Georgia Raindrops

Great love, setting the world on fire

I am in awe of who you are

And it's your love I'm living for

                           —Flyleaf

Summer is beginning to pack his bags. He's there in my room, laying out all of his clothes and folding them nicely into his suitcase, the one with travel stickers all over it. I keep asking him to stay, but he's declining my offer. He tells me he's ready to head south, you know how that goes. It's time for a fresh new season. He promises he'll send me Pinterest pictures of the places he's going next around the world. Well fine. I'll enjoy your stay while you're still here Mr. Summer.

I guess maybe he's right. It's time for a fresh new season, because these last few weeks of summer leave us trapped between lazy freedom and anticipation of the future, and we don't really know what we want. We're just floating and trying to enjoy ourselves, but it's hard because we're starting to put on our armor for the battle ahead: the battle of busyness and worries and excitement. We'll always be seeking out an answer to the mystery: trying to find who we are and why we are who we are, and how we can be who we are when we don't know. We're so messy with all of our questions.

Summer has been taking me by the hand and yanking me into the sky. But, the ultimate climax of my summer was camp. Last week, I had a wonderful adventure at a camp in Georgia with some of my youth group friends. I have to be honest, my sister and I are suffering a bit from camp withdraws, but I wrote nearly every detail of the week in my journal, late into the night, on my top bunk. With spiders staring me down. But I didn't mind them so much, I wanted to cut them some slack. Trust me, it's more dangerous to be a spider in a cabin of girls than it is to be on the front lines (KILL IT MURDER IT MWAHAHA). In fact, my journal still smells a little funky...

Anyways, the camp we went to was in Tiger, Georgia; a place that counts as a teeny dot on a map, but is now a big dot in my heart, not because of its location but what happens there. And what happened to me. And how God uses tiny places on maps to do things so miraculous and big we can't comprehend them. It was an amazing week. I was filthy, holy, and overjoyed at any given time. We celebrated mass outside under a tent every day, swam in a lake, sloshed around in a mud pit (ew), praised and worshipped with every ounce of our souls, and spent time in wonderful adoration.

If y'all haven't ever been down to this here Georgia, lemme tell ya somethin, it is green. Like a John Deer rollin' down I-80 near Omaha in the middle a winter. Well. Kinda. One of the days, we went whitewater rafting on the Chattooga river. It was absolutely beautiful to be in the middle of all the trees. The water was warm, which was an unexpected blessing, given that I'm prone to being cold all the time. It was a breathtaking day. There was not another person or house anywhere around us the whole trip. It started to rain halfway through the day, and it completely drenched us at times, but it was secretly a lot of fun. I don't think I've ever been so wet.

The rain was refreshingly cold. My thirsty soul soaked up that rain, and I felt alive. It was crazy, when we stepped out of the raft at the end of the day after being soaked by chilly rain, the river water felt like a hot tub. It was so different from Colorado rafting. I kept wondering if we were actually rafting in water or some other strange substance that doesn't get cold. I think I could become a tree right then and there.

We also stopped once to jump off of rocks into the water, then another time to "slide" down a waterfall (which was more like scooting). I would love to be a rain drop in the Chattooga river, cascading down a waterfall every second, and soaking up the ice-cold life of God's glorious creation. We saw natural, wild turtles sitting on rocks, and even a bald eagle. It was a lovely lovely day. (Well, other than my youth minister falling out of the raft and getting trapped under the raft, that wasn't so lovely. But other than that it was lovely.)

After we had gone through all the rapids, we tied our rafts to a motorboat and sat in them while we steadily made our way back to the bus. At first it was sunny, but of course, it started to rain. No sorry, pour. Monsoon. While we were getting drenched by rain, although it was cold, I felt incredibly alive. Cold droplets from a pure, unadulterated sky soaked into my pores and my heart felt overwhelmed with a wild sense of crazy peace. It sounds like an oxymoron, but the peace I felt wasn't relaxing. It was a peace that told me life is an insane adventure and won't ever slow down for me. Rocks will jut out of seemingly calm waters, and I will have to find a way around them to stay in my raft. It was a living, breathing, heart-exploding peace that gave me strength and excitement to live my life different from the rest of this world. I will still go through the struggles of the world, but I have a never ending peace lying underneath all the problems, and it has power to crumble them. This peace is too intense and strong for our struggles to handle. Peace will win, and fear will lose (twenty one pilots). This is a truth that needs to drench us. Peace isn't just in the form of a hammock or a stress-free life. Peace drives our hearts to search for something more. Peace is what keeps us alive sometimes. Peace is constantly fighting for us in battle. Peace is wild. Peace will win and overwhelm.

*This picture does not do the river justice*

One thing I realized at camp is that God is constantly speaking to me and tugging at my heart. If you've ever doubted that God still speaks to us like he did in Bible stories, well, he does. I know I'm a small, broken person. Insignificant and devastatingly hopeful sometimes. But God speaks into my heart. In fact, I like to think of him writing on my heart. He created me, my soul, body, everything, out of a word, so he's constantly writing words in me and story-telling his grace into my life. That makes my heart spin. I'm a journal for God. I'm poetry. I'm a novel with every detail described better than any writer ever could. My life is a collection of spellbinding words written by the maker of beautiful things.

On the last night of camp, we had a parish bonfire. We made s'mores and prayed together in the middle of dark, wet, open grass underneath a carpet of restless stars. I was staring up at them lying down, and in that moment, with some of the most amazing people in the world lying around me, I exhaled deeply so that a little bit of my soul would come out, so I could always be a part of that moment. I let go. That's what Jesus kept telling me to do all week. Just let go. Let go of my fear. Let go of my past, and especially my future. Let go of who I think I want to be. I'm still trying to let go, but now my heart finally has a vacancy sign lit up, and it's only accepting one guest. A permanent guest. Jesus, come stay in my heart hotel. Fill all the rooms that ache for company with your love. Help me continue to let go so that you can come live in me.

I tried to take in the craziness of all those stars that night while lying next to my sister (which, by the way, together we saw four shooting stars), and I was so happy to do that with her. We did it last summer too, in another place miles away in the Rocky Mountains, just us lying in the grass underneath all the constellations. I think that's where we belong. We're a little star crazy.

