A Letter for my 21 year old self

Today I'm 21. And I woke up in the quiet almost-morning, stretching my limbs to the skies, and I thought to myself, "Today, I'm 21. There it is." Age and time arrive and depart gently, and suddenly, and somehow we grasp at words and hugs and bright grins and laughter and well wishes, as we ponder the reality that day becomes night and fall sinks into winter and my twelve year old self who hid away for hours in her room with books, lost in the world of Narnia and Watership Down and the Wind in the Willows... she has become this twenty-one year old self, who keeps a blog and dreams of making her heart a home for the stories we all carry in us. How did that happen, I want to ask myself? And what will this year hold? And what kind of beautiful, wild life might I grow?

(Thank you, Mandie)

So I write, my own name and my own hand (no advice column today), and I write to remember and to promise and to wonder.

Dear Hilary,

You made it! You're 21, and for all the waiting and looking longingly at the wine list in restaurants, all the anticipation of being an adult, all the wonder about being a senior in college and then, so soon, a newly launched seedling in the world, you've arrived.

You're asking right now why God says "wait." You're asking how to hold the memory of harvest in your heart when the desert sand scratches against your feet. You're asking what it means, the choices we make, and how to choose wisely and well. You wonder, often, in the quiet corner of your heart you don't always admit exists, if you really are becoming what He wants you to become.

And so on July 18, your 21st birthday, remember a few things. Remember that what He wants is for you to become His, to be caught up in Him and in the adventure and work of obeying Him. Pray often.

Remember that beauty lies hidden in the small things, and that you have to go looking for it, seeking high and low in the hearts around you, in the moments of laughter outside on the porch and the familiar ache in your muscles as you finish mile 3 and veer towards home. Remember that nothing looks like the moon over the Atlantic.

The world is too beautiful to waste. Be careful, with your heart, with your words – both are easily broken, but both are also easily healed, if only you will listen closely and let the questions be questions, the days be days, and the love of God be the love of God. You are 21, at the beginning of becoming, and already in the midst of it, and what was it that Paul prayed?

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Read Rainer every day. Learn Italian. Fly up on the wings of anticipation even when you thud to the ground, because you are Anne of Green Gables and you will anticipate no matter what – so expect great things. But don't spend all your heart on the expectations of job, and career, and the progression of life as you wrote it years ago. Spend your heart on the hope that when you wake up tomorrow, you will obey better and love deeper. Spend your heart on the hope that by leaning into the wind and the wonder you will find His hands and His will and His love. Yes, that especially. Spend your heart leaning into the promise that He dwells in your heart and you will be filled. You will be full to overflowing.

So for now, I leave you with the good words from the writers you love:

“I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try and love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” (Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter 4)

"Love is the mystery of water and a star." - Pablo Neruda

"But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not."- John Steinbeck, East of Eden

"If I don't stand out like a star among the moons
if I am always late and he always backs away too soon
I walk the world with a skin so thin
I can wear no adequate protection
everything comes crashing in.
If I'm too wide open for this place
but not enough for him to recognize my face" - Deb Talan of The Weepies, "How Will He Find Me?"

And lastly, but not least, the question that rings true and beautiful in your life, from Mary Oliver (continue to love her poems): "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

(Thank you, Mandie)

Moonrise (an extraordinary moment)

The wind slapped the flag and the sides of the boat as we pulled into open water. The motor churned a spray of white foam against the black water and crowds of people lurched to the sides of the boat for one last look at Provincetown. They nestled further into mustard yellow cardigans and boyfriend's sweatshirts, pulled on crumpled windbreakers, and held out their cameras with both hands. One picture was never enough, it had to be four or five, adjusting the lighting and exposure, the sun tossing a few stray beams of light their way as it descended below the horizon.

We sat quiet, watchful, our knees pressed against our chests and our flipflops slipping against the edge of the bench. A group of men laughed about the lobster they'd eaten. A woman on her fourth gin & tonic danced with a stranger using his headphones as their DJ on the upper deck. A French couple in hiking socks and cargo shorts spread a towel over their knees to keep their legs warm. Somewhere behind us seagulls wailed and dived, and a little boy leaned over the side of the dock to grasp at a vision of the giant fish swimming underneath the surface of the water.

The day had been ordinary. A fast ferry ride to the edge of Cape Cod, an afternoon poking our heads through shop after shop of unaffordable sugar scrubs and cowboy boots and vintage jewelry, conversation that trailed off as we passed eager tourists in pink and green P-Town shirts. It was time together, for the two of us, remembering six years of learning the pattern of life. We scuffed our shoes along the planks of the dock, and felt the salty air against our cheekbones. We wondered, as we often had before, why life had brought us (or kept us) here, working the jobs we worked, living in our red and yellow houses, and we each whispered our dreams to the other: how I longed for the red line and a chai cupcake, how she wished her address was Downtown Crossing and the hum of the T. As we pulled on our sweatshirts it all felt ordinary.

On the boat we told a few stories, laughed and felt our smiles pinching the sides of our cheeks. My dimples always show when I laugh. Her eyes always squint when she laughs. So there we sat: two girls in the ordinary day, shoulders leaning one on another, on the outer deck of the ferry listening to the world.

And then the moon rose. 

