The time has come...

Dear Facebook Friends,

Some of you are friends from high school. Others of you were coeds with me at the old BYU. When I think of many of you I have memories of commiserating together over our single lives. But clearly, many of you have moved on.

Now your wedding photos were cute and sometimes even inspiring. I could stomach the obscene amount of pregnancy updates and baby photos because I knew they were meaningful to you. Funny quotes from your toddler and recaps of their crazy antics were totally welcome (they made me laugh and feel instantly grateful for my life). BUT PEOPLE this recent deluge of first-day-of-school photos are really starting to get to me.

I know I'm way past my "Mormon prime," but come on! I'm not even thirty yet and here you are with a kindergartener! Wait, no, a second grader AND a kindergartener! Bah! I hate to break it to you, but it might be time for me to hide your updates from my Facebook feed. This was intended to be a medium for  witty banter, stalking of potential boyfriends, viritual flirting, and the occasional showing off of my recent bad ass vacation. You and your adorable backpack clad kids are really starting to cramp my style.

Your Truly,
Liann

P.S. Oh and you overly religious, outspoken anti-religious, or overtly politically minded friends this doesn't mean you haven't fallen off my radar. I have an "unsubscribe from status updates" button and I'm not afraid to use it. 

My other birthday

When I first moved to NYC my roommate explained that people in NYC have two birthdays: the day they were born and the day they moved to the Big Apple. She said that transplants to the city will celebrate their New York birthday with friends more often than their real birthday.

Apparently I didn’t have a life until I moved to New York City on Saturday June 2^nd, 2012. Since I’m not planning to be a full time resident of NYC, I wonder what I’ll call the day I move back to the DC area in September. My death day? Silly, the whole thing is slightly silly.

But I have to say this summer in NYC has been beautiful. As silly as it sounds, it has brought life back into me. There has been something about it that I can’t quite pinpoint. I think it has something to do with the time I’ve been able to spend with my brothers and sister in law, the inspiring theater I’ve seen on and off Broadway, and all the yoga classes I’ve attended for myself (rather than for my teacher training). I have spent many solitary hours exploring the city and re-found a curiosity for life that feels reminiscent of my travels in India. I suspect it all has a lot to do with this foreign thing called “unstructured time,” evening hours and weekends that I haven’t been able to fill and fill and fill with all the busyness I found in DC. It has been a beautiful summer of renewal.

I’ve debated and debated about starting up this blog since moving here. My birth in NYC brought a return of an itch for creative writing. But what is the point of posting it on a blog for all to see? While I haven’t figured out that answer, I do know my mom still reads my blog and would love to see new posts. So here’s to you Mom—thanks for your part in my first birthday and your support through my second (love you!). And let the blogging begin (again). 

Stranded on a Desert Island: Grocery Style

At about ten on Monday night Kati and I finally got around to making a grocery run. Since she doesn’t have a car we tend to go together every other week or so. As is our habit we chatted while moseying from aisle to aisle occasionally dancing to the music piped into the store.

Finally we had wandered through the entire store, grabbed the last two things on our lists (bread and peanut butter) and headed to the checkout stands when the store went completely black! Kati and I gingerly pushed our cart to the front of the store. We watched as employees grabbed flashlights from the store shelves and walked around the store. Out the front windows we could see that all the lights in the neighborhood were out, including the main stoplight. Miraculously one self-checkout kiosk still functioned. Customers began to cluster in some semblance of a line behind the lone checkout counter. The screen of that kiosk froze as the older woman in front of us tried to type in the skew number of her lone Idaho potato.

The manager then announced to the weary crowd, “Since the backup generators aren’t coming on. Customers are welcome to take one item from their cart for free and leave. Employees will reshelf the remaining food.” Customers near the front repeated the announcement for the people behind them until everyone began to play the game of stranded on a desert island.

The guy next to us pulled a rack of lamb from his small basket and booked it for the door before the power had a chance to come back on. Slowly Kati and I began picking through our cart weighing the decision carefully. Hungry, I settled on the bag of frozen potstickers. She wisely chose the package of toilet paper.

While standing in front of the microwave later that night watching my plate of potstickers turn I couldn't help but shake my head and smile. I would just have to visit the grocery store again this week for the fruit, milk, bread, and yogurt I was forced to abandon in that Safeway cart. Because woman cannot live off potstickers alone.

Lessons

I was reading a talk by Elder Ballard called Finding Joy through Loving Service while on the bus this morning. At the second stop I watched a man quickly stand and offer his seat to the pregnant woman who got on.

