The Longest Distance Between Two Places

I am coming up for air on the back half of the most strange season of my life. 

So many things have happened in such a short time. A short time that feels like an eternity.

365 days.

How can they feel so torturously long and so incredibly fleeting in the same breath?

At the end of The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams' character, Tom, says that, "time is the longest distance between two places."

Oh how I have lived that. The longest, most foreign distances I have ever known were traveled by my shoeless, uncalloused feet this year. I can assure you (though if you have lived long enough, you can assure yourself) that leaving one place and going to the next- unprepared and without a map- becomes a showdown between yourself and the clock; time ticking torturously slow, hour after inconsolable hour, taunting you with its impeccable attention to punctuality.

Time is the longest distance between two places.

But eventually you arrive. Mangledy-bangledy. With calloused feet, some sort of shoes you created along the way, a weary body and pride. The pride that comes from navigating without a map, without a GPS, without a tangible guide. Just you. The frigging wilderness. And a determination to not turn around or quit... to not sit down by a tree and hope that a family of benevolent squirrels will befriend you, to not camp by a cave and hope to be eaten by a bear or accepted as a man-cub, to not carve your name into the bark and eat the kind of magic berries they ate at Woodstock. (Though let's be honest, when you're in-between, all kinds of options are on the table...)

But to keep moving. To endure. To hope for what cannot be seen. And maybe even learn a thing or two about wilderness survival along the way. About what to do with your soul when the space between point A and point B seems like the space between the gravel trails by the riverbed and the summit, 15,000 feet above you.

The in-between always feels interminable when you are in between. 

But eventually you arrive. You really do. You reach the outskirts of the other side, you see the outline of a place you have never known but have fought to see. And it all begins to happen very quickly. The quickness in your step. The trees moving out of your way. The clarity of the path in front of you. The sense of purpose. The dreams surfacing in your soul- as if you never stopped believing. The pride of not being eaten by a bear or joining a family of squirrels or eating the magic-cure-all-berries. The desire to walk faster, to run on calloused feet, to smile and scream and laugh and arrive joyfully broken causes time to change its course.

Now, time flies.

The beat of your own heart flies. You breath in a new way. Deep and with purpose. You know you walked through a wilderness where each moment seemed unbearably slow; but now there are not enough minutes in the day. It all happens so fast, so unexpectedly fast.

When we are again, fully alive, there are never enough moments to be had.

How can one thing that is so scientifically constant, be so inconsistent? How can one year feel like an eternity and the blink of an eye? It's as if time speeds itself up and slows itself down based on the seasons of our souls.

In the season of becoming, time is unforgiving. Lingering on every last second so that we might truly experience the anguish of becoming. And when the soul re-enters a season of purpose and joy, time rushes about, forcing us to choose over and over again what we will wholly give ourselves to.

This long journey of the becoming is finally transforming in front of my eyes into a journey so brimming with new life, that I hardly have enough hours in the day to take it all in. To breathe it deeply enough. Or to sit and dwell on the fact that this exact week, one year ago, my world was turned upside down and I found myself shoeless, with uncalloused feet, dropped at the base of a wilderness I had never known.

I look forward to being able to tell the whole story very soon. But until then- thank you for the many prayers offered on my behalf while I journeyed through the unknown. Through the becoming. 

And to the ones who are still in between- I wish I could rush the process along for you. I wish time wasn't the longest distance between two places. But it is. So beware of bears, man-cubs, benevolent squirrels and magic berries (though Lord knows those berries are tempting in the in-between). Don't listen to the ticking of the clock. Take hope. From one mangledy-bangledy person to another...

there is another side.

It might take a year- or two- or five- to get there, but soon enough you will arrive, and time will no longer be the litmus for what is not.

Time will be the great gift for what IS.

I wish we all could know...

A few weeks ago I was in Terminal D at DFW airport. Terminal D is the international terminal here in Dallas. It's not flashy- like Detroit Metro- with beautiful fountains, leather lounge chairs, and an indoor tram; but it's not dinky either. It has rather lofty ceilings, fabulous restaurants, and enough flat screens to remind you that, although spread out and enormous (like everything in Texas) it is still modern and trendy. Mostly, terminal D seems to be a hub for wealthy travelers and more business men and women than I ever, ever care to deal with. They are everywhere. All huffy and puffy and rushed and sipping their lattes and making business deals on their laptops while talking on their ear pieces to someone else- all while trying to pay for their lattes. You get the point. It's the business elite and the people hopping on planes to amazing places like Paris and San Paulo and Beijing.

