Where I’m At Right Now
Hey again!
I’m currently writing from 55 degrees foggy San Francisco. I’m staying with my old youth pastor’s family and it’s funnily comforting to see the same momentos and furniture in a place so wildly different from where they used to be.
What used to be in my mentor’s kitchen as I spewed my 16-yr-old drama is now in her living room as I update her about what I want to do after college, as I debate how exactly to spend that time between graduation and the rest of my life.
The same song that literally played a zillion times in my youth group years rang out in a hundred-year-old First Baptist Church in San Francisco, as a very familiar voice got up to speak to a room full of SF families rather than a bunch of Vegas kids.
God’s been the same even as all our stories change. All the faces I grew up with have grown up too, and the church halls that meant one thing now mean another.
I’m in that place where I want to know how people got places. Not about where they are or what’s just normal now- but *how* did you get here? What kept you up at night? What one random morning did you wake up and realize- oh this is what we’re gonna do now? What lingered and sat in your being until finally you just- did it?
I know two roads diverged in the wood- but how did you pick the one you traveled? Frost is great, but I’d like to not just pick where I go based on previous foot traffic. There’s got to be more to direction than that.
I keep joking as I fill in mentors and loving voices about my life right now that I want a motivational speaker to talk about the messy middle. Not just say the usual, “Oh well I worked odd jobs and had to figure out who I was,” part as a little introduction- but as the whole speech. Tell me every odd job. Every question you held. Every little decision you didn’t even realize you were making that somehow landed you the dream life you actually came here to talk about.
Maybe that’s why I love comedic essay writers or stand-up people- because all they do is talk about their odd jobs, their random summers, and their weirdest mistakes. John Mulaney and David Sedaris make a living off their messy middles- and, in some cases, their messy still-happenings.
The poetic parts of me have summed up this season as “letting things be light blue.” Of course I wrote a whole actual poem about that that I’ll share someday, but it just kinda hit me as I drove past a long, shallow pond in the desert.
Anybody who knows desert ecology knows that flash floods happen when lots of rain hits the dusty rock floor of the desert. As the lovely diagram and flash flood room at the Spring Preserve will tell you, rock can’t absorb all that water as fast as it hits it- so it just collects and collects and then, floods.
What would've been absorbed near-instantly into the soil of San Francisco or Portland forms ponds and floods in the wilds of Southern California or Nevada.
But then, the rocky ground will slowly absorb the water and like pure magic, brown turns to green. Life comes up. Near-meadows emerge where cacti and vultures reigned. They go as quickly as they came, but there they are- little patches of life after unexpected water.
And I guess, both as a desert native and a slow processor, the image of letting things take time to sink in, to create a garden out of dry ground, is comforting. Not all people are forests or oceans, where unexpectedly good things quickly absorb or instantly integrate. Sometimes people are like deserts- needing some time to let it all sink in and take shape, knowing that it’ll actually have the deepest impact in the end. You just got to give it time. So, let it all be light blue. Let a shallow pond reflect the mountains for a bit. Stop rushing to the green, shoving stubborn water into solid ground. It’ll come. It’ll be real in time.
Which honestly- I’m not the hugest fan of. Sitting amongst literal acres of dense green at the Botanical Gardens is more my speed. But, I’m learning that’s not the speed of my soul- and we’re learning how to play the waiting, growing, watching game together. We’re gonna be repeating this cycle quite a bit I bet.
I’d love to tell you exactly how I feel, exactly what’s happening, exactly what the big themes and movements of my life are right now- but my usually very self-aware self can’t deliver that as much at the moment. It needs time to soak in all the new, good, wonderful, intense, amazing- but unexpected- things before it starts trying to craft a narrative written in pen. It’s a little afraid of rushing the wrong narrative, to be honest.
But it’s great to be back. Back to traveling and packed bags and time away and chats with friends and mentors and long hours on my own. It’s weird to be back to how life once was as a person I’ve never quite been before, but I’m learning. Letting life be light blue right now- and somehow, that’s bringing me an indescribable kind of peace.
If I could give any advice to anyone in the middles of life, or anyone who’s a wee child but can almost drink legally- it’d be to find voices from all over the place. Especially older ones- ones in a season or five ahead of you. If you’re almost graduated, find someone who’s fresh out or a few years out or hardly even remembers school. If you’re in a new relationship, find someone who’s dated for a while, someone newly married, or someone whose wedding picture hasn’t moved in years- or maybe even someone divorced or intentionally single.
They won’t be perfect or all-encompassing people- but they will be real-life, flesh-and-blood honest people. They will add quotes and soundbites to your life that you’ll reference forever, being little books of support for all the different parts of making your life yours.
Life was meant to be lived with a web of people- not a perfect collection, but a web of people. It’s why church, even with all its bits and bobs, is still such a powerful place when done well. Sure, it might be awkward to meet people but do it- it’ll ease your aches and question marks so much.
