what breaks does not shatter

I write the words slow, the way that I used to in pages, pink pen pressed hard against the fake parchment paper of the Harry Potter journal. I am trying to learn that sometimes just because the words can come quickly doesn't mean they're the right ones, so I type slower than normal into the blank screen.I'm sitting cross-legged on my bed while I do this. I'm sitting with journals scattered around me, the old stories of my young self, the evidence of a thousand nights of anguish softened now by time and the half-finished tea by my bed. I'm rereading, because when you move away from home, when you get married, there is this exquisite sadness of leaving your room. There is this old self who you think will slink away, a shadow you couldn't sew on tightly enough, and she'll keep pace through the house, while you sleep and wake in a strange, new home.It hits me this way, when I am looking for my self among the things I am choosing to leave behind, that I have been preaching a story with my life that I do not believe enough. Isn't that funny? This young self - stirrup pants and crooked front teeth in sixth grade in the hallway when the boy didn't like her back, or the self in the ill-fitting American Eagle jeans at the mailbox with three crisp rejection letters, or the self in college who lay on her back one winter night after falling on the ice and spilling hot chocolate down her coat not once, but twice -this is the self who has been preaching the truth to me, and I have not been listening.And this is the truth she is speaking: even what breaks does not shatter.I can revive at a moment's notice the stories, the humid June air or the night that I pressed my address written in sharpie on an index card and said "write to me", thinking it was the beginning of something. I can sit on that bed and I can relive the bar and the dress and the anger I wore so badly, draped over me like the sheets I pretended were wedding gowns years before. I can tell you the song that was playing in my head the days after I didn't get in or the day I realized the friendship had changed, I can have the conversation over and over again in the safe aftermath of my car, crumple my fist against the steering wheel and make my heart swell again with everything that went wrong, everything that hurt, everything I remember about being broken.But this is the living proof - for the me that can remember the breaking is not, herself, broken. No, she is alive, and gloriously alive, and she is sitting typing deliberately on her bed, pressing these words into her heart. Not everything that breaks shatters. And even just the breathing, in, and out, of those words, those pressed deliberate words, starts  to build up this wearied heart. And the worry, that I can't do this, can't leave this home this room these old journals, that I can't go off and be brave -the worry quiets.It is all too easy for me to hold on to the memories of being broken, the familiar pieces of hurt, the way that he said or she looked. It's too easy for me to see myself as not complete, or still recovering, to imagine myself frail or small or unable, incapable. It's easy to say that to myself when I am weary-hearted and the mountains keep rising up before me, and I think, I'm still broken, that still hurts me. But my younger self has been the living reply.I am widened by the months and years of work running my fingers along the frayed edges of her couch cushions, trying to put words to the counseling questions, to make a space where I hear my own self.I am widened by the quietest moment in the morning when he only kisses me hello, no words, catches me up in his arms and in that gesture promises forever, promises us, in this, promises that he is the kind of man who will keep his promises.I am widened and changed and made bolder and braver by writing out into the spaces where you see me, pink penning these words over us both: we are not shattered. we are alive. Maybe it's the beginning of brave - a belief that you have, all along, been braver than you know.Love,hilary 

