In the end, I'm glad it's you.

Stop and feel this moment. Doesn’t it seem fragile, like the whole world is holding its breath, trying not to blink? 

Doesn’t the brazenness of young love seem like a million years away? How many times have we known heartache since then? Our scars are like webs across our hearts, and we sit here, naked, asking: Do you see me? Do you know me? Am I enough?

Let’s not listen to the voices, OK? Half of them are telling us we’ve found each other and from here it’s happily ever after. And the other half is telling us love is a sham, forever is a lie. What the hell do we know about forever? We’re just two kids with the rest of our lives to lose. Do we even know how to be in a relationship that doesn’t have an expiration date? Of course not. Nobody does. We just start somewhere near the beginning and time ticks, ticks, ticks us along until we’re older, until we’re old, until we’re dead …

Will you be there when I die? Will you still love me then, even in those last moments? Will you still hold my hand and trace the veins that run under my frail, papery skin? Will we still laugh until our sides hurt and tears run down our cheeks? Will you still look at me like I’m made out of sunshine and magic? Or maybe we won’t need magic by then. Maybe we’ll have found the comforting rhythm of friendship and life-long partnership behind the smoke and mirrors. Think of the life we’ll have lived, and all the things we’ll have seen. Isn’t life a wonder, the way it never slows down?

Please understand me. I’m as sure about you today as I was the day I met you, and every day in between – like gravity and tequila and God Himself brought us together. (And what tequila hath joined, let no man separate.) When I met you it was like I could see color for the first time. It was your eyes – sharp like a pinprick, soft like a whisper, dark like a thunderstorm, deep like the sea. I looked in them and saw everything I needed to know: I was home.

But I’m scared. Is that OK, to admit that I’m scared? Not of you, not of us – just of life in general and the reality of being human. I’ve spent 27 years in this body, and before I was 27 I was 7 and I was 17. And those people I was then, they’re still here, inside this body. Their memories, their experiences, their states of mind, they’re all still here, slinking around inside these hollow bones. I can’t promise you what I’ll be like at 37 or 57 or 77 because how could I? And you shouldn’t promise me either, because we shouldn’t make promises we can’t keep.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. If I was, we wouldn’t ask every old couple we ever meet: What’s the secret? What’s the secret? The people want to know, what’s the magical formula that will lead us to a long, happy marriage? Because we don’t want to face the truth: There is no secret.

There is only you and me – two selfish, stubborn, messy people with the best of intentions, just trying to grow up and grow old and build a life in a world full of selfish, stubborn, messy people.

They say you don’t pick your family, but that’s not entirely true, is it? Because I picked you and you picked me, and together we’ll start a new family. We get to pick the person with whom we’ll share a bank account and a bathroom sink, forever. For as long as we both shall live. We pick the person who will hold up a mirror for us every day and say: this is you, look at yourself.

And in the end, that’s why I’m glad it’s you.

It’s only been a year, but already I feel like you’re a part of me, like an extension of me. It’s uncanny how well we match. There aren’t enough words in the English language to describe it accurately. Even our quirks, those rough edges in our personalities that prick and grind harshly against others, seem to fit. We move around each other like water -- ebb and flow, ebb and flow. Even our friction is like a slightly-too-tight hug.

You still fascinate me. I’ve been tangled up in your complicated, maze-like mind since the first day I met you, and I’m certain I could spend the rest of my life crawling around inside your headspace, looking at life through your eyes. But it’s the day to day, the way you move through life with such openness and ease, that I love most. It’s the in-between moments, the moments no one else sees, except us.

In the whole wide world of people, you’re the only one who makes me feel brave enough and safe enough and loved unconditionally enough to stand before you at the altar and say: Do you see me? Do you know me? Am I enough?

Ships

What is mine to give?

Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's spring. How could I not look out at the world that's fresh and green and new and not feel that gentle stir in my gut, like change is coming? Like change is here. I feel like I'm standing on the threshold of an identity crisis — again. How many times have I been here? Five? Ten? A dozen? Sometimes it's scary, but not this time. This time it's exhilarating. And also peaceful. At times, identity crisis has felt like painfully peeling back weather-worn layers to expose ratty scars, or like cutting out infected wounds. But this time it feels like discovery and adventure. It feels like new growth, like blossoming, like reaching out and stretching new muscles I never knew were there. In the timeline of my story, this is the part where I'm finally coming into my own as a human, as a woman, as a writer, as a creative, as an intellectual, as a spiritual, emotional, physical and sexual being. I feel powerful, but not in an awkward, abrasive way. I feel comfortable with myself, even as I'm grappling with what that means — to be myself. For years I've been digging and clawing at myself, asking over and over again, "Who am I?" All the while half-afraid of what I'd find. For the first time, that inner dialog has shifted and I find myself asking, "What is mine to give? What do I have to offer my friends and family, my world?" Yes, my world. Planet Earth belongs to me as much as I belong to it. I am the future of my world, and I have a responsibility to take care of it. Hell, I am the present of my world. I am not a girl. I am a woman, and for the first time that doesn't scare the shit out of me. For the first time I don't feel the urge to apologize or ask permission to be the woman I was created to be. For the first time I feel like I've earned the right to stand in the space I'm standing in, to own it and use it — not just for myself, but for the good of those around me. What does that mean? Hm. I have no idea, but I have this aching feeling I'm about to find out. It's weirdly bittersweet, actually. Like I've stepped out of young adulthood (big girl adolescence) and I'm looking back at my own shell. I can never go back, you know? To those moments of raw insecurity that I've worn like a blanket for so many years. I've hidden under that immaturity, convinced I had nothing to give; I could only take. I can look back and remember what those moments felt like. I can stand in my old footprints, but I can't peer into the future with fresh eyes like I once did. Because I'm standing here now, looking backwards and forward at the same time. For a long time I've felt like I was playing house with myself, pretending to be a woman. Then suddenly I woke up and realized I don't need to pretend anymore. I don't need to become a woman, or even be a woman. I am a woman. I'm not afraid of myself — of my spirituality, my intellect, my emotions or my sexuality. I no longer feel like they're all separate parts of me that circle each other like dogs in a dogfight, each bristling with teeth bared. I've called a truce, and I'm in the process of making peace with myself. I'm learning to trust myself, to respect the many facets of my being and to protect and cultivate each of them while still allowing them to live in unity — in harmony. I'm learning to be comfortable with the knowledge that I am strong enough to be vulnerable. I'm learning how to trust my intuition, how to listen to that inner voice and decipher its meaning. And I'm learning to forgive myself when I'm wrong. I'm learning how to sit with myself without hating the silence and wanting to escape my own skin. I'm learning to stop apologizing for my opinions, even when they're not popular. I don't need anyone's permission to use my own brain. I'm also learning that I don't need to keep my emotions on lockdown or cage my empathy in order to prove my intellect and my "strength." I'm learning the true meaning of strength, leadership and power. I'm learning that love is not a weakness; it's a powerful motivator, and it's something I am full of. It's what fuels my fascination. It motivates me to learn more, to understand more. My emotion is what drives me to seek logic and understanding, to make sense of the world. I can't have one without the other, and I refuse to apologize for that. And for the first time I feel like I don't have to. I can just be because I am. And that's a good feeling.

Dallas

I was enamored by your beauty, 

By the way your sleek glass walls sparkled in the Texas sun.

I wanted to bounce my shiny, new dreams down your mirrored hallways,

But we don’t have time for those kinds of childish games.

Here, we mainline success.

And it settles in like December in our bones. 

     If we could only get enough…

Porcelain people with big hair and painted smiles.

We waste our youth building paper lives.

Each of us, just another cold body, 

Navigating the flow of traffic that sucks us through your lonely heart, 

And pumps us out the other side.

Even God is silent,

As He gazes on this desolate city with vacant eyes.

The only truth I’ve found among your hollow walls,

Is that aching feeling that I came here for a reason,

     If I could only remember what it was…

Maybe if I go back to where I started,

Something will remind me.

But Dallas only knows one direction:
Forward.

Movie crashers

One of the best things about Lubbock is the Stars and Stripes Drive-In Theater. In Dallas the closest drive-in theater is the Galaxy Drive-In in Ennis (which is actually only a 40-minute drive, but no ever makes it out there because just leaving your neighborhood is a daring feat for most Dallasites). Whereas, the Stars and Stripes Drive-In Theater in Lubbock is an easy 7-minute drive from Tech campus — because that's all it takes to get out of town and get an eyeful of the wide open, star-spangled West Texas sky.

