Category: Creative Nonfiction

It’s the end of the movie, and the scene cuts all the way back to the beginning, where the boy and the girl spend their first day together. I’ve seen the movie, I know they end up together, at least in a way; I know how they feel about each other, I know how it ends. But all I can think, when I see them laughing and running in the tall wild grass up on that windy hill, is this–this is the beginning of their something.

Until now, I never quite understood what my friend said, all the way on a little island in the middle of the ocean, just two kids enjoying being wild and free and navigating the world all on our own, reveling in the little mistakes and trip ups we made along the way. She said that labels are overrated–what’s the point of labeling a relationship as something, when it is what it is anyway? Good communication she said, that’s what’s important. Ah, I said, nodding. Yes, I see. That makes sense. But it didn’t really. Two people either were something solid and particular or they weren’t… I didn’t see the point of avoiding clarification. It felt dangerous otherwise, communication or not.

But now–I’ve got my own something. It’s amazing and wild and precious and magical and sweet and gentle and messy and oh so darn hard and even more comfortable. It’s belonging and giggles and a bit fragile and determination. It’s living and warm and always changing yet always somehow the same. It’s a person. It’s something that began when I didn’t even know it was beginning and when I wasn’t even expecting it and now I just don’t want to even imagine myself without it and I don’t even know what that would be like and yet at the same time I do know and it’s too awful to think about yet I know that we’d be okay at the same time, somehow, someway, even though it doesn’t feel like that–and gosh darn it, all I know is that this something is part of my heart and I don’t want to lose it.

The boy and the girl in this movie–their something inspired me. They didn’t try to label it. Yes, it was messy and even dangerous–they definitely should have defined it more, contained it more. But in some ways, their ‘we’ reminded me of our ‘us.’ They were best friends, and something more. They were together, and yet not. But they always fought for each other, even through the years, and in the end, their something ended up working out, even if it wasn’t in the way they thought it would. They just remained dedicated to their something, without thinking too hard about what it should be, and just focused on what was. What is. They focused on “Whatever happens tomorrow, we had today.” Gosh I’m trying… I’m trying not to squeeze the darn life out of today because I’m terrified of tomorrow. I have to remember that today is good, and just live in it and be ridiculously joyful in it, without breaking all my rules somehow. I have to make as many beautiful and bright memories as I can without being painfully conscious of the fact that I’m making them, that one day they will just be memories–tomorrow in fact. But today, today, today–gosh, Jesus, I am so thankful I have today. Help me live it right.

“Listen, listen. Nothing truly good was ever easy,” the boy said to the girl. Listen, listen, I’m listening. I’ll try to walk it out, balance the curb, toes pointed, eyes straight ahead, feeling my way through the bumps and dips, alive to the world… focusing on the person holding my hand, keeping me balanced. Focusing on that grip, not worrying about when it will let go of me, and when he does, whether we will ever hold tight to each other again.

When we hugged back in November, I didn’t realize that it was the beginning of my something. That the moment would change my next year and even my very self forever. I didn’t realize ‘we’ would become so much a part of my vocabulary and my way of thinking. I didn’t realize that I’d finally have a something. And as crazy and hard and scary and beautiful and wondrous as it is–I want to thank you. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Thank you for being just that–my something. And I am so so grateful, that we have today to live it.

We piled into the vans on a cold, grey Saturday morning, friends and strangers alike, most having no idea of the journey ahead of us. Some of us expected to come back changed, and others of us did not–but West Virginia was about to work her untamed magic on us regardless.

Slumber filled car rides turned to noses plastered to chilly windows as the miles wheeled by, passengers staring quietly at the blue mountainscape that scudded past. The road wound up and down, sideways and through, over and dipping softly beneath, depositing us deep into the heart of the wild and wonderful… into a scraggle of unloved houses with flaking white paint and sagging porches.

