In the Riptide

There's a soundtrack: Listen.


We start here. We go back. We come around again.

Some things have happened.

You see?

I wasn't sacred of anything. I knew who made the Light. and I knew He made it right. And it Lit me.

The Word came in and said: move. And we moved.

Well.

I moved. The literal kind.

And it was good.

Is good.


Slow down.

Things change: things stay the same. We write, cry, build, break, fly, fall.

We fall so flat splat useless on the pavement.

But in the tide.

But we move. Ooh how we move.

And then?

We
come
so
incredibly
undone.

We go running to the shore, to the tide, to the waves.

Throw ourselves into the drama of it all, lost in a riptide, lost in the days, lost lost lost.

You think you know. A person. The girl. The words.

You think she'd know. The words, the waves, the Light.

You think you'd know where she was going.

Here.


There's this story I thought I'd like.

This girl decides to quit her life and jump into some old ocean.

She clings to all the waves that were, and something of a rescue in the blur.

She hammers the nails in the pedestal legs she builds herself.

She settles in. But those damned nails.

What did you think would come?

But of course.

She moves in the water and

they come unstuck.


And she runs again. Into the riptide, over and over. Washing over and over.

In the water. In the little hours. In quiet conversations.

And there's something good.

And she thinks she sings the words right.

But I'm afraid she's singing the words wrong.

She is singing the words wrong.

And the nails are no good

But she's still moving.


Even now.


She wants to know.

Who and when and how.

She's just gotta gotta know.

There is no other way.

That Light Maker Breaker Creator knows she knows the Words.

And there is no other way.

And her little pedestal platform doesn't need those nails.

Doesn't need legs at all.

She's sailing on the riptide.

She's gotta, gotta know.


She's gotta know the words. The Light Words--The Right Words.

She's on the water, above the water, in the water.

Not in the water.

She's the on-the-water-above-the-water, kind of in the water.

And she knows the words.

And she won't write them wrong.


I'm on the water, I know the words.

I'm through above beyond the riptide in the wind.

I know the Words, the Light, the Love.



I'm not sacred of anything.

I know who made the Light.

And I know He made it right.

And it Lights me Floats me Lifts me.


I won't write the words wrong.

I won't write the words wrong.

I won't sing the words wrong.

Daylight Enough and Time

Some days a girl just needs to know that no matter what has changed, there is still some consistency somewhere in her universe. 

She needs to know there's Daylight. Listen up. 

She needs to know

She can lay away in tall grass alone in empty spaces
and come up alone and unharmed


That her breath can be pulled up from her lungs

to its rest for the time it takes
the leaves to come from green to gone

That her soul limbos in the inbetween
hanging on the memories of green and ultraviolet summers
in grass and water and smoke and deep breathing

She needs to know the soft place cradles what she hides

And she knows because
her body she beats on city streets
where the inorganic becomes the only and
natural a term she can no longer identify--
all caked in smoggy morning-after haze

And she knows
That when that scarred spirit returns to her broken body
while the tangerine light paints morning--
warms the shut-blind slumber of all the lonely people--
there creeps a feigned moment of Spring in the daylight

Enough and time

She reminds herself of the things she knows:
It is not the love of a man that makes a woman.

It is the hell she goes through for understanding of the love of God--
The love she saves only for herself that makes her

So body captures soul on the December set
and she tells that sun to stay longer stay lighter stay light
She knows
And she knows she cannot make that sun stand still
But she will make him run
in the daylight

A Damsel, A Tramp, A Wildcard, A Jack of All Suits: The Story of The Knight

Good Lord.

The Killers are the soundtrack today; you know the drill: open this link and listen while you read.
You know, artistic choices and stuff.

When there's nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son?

I'm warning you all now: I'm experiencing a bit of virtually every emotion on the spectrum today. So brace yourself. Here goes.

Becca told me once, "If they can't accept you at your worst, they don't get to see you at your best."

