I recently went to a show with a few hundred folks in one of my favorite venues here in nashville: the basement.  named thusly as it’s in the basement of one of my favorite record stores.  it’s not big, not the best sound system, but you get to, for a few short hours feel like you’re still in someone’s living room.  like you’re watching the magic happen on the “ground level” before it happens to hit top 40.  

watching new bands play here is a little bit scary.  new bands don’t pack a house, so i get nervous for the guys who i’m sure are a bit nervous for themselves.  it seems to me that the larger the crowd the better.  the nerves kick in when folks are really paying attention. so, i’m sympathetically scared for the new bands.  but to see an established band play here?  that can be nothing short of breathtaking.  there’s something very private, very secretive about it that makes my blood rush.

that night had elements of that, as i’ve been a long time fan of will kimbrough’s.  he took the stage in an unassuming yet entirely commanding manner and from his second line of the first song you knew: he’d done this before.  not because he looked haggard from it, as many do, but because he just….well, belonged there.  to me that’s the ‘it’ factor, no matter how it’s packaged.  

he sang primarily off of his record, americanitis, a politically charged, verbally raw thing that hints around at the corners of brilliance.  but he did a few from old records that i love.  one of which includes the song ‘piece of work’ which is in every way that.  but one of the lines struck me between the eyes tonight.

“well the lord made me on a long thin limb, made sure i’d remember him…”

i thought about that line the rest of the night because i think it sums up this thing we casually call a ‘walk with God’.  most of my life i’ve done best in my walk with God when faced w/ uncomfortable odds.  when the wind blows the hardest, i fly the highest.  when the weight stacks up on my shoulders, i stand the straightest.  it’s the comfortable days that scare me. that lull me into believing that a hard rain won’t come again.  the comfortable days make me forget the urgency of this walk and that it really isn’t a walk.  it’s a mad dash to get as far as you can possibly get.

god did make me on the end of a long thin limb so that in the comfortable days, i’d still feel the sway of the branch in the breeze.  i’d still feel the need for him even when i couldn’t see the way.  i haven’t always loved that branch nor the need for it but the older i get the more i see his wisdom in using it.

my independent streak is something that i try to embrace and in that embrace there are things that i love and things i don’t love as much. knowing this, god fashioned me to be in that shakey and uncertain place of a long thin limb, lest my cocky independence get the better of me.

and when it does, as it inevitably does and will, and i teeter around on my swaying branch, i come quickly to grips with who i am and who i am not. loathe as i am to admit it, sometimes i fall.  when the ground comes rushing up at me, just before impact, i remember, as i should in all moments but don’t, that i know the guy who makes the wind, that makes my branch move, that keeps me dependent, because he knows how i’m bent.  

i just think it’s pretty kick ass that he not only allowed for my independent streak when he was dreaming me up but went ahead and crafted a plan to keep me close to him with it.  

as i listened to the lyrics from will’s record, it seemed pretty brave to me that he was standing there saying things that he believes, popular or not.  he’s saying things he’d be less for not saying.  they might not be comfortable odds, but he’s showing up anyway with all of who he is.  maybe he’s on a long thin limb, too.  but he’s jumping up and down on it. his little lyrical and stylistic act of bravery, actually, makes me a little more thankful that my footing isn’t too sturdy.  it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if it were.

i recently spoke with a rather confident friend of mine who is in the midst of learning some thorough lessons about pride. the lessons were spurred on by a chapter in a book which had arrived in the mail in one of those unsuspecting packages which, in retrospect, smack of the kind of providential coincidence i’m convinced God finds humor in.

he shared about one chapter in particular that dealt with sleep.  It said that god could have chosen to create us to never need it. I mean, if he’d really wanted to, he could have crafted us to be awake 24 hrs a day.  but it seemed like he just wanted us to know that we’re not him.  he who ‘never slumbers’—never needs to. That God uses those 8 hrs a night to convince us that we need to be restored and that he alone is the restorer.  As each minute of nighttime ticks by, he’s saying that i am weak and that he is strong.  He offers a daily reminder there is an infinite difference between us.

