Slipping Through my Fingers; Feeling You Between my Toes. A Heartbeat goes...

       So many years spent sleeping next to a lover, sharing space with a lover, sharing and pouring energy into a lover.  So many years removed from the heart that beats in me...for me.   The focus has been so zeroed in on another heart beating for me, I forgot the sound of mine that does me the generous favor of beating just for me; no one else.

        I never learned the skill of hearing the beat of my own heart and being able to listen to anothers.  Everyone else's heart & tune were always so much more important than hearing my own.  I derived all my self-importance from the happiness, support, and love that I could give another.  Their happiness covered my silent pleas for my own needs.  Tonight, I feel as if though I am stuck in a time portal back to my high school and college days where I was not living with a lover and could heart the faint beat of my own heart begging for attention.  I sit in my bedroom, candles lit (not for sensual purposes with another per the usual) for relaxation purposes, and MY music playing over my speakers.  In the days of high school and college my mind would race at nighttime.  Thoughts of relationships, life's meaning, my meaning, and all other life's big questions would flood my mind and I would write.  I would play my music and I would write.  

       Perhaps some of that introspective was rooted in the fact that during those years I was a knowledge sponge and took such intellectual delight in figuring out where I fit in this beautiful, disastrous world.  Either way, I heard the beat of my heart.  I sit here and write tonight because at the very basic parts of me, the parts removed from being all consumed with the romance needs of those I have chosen to give my heart, I EXIST!!!! You could label me a scorned woman but to me, that implies weakness and victimization.  Have I placed myself in less than life giving relationships to my own detriment? Hell yes! But the reality is, I cannot play the victim card because I willingly signed up for it.  There is no blame shifting because the responsibility falls upon my shoulders.  

       I have loved so deeply.  It may have been right and it may have been so wrong.  Either way I loved.  Have you ever felt like you were on the brink of holding the most precious thing you've ever come across and then, without any knowing, or thought, they slip through your fingers like sand?!  You  try so hard once you realize what you have to grasp it, but it slips through your finger tips.  The guttural  response of knowing what you have and not being able to hold it, love it, accept it, and treasure it like you want to so bad is the worst feeling.  It just slips through your fingers.  

        The music. The writing.  The heartbeat I hear within my chest lets me know that I am alive.  Very few things these days make me aware that I am a person that exists for a reason.  After deriving my meaning from serving others vocationally, romantically, and sacrificially platonically,  I am slightly lost without those avenues.  I wake up and wonder where my place is in this world.  I question what my point is.  There are those that love me with a vigor but somehow their love still does not give me a reason to wake up and go about my ways.   I've been so focused on external to me, I've forgotten how to hear the quiet voice inside me.  Moments of isolation can either be a tool of destruction or a tool of self-discovery and awakening.  

        I've had a few old classmates that it seems got swallowed up in the silence.  The pressures of life, love, and inevitable failures of life had a weight that was too crushing.  Their families love and support couldn't hold them up.   The joys of having beautiful kids and wives could not breathe enough light into the darkness in their moments of silence.  It's a wonder how some of us get swallowed up while some of us keep plugging along.  I think of these men in my most desperate hour.

         At the end of the day, I have me.  There's so much redefining to do with what that is or what that will be but, I have a heart that beats just for me.  I'm fearful that the great love I have felt and have felt myself love with, is sand slipping through my fingers.  I am blessed to know what it is like to be deeply loved and to love someone with such a passion and vigor my understanding of it fails to be able to defined.  Perhaps the best thing I can do for myself at this juncture is to let the sand fall and allow myself to run along the beach with its beauty and comfort beneath my feet?  At the very basic core of who I am, I have always loved to walk and run along the water with the sand between my toes.  

Below is a link to a song that has hugged my soul for many years in my quiet hours of desperation.  Matt Wertz - Lonely Tonight.  Listen to the whole song.  I hope the end will bring you the same feeling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgmrSK0sCP4

Christmas: Bah-Humbug, Bitch!

(Gotta love Jesse from Breaking Bad) 

       A high school student just miles down the road from where I live shot two students and then took his own life at school today.  It's easy for us to think of the kids he injured and those that will continue to suffer at his hands but let us not overlook what things had to be going on in this troubled teen's life.  A youth felt anger and miserable enough to walk into his school and take his own life.  