I think I'll remember the one lesson much longer than the other. Nice try Elder Ballard, but random bearded man with coffee in hand totally had your Ensign article beat this morning.

Thanks though.

A few loaves and fishes

When I first moved to the DC area I decided to go down to one of the Virginia single wards to “check out the scene.” As I sat in the back of the chapel I first noticed all the beautiful colors in the mass of seated singles. It then dawned on me how few white shirts or dark colored suits there were. One of my reasons for moving to DC was the greater possibility of finding someone among this large pool of singles, so I began counting the women and men, trying to calculate a rough ratio in my head, was it 3 to 1? Or worse, 5 to 1? I then asked myself if I should assume the same likelihood of temple worthiness for men and women or if the attendance at ward temple night (far more sisters attend than brethren) is a better measure. I couldn’t estimate the gendered differences in sinfulness with accuracy, but even with the assumption of an equal rate of sin among men and women the numbers were not in my favor.

I then thought, “Heavenly Father this is impossible. These numbers don’t add up. There are not enough men to go around. Some of us are going to have to go elsewhere to get a husband. That or live a virginal lifestyle the rest of our days where the only consolation may be that you're the one to teach the primary class with little Tommy who talks about you later in general conference.” I sighed and felt my shoulders droop a little. “Next to these educated super models who sing, play piano, and make time to feed the poor I have no chance.”

The thought came to me, “But Liann, Jesus was able to feed 5,000 with a few loaves of bread and some fishes. All 5,000 were full and still they had leftovers. Getting a husband for you won’t be that difficult.”

“But, God! I’ve counted. Unless you reinstate polygamy these numbers really don’t add up.” The social scientist in me had done the math and it wouldn’t work. Not in this town, a place with one of the largest mass of LDS singles outside of Utah. And not with this girl, a slightly overweight smarty pants who occasionally rants about sexism in the church. Not me. It’s not happening.

There was no response, just a peace I pushed away as I continued counting. But from then on I’ve returned again and again to this thought: “God is a god of abundance.” And I’m still trying to trust that.

Unfortunately I feel so busy these days. Between working 8 hours a day, commuting 2 hours, teaching yoga once a week, recently moving to a new apartment, preparing, planting, and protecting my garden plot (sorry for any bunny lovers out there, they have become the bane of my new existence as a gardener), oh and don’t forget getting in that regular exercise and sleep, along with dating and keeping up some semblance of a social life, then there are the attempts at meaningful prayer and scripture study, recent travel for work, and the time it takes for the two callings I now have in the ward, I feel exhausted, worn out, used up, finished. And I’m not even attending Family Home Evening most Mondays, institute on Tuesdays, Relief Society activities on the occasional Wednesday, and about a half dozen other things.

On top of that I have been hurt, badly, by a few people in the ward. I put myself out there (to girls and guys) and tried to be friendly but then experienced everything from the slight brush off to a full fledged emotional slap in the face. I’m tired of being friendly, I’m tired of caring. I would like to be part of the solution in this ward (many people I talk with feel lonely), but I don’t dare risk lending a hand of friendship these days.

Basically I am clutching a few crusty loaves and dried out fishes close to my chest and saying, “no!” like some two year old, “I won’t share! I don’t even have enough to feed myself! How do you expect me to feed these five thousand? I won’t give it over. I really just need to conserve it.” Yet, I continue to walk around starving, unfulfilled, wondering how anyone budgets out their time, energy, and heart to live successfully.

OK as usual, I’m being a bit over-dramatic. But I do feel I’ve been so selfish lately. And I recognize it’s a problem. I need to give freely, to open up. I told a friend about this recent realization, and he mentioned the law of consecration. The Lord expects my time, talents, along with my money. So I’m starting a new experiment. Pry those crusty loaves and fishes from my own hands and give them to God, see what He can make of my life, my efforts, my heart. Day One hasn’t been too bad. During my morning prayer I sat on my bed and imagined giving my battered heart to God and telling him of my desire to give him what I had been holding back. I felt like the girl in her best dress who finds she’s still under-dressed for the dance but still looks each dancer in the eye. It’s not a lot Lord, but it’s what I have.

