The ALo to My LiLo: A Tribute

Jake: Lilo, Don’t be dark.

I glared across the table at Jake. Nobody tells Lindsay Schuette when she can and cannot be dark. Darkness was cascading in on me from all sides, I was officially in stage two of a non-Gilbey’s induced brown out, and there was no Narnia in sight.

Carlee: Linds, Anna’s really happy. Seriously. Stop being rank.

I shifted my glare and attempted to increase my “please feel sorry for me” pout. If there was one thing I was assured of it was Anna’s happiness. After all, it was her wedding day … best day of her life … “their” new beginning … the day that causes the end of the dreaded “You’re 27? Not married? What’s wrong with you?” for millions of women, but life as I knew it was suddenly coming to an abrupt and upsetting end. Had I really been so caught up in the “magic” of my best friend’s bridal bliss that I had not taken even a full minute to wallow in the despair of what this day truly meant? And this wasn’t the standard single girl, “I’m so sad, I didn’t catch the bouquet, nobody wants to marry me, I’m going to cry and bite my pillow until the tragedy of my singleness disappears …” That wasn’t it at all. This was a deeper sense of sadness … a more profound sense of injustice and wrongdoing. Had Anna honestly not taken any time to reflect on what this new commitment was going to do to me … to us? Not only had my perpetually single friend gone and gotten married, she also had the nerve to marry a man that I happen to adore, therefore dashing any hope of a quick and nasty annulment. And now, sitting at a bistro table on Orcas Island, in a post nuptial haze, drinking tall boys, and listening to a bad jazz with two married couples, I was suddenly painfully aware of the presence Anna’s absence was creating in my life.

The five of us (The Couples and I) had just narrowly escaped an epic post-wedding throw down at the local dive bar between the bride’s cousins from Cleveland, Aretha and September*, who despite being previously involved in serious relationships,  had simultaneously decided to pursue a one-night stand with the best man, “The Wad**” following his sappy, yet touching toast to his brother, whom he noted now had a new best friend that was forever going to change the most important relationship in his life …

Taking a sip of my PBR and reflecting on the truth in The Wad’s suddenly provocative toast, I began to panic. Not only had his relationship with his brother forever changed, I had, without realizing it or mourning it, lost my best friend. By absolute accident, I had been completely thrilled for her. In a vain attempt to keep the nausea down, I let my mind drift …

Anna and I had met six years before. In a venture only a much younger and far less jaded Lindsay Schuette would attempt, I had followed a boy to Skagway, Alaska figuring that moving to a remote town of only 800 (who were mostly male) would increase my odds of nailing down a relationship. After a terrifying day of small (when we say small, we mean mini-van sized) aircraft travel, I walked into my new home and was greeted by Anna. Two people could not have seemed more opposite to the naked eye. I was a constantly self-conscious cookie cutter, Abercrombie wearing, overly bleached, 21-year-old, who insisted on drinking wine coolers out of a straw. Anna on the other hand, was independent, stylish, confrontational, brilliant, and unbelievably sure of who she was and what she wanted. Where she was pessimistic, I was optimistic, she drank beer and shot whiskey, I could hardly stomach an entire Blue Hawaiian, she would wake up ten minutes before we needed to leave the house, throw a hat on and go, I needed an hour and a half minimum to make sure that my hair was curled, my mascara was generously coated on, and my tiara was perfectly placed. (Yes, I wore a tiara … I don’t want to talk about it) That first summer, it seemed we had nothing in common except an affinity for animal associations and small dogs.

But somehow, throughout the following years, despite our many differences, Anna and I became joined at the soul. She became my greatest cheerleader, my protector, my provoker, my confidant, my travel guide, and my best friend. We laughed together, we laughed AT each other, we cried, we danced when no one else was dancing, and I knew with unprecedented confidence that as long as I had Anna in my corner, I was safe. Together, we lived in smaller than orphanage-sized spaces, drove buses full of old people, climbed mountains, dreamt of life anywhere but where we were, formed campaigns, and built parade floats. We fought boys (usually verbally), dissected my failed relationships, accidentally killed one of Stimey’s goons under the house, frolicked on glaciers, suntanned on a cloudy days, stayed inside listening to records on sunny days, cruised Cape Horn, and browned out on the lawn of 14th and State. We survived two weeks in an interior cruise ship cabin (a true feat), led dance parties through diesel spills, and have correctly predicted the end of hundreds of reality TV shows. Together, we wandered the streets of South America, ate millions of calories in greasy breakfasts, found out Lance Bass was gay, and for the love of travel,  existed on only Siracha and rice crackers.

The fact that we were so incredibly different, and yet found in the other something completely irreplaceable, built in us a necessity for one another that was rare and profound. She has been the Taylor to my Rachel Zoe, the Oprah to my Gayle, the Courtney Cox to my Jen Aniston, the ALo to my Lilo.  When I think of people who have fundamentally aided the formation of the person I am today, Anna ranks at the top. She has known me as completely as someone can know me and has loved me regardless.

