Overwhelm

I am overwhelmed this afternoon, sitting in the smallest sliver of sunlight in my room, trying to tame my to-do list. I am pausing for a moment to write this, because I must write daily - that is just what I do. Most of my writing of late has been done in my journal, and that is just fine by me. I've had a lot to say to the Lord. But I wanted the briefest of records of what it feels like to exist in the midst of this overwhelm, right now. 

It is report season and I have written barely any general comments. I am behind on my school-mandated 'learning posts' (no-one can convince me of their utility, but complete them I must). It looks like my environment group may not be able to attend a special event this term after all, as the result of me dropping the ball on my comms. Green Week looms large in Week 7 on the school calendar, while testing deadlines call to me this week. Work has curled around every part of my mind and is squeezing, hard. Its tendrils pierce even my sleep. 

This is only part of what is contributing to the ache in my head and jaw and shoulders. I have found myself in yet another situation with a guy friend where he simultaneously enjoys my company and is ashamed to be seen in my company. (Obviously, I'm not going to put up with that and plan on staying away from him from here on out, but the sting is there, nonetheless.) Two friends have received happy news on the romance and family front; of course, I am absolutely thrilled for them and can say in complete truth that I'm not regarding them with any envy. But it also prompted another teary walk around the neighbourhood, thanking the Lord for my friends' good news and asking if it could please, possibly, be my turn soon. (I've yet to hear back.) And then there's the situation with a friend that's too tender and fraught for me to write about here. Suffice to say, it's a spectre that haunts my already-overwhelmed days. 

Overwhelm is a part of life. It's cloying to say so, I know, but I can't help but state the obvious in my current state. Overwhelm is likely going to keep me company this week. Thankfully, so is the grace of God. 

Blessings - Essay no. 6

Write about your blessings. About what it was like to wake up today, about the people you love, about the songs that have lifted your spirits. Write about the wind in the trees, or rebirth in spring, or of freedom. Write about whatever gives you life, which - especially in troubled times, we remember - is so precious. 

Prompt written by Mavis Staples in The Isolation Journals, Suleika Jaouad's Substack. 

My Saturdays of late have been drenched in pleasure. Slow starts have cascaded into long walks, conversations with friends, good films and even better food - sometimes made by my own hands, often others'. I move, on the sabbath, as I imagine a bird does on a morning after rain: slowly, and with reassurance of continued bounty on which to feast. This has happened almost without my intending, although it has not escaped my notice. 

My sabbaths are heavily guarded, I remarked to a friend, and essential with the busyness of my weeks. If I don't set aside this one day on which I don't check my work emails or tweak my planning, I lose touch with reality beyond teaching, and the world beyond the four walls of my classroom. On the sabbath, I sleep and play and read for extended periods as on no other day of the week. If, on first waking, my body protests, I listen, roll over, and return to the land of sleep. I allow myself culinary treats - a pastry, a coffee, a cookie. I turn my eyes and ears and hands towards beauty. 

This sabbath practice has kept me human for almost a year now. I can no longer imagine my weeks without it, nor do I want to. But I am aware of contentment seeping into my life not just from this one full cup, a respite, a well, an anomaly. 

Contentment creeps in at school, when a child hugs me as if she can't help it, arms wrapped firmly around my waist. It takes me by surprise when I stretch my legs in bed at the end of a long day, happily aching from a day's labour in heels. I find contentment in a patch of afternoon sunlight on my orange armchair; it arrives at just the right time for me to sink into it with a book. My physical surroundings, with their quotidian, suburban beauty, feed contentment continuously. On walks, I ponder and notice, along with Mary Oliver, "the sweet, electric drowse of creation." 

Pay attention/be astonished/tell about it writes Mary Oliver in that same poem. I will. 

A Life's Work - Essay no. 5

For 50, 60, sometimes 70 hours a week, I am a teacher. On good weeks, most of this time is spent actually teaching or planning for teaching. On not-as-good weeks, it's spent replying to emails, ticking boxes and staring at various calendars, trying to figure out which deadlines I've yet to meet. I'll let you guess what the balance is between good and not-as-good. 

Given that teaching occupies my hands, my head, my body and even my subconscious (I dream of parents and planning docs) for so much of my time, I guess it's a little strange that you wouldn't know it from reading this blog. References to teaching, I've discovered while scrolling through the archives, are scant. 

Part of it is that I view writing as a reprieve from my work. For these thirty minutes every morning, I do not assume the identity that I inhabit for most of the day. I am simply myself, sitting bleary-eyed at my desk, trying to convey something of what I'm dreaming, planning, thinking about. Although I am always dreaming, planning and thinking about things related to school, for thirty minutes, I try to set those particular concerns aside. 

