#LiveTogether: Hide and Seek

This post is the first in a series on relationships called #LiveTogether (and if you followed up with "Die Alone," then you have watched Lost and are my best friend) which will cover all kinds of relationships--romantic, platonic, familial. I hope it'll be fun, funny, heart-wrenching, hope-giving, and eye-opening.

***

On our first date, we played Hide and Seek in a Super Walmart.

I was nineteen and didn't have a car. She picked me up in her dad's worn down, small-size Chevy S10 pickup. As soon as I shut the rusting door, her perfume danced around my head and slipped smoothly into my nostrils down past my lungs, spun circles around my nerve endings to the soles of my feet and floated all the way back up to the hair follicles on the top of my head.

She looked at me and smiled. Even in the dim orange tint of my apartment's parking lot lights, she lit up in my mind like a hungry fire and burned an image there--long, feather-like earrings and waterfall bangs framed her face. In the dark, brief gleams of light flashed from the middle of her shadowy eyes, her speck of a nose ring, her unbalanced smile, and the metal loop in her lip.

The air was no warmer than 40 degrees, but all she was wearing to guard herself from the cold was a thin, black blazer. Its sleeves stopped just below her elbows, which made sure I could see the large, turquoise beads shaking and rattling around her wrists. I had stepped through the crusty, outer crust of a country pickup truck and found a rich, elegant, caramel center inside.

It was like happily drowning in a pool of rare, century-old wine.

And then we headed to Walmart.

To play hide and seek. Because that's what kids in a college town do. (To my credit, it wasn't the only place we'd go that night--there would be dinner, there would be music, and there would be a drunk guy mooning us. What a night.)

 As we walked through the wide, toothless mouth of Walmart's automatic double doors, I was ready for what my wiry, circus-like body was born to do--hide in really weird places.

I hid first. I felt good about it--I could set the bar high, leave a good impression. My clearly yet-to-be-developed brain was convinced a girl could be wow'ed by my hiding skills. She had trash talked me earlier, bragging about how awesome she was at this game.

Nonsense, I thought.

I left her, with the smug smile of arrogance on my face, to count to sixty somewhere between the racks of extra-large men's camo gear and the wall of Hanes socks. I jogged down the aisles, snapped my head from side to side, my eyes pinging in every direction, zipping like hummingbirds, looking for the spot.

I don't remember exactly where I hid. It doesn't matter--she found me faster than a mom of four could find the Snack Packs on sale. For years, as I investigated the mystery of how she found me so quickly, she would only say, "I'm that good."

Now came her chance to hide, and mine to redeem myself. Each second I counted, my body temperature seemed to rise. By being found so quickly, I identified with my Korean ancestors' shame when they tarnished the honor of their families. I gathered myself and narrowed my eyes with determination as I rattled off the final seconds before my hunt began.

I marched in swift strides, moving quickly underneath the fluorescent lights and spherical cameras hanging from the ceiling. Toys aisle. Not there. Bikes. Not there. Baby stuff. Not there. Electronics section. Not there.

Of course--the garbage bins! So easy.

I looked behind them, inside them, around them. Not there.

The sweat of pressure began to seep over the lip of my forehead. Oh no. This can't be happening. Everything would have been fine had we simply gone to dinner and started our night there. But no--I just had to agree to begin our night in the land of broken dreams: Walmart. Minutes disguised themselves as hours in my head passed as I poked my head in between shelves and ripped open racks of clothing. Exasperated, panicked, and desperate, I started to backtrack my route through the store. Still nothing.

And then:

“Paul!”

I heard her voice ring out. I spun around. And there she was.

The baby stuff. The baby section where I had already looked--she was crammed on the bottom shelf behind some cribs. That I missed her on my first pass, I’ll never forgive myself. She shimmied out, and I thought her head might be cocked to one side permanently from having held it in that position for the eons of my fruitless search.

“You suck at this,” she said. “I told you I’m the best.”

After that, we left. We ate. We listened to music. We began. We kissed. We fought. We strayed. We came together. We journeyed for a long time. We parted ways.

As I look back on it all, I'm not sure that I ever really found her that night in Walmart. I'm not sure that our game of Hide and Seek ever ended.

For years, I traced and retraced the same steps through those scuffed aisles. I called, "Olly olly oxen free." I sat down on the floor to wait.

I was forever found, but never finding.

***

Feature photo ©2010 Sylvia Sala | Flickr

How a Heart Comes Back Together

For some of us, heartbreak comes like a summer thunderstorm. It pounces on us, hammers down heavy drops for a furious few minutes, and passes, leaving us stunned.

For some of us, heartbreak comes like heavy snow on a winter night. It coats everything in white and convinces us for a short while that all is beautiful and tranquil until the weight becomes too heavy for the limbs and lines, and there is breaking and collapsing and crashing.

For some of us, heartbreak comes like drought. We soak in the sun, and...

slowly...

slowly...

slowly...

...our lakes and rivers recede, our throats feel like sand, and we shrivel, and shrink, and crawl to a stop.

For me?

For me, heartbreak was like hurricane season. I came to expect it, anticipate it, brace for it. I lived in constant fear of it. Before I had even finished the repairing and remodeling from the previous season, the winds were upon me (again). The roof was ripped off (again), the basement took on water (again), and I began the work of recovery (again).

Year, after year, after year, after year.

After one too many storms, my home, my heart, lay strewn about in pieces amongst a haphazard scattering of cracked mementos, splintered trust, collapsed vows, and water-logged years.

