11-26-09
all these places feel like home
grateful:
1. God…i know that seems trite, because everyone says they’re thankful for God, but it’s true. I’m so in love with Him!
2. my amazing, crazy, supportive, loving, helpful, wonderful family
3. my friends, both near and far…i don’t want to imagine where (or who) I’d be without you.
4. my job. i actually enjoy going to work daily – never thought i would say that!
5. school. i’m learning way more than i ever thought possible, and it’s so, SO good for me.
6. living in my hometown. never thought i would say that either, but there’s something comfortable about being here now and choosing to embrace it rather than resign myself.
7. good music that speaks to my soul (what i’ve been listening to lately, plus snow patrol and one republic on repeat!)
8. my church. we’re still in the ‘getting to know you’ phase, but so far, i like her.
9. i know i already said my family, but this year i am especially grateful that my mom is healthy.
10. New York City…I know, it’s weird that I can be grateful for being in Tennessee and for NYC at the same time, but I am. You can love in two places at once (roots and wings!)
10-20-09
How much love would make you whole?
I’d never thought of myself as someone with ‘trust issues’ until I moved to New York. Maybe I always had them and didn’t realize it, but more likely it was that I hadn’t had to make that choice. I naturally trusted my family and friends in Tennessee, but when I moved and started afresh it was a decision I had to make.
i wrote these words on the wall of my first apartment: you have to trust someone in order to follow them. i was having a hard time believing that anyone in that whole city was for me (as opposed to against). I felt like I had no one. No one who knew me, the real me at least. These things take time. 6 months, for me…longer, for some.
i had a lot of thoughts on what leadership is, and hospitality, and how that plays out in a city such as New York. It got better. We got better at it. we might even be good at it now, because we’ve all been alone and we don’t want anyone to feel that way so we ask new people to lunch and we invite them to our growth communities and we encourage them not to leave, to give New York a chance, to plant themselves there for a while because it really can be good, if you let it.
it took awhile before there were people to be that for me, but in that alone [lonely] 6 months God taught me about community and what it meant and how to create it and grow it and learn to need it and even trust it. even when it’s hard, like one night when you have to sit down and tell your community that you’re dealing with the hardest struggle you’ve ever faced and you have to confess and tell them details and ask for help and prayers. and now we’re all better and stronger because of that night, and i would not change it. it’s hard to need somebody, but i needed them. need them, present tense.
I learned that trust is a choice. i learned that with a growing faith, the choice to trust someone gets even more difficult. Trusting someone doesn’t mean that we won’t be let down – rest assured we will – but we do it anyway, because we need each other. and no one is perfect.
Recently God has gifted me with new people, a new church, a job i completely love, and a new community. A different kind of community, because I don’t live in close proximity with most of these people. But a community in the sense that they know me, they are for me, they encourage me, and in turn i am learning to trust them.
This past weekend I was surrounded by people from New York and people from Tennessee. we were laughing and eating cake and the conversation was so good and everything just felt like it was in the right place. it was one of those ‘clarity’ moments in my life — the choice to trust means i get to love and be loved. and if trust means risk, i’m risking it all because it’s totally worth it.
06-29-09
it’s difficult to lose a person.
“New York City is the greatest city in the world. It is a perfect thunderstorm, scary at first with all it’s lightning and thunder, but then you grow to love it, to feel alive inside it….Someone told me once that New York City was like a person, and I suppose I understand that now. It is difficult to lose a person.
They knew me. They know me. My eyes are honest. I don’t have to say anything.
There is perhaps a strange freedom in my certainty. It’s like playing poker with God, and I’m all in – every last chip. And He had to know that I would be, because he made me this way. And I cry sometimes, but I also have to smile, because win or lose, we’re walking out of here together. And I wonder if it’s rare, this crazy thing always pushing in my chest, the weight also a gift, God always saying “Come on, follow me. Let’s go see this new thing. You have to trust me.” And me with all my questions, always reaching to rewind, that button always broken. And everyone with their stories and encouragement, words about…redemption and ‘this too shall pass.’ And God smiling, going ‘It’s me, you know me, I know you, I’m proud of you, Let’s go, Let’s do this, You’ve never been alone.’”
06-24-09
missing you
my first experience with missing someone was my freshman year of college. several of my close friends went to a school 3 hours away, and i felt pretty much alone. my parents had just divorced and i didn’t feel like i could leave them (co-dependent much?), so i stayed in town since there was a perfectly good university right down the street from my house.
i started school in the middle of august and i went to visit my friends over labor day weekend. the reunion was loud and girly and…well, loud, but there was this underlying aching feeling that i had never experienced – that feeling when you know you only have a short time and will be leaving soon, so you have to make the most out of every conversation, every moment.
that feeling has been a part of me ever since.
when i lived in new york and would come to tennessee for the weekend, every second of every day was planned to the max. i tried to make sure i saw everyone and spent some good quality time with them because time wasn’t a luxury. there was this sense of urgency the whole time i was here.
the great thing about being back in tennessee is that i’m not always leaving tomorrow or the next day. it’s something that is hard to get used to, though, not feeling anxious about time running out because i have to get on a plane. my time here is something i don’t yet take for granted because i missed it for so long. i love driving to nashville for work, eating dinner with my family, trying out new churches, seeing the same people two days (or more!) in a row and for more than a two hour stretch. it’s a different dynamic, one we’re all adjusting to, but it is good. and i don’t think it could have been this good if i had moved back two years ago, or even one year ago.
you can’t be in two places at once, but you can love in two places at once. the beauty in leaving gracefully – not running – is that you get to return without fear. and tomorrow i will get on a plane that will take me back to a city i love and people i love and a church i love and i will have that sense of urgency/aching feeling that i have to make the most out of my time in new york.
i can’t wait.
