Where I’m From

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Guys, I am not normally one to write poetry, but this was just too fun not to share. As you may know, I’ve been in a writing course for the past couple months with author Allison Vesterfelt. Her goal is to help writers as writers, not just help their writing. A big part of that is helping us discover our voices and really claim our messages, and part of that means delving into who we are as individuals and the experiences that have shaped us.

I’m excited to share more with you soon about what I’ve been writing – and what’s coming in that book I announced recently! – but in the meantime, I wanted to share this exercise with you and invite you to give it a shot. Personally, it helped bring to light some of the unique experiences that have made me who I am, and it helped me better understand what I want to share through my writing. Even if you’re not a writer, my hope is that this exercise could at the very least give you some space to process how your growing up years have shaped you. And, taking it further, it could help provide some of the certainty and clarity you need to move forward with whatever is in front of you: motherhood, a new job, marriage, or just learning to rest and settle into who you are. Whatever’s facing you right now, I hope this helps you walk into that season with a better understanding of where you’ve been. Continue reading →

Everything I Know About Dating

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Yesterday one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, shared “all that she knows at 61.” There were so many gems in her post…

Laughter really is carbonated holiness.

Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together…So try not to compare your insides to their outsides.

Earth is Forgiveness School.

Yes. Yes. And YES.

Inspired by Anne’s honesty and spot-on humanness, I thought I’d share “all I know about dating.” By no means am I an expert on this topic. I am simply another late-20s, verging on her 30s, city-dwelling girl trying to date well. Which, to me, means treating others with respect, enjoying the process, and learning a lot along the way.

People have asked me to write about this topic for a while, so rather than keeping it all to myself, I’m sharing it with you. Continue reading →

I Thought There Would Be More

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This blog is called “Waiting for the End of the Sentence.” Choosing that name was partly just a funny little play on words about how I’ve been waiting for my missing period (get it?) to return for the past five years. But the name was also birthed out of a feeling that I’m waiting for the end of my story – the end of the story God is writing.

What I’ve come to realize in the last five years of posting on this site is that the end isn’t coming. At least, not on this earth. Instead, God is teaching me so much in the process of him writing my story – a story that fits within the bigger picture of his grand story of love and redemption. He’s using the wonderful, joyful moments and the hurtful, confusing ones to create something much larger and powerful than I often comprehend in the moment.

Finding Grace in the Gray

A more appropriate title for this blog might be “Finding Grace in the Gray.” Because life is not black and white. It’s not a series of starts and finishes. Clear beginnings and clear endings. It’s an often messy work-in-progress. A charcoal drawing that blends varying shades of black with splashes of white to create something more nuanced and beautiful than we can recognize when we’re staring at it too closely. Continue reading →

An Exciting Announcement

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Recently, I shared how my occasional insomnia has taught me to listen to what my body, mind, and spirit are telling me…am I anxious, excited, or just plain rundown? And this weekend I was able to put that into practice.

While I didn’t have much trouble falling asleep, I did find myself awake before 7am on both Saturday and Sunday, unable to lull myself back into unconsciousness. As I lay awake at 6:30am on a day when I supposedly “should” be getting more sleep, I realized I didn’t feel frustrated by my wide eyes and alert mind – I felt invigorated and excited for the day ahead.

You see, on Saturday, I woke up full of ideas: ideas for books and blog posts, stories I want to share with you – with others. Later that day, I was to meet up with a friend in the publishing business, and I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. I couldn’t sleep; I was just too excited to unwrap the presents that the day had in store. In that moment, I realized that my inability to sleep is not always a negative effect of anxiousness or worry. Sometimes it’s just part of the unique way God has made me: imaginative, thoughtful, action-oriented. A writer.

Living into that identity as a writer means embracing even the inconvenient parts of it, including sometimes getting less sleep or getting stuck in my head until I can get the words out on a page. It requires persistence and being observant of what’s happening around me and within me. Continue reading →

Things Fall Apart…And We All Fall Down

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“Bang!” The thud of something crashing to the floor startled me out of my evening sleepiness as I walked to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water.

I checked my room for anything that might have broken. Everything appeared to be in tact.

I opened my closet door to see if my suitcase might have fallen down from its precarious perch on my over-stuffed shelves. Nope, still there.

Checking off the boxes of possible problems in my room, I moved on to checking on the status of my roommate’s room. Katie was out-of-town, so there was no need to knock, but I still opened the door quietly and slowly, just enough to peek my head in.

Immediately, the intense heat emanating from her room struck me. The space smelled strongly of burning plastic, and I quickly realized she’d left her space heater on before leaving town. I rushed over to the power strip and unplugged the cord, wanting to ensure the thing was truly turned off. I didn’t trust myself enough just to press “off.” While I recognized that our house probably wasn’t in immediate danger, I still felt a huge burden lifted as I dropped the now powerless cord. Continue reading →

Are You Listening?

