Paradise Lost

I have moments, whether through hearing my nephews laughter or smelling the wind in October kick up crisp leaves, that I know I was made for somewhere else. I know I don't belong here. None of us do.

When I think about how we were created and so intricately designed, it's clear to me that it was an intentional act. It's also clear to me that we were made to live somewhere intentional, somewhere that doesn't pull us apart with pain, a place that doesn't make us ache for more. Paradise. Adam and Eve were made and designed to live in that perfect place but that unraveled when Eve disobediently bit the apple and Adam passively followed her lead. Enter: Earth. (Along with the comfortable dysfunction between men and women) While she is an incredible planet and full of mystery and beauty, she is not paradise. I appreciate Earth, but I long for Paradise.

The remarkable thing in all of this is that because God made us, cares so deeply for what He's made, made a perfect place for us, and because His perfect plan for us was to live out our days there, He has brought pieces of it for us to experience while we endure Earth. We aren't owed those pieces, certainly don't deserve them due to our rebellious spirit and we most likely wouldn't know any other way were we not gifted those pieces but He still opens His hands to release them on us because His love endures forever. What a powerful Maker we have, what a specific and Creative Creator and what a loving Father. 

Immersion

This past Wednesday I witnessed a new friend who I sense will become a very dear friend get baptized. Yesterday I watched an iphone video of my brother in law getting baptized. It reminded me of what a married couple must feel like when they attend a wedding and witness the vows they once made being remade by two new hearts. Watching her stand there, folding one arm over her chest and preparing to hold her breath with her other hand as she joyously proclaimed love over her heart and life, Jesus as her guide and map, I did the same. I remade my vow as I remembered the dance that God and I once shared in the water together nine years ago.

As I continue the journey I look forward to another nine years (and then some) and end on this notion: baptism isn't a one-time occurrence. The action is, of course, but the intent is a choice we make every single day just as love and forgiveness are- Wednesday brought me this understanding. I haven't been intentional about that choice in my past but just as I did nine years ago, I choose today to follow my guide and my map, my God, for there is no other fount I know as I find myself standing on His promises again and again and again.

To be continued.

It was Illinois and it was summer. I heard my grandfather’s blue Chevy pull up in our driveway and the click of his door as he got out. Seconds later I was greeted with a pink stuffed bear holding a heart. Kissing my mom goodbye on the cheek, grandpa and I took off on our three hour journey to Perryville so I could spend time with he and my grandmother like we did each summer.

     As my grandpa and I crossed the Mississippi he insisted I hold my breath going over the bridge.
            “Train tracks are different”, he told me, “those you pick up your feet when ya cross em.”

At the halfway mark we always stopped at Dairy Queen or Hardee’s for an ice cream cone. My grandfather is a diabetic with the sweetest tooth I’ve ever known. A vanilla cone in both our hands, he continued driving and asked me silly things like ‘so, you got a boyfriend yet?’  To which I responded, “Grandpa, ew! Boys are mean.” He laughed and said that would change. I liked making him laugh.
           
             Once we arrived on North Street, grandpa drove past the house and made a U-ie in the Pete & Leo’s parking lot, then pulled onto the side of the road out front. I threw open the door before he could even put it into park as he called out after me. Up the stairs and through the screen door I entered the foyer where grandma had spent hours one fall stenciling ivy green leaves which grew up those off-white walls of hers. Through the foyer there was a second dining room covered in burnt orange carpet and beyond that was the kitchen where I’d always find her. She sat at a white linoleum table atop green legs, cigarette in hand and an alkaseltzer in front of her, The Bold and The Beautiful disputing who cheated on who in the background. My grandma.

            I bounded into the kitchen, stopping first in the doorway and reaching my hand into the cookie jar (it was never empty) then running over to her and gripping onto her. Her hug stuck as if I could feel her arms around me even after they weren’t anymore.

            “Oh my sweet girl! I missed you!”
            “I missed you too Gramma! So so much!”
            “I have something for you honey.” She took my tiny hand in her twice as large wrinkled one and walked me to the back porch. There was a chair waiting for me to sit in so I sat. Next she told me to close my eyes, so I did. I felt a box placed onto my legs. I opened my eyes and on my lap lay a face-painting kit. See, I was the kid at the fair who first and foremost had to have my face painted. Forget about the merry-go-round or the funnel cake. There was just something about having a rainbow or a heart or a horse, things that aren’t allowed to live on our cheeks in real life, take up residency there for a few hours.

            “So”, she says, “what would you like on your cheek today?”  I honestly don’t even remember what I asked for or what she painted because all I can remember is how I felt; happy, known, seen. This is the first memory I have of someone acknowledging an interest of mine, encouraging and investing in that interest.