But for me, it's about being accepted at my best. And I don't quite know why that is. I get to the top and somehow throw others down to the bottom. Stay with me...

If you can hold on, 
If you can hold on, hold on.

I'm going through some things, and in the last 72 hours have been filled with love and heartbreak and angst and grief and shame and pain. Overall, I'm overflowing. And at the same time I feel a little empty inside. Like there's this swelling loss so big that it's taking up all the space inside my insides, and it's pushing my lungs up out of my chest and it's hard to breathe and eat and sleep. And I only stop thinking when I'm sleeping.

I'm hurting, because I was called fragile.

Fragile is one thing I am not. Never have been. Never will be. 

I wanna stand up, I wanna let go.
You know, you know - no you don't, you don't.
I wanna shine on in the hearts of men;
I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand.

No.

I have faced abandonment and abuse, divorce, depression, hatred, loss.
I have seen cancer and rape and violence.
I have been hit and hurt and cut and thrown aside.
And what hurts most of all of it is the thought that I might not be able to handle any of it again.

Another head aches, another heart breaks.
I'm so much older than I can take.

I'm not asking for it, of course, but in life there's one thing I've learned again and again: Man will not save you. Man will not hold your world together.

You know you gotta help me out.
Don't you put me on the backburner.
You know you gotta help me out. 

You grab your satchel and your wheelbarrow; you load up your skeletons, and you call on your God to get you through. Because no one can carry the burdens of your heart but you. You set off along the railroad tracks, another tramp in the haze of a southern summer and you go make your own story. You march, crawl, scramble, amble, sprint: to your hurdles, your loves, the moments in time when you stand and point to the first person in the room who catches your eye and he changes your life.

And then you go to the next room. And you point out someone else. And someone else changes you, too.

But you never let those cards--the Jacks and Queens that float in and out of your hand through the trick, through the game, through endless turns and rivers--the cards never play for you, never throw your ante into the pot, never raise your stakes, never hold themselves up at the table.

You hold your own. You tramp along, another game awaiting your bid.

It's a valiant knight who makes the attempt to pull you onto his horse and carry you along. But there are some pieces of your life in that wheelbarrow (your family, your desires, your memories, your insecurities) that you cannot leave behind. And in his armor, he will try to lead his horse while you ride; he will push the barrow. And you're there: just riding along.

But eventually you both realize he has done too much. He has carried all your weight. You wrap your arms around the neck of the steed, laughing at the irony of a man so strong who has worn himself so ragged. You tell the horse to carry his master home. You thank the knight for the beauty of his heart. You give him one last look while the rider mounts, and you say goodbye, and thank you to your dear, dear friend.

You know you got to help me out, yeah.
You're gonna bring yourself down
Yeah, you're gonna bring yourself down

And you pull your satchel back over your shoulder. You say a prayer of thanks for the kindness of a wildcard in a moment of need. You realize you lost the hand, but the Dealer is still at the table, and He's got another trick for you. And all the cards are back in His hand. And you've learned another secret of the game.

I got soul, but I'm not a soldier.

So many metaphors. Sorry if I lost you. That was maybe more for me than anybody else. And I feel good about it. But here's where I wanted to end up...

I am a strong, strong person

You're gonna bring yourself down.

And I am resilient.
Three weeks ago I was at the bottom: emotional, frustrated, hurt, trapped, angry.
But I built myself a terrace; I climbed my way out. No one else did that climb for me.
I had plenty of concerned hearts on the outside cheering, but for years now I've been the one to pull myself from the hole.


But this time, at the mouth of this crater, I was careless. I saw a hand reaching in to pull me out, and what I thought was one quick pull turned out to be much more, and when I regained my footing, I saw I had thrown the body of that salvation into the place I had only just left. I made a martyr of the grace I was given.

Over and in, last call for sin
While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done
All these things that I've done

I didn't realize how tired the knight had become until I saw him fallen and bloody at the the bottom of the hole I'd dug  I never wanted that. No one should ever work so hard only to come out feeling like a failure; like I feel now.


