Around this time five years ago, he and I were committed to each other in as many ways as two can be except by way of ring or covenant. In hindsight, the youngest and most dangerous of all the ways. We were fighting already like old people – a lot over schedules and semantics then, and we both hated pornography. He loved me and I loved him, and we knew from the humble beginning that we’d end up together, rounding out those last and final stages. I’d hear his same profession, let it sink impatiently deep, try with all my might to value its simple three-word form, and then I’d ask him for the first time, “But what do you love about me?”

We’d released our good and ready phrase into the atmosphere with an adolescent force to be reckoned with, and as many of you know, you’ll never get that bird back in its cage again. It flits and flutters about, intentionally careless, landing when it needs to or when it doesn’t, singing soft and loud, never enough times. And it’s true. Just when you think the love well’s run dry or it’s at least losing tread, there are days when it’s uttered between every literal breath and even then it’s still too few. So when, then, did I start needing more?

But what? He’d say well, of course your blue eyes and your family and our very common interests. I’d look at him – a stranger – my eyes drifting for his phone, and I wondered about who else he might know with blue eyes, a family, and similar favorite things.

. . .

I was scrolling through Instagram the other day, and this happens to me sometimes – I’ll go from zero to irked with not much context for the trigger that brought me there. I’m sure social media is a contributing factor, but it’s not the only one, and I won’t resign to an eternal temperament that’s just annoyed at the wind. With the help of the Holy Spirit who convicts with immediacy, I’m getting to the bottom of the provocations and the reasons they make me utterly out of control. Sometimes all-day irritable, sometimes more. Like rolling your windows up, locking your doors, and – only until your voice breaks and betrays you – suffocating a whole car with the devil’s dictionary of expletives and not a sin in sight to blame it on. Anyways, we’re working on it, sanctification and me.

That particular day, I’d come across some fluffy account (that’s what I call them) and behind this one, another blonde preaching from her impressive platform about dreams and margin and the ethereal lies that whirl around a misshapen identity. Throw in a few kitschy phrases about what to do when God says no and you’ve unlocked the winning formula. An anemic, scripture-based message and a thousand-person chorus amen-ing in unison. About what? She hadn’t risked a thing speaking in platitudes, she received the applause she had hoped for, and her blind affiliates can say they sort of feel better about themselves. Maybe it was a win-win all along.

He tapped me gently and told me that this was one of those times. Caught in the unbecoming web of judgment, condescension, and a gnarly assumption that her empty, loose words couldn’t possibly resonate with another human soul. It was a vulgar response, and a wrong one, but it was an assessment I wanted to come back to because it wasn’t new to me. I didn’t have pen and paper handy, so I scribbled down what notes I could quickly into my phone before the free thought vaporized and became bitter like it’s done before.

Vulnerability is specific and should be practiced without restraint – In relationship, in faith, in writing. Including detail and pointed repentance will highlight the character of the Lord more than vague representations of openness will. How much is too much to share or is that the point?

I collapsed it down and put the phone back snugly in my pocket, recognizing good and well that my opinion is only that, and I’ll need One more knowing to really get at what’s true. But with a swift and single pivot, I was at least able to catch it in a jar and examine the bug more clearly from above than from inside, slamming our heads into glass.

It really bothers me when I see a writer beat around the bush and call it honest. In fact, I think to name yourself a writer at all, you must be willing to learn more words and stretch them out to describe a thing well and you must be willing to suffer twice, making a reader live through the very affliction that made you tear the page up in the first place. I’m not trying to hear about your tiff with anxiety, which has you beat down. I want to see the color of the hives that cover your chest when you take your shirt off at night and know if they feel like bubble wrap as you press your fingers in. I’m not concerned with how inadequate you feel as a wife unless I know about the way you situated both soapy hands against the kitchen sink and with your neck strained out long you cry out to him that you don’t quite care what he has to say. And when you talk about apathy, try not to use the word more than once. Instead, tell me how scary it is to sit around a table eating chicken with the five people you love most and to still feel nothing, much like how someone might react after they’ve lost sight or sound or touch or taste.

Now, there’s a bit of controversy surrounding this one, but it might behoove the church to come out and just stand by something. Rather than covering its bases with a brush of generalities, I wonder how many might actually be comforted by the force in which a leader admits that he wishes they’d not split families up at the border. We’d nearly eliminate congregational phrases like, I know you didn’t mean to say it this way or what is he/she really trying to get at? You don’t have any reason to listen to me because I don’t know the first thing about stewarding a local body and I’m closer to apolitical than anything, but it’s just tiring to hear an authority voice in whatever capacity be mild and agreeable. Ask the spirit to correct, of course – and He will – but then find your convictions and don’t let them down, because the godforsaken name of authenticity depends on it.