In rare moments where Anna and I fought, we fought like I have never fought with anyone. Some would claim that they’ve seen me mad, but if you weren’t at Moe’s Frontier Tavern on that fateful evening in July of 2006 to witness the verbal thrashing between ALo and Lilo over a brown vintage Moe’s windbreaker, then you’ve missed out on how deep rage can truly go. It is the only time in known history that I have ruined designer anything to prove a point. Just minutes after I had stormed into my house and thrown myself down on my bed in a frenzy of despair, after walking through the streets of Skagway, Alaska in a torrential downpour, Anna walked in to find me sobbing uncontrollably. She sat down beside me.

ALo: Angel, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t want to fight with you.

Lilo: No, I’m sorry. Brown is really more your color.

ALo: I know it is, but I am really sorry. I can’t believe I said all those things.

Lilo: Look at my Uggs.

ALo: Oh angel. What have I done?

Enter soggy embraces and ugly Oprah crying.

But now, this was all over. After all, Anna had just gotten married. She had someone new to laugh with, someone new to fight with, someone new to cry with, and someone new to dance with. Everything was going to change.

Carlee: Lilo. Seriously. Stop being dark.

My mind snapped back to reality.

I glared at Carlee again, then realizing rather than giving me pity points, she was about to get out the mace, I got up from the table, and in honor of my newly married friend, who would dance with me regardless of who was watching, I danced …  and danced and danced … to the cover music of an awkward jazz guitarist in a small bistro on Orcas Island. Finally drunk enough, some local hippies took pity on me and joined in. My misery slowly subsided in a fog of interpretive intensity and I accepted that this was my future … dancing alone, laughing alone, reading celebrity gossip alone,  being rank alone, being brilliant alone, obsessing over Bravo television alone, and pondering the issues that come with having a collared sea otter and a diapered monkey as imaginary pets, alone. It was my fate and my future to simply figure out how to survive an existence without Anna … because after all, she was married. Everything was different. I left the bar exhausted, walked home, and crawled into my recently vacated twin sized bed.

The next morning I woke up to my phone ringing in my ear … “What the … eight o’clock … who is calling me at … wow … is it seriously morning already …”

Groggy and confused I answered.

“hello …”

Anna’s voice, angry.

“Did you throw away my marriage license yesterday?”

“No.” I only wish I had thought of that. “Why do you ask?”

“We can’t find it.”

Long pause. Then, laughter.

“OH. MY. GAW. Did you hear about Aretha and September …”

“NO! what happened ….”

As my best friend, my cheerleader, my confidant, my travel guide, my protector, my provoker, and the only person who will read trashy magazines out loud to me when I can’t sleep began to recall the story of the sisters from Cleveland who woke half of Orcas Island at 2AM after both going after “The Wad” in his hotel room, my heart and mind were flooded by a genuine peace. Maybe a quick and nasty annulment wasn’t what I wanted, after all. Perhaps all I needed was a reality check, some concrete reassurance that there are ties that bind deeper than lace and diamonds and flowers, that regardless of circumstances, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for single or for married, some things would never change.

*Names changed to protect the guilty.

**Name not changed.

… honestly?

I love a guarantee. While to many I may seem to adhere to a more flighty side of life, deep down Lindsay Schuette truly enjoys the stability of a guarantee. If I were a man, I would shop at the Men’s Wearhouse. Why? I would like the way I looked. After all, they guarantee it. As a woman, it compels me to shop at Nordstrom. There is a beautiful security in knowing that if the unthinkable happens, and those perfect True Religion’s and I don’t work out for whatever reason, I can guarantee that the salesperson in T.B.D. will be crying right alongside me; her at the loss of commission, me at the loss of something true and beautiful. And finally, it is why when I’m trying to convince you of something I’ll often use phrases like, “well … the bottom line is …” or “the reality is …” or “at the end of the day …” I offer up certainties to people like lollipops at the bank.

Promises.

Assurances.

Guarantees.

But then again, at the end of the day, the bottom line of this reality is, very little is actually guaranteed.

A few weeks ago, I was discussing the finer points of life with a friend, and in being more honest than the casual bar chat called for, he questioned my transparency, wondering what the point was of my desire to be honest, of allowing people into the more painful areas of life.

“Why be transparent, Lindsay?”

“Why not?”

“That’s not a good enough answer.”

“I know. (Silence. Stare) You’re antagonizing me.”

“I’m not antagonizing you. I just want a better answer.”

“Fair.”

