baggage

“Baggage”: A drama written for teenage girls.

What do you think?
Technically?  Artistically?  Spiritually?  Emotionally? 

(My friend Jenifer is singing in this at the end and it is sponsored by an organization some of my friends speak for).

check her out!

i’ve blogged about her before, but she’s entered the blog world now.  meet jenifer thigpen on her official site here, vocally here and blogging here.  we became friends when she was the worship leader for women of faith and she still works for that organization and also sings in the band, avalon, whenever one of those ladies are preggers or unable to sing.  she’s the sweetest, i think you will enjoy her!  every time i talk to her i just think, “could this girl get any more precious or adorable?”  i think not.

elyse’s mama

Mom’s Overture by Anita Renfroe

This is the ever-popular video of my friend Elyse’s mama that quickly hit 1 million views on youtube.  She has since been featured on many morning shows and will be on more shows to come.  Not really my demographic of blog viewers, but still– it’s Elyse’s mama!

message to myself #2: come as you are…no really?

God: Do you believe your world will fall apart if you express your true thoughts and opinions? You can make all the noise in the world and I will never be angry or annoyed with you. –Sheila Walsh

You can read some of her message here in an interview she did for Christianity Today with a family friend of mine, Dick Staub.

Sheila Walsh talks often about her childhood relationship with her father, (he developed a brain condition which changed his personality to being volatile and aggressive, and his death was also traumatic). His behavior was verbally abusive, so she learned to be quietly overcompensate and serve.

I’ve been told my presence is too “big” at times, intimidating and too candid. It makes my aunts laugh, who remember me as an overly compliant child. I grew up in a crazy household, seeing and hearing and believing about myself a lot of things I shouldn’t have. Part of learning to speak my own voice has included mistakes of over-speaking.  Learning to use and sometimes harness my voice has. To accept our personal power and the ways our words can damage others, yet also be free to be our raw, gutsy, brave selves is a process.

still a bright eyed baby…

A few weeks ago, as we were leaving the conference, Marilyn asked Amy to make sure I never lost my ”bright eyes” and always remained “her bright eyed baby”.  She means “baby” in the way every girl still wants to be a little girl and dream big dreams. 

I find the most beauty in bright eyed babies who aren’t bright-eyed with naivete, but who’ve remained bright-eyed in the face of adversity.

This evening, my housemate had a small potluck gathering of women and their children.  Hers included there were 4 women and seven children.  One thread ties this little  nest together, they are domestic violence survivors.  Just being in the same house as them, hearing and participating in some conversations, my mind was stimulated and impressed from the calm wisdom in each of these women.  They are survivors, no other word really captures this. 

I imagine the final grief in the end of these marriages is really the loss of a dream, because the loss of a loved one must have occurred far before they ever left the abuser.  I am not really sure of this, but maybe deep down they knew love wasn’t supposed to hurt, but maybe they grew up with that kind of pain and so it seemed familiar.

Sometimes I am discouraged that loss doesn’t kill your dreams.  This sounds sick I realize, but what I mean is that you would learn your lesson and adjust your level of hoping.  Childhood taught me that there might just be too many people in the world for God to make the dreams come true of every one, and I was just in the latter camp.  That God was just too busy with the million others to call me “special” and make my dreamings come alive.  I just wanted to be “special”, so when Marilyn says I am a bright-eyed sweet baby, you can’t help but feel special.  My grown up heart knows a life without hope is no life at all.  It is the fragile little girl heart that sometimes wants to be put out of its misery.

The death of dreams ache like nothing else.  As a little girl, my reality taught me that the world was not safe to dream, yet despite every intention, I am a big-picture girl.  My mind relishes theories over facts and big-picture planning of the future gets me excited.  I am by nature a connector, a marketer, a networker, a social butterly.  I love pop-culture trends and patterns because I want to be in that industry as an actress, and see marketing as a handy trait for branding oneself, which any famous actress typically has a persona that is semi-marketed.  Yet I doubt they will tell you that, because it’s really their entourage that does a lot of that for them.  I am also an aspiring and sometimes professional actress and writer, thus my life in the fine and performing arts lends to being a natural storyteller.  I love interpersonal dynamics, which is why I so enjoy analyzing a script and a character in tv and film. 

message to myself, and you too :)

See, I am doing a new thing!  -Isaiah 43:19

Truthfully, the WOF conference came at the most inconvenient time for me this year.  It was the weekend before the weeklong Little People of America Conference, the same weekend as a dear friend’s wedding and the same weekend in which I was bloody, bloody sick.

But it is the only chance for me to connect with my friend Marilyn.  It’s more than just that, but you may read about that in a previous blog entitled  why I go.

Anyways, back to starting a new thing.  I took my little arena seat in the front row and felt heavy that night.  It was not as if I expected to have or did have a come-to-Jesus-moment because my life has never worked that way.  But in the quietness of my heart and through the words of each speaker, my hope was being renewed, little seed by seed.

My discouragement was summed up in one sentence by that casting director. 

-The world is not ready for a LP heroine.

Her words had ricocheted around my mind for over a week until, sitting in that seat, I heard a small voice say,

-The world might not be ready yet, but the kingdom IS.

