He is not invisible when we come alive

“We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she’s known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don’t get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won’t solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home."

[Jamie Tworkowski]

afraid to be happy?

someone told me this summer that they think i'm afraid of being happy. talk about a major blow to a girl who considers herself to be an incredibly happy person. but then, i'm also a girl who weighs a person's words whether they meant what they said or not. i'm a thinker. i love heart-to-hearts and if someone is willing to challenge me, i'll take it.

so am i? afraid to be happy? yeah. sure, i'd classify myself as a very happy girl, and it is rare that a day goes by without someone asking me why i'm smiling or what i'm so happy about. i'm happy with my life - the past and the present, but for some reason i am still afraid of getting my hopes up.

like what if everything is so good because something terrible is about to happen? or what if i let my guard down too much and get hurt? are these irrational fears? i feel stupid confessing them, but at the same time i don't, because i know so many people live in this fear but never realize or admit it. what else, besides fear, would explain why we all stay on the surface so much? or why we have so few people we can truly be ourselves around? it sure seems like everyone is afraid to be vulnerable in one way or another.

i used to seriously hate the word 'vulnerable,' but thankfully i've grown into the word. when i did my ywam dts in maui, my friend ashley and i would cringe when scott, a guy on our team, used the word 'vulnerable' in every other sentence. he would even shamelessly single us out - "chelsea, i really think you need to be more vulnerable." (and i think you need to shut the hell up scott, but i guess i'm not feeling vulnerable enough to say that yet, lucky for you.) he really agitated me (just in case that wasn't already quite clear) and when he got kicked out of our dts for all kinds of misconduct and sent home a week later i was feeling all kinds of smug. his words were inside of my head though, and even though they pissed me off i took them seriously - and i started being more vulnerable.

my hope is that the "you're afraid to be happy" comment will be the springboard for me letting go of even more of my fears. and honestly it already has been. because i want to be fearlessly happy.

don't be afraid to be happy or to get your hopes up. and don't, please don't, be afraid to speak into someone's life. speak now! maybe your words will anger them and you'll never see the positive outcome. like scott telling me to be vulnerable. or maybe your words will be spoken and the outcome won't be what you were hoping for, but there will be another positive outcome nonetheless.

i think we can all relate to the line in "pretty woman" when julia roberts says, "people put you down enough, you start to believe it ... the bad stuff is easier to believe. you ever notice that?" so make sure you speak the positive more than you feel necessary. overcompensate for the bad stuff by saying the good stuff, and saying it again and again. say i love you even if you think they know. tell them they're beautiful, the life of the party, the kindest, the best to talk to, an inspiration, whatever it is that you're feeling. the simplest compliment might be the best part of someone's week. it could boost their confidence or sink into their spirit to the point of altering their destiny. you might never see or know how, but if you never speak up you'll never know at all.

rose and dorothy//susan and chelsea

rose and dorothy on the golden girls could easily be my mother and i in a few decades. that show cracks me up, but not as much as my own mom does. last week on the way home from shopping i don't know what i was going off about, but my mom was laughing and i said, "what are you laughing at?"
"just you."
"which thing?!"
"which thing?! chelsea! you expect me to pick one thing?! i don't have the time or the energy to narrow that down, that's like ..."

shopping with my mom is a delight. particularly the faces and comments when something i try on does not meet her approval. ("i'm just trying to decide if that's asian or pajamas chelsea.") i do not take nearly as much delight in shopping for her. ("well what would i wear this with?" "jeans." "ugh! no! it would look much better with grey!" "mom if you already knew what you wanted to wear it with, WHY are you asking me?" "well i just like to hear your opinion. so you would wear these with jeans? huh. i don't think i like it anyway.") i couldn't ask for a better shopping buddy, she taught me well and i'm so glad that shopping will always be our thing. love you susan!

mongolia

i was about to apply for this AMAZING internship yesterday. a month in MONGOLIA. with all sorts of crazy special permission forms to get signed and warnings from the government to read because apparently it's such a dangerous place to travel to. and desolate - the place you'd be doing research would have no electricity or running water! and they said people with special diets shouldn't bother applying because the food choices are so limited. but you'd get the all-expenses paid chance to do groundbreaking research in an area of the world where very few people have ventured.

