Tag Archives: Writing

Changing Days by Sara Honda

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Posted by kritzau on April 18, 2012 – 10:21 am
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Growth in Change

Sara Honda works at the University of Colorado Denver.  In her free time, she loves mentoring teenage girls, exploring the beautiful sunny state of Colorado, and watching Survivor. She secretly loves professional golf, hates onions and Crocs with a passion, and wishes she was a hip hop dancer.

 

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
― Annie Dillard

 

A few months ago, a good friend shared this quote with me.  At first, the quote made me uneasy.  I could see the truth of it, and that’s what hit me.  There are a lot of my days that feel routine, that feel mundane.  Do I really want my life to reflect the hours I spend riding the train to work every week?  That makes me seem too ordinary.  Or the hours I spend sitting in front of a computer each day?  I’m not exactly saving starving children.  What about all those nights I go to bed before 10pm? Does that make me lame?  (I swear I’m cool, people.  I just like my sleep!)

 

The more I thought about the quote, the more I began to welcome Dillard’s idea as an invitation rather than a conviction.  What if we treated every day and every decision, little or big, relevant or not, as though it really mattered?  Not with the pressure that everything is make-or-break, but that the decisions we make will, over time, tell a story of who we are.  What we buy/say/do/read/think are indicators of our values.

 

Our childhood and young adult years are marked by milestones: sweet-16, first car, first kiss, graduation, college, and first job.  Many of my friends are encountering adult milestones: engagement, graduate school, marriage, babies, and travel.  But I’ve been without any significant cliché life-changing milestones for a few years now.  I had become a full-grown adult, and yet for a long time I was waiting for something else to make me feel like I’d reached adulthood.  Would the perfect job do it?  Maybe I wouldn’t feel like an adult until I was married, or at the very least in a serious and committed relationship.  Does it happen when you have a baby?  Perhaps if I lived on my own (which I am currently doing, and yet I still feel like a kid)? 

 

I am sure the fact that I sometimes like coloring in coloring books and watching Harry Potter movies has nothing to do with it, nor the fact that I still don’t know how to order an alcoholic drink.  “I’ll take one of those alcohol-thingys.  Um, the wet kind.  Do you have anything pink?”

 

Over time, I have come to appreciate (with much prodding from God) that my life has already started, and that the seemingly-mundane decisions I make today are in fact  meaningful.  It’s hard to pinpoint a particular moment over the past few years that significantly changed me, but somehow I’ve evolved.  It has been nearly three years since I graduated from college, and in that time I’ve gained confidence, new lifelong friendships, a deeper understanding of God’s presence in my life, and assurance of the ways God has called me to minister to others. 

 

As we get to know ourselves better (and I truly believe this process lasts until the day we die), we are able to recognize when we are not growing.  For me, I begin to feel frustrated and ask that ever-present “Why am I here?”  It spurs me to get to know someone new, get plugged in to a new group, or take on different responsibilities at work.

Change in my life is not marked by milestone moments, but by the little decisions I make every day that dictate who I am, and who God is shaping me to be.  Change is gradual, fluid, and welcome.  I know there are still milestone moments to come (good and bad), but I have come to the understanding that these are just another part of the long and constant growth known as my life.  God has promised us that a life lived for him will be meaningful and worth living.  That has been my journey; appreciating consistency and recognizing that sometimes growth is gradual and occurs without my immediate knowledge.  I hope that if your story is similar to mine,  you can recognize growth in your life, and that if you do experience change on a more significant level, you can still recognize the change that happens in the quiet lulls in between. 

Letting Go by Sarah Scheidler

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Posted by kritzau on April 11, 2012 – 10:35 am
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Growth in Change

Sarah loves all things organic… Her soul is fed by a good challenge, coffee & old dusty stuff with potential. She meddles in all things artistic… but adores photographing people (you can find her work here)… She is a mother x 3 and a wife to a wonderfully creative type. Former avid blogger… gone hotwheels racer and baby chaser…

 

Growth in Change: Letting Go

It was slow as molasses…yes in January…  A change that came out of nowhere and yet… over much time and many discussions, in retrospect, my husband and I should of known what was coming…

God wanted to do something different than we had planned… Damn. It. All.

I am not a risk taker by nature. I am loyal, responsible & calculated and I married a man who is equally conscious, reliable and planned. Together for nearly 8 years we lived together happily buying and selling homes, living within our means, wanting for nothing, sharing and enjoying all that we had, the best we knew how…  It was a good life.

