love moves freely

Another airport this morning. I sit in an anonymous wooden chair, the girl in grey with the cinnamon raisin bagel and the pile of hair escaping in all directions from its elastic. The sun rises slowly this morning, pausing as clouds sweep over the tips of the plane tails, and Eric Church sings into my ear as flipflops clack against the floor. Next to me, a woman checks her iPhone. Something in her face looks worried, and she checks her watch every minute. I am suddenly desperate to know - what is your story? Who are you waiting for?But I just nudge my suitcase closer to my feet and turn away. When I look up again, she's walking towards her gate, and her seat is taken by an officer with a wrist brace drinking a diet Pepsi.My mind wanders to fearlessness, the strange dream I had last night, and then I remember what Dear Sugar wrote about love to her twenty-something self:Real love moves freely in both directions. 

You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.

When I first read this I was sitting in my single room in the middle of February. I was in the gap between exhilarated and exhausted. The joy of school, of learning history and tracing stories through time was also the aching, tired eyes of being up too late and doing too much. I was blogging without really knowing why. And I read Sugar's words as dazzlingly true. You can't convince people to love you. There isn't an argument in the world that will coax love from one person's heart into another's.This was protection for my weary heart when I read it more than a year ago. It was relief, courage to walk away, courage to tell the truth about what was unrequited, what should be let go. Then, real love moving freely in both directions meant keeping my heart a bit more guarded. I didn't give as much away.I read it again in this early morning, watching the officer and the woman with her worried face, watch the people sip their coffee and polish their glasses. And I think about how we only have a little bit of time to be with each other. And I think about how I named this blog The Wild Love, because I wanted to remind myself that we should give more than we think we can, and we should love wild.Sugar's right: you can't make someone love you. You can send your love towards them and they may not be there. You can sit at the table, ready to offer your extraordinary self, and they may not come to the other side of the table.But if I have any encouragement, from the very beginning: unrequited love is not wasted. The learning to care for someone, the hope, the teaching yourself to pay attention to how your heart works, the glimpse you get of their glorious self (even in the most agonizing moment when you realize that it will never be more than a glimpse) is not wasted.We should protect our hearts. But maybe some of what we call protection is a lack of trust. A lack of trust that love is good work, that in this divine economy, all things have purpose, all things work together for good. I built a fence, thinking that the most important thing was to be safe, at any cost.I see the woman sitting three tables away, her quiet elegance the kind that only comes with years. She crosses her ankles and chews on a blueberry muffin. Trusting begins here, smiling over at her, risking her early morning displeasure or her pointed ignoring. Wild love begins in the belief that love offered, even if not always taken, is not wasted.I smile at her as she gets up, and she frowns slightly and walks away. I smile at her retreating figure.Real love moves freely - and it trusts.Love,hilary

some mornings you wake up wondering

beep. beep, beep, BEEEEEEEEEP. I jolt upright, panting. My fingers sleepwalk towards my cell phone, sliding it silent again. I look around. I've kicked my comforter into a heap at the foot of the bed, scattered pillows across the floor in my dreaming. I feel my arms, goosebumped and cold.I know the dog is downstairs, waiting for my father to feed him. I can hear my mother in the next room clinking hangers together as she decides what to wear for the morning. I know my brother is sprawled on the old couch under our one air conditioner, and the other brother (the red truck driving brother) is eating a bowl of cereal before his work day begins.Everything is in its place, all the people, all the animals, even the flowers that bend their petals towards the sun that hasn't quite finished rising. And then there is me: sitting in a pile of leaf-printed sheets, hair in a messy red-blond halo, wearing a T-shirt from my days in an elementary school play and an old pair of soccer shorts, and my heart is spinning.What if I have been wrong this whole time, Jesus? What if when I thought you said, "This is important," you didn't mean what I thought you meant? What if you meant for me to move to DC, to move to teaching, to move to France? What if you wanted me to go to grad school after all, and if I was there instead of here I wouldn't face this heart-and-gut-wrenching situation, this worry, this falling and failing? I dreamed I had gotten it wrong, I realize cup my chin in my hands and draw my knees up towards my chest. I dreamed he had wanted something else from me, something brighter and braver.I hear the water running for toothbrushes. I hear the coffee gurgle and drip, and somewhere in the ordinary morning below these three hundred year old floorboards, the world is moving.I swing my legs over the bed, trip over a stray book, and fall to my knees. This isn't funny, Jesus! I'm already late! I roll my eyes, but then I close them.