The community center of BCPIA became our home for the first half of the week–the sprawling hallways covered in children’s scrawled names and the artwork of pondering volunteers of years past and the quirky warmth of mismatched armchairs and cramped bunk rooms welcomed us in. Sounds of pattering feet skipping through the halls and coal-black footprints in the showers began to add to the layers of memories that richen the air and dust the baseboards along with the buzzing bodies of millions of ladybugs. Three-hour chicken pot pie pans and nighttime tea adventures added to the flavor and rhythm of living life with twenty-two other human beings, sleeping in the same room, eating off the same dishes, and hearing the same stories of love and betrayal from folk with the lilt of the mountains humming in their speech.

From learning about Joel’s hydroponics, losing ourselves in Marsha’s time-machine stories by the lake, or dancing the night away to Chester’s rollicking music, we immersed ourselves deeper into the land and culture the people of Appalachia hold so dear. We piled onto mattresses in front of a VCR and an old boxy TV and cried for the plight of a small boy with dreams brighter and higher than the mines as we watched October Sky and rose the next morning to blast away pieces of concrete stairs with a sledgehammer, all feeling like mini Thor’s.

As the days accumulated, the exhaustion built. Eyelids grew heavy and heads dropped to friends’ shoulders. Unplanned naps became almost planned for, and appetites burgeoned as blankets and raincoats became constant companions to shield against wind and storm. Yet even as hearts grew wiser and heavier with knowledge, and minds became chock full of information and calculation, and hearts stretched further with all the emotion they could carry, laughter and mischief still glimmered in eyes and echoed around the halls, and the night was full of sneaking footsteps on creaking stairs and the snores and exasperated giggles of a new family, bonded together through an experience that had never been expected, and some never thought they’d have.

When I write about love, it’s a complicated thing.

I’m not talking about a crush, or a fleeting friendship or obsession… I’m talking about love. Whether romantic love or friendship love or family love. Just love.

It’s hard. It’s beautiful. It’s messy. It’s darn complicated. It’s so so good. It can take you to towers of happiness or holes of sadness. Often it does both.

Falling in love… what is that even? ‘Falling’ is accurate… one day you’re walking along, and then you’re suddenly moving faster and you’re not sure why, and then you accelerate and accelerate without even trying until all of a sudden you realize you’re falling, falling toward something that reaches out to catch you, but all the same you’re afraid that you’ll miss it. How do you even know you’re falling in love? How do you know you’re not just falling? Or that you’re even moving at all? What I think–you don’t. You don’t know. You don’t know until you’ve been caught and everything is okay and the world is right and the sun is brighter than you’ve ever seen it. So when you’re falling, tumbling through the air with a dropping feeling in your stomach that’s equal parts excitement and fear, you just have to shut your eyes tight and hope that a certain someone will be there to catch you. Falling into love would be a better phrase. Yes, that’s it. Falling into love.

So much of love is trust. Trust in yourself. Trust in the person waiting to catch you. Trust in Jesus. No matter the situation, this is true. But the more complicated it is, the more this is true. The more trust is needed, in greater measure and fiercer strength. A simultaneous holding onto someone tighter than you ever have held anything before and also an uncurling of the fingers, an opening of the fists, palms flat and open, saying I trust that this good thing won’t run away from me. A trust that this whole crazy thing is going to work out, somehow, someway.

Yet an even crazier realization–you can hurt someone through love, even mutual love, sometimes especially through mutual love. When there’s something between you, love can push you harder and harder into that wall until you feel the hard diamond cold impressed on your skin and aching deep within your bones. Yet I’d much rather be hurt by love than not have it, the belonging and home and warmth and reassurance and hope and just pure joy it brings. And any wall can be moved. Any wall. No matter how freaking tall or wide or hard or dark it is… as long as you can still feel the person on the other side, you can break through or climb over or tunnel under. Don’t stop believing that, even for a second. Never ever ever. Because that’s what makes us human, that what makes life worth living–that will to fight for love and keep on loving no matter the cost. That’s what love truly is–determination to belong with someone no matter what, just because they are them and you are you. What a simple, blazing strong, most wonderful thing. What a thing to call mine, home, a flame in my heart to keep me burning all my days.

Jesus, give me the wisdom to love the right way. Jesus, give me the bravery to follow hard after the truth. Jesus, give me strength even when it hurts. Jesus, help me trust that you’re the God of miracles.