We remodeled our craftsman house (read: 2200 sq ft beauty with 3 car garage) in Pasadena, Ca… and as we moved back in… in to a much larger, better planned out space… I kept finding myself wanting to purge… and purge more of the things we did not use regularly… I didn’t really think much of it as it happened but gradually it became obvious… we had plenty of space to store things… and few things to store…

A few months later, during my husbands sabbatical from pastoral work, my sweet but entirely burned out husband, and I began to do some soul searching… and real questioning… you know the kind that starts with “Do I really have a need for 15 pairs of jeans?” and moves to “How can I be a good steward of  today, Lord?” and “God how can you heal my soul?” and “What do we really value & desire?” and maybe even “God help us to dream..” … My husband also took a motorcycle training class… we tried to connect with others… but made very few connections, after many attempts…

In this space there was much hurt, more loneliness and layers and layers of disappointment in people who were called to care for others, but did not care for me…

So we prayed. And prayed. And at the end of my husband’s sabbatical we agreed that we needed to begin a conversation with the church about what we believed God had done and was doing… Quite honestly, he wasn’t sure exactly WHAT God was calling us to but he was pretty certain it was NOT his current position/job…

I remember sitting in the living room of our lovely craftsman home…  sharing tears… realizing we were going to have to move… away from our neighbors… 8 months pregnant with our third munchkin…  and down size our living space, significantly…

The purging I had started a few months prior to this was nothing compared to this mass purge, lots of tears, putting our craftsman up for rent, saying bittersweet goodbyes to our church family of 10+ years and the hope that God knew what He was doing even if we had only a glimpse. I revisited our finances a few (million) times, we met with wise folks to make sure we weren’t overlooking something… I researched places to live… From Portland, OR and the greater Los Angeles area… We searched for housing and jobs…

God was calling us to something new… something unknown… something ridiculous really… something creative…

 

We trusted and we leaped.

 

Exactly one year later, we have found ourselves surrounded by an amazing community. Literally. Surrounded. Our church community lives sprinkled among the streets surrounding our sweet little postage stamp sized rental home.  There there are people who live what they believe… humbly and intentionally… and it heals our souls… It heals me to walk down an unmarked alley to even more nondescript doors… down stairs into a basement to meet for church… in a place where my children, who may be found brake dancing in the back during worship, are joyfully greeted… It heals me to have ladies that will let me contribute to their lives… if even by a grocery run… It heals me to be invited to showers (baby & wedding) where guests are welcome with or without a gift… welcome even without knowing the one celebrated.

Tim is slowly, but surely, pursuing his own creative journey…  I continue to search for time (& literally space) to carve out for my love of all things creative… and/or growing… my children included…

Our little family has LOVED learning to love being together so much, so closely.  The boys have learned the neighbors have a small farm, clubhouse and trampoline.  Tim’s appreciation for the little things like a good cup of coffee has grown. I have learned to shop for less, less often.

Shortly after we moved into our little place, I remember saying to a new friend “We are exactly where God wants us”… but it stung quite a bit… I welled up with tears often when speaking of where we came… how we came… where we are. Even now, some days I daydream and wonder if one day we will suddenly find ourselves in our former life… With the big house… enormous yard…  our own master suite… a custom made place for everything and then I remember.

 

I am EXACTLY where God would have me… and I. Love. It. Right. Where. I. Am.

 

 

 

Celebrating Change by Meghan Jackson

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Posted by kritzau on April 3, 2012 – 8:59 am
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Growth in Change, Home.Food.Garden

Meghan Jackson is a pediatric nurse and a radical homemaker. This past year has certainly brought change – she got married, celebrated her husband’s graduation from dental school, and has decreased her hours at work to spend more time working in their home. She enjoys reading books out loud with her hubby, coffee dates, concocting good food, and losing all sense of time in her vegetable garden. When the mood strikes her, she blogs here.


 

 

If you know me, you know I love to garden. It all started my senior year of college with some snapdragons and potting soil bought at the Target garden center. I lovingly planted my little babies in brand-new pots and placed them in various well thought out spots around our apartment.  You know, the end tables, the bathroom, my night stand. Needless to say, all of them died…but they did not take with them my passion for nurturing. I graduated. I researched. I learned that most plants do better outdoors. And now I grow vegetables.