I’ve contemplated this conversation ever since. After all, he was absolutely right. Being real doesn’t always pay off. In fact, often instead of being beneficial, the repercussions of transparency feel like you’ve handed people a stick to beat you with. So, why even attempt it? One could argue that sharing your past helps others to relate to you; and the past is safe, it’s reconciled, but today? Living a transparent life, moment by moment, what is a good argument for that? In the midst of my process, a conversation I’d archived a while back came to mind.

Last year, I found myself at a conference, nails painted red, lunching with a priest, who was making an honorable attempt at some rational, Christian-conference-appropriate small talk.

“So what color is your nail polish? I’m sure it has some creative name like “The Waitress” or “Razzberries” or “A Ruby for your Thoughts” or something, right?”

“You know what … I don’t even know. You must have daughters though … you clearly know your polish.”

“Nope … No daughters. I’m a priest.”

“Wow. Seriously? Then your sons must have girlfriends.”

“Uh uh. No kids. I’m a priest.”

“Well, I obviously realize that you’re a priest, but really … no kids, huh.”

“No, actually. Like I said, I’m a priest. We adhere to something called celibacy …. It basically means … ”

Ah. Wow. Brilliant, Lindsay. I could run, but there was nowhere to go, so having covered sexual boundaries right off with this stranger, I decided to move onto more Martha Stewart approved, run-of-the-mill, luncheon suitable topics like, my greatest fears, most unattainable life goals, and my grandest transparency-fueled failures. In the midst of this verbal assault, which in all reality was simply a sad attempt to help him forget my idiot savant status, he offered me a small, but vital truth.

“Well Lindsay, I can guarantee you two things. If your life is transparent, if you wear your heart on your sleeve, and you genuinely try to love people, I can promise you, you’ll get walked on. But maybe, just maybe you’ll have the chance to actually love others and others will have the chance to love you. If you don’t live that way, I can guarantee you’ll be alone.”

Ah, the old damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

But I like that sort of thing. It’s guaranteed.

Brennan Manning resonated with my soul, saying, “When I get honest, I admit that I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games.”

If we’re truly honest, we can all admit that we’re a bundle of paradoxes. And in that glorious admission, we find grace for others, and grace for ourselves, whose existence we had perhaps forgotten.

What would happen if, God forbid, we let go of a little pride, let down our defenses and admitted to one another that maybe we aren’t as perfect as they had perceived, or as we wanted to be, what kind of doors would that open up?  Could we then allow ourselves to truly live, unafraid? Could we allow others to be who they were created to be, rather than some gunnysack shell of a person hidden behind walls of insecurity and arrogance? I’ve found that in my less guarded moments, when I’ve declared to another that I don’t have it all together, that I have innumerable faults, that I’m mostly selfish, most of the time, that I’m terrified of both failure and success, that I’m petrified of commitment, but involuntarily vomit at the thought of being alone, my sounding boards have an immeasurable amount of grace for me. And they are able to trust that perhaps I’ll return the favor.  And when the ugly truth has finally come out, I’ve found the raw, imaginative, beauty of community.

And true, honest community is the best thing I know. So I will continue to pursue a life of transparency in hopes that in doing so I won’t end up alone. In hopes that people will come alongside. And in that authentic space we will summit together, encourage each other, and believe one another’s best despite knowing their worst. And the amazing thing is, I’ve seen it work out. So, to those of you, who know who you are, thanks for our friendship, thanks for being transparent, and for knowing me and loving me. It is my world. Cheers.

Travel Archives 2003: Nicaragua

“Sería un honor para usted a matar a nuestro pollo.”

“I’m sorry … what?”

The Nicaraguan couple stared at me, thrust a live rooster in my general direction and with anticipating eyes again stated, “Sería un honor para usted a matar a nuestro gallo!”

I looked up from my workbench where I had been dutifully sorting pinto beans, through blurred, dehydrated vision at Daniel, my friend and translator. “Lo siento. I don’t get it. Wha … what are they asking?”

Daniel looked at me, thrilled, “They wish me to tell you that it would honor them for you to kill the chicken!!!”

Oh, this has to be some sick joke. I courtesy laugh and go back to sorting beans.

Nobody moves. The rooster squawks.

“Oh God.” A plea. A petition. A desperate prayer.

Silence.

I looked back up at Daniel, my illness-inflicted eyes begging him for some exit strategy. My focus then shifted to the sweet, hopeful eyes of the Nicaraguan couple who had recently given up their home so we could stay there. Then, I stared into the beady, bulging, black eyes of the rooster, squawking and begging to be released from the death grip Daniel had on its neck.

No. Way. Out.

I began to pray silently, a fervent appeal that has become as familiar between God and I as the rosary is to a devout nun, “Oh God … oh God. How how how how how did I get myself into this situation … And now that I’m here, please get me the hell out. Sorry about the swear. Amen.”