i heard what my friend said, wrote it down even.  and then asked him to fax me the chapter so i could read it.  but if i’m honest, i’ll admit that the thought crossed my mind, ‘whew.  good thing i’m not learning about pride right now.  i mean, i’ve got my lessons, but that’s just not one of them today.’  Dutifully i read through half the chapter a little bit stalked by a sneaking suspicion that there was something in it I shouldn’t walk too quickly past, but didn’t really dedicate much more to it.

then last night when i got home from an evening out with friends, i took off my shoes and noticed that my toenail polish was chipping.

i’ve been needing to do an in-between pedicures touch up on my toenails for a solid couple of weeks and have my current favorite bottle ready to go.  The color of it is that perfect shade of red for me: dark but just a few shades lighter than the goth colors of my youth. but ever since a trip a few weeks back on an airplane where it blew up a little i haven’t been able to get the stupid thing open.  i’ve tried everything.  hot water, cold water, rough towel, bare hands, hitting it with a knife (like you do w/ jars you can’t open), throwing it on the carpet and still, it remains beautifully and hermetically sealed.

as the day wore on today, i looked down at my toes in my flip flops and thought, ‘damn that stupid bottle of nail polish.  maybe i just wasn’t applying the right amount of torque’.  frankly, i’m not really sure what torque means, but i know that boys say it.  and i know that boys could probably open this bottle.  and so i used it b/c it somehow made me feel a little closer to my goal.

i tried it again—the hot water, the rough towel, the banging of it on the counter and it remained unaffected. and as i put it harshly down on the kitchen counter I wondered why I didn’t just get in the car, drive to the store and spend the $7 bucks to buy another one.  one that i could open and throw this mean little taunting bottle away.  i could still win.  but something about that impending victory felt something like defeat and i wasn’t willing to surrender. 

as i walked out of the kitchen, i turned around to glare back at it and that’s when the lightening struck.  i’m a 37 yr old single woman.  i own a home.  i live by myself.  i travel all over the world.  i own power tools and shovels and know how to check the air pressure in my tires. I bought a shop-vac that I use to kill bugs in my house that scare me.  my life, through necessity, has slowly evolved into one of self-sufficiency.  there are very few things i can’t do on my own, if I really wanted to. Point of fact, if it came down to it, i could move every piece of furniture in my house by myself—it might not be pretty or convenient, but i could do it. b/c i’ve had to.  There isn’t someone here to help so what do u do? You figure out how to cope.  You figure out how to get things done.  but somewhere along the line I think that self-sufficiency somehow became a lack of acknowledgement that I need to lean sometimes. and i think there might be a crucial difference between the two that I’m missing.

there are less than 10 people in my life—my whole life, not just in my city—that i would call if i needed help with something.  not just something big, something small. Not just the stuff that matters, but more the stuff that doesn’t.  no one hesitates to show up in a crisis, but it’s the day-to-day that sometimes you can’t do alone.  i don’t want to be needy.  don’t want to be a drain or inconvenient.  frankly, there’s just a certain amount of acceptance on what you can expect from your friends and what you can’t.  there’s a certain amount of acceptance as a single woman about what you have to figure out on your own. 

but then I couldn’t get my nail polish open and I suddenly had to deal with the fact that despite my protests and efforts, I need help with it.  I can’t do it on my own.  passage of time won’t help, apparently newly discovered ways to assault said bottle won’t do it and all the while my toenail polish falls into a more severe state of disrepair by the day. What my “friend’s” lesson on pride taught me, was that i need someone bigger, someone stronger to open up my bottle of nail polish that is intent on keeping my toes unpainted.  i need to lean.  and it’s my pride that keeps me from doing it. 

so i mentioned it to a local friend of mine tonight and he said he’d take a crack at it tomorrow—which both my toes and my heart appreciate.  and maybe god is using this taunting little donkey of a bottle to teach me to look at myself and where i get my strength.

