angel (noun) –a heavenly figure, usually depicted with white robes and wings, but sometimes represented as a greasy bike mechanic.

I don’t know if angels walk around on earth and interact with human beings. But if they do, I wouldn’t expect to find them in Nowhere, NY, in a battered bike shop with wide, uneven floorboards, somewhere up in the high peaks of the Adirondacks. I wouldn’t have pictured them with long, grey-streaked brown hair and well-worn Chacos. And I wouldn’t expect them to be potheads.

But if I were to run into a member of the heavenly host, out on a jaunt around the planet, I would expect to like him immediately. If his teeth were crooked, they’d be set in a wide, warm smile that’d make me want to smile back just as big. If his stomach stuck out a little far, it would be because of a few too many beers with good friends. And he’d be one of the most easygoing, welcoming individuals I could imagine- kind of like Jesus.

And if this is what angels are like when they visit earth, then I’m pretty sure Eric and I ran into one.

We never would have if Eric hadn’t forgotten to replace the cassette on his bike when he replaced his old stretched chain. The day after he put the new chain on, we drove north to those piled-up, blue-green Adirondacks I’ve come to love so much, and it wasn’t until we were there for the weekend that we realized the cassette was as worn down as the chain had been.

If you’re not familiar with this bike lingo (like I wasn’t until this happened) it basically means the gears in back and the links on the chain are so worn, they don’t catch and when you pedal, so it skips. As you might imagine, it’s pretty much impossible to ride any sort of technical trail if this is happening.

We left the campground and drove until we had reception, then started calling bike shops. Most were closed already for Memorial Day weekend, and we were close to giving up on a chance to ride at all when a cheery voice on the other end said, in answer to Eric’s query about hours, “Yeah, I can be open till one, maybe two tomorrow afternoon? Come on by!”

So we did. The next day, we drove over and around and down one of the loveliest roads I’ve ever been on. It set us winding through cliffs and hills, crossing and re-crossing the Ausable River, and gliding along under the high-domed blue sky, and forty-five minutes later it brought us to a town (so small you could hardly call it even that). 

The ramshackle side street  we turned down next was lined with overgrown lilacs that reached knobby branches across shabby homes, dressing them in scattered clouds of purple.It was here that we stopped, across the street from a flat-faced building with a man sitting out front. The bike rack to his left might have toppled if you leaned on it too hard, but the bikes stuck in it were anything but rickety: under the mud, they gleamed, their lines hard and powerful. And then-

“You’re just in time!” the man said, setting his mug down on the cable spool that served as his patio table. He was already eyeballing Eric’s bike.

“In time for what?” Eric asked.

“I just finished my coffee!” He’d crossed the road by then, and when he reached us he stuck out a hand, his smile wide and honest. We shook, and then he took the bike from Eric, who’d just hefted it off the rack, and started examining it; spinning the wheels, testing the shocks, and all the while asking us questions: where were we from? What trails in the area were we planning on riding? Had we eaten at the sandwich shop up the road? Because if we hadn’t yet, we should: they had the world’s best sandwiches!

I think he would have done the entire job right there in the middle of the street if a car hadn’t come up just then. The driver slowed to let us move out of the way, waving amiably, and the owner of the bike shop waved back. And then we followed the man into his shop.

It was unlike any bike shop I had ever been inside before. The bikes that crouched in rows in the small room were old, not new, although there were a few beefy downhill frames stacked on a couch, and some light, speedy-looking road bikes hung on the walls. Boxes of tire tubes sat in rows on the low rafters, and behind the counter (which only had glass on one side) hung a wooden sign, words burned clumsily onto its surface:

“The man who works with his hands is a laborer.
The man who works with his hands and his mind is a craftsman.
The man who works with his hands, his mind, and his heart is an artist.”

I smiled when I saw that. And I smiled again when the man told us a bit of his story: how he used to be an engineer, but quit because he wanted to work with his hands, to give his time to the thing he loved. He laughed out loud when he remembered us from two years ago, when he and some buddies had been breaking in a trail while Eric and I—out for my first-ever mountain bike ride—accidentally  ended up on that difficult run. And then we laughed with him when he told us his life philosophy: 

“Everybody opts for the quick fix now, you know? I call it ‘FPP’: flip a switch, push a button, pop a pill... ain’t that easy? People don’t take ownership… it’s rough, man. You forget what’s really important.”

