I’m thinking about a class I just taught.

It was a reflection and my end point was that to be truly present to another human being, we have to be able to choose it despite all the things going on in our lives – suffering, pain, distraction, obligations – and choose to give ourselves to another by our presence.  That actually wasn’t what my end point was going to be, but something inside me led me to bring it up and I went with it.  I ended the class asking for them to think about someone in their lives who truly needs their presence to be fully engaged and open to …

It’s been about three hours since that class ended and I feel somewhat in a fog myself, not really sure if I know who I want to be present to because, in all honesty, the person who I most need to be present to is myself.  There isn’t a moment in the day where I am able to truly give myself undivided attention to what I think my great purpose is, what I believe is my greater calling, and create a plan to make that happen.  So much of my life as a parent, as a minster, as a human living in the moment is taking the sacrifice of not being able to plan a future.

I’ve had very little time to write lately and I find myself slipping away, emotionally, when that happens.  Like a boat with no anchor, a body with no gravity, a balloon with no string to tether me to the earth.  I am floating, gracelessly in my life.  Full of purpose but with very little action to piece my purpose into reality.

I love my life.  I love everything about my life, but lately I’ve been feeling an itch to be bold.  That phrase keeps popping in my head, “Be bold.”  I think when I love people in my life I will do whatever I need to do to circumvent disappointing them or letting them down, to the detriment of my own dreams.  Since Mike died, I’ve had this house-sized billboard across the street reminding me: LIVE YOUR DREAMS.  We don’t know when our time to transition out of this life will be and I feel I have so much life still unloved, dreams unspoken that need articulation, and stories to write on paper.  To make that happen I have to say good bye to all the things that eat up my time, even things I love.  I have let go pieces of my time with painting and photography and cropping into my schedule are new obligations: family gatherings, weddings, birthdays, graduation parties, sacramental celebrations, lunches, coffee dates, playmates, travels…the list is endless.

I’ve found that it’s not enough to let go of things, but working toward your dreams also means being bold, saying no to what does not feed the dream, and saying goodbye to distractions.  If we only say goodbye but do not fill those spaces with intention, those spaces quickly fill with eager people and appointments.  As an adult, there’s no such thing as free time.  Everything comes at a price.

I need to be clear with myself, reminding my own two hands that I am not here to be a blogger*.  I am not here to have the greatest Pinterest account.  I am not here to garner five digit twitter followers or be the greatest facebooker ever.  I am not here for that.  I am not here to be an assistant to anyone but a manager of my own destiny.  It’s taken me 33 years to know who I am and who I am not and I need to be bold and say goodbye to wasted time reading op-eds that pull me in opposite directions instead of books that enrich my knowledge.  I need to stop collecting pictures of “cute” and “pretty” things that aren’t even real.  They’re ideas, concepts.  THings that I don’t even have time for, yet I am spending a portion of my life letting OTHER people know that I “like” how something MIGHT look on me IF i decide to buy it someday.  Is it just me or does that sound crazy?

I need to hold that balance that social media is most certainly a tool for connection, but those “relationships” are to people who haven’t seen me in at least a decade, sometimes two decades.  My responsibility is not to them.  My work is not accountable to them  and while I treasure those individual people, as a whole, I refuse to spend more of my time that has nothing to do with purpose; things that will never make it to my obituary.  Things that matter only to Statcounters and faceless commenters, but not to me.  As luring, as tempting, as fluffy fun and empty headed and easy as it is to lose myself in social media, it’s time to reground myself and grow elsewhere.

My purpose is like anyone else’s – to not only find but USE my most authentic self and expand with confidence.  My keyboard has been used much but not for the right purposes.

I am a writer, not a blogger.  I am a mother, not a mommyblogger.  I am a feminist, not a media junkie.  I am a social critic, not a twitter whiner.  I am an artist, not a Pinterest collage.  I am invested, not LinkedIn.

This is who I am.  To those other things, I bid farewell.

* My definition of a blogger is a person who writes for internet publication and engages in the threads (dialogues) and comments/ feedback of their readership.

Me: I have red flags with anyone who feel compelled to tell me, ‘Just so you know, I don’t have a bad reputation.’

Sara: Yeah, it’s just like when a man says, ‘Trust me.’

After a while of ignoring the voices inside your head

which threaten you

to live more daringly, seek more unknown,

push the challenge, and feel more than your skin allows

the voices get tired and eventually are silenced

and then you are left

with nothing

but wasted energy that was once spent on trying to ignore the calls of God.

Fat Tuesday.  Mardi Gras.  Or, for Catholics, “Eat Whatever You Want Because I’m Giving It Up Starting Tomorrow.”

Fewer days of the year are as confusing as Fat Tuesday.  For us Catholics, after we stuff our mouth with Twix bars and swear off sweets for 40 days, it’s a a time of reflection and preparation.  Personally, I came to the same struggle ever year: what to “give up” for Lent so my Easter holiday is more meaningful.

