Update

Last night, I wrote the blog that I posted early this morning. It was so early, I was half asleep and didn’t put together the fact that I was posting on 9/11. When I realized what I did, I just about kicked myself in the arse and let out a Homer Simpson "Doi!" It's so petty to talk about remembering my life on a day we need to remember others who are not with us any longer and who are somehow connected to the tragic event. So just keep in mind, I didn’t mean to post my ramblings on such a day. It was a fluke. That being said, today is a very emotional day for many people and we should take some time to remember them and mourn for those we lost.

Detours

Nine years ago I left a cushy job at Accenture to pursue my dreams in the music business. I packed up everything I owned (thankfully not much) in my 1992 Mitsubishi Eclipse I called “Shabazz” (my beau’s name is Jabazz, isn’t that weird?), and drove down to Music City USA.

Hello Nashville, TN.

I didn’t have a plan, really. I had grown up with music—played the violin since I was four (it’s now huddled in the corner of my living room sadly collecting dust), took years of music lessons in a smorgasbord of instruments (mandolin included and no, I don’t do bluegrass), wrote lyrics to over 300 songs (way too wordy, I should have known I wasn’t cut out to be a songwriter), was on my church’s worship team as a peppy alto, blah-blah-blah.

My mindset was pretty simple. Optimistic. Naïve. Unstructured. Definitely simple. I was going to be a star. You know how embarrassing it is to admit that? Well, maybe it’s sorta funny, too. Armed with music in my blood and a dream embedded in my soul, I drove Shabazz into Nashville and expected an entourage of music biz folks to greet me, the “next big star,” at the border with champagne and a recording contract. Yeah. Not so much.

You know what happened? My dream didn’t work out. What a shocker. It took all of a few weeks for reality to punch me in the face. I didn’t have what it takes to make it in music. In hindsight, there were glimpses of that truth here and there. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. Maybe I had some talent, but I didn’t have the confidence, the know-how, the connections, and the list goes on and on. Kudos to me, I have to say, for actually trying. I jumped a fence mostly on chance. Over the years I’ve lost some of that edge and am praying to find at least a piece of that chutzpah to keep with me.

In the two or three years I spent in Music City, my inner life shifted. In slow motion. I got real depressed, my eating disorder spun disastrously out of control, and though I was seeking God with a reckless abandon to help me find my purpose and live my dream (whatever he wanted it to be), I was met not with answers, but with the blasts of wind from slammed doors.

All my life I asked God to lead me wherever he wanted. I prayed I would do anything, if he could only just tell me what he wanted me to do. Didn’t hear a peep from him. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. I was disappointed, felt let down, and didn’t have much to believe in. And out of this void, I began writing bits and pieces of a book, Silent Savior, which has now made its way in publication.

Nine years ago I traded comfort for the unknown. I believed in a fairytale with an envious confidence. Nine years ago the haze of wishful thinking dissipated to expose my empty life. And nine years ago, the genesis of a book that would take almost a decade to complete and get published was birthed. Silent Savior is the dream I never knew I had. I really believe those are the best kinds. Sweet surprises that bear the handprint of the divine. My desires got rerouted in a better direction and I’m doing something today I never imagined I could do.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a look-at-me-I’m-so-great-my-dream-came-true self aggrandizing moment. I am just amazed that God’s orchestration of our lives includes different paths, detours, intersecting highways, and even closed roads. Yes, all of the above. But all of it takes you where you need to go.

There are desire we have and choices we make and the divine is at work in the midst of these things. Sometimes things work out. Sometimes they don’t. But all along the roads we walk or stumble on, littered with stone or smooth as silk, we just need to trust that Someone up there is holding on to our hand and leading us in a connect-the-dots way. I mean, come on, I wanted a stage with lights and a microphone. I got a world of books and solitude instead. Guess what? I couldn’t be happier or more grateful.

Nine years from today? Who knows? I can say I kinda like the feeling I have now—the marriage of mild fear and excited jitters. So much can happen. To me. To you. Let’s just trust that God knows what He’s doing and may we learn to live to enjoy the ride.

Vroom, vroom, baby, vroom, vroom.

Fix Me. I’m Broken.

The thing with having a healthy love relationship with someone that you hope to spend the rest of your life with is in having to reveal the bad and the ugly. What sucks is that it’s usually not a one-time deal either. Lately I’ve been feeling like the Awesome Blossom Chili’s used to have on their menu. There are like a hundred layers of fried crap and fat sticking out of a vegetable that slightly resembles a flower. If you pluck off and eat one layer of this fried beauty, guess what? There are 99 more layers you can pluck off and eat.

