I like labels and definitions to help me describe who I am and what I do. Some of those labels are precious, and don’t change, like “daughter” or “sister”. Some carry a lot of social weight, like “girlfriend” or “best friend”. Some have to do with how I spend my leisure time, like “climber” or “knitter”. And I’ve spent a good part of my adult life so far looking to labels that are associated with what I do instead of who I am, and I’ve come to think that this is not a healthy practice.

What happens is that I get wrapped up in the persona I create for myself and the expectations I perceive from those around me. I lose sight of myself. It makes me burn out and it makes me resent things I never meant to resent. I build a mask and then I get upset when people don’t see past it.

Maybe I won’t ever totally outgrow that tendency. What I do know, though, is that all of these things I have loved can still be part of me but don’t have to be what define me. Today I went climbing. I haven’t done that in a really long time. I didn’t know any of the other climbers in the gym, and in a really weird way I liked that a lot. I didn’t perceive any sort of expectations on my performance and instead it became more like a solo session of getting reacquainted with my body in the vertical world.

I’ve come to believe that activities and people have seasons and that sometimes those seasons have finite endings, and that sometimes they cycle in and out of your life, and that you can’t rely on those activities and people to make you happy or define your identity. I’ve met some really wonderful people in the adventures that I’ve had and I can say that the relationships that stuck have often had more to do with finding a kindred soul than having the same interests.

Socially, realizing this pattern is freeing as well. It means that ultimately, and especially as a single woman, I’m the one who has to look out for my emotional and mental balance. That skipping a social engagement or looking for a listening ear are things that I need to recognize the need for and act upon to maintain my balance.

And part of it is letting people put labels on me if they want to and understanding that I’m not limited by that, especially by my own ideas of what a label carries with it. I have a firm hold on the things that matter to me about who I am, and I am grateful for that and the freedom in it.

I should know…I am one. And all of these things at one time or another have made me absolutely crazy, especially when I look in the mirror and see my own face and hands all covered in the grime of hypocrisy. Other times I smell the odor all over others, and when I’m feeling especially cynical, I let it get to me. I get suspicious and self-righteous.

But I can think of a few Christians I know who are refreshingly real, too. Actually, once you get past the protective wall of ritual and religion, there are real people under all those faces. Remembering that helps me to be more understanding. I’m human, too.

Basically, I’m addicted to myself. Doing things that make me happy, usually instantly and temporarily. Looking out for myself before someone else. And if I want to get really honest, when I do nice things for other people, I probably have selfish motives tied up in there somewhere…perhaps the hope of recognition or reward? I absolutely believe that left to my own devices I’d eventually destroy myself. That I’d get frustrated or tired or upset enough to just be done.

I’ve been there. I’ve not self-destructed, but I’ve been in places, sometimes my fault and sometimes the fault of others, in which I felt powerless, helpless, desperate. Many times. That’s why one of my favorite verses is this one: But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

For instance…just a couple months ago, I was in a proverbial valley, another deep place of feeling useless and tired and desperate. My body literally felt weak. Friends who looked hard enough could see it in my face. I could not understand why God was making me go through the mental and emotional struggle of searching for a job and coming up so discouragingly emptyhanded. I was emotionally and financially fragile, and I must have had a dozen psychotic breakdowns. Sometimes I felt like I was overreacting. There are people out there with much worse situations than mine and why should I be so down? But to me it was all real and heavy.

I felt like God just wasn’t there. Wasn’t teaching me or comforting me like He promised. Like if He really loved me I’d have it easier. I begged in my prayers for Him to show me that He was there and that I was okay. Sobbed out exhausted groans so many times, pleading for respite.

Today during the Easter musical I was made to pause at the idea that Jesus knows exactly how my heart feels. A woman in our church read a poem about Jesus asking his Father to “take this cup from me”. He didn’t want to go through with the plan. Didn’t want to die. That true thing helps put my own seasons of heaviness in perspective.

With the encouragement, and I’m sure the prayers, of a few friends, I started to believe in my head that I might not be abandoned. My heart was unsure. And as I started to be sure, my circumstance didn’t change. Now, I’m not one to believe that “if you’re good you get better presents” in terms of God’s providing. What I do know is that God does, like a parent, enjoy giving to His children. And not long after my heart had changed a little, other things began to change, too. I had more emotional energy to handle what was hard, and in turn to continue to pour into my job search. I trusted that I would be okay.

And I didn’t end up where I thought I would. I ended up taking a job in a field that is nothing close to what I studied to be, that I’m probably overqualified for, and definitely wouldn’t have looked for. But I LOVE my job. And to feel like it’s a gift makes it even better.

