one safe place.

How many roads youve traveled
How many dreams youve chased
Across sand and sky and gravel
Looking for one safe place

Will you make a smoother landing
When you break your fall from grace
Into the arms of understanding
Looking for one safe place

Life is trial by fire
And loves the sweetest taste
And I pray it lifts us higher
To one safe place

How many roads weve traveled
How many dreams weve chased
Across sand and sky and gravel
Looking for one safe place

[hate this video but this is the only way that i could figure out how to put the song on here]

simple as it should be.

today's treasure.

to remain lost, in fact.

it is my responsibility now. to show up. wide-eyed, and willing, and ready. God reveals all the wisdom of doing a certain action, and then i become so overwhelmed in contemplating that, that i am unable to perform it. lost in the infinity, with no ability to understand, or do, anything.

how do i show up if i don't know what it is i am showing up for? i need to show up for anything. for everything. to take on life. to take on love.

i was reading Rumi today. his words seep with wisdom of an islamic mystic but when i read his poetry, i am always recycling it back inside a perspective from my christian faith. Rumi puts it so flawlessly:

i have seen that God reduces the wisdom portion, and makes a small bridle to fit over my head and lead me by. the size of the bridle is important when you're dealing with a stubborn horse. too heavy, and he'll lie down and refuse to move. too slight, and he'll ignore it. the proportion of wisdom to personal advantage is a subtle mixture, like that of water and clay to make bricks. too little water, and it won't cohere. too much, and it washes away. God gives attention to an individual's balance, except when giving to those described in the text, "He gives and they receive without calculating." but that state cannot be understood without tasting it.

you ask, "what is love?"

"be lost in me," He says. "you'll know love when that happens."

love has no calculating in it. that's why it's said to be a quality of God and not of human beings. "God loves you" is the only possible sentence. the subject becomes the object so totally that it can't be turned around. and i must know the subject if i am to write and re-write and re-member and re-understand about God's love. i am so consumed with what i am going to do, how i am going to write, what i am going to think, what i am going to create, who i am going to teach, how i am going to counsel, and where i am going to show up to do any combination of these things. but then i am humbled, every time, to recall that the greatest of these is love.

how can i be so lost in Him that i'll know how to love freely-family, friends, my life, its purpose? how can i stop calculating? when will i soar, without any worry about when my feet will touch the ground?

a dove in His eaves.

this year in six words:

life keeps leading to more life.

sometimes You place me at the front of your troops as a commander.

sometimes You wet me with your mouth like you do your seal-ring

just before You plant your power.

sometimes You round me

into a simple door knocker

like keeps leading to more life.

You drive me away gently

as a flute song does a dove from the eaves.

with the same song

You call me back

You push me out on many journeys;

then You anchor me with no motion at all.

i am water. i am the thorn

that catches someone's clothing.

i don't care about marvelous sights

i only want to be in Your presence

there's nothing to believe

only when i quit believing in myself

did i come into this beauty

day and night i guarded the pearl of my soul

now in this ocean of pearling currents

i've lost track of which is mine

there is no way to describe You

say the end of this so strongly

that i will ride up over

my own commotion.

i am alive with other life,

as clear stones take form in the mountain.

wild horses.

With my final thesis finally polished and turned in and a mere 3 weeks left of my time here on the eastern shore of Maryland, I have been checking off my list of "must-dos" before leaving this area. I finally made it out to Assateague, MD. earlier this week. I finally decided to heed everyone's advice, pack up my bare minimums for beach camping and make the trek. I welcomed summer with dashboard drumming and inviting every ounce of sun into the car through open windows. I was anxious to reveal my freckles and refresh the tan I had come back from Florida with just two weeks prior. You know that feeling of summer freedom that no one has the power to inhibit? You head to the beach with no resistance, no thoughts of vanity (as evident by my blue bandana, messy ponytail, and goodwill t-shirt), no distractions (blackberry and laptop left at home). I had my bare feet, aviators, a couple pieces of fruit, some hot dogs, and a nalgene.

A group of great friends joined me and as we headed over the bridge onto the island, you could taste the release. We left all tensions, all assumptions, all pressures, all baggage on the mainland and greeted the wild horses with an innocence that only comes when you let it in. Horses were on the side of the road and even came up to my car, looking for food. I reached the campsite and kicked my rainbows off my feet. Sand between those toes of mine exfoliating the last of my worries away. I ran to the water, first thing, just as I have always done on every trip to the beach since I was a little girl. Tradition. This time, I was joined by wild horses. Wasn't this a scene from a movie, perhaps? How did this ever happen in real life? Sunset behind me, flailing my way to the waves, and not far down the sand, horses matched my expression of freedom.

Grilling and campfires, cigars and beer, marshmallowed fingers and chocolate lips. The perfect camping trip.

I woke up the next morning on the sand, as more horses ran by. Cliches flooded my head, of course, but i couldn't help but dwell on the metaphor of that moment. I thought about this year. I offered a thanks and then a prayer. I asked for the courage to amar generosamente (to love freely). It's the theme of my friend Teresa's and her fiance John's wedding but I do believe it applies to me these days.


All I want is the wind in my hair
To face the fear but not feel scared
Wild horses I wanna be like you
Throwing caution to the wind, I'll run free too
Wish I could recklessly love like I'm longing to
I wanna run with the wild horses
Run with the wild horses
I see the girl I wanna be
Riding bare-back, care-free
Along the shore
If only that someone was me
Jumping head-first, head-long
Without a thought
To act and damn the consequence
I wanna break free
I wanna run too.


"Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow it." -Braveheart-

amar generosante.

all along the eastern shore

it's so good to be home.
on the eastern shore.

two of my favorite boys in the world picked me up in annapolis today. their hugs have never felt so warm. i got back and everyone smiles with excitement as they see everyone. everyone screams at tan skin and sun-bleached hair. i am just thankful to see the slightest changes in someone's face. new haircuts. new experiences to hear. stories to tell over beers and a few rounds of mario kart. someone brings rockband home. addicted. like clockwork. we all took a break to hit the gym for a while. now we're back at the robotic drum and guitar set. staring at the screen. pretending to be the rockstars we aren't.

this is home. for one more month. this group of friends, family really, who know me better than any other friends on this earth. they have heard my life stories, my hard times, my best times. i've grown to know every meaning behind a grin, every inflection of a laugh, every mannerism. and they know me. and it is all under the banner of love.

one month and this family i live with-my christian "real world"- will end. i must pack up and leave, leaving nothing but footsteps on this property and the hope that perhaps i made a lasting impression on those i have left behind. how will we all part ways? no one tells you how to prepare for that. i suppose it will feel a bit like graduating from jmu. leaving mason street and all that i knew for four years. i've left a place i called home once. i bet i can do it again.

but i left that area that i knew for four years to still stay in the area for another year. i realized i have been here for 5 years, this virginia-maryland region. this part of the country has been my home and the backdrop behind some of my greatest memories, mistakes, dreams, achievements, loves, friendships, and lessons. in one month, i'll pack it all up, in my green saab again, and coast back to chicago. another chapter done. a new one waiting. i'm scared and yet i'm peaceful. uncertain yet hopeful. my family and my best friend are waiting for me in chicago, and my prayer is that so much more is waiting that i cannot even begin to fathom.


got asked to photograph another wedding today. that's four this summer. i'll post the montgomery wedding photos soon...
finished my year long thesis last week and i will be presenting it tomorrow. maybe i'll post some sections from that as well.
happy monday.

revelations of a single woman.

and this is that familiar feeling. the one that completely overcomes you, filling your stomach with a pit too large to ignore. with tears welling too fast to wipe them away soon enough. so i just let them fall. they flow down my skin, first cheekbone, chin, then neck and i am wondering why this pain creeps up the way it does sometimes. at the most inconvenient times. when i should be thinking about something else. when i should be doing something else far more worthy of my time, attention, and purpose. it comes when i realize that the rest of the world is experiencing things i thought i would have by this point in my life. it comes when i lose sight of all the blessings i receive on a daily basis. it comes when i long for a love of my own. it comes on a champagne high. while their stories are completed, and mine are a long way from done.

pathetic but true. dramatic but true. and i know that my love story is not completed yet because i would fall right now. i would love again so deeply if given the chance. it would be a slower start. but if you show me the love story, i would write it again and again. but the cost would be to give up this path i've begun as an artist, giving it my all and the same passion as i would in writing my own love story. it deserves my all right now and all of my attention.

who knows niggle? tolkien's most unsung character, a product of a writer's block just before he wrote lord of the rings. in the story, niggle tries his hardest to paint a mural of a tree on a wall in his town. in his head, he theorizes about several different possibilities for his mural. niggle sculpts this particular tree in his mind but focuses entirely on his shortcomings as they convince him to begin again. he delays the project for extended periods of time, filling his days with menial activities. one day, he steps up to the wall again. this time, he decides to capture the shape of one leaf with its sheen and glistening dewdrops on its edges, calls it finished, and is considered the town fool, as a result. soon after, niggle dies and finds himself riding on a train to heaven. while glancing at the landscape he sees it. the train stops and he gets off the train to run to a tree at the top of a hill. this was the tree niggle had wanted to paint all along, in it's full glory! he looks more closely and there was the leaf, just as he had painted it, radiant with detail.

i know i am being called to focus on some details right now. i have to focus on the sheen of my life, careful not to miss any glisten or shade of green because when i lose sight of that-my larger purpose in that grand mural- i am overwhelmed with unworthiness. left wondering why it wasn't my turn to play in a game i may not have even known enough about to play in the first place. i thought i knew better but maybe i needed to learn more. i needed to know feel what it meant to lose before i could feel the glory of a win.

i move away from here, my maryland home for the past nine months, in may. back to chicago for a while and then who knows. hopefully i will be able to claim the west coast as my new home by christmas. i know i have to hold true to what i've learned this year. he has revealed a passion in me-this art therapy thing-and i gotta do it. i don't know where. i dont know how. but it means that until i do, you will have to wait, oh love to call my own. i realize that this is my story, far from completed but i am still living it, day after day, outside of past expectations of what my life would look like by the time i turned 23. while i believed them so hard only a few years ago, those ideas are gone. but this is better.

when i was a little girl i would say to my parents as the tucked me in and kissed me goodnight, "goodnight, sleep tight, cause tomorrow will be a surprise!" every night i said that to my daddy as i flung my arms around his neck and i know i truly believed it as i lay me down to sleep. so why not now? where is that excitement? i have just as much love, if not more, in my life now as as i did then.



you don't have a love yet, jo. so go live like you don't, with abandon and an appreciation for the unexpected. go chase what God has inspired within you. you can't go back to that garden, to the way things were at the beginning, so you might as well leap into new promises. cause Lord knows, if you give them a chance, the floodgates will be opened and more blessing will be poured out than you know what to do with. just wait for the surprise.