It’s the Simple Things

The best things in life are often the smallest.

The first time you exercise after a bout of sickness. A good home-cooked meal. A bowlful of cherries. Flowers you buy just because.

And the best kind of thing – letters from people you love, especially when those people are your niece and nephews. Especially when their drawings remind you that the world is, in fact, a pretty beautiful place, and that you aren’t as far from home as you feel.

Your moment of Zen ...

All in the Waiting

I cleaned the windows in my flat today for the first time in months. I realized when I was home sick this week, sitting on my couch for the better part of every day, that they were pretty dirty.

So I got my cathartic clean on this morning -- the first day without rain in a while. And as I moved from window to window, from inside to out, in that repetitive wiping movement, I realized that those windows were a lot like my relationship with God lately -- that my view has been a bit skewed from the dirty film of my misconceptions about who he is.

It's pretty easy to bring our own ideas about God into situations. To think that God is a lot like this world we live in. Lately, I've been struggling to remember that he is good, that he has good plans for me. (I suppose that's the universal struggle, really.)

A few weeks ago, as I was sitting on a bus stuck in bad traffic that turned a 4 hour trip into a 7 hour trip, I realized that my whole life right now feels like one big waiting room. Not just waiting to get home. Waiting for my new job to start. Waiting for new friendships to deepen. Waiting for someone to share my life with. Waiting to be changed.

The 7-hour bus ride was a return trip from a week retreat with my church. It was good in many ways. I learned a lot. I also struggled a lot. But the thing I came away with was the sense that God is doing something in my life. I just can't see it yet. And my part in the changing of the scenery is to wait. To actively wait, which Henri Nouwen defined best in "A Spirituality of Waiting: Being Alert to God's Presence in Our Lives."

"The secret from waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active waiting means that you are present to the moment, fully and totally, in the conviction that something is happening where you are, and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is very present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment. You see, that's what the world 'patience' means. See, the word 'patience' means the willingness to stay where you are and live it out to the full, to taste the moment to the full in the conviction that something is hidden there that will manifest itself to you."

If I'm honest, I haven't really wanted to be present to the moment lately because the moment, well, it seems a bit overwhelming. And like a petulant child, I haven't wanted to wait.

It goes pretty much hand in hand with the fact that I haven't made a lot of room for God in my life recently. I have been too busy with work and getting things done to listen for him. I have spent time with him, sure, but in a rushed way that leaves little room for him to speak into my life. Because I have been tired. Tired of the stress at work. Tired of the waiting. Tired of myself.

My life's not going to slow down any time soon. If anything, it's about to get busier. Which is why it's all the more important to train my ear to his still, small voice -- which speaks into even the most mundane moments of my day. People all too often think that God is separate from our everyday lives. But the more I know of God, the more I see that he is in everything. That he is the undercurrent flowing through this world of ours.

I know that I will lose focus again, that I will struggle with the same old battles, just as my windows will get dirty again. But life, if anything, is a process. And for now, I'm with T.S. Eliot:

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting."

God Only Knows

I think it was love at first sight.

The first time I read a book by Henri Nouwen, I just knew. He was my soulmate.

I suppose being someone who values words so much, it was natural.

And his words have meant a lot to me over the years. I read "Life of the Beloved" after a hard breakup and it helped soothe an aching soul with truths I needed to read. I remember finding "A Cry for Mercy" in a dusty corner of the Borders near the World Financial Center, at a time when I desperately needed God.

Last week, when my melancholy self was struggling yet again to make sense of this life and my faith, I found myself comforted by words from a familiar voice – one a little further down the road.

And sometimes you just need someone to remind you that you’re normal…

“My reading about the spirituality of the desert has made me aware of the importance of “nepsis.” Nepsis means mental sobriety, spiritual attention direction to God, watchfulness in keeping the bad thoughts away, and creating free space for prayer. While working with the rocks I repeated a few times the famous words of the old desert fathers: “fuge, tace, et quiesce” (live in solitude, silence, and inner peace), but only God knows how far I am, not only from this reality but even from this desire.”