One year previous to this traumatizing event, I was eighteen and beginning my college career at Western Washington University. During what, for most people, is a novel and predictable time of testing boundaries and growing up, I had become increasingly neurotic and isolated. Often prescribed for chemo patients and hangovers, I had decided the BRAT diet was a healthy and rational option to adhere to in order to control my eating habits and therefore my life. In addition, I had also developed a severe case of insomnia and was dancing with a  paralyzing case autophobia (fear of being alone). Therefore, I spent the year rarely sleeping, exercising for hours a day, barraging myself and anyone around me with constant noise, and nourishing my body with a steady stream of rice, apples, and dry toast. To eat all four of the items approved by the BRAT, seemed a little overwhelming, so fueled by a hatred of bananas, I cut it down to three. The RAT diet? This was completely do-able.

Like so many things that begin out of a desire for control and need to give some semblance to life, before long my entire existence revolved around food and not eating it. Thankfully, and much to the chagrin of my roommate, academics came fairly easily to me, giving me hours a day to obsess about myself and develop added rituals and compulsions to how, when, where, and if I would choose to put food in my body. “Failed at life yesterday by eating way too much rice… maybe I’ll go for an apple if we head over to the commons .. but apples make me feel weird … I don’t know … I guess it is Friday, I guess I could do something crazy … I wonder if the lettuce is fresh … ”

Anyone who feels my current relationship with food is slightly off, obviously didn’t know the idiosyncrasy’s of Lindsay Schuette circa 2001. While it proved an enjoyable to me, the planning and obsessing that went into each day was incredibly isolating and time-consuming. Consequently, while my freshman counterparts were eagerly choosing majors, making friends, crushing on boys, and relishing in their new-found freedom by drinking a few beers on Friday night, I was a charmingly neurotic hermit who spent much of my time confined to my dorm room, only socially indulged occasionally by the political cartoonist from down the hall who thought I looked like Animae and would stop by to sketch me.

With the threat of a full-blown Mary-Kate Olson rehabilitation situation breathing down my neck, I stubbornly relinquished some control and began to see a counselor.

“Why are you here, Lindsay?”

“I don’t know. You’re the professional. You tell me.”

“I think you have some unresolved issues in your life that we need to work through for you to become a healthy, whole person.”

Fair.

“I also think your parents and friends are concerned about your eating habits. I think you’re on the road toward an eating disorder and I think we should try to stop you before this gets any worse.”

Okay, now she was confused. I looked up at her plaque on the wall. It looked legitimate. But had she actually met someone with an eating disorder before? Doubt it. If she had, she would know that they were crazy. Absolutely cah-razy.

That was so not me. I explained to her that she was nice and I’m sure very smart, but totally mistaken, I went on to clarify the RAT diet’s ins and outs. I was a big eater. I just liked to control what went in. That was all.

She listened quietly and we finally came to a middle ground we could both agree on. I didn’t have an “eating disorder.” I had “disordered eating.”

Life began to slowly improve. It was during one of these sessions, several months in, that my therapist looked at me and asked “What do you want to do? Not what do your parents want you to do, not what does society want you to do, but what do you, Lindsay Schuette, want to do?”

Confusion.

“What are you asking?”

“What would you want to do if you could do anthing?”

“I would … umm … I guess I would … I don’t know … Wait a second, are we talking like other than going back to the RAT diet or telling you to stop making me do positive self-talk exercises?”

“Like other than that …”

“I would leave.”

Two weeks later, I found myself hauling my baggage, both physical and emotional, through the streets of Guatemala City.

In the months that followed, my soul began to improve little by little. No one in this developing nation was interested in my compulsions around food and more importantly, no one cared. No longer under the watchful eye of parents, friends, or professionals, and suddenly fully and painfully aware of the ugly, self-consumed tone my life had taken on, I became more and more comfortable around food. Thankfully, Guatemalans eat a lot of rice, beans, and fruit … which, when compulsive behavior got the better of me, still fit in nicely to what I was accustomed to putting in my body.

Latin culture’s demand that you eat the food put in front of you by a host, continued to be a challenge for me, but I found creative ways around these tricky norms. Thankfully Hermana Hilda, a large, black woman from Honduras, who was put in charge of keeping a watchful eye over the girls on our team, would, after chastising me and repeating over and over again, “No, no, no, Flaca! Esta malo.” (No no no, skinny girl, (derogatory) This is very bad. You are very bad.) would gladly take and eat my extra portions of indistinguishable mush while our host had their back turned.

And so it went, I kept certain rules intact over my body, but slowly relinquished control over others. The general neurosis that had become so familiar and had ruled my life for the past year, slowly subsided. I was still unwilling to eat meat, bananas, or anything else not easily recognizable by food pyramid standards, but here I was, beginning to enjoy this less fanatical version of myself when five months into this life’s journey, I was sitting at a workbench, in Nicaragua, innocently sorting beans, and being propositioned to murder somebody’s rooster.

