where have all the blog posts gone?

Cue that one Paula Cole song. Which is funny, because I've been listening to this:

I'm sorry for my absence. I'm actually not sorry as much to you, my sweet readers (or lack thereof), but more to myself. I love this little space. I write in it because it's my way of throwing open a window and breathing in fresh air. Which means that I have spent a fair amount of time twiddling my thumbs, wasting time, dreaming of the written word and not partaking in it. I'm not even reading very much. It's like my soul is tired.

I know, that's terribly dramatic, but actually not far from accurate. These last 9 months (how has it really been 9 months since I last wrote?) have been so hard. How do you halt a blog in the middle of its frivolity (of course it has had its moments of depth, but let's be real here...recipes and DIYs aren't really of soul-bearing nature) and talk about the death of my sister...and then pick the happy-go-lucky back up again? Well you can't really. I mean, I care about all these things. I care about my paragraphs about sweet nothings and my long drawn out ramblings about life. They're all so relevant, because dammit, life is NOT happy-go-lucky OR super emo all of the time. It's both, and.

So I want to resume, which is why I'm typing again. Besides the fact that I love it, my sweet sister would be disheartened to know I had pushed it aside. I'm thinking of giving her a different title though (the blog, I mean. She's a girl.) Suggestions? 

Since I last wrote, I have picked up and moved with my ever-loving babies to Atlanta, Jaw-gia where one of my babes is working a big ol' job (right outta grad school at that, clap, clap clap), and I'm working a...job. Making a little coffee, interned at a magazine, volunteering with a start-up biking magazine, sleeping a lot and loving on my sweet furry boothang. 

said boothang at the park

I am learning to live without my sister. I think by living in separate cities for most of our lives, I assumed her death wouldn't hurt as bad as it has. I mean, there isn't this constant reminder of her all over my house or on the street corners. She was 18 years older than me, so we didn't even share many of the same memories. Despite that, she was such a big part of my life. She was one of my good friends. My second mom. My counselor. One of my biggest fans. I think in many ways I knew how much more loved I was by my Creator because of how LIKED I was by my sister. She lavished. She encouraged. She spoke truth and wisdom in some of my darkest places, including the darkness of her illness. Some of my greatest joys was being able to do that for her when she was struggling. In the last two months of her life - when I had no idea she was that close to the end - she wept with me like I had never seen her weep and talked about how tired she was and expressed, "how did we get here? How am I already here?". And all I could do was cry and sing "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" (NO idea where that song came from) because I had no clue what to say. Even in that sorrow - because sorrow is the only word for what we were experiencing - the bonding moment of singing and inviting Jesus into where we were - brought us even closer. I've thought about that time over and over and over, especially when I'm sitting in that same spot on her bed when I'm at her house.

me, my sister's kids and my mom at Christmas

I miss her. And that's how I'll begin this blog again. My new year's resolve. A little piece of my heart is missing, but I really want to keep moving. More people in my life will be lost, more tragedies will turn our world upside down, I will still struggle with writer's block, and yet writing is just the most poignant way to get through it. Love to you all from my living room floor in front of my yet-to-be-taken down tree...to yours. 

Happy Christmas and merry 2015!

P.s. This is refreshing to look back on. I feel basically the exact same way. And I'm so glad I hugged my sister tighter.

back to business

Whatever that means. The times they are a changin, Monsieur Dylan says. The past two months I have been sitting in a boat on choppy waters. Philip sits with me. Our boat has not faced any particular direction, and it is rocked by imminent change. Where is this boat going? we think. Half of me doesn't care, because my heart is so sad that my sister is gone. But the other half is jumping from foot to foot like I used to do as a little kid when I needed to go the bathroom but refused to stop playing. Eeeh adventure, what's next, what's next, what's next! Some of my sadness has been suppressed by job hunting and then house hunting. When our boat turned south toward Geawgia, the logistics of everything kept me busy, making plans, giving my two week's notice, finding a place to live, traveling for anniversary and summer...We moved down south on Sunday with a full moving truck, finally secured a place to live on Tuesday, moved in on Wed., and then I went back to DC on Thursday morning to stay with a friend and finish out my last couple weeks of work in the office.

When the boat changed directions, our hearts did too. We began researching Atlanta, google-mapping distances to friends and family and the beach. So arriving back in DC yesterday was hard. When hard things like moving or losing someone happen, your heart begins to embrace something new and find a new happy place.

When I moved from TN to DC, my sister told me she could not wait to see what God was going to do. I had NO earthly idea what career path I should take, and I was mostly resigned to an eternal destiny/fallback of barista-ing. But then a new job fell into my lap with lots of possibility, and my sister just smiled and said, "See? He takes such good care of you." What an encouragement.

After arriving on a bus from Atlanta after 13 hours, the only thing I wanted to do was go running, and after I arrived at my destination, I promptly plopped my suitcase down on the floor, unpacked my running shoes, and departed. As I ran in this familiar territory, literally on my old stomping grounds (which I'd had until this last Sunday for the last two years), I felt sad. Running through Lincoln Park, I missed my dog who I brought to this park all the time to play. As I ran towards the Capitol, emotionally exhausted from all this change, I realized what was possibly the hardest thing about this move. My sister wasn't here to see this new phase of life. She wasn't here to walk me through it, to assure me that even though I'm quitting my job in DC that I'll be fine in Atlanta. This city - DC - is last place I lived when she was alive, and that made this city both heartbreaking while also comforting. I remember where I was when I got those phone calls from her and when we talked and talked about how she was doing. DC is a painful place to be and a