And somehow, between his stories and ours, two hours passed. Although he only charged us for the cost and installation of the part we needed, he gave the bike a full tune-up, explaining what he was doing step-by-step, and stopping to clear things up if either of us had a question. And then, as we were about to leave, he stopped us.

“Have you guys ever done ‘Poor Man’s Downhill’?” he asked.

We told him no, we’re from Schenectady, so we don’t get up this way much.

“Oh, man, you need to ride it. It’s not hard, but it’s a ton of fun to rip down! Tell you what,” he said, shaking a strong, battered finger at us. “A bunch of us are doing some shuttles up to the trailhead tomorrow: there’ll be food, and beer… you should come!”

We told him we’d love too, and that even though we had a long drive home tomorrow, we’d try to be there.

Fast-forward to the next afternoon.

We pulled up to the meeting spot a little before the bike shop owner had said to be there, so we got to watch everybody else arrive. It was a group of mostly guys, many of them in need of a shave and/or a haircut. They started pulling bikes off of racks and out of truck beds and tipping them down on the grass: big, beefy downhill bikes that made me suddenly very self-conscious of my little hardtail.

("Hardtail" is slang for a bike without full suspension. 
Just in case you wanted to know.)

Despite the cussing that filled up at least half of each sentence any one of them spoke, they seemed like a nice bunch, and they welcomed us without question. Some of them even recognized us from two years ago, as the bike shop owner had, so any doubts I had about Eric and I getting into a car full of strangers fell away. And that sense of security lasted until we got into our “shuttle”.

I had never seen such a beater minivan until we wheeled our bikes up to what was to be our transportation to the trailhead. It was the furthest thing from a “mom car” you could imagine: rusty, dirty, missing all but the front seats. It took a bit of creative packing, but soon we had five bikes and five riders tucked in, and our caravan of trucks and vans turned out onto the toll road up the mountain.

And this is where it gets really good.

 
See, we were barely on the road when the driver plopped a six pack down on the center console, popped the top off one of them, and started pounding it down. Several of the others in our van grabbed one for themselves, and my eyes got wide.

(Yes, "Porkslap" is the name of the
beer they were drinking....)

Personally, I wouldn’t drink a beer before barreling down a crazy downhill trail… but then again, I hadn’t been on this trail before: maybe they were just so familiar with it that they weren’t nervous like me.  

I decided that it would be best for me to ignore the fact that our driver had finished his before we were even halfway to the trailhead. But my eyes got pretty wide when one of the guys in the back asked if anybody “partook of any medicinals” and pulled out a little plastic container.

To my great relief, they opted to wait for a clearing halfway down the trail to pass the pipe around (and lest you think me a prude, the random drug tests where Eric and I work are pretty serious business). I’ll just say that our newfound friends were a pretty loose, relaxed group when they went flying down the side of the mountain, jumping rocks and skidding turns like nobody’s business. I didn’t even try to keep up: they were a good challenge for my fearless husband, maybe, but I wanted to make it down the mountain without eating too much mud.

And I did. And we even went up again for a second run. For Eric and I, that meant another chance to test our skills on the intense trail; for the rest, it meant more Porkslap and pot. By the time we finished that second run, though, there were pink tints in the sky, and the blue shadows stretching across the clearings were a reminder of the three-hour drive we had between us and home. So we waved goodbye to our new hippie friends and headed towards the car.

“Great to hang with you guys!” the owner of the bike shop called after us. He left the group and came trotting up to us, holding out his hand and grinning his big, easy smile. “Next time you’re around, stop in and say hi! Even if you don’t need a bike fixed.”

 

Which is why I think that man is an angel in disguise.

We left the Adirondacks in a hazy, yellow-red sunset, rolling back towards Schenectady and the routine of our people and places there, and we left with a smile and a story. The bike shop owner was part of our lives for less than a day, but I’ll remember him better than some of the people I interact with much more regularly.

I know what you’re thinking… and I can’t say you’re wrong in thinking that. You can tell me that it was the “medicinals” making him so easygoing and kind, or the beer, and you might be right. But I like to think that it’s just him: that his big, crooked smile and joy-crinkled eyes are all his own.

