Oh, it’s terrible English, I know–and I cannot remember where I first heard this phrase–but it keeps running through my mind tonight. I have this sense of contentment, of wellness, that feels even bigger than my body, if that makes sense. Like my fingers only go so far when I reach; but, oh! this feeling of peace, it extends. Further than I knew, maybe.

And I feel, well, all full up.

Like the holes that have been poked through my psyche and my heart and my mind have started to patch. And you know what? I’ve always really liked patches. One of my favorite parts of flying in an airplane is looking down and seeing the land assembled like a patchwork quilt.

Which is something else I love. I’ve always wanted to make one, actually. And I’m gonna do it someday, too. And then I’m gonna give it to a really special person. You’ll see.

But maybe it was the shooting star I saw, falling like a thread of silver through the black sky; or the very short run I made with my dog in the kind of night that is so dark, it forbids you from seeing your own hand in front of your face; or the honest and free laughter that I shared with my parents (some laughter isn’t free; unkind laughter takes from you, leaves you in a debt that is hard to pay back); or talking to some friends late tonight in a house made warm by a yellow fire and happy by music; or the choreography I taught to a friend who loves to dance, sees it as a kind gift from an even kinder Creator; or maybe I could cite every last good thing I can remember and still not quite define what has me all full up tonight.

Maybe it’s like stripping the rose of every last petal in an effort to find what makes it smell so lovely–this peace, this life, this love–it’s big. Bigger than me. Bigger than one day or night. And I am happy, so happy to be included in it. I feel like traces of the song God first sung to cause everything in this old world to grow and breathe and bloom and be can be heard tonight.

And it has me all full up.

Since I am too tired to write anywhere close to a thousand words tonight.

But it’s a good kind of tired; an I’ve been working kind of tired.

There’s a lot of peace in this kind of tired.

But I will say that one of the best things about friends going to far far away places is when they come back. Shane is home now and this is such lovely news. I drew him a pig playing a guitar as a welcome back and then I made the pig say “snort.” Not “oink,” but “snort.” Oh my gosh. I realized my misnomer too late, and after I had finished laughing about it, decided to sign up for preschool. Because isn’t that where you learn about farm animals and which particular noises they make?

Seriously, who does that?

And I will also say that I have been listening to a certain song called Fearless by Colby Calais. I have been listening to this song a lot. My friend Sarah told me about it, told me that when she listens to it, she thinks of me. And now I go and drive and I turn up the heat in my car and then I turn up the volume of that particular song and both the heat and the music help to make me warmer, you know? And I sit inside those lyrics and I am at peace. Not even sad, just at peace.

Oh, now it’s even later and that whole getting up early thing is coming nice and fast. But I just wanted to let you know about the mistaken snort. And that song, Fearless. And that Shane is home. Yes, I think I have covered everything.

There is a trick to singing; it is called relax and the sound will come easier.

Not that it will come easy, mind you. I don’t really believe that anything of value comes very easy, but there’s something about letting your body be at peace. Breathing nice and deep. Letting go of the tension. And then something else happens–it just starts to work.

I remember one time I was thinking about that verse in the Bible–the one about how Option A is to be all anxious and Option B is to be all let’s give this to God when things weigh heavy and how choosing Option B floods your mind with peace, even if not much changes around you.

And I decided I wanted to write a song about it. So I sat there at the piano and worked for a very long time. And a whole lot of nothing felt like it transpired in the next hour. Sure, I found one chord progression that I liked and so proceeded to wear it out, but that didn’t exactly feel like something to write home about. Especially since I was already home and my parents would be all, Why didn’t you just save yourself the thirty-nine cents and tell us about that chord progression over cereal in the morning?

So I gave up and left for whatever was next on my agenda. And as I was walking out of my house, a set of lyrics and a melody just popped right into my head–acted like it owned the place cause it didn’t even knock or anything.  So I ran back to my piano and, sure enough, it fit with that chord progression I had been playing over and over again. Fit like a glove. And that was that. The song came so easy when I stopped trying so hard. Not that you shouldn’t try–you should never not try–but sometimes there’s a time to walk away, I guess. To relax. To let it happen.

And it’s such a nice surprise when it does just that.

