January + 2

It was before today when I thought there is no escaping it. 

News Channels.

Social Media.

Coffee Table Conversations.

Then it becomes your reality.

And you wonder how you got so lucky to see another day.

I remember walking down the path he led us on, for what seemed like an awful long time, because the bus couldn't get through such a narrow and muddy foot path. This isn't where she and her brother lived the last visit made to Bolivia. When I saw the structure she and her family lived in...
Her brother was quite the show boat and eased the hurt I had within, almost like a nauseating feeling slowly subsiding through distraction. "I am blessed." I heard it being translated behind me. And that is when I wish I knew God like she did.

I've known tear drop tatted, gang and brotherhood branded, men who would drop dead if they didn't hold the door open for a lady, or push her chair in at the table. Never speaking to me as if I was less than them, never leading me to believe their past was as dark as it truly was. "You don't know my moms." They would say. They, the ones with blood on their hands, and regret in their eyes, knew better than to disrespect their mothers and not be gentlemen. Back then I am sure I assumed how they must feel lucky to be alive.

It was June. And anyone over a certain age had sat around a patio table in the backyard. Old friends catching up. Once neighbors, now just kids swimming in a pool while their parents talked war. I can't help but think this was our own little version of Gone With the Wind in modern times... imagine with me. All us kids had ever known of our fathers pasts were military related stories and "we never had that!" remarks. That was their "cul-de-sac" bond before we ever made it to the suburbs. I remember their dad pulling out a camera and playing back a scene caught from a firefight that made the wives jump and cover our eyes. "Yep. Sure saved a lot of asses that day." Everyone cheered. I guess I was thankful too...


I'd like to be honest here and say, a lot of people blog to share their lives with other people. Which I believe is great. But I also think they are hoping for a guttural, emotional, active response to those shared pieces of their lives. The edited versions. The ugly parts they are willing to share. And the wins they can't let you miss. I get it. But I can't help but tell you I don't give a damn about who reads this, who doesn't, if it's shared, or if it collects dust till the internet archives shut down. I live my everyday life in story book form. Partially because I truly believe I am Peter Pan incarnate. But mostly because I live a life worth reading about one day. Not a Biography about me... hell no. An indie film / gopro style / collection of moments. Where Humans of New York meets Humans of Woodhill. You feel me? Doesn't matter.

I wrote for myself in January. 

I wrote about the hardest things I have ever written about. 

Chicken scratch.

3am.

Run-on sentences.

Story form.

Poems. 

I read prompts to guide me.

Some days I just wrote about how every day in January felt like 10.

I didn't want to share it. 

I still don't.

But what I feel like needs to be said is... in the midst of my heart breaking, constant set backs, horrible communication, misjudgment, exhaustion, no direction, and an overwhelming feeling like a fog inside me would never be lifted... in the midst of that, I still celebrated the lives of the ones I have here with me. I cheered on at ball games, choirs, spelling bees, in the classroom. I included my own blood more. I took my own health serious. I hugged friends. I read some good books. And I never stopped telling our story. Our story of resilience. Of perseverance. Of patience. Of how it isn't luck we are alive - but a beautiful challenge. Because too often we look at a casket and think of what they could have accomplished, or what they achieved, and mark the whole life as just that. How dare we. It wasn't until several close to home school shootings, bomb threats made to a school while we were in it, and an accidental school lock down, that I realized those people didn't think they were lucky to be alive either. They were in question of their lives each and every day because of what they had been through in poverty, prisons, gangs, black or brown skin, war, constant threats being made to their lives and surviving wasn't luck, it was God. And they were going to honor every breath he allotted them. Until it was taken by whatever force that should come.

January felt like a constant threat on my life. Not in the same way I felt laying on the ground under a table praying my babies in the auditorium were okay. More like when a bandage has absorbed so much blood it no longer has the same effect to the wound than a freshly tied bandage would. The very things I thought would last, sustain life, and push us into a new season, were some of the very things that stunted healing, caused pain, and inflicted more grief. There wasn't any point in sharing details of the wins or losses because nothing flowed. Words felt boxy when this season just needed to settle somewhere. People who know families like the ones I do life with know what this January felt like. Just 31 more days tacked on to 2017. And no one needs to dwell on things like that. But if we didn't grow from a season like this one! Where the vines that choke out any fruit are finally cut away, and life can continue again in that tree. That is what I feel we will eventually move toward. Where the vines will be cut away, water and sunlight will pour into our roots, and fruit will be the focus again.