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;²     Lord, hear my voice.Let your ears be attentiveto my cry for mercy.

³ If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,Lord, who could stand?⁴ But with you there is forgiveness,so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

⁵ I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,and in his word I put my hope.⁶ I wait for the Lordmore than watchmen wait for the morning,more than watchmen wait for the morning.

⁷ Israel, put your hope in the Lord,for with the Lord is unfailing loveand with him is full redemption.⁸ He himself will redeem Israelfrom all their sins.

Today, I will wait. More than watchmen for the morning. The coffee will be almost gone if I don't hurry - and I race through the rest of the room, gathering shoes and glasses, putting an earring in while I try to brush my hair. Even here, though? More than watchmen for the morning. Love,hilary

for the brother and the red truck

"Wanna drive?"I ask him hesitantly, kicking imaginary dust off the step. He looks at me, and shrugs. "Yeah, sure. I'd be up for that." I backtrack, immediately skeptical. "You don't have to! You can't just - yeah. You don't have to." He shakes his head at me, and stands up, stretching his long arms towards the pink sky. "Hil. Let's go. I'll get the key."We drive without talking for a while, Eric Church and Jason Aldean our companions through the emptied suburb streets. He has one hand on the wheel and I can just see a bit of his brown cowboy boots peeking out from beneath his dirty jeans. This is the brother who spends his days in the sun, working grounds, mowing and pruning and planting. This is the brother who puts his callused hands to the ground and takes care of things. I shift in my seat next to him, crossing and uncrossing my legs under me. I start to say something. "Can I ask you a -" but suddenly my lip is trembling and I feel like crying and I can't control myself. It sounds so stupid.He looks over as we pull up to the stop sign. "Hil? What's up?" I look out the window. He's my younger brother, I say to myself. How can I be this stupid in front of him? I want to be laughing and wise. I want to be the one who gives him the advice, who tells him the truth, who teaches him about life. But I'm still sniffling and now we're driving through a development, the same five year old maple leaves brushing against the truck. He waits."I just... I'm sad. I'm sad about - you know." He nods. A rough hand touches my shoulder for a second, and returns to the wheel. "I know. But you know, Hil, you're great. And if he doesn't see that, and if he doesn't want it, and if she keeps saying those things... well. I promise, it's because there's more going on inside them that you can't understand. But you are still you." He pauses, looks out his window. "I love you, Hil."And as he flicks on the blinker to veer home, I am crying for a different reason. My brother is wiser than anyone else I know. He is a nineteen year-old truck driving cowboy man, who takes care of things, who makes me sing Eric Church at the top of my lungs on the way home from church, who finds me in tears late one night after a fight with a friend and walks with me while I sob about how much words hurt.I can't hide from the brother and his red truck. I can't be the perfect older sister. I can't pretend to have all the answers. He teaches me, takes care of me, reminds me of the truth more often than I remind him. Sometimes the greatest blessings are the younger siblings who drive us through suburbs and hold us while we cry and come looking for our hearts when we try to hide them. Sometimes, the richest witness of Christ's love is your younger brother in his red truck.Love,hilary