It's a sad thing that camp is over, but I'm so so happy I got the chance to go. The future is racing towards me like a crazy train about to derail, but I'm ready to jump on it. Jesus is pumping in my blood and I'm excited to go out and love with all my heart. I need his courage. Especially for when school starts, and work gets hard, and life ties my heart in cowboy knots, I need you Jesus. I never want to lose my passion or my faith.

While writing my testimony in my journal one of the nights, Jesus took the pen and wrote something I need to remember, especially when I'm afraid. The same hands that sculpted the stars sculpted me, so I have stardust pumping in my veins. Since I have flakes of stars within me, I'm always radiating. Even when I feel lonely or worthless.

This was my prayer during camp, and it's my prayer now, and I want it to be my prayer for you too:

Jesus, I love you and I want the world to burn with this love. It's true, it's taken days of my heart being thrown through rings and my soul feeling like a wayfaring gypsy, but I love you, and I'm amazed at what you're doing in my life. Any atmosphere or galaxy or simple place I end up is where you find miraculous ways to console me and love me. Help me burn. I'm ready to feel alive. 

~~more summerish things I've done~~

We went to Chadron for Fur Trade Days to visit grandma and papa. Us three ran in the Colter Run (John Colter was a man who ran...and they made a 5k for him...the end :) hehe. (daddy and camryn will get that). We ate papa's buffalo burgers and went to the rodeo too. 

Also, on our way home, we of course stopped at our favorite gas station/bathroom (for various reasons, I won't go in to much detail but let's just say the first stall in the ladies has a bidet...which I did not use thank you very much) Anyways, it's called Sapp Bros and it's in Cheyenne. There was a semi there that said Jesus on it, no idea why, so I had to take a picture.

 Soooo, the Saturday before we left for camp I got to go to an amazing concert with my best friend. We saw some of our favorite bands ever (Panic!, Bad Suns, Walk the Moon, and Twenty One Pilots to name a few). It was the craziest and best night ever. 

The week before the concert, Juju's best friend and her granddaughter Brittany came to visit from Arizona. So did our other lovely Texas cousins that make me laugh until I cry. One of the things we did was go to formal tea at the Brown Palace Hotel, which serves heavenly scones sent from the Lord himself (I do not exaggerate. Try these scones and you will see.)

Not sure what's going on with my face but at least Britt looks pretty

Whispers out West

Don't drop your arms. I'll guard your heart,

With quiet words I'll lead you in.

                                              —Anberlin

"Cassidy Klein...hmmm. Now how did you end up with a German last name and an Irish first name?"

"Um, you know, that's a great question. I don't know, I guess I'm just multicultural!"

"Yes, interesting! Do you know what Klein means in German?"

"I can't say that I do, sir. What does it mean?"

"Klein means small in German."

"Really? That's so fitting. Thank you for telling me! I don't know why I didn't know that before."

I was carrying a very heavy (heavy on the very) tray of dirty dishes back to the kitchen at the retirement home I work at when a kind old man looked intently at my name tag. The residents where I work are very sweet, but many of them think Cassidy is a strange name (I didn't think it was all that outrageous until I started working there). A lot of them ask me if I'm Hopalong, to which I reply of course, isn't it obvious? I'm so far west it's where the east begins!

Luckily they got my good side here

Anyways, this particular man was on his way out when he stopped to tell me more about my name. I was feeling overwhelmed and incredibly assiduous during my shift, and he paused the craziness for a second and informed me of a fact that I definitely need in my Rose Encyclopedia (my brain).

Small. I know I'm small, and I usually feel pretty small, but now it was for sure. Engraved in me like a lumpy scar on a skeleton aspen tree. As I lugged my way back into the kitchen, I slammed down the grimy tray just as my muscles were giving up and started scraping half-eaten Tilapia into the trash. Small? Why can't I be big? Powerful? Super important and invincible? The flawless girl you see flying in the clouds a thousand miles per hour, with a smile that thrives so brilliantly that people stop and wonder? Small can't deliver that. I need to be someone who, when people see her, they hold their breaths until their lungs give out and become lumps in their gut. Only she can take their saggy lungs and knit them back into being, with an exhale so deep and refreshing it drowns them with ice-cold peace and purpose.

But, I'm a Klein. I'm not in the major-leagues, and I can't actually fly yet. I'm not exactly a social butterfly either, although sometimes I wonder if social butterflies ever feel like their wings are tacked to a wall. My small mind contains enormous dreams, that I'll be on the front page someday and that my words will swim into the hearts of people all over the world. And that somehow, through the words I braid into messy sentences, they will stumble upon a sea-glass glimmer of hope in the endlessly bleak gravel of a shallow promising society.

Sometimes I find myself wandering along this gravelly beach after darkness lead me there, and the vicious stones cut the bottoms of my feet and give me bloody footsteps. All around I notice souls who have bought the lie that they are too small and insignificant, and are doing anything they can to build themselves up and fortify their concrete walls for any battle they might need to fight. These walls look all different, but I'm surrounded. I walk by beautiful faces and see their eyes screaming from inside the concrete. They scrape their skin every time they move, but don't even care, because they're feeling something when they bleed. Who they are is never enough. They hate being trapped in concrete, and they hate being freed from it. It's their bodies, their personalities, their talents. So much hate trapped inside the walls.

I know I'm small, smaller than the teensiest star in the barely visible fuzzy patch of them underneath the grand carpet of initial stars. Small, seemingly simple and ordinary, but underneath the surface my emotions and ambitions are blankets of tangled, intricate lace. When I look at my small hands, I see blue veins that remind me of the labyrinthine paths I've tried to take, only to wind up hopelessly lost. But every veiny path leads back to my heart, somehow. And though I'm small, I won't drown in a sea of big and powerful faces. I will silently breathe and let my heart soak up more life than I can handle. The small writer inside of me is constantly working in her head, kneading moments and memories into something she can try to make sense of—words. Writing helps me in that way. I don't always know what I think until I read what I say.

I want to look into the eyes of every hurting soul I see and cause the concrete walls to crumble. I want them to be free and fall in love with the privilege of running wildly. In our smallness we can stop seeking artificial love and discover a true love that never shouts, but whispers softly and makes us feel infinite.