He’s whispering that what i need in my life, is someone bigger and someone stronger to hold me up.  even though i convince myself i can do it alone.  And while I’m not as strong as I’d like to think, my God is. And where I come up short, he succeeds.  And when I’m alone in my unassembled, chipping nail polish life, he is standing nearby, brilliantly and craftily instructing and guiding and showing up. and who knew?  apparently I  needed that.

in la on vacation—officially.  ate lunch at an amazing restaurant.  sat in the sun.  have a tan line from my bracelet.  (damn it, why didnt i take that off)  and then just got a massage here at the hotel spa.  i can admit now, what i haven’t been able to admit in the past: i, julie johnson, am a spa snob.  “no!”, you’re saying, “how can that be?” but yes, yes my friends.  it’s true.  a total spa snob.

this is tranquil (kind of), these cookies are good (well, one of the kinds is), the steamroom is healing (oh wait, you mean the steam room and the shower are the same thing?), the therapist was thorough (i.e., she stretched me and pushed me and prodded me until i almost yelled in pain.  my lips feel the most relaxed as they were securely clenched together to avoid such a demonstration during said massage).  

it’s not that i’m tough to please.  i mean give me a robe, some of those crazy pokey flip flops and my russian facialist and i’m right as rain.  but the spa at the beverly hilton felt like an afterthought to the hotel….which, in thinking about it, it probably was (did they have spa’s when this sucker was built?).

but even in my snobbery, a spa day is still a spa day.  and it never sucks to have someone focusing all their attention on you.  even if it’s only for 80 minutes.  even if you’re paying them very well to do it.  even if it hurts.  but that’s how relationships are, right?  we hope for that attention from our friends, that kind of focused, ‘you’re the only one in the room’ with each other kind of intention of attention.  when someone doesn’t just look at you, but they **behold** you.  that kind of attention is intoxicating.  you can’t seem to get enough.  and sometimes it’s glorious and sometimes it hurts.  but it’s the work that relationships are birthed from.  and in thinking about it, i could be better at friendship.  better at offering the focus.  better at being a mirror.  better at handling the hurt.  better at hearing and being present and all the things that one needs and hopes for in a friend. 

the trick will be not making my friends pay for it.  to just offer it.  selflessly.  as a gift.  my insides are screaming something about self protection and boundaries but i have some level 5 friends (my highest level—long story) and gifts like this are what we live on—what flow between us. level 5’s are family.  the family we come from and the family we’ve built for ourselves in our lives.  and attention and focus and healing and hurt all come in the same package.  and it should cost the giver something to give it.  greatness doesn’t just happen.  relationships dont just work.  those things REQUIRE something of a person.  REQUIRE.  not optional. not half-assed.

i once heard that every great artist leaves a piece of themselves onstage after a performance.  they were so there, so present, so engaged that it cost them a little bit of their soul to share it w/ an audience.  i think friendship is like that. it costs you something.  it should cost you something.  but it costs the other person on the other side of the relationship to give it too, so somewhere it all comes out in the wash.

and i think that should be our goal: give it everything you have, actually **SEE** the people in our lives and then hold on for the ride.

i leave you with a quote from one of my favorite and loveliest of books called “Divine secrets of the ya-ya sisterhood: “how polite can we bear to be with one another as we welcome people into our lives.”  or into our spa’s or into our hearts.  places that all have intention and healing when you actually show up.

i’m in LA right now for a conference.  i was expecting what i’ve come to expect: the analysis i’ve learned so well of the fake tears that speakers cry, the performance of the worship band, the cynicism that threatens to take me over.