It seems every now and then (or a lot in the past few weeks) I have to talk with my beau about something from my past that affects me in some way still today. (One layer of the Awesome Blossom is ripped off, only for him to see more layers of crunchy-bad-for-you-friedness right below and around it). Sometimes the conversations revolve around things that I’m dealing with today that, though will make a better and healthier person, are just embarrassing to admit. Or things I have to apologize for. Or things that put my emotional scars on display. Or things that make me look like I don’t have it all together all the time (which I don’t, but still…)

This type of vulnerable sharing makes me feel tired. Frustrated. Used up and washed out. It makes me feel broken, like I need to be bubble-wrapped, duct-taped, packaged, and UPSd to a remote factory where they fix people. Hmmm, what does this broken instrument need? How about we wind AJ up top, take the bottom screw out of her right ventricle, insert a metal pin in the left side of her brain, throw her in the wash, let her air dry, and give her an apple. Except that’s not gonna happen.

When I expose my inner issues and struggles and fears and doubts and subsequently feel like a stopwatch that’s been mauled by a Rottweiler, I have to remember it’s just feelings of inadequacy that make me feel broken, the razor sharp lies from the ghosts of yesterday and today that can make my self-worth crumble like a Graham cracker. But that insecurity doesn’t dictate the beauty and juicy goodness that embodies who I truly am, nor the beauty and juicy goodness of G-d, who has so lovingly and carefully designed me from even before I was born.

And you know what else? The truth is, sometimes digging deep into those dark places of confession, the breeding ground for secrets and things that have the power to control us, is the best way to bring them into the light and maybe take some of that destructive power away. Maybe the bad and ugly stuff is like vampires. Maybe, like those creatures of the night, my sharings go nuts when they see sunlight and are rendered useless. I hope so.

For now, I’ll keep on being open and honest and willing to walk into the fissures of my being that I so desperately protect and keep roped off. Though certain things are uncomfortable and annoying to share or discuss, I think they’re necessary. Exposing your true self (to the right people, of course, and in a healthy way) is probably one of the most empowering things you can do. It takes chutzpah. It takes courage. And there’s a certain element in freedom when you take the stuff you’ve been carrying around on your back for a long time and chuck it on the ground. But it shouldn’t stay there. I need to remember to kick that baggage toward G-d instead of allowing it to make me feel broken. He may not be a fix-it repair guy, but I hear he’s a pretty good recycler.

Wahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I miss my sister and she hasn’t even left yet.

I live on the East Coast. She is smack in the middle of the Bible Belt, only a few days away from trekking her way to Oregon. There she will be in a different time zone, in a different environment, with different people. And though we are now in different time zones, in different environments, and with different people, we are still connected. Very much so. And I’m scared that her move will abort that connection. And that fear is making me burst out in tears at random moments in the day. Which is very inconvenient. Especially if I am wearing mascara.

My sister is awesome. I admire her, in one way, because her being is embodied by adventure. Whether it was deciding at 17 to join the Army against my parent’s strong protests, or running for a student body position at college where she virtually knew no one, or giving up a cushy job to work for a dot com for peanuts, or living in Thailand in a hut and taking up Muay Thai, or constantly working against the grain of societal norms, assumptions, and rules, I am in awe of the things she does. My sister is the queen undertaker of the unconventional. Her bravery challenges me.

She is also intuitive and smart. When I am running the gamut of bubbling emotions, my sister is my calming equilibrium. She is refreshingly adept at guiding me toward a change of perspective, a new way of thinking, to get me through whatever I need getting through.

And even though we have lived in different states for the last three years and have been distanced by countries at times, I feel her move to Oregon means she is pulling herself further away from me. Though, deep down, I know this is not true. I believe in my sister and want the best for her. But the selfish part of me is screaming out for her to move to NJ and stay with me. I want to put her in my pocket and keep her with me forever. But that is just dumb.

You know what? I’m just gonna miss her. And deep down inside, all this fear and missing and thinking and sadness is just fluff on top of the real issue. I just don’t want Viv to forget me. Ever.

An Accusation. A Truth.