My husband and I dug a long-awaited veggie patch into our backyard last summer. We planted the seeds, and from October onward it has been a part of my general routine to wake up, put on my bathrobe and slippers, and pad outside to check on the plants. It has been a delightful journey, observing this first season of our garden’s growth. I’ve watched the seedlings come up, their first leaves drop off as their mature ones grew stronger. I’ve seen the radishes swell and the pea pods slowly fatten and the arugula bolt into flowers, attracting bees. I’ve found myself engrossed in the activities of worms, grub, and roly-poly as they break down our kitchen scraps and yard waste into wonderful, dynamic dirt.

Our garden is literally different every single day, and it never ceases to amaze me that all of this change happens more or less without me. Granted, I water the plants and feed them fresh compost, and likewise feed the compost with our leftover plants, but 99% of the change that occurs in our garden is not of my own doing. It’s like magic.

It dawned on me about a month ago that almost daily, I have been exercising a practice in celebrating change. I’ll venture to say that for all of us, change can be scary. And I think all of us can name a time when that fear kept us from making or accepting a change.  So when I realized that I had happened upon a way to celebrate change, I rejoiced! That’s probably a healthy practice to have!

I encourage you all to consider a way in which you can practice celebrating change. Maybe it is in really noticing the growth of your children, or that of a relationship, or a way you have matured in the last year. Maybe you can wake up early, and watch the dawn unfold and the light change around you as the day begins. Or savor a sunset. Or notice the subtle changes that occur in the yards and on the porches of the homes as you walk a familiar stretch of your neighborhood.

Maybe you will plant a seed, and watch the miracle of change and growth unfold out of the dirt. It really is magical, and it really is worth celebrating.

October 2011:

January 2012:

Controlling Growth by Melanie Dosen

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Posted by kritzau on March 22, 2012 – 4:25 pm
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Growth in Change

Melanie, (and for some reason, I cannot upload picture of her today), is a people person.  If you were to see said picture(s) of her she would be surrounded by people – people who call her a dear friend, people she is laughing with, dancing with, chatting with.  What is evident is that she cares about these people and what you can’t see is how big her heart is – for the world and for her community.  She currently works giving care and attention to autistic children and will shortly be going back to school to get her Masters in Social Work so she can provide better care and education to herself and others. 

Melanie is starting us off with our new spring prompt GROWTH IN CHANGE.  She read this at the open mic night and I felt it needed be shared with more people.  Thank you Melanie!

 

I am not a patient person.

I find slowness absurd, expecting sufferable, and waiting intolerable. I must be moving, I must be doing, I must be accomplishing; I reject the notion that things might not, cannot, or will not happen, so I take it on myself to facilitate that “happening”.

I am not patient, I do not know how to just be; I do not know how to trust my muscles and joints to gravity and allow my body to gently sit, letting my mouth and nostrils expand and suck in this miraculously available oxygen.  To allow it to permeate my bloodstream, voyaging through my veins, delivering fuel and life to my organs, which all labor together symbiotically to ensure that I remain a healthy, functioning being.  I do not know how to be patient and let my body do what it innately does, what, in some sort of holy inspiration, it was designed to do.  Do, and do well, do absolutely perfectly (most of the time) completely without my assistance.

I am impatient, because I am terrified of things “not happening” when I am doing nothing to make them happen; despite of the fact that my body, my land, my world, everything manages to not just exist, but thrive without me.  My impatience induces a habit of creating needlessness: my unhealthy habits, my unnecessary exertion, my controlling mentalities, my impatience over the fact that things aren’t going my way, my capacity to criticize and ostracize, my ridiculous dependence on things.  Needlessness is my constant companion in this dark cavity in which I am comfortable to nestle, incapable—or, perhaps just refusing—to accept that this existence I’ve enjoyed is not contingent on myself.  Refusing to accept that I have no control.

The realization of this horrid reality instigates all sorts of different reactions: some find this emancipation from control quite comforting, embracing their relinquished responsibilities from life’s supposed burdens like a warm blanket, happy to dwell in the surrounding nothingness.  Others, however, find themselves in a panic, their wholly control-less nature an empty and suffocating void, an intolerable vacancy.

So, like me, they’ve fabricated a world where they do have control by making themselves dependant on needlessness. They, like me, refuse to believe that we have everything we need, and that we’ve already been given everything that matters, and that our bodies and our plants and our ecosystems know what they are doing.  Fancying ourselves to be the wisest, strongest, and cleverest, we instate dominion over the things of the earth that do not defend themselves against our impertinence, perhaps, because, unlike us, they are confident that they have nothing to prove.