I want a treehouse home, with a treehouse family, up on little stilts above the rest of the world, hearts on balloon strings, getting all tangled up in each other and giggling about it. Our porch rests high above the rest of the world on and amid wispy cotton clouds, a wind banner furling multi-colored joy from the roof peak. The front door is pleasantly peeling pale pink, rustic and warm, leading into a square little haven to cradle us in honey-colored wooden floors, lush gypsy carpets, multicolored walls of neon and pastel, and mismatched flumpy pillow piles.

We are the rebels of the conventional world, hanging up faerie lights and cooking pancake dinners with cheap Aunt Jemima syrup. Guitar sounds echo off cozy bedroom corners and muffle themselves in the tie-dye bohemian tapestry. Our little grey wolf pounces and stretches with deft, soft paws, needling tiny claws on the striped couch, sashaying here and there, counter top to windowsill, a queen stalking dust motes dancing in sunshine shafts.

I want to live with a boy with thoughtful brown eyes and laugh lines–we’ll have lots of tickle wars and pushup game battles and impromptu naps with fuzzy blankets and stargazing conversations in the crow’s nest on the roof.

I want to live with a girl with green-hazel eyes and a deep gaze, with calloused hands and sure movements, with a wandering voice, quick fingers, a big warm heart, an artist’s mind, and a loyal soul.

I want to live with a boy with a hooked nose who smells like fresh laundry, who wears layers like the never ending scarves out of a magician’s hat, who loves world peace and has a penchant for pancakes, whose head turtle-bobs while playing guitar, and who makes funny faces and domino jokes.

I want to live with a girl with red hair, a cute nose, and a smattering of freckles, with a loud happy voice, bright eyes, a feisty wit, and caring arms that want to encircle the world.

I want to live with a boy with dark shaggy hair, a quirky smile, and unraveling mystery, with a wry sense of humor and an impressive disappearing act, with a sassy hip twist and an impressive determination to be the wolf’s favorite uncle, with mad frisbee bounce skills.

I want to live with a girl who I’ve come to discover only recently, familiar yet only just out of hiding, a girl with an uncontrollable laugh, a leaping growing mind, a supple body, and a wild loving heart–a girl that touches and hugs and writes and plays and praises and climbs and sings and loves and loves and loves and loves, boundlessly and more deeply every single day and hour and moment and breath. Someone beautiful. Someone sure. Someone belonging.

A treehouse family of six, hanging pictures on the walls, plunking out tunes, and frisbeeing in the nearby wildflower meadow. A treehouse family, climbing into the heights of each other’s minds and hearts, leaving the dark depths of sadness and loneliness and confusion and doubt behind, discovering new bright levels and windows and rooms, sweeping floors and cleaning out cobwebbed corners and spreading fir fragrance and golden candlelight. This treehouse family, living a treehouse life, in this treehouse home, which we built, and continue to build, together, strength flowing from hand to clasped hand, into and out of hearts, cool green silver and warm gold, strength pouring from our bones, plunging through our feet into the rough-hewn floor, making what was once inanimate and lonely a living place to call “mine.” Ours. On and on and on.

My treehouse family, in my treehouse home, in my treehouse heart. Here, nothing will die, everything will remain, to the clear blue horizon.

The moment I have a good thing, I’m always terrified I’m going to lose it. The brighter the memory, the crazier the joy, the more golden the relationships, the more cataclysmic that fear is. I have always hated the way it encroaches on the bet of moments, trying to push its dark, stalking, heavy, fanged presence out of my life with both hands. And it’s dang hard.

Looking back on my life, I think this lurking joy thief haunts my steps so doggedly because many of my best and brightest joys–specifically people–tend to leave me. No one is ever as permanent as they feel. I have had to fight the lie that I am not enough. I just have always wished people would fight as hard for me as I’m willing to fight for them.

And now, they’re all terrified. The people who I have fallen in love with these past few weeks and who have become my family are as scared of losing their home in each other as I ever was. They don’t have control over that joy and safety as they would like. And it’s hard to trust in this new Spring love we’ve just found when so often people just don’t fight for us as they should. For me, this experience has been one of secondhand terror, the utter chaos in my head transplanted by osmosis, their roots of uncertainty travelling from their hearts into our joined hands and into my own center. I understand what it’s like to be left behind.

