On Defining Success

Over the holidays I ended up in Queens visiting my childhood friend and her husband, accompanied with my college roommate, who is now a seasoned Coloradan and conqueror of things like “mountains” and “bouldering” and “snow” and “going through the pass” and other outlandish things. These existences barely beg my attention in the newly inhabited flatish mid west, whose weather and culture is something like Baby Jane Hudson going through menopause. New York was a welcomed halfway home from Missouri’s abusive and temperamental weather, as a haven of constant wintery climate and the company of two of my dearest friends. Sometimes I have realized it just needs to be the small, stable things that keep me content, like weather and comradery. Yet, while safehoused in wool coats and outrageous squalls of laughter, there was something about the city that left me gloomy, as is my wont (I’m finally honest enough to raise a hand and announce: “Hello. My name is Bri and I’ve been moody for 23 years.”)

I remember by day two of the trip, after soaking up as much information as I could about what everyday life could look like in the city and observing a skeletal look at my friends’ new lives there, I recognized a dissonance in them and myself -and in my over simplistic mind, most city dwellers and myself for that matter. These people had goals. And dreams. And they were willing to work eighty hours a week for them! They loved walking and networking and doing whatever it took to live in a city that provided them the life they wanted. Even still, I pause to read that last sentence to double check my opposition with the listed. Maybe not everyone is cut out for a career that demands your soul eighty plus hours a week -okay, I can scratch that off. But what about walking, networking, and doing whatever it takes to live the life one wants? Besides a deep seeded love of sitting and a nasty desire to travel by way of Hover Round eating donut holes and drinking sweet tea, I am beginning to understand that the reason there is conflict between the City and I was because I don’t really know what my dreams are. This was so upsetting that I found myself in Central Park on New Year’s Eve supposed to be screaming with excitement, waving hello to my new friend, 2013, with thousands of others. Instead, I could hardly see the fireworks exploding on the horizon, my vision blurred with the frustrated tears of being surrounded by people I assumed had their crap together and knew what they stood for, who sang along, fists in the air:

“Some nights, I wish that this all would end,
‘Cause I could use some friends for a change,
And some nights, I’m scared you’ll forget me again,
Some nights, I always win, I always win,
But I still wake up, I still see your ghost,
Oh Lord, I’m still not sure what I stand for oh,
What do I stand for? What do I stand for?
Most nights, I don’t know anymore”

I couldn’t even join in the song -an annoyingly catchy pop culture favorite now ruined by the ghoulish side effect of enlightenment, of suddenly making a bigger connection with the words outside singing off pitch every other line, “Whoa -oh-ohhh-oh! Whoa.” What do I stand for, Big Apple? “How did you know that cutting hair was the thing you were supposed to do?”, I turned earnestly to ask my hairdresser yesterday mid snip, augmenting my mid-winter hair cut a bit shorter than planned. Sometimes I just wish I could have a clear vision of my life -like Mary, mother of Christ. A scary but trustworthy celestial being appears to me and says, “This is what you do”. I have a passion to know God but it’s the application in life that I don’t know. How do I channel that passion in my skill sets? Why must the Meyers-Briggs be nothing but a spoke in my wheel as it educates and unlocks answers for others?

“Don’t worry about it -you’re still young and we’re making you look cute!” My hair dresser affirmed after noticing I had gone silent, overwhelmed by insecurity on the topic. I’m still young, yes, and thanks to Laura, she’s helping me look cute, as if that offered any real comfort. In some ways, I was that kid that thought I would die prematurely growing up. It’s awesome I get to be here and live life every day I wake up but it’s a burden to be older than I should and feeling like I might be missing something. I know eighth grade me would be horribly letdown at how little I know. Sometimes I fear the knowledge of a high form of passion is just as dangerous without application as it is without possessing the passion at all.