All that to say…my attitude and my heart couldn’t change until they were broken. On this side of that valley, I trust God more completely. To use the things that make me ashamed or uncomfortable or weak to show what He can do and has done.

Maybe that sounds simpleminded to you. It has to me sometimes. But you know what? However I come off to other people is not up to me. I’ve met Christians who seemed so self-righteous or disconnected from reality…and really it had everything to do with the lens I was wearing to see them. If saying I’m a Christian lumps me in with all of those people you don’t like because they’re stinky hypocrites, that’s fine. There’s nothing I can do to change that. There will always be loud voices out there, and I’ll sometimes agree with them and other times I won’t. And if you ask, I’ll do my best to answer.

At the end of the day, I’m not even close to all-together. I like to think of myself as “in recovery,” because sometimes I relapse into living like I don’t trust God. I pick self-serving over anything else. And it feels good, for a little while. But I have never been happier or more at peace than when I get to look at what’s going on around me and know that God knows way more than me, and that He has got all of it under control. It doesn’t make me feel weak. It makes me feel loved and cared about. Certain that no matter the storm, God is worth trusting.

Even when I did my birthday half marathon a couple years ago, I half-assed the training. I think I “ran” for about three weeks, and during those weeks I rarely ran more than a fraction of a mile without walking. I was happy with a 12-minute mile. I was as surprised as anyone to even finish the half, and to feel as good as I did the next day. Any training I did essentially translated to injury insurance so that my body didn’t freak out when I dragged it 13 miles.

This year, I’m signed up to run a Mud Run with my Dad and brother and a few other family members in June. And I don’t just want to finish; I want to know that I prepared well, that I can push my body hard. So I started running again. I committed to myself to run three times a week, on non-practice nights. So far, I’ve managed to run at least twice a week, and it’s getting easier.

The other day, for the first time ever, I ran two miles without stopping to walk. And I was darn proud. I’m glad for having been told “you’re just not a runner.” That not only gave me extra fire to prove ‘em wrong, but it made the accomplishment that much more satisfying. And to boot, I hit some of my best mile times…ever. And it felt so good.

Something else I’ve learned: running is great cross-training for derby.

I have two weaknesses as a skater, besides the obvious one of strategy, which is mostly a byproduct of being new to the sport (I just had my six month-iversary this last week!). Those weaknesses are endurance and grit. Running confronts both of those weak links head-on. For every step I run instead of walk, for every time I wipe my sweaty brow with my sleeve, I’m getting faster and stronger. And that’s going to translate to my skating. My legs even look and feel more muscular.

And then there’s the mental toughness I’m building. Learning how to listen to my body and how to push it…and sometimes how to give it a little bit of care so that I can push it harder next time. The end of a run that is at the edge of my usual distance is the best and worst part. Nothing feels better than the relief of finishing strong when I’m tired and it hurts.

Every mile is teaching my body that I can give that much more in a practice, that much more in a bout. That, barring injury, you can always gut it out. I’ve never been a sissylala on that track, but it’s time for me to be done being the new girl. I’m gonna chase the skates of the fastest girls out there, and I’m going to encourage my teammates to do the same. We may work as a team, but we are each responsible for keeping our own bodies and minds safe and strong.

Photo by David Costa

This weekend’s out-of-town scrimmage got me thinking a lot about the idea of mental game, and recognizing it as a vital component of success. Sports often serve as a microcosm for realities outside of the game being played, and derby seems to be a good microcosm for my reality at the moment.

I’m new to the derby world, relatively speaking. I’ve only been skating since early last fall. I come at the game with a mix of wide-eyed determination and slowly burgeoning confidence. I’m constantly evaluating how I let my self-view determine how I play the game, and letting myself take the ‘out’ of “I’m new, I don’t know how to do that yet” doesn’t do my mental game any favors.

At this last scrimmage, I put on the pivot panty [for any non-derby readers, that's the term for the stretchy helmet cover with the stripe on it] for the first time ever. I mean, ever ever. Never in a practice, never in any other venue had I done that. I let the girls with me know that I was new to this position, and they were so awesome about it. “We’ll do whatever you ask us to,” they reminded me. “You’re in charge. You want us to wall up, you say the word.” I wasn’t so sure I would know what to do.

And then the whistle blew and the jam was going and I honestly don’t remember if we dominated the jam or not. But what I did gain from it was the idea that being a rookie is no excuse for not trying, for not taking the lead. I don’t get the ‘out’ because I’m fresh, and taking it makes me a weaker player no matter what position I’m skating. Every single jam, especially in a scrimmage, is a brand new opportunity to try something new or difficult…and always always always to learn something. No lesson is too small.