You go to Terminal D to people watch- and then you try to stay out of the people's way!

I tell you all of this to tell you that when the whole of terminal D was frozen in place the other day for what seemed to be fifteen minutes... I thought the worst. Perhaps the airport had lost cell signal or some other terrible, natural catastrophe had occurred.

But then I saw an older gentleman looking up.

There were tears streaming down his face.

And there, above our heads, encased behind a glass wall, coming out of the international arrival doors, hundreds of our men and women returning from Afghanistan began to file through the doors.

The gentleman in front of me drew to attention- you could almost here his 80 year old bones snap into place-  and put his hand to his head in the most beautiful salute I have ever seen.

He stayed like that, at attention, saluting, for 15 minutes.

His wife rose from her wheelchair and steadying herself against him, she began to clap.

Aall the huffy, puffy, busy business folks set their briefcases down and began to clap too. All through terminal D people stopped. Frozen in time. Cheering and clapping. Giving thumbs up and mouthing the words thank you. Wiping tears and not breaking our gaze- we stood there, scattered throughout Terminal D, craining our necks upward, knowing we were a part of a moment that was incredibly significant.

Whether you believe in war or not. Whether you believe in this war or not. You gotta believe in these men, women, and their families.

Some of the men and women in uniform wiped tears from their eyes as we cheered them on. Some of them threw their hands in the air like Rocky- telling us they did it, they made it home. Some of them nodded, and as straight as a soldier who has seen death, walked with purpose down that hall as a man and woman who comes home with honor should. Some smiled. Other men stopped to hug each other and buried their faces in the camouflage of another. One girl started dancing. Their reactions were all different, but all beautiful.

Our airport does an amazing job at welcoming home troops, but it never happens in Terminal D. It happens in another terminal. The USO is set up in a smaller terminal with plenty of room for families to cheer... and no glass walls. So I suppose this group was headed to the other terminal. I suppose the sight of them surprised the Terminal D kind of folks. I suppose people had places to get to and phone calls to make and business deals to secure and... and.. and...

but in that moment, the whole world stood still.  And these men and women stole our hearts. And we gave them ours.

I wish the whole world could have seen it.

We- the collective we- we were so proud of them. So grateful. So humbled.

***

I was deeply touched by the stories of your friends, family, and personal experiences regarding deployment. Thank you to all the blog readers who shared your stories with us. I wish I could repeat them all here. I wish I could tell people your story so that we could ALL have a better grasp on what it truly means to sacrifice.

I wish we could know the feeling a mother has when watching her 20 year old baby boy leave for the foreign desert of Afghanistan.

I wish we could know the feeling of giving birth to a baby while a best friend holds the computer and dad watches on skype from a desert laced with war.

I wish we could know what it feels like to leave our children and husband behind, wondering if they will still be there, if the marriage will still be there, when we return.

I wish we could know the feeling of  keeping it together, day in and day out, taking care of children, bills, family health issues, and the simple chores of getting kids ready for school and holidays, while our spouse has been deployed for the fourth time.

I wish we could all, for just a brief moment, experience these things so that we might not only appreciate the sacrifice, but that we might also be drawn to a place of action on behalf of our military families. Like everything in life, once we see it with our own eyes; once we walk through it with our own family; once we put ourselves in the shoes of another... it is no longer a foreign concept, it is a person, a family, a child, a shared moment that- try as we may- we cannot seem to rid our minds of.

The result?

Once we experience the shoes of another, we move beyond cursory words of sympathy and we move into empathy. A deep feeling of truly sharing and carrying another's burden or pain. Sympathy is the broadest form we can relate to someone who is hurting. Then comes empathy, which allows us to actually put ourselves in the person's shoes. Then comes compassion, a mixture of both sympathy and empathy marked by a propensity to alleviate the suffering of the person who has suffered. Sympathy is easy. Empathy requires "knowing what it feels like" or at least allowing ourselves to imagine what it must feel like. And once we feel it? We- as humans- are more times than not, driven to compassion.

Sympathy. Empathy. Compassion.