At the End of a Stormy Day

I've found myself lately listening to old Pedro the Lion albums late at night. I sometimes put "Secret of the Easy Yoke" on repeat just to hear the last few minutes, when he sings Peace. Be Still. over and over again.

I guess I have needed to remind myself of that. Again.

I'm feeling pretty worn out today. Just physically tired. From sitting in a chair all day? Maybe. Most likely, though, it's my 5 a.m. start clashing with my night owl self.

Whatever it is, I plan to go to bed early tonight.

But before I do, I just thought I'd share a little snapshot of the sky from my little flat as the sun sets in London.

After a stormy day, where dark clouds seemed to loom overhead for miles on end, blue is peaking through again. So is the sun.

Peace. Be Still.

Distracted From Distraction By Distraction

I read an article today in the New York Times about what this computer age is doing to our brains. (Favorite line: This is your brain on computers.) It was kind of scary to think of what we’ve done and are doing with our crazy need to be plugged in 24-7 to news and technology.

The article said that computer users at work change windows or check email or other programs nearly 37 times an hour. I’m pretty sure that in my line of work, I do more than that. A lot more. And seeing as I’m probably not one of the less-than-three-percent of the population deemed “supertaskers,” it stresses me out. And the amount of information and emails and news I see a day only adds to that feeling.

So tonight, after a packed tube ride home, I decided to unplug. I went for a run. Only my second time in I’m ashamed to admit how long. I didn’t bring a phone or my iPod. (Having started my running days with cross country in high school – back when a Walkman was the latest form of cool, I’ve actually never run with music.)

It was so refreshing to hear the sounds of the city and nature around me. Snippets of conversations I normally shut out with earphones. The ebb and flow of traffic. Birds singing. Wind rustling leaves. The sounds of opera in the park wafting over the voices of people waiting to go into the tent. Rain falling gently through the trees. Dogs barking and playing. Kids hanging out.

Life in acoustic.

I should unplug more often.

Life Moves Pretty Fast

I am amazed at how quickly time flies these days.

I have a theory about this. (I have a theory about most things. I think I get it from my mom...) When you're two, one day equals about 1/730 of your life. It's a big deal. You remember every little thing. At the moment, one day of my life equals 1/11,680. Days just pass by. Weeks pass by. Months pass by. And most of the time, I have a hard time remembering what I did yesterday.

The last month has been a good one, filled to the brim with things that don't include work (although, as usual, I did work a lot.). I had visitors in town -- including one of my dearest friends from Brussels. I went to a jazz club, where grandma that I am, I couldn't keep my eyes open and had to leave hours before my 60-year-old friend. I went to see a play. I went to museums. I walked all over London town. I visited with good friends in Oxford, where I ate at a Michelin-starred restaurant in the middle of nowhere, took a long, meandering country walk and went strawberry and asparagus picking. I went out with friends to delicious dinners. I went to yoga. I walked through blossoming parks. I went lawn bowling in Hyde Park to celebrate the birthdays of very precious friends.

Life has been full. So full that I sometimes forgot to thank God for the many blessings He's given me. So full that I always forgot to write -- though true to my nature, I did feel guilty about it...

It is easy for me in the midst of this fullness to just go quickly through my days. To not stop and enjoy life. To enjoy exactly where I'm at and the people I'm with and the passing of time and seasons. As Ferris Bueller once said: Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

So I'm back from my little hiatus, hoping to take a few moments each day to stop and look around. To be thankful for the small things that make up my life during this season in London, where like the trees and plants all around me, I feel myself changing and growing into a fuller version of myself and who I am meant to be.

Be an Artist

I started taking yoga classes last winter, as I tried to deal with my rising stress levels at work. I had wanted to try it for a while, but never had the nerve in Belgium to attempt to learn the French word for “downward dog” while also learning the pose. (Of course, I suppose there is a good chance that it’s just “downward dog.”)