My problem in admitting this is that my life is filled with good people that live good lives, honoring the Lord with their minds and bodies, who have enough faith to just be committed to what God calls them to accomplish today yet I have to be that person who my aunt so quaintly coined as having “two legs in different boats” straddled between what I know and what I can’t help but wonder. And hear this: wondering is a beautifully raw element of being human but I can’t be consumed with unanswerables. I don’t want to grow into a person that refuses to acknowledge truth just because I’ve grown accustomed to the questions. There is something to be said for accomplishing the small things today with the hope that they unravel even if slowly, the path or passions of tomorrow, like so many of my loved ones do. I am learning a lesson in patience in the ordinary. Oswald Chambers says that, “It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God: but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes.”

Maybe one day I will be cut out for New York but for now it remains an object lesson of redefining success in my life. How do you define success in your life?

Regretagrams.

I read an article recently entitled “Why I Quit Guarding My Heart” – a considerably less stupid reflection than its title might suggest on living fully by unleashing your relational inhibitions. The article, written by a young woman who, through her grandfather’s recent passing,  had begun to understand that in order for her to live the life she desired, she needed to stop preserving her long-term emotional goals and issue in a reign of truth and vulnerability. I appreciated her openness in explaining her newfound life, even though I felt the reading could have come with a complimentary box of pumpkin flavored macaroons and an agave pumice scrub. But I’m digressing, mainly because a pumpkin macaroon sounds good. Life is tricky for us all. Growing up and into the person we are has that delicate balance between choice and reaction. Some of us might be more proactive, headstrong than others and tend to fall more in the choice than reaction category, our mantras and t-shirts screaming “Just do it!”. Others might be the thinkers, the cautionaries with backup nuclear war survival plans. But in both of these thoughts, neither are mutually exclusive. People don’t instinctively latch to one and remain true. What I think I’m trying to say is, plans can be made but we’re not in control of the outcome. We can strategize but in a moment be faced with an inconceivable decision.  It’s like that clever vitamin water super bowl commercial  a few years back where the Shaq is a competitive horse jockey. Is it possible? Sure. Is it probable? For the equine’s sake, I hope not.

There is very little out there that hasn’t already been spoken up for on matter of regrets. I’m told everyone has them but on social media outlets, many of my friends and acquaintances tell me they don’t have any. And in a way, I accept both. I understand the beauty of focus and hindsight. Hindsight in many ways makes things better, even if it not as truthful. Or is it more truthful? Lately I have become fascinated with perception, perspective -things that can change at any given moment and yet people toss them out like rabbinical law or something. I want to believe that nothing is a waste, a mistake, that I can regret nothing. But I don’t know that my experience can fully attest that. I haven’t had enough life experience to look back and be certain whether I truly regret or truly do not regret. I tend to think people are prone to be their own god and make the call to live with or without regret, like it’s their choice to make. And in a way, if it helps them make sense of their experience, I can’t disapprove. I don’t know if living without regrets is a flawed philosophy but I do know that in my short amount of life I’ve lived, I regret in this moment, looking back. Maybe these regrets will dissipate later on. Maybe not.

I struggle with immediacy and I struggle with vulnerability. In the moment I hold back, hoping the future me will be grateful later, only to just regret not jumping in and figuring things out in the first place. To me, this has always seemed good in perhaps the invitation to make bank making meth  or something but really bad at the opportunity to make a friend at the coffee shop on High Street. Sometimes I feel I squander myself in this quest of self-preservation. I, too, feel delicately stuck in between my choices and predisposed reaction in these situations. Maybe I wouldn’t give two hoots whether or not regret is a ‘thing’ if I were simply an extrovert, too busy gathering energy and experience from other people to even consider it. That’s what I want. And yet, without consent I regret not possessing the ability to be that person. I cling to the narrative I hope my life holds, the narrative that because of who I am, something or someone changes for the better despite my oddities.