So yes. I wish for each of us that we may, in some way, understand the hardships of another so that we might move well beyond sympathy and into empathy and acts of compassion.  This week specifically, I hope to encourage you- whoever you are- to be moved to compassion on behalf of the men, women, and families who sacrificially serve in the military.

***

At the very least, we can pray prayers of peace over those we know who are currently deployed and serving during war time.

But I hope you and I become inspired to do more than just that!  This week I will introduce you to several organizations that you can partner with in big and small ways to show our troops and their families compassion. Be looking for those on Wednesday.

Please print this list out and join me in praying for those who are currently deployed and their families:

Ashley Barnhill

Josh Barnhill

Ashley Miller

Joe Gilling

Tim, wife, son

Treylyn Smith, wife, son Karsyn

Orlando, wife

John, his father and sister Lori

Parker and Ellen

Matt Emmon's brother, wife, two children

Serrell Livingston, wife, son, and step daughter

Robert Tepera

Andrew Baptiste

Thomas Jones

Michael Payne

Chris Davidson

Sarah Bleything

A family that my sister is close with just said goodbye to their husband/daddy as he was sent off to Iraq, again.

A young couple who are moving in two months, and their third baby is due in one month.

A young female soldier who volunteers at my youth group is currently deployed.

Jeanna B and her husband who is currently deployed

Jared, wife, and three children

Colin Kerrigan, wife, and three children

Chris Sikes

Ashley Sanders

Jon-Micheal Cason

Michelle Davis (currently deployed) husband, and two children

Tim Benedict, Melissa, and the little baby in her tummy

Katie's cousin in Afghanistan

On Domestication...

Dear Becky... Thank you for inquiring as to my whereabouts!

I am living in a strange and foreign land.

I have a real live toilet (not a nasty tour-bus toilet). My daughter has a semi-schedule. And I have slept in my own bed more in the last three months than I have in two years straight. In this strange land, I have friends that I actually share meals with, and I am realizing this is a lot more sweet than sharing text messages. In this land, I cook my own meals; there is no maid to make the bed and clean the bathroom while I'm away for the afternoon. I clean baseboards, teach my daughter how to spell her name, and I touch chicken guts more times during a week than anyone should ever have to do.

In this land of suburbia, I am learning a new normal. And when my heart aches to get on an airplane or I worry about losing my frequent flyer status; I crave to sleep in a Hilton bed or I miss being on stage telling my stories and singing my heart out; I remember, this will not always be my normal. This is just normal for now.

And for now, I am trying to fall head-0ver-heels into this new phase of life because it is a gift to be here. To be now. To be all that I can be for my daughter and my husband. For so long, I have given so much of myself to so many people that it seems foreign to pour all of that into a small circle of people. But God is showing me, in a multitude of ways, the beauty of sewing seeds into my family during this time in our lives.

I admit, I have days where I fight it. Days where I want to crawl back into my tour-bus bunk bed and get back to the life I was once living. But then I see Annie look at a bug. Nose to nose with a little bug. And her eyes light up and she says, "Oh my goodness! Buggy is sleeping!"

I don't have the heart to tell her that buggy is as dead as a doornail.

Right now I am taking the time and space to pour myself into her, Ryan, my family, my friends, and my church. Oh yeah, and myself. Having the gift of  being still, present, and available to the ones I love the most is amazing. So I am trying to fight my own selfishness; and I am embracing domesticity. For a little while, I will put my own dreams on hold while I teach my daughter and watch her explore the world. And in a little while- when she wanders the hall of her kindergarten- and I find myself back to singing, writing, and traveling- I will wonder how she grew up so fast and I will ache for these days once more.

I have missed writing and missed my sweet blog family that has joined me here on my journey the last few years. Now that we have established a "new normal" I will get back to writing out the stories that make this life great. And I hope you will join me once again...

Here are some pictures of my journey into domesticity.

This kid is only smiling because she is not the one who is actually cooking.

In the land of domesticity, I made my first ever chicken. I had to pull its stomach guts out and that was disgusting.

The end product was beautiful. And, in my attempt to be a real Marth Stewart, I took the carcass and made my own chicken stock. Wow. I never thoought I would utter those words.

My favorite cooking attempt has been a series of homemade muffins. I like watching Annie press her face to the oven to watch them "grow."

There is the "sleeping" buggy. No, she is not eating it. But she likes to get nose to nose with buggies and talk to them.