But there’s a yoga studio about five minutes from my house here, and with the stress thing, I figured it would be worth the money. The fact that it reminds me of my friend Laura in San Francisco is just all the better.

I don’t buy into everything. I still can’t bring myself to do the long, chanting OM that some teachers have you do at the end of class. (And yes, I do totally fake it.)

But I do love the kind of environment it can breed. Like tonight. My teacher started the class by saying what a wonderful job she had. And you could tell she meant it. She is the sort of person who breathes life into the people she meets and the places she goes.

She went on during the class to encourage us all to be more creative, to tap into our inner artists. To be free of the burden of expectation and perfectionism. The last thing she said before we left was something along the lines of: Be an artist.

I find it hard to find the courage to even acknowledge to myself that I am creative. (Be practical!) But over the weekend as I read an article in last month's Vanity Fair about the making of Raging Bull, I found myself craving that kind of creativity in my life.

And I think we all must have an artist in us. Whether it’s the art of loving or creating or baking or writing or organizing or healing. So I’m hoping to make a little more time in my life to nurture the artist in me. To give myself room to fail. As Henry Miller said: We don’t have to turn out a masterpiece every day. To paint is the thing. Not to make masterpieces.

Good Intentions

I have the best intentions.

I mean to write a blog post every day. I mean to leave work on time. I mean to take a lunch break. I mean to go to yoga four times a week. I mean to write friends whose emails have been lingering in my inbox for months, slowly getting pushed back to page 5 or 6. I mean to call friends I haven’t spoken to in ages. I mean to love my colleagues well.

But most of the time, as the erratic posts here prove, I fall flat on my face.

I have to remind myself to not feel guilty. I am a rather guilt-plagued person. Oh I should have. If only I had. Yep, that’s me. I can make myself feel guilty about any little thing. It’s hard work, really, making yourself feel guilty about all the things you could have done differently.

And lately I just don’t have the energy for it. God has been reminding me that it’s OK, that I’m a work in progress. At times it doesn’t feel like it. I don’t even often see the scaffolding going up around my heart. If I’m lucky, I notice a rail or two. It usually takes a jackhammer going off at 5 a.m. to get my attention.

In London at the moment there is all kinds of construction going on. (Apparently there’s a big rush to spend spend spend before a new government is elected.) You can hardly walk down a street without seeing a detour sign. It’s crazy. First it was on Ludgate Hill, leading up to St. Paul’s, where they've blocked half of the street. Then it was at Notting Hill Gate, where they seem to be fixing a pipe or two. Now it’s on the street outside my flat.

And it seems like the construction on this heart of mine is getting closer to home too. It’s good. It could use a little spring cleaning. Hopefully I’ll let the guilt get swept out with the cobwebs, instead of hiding it under the rug, and in the meantime give myself a little more grace.

(Not So) In Control

Today a massive cloud of ash moved its way from the spewing mouth of an Icelandic volcano down across much of Europe and just like that, it shut down air travel across a wide swath of the globe.

In its wake are thousands of people stuck at airports or at the very least with annoying last-minute changes to their plans. Hundreds who have had to be evacuated from their homes because, oh yeah, the volcano happened to be sitting under a glacier.

It’s funny how often we fool ourselves into thinking we are in control. I don’t know about you, but I really like to think I have a firm grip on life – even knowing in my deepest self that I’m faking it. I’m a bit of a control freak, really. I think we all are in our own ways. But in moments like these, and in ones that aren’t quite so bizarre, it’s pretty clear that we’re not.

While that drives me crazy more often than not – patience is not really one of my virtues – it should actually be a massive relief for a people pleaser like myself. Because it sometimes feels like I’m Atlas carrying around a bronze world on my shoulders. When the truth of the matter is: I don’t have to.

And really it comes down to who I think God is, which is way too often way too small. So here’s to a God who knows the exact number of the billions of ash particles in a certain cloud making its way across a rather small continent in a planet in a solar system in a galaxy in a possibly infinite universe. And here’s to a God who also knows the number of hairs on my head and each moment of my day.