I struggle with this every year.  Supposedly, the sacrifice of giving up something is supposed to help us grow in spiritual union with God.  If framed correctly, we are able to strip down what is excessive in our lives and come to find what is most precious and everlasting: our relationship with God.

I’ve tried year after year to find meaning with giving something up.  And I do it faithfully each year.  But it never means as much to me as other things.  This year, teaching classes on catholicism has given me a gift of renewed faith and a sense of growth that I rarely have experienced in offering up a sacrifice.  Maybe it’s my mentality.  Someone said to me last week, “Think of it less as giving something up and more as making space for what you truly want.”

Making space for what you truly want.

I recently created my own room and I’ve been thinking of what I want to create and build in that room.  I never considered my faith.

So, I made a decision.  I’m not giving up the internet entirely, because that’s not something sustainable that I would be able to sustain after Lent.  But, unless work-related, I am no longer going to use the internet after 9pm.  I can write on my computer, but I will not use the internet in any fashion.  While that may not sound like such a big deal, evening time is typically when I can do what I most want.  Isaiah has laid down for the night, Nick buries himself in his homework, and I am left with a good 2 hours or so to do as I wish.  It’s been so easy to plop into my chair and read updates on Facebook, browse blogs, laugh on Twitter, and google random questions that I’ve jotted down in my notebooks.  I’m taking the internet out of that free time.  I’m hoping that by stripping out the internet in that small period of time, I’ll be able to fill it with things that do more than just pass time.  The hours can be spent reading, curled up in a chair with tea.  Calling people back.  Painting.  Writing poetry.  Going to bed early.  Getting a head start on the next day and cooking for tomorrow.

This spiritual practice is about making time for things that I truly love, instead of doing what is most convenient.  This practice, I hope, will bleed into other areas of my life where I choose the higher road, the path less traveled.  A path, I hope, that leads to a deeper understanding of my relationship with God.

I didn’t have my own Room growing up.  At any given time, all the way up until my sibs left for college, I shared a room.  That wasn’t a curse, even if at the time I would have argued so.  I shared a room once with my brother Fran.  Bunk beds with rocket mattresses.  I had bottom bunk and wondered what would happen if life was all a dream.  But my big brother was there, three feet above me, and when I shared this with him he said, “Don’t worry.  I think about that, too.”  Comfort.

I shared space with my sister.  We’d talk, laugh, and listen to music for hours on end.  One night, after she saw a scary movie, asked me in the dark if she could sleep next to me.  Awestruck that she asked for my company, I said,”Sure” and happily moved over in my twin bed.  She and I slept back to back that night.  And I remember smiling, loving the feeling of being needed.

But I always wanted my own space.  A bed to lay in the quiet.  Walls that had my favorite things hung, or nothing at all because I chose it to be so.

It was years ago that Nick brought up the idea of making one Room my writing space.  I snorted, doubting we’d ever have the space or time to do it.  Years later we found ourselves in an old home, with more space than we knew what to do with, and a Christmas gift that toppled me off my feet.

It’s been months in the making, it needed new paint, a window had to be replaced, and a lot of moving, purging, and organizing.  But, it’s finally in a place that I feel ready to share with the world.

Now, let me first say that I’m not posting these photos because I believe them to be the most creative or colorful trinkets or decorations.  I post it because years ago, I would have loved to see a space created solely for the purpose of being.  Not the kitchen for cooking and gathering.  Not the living for entertaining and talking and television.  Not the bedrooms for sleeping.  A room meant to be purposeful; a place to bring ideas to fruition and dreams to be laid in.  Virginia Woolf called it a Room of one’s own.  I simply call it my Room.  Room.

Room.

Space.

In this crowded 7 billion and counting world of noise and multitasking, this space is for me to think, read, write, Be.  A place for my things to be laid out so I know what I have and use it.  An organized corner of the universe that waits for me.  Women are told the opposite.  Never create a scene.  Don’t take up too much space.  Apologize for the rain.  Create for others, but not yourself.  Care for others, and leave yourself to last.  Buy things, new things, impressive things.

Most of my things aren’t new.  They’re used, and beautiful.  Clean and still useable.  I like piecing them together until it feels right to me.  The environment around me has to make sense in order for me to concentrate.  Most places don’t make sense to me at all.  This is the one place where I find sense.

Children are allowed playrooms.  Stereotypically, men need their “space” – TV, golfing, card playing, working out – and all I ever wanted was a Room.  With light, windows that throw themselves open and colors that fiddle the strings in my heart.

And I don’t want to explain it to anyone.  I don’t want any questions about what things mean and why.  Contrary to this public sharing, and my descriptions, I don’t want to have to defend my space in any way because the last thing my Room is going to do is attack anything.  My mind will do that via writing, but my Room?  Not my Room.