Part of it is that I don't want my whole life to revolve around teaching. I see some teachers at my school whose lives have been consumed by their work. "I can't not look at my phone when a new email comes through," one tells me, a slightly manic look in her eye. Actually, I've discovered, you can. Turning off email notifications on my phone was one of the best choices I made last year. No-one has died or even been greatly offended because I haven't responded immediately to an email received after 8:00PM. 

Teaching, particularly in the primary context, is a profession dominated by women. Many of these women are either mothers or older single women, a phenomenon of which I was aware even before officially entering the teaching workforce. "It's a good career for mothers and spinsters," I said to my friend, M, when I decided to retrain. "So I'm covered either way." Most of the administrative work in my school is shouldered by women who are either single or whose children have left home. However, the single women bear, quite literally, twice the burden of those with families, overseeing two teams instead of one. 

I balk against this. As a single woman who could see herself being single for quite some time, I resist the idea that I have to sacrifice every aspect of my life on the altar of teaching. Just because I am single doesn't mean that I don't have other legitimate things to occupy my time. I get to rest. I get to enjoy hobbies. I get to invest in other relationships. 

And yet... there is a part of me that recognises the significance of teaching as a vocation. The time, love, expertise and attention invested into your students and your potential disproportionate effect (for better or worse) on the rest of their lives is no small thing. They are part of what makes teaching, as Rachel Cusk once said of motherhood, 'a life's work'. 

***

There is nothing like being in a classroom full of kids hungry for your care and attention. To sit in front of them on Day One, with their shoes not-yet-scuffed and their eyes wary and anxious, is to be confronted with something holy. Will you love me? They ask with their eyes. Are you safe? Are you on my side? The answers they receive and perceive to these questions will shape the course of their year, maybe even their lives. 

I do my best to shoulder the weight of my job without crumbling beneath it. On a daily basis I greet, smile at, instruct, laugh, correct (both gently and firmly), train, encourage, discourage, joke with, read to, invite, coach, look in the eye, hug and explain things to my students. I seek to shape them into better versions of themselves, while never giving them the impression that my love for them is contingent on their performance. 

***

We have started off the year with descriptive writing and spoken a lot about the role of the five senses in describing well. "What does it look like? Feel like? Smell like? Sound like? Taste like?" I have asked a thousand times in the last few weeks. 

So much of teaching is seeing. Yes, I see you, quiet girl who struggles with English, but whose Maths is spectacular and demonstrates a deep knowledge of how numbers work. I see you, boy who has been labelled "naughty" almost from birth, and who is desperate to claim almost any other label. I see you, girl who receives no discipline at home, and who needs a firm adult to provide structure and consequences. 

I see, too, the panoply of events that unfolds in my class on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis. Just this week, we had several lost teeth and an actual foot to the mouth in the swimming pool! A squad of bodyguards was formed to protect our class mascot, Avan, the stuffed avocado. Descriptions and acrostic poems were written, maths strategies consolidated. A new student's baby-ish tones and requests were giggled at by the rest of his classmates. "Can't" was misspelled, with offensive consequences. 

One of the great privileges of teaching is that, if I let them, my students see me, too. A Deputy Principal, whose daughter is in my class, came in to see me on release on Wednesday. We talked through an issue related to an upcoming field trip and as she was leaving, she paused by the door. "Stacey* came in the other day and she was like, do you know what the best thing is about Miss Manickam? It's that she reads. She reads every day!" My DP was mock-offended by the fact that her own daughter hadn't seen the fact that she read, but was clearly impressed by the reading of her teacher. In me, Stacey had found a kindred spirit. 

***

I am going on a field trip today. It's my first one in charge, my name and signature on all the procedure forms. 28 students today are dependent on my love and care and corralling to stay safe. One is in a moonboot. A few have a tendency to wander off. I am running a list of things to do at school in my mind, over and over to make sure that we have everything covered. 

The kids have no sense of burden about today. They have been breathless when they approach me on the playground, sleepless with excitement. This is good and right.

Lord-willing, we will learn something, get our hands dirty and stand in the sunshine. We will experience joy as we do all of these things. 

At some point in the day, I will stand with my hands on my hips and survey the 28 small humans in front of me. I will smile and give thanks. I will get back to work. 

*Not her real name.

The Saturday Diaries vol. 8

{A picture connected to my watching and realising recaps for the week}

Hello, little blog! 

It's been a while, mostly due to the fact that my morning writing times have been taken up by writing in my journal or (very slowly) working on a short story. The words just haven't been flowing recently, and I am learning to be okay with that. Not every season has to involve words spilling out of me; fecundity is not a perpetual state of being for the writer. Nevertheless, I am happy to be back here today for an update on what's been happening in my world. 

First up, I am moving! (Yes, again.) I knew when I moved into this house that there would be another move in my future come November. I put this fact firmly into a locked room at the back of my mind, then, at about the six-weeks-to-go mark, the sneaky fact escaped and claimed all of my head space. I went to five flat viewings that were no-gos for various reasons: the house was dark and lifeless, the house was a safety hazard, the potential flatmates seemed scared of me, the potential flatmate gave me a douchey vibe... you get the picture. Nothing like flat hunting to confirm that it's a wild world out there. I was at the point of despair when a friend of S's reached out to S to ask if I was still looking for a flat. We arranged a viewing for that day, I went, I saw, got a good feeling, and said yes. A surprising, yet not, answer to prayer and means of God showing his kindness. 

In school news, my class was on hosting our school assembly this week and I was stressed. My class had decided they wanted to do a skit and a quiz (great!) but this involved them practising and perfecting lines, learning how to project their voices and not standing with their backs to the audience, all of which seemed impossible for them... on Thursday. Nevertheless, we scrapped most of our usually-scheduled school programming to practise (ugh) and pulled together an assembly that we were all proud of. I can now put up my feet and wipe the experience from my memory until next year. 

That's not the only school update from this week. Without going into detail, I've been asked to consider a couple of different opportunities for next year, both of which will involve taking on significantly more responsibility. While it's nice to be asked - really nice - I've been pausing to consider how much growth I can handle. Is perpetual change possible? Or good? Or necessary? I had been looking forward to, well, coasting a little more next year, gradually taking on more responsibility in the following year. But: I don't want to stagnate or be cowardly, particularly when I'm in a season of life where I can afford to take on a little more. I'm definitely leaning more towards one option than the other, and will make the call and let my mentor know sometime this week. 

There's a lot more that I could say about the last seven days, but I'll leave it at that for now and go into recapping it in (expanded) bullet-point form. 

Realisations: I love blogs. I know this seems like a bit of a 'duh' statement from someone who's currently typing on one, but I was made particularly aware of this love when I stumbled across an old-school blog link-up from last year. Each post linked to the next one in the chain, taking the reader on a delightful tour of various small-name sites, each answering a slightly different question. It was so 2012, and it took me back to the heyday of blogging - weekly link-ups, advertising your blog on someone else's (by creating a crappy pin on an online photo-editor that wasn't Canva), attending blogger conferences??? (I never did that last one, but I know for a fact they existed). I love the labour of loves that blogs were, for no money and no goal other than to share snippets of one's life and be creative. 

Watching: Last week, I rewatched You've Got Mail, and, as always, it was an utter delight. New York in the fall, as seen through the lens of Nora Ephron, is always one of my favourite destinations. I love the dialogue, the outfits, the set design, everything. I'm not holding You've Got Mail up as an example of how to conduct a relationship, but there's still a lot that I can appreciate about it. 

Listening: To 1989 (Taylor's Version) of course! It was such a fun listen at the end of a looong week as I lay on the couch, trying not to cry with relief that it was all over. I really like a couple of the new tracks in particular - "Say Don't Go" and "Now That We Don't Talk". 

Reading: Many good, and some truly great things. The good: Organizing for the Rest of Us by Dana K. White, Homegoing by Yaa Gyaasi, a Babysitters Club book. The great: Miracle at St Anna's by James McBride. McBride's in particular - his nuanced portrait of race relations between Americans and Italians during World War II, his humour, his ultimate hopefulness about people - was a balm for me this week. I've got The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store sitting on my shelf and can't wait to crack into it before the end of the year. 

That's all for now, friends - happy Monday! (because yes, I am pressing publish on a Monday). Here's to the new week being full of grace and fruitfulness, as well as significantly less teary than the last. x 

27

At 27, I'm going to watch my words. At least that's what I ought to have said to myself as I was preparing to turn the page into a new year of life. Instead, I've used my words like an idiot today. An underage, incoherent, babbling idiot. Instead of biting my tongue as I was working through some complex emotions in relation to a couple of things that S did this morning, I chose to voice my tadpole-like thoughts, inchoate as they were. Confusion and frustration (understandably) resulted on S's part. Since then, she has regarded me as politely and detachedly as one would a distant cousin - twice removed, related to your least favourite uncle, whom you see once every five or so years at family gatherings. 

This is an ironic twist, because in allowing this verbal dross to spill out of me, I have ignored a favourite piece of advice I have often directed at S: not everything has to be said. There is a time for everything, says the Teacher, and I couldn't agree more. I have been better in the past at knowing when to speak and when not to. Evidently greater years do not equal greater wisdom; what a shame to discover this deficiency in myself at the relatively jeune age of 27. 