He lives his life with his hands, his mind, and his heart, and because of that, his life becomes a gift to others... even total strangers.

attention (noun) - the action of taking special care of someone or something or some words; the action of turning normal around into unusual and dipping ordinary into incredible

You know those moments when you’re having an ordinary conversation, and then someone says something that just makes you breathless? 
Here’s what it’s like.

Your words- just moments ago walking normally and naturally and boringly across your tongue and off your lips- are stopped in their tracks, wide-eyed, while your heart and mind race on and away, whirling in wonder. The run-of-the-mill phrases just aren’t good enough anymore, because someone has said something that requires more than a casual nicety in response; it requires depth in return. Someone has said something that burns, either beautifully or terribly, and you’re blown away by the power of the statement and by the person the words have revealed.

This happened to me twice over the past week. It was two very different observations; two totally opposite ways of looking at the same thing; two vastly separate ideas about love. And they both came from teenagers.

The words sent my thoughts flying in opposite directions. One extreme struck tears into my eyes with its tenderness. The other made me wince at its casual, unintentional harshness.

But let me interrupt myself to give you a bit of a reason as to why these words mattered to me the way they did. A year and a half of marriage has me in constant, incredulous wonder. I’m try to get my head around what the love Eric and I share is, so whenever this kind of relationship comes up in conversation, my ears perk up. And here’s what I’m learning.

I’m learning that falling in love is like going swimming… sort of. You meet someone you like, and it’s like stepping into a kiddie pool. It’s nice and it’s fun and you splash around think that love is that pool and hey, it’s great! Yay love.

But somewhere along the way, it changes, and the love you’re in isn’t just a kiddie pool anymore, it’s a big backyard pool. It’s up over your head in places, but if you touch your toes to the bottom, you can still wave your arms above the water. And you can easily swim from side to side, and it’s great because hey, who knew that love could be like this?

And then the love has expanded even more, and it’s a lake, and you can glide through the surface or dive down deep or just float in the middle, surrounded and sheltered and supported by the lake-love that you still haven’t come to really know all of yet.

It’s there, floating in the middle of the lake, that it occurs to you that once you’ve explored every bit of the lake, you won’t be done figuring out love yet. Because probably the lake will turn out to be an ocean. And probably after the ocean, it’ll be something even bigger.

So when you look back at the kiddie pool version of your love, you can’t help but laugh, because weren’t you silly to think that that’s all there is to love?

So that’s what has in my head when the first words came hurtling in. Now, I’m lucky enough to work as a youth leader, and because of that, I get to know some really great kids. Some conversations are lighthearted and funny and totally not serious at all... but other times they're deeper. Other times, the easy, casual flow of words turns slow and serious, and it’s less of the kids asking me questions than the two of us asking and answering together.

High school kid: “You know what you said the other day, when I mentioned to you that I sometimes said ‘I love you’ to my girlfriend?”

Me: “Yeah….” And then I wondered out loud for a bit. I’d said that love is tricky to understand, and even though I don’t really get it, I do know that in the end, this kind of love is for marriage. So when you look for love, you should have your someday spouse in the back of your mind. “Do you want her to be the second, or third, or whatever girl you’ve said you love? I mean, it’s not a huge deal, sure… but I know it’s tough for me to think of Eric having said sweet things to other girls.” Even if it was only in the kiddie-pool stage. I’m jealous, okay? Romantic love is supposed to be an exclusive thing; a me-and-you-and-nobody-else thing. Sure, I say “I love you” to my friends, but it means something different. The Greeks really had the right idea with all their different words for different kinds of love.

But back to our conversation. We’re quite for a while, then this guy says to me, “That’s a good point.”

“Well, thanks.” I tell him. I only hope it actually is, though. A year and a half of marriage isn’t a lot to go on. Still…. “You’re a good kid.” I tell him. “You’re more mature than I was at sixteen.”

He laughs, then goes quiet. “I also decided something else.” Another pause. “I want the first time that I seriously tell a girl she’s beautiful to be when I see her on our wedding day.”

“Oh, that’s so cute-” I start. Then-

OH.

What better standard of beauty can a man have than his wife on their wedding day??!

And this from a kid in high school. Wow.

That’s the first conversation.

And then, just a few days later, this happened. A cluster of laughing high school girls had gathered around someone’s pink smartphone. I picked up some of the conversation: “Isn’t he just perfect?” “Look at that face!” (More laughter) “Look at it! What do you think, Kate?” Someone pushed the phone at me. “Don’t you think he’s just perfect?”