Pure love is swelling inside our small souls. If we let it, it can fill us up so profoundly until we absolutely can't hold it in and we burst open like Spongebob, leaving a beautiful, erratic mess of joy all over those around us. They'll get stained with it and wonder where they can find this joy too. No matter how small we are, we can hold an immeasurable amount of love and life inside of us. Particles of God dwell in us and when we pray and laugh and sing and cry we retch up these bits. And then he replenishes us with many more, and these particles sink into every cell of our bodies and begin to radiate until we're burning alive.

Love is a word that has become so cliche I almost can't stand it. It's overused, and too many people have a demented perception of what it really is. It's such a real and fierce spirit that attacks us unexpectedly and provides us with a reason to live. My choir instructor (we call him "life lessons" teacher as well sometimes) tells us that love shouldn't be big and loud. If someone is screaming at you that they love you, they probably don't. If they whisper softly that they love you and humbly show affection, then it's real. (He also tells us that saying "I'm sorry" comes with the implication that you will never let it happen again, which I think is golden. But that's a whole other story. Choir is the one class that teaches me things I'll actually need in life!)

Whispers are small. They don't roar and explode and bite. They don't usually draw a crowd, and sometimes they're inaudible. Insignificant. But if the whisper is directed at you, it's the biggest, most powerful force that can make you topple over. And that's where God is. The small whisper. I think sometimes we (me especially) think we have to be these perfect, saintly people to feel close to God. I'm learning though, that if I listen to the small things, I can feel overwhelmed by the closeness I feel to him. He's in the lyrics of our favorite songs (or weekly song obsessions if you're Peyton), he's in the late night conversations with your friends, he's in the passenger seat of your car. He's even in the frantic beating of your heart as you catch eyes with that one person who makes you feel like flying.

Tonight, it's so late, and I feel comatose as I twirl in an ugly thrift store dress with my hair in a messy knot and guitars and drums and good lyrics bleeding from my stereo. And I feel in love. I know Jesus loves me in my smallness, and because of his small whispers I am the strong and fearless hopalong Cassidy. I might be a Klein, but I will stampede on my horse into tomorrow with a love so violently calm I'll break any concrete walls with a whisper. And I know the beautiful people around me, my lovely, broken friends, are capable and strong and will do the same.

I know I'll get lost. I'm a wayfaring dreamer and I might wind up in a scary and pressure-filled place, but all I have to do is remember to listen for the whispers in the dark and know how fleeting my time here is. I'll listen to the music and my heartbeat will be the drums, beating and loving so loudly that my smallness will melt into the rich blanket of stars, and there I'll stay; burning until I fizzle out and someone makes a wish.

emotions like lacey dreams

Big CC and lil cc

Big CC and...lil cc? And two more C Klein's :)

I've seen love die way too many times

When it deserved to be alive

                              —Paramore

Welcome Home

This place called home is meant to be.

Flowers bloom, roots grow deep.

A special day: time to keep.

                             —Judy "Juju" Garrett

The sun was a dribbling mess of boiling heat. It hung low and giant in the sky, and I swear it was about to stretch out one of its pointy beams and poke me. Mama was dragging me along Main Street, and I saw my glassy reflection in the windows as we scurried by. It was a busy and hot Saturday afternoon, and I clutched Mama's porcelain hand, but not too hard, cause I was afraid I might shatter it. And if I shattered her hand, I would have to live in the dusty prairie with the tumbleweeds for the rest of my life, cause her hands did every single thing in the whole wide world. Mama held Babs' hand in her other one, and we held our breaths as we walked by the saloon so the stale rusty beer smell wouldn't intrude our nostrils and churn our tummies. I looked in the window of Kresses and saw red lipstick on display.

"Mommy wait! Can I get some red lipstick to wear? Sally Harrison wears hers to school and so do the other girls."

"Heavens ti-betsy's no! You may never wear red lipstick! Hussies wear red lipstick, and I will never ever raise a polite, godly daughter just to see her become a low-down hussy. Now hurry along, Aunt Kate is waitin' on us!"

I wasn't quite sure what a hussy was, but it musta been bad, since Mama got real shook up about that. I looked at Babs and her eyes were so wide her red little veins were popping out all over me. I figured I shouldn't say anything else about the red lipstick.

Daddy was still overseas, and we prayed for him every night before dinner. Sometimes Mama gets so into her prayers and keeps on talking to Jesus that I get too hungry and start eating. But I pray with all my heart, cause I miss Daddy a whole lot too. 

Finally we reach Marizons, and Babs and me let go of Mama's perfect hands. We find some fur hats and gloves to play dress up with as our Aunts do grown up talk. We pretend we live in one of the big mansions in the middle of town, and sip our fancy glasses with our pinkies in the air like the fancy ladies do. I walk over to the window and see a girl with blond hair looking in. I freeze and pretend to be a model, but I start giggling instead.

*******

My grandma has a special ability to spark memories to life through rhyming words and poems. The words flow so smoothly you want take a butter knife and spread them over your heart so they stick thick and creamy like peanut butter. Last Saturday, I peered into the sun-caked window of old Marizons and studied my reflection. I could almost see the little girl that my grandma used to be looking back at me, with huge eyes and curly hair. The wind was so forceful that morning I thought it might be attempting to braid my hair, but the wind has too many fingers to braid correctly so my hair looked more like a tumbleweed instead. I stood on the deserted Main Street in Amarillo, Texas, and thought of all the people who had walked these streets before and looked into this same exact window with wide eyes and hopeful hearts. 

All the memories my grandma Juju brings to life and whips into rhyming poems helps me see that they are precious and deserve to be in poem form. They are beautiful and simple memories tangled in joy and suffering, but the jumble paints its own sunset of home and life and God and family. No matter where these lovely people are, they will carry those things with them forever: home and life and God and family. The Main Street in Amarillo seemed barren to me that day, just a few stores and restaurants still open here and there. All the empty storefronts looked hungry and were growling and aching to tell their story. They are walls that have experienced decades of humanity in it's raw and sometimes un-pretty form. They have so much history plastered into them, but they are forgotten now.

