Here Comes the Sun

Winter has stayed a bit too long this year, can't we all agree?

Instead of the silent wonder we felt as we turned our faces up to the sky and first let the wet crystal flakes come to rest on our rosy cheeks, we only remember the muck and slush of the aftermath of one too many blizzards. The back-breaking weight of hundreds, maybe thousands of shovel-scoops thrown to either side of us.

Instead of the novelty of wrapping our necks in soft scarves, the warm invincibility of layers built of jackets on cardigans on Henleys on V-necks, there's only the sharp sting of cold floorboards on the naked, bed-softened soles of our feet as we climb out of bed in the morning.

Instead of soul-warming chai lattes, we think only of rain that falls sideways and scrapes its cold fingers along our bones.

Instead of the glow of family gatherings, we think only of the loneliest moments in our car as we shiver waiting for the heat to work.

Instead of Christmas lights and snow as white as our smiles, we think only of short days and longer nights.

It's like our spirits are covered in a crusty layer of salt. We're tired of it.

But today...today is different. Can you feel it, too?

My breath leaves my mouth in slowly spinning strings of white. They dance and disappear into the cold air. I like to think they'll travel to faraway places, like New Zealand, and come back to me years from now in a warm breeze to say, "You haven't even begun to taste life."

Slight chill aside, the air stirs with something warm, bright, fresh. It smells like evaporated rain, like slow-cooking hope.

And there it is.

The whole sky above slowly fades up from black to pale, pure blue. I look at the horizon, at the edge of the earth where the tree lines stand as the levees which keep all of our angst and worries and stress and longing from spilling out endlessly into the rest of the world. Just above those trees, the sky blooms with deep violet.

Soon, violet will turn crimson. And then it will come:

The sun.

But not like it's come up for the last hundred-or-so days. Not winter sun. This is spring sun.

This is the sun that will plunge its hands deep into the earth and hold them there until the ground stops shivering beneath our feet and begins to feel the relaxing waves of warmth move through its tissue.

I can almost hear life pushing itself out of the ground at the mere thought of it.

This is the sun that will rest its rays on the back of your neck as you enjoy your chicken-salad-sandwich lunch outside for the first time in months.

This is the sun that will set your kids' hair ablaze with gold as you do the important work of absolutely nothing but fun in the backyard.

This is the sun that will come to your window like Peter Pan came to Wendy's and beckon you to fly away on some new adventure, to let your age and responsibilities and cares fall haplessly to the tiny streets of London far, far below.

This is the sun that will weave its way through the barbed wire you've wrapped around your ribs, soak straight through the stone you've laid up around your heart, and cause new flowers to burst out of the barren ground you thought was done with love and hope and life.

Can you feel it like I do?

Can you feel it picking the cold, dead air from your skin?

This is the spring sun. This is hope. This is new life.

Here it comes.

I'm Not Saving Myself

It's 6 a.m. I'm leaving for work.

I walk out of the front door into the morning air. The cold immediately coils itself around my ankles, my wrists, my neck, my face. The breath escapes my mouth like constantly curling fingers. It's mostly dark, but the edge of the horizon has started to burn and glow with the deep red of sunrise. As I make my way to the car, a flash of purple in the midst of all the gray and brown catches my eye.

A handful of spring flowers have popped out of the earth around the mailbox. I stop and stare at them. Even in the low light of dawn, they seem to shine bright. I stand there with the flowers, all of us shivering in the cold, and all of us quietly saying the same thing:

Spring, we're longing for you, desperate for you to come.

***

It's been a long winter--too long. In more ways than one. I don't recall ever needing spring as urgently as I have recently. I'm weary of this season, and I'm ready to move on to the next one.

Speaking of transition, I'm at a weird spot, friends.

Let me be honest--when I got married at 22, there was absolutely a feeling of relief: Oh, thank God I found my person. I do NOT want to be one of those people still looking when I'm 30. Every person who finally meets their love and walks down the aisle with them feels this, too: an overwhelmingly freeing sense that you dodged the struggling-single-person bullet. Come on, married people. You've been there.

I was there. I've felt it. I thought I was in the clear, that my worst fears about being single and alone were all but buried in the grave.

Hold the phone.

