Writing

Spoken and Broken Together

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Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete.
Could we just be broken together?
If you can bring your shattered dreams and I‘ll bring mine,
Could healing still be spoken and save us?
The only way we’ll last forever is broken together. – “Broken Together”, Casting Crowns

My Wednesday morning started with the discovery of something being created that, honestly, excites me on a level that I cannot quite explain. Round Table Companies has started up a Kickstarter campaign for the development of a card game called “Vulnerability is Sexy”. The founder of Round Table Companies explains the game like this: “We believe everyone has a story to share, and our stories—the proud ones and the not-so-proud ones—are what make us beautiful. That’s why we created Vulnerability is Sexy, a card game that helps players reveal their true selves and give each other some of life’s most beautiful gifts: time, truth, and connection.” Yes, this excites me. It is hard to explain exactly why but it does. Over the past several years, I have learned the benefits and blessings of vulnerability, as well as come face to face, again and again, with the fears associated with it. I love that the point of this game is to create safety and hold space (two phrases/ideas that are well-known now in the vulnerability movement) for people to be their most authentic selves. I don’t see it as being a party game so much as a good endeavor for a night with good friends, a chance to hear as well as be heard.

As the years have gone by, I have met so many people who have suffered in the same silence and fear of vulnerability and mask-removal that I have–it was even one of the first deep conversations my husband and I had–and It breaks my heart. It has become more and more important to me to create and hold those sort of safe spaces for people as best I can. I have faced my fears of being vulnerable coming true, and I don’t doubt that I have likely been that fear come true for others. For the latter, I am most profoundly sorry, more so than I can adequately say. Now, I find my heart deeply drawn to creating and being a safe space. Moreover, I am learning just what it means to be  a safe space, whatever that might be for the other person(s). That might mean telling/reassuring them that, yes, it will, in fact, be okay; they will be okay. Or perhaps it’s offering an outside perspective. Perhaps it is not offering anything but your presence, to be a breathing, present life on the other end of the phone line while they cry. Not offering advice or a fix or a silver lining, but just showing up and staying there through their hard moments. Maybe being that safe space means reaching out to someone when they are sure that they have screwed up so badly that they are sure no one wants them around.

Later that morning, as I drove home from the gym, a song played on the radio that I had not heard before. It is called “Broken Together” by Casting Crowns (I have quoted part of it at the top of this post). I know that the song is written around the story of a marriage but vulnerability applies to any close relationship. I was struck by that idea of being broken together and the image it developed in my mind. The image is that of bringing the shards and pieces of the strong yet delicate clay pots that hold our selves and souls and pouring IMAG0151them out at each other’s feet. As those pieces fall and gently clatter upon the floor, they tumble and mix. They don’t voice any expectations, any rejections; they just are together in that brokenness. You know what else is beautiful about bringing those broken pieces together? There is no telling those shattered pieces apart. In our brokenness, we are the same, we are together. And when those pieces are put back together, it will be something new and beautiful, mortared together with love, empathy, camaraderie, and acceptance. We will have spoken healing to each other, even if that speaking is only the words, “Me, too. You’re not alone.”

We can be spoken and broken together. Shattered and crushed together. Sorted and pieced back together. Molded and melded back together. That is what vulnerability allows. That is what it accomplishes.

Will it always work out that way? You want the truth? Of course, you do; you’ve already experienced it. No, it won’t. As a dearly-loved friend of mine wrote:

“Caring isn’t all shiny belly badges getting glowy in Care-a-lot. There’s blood no one ever sees spilled. Tears no one sees shed. There’s a soft violence to caring. Not always, never always, but the potential’s always there. When we care, we make ourselves available, vulnerable.” (Daniel Youngren)

If there is a soft violence to caring, that possibility of deep pain, then vulnerability takes courage. Deep courage. BrenĂ© Brown calls vulnerability “our most accurate measurement of courage”. How willing are you to be courageous? To step out in that vulnerability, to be broken together, even with the chance (and, yes, likelihood) of at least some pain? When you know that the good that can come from it will produce something deep and wide and high and beautiful in your relationships? Can we be safe spaces for each other? Spaces where we can come, pour out our pieces and broken together, and have our healing spoken to each other’s hearts, souls, and minds? I would like that. Wouldn’t you?