I looked, and yes, the guy in the picture sure was easy on the eyes. But if I’m honest with myself, it doesn’t come close to my idea of manly “perfection”… which comes in the form of a blue-eyed boy with a crinkly-nosed smile. So-

“I’m a little biased.” I told them with a laugh, waving my left hand in front of them jokingly.

Then one of the girls looked me right in the eye. “Just because there’s a goalie doesn’t mean you can’t still score.”

“Well, I mean-” I start. Then-

OH.

Why would you want to score against your own team? Against yourself? And since when is love about scoring and winning and losing? Is there any sadder understanding of love than seeing it as a game? Of handling it as a competition, with a winner and a loser…? What does that have to do with floating in that beautiful lake, with being thrilled and cradled and adored?

I am overreacting by normal standards, I suppose. The quip the teenage girl uttered was her youth speaking, her immaturity seizing a chance to be clever. And it’s not that a big deal to tell someone you love them in the kiddy pool stage, or the backyard pool stage, because according to your understanding of love, you do love them. Feelings are always real… they’re just not always right, or true.

But I still think we should pay attention to the words that catch our breath. Words like “I love you”. Words that call into question the “normal” ways of seeing and doing things. I think we should stop and cup them in our palms: shelter them. Bring them close to our eyes, really look at them, and wonder how they became the boring and mundane and cliché.
I think we should question why they cling to us; why they make us wince.

Or why they thrill us so.

already (adverb) - before this time, before that time, before now.

It’s barely November, and I’ve been listening to Christmas music for the past week.

I know that for a lot of people, Christmas music before Thanksgiving is a terrible crime, and even those who don’t mind a little “Jingle Bells” before the turkey comes out of the oven are opposed to it before Halloween has even come.

I know it, because that’s usually me.

When it comes to the seasons, I don’t have a favorite: I just love the way summer cools into the mellow chill of autumn, and the way fall bursts out, then fades into the softened, grey-brown peace before the snow comes. I like the holidays that go with the seasons, each bringing its own mood, its own colors and sounds and smells and traditions. And I revel in each single, tiny moment.

So why is it that this year, I’m already thrilling to the words of Christmas carols? And I’m not even putting up a fight?

I think it’s because of what all the songs say. Secular or sacred, Christmas songs tell stories of expectation, of hopes fulfilled, and of the celebration that follows of those moments of realization.

My heart has been singing Christmas carols because I’m reveling in this gift of easy joy. There are some seasons when laughter comes easily, when your eyes crinkle of their own accord, and when the world speaks to you in gifts and graces. But there are also seasons when the clear-cut road turns to dragging mud beneath you, and your feet are so heavy that the moments of dancing come few and far between.

I am celebrating because I know that there’s mud ahead of me, but also grace, and right now is a moment of grace. Right now I am celebrating the way I want to spin on the wind like the last of the autumn leaves, sing like the unmatchable, silver laugh of jingle bells, and run across lawns buried in crystal feathers of snow.

I’ve come through a season of mud, and yet, from this end, when I look back on that season, all I see is the beauty of our Father’s faithfulness. And that beauty is the beauty that makes me, once again, fall in love with the world.

May grace that is bright, like the red and green of a gaily decorated tree, fill your heart. And may peace that is blue and silver like the holiest of nights fill you during this season of thankfulness, and the coming season of hope and fulfillment.

fall (verb) - to move downward, typically rapidly and freely without control, as in, leaves falling from trees, laughter falling from lips, a mountain bike speeding down a trail

I fall in love on a regular basis. 

Now let me explain that. I’m not talking about romantic love here (although Eric is constantly doing things to make me trip head over heels for him). What I mean is that my heart seems to be perpetually open to the world around me, and it’s always getting caught on different places or experiences or people. Take last weekend, for example, when Eric and I ran away to Vermont together. We camped at the base of Burke Mountian and spent the days biking across green fields and through orange hills, along silver-brown creeks, and under an autumnal rainbow of red and gold and orange leaves.

I fell in love with this place. The Kingdom, they call it.

looking out from "heaven's bench".