Humans seem so attracted to meaning. Meaning and stories through conflict. I am no exception. I love the idea that all the world is a stage. I need to know if regret is a good or bad thing so that my life has a clearer narrative, that in the moment, I understand that this, this is the inciting incident I was born for. But the reality is, no one is closely examining my story.  It’s just me and God, and even then, so much of my life happens without my consideration anyway. Sooner or later I’m going to have to give up on the hope for a picturesque, killer closing, fits without flaw sort of a life story, this side of heaven. And I’m also going to have to repress the urge to hammer an ice pick in the eyes of one who so staunchly does or does not regret their life’s actions merely because I have an inkling it can’t be that simple. But still. Making friends at the High Street coffee shop could never be simple.

About Buying My Car, Except Not Really.

I have never been much of an academic enthusiast. Sure, I enjoyed the luxurious social lifestyle my student years’ afforded me, and the idea of learning about new things as a season in life. I am a creative and somewhat rational and reasonable student –creative being the part that got me an B+ on an eight page paper that was supposed to be twenty, rational being the film student that thought having a scene with roman candles and homemade gunpowder was at the very least, a cautionary venture; however precision and logic have never been my strongest qualities. Fabric softener and fabric soap were all the same to me my entire first year of college, the only difference in my mind being that my clothes were somehow slimier at school then when I washed them at home. I simply thought it was the water.  This lack of precision and logic also proved to be a challenge rooming with a mechanical engineer. One particularly defining challenge was defending my right to pursue higher education after examining a confusing cartoon depicting the earth’s rotation in preparation for a science exam and asking her if ‘we’ revolved around the sun or if the sun revolved around us. As soon as it slid out of my mouth, I knew it would elicit eternal damnation from her. My time in academics has not been illustrious, although extremely insightful and if at the least, is something I can point to and say I stuck something out for around 17 years which is both an alarming and comforting thought. I feel pressure to confess, as if it were some mystery, that although I was a likable and hardworking student I was not the sharpest -even though that was never truly my aim.

As a creative student of sorts, college was always about my shape as a soul. What was I doing that mattered? Was I isolating myself being only immersed in academia? How could I take all of these little experiences and piece them together to mean something big? So much of it all just happened, I felt either robbed or a like a lotto winner at any given circumstance and before I could piece any of it together something else came along. Do you ever feel that way? That you don’t have enough time to make sense of any of it, that life just is always in complete chaos? That you’re wishing to catch just one ice cube from your cup, tapping gingerly, only to have its entire contents in your face? Most of the time I feel my life’s face is continually in the company of ice. Very few have the luxury of time to reminiscence and piece together these things however, I was afforded such luxury as I bought a new car last month.

The car came with some sort of recent college graduate rebate if I provided documentation of my graduation. Of course my diploma was delivered a couple years ago in the rain which left it ruined. My quickest option was to provide them with an unofficial transcript the university emailed me just moments before driving to the car dealership. The car salesman was winded from the heat and left me in his cubical to go “find the finance guy” which took an unusually long time. I took the time as an opportunity to skim over my transcript. It amused me, though not startling, how little numbers and scores played into my time at college. Just glancing at my transcript, I laughed out loud that I had been on the dean’s list for a year and never knew it. I skimmed the class list and associated professor’s name with them and a particular memory with each. I glanced at the numbers and letters associated with each semester, mildly disinterested. But then I noticed something that shook my attention. There was within those numbers, a pattern which was cryptic, but easily solvable.

The first year, particularly the first semester I was scared out of my mind being far from home amongst strangers, only knowing two people from home there. I applied myself, I focused on the work and not the whole balancing act that takes some college students longer than others to figure out. That balance between self preservation and scholarship lists and family ties and new friends and diet and scheduling and rest and your life back home and exercise and personal beliefs. I focused almost completely on academia to medicate my first broken heart and the general transition from independent living -and it paid off only in the way I applied myself. The numbers were great.

