Søren Kierkegaard

It is only in love that the unequal can be made equal.

Art for now

I wanted to post yesterday about the 50th anniversary of MLK's "I Had a Dream" speech, but I never got to it. Maybe I will in the next few weeks.  There's lots I have to say about race, but this week I'm simply too busy to write anything meaningful.  So I will direct you instead to you my favorite artist:

Marcia Furman

If you read this blog regularly (i.e. we're friends in real life) there's a strong possibility you've already heard of Ms. Furman because of me. :)  This woman paints what I would paint if I could paint, which is why I love her. Here's my current fave: 

"Doubts - they get the best of me" by Marcia Furman

If you like her style you can buy cool things at her Etsy and Zazzle shops.  (Also a good place to go if you're dying to buy me a present but have no idea what to get...)

::Goal::

That,
when my feet hurt from work
and I have homework
and housework,
I would be
as patient
and kind
and smiley
and invested
with the 6-year-old
as I am with
the grocery store clerk
or my best friend on the phone.

This is adulthood; this is growth; this is my goal.

Friendship!

It's so great, guys.
The investment of years is worth it.
The good times.
The bad times.
The times you wonder, "Why are we friends?"
Yeah. 
Life is good.
Make friends. Keep them. Stick with it. It just gets more beautiful.

Baba W

She was so much older than my grandmothers, because my best friend's parents were so much older than my parents.  But with the age, perhaps, came the wisdom. 

And peace.
She was peace, personified.
She was joy.
She was graciousness.

How can I describe her?  How can I give you a taste of this beautiful slice of my life? A person wanted to be around Baba, felt better around Baba, couldn't help loving Baba. Baba was so much at rest with who she was and what the world was. She is what comes to my mind when I think about who I want to be. I miss her rolling Russian accent. I miss hearing her pray in her native language. I miss her roses and her back house and her kitchen and the little jar of candy on the coffee table. I'm glad I knew her, and grateful that her memory is almost as strong and fresh as her presence even years after her passing.  It...she...reminds me to hold on to peace and let myself give grace.

God, that I might be like Baba.

I'm baaaaaaack!

Well my dears, I privatized for a while and thought about deleting, but here I am again.  I like this outlet.  I like looking back at old posts and remembering my life.  It is good.

You know what else is good?  My life.  I've had a good life.  I've lived, and that has made it good.  Kierkegaard talks a lot about venturing and risk; I think, as a young man, he did not risk enough in life and later regretted it.  I, however, am a master at risk (with both success and failure) and have no regrets.  (Well, very few, and the ones I do have would be silly to most people.)  I don't think you can live with regret and live with heart at the same time.  Risk and venture are part of life and we can only work with what's been built before.  So if I step out and risk something and it fails, what have I lost?  Nothing.  I have gained everything.  I have gained knowledge from my failure, I have gained boldness by learning how to fail.  I have been broken of perfectionism because failure has taught me I am imperfect.  I've learned to give grace to others in their failures, and I've learned to let go of the ideal for the sake of the real. 

I love risk and I love failure.  Because of this, looking back, I love the life I have thus-far lived. Even in the hard times (Endo!) I have lived fully, and to die today would be no loss.  What a lovely life I have been given.  How beautiful life is. I am content.

(Of course I must acknowledge my parents, cause they never held me back with fear or caution.  This is a great rarity among parents, I think, and I am blessed.)

BBF* is engaged!

This means I'm going to England for a wedding, baby! Oh yeah.

*Best British Friend

.:First day of the new year:.

Friends for 27 years!

Perfect sunset, January 1, 2013

Sunset at Newport Beach

"Sometimes it is a kindness to let someone be wrong."

So said I to my niece one sunny afternoon when she was yelling at her friend Zach because he insisted that 14 immediately follows 7.

He was on the point of tears and insisted he was right.
He was wrong.
But he was 4.

He hadn't yet grown up enough to realize, indeed, 14 does not immediately follow 7.  Yelling at him wouldn't do any good, and it would be kinder to let him sit in his fallacy until he was ready to hear the truth.

Thus I tried explaining to my niece.  And as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized I needed to hear them far more than she.

Many moons ago I was a 3-year-old in love with my older sister. She was my favorite person in the entire world and I would have sold my "beautiful blond hair" to be exactly like her. She liked me a lot too - until my mother naively allowed me to sit beside them while Mom taught Sarah to read.

Sarah has dyslexia and I don't. No one new this at the time, so just by sitting with them I learned to read within a few months, while Sarah didn't learn for another couple of years. It was at this point that Sarah decided she hated me, and she would continue to hate me for the next 15 years.

About a week ago I wasn't using my brain and I recounted this old family story to my 5-year-old niece who is currently learning to read. Tonight she popped in one of her reading videos, and after a few minutes I heard her say, "Mommy, you need to listen to this. You need to learn the sounds so you can learn how to read better and you can like Aunty Rachel."

That bit about getting married...

February will see me to 31, and I have no problem with that.  I didn't have a problem with 30, or with 29 before her, so why should 31 be any different?  I don't agree with the phrase "age is just a number" because I definitely experience different things with different ages...there are biological realities that simply pay no attention to cliches, and these things must be faced and, to some extent, embraced.  But I don't get panicky over the passing years or my changing body, so growing older doesn't bother me.  I like birthdays.  I like birthday presents.  I like birthday cards. (February 22, ya'll.)