       School teachers and social workers loathe this time of year.   Those of us that are not directly working with folks in a human service/ education capacity may be completely clueless of the Holiday phenomenon that takes place.  It's an energy that you feel building up in the schools and with clients in a social work capacity; a buzzing that gets louder and faster, as time with, or more notably, without family approaches.

      The Holidays makes us keenly aware of what we have and what we don't have.  We are forced by social media and Christmas cards to inadvertently compare our lives to that of our peers and family.  As someone who does not have children, a house, a spouse, or family that lives close, I have been a victim of this social comparison.  You sign into Facebook and see how happy everyone is.  At 30, I look at my wall and see my peers, their husbands and wives along with their children all smiling with gorgeous Christmas trees.  It's a magical time of year that not all get to participate in.  I grew up with the magic and the golden family.  This Christmas I will be spending it with my best friend in Colorado.  She too is an individual where the Holidays highlight the voids more than the blessings.  For the first time in my life I will be without MY WHOLE ROBINSON SIDE OF THE FAMILY!!! I've been so blessed to have that whole side with me every Christmas eve.  This year feels empty and weird.  This year feels like a fake Christmas.  

     As the educator and social worker that has felt that energy that is filled with anxiety, pain, frustration, and fear from my kids, I'm now feeling it inside myself for the first time.  I'm gaining insight into my kids, their actions, and their feelings.  I'm understanding just why the buzz, the behavior, occurs.  Just as I've fallen into the social comparison trap, I imagine our kids in school do the same.  Suzie Jane who's home life is chaotic sees what Katy Smith, who's home life is plump and beautiful is.  Suzie Jane wishes she had the love and surrounding family like Katy Smith...so on and so forth.  

    When there is a problem, we naturally want to fix it.  So, what's the solution to the Holiday buzz, social comparison, emptiness, and desperate behaviors?  There is none.  Be a cushion for the blow though.  Exude compassion, sensitivity, patience, and extend understanding before there is a need to.

May the Lord and us be with the desperate now and not before it's too late like the kid that took his own life today.  

   

Life Without Freedom: Simplistic Things We Take for Granted

         I grew up in a stable, middle-class home full of love and hard work.  I had the support of two loving, well adjusted, morally sound, parents.  They were full of love and full of resources.  Never was I without plenty.  I literally grew up in MayBerry Land in the epitome of the American dream.  We had your proverbial white picket fence, two stall garage, dog in the yard, flowers in the garden family that wore smiles most of the time and actually smiled out of actual genuine happiness.
         For all intensive purposes, I grew up an only child.  This is not to say I didn't have to share the limelight with several siblings, but they were so damn old, I grew up an only kid.  The fruit of both of my parents loins and love; I exist from pure desire for my existence.  Though I come from a one parent working family (middle class at best), my path was paved with nothing less than gold.  I'll get back to this later but first.......
         Do you love the ability to clip your nails when you desire? Isn't it nice to grab a fork to eat your food when you deem necessary? These are a few things we don't even think about as liberties.  It's a true joy to have a TV that needs dusting; a floor that needs vacuuming; PORCELAIN toilets that belong to you and need cleaning; dogs that need walking; food that needs cooking; rent that needs to be paid; groceries that need to be bought; love that needs tending to.  The list goes on and on!  The majority of that sounds like a taxing bunch of bullshit!

Liberties....these things we think we are ENTITLED to....Things we somehow think we have a RIGHT to.   Things we don't EVEN know we have until they are taken away from us.