Like yesterday, when I decided to get myself into a ballet class. I even got myself into a leotard and tights, which was a nice kind of nostalgic for me. And the correction I got from my teacher was to not be so hard on myself; to relax and maybe even get rid of that determined expression that was arranged on my face. The one I had, up till that point, had no idea about. And then I remembered that I was dancing and it was like, Oh! right. This is my body dancing–moving to the music, even if it is a little piano tune and not exactly something with a fat beat–it’s still me dancing, so why not show that I love it?

Not to mention relax, too.

Which is when I started to land some pirrouettes. But not learn how to actually spell that word. Don’t be crazy.

And the thing is, sometimes it can feel like we are up against the clock all the time. The way life is arranged in increments we call minutes that fill up till they are hours that fill up till they are days. Days of our lives. Haha that’s a soap opera, which wasn’t my point. Just kidding, that’s totally my point. We should all watch more soap operas and then life will come easy.

Oh, I kid again.

I didn’t actually want to comment on soap operas at all, except to say that they give actors jobs so YEAH!

But what I am saying is that there isn’t a lot of time to give yourself to worry, especially when that makes whatever it is you are trying to do a little less likely. And a lot less fun.

And I’m not saying this because I’ve done it and done it well. I’m saying it because I am learning about this; I’m trying to relax and breathe while working hard. To remember that, though I am turning out and pointing my feet like crazy or singing something that feels real, REAL high right about now–or even going to the grocery store because my momma asked me to and let’s be honest, she’s done more for me than could ever be paid back, should I go to every grocery store in every province, it is my life. All of it. So why not remember that I love it? And then once I remember, why not show it? Just like in ballet class. And why not give myself to the work of peace, starting right here. In that part of me that you cannot see or take, that part of me that I should not forget or neglect…

Yes, you could, my friend Christian told me, just as serious.

No, it’d kill me. I can’t, I just can’t, I kept repeating.

No, you’d get through it. Just like you get through all of life, he assured me.

And then I told him I’d kill myself, but neither of us really believed it. Because I wouldn’t, but still.

We were talking about me and marriage and whoa. I know that might sound crazy, but it’s me we’re talking about here; and in case you don’t know, I talk about everything. Well, with some people, anyway.

And when I talk about marriage in the case of me, I generally say if while my friends say when. And when I asked Christian how weird–on a scale of one to ten-he thinks my life is, we both decided on twenty (at least) and then started laughing.

Because, seriously. Who would have thought? I still shock people quite regularly by giving them an outline of the recent events of my life. As in: I’m single now. S-I-N-G-L-E. Yes, I know he seemed like he was “really on fire for the Lord,” as one person recently put it, but well, things didn’t work out, anyway.

And the thing is, they don’t even know the half of it.

Just like me. At least, the way it was for a long time.

But now I know the whole of it and I’m grateful to be out of it. And I’d rather feel a little lonely sometimes when I am all by myself, then very lonely when I am with somebody who claims to be a husband.

I like this feeling, lately. I think it might be peace. Isn’t that a beautiful word? And what makes it beautiful is the concept behind it. Because sure, the e and the a sitting so close, making a nice, strong and two-letter-deep sound that neither of them could make very well on their own doesn’t hurt either, but I love the word because of what it stands for.

And you could talk to me about peace for hours and hours; we could even watch a movie chronicling peace that Quentin Tarantino himself made, but if it’s not something that’s in my heart, I guess I’d lose interest or stop believing after a while.

Because eventually it’d be like randomly saying peace to the soldiers marching in Pickett’s Charge in Gettysburgh while all their friends are getting shot down around them. War is obvious in the cadence of their marching, always marching, towards an end that is not necessary; not if this world were the way God dreamt it, I think. But I guess it’s the way we wheel and deal our free will as if we’re peddlers, each of us with an angle, each of us with a gimmick and a jingle to keep them coming back, even if it’s a place that hurts rather than heals. I suppose that is what makes war necessary sometimes. But God, I wish it weren’t.

But if you’re saying peace over and over again in the midst of all that, the word starts to mean nothing.

Which is what the word trust became for me. Nothing. But I kept hearing it; he’d even get upset with me for not holding fast to it, but there I was, watching everything fall down around me. Wondering at the secrecy. At the lack of communication. The lack of care. The lack, the lack, the lack.

And now it all makes a kind of sad sense. But the sadness is trailing behind, I think, in this race for my heart, while the sense of freedom is maybe pulling ahead now. And certain words that had lost their meaning in my life are once again conceptualizing right before my eyes.