I don’t get to take the ‘out’ in the real world either. It’s easy to take sometimes. The mental game of job searching as a freshly graduated counselor is a daily battle. I get so frustrated when I put out application after application and nothing comes of any of it. I’ve been in tears over all of it more times than I’d like to admit.

So this is the inner dialogue I’m working on:
Self. Yes, this sucks right now, and yes it is hard. But you can take a lot more hits than that. You know how to get back up. Sure, you’re tired. Sure those other people out there are bigger and more experienced. But there will always be people out there who are bigger and more experienced. And they might get the glory for a while. But you have to try. You have to get out there, over and over. Learn. Try something new. Fail. Shine. But mostly, remember you’re not alone out there. Look around you.

I’m not in this alone. Ever. None of us is. I love that.

I live way too many days trying to be different things for different people, and while so much of that matters, it puts me in a position to feel like I need the permission of others to navigate my own life.

So I take permission back into my own hands. I give myself permission to be proud of what I’ve accomplished, to be a little (okay, sometimes a LOT) fearful of what happens next, and most importantly, I give myself permission to shamelessly eat my Oreos in my more than slightly psychotic way. I give myself permission to have a bad handwriting day. I give myself permission to obsess over…well, pretty much whatever happens to be holding my fleeting attention at the moment.

What I’m getting at is…permission is part of the process. Without being okay with being a little scared or goofy-happy, I don’t get to move through those things and onto the next moments and adventures. Recently, I had to give myself permission to nitpick my performance at an interview. It’s totally okay to be critical of myself for a little while as long as that critic recognizes the good AND the bad, and moves through the whole experience with some measure of acceptance.

Giving myself permission allows for seasons, and for a chronic Creative with an analytic bent, that’s a good thing. Instead of being caught up in how a recent endeavor endears me to others, I choose to focus on the elements of Self that are revealed in the process. Am I recognizing in myself qualities that I want to cultivate or change?

What is it that you need to give yourself permission to do/think/feel/change/accept? Is there someone who needs a piece of your mind…or to know that you forgive them? What dream have you been keeping on the back burner that you could totally sit down and put on paper? Perhaps most importantly, when was the last time you looked really really silly in public?

That’s what I thought. Now get that tutu and tiara out of your closet and start dancing in the grocery store! And call me up if you live near me. I’m all over that .

I don’t remember where I first heard the idea, but I totally believe in the power of setting goals and having expectations so that you can make your life happen to you. Waiting for life to happen is a really good way to spend a lot of time doing just that…waiting. And, let’s face it, I’m not very good at waiting. Waiting for the right job, the right relationship, the right moment…I get tired of it. So I’m going to set some goals. Right here, right now. Now that I’m done with this last season of my life (school) I have all the room in the world to dream big. So that’s what I plan to do.

I want to stay close to home until my sister makes it through the majority of her teenage years. I believe in the importance of having solid role models, and hell, just people who care enough to keep tabs on you when you’re going through adolescence. I know how important it was to me to have women in my life during those years who I could count on to just love on me and so I absolutely want to be there for my sister. She’ll be sixteen in five years…and I’ll be 30ish.

Five years will also give me time to do two things work-related that need to happen. I need to “pay back” my scholarship from grad school by working in the field. I need to do that for four years. Then I have the freedom to do whatever I want with my degree, whether I use it specifically or not. My short-term goal here is to get a moderately-paying full-time job that I can handle for a few years so I can put some money away and be totally independent from my incredibly generous parents. They have been a huge blessing while I’ve been in school and always willing to help me out when I need gas in my tank and my bank account reads in the single digits.

Now here’s the more personal goal…that I’m wary to share but I’m going to anyways because we’re all friends here. This one doesn’t have a timeline. I want to be in a relationship with someone who shares my passion and my big-dreaming tendencies. He needs to be strong enough and confident enough to hold his own in my world, to sometimes take me by the shoulders and say “honey, breathe” without deflating me. He needs to be a balanced fellow, who understands and lives by the same values that I do, but doesn’t make me feel inadequate. A bonus would be that he’s good at organizing without making me feel like my tornado-disaster is a mark of failure.

I will wait for that man. For however long it takes. And writing those things down helps me to remember that anything less is not worth it.

Five years from now, I want to be planning my move to Manhattan, apartment shopping and establishing connections there. I want to have published at least one thing, whether it’s a book or a magazine article or a novel.

Writing this all down makes it feel more real. I can see it in my mind’s eye, and I feel hopeful. I know that some of these goals may change or be altered by life, and I accept that. Today, though, I’m going to savor the sweetness of dreaming.