           I am 30 years old.  My parents have sustained the backbone of my life all 30 years.  Hell, I will ALWAYS have nail clippers because of them! I will always have a CUP to pour water in to drink because of them!  I'm one of the lucky ones that do not have to worry about running out of these resources.  I do nothing to receive such a blessing; the blessing of knowing I will never sleep on the streets or be without clippers and a fork.  In my career I've seen a lot.  I've worked with many youth who do not have this comfort or the ability to have their own nail clippers.  They are such simplistic, minute things that we overlook as gifts and a right to have.  Americans are raised with this sense of entitlement.   I'm no better than the rest of us.  I expect the option of a fork vs. a spoon.  I expect to be able to choose my Religion, voice my opinion on this and that, put make-up on when I feel like, and dress however I want when I want.  What most American's do not realize is that there is a large population of the world that do not have that option.  They have either done something that causes those liberties to be removed, government does not allow, or simply they do not have that family/friend support to supply them with what they need.
           I'm someone that got lucky.  For no reason this world chooses some to be blessed that way and others are condemned to struggle for the entirety of their lives.  I have many youth I counseled that were born into dysfunction, anger, and impoverished.  They possess souls of gold but do not have the resources many of us do.  I don't deserve the gold path paved for me with love, care, morals, values, and boundaries but I have it.  Do we really and truly at the end of the day all deserve a right to nail clippers and the choice between a fork and spoon?  We deserve it but we all don't have that right or resource.
         Without disclosing my whole story, heed some advice, the next time you're in an argument be thankful you're able to argue with that loved one in person and not in a monitored conversation that can only last a few minutes.  When you cry, be thankful you have tissue to wipe your tears and hopefully someone to cry to.  When life gets overwhelming and you cannot take it anymore, remember you have nail clippers, a hair brush, maybe some moose, a mirror to look in, and a toilet to go to the bathroom in. I spent some time in Tijuana, Mexico back in 2001.  Most of us do not have to discard of our excrement in a hole dug next to our pitiful shack we share with 10 people.  The list of things we feel entitled to and have a right to can go on and on.  There is no rhyme or reason as to why some of us get lucky and some of us don't.  At the end, we're all not entitled to these things, some of us just get lucky.
          It's just as we are not entitled to God's love for us and the plentiful resources provided to us through that.  We are not entitled to that forgiveness.  We are just blessed.  So don't let a moment go by without recognizing what we have or who we have.  Moments are fleeting and so can our possessions and liberties.

You did nothing to earn it but God gives it to you anyways. Be thankful. 

Christianity: The Infinite Dichotomy That Makes Me Cringe

       Once a Christian, always a Christian?? 

       I became a believer at the tender age of 17 right before my senior year of high school.  I was not raised in a Christian home but was raised with what one could deem "Christian morals".  Whatever that means.  Like a baby birthed into the world, I gasped for as much spiritual air and nutrients as possible.  Very quickly I became keenly aware of my desire to study theology and go into ministry.   Without giving the elongated background story that is deserved, I will provide a snapshot of my faith journey.  

       Electively slingshot into my education as a Religion major, I gobbled it all up like a starved child.  I attended a Reformed Church of America, Christian college.  It turns out that most folks that attend Christian colleges were actually raised in Christian homes.  In West Michigan, a large portion of the student body were raised in conservative Christian homes.  Insert Jess; existing in my newly found Christian faith for only a year.  I knew the love and power of God but had no idea about scripture, Christian rhetoric, or the nice LARGE outline of how to act or what to be in order to be acceptable to God's people.  Expectations. Expectations. Expectations.  

        I never fit.  Certain Christian expectations and beliefs never washed well with me.  I've always believed Adam and Eve were a bit hairier than we give them credit for.  If Noah didn't sail his great ark, I don't care.  I believe love is love and cannot be confined to the gender our bodies portray.  I am pro-choice in certain cases and pro-life in many others. I'm not exactly certain that hell exists.  I cuss like a sailor, drink like a fish, love to dance, play cards, occasionally smoke, like rock n' roll, and hangout with others that do the same.  There are many other things that make me, me but those are some of the items that disqualify me from being a pristine Christian.  Oh, did I mention I like women?!  College was a challenge for me to uphold my beliefs in a sea of conservative Christians.  There was so much pressure to fit into that Christian ideal and morally speaking, I just couldn't allow myself to blend in.  