So, I shovel another heartache into the barrow. I say my prayer of thanks, remind myself of the lesson I keep relearning: man will not save me. But oh, it is a beautiful ride when he tries. And for that, I stay grateful, and with grace, I stay away while the knight picks himself up from the pit, rebuilds the terrace, climbs his way out.
 
If you can hold on
If you can hold on.

A Birthday Request for Corah; Very Important!! PLEASE READ!!

First, I'd like to thank you all so so much for the Birthday greetings! I've had lots of smiles today and am a blessed little lady to have seen so many of the people I love in the last two weeks.

Now I have a birthday wish that I would really like for you all to make come true. Let me tell you a story.

My cousin Jamie donated his kidney to his daughter, Corah, yesterday. She was born sick and in nearly four years of life, we've never really been able to say she was healthy. There were times when we thought her life would soon end, and weeks of desperation and sadness. But Corah Brigit Hanlon has a whole lot of life in her precious little body, and with a great deal help from her daddy, and a shower of grace from God, she's starting a new life today.

You all know how sentimental I can be, so excuse the fact that I'm going to that place and getting a little teary over here....

My thought is this: Today, July 27th, Corah gets to have a new birth day. And I get to share it with her. Oh, that I should be so blessed...

Corah's parents, Crystal and Jamie, are two of the kindest and wisest young people I've ever met. Jamie put faith in my writing in a way that inspired me like never before when they visited two years ago at Christmas. He is a loving and thoughtful man. He looks out for the broken, and brings peace to the hurting. Then there's Crystal. In my mind, Crystal is the perfect subject for the greatest poetry. She is the essence of womanhood. She'd bundle her Corah to her chest and walk in the snow of Maine in winter's most bitter fits, while pregnant with Corah's little brother, Burton. She plays and sings and reads with her beautiful children. She stands up for the oppressed, and challenges others to take action as well. Women like Crystal are what must have inspired men of the ancient world to believe that the were goddesses like Athena and Aphrodite. She is strong and even in the face of frightening times, she is brave; she is fierce.

These people deserve love from every corner of the world.

And Corah.

She is the single sweetest little girl I have ever seen. When I met her for the first time two Christmases ago, my heart broke at the thought that we might not get to see her grow up. It was too much goodness--too much purity--to see leave this world so quickly after it had come. I loved her immediately, and deeply.

She is the embodiment of joy: a truth that some people go their whole lives without ever experiencing.

My birthday wish is that all of you will help her to keep showing that truth to people every where she goes.

So here's the request.


My sister, Anne, and my mother, Kate, have set up an Indiegogo site to help financially support Corah's family. By following this link: http://www.indiegogo.com/careforcorah, you can watch a video with photos of Corah and a little bit of her story, and you can donate to help pay for the cost of the transplant and other medical procedures.

So, between my blog subscribers and almost 700 Facebook friends. Some of you are never on and won't see this, and some of you are children. Some are well-off, some have tight budgets. But one thing that I know is true of all of you: You all have hearts that know how to spread love.

I know this because I am so incredibly blessed by the love I've received in the last 23 years from all of you, and so many others. So today I have a request, a birthday wish. I would like for all of you who read this to go to Corah's Indiegogo page and donate a dollar or two. Our goal is to raise $1500 by November 24, but I know that we can do more than that with some help. I don't much like getting birthday presents, but if each of you would pitch in even that little bit, it will come together to make a huge difference.

Please open your hearts and help my dear, dear loved ones. And make my birthday wish come true.

God bless, and thank you all.


http://www.indiegogo.com/careforcorah

Heavy Things

Florence is the soundtrack for the day.
Shake it out, shake it off. 



Well good Lord. I've been elsewhere for months. But I'm coming back more and more all the time.

I forgot what I can do with words. The arrangement of letters and things that aren't just noise and aren't just about me in the sun with a chai tea latte at a picnic table. Keyboards and characters.