Some things are changing. In fact, some days I feel like my whole world is changing. But if you find yourself in the midst of change like me, remember, some things never change.

Like my love for taking pictures of clouds.

Clouds. They are always moving and reshaping. But ultimately, they do not change. They always exist. Always have. Always will. Sometimes they just look different. Sometimes they take on a new normal. Sometimes we take on a new normal.

Here's to living IN the new normal...

Smart things my friends have said this week.

Krista:

(As I am trying to eat, talk to friends, and watch a football game... and trying to feed Annie when she doesn't want to eat) "You know it's ok to just give her pieces of food when she wanders over to you?"

Well NO Krista that never occurred to me... but it's stinking genius! Thank God for mom friends who tell you that you can just put a piece of ham in your kids mouth every ten minutes and by the end of two hours she will have technically eaten dinner. Having an older mom friend is like having a cheat sheet during finals. Brilliant. Thank you for always making me feel human Krista.

Jody:

(As we are having coffee and discussing the possibility of her daughter going to a private school. The kind of private school that she would have better chances of getting into if she rented an apartment- on top of the home she owns- in the same district that the school is located in.)  I just don't want to do that. To force this thing to happen. What if she gets in and the school totally screws her up and I look back and think, "She's only there because I forced it." I don't ever want to look back at my life and see that I have forced anything to happen simply because I could. I want to look back at my life and see that things happened because God made a way.

It's comments like this that make me grateful to have deep, beautiful people all around me. And the crazy thing is... she didn't even mean to be deep or beautiful or profound... it was just a part of the ramble.  And yet it made me re-think everything. Thank you for being so wise Jody.

Jackie:

(As a group of friends gathered for tamales and a break from our snow-bound cabins at her kitchen table, we did what we always do at Steve and Jackie's house: talked about the things that really matter. We do that by asking questions that everyone at the table answers. I loved Jackie's question).  If you had a warning label on you, what would it say? Like mine, Jackie said, "Would be: Warning I'm crazy. But if you can put up with the crazy, I will make you stop and think."

We went around the table and spouted off our warnings. One friend said, "Warning: I probably don't care." She's 16. You gotta give her time. Another said, "Warning: I am full of useless sports trivia and I love sports, so be prepared." Another said, "When someone really tries to be my friend I turn into a complete *&@*@! (bleep) out of no where and I don't really know why." Of course now my ultimate goal is to dig in deep with her... but that was my goal way before she said that. Cause I kind of like her. Now it's just even more challenging and fun. Ryan said, "Warning: I don't let people in."  Oh, really?  I said, "Warning I attract bad luck and broken things, but I give lots of hugs." As each person talked, we were able to affirm each other; laugh; listen intently; and see a little bit of ourselves in everyone at the table. I have come to realize there is a difference between just hanging out with people and truly being in relationship with people. Jackie and Steve have taught me what it looks like to be in real relationship with people. To have conversations that matter. For that, my life has been forever changed. Thank you for loving me well and teaching me how to be real Jackie.

Not Without Hope:

(As I sat with a dear, beloved friend of mine this week who miscarried for the third time this year. *She wishes to remain anonymous, so if you know who she is and you leave a comment, please protect her identity.* We cried and cried and cried and said good-bye to her unborn baby who had lived in her belly for seven weeks. The baby she had already seen a picture of. Seven inches long and a little heart beating 126 times per minute. Right there in her bathroom, the life ended. And in the most crude, cruel, gesture of life I have ever seen with my own eyes, my friend had to sit there until she could work up the courage to flush the toilet. To say good-bye to another life she dreamed of mothering. To wait for the bleeding to stop. And I swear, I thought my heart would never stop bleeding for her. I have dreamed about it every night this week; woken up in a tsunami of pain and sadness. I have shed a million tears. But there in her bathroom, with her eyes locked deeply into mine, my sweet friend softly, courageously, and gracefully said...)

You know, Jen, God is still good.

So to my friend- Not Without Hope- thank you for showing me the most beautiful picture of faith I have ever seen in my whole entire life. Your strength in the midst of suffering, your faith in God's goodness when you yourself were robbed of another tiny life, your hope when you had every right to give up and give in... it has changed something deep within me. Thank you for showing me the face of Jesus so clearly, that I can't stop thinking of Him.