Photo by David Costa

Last night was my first mixed-league scrimmage. I’ve scrimmaged with my leaguemates, but it’s different to get together with 50 girls from leagues all over the region. As it stands, only one other girl from my league came to this one, which was about an hour away from our town.

I try to make a habit of doing things on a regular basis that make me nervous–the good kind of nervous. And frankly, until I got in the car and started driving to the scrimmage, I was seriously considering staying home because I was definitely fighting some nerves. None of my girls were riding with me, so I was going solo. I’m no stranger to solo, but solo make it a lot easier to call things off. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, and I’ve only been skating a few months.

Thankfully, none of my excuses to myself panned out, and I found myself at a skating rink at 10pm on a Saturday night, lining up with a whole host of new friends, chatting about how we were looking forward to the first couple of jams to get our jitters out.

And get our jitters out we did. I even put on the jammer panty (the helmet cover that identifies the jammer) during my second jam of the night so I could get my jamming nerves to calm down. I figured this would be a really great venue for practicing jamming as much as possible, because we’ve got a lot of hotshot jammers on my home league so I don’t get to just practice super often.

(If you need a basic rundown of derby, check out the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_derby)

My first sprawling fall of the night nearly knocked the wind out of me, but lucky for me I like to fall (think: gymnast, climber, skydiver…you get the picture) and all it really serves to do is fire me up. The whole night we just rotated through lineups, skating when we wanted to, rearranging teams when girls had to leave to go home. The beauty of a black and white scrimmage is that all you have to do to switch teams is put on a different color shirt.

I also love that in a scrimmage, every jam pretty much stands alone. No one is keeping score, so each new group starts fresh. The one thing about derby that I haven’t learned to love is the drama, and while I love skating with my own team and building those relationships, skating in a group of relative strangers totally minimizes interpersonal drama. Yeah, that girl I knee’d out of my way totally sent me sprawling out of retaliation, but it was still fun, and then forgotten.

The refs called things off when the skaters started to get sloppy because we were so tired. Three hours of late-night skating can take it out of you, that’s for sure. And when girls skate sloppy, people get hurt, so it was a good call on the part of the refs to call it a night.

After a short night of sleep and a church service, today has been a day of ibuprofen, adding new friends on facebook, and checking out pictures from the scrimmage. I’m still new enough to this sport that I’m not agonizing over every mistake I made (not that that’s really my modus operandi anyways) so the whole thing was just fun. I’m glad I didn’t stay home.

Tomorrow’s the cross-town burrito-eating race with my leaguemates, so there is more derby fun to be had before tryouts in a few weeks. I’m so glad to be back on skates with some regularity. Off-season was good for my joints, but pre-season is great for my spirit.

I’m a chronic rearranger. Even as a kid, I moved my furniture around on a regular basis. I probably inherited the tendency from my mom, who moves the garbage can around the kitchen to a new place every time I visit…and sometimes halfway through my visit. My childhood was full of elaborate furniture swaps between the women in our family, and endless redecorating projects. I learned to wallpaper before I learned to shave my legs, and I can tape off a room for painting with the best of ‘em.

Suffice it to say, I come by my compulsive rearranging rightly.

I’ve lived in a lot of small spaces over these last eight years, which puts a bit of a damper on the extent to which changes can be made, but I still manage to freshen the feng shui of my environment a couple times a year. Sometimes I get roommates in on the project and the day turns into an apartment rearranging party, much like today did. On those days, I should be banned from access to craigslist, where I will most certainly be looking for bookcases I don’t need…except I feel like if there’s one thing I need more of, it’s bookshelves because no matter how many boxes of books I put in storage every time I move I still manage to have way too many.

The last three days have been a lot of organizing and re-homing. The instance of returning home from visiting my parents for Christmas and having gifts to put away and laundry to do converged with needing to prepare for houseguests and an altogether occupying need to adjust some furniture…it all kind of happened at once, with a lot of 80s and 90s British punk in the background. And when I mean it all happened at once, that’s how it happens. I let very few friends and family members be privy to my organizational tactics because they are completely bonkers. Utterly, exhaustingly incoherent. Seven tasks all at once, me muttering to myself, with plenty of coffee to tie it all together. Unfortunately, I also seem to have my best hair days when I’m playing the crazy hermit lady, and this week was no different. Ah well.

I love the freshness of new organization. I love when for at least a minute (because that’s about how long I can maintain a clean bedroom) my space feels totally “me”. My bed is made and my books are in neat stacks and my nutella has a new stashing spot and most of my clothes are folded and put away. My world is in order and my overactive mind can rest in my little sanctuary that is decorated with far too much green.