If you’re familiar with any of my other ramblings here or elsewhere, you know that the Lord’s been teaching me for some time about my words. They trip me up and come out wrong and have been the cause of a handful of hurts over the years. It was a cruel irony when the Lord fashioned me with a penchant for writing and an unkempt tongue, but we’re working through that. And regarding the tendency to spill my guts all over the floor, there are moments where I’m certain I’ve let people in on way more than they bargained for with no way to take it back and no way to rearrange the story. But He’s quick to remind me that the word of God is specific and that when understood rightly, specificity is a gift too often snubbed and turned away as baggage. God was clear in his commandments, Jesus clear in his preaching of the gospel, and the Holy Spirit clear in his prompting and direction. The enemy tends to crouch near specificity and offer that they didn’t ask for this, and when you notice that, push further and you’ll hear the truer voice offer that maybe it’s surely what they need.

Ryan and I have spent all of our subsequent years in the throes of intimacy and the compounding specificity required to stay there. Say what you will about the Enneagram, but it’s a recently trendy tool that wasn’t as trendy four thousand years ago. Studying it closely has defogged a world of frustration for us. It doesn’t fix marriages or make you a perfect companion, but it encourages purposeful communication and comprehensive understanding – both ideas that demand precision.

We’ve learned to be specific in our praise and intentional with our questions. I don’t notice a fridge full of groceries and tell him thank you anymore. I go to him and say hey, I appreciate you going to the store. That’s really freed me up to rest, finish my work well, etc. Used to, he’d ask me what in the world is wrong, and I truly, madly wouldn’t know. I’d tell him nothing and neither of us was happy with that half true response. Now, because he knows that the shame-game is a 4’s broken heel, he’ll lean in and say that he knows I’m embarrassed for blowing up unfairly earlier and is that what’s bothering you? And the fact that he knows me well enough to direct his language accordingly is what separates shallow, self-serving openness from risky, self-sacrificing vulnerability.

After all this time, it’s not what he loves about me that’s changed, but the scope with which he shoots has become smaller. But what, I’ll say. And it’s something silly like how my nails click against the iPhone gorilla glass when I’m typing a message. He can hear it from a mile away. Most people use the pads of their fingers which produces an entirely different sound. Or when you’re primping in the mirror, he says, you make this same face. He demonstrates. Your lips purse and your eyes are like almonds, but you don’t know you’re doing it and no one would notice unless they’ve admired it for many, many mornings.

With such specificity, he’s captured my attention, and I believe anything he’ll say.

It’s not like we have nothing to lose in doing so, because I’m sure there are plenty of things. Reputation, perception, followers and fame. There’ll be backlash and possibly extreme opposition. But what if we dug all the way down and reached the guilty ground with signs that show we’ve said too much only to find that there’s more to go. More to uncover, more to feel, more to say. What if we risked over-sharing, misunderstanding, and being exposed for the sake of real rock-bottom depth and communion. I think we’ll find there’s freedom in saying exactly what we mean and consequently meaning what we say. Be diligent to pray against shame once it’s out there, and ask the Lord to do what only he can do when you’ve emptied yourself of everything. Go further than you’ve gone and expect quite a new thing to well up in you.

I'm a woman of routine through and through. Compulsive, ritualistic, and entirely wrung dry of a day's worth of principle. Some would argue that, as humans, we're all designed to identify patterns and that when thrown into chaos it's only natural for us to find solace in the reordering of it. And I'd say that it's true, but if we can be honest for a minute, let's. There are a few of us whose dependency on structure got cranked over several times past normal, and we're the obvious spokespeople of consistency but, more loudly than that, we live as adversaries of the things that disrupt it. 

My starting semester at UNT, the routes I walked to first find my classes were the routes I walked the rest of the year. They weren't the quickest ways to get there, but they were the ways that I knew. I have specific and unfond memories of the day that campus construction had blocked off one of my streets. I swallowed hard and glanced at my watch and thought that I could probably miss class just this once, and then I got my wits about me and remembered that there were literally a hundred alternatives. My day felt undoubtedly null and void at that point, but I still announced aloud to anyone who would listen about my inconvenience. And it's to this inconsequential degree which turns a good day right on its head. 

Getting older, I've noticed that even events indirectly having to do with my everyday will throw me into a tailspin. I had a conniption the moment Ryan left school to do hair, and it was only because life would look different for him. Imagine wearing an extra pair of antennae for empathy, detecting another's feelings and exacerbating their suffering because of how much you share in it. Latching onto those that change hardly bothers and saying, "Here, let me do that for you." Leave being bothered to the experts.