i've wanted to go to mongolia ever since 1) i heard that so few people go and because of 2) the theory that mongolians are the people group we can all trace our ancestry to. i wanted to observe them and see what mongolian mannerisms i've inherited. so i was about to fill out the application for this amazing adventure BUT ... it's only offered to university of penn students. way to put that in very small print at the end of everything, sheesh. so i won't be in mongolia this summer after all. which is good because it's also cold there, what the heck was i thinking wanting to live there for a month of summer. and somehow i think the upenn students would be going for much more intellectual reasons than wanting to hang out with mongolians. oh and the research had to do with global climate change which i know nothing about. (and shhh, also care pretty much nothing about.)

as i explore all of the opportunities that i have as a writer i just get giddy with excitement! not only as a writer but a traveler. ohhh the places i'll go! mongolia someday. why not? ireland, scotland, brazil, argentina, california, colorado, oregon, maine, alaska, the grand canyon (yeah i haven't gotten around much of the usa yet, ok? haha), switzerland, italy, tahiti, south africa, france, israel, belize, egypt ... and greece! greece has been at the top of my wish list for awhile. i really should've moved the last item of my christmas list to the top. but i scribbled it at the bottom of the page (yup, i still write page-long birthday/christmas lists in my twenties, are you really surprised?) instead: "plane ticket to anywhere." :)

life is good and there are many more good things to come. i'm so very happy. granted, that happiness will probably be temporarily squelched in a bit as i head to my three-hour night class on 17th century post-restoration literature. barf. but at least it's the last night of that class before finals week ... h-a-l-l-e-l-u-j-a-h for being one semester closer to graduation!

to chelsea, my daughter and friend

i don't write poems, but apparently my dad does. i requested a song, and i got a poem that i'm just tickled with. i am a person who craves compliments and affections, so much so that sometimes i will blatantly ask for or fish for them. ("do you like my jacket?! it's new!") i'm not sure if everyone wants that or if i am overly selfish and insecure. i'm caught in a mini-crisis trying to figure this (among many many other things) out. do i need to quit being so needy, or insist on not settling for less than what i feel like i need? but this poem kindof has nothing to do with that mini-crisis - i was just being silly and wanted a song, and he wrote me this hilarious poem. halfway through he changed pens and it starts to sound like an obit or funeral reading. i think he lost his poetic train of thought, but i'm not picky ...

To Chelsea, my daughter and friend.

She always loved through thick and thin,

through the good and bad things I've done.

She was always there for me, sometimes the only one.

She was as pretty as a beautiful sunset

and had many friends you can bet.

Boys flocked around her by the score,

but she was very choosy because she knew there would always be more.

She was full of questions that I sometimes did not know how to answer.

She always was eager to go along fishing and hiking.

She never gave her mother or I a lot of grief, at least not that I knew about.

No matter how low or blue I was feeling she could always cheer me up.

She was very brave and went to Hawaii all by herself to do missionary work.

She had so many boyfriends she didn't hardly know what to do with them all.

She asked me and I didn't know what to tell her.

I told her to ask her mother.

Well Chelsea, I can't think of much more to say right now than I love you very much and I am proud to have you for a daughter.

the perfect life

i woke up at six a.m. today to register for classes. i am determined to graduate next winter but the school system frustrates me because they barely offer the classes that i need, and even when they do the sections are filled up immediately. which means i send emails begging to be added to classes. and then i go to the classes on the first day and beg in person to be added to classes. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but i really don't want to pay for an extra semester of college because they don't offer the credits they require me to take in order to graduate. i'm a little embarassed to admit that i have a bit of that conspiracy spirit in me and i sometimes view the whole university system as somewhat of a scam, where they are intentionally screwing lots of students over so they can keep raking in the dough ... but that's not a very good attitude for me to have, now is it? :)

so with that frustrating start to my early morning i went to a dull class, then headed to the gym and read a magazine while i biked. let me explain that i LOVE magazines. ever since the days of "american girl" and "clubhouse" i've been hooked. i used to buy magazines at the grocery store even though they were overpriced, because i was worried they'd stop publishing them if no one bought them. that was when the failing economy was freaking the nation out and journalism was supposedly going under, and of course my worst fear was: what if grocery stores stop buying magazines and you have nothing to skim over in the checkout lines?! must. help. economy.

all of that to say, i was pretty content to be reading "self" magazine and pedaling away to my music. i was even happier when i stumbled across an article about choosing to be happy. the author told a story of how her six-year-old daughter came and jumped on her bed early one morning to wake her up and said, "mom. we have the perfect life." this mom wasn't feeling that way with her piles of work to do and a rough year of a near-divorce, death of her parents, and now being woken up at 6am. "dad is an artist and i'm an artist too. you're a writer. and we have the best dog and the best two cats. and we're having waffles for breakfast this morning, remember?"

