Relaxing the Muscles

Having noodle shoulders is a good thing...

My name is Lizzy Bergren and I am a planner. Before I stammer out another word, please do not misunderstand me. I do think planning is a valid and necessary part of life. Over-planning is like over-watering: Suffocating. Like everything in life, balance is key. Although I do appreciate planning in the professional, swirling realm of my life, I am ready to let go of all that baggage and focus on my life beyond the paycheck.

I do believe that my life was planned before I was born by God. A God who certainly knows in more ways than my little brain will ever comprehend the reason for my walking this earth. Living at peace with God, myself and others is strangely easy when I relax my shoulders and realize what a gift my days are. Even when they're crazy because, I've chosen to live my life for the time being at a residential high school. Gifts in big boxes with big bows.

It's so funny to be in a place at 29 years old where absolutes aren't as important to me as they used to be. I guess I thought getting older would provide for more of a need for equations that equalled steadfast results. In actuality, my lines are becoming grayed and I am enjoying it. I am not boxing myself in any longer to the "if this than that" mentality. I am beautiful and imperfect all at the same time. I can enjoy a good bottle of Champagne and an Indiana campfire simultaneously. I can have an iPhone (and love it so) and not feel guilty about it. I can be a good example to young women and still have a massive Walt Whitman tattoo on my forearm.

God, you are amazing. Thank you.

Swirling Fumes

As the nails went flying...

As she plunged the sharp edge between the acrylic and the natural, the fleeting second of pain I felt masked itself in a fleeting sense of liberation, unmasking. My eyes floated from one hand to the other, from artificial beauty to natural imperfection. The scares left from my attempt at obtaining digital perfection undulated quite like ocean waves within my nail beds. So much so that the salt I've been yearning to taste on my lips, the sound of the dark hypnotic noise from November was in that room with me.

Buckling my seatbelt and pulling into traffic reminiscent of the frogger game I could play until the Apple 2GS needed a break, I noticed that my habit of demolishing my cuticles when deep in thought was back. As instantly as it had left at the seemingly small price of $40, it was back.

As I do, in times alone, I found myself mulling over how appropriate this superficial representation of not so superficial events was. I found myself thinking about removing all attempts at perfection and marinating for awhile in the imperfections that define my character. In my habitual tendencies to over think and find meaning in moments otherwise insignificant. How I run, like a child toward a moon bounce to my good friend, Walt Whitman at the end of a long day, or week, or months upon months. My inability to take music lightly and my incomprehensible annoyance with those that do. The way my phone rings and I find delight in the discretion I maintain to answer or to listen, in it's entirety, to the ring tone I so carefully crafted.

Perhaps the toxic fumes and my not having the luxury of a mask as the employees do were to blame for this moment of clarity born out of mundane errands. Perhaps, something serendipitous all together. Regardless, I am thankful. Faults galore, step right up and watch her delight in her shortcomings. Her shortcomings that were crafted for her and her alone.

Move on over

Dear Old Man Winter,

I love you and the weight of the snow you bring to my doorstep each year. I love the silence that accompanies your stay in the twelfth month. I love the blanket of beauty you lay down for my eyes to delight in and my soul to ponder. Even before the snow settles in it's resting place, you provide a show, under every street light and clung to each branch of the trees outside my windows. So yes, Old Man, I love you.

You know as well as I do that your stay this year has been longer than necessary. Plain and simple, you've overstayed your welcome and it's time for you to move over and give your seat to the sweet lady of spring. I spoke with her this morning and although she too has an affinity for you, her feet are growing tired of standing in that aisle waiting for you to be the gentlemen we all know you are and give up your seat.

Lady Spring is growing rather impatient with your "winter weather advisories" and "winter storm warnings" and I must admit that I share her sentiment. She's waiting with sunshine and green grass dripping from her pockets and the baby birds she's carrying are getting restless and are need to log some flight hours before they will be able to fully enjoy summer. My wings are in need of stretching as well; in need of the ability to walk out my front door and fall into soft, supple grass that will make me itchy from head to toe in a matter of seconds. My wings are in need of a good campsite, a long night around the fire and the ability to breath in the scent of something other than street salt.

So what will it be, Old Man? With all the love in my heart I beg you, give it up. Have a great spring and summer and I'll see you next year.

All my love,

LizzyB

Enjoy the Ride!

Breath, Calm Down, Enjoy the Ride...

I cannot count how many times I have gotten this exact advice! If you know me, you know that I have a tendency to be thinking miles and miles ahead of myself on this road I'm traveling. Always thinking about the future, always checking and re-checking myself to make sure that I'm making the "right" decision, the decision that will get me to where, exactly? My tendency to want to flash forward has prevented me from slowing down and enjoying life's little gifts, at times.

Not always riddled with this tendency, I have been blessed with so many awesome days free of worry. Just so were clear...I have had a lot of fun in my life :). For some reason though, I come back to true north and the planning begins again.