In a place so gutted and lonely, my family's memories ignite and cause the vapid street to sing again. Every word that comes out of the story-teller's mouth soars high above the buildings and forgotten signs and becomes real in the crispy, anxious sky. I was there last weekend to celebrate my grandma's close cousins' 80th birthdays, and the joy in their hearts made me realize that despite heartache and suffering and uncertain times, there is always home. Home, though, isn't a star on a map, or even a dot. Home isn't a place overgrown and uncharted, for hearts that feel lost. Home is in a true and sincere hug of someone who loves you. Home is the beating heart of your family member, thumping along despite it's cracks and bruises. Home is being with people who shape and mold you into someone spectacular. Home is crying and laughing all at the same time. 

Sometimes I feel like I don't belong where I am. Like I need to be over there, up there, way past the white borders around the edge of a paper map and onto the table, and then keep going until I'm falling off the table and running out the door. Constantly on the move. Sometimes I think that if I run fast enough and far enough, I'll never get caught being who I actually am. My soul won't catch me if my body keeps galloping into the next scene. I'm a tumbleweed. I'll come out of nowhere and leave the next second. Who needs a home when you never have time to breathe?

Maybe you've been running so fast you've hit a brick wall and feel like a giant splattery mess. Maybe you feel bored with "home," like there's nowhere for you to go or nothing to do. Maybe the thought of home invites sad memories to enter in and make a mess of your dreams.

In uncertain and stressful times: strike a match. Watch the fire devour your material home, and see all your possessions melt. What if they were all gone? What would you do? It's your family and you standing out on the road in front of the fire, with pebbles burrowing into your bare feet. Where's home now?

With or without a charted town to call your own, home is in the suffocating embrace of a God who adores every detail of who you are. Home is faithfully loving your family and putting them before your own interests, ideas or plans. Home is knowing that you can't escape from your soul, and instead placing your spirit back inside of your body and zipping it up tight so you can take off flying. Both sides of my family have accomplished some incredible things, and even though they aren't in any fancy history books, they constructed their real homes in heaven, so wherever they were on earth they felt rooted and ready to change the world around them.

Knock on the door of your heart, your home. Knock until your knuckles are raw and bleeding, and then keep on knocking. Knock until you discover that Jesus was standing right beside you on the welcome mat the whole time, ready to show you home. He is so excited at the thought of making this extraordinary home known to you. He will hold your injured hand and make you close your eyes until he guides you in and you open them to the unpredictable joy and beauty of your true home, which has been with you all along. You are a heaven person. You have an identity in an unimaginably holy and perfect place, and society or your mistakes can never steal that from you.

So welcome home. Your family is your quirky and one-of-a-kind house, and Jesus is your city with starlights twinkling in every possible direction.

 Palo Duro Canyon

Georgia O'Keeffe and Friends in Palo Duro Canyon

(I did not take this picture nor was I there in 1912 when it was taken, darn, but I felt this needed to be here because it's too perfect not to be)

 Cadillac Ranch. People just graffiti all over these cars with no restrictions, like giant blank metal canvases. My mom said she thought it was disturbing, but I think it's intriguingly grotesque. :)

Rose in the Middle of Nowhere with Spray Paint

My summer has been a big giant adventure so far. First off, Texas was a party. The road trip there and back was...interesting...my 13 year old cousin had been staying with us for a week, and we've basically adopted him by now so we just took him to Texas with us. The seven hour drive consisted of laughing hysterically at absolutely nothing and trying to get semi-trucks to honk. On the way back, I was driving as fast as I could manage through New Mexico while Ethan, my very mature and respectable cousin (who had six burgers within the course of like two days), was dur dur durrrrrring in the back seat complaining about his drowning fish and rolling like a ball on the floor of the car crying about needing to pee. He also thinks he's some great back seat driver. Thank you, there are cars, so I'm not going to go, shut up, have a nice day. :) I also got a job at a retirement home serving food to the residents. It's basically like being a waitress, I take orders and carry out heavy trays and bus tables. Today one of the residents had her 100th birthday!

Me and my cousins, you and your cousins

It's a line that is always running.

                                                 -Vampire Weekend

Maybe You Are Magic

I carried about my pierced and bloodied soul, rebellious at being carried by me, but I could find no place where I might put it down. 

-St. Augustine

What do hearts sound like when they break?

Maybe like a glass vase falling out of a window in a moment of sanity, shattering on hardwood floor, making a sound so terrifying and dangerous that it's beautiful. Or maybe it sounds like paper being ripped, the angry shred of desperately tearing apart a memory that you need to destroy before it destroys you. Or maybe it sounds like a click, a tiny tap of a finger nail against the wooden frame of your bed, because you're trying so hard to pray but your knees are getting bruised and achey and the words refuse to come.

It could be any of these. Hearts can break in loud and sharp and scary ways. Or they can break in the torturous, slow, and dull ways, the kind where you don't have a real reason to be falling apart, you just are. I don't know which is worse. We try so hard to make our hearts bullet-proof steel, but dull pain slowly erodes steel hearts and makes them rust.

Why do our souls hurt so much? Why do we suffer the incredible pain of a thousand thorns piercing and burrowing into our hearts at night? Why do we inflict this pain on ourselves, and allow the poison to sizzle away our joy?

The past couple of weeks have been full of questions. I try really hard to keep myself together, but I'm realizing that sometimes it's too much to keep lugging around my heavy soul. My heart is too passionate, too restless, and too ambitious for me to carry all by myself. And as I break down and open up to people, I'm finding that they're just as tired as me. My friends are beautiful, but we are all so broken. If you put us together and held us up to the sun, our broken pieces would coalesce into a dawn-kaleidoscopic brilliance. Maybe our hearts prefer to be broken, so there can be cracks to blaze forth a rainbow within us.

I want answers Jesus. I'm waiting. I hate carrying around this soul sometimes. If the Holy Spirit is really inside of me, can't he mold my bloody heart back together? I want to find a place where I can put down my bloodied soul without fear of slipping on it. I want to burn to life, but I'm all wet with tears.