how true. and how easy to forget. i have the perfect life too.

and sometimes it's perfectly imperfect. i mean am i the only who can't stand those seemingly perfect people? they're irritating as anything. so i imagine that a perfect life would probably be just as irritating. perfectly imperfect for me is complaining about the things that go wrong and being able to laugh at them when you see the looks on your friends faces and realize how crazy you sound. perfectly imperfect is jumping on your bed you're so happy and what do you know, it breaks and you get yelled at. (well whose idea was it to buy me an antique bed in the first place mom and dad? let the record show that to this day i am the only one in my family who does not have an antique fetish.)

it's not the "perfect" memories that stick out. my favorite stories are the ridiculous ones. getting on the wrong bus with my dad and being on the road an extra half hour as we both blamed each other for the error. unintentionally chugging a milkshake on a blind date and being told - "wow, i've never had a girl finish eating before me!" missing the right train stop on the way home from new york with my friends and catching a ride with a man from borneo. getting trained at my first job by my brother and watching him drop a whole angel food cake on the floor, only to put it right back out to serve everyone, mmm. singing off-key with my friends, whether it's "frere jacques" in a driveway at midnight,or "linger" by the cranberries on a rough road trip. there is nothing perfect about those memories but somehow they always make me smile and think, how perfect ...

my brother's wedding

my big brother got married last weekend. november 6, 2010. i was wildly excited for this day but as it got closer and closer the hype might've gotten to me a little. a lot. i banned my mother from talking about the wedding - which she didn't do. i told her that the wedding could only be referred to as "the coconut" because i was so sick of hearing the word wedding - which she actually did. and it made me laugh every time.

what will i remember about this wedding?

i will remember how i couldn't fall asleep for two nights before the wedding because i was soo excited. i will remember waking up the morning of the wedding before my alarm and running downstairs yelling "WHERE ARE THE PRESENTS!?!?!" because it felt like a day bigger than christmas, and my mom just rolled her eyes and said, "only you chelsea." i will remember cindy's sister showing up late to the b&b saying that she had a crazy morning and yet she whipped out a tshirt she made that morning which read: "francis-shank wolfpack." i will remember the bridesmaids traipsing around that morning practicing our high high heels while cindy just seemed to be laughing at us. i will remember how calm cindy seemed and being impressed at how she pulled together such an incredible event.

i will remember how i could've cried at how beautiful cindy looked in her wedding gown and that i was positive colby would cry when he saw her - or at the very least shed a few stoic tears. i couldn't see his face when she walked down the aisle (my favorite part of weddings!), but i don't think that he did. i will remember jon reading from job. i will remember the bee that landed on cindy during the wedding and how i almost jumped out of stance to take the sting, but she remained shockingly calm considering her hatred of bugs. i will remember trying not to laugh while her sisters lost it on either side of me and trying not to fall over in my shoes. i will remember randy mentioning something about difficult times in his message and thinking, 'i hope not, but colby can handle anything.' i will remember how glad i was to walk with dan because he was so much fun. being so happy for colby and thinking if smiles could burst mine probably would. feeling so proud of him and marveling at how good he was at being a groom. i will remember getting a few much needed bear hugs from my dad. i will remember how smoking hott my mom looked and wondering how she had so much energy. (i am contending for her ageless genes - please God?) i will remember gushing about how beautiful cindy looked and colby saying - "she always looks good."

i will remember resenting the groomsmen during outside pictures when they complained about sweating in their suits while my teeth were chattering and my heels kept sinking into the mud. i will remember jess climbing up a hill on all fours. and the photographer saying to joel, "hey uh buddy, don't look up at the sky." (can't wait to see that picture.) i will remember feeling so exhausted at that point that i made a mental note to elope. but then with some wild applause at our reception entrance and a delicious dinner (a hungry chelsea isn't usually a happy chelsea) i got my second wind. i will remember trying to mentally will the day to slow down so that i could make the most of it before it ended too quickly. and thinking '100 people is a lot more than i realize, i don't think i can give a speech after all ...' but doing it afraid anyway and watching my brother and his brand new wife while i spoke and just feeling indescribably happy for them. and thankful for such a wonderful older brother and sister-in-law.

and just in case i don't remember these things, now they're written down ...