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a hard time falling asleep. When I was little, I’d lay in bed, pretending to stir the stars that blanketed the ceiling in my imagination. Or I’d lay there writing stories in my head or dreaming about my future – career, wedding, husband…I had plenty of time to plan it all in those sleepless hours.

Being a somewhat anxious child, I’d also worry about all the things that could go wrong while I was sleeping. What if there was a fire? What if something happened to my parents? What if a burglar tried to break in? As my mom can attest, my nightly prayers often included pleas for protection against any potential maladies or disasters that might come down on our household.

DeathtoStock_Medium8During my college years, my sleepless nights were fewer, probably because I was chronically sleep-deprived. Like most over-achieving academic – especially those with a long-distance boyfriend that they’d talk to on AIM (throw-back!) until the wee hours of the morning – I was lucky to get an average of five hours a night. So when my head hit the pillow, it didn’t take long to drift off into dream land.

These days, though, I’m back in the thick of it. Chasing after sleep like it’s a coveted prize. Struggling to achieve lack of consciousness, even when I’m past the point of exhaustion. Wrestling with questions about why I have such a hard time letting go and just getting to sleep for goodness’ sake. Continue reading →

Lean In

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I’ve been on quite an Allison Vesterfelt kick lately. After multiple people had prodded me to read her book Packing Light: Thoughts on Living Life with Less Baggage, I finally picked it up and devoured it in a few short – but profoundly challenging – days. I finally understand why my friends were so persistent in recommending this book. They knew it would mess me up in the way only a good book can.

Allison – or Ally – and I have a lot in common. We both went to Whitworth University, we both studied English, we both have felt at home in weird cities (Portland for her, San Francisco for me), and we’ve both struggled to call ourselves writers. And yet, as both of us have discovered, we are because we do. We’re writers simply because we write.

In reading another one of Ally’s books Writing to Find Yourself, I’m finding so much encouragement to keep writing. Writing, like most things that are worth doing, takes effort and vulnerability. For me, writing is the process of putting little pieces of me on a page. Every word I type makes me vulnerable to criticism and has the potential to be misunderstood or to step on someone’s toes – I’m sorry if I ever step on yours! But these words also have the power to speak into someone else’s story, to allow that person, as Anne Lamott says, to speak the two most magnificent words you can say to another human being: “Me too.” Continue reading →

Time Does Not Heal All Wounds

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2015 and I got off to a rough start. I feel like we kind of got off on the wrong foot. I mean, when your relationship comes crashing down around you on New Year’s Day, that can’t be a good sign of things to come, right?

Well, it certainly was a sign of singleness to come. New Year’s marked the very sudden beginning of the end of a relationship that held so much promise and hope. A few days before New Year’s – heck, even on New Year’s Day – we were learning to do yoga together, planning little trips, and talking about grateful we were for each other. A few days later, the relationship was just done – it simply vanished – but so many questions remained. What had gone wrong in the matter of a day? How did we go from brunch and a long walk in Golden Gate park on New Year’s morning to tears and confusion in the Potrero Hill Safeway parking lot that same evening? To make matters worse, I was caught so unprepared for that conversation – “I’m not feeling like we’re connecting” – that I was tissue-less. Tears, no tissues. Not a pretty picture. And none of it made any sense.

For a while, I held onto my frustration and a subtle sense of bitterness. It felt like I had to maintain my grip on those feelings in order to make some sense of the situation. If the relationship had to end suddenly with no real answers and no real closure, then I’d make my own. I’d do the relationship justice by holding it up to the judgment of my own sadness and hurt. I’d wrestle meaning out of it by concluding that God just had something better for me. Continue reading →

Hidden Things

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FreeIt’s been a week. A week since I’ve written anything down. My prayers, my thoughts, the things I’ve been learning. And I miss it.

But even though I haven’t memorialized all the things that have been happening, I’ve still been increasingly aware of God’s presence. Because he truly is always present – omnipresent. And yet, I’m discovering that it’s in seeking him that I find more and more of him.

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7)

“…to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.” (Ephesians 3:8-12)

So many verses like these are peppered throughout the Scriptures. Why? Continue reading →

The Invitation: “Taste and See”

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DeathtoStock_NotStock2It’s a little scary how easy it is to miss Jesus. Even though he’s “Emmanuel” – God with us at all times – it’s all too easy to misunderstand his character and his purposes. To fail to see what he’s doing in our lives and how he’s inviting us to simply connect with him.

This is true both for those who do and those who do not claim to put their faith in Christ. Today, people’s views of Christ and Christianity are either watered-down or polluted to the point of unrecognizability. When we miss the power and perfection of Christ, we miss the gift of “living water” that God is offering to our parched lips. Continue reading →