06-17-09
it’s the end where i begin.
February 25, 1995 (age 14):
“When I get older…I’m NOT staying in Murfreesboro all my life because I want to go somewhere….I wanna be somebody. I can’t stand the thought of staying here my whole life.”
Summer 2000 (age 19):
[Conversation with my dad while in Times Square]
“Dad. You don’t understand. I HAVE to live here someday.”
(He knew I would).
December 4, 2004 (age 23):
[From a list called "THINGS I WANT TO DO BEFORE I DIE"]
5. Live in New York
Summer of 2006: (age 25):
“I love my life here. I love navigating the subway and the bus. I love pretending I’m a New Yorker. I’ve been here 2 weeks. 14 days. Have I loved every minute? Nope. But I think I’m happy. It’s happiness I can feel in my bones. It resonates like the words to my favorite song that I can’t stop playing. I wake up singing it, go to sleep singing it, sing it in the shower, and play it loud as I prepare for my day. I love this city.”
Spring 2007 (age 26):
“It took moving to another city and being truly alone for the first time in my life to realize I have nothing figured out.”
Summer of 2008 (age 27):
[a letter to new york]
“somehow i was able to fall in love with the real you – to see past the lights and the metal and the crowds and the perception that your outward facade was all that there was to you. the real you just makes all of that more beautiful, more inviting. i still love times square and broadway. public transportation is the best thing ever, especially these days. and my heart beats fast every time i look at your skyline. walking across your bridges is one of my favorite things to do, just to see you from a different perspective. you have so much to offer, and because of you i have learned so much about me.”
April 19, 2009 (age 28):
“I don’t have a lot of answers, and quite honestly, I’m not searching for them. I’m learning that ‘I don’t know’ is perfectly acceptable.
I’m leaving New York. I’m moving back to Tennessee for a while. It’s good.”
Summer of 2009 (age 28):
[From Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst]
“…and things do affect us, right? People we meet, places we go? Maybe I have found something, but it doesn’t fit neatly into [a box]. Maybe it’s going to take me a while to even figure out what it is. We’re in a car heading toward our house, and out the window I can see us whizzing past all the landmarks of my childhood. We pass my elementary school, and the supermarket we always shop at. Everything looks familiar and strange all at once.
We’re home, whatever that means.
I take a breath of the summer air that’s not like the air in any other place in the world.”
05-21-09
new york is hard.
- Rach
05-20-09
it’s important for me to remember these things
at the end of every season it’s hard not to wish time away. one thing i’m constantly trying to learn is to be present, to embrace the moment, to cease focusing on my future or my past and be here now. i’m not great a living in the moment. my mind is often elsewhere, dreaming or planning or hoping.
so, to remember what i love about this city, a list:
- exploring central park
- street/subway musicians
- walking through Grand Central and Times Square on the way to work
- watching multiple episodes of How I Met Your Mother with a good friend.
- street jewelry in SOHO
- summer nights at Blockhead’s
- late night chats w/all 4 roommates (few and far between)
- being a train ride away from the beach
- the awesome people i work[ed] with ( and since they are helping me write this list, they wanted their names mentioned: so here you go, mary, anetha, and selina!)
- actual seasons!
- public transportation
- celebrity sightings (though i only saw Elizabeth Hasslebeck, Jane Fonda, and Seth Rogan, and Ralph Lauren [is he a celeb?] and Condoleezza Rice [thanks for the reminder, Susan!]
- watching shows/movies about new york and recognizing places
- the view of the skyline from the Brooklyn Bridge
- flying into LGA and seeing the whole island at once
- pinkberry, red mango, and chipotle (Nashville has none of these….come on Nashville!)
What did I miss??
03-07-09
light breaks from the left and hits between the buildings
02-21-09
beautiful
she likes attention. she wants everyone to know she has arrived and causes a commotion as the door to the nail salon swings wide open.
she rolls in slowly with the help of her assistant. she’s wearing fur, of course, and tons of jewelry. her face is streaked with too-bright makeup: heavy blush (though she might call it ‘rouge’), eyebrows drawn on, lipstick over-lining her lips and dripping into the deep-set wrinkles around her mouth.
she has just had her hair done, and it resembles a style from the 40′s. she loves the lavender tulips in a jar by the counter and comments on them more than once.
she is 96 years old. she loves fashion. she is a former model – “i used to be tall!” she says. she’s been watching fashion week on television, remembering the old days before “fashion died.”
she is beautiful.
i watch in fascination as you engage her in conversation without hesitation. you ask her questions and really listen to her answers. you make eye contact. you treat her gently, like a friend, like someone you truly want to know.
you tell her you love her hair. you respond to her declaration that she used to model with a genuine, “i can tell!” you agree with her that the tulips are an exquisite shade of lavender.
you have ‘love’ tattooed on the inside of your wrist as if you need a reminder. in this moment, you don’t care what is easy for you, you only care about her comfort. You aren’t concerned with your own agenda, or your own time – instead, you are attentive to her needs.
you are beautiful.
11-16-08
single ladies SNL style
living in new york city, i love movies and tv shows and songs about this city more than the average person…it’s just neat to watch a movie and be able to point out the flaws (like when they try to pretend they’re on the upper west when they’re really in tribeca, etc) or remember why you love this city in the first place or hear a song that explains exactly how it feels to live here. it’s a totally different feeling when you actually do live here.
on that note, i didn’t really appreciate saturday night live until i moved to new york. i guess it’s because i didn’t understand the humor when i was younger – the pop culture and new york city references just didn’t mean anything to me. and now i live with two avid fans of the show – one whom i’m convinced will actually be on SNL one day, and the other quotes it often. So I end up watching most episodes.
all that to say, this skit from last night’s show is one of the funniest i’ve ever seen: