We do Because we Have to. We get to.

It is a perfect day here in Waco, Texas.

Not humid from the stifling river; just breezy and perfect.

It's understandable then, that the young lads at my college Alma Mater walk around with such carefree looks on their faces. Smiling; talking about their weekend trips to Austin or Dallas. Running; facing down the bear trail and looking like a million bucks as they hit mile number two. Cruising; literally, in lawn chairs in the bed of their buddies truck. Chatting; with girls about other girls about other girls. Flirting; like the couple behind me on the porch of Common Grounds who are dreaming about their future together.

They all look so young.

What happened? Are they letting junior high kids into college now or have I just gotten that much older?

These kids are little. This place screams summer camp. And as my dear friend Sam said over lunch today, "They have it so easy and carefree... they have no idea what they're getting into."

I laughed.

No matter what age you are, you do not want someone older than you telling you that your life is simple and trite, as if being a college student is really all that carefree. As if being in junior high is really that easy. As if being five discredits you from knowing everything there is to know in life. As if almost turning 30 is the wonder year that you will long for in years to come. Don't tell me that. This year hasn't been easy at all.

So- I aim at not discrediting the weighty matters of being in college and completely deleting all the meaning out of existence before then. Sincerely.

It's just that I don't remember it. Being back here makes me feel like I am stepping out of the wardrobe closet and back into the professor's house after a long and magical trip to Narnia. This place isn't Narnia.

This is the cold wooden dank armoire bringing me back to reality. Narnia feels like home. This place feels foreign. Or does this place feel like Narnia and where I have lived the last few years as a rootless vagabond feel like the dank armoire? I'm not sure. But I have driven the streets today, looked at the buildings, and tried to retrace me steps. And I am quite sure I have never been here before.

Did I ever go to college here? What did I do? Was I happy? Why didn't I just have fun while I was here? Why did I insist on being so grown up? So serious? So committed to boys? Why didn't I take more road trips? Make life-long girlfriends? What happened here anyways? Was that me or a different me? Have I changed... I mean, who is the real me. Her? Or me, now?

Are you sure I lived in that dorm?

I feel no more connection to that dorm than I do the swing I am sitting in. The swing I have never seen before in my life.

Wait, I must take a time-out here to say that a really adorable 19-ish year old guy with dimples just saved a girl's dog who broke free from the leash. He jumped in front of two cars to save that girl, I mean that dog, and I am quite sure he will have heroic folklore follow him the next four years for these actions. At least that's how the girls squawking over his bravery right now are acting. He is a hero. And he knows it.

And I don't know. I am not in a bad mood. I am not pessimistic or sad or even sitting here in regret. I just feel like a bit of a realist today.

I wonder if that guy will still be a hero in ten years? That's all.

The boy who saved the dog and had all the girls gasping and hugging him. Will he hit adulthood and find out that it's complicated? Hard? Tricky? Will he ever come back here and sit in this same swing and wonder if this place is a dream, if he ever really saved that great big white dog from being hit by a car or if it was just a dream? Will he wonder who he was back then and how he could have grown up so much since then? Will life pass that quickly and that eternally slow for him too?

These are Friday afternoon musings from a girl who feels like she's lived a lot of life since she's been on these streets last.

I met my husband here. I started the band Addison Road here. I studied religion and history and fell in love with the anthropology of people here. I made lifelong friends with Sam and Leslie Smith the very first day of school here. They became spiritual mentors. Teachers. Friends. Parents.

These are facts. They most certainly happened. But it all seems so fuzzy now.

My life is not overly complicated or terribly hard. Still, something about being here tugs deep within me and makes me a little bit afraid. Afraid that I can't remember. Afraid that it seems like so long ago. Afraid that I will be back here soon... with Annie and her boxes. Afraid that life is shorter than I thought and yet oceans away from memories that should be more fresh. Afraid that maybe I miss making memories. Afraid that it is happening all to quickly. Desperately wanting to hang on and slow it all down. To keep it in my hands. Frozen.