         In hindsight, God swooped in to my life at the right time.  I hadn't yet become knowledgable and  callused to the hypocrisy that the Christian church often portrays.  We are called not to judge, yet we close the church doors to those we deem unacceptable.  We make judgements on appearances, lifestyles, family backgrounds, money, etc. etc.  The church tends to make judgements on everything.  Some of the most beautiful people I've known have been my Christian friends.  Adversely so, the most accepting, understanding, and unconditional loving people I've known are the good souls that don't believe in God or at least don't buy into any of the Christian rhetoric, outline, bullshit.  And we, the church, sit in condemnation of these folks because, after all, "Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life and no once comes to the Father accept through Him", right?!
          There are so many avenues I could go down with what I have started here, and maybe someday I will go down them but I'm going to attempt to focus a bit.  The body of believers that have encompassed my life are not in support of me forgiving or reconciling with an individual that has done me wrong.  Forgiveness and reconciliation does not equate to full restoration to the way things used to be but it means we are loving enough, smart enough, and beautiful enough to simply forgive and move on.  To me, so many things about Christianity (as humans have morphed it) are so backwards and against God's word.  Let us not forget about what scripture says.  I'd love to lay out all the verses that would act like a 2x4 against the face and cause one to feel like Chris Farely in Tommy Boy, but there is not enough time in one or 10 days to do that.
       As a bi-sexual, beer loving, dancing, woman in college declared her self as a Religion major unblushingly to a bunch of conservative Christians that I cared (care) deeply for, I say in true form to myself, I will not compromise myself to the outline the church has given me and my true leader is not expectation, but Christ.  Christian writer, Donald Miller who wrote Blue Like Jazz and I could most definitely hang-out.  Let's get it right people.  Let us follow Christ and not Christians.
         

Once a Christian, Always a Christian?

Once a follower of Christ, Always a follower of Christ.

             Praise be to my God and Father who came into my life at the exact right moment!  I am who I am and according Psalm 139:14, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."   I'll continue to go against the grain and exert the qualities He calls me to.  This time, this period of my life, it's FORGIVENESS, RECONCILIATION,  AND LOVE as defined by 1 Corinthians 13.  

              My Savior turned water into wine; I will drink.  My Savior dinned with the desolate and washed the feet of sinners; I think I will keep the same company as Him, especially because I am one of them. 

Praise be to God.       

Love: A Multi-faceted Joke or The Most Brilliant Thing Ever?

        Scripture in the Bible clearly states for us in multiple areas that love is the greatest of all human qualities.  In the overly used, yet brilliant and beautiful scripture of 1 Corinthians 13, it states that love is the only thing that will exceed prophecies, the gift of speaking in tongues, faith, and hope.  The greatest human attribute is love.  It's the one thing that will bind us through the most difficult of times and sustain us.  Is Paul (the author of Corinthians) speaking strictly of God's love for us (agape)?  Does eros love fit into this as well?  What about the love that fails, the love that cuts to the core like a finely sharpened knife?
        Life has taught me a few things about "love".  The Greeks were point on when they separated love into 4 different types.  To review the different types, in a way that will no way shape or form encompass the depth of the types of love; we have Agape, which is a Spiritual love that is seasoned with unconditional love.  Then we have Eros; the burning passion we feel for a lover in an intimate, sexual way.  Philia, which is a mental love that we feel for a friend or family member and Storge, which is love that is felt by a parent for their children.  All four types of love carry with them characteristics that make them uniquely their own.
        In 1 Corinthians 13, is Paul rolling the 4 into one?  We can examine love from a pure intellectual stance or we can play with it and combine spiritual and philosophical stand points.  I am a person who likes to look at the whole picture.  What life has taught me is that God's love for me is VERY separate from the ways that I am capable of loving and understanding love.  God's love is indeed something super human and extraordinary.  I've tried to love with the love that I have felt He has given me but inevitably fail.  I've managed to implement some of the unconditionality of God's love into the ways that I display and present love to others but cannot seem to harness the purity of God's love.  In true human form, a lot of my love is seasoned with a desire to receive something in return.  Philosophically this makes sense.  A basic human desire is to decrease our pain and discomfort.  Inherently we have a desire to be loved and cared for.  I believe it is very rare for us to give of ourselves and love without expectation of receiving something in return that makes us feel good about who we are and adds meaning to our existence.  I'm not certain that there has ever been a time where I gave out love or kindness without some expectation of reaping some benefit myself.  I have loved and cared for my homeless kids deeply but through that I was able to feel a huge sense of purpose and meaning in my life.  I was able to go home and feel accomplished for the day and wake up with a larger than life meaning to get up.  Though I could just be looking through a cynical lens.  Would I have cared for them equally as much if I didn't go home and wake up feeling as such?  Probably.
       What about the love that destroys? According to 1 Corinthians 13, a love like that isn't characteristically love at all.  I use 1 Corinthians 13 definition of love because I believe it to be the most beautiful description of love to date.  I use it because as a believer, I am called to use it as my definition.  I do not contest it but that isn't without reason.  I do not contest it because for me, it is truth.  I watch a lot of crime TV shows.  In a lot of them we see how EROS can take on the form of evil and lend itself to seek and destroy like a heat seeking missile.  Is that love?  I've been in love several times in my life.  All of those relationships took whatever combination of 3 loves that we felt and carried them into some perverse land where anger, hurt, insecurity, and frustration covered the relationship.  Such perversion was born out of a genuine love for one another.  Such destruction was done because of a sense of love. How can this be?!
       I've seen 3 loves played out beautifully (not perfect) in my life; agape (will argue I've seen this in perfect form), philia, and storge.  Eros...well, that one has yet to be seen to be exemplified in the manner in which it is described.  Perhaps because I am human and humans pervert all perfection.  I believe we inherently screw up God's creations to an extent without intent to do so.  It's just nature that we cannot ever carry the characteristics of God like He does, because after all, there can only be One God.
       Love is a beautiful, gorgeous, amazing thing that pushes us, stretches our knowledge of self and the world, and makes us wake up the next day.  Without love, we are mere shells that carry a distain for life and all those encompassed in it.  All four loves are beautiful and perfect in intent and all four loves are subject to the perversion of humanity.  We live by it and we die by it.  Like most things, we fall short with it but the joy we can take in the shortcomings is that if lucky, we are afforded the opportunity to wake up tomorrow and seek to love stronger, better, more complete than the day before.  And that is God's call.  "To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving" - Khalil Gibran
         Without a doubt, love can be a giant joke compared to what it was meant to be and in the same, it IS the most brilliant thing ever! No one is exempt from our stained way of living, yet no one is exempt from being able to receive and give love in a way that can change and alter the course and direction of someone's life or heck, even our own.  

