The Opera Is In Me.

Little towns and big cities.

2010-07-02T00:44:00.001-07:00

Moderation has never been strength of mine. I’ve always accused my brother of being an extremely black and white person without ever considering myself to be one. Extreme people find themselves in an interesting situation; they have the ability to do both amazing things as well as amazingly stupid things. This basically sums up the cycle of my life. The worst times of my life have been when I’m just stuck between the two, dabbling in things that I know I shouldn’t be but wanting desperately to do good. Yuck. I don’t even like the think about it.

My move from Petaluma to L.A. is a good symbol of my knack for finding polar opposites. Petaluma is a small little town, the kind of place where even in this day and age people still are in love with the same person from their first days of junior high to the day they graduate high school. L.A. is the kind of place where people are in love for about 6 hours before they get bored and move on. If you go to USC you can cut that time frame in half. I think that all these changes have just made me somewhat numb to having stances on things that I used to see in black and white. There are so many things that I cannot even begin to figure out because they simply were not issues in Petaluma. I miss that. That’s all.

Flashbacks and promises.

2010-06-19T23:03:00.000-07:00

Music has the amazing ability to send you back to very specific phases or events of the past in a startling and very real way. I recently made a 400-mile trek from Los Angeles to the Bay Area to visit my parents and had one of these musical out of body experiences somewhere between Fresno and San Francisco (it all looks the same…). I sat in my car listening to the same songs on repeat until I thought I was going to rear end someone just for excitement and realized it was probably time to shuffle. I shuffled and lo and behold a song that I was obsessed with at exactly this time last year slowly penetrated my brain and sent me back to June of 2009.

Going back in time can be such a weird experience. Anyone who says it’s not possible has never experienced the power of music. Suddenly I was back in the hotel room that I stayed in with my roommate and her parents while apartment hunting for the place that would be my first home in Los Angeles. I remember thinking at the time that it was so strange that it was gloomy in L.A. in June. I remember my roommate’s dad making us move out of our first apartment because it was in the ghetto. It was. We were stupid. I remember calling my mom and telling her that I would need twice as much money for rent as she had promised if she didn’t want me to get shot; that might have been an exaggeration. I was stupid.

Life is so beautiful, so unexpectedly beautiful. Things didn’t end up working out in my first apartment; we both ended up moving out six months before our lease was up. I now go to USC but I moved to L.A. to go to UCLA. Never in a million years would I have told you that I would be living in a fraternity for the summer of 2010 and loving it. Never would I have picked USC out as my dream school, but it is. That’s what’s crazy about how God designs things in our life; he sends us all over the place just to remind us that he knows us better than we know ourselves. All 400 miles of my drive were spent just thanking God for the life that he has given me. There isn’t one single thing that I would change in my life. Sometimes I feel like I might literally explode from happiness or that if I get even one more blessing I’m just going to die. I realize that life is full of seasons and that struggle and hardship are probably just around the corner but I can’t help but just be blown away by the way God holds true to His promises.

2010-04-29T20:34:00.001-07:00

The Saturday In Between

2010-04-03T12:08:00.001-07:00

As a general rule of thumb, I hate being in between things. Right now there are a couple different things in my life that I am metaphorically “in between.” I’m in between coming to USC next year or not, between pursuing a professional career after college or entering full-time ministry, and at any one moment throughout my day between have a peace that surpasses understanding or giving in and letting that terrifying grip of anxiety and fear take over my life.

I woke up today really angry with myself. Yesterday was Good Friday, one of the most important days of the year for the Christian faith, and I did not do a single thing all day to even recognize that the Creator of the universe died an excruciating death because He loved us, because He loved me. I’m sitting here writing this on the Saturday in between Jesus’ death and resurrection. I can’t help but feel that today is more than just a little symbolic of this season of my life. I can focus on yesterday, on my own sin of selfishness and immaturity, or even on the sin of humanity that nailed Christ to the tree, or I can choose to look to tomorrow, Sunday and remember that God is alive and He’s taking care of everything.

Looking backwards at Friday brings anxiety and frustration and will put you in that nauseating cycle of guilt and sin. Looking forward to Sunday will bring hope and peace and the reminder that you are not alone. The end has already been decided. I might get into USC; I might not. The good news is that it really doesn’t matter. My senior quote in high school was “I do not know what the future holds but I know who holds the future.” How ironic that I chose that quote at that time of my life; at that point I had my future all mapped out in my head. Two years later I’m sitting here in a city that I once said I would never live in, praying that I get into a school I grew up detesting. I guess I wrote all this just to say that I’m learning how to accept that feeling of “the Saturday in between.”

On my new reality.

