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.