By my sophomore year I began to learn that life is complicated and unexplainable, which is hard for a curious, naive 19 year old to accept. The ‘broken heart’ was nothing but a paper cut compared to the cancer that whisked away two dear friends and my closest friend who was almost completely surrendered to an seriously destructive bout of depression; I too, slowly became engulfed with specific hurts like anxiety attacks, extreme low self esteem, and other uncomfortable things I really just want to quaintly call my little black rain cloud. I didn’t really know what to focus on and so I floated from class to dorm room to phone call to melt down to therapy and back to class. And the numbers were all over the place that year, mainly in the low place.

That following summer was magical and if you know me well, you know what I’m talking about. Summer of 2009 was a time of healing and laughter and understanding more fully how to love God in and through the constant chaos. There were no summer numbers to prove that on my transcript but there was that fall. It seemed, according to the data, I had finally struggled through to understanding that balancing act and things all around were going well until I met That Guy. By the next semester my numbers were down again -but in all the good ways (sorry parents for admitting that). He was such a distraction and I adored him and I flourished with him. But as complicated life would have it, we graciously parted ways leaving me truly heartbroken but ambitious entering my senior to finish strong. And I did, although a few class grades exposed a dullness and tiredness a season veteran of the academic world would be hard pressed to avoid. I had learned to pick my battles it seemed, though imperfect. I remember graduating feeling like my brain had just finished being on “Survivor” for four years and wondering at the same time how it could have all gone by so quickly. I was amazed at how much these GPA’s year to year, semester to semester, revealed and how little it had to do with my I.Q.

I stared, locked in at that transcript, its pattern unveiled, barely able to breathe.

“Ms. Suitt?” The car salesman clicked his way towards his cubical where I sat. “I need all your documentation now.”

The pain and comfort of nostalgia overwhelmed me, unaccustomed to the impromptu opportunity to see a bigger picture of a piece of my life. I actually was hesitant for a moment to hand it over to the salesman, afraid he too would look closely and see the small fermata of me. I forced a smile as I shuffled it in the pile and handed it off. It was brief and sweeping. And for the first time that I can really think of, I noticed that numbers too can tell their own precise stories with or without my permission, even if I’m their only audience.

Mr. Marts Died.

Last week my neighbor died in his house across the street from mine. I didn’t know Mr. Marts. I knew he was particular about his lawn, which numerous times won yard of the month – whose weathered yard sign and neighborhood elitism I passively coveted. His yard was illuminated by a halo of buzzing blinding light from the street pole, ensuring added attention to his perfectly manicured lawn, especially at night. I knew he must have enjoyed the sound of running water by the miniature watermill sitting on his porch, which pumps out just enough water to question its actual purpose. I also knew he was dying of some sort of cancer. My housemates told me he had been moved to his home under hospice care a few months earlier and my thoughts and prayers were with him. But as time happens and egocentrism battles on, I sort of forgot about Mr. Marts in our quiet neighborhood in my busy day-to-day. My excuse for being busy is that I am a twenty-something. We twenty-somethings are too busy trying to project our dark hole of an existence as a hip and full lifestyle, for pete’s sake. Plus I was traveling all summer for work and herding interns around and having just moved to the state, trying to find a dentist, trying to find the new way home without getting lost, and keeping up with friends scattered all over the country. So forgive me Mr. Marts, that I forgot you were dying slowly every day I drove up, parked, and peeled my sweaty legs off the leather car seats in a rage of questioning the actual purpose of my car’s air conditioning in 115 degree heat.

Clearly, things get blown out of proportion with the aid of poor prioritizing and carelessness, but I have also found life can have a way of slowing down just enough to shove your head in your own armpit of self centeredness. I caught my first whiff when I drove down our drive, clogged with cars that seemed to be magnetized to Mr. Mart’s flawless lawn and it remained so for almost a week, cars swapping out parking spaces with one another. “He’s getting close.” my housemate commented one evening over dinner. I was quiet, thinking about what he might look like or be feeling. The next afternoon I arrived home there were people milling about the yard on cell phones. Surely he had died. A presumed relative was sitting next to the eeking watermill with her dog, who was consumed by the mill’s workflow. The dog looked away and barked when I got out of my car but was hushed by the woman, as I waved. I instantly felt shameful. You don’t wave to someone who is watching a person die. I scurried inside.