and then up came sheila walsh to speak.  i’ve seen her speak before.  i’ve seen the pitch coming.  but something in me let my guard down this weekend and i heard her.  really heard her.  somehow, i put my blinders on to the industry that this whole thing is and just leaned in for the message.  and i was completely shaken by the ministry of it.  ministry.  that thing that i’ve learned can be so constructed, so performed.  i’d forgotten that sometimes ministry isn’t about the messenger and how they deliver it but is about the message.  sheila spoke about god loving broken people.  she said, “guilt tells me i’ve done something wrong.  shame tells me i am something wrong.”  she said that “when the pain of remaining the same becomes more powerful than the pain of the change, then you will change.”  she spoke about our lives being a movie.  that everything we’ve ever done, ever said, ever thought was all captured on film somewhere.  things that i think would mess w/ the facade i’ve created of the christian i hope you think i am.  but lurking out there somewhere was this film.  full of the secrets we never tell people.  the deep secrets.  but that god has “seen your movie and still loves you.”  god hasn’t seen the edited version that i post on youtube and on blogs and that i hoist onto coffee tables as we sit across and “connect” with one another.  he’s seen the dirty movie.  the one w/ all the ugliness.  the one w/ the shame.  the one i secretly hope doesn’t exist but yet replay in my head when i let the light hit me honestly.

then christine kane took the stage.  i’ve heard her speak before.  i’ve seen the pitch coming.  but somehow my softened heart heard her, really heard her for the first time.  she spoke of sarai, abraham’s wife, who had a child while in her 90’s—twenty some years after god had promised it.  i thought of the graveyard of dead promises in my heart and life.  places i thought god should show up.  places i had been sure he would and all i got was met w/ was silence.  places i dont like to admit i exist in much less that i hurt about.  she said that we put “a due date on god instead of waiting for an appointed time”. i thought about one of my favorite sex and the city quotes where carrie is talking about keeping up walls around her heart to keep her safe emotionally.  “otherwise, how do you bounce back when reality batters your belief system and love does not, as promised, conquer all?”

and that’s when it hit.

i have, somewhere inside me, that i dont really remember, that i never give voice to, that i hope doesn’t really exist, given up on god.  not in the “he’s not the god of the world” kind of way.  but in the “is he even interested and invested in what i’m doing w/ my life” kind of way.  not in the big picture of god.  but definitely in the small one.  i’ve watched deadlines of marriage and having kids and building a life w/ someone come and go and “have not judged him to be faithful in the silent years.”  Christine said, “I haven’t had an impossible moment lately.  But then again, i haven’t been looking for one.”  and neither have i.

i have not trusted that god will be faithful to the promises of my heart that i feel he’s forgotten.  the things he and i just never speak of.  i have not walked humbly with my god, i’ve walked in spite of him.  i have let the goo of cynicism creep in and around my heart and harden in such a way that i am closed off to ministry that happens from a stage—that all i see is the show.  and i’m not sure when it happened.  in an effort to not feel the silence of god, i think i went ahead and got silent too.  you dont talk to me.  i dont talk to you.  and we draw a line in the sand and we live our separate lives. 

how insane.  how absurd.  how TERRIBLY naive of me. to think that i’m living separtely from god.  he controls my breath and i scream of independence.  god’s silence does not mean god’s absence.  god’s timing not being my own doesn’t mean he’s not working on it…working on me.  and god most certainly, while i’ve been stomping my feet and crossing my arms on my chest and huffing and puffing, has not remained still.  i just haven’t been watching for him and his moving around.

so today.  wow.  big day.  not sure what the next steps are from here.  but i think right now, i’m just satisfied to remember that there are steps to be taken.

so much of my life is dictated by time.  the spending of it, the passing of it, the analyzing of it.  for such a small word, it takes up a bunch of…well…time.

for those who know me well, you know my memory often fails me. i forget important dates, vital details and hope that you love me in spite of it.  i don’t remember what happened last week much less last year (or whenever your birthday was celebrated then).  my friend eli and i spent some time talking about that a few weeks ago.  he said, and I’m paraphrasing, that his life felt like a movie reel.  that it was playing and then the second he was out of the scene, the moment the moment had passed on the screen, it was simply gone.  disappeared.  and it came into crystal clear focus that i felt the same way about my life.  once it happens, it’s like the tape gets taped over and i forget it.  people will ask me what countries i’ve been to and i draw an almost total blank—i know i’ve been to almost every country in central and south america and a couple of african countries, but i couldn’t tell you when.  or the details of the trip.  they’re just gone.