A few nights ago, the dark clouds in the sky looked like a sheet of iron, and the lightning looked like ribbons of lace. The light trembled all over the clouds, beating and punching like it was trying to break free. But it was only lace against iron, and the lightning couldn't break free, so it ripped apart and flashed a spectacular spider web of burning light. I think we are all lace lightning. We have incredibly real souls in an incredibly fake world, and when we try to break through the false iron, we get ripped apart.

But maybe that's when we become even more breathtaking. In our bloody shreds we become the most astounding things, even though we don't feel like it at all. We feel beat up from trying too hard like the lightning, but it's a thrilling beauty that can't be found in any other emotion or state of being. I know you're broken. So am I, and everyone around you. We all carry around a pierced and bloodied soul, straining our eyes for a place where we can put it down and rest. Even though you feel like your heart is a gloppy, bleeding mess that no one wants, there is someone who would die to have it. He's used to slimy, wounded hearts. He was a bleeding mess himself, and he knows what it's like. And guess what. He loves you. He burns for you and your raw heart.

I'm learning to let Jesus deal with me. I found I can't escape from who I am or escape my restlessness no matter how hard I try. But when I feel the pain vibrating inside of me it helps me remember that I'm definitely alive and have much to live for. The most beautiful and sturdy flowers bloom in the desert, and they are watered with rare and chilling tears.

I'm finding myself caught up in the ecstatic, wild spirit of June; the fresh, crispy new feeling of summer, before it gets all hot and lonely and sticky. There's a painting in the art museum that I love. I think I was 12 when I first saw it, and I was so excited about the name I wrote in on me and walked around in January with it tattooed on the back of my hand. The painting itself is awesome (and it's Nebraska sky, so even better!), but the name of the painting is just as rich and creamy.

 By June the Light Begins to Breathe by Keith Jacobshagen

By June the Light Begins to Breathe. June is a month full of promises and new hopes and dreams. It's the start of summer fantasies of late nights, sticky watermelon, road trips, Kenny Chesney songs, and reading gigantic stacks of books. We are alive in this sixth month between the beginning and the end, between abundant life or depression. But sometimes we get so caught up in doing something "worthwhile" with ourselves over the summer that we obsess and completely miss out. We have to get the perfect 'bikini bod.' Gotta find a summer love. Gotta get a job, entertain yourself, and do anything you can to feel like you have a million friends to make sure every second is spent with someone.

When I say abundant life though, I don't mean going on crazy adventures every day and driving really fast with your friends or breaking all the rules to feel the adrenaline. That's what the world thinks abundant life is, but it's so much more. You can do all those things and never live an abundant life. An abundant life is feeling your heartbeat and appreciating, fully appreciating, the fact that it's beating. An abundant life is loving people deeply and taking time to breathe and chill with Jesus. An abundant life is running as fast as you can and dancing freely without the chains of society enslaving you. It's discovering the hidden magic that life has, when you do what you love and are completely okay with it.

An abundant life consists of loving the little things that melt together into a chaotic, beautiful mess. Like playing one last song in the middle of the night and seeing the your shadow dance with you across your room. It's the smell of campfires and watching the little embers crackle into the night sky, giving it freckles of fire and smells of earth and blankets and hugs. It's a leftover ink stain from a night full of words. It's reading a life-changing quote. It's waking up in the morning to a day full of opportunities to listen and read and talk and smile and breathe.

It's recognizing your brokenness, bottling up your pain, then hurling the bottle at the sky and watching it shatter into a thousand glassy stars.

Tolkien says that "Elvish singing is not a thing to miss, in June under the stars, not if you care for such things," (The Hobbit). The light is breathing. Even though goblins pull us into dark caves sometimes, we will always crawl out again into the light and begin to breathe. This is abundant life. Acknowledging our starry constellations of pain but continuing to sing with the elves in our hearts. The thorns will continue to pierce our bloody souls. We might not hear the singing some nights, but if we care enough, the Holy Spirit will never ever stop. I know I need to take my own advice with this, but I promise I will try to listen to the singing. I'm ready to breathe. I'm ready for my gloppy heart to start drumming in my chest. No bloody broken heart can scare away the joyful, magical elves from singing to you. Listen to them this summer, and don't obsess over living a worthwhile life, because you are living one. And let Jesus hold your torn-up soul, because he's the only one in whom you can really trust to lay it down. The elves can't get enough of you, and neither can Jesus. Do you care for such things? Let your light breathe, and drown in the melody.

Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. 

-Frida Kahlo

~~~

I went to another Switchfoot concert last night! Except this one wasn't very big, and it was freeeee! We were very front row, and it was one of the best experiences ever. This was only my third Switchfoot concert so hopefully I'll go to a lot more. Concerts are, like, why I'm alive.

 Everything inside screams for second life

That's me. I'm not even kidding. Oh and Jon Foreman.

Night Trains

Starin' down the stars, jealous of the moon

You wish you could fly

Just staying where you are,

there's nothing you can do if you're too scared to try.

                                                                                      —Nickel Creek

Sometimes she sits by her window at night and waits. Sometimes it's hours, sometimes only minutes. She might even wait until sunrise. But she sits until she hears the grumbling night train go by, miles away from her sleeping suburb neighborhood. She memorizes the far off howling of its whistle and the eerie reassurance it gives her; that it's going somewhere lonely, that it will see crispy prairie grass and mountains that yawn under the moon all in one night. All while she sits by her finger-print collaged window and dreams of the day she'll be a night train. A day she'll escape and fly across a train track, a day when she'll be able to dream in silvery horns. She wants to run steady and fast, with the weight of something important trailing behind her. She wants to watch the miles of empty prairie under a hungry night sky, and not wait for anything ever again, except for the sunrise.

~~~~~~

Tonight it was raining. Big, crocodile tear raindrops. She had changed a lot since those first few weeks of waiting for the night train, and that little girl who dreamed so big was starting to decay inside. Maybe she looked put together on the outside, with her lip-glossed smile and stick-thin body. But every night she unfolded, and her night train soul soaked it's way to the outside. The sky was moaning. She was stuck under a frozen tomb of grey and chaos. She wanted cold toes and blue lips, something to take her mind off the pain. She watched the rain on her window. Each droplet was a dribbling leak of her heart. Her entire soul was dripping down the window, and she couldn't stop it. After hours of waiting for the night train, it was all she could muster up to whimper a tiny noise, a plea for something. It was then that someone picked her up and carried her to another time and place.