That night I sat in the common room working on a few projects with Star Wars rooting for me in the background, walking past the window more often than usual to peek across the lawn, as if a relative would be hammering a sign beside the mailbox that would indicate by way of percentage how close he was to death. I prayed a feeble prayer, the kind of prayer that gives the realization how distant you’ve put yourself from real things. Real things like life and death and loving on people and caring about the worthwhile. Give Mr. Marts peace. Help his wife be strong. Be near to them. I sputtered out awkwardly, the twinge of remorse so near, it started to ache a little. As I finished, the garage door opened and I knew my housemates were home after an insanely busy day, just coming from a hospital visit, nonetheless. But i didn’t hear it close and I didn’t hear the back door open. I stood up to look out the window to catch them walking across the street, and being invited into Mr. Marts home by a very sad looking woman. My heart began to thud with guilt. You should have cared and it’s too late. Mr. Marts is probably dead and you didn’t know how to care.  In all honesty, I was confused about how to acknowledge that something was clearly wrong across the road but my lifestyle had gotten so obese, I was too out of shape to remember that all it took was, “I’m sorry and I care”.  He died two hours later and it’s such an strange thing to think about. His body lay there for at least some amount of time before it was transported while I was just sitting across the road watching Star Wars, working out a very acute flaw.

Shortly after, my coworkers’ four year old son was over at the house, curled up on my lap watching the Olympics on television. Adults in the kitchen turned the conversation to poor Mrs. Marts across the street. He turned to me during a commercial break and asked nonchalantly, “Why did Mr. Marts die?” I patted his back “Because he was very sick.” My attention floated back to the television, uneasy and hopeful to avoid having a conversation about death with him. Micah is only four; I am twenty-three, and I have no desire to steer him in the wrong direction. I am not a parent, nor am I one of those people who pretend to be. I take no delight in delivering time out or wiping a potty trained kid’s butt, or making sure vegetables are eaten. I enjoy children simply on a friendship level. There are many good things about having a friend that is four years old. He still laughs at potty humor with me, and he thinks I’m magnificent simply because I am ‘tall’ or that I can imitate Darth Vadar or because I love grapes too. But these conversations of explaining early on these intense topics kind of make me curl inside.  Micah would have none of it. he grabbed my cheeks with his icy little hands and pressed his forehead against mine, spying at me out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah but whyyyyy did he die?” as if reiterating the question would somehow probe a different answer. I laughed forcibly, “Well, everyone has to die.” He stared at me for a while searching my face for a hint of jest; I felt cruel withholding the trite comfort a child deserves, but paralyzed with the difficult and unanswerable realities he will uncover the remainder of his lifetime. He then looked at the ground and mumbled, “But I don’t want to.”

Both his parents and I are Christians and so I spoke with him about eternal life in the afterlife and how it is important to know and love God; Even though I knew that sometimes even the strongest Christians can still fear the passage of death -and to a four year old, it seemed to negate any words of comfort anyway. I confess too that i feel at times like Marcus Mumford penned, that ‘death is just so full and man so small’. While it doesn’t eliminate hope, death has a way of rattling the skeletal cage of the soul. And although uncomfortable, I am grateful for this past week. I think I tend to pad myself from the inevitable and trudge on sort of whisking it aside like a fly. It’s good to be friends with a four year old and have them ask those questions to remind me that I only have today and to ask what have I have done that holds any sort of weight in eternity. This has been on my mind a lot: in fact, twice a day to be exact. Since Mr. Marts passing, his lawn hasn’t looked quite as sharp and his water mill has gone awry. Every time I get in and out of my car i can hear it whining in sort of a rotating manner. Like someone’s crying.

bearfield lovin’

 

This is the Bearfields. They are in love. They were married last month and are one of the sweetest couples I’ve ever had the privilege of shooting their wedding. They are those people who are great individuals, but even better together. Thanks Grant and Kelly for sharing your day with me!