someone once told me that when you dont have an internal structure you grasp for an external one until the internal one grows.  basically, it means i blog.  i keep a timeline w/ stories of where i’ve visited both in my heart and body.  and it helps me remember.  remember even the things i wished to forget.  but the last couple years have been so full that they now feel empty as the cursor blinks at me.  i stopped keeping track of my life.  i stopped writing stories.  i kept feeling feelings but now i can’t remember them.  it’s funny if it weren’t a bit tragic.

it struck me this morning that i turn 38 this year.  which made me shake my head.  and then on npr today an author was saying “my dad’s 48 years old is not my 48.  he was watching children graduate and i have two in elementary school.  my 48 is more tired.”  and i dont want my 37 to be more tired than someone else’s 37.  because i plan on attacking 38 with everything in me.  my best years are ahead.  the ones that have passed may have shaped me into the person and friend and woman that i am but now it’s time to put it all to some sort of use.  a good use, hopefully.

so, to those of you who used to follow these little writings of mine and enjoyed them, i’m back.  to those of you who are just getting to know me….tell me your name again?  :)

Let’s take our make up off and unstrap our shoes and put aside the versions of each other that we hope the other sees.  Let us sit here.  Sit here w/ our real selves.  And let us have no lie between us.  Mirror back my life for me.  And let me serve as your mirror too.  Let us let down the guards of self and of soul that we have so carefully constructed and calculated.  Let us just sit here.  The real you.  And the real me.  

Let us not speak words to just say them.  Let us mean every syllable we pronounce.  And let it be real.  Let us not fill a silence that might be vital—that might be healing—with words meant to bring comfort.  Let’s just sit here.  The real you.  And the real me.  And see who we are.  When all that we know and all that we think and all that we carry around on our backs in and our hearts is stripped away.  I want to sit on the couch w/ who is left when all of that is gone.  I want to be loved by that version of you.  The real version.  I want to know that none of the rest of it matters except the real you.  And the real me.

Let us not stand in public places, playing private games of the civil war that is our relationship.  Let’s, for once, call this what it is.  And when we say it, let it not be all the lessons that you think you should share with me, let it not be the picture you think I want to see painted, let it not be a veneer that, whether you know it or not, I see cracking.  Let it just be the real you.  And the real me.

Because in the darkest, deepest, hardest, softest places in the caverns of my heart, that’s what I need.  The real you.  To see the real me.  To want to know the real me.  The real me you may disagree with.  The real me you might hate.  The real me I deeply hope you love.  But enough with these disguises.  And enough with these games.  I sit here, on this couch, and offer you this: the real me.  Hoping that my small and terrifying gift will illicit the same response from you.

Because when all is said that we can think up to say.  And all we think we want to hear has been heard.  There will never be an escape or a relief as deep and as needed as the real you.  And the real me.  And then I can call you friend.

new tumblr site.  i hear it’s going to change my life.

i recently spoke with a rather confident friend of mine who is in the midst of learning some thorough lessons about pride. the lessons were spurred on by a chapter in a book which had arrived in the mail in one of those unsuspecting packages which, in retrospect, smack of the kind of providential coincidence i’m convinced God finds humor in.

he shared about one chapter in particular that dealt with sleep.  It said that god could have chosen to create us to never need it. I mean, if he’d really wanted to, he could have crafted us to be awake 24 hrs a day.  but it seemed like he just wanted us to know that we’re not him.  he who ‘never slumbers’—never needs to. That God uses those 8 hrs a night to convince us that we need to be restored and that he alone is the restorer.  As each minute of nighttime ticks by, he’s saying that i am weak and that he is strong.  He offers a daily reminder there is an infinite difference between us.

i heard what my friend said, wrote it down even.  and then asked him to fax me the chapter so i could read it.  but if i’m honest, i’ll admit that the thought crossed my mind, ‘whew.  good thing i’m not learning about pride right now.  i mean, i’ve got my lessons, but that’s just not one of them today.’  Dutifully i read through half the chapter a little bit stalked by a sneaking suspicion that there was something in it I shouldn’t walk too quickly past, but didn’t really dedicate much more to it.