I'm swept up in the music of life and the astounding beauty of chance leading to the whispering moment when time slows and a chill rolls across my back. Life says, "This is pure and good, dear. Rest."

The goodness makes me realize just how good it is, the essence of the thing in itself being so very beautiful.

Talking in circles.

What I mean is this. 

We, many of us, have a habit of finding heavy things on our backs: scandal, cancer, abuse, divorce, death, despair, depression. We then bear the weight of the pain, the secrets, the sickness. Brokenness: the constitution of tragedy. And the harshest inherent pang is the sly grasp of darkness when it settles on us and we forget what makes us human.

We have the ability to comprehend the badness, to carry it, share or shelter it, to shoulder it.

And we have the ability to shake it, to shrug the devils off our shoulders and rip out the deepest claw.

We, again, many of us, have the habit of letting the heavy things name us, shape us.


The blessing is here: the goodness in my life reminds me of how much I have shrugged away, and of what I still carry, the residue of disaster that makes me who I am:
Em, a product of...

Dark days and basketball games.
Youth group retreats and awful Halloweens.
Christian community and measle immunity.

Breakdowns. Lemont. Rocky Mountains and Great Plains. Rocks and rivers, brothers and sisters. Lakes. Salt. Broken-hearted boys that never could be fixed. Grand grandparents.

And so much music. The melodies that run me up and down.

I am the cocktail drink of everything I've ever seen, Daughter to the Creator of all the greatest scenes.


I've no need for the nagging presence of the bad things telling me who to be. The big disasters that make me forget that my capacity to love is limitless, and boundless.

So I shrug off all the ugly, and embrace the beauty I see in the architecture of the Fox River when my favorite playmate says, "God knew exactly what he was doing to make this all look exactly as it does." And He did.

The essence of the thing, the beauty in itself, that heartbreak lays itself to the side when its time comes: the ugly fades away.

The good persists.

 And oh, how much good there is, how much better things get.

A frightened girl finds a safe place in a drunken gamble. She teaches the art of tenderness. It all falls together.

We, many of us, let the heavy things define us.

But what if we defined ourselves by the slow moments when we feel a little more alive, and the lines that hang in our memories... You're changing me. You're beautiful. I'm better when you're with me. I'm learning to trust again. I am the way I am for a reason, and I want to share it with you. I can share with you. I'll stay with you here. I'm happy. It's wonderful.

What if we defined ourselves by the awe that fills us in the most precious sights: our children, nieces and nephews. An eagle bowing in the sky. Water crashing through a garden. The laughter of an old friend.
The quirks of our grandparents.

The moment in the precise center of balance: time goes too quickly and time drags on.

So shake it off.

And write your story with whispers Life lays in your breath: "This is good. And there is more to come."


It's hard to dance, with a devil on your back, so shake him off.

Give A Man A Dollar

I know many men named Michael.

One is Mykael.

One is a dear old friend who knows all my secrets.

One shares his name with a dead celebrity and is my go-to for zombie apocalypse advice.

Two went to grade school with me for years.

One is my father's brother-in-law.

One is my mother's brother.

One is my step-father's brother.

One is my cousin.

One was in my high school youth group.

One dated my best friend for a minute one summer.

Some are brothers of friends.

Some I went to high school with.

Some I met in college.

And this is a story about one of those Michaels: Michael Krepps.

I met Michael during my sophomore year of college. The next year, he lived with my friend Austin, whose brother and sister-in-law would have a group of us students over once a week to hang out and play cards and eat Pizza Rolls. I went to EJ and Chad's with Austin and Michael and a collection of other friends most Wednesday nights over the course of three school years.

Michael was always pretty quiet, but as he began to open up, I realized how funny and genuinely caring he was. He spent last Spring studying abroad, and unfortunately for me, it was my last season in Colorado so I haven't seen much of him over the last year. I still have a Paragon magazine (our college's yearly literary publication) sitting just across the room from me with a post-it on it that reads: "Send me to Michael!" along with the Florida address of the office for the mission organization he worked with this summer. (Sorry I never sent that Michael!)