Schmudio.

There are many things that I have learned after shooting studio work five days a week for 15 months straight. I have a deep appreciation for professional studio work -it’s such a mysterious and yet mathematic world to create beautiful pictures in the confines of a studio. It is not my forte but I do love studio lighting and I am always learning something new. Here is some from the past year. Some are terribly basic but it’s cool to see how much I have grown. What the best and worst part of studio photography for your photographers out there? For me, it’s hand placement and filler lights that are too hot. best part? It’s like a life size puzzle. So fun. Enjoy these works in progress on my journey in studio photography. (All of these were shot with the Canon 5D MK II 24-105 mm L series lens and Elinchrome lighting systems)

 

In Compton, With Love

Meet Samantha and Joe -a super cute couple from NW Arkansas, my current stomping grounds. We shot their engagements in Compton Gardens, which was a first for me and it was really beautiful, even though it was ridiculously hot, humid, and quite overcast. I really love that Samantha is a beautiful, classic kind of gal and Joe is easygoing and outdoorsy. I wanted to bring those elements together with this shoot -and I’m quite pleased with how they turned out. It’s hard not to though, with such a great couple. Looking forward to shooting their wedding in just a few short weeks!

space

Over the last five years there hasn’t really been one place that has felt like it’s mine. I’ve lived in several different places, all with good times and not so good times. I’ve shared homes with eight other twenty-somethings, tiny gross dormitories with my best friend Sus, the old Holly House with five other girls from college, my parent’s house after they rearranged from my absence, and that one dorm with the conjoining bathroom that functioned more like a megaphone for my neighbor’s drunken Friday nights. And monday nights. A year ago, it would have been impossible for me to verbalize where I saw myself in five years. I’ve gotten so accustomed to packing up about every eight months and with life shifting just a bit with school, or work, I forgot about wanting to have my own space. When I moved in with my housemate Sam a year ago, I wasn’t expecting the quiet, personal, homey space that we have. This has been the first year of my life that I haven’t shared a bedroom or a bathroom or a closet. I sound like a whiny middleclass pretending to be underprivileged when I say in all seriousness that there is something truly luxurious about having my own space -something I’m experiencing for the first time at twenty-three. I know I’m lucky to have had this year to be alone and grow up a bit more, and to experience a shower without a roommate or sister needing to brush their teeth.

 

I knew that I would be moving out within a year or so, as part of my little life plan and I tried not to embrace the house as mine but I did. I will be on the move within a few short months and a few days I began decluttering and simplifying all the stuff I do not need. I sat folding clothes on the floor and looked up to peak out my window and I smiled proudly at the late accomplishment of hung curtains. And hanging beside the curtains is a beautiful canvas print created by my new friend Helen and next to the print is a sturdy silver lamp stand that I bought to match the rest of my room.  I realized that somewhere down the line, I unexpectedly made a little home this year. I was kind of overwhelmed at the realization and didn’t really know what to do to remember this day -a small, but meaningful discovery. I decided to take out my camera, not for a friend or a client or for my blog, but for me. I can’t remember the last time I picked up my camera without a goal or expectation. So I ‘journaled’ with over two hundred pictures wandering around and rediscovering this place I’m really going to miss. I will be excited for my new dwelling place, wherever it may be, but for now I will revel in this unexpected gift that sits on a little corner of a little neighborhood that has been oddly perfect for me.

 

Victor + Claire

I had the opportunity to shoot Claire and Victor’s engagements last weekend in my college town, Siloam Springs and it was a blast. This shoot was hilarious. I’ve never cracked up so much. I’ve known Claire for several years and she has been one of my good friends through it all -15 page art history papers, hosting and waiting tables together, dance parties, thursday night catch ups, break ups, and girly chatter. I remember Claire telling me about Victor and I swear it wasn’t but three months later she was on my couch admitting how crazy it sounded but she thought this might be the guy she wanted to marry. A few months later I was having trouble finding work right out of college and Claire got me a job working a restaurant with her and Victor (which was my first time to meet him) and man, the rest is history.  She couldn’t be marrying a better guy.  They are some of the most fun, good hearted people I know and could not be happier that they are getting married in September.