My friends and I were pretty boring in college, so some of our best memories happened at the drive-in. We'd go early to snag a good parking spot and then blast music from our cars and snack on whatever food or drinks we brought along. Usually we'd go in groups of five or more. There are three screens at Stars and Stripes, and moviegoers pay to watch two features. 

One time a group of five of us went together. We wanted to watch the first feature on one screen and the second feature on a different screen. Guests aren't allowed to switch screens, so we took two cars and parked them in different theaters. 

Well of course after the first showing, we were tired of being cramped into one car, craning our necks to see around each other, so we decided to move both cars to the second showing. Three of the girls walked over to the car already parked in the second theater, and me and my bestie stayed in my car and drove it to the other screen. 

We had barely gotten inside the opening to the other screen when an employee came running up to us, waving a flashlight frantically. He told us we weren't allowed to switch screens. We were going to have to leave, he said — and not just the theater; we were being booted out of the drive-in altogether. I apologized profusely and told him I'd leave immediately. Satisfied, the employee started walking away.

My friend looked at me. "Too bad we have to leave," she said, disappointed, but I was still watching the employee walk away from us. He walked out the entrance to the theater and turned the corner, out of sight. 

I snickered. "Oh we're not leaving," I said. Before my friend had time to react, I kicked the car into reverse, slammed down the accelerator and quickly maneuvered backwards through a line of cars parked side by side in the darkness. As soon as I saw an available space, I whipped inside and killed the engine. Seconds later the same employee came running by, scanning the drivers with his flashlight. We busted out laughing and ducked down, sure we were about to get caught. 

But then we didn't. Flashlight Guy just kept running down the line of parked cars, shining his flashlight into every car he passed. He eventually gave up the search, and my friend and I shared another laugh and settled in to enjoy the flick. The best part is that that's the night we saw Remember Me, which is still one of my favorite movies to this day. 

So thank you, Flashlight Guy, for sucking at your job and failing to throw us out of the drive-in.

Remember the time.

I measured the seconds by the times your unseeing eyes flicked over me,
And the hours by the conversations we never had. 
I numbered the days by the TV shows we watched to distract ourselves,
And the weeks by the sermons we heard, side by side.
I counted the months by the growing pile of magazines on your table,
And the year by the dull ache in my lonely heart. 

Word play.

Your soul, it is the cynosure.

I’m lost in my affinity.

Your voice, a lilting song to me,

I hold my breath to hear you speak.

The shift, it moves first through my blood,

Into the heart that deeply loves.

First timorous, with trepid jolts,

The shudder that becomes a flood,

The spark, the flame that starts a fire.

Your body is the warmth I seek.

The flush that’s spreading from your smile.

I melt in your propinquity.

I want.

I want to travel the open highways of your mind,
    And get lost on the backroads.

I want to draw from the deepest part of your well,
    And taste the bitterness of your almost forgotten tears on my lips.

I want to wander through the shadowlands,
To temp the fires that burn in the night.
    I'll take my chances with the ghosts of your past.

I want to cover you like a blanket,
To wrap myself around you and hold you until our bones graft together —
   ragged and crooked with old age.

I want to kiss your skin with my skin,
Like a thousand tiny conversations.

I want to look into your eyes,
And see the fine print stamped on your soul —
Words that tell me who you are,
    Words that unlock the secret passageways of your mind.

I want to know the you that you love to be,
The secret part of you that hovers in the fringes —
Always watchful,
Always thoughtful.
I want to know what that you dreamt about when he was young and life was new.

I want to chip away the ragged edges,
And peel back the delicate layers.
I want to spend hours pouring through the boxes that house your mental chaos,
Boxes that are color-coded and labeled neatly.

I want I find the back room,
Where the files in the corner are messy and unorganized.
I want to put my fingerprints in the dust on their cases,
    Like "Brittany was here."

I want to find the stretch marks from when God grew you.
I want to kiss those ragged scars —
    Some fading,
    Some pink and new —
And say, "Good job, God."

[personality test]

•You thought
•You understood me
•And when
•I surprised you
•You took
•Me out of my box
•And put
•Me in another

The narcissist

I once loved a man
made of ice and stone,
who loved me for my flesh,
my blood and my bone.
He loved me to have,
but never to hold,
and if eyes are a window
to a stone man's soul,
then even his heart
was like a black hole.
He believed deep down
he had a heart like mine —
steady like a metronome,
pumping in time —
but if you are what you do,
he was only a mime,
going through the motions
in a grand disguise,
begging for applause
from audience eyes.