if tomorrow wasn't such a long time

There's beauty in that silver singing river, there's beauty in that sunrise in the sky, but none of these and nothing else can touch the beauty, that I remember in my true love's eyes... I first heard this song when I snuck onto my sister's computer in middle school. She had an old white Mac desktop, running the very first version of OS X, and you had to know a password to get in. I remember trying a hundred different ones before I got it right. I would turn the music up, just enough to feel the strum of the guitar in my ribcage, and then I would sing.I sang because I wanted to open the cage on longing. I wanted to feel those words about my true love, even before I had an idea of what that love would look like. I wanted to set myself free from the narrow ideas of who can sig and who can't.So I sang about silver singing rivers to the smudged mirror, to the empty house. I poured out my voice- and somehow in that moment, I opened my heart.But I stopped singing for a while in college. Maybe I thought I wouldn't have time, or that it was only for the truly miraculous voices, the ones that shatter your idea of what music could be. But I think mostly I forgot how to love even the smallest attempts to open our hearts. I forgot to be unashamed of singing to my mirror about my true love and how long tomorrow is, because I thought that only belonged to people who have a true love.But singing that song belongs to all of us who long to live in love. And singing in the mirror, far from foolishness, might be the best way to keep our hearts strong and beating, joyful and true.Tonight, I am going to sing to my mirror again. I am going to sing Sarah McLachlan and Ingrid Michaelson and Justin Vernon and Emmylou Harris. And in between their good sounds and good words, I think I might find freedom.Love,Hilary

Learning to forget myself

I fiddle with the screen, adding songs to a playlist. It's early morning and I am on a plane to Georgia. Flannery O'Connor and the sweet, sticky south call to me as my northern body scoots down in the seat. Some days I hide to see if anyone will notice me. I test them, these normal, tired everyday people bound for home or on a long journey. I watch them for a sign- do you see me? I whisper as I make my way to the bathroom at the end of the aisle. Do you think I am extraordinary? Do you wonder about who that yankee girl with the long reddish hair is, and where she is going, and what thoughts swirl through her head? The baseball caps around me don't stir. The women trying to drink their coffee as we hit choppy air keep sipping. The children cry and color and push their feet against the seat in front of them.I catch my own eye in the tiny bathroom mirror and am surprised by the force of the response. "Hilary Joan, stop worrying!" I tell myself. "This is an airplane. You don't need someone to be in awe of you."I am surprised by how much I wanted awe. I want to turn heads and stop traffic, I want to leave an impression. I want to linger in someone's mind.I put my hands on either side of my face. "Go sit and write." I do. I smile at the woman waiting in line for the bathroom and squeeze back into my middle seat. I smile at my seat mates, who turn away and sleep or recheck their email.I don't have an answer to that desire, that hunger to be known and awed, that strange mix of selfishness and truth (for we are all extraordinary marvels). But I begin to write.

Humility is throwing yourself away in complete concentration on something or someone else.

- Madaleine L'EngleOh Lord, grant me the grace to forget myself.Love, Hilary

I get it!

I stand in front of the mirror, water dripping behind my ears, plastering bits of my hair to my neck. I cradle the phone to my ear, laughing and smiling so much I can barely get the words out. "I get it!" I can picture her sitting at her kitchen table, or leaning against her clean counters, her chin in her hand as she shakes her head in amusement and joy.This isn't the first time that I have called her with news. She's gotten frantic phone calls about everything - new jobs, new boys, bad habits, fights, something someone said about me, my inability to hear God's voice, my impatience. She can trace the pattern of my hurricanes with seasoned accuracy. When I had to tell her goodbye last year, I told her that she could read the weather of my heart.I trip over my words, scattering water across my mother's dresser surface as I shake my head in disbelief. "It's about my relationship with Him! All of this, isn't it? It's about learning to trust Him. It's not being mad that He is in control of something that already belongs to Him!"We both laugh. I can hear her push her red glasses onto the top of her head, her eyes crinkling in recognition. She knows the hurricanes and the harvests. I perch on the end of my parents' bed, close my eyes, listening to her remind me to record this somehow, to build an altar of remembrance. It won't always be like this, she says. I imagine her swirling a spoon in her coffee cup as she says this, then taking a careful sip. Find a way to remember the harvest so that if a drought comes, you remember that you were joyful about this realization.We are a thousand miles apart and, somehow, it's just as if we were two feet apart. "You're the first person I wanted to tell," I whisper as I feel the conversation coming to its end. "I love you, Julie.""I love you too, Hil." I hear the familiar nickname, hear the promise tucked inside that there is a life full of these conversations, lemonade and sweet tea on our porches. There is a lifetime of building altars of remembrance to His goodness.I lie in bed after hanging up the phone and as my eyes close, I whisper one more: Thank you for the beautiful ones, who read the weather of our hearts. Might I be one, to her and to others?Love, hilary

