Dear Hilary, Love, Hilary (A Bit of an Advice Column for Myself)

I'm newly obsessed with "Dear Sugar" who writes a weekly column over at The Rumpus. She spins words of truth and words of beauty and power and a little bit of feisty language, and there's so much good in it all that I wanted to soak up her atmosphere for a while.

And that gave me this idea to write myself an "advice column" this week. I'll be the person who pens the letter looking for the perfect constellation of wisdom, and then I'll take a whack at being the constellation-draw-er too.

So, here we go!

Dear Hilary, 
I want to dream the big dreams, but I find that more often than not, I dream the - practical dreams. They are good dreams, I guess - but how do I imagine beyond that? How do I imagine the harder things to grasp? And what do I do about being so scared that they won't come true? I'm terrified I won't ever be good enough or beautiful enough or smart enough... but I feel like this fear keeps me from living fully and joyfully. I don't want to be a perfectionist, Hilary, but it creeps into the smallest corners and crevices of my life. What would you do? 


Love,
A Perfectionist and a Dreamer

---

Dear PD, 

I have good news for you. Your letter to me suggests that you already dream big enough to see where your fears inhibit you. Your vision and your hope is intact enough to want the changes you talk about. Sometimes, when we're deep in the muck of our fears (as I've been, many times), we can't even tell that our way of seeing the world is off. We can't see how illogical, how untrue it is to believe we won't ever be beautiful or smart or powerful or good. And it is, you know. It is wrong to believe you won't or aren't beautiful and smart and powerful and good. You are. And you are wasting precious time, time you won't ever get back, by telling yourself this "not enough" story.

Now, sweetheart, you've got your fair share of work to do. Exercising the muscles of our imagination is like exercising our prayer muscles, our love muscles, our generous spirit muscles. You want an imagination that flies free into the world and is hopeful beyond all reckoning? Practice. Every day. You want to write the words that shimmer with truth? Write. Every day. Sit down at your computer or your notebook and watch the world beckoning to you. And write it down. It's only and ever going to come from you because only you have the two eyes you have and only you can tell us what those two eyes see.

You want to compose music that colors the air with its cadences? Compose it. Sing the songs in your head to your mirror. Sing to your best friend. Scribble it down. Go out and listen for the songs hidden in between bricks on a sidewalk and overlooking the harbor and in the murky clouds.

You want to chip away at the questions of ultimate meaning? Think it. Read good books and wrestle them in your journal. Carry the question - what does it mean that God exists? - in a pocket in your heart and start seeing the answers in each encounter, in each miraculous moment of living. Tell us about what you learn.


Live a life colored by verbs: compose, sing, write, laugh, pray, weep, cradle, cherish, learn, worship. 

Live the verbs, love, and the rest begins to follow just as it should. And above all, be patient as the moving forward unfolds before you. You are so young, love, so before all the beginning, as Rilke whispers. And he and I beg you to be patient, and trust that the biggest dreams are always perched in your soul, ready to be taken up again. And trust, too, that the beautiful, and the good, and the intelligence? They follow the obedient heart. They arrive at the doorstep of the person who loves sincerely, who speaks truth, and who obeys the Good Shepherd.


Love, always, 
Hilary

(This was fun... perhaps I should try it again sometime?)

On Forgetting (A Five Minute Post)

Lisa-Jo challenges us to write in five beautiful, precious minutes without worrying about what comes out - just free and easy down the road we go! This week it's on forgetting. {I hope you come join us!}

Our minds are harbors, you know. Ships of ideas dock for seasons, some staying just til the next day like grocery lists and where we hide our car keys and how much we need to set aside for student loan payments and what it means to whisper thank you to God every morning. Sometimes they linger long into the winter and shore up tight - this idea of gratitude or joy or the hidden wonder of just about everything.