His eye is on the sparrow.

The Gleam of a Penny

When I look back on the last several months, I feel like – well, to be honest, I feel like I can’t remember much about them outside of my trip to Italy with my mom and sister.

It may be just that I’m getting older, but my memory isn’t THAT bad – yet. Or maybe it’s the London fog. But I have a feeling that it has more to do with the fact that I’ve just been too busy. Too busy to see God, to wait for his still small voice.

I feel it most keenly when I’m at church, where lately I find myself fidgeting and very aware of my inability to be still.

But I’ve been as aware of how God has met me, even in those times – especially in those times.

In her book “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” Annie Dillard wrote: “The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.”

While I feel like I’ve had a bit of tunnel vision these last few months, even in my limited view, I have seen the gleam of a penny or two. More than that. God has been reminding me lately of his abundant love and of all the pennies stored up for me. So many, in fact, that even when I’m not looking, I stumble upon them.

A New Season

Spring finally arrived in London this week.

There were signs before now that it was coming. But then the grey and rain would come again and you’d forget that the sky could be blue or the feeling of the sun against your skin.

The last few days have been glorious. Blue skies. Sun. Flowers everywhere. Trees blossoming. I’ve spent them in the parks and on the streets. It’s amazing how people seem to come out of the woodwork on the first warm day. The sidewalks are packed. The parks have no green patch left under the mass of people.

I am thankful for a new season. For the reminder that things don’t always stay the same. That things we once thought dead – hopes, dreams, relationships – can be brought back to life, resurrected. Even from the greyest of winter. I needed that reminder. Work has been hard. Life has felt a little lonely. I have found myself wondering, as I often do, what I’m doing with my life.

The sun has done me good. I feel like I am coming to life with the nature around me.

And I decided tonight that this new season needs a new soundtrack. I have been stuck in a rut for a while – listening to old stuff, mostly The Smiths. But today I downloaded some new music to mark at least these next few months.

I’m already in love with Local Native. And somehow I think I’ll be as obsessed with Frightened Rabbit’s “The Winter of Mixed Drinks” as I was their last album. It will be nice to have good company on my tube rides.

An Education

The U.K.’s election season started in earnest today. In a series of calculated moves, Gordon Brown met with his cabinet before heading to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament so that elections could be called. She said yes.

Coming from a very American idea of democracy and government, the politics here – and the ceremony, the decorum and the sometimes lack thereof – at times baffle me almost as much as the accents. (Today I found myself yet again sitting next to some girls on the tube who I at first thought were from some foreign country, speaking a language I couldn’t decipher. Only to find that when I listened for a few minutes, they were – in fact – speaking English.)

It is a strange time to be an American in the U.K. Or maybe it’s just a strange time to be in the U.K.

The media are calling it the most interesting election since 1997, when Tony Blair and the Labour Party swept to power with a promise to modernize the country – ending years of Tory dominance.

Strangely enough, this weekend I was a bit immersed in that exact moment. I finally watched The Queen. (Late, as usual, to the party.) And it was an education.

I can’t say I understand this place much more than I did. Or that I will fully grasp the politics of this election. Then again, I don’t think I really comprehend the politics of my own country much either.

But I find that history is always important in understanding countries and people. We each have our own background – small or maybe large moments that add up to a certain point of view, a certain way of interacting with others. That add up to who we are. And it is important to try to see, at least for a moment, from the other point of view.

I wish that were easier to practice than to preach. It is, in fact, one of the harder things we can attempt. But it is also one of the things that would make this world a more compassionate place.

Contemplating Easter

Last February, I got sick. Really sick. I was out of work for over a month with a second bout of mono. My mom came to take care of me for several weeks, because I was pretty much unable to do even basic things without extreme, exhausting effort.

It was awful. But it was also one of the best things that has happened to me. After a week or so of watching TV shows and DVDs on my computer, of reading gossip Web sites, of trying to find ways to occupy endless hours of boredom, I found myself just wanting to rest, to be quiet, to spend time with God.