I'm in my late twenties, and I'm single again. Back to square one. Much like the characters in almost every single story the boys in my 7th grade classes write, the fear of being single and alone has come back to life, full zombie mode. Trust me--I would love nothing more than to not worry about this, not think about it, put my head down, and focus on how awesome single life can be. (And so much of it can be.)

But I do think about it. I don't live a normal life, but I have normal desires. I don't know how to reconcile those two.

My "bachelor" existence is a unique one--I'm newly single at 29, have a professional teaching career, and am a visible leader at a church of 1,400-plus people--which all means that my life is constantly under the microscope, there's hardly any public place where I'm not going to be recognized, and best/worst of all--people have supreme trust in me. People trust me with the well-being of their kids. People trust me to do my job well. People trust me as a leader. People trust me with their personal and spiritual baggage and journeys. People trust me to do the right things.

It's heavy, man. Every day, I feel insanely blessed to do what I do and have the life I live. And every day, I feel insanely burdened with the responsibility that comes with it all.

Here's a secret: I have no idea what I'm doing or how to handle it.

People who are not me have all kinds of opinions about how I should proceed with my life at this point, especially regarding the love department. If I'm really honest, I have a huge temptation to lift my holy hands up to everyone--with only two fingers raised. Know what I mean? I won't--but there are times I want to. Part of this process has involved me learning how to tune out all the noise, the voices, the opinions, the judgment. Fortunately, I have a tight team of really wise, insightful, and loving friends whom I trust with my life and who remind me what's okay to feel and what I might want to avoid. I owe a great deal to them.

There are also the friends who tell me, "You'll definitely find love again." While I appreciate the heart behind that sentiment, the truth is this: I have no guarantees about my future. Nowhere in life's rules does it state that I'm entitled to a When-Harry-Met-Sally happy ending. Good people are not promised good love lives. That leaves me conflicted. There's a part of me that's excited for the unknown, the adventure of it all. There's another part of me that has a natural desire for love. It's really easy for me to want to find a channel for that desire.

The way I see it, I essentially have three options:

1. Sit around while I hope and pray I find "real love." Which is like watching a pot of water boil. Which leads to impatience, which leads to frustration, which leads to a marathon of How I Met Your Mother, but only the episodes where Ted meets Victoria (a.k.a. depression).
2. Make it happen, Cap'n! I could jump into the first and easiest opportunities that pop up for relationships. The path(s) of least resistance. I could find myself in places I swore I'd never go looking for people (which, for me, is almost everywhere). Or to quote Death Cab, "This is the sound of settling." Bah-bah, bah-bah...

These first two don't sit well with me. The major risk I'd run (and it's not the only one) is this: I'd play into the idea that I should be saving myself, my energy, my creativity, my love for some hypothetical person or situation that may never come along.

It's easy to do. I already find myself doing it. One of my biggest problems is that I take my closest friends for granted sometimes and expend little energy to love them well--I'm short with them, I'm not fully present when I'm with them, I don't ask thoughtful questions or listen to them closely enough, I treat them like they're automatic, like they're a given in my life. I treat them in those ways, but then I think I'll magically be able to pull it all together for some pretend person I'll meet someday.

I'd be wrong.

But there's a better way, a third option, and it's a message that has been slowly sinking in for the last couple of months: Do not save myself for some hypothetical future. Love well now.

I'm prepared for the possibility that I could be single for the rest of my life. It's not what I want, but I acknowledge that it could happen. I'm not guaranteed another shot at romantic love. Heck, I'm not even guaranteed next week or tomorrow. What is guaranteed is today and the people I have in my life right now. Those people--my friends, my family, my coworkers, my students--they deserve everything I have.

I'm not going to set aside love in some reserve account--love gains no interest while it sits. Love is meant to be spent now.

The best thing I can do with my life is to love the people in it well. In every way I know how, with everything I have. There's no time to worry about next week or next fall or 2015. There is only now. I don't want to look back on this period of my life and realize that I spent it worrying and sitting on my haunches, that I wasted months or years longing instead of doing.

I have no strategy to my life other than that right now: love well. Don't hold back. Don't wait for life like it's a delayed train because I'm already on that train, and it's moving fast. I can't worry about where it will take me tomorrow. I want to make sure I don't miss what's right in front of me. Today. Now.

***

I roll the windows of my car down and let the breeze fill my car with warm air. Even through the dark tint of my sunglasses, the sun makes me squint my eyes as it floods my car with light.