2010-01-28T14:07:00.000-08:00

Growing up in a small town, you don’t get very many “fresh starts.” If you pee your pants in kindergarten it WILL be brought up in your sophomore history class and thoroughly laughed at by all. Having the same people around you your entire life has its advantages and its disadvantages. One advantage is that people know your weaknesses. One disadvantage is that people know your weaknesses. I wouldn’t have changed the first eighteen years of my life for anything. Sure, it got annoying having everyone know your entire life story, but at the same time, they only know your entire life story because they lived your entire life right alongside you. They know you. You don’t have to try and explain why you do and don’t like certain things because they can probably remember the events that took place in your life that formed those preferences. If you grew up in a small town, going home is like going back to the nest. I can’t go downtown without seeing at least ten people I know. I love it. It’s part of who I am.

Moving to L.A. was a fresh start. But that’s not even the fresh start I’m talking about. My first six months in L.A. were rough. Not because anything traumatic happened to me, just because I was trying to live life on my own. I thought I was an independent person and that I could survive life and do things my way, and I was excited to finally escape my tiny town and have the chance to do this. It turns out the old adage is true. No man is an island; God made us to live in community. I recently moved into a house with eleven other girls and I cannot even begin to explain how blessed I am to be here. Although I’ve been living in L.A. for six months already, I feel that this is finally the fresh start I’ve been waiting for. This fresh start isn’t about me. It’s not about “finding myself” or making a name for myself or somehow changing my reputation or the way people perceive me. This fresh start is about getting to meet new people everyday and living in community. This fresh start is about other people. In the past week and a half, I have met more people than in my entire first semester in L.A. I can’t even tell you how much I love everyone in my new community. It’s amazing. God is really moving here at USC and all over L.A. and I there are no words to describe how excited I am to be a part of it.

I asked God for a group of Christian friends and he BLEW MY MIND. We dream and God says “dream bigger.” I love that. I’m not promoting some kind of health and wealth doctrine. I’m saying that if you ask God to put you in community, He will. I used to feel like I lived alone and that no one could really meet me at my level. I now feel like I live with and for others and the love between these people that I’m meeting is insane.

God is good. He works in unexpected ways. I moved from Beverly Hills to South Central and I couldn’t be happier.

The only way you can truly experience a “fresh start” is by asking him to give you one. For me, that meant a whole new life.

Holden Caulfield.

2009-12-04T21:21:00.000-08:00

This past week I’ve felt very much like one of my favorite fictional characters, Holden Caulfield from The Cather in the Rye. No matter how hard I try to be perky and see the good in people, give them the benefit of the doubt and pretend like I don’t mind that everyone is putting on a show, at the end of the day I just want to get home and scream. At the end of the day. Every single day. No I don’t live at a boarding school full of pretentious nitwits but I might as well; community college is the next worse thing. Perhaps the most aggravating moment this week came when some twenty-something “I’m going back to school after spending years traveling the country and being better than you” type of guy decided to throw America under the bus in agreement with my professor by loudly exclaiming, “Oh that we were like Canada” and leaning back in his chair. Phonies. I wish I was more articulate and could explain exactly why it makes me so infuriated when people make drive-by knocks at their own country, but instead I’ll just say that I think this guy is a giant prick.

I don’t know if it’s just because I’m stressed out because of school or if there is a serious screw loose in my psyche, but I’m ready for college students to cut this “I’m so Indie I wash my clothes in Thom Yorke’s urine” bullcrap. Dear guy in my photo-history class who has to ask the professor if he can share with us his artistic interpretation of every single slide that goes on the screen, I DON’T CARE. Does Huene’s “Izod Swimwear, 1930” really remind you of that one summer in high school when you traveled the Mediterranean coast and survived off the kindness and generosity of others? A) I don’t believe you and B) That’s not at all relevant or beneficial to the rest of the class. Thanks for the good times.

I’m going to come out right now and un-Hipster myself just because I’m ashamed to be associated with “the scene.” Yes, I shop at Nordstrom’s. And yes, I wear make-up that was probably tested on animals. I hope a mouse died so that my lashes look fuller and curl better. I hate mice anyways. Yeah…I do like Radiohead, but I also like The Beatles (sooooo cliché). Sometimes I do feel depressed and moody, but I’m not proud of it and I don’t flaunt it for the whole world to see. Get a grip.

Phonies I tell you.
At least Holden understands me.

Non, je ne regrette rien.

2009-12-01T09:07:00.000-08:00

"And I'm not gonna take it back
Oh I'm not gonna say I don't mean that
You're the target that im aiming at
Got to get that message home.."
-"A Message" by Coldplay

In literature winter is representative of death; once again life imitates art because the same can be said about my life. The months of November, December and January are somewhat like musicians. At first you're attracted to them because they are mysterious and they make you want to stay in all day next to the fire and write (write what? It doesn't matter..), but then you realize that they're actually just selfish and have no greater purpose then just trying to meet their own needs. Romantic personality types such as myself get excited for winter every year because it means rain, shorter days and the hope that some artistic inspiration will come as we lay curled up in our beds drinking soy chai lattés.