It is a rare thing in this crazy world of ours to have time like that. But leave it to mono to open up all kinds of opportunity.

My sickness came during Lent, which I don’t think was any kind of coincidence. And as I read books like Tim Keller’s “The Reason for God” along with my readings from a little book my friend Caroline found years ago and which still guides my everyday time with God – “A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants,” I found myself understanding for what seemed like the first time the meaning of the cross and the depth of God’s love.

I grew up a Christian. I've gone to church for as long as I can remember. I am actually really thankful for that, but I also find that there are some things that simply become route about faith because you have heard them your whole life. “God loves you.” “Yep. Got it.” “Jesus died on the cross for you.” “Uh huh.”

But as I was forced to take a big step back from the restlessness of my life, as I spent hours in quiet solitude with God, those most basic truths about my faith became real to me again.

A year out, in an entirely different city, on an entirely different couch, I find myself contemplating those same things as Easter comes again. And I am amazed at a God who comes. Who meets us in the darkest night. Who brings us out into the light. Who loves us beyond anything we can measure or imagine.

It can be hard to remember that. This world is broken. I am broken. There are things — awful things, evil things — that I just can’t explain. But what I always come back to, in the end, is that the God I believe in is one who isn’t removed from pain or suffering. He knows the depths of the deepest pit. And the thing that gives me hope is his resurrection. Because it means that one day everything will be restored, everyone will be whole again.

I know that seems crazy to most people in this world of ours. Sometimes I think it’s a bit crazy too. But my life’s been completely changed by it. And as Jonathan Edwards once said: “There is a difference between believing that God is holy and gracious, and having a new sense on the heart of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. The difference between believing God is gracious and tasting that God is gracious is as different as having a rational belief that honey is sweet and having an actual sense of its sweetness.”

Reading the Fine Print

I love a lot of things about England. After spending three years in a schizophrenic culture I never fully understood, I find the similarities to home comforting. I know that it is a weird thing to say. I have a feeling it’s not something most American expats in London would say. They’ve never lived in Belgium.

But there are things that still baffle me about the English, as a recent trip to the grocery store proved. I wanted to buy some rice cakes (no comment on my food choices, please). I scanned the shelves for the lightly salted ones I like, but there were none to be found. After looking around for a few minutes, I found something I hadn’t seen before: SAVOURY rice cakes. I was thinking salty, with a little seasoning. Perfect.

Unfortunately for me, I have never been good at reading the fine print. Remember those tests you took in elementary school, where the teacher told you to read through the entire test and then fill it out? I was one of the kids who started filling in the answers immediately – before getting to the end, where there are instructions that tell you to simply put your pencil down and not answer a single question …

So it wasn’t until I got home and had my first bite of a “savoury” rice cake that I realized something was wrong. It wasn’t until I had a bitter aftertaste in my mouth that I read: Our delicious Wholegrain Rice Cakes are simply made with organically grown wholegrain brown rice puffed into a light texture and coated in yeast extract … Um. Excuse me?

That’s right. Yeast extract. Lovingly known here – and detested the world round – as Marmite.

I am sorry, England. I love your accents (at least the ones I can understand). I love your humor (Excuse me, your humour). I love your literature. I love your music. I love your art and poetry. I love your TV and I even mostly love your food. But I cannot understand for the life of me WHY you would put yeast extract on anything. And I hate to say it, but I really don’t care to ever know either. Sorry. It’s true.

On the other hand, at least I can read the packaging.

On Courage

There is this man I see some mornings on my way to work. Sometimes he is crossing the square next to St. Paul’s. Today he was walking up Ludgate Hill.

It’s hard not to notice him. He is hunched over. His back and his legs are crooked and every step is a deliberate act. His arms swing like a runner’s in the middle of a sprint. Walking to work seems like it might be the toughest thing he does all day.

And what struck me today as I saw him struggle up the street is that he chooses to do it. Every day. He chooses the harder way. And it is courageous. The simple act of walking.