dear hilary: be braver

Dear Hilary,I just watched the Brené Brown video - the one about being vulnerable, people who live wholeheartedly? Do you know that one? Her Ted Talk? I want to know how you have learned about doing that in your life so far? How do you live vulnerably?Love,Un-vulnerable in SeattleDear Un-vulnerable,I've watched that video a bunch of times in the last few months. It was a suggestion from my counselor, and, like most of her suggestions, it was a good one. When I first saw it, I was sitting in my office at work and worrying about something (I'm a bit of a worrier, I'll confess). I was eating these really good cookie things I got in the grocery store, 2 boxes for $5, and they promised to be very nutritious and give me hours and hours of energy as well as fill me with the sweet taste of hydrogenated blueberry (I promise, actually, they're really good). As I munched, I worried, and Brené talked, and I thought about vulnerability and shame and courage and those words I'm so fond of and so very not good at living by.This year, the year of 22? I have learned that I am braver than I thought I was. I have also learned that being brave is more about being braver - about the growing from one kind of brave to another, far more than it is about the thing itself.I want to start with being braver than I thought I was. I go on runs sometimes - you probably know this from my blog - and when I run, I talk. I talk to God, I talk to the birds, I talk even a little bit to myself. And the things I say are brave not because they are difficult, but because they are gracious. "I love my body," I said one summer afternoon. "I have done a good job at work this week," I said as I rounded the muddy right turn in the path behind the college buildings, the one that leads to my favorite pond. "God, Your goodness is bigger than my idea of it," was the thought last week as I ran hands up through a cul-de-sac praying for a sign from Him. These things are brave: because they are words of love instead of judgment, words of a recovering good girl who now believes that her job is not to hurl condemnation at her legs or her work ethic or her relationship with God, but instead to say things in love. That's brave.Brave looks like wearing bright blue pants on a Friday night, like eating Ben & Jerry's from the carton, like whispering to your best friend that you do not know if you can believe that you are worthy. Yes, un-vulnerable, brave is in the work of admitting all the places where you ache. This year, my year of 22, I have learned that to be brave is to walk into a room and, for just a moment, believe that all things work together for the good.And then that oh-s0-much-more-important thing: in this, my 22nd year, I learned that it is not about achieving a level of brave all for its own sake. It's not about an arbitrary measurement, where you suddenly are brave enough, where you have arrived at a satisfactory level... Oh no. Being brave is for something else: for love, for the truth, for the sake of the bigger, richer life that you must seek. You must not seek it for merely self-actualization: you must seek it because to be alive is a great and grave privilege. But being brave is more about being brave in the direction of the other things you seek. Therefore, it is a movement, a blossoming. One day you manage to say to your abs that you love them. One day you pray and release. One day, in the middle of the day, you watch the Ted Talk again and you say to yourself, I want to live wholeheartedly, too. And that is brave. And that is braver.Living vulnerably is not a thing to be achieved, my dear friend. It is more a striving to live according to the great privilege it is to be alive, a striving to offer your fullest self because you believe that self is so radiant, so very real, that to offer less is to be less. It is a striving, a blossoming, a becoming.In this, my 22nd year, I am beginning to strive. I am beginning to hope that I will be braver now than I was three years ago and braver in twenty years than I am in ten years, and all the while, seeking not merely bravery or courage or vulnerability: seeking instead the good, wondrous life.That's what I know about being vulnerable, Un-vulnerable: yours is a good and wondrous life. Be brave in its direction.Love,hilary

on living water

It was a year ago this day that I wrote about living water. I told you in my college-aged space with my rushing, hopeful words, that I longed for us to carry this living water to each other. I wanted us to bring each other cupped hands filled with that mighty Ezekiel stream. I wanted us to love the people we didn't yet love with a wild and living water.Because, I typed, sitting cross-legged on my bed with my hair wet from the post-run shower, "Every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers go, will live."Do you ever think, while you sit next to the strangers on the bus on the way to work, that they hunger and thirst for a wilder love? That as they walk through their day, they might drink an iced tea and write emails and go to spinning class, all the while wistful for something bigger?And you, do you ever do that? Do you ever walk along a street in what feels like the middle of the night, against the silence of stars and flickering stoplights, kicking the sidewalk with your longing? Do you ever find yourself staring out of a window, almost in tears, for no reason other than you don't know what's next but you wish it to be big and brave and wild and beautiful?And do you ever stop in front of your door, frozen to the sidewalk, frozen in all that you think about admitting, but don't want to? All that you would tell that person, or write in a letter, or sing out to the sky if only you believed you could?Oh, me too.Me, too.In this, my twenty-second year, I stand outside my door. I scuff sidewalks alone after a cocktail or a coffee and think about the possibilities that terrify me. In this, my twenty-second year, I cannot leave church without crying hysterically on the strip of road between the initial right turn and the dangerous narrow left. In this, my twenty-second year, I whisper, "counseling" and "writing" and cross them off and rewrite "history" and "provost" and cross them off again and rewrite, "?" and leave it.And now I sit, leaning late into the afternoon - and I hear His command: Hilary, give away My water. Maybe it is that simple. We are weary travelers all, searching for a drink of water. We thirst for the living water flowing from the temple. We look at each other longingly, wondering, where is the drink of water for my weariness?Maybe it is as simple and as difficult as you and me, traveling along the road, offering each other a drink of living water. In quiet prayers in a cold parking lot. In twenty minutes of laughter in our offices. In dinners and drinks and blog posts and daring greatly for each other. In telling you, dear reader, as scared as I am, that I am vulnerable and new to everything and afraid. In telling each other that some days, you just need to drink deep from a well of living water. That's all.Give away my water. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."Love,hilary