And so maybe this blog is mostly for me, ammunition to face my next daunting audition, kinda like Melissa Etheridge’s latest song being literally called message to myself.

why i go.

i’m pretty cool (or so i think) and pretty unphased by the whole christianity-in-a-box-sold-at-your-local-christian-bookstore-if-you-have-a-giftcard but every year i get a whole lot out of women of faith.  i never would have thought i would go to something like this, i always considered myself far too cool, edgy and hip.

i became friends with marilyn meberg while a student at SPU.  she is irreverently funny, wise and always manages to cut through the crap to get to the heart of the matter.  she is tender yet fierce.  i began attending women of faith when i was leslie’s assistant, but now enjoy getting to see marilyn on a yearly basis.  i think she calls everyone “sweet baby” but the way she says it, you feel like a child again and as if you’re the only one she says it to.  this is i think my 7th year, i started out at leslie’s book table for the preconference and i think i met marilyn 5 years ago.

through marilyn, i have been able to meet or get to know jenifer thigpen, jody mcbrayer (he’s with avalon), mary graham, sandi patty, patsy clairmont, nicole johnson, pat wenger and a myriad of other stand-out women.  i’ve sat with each of them in their section of seating and i will say with full honesty that each of these women is as kind, witty and encouraging sipping their coffee in their seats as they are at their book tables and on the platform.  they don’t claim to have all the answers, they realize that life is one big mess, but yet on the other hand they sense a greater hope toward the One who is.  i’m actually advertising a large christian womens conference, those who know me well should know that i wouldn’t do this unless i really believed in it.  i’m pretty skeptical about all that.

i brought one of my dearest friends amy two years ago and i speak for her to say, she would echo my thoughts.  this year we hung out a little bit with anita renfroe, her delightful daughter elyse, nicole c. mullen (who brings down the house and yet is one of the easiest people to talk to) and her daughter.  again, these are genuine, talented and anointed women.  not for one minute do i think their lives are perfect or they have faith completely figured out–but i do believe that they are called to that platform and they are incredible individuals.

so, if they come to a city near you–i’d recommend going.  you will laugh and cry and you don’t have to go to the book tables.  i think it’s like a pep rally, and i don’t know about you, but i could use the pep!  it’s not perfect programming, i can already hear the throngs of cynics out there, but you know what, i am a better person for attending and  richer person for knowing these women.

i find that there are many judgments about contemporary christian media, and many of them are fair criticisms.  but i find that there is good and bad in any media market, and there are many gems among christian media – women of faith being one for me.  it’s easy to become cynical, thinking ourselves too cool for anything mainstream.

2-fer-1 day

one of my best friends is deeply gifted to handle complex, wounded friends.  she is studying to be a social worker and is one of those people who always seems to have a handful of strays she is caring for.  she doesn’t approach people as charity projects, but somehow they find her.  she is good at messy, complicated people.  she’s wears her heart on her sleeve, vulnerability comes easy.

i on the other hand, get the heeby-jeebies by people who are particularly needy. 

home.

home–katharine mcphee

home.

post-college home has not so much meant a particular location or vantage point of seeing the world.  when i was younger it meant my house on 123 street or the summer house in idaho.  then when i went to college and lived in 3 dorms, an apartment complex and two houses, i quickly learned that home was more than just what i could pack and fit in my car.  later in college, when my parents got divorced and my dad shuffled around from house to house before he settled in his first of two permanent residence, i learned that home was transferrable.  i remember one month long christmas vacation in which we had one or two housesitting jobs along with staying at my aunt and uncle’s in lynnwood.  home during that season was unsettled and unnerving.

i have since grown to learn that i carry home with me wherever i go.  it has become moreso liberating than scary–that no one can really take home away from me.  it is through experience and relationships.

in the past 6 months i lived in portland, toronto, portland, seattle and portland again.  it’s only been in the past 2 weeks that i unpacked my boxes, really settled into my room and stopped living out of a suitcase.  while the gypsy nomadic style of living was fun in toronto, it gets old when your life stops being exciting. 

i mean, performing alongside the rockettes in the radio city christmas spectacular every night made hotel living worth it.  and c’mon, the one king west was no shabby motel.  but living on your dad’s couch with two black eyes, a broken nose and a face so swollen you hardly recognize yourself hardly makes for the kind of excitement you’d choose.i’ve come to learn that home now is more than a state of mind, more than an emotion, more than an experience, more than the sum of my relationships–and yet it is all of these things. 

• i am home at the brann’s, bon is the ultimate hostess, filling her home with fresh cut flowers, candles, clean linens and fresh towels.  no matter when i am there, i am at peace.
• home is holding a newborn baby or playing with a small child, imagining my own future with children and motherhood.
• home is on stage performing or dreaming about performing, talk showing or acting.  home is dreaming about scripts, the quippy line i’d say when interviewed and walking the red carpet.
• home is at the women of faith conferences.
• home is with a dear friend at a coffee shop when our hearts connect and mercy is exchanged.
• home is in the car with leslie at the starbucks drivethrough, with john and jackson in the back requesting “madeleine cookies”.
• home is at monkfish abbey or wednesday night dinners at ffmc.
• home is at my art table, by candle light and some indie music playing.
• home is on the farm, cruising around on the mule, with safe and dear best friends, knowing that we are alone for acres.
• home is familiar scents, my trusted handbag, the beauty of aesthetics, the taste of familiar food.
• home is expressing myself artistically, relationally or lovingly.
• home is with my tribe of wise women who have stood in the gap for me.  coffee with amy, leslie, bon, kerry, jayne, linda.
• home is with my tribe of bestest girlfriends – jenn ann, jenny, denee, megs, melis and my best friend zachary.
• home is teaching, commanding a classroom of primary students or interacting one-on-one with people like charlotte and her mommy annie.
• home is with my friends’ children or young cousins that i’ve claimed as “nieces and nephews”: olivia & amelie, john & jackson, kailey, maci & matthew, kenzie and ty, skye & sara, eden & cate shalom.
• home is memories of living in the orphanage in romania for two weeks–children in poverty dancing and praising god, teaching me gratitude and joy.  running ragged in the sunshine with nothing more than our love of life connecting us. 

home is all these things and more.  yet it is none of these things alone.