It is easy to believe that to be brave we have to do big things. But I sometimes imagine that it is actually in our smallest, everyday acts that we choose courageous lives.

I have been struggling lately with how to really love. With what it means to be a light in the darkness. And I think that too comes in the small, everyday acts.

I mostly feel like a failure. My heart and my mind, like that man’s body, can be pretty crooked.

The thing is: I am going to screw up. I’m going to get it wrong. I’m going to fail. I’m going to fall flat on my face. And I think that might actually be right where I’m supposed to be. Because that is where grace – which, let’s be honest, is the only way I’m ever going to be able to truly love – is able to start its work.

So I pray for the courage to keep choosing the harder way, even knowing I will fail. Because I also know that it will also be the better way.

True Colors

OK. I’ll admit it. I’m a sucker for pop culture.

I used to, I confess, look a bit down on it. Thought of myself as something of an intellect, I suppose. I remember huffing at my roommates’ US Weekly – before I would somehow strangely find it in my hands … But now the truth’s out in the open.

My latest obsession is Glee, which came about because of a hiatus in my other obsession, Gossip Girl (And yes, I think there might actually be a chance that I’m a 13-year-old girl.)

While I’m sure you in the U.S. have been watching for ages, Glee only landed in the U.K. recently and the minute I heard “Don’t Stop Believin’," I was hooked. Who wouldn’t be after hearing the theme song of karaoke bars around the world?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a bit of a snob about music. But the thing I’ve come to appreciate in my relatively old age is entertainment for entertainment’s sake. I used to believe that a movie or a TV show weren’t worth my time if they weren’t thought provoking. Now, like John Sullivan in Sullivan’s Travels, I’ve realized that there are enough hard things in this world. Sometimes you just need to laugh.

What surprises me so often about pop culture, though, is how it will show me some truth I’d forgotten. Like last week’s Glee, when they sang "True Colors" at the end of the show – and it was somehow something I needed to hear. That who I am is unique and precious. Leave it to Cyndi Lauper.

That’s also the thing about God that surprises me. How he can use even a pop song to reach me exactly where I’m at.

The Good Fight

I got home last night from a week of family, sunshine, good food and gelato in Italy. It was a much-needed respite from my everyday life.

And while Tuscany this time of year is still a bit brown, green was cropping up everywhere – as my sister’s terrible allergies could attest. It was wonderful to watch the countryside and cities come alive, and to live a different sort of life for a little while.

Lately it seems that I’ve been just going through the motions of each day without really taking into account what makes them up, which I suppose is how we mostly go through life – especially during stressful or busy seasons.

But Italy woke me up. And if I’m honest, I think God had been trying to wake me up even before then. To the fact that I should be soaking in life more. Paying attention to the people and situations around me. Paying attention to the things that matter.

In Orvieto, we stayed in a little bed and breakfast that was, as my dad would say, a Mary Poppins kind of a place – practically perfect in ever way. In Cinque Terre, my sister and I went on a hike along a mountainous path overlooking the sea. The freshness of the air alone restored me. In Siena, we stayed at an old nunnery that overlooked the city and woke up to see the duomo bathed in light. In Rome, the warmth and beauty of the days and food more than made up for the mobs of people we encountered almost everywhere we went.

It’s really hard to slow down when you’re back in reality, though. To not always wish away my time – if only I were back in Italy, in New York or if only I had such and such a life or were with so and so.

It is easy, in a way, to miss things – even when you choose to live far away. It is much harder to live a life in the present, much harder to choose the important thing – or to see the important thing for that matter – when the urgent is frantically calling you. That’s the battle, I suppose, of our modern life. (And, I suspect, of the ancient life too.)

After a week (mostly) away from the madding crowd, I feel ready again to fight.

One Hand on the Escape Latch

I hit a wall today at work. I just felt like I couldn’t care any more or work any harder. Which might have something to do with the long hours and weeks I’ve put in lately. Or the levels of stress at the office, where it feels like any small shift will cause the duct tape to unravel and things will start falling apart.