My selfishness aside, I realized our mission’s team hadn’t had meat for months, save the boa constrictor that had almost killed Ephrain and then was brought back to camp and boiled. I knew that anyone else would jump at this cultural experience.

Kill family’s bird.

Honor family.

Delight  in eating something other than rice.

I looked around desperate for someone to take my place, anyone. Someone else could do this honor, right? Where is everyone? I needed another Caucasian, stat. Desperation. How was I the only one present at base camp? Then through the static fog that was my memory at the time, I remembered, I was here because I had amoebas. Everyone else was out on assignment for the day. My parasitical situation during the last three days had given me only enough time outside of the 2×2 concrete slab enshrouded in black tarp that was our “bathroom” in order to recall the brilliance that was non-contaminated air before once again being confined to its humid, disgusting precincts.

How did I get here? How do I get out?

Maybe had I been healthy, or had they asked me to go grab a bag of boneless, skinless, chicken breasts from the Costco freezer, or had I not been me, I could have honored their family by following through with their request … but this? This was completely unbearable.

My desperate and demanding moment of terrified petitioning to God was interrupted by the rooster’s screams. I began to slowly shake my head … I looked up at Daniel, my eyes welling with tears that quickly became an exhausted show of raw emotion. Between the now gut wrenching sobs, voice shaking, “Daniel … Daniel … I can’t kill their rooster … I’m so sorry … Tell them I’m sorry … Tell them how much I hate myself right now, I can’t honor their family … I can’t do this … I’m so sorry …”

To my relief, the three of them began to laugh. My Nicaraguan mother took my face in her hands, kissed my forehead, and told me in repeated Spanish that it was fine, all was forgotten, and everyone still liked me as much as they ever did.

Then, she took the rooster from Daniel, snapped its neck and walked away.

I woke up hours later in my tent, disoriented, and alone. I looked outside, all was dark except for the light of a fire at the next house over. I drug myself out of my stupor and walked toward the light. Around the fire was my mission team of twenty, enjoying some gamey meat and thoroughly enjoying Daniel’s tale of how “Barbie” (my Guatemalan nickname) had promptly passed out into a pile of pinto beans after the rooster’s death.

I grabbed some rice and sat down among these people that had become my friends and comrades. They looked at me, laughing. Slowly I let go of the trauma that had put me out for the day and began to laugh with them. Life was going to be a process, not everything was going to change today, but as long as there were people around me to laugh with, there was a light at the very dark tunnel I had been living in. Whatever their reason, these people believed in me and therefore they gave me faith that maybe, just maybe God hadn’t completely given up on Lindsay Schuette either. After all, as Thomas Merton so eloquently stated, “In the end, it is personal relationship that saves everything.”

Perspective

I spent last week in a state of mental darkness …  like Narnia under the rule of the White Witch status … unwilling to be swayed by usual optimism, acknowledge the light, or write something that had even a slight chance of being uplifting in nature. Instead, I chose to chronicle the rank benefits of only living until thirty. Now those of you who know me well, recognize that my optimism and ability to deal with difficult situations and people is more than occasionally born out a firm belief that my time on this earth is limited … like real limited … like I currently am living on borrowed time with a paper chain quickly counting down the three and a half years until my thirtieth birthday and impending death. Morbid? Maybe. Something my sometimes sadistic mind could become completely convinced of and borderline obsessed with? Absolutely.

This belief system wasn’t without certain benefits:

In Life: I didn’t worry about getting a “real” job, ever … because who needs a 401K when you know you’re not going to be around to enjoy it?

With Friends: I was simply collecting a stellar crew to show up at my quickly approaching funeral, cry, dance (because “that’s what Lindsay would want us to do…”) and tell stories about how brilliant I was back when I was alive.

With Guys: No need to find “Mr. Right.” I could simply prioritize dating “Mr. Right Now” for kicks, giggles, and an occasional free dinner. When friends would confront me with the old “I just don’t see you two together forever.” I could answer confidently; “I feel like I do” … After all, “forever” was only four and a half years … and I could endure ANYTHING for four and a half years.

In Future Planning: I could refer to my unconceived however I chose to …. Bestow upon them creative monikers like “Fernando” and “Coco” … and when approached by concerned individuals who informed me that those were really better names for a dog, there was no need to take offense, for those sweet, little buggers were never going to actually come to fruition. (No pun intended)

Best of all, my life could truly revolve around the motto “Why do when you can overdo?” I could be as much of an idealist as the day called for, and I could selfishly live unattached with a great deal of spontaneity knowing that all this wasn’t going to last much longer.

Now, I promise you, this isn’t as morose as it all sounds. For some, this thought process would be a result of a deep depression or total pessimism, but for me it was born out of a life where chaos, cancer, and uncertainty ruled reality. For eight years, life was up in the air. At best, my family planned a month in advance, at worst, scheduling the next ten minutes became an overwhelming prospect.

