Well, I came out on the porch to talk to the Lord and instead I’m updating my blog.  Go figure.

Most blogs seem to have a consistent theme.  Travel.  Food.  Fashion.  Mine is erratic.  A public journal of sorts.  Just like the quote at the top of it from my Grandma Josephine, her simple yet poignant observation of foliage, I guess this is a shameless declaration of how I look at things.

Life right now is grand, what with all its uncertainties.  And I’ve changed, a lot.  It’s weird how memories make us, how some richly identify us and others are stranger than fiction.

Baby Glo was chunky.  They called me Thunder Thighs.

Toddler Glo woke mom up in the middle of the night asking for cheese grits.  They called me Grits Gloria.

Little kid Glo was asthmatic and took off her shirt to play football in the yard like her brothers.

Middle kid Glo found a bunch of antique bottles in the woods and broke them against a tree for no reason.

Bigger kid Glo wrote songs and listened to music in her bedroom during her free time.

Middle school Glo was chunky again.  And awkward.

High school Glo was bone thin, then chunky, first preppy then emo.  And awkward.

College Glo was leveling out.  Read Kierkegaard in her free time.  Put her dreams on a shelf, though.  Some awkwardness still lingered.

Post college Glo was lost in the search for legitimate adulthood.

As the current Glo, I’ve let go of identity crises altogether.  And I’ve divided my awkwardness into two categories, almost like good and bad cholesterol.  Bad awkwardness continues to abate in my life, but I’m realizing good awkwardness as a way of helping me get the upper hand in otherwise boring social situations.

I’m just done trying to be certain things.  I’m trying to be real about my interests, real about my desires.  And it’s cool to see God working, bringing my dreams to fruition and tweaking them.  Insecurity has all but vanished, and it’s a beautiful thing.

So, a summary of current Glo’s life:

I still feel called to do music, so I’m pursuing it, but in baby steps.  It’s been a passion– calling, I dare say– of mine indelibly  since I was a kid.  And it hasn’t unfolded at a pace or in a pattern I would have chosen, but I have an assurance that God is brewing something up.  I’m itching so much to record I can hardly stand it.

I’ve moved into a new house with three amazing girls, all with a passion for people and community.  We want to steward our home and hospitality.  We want people to know our door is always open.  We have big things planned.  I don’t want to spoil anything, so that’s all I’ll say.

I’m loving my city more every day.  I remember driving away from Wilmington after graduating from UNCW, just thinking about how glad I was to be out of that place.  I think my disillusionment stemmed from being jaded by pretentious academia, not by the city itself.  I have a newborn love for the people here and excitement for my part in the community.

I don’t get a kick out of reading philosophy and poetry and smartsy things like I used to.  I’m really starting to appreciate simplicity.  Real life.  Though oddly enough, I’m writing more poetry these days.  I’m writing lots of songs, my pen is always at work.  New melodies are always surfacing in my head.

I’ve started enjoying domestic things, which is near miraculous.  I was always the laughably non-domestic of my friends.  I actually LIKE cleaning now.  Vacuuming might be my favorite.  I’m cooking, organizing, and even (this one’s REALLY impressive) making my bed in the mornings.

I’ve started exercising, which is also a gasp to those who have known me for a long time.  Not like P90x or Crossfit or shakeweights, oh no.  I do Jane Austen style exercising.  I go “out for a walk” or take a run.  But still, historically exercising had been for the birds from my point of view.

I’ve started to enjoy the company of annoying people.  Annoying people pose a challenge, a challenge I’ve started to welcome.  I’ve also found that a lot of them are in dire need of something, usually identifiable within the first several minutes of talking to them, and it presents an opportunity to practice compassion and brotherly love.

Jesus continues to be real in more and more ways to me.  He is changing people’s lives all around me.  He is infiltrating more and more the details of my life.

I’m addicted to caffeine, but it doesn’t make me crazy like it used to.

It’s an interesting life phase.

I remember something my dad’s friend Doug told me the day before I attempted to drive to Austin, TX  last Fall, with my clothes and my keyboard in my car.  He said “Time isn’t passing you by,” and “Stop measuring yourself according to the world’s standards,” and “Most people give up on their dreams– don’t give up hope.”

Those words were truly prophetic.  They were meant for now, for these lingering uncertain days, for these days crammed with what feels like barely justified expectation.  I feel like anything could happen tomorrow.  This mystery is growing on me.

I guess it makes sense that we take some of who we were with us and leave a lot behind.  Doug something else the day I talked to him– “It is from our destiny that God calls out to us, not our past.”

It is through the lens of our destiny that we get to see how the fragments all start to fit together.

Amazing.  I love this journey.

Advertisement