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Photo credits:
*Ceramic pot pieces – http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zYHdwVRZSA8/T1HM7afRoDI/AAAAAAAABc4/ZMyn5sHvyUE/s1600/IMAG0151.jpg
*Broken Clay Heart – https://claypotbroken.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/broken-clay-heart.jpg

The Power of a Simple Flame

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Author’s Note: I wrote this story for a darling friend, inspired by a simply ethereal picture taken of her. Elen verch Phellip is one of my dearest friends and a consummate inspiration to me. This piece was intended to do her as much honor as may be, for all the love, kindness, and heart-good she has given me.

It was a beautiful night. The Caernarfon half-moon was bright, clouds nowhere to be seen, and the spring stars were scattered out and bright, like silvered chalk against a black cat’s coat. In the light from the house doorway, one could see her, outlined in nighttime shadow as she stacked pieces of wood in her bucket. Her long hair, left loose to be lifted in cafuné by the wind, caught the light and one could almost believe it to be living fire breathed from the throat of the red dragon of Wales itself. When seen by daylight, her fiery red hair set off her woodbine skin and bright eyes, an ethereal combination that caused many of the children in the village to whisper that she was fey-touched and hang about her apron asking for wishes.

She would merely smile, sometimes benevolently and sometimes wryly, and remind the children that the Tylwyth Teg were often far more interested in taking little ones for changelings than granting wishes. So they had best mind their manners to all, for you never know who is simply mortal and who might be fey in disguise, the cunning in her smile sometimes sending them scattering with a chorus of giggling squeals and screams.

She was a woman most capable. She took no rubbish from anyone, gaffer or matron, master or maid, and those who would dare try would often find themselves in a battle of wit and fierceness and woefully unarmed. Sometimes mothers sent their girls to her to learn particular skills which had perhaps gone to grass in their line, bringing a new layer of life to busy hands and quick minds.

The men called her a mage. The women, more correctly, called her a Firebringer. Not just physical fire but the metaphysical. The fire that burned within, lit in your soul upon the day of your birth. She was the one you called to rekindle your spirit. No one rightly knew just how it was accomplished or even recalled specifics when all was said and done. Women would remember that she came and sat with them and had a cup of tea or brought some of her dandelion jam of an afternoon. Men would recollect her skilled hand threshing and sifting the chaff from the wheat alongside them for a day. More than that, though, one never seemed able to educe. All they knew was that she was able to spark that light of life within again, even if that spark were just enough to get them through the next struggle. And, sometimes, that was all that was needed.

Tanwen, they called her. Fire. A given name, a gifted name for the woman who shared her gifts.

 

Casting of Light

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I watched in fascination and more than a little awe as the candle rays intersected, bisected each other, arced, and danced across the wall over the steaming bathtub. The flickering wicks made the facsimiled sunbeams dance and bow, the bubbles in the tub taking on a brighter luminescence for brief seconds. 

I sank into the hot water, the light from only the candle pouring over my skin, splashing its earthy tone with gold, and the soft piano music trickling its sweetness into my soul. Days, though long and good on the earth, can leave my spirit devoid of quiet and awe. I had come, like a pilgrim to a wildwood chapel, seeking them, and I found them in flickering candle shadows on my bathroom wall. 

Well, I’m Back!

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Oh, those words! How they stir my heart each time! Today has been a day of awesome firsts and dreams come true. Today, I voted for only the second time in my life but for the first time in a presidential primary. If you’re wondering, I voted for Bernie Sanders, though, if Hillary Clinton gets the nomination, I will definitely turn out for her in November.