           

 To this day, my mother and father have no idea how much I loved having my face painted as a child. In their defense I never told them but my grandmother never had to be told because she saw. My parents didn’t or couldn’t, not because they are bad parents but because of the dynamic of our family within the confines of divorce. You see, in second grade when my father made the decision to continue medicating himself with alcohol my mother made the decision to severe their relationship and I made the (albeit unconscious) decision to cope with it by trying to go unnoticed, to go unseen so as not to bother them or create more of a disruption within our household. It took me eighteen years, the loss of my grandmother and almost eleven hours of therapy to discover this and thus begin to combat it. I am the unseen child, it is my cancer and it has grown big and fast, shaping the way I see others and the way I allow them to see me or rather the way in which I don’t-- until this moment, until now, until three months ago when I hit rock bottom. I won’t go into detail because like with all rock bottoms one must first befriend time and embrace space before sharing it but I will say it’s completely transforming the child that hid for so long behind these hazel eyes. This past month, this past week, today, I have never been so desperate for community and vulnerability, to be known and to know, to serve and invest in the lives of those around me, to see and be seen. I am at the beginning of turning into a different being , I am on the verge and I’m no longer afraid of it’s bluff. If it’s true that authentic happiness often stems from the most broken of moments than this, this revelation and this new self is truly the start of one of my happiest moments. 


           

Jealousy, the expired compliment

My friends, beware. A compliment that rests inside your heart and mind but goes unsaid may decompose and cause rotting within.

If they came in boxes I believe that to be their warning label.

There are many things I struggle with and am learning in this season of life however, one thing I have found God's wisdom on at a very early stage is the art of a compliment. When I notice traits on a woman that are different from my own and that I admire I hand those thoughts out. Not only is it uplifting for her (and I'm a big proponent of encouragement) but it brings life to me.

See I believe that a compliment can spoil if it isn't given out. Have you ever looked at a woman and thought:
'I love her hair' or men 'I wish I could grow a beard like that'? It's at this stage, when the thought enters that it should exit into the ear of the person you are admiring because when it doesn't, more often than not this thought turns rancid and starts to sound like:
'Why don't I have hair like that? Must be nice to just be born with great hair...whatever her hair isn't that great'.

And a wall begins, brick by brick, dividing you from someone who might just need you and you them.

wild horses and butterflies

I've heard it said and, much like my 'favorites' list on my ipod, have had it on repeat in my mind, "God offers His hand to us so many times to step down from off our wild horse and if we don't take it He will allow for us to be thrown from it to save us from the inevitable were we to stay on."

I have been thrown from my horse and what's more, the horse has trampled me but I am still alive, breathing and I am wide awake.

So I find myself at the beginning of turning into a different being. I am on the verge. I am in a cocoon and it's tight and painful and uncomfortable and unbelievably terrifying, as often times butterflies do not even receive their chance to emerge. Yet I feel God's hand on the small of my back, gently tugging the wings inside of me, His whispers tell me "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here". So there is this peace amidst it all and the honest truth is that I couldn't be more excited to become the butterfly that emerges, to see myself turned inside out, far from the cocoon and even further from the horse that threw me.

Courage

Who knew that the title of a blog I created a few years back would end up being my anthem a few years later? Funny how those things work out...like how we are given a permanent title fresh out of the womb and eventually end up belonging to the meaning of that title. Bridgette means "exalted one" so we'll see how that one turns out ;)

courage (n.)
    c.1300, from Old French corage (12c., Modern French courage) "heart, innermost feelings; temper," from Latin cor "heart" (see heart) which remains a common metaphor for inner strength.

I'm learning a lot about this.

Life has taken a very sharp right turn which ended up being a very wrong turn and now I must get out of it's current vessel and walk back home, barefoot.

I'm not even to the end of the street yet.

growing pains

Every other month or so I discover I've picked/filed/bitten my thumb nail down to the quick.Usually the left one.

This means there is something still misaligned in my life, something I am still afraid of, something I need to re-route; a moment to stand up for myself, to make myself be seen/heard so that I refuse to hurt myself this way any longer. It isn't severe pain but it is pain that I inflict upon myself because a) I deserve it? b) I am punishing myself? c) I'm scared and don't know how else to deal with said fear?

I don't know if it's one, all or any of those but one day I will be a woman, a fiance, a wife and mother who has well cared for hands that will hurt from helping my kids with their school project or cooking dinner for my husband or writing too much for too long. Not from my own doing, but for my doing for others.