the word is light

Last year, at the beginning of 2012, I gave myself the word "build." I promised it was a year to build - to build on the new person I wanted to become, to protect and grow a dream of writing, of loving other people in words, of advice offered in letters like Sugar, a dream of a bolder, freer Hilary. It was the beginning of it all, I stated boldly. Now build.And I find myself back at another beginning today. My hands are full of dreams, just like last year. They spill out around me like ribbons escaping their spools - looping and spinning, brightly colored, almost invisible in their lightness. They sound like England and graduate school and Starbucks coffee dates and maybe someday I'll write letters to strangers and pour out love to them even though we've never met. They sound like the quiet nights of practicing sign language and praying for my friends far away. They sound like that tattoo of an empty birdcage I always wanted, the one that whispers "from grace, freedom." They sound like drinking wine with the people I love, like laughter loud and echoing across a bar or an empty office or a path through the woods. My head is full of questions, just like last year. And this year, I have new answers.Why do our hearts have to break? I tell you the truth, that only in the breaking open do we find love sufficient enough to carry us forward. Only in the heart widened by pain and surprise and change (sudden or long-expected), can grace sound its sweetest chord.Why do we have to do awful obedient things? Because we belong to something bigger than ourselves, and sometimes it calls for putting aside what we want. It calls for us to set apart some of what we wish we could do or say or have, and instead tell the truth. Even when the truth means an ending. Even when it means a fight. Even when it means an unknown outcome.Why do we dream so big? Because we are a people caught up between the fleeting beauty of the snow that melts tomorrow morning and the eternity of the love that did the dishes for you last night. Because we are always torn between seeing everything we cherish dissolve before us, and knowing that all we love is never lost forever. Because in the big dreams, we love each other and this world better.What do you want to build? I want it to be a great unfolding, this next year: I want to build a nest for you. I want to spend 10,000 hours listening and another 10,000 growing wings next to you: in writing your stories and pondering questions together. In declaring that love is brave. In whispering that you are lovely, just because you are. In 10,000 hours of harvesting the light for each other and cupping it in our palms, 10,000 candles to mark our way forward. So this is the way to begin again: with 10,000 candles and a million questions and a big dream to love.And the word is light.Love,hilary

