“I can see it, it’s just that my feet feel like lead.”

“Are you tired?”

I am on the phone with my spiritual director.  We are working with a vision where I’m trying to get up a hill – to a house – a house where I feel so safe and like there is no other place I belong but there.  However, I can’t get there.

Am I tired?

I look at all I need to accomplish in the next six months and I feel a tad bit overwhelmed, but I am not tired… yet.

I see my younger self up the hill beckoning me to come to her.  She is full of energy and charisma.  Her hands are waving wildly as she doesn’t understand what is taking me so long to get up the dang hill.

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My sister-in-law called me last night. She just returned from a trip and I started teaching, so we had a bit to catch up on.

"How's work going?" I inquire, because she talked about a promotion right before she left.

"Good, but they might end up moving me to full time. I know you're supposed to 'climb the ladder'...."

I cut her off, "Yeah, whose ladder though?"

"I know right? I lose freedom of my schedule and I'm just not sure I want that, but I do love it."

I hear the wrestling match in her voice.  The part time job which allows her flexible hours and the benefit of three day weekends every weekend might move to more time at the office.  Opportunity is about to knock - or is it?

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I was recently asked by a dear friend to be her daughter's godmother, and not just in the figurative sense. In the case of a tragedy, we are the literal guardians of little Maya. The request came over lunch: two friends eating tomatoes and mozzarella catching up about the last month we hadn't seen each other was about to get a lot more serious.

"So Erik and I are working on our will and we wanted to ask if you and Nate would consider being guardians." She went on to say of course they understood this is a big request and we could of course say no.

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We've been home for a week.  During this time we've had our first taste of summer - literally. We have started harvesting cucumbers, zucchini, just a couple handfuls of raspberries and tomatoes, and, wait for it, two blueberries! Jam making has commenced as well: Apricot, Vanilla, White Wine and Strawberry Thai Herb.  Our lovely and creative housemate, Beth, helped with these and now we take a breather before this weekend's Plum Cardamom followed by a Tomato Sauce Extravaganza in a couple weeks.

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I’m sitting at work, at my desk… my empty desk.  The day has been spent going through paperwork and memory-filled-cards and mementoes from the past five years.   I have sorted through my professional life and what is left to this point sits in an assortment of boxes on my office floor.

I am leaving my job this week. Pandora keeps reminding me with song titles like, Let Go, Opportunity to Cry, Be OK, and Only Hope.  This has been a job I have loved and one that has loved me.  I have worked in student life at Azusa Pacific University for five years.  Five years. In my short life, that is a large amount of time.  The opportunity to work here has launched my career, taught me more lessons than I can count and shaped me into the person I am today.

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One of the worst memories I can still feel in the core of my being is getting in the starting blocks at the beginning of a sprint.  In high school I was a 100m hurdler.  If you know me, then you’re probably thinking, “Huh… that’s funny, she’s pretty short.”  Short but determined.  (That could be a motto for my life).

I loved jumping over obstacles – running in straight line seemed too easy.  Put 10 large objects in my way, and –bam- I had a challenge worth my time. I even held the school record for a few years.

Theme songs from movies and the Frosted Flakes commercial would play through my head as my competitors and I would warm-up, stretch, and entertain our mock starts.  There was always a feeling of anxiety… always.

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I'm sitting in my home office having just gone back to my regular part time job at a local university.  The last three months I have filled in for a dear friend and co-worker while she bonded with her new baby.  I'm trying to get out of my funk (aka writer's block) as I "go back" to my old routine by showing up and writing.... and then starting over again, and again. 

A funny thought dawned on me as I thought about "going back": There is no going back. The last three months have pushed me vocationally, challenged me professionally, and made me start dreaming once more. It's hard to turn those voices off.

Although, it's not hard to want to settle into the comfortableness of predictability.  I am beginning to understand why people settle into a pattern for years on end - there is an ease to it.  And even though each year brings its own excitement and unexpectedness by nature of working with college students, I sense a tug out of the easiness.

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As the palm trees came into focus like angry splinters waving in the heat, I knew I was home. Over the course of the last decade, I have made this land where all kinds of differences collide my place of solace.  Decades are markers of sorts the older you get and I had just returned to Southern California after my 10 year reunion in the Pacific Northwest. It seems like it went by so fast, these 10 years, and I had lived most of them in this dry place where on one side of town it is littered with the small world of movie stars and fancy cars and the other where I dwelt.  That side of town wrestled with issues like social justice, grace, true love, and it is where I felt Jesus show up for the first time in my short life.

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It's July, yet June gloom lingers in the San Gabriel Valley.  As I woke up this morning, subconsciously I pulled a gray shirt over my head.  I realized I am trying to sympathize with the clouds. Everyone, well most Californians, hate that the clouds remain in July as they fantasize about baking on famous beaches. However, today it reminds me of home in the Northwest.

I've been thinking of "home" a lot lately. Probably because my high school reunion is this weekend. The past few weeks I have truly embodied June gloom - a looming gray murkiness over the impending event. Stories from my current friends haunt me as they say their ten year was the worst due to everyone feeling the pressure to prove something or show-off. I don't know... I've never done this before.  So I'm trying to see through the gray, and make something of it, but it's hard.

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At 30,000 feet the world looks like an ant farm. Paths are carved out, territories staked and there are little tiny movements making it all possible. And I am not part of it. For two hours, I have no where to be but right here in the in-between.

I'm leaving behind one of my most sacred places. Every summer I cut ties with most of my life's accessories and travel to a contemplative prayer retreat in the Northwest. I put my email on vacation responder, I leave my computer at home, and I look forward to this place where my cell phone gets no reception. Each day of this week is spent in four hours of silence with 20 other dear souls. As June draws near every year, I crave this time.

It's hard to explain everything that happens there. In the disconnect, I find connection. My soul can speak and sing, my food tastes better and I'm able to be present to all that's around me. In Southern California I can seek these things out, but the culture does not promote it. I have to fight sometimes to make room for my soul.

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