My error with S was in speaking when I should have stayed silent. My error in other areas today has been staying silent when I should have spoken. I actually wanted to celebrate 27, in some small way. But this realisation struck me at what I perceived to be too late a moment. I didn't feel like I could send the message, make the restaurant booking, tap the friends on the shoulder. And so I didn't. As a result, at a moment where my closest friendship is one that is causing me to hold my breath, I have nowhere else to retreat. I will smile through dinner, cut the tart that I bought myself, and then come back downstairs to what I assume will be a stony silence to fall asleep. 

At 27, am I loved? This is all I want to know. My slip-up with S today was to do with a perceived lack of a response to this question. This relational fracture, however, has allowed me to go deeper in answering it. 

Yes, I am loved. (And liked, which is almost as important.) By God, most of all - his love is safest. By friends - even if I'm not liked by all of them, all of the time. By family - no matter how distant I am feeling from them. I am loved, I am loved, I am loved. And I will go into 27 safe in this knowledge. 

The Saturday Diaries vol. 7

My phone read 4:48 when I looked at it this morning. The sun is slowly coming up, a blue sky is visible through the blinds, and I have been trying to process all that has been swirling in my head and my heart. Week two of establishing new habits has gone better than I'd hoped. Morning has brought little resistance to writing, and afternoons have brought a fierce guardedness of my reading time before re-engaging with communal life. I am tracking my expenses and my spending is aligning with my values.  

And yet, a 4:48 wake-up time is indicative of something, isn't it? Although my body tends towards maintaining its weekday wake-up time, usually after a quick bathroom trip, I'm able to pull covers firmly back over my shoulders and sink gratefully into the extra sleep. This morning, though, the same thoughts kept darting through my mind, the same situation turned over and analysed from a hundred different angles. Rather than allowing my mind to grind frustratingly against something it was clearly unable to compute, I decided to get up and stretch out my quiet time. It was a good decision, even if it didn't quite put my restless mind at ease. 

I'm hoping the day will bring with it some sense of resolution, and even if it doesn't, a sense of peace about the lack of resolution. 

Reading: My month of re-reading has turned out to be such a delight so far. I finished Someday, Someday, Maybe (a treat) and returned to Early Morning Riser, a novel from 2021 by Katherine Heiny. Gosh, I love this book. The setting (small-town Michigan), the characterisation (oh-so-specific and hilarious), and the dialogue (quippy) all contribute to making it one of my all-time faves. Having laughed my way through Early Morning Riser, I decided to turn my attention to the more serious, but no less delightful, Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibin. Eilis' grit and determination make her, in my estimation, a most admirable literary heroine, and I'm loving wandering through Brooklyn with her again. 

Listening to: The Bible Project's series on the Chaos Dragon. The most recent episode, on Jael, Deborah and Sisera, is a mind-bending look at one of the gnarlier accounts in the book of Judges. From that same episode, I was put onto the work of Poor Bishop Hooper, in particular, their Psalms project. I only listened to a few last night, but was pretty blown away by the quality and fidelity to the themes and phrasing of each Psalm. 

Enjoying: Spring. The cherry blossoms are out, the birds are chirping and I could not be happier about it. I'm no longer waking up in the dark, and the extended daylight is vastly improving my joy in the day-to-day. Bring on the rest of the season! 

The Saturday Diaries, vol. 5 (on a Sunday, again)

In this fifth instalment of the diaries, I come to you from my couch, typing against all odds today because I am behind. BEHIND, behind. A non-exhaustive list of things I am behind in: laundry, chores, dating, exercise, reading, clearing out my fridge shelf, determining school plans for next year, writing up the books I've read recently (9 down, 12 to go, ugh), French practice, planning, costume prep for school production, child-birthing and rearing, budgeting and reading the news. My mind is a whirlpool of concerns big and small, but I'm taking a moment to fight against the tide of these concerns and swim to shore for just a moment to write out these words because, well, I wanted to. 

On Tuesday, I finished a bad book. It wasn't terrible - the premise was strong and I'll keep it on my shelf for travel recommendations in the future - but although the author's grammar and vocabulary were excellent, they didn't combine in a way that made me want to turn the page. My overwhelming thought while reading it was, she's not a writer. And yet, I also thought, she had written a book. 