then last night when i got home from an evening out with friends, i took off my shoes and noticed that my toenail polish was chipping.

i’ve been needing to repaint my toenails for a solid couple of weeks and have my current favorite bottle ready to go.  The color of it is that perfect shade of red for me: dark but just a few shades lighter than the goth colors of my youth. but ever since a trip a few weeks back on an airplane where it blew up a little i haven’t been able to get the stupid thing open.  i’ve tried everything.  hot water, cold water, rough towel, bare hands, hitting it with a knife (like you do w/ jars you can’t open), throwing it on the carpet and still, it remains beautifully and hermetically sealed.

as the day wore on today, i looked down at my toes in my flip flops and thought, ‘damn that stupid bottle of nail polish.  maybe i just wasn’t applying the right amount of torque’.  frankly, i’m not really sure what torque means, but i know that boys say it.  and i know that boys could probably open this bottle.  and so i used it b/c it somehow made me feel a little closer to my goal.

i tried it again—the hot water, the rough towel, the banging of it on the counter and it remained unaffected. and as i put it harshly down on the kitchen counter I wondered why I didn’t just get in the car, drive to the store and spend the $7 bucks to buy another one.  one that i could open and throw this mean little taunting bottle away.  i could still win.  but something about that impending victory felt something like defeat and i wasn’t willing to surrender. 

as i walked out of the kitchen, i turned around to glare back at it and that’s when the lightening struck.  i’m a 32 yr old single woman.  i own a home.  i live by myself.  i travel all over the world.  i own power tools and shovels and know how to check the air pressure in my tires. I bought a shop-vac that I use to kill bugs in my house that scare me.  my life, through necessity, has slowly evolved into one of self-sufficiency.  there are very few things i can’t do on my own, if I really wanted to. Point of fact, if it came down to it, i could move every piece of furniture in my house by myself—it might not be pretty or convenient, but i could do it. b/c i’ve had to.  There isn’t someone here to help so what do u do? You figure out how to cope.  You figure out how to get things done.  but somewhere along the line I think that self-sufficiency somehow became a lack of acknowledgement that I need to lean sometimes. and i think there might be a crucial difference between the two that I’m missing.

there are less than 5 people in my life—my whole life, not just in my city—that i would call if i needed help with something.  not just something big, something small. Not just the stuff that matters, but more the stuff that doesn’t.  no one hesitates to show up in a crisis, but it’s the day-to-day that sometimes you can’t do alone.  i don’t want to be needy.  don’t want to be a drain or inconvenient.  frankly, there’s just a certain amount of acceptance on what you can expect from your friends and what you can’t.  there’s a certain amount of acceptance as a single woman about what you have to figure out on your own. 

 but then I couldn’t get my nail polish open and I suddenly had to deal with the fact that despite my protests and efforts, I need help with it.  I can’t do it on my own.  passage of time won’t help, apparently newly discovered ways to assault said bottle won’t do it and all the while my toenail polish falls into a more severe state of disrepair by the day. What my “friend’s” lesson on pride taught me, was that i need someone bigger, someone stronger to open up my bottle of nail polish that is intent on keeping my toes unpainted.  i need to lean.  and it’s my pride that keeps me from doing it. 

so i mentioned it to a local friend of mine tonight and he said he’d take a crack at it tomorrow—which both my toes and my heart appreciate.  and maybe god is using this taunting little donkey of a bottle to teach me to look at myself and where i get my strength.

He’s whispering that what i need in my life, is someone bigger and someone stronger to hold me up.  even though i convince myself i can do it alone.  And while I’m not as strong as I’d like to think, my God is. And where I come up short, he succeeds.  And when I’m alone in my unassembled, chipping nailpolish life, he is standing nearby, brilliantly and craftily instructing and guiding and showing up. and who knew?  apparently I  needed that.

wishes this was my day.  esp the part about the floor in brooklyn  :)