It’s not as if I’ve never lived through a beautiful autumn before (I think I've even posted about it once already.) But spring doesn’t lose any of its allure because of the many poems that have been written about it, so I guess the same goes for me writing a second post about fall. Besides: fall in the mountains of the northeast is not something I’ve never truly done before. Yes, I was here last year, and even took some trips into Vermont. But my heart didn’t catch then, because I didn’t get the chance to get to know it. I wasn’t winding through it along the elbows and knees of these slouched, dreaming mountains.

 There’s something about watching a molten sunset through the bones of baring tree branches. Leaves turn sharp and black, sketched in a sharp contrast to the sky that glows even after the sun has fallen behind the mountains. The purple of evening settles over the woods like a fog, and when you scoot closer to your campfire, it’s because you can see your breath in front of you, and your skin prickles with cold. Sleeping is hard, bundled in a little tent under a heavy mound of blankets, but the pale yellow morning makes up for it: that lovely, fallish smell alone is enough to make your heart beat hard and send your mind into full, reeling awareness. Hot cocoa with breakfast may seem silly in the real world, but here, nestled in the crook of the mountains, it’s the best thing you’ve ever tasted. And that’s just evening and morning.

The town of Burke is small, but I think it must double in size on weekends from spring to fall. When we drove down from our campsite in the morning, it was already crawling with bikers in baggies and jerseys. A helmet and a Camelback are natural accessories, and you get used to the sight of mountain bikes with forks that cost as much as your entire bike. It’s less crowded on the trails, but at some of the more popular sections, you can hear the whoops of people ahead of you as they fly around banked turns and over jumps.

I’ve wished I had a GoPro several times, but never felt like I was quite enough of a badass to warrant spending money on one. I would have loved to have one for these trails, though, and not just to record me riding a double black diamond trail without falling off my bike (yes, I TOTALLY did that!). But no: I would have loved one to capture the gorgeousness of the ride.

When we rode through the trees, it was a close-up picture of a fall anywhere, and my soul thrilled to it: the brilliant colors, the crackling smells, the blur of tiny sounds. But it was when we zoomed out, and the trails took us along the shoulders of the mountains, that a strand of my heart slipped out and caught.

The mountains of the east are gentle. Their peaks don’t pierce the clouds, driving snow out of the sky like the western mountains do. They don’t force awe out of your lungs with a sharp gasp, and they don’t make a bold, rocky slash across an entire continent.

Instead, they ripple out softly, bluer and more indistinct the closer they get to the horizon. They draw your breath out gently, curving your lips into an awed smile. The trees that grow on their rounded peaks and sides turn them bronze in the waning season, and the clouds that float unhindered above them cast darker shadows into their folds and creases.

If you could see this and smell this and hear this and feel this, your soul would breathe out a wordless prayer like mine did. Your heart would plant itself in the curving soil of this place like mine did. You would laugh too, like I did, because there is no other way to make yourself a part of these mountains, this season, than with your own expression of joyous giving.

Lazarus (proper noun) - A brother of Martha and Mary whom Jesus raised from the dead; A black-eyed susan, living in a pot on a deck in upstate New York

My first real foray into the world of gardening took place this summer in the form of several orange pots on my little deck. Arguably, this is not really gardening: I didn’t have to pull a single weed all summer, and none of my plants have had enough blooms at any given time for me to justify cutting some for a kitchen table vase. But my hands were gloriously dirty after potting those plants, and we ate many meals seasoned with herbs we picked from the pots on the deck. Also, none of my plants died before their time, and I was even able to get them to re-bloom throughout the summer. So I count it as gardening, and I count it as success.

But for a while, it didn’t seem like it would be. So let me tell you the story of Lazarus.

Laz is a black-eyed susan. I found him sitting drooped next to the building where I work, his roots bundled into a plastic grocery bag, spilling dirt that was more woodchips than soil. He was with some other plants, but since it was late May, none of them were blooming, and he was the only one I recognized by foliage alone. Above him, taped to the side of the building, was a cardboard sign with the word “FREE” scrawled on it with a dried-out Sharpie.

Depressing, right?

So I hefted him up and dumped him as gently as I could into the trunk of my car, trying to ignore the weak flutter of the drying leaves on the other abandoned plants. After I got him home, I went to Lowe’s to get soil, fertilizer, pots, and a few other plants. After all, one lonely little black-eyed susan wasn’t going to count as gardening.