She got in her car and drove. She drove until she reached the shore, then she started swimming until she reached another shore, and then she started driving a stranger's car on the wrong side of the road. Then when she was out of gas, she climbed a tree and finally allowed herself to think of the truth that she'd been hiding from. She thought of the boy, the anxiety of never knowing for sure, the aching of the rest of the world, all the drowning monsters inside her own head. She will spent nights and days in the tree somewhere across the sea. Finally she'll look up and see there is someone else in the tree too. Someone so bright she can feel the warmth of the light rays on her pale face.

I'm sorry, She says. I didn't know this was your tree.

It's your tree too, He says. I've enjoyed having you here with me.

And she says, But I'm a nobody. I hurl disappointment at people like a storm cloud hurls rain at the ground. Unpredictable and inconvenient, she says. Just like me.

No my dear. He says. I wanted you to climb this tree today. Isn't it a lovely day?

She looks around. Sure, she says. But you avoided my question, just like everyone else. Maybe you're no different. Maybe you judge and are disappointed at me too, just like them. I'm everyone's inconvenience, an unpredictable inconvenience. 

Yes, He says. Yes you are. But I created you this way.

Why would you do that? She says. Thanks to your great creation, I'm unloved. An annoyance no one wants. I don't have anything to offer. I'll never be appreciated by them.

I created you to be like me, He says. I promise you, my princess, that I was the biggest inconvenience to people when I walked on earth. I'm still an inconvenience now. I am by far the world's most unpredictable inconvenience, but just like a rare tear of joy, there's beauty in it.

Can my inconvenient nature become beautiful too? She says. Can I really find a place in this scary world, or will I forever roam across an endless prairie, hoping and screaming like a night train?

If I told you that now, wouldn't you miss your night train soul? He says. You may settle down one day. Or you may get swallowed by stars like a night train. But no matter what, I've given you a restless soul for a reason. Your "inconvenience" is beauty. A startling whistle that brings excitement to desolate and abandoned places. And what a colorful train you are, as you will help people find life through you, and you will be tattooed with broken stories that splash into new ones with the colors of the rainbow. 

She starts to cry. Words swirl around in her mind, but they come out as sparkling tears on her cheeks. 

I promise I will keep building exciting and thrilling tracks for you to run on, He says. Don't slow down my love. Your restlessness is a beauty the world needs.