Change has crept into my life and rearranged this past month. Structures, routines, modes of moving and being that I could once locate in my sleep are not on the same shelves; I have encountered both chaos and her less-frightening-but-still-disorienting sibling, unfamiliarity, on a regular basis. It has taken time to begin to reorient myself to what change has done, it will take further time still to be on speaking terms again with ease. (I'd like to pause this meditation on change to interject that change hasn't come without beauty. I've seen beauty in brand-new lights and from previously-undiscovered angles this month, for which I am effusively grateful.) What I don't want to allow change to take from me is both my desire and ability to write. I was hungering to loop words into sentences this afternoon, and I need to sate that hunger, allow my to-do-list to be momentarily forgotten. I want to write, I want to write, I want to write. And I will. 

Reading: Inheritance by Dani Shapiro. In this gorgeous memoir, Shapiro writes about the implosion of her interior life after discovering, at age 54, that her father wasn't her father. I'm crawling upstairs to read this now with my flatmates and can't wait to finish. 

Watching: Nothing! I haven't watched TV in more than three weeks and last watched a film almost two weeks ago. Visual media simply isn't playing a central role in my life at the moment, and I am okay with that. (Although I have to put in a plug for the last film I saw at the movies, Are You There God, It's Me Margaret? Will be entering my film pantheon for sure.) 

Eating: So, so well. We are taking turns cooking for the flat at the moment and a house full of good cooks = one contented stomach. 

Holiday Time

It's the first official day of the school holidays and I woke up at 4:45. This is an improvement on other mornings as I have recently found myself staring at the ceiling at 3:03, 4:00 and 4:30. Although part of me resisted getting up at this hour today - I am meant to be on holiday - I find myself largely happy to reacquaint feet with slippers and begin my morning routine. I have finished a large cup of Lady Grey tea, met Jesus in Mark and a prayer liturgy, and have just opened my curtains to see pink clouds against the faintest blue sky. My cup runs over. 

The rest of the day lies open in front of me, and I am less sure about its contents and accompanying feelings. Two weeks seems like an awfully long time in theory, but in reality, they're already filling up with overdue catch-ups and Autumn cleaning and planning for the term ahead. I can feel a mild anxiety hovering over me any time I think about all I have to/would like to accomplish in the next couple of weeks. Plans have already shifted and had to be reworked, and two weeks now seems like a suffocatingly small amount of time in which to do that which simply needs to be done. 

Will I ever stop feeling like there's never enough time? I work so hard to parcel out my hours, ensuring that few, if any, are spent in idleness, and yet I still can't seem to get the calculus right. My intended bedtime rolls past and still the to-do list remains unfinished, despite the fact that I've been ticking things off since 5:00am. Tightness in my chest and whispers of you're not doing enough are near-constant companions as I wade through my overflowing days. I long to float. 

I know that my approach to time is all wrong. As Tish Harrison Warren discusses in Liturgy of the Ordinary, time is not something that's meant to be partitioned and distributed with furrowed brow to Things That Must Be Done. To even think that we can do such a thing is to fail to recognise that time is not ours, it's God's. Liturgical time and the church calendar are (meant to be) beautiful reminders that timelines are not ours to control, and our lives revolve around God's story and the story of the church. 

I have been thrilled to find that patience has, in recent years, become something of a flourishing resident in my life. I am calmer in the face of interruptions and more easily reconciled to even some big hopes and dreams not coming to fruition in timelines I would have chosen. And yet, I find that patience has yet to spread her tendrils into all of the nooks and crannies of my days. I am impatiently waiting for a friend to get back to me, and fighting the urge to read her silence with cynicism. I, the urger of giving "the most generous reading" to a situation, find myself fighting to do just that, and to allow patience to produce goodwill and empathy in me. 

Jesus is the keeper of my days, and my time. If I really believe that he knows the length and content of my life, my response should be to ask him to "teach me to number my days, that I may gain a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90). To do anything else is to resist the natural state of things, using precious energy to swim upstream when all that's required is to allow the current to carry me. Of course, surrendering is always a messy and repetitive process. My urge to control time and a smattering of apparent successes at doing so hinder me from giving up this flawed practice easily. But the Lord is patient with me, and he invites me again and again to let go and accept the good news that time really is his; his to control, his to portion, his to use to good ends. I'm slowly learning to believe him. 

Fruit

"I am forty, and it is different. Suddenly in midpassage

I come into myself. I leaf

gigantically. An empire yields 

unexpectedly: cities, summer forests;

satrapies, horses.

A solitude: an enormity.

Thank God."

It is Difficult to Speak of the Night - Jack Gilbert

What cities and summer forests await you? What seeds are longing to leaf gigantically? (Writing prompt taken from The Isolation Journals Substack written by Suleika Jaouad) 

I can never think of leaves without thinking of Beth Moore's Chasing Vines. Moore recounts a trip to Italy in which she learns the conditions needed to produce a grape harvest. "The grapes love the rocky soil" says the Italian farmer. Without rocks in the soil, the vines will produce big, beautiful leaves, and almost no fruit. It is only when they feel like they are on the cusp of death combatting the rocks that they are able to produce the fruit they were created to bear. 