Don't Forget Liann: Life is Good

I am sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I probably feel the lack more than you, I love writing for my blog. I just wanted you to know it's not because I've been sulking around my apartment depressed about the recent breakup, OK so maybe there has been a little sulking. But the truth is I have been so busy I'm afraid I haven't thought of many poignant things worthy of posting. That and I haven't had the energy to write up the ones I've thought of. This post started as a simple apology and became the following:

I think the Lord sometimes puts people in our lives who act as teachers because either (a) they excel at that thing you need to learn or (b) they suck royally at it. Well, I think I have one of the latter. I have a friend who seems to see the negative side of everything. In some ways I don't blame him, right now things are particularly hard for him. But after a recent encounter we had I wanted to go back, shake him, and yell, "Stop throwing yourself a pity party and inviting me to come!" I was tired of hearing his complaints about dating failures, major setbacks in work, and how much he has to do.

What a blessing it is to complain about dating instead of a lack of food. What a blessing it is to be striving worth something so great that you suffer from major setbacks. Some people live their lives with no setbacks because they never take the risks. What a blessing it is to have things you have to do. Having spent much of 2010 unemployed I know what the opposite feels like and it ain't pretty.

So instead of giving him some lecture on pity parties I think I'll just ponder on all the things I'm grateful for. I'll think of my love for teaching yoga, fun coworkers, thoughtful roommates, new crushes, delightful friends, emails that help me feel loved, conversations that make me LOL, and random calls from family. And I'm sure I'll conclude that life is good, really good.

And I'll be right. Life is good. Even when dealing with rejection from guys (note the plural), even when the power goes out in my apartment for 48 hours in the dead of winter, even when working on tedious task after tedious task at work (when I described what I do all day to my roommates they said, "So basically you do homework all the time?" Yep basically.), even when feeling doubt about myself, my choices, and my God, even then, life is really good.

Emptiness

Remember that shiny and new relationship I wrote about earlier? Well it's not shiny and new anymore. It's broken. Bryce and I decided to break up the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We each had our own reasons for breaking up: him because of me, and me because of him. However, the break up was surprisingly civil, which is the best you can hope for in situations such as these. The reason I want to type this up and put it out into the internet universe is because of what happened to me afterward.

Sunday morning I woke early, got ready, cried a little as I drove to church, and sat on the pew next to my brother. I told him what happened. Aaron turned to me and said, "You broke up? For how long? Or I guess it's a permanent thing." I laughed inside remembering a past relationship with a few not-so-permanent breakups, Aaron's question was a legitimate one. However, this break feels un-fixable on my end. I had done all I could and was at peace with claiming defeat. The question intrigued me and I spent a few moments mulling over what I would say to Bryce if he came back to me to pitch the idea of "us" again.

I stopped dead in my mental tracks. "Liann. Live in the present." The thought resounded loudly in my mind.

This concept of living in the present is one we talked about in my yoga teacher training. When in a difficult or uncomfortable yoga pose people often think, "Oh man! Oh man! When is this going to be over?" Or if you're me you are simply counting your breaths swearing you'll kill the teacher if she doesn't stick to the "5 more breaths" like she promised. Whatever it is, people tend to escape the pain by putting their minds anywhere else but on their mat in that moment.

So I thought, "Well, what is in your present?" The answer:


emptiness


At that moment I could feel the empty space in my chest and stomach. It was as if I could inhale and inhale and never fill that space. It felt wide, expansive. As I looked into that space I felt a little uncomfortable, scared even.

I then asked myself, "What do you want to fill this space with Liann?"

"I could fill it with bitterness, resentment, and sadness." I answered. Which is something I have done in the past. I poisoned my heart so much that it took years and even a 7 month long trip to India before I was fully able to love again. I shuddered.

With that emptiness tugging at me I then thought, "Or, I could fill it with other things." I then thought of how much more time, more emotional energy, more thinking "space" I have now that I'm not dating Bryce. I can make more friends in my current ward, read more books, focus on yoga more, spend more time at the gym, set aside more time for me and God, sign up for that book binding class I found weeks ago, and maybe even spare some vacation days for a trip to Europe next year.

I became hopeful with the possibilities of what I could do with all that empty space.

Whenever I find myself thinking unhelpful thoughts about Bryce and I (things like daydreaming about what I'd say to Bryce if he came back) I stop myself. I remind myself that that isn't in my present. I then meditate on that empty space I found so unpleasant and yet so hopeful. And whatever I feel passes.

While I am still allowing myself time to mourn, to work through the past as it relates to my present, I am careful about what I am filling my present emptiness with. And I've noticed that each time I peak into that empty space within me I find that a few more things have slipped themselves into there and it doesn't feel so vast and scary anymore.