Therefore, three premium decades looked real good and seemed very manageable to me. A solid period of time here on Earth, enough to have some rich experiences, take some amazing photos (for the funeral slideshow) make some absurd friends, and leave life in style, buried in a cute pair of jeans, without any major fine lines threatening my vanity.

An unabashed belief in all of this, came to a screeching halt last week, when, upon some deep introspection, I was faced with a startling reality. I am 26 years old, in the best health of my life …. And I want to live. For a really long time.

I needed to take a deep breath, look back, relish life already lived, and remind myself of how truly amazing the last 26 years have been, thereby showing me all I have to look forward to and giving my mind and body a push start into my new goal of living to a ripe old age where Coco and Fernando have to put me away because I’ve become too ornery and too aggressive to keep around the unconceived grandkids. Thus, I drug thirty-six filled journals out of the garage at Tiny House, dusted off the sawdust, and began reading.

Taking into account, that the people who find me and my life mildly enjoyable are more interested in having these misadventures documented now, rather than experiencing them at the live reading on my 95^th birthday when we all require an extra dose in the morphine drip to keep us upright, I’ve been challenged to backlog a little of the journey thus far. Who I am, where I’m going, how I got here, and the experiences and people that have helped me along the way in the art of becoming …

Fear …

“No Lucy …. We’re not playing this game tonight. Please, please go to bed.” Pat Schuette, a football playing, Carhartt wearing, giant of a man’s man looked down at me with exasperated, tired eyes. “Please Lindsay … Go back upstairs. I can’t do this tonight.” I looked back at him with frightened tears streaming down my cheeks and stated fact, “I can’t go to bed, Daddy … What if the robbers come for me tonight.”

My dad, my hero, and, in my eyes, the strongest person on the planet, looked back at me with the answer he knew would quiet the conversation and my seven-year-old soul … “Lindsay, baby, if those robbers come into our house tonight, I can absolutely convince you that the very last thing that would ever want to take, that they would ever consider taking, would be you. And just to make sure they don’t, I’ll come up there with you. Now, please, Linds … Let’s go back to bed. No more what ifs tonight.”

The “What If” game was a favorite of mine starting in early childhood … I learned to play in a world where the adults in my world were playing the same game, in hushed tones, with sad eyes. Everywhere we went, people would look at our family and ask the same giant, elephant in the room question; “What if Jesse dies, what then?” and later, “What if Carol dies too?” While I was convinced that I was going to be kidnapped, everyone else was questioning my mom and sister’s ability to battle the cancer that had been plaguing our family for nearly a decade.

Fear is a funny and fascinating thing. It’s hypothetical, not based in reality … It finds it’s total existence in a realm that we create in our heads. While I look around at many of my peers, I see that their fears are growing, they’re finding a world in their mid-twenties that has more to fear than their childhood one did, while I find, in general, I fear less. Not to say that I live in a fearless existence, by any means, I don’t. But, based on what some might consider brutal experience, I know a secret others don’t seem to know.

I know that our active fear of something doesn’t stop whatever it is from happening. Fear does nothing but cause us to stop fully living, cutting ourselves off from genuine relationship and experience. Why? Because it’s love’s nemesis. It makes perfect sense that John says, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear…” (1 John 4:1) As we grow up and move throughout life, it seems like there is more to fear because we have more to lose, the question of “what if” becomes more and more relevant. The more we devote ourselves to relationship, to people, to causes, and to fulfilling our dreams, whatever they are, the greater the possibility that at the end of the day these things could all vanish and we could end up sad, lonely, poor, and heart-broken.

I know that because fear is almost always selfish, these imaginary situations we create, are always worse than reality. While the circumstances that we fear may not involve us, our own body or our own life, we almost always fear for ourselves. We fear that we won’t survive, that an event’s impact will be bad enough to drive us over the edge and we won’t make it through, or if we do, we won’t ever be the same, we won’t ever laugh or enjoy life again. And the reality is that even when those great “what ifs,” those worst-case scenarios, even when the unimaginable actually happens, somehow we survive. We’re resilient and we get back up, walking away, and one day waking up able to find joy in life again. And often, life is never the same, but perhaps it was never meant to be the same, perhaps we couldn’t continue on, unchanged, and still accomplish what God needed us to.  And we tend to find, while in that deep pain, where we can see through the glass dimly at best, His presence becomes somehow clearer than we’ve ever known it to be.

Therefore, am I suggesting that we do our best to throw off the shackles of fear that bind us, that stop us from living and caring for others as our souls truly desire to? I think I am. I’m not saying to abandon general common sense, but I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that the only thing we’re ever told to fear throughout the Bible is God himself, or that my biblical crush, Peter urges us, saying “do not fear what they fear, do not be frightened.” (1st Peter 3:14) I know I have close friends that would disagree with my stance on this outright, and then there are others, myself included that would concur in theory, but deny completely in practice, but that still doesn’t change my belief that Christ calls us to live and to love recklessly.