Recently, I've been able, for whatever reason to slow it down a bit and enjoy what life is offering me. Even with the stresses that are constantly being thrown into my life in regards to the economy and work and things of that adult nature, I am finding myself calm. Almost as if frozen, in peace, as the world continues to spin around my two little feet. This, my friends, is new for me. So new, in fact, that I've been sending up prayer after prayer after prayer thanking God and begging him to show me if my peace and confidence are in vain. After so many prayers, there remains this peace.

And I remain...thankful. Thankful that the spinning plates of timing, maturity and a fresh perspective have all seemed to nestle into a very nice balancing act.

Thank you God, for your blessings, for the peace I have in my soul, for the confidence I have in you and others

Life is Real

Real can be so good and so bad all at the same time...

The phrase, "It's been real" comes to mind as I sit down to write this evening. Possibly, a more fitting phrase would be "This is unreal." Either way you slice the cake, as I sat down to write, I realized that my life, as of late, has been very real. Real in ways that have made me cry and grieve from places I rarely explore. Real is ways that make me laugh from places that have appreciated the long over due expression of energy. Plain and simple, my friends, the realness that has radiated from the depths of this being.

My relationship with God has been twisted at times throughout the past few weeks, seeming like years, at times. Ups and downs have driven me closer and pulled me further from God than I have journeyed in recent years. Through the ups, He's shown me His face in truer glory than I had ever imagined the ability to see. Through the downs, He's cradled me, even in times where I attempt my little heart out to escape His grip. A steadfast love, an unfailing desire to understand me, a never ending well of patience to continually accept this bleeding heart, God has been my partner through these days.

There's a line from a Dave song that rang so true and so poignant in my heart this week, "Be wary of those who believe in a neat little world cause it's just f-ing crazy, you know that it is." The craziness of life is so touching and so beautiful with an unfailing capacity to bring alongside a measure of sadness and depth.

While I travel through this broken, fallen world, I choose to think of the touching and beautiful moments as those ordained happily by God. The moments where He smiles to himself and utters, "Man, she's going to love this!" The gifts He delivers are not only in the form of large blessings, but rather, can come during 3am conversations. Conversations that consist of very little talking but rather, uncontrollable laughter and idiocy appreciated by all those involved. As insignificant as some may view a good moment, as small and meaningless as a joke shared between friends or a private moment where I find myself saying, "I am so glad no one saw that," may seem, these are the moments I choose to thank God for.

As any parent knows (or those of us who feel as though we're parents), there are moments where you must allow unhappiness to grace the path of your children. As sadly as you deliver the news, you grieve in private about the necessity of this role you've been given in the child's life. Moments like these cannot and should not be easy but they are most certainly, ordained. I know that God has grieved the sad moments of the last few weeks but I am so thankful He's chosen to be my teacher, in whatever ways He knows are correct and true.

I thank God that the last few weeks have "been real" and I pray for the grace to enjoy tomorrow. And the next day, and the next day, and the next day...

Sifting through it all

Out of chaos comes comfort...

The past few days have been chaotic. Emotions running high. Physical energy running low. As I laid on my bed last night, starring at the ceiling, I prayed for my thoughts to slow down. I prayed for my mind to be quiet. I knew I should just hop in my pjs and settle in for the sleep my body desperately needed. I knew though that my mind had a different set of needs. A need to calm down and find a resting place through the mess that encompassed the past few days.

The loss of a student is something I've never experienced and naively never expected to. My heart is tender at the loss her family and close friends must be feeling if my sense of loss is as great as it is.

In addition to the scar that Saturday created on my heart, Monday brought with it a whole new set of anxieties. The economic issues have stretched their tentacles into my realm for the first time and I am beginning to understand the stress I once only empathized with.

For almost two weeks now, I've been talking about making a list of the books I have in my apartment that have yet to be read. I intended to make a list and prioritize these pages upon pages so that I could rest and read what is already mine before setting out on an adventure in pursuit of other readings. As I sat on the edge of my bed, almost in a meditative state, last night, the priority list found me.

A book entitled, "Sailing between the Stars: Musings on the Mysteries of Faith" by Steven James. The title itself was a welcome surprise for my evening as throughout the last few days, my thoughts have centered around "why" when I think about such a young woman loosing her life. Mysterious, this God of ours. Mysterious this faith of mine. All the while, making sense, I thought.

I read through three chapters in what felt like minutes but in actuality, was over an hour. The writer's phrasing simply beautiful and rhythmic in it's simplicity. The author wrote this about jumping fish in a clear lake in Minnesota:

"I started wondering what it would be like to be one of those fish, swimming through this mountain lake, minding my own business and then one day rising to the ceiling of all that there is and finding that I could poke my nose through the surface of the sky. And not only my nose, but to learn, in a moment of glorious discovery, that with the right flip of my tail I could break through the rippling curtain of my world and take flight, experiencing the strange and wonderful and dangerous freedom of the air."

I have no idea why I thought of this young woman so much when reading this. Perhaps it was her connection to the sea. Perhaps it was the romanticism behind shattering the ceiling of our world and delving into what lies beyond.

I am beginning to think that the mystery of my faith is perhaps, one of the things I love most about it.

'Tis Life

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I have not lived."

Henry David Thoreau