13139339_10153585710983133_4363788591045689663_nAfter voting for Bernie, I made my way to the local campaign offices for Hillary Clinton and hung out there for a while, with a singular purpose. Sean Astin was to be campaigning through our state today for Hillary and I have wanted to meet this extraordinary man for most of my life but especially the past sixteen years. Like most of my peers, I have grown up watching him on the silver screen, but it was his portrayal of Samwise Gamgee in Lord of the RIngs that has filled and stuck with my heart and soul. Sam is a character to whom I would dearly love to emulate in my lifetime. A dear friend calls me “her Samwise” and I strive every day to be worthy of that moniker.

After chatting with folks at the campaign headquarters and playing with my daughter for a little bit while we waited, Sean arrived with Senator Joe Donnelly and worked his way through the small waiting crowd, shaking hands, taking pictures, and signing autographs. He took a moment to laugh and proclaim, “I’m just going to dance with the kids,” and then proceed to do so with my three-year-old daughter and her new little friend who were bouncing around him little Tookish little hobbit children.

When it was finally my turn, I shook Sean’s hand, said how wonderful it was to meet him, and asked if he would sign my copy of Forgotten Leaves. I explained that the book contained my first academic publication, an essay on Tolkien’s heroes. I’m sure I babbled more than a bit as I tried to explain how I had examined all of Tolkien’s heroes with their differing characteristics, triumphs, and failures, and had found Samwise to be the one who 13173798_10153585711198133_4453832520624279180_nmost embodied the traits that Tolkien considered the embodiment of heroism: loving service, loyalty, devotion, and sacrifice. Being as self-deprecating as the character he so brilliantly and lovingly portrayed, this dear man signed my book “Sean Astin. “Sam”, 1 of the heroes”. Fittingly, he signed on the dedication page which simply says “To the Professor”, which I thought was amazingly appropriate.  After taking a photo with me, Sean pointed at my “I Voted” sticker and exclaimed, “At last! I’ve been all over this state today and this is the first one I’ve seen anyone actually wearing! Well done, you!” That sticker now resides in my journal where I will recount today in all my geeky joy with more than a few squees in bold letters on the page.

And did I mention that he tweeted back at me a little while ago? Squeeeeeee! It’s been a really, really good day! I have to smooch my hubby extra much to thank him for alerting me to all of this going on today so I could be a part of it.

Sean Astin tweeted me!! ^_^

 

Snyder, Melissa. “He Who Would Be First Must Be Last: Tolkien’s Heroism in Lord of the Rings.” Forgotten Leaves: Essays from a Smial. Eds. Jessica Burke and Anthony Burdge. Staten Island: Myth Ink Books, 2015. 7-28. Print. 

Store Link: http://mythinkbooks.storenvy.com/products/14307147-forgotten-leaves-essays from-a-smial

 

Laced Together With Grace

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“When we keep our eyes on Jesus–remembering that He is the one we serve when we love others–the perspective and attitudes of our heart will be laced with the grace of Christ.” — Alyssa Bethke, from SheReadsTruth’s Colossians study

I love that phrase “laced with”. I’ve used it before in my own writing and it’s one of my favorite lovely phrases. To be laced is to be held together, held firmly. If I think of my heart’s perspective and attitudes as holding me together like a corset, informing my posture and gait, my attitude, and then I lace that heart corset with the grace of Jesus Christ, I can see His hand and love in everything.

When my soul aches, I can see Him refining me, just as a corset straightens my back and posture, and sometimes it aches, but it is being improved.

When I am tired and feel like I can’t hold up anymore, grace holds me tightly and reminds me that I can make it. I am supported. I can love, I can forgive, I can have courage, and be kind because I am constantly held up by Christ’s love and grace.

My word for 2016 is ‘grace’ and, as I am specifically working towards this, I hope it will come to be a part of me, my everyday wear, just as that corset might be, the longer I wear it. Kindness, love, compassion, empathy…my heart and actions laced together with grace.

