r&r

march 2017 

“lord have mercy on my rough and rowdy soul”

my #ootd is a pair of sneakers that have a huge hole next to my left pinky toe, jeans i have literally never washed, a red tshirt i swiped in high school (the one with bleach stains on it) that is deeply wrinkled from days at the bottom of a mound of unfolded clean clothes. i am sporting a natural face (meaning that i am breaking out), and my curls are more like corckskrews of fuzz. my voice a mysterious smokey timbre from screaming all weekend at full volume over over games of all sorts (shoutout to my insatiable desire to win!!), my statement accessory is my swollen right ankle that i heard pop (loudly) 3 separate times this weekend. the first time was when i tripped when playing basketball, the second was mid dance-battle, and the third was jumping for joy when kentucky sunk their last three pointer vs UNC.

in short, i am a smelly wreck.

in the song Down in the Valley, the Head and the Heart sing “lord have mercy on my rough and rowdy soul” , a worthy summation of my daily conversations with God. but the cool thing is that i am learning that i am literally exactly who i am supposed to be.

i am so far from perfect is comical. i am not just not perfect, i am a real freaking punk most times. my edges are steak knives, the only sugar-coating that i know about is when i’m talking about m&ms. my jokes are crass, my language in vular, mischief finds me wherever i run. and boy do i run. rough & rowdy is the only r&r that i am familiar with. rest is a myth (too many things to do, too little time) and relaxation may as well be complacency (too many things to do, too little time). so what does a perfect God think of a dirty little troublemaking spazball with a real talent for screwing up?

Matthew 9: 10-13    ¹⁰ And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. ¹¹ When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹² But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³ Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

i am a sinner. Jesus was crying out in anguish under the weight of my specific sin. i am broken and fearful, angry and spiteful, a hypocrite of the highest order. i have done nothing to deserve forgiveness but i have it. i am unworthy of a place in heaven but God’s love is bigger than my inequities.

perfection comes from one place only, Jesus. God put on flesh and descended into the world of sin in order to sit at the table with the broken and dirty sinners that He called sons and daughters. He put on flesh and walked here, He hung on a cross and took on every sin of every person for all time in order to open up the path to forgiveness. God doesn’t ask us to be clean or neat or dressed business casual when we come to his door, He only asks that we come to His door.

God doesn’t look at my clothes or my personality or any of my mess and see irrevocable imperfection. He sees his perfect (wacky and wild) creation that has been smudged by the world. God actually built most of what the world calls my messy stuff. The mess that he aches to see in me is the worldly chaos. He didn’t create that but He for sure sees past it. He sees me. Phebe Martin, clothed in dirty jeans, dancing on a sprained ankle.

this is how i picture my perfect entrance into my the home of my eternal Father. i’ll run up at sunset after a full day of playing. my feet will be bare and black with dirt, my arms and legs will be scraped and scabbed over by briars encountered in the forests, my hair will be matted down from swimming in salt water. i will have spent my time building stuff and breaking stuff apart and dancing and diving in head first to murky water. i’ll turn up sporting tan skin, achy tired muscles, carrying a full heart, a huge smile, and a head full of stories. i will run home after a long day of playing, and my God will laugh big and loud “sweet phebe! it looks like you had quite a bit of fun out there! i am so glad you took advantage of this world i moulded for you. go take a shower pigpen, there will be dinner on the table when you are done. I Love You”

 

playlist-

1. down in the valley – the  head and the heart
2. wild one – michael ketterer
3. rabbit song (live at the hordern pavilion)  – boy and bear

queen of funk

september 2016

funk is an amazing word. it invokes two completely different meanings. it is either a kickass genre of music, heavy on the rhythm, made to dance. or it is word for a dejected mood, close to depression. sometimes i think i am the queen of funk.