It finally feels like spring, even if only for a day. It's enough to make me smile as I pull out of the parking lot and head home. It's enough that I finally feel my bones, my spirit, my heart thawing out. It's enough for now.

The Four Words That Almost Buried Me

I have all kinds of phrases I use on a daily basis. Some I've picked up from friends: "Holy rip." - to be used as an expression of surprise or awe, like during the opening sequence of Gravity. "Holy rip. This is amazing." Also to be used as an expression of disgust, like during the second half of Gravity. "Holy rip. This is not happening."

Some I've picked up from TV shows: "TREAT YO SELF." - to be used to justify spending money without any rational thought, but I usually just say this before I eat an obscene amount of ice cream.

Some I started to use ironically but have now become a legitimate part of my vocabulary: "That's cray." - I don't even notice it anymore; it's that normal.

There's another phrase I started to use, and it was a spinoff of the FML trend:

I hate my life.

It was supposed to be funny. I spill my drink on myself at work (which happens way more often than it should for an adult)--"I hate my life." I forget my keys in the house when I leave in the morning--"I hate my life." The episode of How I Met Your Mother that I'm watching online freezes, so I have to start the whole thing over and sit through the marathon of ads that CBS.com runs--"I hate my life."

You know. The struggle is real. First world problems. Hashtag something-or-other.

But then something strange started to happen. I was going through a rough season. I would go to sleep hoping that I could get to the next day as soon as possible and forget all my troubles. I would wake up not wanting to face the looming mountain ahead of me. I would leave my crowded work place, my crowded church, my crowded friend's living room and find some isolated spot--the bathroom, the porch, the parking lot--place my head in my hands, and tremble until the sorrow that had built up inside finally subsided. I would be driving down the highway when I felt like I had suddenly driven off the side of a bridge and slammed into the frigid arms of the Schuylkill River, and pain and regret swallowed me into blackness.

I would shake my head quickly, like I was trying to clear an Etch-a-Sketch, and found myself saying, every time:

I hate my life.

Those four words became more than catchphrase or a cute joke. They became my truth, my reality, the pen recording my past, the cell mate of my present, and the gatekeeper to my future.

I began to believe them--I really did hate my life. It didn't matter what good was happening. It didn't matter how successful I was. It didn't matter that I had friends who loved me. I hated my life--what power words can have to bury us in the dirt. What started as a joke began to shape itself into reality. I believed those words now. I lived in them. They clung to me like cold, wet clothing, and the more I said them, the more they stuck to my skin.

Sometimes, words may be the only key to unlock the chains other words have placed on us.

I fell under the dark enchantment of "I hate my life" for months before I began to snap out of the spell. Then I received an email from someone who had the power to make my chains heavier or to set me free. Here's what she wrote to me (edited to protect some of the more personal details):

This is what I want you to know--it gets better. One day at a time, you will make it through this...There's no quick fix to this. You're in shock. There's been a renting. Your life has been torn in two and no matter what happens now, you're not the same Paul you've always been. You will get back to being successful, but it's all going to look different, feel different because you're different.   

But that's the good news. When you're ready, you have the opportunity to build bigger dreams than the ones you've had--dreams you didn't know were possible before, dreams as big as the sky. I believe in you.

Winters like the one we've had this year on the east coast--this frigid, never-ending winter--remind me of the startling difference between having the sunlight fall on my face versus being under the shadow of clouds instead. It's the difference between treacherous ice and smooth paths, bone-deep chills and spirit-lifting warmth.

Those words thawed me out and brought me into a spring I desperately needed. They gave me a glimmer of green when the gray crept up to whisper death and despair. I didn't let go of them. I held them close. I let my heart slowly pump them out to every part of my ailing body until even my fingertips and my toes felt warm with them.

I will get better.

I will be okay.

I can build bigger dreams than the ones that have died.

I can dream dreams I didn't even dare to think about before.

I used to be buried alive, but I could feel the sun again. Now, when I lie down in bed, I want to stay up and dream. When I wake up, I can't wait for where the climb might take me that day. Slowly but surely, I've worked the old phrase out of my system and replaced it with one I intend to keep until I've sucked in my last breath:

I love my life.

***

Friends, let's bring life and hope and spring and warmth with our words. To others and to ourselves. And let's do it more often, yeah? It could be the difference between life and death. Thanks to all of you who have been committed to speaking life to me--I'm more grateful than you can know.