Looking Up

As I flip through Instagram, Facebook, and other social media, holiday cheer is high.   News feeds are plastered with veggie-tray Turkeys, football memes, and awkward family photos (my favorite). Hashtag “thankful.” It makes me glad to see an acknowledgement of the overabundance of wealth and opportunity that we’ve been given. As Americans, we are incredibly fortunate. Even our concept of “poverty” is ridiculous relative to much of the world’s standards. However, this year, I’m not posting my usual “so thankful for friends, family, and food” paragraph. Not because I’m not thankful for these things—I am. But because God is changing the way I look at thankfulness. To be honest, I started this week unthankful. My heart was discouraged and laced with bitterness. I’m still young, but some days I feel like I’ve seen enough of the suffering in this world. My fragile heart feels like it's going to collapse when I hear about the refugee crisis overseas, when I see a friend lose...

Stoplights, angry red, bored holes into my consciousness. Brakes screeched as my backseat belongings somersaulted. My peripheral vision caught the nose of a white van, too close. The smell of burning rubber overtook my senses. Yep, I was awake now—shaken out of a mental fog induced by sleeplessness, sickness, and stress. As I pulled away from the middle of the intersection, my rear-view mirror showed me wisps of smoke rising from the pavement. I shakily guided Li'l Red into a nearby parking lot, and the words bubbled out:  "I can't handle this anymore."  By "this," I didn't just mean my coffee-less Monday morning. I meant the ongoing trials of life. The unending checklists and bills, the unending brokenness in people I love, the unending battle between fighting for what’s best and settling for okay.  A few seconds later, it struck me that maybe that's exactly what God was waiting for me to say. I had just read that morning: "Fait...

It was a typical start to an atypically sunny morning at the Seward Seaman's Mission. Fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies multiplying at a rate of 12 minutes per batch? Check. Coffee pots humming? Check. The cash register rattled as groups of two or three eager faces popped through the door and asked to buy WiFi or phone cards. As I loaded the dishwasher, two guys and a girl entered. It was their first time at the mission, they said. WiFi passwords in hand, they were soon sucked into the worn blue couch and chairs near the kitchen. Despite the tell-tale double-chins of the-phone's-down-in-my-lap mode, I dutifully stopped by the preoccupied group and yawned, "Anybody want some coffee?" No takers. But the bashful girl sitting on the chair nearest me shyly beamed, "Oh, thank you. Maybe later!" I asked what her name was. "Pika," she replied. "Well, it's nice to meet you," I smiled back. "Let me know if you need anything." I t...

Eternal life. To many people these days, it sounds like such a fairy-tale, Spanish-conquistador-age ideal. Who cares about eternal life when you're a highly successful New York businessman and you've got a solar-powered cabin on a private lake in the Alaskan wilderness? At least my traveling acquaintance, the middle-aged brainiac with a PhD in computer sciences I sat next to for three hours on a flight last week didn't. Not long after take-off, I got a hint that the conversation would be interesting. He was reading a book on astrology. I was not disappointed. After discussions--er, I just tried to keep up with his vocabulary--on everything from the vibrations of sound to computer software ethics, our discussion eventually turned to the spiritual. Blinking carefully, he calmly defined himself as a deist. Well-educated in mathematics, history, and world religions, he has concluded that there is indeed a higher being who will one day judge us. Of course, he acknowledges tha...

I gripped the splintering wood edges of a well-worn Steinway piano bench and squinted my eyes for the 4 th time at the opera score reduction propped on the rack in front of me. I mumbled something incoherent about tempo and tried not to let my inner anxiety about playing for a stranger leak into my face. Apparently it didn’t work.  The grinning African-American towering above me lightly tagged my shoulder and loudly snickered: ““What? You scared? Just PLAY!” I put on my big girl attitude and played—played for a singer like I never have before. So began my first rehearsal with J. Warren Mitchell, budding opera star. I’ve followed vocalists from behind the piano for several years now, but this one was different.  From the first wave of sound that spilled out of his hefty frame, it was clear this man was not at his first rodeo. He took me along on a crazy ride of expression, completely controlled and deliberate, yet ever surprising.  One moment he’d be b...

I remember my first experience with a baby hedgehog. My friend deposited a trembling, warm little creature into my hands, tiny feet pressing into my palms. I couldn’t stop smiling. I just stared down at the quivering mess of coffee-colored velcro—er, spiny fur—while the owner whispered to it and gently tried to smooth down its spines. Finally, a teeny pink nose peeked out. Hedgies had faces!? Sniffing out the excitement of this new skin-colored bean chair, it forgot itself and even let out a little grunt of happiness. And then I forgot myself and said something back; something generic like “It’s so cute,” which apparently sounded deadly enough to put up the sheath of terror. No more privileged glimpses of the real hedgehog tucked inside that prickly shell. All too often, I find myself in hedgehog mode. Not necessarily because of the way I waddle to class on a -25 F morning or because of the static electricity hitchhiking via my hair. Rather, it’s because I want to hide. Life is f...