junior year was a rough time for me. i was hurt badly. my initial reaction to this hurt was to punch the steering wheel of my car until my knuckles ached. my second reaction was to ride my bike until i had convinced myself that i was okay, that i was not hurt at all. that didn’t last very long,  all of the sudden i was cartwheeling careening crashing downward into what my friends and i came to call “the funk”.

the funk felt like someone turned down the color saturation, and everything turned drab and grey. the funk felt like i was ten miles away from everyone and i could only halfway hear what was being said to me. the funk felt like a big empty room, where the air was heavy and pressed down on my back. the funk felt like i was alone in a sea of people. like my senses were dampened and that i was floating through life without feeling anything. eventually the funk made me think that i was unloved and not worth loving. that i was worthless. that all i was good at was breaking good and pure things. in time, it made me drop out of healthy and strong friendships. i pulled back into my skin but even it felt too close to the world, if i could have crawled out of my body i would have.

but in a sadistic way, the funk felt like coming home. i had lived in the perimeters of the funk before. for a long time. since i have been past the age of ten i have spent more time in it than out of it in all reality. it’s comfortable for me. it’s not hard to disengage from the world, to half smile and to pay attention enough to get by and to bounce from home to school to home to school to home to school without ever thinking. not thinking was the main goal of this self imposed isolation. i didn’t want to think about the hurts that i was carrying, because to acknowledge them and to strive to process them would mean i would have to wade back into them. it is impossible to heal from being wounded emotionally without feeling those wounds over and over and i was not interested.

so i spent a lot of time alone in my head {familiar terrain}. i got bored quickly. this is where this funk differed from ones i had slogged through before. when i was younger and was in a bad spot, i didn’t really ever seriously entertain the thought of doing anything about it because i was at the whim of my parents who drove me everywhere and had heavy say in how i spent my time. this time around however i had a car. and every time i got behind the wheel, every time, i was faced with the reality that i could end all of it. easy escape was just a pull of the steering wheel. easy escape would take me out of the equation, would ensure that the last thing i ever hurt was myself, was the ultimate disengagement. i would drive by a strong old tree and have to decide to stay alive one more second. i would cross a bridge and have to decide to be alive when i got to the other side. every time that i made the decision to live, it got harder to make. my palms itched, i felt like a coward for not just getting it over with.

praise God that i am not nearly as sly as i think i am, praise God for my transparency. i say this because while i was spiraling down, i had a community fighting for me, holding a net at the bottom of the fall. they saw me fall apart, they felt me pull back, they heard me stop talking, they watched me leave. but my sweet sweet friends y’all. they started to pray that i would come back. they prayed out loud (with me in the room… yeah it was strange for me) and in silent, they prayed and showered me with truth and showed me truth. they radiated Christ and carried me to the foot of the cross. every time i got up and walked away from them again, they started over.

what a sweet picture of God. He has never, will never, can never be okay with us walking away from him. He is greedy in His love. He wants us in our full, in our flaws, completely engaged, all of the time. He fights for us, He runs after us, and when we really can’t take it anymore He lets us go with the promise that He will always be there when we turn around. He doesn’t stay at the place that we turned away from him, He chases after us so that when we decide that we need to come home, we don’t have get back to that place we left him. He shadows us, walks in our footsteps so that all we have to do is turn around and we are wrapped in his arms, covered in his grace, in his truth, in his love. we don’t have to fix ourselves, we don’t have to be what we were, all we have to do is to desire Him. all we have to do is to turn around, to say “God I miss you” and He will answer “I am here child, I am here Phebe, I have never left you, I have never left your side.”

one day, i turned around. no epiphany, no sea splitting moment, i just decided that i was done pulling away, i was worn out of running. God was right there when i turned around. my friends where only a step behind. they wrapped me up in their arms and told me they loved me and i believed them. but i looked around and i realized that i had been so disengaged that i had navigated myself into unfamiliar waters and i had no idea how to get home, i had no idea how to be whole again. but again God spoke “all you have to do is move with me, I will chart your course, I will navigate. I can’t promise smooth water, in fact I promise storms. but in the end, I will always get you home” so i just started moving. i started taking peeks at my hurts, longer and longer every time. i opened up to friends, i started paying attention to the world, started processing burdens i had carried for a long dang time.