The good thing is that these moments tend to hit when I have one hand on the escape latch. I’m leaving on a weeklong Italian holiday Saturday with my mom and sister – two of my favorite people in the world in one of my favorite countries.

I know that most of the things that are weighing on me now will be waiting for me when I get back, but there is something to be said for coming back to the battle rested and with a fresh perspective.

My dad always says that when you feel like I did today, it’s best to just go to sleep and everything will look better in the morning. I wonder if it would be OK to nap at work?

Becoming

The organic grocery store in my neighborhood has started carrying blood oranges from Spain. They are so delicious I can hardly stop myself at one.

It amazes me how dark they get. I grew up only on plain oranges, maybe the occasional clementine. And while they turn a lovely shade of orange, I love the dark, juicy red of a ripe blood orange. It is somehow more delightful. It somehow tastes better, even though my colleague told me today as I offered her a precious sliver that it tastes just like any other orange.

The thing that hit me as I sat last night eating yet another blood orange was how the most recent batch I’d bought were so much darker than the last ones. Which got me thinking about the process of ripening, which led my always over-analytical mind to the idea of becoming.

I have for a long time now been slightly obsessed with the idea of becoming and have found great comfort in it. It probably stems in part from my perfectionist tendencies.

I like processes. I don’t often like what they feel like when you’re in the middle of them, but I like to know that I am a work in progress. There is a lot of hope in that. It’s what I connect to in modern art, which is so often about the process. It’s about the making of something – and the triumph that innately stems from a simple act of creation.

I love this idea of becoming because it is about grace in the end. I am critical of myself to a fault, always thinking that who I am is not enough. But if I am in process, if I am becoming, then these things are only a part of my refining.

I do believe that we are supposed to love who we are, as we are. And I am, slowly, growing more comfortable in my own skin. But there are moments when I need the hope of more, moments when it’s good to remember that I am still in process.

Hope Springs

After a seemingly endless cold and dark winter, the sun has been shining in London for almost a week now. It is still cold, but there are glimpses of spring.

I love the changing of the seasons, especially this one. I find the winters hard to bear, the lack of sunlight in particular. You go to work in the dark, come home in the dark. And even during daylight, the sun is often hidden under a heavy layer of grey.

But for the last week or so, it has been light when I come out of the tube at 6.45 a.m. And I feel a shift in my heart. I think it is hope. That soon I will be able to shed my winter blues along with my winter coat, and put both away in the closet for another nine months. That life will be blooming around me in a few weeks time. The leaves on trees will fill out their skeleton frames. Flowers will break through the soil.

I have been ready for spring for several months now, with my heart filled every now and again with a deep longing for sunshine and warmth. But it was hard at times in the depths of February to believe it would ever come. It had been so cold and so grey for so long.

It is amazing how brief an appearance from the sun it takes to renew hope, to restore a little bit of joy, to move us out from under the clouds of despair.

I know there will be dark days again, but I am thankful today for the sun and these glimmers of spring, of hope, that will get me through them.

There Is Only the Trying

Two summers ago, before I moved to London, I visited the city and found myself – as I often do – at the modern art museum. The Tate had a Cy Twombly exhibit, and as I walked through the rooms, I fell a little bit in love.

One particular print, “The Wilder Shores of Love,” stuck with me.

I have never been one for the beach. If you took one look at my pale skin, you’d understand why. But I do have a thing for the ocean. And I’ve had some important moments in my life sitting with the water lapping at my toes.

Moments when I saw “the more” I am always searching for. Moments when I realized that everything I have known is only the shoreline of love – love of friends, of family, but most importantly of God. Moments when I knew that, if I were brave enough – and I prayed I was brave enough, I would walk out a bit further each day into the ocean depths.

Which is a bit what this blog is about.

I’m not a brave person in general. I’m a writer, but I find it hard to find the courage to really write. I’m shy and reserved. And even the ladybugs that infiltrate my flat in the fall freak me out. But, as my favorite poet T.S. Eliot says: For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.