The one thing that never changes as I age is my older, married, female friends' conviction that I'm going to get married someday.  I have reconciled the possibility of "spinsterhood" for myself, cause, frankly, I may not get a spouse.  I mean, I just might not.  I'm nearly 31 and no prospects*. And for me, that's okay.  I'm okay with my marital status.  But when I make comments like, "Well, I may not get married," my older, married, female friends jump in with

"Oh no, I'm sure you will!"
and
"I don't think singleness is what God has for you!"
and
"Don't worry honey!  There's someone out there for you!"

I...don't know how to respond.  I'm content; don't steal my peace.  Cause really sweet friends, I simply might not get married.  And I am perfectly, 100% fine with that.  Please let me focus on my present and not be distracted by a future that may never happen.

*A word to my friends: do not suggest online dating.  Just don't. Just.don't.

My eyes shall see light again/

my heart shall bleed right again.

The best part about being sick

is the flowers.

The way we are with God

"I have decided," he said slowly, his head rolled back as he sat on the couch strung out on heroine, "to give your friend R.A. a chance."  This, to my friend, his older sister, who told him she would, "Never do that to R.A."

He's good looking.
He's intelligent.
He's a raging drug addict who sleeps with a loaded gun under his pillow.
If he didn't love heroine more than food or family or life itself I might be willing to go on a date with him, but as is he doesn't have a snowball's chance in Phoenix. I'm no prize and I'm willing to overlook other people's issues, but I am not taking on a drug addict.  I watched my sister go through that; not happening.

Anyway it's a bit funny to think of a man lost in addiction giving a non-addict "a chance".  
I have to smile.

And then I stop and think, 
"This is how we are with God."

We are beautiful, no doubt.  How couldn't we be?  We're the Imago Dei, and as long as we bear His image we are beautiful, if broken, creatures. But God is too good for us.  Yet we sit there in our self-addiction saying to God, "I have decided to give you a chance."

How God must smile. 

Thank You

Here's the thank you note Bekah is posting through Give Forward.  Some of you gave anonymously, so I'm also posting it here since I can't thank you personally.  You guys are amazing!

Dear friends,

 

I'm sorry I didn't get this thank you out sooner, but how do you thank people for something so important?  I am really blessed by all of you - though the Give Foward website doesn't reflect it, some people also gave to me personally, and with all the gifts combined you guys raised over $8,000 for me!  That's monumental, and I am extremely grateful.  If you guys hadn't pulled together and been so gracious, I would've had to wait at least one more year before I could afford surgery.  So thank you.  Thanks for caring about me.  Thanks for helping me in my greatest hour of need.  This experience of opening up about the disease and accepting help from my community has grown me in big ways and helped me understand how we ought to care for and interact with one another. I am really overwhelmed.  Really and truly.  I mean, $8000!  That's a lot of love. :)

 

Bekah will continue to post updates on the Give Forward website and on Facebook if you would like to hear how surgery goes.  After all, you paid for it!  Oh, and I also found out they record the whole thing and I get a copy, so in some ways you could see it as having funded a full-length motion picture.  Movie night, anyone? ;)

 

Thank you again, so very much.  From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

 

Love,

Rachel

< 24

In less than 24 hours my sister had a baby, my favorite second-cousin got himself engaged, and I found out one of my close friends is moving to my city this Friday. 

Good, good week! :)  Happy 4th (tomorrow) everyone!

This week I

• decided to have surgery, which I've been trying to avoid for more than half a decade
• made a video talking about my chronic pain and posted it publicly on YouTube for the entire world to watch if they wanted
• asked everyone I know for money for myself, and
• sat back and watched this unbelievable response of love and support from them

I'm a processor who journals or blogs her brains out about everything.  Just one of those bullet points listed above would require a month, at least, of processing.  And all 4 have happened within the span of a few days.  I'm a bit on overload right now, like that little colored spinning wheel that pops up when your Mac just can't handle all you're asking of it.  Can't journal.  But it's been great for working out. ;)

Unbearable grace

On May 11th I swallowed a pill called Pride
and asked all my friends and family to help me pay for surgery.
And I thought that was painful.
Then they started giving,
and my heart didn't know if it was soaring or sinking.
The love of others is a magnificent burden;
heavy in a good way, like a thick blanket in the middle of winter.
Or,
like a wave pulling you under and flipping you over,
making you realize how tiny you really are.
Or,
like that moment on the roller coaster...
the one where you tip the edge and start going down really fast.

Thank you for turning me upside down,
inside out;
for wrapping your arms around me,
and making me realize how good it is to need you.

I want to go to Romania.

My 5-year-old niece gets frozen yogurt as a special treat when she's been exceptionally well-behaved or has helped out around the house or whatever.

Her favorite is Yogurt Mania.

She always slips and calls it Romania.

"Can we go to Romania now?"

Yes.  Yes we can.

Congrats?

Is it good to get married at 21-years-old?

I'm not the person to say,

but,

I know that I am SO GLAD I didn't marry the boy I liked when I was 21.

Or 22.

Or 23.

Etc.

I'm okay with being 30 and single.  So okay that it kind of freaks me out when my much younger loved ones get married much younger...