Once upon a December.

It’s like December in your soul.

And here am I,

Searching for the fire

That once burned in your eyes.

But I find only the reflection of my breath

Curling in the cold, damp air.

Like the sunless sky.

Because you’re cold inside.

Why are you so cold inside?

There’s a hollow clinking in your bones

As I’m trying to light a match,

But there’s no oxygen

To catch.

And my fingers,

They can’t grasp

The matchbox

Or the match.

One-liners

With fascination I trace the delicate lines of your palm, searching for our future in those worn out intersections. 

---

I don't care what anybody says, there's unspeakable beauty in an endless sky. Restless hearts like mine can get addicted to the uninhibited confidence it exudes, even in its most naked form.

---

We walked like sheep to slaughter, smiling through slitted eyes to whet their hunger, through a place so hopeless it even smelled like darkness. Ready for a heart to heartless.

Fingerflow.

Call it luck or call it destiny, but I found an old soul in a box of trinkets that had found its place in a modern world. It is the key that unlocks a forgotten moment in time. I carry it with me in the pocket at my chest, and it whispers sweet nothings to my weary heart. Sometimes it seizes me away to another time, to a foreign place when people were valued for their depth and complexity, a time when being both strong and weak wasn’t a contradiction. It takes me to a time when respect was something people earned and a thing called honor was worth dying for, when freedom was a man’s elusive lover and loyal friend, when blood, sweat and tears was all in a good day’s work. I hold onto those sweet lessons, savoring them like a box of chocolates in the back of my mind...

The side of the world I'm looking at

For some time I'd been talking about my restless feet being itchy, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I'm standing on the threshold of a new adventure.

I've been looking at the world from a new corner these days. I've moved back to Dallas, my hometown. I've been here for about a month and have gotten pretty solidly initiated into my new job. After a few near-sleepless nights, I made my first round of deadlines. I dyed my hair purple, and no one at work said anything about it, so it seems I got away with that one ;) In fact, my boss says I seem to be getting along OK, which to me says I won't be getting fired any time soon. 

I don't have internet at my place yet, so I've begun cycling through coffee shops, cafes, and just about anywhere else that's open until God-forsaken hours of the night. 

The strangest thing about this move is that I've only been here a month but I already feel more at home here than I ever did in Amarillo. I think it's because this is a place where I could put down roots if I wanted to. I probably won't know for a while if that will happen or not, but there's comfort in the fact that it could. I've also stepped into a great job I think I'm really going to love a lot. And there are definitely opportunities on the horizon, which is exciting. 

I've already fallen in love with Dallas, which is honestly completely unexpected. I don't consider myself a "Dallas girl." I'm not a brand-name-purse, white-picket-fence kind of girl. I expected to feel awkward and out of place in the fast and furious concrete jungle, but Dallas has managed to surprise me in that aspect. Maybe it's just because I've managed to settle in Lakewood, which is basically a small city trapped in the middle of growing Dallas. So there's a kinship there, I think. I feel at home with these people, in this anti-Dallas corner of Dallas. 

But I even love venturing outside of the East Dallas bubble. Aside from people being a little horn-happy, Dallas is still Texas. People still smile at you when you pass them on the sidewalk, and they still talk to you in the grocery store. It's not such a foreign place, and for that, I'm grateful. In truth, it's a lot of fun being young and single in Dallas. There's a vivaciousness here, an energy. I could drink it up forever. And who knows, maybe I will. 

A Hope You Can Hold

There are a lot of things I love about my job. I could talk about it for hours, so I'll spare you the gushy details and just get straight to the good part. I love my job because it allows me to constantly learn new things about the world I live in. I get paid to talk to people and write about them. I get paid to understand the human experience, to dig deeper into what we do and why we do it. Over the past several years, I've written a lot of stories about social issues. Words like: poverty, hunger, teen pregnancy, homelessness, prostitution, sex trafficking, and foster care seem to be a constant part of my vocabulary. In our world today, especially in our economy, those subjects would be difficult to avoid, but I don't really try. In fact, if anything, I seek them out. They're what fuel me to keep doing what I do, because I believe if I can understand them a little bit better, maybe I can tell people about them, and then they will understand them a little bit better too.