She wakes up to sunshine spilling all over her tear-stained face and messy hair. She hears a bird chirp for the first time. She wonders why she isn't in a tree. How did she get back home? Something is different though, and she knows it. She encountered her first true love in a tree halfway around the world, and she will never be the same.

~~~~~

The thought of night trains thrill me. The fact that they exist leads me to believe that we all need an escape, and we all yearn for mystery and new opportunities to sweep us away and carry us somewhere far. Night trains are the ultimate escape route. They tell us that it's not about who we really are, it's only about who we want to be. Whenever I hear one, (usually late on hot summer nights, while I'm sprawled out under the fan in the dark with my window wide open) I imagine myself hopping that train and embracing the electric tingling in my heart when I'm excited and terrified at the same time. Of course, I don't actually feel that way lying in my same ol' same ol' room, but I pretend to transport myself to a place beside the tracks, a place where no one can find me and I can be anyone I want to be when I jump on the train. A place where I can allow the chilly wind to wrestle with my hair. A place where I can smear the world in front of me with my hand like paint, and see the colors zoom past me in a stunning and fascinating way. I would ball my hands into my sweatshirt sleeves and feel the freedom of not knowing. I have a feeling most girls can relate to this, and through our pain, God wants to meet us in simple places like trees if we let him. He understands how big we dream and how restless our hearts are.

Once we reach our night-train destination, we can become who we want. It can be a beautiful thing to escape from ourselves and transform into someone of our dreams for a little while, someone who doesn't mess up and doesn't ever hurt. We become in our minds someone who always knows what to say, is adventurous and makes society breathe. This version of ourselves becomes our universe for a little while, and we laugh as our old self is stuck back in her bedroom floor under a fan. But we can't stay there forever. Soon enough another night train will chug by and bring us back to who we really are. It won't be a dazzling antique train that sings on the track. It'll be an ugly freight train that whines and stutters. But somehow, I'm starting to be okay with that train. If that train can bring me home, then it is the most wonderful of all. If it's the train that takes my made-up heart and delivers it back inside my real one, and wrings out all the fake and make believe from it, then I am thankful for my ugly freight train.

I want to be real. I don't want to live in a city of my imagination and travel on the night train all the time to be there. Someday I do want to take the midnight train and go anywhere (heh heh). But when I do, I don't want to be running away from my problems. I want to be a genuine soul, a scared yet passionate girl who embraces the uncertainty that God places in her life. I want to be a girl that trusts so much in the Holy Spirit inside of her that the night train leads her on journeys to change the world; and not act as an escape route to lead her away from her pain. I believe that Jesus isn't just some grand conductor of our night trains, but he is a simple passenger who meets us on them and sits with us as we watch the world fly by. He just wants to accompany us on our dream-filled adventures and give us comfort and a home along the way. He will never fail to show up when we're desperate. He has this crazy ability to be alive in any place, even places where we would be ashamed if he saw us there.

I do have a night train soul. I desperately want to run fast across train tracks and get eaten by hungry stars in an endless sky. My future is the most uncertain part about my life, and I think about it all the time. But I trust that someday I will hop on my "night train" and be the fearless girl that God is making me. But for now, I'll get up off my bedroom floor and go look at the stars, because no matter how far I go, they'll always be there. And the angels will peep down on me through them, and I'll see the stars twinkle as they flutter by, because stars are holes that penetrate the brightness of heaven. But most of all, I will trust. I will be a messy star and embrace the soul that I've been given in this point of my life. And we can all do the same, as we let our chaos explode into a quiet and brilliant star. Our night trains will carry us closer to heaven as we disappear into the endless beauty of God. And our hearts will blaze with restless splendor.

dream dream dream

Bleeding Sugar

My shoe is off. My foot is cold. I have a bird I like to hold.

             -Dr. Seuss

My mind was a forest. It was an exciting forest, one that kept on giving and never stopped surprising me with clovers under rocks and little mushrooms shoving through cracks, with an enthusiasm to tell me their story. I wanted to pause my life right there in the middle of a grove of a thousand trees, all grimy in my dirty cowgirl boots, and become a tree. I wish I could've dug myself a hole and let my roots soak up slippery mountain water at 11,000 feet. I could be a tree just to stay in that forest forever and let the songbirds overwhelm my heart. My heart would ooze with yellow-y sap and smell like vanilla. People would walk up and smell my heart, take a deep breath, and feel okay about life. That's the kind of tree I would be. The kind that exists to make people feel okay. 

When I camped out at 11,000 feet last summer, I felt like the most insignificant creature on that mountain, and it was the best feeling I've ever had. We strapped all of our stuff (when I say stuff, I mean STUFF. We literally had to stuff everything vital to our existence into a foot-long bag and packed it on our horse, and up the mountain we went. Whenever I'm mad that I didn't pack an extra shirt after spilling a teeny drip of food on mine, I remind my ketchup stain that I survived off of almost nothing for a week. I was super dirty and it was so much fun. I was the star of my own survival show in my head. Don't be surprised to find me sleeping under a tree or rolling in mud one of these days. It's my natural survival instinct :)

As I contemplated life on my sassy horse, Blizzard, (whom I love to death and I wish I could've galloped on her back all the way to California and never come back) I imagined all the people I know as one of the many trees I was watching. Dead and alive. The funky one with the spastic trunk was my little cousin Calissa, and if you met her you'd know why. The beautiful aspens with the whimsical leaves were Peyton and Angela and Nikki and Tanner and all my lovely, incredible sister-friends. The wise old one that I wanted so badly climb was my grandpa. There were hundreds of other trees that had a name, and the forest of unique people that have impacted me was breathtaking. They wave at me in the winds of my unpredictable life and give me shade when I burn up inside. But the beautiful thing about my forest of people was that each one stood it's ground. It knew it was rooted and safe in the mountain soil. It knew it was the product of God's imagination, and it wasn't afraid to thrive because of that. 

With nature and the beauty of trees on the mind, I'm going to share something beautiful with you. I read this poem recently and it makes me want to melt the words in my hand and mix them into coffee and drink them up so I can feel the warmth of their wonder. And here's what so powerful about these words to me: they were scratched onto the walls of a mental asylum by a patient in 1917 and were found after he had been carried to his grave. I'm not sure what made him crazy, but he was headed somewhere greater than his wildest dreams.

Could we with ink the ocean fill, 

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade;

To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry;

Nor could the scroll contain the whole, 

Stretched from sky to sky.

After reading a little bit more on the good ol internet I found out that it's been written and composed into a hymn. If this patient wrote these lovely words (that have been transformed into music) in moments of sanity, why aren't we all completely insane? Why can't we realize that God's love is so big that there's no way we could ever come close to knowing it? If the ocean were ink, and all 7 billion of us humans wrote with every wheat stalk or corn stalk or any stalk that grows in Nebraska, and wrote all over the endless sky, getting it all soaked with ocean ink, for our entire lives, we could never proclaim the love of God, ever. Never ever and ever is never ever never. 

So the question is, if the love of God can drain an ocean dry, and this love is available to us every millisecond of our day, this love that can make us breathe again and feel again and hope again, why do we still seek the poison of this world? Why do we shut God out when he wants to drain the toxins in our hearts? Why do we yearn for attention from this polluted society? When you think of God's indescribable love soothing your bruised heart, who cares if someone looks at us a certain way or wants to include us in their aspen grove of conformity? Can't we grow where we're planted, despite our circumstances? Can't we bloom? Thrive?

I want to write something for my friend who is in a rough spot. He wants me to write about how you can come back and have hope after losing so much, but I want him to hear this, and I think God does too. Don't be a tree that grows in a plastic, Made in China by machines pot. Don't be bought by a random person at a Walmart nursery and not allow your roots to be one with the earth. Don't allow your leaves to rot and scream for life. Be a tree that knows it's identity. It's roots, it's worth. Know this. Engrave it in your tree soul. Be a flourishing tree that lets it's seeds be blown by the Holy Spirit, wherever he decides to plant you. Whether it be in the middle of a dense Rocky Mountain forest or the middle of Kansas, in an overwhelming environment or a lonely countryside, just grow. Bloom. Thrive. Drink so deeply from your roots of the delighting water of compassion, forgiveness, and grace that you sprout a million feet into space and your roots grow to Africa. 

Be that tree in our deprived forest. Be that tree in the center of plastic office plants collecting dust and spiderwebs. Be a living tree that gushes sweet sap for everyone around you. Bloom in the most ordinary, un-beautiful moments imaginable and offer your candy sap to those plastic trees that judge and compare themselves. Invite them to start fresh with a living seed. Because even if they take your sap and put it on their pancakes, at least you've given them something sweet to remember. You've given them joy for the moment, and they'll be coming back for more. So, my dear friend(s), stop seeking attention from plastic people in this plastic society. There is one who is willing to give you more real attention than you can handle. He will plant your tree on top of the Hollywood sign, so big that it will cover the beaten letters and be a blinding rainbow of beauty for all who drive by on the car packed 101. We have to train our hearts to stop worrying about what they will think or do and how I will look or be treated by them. Because when this happens, we can't provide them with our sweet, purpose-for-life sap. We produce artificial sap, and no one wants that.

Let yourself bleed sugar. Bleed real sap. Whatever poison has tried to kill you, bleed it out and let it be eroded by the elements. Jesus longs for you to thrive, and he believes that you can and will. He yearns to bless you with a heart that can't stop gushing with joy-filled sap. Allow him to. Allow him to make you the most living tree out there, seeking only his attention, and you will be so overwhelmed with love that you will be bursting with sap from every single crack in your tree trunk soul. And then God will shine his light on you, and you will glisten brighter than a billion stars.

 The Beautiful Forest of People

 Blizzy Blizzard :) and a super dirty me

 Yayyyy!

oh hey derr

Breathe on these Bones

You will hear thunder and remember me,

And think: she wanted storms.

The rim of the sky will be the color of hard crimson,

And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

-Anna Akhmatova

Look at that. In the corner. LOOK. Do you smell it? Rancid, garage-y smelling like yellow-paged sourness of an old book sitting on a neglected shelf in a basement somewhere. You can swat at the furious flies all you want, but it's still there. The pile of bones in the corner of your heart that sits and waits for you. And sits. And waits. 

All your mistakes. Everything you've failed to do. Everything you thought you might accomplish or might become, but didn't. The beckoning pile of bones sits there. It gets more and more filthy in your desperate heart. The very bottom tip is where these bones sit and weigh your heart down like an anchor. A sinking ship. Help, your heart whimpers. I'm drowning in bones. But no one else can hear it crying; only your mind can. And your mind is wired from the draining outlet of an empty-promising society. 

Haha, you ate that whole bag. You are so fat. Fat is failure. You have to look perfect. Another heavy bone. 

Wow. You really thought he would like you? You're ugly. Super ugly. Look at that zit, those eyebrows? Uh-uh. Failure. More bones pile up, and soon the seams of your heart are ripping open. 

Why would anyone ever love you? Just LOOK at you. Past being gross, you're stupid. No one wants to talk to you. You never have anything good to say. Your life is boring. No one cares. 

A fragile heart can't handle this many bones. Your heart splits open, and bones crash all over the hardwood floor. You made a mess. Your vision becomes a desert of white, and you collapse right on top of the heap, falling deeper and deeper, until you're finally hidden beneath every single imperfection. All you can find left in you is a tiny noise, a silent breath of help. This melody of desperation rises to heavenly ears. He drops everything. He comes over to this heap of bones, not bothered by the sour smell of the past. He digs. He throws the bones aside into a heavenly dumpster that spits them right back out into the devil's face. He finds you, lying there like an abused rag doll; broken, bruised, and completely defeated. You finally open your small eyes, and they see something enormously beautiful. Jesus holds you close.

My beloved, 

I love you. I LOVE you. I love YOU. Please trust me. My heart breaks right along with you every time you obsessively get on that scale, every time you slice that razor into your skin, every time you smoke that "last" joint. Please don't hide from me. I'm not a religion or a set of rules. I didn't come to restrict, I came to set you free from all these terrible feelings. I want you to live a life of freedom and wonder. You are beautiful and I promise I have a plan for you. Your dreams of living in a big city? I've got it under control. Your desire to be loved? The wait will be worth it. Do you believe that I love you? I suffered immense anxiety and rejection. I know what it's like to feel unloved and the weight of being an outcast. All those feelings were nailed to the cross with me. But here's the thing: I came back to life, and they didn't. They are dead to me. They belong to this broken world. I defeated them. Crumbled them like a sour scone. My blood sizzled them like acid. 

Let me love you. All you have to do is say my name. Even if you stop believing, I never stop carrying you. 

Love, 

Jesus

