our jam out.

I am tired.
But maybe the best kind of tired.

And I know, it’s been a while since I’ve been the best kind of anything.
I also just ate a cadbury egg, a gift from my friend Sarah.
To say I am a lucky girl would be an understatement. It’d be giving too much credit to chance when there are people who purposefully do things to make my day sweeter.
And there’s not much that can make a day sweeter than a cadbury egg, I think.

Love that isn’t a bum deal comes to mind, but a cadbury egg is still quite good.

Still, I am the best kind of tired right now because Shane and I just finished what we affectionately refer to as our First World Tour.

Too lofty of a title you think?
Well, you go play Bear, DE on Friday, Philly on Sat, two services at church Sunday morning, and then Newark, DE on Sunday night and tell me that you didn’t just complete your first world tour.

And really, our First Three Cities In Two Different States Tour just doesn’t quite sound as catchy.
Or impressive.

And now I think I’ll sleep well tonight.
Basically, because I’ve been doing a lot of this lately.* ** ***

*

And I’ve also been playing a lot less solitaire, which says something, I think.
Something good.
Something about being a little more comfortable in my own skin, even to the point where my thoughts sit down for a second. They stay and it’s not such bad company all the time anymore. Used to be that they were a lot like the tadpoles that my brothers and I would catch down at our stream: darting wildly about in the bucket, looking for a way out but only finding a terrible monotony. Just trapped anyway you try it.

And if I were to stay with this bucket analogy, considering that I just called myself a bucket, I would like to say that, for tonight at least, the bucket is filled with musical notes. And something that looks like hope, though I’m afraid to look very close.

It’s like the way you trust a camera to take a kinder picture when it’s a little further away from your face. There’s a chance, then, that it won’t capture the parts of you that make you so grateful for make-up. For make believe. For make overs. For make it stop, please God, make this stop.

But I think those same parts–those same imperfections or wounds or whatever it is that makes us hurt ourselves and others so badly, so quickly, so easily–is also and undeniably responsible for making music. For making our songs the questions that we are afraid to voice. And though the answers may never come, one day we’ll feel a little freer and then maybe we’ll feel good and answered anyway.

*This is what we call our Jam Out. It started a little by accident because Shane was playing this on the guitar while James walked into the room and asked if we could start singing about him. So I did. And, though the lyrics have morphed into something else entirely, James still calls the song ‘his song’ and I am really okay with that.

**Please note that right when I sing the lyric, Baby, let’s go, a guy and a girl decide to take me literally and leave at that moment. I think it’s funny. I wonder if I should change the lyric to, Baby, let’s stay, so as to keep our audience with us while we sing our songs.

***Ian is the one who is playing the djembe so fabulously here. Oh, and he’s Shane’s brother.