Fear will only have me for a few more minutes. Then I will tell it to go away and stop messing with my mind, my memory.

But right now I sit here, on this swing, and I wonder...

Did I really show up here, a scrawny 115 pound little person all by myself? And for what reason? Did I have any idea what I was getting myself into? Did I have any clue that life would happen? Or did God protect me from that little piece of information?

Like he does before you have a baby.

Protects you from knowing how brutal the first few weeks will actually be with strange fluids, aching legs, sore breasts, the strange fear of defeat, utter exhaustion, and a complete certainty that the critter in the other room has stopped breathing.

Maybe that's how we do life. If we knew ahead of time, we would run. So, we live innocently. Freely. Without fear. And when we have to grow up. When we have to face the fire. When the flames get hot...

well, that's when we learn to fight another day.

We grow up because we have to.

But we are changed in the process... because we want to.

Warning Signs

I adhere to the universal signal of flashing my lights so that oncoming drivers know there is a cop running radar ahead.

I do this because I believe in the universal theme of being warned.

(Though, yes dad, I suppose the posted signs are fair warning enough).

I can’t stand it when I have passed 29 miles of bumper to bumper- kids out on the median playing frisbee- truck drivers have called it a night and abandoned their rigs to smoke a cigarette with other drivers- woman’s having a baby on the side of the road- highway is shut down until Easter- kind of traffic and I know that I have no way of telling the poor unsuspecting drivers headed into this nightmare to STOP.

“STOP. TURN AROUND. EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO DIVERT THROUGH CANADA OR BACK TRACK A STATE OR TWO Or ABANDON YOUR CAR AND HIKE, TRUST ME… YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO THIS WAY!”

There really should be a universal signal to let people know there is upcoming traffic the same way there’s a signal for letting people know a cop is hiding in a bush past the next intersection with his radar gun. It’s just the proper, kind-loving thing to do.

I have tried creating a new signal.

I really have. I sit in the front seat and stare at the people with bulging, terrified eyes (which Ryan says will get me confused for a kidnapping victim if I’m not careful) and I wave my hands back and forth and mouth out the word S*T*O*P* and NOOOO.

(This is a practice I swore I would never do because, as I have explained numerous times to my mom, “MOM that’s embarrassing. Nobody knows what you are saying when you are mouthing to them from a different car. You just look like a crazy lady. Even if you are using hand signals at the neglect of your own steering wheel and giving them a thumbs up and vigorously shaking your head to tell them that you like their license plate or their dog is cute or making the pumping motion so they know their gas knob is opened or their kid is hanging out the back window. They honest to God don’t know what you’re saying).

But there I am in the front seat and I am terribly concerned about getting the message out that people need to turn around.

Ideally, in a perfect world, I would have my own public announcement system attached to the roof of my car along with bright pink flashing lights and an LED screen that gives people a fair warning that they’d rather hear finger nails scratching a chalkboard and then have to floss their teeth with big sheets of aluminum foil than continue on.

Ideally, in a perfect world, they would then nod their heads at me and raise one hand off the steering wheel in a friendly wave of human camaraderie, the way my Papaw would greet every single car that drove by him whether they paid any attention to him or not; and cars would turn around in droves. Because that’s what happens in a perfect world… someone gives you a warning.

Everyone wants a heads up right?

That’s why we have websites like Tripadvisor.com and other outlets that allow us to shoot straight with each other. And while I am quite sure there are a lot of people out there with pent up anger that turn to these online sites to spew rage, seek justice for their product gone bad, or dish out their passive aggressive opinions, in the beginning these online sites began as useful warning tools for the public.

Don’t go here, go there.

We have signs on the highway that tell us ‘20 minutes of traffic from this point on’. Signs at Six Flags that tell us how long we have to wait to get on the roller coaster. The GPS gives us the ETA. We have a count down for Christmas. We take numbers at the deli so we can constantly gauge what is coming next: number 29. Pastrami on rye. Number 28. Tuna. I only have to wait through 7 more orders. We even get a countdown at the DPS. Seven more miserable people in front of me before I go pay the state money to take a really bad picture that will haunt me for years. Still, something about knowing how many people are in front of me and watching the numbers disappear on the screen makes the whole thing bearable.