In the gospel of Matthew, a story is recounted where Jesus’ best friends were out in a boat, having been told to go on ahead, without him, across the Sea of Galilee. While the guys are 6 miles from shore, on a temperamental lake, in a windstorm, in the middle of the night, Jesus shows up walking on the water. Understandably, they freak out, convinced they’re seeing a ghost, Jesus tells them to “take courage,” to not be afraid, and Peter, being as reckless and impulsive as one could possibly be, commands Jesus to prove his identity by asking him to walk out on the water to Him. As the story goes, Jesus gives the go ahead and Peter jumps out of the boat and begins to walk on water, having this incredible moment with his best friend and savior. The earth shattering experience comes to an end however, some paces in, when Peter suddenly realizes what he’s doing, panics, takes his eyes off Christ and begins to sink. Jesus grabs his hand, looks into his eyes and asks him the question that haunts me almost daily, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

More often than not, when I hear this story from the pulpit, Peter is being chastised due to his lack of faith. But I see this narrative in quite an opposite light. The beauty I find in his recklessness is that while true that for a split second Peter lost sight of the ultimate goal and began to sink, in his wild desire to be close to Christ, he was willing to jump out of the boat in a storm to be near to him, disregarding all the hypothetical problems that may have arose.

And so is it totally idealistic to say that we should follow recklessly, believe recklessly, do our best to abandon the fear that drives us, and jump out of those proverbial boats to follow a higher calling? Definitely. But I believe that Jesus was an idealist. And at the end of the day, we’re faced with a terrifying choice. We can choose optimism, we can choose to try, to love, to fail, to get out of the boat, and to sometimes sink, knowing that Jesus is going to be there to grab our hand, or we can choose fear and cynicism, twins who offer a sad guarantee of an unfulfilled and lonely life.

My hope is that I wouldn’t completely abandon the hypothetical; these “what if” questions that drove me through childhood, but rather I would allow them to grow with me, to change shape into something more productive, based on faith and a concrete belief that God will in fact do, as he says, beyond what we ask or imagine. So, what if we woke up everyday confident that God loves us completely regardless of how we’re  living or bad choices we made yesterday and what if we let that relentless love drive us rather than listening to all the other voices vying for our attention? What if we were able to look at people and see them, truly see them, what they were created to be rather than seeing what the world has made them? What if we chose to believe in others and rather than competing with them, worked to bring them to a space where we could all be our best selves? What if we truly trusted God, if we were willing to come to him, believing his love for us, believing that He believes in us? What if we took that step, jumped off the boat, and walked on water with Jesus?

I don’t know. But I think it would be absolutely brilliant.

Love …

“I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love one another.” (John 15:11)

As an evangelical person in her mid-twenties, I’m constantly asking myself the purpose questions that I think most people are. Where does Jesus want me? What’s my life about? Where should I go from here? Am I doing the right thing? Did I just miss out on the best thing that could have ever happened to me? It’s a fun game we play, that for me usually includes many sleepless nights, countless self-help and books on spirituality, talks with friends and mentors, and seemingly unanswered prayers.

When in truth, all of the above, while none are necessarily bad things, are simply helping me to avoid a very simple reality; “Love one another. As I have loved you so you must love one another.” (John 13:34)

I’ve spent a large majority of my life and my energy focused on creating a world in which everything is equal. Where I know that the love I give to others is returned evenly to me. Of course it was fine if someone loved me more than I loved them, but under absolutely no circumstance could I love someone more than they loved me. That would completely knock off the rhythm of the carefully balanced pendulum that I had created based on “total equality.”

I chalked up the phrase of “As I have loved you” to Jesus loving people by performing miracles of healing and feeding thousands from a few pieces of bread and a fish and after a few failed attempts at multiplying food in the kitchen, decided that God was calling me to do the best I could personally do out of what I’d been given.

A few years ago, I decided to take a few months off life and move to Samara, a small oceanside community in Costa Rica. I lived, what I believe was probably the most simple life known to man, practicing Spanish daily, surfing in the evening and spending countless hours alone looking at the ocean. With this newfound time and solace on my hands, I began to read the gospels and early on, for whatever reason, became obsessed with a story that I had read, seen, and heard literally hundreds of times; Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Here is Jesus, moments before his arrest, spending a night praying and pleading with His Father, literally sweating blood out of intolerable stress and begging his best friends who were there with him to simply stay awake.

They can’t.

In fact, they all fall asleep twice, even after their best friend and Savior begged them to “just stay awake.”

Jesus goes on to be arrested in front of these friends in the garden, be betrayed by these friends while dying a horrific death on a cross, rise from the dead, and return to those same friends who go on to make a triumphant entry into history based solely on their relationship with him.