You can probably predict what I'm going to say next: this idea of winter bringing months of unadulterated romance is sadly a fallacy. You're also probably wondering what the Coldplay lyrics have anything to do with winter. The shoe-in is that I usually do things that other people would deem regrettable just about ever winter since I was fourteen.

The legacy of my winter-idiocy started with me standing in the main hallway of my high school campus dumbly starring at a (dumb) boy trying to muster up the courage to tell him I liked him. All my friends told me not to tell him, but I wanted to do it anyways...I needed to get it off my chest. Fast forward five years to me, once again, telling a guy who I was was bound to get rejected by that I had feelings for him. Winter makes me a social moron. After that last incident it seemed like just about everyone, with a few notable exceptions, was trying to get me to regret ever telling the guy I liked him. The problem was, I didn't regret it for one second. No matter how hard I tried to get myself to feel bad for taking the initiative, I couldn't do it.
Why should we ever feel bad for telling someone that we're fond of them? What's the worst that could happen? They reject us. We cry. We lock ourselves in our car listening to Damien Rice songs on repeat. We change our facebook profile pic twenty times in two days.

And then we move on.

What would you regret? That you made yourself vulnerable in an attempt to see if he/she had the same feelings for you? And maybe they did reject you, but at least you did it! So they don't like you...attraction is a funny thing and few can understand it. I would rather make myself vulnerable twenty times and get rejected twenty times than pine over someone for years without them ever knowing it. Winter this year is going to be great. I have no one to get rejected by. But if by this time next year I have feelings for someone, you can count on the fact that I'll tell them. As Edith Piaf once said, "Non, je ne regrette rien."

Et je mentis.

2009-11-29T13:46:00.000-08:00

I grab life by the blazing white jawls.
You burn
I suffer
Et je mentis.

I hold the flowers and snap the petals through my angry thumbs.
You ingulge
I bear
Et je mentis.

We promise never again, not to tell the soul that secret.
You yell.
I choke.
Et je mentis.

You kiss.
I strum.
You live.
And I lie.

Je respire
Et je mentis.

On taking risks. It's Biblical.

2009-11-22T16:34:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure when I first realized that I'm an extremely impulsive person, but anyone who has spent any significant amount of time around me has probably noticed. I can't say that it's something I'm ashamed of, or even something that "I struggle" with (to throw in some Christianese), because after all, God gave us each a personality and mine happens to incorporate a fondness for the unplanned. I'd like to propose that it isn't oxymoronic to be both an impulsive person and a Christian, as some would have you to believe.

Last spring I got a text message from a good friend who lived on the other side of state with the simple question, "do you want to go to Tennessee in two weeks?" Of course I said yes. And of course we didn't talk about what we would be doing there or make any plans for our time spent there. When I landed in Nashville I just called her up and guess what? She was in Nashville too. It worked out. BUT, certain people from my hometown gave me grief about my last minute trip. Why? Because it looks suspicious and because from a very young age Christians are taught to plan, plan, plan.

The book of Proverbs encourages us to plan, and I couldn't agree with that wisdom more. If we plan our days, they will be more productive. If we make grocery shopping lists, we won't buy cereal and forget milk. If we start saving now for a vacation that we would like to take in two years, that vacation suddenly becomes more feasible. I even like to make lists of goals for certain periods of time. However, there is a certain group within the church that has taken planning to a new level and made a "little g" god out of it. This has happened because of fear, more specifically, the fear that God isn't in control.

A woman in the church I grew up in once tried to talk me out of spending my summer in France(the night before I left) because she was afraid that I would start drinking and smoking weed. Certain authoritative figures in my life for years tried to talk me out of going away to school because they were afraid that I would backslide in my faith. When I announced that I was leaving my small hometown in Northern California to move to Los Angeles (gasp) I was all but delivered into the hands of Satan. This is so discouraging to me. When, as Christians, we fear that we will walk away from God if we are to leave our little nests of comfortability we are questioning the Greatness of God and demonstrating how small our faith really is.

You know what living in Hollywood and going to a secular college has taught me? That God will never, ever let me go, that His hand of provision is forever over my life and that nothing I could ever say or do could ever change the fact that He has saved me. This has been a hard lesson to learn but in the process I have discovered unspeakable joy and freedom. I wish I could go back to all those people who discouraged me from moving here and share with them that God is bigger than their plans. Not because I want to try and prove them wrong, but because I want them to see the freedom that they have in God. We can take risks! We can move away from home and still walk with the Lord! We can move away from home (and not go to Bible College) and even GROW in the Lord! This is great news! And it's Biblical. Take a risk for God. If it's not part of His plan for you, believe me, His is great enough to derail it. It's called LIVING for God, not planning for Him.

"We can make our own plans, but the Lord gives the right answer. People may be right in their own eyes, but the Lord examines their motives. Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed.....We may throw the dice, but the Lord determines how they fall."

Proverbs 16: 1-3, 33