And more than anything I want my mind and heart to harbor long the good things and to let the others float away, set sail for forgetting. How long have I harbored grudges long past their time for departure? I remind and remember and retell the stories, the ones about woundedness, the ones chock full of memories that bite and burn and why? Because I'm afraid to know what might happen if I forget my story.

But then I remember this other wonderful thing that happens when the good thoughts linger long into the seasons of life: after all, the story is written by One who forgets nothing. And it makes me want to shout and dance and laugh til milk comes out my nose because I don't need to scrawl memories of hard things anymore, I can draw in pink and orange chalk the stories about His wonderful love and His faithfulness and His love? I can just write that story and let the cool summer rain wash away all the things I never needed to remember or harbor?

And that is the most beautiful thing to remember.

Love,
Hilary

For the forever babysitters

His face is the window to the galaxy of five years and older siblings and a brown chocolate lab and babysitters and pirates in dragon-filled lagoons. And he remembers the worlds we built in his backyard last summer, in between trees and behind the house and by drawing in water with our fingers the treasure map. And he climbs up into my lap and settles there, remembering also that I am big and old and a student, and that I can read books to him and tell him stories.

When he smiles it lights the room, and I smile because he is smiling. We watch Playmobile Egypt and Victorian mansion videos. We laugh because somehow his Max & Ruby video is in French of all things, and that's just so silly! And I am floored again and again because he makes everything in my world that seems so desperately important... evaporate, and I laugh at the things that are funny, and I look serious at the serious problems, and I stare down dragons and listen close to what he whispers into my ear.

Today I had the privilege of being taught how to color. I sat across from my five year old friend, his face puckered in concentration, drawing careful racing lines, asking more than once how to spell "racer" and asking each time I got up to get post-its and a red pen where I was going. "Hil-a-wy, are you comin' back?" and each time I'd say, "Yes, I'll be right back."

And when I was told to close my eyes, because he was drawing a picture for me, I scribbled quickly these words:

This is the beauty of a forever babysitter, when you obey a child because it is time to be one again. When you say, in the presence of this small one, all I strive for and covet and envy in my green heart, it melts like August popsicles under his warm weight in my lap. And the not-realized things, the disappointments, the waiting, and all of it vanishes in the too-real moment of existing.

And when I opened my eyes he explained each picture drawn in Mom's pen like Van Gogh at his easel. "You can use the back to make your own picture, Hil-a-wy." He offered the paper like a wise man to Mary. And so I grabbed a broken crayon from the box between us and I tried to draw a hill, some flowers and maybe a tree spreading its branches to a yellow and orange sun. And he piped up in his unabashed way, "No, Hil-a-wy! You need to use a pen!"

My lines were wobbly and imprecise, and he saw it. And the solution was offered in his small hands like the simplest and most profound gift: a pen. Draw with a pen. Stick your tongue out while you press the ink into the paper, and then use your red and green and yellow and blue crayons to color in and outside your lines.

Today I was taught how to color. How to hold a pen and draw without taking it back. How to draw my lines in solid black ink and how to explain my pictures like I am Monet at his easel. And the big blue eyes looked back at me as I drew, and suddenly the things that seem heaviest evaporated, and the things we can't grasp, that we can only trace softly through the air as they pass by, those moments of gift sunk deep into the morning.

This is the beauty of a forever babysitter. That we are humbled by the children we meet, that we know as if by accident how to listen for their secret wisdom, their weight, their special kind of gravity. We are taught and retaught how to color. We learn to finger paint and eat goldfish and laugh at the jokes and tuck little arms and legs into bed and tie shoes. We peek into their imaginations and find that for a moment, our own disbelief is suspended. We become pirates and racers and queens and detectives. We are inscribed with their blessing.

And when he left this afternoon, he flung his arms around me with a hug and a big kiss, and I know that for the forever babysitter in me, this is the radical reshifting of my world at the beginning of a long week, and it is beautiful and true and I treasure it.

Love from my babysitter heart,
Hilary