Laz (who wasn’t Laz yet, just “the black eyed susan”) was doing all right in his plastic bag. He wasn’t exactly lively, and he had a few brown stems among his wilted leaves, but he was hanging in there. When I got back I went out and sat cross legged on the deck, with my garden-to-be stacked around me. I dragged the plastic bag off him and loosened up his roots (though they were already pretty limp) and tucked him into the pot, filling dirt in all around so he’d have a cozy home. After a little fertilizer and water, I was done, and I moved on to my other plants. Soon I had a row of pots, big and little, lined up along the bottom of the railing, waving their leaves (and flowers, on the ones I’d bought at Lowe’s) at me. Even Lazarus was perked up for the first time since I rescued him from compost.

That was in the afternoon. The sky was pink and purple- a shy, springtime sunset- when I checked my garden again. The plants were doing fine… except for Lazarus! His leaves- what had happened to them? They weren’t just wilted, they were crumpled! The little dish under his pot had water in it, but he wasn’t soaking any of it up! I slid it out from under him and poured the water over his dry dirt again, and soon he was looking a little better. Relieved, I went back inside to eat dinner with Eric, but I kept an eye on my black-eyed susan all evening. He was still okay when I went to bed, and after I watered my plants again in the morning, he was looking downright healthy. Heart light, I left the house.

When I returned, the sun was high and hot, and Lazarus was dead.

I fingered the dry, wrinkled leaves and browning stems sadly. There was no doubt in my mind that yes, my black-eyed garden rescue project had passed along into flower heaven (he was definitely not headed to flower hell, since I’m pretty sure he could have checked “yes” for each of the Beatitudes). But, because I’m an eternal optimist at heart, I watered his dry soil again. And what do you know? The dead came back to life! Green crept in and chased away the brown from his foliage, and tired stems straightened up.

This was when I decided to call him Lazarus. I was so excited about this verdure resurrection that I told Eric about it the minute he walked through the door. He’s a dear, and made no comment on the craziness of naming a plant (he even laughed over the pun of the name).  And so the newly-christened Lazarus lived, and I was happy.

Until the next day, when he died again. And then I watered him and he came back to life for a bit before the inevitable fourth, and fifth, and sixth (etc., etc.) demise.

I grew resigned to this. After consulting both mom and the internet, the only diagnosis I had was transplant shock, and I concluded that Lazarus was too far gone. I’d tried watering him again and again, but his roots had been dry too long to remember how to soak up any life-giving water… and the hot, early summer days were just too warm.

I banished the useless watering can. Poor, poor Laz.

Later that day, though, something happened. Not to Lazarus, but to the sky. Fat, grey clouds unrolled lazily from where they’d been resting on the horizon and spread themselves out overhead. The air cooled as a whisper of wind nudged the new leaves on the trees. Then, as I watched, it began to rain.

The drops that fell were tiny and soft, hardly more than a drizzle. For almost a week, the lightness of the water kept the grey roads stained brown. It kept the air fresh, making you feel as if you were breathing in Eden every time your lungs expanded. It kept my dreams sweet, infused with the chuckle of rain on the roof.

And it kept the soil in my pots damp.

In general, if it rains for more than two days in a row, I start to get itchy. But this rain was revitalizing, and when those lazy clouds finally decided to roll themselves off and away, Lazarus was alive. Really, truly alive. He didn’t crumple away from the bright new sun anymore, but spread his leaves boldly, greedily using all the light he could suck up. New, baby leaves sprouted, and by mid-July, he was showing off more buds than I thought possible for my scrawny black-eyed susan.

And every single one of those buds opened in the August heat, tiny little suns waving back at the world.

I’m going to try to winter Lazarus, so he can come back again next year… and the year after that… and the year after that (although I’ll need to consult mom and Google again for how to do that). And someday, when I have a garden that’s more than just a few orange pots on a little deck, there’ll be giant clusters of those tiny suns all around the yard in late summer, and vases full of them throughout the house. And if you come visit me then, I’ll give you some to take home for your own kitchen table. Or, if you want, I can dig some up for you to plant yourself. Only, don’t give up if your black-eyed susan pulls a stunt like Lazarus did. Just water him and remember that it probably runs in the family.

He’s just waiting, listening for the insistent, irresistible call to life.

crazy (adjective) - possessed by enthusiasm or excitement

There’s this great song that’s been playing on the radio lately, and every time it comes on I crank up the dial and belt it out, no matter who else is in the car with me. It’s catchy, country-sweet, and makes me think of the boy I love. ^_^  If you haven’t heard it yet, take a listen.