These things are used to create more things to feed our needlessness, leaving places barren in our wake.  Our ethic is consumption, and we have been conditioned to earn livings to purchase lifestyles.  We perpetuate a cycle of acquisition and waste, removing from earth and our bodies the very elements that make them function and thrive. We exploit what’s good so that we can prove to our terrified selves that we are in control.

What if we were bold enough to return our illegitimate control?  What if we were confident enough to live as though we aren’t needed, but have in fact been given everything as a gift to enjoy?  What if we listened to our bodies and our earth, and vowed to only give it good things?  What if we made a covenant with ourselves and our land and our neighbors to re-learn how to be producers, rather than consumers?  By renouncing our control that we have illicitly usurped, we actually become the wisest, the strongest, and the cleverest; by acknowledging that we have very little to do with the perpetuation of existence, we become freer beings, unrestrained by a lifestyle of needlessness.  Instead, we become open to living a lifestyle that can meet real needs, a lifestyle centered on enacting justice, embracing mercy, and living in humble wonderment of to Whom we can attribute all of this beauty.  A lifestyle that honors life, rather than trembles in fear of death.

I want to be brave enough to relinquish my control and regain my patience.  I want to learn to lay down on the grass in peace, trusting my body and the earth that supports it.  I want to embrace the radical assumption that I don’t need the needlessness, because I am actually not needed, though deeply, deeply wanted.  Come, dive into this great warm abyss with me; let’s be courageous enough to surrender our control.

Proverbs 3 “Crop of Hope” by Christin Taylor

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Posted by kritzau on March 19, 2012 – 12:02 pm
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Finding Hope, Poems and Blessings

Christin Taylor lives in a college dorm (in an apartment) in Bellingham, Washington with her two children and husband Dwayne.  It is there that she writes prolific essays and teaches online writing workshops as well as mentors many students who seek out her wisdom. She has currently just solidified her first book contract for Shipwrecked in Los Angeles, her creative memoir filled with insightful direction and beautiful words.  She is a great teacher (take her workshop!) and wonderful human being.  Christin is our last writer for this season’s FINDING HOPE prompt and she closes us out of this season with a lovely take on Proverbs 3. 

 

 

What I’m about to tell you

Will lengthen the line of your days

Will harvest a crop of hope:

“In all your ways”

in every road where you put foot to path

in every street where you pass lights and lives

admit that there is one bigger than you, truer than you,

more real than the very breath you are now taking

 

“and He will make your ways”

straighter than the truth that has pierced your heart.

He will walk the trail you are now treading

And wear in every curve of confusion, every angle of apprehension.

 

“Don’t be wise in your own eyes”

be wise in the eyes of one who peers into your soul,

who sees what is not, and what cannot

be fathomed by those such as us,

dust as we are,

fading from one temporary moment to the next.

 

“Blessed is the man who finds wisdom”

it will be like he found a small child by the road

sat with her and heard the thoughts of God

held in the mind of one so innocent.

Those thoughts are deeper than Time

Simpler than a single note.

 

Beautiful are the traits of wisdom

“Nothing you desire can compare with her”

because nothing you desire brings peace

nothing you desire brings life

nothing you desire brings honor

But wisdom has laid these out like a laurel wreath

Ready for us to take with both hands.

 

That’s how God laid the foundations, placed the heavens, split the depths

That’s how he formed each one of us -

With sound judgment and good sense.

Cherish wisdom and know this:

 

The One, whose beginning and end meet on the other side of existence,

“He will be your confidence”

Though you fall, stumble, blunder, trip

He will keep you from breaking beyond repair.

Hope in failure by Kristin Ritzau

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Posted by kritzau on March 16, 2012 – 2:04 pm
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Finding Hope

Kristin here, I haven’t posted yet about hope. This post may have come from the first caffeinated latte’ I’ve drank in three years, but Brene’ Brown led me to hope today, so I felt I needed to share.  Thanks for letting me.

 

I am obsessed with TED talks.  (click here to learn more).  I have input as a strength and that doesn’t mean I like to interject with my opinions, that means I like to take in a lot of information.  TED feeds this cute little gremlin inside of me.

In the last year, for some reason, people like posting this talk on my wall and three separate people have said, “This reminds me of you.”

It’s Brene’ Brown. It’s her talk on vulnerability.  I show it to every class I teach and I watch it almost every month. I am flattered, but it also scares me a little bit.

Good news is she posted another talk this week.  Bad news, it reminded me of me – that might not be so bad because it forced me back into what I know I’m good at, pulling the sheet off of myself.  And I pulled out my notepad.  It is a talk about shame.  Not about the action of it, but what it feels like at our core.  What we are taught to value and do and not the empathy that we desperately need to function holistically.