It slows down

My imagination is a runaway train. I've said this before, in journals from high school and middle school, even all the way back to my new pink penned, third grade scrawl. An idea floats across my mind, and I begin to toss it back and forth, watching as it blossoms and takes shape. I daydream. I make pictures in my heart of possibilities.I've already told you this, I think as I find myself reaching for the keyboard after a long day. I curl into my sheets, glancing over at the pictures of my grandparents on the nightstand, at the pile of clothes in a heap from Sunday morning frenzy, at the cold cup of tea left over from last night.I keep writing about it, because the lesson tonight feels like a cold shower. Your imagination ran away with you. The words don't come from a mentor tonight, or a friend, or even the many books I have that warn us about letting loose our minds after the love of outward things (John Woolman is first among them). The brakes on a car screech at the intersection just outside our house. My heart thuds in my chest and I put my hand over it, a small gesture of calm. I close my eyes, feel the stale bedroom air fill my lungs and shake my head.Sometimes slowing down hurts. I don't want to be reminded that my imagination can spin out of control, or that sometimes, the pictures and the possibilities have to be loved, and put away. But tonight I'm reminded that I must slow down.The steady thump of my heart is loud in my ears against the quiet night. Why is this lesson so hard for me, I wonder. Why is it so hard to go slow, ask only the questions that are right in front of me? Why is it so hard to believe that I'll know what to do when it's time to do it?It slows down, I whisper. It's about slowing down. It's about gentleness. It's about trust.Tonight, though? Tonight, I keep my hand on my heart, close my eyes and burrow further in the blankets. I'll slow down, I try to promise myself. I'll stop the runaway train.I fall asleep, the promise muffled in the sheets. Maybe tomorrow I'll begin.Love,hilary

when I couldn't write the post

"A fierce post." My insides churn as I sit, staring at the computer, my fingers poised over the familiar "e" and "s" keys. "You're an opinionated person. You have tough and gritty things to share with the world." My stomach won't sit still. I stand up, go to the bathroom, look into the mirror. My freckles stare me down. I blink back a few tears. "You can do this. You can do this!" I wash my hands a third or fourth time, scrubbing away at my cuticles like I can scrub off the insecurity. I go back to the computer, flex my fingers again.I can't get Anne and Jo out of my head. Those rich, aching-with-life conversations - Friedrich and Gilbert and their true, challenging words: "Jo, there is nothing in this of the woman I am privileged to know." or "Maybe if you just let your character speak everyday English, instead of all that highfaluting mumbo-jumbo." or "There is more to you than this. If you have the courage to write it."And I hear those voices too. The wise and fierce voices, who read my writing and push me. Tell us the other stories, the ones where you're pissed off, they say. The ones where you feel that women and men are equal, all bearing God's image, all preachers and teachers and sinners and it makes you mad to think we've baptized cultural stereotypes as the truth. The ones where you believe in the Clean Air Act, in driving a hybrid car, in solar power and healthcare and the need to reform education. And yes, even the ones where you sometimes think about whether universal salvation could be the right thing to hope for - to hope that Hell is real, and empty.But my screen is still blank. I hover, type a word, delete it. I flip through the Switchfoot album that's playing - listen to that same verse seared in my mind from the last week of school... But I'm not sentimental, this skin and bones is a rental, and no one makes it out alive... which I don't even know if I believe. But I sing anyway.I can't write the edgy post. Maybe it means I'm a coward. Maybe it means that I'm here looking for sweetness and acceptance and all flowers and turtles in a pond, hiding from the days when I'm in a foul mood and I yell at my mother for no reason or doubt whether love's real or possible or even worthwhile.I can't write it. If it's either all sweetness or all edge, if I'm searching for a voice to fall pleasantly or harshly, I'm still searching for a voice instead of speaking with one. I keep holding this space up to the light, worried. Type, delete. Type, delete. The words about women in ministry don't appear. The words about this election. The words about what I studied in college, and what it made me think about (the history of dating, for example, the history of birth control, plays about plagiarism or that paper I read about nanoparticles). Words for any of it.So I write this post instead. I confess it: I can't write it yet. The rain splashes through the edge of the open window, and I look at the sentence again. Not yet.Not fierce or wild, but true. And that's the most I have.all my wild love, hilary