Who doesn’t want a love like that? A love that defies the boring old norm and gives the lovers something larger-than-life? I can’t believe that anybody wants to “settle” when it comes to their love and their life. But for all its talk of passion, it strikes me that our culture does standardize love. The norm for modern relationships takes away all the crazy-all the mystery and fire- and turns love into a practical equation for personal pleasure.

When I listen to the words in this song, I’m hearing an impassioned cry against this standardized equation for relationships. I’m hearing words that are getting at something deeper, a truth about love that is too often overlooked. Take a look at some of the lyrics for a minute:

“The world makes all kinds of rules for love
I say you gotta let it do what it does
I don’t want just another hug and a kiss goodnight
Catchin’ up calls and a date sometimes”

The culture we live in does make a lot of rules for love that aren’t consistent with God’s incredible design.

The world’s rules say that love is cheap. They say we can give love and receive love for basically free, at no cost to us or to anyone else, for fun.
The rules say love is short-lived. They say that love will run out… and that’s okay, because there are lots of other people to choose from when that happens.
They say love is flexible. They say we can adapt it to fit whatever mold we want it to, and whatever it looks like in the end, it’s still the same love.
They say love is calm. They play it safe, and say that it is not an explosive, life-changing, reordering of two individual’s separate realities into one.

But oh, real love breaks these rules! It cracks them, because real love is the most costly investment we can make. It crushes them, because real love is forever, and it doesn’t just reach into the future of forever: it seeps into the past, too. It shatters them, because real love is not equal to liking or desire or attraction or anything else: it’s so much more. And it blows the broken rules “far and wide” because real love is a wild thing: a fierce, beautiful wonder you can’t really wrap your mind around. Not ever, I don’t think.

And there’s more, too. These may be the most insightful lyrics of all, despite their shallow shell.

“I don’t want good and I don’t want good enough…
I don’t want easy, I want crazy”

The rules would say that love is easy.

It isn’t. Not at all. Real love is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. It is also the most worthwhile, but because it’s so hard, the rules dictated by the “norm” say we should skip the struggle and just take the “good enough” love. We should settle for cheap, easy love that comes and goes and never even brushes your heart, let alone possesses it.

It’s likely that I am reading a lot more into this song than the artist intended. But I’ve heard it said that words are shaped into songs and stories and poems in order to hold the things people read into them: they’re not meant to be shallow. And for me, this song holds encouragement, because it reminds me that the world’s “rules” for love are wrong. We were created for wild, crazy, wonderful love.

“Tonight, the midnight rules are breaking.

There’s no such thing as wild enough

And maybe we just think too much

Who needs to play it safe in love?

Let’s be crazy”

again (adverb) - another time; once more

Anniversaries are funny things. To the people they belong to, they are chock-full of feeling, memories, and emotions, so much so that they have to keep a tight hold on them and use little words and shallow clichés to talk about them. The people who observed the original day with its owners may notice it’s coming again with a smile, a card, or some kind words: actions that are sweet, heartfelt, and most definitely appreciated. And to other people, the day is nothing but a date on this year’s calendar. They go about their routine- or maybe break from it- with no extraordinary wonders bursting out of the day. Nothing about it reminds them of an earth-shattering, mind-blowing, life-changing event.

But oh, how incredibly, incredibly sweet the 2^nd of June was this year! The love I thought was so beautiful when I answered “yes” to a nervous question on a starry, snowy March night grew and grew through a year of impatient waiting and hoping and dreaming, and then it was realized in a promise on this same day- a day of joy and laughter and the happiest of tears- just one year ago. And I thought that was its brightest moment. I couldn’t imagine a love that was fuller than that.

But now, another long year has gone by- this one of impatient questioning and rejoicing and learning- and I am amazed at how that love has bloomed. I laugh when I think that I said “yes” to the anxious question on that March night two years ago, without the awareness of this blessing. I shake my head when I think that I said, “I will” on that happiest day one year ago, not knowing how much better it could and would become. And when I think about this dear day next year, and the years and years after that, my eyes fill with tears. Tears of an emotion I can’t name, because I’m imagining something I don’t know yet: the beauty that this love will have become then.