaccurate one. Or I take a plunge with some creative endeavour or other and no one says it's good and lovely and wonderful and... was that really the only reason I was doing it?

That's why this word from Amy Carmichael's Rose from Brier came like pure, cutting poetry to a soul such as mine:

Let not thy peace be in the mouths of men.

We stand or we fall to God alone. I think this must become my catch-cry. Let not thy peace be in the mouths of men.