 

beautiful-black-and-white-corset-dress-Favim.com-1293955

 

Reflections on Thirty-Three

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Author’s Note: Today, I turn 33 years old. It has definitely been an interesting three and a half years since my daughter was born and life changed in a big way. I think that I have learned more about myself in these few short years than in many others combined throughout my lifetime. I see myself differently, am taking better care of myself, am learning to love others better, and live my faith and purpose more honestly and, I hope, effectively. I do more than like myself at 33. I truly believe that I have finally learned to love myself.

= = = =

My form is a thing of beauty.

Take all your definitions of allure

And weigh them in your hands,

As I make mine my own.

Breasts, waist, hips, legs,

Arms, stomach, shoulders, back.

All I work to make strong.

This I do for myself,

For the good of my body as well as my soul.

To be strong enough in body to hold the skies on my shoulders

But soft enough in soul to hold joy in the sway of my hips

And grace in the reach of my hands.

My mind is a work of art.

Growing and challenged still,

Deeply considering and intense.

My intelligence has not been silenced by time,

But continues to grow and refine with new challenges.

My art is a meeting of thought and feeling,

Pulled together, chiseled, and shaped.

I share my art with a desire for hope,

Encouragement, uplifting, and joy.

I write to challenge to love, to kindness, to compassion.

I write to create refuge, worlds in which to escape,

To send out words that my own voice might find difficult to speak.

I sing to birth joy. I dance to proclaim free. I dress to cry beauty.

I write and post and mail to connect and pull threads together.

In life. In community. In love. In friendship. In chosen family.

I am a being made unqiue and becoming uniquer still.

The older I get, the finer I am becoming.

You should rejoice. I’d love for you to rejoice.

If you don’t, though, that’s your choice.

But, most of all, I just want you to smile with me.

The Education of a Lady

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Author’s Note: This is a momentary writing that flitted through my head yesterday, inspired by memories of lines from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

“Oh, I absolutely despise being her tablemate at a dinner party. Have you seen her? It’s disgraceful, I tell you, the way she flirts with her husband across the table. The woman is shamelessly blissful! It puts the entire table out! If something is not done soon, I shall demand that the police interfere.”

Her tablemate at this particular teatime tutted: “Truly, does she not know that it is the position of other women to flirt with her husband and her position to be utterly unconcerned by it?”

“It is also the position of other women’s husbands to flirt with her and hers to be outraged by such behavior,” chimed another well-taught madame.

“Indeed, does she have so little education at all in Societal affairs?” ruffled the originally offended party.

“The barest it would seem, poor fool,” sighed the commiserating tablemate.

— “A Meritous Conversation Betwixt Ladies of Standing”

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The Adult You Are Looking For Has Left the Building.

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Adulting is hard! Allow me to repeat that: ADULTING IS HARD! And, yes, like so many other words in the 21st century we have verbed the noun. Our predecessors would most likely remark that there is no such thing as “adulting” when you are one; it’s just living life and doing what’s necessary. Perhaps so but, sometimes, it can feel downright oppressive.

Here was my adulting today:

  1. I got this week’s bills written up and ready to mail.
  2. I wrote letters to friends and loved ones.
  3. I sussed out our budget for the next week and a half.
  4. I went to the post office.
  5. I went to the bank.
  6. I helped my in-laws get their tax forms printed off since their printer is being a jerk.
  7. I went to the credit union to make sure all was in order for some important payments.
  8. I dropped four bags of stuff off at Goodwill.
  9. I found a prop my husband needed for a project in under three minutes of entering the store.
  10. I ordered and picked up dinner for my family and my in-laws.
  11. I chatted with my husband about something I felt God had led me to do today that he needed to know about.
  12. I washed and dried a load of laundry.
  13. I fed my daughter.
  14. I baked cookies at her request.
  15. I made the beds, tidied the bedrooms, and aired the house.