~~~

I'm learning to let go of my bones. I'm learning to throw them as far as I can, and then I sometimes watch as a super strong angel throws them a few galaxies further. Sometimes I'm still trapped. Sometimes I still smell my sour bones. But I'm learning, with breathtaking love supporting me.

I want to be thunder. I want to explode in the sky and rumble in people's hearts, a feeling that gives them shivers. I want to flash in the endless sky like lightning, a split second spark of chaos and beauty and wonder, leaving them wanting more. I want to be a storm, scary and beautiful and exciting all at the same time. I want to be a spectacular sense of wonderment that people will remember and admire. I want to act like rain and walk like summer, a fresh coolness that leaves a crisp sense of joy. A joy that sets hearts on fire.

Lately, my heart has been set on fire. My bones aren't weighing me down anymore. I'm not letting them. It's as if lighting zapped my dried out wooden heart and set it blazing. I feel full of life. I'm so blessed in what God is doing for me. For the amazing people and friends I have who feed that fire. And for my Savior, the one who always makes sure there's a spark, no matter how small.

I remember going camping with my best friend a few summers ago. We stayed in her family's camper and, no joke, I caught an incredible amount of fish, at least for a girl who had never fished before! Party! Then we ate the fish we caught. Holy guacamole it was super fresh and scrumptious :) Anyways, I remember one afternoon while we were feeding chipmunks (hehe) an unbelievable thunderstorm stirred up in the crystal sky. It only lasted a few minutes, but it was one of THOSE thunderstorms. Like the loud and scary and awesome ones with lots of bright lightning and beauty. We ran for cover in the camper, but I remember it being one of the most spectacular thunderstorms ever. And I got to watch it with my best friend. Extra bonus. We were just a bit worried about our chipmunks.

When I see tremendous rainclouds like that, I wish I could take everyone who suffers with me up on that cloud, and we'd sit in the shaving cream softness and float around the world. We'd go wherever we're needed, watching all the people below and seeing the beauty of enormous things with our small eyes. We'd send fabulous storms for people to watch and squirt pure drops life on them. Then we'd float away again and kiss another town goodbye. We'd see a small girl, dreaming and watching the sky behind her bedroom window, wishing we'd stay and carry her too. We'll be back, we'd tell her. But for now, be drenched in sunshine and rainbows. And as we'd float away, a rainbow would trail after us, giving us wings. Our rain would wash away every sadness, tragedy, conflict, issue, and heartache in every town. They would flush down the drain like dirty car-wash water and into the dirt. Then a flower would bloom. A flower of new beginnings that sprouted from decaying bones.

You are worth it. We all have bones, but Jesus will take them for us and cause flowers to sprout from the despair. He can turn your biggest burden into your biggest boast, all because you conquered it through him. Never let society define you in such a way that you think you're worthless or unloved because it's so not true. You are worth dying for. In fact, someone already did die for you. Throw your bones as far as you can, and watch as they tumble and fall, further every minute. Breathe, and let God set your heart on fire. 

 Daisies at Mt. Vernon (who knows how old that soil is)

Double rainbow outside our house last summer!

Okay so this was amazing. Last night I went to a Switchfoot concert with a good friend of mine, and the lead singer, Jon Foreman, is literally my heart and soul packaged into a human being. He loves people so much, it's incredible. ~~Go to a Switchfoot concert sometime in your life~~ seriously...do it~~