slowly i healed. color crept back into the sunrises, conversations got clearer, my body felt lighter. there were days that i felt like i was in the bottom of a well though. there are always those days. but eventually, those days were outweighed by the days when i felt like i was on solid ground. every once in awhile there were days where i felt like i was on top of a mountain. i forgave. i let my community soothe my wounds and eventually let Christ have all of the hurts. i don’t carry them anymore.

i didn’t let the funk go though. “a kickass genre of music, heavy on the rhythm, made to dance.” i  came back into myself and was made whole by God and all of a sudden, the world was music again. there was the sounds of laughter and genuine connection and pranks and tears back in my ears and it was music. my heart pumped constantly and strongly, heavy and always in rhythm. it said “you are alive you are alive you are still alive.” the dance was inevitable. once my limbs realized they were free, they moved without abandon. they shook and rolled and grooved.  i dance because it brings me real joy and that is what comes when we engage in the world and turn back to God.  i dance because sometimes i feel joy all the way down to my fingertips just because i am still breathing. i dance because i have amazing, consistent and wonderful friends to dance with. i danced, i dance, i will forever dance because i am alive because i ran from God and he ran after me, because the music of life never stopped and never will stop.

PSALM 30:11— He turns my mourning into dancing, He takes off my sackcloth and clothes me in joy

playlist~ (songs that make me feel alive)

sideways by citizen cope and santana

julep by the punch brothers

wings

december 2016

My back always starts hurting pretty badly around finals week. I know that the ache is a byproduct of hunching over computers and tests. But that is really freaking boring so instead here is my explanation.

The wings that lay dormant under my skin deeply resent the way that finals chain me down. They strain and ache and push against my nerves in protest. I write papers and study for tests and read scholarly articles and dream about being anywhere else.

I could be in the Grand Canyon, yelling as loud as I can and knowing that I will never be loud enough to fill that chasm with my noise. I could be snorkeling in the Keys, chasing clownfish and being chased by barracudas (actually happened). I could in a black hole vortex, spinning in the subjectivity of existence alongside schrodinger’s cat. I could be in 1966, marching on washington or maybe marching into the heart of the jungle. I could be a magnet, simultaneously attracted and repulsed by myself. I could be a guitar string, thrumming along, dancing and squirming and moving and making sound as I go (or maybe I am already this one).

But instead, I am here. Left side of the table, study room 311, Anne Belk Library, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina, United States, Northern Hemisphere, Planet Earth, Milky Way, God’s Palm.

WHY? WHY AM I DOING THIS? I REALLY REALLY DISLIKE THIS! I AM NOT ENTIRELY SOLD ON THIS WHOLE COLLEGE THING ANYWAY! WHY AM I STILL HERE?

Who freaking knows my friends. Maybe because it is my parent’s wish for me. Maybe because I (sort of) believe that this is the path to success. Maybe because I truly love my major. And my friends. And Boone. And the restaurants in Boone.

Or, maybe it is because I am too afraid what my wings will look like once I open them up. Once I let them rip out of my skin. Freedom is fun until it is really freaking scary.

But mainly I think that I am here because I am supposed to be here, enrolled in college. I need to learn how to sit with an achey spine and a wandering mind but not let them control me. I need to learn the wisdom that patience and perseverance grinds into you. I need college.

When I bust out of this joint, it will be glorious. I am going to moonwalk across that freaking stage and grab my diploma like a baton and sprint forward to the next leg of my race. I am gonna to stage dive into the future.

And as for my achy wings… when I uncurled myself from under my down comforter this morning, heaved my body off of my foam mattress and faced today, a feather fell out of my curls. So I think they will be just fine.