But for me, that bitter root finds itself unable to penetrate the hardy green-wood coating of life and hope and faithfulness these people have gifted me. The fear will not take root inside my heart, where I guard these strong fledgling bonds jealously. I will not let the cold reach them and kill their warm purple flowers, just having bloomed from tentative buds. Because for once, I HAVE A CHOICE. (how good does it feel to say it, I have a choice!! a choice a choice a choice, hear it ring!) Nothing is being taken from me. And I will not let it be so, will not deceive myself into thinking I am impotent when it comes to protecting the happiness and friendship of the people I love and love me. I finally get to fight for a ship that’s not sinking and with a crew that actually cares, if minorly despairing. The sun is merely behind a cloud, the wind is merely waiting for tomorrow.

Maybe people are just not used to others–even wonderful people–fighting not to leave them. I guess when it’s something you never do yourself, because you know it won’t work one-sided, you forget that it doesn’t mean it won’t work at all. I’ve never been able to stop trying–I have found myself incapable of being passive, and that means when I get hurt, I get hurt. But I can’t help it, and I’ve never truly regretted it about myself. I think it’s a better way to live, a fuller way to love.

But for the first time I can remember–I have a choice. It’s my turn to decide whether it’s more worth it to go or remain. I can go off into the unknown in pursuit of new adventures, or I can stay here with the known delights of people who actually care about me. I can go hunting for more amazing people to adventure with, not knowing if they’ll accept me, or keep on building deeper with a family that’s already wholeheartedly said yes to living life with me. I could go looking for more people to want me or hold fast to people who have already said they don’t want me to go. We’re not perfect. We are messy, broken, confused, hurt, sinful people, just like the rest of the world, downright human. But we know how to love. And who to love, and how to live with the certainty of being loved back. And that is an indescribably precious gift. That’s called community. That’s called friendship. That’s called family. That’s called home. That’s called love.

And in the end, I know it was never really a choice at all.

I will always choose to stay.

Some days I feel like the luckiest girl alive. Especially now. Man, if you told me I could be this happy going to school in the city I’ve always known, I would have thought you were crazy! If you had told me that I would become so gloriously, nonsensically happy, that I would never want to leave, and that I wouldn’t want anything to change, and that I wish I could just stay where I was just as I was with the people that were, forever… I would have thought you were insane. I didn’t know it was possible to have an experience like this. I didn’t know it was possible to fall so lightning fast and so hit-the-dirt hard as I have for these wonderful hippie, dorky, best-friends folk. I am overwhelmed, each and every day, by the love I feel for these people and the utter, wild happiness that just engulfs me like a breaker wave on such a bizarrely regular basis. I am so happy. Like jump and shout and scream for joy happy. Like I can’t even explain, or even understand, just feel my body and soul and heart and mind thrill and laugh and spin and just burst with the ecstasy of life. I cry I’m so happy sometimes. What a strange thing, to cry because you are happy! I think it is because our human bodies don’t know how to handle such an overflow of positive emotion–often only sadness is so all encompassing. So we cry as an utmost expression of joy in a world that we didn’t know could be so bright. WHAT FREAKIN’ JOY!!! Hallelujah–and I mean that–praise the Lord! He has given me what I never thought I could have, and the possibility for so much more, deeper, different love than I ever have experienced with a community of people and even with individual persons. The horizon stretches out wonderfully pale blue and blissfully empty and free, all around me, like I’m standing on the top of some tall rock spire. And sometimes it’s scary, knowing all the directions and places I could go and the ways I could get there and how easy it would be for me to mess up and fall and lose it all–but then I feel Jesus’s arms holding me steady, and my friends hands steadying my feet and shoulders, and someone’s warm grip in mine. I hear laughter and I smell cinnamon coconut pancakes and feel the reassuring warmth of family. I feel as far from alone as I’ve ever felt, and more of a certainty of permanence than I’ve ever had. And so I dream of flying, instead of falling, and of a flock to guide me home.