Tonight, I am hanging out with two very special people: my friends, Betsy and Todd. And Betsy made some adorable cupcakes and let me help her decorate them. I especially liked the broken hearted one. I have a soft spot in my heart for broken hearts, I guess.

Right now I feel very content. I don’t mind this feeling at all. No, wait. I do mind it, actually. In the sense that one should mind their manners, at least. I pay attention to this sense of contentment. I listen to it. I realize it. I tell it to please be at home here. I take a cue from Betsy and Todd and set out a gerber daisy in full bloom beside the guest bed, in hopes that contentment will know just how very welcome it is.

And Valentine’s Day.

It doesn’t hurt.

I think I will walk with a bounce in my step tomorrow and try to smile at as many people as I can. I will hope that love has found each and every one of them, just as it has found me, again and again, though I try to hide somtimes. I am ridiculous. I am like a child, pulling the blanket over my still form on the bed, thinking that love won’t know what the me-shaped lump is and so pass me by. But, no. Love finds me. It has so many names, love does.
God.
My parents.
My family.
My friends.
My pups and kitties.

Too bad I didn’t pack anything red to wear tomorrow.

I suppose my yellow pants will have to do.

May you be found in love . Always. Not just on the day that Hallmark made up, but every last one of them.

I thought I’d finally be like my brothers and have to do homework, too. I knew they didn’t exactly love that club, but I loved any club that involved being more like them, so I was all for it. But it didn’t happen. I know, I know, cry me a river.

I say that because, well, I don’t really mind the idea of homework. Probably because I don’t have to do much of it right now. Well, that’s not entirely true. I do a lot of work at home, actually. But it’s not anything I have to hand in to Mrs. Birdsall, who was my kindergarten teacher, God bless her.

So this is why I very excitedly ripped open my package from Amazon today. It was my book. My, ah, workbook, to be specific. It’s called breaking free. No, sorry, It’s called Breaking Free. At first I was confused, because someone had already taken a highlighter to it. And then I remembered I only paid $3.47 for it. Read: it is used. Oh well, at least the highlighter is yellow. But, right away, I started eating granola and working through it. Well, if right away means after a rehearsal and after I baked bread and after I worked on choreography, that is.

And then I got sad. Because you have to think heavily on some sad things that have happened to you. Actually, you have try to remember every dadgummit last one of them. And then you have to analyze them. How did it make you feel? What lesson did it teach you concerning your value? Your ability to be vulnerable? Your imperfections and what they mean?

Well, book that is surprisingly highlighted all over every one of your pages but not surprisingly only $3.47, How would you feel if your husband packed his bags and snuck out while you were sleeping, only to much later finally answer the phone and tell you that you’ll never see him again?

Probably not like throwing a party on Valentine’s Day, I am guessing.

Which is exactly something I have been considering. Either that, or joining a convent, I told one friend. He told me that his monk robes are in the wash. And then I said there might just be a few options somewhere in between partying on Valentine’s Day and marrying the church. I mean, google might have a few ideas, at least. Google seems to think of everything.

So, yeah. I believe in this kind of thing, though. And who was it who said that it’s the darkest hour just before the dawn? Probably Google. Google is so smart. But right. I think we go through hard times–sometimes even on purpose (gasp! clutching my pearls! and still gasping!) in order to live freely. Let me make that less boring.My oldest brother broke his arm once. Nobody knew it because he’s kind of a beast in the department of pain tolerance. So it healed all kinds of wrong. Wasn’t his fault the arm broke and nobody blamed him for it; nobody even blamed him for it healing wrong. But the doctor had to re-break it. And then set it properly, so it could heal right. And then he could use his arm properly, the way it was meant to be used.

So it is with a heart and a mind and a soul, I believe.

We go through the pain of feeling the break again in order to make sure it is set the kind of way that will heal it up right.

And then we throw parties on Valentine’s Day.

Or not.

But we at least don’t go around singing Love Stinks.

Because it doesn’t; it really doesn’t. It takes my breath away, actually.

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.