In light of this reading, leaves have become anathema to me in recent years. I don't want to be all style, with alluring leaves and no substance. The fruit is what matters. So if you'll allow me to alter the metaphor slightly, I'll tell you where I'm longing for fruit to grow, starting, aptly enough, with food. 

*****

My body has borne the burden of dissatisfaction harshly in the last year. I lost weight, yes, but the way in which I achieved this was unhealthy at best, punitive at worst. On some days, I counted calories like a Friends actress; on others I ate every sugary thing I could find in my pantry. Switching between states of ravenousness and overindulgence, I lost sight of satiety, forgetting what it was like to eat what my body needed and sometimes craved, nothing more or less. 

With the way some of my days are unfolding at the moment, I still seek to ease the ache of a hard day with cookies or hunger. But as I settle into better routines (eating breakfast every morning, having healthy snacks on hand for when I come home and crash on the couch), I am hopeful that my relationship with food will change for the better. 

As anyone who has struggled in this area knows, malformed eating habits are only the surface features of a much deeper problem. The more pressing reality is, I feel ill at ease in my body. I thought that once I hit my goal weight, things would magically get better. Approximately seventeen thousand books on the subject would assure me that that's not the case, but in an uncharacteristically optimistic move, I had hoped I could be the exception. 

The act of looking at my figure in the mirror elicits anxiety, dissatisfaction, disgust. Could be better is the warmest thing I might have to say. Friends have noticed the weight loss, family members have exclaimed over it. But my body is not yet in an ideal state, and it frightens me to think about how much weight I would have to lose to fit the slender ideal my mind conjures; the one who lacks curves and whose thighs have diminished to Bambi-like proportions. 

My best friend, S, often asks me what Jesus would say about the things I think about myself. I experience a jolt of surprise every time, because, truth be told, the thought hasn't crossed my mind. Jesus has much holier things to be dealing with than the nausea that sometimes rises when I think about my body. S's question fills me with an ache. Could it be true that Jesus cares about my body and how I inhabit it? I can think of Bible verses and books that would confirm this to be the case, but I want that knowledge to leave my head and filter into my thighs. Head knowledge won't cure me, an embodied awareness, will. 

*****

In the past few months, I've also become aware of a growing longing for adventure, specifically to France. Cooped up in the front bedroom of my grandmother's house over the summer, I typed "Paris, 1 month" into AirBnB and let myself imagine the possibilities that such an excursion could bring. Croissants, cafés, art, writing, walking cobblestoned streets until my tired feet can carry me no further. The idea of such a trip momentarily numbed me to my cloistered and humid reality in Ipoh. 

Of course, financing such a trip is no small matter, nor is hoisting my French up to a level where Parisians wouldn't scoff at me. Yet, despite everything, I've begun to hope that it might not just be a fevered fantasy, but could, with effort, become another embodied reality. I am enjoying reading une Psaume and a portion of Matthieu each day in French, reacquainting myself with the passé simple and delighting in new words as I go. I recap my day to myself each day in French on the drive home, searching my brain for the right words and enjoying the sensation of occasionally relocating them. I have booked an intensive French course at my local l'Alliance Française pendant les vacances, and am hopeful that I can sit and pass an exam and have a formal qualification under my belt by the end of the year. 

I fell in love with the French language at thirteen, sitting in a sparsely decorated room on the second floor of my girls' high school. I had never intended to progress beyond the junior years, but each year, the sensation of expanding my mind with this beautiful old language and wrapping my tongue around its increasingly familiar sounds proved too much to resist. I was hungry for more, toujours curieuse, as my favourite teacher once told me. I want the seeds of love and hard work sown in my adolescence to bear fruit in adulthood, sustaining me on adventures to the French-speaking world. 

*****

This morning I've been thinking about the phrase "bald desire". I cannot remember where I encountered it, but it has proved memorable amongst the glut of of good words I have consumed recently. Baldness can be momentarily hidden with a cap or beanie, but once these accoutrements have been removed, a bald head glistens for all to see, announcing itself whether its owner wants it to or not. 

I have a bald desire for love and marriage. For a long time, I've tried to disguise this with various metaphorical hats, but recently, the hats have come off and I am confronted with a desire that has remained unchanged, despite my attempts to hide it from myself, others, and God. I sensed a whisper from God this week to tell him what I desire. This provoked tears, because of course it did, but also the tiniest bit of courage to take him up on his offer and whisper back, I want this. I want date nights and a held hand and looks from across the room. I want to encourage and affirm and be encouraged and affirmed back. I want to walk in the way of Jesus with someone who has committed to doing the same, and has committed himself to me. 

