Ode to Oregon

We were driving along the coast, heading back to campus after our first date (well, pseudo-date since neither of us would admit it was one until much later), and I specifically recall the conversation in which we shared our dreams for the future. I wanted to book it to Latin America as soon as possible and work with street children. B was looking to go into investment banking and live in Oregon. I remember thinking, We have a problem...

I could never live in Oregon. Ew.


Dear Oregon,

My deepest apologies. I rescind those hastily made judgments of long ago. This is me eating my words.

Time and life, they change things. This past weekend, pretty much all that ran through my head was, "I would love to live here." Perhaps it was the lush shades of deep green everywhere that surrounded me in a perpetual canopy of serene tranquility. Or the rocky caves that bring you right under a sparkling waterfall. Or the rain and moody climate that become almost romantic when you spend most of your waking days in a scorching inland city of brown and dust. Or maybe it is the fresh nigiri the size of my cell phone that melts divinely on my tongue just long enough to savor yet leave me craving more. Or the warmth of strangers who smile and send jolly greetings simply because I passed them on the street. Or the enigma of a chic city downtown that somehow manages to remain relaxed and unhurried. Or Powell's palace of a bookstore and its delightful 8oz. cappuccinos. Or a basketball team and free chalupas every time they win at the Rose Garden.

I confess your eighty-seven feet of snow this past winter and I are still working out our differences. Winding up an icy road while holding our breaths for fear that the slightest exhalation will send us veering into on-coming traffic is not quite how I picture an ideal death, but I suppose snowball fights, frozen skate parks, and snuggles under a warm blanket when the weather outside is frightful are otherwise worth it.

And I will concede, you make some really delicious doughnuts and to be honest, that's about all the convincing I need. Until we meet again.

Warmest Regards,
Lo

Quente.

It is 8:06pm, and I'm wearing thin plaid pajama boxers and zero sleeves. My window is wide open, the fan is set on the highest, most violent setting, and yet here am I, generously glazed in a salty film, soaking through all the layers I have not. The photographs that normally march in ordered lines on my wall curl and peel haphazardly off their blighted blue background. The really unlucky ones lie in a defeated, mangled heap. My plastic green cup of water fresh from the fridge has instantly boiled to lukewarm. The box of chocolate treats I quietly snuck upstairs has morphed into one huge rectangular pool of liquid brown. My bangs and baby hairs cling frantically to my damp forehead. My cheek tickles as a rogue drop escapes, winding a rivulet. My red-framed glasses slide down the slippery bridge of my freckled nose every too many seconds. Pushing them back into position is an effort more futile than shoveling snow in a blizzard. Snow. Ah, lovely, lovely snow...




It's hot.

Chris Tomlin was on to something.

Loneliness is a strange thing. On Friday nights and all day Saturdays, I despise it with a passion as I lie listlessly on my bed having exhausted every activity that could possibly make the legs of time reluctantly put one foot in front of the other. I become desperately repulsed with claustrophobia of too much space and too much of my own glaring solitary presence. But then when I find myself in the overwhelming, puzzling midst of a crowd, every nerve and instinct in my body retracts, consciously choosing, frantically clinging, to loneliness. In my extreme introversion, I revert to an isolation that is to a point flat out rude. I bluntly reject advances, notices, the very things I so recklessly crave when I am trapped at home and all the world out carousing and caressing their company.

What gives. It's been a rough and tumble of a month, and God has been teaching me a paradoxical number on self-sufficiency and dependency, humbling my infatuation with attention. Well, sort of. I simultaneously lust after it and am repulsed by it, tangled in a weary web of discontent. It is an empty feeling. But dramatics aside, I am conscious that this is God drawing me, the reluctant, prideful child, to Him because He knows what I really need. To rest in His presence when I am on my own, to bask in His unconditional love when I'm drowning in the hoi polloi, and above all, to realize that Jesus is who I need and He is more than enough.

More than enough.

When everything falls away, He is still standing there, waiting, ready to overwhelm me with all my heart cries out for. It is a stark reminder of the finite limits of humanity. Everyone will fail or fall short at some point, as I myself have surely proven to the world. But Jesus--He is perfection, He is the wholeness of extroversion, the satisfaction of introversion, and He is constant. His love is steady and it does not flicker in the face of disgust or desire or moral quagmire. He is truly everything my heart needs, and more than ever, I am learning that He is more than enough.

Coffee headaches, earthquakes, friendship breaks.

It's peculiar how some things in life can be simultaneously all of a sudden and a long time coming.

I'm tired today. I want my face buried deep in a familiar shoulder, my hand secure in another, a graze across the temple, and quiet reassuring murmurs that somehow everything will be alright.

I write...

entirely too much of my mind on paper. But I find there are very few activities in life that bring me closer to living mine abundantly than doing just that.