Being so far away, sometimes you forget to remember the people who played different roles in your life. Ready for a cheesy metaphor in which I explain Michael's role in mine? Here it is:

If my life was a weekend-long party, the main players like my family and closest friends would be sitting with me on the patio hanging out and telling stories. There would be other people mingling and scattered about throughout the venue, maybe a restaurant or some kind of big estate. Michael would be the guy who would show up early to help set up on Thursday. He'd quietly help until things were pretty much set, and at some point he'd slip out and head home. He might not even come to the party on Friday, but at some point during the event, he'd show up while I was feeling overwhelmed about running out of guacamole, and he'd stand in the kitchen with me cutting avocados and hearing about what he'd missed, just smiling, for as long as I needed him. I'd dash out of the room to go refill the bowls, and he'd wander the party, people watching, until he found someone else on the sidelines. It would probably be someone that I'd just met once or twice, but who had to be at the party because to some degree, they were an important part of my life.

Michael would be the guy to sit down and ask that person their story, and to invest a little bit of who he was.

Like I said, it's a cheesy metaphor, but the point is that Michael takes notice of the broken or the lonely, and he cares for them. He is a seedplanter, and a thoughtful, kind man. I'm proud to have been a friend to him. And now I'm excited to share what he's doing.

On January 31, Michael kicked off an experiment: His goal is to ask 1 million people to each donate a dollar to him over the course of the next year. He has pledged that the first $10,000 will go to charity. If the donations surpass this amount, he will then begin using the remaining money to enable his work for those in need. I could tell you what I know about the work he has already done, but I'd rather you explore for yourselves.

The link for Michael's experiment and for the Facebook event page are below:

The Self-Serving Social Experiment: For the Benefit of Others

SSS: For The Benefit of Others Facebook Event

You can use the first link to visit the Experiment website where you can learn more about Michael and donate $1. You can further help by going to the Facebook event and inviting your friends to donate as well.

I understand that this may sound completely crazy, especially for those of you who haven't heard of Michael, not to mention those of you reading who don't even know me personally, but let me tell you this: If Michael Krepps collects even half of the million dollars he has set as his goal, he will change the world for good. I know this because he is already making a positive impact through his work with the International Action Club at Colorado Christian University and through the missions work he has done over the several years in eight countries.

I believe in Michael's experiment, and in the charity and hope of the people I know, and of the people who read this blog. I can promise you that Michael is not and never would be scamming anyone. His desire is to do good things for people who have little, and who need love. So please, give a man a dollar, and help him change the world.

If you have any questions about the experiment, you can comment or email me at emilyymariee@gmail.com and I will forward them on to Michael for you.

Thank you for supporting a dear friend.

Nothing

This is something that isn't anything.

This is where I ask a boy why he would let me think we could love each other.

This is where I wonder what reality is, because someone has deconstructed it. And everything. With single words, with "I can't talk about this now."

This is the moment when I wonder why any of us are where we are, because why are we why, because when are we when, because what are we?

What!?

This is nothing.

This is where I stop letting myself love.

This is where you break my heart...

where my heart breaks all which loves it.

This is something and nothing and everyone who knows what I have not yet been allowed to understand.

This is conspiracy.

This is dogma.

This is life.

This is.

I don't know what is tonight. The things I believed are no longer believable.

This is a man sleeping on a mattress. This is a girl waking in the night.

This is a boy not knowing what love is.

This is a girl who is not the boy's own to love.

This is how a girl hates him for no promise he made.

This is nothing.

This is everything.

Relationship. Words exchange.

This is no poem; this is no cry.

This is what falls out of my mouth as I think about carelessness and novels and song lyrics, the mix CDs made for me, and the city streets I cannot face, for love has paved them, and I do not seal its tar.

I am forbidden from the paths the men have laid. I am restricted from the asphalt under my feet.

This is nothing.

So on I'll drift to nothing else.