So often in the past when I've felt a seed of desire starting to grow, I've quashed it, pulling it out of fertile ground to lie in the sun and die. I was convinced that only heartache came of letting that grow and pre-emptively cut myself off from experiencing the pain I was always so sure waited around the corner. These days, I am longing to allow desire to grow and diminish in its natural cycles, and not those of my own making. More than that, though, I am looking to cultivate hope and stay connected to its source. 

In his farewell discourse, Jesus tells his disciples that the key to bearing much fruit is to abide - remain - in him, as he abides in us. Abiding is about so much more than bearing fruit, but the fruit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control - is so good, and so needed for any sort of longevity in the Christian life. 

I can't abide on my own. It is God who keeps me abiding, and his body - that flawed, flailing institution called the church and the flawed, flailing local expression I am a part of - who will encourage me to keep clinging when I'd rather let go. So as I find myself in rocky terrain in these areas and more, I'll keep fighting to abide by the grace of God and the encouragement of friends, hoping, praying, knowing that one day soon I'll see fruit. 

Kathryn Hahn

{via}

I have watched the trailer for "Tiny Beautiful Things" twice in the last week. There is a part of me that feels the need to apologise for such an indulgence, but most of me remains at a loss to explain what exactly has caused this slide into the sentimental mush I usually eschew. It's not simply that I love Kathryn Hahn and her steely gaze, or that I caught glimpses of verdant landscapes in the background of a few scenes. I think it's the fact that in the trailer, Kathryn Hahn as Cheryl Strayed looks as conflicted and distraught as I do right now. 

No-one is approaching me to write an advice column (for which you can breathe a sigh of thanks), but I shoot a version of Kathryn's look of consternation at the occasional person who suggests I may be doing a reasonable job of living. 

Me? I want to say. And again, me? 

My bookshelves are dusty and my bathroom is hosting mould I can't reach on my stepladder and I can't bring myself to tell my landlords that the oven has stopped working. These are only the external markers of an interior life that feels dusty, mould-infested and full of broken parts that need to be replaced. 

I spend days and nights thinking, worrying and dreaming about what it means to live a good life. 

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to return to being a whole person. Reading was mentioned, so was writing. Dating, too. The past few weeks have included more reading, stilted attempts to speak French on the drive home and even a singularly bad date, none of which I have regretted. I have become slightly more adept at closing the work laptop lid envers huit heures and crawling into bed with a book and my journal. I can feel a former self reaching and returning to me, slowly showing me parts of who I have been. 

I am not worried about the past. It's the future that keeps me up at night. 

The other thing that strikes me about Kathryn/Cheryl is that although she is clearly tortured about her writing, she writes anyway. Her feelings of ineligibility and unsuitability don't stop her from persisting with her column, and this persistence (of the real-life Cheryl Strayed) has led to me unashamedly ordering a copy of Tiny Beautiful Things from my local independent bookstore. 

I can never disassociate Cheryl Strayed (and now, Kathryn Hahn) from the blistering essay, 'Write Like a Mother******" which appeared on The Rumpus over a decade ago. I re-read it tonight as I was thinking about this piece, and am struck anew by the two words she counsels Elissa Bassist to put on her imaginary chalkboard - 'humility' and 'surrender'. When it comes to humility, I think I possess it in relation to estimations about my writing abilities. I am not great and I am not terrible and I have reconciled myself to that. 

But I haven't gone any further to acknowledge the fact that, with mileage and exertion, I would like to become a great writer. And I haven't commenced the slow, steady work required to one day produce great writing. I have left my ambition and sense of calling towards writing unacknowledged, languishing inside my dusty, mould-infested, junk-filled self. 

*****

I have written several posts in the last year or so that run along the lines of "no more". I will make this happen! I've said. Writing is important to me! And yet, nothing.

My inchoate writing abilities haven't been coaxed into fullness by declarations. So I'm not making one.

What I have done is added "write for thirty minutes each day" to my rule of life. I have told my best friend, S, to check in with me about whether or not I've been writing each day. I'll be here, every morning, typing out words for the zero to twenty people who peer into this space. 

See you tomorrow. 

The Friday Diaries Vol. 1

(I know, I know, it's Thursday of the following week, but I've opened up to this in my drafts and want to publish it, so I will.)

It's the end of week four and I have almost a month of (interrupted) teaching under my belt. 