It's not just a song

"It's just the Civil Wars," I tell myself as the song ticks out of my computer. "It's just a song. Just a rhythm touching a melody." I make my bed, folding ten year old sheets with none of their stretchiness over my college room memory foam pad, laugh at the soft hills and valleys. "It's not anything to cry about." I keep folding the same corner, feet glued to the ground, swaying back and forth. I put my hand to my mouth to stem the tears. "Come on, Hilary. It's just a song!" I'm harsh with myself now, willing myself not to cry. Just a song. Just leaving. Just a wild and uncertain future. But the tears come faster, and I drop my hands, still holding the top sheet, standing in the scattered piles of books and papers and old photos of my parents' wedding.The song plays endlessly - I've left it on repeat from hours of rocking Saylor and Emmaline to sleep while their mamas work during the long afternoons. I hear the words again, and again. I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back. I wish they'd hold me, all these faces that have left. I wish they'd hold me, the gifts I forgot to hug an extra time at graduation in their billowing black robes. I wish they'd come storming into this room and catch me in their arms and remind me that this is the ache of leaving and it's okay to stand in your home and be homesick. I don't have a choice but I still choose you. I still choose you. In the rhythm of the rain and the piano and the guitar. In the unmade bed and scattered shoeboxes. In the piles of letters I didn't have the courage to write to you yet. In the small weeping.It's not just a song, I tell myself as I sit on the bed, smooth out a lump or two. The rain drips through the open window onto a pile of books, but I don't hurry to fix it. The house has gone still. Outside, a car alarm begins to sound, but somehow it adds to the silence. I lace my fingers through each other, watch my knuckles turning white. I wipe the rest of my face with a corner of the sheet. It's not just a song. 

the wild love.

What's going on?I want to ask myself as I type in the new wordpress dashboard, my fingers clicking nervously over the keys and my heart thumping in my chest. What am I doing here, in a new space, trying to understand why I'm not blogging the way I was just a few weeks ago.But you see, my old blog - Sittin' There on Capitol, Hil - was for my beautiful, messy, college self. It was a blog for the city sidewalks and the night walks to the Capitol building. It was for the journey towards fullness in college. In classes and young love and questions about the future, and all that late night emptiness and hearts breaking open. And oh, it was good for the soul to be there.And so then you wonder, why am I here now, blogging somewhere else? Why not just keep the old space, and live in it? You see, I'm graduating in a few days. And with graduation comes the joy and the uncertainty of a new phase of life. It's a phase for new questions, new adventures, new hearts that break and mend and break again. I want to take you on this journey with me, and I want to remind myself that I'm beginning again. So I want to share a new space with you. I want to fling my heart open here, and invite you all over for some sweet tea on the porch.Why the title? I pondered and pondered about the title. And I couldn't find one I loved for weeks. But this morning, as I began to think about what's next, I heard it. We are called to wild love. We are called to live with hearts that are full and overflowing, to stretch ourselves to carry each other. We are called to see, and seek, beauty around us. We are called to honor one another with a fierce loyalty and love.This is the wild love I want to live now.And so, I name this space the wild love, to remind me.I love you already, readers, journeyers, lovers of leaving and arriving. I can't wait to begin again with you.love, hilary