Here are a few from our Sunday afternoon.

Expert on Secrecy

Mystery is supposedly one of the most alluring things humans can hold over one another. The idea that one has an upper hand in a situation because it is unknown. Mystery is coveted because it begins a journey, a search, a chase even, to understanding. In novels and film, we love a good mystery because we’re guessing against ourselves -enjoying the thrill of surprise. In relationships with people we interact with daily, mystery can be a draw to be perceived a better fashion of who we are, to hide that which we are not proud about ourselves and to escape the monotony of the day-to-day. Mystery is something that can be all-consuming for the dreamers, those that see only the best in everyone, those with a flair for the dramatic, or the ones that might be a bit overlooked. Philosopher Sissela Bok puts it much more beautifully, “We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect.”

There is little about myself or my life that remains mysterious, also a quality many pure bred southern women consider a leading edge in man hunting, which depending on levels of expectancy is unrivaled in obsession.  Unfortunately, I have struggled with my leading edge, mainly because I hear crap come out of my mouth like: I haven’t shaved in three weeks, feel how soft my legs are! I have a weird rash on my stomach, what do you think it could be from? I am attracted to you, would you like to hang out at Shanty Town and mentally prepare for the zombie apocalypse? But that’s beside the point.  I’ve always craved mysteriousness, regardless of my fruitless man-hunting or the fact that I tend to verbally vomit my personality. My alter ego would be the girl with the dragon tattoo, I would play oboe on the weekends, and be a surrogate mother, and have a second home in Columbia, Missouri, and be close friends with Teri Gross. If you’re not dying to know who my alter ego is, then you’re messing up my point. The point is, the idea of not being truly known but still pursued by a force, is exhilarating but it’s never permanent. If I’m being honest, I wish to be loved without having someone understand the depths of my inadequacies or even worse, the averageness of who I am -but that’s not how I was designed to interact with others. And with most things outside of myself, I know this is unbelievably shallow and silly. In all actuality,  I would never want to go back in my relationships with some of my closest friends when I thought they were shiny and put together and well, awesome. I prefer them as they are: well made, durable, quirky, dependable, real. The glitter of who they are has been dusted off through years of a slow understanding to uncover a genuineness of a person that is far worth knowing over a fleeting amusement or intrigue. But sometimes I just can’t get over wanting everyone to be just as they are but still wanting to be the put together one – I guess it’s a gut reaction after you’ve disappointed a person repeatedly.

I have been thinking a lot about the mystery of God this week and how different it is to me than the mystery a person holds. Last night I was reading the book of Jeremiah and read this passage in chapter twenty-nine:

“For thus says the LORD, ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’

I love that even the Lord wants to be found by us (v:14) -but not in a needy, imperfect sort of way that begs for our attention and affirmation. His mystery holds an answer -a future, hope, a deep understanding, restoration, a home. There is nothing selfish in His mystery, unlike my own. I don’t wish to be discovered for who I am and in contrast God urges us to uncover the mystery of Himself because of who He is. There is no letdown in the revelation. And God does not need our love and understanding, yet He offers the pursuit to us – a relationship that for the first time, isn’t anticlimactic. I’m not really sure why God gives us this opportunity to uncover His mystery but I’m really grateful He has. I remember in high school, a close friend of mine used to tell me often, “God wants to be found, but the great thing is that He is not hard to find.” She used to smile so big when she told me, like it was the best news she would ever deliver to me. I’m starting to think maybe it was. I’m struggling with this right now, a lot of things are uncertain in my life and it’s easy to project that onto God and begin to question His mysteries in my life. God is indeed a massive mystery but I wanted to encourage you (but mostly myself) if you’re overwhelmed with it, understand that He desires to uncover it to you as you seek it out.