My sister-in-law’s ice-blue eyes sparkled in the silhouette of the aquarium behind us as she turned to my boyfriend and said, “You know, AJ has low self-esteem.” I was mortified. I know she spoke other words that dangled in and around that sentence, but all I heard was: AJ. Has. Low self-esteem. She might as well have jumped up from the table, belted out “Yepa-yepa-yeap” like a Mariachi performer, and then shrieked for all to hear, “Hey, let’s cheer to the loser at table six. Give it up to the bottle-blonde failure.”

I thought of only one thing while my face turned Jersey tomato red and smoke poured out of my ears.

Bitch.

Then I lashed out in defense. I don’t remember what I said. Something along the lines of “No I’m not,” but in a very defensive tone and with more and big words so I sounded smart. The truth was, I was embarrassed. Humiliated. I felt I had to do damage control and quickly salvage this broken, ugly, and messy portrait of me. I didn’t want my beau to even slightly entertain the notion that I questioned my self-worth. Honestly, I didn’t want to hear it myself. It made me cringe and took me on a supersonic trip down memory lane…reminding me of things I did to myself that I’d rather since forget.

I continued to defend myself with much passion, even taking verbal jabs at my sister-in-law here and there out of spite. I was on a roll. My boyfriend tried to step in. From the corner of my right eye, I saw him try to aim a forkful of cheddar cheese-topped crabmeat toward my mouth. I was actually offended. Did he think I was a pig? That I was so pathetic that I’d trade my defensive monologue for a bite of greasy goodness? For Pete’s sake, nobody else was stepping in, lifting up sword and shield, to fight for my worth.

A few minutes later, it was over. My sister-in-law and I ironed out that accusatory wrinkle. Only it happened after I was able to crawl out of my foxhole of self-protection to actually hear the point she was trying to make. Do you know what this woman—who has known me since I was thirteen—was really saying?

That it was a shame that I wasn’t able to see how creative and smart and beautiful and talented and dedicated and hard-working she thought I was. That I didn’t give myself enough credit for my accomplishments. That she admired me. That she thought I was an amazing woman. And that she wished I would stop questioning myself and simply enjoy me. That I needed to be reminded of how important it was to keep believing in myself.

I was touched. I shed some salty discharge. And though it happened in December of last year, I’ve not been able to get that conversation out of my mind.

Sure. Self- image and esteem have been things I’ve struggled with for many years. It’s a thorn in my side. But I’ve come a long way, baby, and I’m continuing to dare to believe in myself. My sister-in-law, in her inimitable way, reminded me that I still have to beware the demons and ghosts on my shoulder that hiss terrible things in my sometimes sensitive ear. It’s something I need never to forget.

It’s an interesting road, this thing called believing in yourself. I’m quickly realizing that it is, at least for me, a battle for my life…and my future.

God Sees Us Poo

My hair dresser is a twenty-something, non-practicing Catholic who believes in Jesus. He’s also gay and, surprisingly, very conservative. Every time I plop in his chair wearing the salon’s unflattering black smock and he devilishly eyes my mop to see what creative thing he can do with it, we immediately launch into discussions about the relationship of spirituality and the realities of life. In between “Make it a little blonder,” and “How about some streaks here?” I tell him about my church, and he tells me about the gay community. We talk about politics, the twelve disciples, abortion, and the Bible. Faith always lies at the core of every conversation.

He did my hair one year on the National Day of Prayer. I kinda made a big deal about it, and encouraged him to pray. He admitted it was a great idea and told me he would. “Yeah, I just need to talk to God. Tell him what’s going on. I mean God knows and see everything we do anyway. He sees us poo, for Pete’s sake.”

While that was certainly not an image I wanted to capture in my head, I thought about its truth. Our lives are pretty much an open book to God. He sees when we say no to temptation. He sees the affair we are having. He sees the cheerful heart we have when we give in secret. He sees our hypocrisy when we don’t practice what we preach. He sees our dark secrets, our good intentions, our tries, our failures, our victories, our defeats. Because of this, there are opportunities to either enter into an honest and open relationship with him, or to run away like Adam and Eve, leaving a trail of fig leaves in the dust. Sadly, I believe many folks do the latter.

If the truth can really set us free, it would serve our ultimate good to peel away the facade and purge our secrets, especially the ones that are chipping away at our sanity. Isn't that the point of believing in a God of love...of mercy...of grace? If he can't handle the messy parts of our lives, I don't think having faith in him matters at all.

Not that I have had (or have) any secrets of course. I'm perfect.

And a great liar:)