Another move you can’t help with.  Another apartment you can’t see.  Another neighborhood you can’t go exploring with me.  Another job you can’t visit.  Another year you won’t know.  Another Malia adventure–oh well, here we go.

Miss you.  Always.  

xoxo.

“Rufus.”  That’s what I’ve decided to name my little plaid carry-on.  It has a ring to it, like that of a faithful companion.

Now, Rufus has been back and forth and up and down coasts with me this past summer.  He’s put in scores of hours and miles of travel and has been a trooper through all of the TSA examinations I’ve subjected him too.  I’ve greatly appreciated his company.  There’s no doubt, he’s been good to me.  However, there inevitably comes a point in every young vagabond’s life when she needs a little bit of space from her suitcase.  Or a lot of space.  Closet space, actually.  And that time has come.

Dear Rufus, I’ve had enough.  I can’t do this anymore.  It’s me not you.

Now as I gear up for one more move of what I hope will be the last one for a while, I look back on this last season of constant travel and see another kind of baggage that I’ve been carrying around with me.  This one, though, is not the kind that weighs me down but actually imparts strength back to me.  It’s been the seat to my weary body, the pillow to my heavy-eyed head, the Mary Poppins bag for my every need including ones I didn’t even know that I had.  It’s been and is my support system, and it’s all of the people that I love.

It’s all of the people that love me.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said,

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.“

And so to the beautiful in my life, the ones whose food I have eaten, couches I have crashed, lives I have interrupted only to leave with my own bags overflowing with encouragement, thank you, thank you, thank you.  I don’t know what else to say, save for the fact that I would not be who I am today had my life not divinely intersected with yours.  You are my blessings.  You are the beautiful I carry around with me, always and gladly, and I have the adventures that I have not because I’m trying to get away from something terrible but because I anchored to something wonderful.

In a season of so much change, your love is my constant.

Thank you again and a million times over.

May the Lord continue to bless you and keep you.  May the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you.  May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace that you may continue to be a blessing to others.

Remembering the elation of finishing the other house last year, the girl continued to pound away with the increasingly heavy hammer, back and forth and back and forth, to the background noise of the drill  saw and the forthcoming delight of finishing this current house.

She paused.  Straightening out her fatigued back and stretching, she looked around at the other workers and their respective projects.  It all seemed so chaotic, though strikingly beautiful and organic in the entirety of its disarray.  There were frames with no walls, windows with no panes, piles of heaping wood with no labels or indications of what they were to become.  It was all very much like a great jigsaw puzzle of life-size proportions, in which only the contractor could make sense of and approach with such confidence and composure.  To the girl, all she could see was that there was still a lot of work to be done.

That being so, she knelt down once again to her own  project and began pounding away.  She would finish her panel the bossman had asked her to do.  She didn’t know what would become of it or where it would go, but she would finish it.  For she knew that when the whole thing was completed, it would make sense.  Somehow.  Someday.  And soon enough.  And wherever that panel would ultimately lie, on the outside to be seen or on the inside to support, she knew her efforts were and would never be in vain.

And so she continued to work.

Wake up, dejected Body.  Look alive.  Stretch those limbs.  Wiggle those toes.  Warm up that sense of hope and be of good cheer.  A miracle has happened.  And it’s you.  You are the prized possession, the culminating masterpiece of a world (and then some)-renowned Artist who only creates, never duplicates.  Your exquisiteness, therefore, is harbored  in the fact that indeed you are one of a kind.  Now some may call you “different,” but He calls you His “marvelous workmanship.”  May you learn to give credence to the proclamation that He simply calls you His.  So now get up, beautiful and unique and enabled Body.  Look alive.  Because you are.  Rise up, I say, there’s work to be done.

Sometimes I write because I want to believe.  Sometimes I write because I already believe.  Other times I write because the journey from the former to the latter is so overwhelming that I don’t know what else to do.

I’ve had dreams, and I’ve had the proper upbringing along with just enough confidence and/or craziness (call it what you will) to boldly approach them.  I’ve had opportunity whet my artistic appetite, and I’ve also had rejection and a whole slew of other circumstances try to wet my ambitious flame.

But thank you, Lord, that through it all I’ve had the most wonderful family, friends, and mentors who have constantly pushed me to keep pushing on.

So here I stand once again, a little island girl in a bustling city of strangers, as I stick my head back into the huddle I had such a hard time penetrating last year.  Only this time, I find out that the very thing everyone is crowding around is dead.  That’s not to say that everyone sees what I see.  Rather in a weird and sci-fi way, the lens through which I now look at this once “highly-coveted dream” has changed.  Be that blame on the lens or the looker, something’s different, for what I used to desire, I don’t anymore.

It’s all very much like that one New Year’s Eve when I realized that I didn’t actually like apple cider (after how many years and cupfuls?) even though I love apples.  I just always drank cider for novelty’s sake.  Currently with dancing, I have likewise realized that I don’t really desire a career in or a paycheck from the industry.  I just always aimed for that because of supposition’s sake.

Now I believe the following phrase is attributed to Gandhi, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  I like to take it a bit further (or back…way back, because he’s Gandhi) and say, “Be the party you wish to be at.”  Why not?  Why not have my own dance party full of life and exuberance and not condemnation and critique?  Why not have my own dance party full of self-expression and not rigidity, of beauty and not booty, booty, booty, booty rockin’ everywhere?  Why not dance because it surges throughout my body and soul and not just because it’s what people expect me to do?

Granted, I doubt my tweak on Gandhi will make it onto any bumperstickers or coffee mugs in the near future, but it’s my party and I’ll dance and not serve apple cider if I want to.  I’ll dance if no one’s watching.  I’ll dance if everyone’s watching–and judging.  I’ll dance, so long as God grants me breath, because it simply gives me joy.

Photo Credit: Brad Elliott of Westmont College