I think in general we can take the blows if you just shoot it to us straight.

Six months of chemo? Twelve? Ok. I can do it.

My company is putting me up at a shoddy hotel for two months? Ok. I can do it.

We have to live on a budget this year? Ok. I can do that.

27 minutes before I get to my exit five miles down the street? Ugghh. Annoying. But at least there is an end in sight. A goal. A set your eyes on the prize. At least there is a warning. And I am convinced, with warnings we can weather anything. (Because it makes us feel like we have some control.)

But it’s the unknown road that I seem to be on lately.

The road feels desolate. There are no road signs, no mile markers, no countdown clocks, warning signs, no websites where well meaning people can tell me what to expect. No girl with an announcement system, pink flashing lights, and an LED screen on her car that says, “Warning: Hell is straight ahead of you. Turn around.”

And maybe that’s good, because I’d take the road to Canada and forget the original plan all together. I’d go somewhere safe. Somewhere with lots of bright lights and police officers and countdown clocks and warning signs. I’d take the easy road and not look back.

People have said a lot of amazing things about Ryan and I this week. How we have encouraged them to keep going in the midst of their own trials. How we have been a part of renewing their faith because we are what it looks like to persevere under fire (literally). How we will be blessed for not quitting and how we are doing this amazing thing for God. And I just want to say, “thanks, but no thanks.”

I can’t be anyone’s poster child for what a warrior looks like.

There’s an old song by an artist named Twila Paris that has always stuck in my heart and the chorus says:

“People say that I’m amazing, strong beyond my years. But they don’t see inside of me, I’m hiding all my tears. They don’t know that I go running home when I fall down. They don’t know who picks me up when no one is around. I drop my sword and cry for just a while. Cause deep inside this armor, the warrior is a child.”

The warrior is a child.

That’s me.

Put me on a highway without warning signs and throw some curveballs… like a fire that takes away my favorite pajama pants, my daughter’s only embroidered baby gifts from her baby showers, and my new make-up, and you will see me fall apart.

My vision is limited.

My faith hangs on by threads.

My endurance for roads deplete of road signs is waning.

My mind tells me to go home. Go to a place where warning signs are a part of everyday life and the next step is always, mostly certain.

And then my God, that voice that speaks quietly to me, that is constant even when the Bible seems to make little sense, Christians seem to embarrass me, and I wonder if I’ve made it all up… even in the midst of my small, defeated faith, my God who is very real and very near to me shows up on the plane ride from Atlanta to Chicago… on Sunday, when I am very much missing being in a place where I can worship.

The sky is beautiful. The clouds are puffy like marshmallows and the sparkly blue-sky dances on as far as my eyes can see. I am lost in the beauty of this perfect day. And yet minutes later, as we descend through the clouds I realize that Chicago is wet and nasty. The sky is full of dark clouds and the city looks dreary from 20,000 feet.

And I hear His voice. “You want to tell them it’s a beautiful day today? It is, isn’t it?”

That was it. Nothing booming or profound, just a single thought that God clearly floated through my mind and into my heart. It might be rainy in Chicago today, but it is beautiful 33,000 feet above Chicago. The sun is out and shining… even if they can’t see it.

There’s your warning sign Jenny. You don’t know the scope of what is going on in a single moment. Your eyes cannot see it. Your mind cannot perceive it. No clock can tell you. No estimated time of arrival. No game plan. No warning. No weather channel can tell you that it is miserable on the ground but beautiful above the clouds.

Your vision is limited. But mine is not.

You have to trust me.

You have to trust that.

The road is not desolate. There will always be a warning sign… because I see what you cannot see. And I give the signs. The warning signs that tell you no matter what the road looks like on the ground, there’s something else going on beyond your vision. And detouring to Canada won’t change anything.

It’s cloudy in Chicago today baby.

But the skies are dancing and I am watching them. I see.

I can give you your warning signs… trust me.