I read the story over and over again looking for some breakdown, some loophole, some missed section that would help me to see that Jesus too needed things to be fair, that the reason He was so good loving others was because he was so well loved.

A few months of obsessing later, I realized a painfully obvious and glorious truth. Jesus was able to do what he did, he was able to walk back to friends that had were disloyal to him in his moment of deepest need, able to die for the world, who would never even come close to understanding his sacrifice and for me, who will never fully appreciate it, because he understood that his life was not his own. While he was the Savior of the universe and one with God, it wasn’t about him. He understood that the only way that story was going to be told, the only chance there was at people loving each other, the only hope we had at understanding the much greater journey that we’re a part of, was if he chose not to love based on equality, but rather to love relentlessly.

So how is it that I’m called to love? I am called to love like Christ, whose love for me is relentless, fearless, and absolutely brimming with a hope of someone who sees past my brokenness and fear and into my complete potential. Choosing to live and love as Christ allows me to see past my limited perception, to recognize and attach myself to an incredible vision that allows for a joy and an abundant life that is far beyond anything I could create within my tiny world.

The tragedy of these revolutionary moments in my life is that they’re short-lived and easily forgotten. Or, like this one, constantly present in my conscience and while what seems like a brilliant idea in one moment, is deemed completely impossible in the next.

Loving relentless regardless … This philosophy puts me in a constant ebb and flow of joy and desperation … Moments of attempted and failed selflessness followed seconds later by complete despair when I realize that they have no idea what I’m trying to give up for them, or she doesn’t care that I’m putting myself in an uncomfortable position so she can be comfortable, or someone simply doesn’t love me back in a way that I determine adequate.

But the grand hope lies in the phrase, “I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete …” God knows me, he created me, and understands that my greatest joy lies in loving as he loves. So in those moments of despair, where I (usually viciously) tell God that he has no idea what he’s doing, that this is too hard, that I’m not happy, that I’m feeling used, that I’m not loved, a still voice answers me, reminding me that my complaints may be valid were it about me, but it’s not. It never was. And the only truth that stands is that “We love because he first loved us.” (I John 4:19)

So while I sit here, completely confident, based on my total imperfection, that my life will be full of one failed attempt after another to love people completely, my resolve and my goal is as bright as the sun;

Love Relentlessly.

Belief …

Conversion … Belief … Faith … Words used to describe something bigger than me, bigger than my life, bigger than anything I’ll ever understand. A friend and I were talking one day and in the midst of our conversation decided that these words aren’t static, that they can’t be … That we’re constantly converting, constantly believing, and constantly trying to find the faith to make it through another day. If you know me at all, there’s a good chance I’ve asked you to name the top five things you believe in … It is a question that has been taken seriously by some and by others as a total joke, but one that has helped me to understand people in a new light. After this particular conversation, I sat down at my favorite coffee shop and wrote out, declaration after declaration, what I truly believe in … A list that (surprise, surprise) didn’t include my standby beliefs in great denim and good skincare. What I wanted was a comprehensive collection of those things that I know to be absolutely true at the age of twenty five.

As the page filled with concrete statements, I realized that they all boiled down to the three things I was trying to center my life around before my brilliant “list” came along; living gratefully, believing recklessly, and loving relentlessly.

I shut my journal and left the coffee shop, caffeinated and confident that everything was as it should be.

Now, just days later … I am, once again, shaken and completely unsure.

I spent yesterday in the hospital … a familiar haunt … while a friend, a part of my family, really, went through an intense labor to give birth to a baby we all knew wouldn’t survive. Amita grabbed my hand and held it through some of the greatest pain that she’s ever felt, both physically and emotionally. I sat by her side, completely powerless to help her in this time of devastating loss. Baby Sona came into this world weighing four and a half ounces, measuring seven inches long, and completely perfect with tiny nails on her tiny fingers and a tiny heart we could see beating through her tiny chest. We watched as she joined our world for just a moment before leaving us again. Her uncle, Jason, would call this her “dance with mortality”.

For some of us, it’s a shorter dance than it is for others, but in reality, that’s what life is, what we all have really, a breathe, a moment, a wisp of time.

And while I’m confused and incredibly sad, I realize that this experience doesn’t change my life prerogative that I wrote down in the coffee shop days ago. My time here is short and experiences like this lead me to further believe that my life absolutely must be about loving. I’m beginning to realize that those moments where we understand what God is doing, what the bigger picture is truly all about, those are the exceptions, not the norm. And thankfully, my limited perception has no bearing on the reality that God is sovereign and  loves us all immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine. Therefore, our lives must be about, as Bono said, in some way making the light a bit brighter, tearing a corner off the darkness. And while there are thousands of experiences that have led me to tears at the end of the day, it’s all worth it, even if all I am is a hand to grab in a moment of pain.

There’s hope.

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