This milestone feels - and truly is - significant. Amassing a month of rainy days and stray hats and endless questions is no small feat. I sound like a broken record, but I really am so grateful for it all. 

My friend, L, sent me a message this week about how happy she was that I was experiencing such a high pay-off after so short a time. She expressed the very thing that I had been mulling over in my shower the previous evening. Teaching is hard work, but it is also pure joy. Seeing kids really get something, or even begin to grapple with an idea fills me with an electric charge. 

My shy kids are speaking up more, my capable kids are using their capability to help their classmates. The marking piles up and the pretty classroom labels come loose, but what does that matter in the face of these small victories? 

This week was also one in which I began the reclamation of my humanity. I need to eat and sleep and read and write and soak up the sun. I need these things every day, not just on the Sabbath. Swapping my cycles of toil and leisure for work and rest (cf. Andy Crouch), won't come easily but it must come. And I am convinced that, in not too long a time, it will. 

Rain

 

It's the end of January, a month that at least in the locations I spent it, was bookended by weather extremes. I started off the month in Malaysia, arriving on the island of Langkawi on the second day of the new year. We spent our time sticky but content, exploring the islands' beach and forest landscapes. Fast forward to the end of the month and I am sitting at my kitchen table in Auckland, staring once again out the window at the rain, falling lightly for now. Of course, the rain hasn't exactly been known for its lightness over the past few days, and I have spent much of the weekend watching the news with an anxious eye and checking in with friends as floods have covered much of the city. For the first time in my adult life, I have feared rain and the damage and disruption it can bring. Although the worst appears to have passed, cleanup and implications will be ongoing. 

This first month of the year has contained a curious mix of days. I spent it partly spent counting down the days until I could return to routines and agency in Auckland, both of these having been largely taken from me while in Malaysia. Then came an almost two-week impasse, in which I spent far too long on hold, trying to ascertain the whereabouts of my missing suitcase (NB: Melbourne). I managed to catch up with friends, spend whole afternoons reading on the couch and weed my garden to (near) perfection. I knew these languorous days were never going to last, so I soaked them up as much as I could. The end of January has brought with it frantic Google searches for classroom decor, delightfully overwhelming conversations about pedagogy and many hours perched far too high on a ladder in the name of displaying hand-made bunting. Each set of days has brought with it new opportunities to grow, reflect and delight in aspects of God's world. I'm grateful (if only sometimes in hindsight) for all of it. 

February will bring my first ever day as a teacher, which will cascade into my first few weeks, and before I know it, the month will have passed and I will be wearily shaking my head over where the time has gone. Teaching is absorbing in a way that I crave: the organisation, the constant stimulation, the need to always be thinking on one's feet. I love this work that I came to in my twenty-sixth year and can't wait to begin it 'for real' on February 7th. 

What I don't want is for it to become my whole life. My best friend, S, surprised me this week, when she said that several times over the summer, she had found herself hoping, seemingly apropos of nothing, that I was writing. She told me that she senses an aptness to writing and me; my world seems to right itself when I am carving out space to do this thing that I love. She is right. The stilted tap of my fingers against my filthy keyboard on the average day sets my world to rights. Having 'spoken', however little, in this space, preferably near the beginning of the day, I am set to speak in all the myriad ways that are required of me for the rest of the day. In this way, writing is akin to my morning prayers. 

So here's what I've decided to make of S's observation and the deep resonance I felt as she shared it : a commitment to show up in this space on as close to a daily basis as I can manage, in slow increments of time. Ten minutes a day to start with, and no expectations as to how much I will write on a given day. Whatever comes, comes. But I make a commitment to show up in that morning space, and in doing so, show up to a truer version of myself and a deeper understanding of the God who made me this way. 

Currently vol. 1

"God's voice can so easily be muted by our hurt, out self-hatred or our crazy pre-conceptions about who He really is, how He speaks and what we think He will say. But when we come to God repeatedly with some deep need - perhaps for healing, or to find a partner, or for a friend who's turned their back on Jesus - His eyes are not angry, bored or cold, assessing the merits of our request and the technique of our prayer. Whenever we come to God with an open wound of longing, we come to Abba Father who loves us deeply. 'Cast all your anxiety on him,' says the apostle Peter, 'because he cares for you.'"

God on Mute, Pete Grieg

Reading: God on Mute, The Hand that First Held Mine, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (among others)

Watching: Miss You Already (queued up for viewing tonight)

Learning: Progress is most often slow and that's okay

Relishing: The reappearance of blue skies and pink sunsets

Grieving: The suffering (and inexplicable stubbornness) of a beloved family member 

Listening: To Maggie Rogers' latest album - what else? 

Delighting in: Good conversations with friends about the intersection of faith and culture