(http://10000birds.com/where-are-you-birding-this-last-weekend-of-july-2010.htm)

It crept up red, dusting the Atlantic with its glow. It deepened in color as it rose, and the rest of the sky darkened in welcome. A few stars caught glimmers of the red and winked at us. The old man sitting next to me poked my shoulder and said, "Am I crazy, or is that the moon?" And there it was: red moon rising.

As we went on, it climbed faster, a thin gauze of cloud occasionally passing over its surface, which changed from deep red to amber to pale fiery white. It was full, and as it ascended it cut the surface of the water with its light. The glow made a path of light directly behind the spray from the boat, and as I watched, the path flickered with the movement of the waves.

In an ordinary day, a day of two girls wishing they were somewhere else, a day of Mexican food and gelato, and feeling the knarled wood of the pier under my feet, the moon rose red over the Atlantic.

And God whispered, "Had you forgotten Me?" 

Love,
Hilary

A poem from Lisel Mueller called "Moon Fishing":

When the moon was full they came to the water.
some with pitchforks, some with rakes,
some with sieves and ladles,
and one with a silver cup.

And they fished til a traveler passed them and said,
"Fools,
to catch the moon you must let your women
spread their hair on the water --
even the wily moon will leap to that bobbing
net of shimmering threads,
gasp and flop till its silver scales
lie black and still at your feet."

And they fished with the hair of their women
till a traveler passed them and said,
"Fools,
do you think the moon is caught lightly,
with glitter and silk threads?
You must cut out your hearts and bait your hooks
with those dark animals;
what matter you lose your hearts to reel in your dream?"

And they fished with their tight, hot hearts
till a traveler passed them and said,
"Fools,
what good is the moon to a heartless man?
Put back your hearts and get on your knees
and drink as you never have,
until your throats are coated with silver
and your voices ring like bells."

And they fished with their lips and tongues
until the water was gone
and the moon had slipped away
in the soft, bottomless mud.

Your Life is Gorgeous

I have recently fallen in love with Lush. It's this organic, veggie-fruity-vegan-y, beautiful smelling soap and skin care store. I find every time I walk in the store I want to buy everything and use it all immediately. I want to use their Marilyn hair mask and their jasmine shower jelly and their rose soap and this "Dorothy" bubble bar that makes me want to sing Elphaba solos.

So when I was there a couple of weekends ago, I was trying out different moisturizers on the back of my hand. And they have this one called "Gorgeous." And it got me thinking about that word - gorgeous - and how rarely I used it. I carry a handful of words - pretty, lovely, beautiful, sweet - and toss them across other people's lives like Hansel and Gretel with their breadcrumbs. But when do I use the word gorgeous, with all of its weight and wonder? The other words are tired of carrying the same meanings, stretched thin over comments and in paragraphs where I can't think of a better word, or in letters to people far away. I keep using the same words to say the unique things: the thing I would say by reaching my hand across the cool ribbed surface of the Starbucks table and placing it in the crook of your elbow, and catching your eyes darting back and forth and smiling so widely that there wouldn't be a doubt in your mind that the only thing I wanted you to know was that you are important to me.

{And I want to fill this blog with good words}

It's my second post of the day (it just was one of those Fridays, as my friend Lauren would say), and I want to use the word gorgeous. I want to use it to punctuate the post and to capture moments in my butterfly net of a mind. I am turning 21 in a few days and the word gorgeous feels raw on my tongue. It tastes fresh and a little like key lime raspberry cupcake or maybe like mojitos with a hint of peach or maybe like I imagine that clean linen smell would taste like if it was a taste. How do I say it?

How do I say, your life is gorgeous, to the girl who stands makeup-less in front of the mirror? How do I say, you are gorgeous to her, with her strands of red-blonde hair escaping from her ponytail as she runs through the pounding rain? 


This girl prefers pencil skirts to jeans and would, if she thought she could, make a 30 hour day instead of a 24 hour one. She has tough lessons to learn about forgiveness and patience and peace, she dwells in stormy weather and she forgets, often, to hold her hands out and open to the gift of the world. And as I look at her and trace my hands over the contours of her face, I want to know, how do you pronounce the word gorgeous with enough certainty that this girl, who writes on a blog about a city she loves, about people who change her, about the joy of learning and dancing in your kitchen, will hear it.

If I were going to ask you a question, readers, it would be how to learn to be patient with my own life when it feels like I'm the tortoise and everyone else is the hare. When I'm still in the same place, and others are leaping forward to new cities and new jobs and relationships and schools and apartments, and I'm just where I am. How do I stop that voice in my head that says the measure of the gorgeousness of life is all of the things the other people in life are doing? 

And if I were going to tell you something, readers, it would be that your life is gorgeous. I can picture you reading this in between folding sheets or loading the dishwasher. I can picture you trying out the word "gorgeous" in front of your own mirror or while you're drinking a cappuccino or while you're brushing your teeth. I can see you scattered like oak seeds all over the place, thousands of miles apart, reading this and thinking, "nah, my life? it's pretty bland."

But it isn't. It is dazzling with moments of moons hung in the sky over the prairie (thank you, Gilead) and laughter over cups of iced tea and tickling five year old feet at the foot of the bed and visiting a good friend. It is all full to bursting with the life that is gift.

(Photo: Hannah Cochran)

Your life is gorgeous. 


Love,
Hilary