The other day, he and I hopped onto our own phone plan. We've been excited to do so, but the night before we switched over, you'd have thought we were forsaking our families and leaving the country. I spoke in jibberish about backing up our wedding photos and text threads that I've had for six years and how my current case definitely won't fit anymore and, most importantly, I wonder if we're really called to be Sprint people. His knee-jerk response was to steady my shaking shoulders and smile through his famous lecture about how many times I've been sure that the world was ending versus how many where I just went on living. Talking through the lopsided ratio of anxious times to real ones. I need somebody like this.

. . .

A lot of you know about my job, because if I'm not there, I'm at the least talking about it. I've worked as a barista for four years at this place that's called upon for coffee but makes room at the inn for those that need it, which means we engage in study and church and business and friendship - and stewarding a space that strangers continue to call home is just as hard as it is rewarding at the end of a day.

You invite them in to eat at your tables and drink from your spout. You realize that people come home to tell stories of Portugal and second dates and their sleepless nights with a newborn and fishing on the Amazon and the oldest son at band camp. You partake in graduations and promotions and engagements, but then you realize that people also come home to bear their cuts and bruises. To sob in your shirt after spreading her kid's ashes. To offer up an empty school yearbook, betting that the names from home might make it less bare. They shuck their shoes and clear their pockets and find relief in staying put for the night. We must first become believable characters in their narratives, willing enough to lend an ear and care. It's only after the fact (and if we're lucky) that we can collect their bags and try again with them the next day.

Three weeks ago, the team and I opened the doors to our second store, and I think I've not been able to sit down and mull it over until forty-eight hours ago. We were so busy dreaming and planning, making and building, designing and decorating - letting the place come to life exactly as we wanted. But then we let people in, and I had to make it run. I was prepared, but I wasn't ready - are you familiar with this feeling? Maybe it's like when you go to take a leveled step down and you've severely misjudged the depth. There's a split second of betrayal knowing you'd braced yourself for the impending transition and somehow still lost your grip. Months of learning to walk and walk boldly toward new responsibility and flailing every which way as it dances back at you.

It felt nihilistic, spending fourteen-hundred days over here, exerting all of your energy another direction and then beginning at day zero over there. A new crop. A different beat. And day zero.

Spotify recommended I listen to this song last week, and I was caught off guard to resonate with it so deeply - not the lyrics or the message, but the way that it explained, or rather, gave rhythm to a season quite hard for me to articulate. It starts with a simple, underlying melody that's strummy and mechanical, giving the listener something familiar to cling to. It speaks plainly at you until the second level comes. And then another one with cymbals, and another on top that whistles, at least three or four deep. There's a moment of harmony and pause and one where they miraculously align, and then it goes on interrupting itself but hearing happily as it's supposed to.

It takes you from comfortable to squirming in your seat, weaving together threads of sounds that mock the trajectory of where we think the strokes should fall. The whole thing's enjoyable and quick enough to see it all the way through, but the layered syncopation points out the same palpitation your heart's been having and you pick at your bloody cuticles until the final note's drawn out. I listened to it over and over again, giving myself permission to feel it freely, rightly and wrongly, simultaneously and compartmentalized. Breaking every rule in the book and figuring out on the fly what to do about it. 

We had been open about a week and one of our regulars was packing up his stuff. He's a middle-aged, married man - soft spoken and discerning. He saw me flying around in a frenzy and stopped to ask how I was doing. I couldn't look him in the eye, because he'd easily see my high-pitched, "Doing good!" and raise me one filthy, "No, really." So I kind of fumbled about and wondered if I should tell him about the hives that covered my chest and back yesterday. Or about how it had been a whole seventy-two hours since I had slept through the night or how my husband and I have been passersby the past two months, hoping to catch each other on the way out. I skipped all of those things but still told him the truth about the living dichotomy that is managing your own store and caring for this town's hopefully home. And he seemed to know. He said that it looked natural, and that in barely knowing me, he could tell that I was overflowing and fulfilled.    

I filed that one back with the others that needed time to marinate, and it wasn't until later that I would revisit those words and know them really to be true. That within the tension, there's still space for cooperation - a good will - that's recognizable and pleasing to the ear. That without either, you lack a tune and without both, you resign to safe life, a mediocre one. I wondered what it might be like to let newness scare the shit out of us and to dance at it anyway. To lose our nerve and wait for the chrous to bring us back. To bite our nails down to the quick and see it all the way through. To reconcile the relationship between calm and commotion.

You and I bear a most striking resemblance to an enduring line of song, and to nullify his presence in what appears disjointed is to inherently disregard his power when it pauses. Go ahead and let it play as it may, and I think we'll all be surprised at the freedom that comes with feeling this one freely.