Trust.
Peace.
Love.
Forgiveness.

And I find myself loving those words like they are family itself. I gather them close to me, holding them with the kind of urgency that spells out to the world that I’m not afraid for anybody to know how much I need them.

Because God, I need them to mean something and it’s because of God, I think, that once again, they do.

Well, God and people.

Some of the best darn people in the world, I think.

Strong.
Together.
Held.
Surrounded.
Weak.
Broken.
Sustained.
Carried.

Lost.
Resilient.
Humbled.
Bereft.
Grasping.
No longer empty handed.
Found.

How can a person be all of those things? How can we burst at the seams with how we feel and still eat sandwiches because, by the time noon rolls around, lunch feels important again?

How can the mingling of the mundane and the surreal collide with me every day, creating a kind of thunder, so to speak, that can eventually feel as normal as the sound of a summer storm in July?

And how many Sundays in a row will I have to tell someone that, no, the reason I am no longer with Drew is not because I was away on tour? So far the answer is two, but hey, there’s always next Sunday, I guess.

So many questions, but I don’t think that peace is necessarily in the answers. Though I wouldn’t mind knowing them, so don’t be shy if you know and if the answer is what most would deem nice.

I think there is peace in living fully in the present; getting home and finding your finger nails good and dirty because you dug so deep into the stuff of life today. I think there is peace in realizing that, sure, five minutes fromt now might find you somewhere else–somewhere shocking, even–but right now, this is where God has put you and you might as well live like it’s good.

Because, you know, it just might be good after all.

*pictures taken by Dan Dunlap; dancers: Olivia Carlsen, Avery McGee

Someone else made me a purse. Like that’s normal. Like everybody goes around making things that most of us only buy.

Someone made me cookies a few weeks ago.

Someone(s) sent me flowers on Valentine’s Day.

Someone else gave me some homemade rolls yesterday. Homemade potato rolls. Once again something that most people only ever buy.

Many a different someone has been available to talk to me–whenever; to frame my feelings in words that do make a difference.

Someone else gave me a shirt. A sweet little shirt that says peace. And at first when she simply told me what she was giving me, and I had yet to see it, I thought she said that the shirt said peas. Like the vegetable. And believe me, I was still excited about that because I am an avid fan of peas. Once I ate a whole dinner that consisted of peas. And before you are super impressed–conjuring up all the different dishes I must have cooked while using peas as my main ingredient–let me explain a little further and say that my dinner was a huge bowl of peas. And not a cereal bowl, either: a mixing bowl. But, still, that’s it.

So yes, I’d be proud to wear a shirt that said peas. That’s a cause I can support wholeheartedly.

But when I unfolded the shirt and saw it actually said peace–well, even better. Because if I were to choose which of the two would better help me through this particular season of my life, I’d have to say peace.

Though another large mixing bowl’s worth of peas could be a very close second.

Which makes me think of the shirt Drew bought me right before I left for Japan. It’s all about peace. In fact, it suggests you go about the business of peace every way possible. That you meditate for it, pray for it, be for it, bring it, and make it. The shirt says all that. In a sparkly silver. Like it is written in angel dust.

And I wore that shirt to warm up before the show every night. It was another way to stay close to home, to stay close to him.

Which is just ridiculous.

I mean, peace.

How ironic that I wore that idea so faithfully. How ironic that, like the shirt, what it stood for was only skin deep anyway. How terribly ironic that the shirt he bought me talked about the opposite of everything that would happen. That I came home to chaos, though as of yet thinly disguised; that I wore my peace shirt, still,  like it could help at all.

There are words for that, I guess. Pitiful. Stupid. Though a friend told me he would replace those words with something more along the lines of trusting. Even innocent. Which is a kind way to put it. And I like the kind way; I try to follow that way.

But my point in all this is that I am the child who woke up on Christmas morning to a house that had been visited by some kind of terrible Grinch. And he had taken seemingly everything–well, everything except “a crumb that was even too small for a mouse.”

So yeah, I shouldn’t be so upset.

But then, something marvelous happened.

It seems people noticed the bleakness of my situation and I am left a girl marked by kindness. A girl marked by love. A girl marked by a community that will not leave her alone.

And I am humbled when I would otherwise be self-pitying, another kind of low that doesn’t end so well.

And I am buoyed when I would otherwise drown.

And I am indisputably loved.

Whoa.

Which is so beautifully different from woe.