I had a meltdown last week.  Like the kind Heather talked about.  I got into my Ph.D. program and I didn’t get a scholarship.  Did I feel entitled to one?  I’m not sure, but I felt it said something of my worth, of my ability, and I felt an overwhelming amount of another gremlin named Shame saying, “Maybe you shouldn’t go back to school.”

Unfortunately, this kind of second-guessing hasn’t come just from inside me. Brene’ has some hard words to hear – words like “women are harder on people than others.”  I have heard the most doubtful questions from women about my changes in my life.  I don’t know what to do with that.  I appreciate the life-giving questions even if they are tough, but I am not talking about those.  I’m talking about the critical eye, the working moms versus stay at home moms debate that I am scared shitless of entering into when we start trying to have kids. Let’s be honest, I’m already a front row spectator to this debate just as woman.

I’m also scared about other things: That my voice won’t be good enough to be an expert in something; that I won’t get a job; that money will be wasted; that people won’t invest in me: in what I have to say, in developing me, in helping me, in letting me help them.  I’m wondering if people are asking, “When will she fail?”

My mom’s words when I told her I got into my Ph.D. program after she told me she was proud and she loved me were, “You do everything right.”  And it scared me so much because I thought, Does she see me?  I don’t want to be told “you’re great” – I want to be seen.  But have I also “engineered a life that keeps me small – keeps me under the radar just enough to still be pretending I’m okay,” as Brene says.  Am I limiting my own God-given abilities because the cultural narrative says stop trying so you don’t fail? Only let others, including those who birthed me, see my good side?

Does one desire failure? Desire for others to know the truth? Especially when it isn’t perfect or successful? I’m not talking about Eeyore syndrome where you spill yourself all over everyone all the time.  I’m trying to find what is true. I watched my parents fail and never admit it.  I’ve watched friends fail and turn to addiction.  Most of all I’ve seen that in myself.  Perfection is my addiction, now more than ever.

In raw honesty – baby showers scare the bejesus out of me right now, because they play directly into my addiction to perfection.  All of the stuff and advice and I did it this way, I did it that way – the permission for everyone to give advice, for the men to absent, for the diapers versus clothe things, for the breast feeding, the discipline models, the nurseries on pinterest… it’s enough to already feel like I’ve done it wrong and we haven’t even started.

“You’ll figure it out…You’ll be a great mom,” Some friends say, and I appreciate that, but I need to know that people will be there when I can’t figure it out and when I’m not a great mom (and IF I am a mom). I want to tell my kids the truth.  I don’t want to be by myself with spectators to my life saying you do it right all the time. I feel this way about school, babies, farming, the workplace. That’s what leads to numbing emotion for me – the need to feel like I have to have it all together before I’ve even started.  Vulnerability is my only way out of this cycle.  Failure is my teacher and hopefully being honest about it will provide safe spaces for others who feel this way.   I know that’s the hope that I need. I don’t need pat answers or exclusive clubs, I need authenticity.

I had an honest conversation my 20 year old self this week and what I told her surprisingly is that she will learn more by failing than anything else.  I met with someone this morning who feels like she has failed; I talked to my girlfriend last week who thinks her work is a failure.  And I as I told my friend, I have to tell myself, you’re right – you did… but not in the way you think.  It’s death and rebirth – it’s failure that is learning.  Too often I was told to not fail, to not cry, to not be seen – and what did that do to my soul?  I have been starving for truth.

My shame has taught me to move on and power through instead of being exposed and honest. My biggest fear is that I will wake up in 10 years, be 40, and have missed it all because I was so worried about exposing myself and embracing the mess…still. So I must keep writing.

Brene’ talks about how we try to make ourselves bullet proof and perfect before entering the arena of life, but when we get there people want to know our vulnerable stories.  So true.   When I tell my students stories of my life, they stop texting.  And they are not success stories.  They are just real stories.

Thank you Brene’ for reminding me of that. Of pushing me once again to expose these voices in a public place because if all of this is for one person, then it’s worth it… I just might be that one person.    If I can’t deal with these voices, they will haunt me and I will miss the life I’ve been given because I was trying to be skinny and perfect and nice.

I wrote a book about perfectionism when I was 27 because I wanted a different model.  And I wanted to be seen.  I don’t think I have figured it all out, but if there is one thing I do know, there HAS to be another way.  Hopefully authenticity will lead us there.

So it would be nice to know – are you with me as we move into our true stories?