If you've experienced heartbreak, you've experienced it in your own way, I'm sure. How long we stay in it, how we cope with it, how we recover from it all varies. Mine honestly feels like ages ago. Another life, almost. Somehow, my heart came back together. Here's how it happened, for me:

It was a lot of angry questions and, "God, why have you forsaken me?"

It was a white-knuckle grip on any strands of hope I could find.

It was listening to people who didn't know me well say, "You haven't done enough. Fight harder." It was listening to those who know me best say, "You have done enough."

It was knowing my friends were shedding tears when I had sworn to stop shedding them.

It was drowning in a flood of emails and text messages that said, "I will wade with you," "We believe in you," "We will hurt and heal with you," and "We love you dearly."

It was the extra few foot-pounds of pressure in the hugs people gave me.

It was putting my head down and throwing myself into work and grad school.

It was reaching out for help when I became paralyzed with indecision about work and grad school.

It was choosing to celebrate my friends as they got married and adopting their joy when I felt like I had none of my own.

It was a thousand other little celebrations, mine and others'.

It was sitting in a counselor's office and hearing him say, "Looks like the dreamer in you hasn't died after all these years."

It was lines from songs, like "Nothing is wasted..." and "A better life is waiting..." and "You've held your head up / you've fought the fight / you bear the scars / you've done your time..."

It was distracting myself with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, Feedly, and everything else bright and blinking.

It was turning everything off and listening to the sound of my heart coming back together.

It was giving up the security of relationship. It was agreeing to the possibility of being single forever, deciding to not settle out of fear of being alone, committing to live the fullest life possible.

It was experiencing God's goodness in it, through it, and because of it.

All that to say, it was some combination of incredibly hard work and overwhelming grace. Gritty determination and utter helplessness. Intentional steps and blind wandering. Daydreams and harsh reality. Company and solitude. Joy and grief.

It all worked together, we all worked together, to rebuild my heart.

We built it bigger this time. More square footage. On higher ground. Instead of reinforcing it with more concrete, instead of erecting walls and barbed-wire fences, we put in floor-to-ceiling windows. We built it to be open.

It took a community. It took everything, all I had, and it took all of you.

Thanks for that, friends.

From deep within my reconstructed heart, thank you.

***

Feature photo ©2012 Nicolas Raymond

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.

Warning Lights

Relationships are like cars.

You laugh, but it's true. You know where else you'd hear something like that? The old show Home Improvement. (Remember that show? So great, right?)

I remember an old episode of the show called "Nothing More than Feelings." (See the bottom of this post to watch the first portion) In this episode, Tim Taylor's wife, Jill, ignores the oil light in her car, which subsequently leads to the engine being shot. She doesn't realize this, of course, until Tim goes to the garage to move her car before he leaves for work. Here's how the dialogue goes after Tim comes back in from the garage, clearly miffed:

Jill: Tim! You're still here? Tim: Oh yeah. How long's the oil light been on, Jill? Jill: Oil light... Tim: The oil light. Next to the speedometer, a little red light with the oil can on it? Jill: Oh, that thing. I don't know. Two or three days. Tim: Two or three days?! It's a warning light--didn't it occur to you there might be a little problem? Jill: I thought if there was a problem with the car, the light would get brighter or there would be a buzzer.

As sad as it might be to know how many of us have similarly neglected our cars, I wonder how many of us are like this with people in our lives.

Someone told me once that we're like vaults. When someone does something to show they care for us, it's like dropping money in the vault. When we're neglected or ignored, we feel a gnawing because our vault is low. It's an okay metaphor.

But I want a metaphor that rocks my face. Like the car metaphor. I like to think we're all like cars who aren't in mint condition, who need constant maintenance. Our oil leaks or burns off, and so we need to replenish the oil or else risk the engine.  Losing me here? Let's turn to Tim Taylor for his explanation of why oil's important to a car:

Tim: Inside of a car is an internal combustion engine composed of many precision parts running at a high RPM. High RPM produces friction. Friction produces heat. Heat is dissipated by lubrication--OIL. When the car doesn't get the oil that it needs, it tends to seize up into a ROCK...We now own a four-thousand pound, four-door boulder.

We are each unique beings, running our own unique engines, going about our lives at a high RPM, producing friction and heat, requiring something to help keep us running.

In a perfect world, we could get a one-time fill of a word of encouragement, a hug, a gift, a conversation, a night out, or a hike in the woods and be good for years.

But we're a little broken. A little bit worn. We don't run at optimal efficiency. We have some gaskets loose. And the effect of those words, those hugs, those gifts eventually burn up or leak out. Some time goes on, and there's nothing to keep the friction and heat of the burdens of our daily lives from grinding us down and breaking our hearts down into glorified rocks.

But most of us treat our relationships (and not just the romantic ones) like one fill-up in a blue moon is enough.

Some of us would never dare ignore the oil light in our cars (although some of us might, and have probably paid good chunks of what could have been Bahamas money), but we ignore the lights on the people around us. Or sometimes we see them, and like Jill, we mistakenly assume that everything's fine until we see the light get brighter or a buzzer goes off to let us know someone's really in danger. Sometimes, we discover too late that the engine's in serious jeopardy.

Once that engine goes, the damage is done.

The road to repair at that point is disproportionately more difficult than the cost of regular maintenance.

Whose light have you been ignoring? Which important people in your life have you been driving and driving and expecting that they will just start up the next time you need them to?

How many of you have been afraid to speak up and say what you need from the people around you? How long have you been riding just above the red line, scraping by on nothing while continuing to push yourself in overdrive?

Just like cars, man. Just like cars.

***