So that’s what I’ve been up to since graduating a few weeks ago. Rearranging. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not.

525,600 minutes – how do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife

You know the song. Well, I know the song…and every other line and note in the entire musical. (Rock opera, if we’re being technical about things. But I digress.) Seven years ago, when I was introduced to RENT for the first time, it appealed to my freshman-in-college, whole-world-is-expanding sensibilities, and nourished my musical theatre obsession at the same time. You see, I come from a long history of total dorkiness. Don’t let the climbing harness and quad skates fool you…long before all of that was part of my life, I spent the better part of my energy teaching myself to like coffee–which was a wildly successful endeavor–and listening to my favorite musicals on repeat. Like, we’re talking overdose repeat. At least I can say that I don’t do much halfway.

But that was seven years ago. And here I am. I still love coffee. Even more now, considering I’m two weeks away from a Master’s degree. You don’t get through grad school without developing such affections. And I still love musicals, especially RENT. I try to watch it once a year or so, and it’s one of those things that has a depth that is different every time. Because I’m really NOT just the same as I was seven years ago. At eighteen I wanted nothing more than to move to New York City and be a writer. To put my finger on the pulse of a city with which I was entirely enamored and get lost in its gritty charm.

In the interim between that season and this one, I’ve been lucky enough to build a life that was nothing like I expected. Obviously, I don’t live in New York (though I’ve visited twice), and no one pays me to write, which I’ve learned is kind of how I prefer it since I’m not the most disciplined wordsmith. When I graduate in a few weeks, I’ll have a degree in counseling and a few more grey hairs than I started with. (No kidding about the grey hairs. First one came in a week before I turned 21.)

I guess I’m writing to process the transition. My seasons have been dictated by the academic schedule for my entire working memory, and soon that won’t be the case. That panics me a little, though I know it shouldn’t. During this last season I have been so happy that I’ve hardly noticed it pass by. I was kind of blindsided by reality last week when my calendar suddenly announced the arrival of December.

I love this right-now life. I’m not ready for it to change. But, no matter what changes or doesn’t, I am glad I was blindsided. This season, I have been happy. No-trouble-sleeping happy (which is a cause for celebration when your bouts of insomnia started in elementary school). Dance-like-you-don’t-care happy. I didn’t even notice the season’s end creeping up on me.

And I think that’s all I can ask for. To be a little distracted by the joys of my day-to-day. If I can reflect on a season or a series of seasons and see that, it really doesn’t get much better, and no matter what happens after this, I had a really rockin’ autumn. I plan to hold onto that.

May your December be full of joy and meaning and reflection. If you do find it lacking in joy, however, I recommend throwing (literally) tinsel at your tree (especially a Christmas tree, if you have one, but any tree will do), or a quiet cup of your favorite coffee, if that suits you better. I tried both. Either way, take some time to enjoy my favorite time of the whole year, okay? And let me know how it goes.

She handles life with an innate sense of ambition and balance that is both impressive and intimidating. And does it all while managing to be sweet and likable and resilient. In all of her burgeoning independence, that kid is beginning one of the most volatile stages of growing up and becoming who she’ll be. What she discovers about the world and how she decides to process it in the next few years will have a huge impact on her identity.

And so I have this really unique relationship with an especially unique little sister and that sometimes scares the snot out of me. I love that she is my biggest fan and loves me with a sincerity that only siblings know. I also know that every word I say and every promise I make and every attitude I cop are being watched by this perceptive young woman…and often emulated.

I hope that I can be as real as possible when she’s watching, because I feel that will give her the best opportunity to become who she wants to be. I have this cool opportunity to be part of her family in a way that is not quite parental and not quite the usual sibling setup. Knowing she’s watching has influenced my decisions since the day she was born, whether I’ve been aware of it or not.

She’ll start junior high next year, and I’ll blink and she’ll be graduating from high school. I hope she grows up to be a little subversive, but not too much. I hope that high school and college teach her the balance of working hard and playing harder. I hope she has her first kiss with a boy she really likes, but only when she’s ready and I hope she gets butterflies and fireworks and sweaty palms. I hope she learns just enough lessons the hard way to be gracious and humble always. I hope so many things for this amazing young lady.

More than anything else, though, I hope that our relationship continues to grow and deepen as her perception of her world grows. I want to be the kind of big sister that asks tough questions that make her think and evaluate what matters to her. I want her to call when something big happens, and more often I want her to call for no reason at all.

I love you, little sister, neverending-infinity-plus-sister-plus-God.