dear hilary: on bringing sexy back

Dear Hilary,Right before Christmas I look at myself in the mirror and scold myself furiously for all the chocolate I've eaten. For the hours I didn't work out. For the way my stomach puffs out, and I lack good posture, and my eyes are an in-between color like my hair is and I never do anything to it and basically I'm just doomed to look like this. I want to change that. I hear people say it's possible, to love yourself, to think your own body is sexy. To think that your butt looks good in those jeans. To believe that, despite even the worst of worst hair days, out of me radiates a sexy, desirable glow.But no one tells you how to actually believe it. So I want to know.Love,Mirror, Mirror on the WallDear Brave Sexy Girl on Fire,I write this to you sitting on my unmade bed that is covered in approximately 5 shoes, a coat, a cell phone, a wool blanket, Christmas cards spilling out of their case, leftover work papers, ribbon and cough drops. I am wearing 4 inch high heels and orange running shorts and my sweaty white T-shirt, having just jumped around my room in said high heels to Usher's, "Scream" and P!nk's "Blow Me One Last Kiss" and the Glee mashup of "Rumor Has It" and "Somebody Like You". I jumped around my room. I shimmied. I swung my hips in what vaguely resembles a circle. I cha-chaed. I salsaed. I shook whatever could be shook. I put my hair down. I put my hands in the air. If there was sexy in the world, I brought it back.I changed your name when I wrote back to you, Brave Sexy Girl on Fire, because we don't get to see our heart's desire in the mirror when we call to it. We don't get to see the "fairest of them all". The problem with asking a mirror is that it will only show you what you already think. It will show you a snapshot of those nagging thoughts. It isn't a new voice; it's just an echo.But. What if you whispered, "I am a brave sexy girl on fire"?Just, what if you did that?What do you think would happen?I dare you to put on high heels and Usher. I dare you to jump around. I dare you to shout to your bedroom walls that you are a brave sexy girl on fire. I dare you to do it wearing a sweaty t-shirt, orange running shorts and four inch heels.It's cheesy, love, but it's true. We have to speak the truth out loud more often than we realize. We have to speak it out ahead of ourselves, so that when we wake up each morning and go to bed each night, it is already waiting for us. The truth about sexy isn't like logic. You can't commit it to memory. You can't plug yourself into one end of the equation and POOF! Out comes a belief on the other end.This is a truth that is three-dimensional, living, a heartbeat inside your heartbeat. This is a truth that you build, with every dance party. With every act of kindness, every smile to a stranger on the street, every dollar you pull out of your wallet to tip the girl at the coffee shop, every outfit that you rock in the morning (especially the ones with cowboy boots, neon pink, ruffles... you catch my drift). You build this belief in your own sexiness. In cupcakes and shimmying hips and three hours reading a good book and dreams about grad school and falling in love. You build it.So this letter ends with a dare. A dare to you, Brave Sexy Girl on Fire. I dare you to jump around dancing and saying, I am a brave sexy girl on fire over and over. I dare you to begin to build.Because you don't have to do a single thing different to glow like the French sky on Bastille Day. You don't need to do anything to your hair or your stomach or your eyes or your hair to have the glow. It is already so gut-wrenchingly radiating out from you I can see it, right now. I can see it in your letter. That's why I name you Brave Sexy Girl on Fire. Because I can see you, glowing, all the way from here.I dare you to revel in it.Love,hilary

my own path (a guest post by fiona)

Oh, I'm so, so, SO excited to share Fiona's words with you today. She's one of the many talented writers out there that I enjoyed from afar for a while before braving the first email. Since then, it's been even more wonderful to get to know her a little bit. Today, she writes over here rich, beautiful words about the paths that stretch out before us.  You are my competition.I stood beside you, on that starting line and we started racinglimbs still chubby with baby fat, pigtails flying you with the prettiest hair clips and the enviable my little pony collectionyou with the neatest handwriting and the most gold starsyou with all the words and the right dance moves to the newest pop song. We run and run and I push every ounce of energy into theseyoung legs just to keep up with you the one who the boys want to hang around near, jostling for attentionyou with the perfect style perfectly poised between trendy and quirkyyou with the easy straight A’s, the assurance of an Oxbridge offer. We run on, my heart beating fast now, breath coming shorterharder, but I must keep pace with you the one dating the CU president and whispers of a ringyou the tutor’s favourite, the job offers already arrivingyou with the perfect smile in church and the easy way of praying out loud. We run and we run and we run until the sweatdrips into my eyes and my chest feels likeit will explodebut I must keep up, must keep pace, must prove I can do it until The path divides and I stumble to a stopin confusion. There you run ahead on my left, a new partner to run with, baby in the sling.And there you go on my right, career reaching new heights, another promotion on the horizon.And you, heading further away, with your church speaking schedule and the book contract signed. My chest heaves with the weight of exertion and competitiona tightness creeping with the promise of tearsmy breath comes fast and shallow.Which of you am I supposed to keep up with?How can I keep pace with you all?How am I supposed to know which path to take? And then a voiceunruffled and unworriedA word spoken over my shoulderin my ear This is the way, this is your wayWalk this wayRun this pathYou will run and not grow wearyyou will walk and not be faint. I lift my tired head and see a path stretchingforward from my worn out feetan empty path, my own pathno one to jostle with compete with keep up withthis is not a racetrack, nothis is a run to enjoyevery step ofthe way. And so I take that first step. A little bit about Fiona: I'm a British woman living in Luxembourg with my Danish husband. I love celebrating, gathering people together, seeing the new friendships and plans that emerge. I love seeing people find their role in God’s big story and I'm still trying to find mine. My one word for the year is “brave,” because I don’t want to let fear be the reason I miss out on all God has for me. I blog at fionalynne.com/blog and tweet at @fiona_lynne.