She always was the adventurous type.

Gathering up the bottom hem, she bunched her loosely draped skirt so as not to get caught on any wayward branches.  Trampling over brittle twigs in her brown slouchy boots, she ventured deeper and deeper into the forrest as her house, her safety and security faded into the background.

“What will today’s adventure bring?” she thought, “A new type of flower?  A never before seen kind of butterfly?  A cookie factory run by elves in the trunk of a tree?”  All thoughts and possibilities fluttered about in her whimsical imagination just like the butterflies she fancied and hoped to see.

Farther inward she trekked through the unfamiliar, fueled by both the most intense eagerness and care.  She stopped.  She looked.  She listened.  The rustling leaves whispered sweet secrets to her as she took refreshment in their shadows.  She could feel it.  She was close.  She was onto something.

Then all of a sudden, there it was!  Right there!  A discovery far beyond anything she had ever known or could even begin to liken it to.  Something wildly beyond belief and yet there in front of her–her discovery.

And with it came the most spectacular high of beholding something so new and so astonishing and so wondrous and otherworldly, but also with it, the most maddening frustration that not a single soul would ever fully know exactly what she was seeing and experiencing, regardless of how articulate her descriptions or persistent her efforts were.

And though less from a voluntary spirit and more of an objective lack of other options, she cautiously placed the discovery into the basket of her mind and memoirs and continued on, every future find to follow in the same manner.

After all, this was her adventure.  Herein was being penned the story she would have to live with for the rest of her life. And with time pushing forward as a relentless beast, she had no choice but to proceed one step in front of the other–right, left, right, left, right, left–just her and her basket and a hope that one day someone might know and appreciate the contents inside.

“When you’re with someone else, you share each discovery, but when you are alone, you have to carry each experience with you like a secret, something you have to write on your heart, because there’s no other way to preserve it.”  [Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines 57]

When I grow up, I want to be just like DAISY–confident, courageous, and doing life with a smile on my face and a song on my lips.

Daisy Love Merrick is my former pastor’s 7-year old daughter who is battling cancer for the third time in three years.  Now though I have moved 2,500 miles away and plopped myself into a world of new, some things will never change.  The storm will pass.  The sun will come up in the morning, and our God will always be good and sovereign and worthy of praise.  Now as for this little beauty right here, I will keep on praying for her and the Merrick family and would kindly invite you to do the same.

“The other day, Daisy was looking at our globe, spinning it around.  She started kissing it as it spun, over and over…We asked her what she was doing, and she said, ‘I’m kissing all the people who pray for me!'”

Be it the news we want to hear or not, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Cue Friday.  Enter Malia stage right, back in Santa Barbara–in the place and with the people who will always have and hold a big piece of her heart.

Picking up at the scene of graduation, she gazes into the eyes of loved ones she has not seen in a year.  She beholds their dear face so close to her own and senses within them an extraordinary amount of growth.  She can’t fully decipher all of the details, and yet she hears and understands perfectly the stutter of their hearts.  How is that?  Well, because hers is stuttering too and yearning to know everything about the other and to be known in the same.  Thus as all words fall, fail, and fade into the background of inadequacy, Malia and the other actors spend their short time together in a long embrace, their friendship reaffirmed once again.

And so concludes the scene as all exit into their separate wings and prepare for the next, Malia to act again with some, some more than others.  And though at times she wishes she could do every scene with every actor, she knows that that’s not possible and henceforth takes comfort in the fact that in the end, after the Director takes the stage, there’s going to be a humongous cast party to follow.

It’s going to be one heaven of a party, and she can’t wait.

In and out.

Ball in.

And so begins the fight for the crucial fourth quarter.  She can rest after the clock strikes 0:00.  But for now she must fight, finish well, and finish strong, for never again can she make a difference in this game and as it will go down in the books.

Photo Credit: Jessica Fairchild [jessicafairchild.com]

Dear Daddy,

Today I lost it and cried in a coffee shop while listening to “For Good” over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.  There’s just been too much going on.  I can’t handle it anymore.  I need to talk with you.  I want to hear your thoughts.  I so direly long to hear your voice.

I miss you.  I miss you.  I miss you.  

Dear DADDY who art in heaven,

I need you for everything.  I trust you with everything.  May will be done here on earth as it is in heaven.  Amen.

Dear wonderful people whom I love,

I thought I’d retire my cryptic and encoded entries for the night and simply give you a what’s-up-with-Malia moment.  The fact that a couple of you have expressed concern over the fish story, may or may not also be a factor.  Hah.  You all are the best, and I love you.

Anyway, it’s been quite the week…year?…two years?…and everything came to a head in the last couple of days.  So much so, that after an intensely frustrating shift at the cafe, I chopped off my hair (to shoulder length) on a whim.  WHOOPS.  Then after an intensely frustrating couple of shifts at the store the next day, I wrote the admittedly morbid fish story, which in retrospect…a bit dramatic?  Perhaps.  I get that now.  Still, there’s only so many T-shirts one can fold and racks one can size before he or she snaps and writes a terribly melodramatic short story.  Obviously, for me, that number has been exceeded.

Now apart from some other nuances that I don’t care to get into right now, one of the main themes in that story is that I’ve been feeling it in my body and in my soul, the adverse effects of not dancing.  After all, that is what I came to New York to do, but I’m not doing it. The dance community, furthermore, that happens to be all around me is one of the most (if not the most) vibrant in all of the world, and I’m not a part of it–yet.  What a tease.

I’m trying to do my best, though, to soak up the seasons.  I won’t be working at the store and cafe forever, which is encouraging to think about and helps me complete each day with urgency.  Lately, it’s been waning.  I’ve been tired, so tired, and I don’t just mean physically.  Still, I recognize and am trying to appreciate all that I am gleaning from these  seemingly unavailing jobs.  It’s been a bit much for this introverted gal, but then again, growing experiences wouldn’t be complete without growing pains.

This season has not and will not pass by in vain.

Now at the end of the week as I sit in my PJs and begin my Sabbath, I reflect back on the untold extremes the last couple of seasons have brought.  I remember the good with the bad, the laughter with the pain, and I am reminded that the safe story is never the interesting, exciting, or worthwhile one.  To that end, it is my prayer that God would write me a story that’s out of this world!  Please and thank you and amen.

Sincerely,

Malia.