In my opinion, that’s some respectable adulting for one day. As I speak, however, there are some things I am leaving undone. The dishes in the sink have not been washed, the laundry in the basket is still waiting to be folded, and the living room is a mess from my girl’s afternoon play. And you know what? With the exception of the living room, which needs to be tidied up a bit so I can do my barre workout, I am just fine with it staying that way for the rest of the night. There’s reading and working out and relaxing to be done!

Self-care is still a learning process for me. I was excellent at it for about a week while visiting my parents; I read more that week than I have in any space of time in recent memory. I went for walks, I got myself ice cream, it was a good time. But now that I am home in the same old same old, I am having to relearn how to do self-care every day. And this is part of it.

The dishes and laundry can wait. It’s Tuesday. Things that I enjoy are waiting for me.

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The Truth on Earth, Not in the Air

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It’s April and it smells like Christmas outside. It’s that cold, shimmering scent, one that promises things to come. I suppose, in that sense, Christmas and spring are similar in nature. Almost like the world is holding its breath, waiting for something. The air is cold and crisp, too much so for April for my tastes, but this is Indiana, after all. The grass is green, the trees are starting to shed their buds and press forth with leaves, albeit reluctantly, and so nature assures us of what the weather would belie:

Winter is done.

Spring is coming.

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Once a Lost Girl…

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Ruth B’s single “Lost Boy” has been moving quite fluidly across the airwaves of late,  sung in her dreamy, soulful voice, though I first heard it when a friend of mine shared a YouTube video of the song to my Facebook page, saying that it reminded them of me. I take that as quite a compliment, personally. The first half of the song goes like this:

There was a time when I was alone
Nowhere to go and no place to call home
My only friend was the man in the moon
And even sometimes he would go away, too

Then one night, as I closed my eyes
I saw a shadow flying high
He came to me with the sweetest smile
Told me he wanted to talk for a while
He said, “Peter Pan, that’s what they call me
I promise that you’ll never be lonely, ” and ever since that day

I am a lost boy from Neverland
Usually hanging out with Peter Pan
And when we’re bored we play in the woods
Always on the run from Captain Hook
“Run, run, lost boy, ” they say to me
Away from all of reality

When I was a child, the first storybook character I fell in love with (yes, I believe that I loved him with all my little-girl heart) was Peter Pan. I had a beautifully illustrated storybook, a book on tape, loved the Disney movie (was so jealous that Tiger Lily got to “kiss” Peter), watched the “Peter Pan and the Pirates” television series on Fox in the mornings before school, had my blue “Wendy” nightdress, and had the Mary Martin production of Peter Pan memorized (still sing “Once Upon a Time” and “I Won’t Grow Up”). It’s safe to say that I was a bit obsessed with Peter Pan and all the characters therein.

When I was a child, I didn’t have many friends. I was small, skinny, awkward, studious, always with my nose in a book. Not many people wanted to associate with that, particularly in the first half of middle school. So I turned to my books and movies (which were mostly based on books), to the characters held within them who had ever been steadfast friends. I was a Lost Girl in truth. I could sink myself into those stories, let the characters pull me along to join them on their adventures, and live a thousand lives that I would never have in the real world. I was happy as a Lost Girl, in Never Land. I was happy with the dream of Peter (who, interestingly, has continued to grow as I have grown) coming to my window, taking my hand with that handsome, sweet grin, and flying me off to somewhere where I could be more than what I was. Where I could be a Lost Girl, not just little Melissa. Where I could talk with mermaids, fly with fairies, fight pirates, and dance with Tiger Lily.

Where I could be someone else. More than what I was.

Even now, I am still a Lost Girl. I still run off with these characters and dive into their stories, their ranks having swelled over the thirty-some years of my life. Dear friends and new, they make me happy to be a Lost Girl. In fact, there are two new books on my table, two new shedloads of characters just waiting to take me on their adventures and share with me their realities.

As a matter of fact…I think that’s a tap on my window. Excuse me.