Kahlil Gibran on Love 

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Adulthood: The Death of Intellect

 It's been almost a decade since I've really wrote.  I'm inherently a writer.  I started writing poetry when I was in 5th grade.  I've kept a journal pretty much since 3rd grade.  My thoughts from an early age were always fairly well developed for a youngster.  I was a creative soul.  Adulthood swooped in and built a wall against all of that.  I've been locked out of my own head for so long.  With the walls of responsibility and the mundane schedule of the proverbial 9-5, a great sense of self has somehow been lost.

      As I began to exit my college years I also began to exit my head.   I would imagine that this is an uphill battle that most post-grads face in the wake of their most intellectual years.   It takes a great amount of discipline to continue the search and hunger for intellectual and spiritual growth.  Coming from a Christian college as a Religion major, I was constantly inundated with sermons, groups, intellectual and spiritual conversation, and theology.  Upon graduation, the umbilical cord to my resources for intellectual and spiritual growth and inquiry was severed.
       Into the world of adulthood, schedules, responsibilities, and relationship centered thinking, I was spit into.  It was void of creativity, deprived of intellectual inquiry, and somehow empty of soul searching.  My intellect became centered around the success of relationships.  Energy directs us.  My energy was consumed by whatever relationship I was in and somehow I began to equate the search for relationship success with the void of intellectual growth.  Human nature always desires for void to be filled; even if it's with the wrong things.  My energy would go towards how to make something right in a relationship verses the pursuit of intellectual and spiritual ponders.  Habits grow quickly and die hard.  At 30 years of age I am discovering that the last 9 years of my life have internally focused towards the wrong pursuits.  I have been intellectually dead and geared towards creating a family so much that I have lost the soul inside of me that for so long drove me to discover, inquire, search with the core of my being, and take delight in simplistic edifying activities.  Simple activities such as writing, REALLY listening to music, pursuing God and Philosophy, and conversation over coffee with a friend.
        Where have you gone, Jessica Cole???  I am still in this shell somewhere.  The things that once built me up from the ground remain as a foundation.  I am still aware of my love for music, poetry, theology, the love of God, and His people.  These things ground me, though, we are at a distance.  After almost a decade of intellectual and spiritual depravity, enough is enough! College doesn't determine the beginning and end of intellectual and spiritual pursuits; it just makes them easier.  My energy has been focused incorrectly.  Part of adulthood is pursuing your passions and desires un-aided by systems or people.  Part of adulthood is truly evolving on your own.  At 30 years of age and after almost a decade of brain death, I am saying NO MORE! It's on me now.
        Adulthood, you suck sometimes but I suppose I better start embracing you and learn to love what you offer.  You give me the chance to evolve.  Thank you.