I don’t want to explain why I deliberately leave pictures of family out of my space.  I don’t want to know what would be a better color scheme or what I should slather with new fabric.  There’s no desire for me to hear what would make it more this or less that.  That’s called decorating.  This is creating.  There’s a difference between finishing touches so a room “feels” nice versus building a space that serves artistic purpose.  Each our rooms will look different, this is what mine looks like.

It’d designed with no one else’s soul in mind but my own.  I have no quotes stenciled on the wall.  I have no fancy lamps or glassy chandeliers.  My curtains are wispy pieces of silver silk that do little to keep the Cleveland winter out of my space, but they let in a lot of light and are easy to pull and push open.  Yes, I have a movie poster of Rocky Balboa with the tagline, “His whole life was a million to one shot.”  Very few people would know that the Rocky series is my favorite movie series in all the world and even I would stammer to explain why.  The politics, the class issues, the below average intelligence, the love, Adrian, redemption, life development, selfish Pauly, coming of age son, money, training scenes, THE SOUNDTRACK.  All of these combine for me to love the Rocky series immeasurably.  So much so that while I can quote Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, and bell hooks in my sleep, the only frame is of Sylvester Stallone running for his life with a sweatband on his head, converse on his feet and a poor man’s sweatsuit on.  It makes no sense.  But it’s me.  Life would be rather dull if we could explain ourselves away in sentences anyway.

Creating space also means time and commitment.  For some, for me, it also meant having a life partner who prioritizes developing my dreams and gifts.  Nick respects my writing.  He may have to work to understand it and it’s not what he would choose to read if we didn’t know one another, but by the very fact that we vowed to love each other our whole lives, he helped build the Room with me.  He put my clothes are hangers and did my laundry.  He moved the heavy things out and shouldered the heavy shelves when the closet needed painting.  He called the contractors for the new window and played with Isaiah while I carefully placed everything in boxes and meticulously labeled them for later use.

Sometimes love calls for us to recognize what would make the other person happy without that person even knowing themselves what they would want.  Upon giving me my Christmas gift, Nick said, “It wasn’t about money or something flashy.  I just kept asking myself what would make you excited, so excited that you had no choice but to go to the next level.  And that’s what I thought of.”  That meant secret visits to the Apple store with Isaiah poking at everything.  That meant trying desperately to hide it from me the days preceding Christmas.  That also meant enduring a lot of nights where I wasn’t so excited.

Nick’s endured a lot of my struggle.  As a partner of a writer, I know that he is often consumed with my being consumed by the world.  He is the land where I take my excess in hopes of easing my own burdens.  He’s well that must stay empty because I’m always full.  And he’s the no-choice optimist because being a writer can be so damn depressing, one has to keep sanity somehow.

This was Nick’s way of giving me wings. The only wings he knew how to build, and he tailored them to fit my back.

Dreams are escapes, but with love dreams become reality.

I couldn’t resist contributing to the newest meme going around the internet.  Happy Weekend.

In the weeks like this where I have no spent much time on my blog, it’s usually because of 1 of 2 reasons:

1) I’m sick and the glow of the screen makes me ill.

or it’s usually

2) There is so much going on in the world that I find it hard to pick one.  Become paralyzed by my multi facet and connected reactions and subsequently find myself not writing ANYTHING purely because I am so overwhelmed.

It’s hard to be a catholic woman these days.  I find myself either defending my religion, explaining my feminism, or hypothesizing impossible solutions in frustrated conversations the past several weeks.  The air feels sickeningly thick as a catholic feminist.  On one hand I agree and on the opposite hand, I can argue the opposition.

But there is one thing that i have no confusion about:  the church’s most oppressive problems lie in their lack of comprehensive knowledge or acceptance of women, gender, and sexuality.

Kinda like Congress today.

Regardless of how one person feels about contraception, doesn’t it strike you as slightly ODD that men are lined up, trying to look like authorities on BIRTH CONTROL with no women present whatsoever?

The 52& of humanity who menstruate, ovulate, germinate, terminate, and menopause-ate were not represented in this critical discussion.

It’s kinda like if I gathered a whole bunch of my friends who identified as women and said it’s our responsibility to discuss the overall experience of vasectomies. Yeah, something’s missing.

This week in the RCIA class I teach, it was an open forum for folks to ask questions and at the heart of it was the church’s teaching on – I’ll give you 3 guesses, but you’ll only need 1 – sex & contraception.

I could go on and on about the beautiful theology of sex and how I truly believe that God is wondering why the eff we fight and fight over an act that, ultimately, is designed to give us joy, pleasure, and a means of communicating desire and love, but HEY, what do I know?  I’m just a woman with a uterus.