There's another word I keep running across: Hope. I hear it everywhere I turn. And I'm not talking about, "I hope things change," or, "I hope this makes a difference." I'm talking Hope with a capital H, the kind you can wrap your arms around, the kind of hope Jesus talks about in the Bible. Hope comes in many shapes in sizes. It's food for a homeless man, it's diapers for a desperate young mom, it's shoes for the feet of a small child, it's college scholarships for a foster kid. Sometimes it's little; sometimes it's big. Sometimes it's longterm; sometimes it's immediate. But it always makes an impact.

It's easy to look at the problems all around us and forget that there's is still capital-H Hope because there are still people in the world who desperately and passionately cling to it. What's funny is it's always the people who are at rock bottom, tirelessly shoving up the muck of society, who use the word "Hope" the most. Because they believe in it. They believe in the people struggling to stand beside them. They believe in each baby step that person takes towards firmer ground. And you better believe, the Hope that they breathe into each struggling heart, is the lifeblood that keeps them going. They're not giving people cans of food, they're not giving people infant formula or old clothes. They're giving people the kind of Hope you can hold in your hands.

I love that. I love living in a world where people still believe that each and every thing they do, regardless of how big or small it is on the world-scale, breathes Hope into someone's life. They might not have all the money in the world, or all the power, but their beautiful hearts make them rich in my eyes. So thank you to every person who has ever given Hope to someone else. May God bless you and keep you :) You're my hero.

A Moment of Distrust

I'm going home next weekend, which makes me absolutely ecstatic for a number of reasons. First of all, I get to finally meet the newest addition to my family. Second, I get to see a good friend of mine who I miss so, so much. And third, I just get to be home. I get to be with the people who love me the most for four whole days. Just the thought makes me cry.  

I think I've mentioned that I've been really, really homesick lately. In all honesty, I don't know if I'm homesick or just being a baby. Probably both.

It just dawned on me recently that I can never really go back. I can go home for a long weekend, or I can even move back to my hometown if I want to, but that's as close to going back as I can get. I guess, for the first time, I realized I have to be an adult for the rest of my life. The simplicity of childhood is over, forever. And forever is a really long time.

I have a great life, too. I have a great job, doing what I love with people I enjoy. I live in a Christian Utopia where there are three churches on every corner. I have deep friendships with people all over the state. I have a family that is always there to love and support me. I have everything I could ever want or need.

...So why do I feel like something is missing? Something big. Something important.

I don't know what God is doing in my heart right now, but it feels like complete chaos. He's asking me to trust Him, and I keep saying, "Of course I trust You. You know I trust You," but for some reason that feels like a lie, and I don't know why. I trust Him. I do... Don't I?

I've given every part of my life to Him. If He told me to walk out of my office, get in the car and drive, I would do it. If He told me to stay, I would do it. I just wish He would tell me something. I'm at a point of total surrender, waiting for Him to tell me what He wants... and nothing. Just, "Trust me."

Day 7: The Desire of My Heart

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.” -- Psalm 37:4

It’s amazing how quickly things I once thought were guarantees in my life can be shaken. I wouldn’t consider myself to be an ungrateful person. I believe God has given me a lot, so I do my best to serve Him with what He has given me. But it’s funny how I’ve come to rely on the things He has given me and have, in many ways, come to expect them – health, financial stability, friends and family, safety – when really, none of those things are guaranteed.

Lately God has been reminding me that He never promised to give me any of those things. He never promised to give me a job or a place to live or even food and clothing. He never promised health. He never promised stability. He never promised friendship. He never promised family. As I write those things, the entitled American in me is throwing a toddler-style temper tantrum. I mean, God loves me, right? He promised to take care of me and give me the desires of my heart, right? Yes. He did. He promised to give me the best thing imaginable – Himself.

When I delight myself in the Lord, He becomes the desire of my heart, and that’s one thing He will never deny me. When serving Him becomes the most important thing in my life, everything else becomes circumstantial. Do I need financial stability to serve Him? No. Do I need health to serve Him? No. Do I need to be in a specific place doing a specific thing? No. I only need to be willing to serve Him wherever I am, and follow Him wherever He leads me. Everything else is secondary.