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Scars of Love

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When I was a kid, I always had bruised knees and scabby shins. There was hardly a moment in my childhood when I was not bleeding or bruised from playing too hard with my friends. Usually, I was taking one too many hits on the two-touch football field and ending up on the ground only to get right back up, dust myself off, and do it all over again. We all did this. We all sacrificed our knees and shins and elbows for the game because we had no fear of getting hurt, no fear of bleeding out, no fear of ending up with an ugly scar. Kids are fearless little creatures who are not afraid of making the same mistake over and over-- never lacking a dull moment and never having a boring story to tell. Kids are innocently proud, never afraid or embarrassed to show off a scar and always insisting to tell the story of how each and every imperfect mark on their bodies came to be. It is a beautiful thing. But as we grow older, some of us grow out of this longing to share our scars and the stories ...
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After the Wind

Check out my SoundCloud. It only has a few songs right now, but here is my most recent creation: After the Wind Enjoy, Cal Pal
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A Guiding Altar

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I was hiking in Colorado recently with two friends, one of which is from Colorado and has journeyed this particular hike hundreds of times in her life. Needless to say, this friend served as our guide for the hike where we went down into a canyon and then back up onto a ridge. After a good amount of time had passed, we finally made it to the top where we could look off into the canyon that we had just ventured through. It was a surreal view looking back and seeing how far we had come to get to the top where we now stood.  The thing about hiking is that it is optional to go up, but it is not optional to come back down.  So we continued making our way across the ridge and back into the canyon to come full circle from where we had started. As we passed trees and plants and rocks, I began to notice a trend. Every once in a while, I would see a stack of rocks that looked like they were placed there for a specific reason. These rocks weren’t just randomly piled up from some...
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License to Nurse

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I recently passed my NCLEX, which, for those of you who don't know, is a big, long, hard test that graduate nurses have to take in order to obtain their nursing license and get a job. When we pass this test, we are also awarded two letters to put behind our name: RN. RN. Registered Nurse.  These may just seem like two letters to most people, maybe even an acronym for when you want something "right now" (which, if we're being honest isn't far off from what most people think of our job description.)  However, these two letters mean a whole lot more to me and so many other caring people than just "Registered Nurse."  See, to me, these two letters hold a lot of weight.  They hold the weight of two very hard and challenging years with many books studied, many late nights and early mornings,  many cups of coffee,  many firsts and exposure to tragedy, death, new life, old people, young people, mentally ill people, and everything in b...
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A Prayer for the Good

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We move too fast to see the things that are standing still. We too focused on getting somewhere to recognize what is steadfast, immovable, and everlasting. We are so distracted by what could be that we fail to understand  what already is  and has been  and will be forever true. We search and we pray for answers that, in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter  while forgetting to look up and realize the evidence  of answers  to questions  that seem too simply to ask. So instead of finding the right answers to the wrong questions, we stop seeking. We have become so callous-- So callous that we look up at the moon and the stars  and all we see is a twinkle  that we will make time to appreciate tomorrow. All we see is a god that we will make time to worship tomorrow. They say that the days are evil and if that is true,  I don't want any more. Because I want my days to be goo...
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The Dark, Bumpy Side Trail

I’m not a runner, but I’ve gotten into running since the end of last semester. I am not very motivated to get up early and I live in Texas, so running outside in the afternoon is not the smartest idea. So I end up running at night. And I like it that way. But one thing about running at night is that it is sometimes hard to see because here in Abilene, Texas, we don’t always have lampposts lining the streets… and we don’t always have WORKING lampposts lining our paths. So sometimes, I end up running in the dark. Which is fine for the most part; the roads are nicely paved and I can usually tell where there are cracks or dips. But to be honest, with only a light in the distance and a vague idea of where a crack or dip MIGHT be, I tend to slow down when I’m running in the dark—partly because my night vision is not equal to that of a feline, partly because I am very cautious of my “bad” knee (even though I do wear my brace when I run in the street), and partly because I know what falling w...
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Growing Close

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Growing close to people is hard. It takes a certain level of intentionality along with grace and acceptance. It takes looking past the ugly, looking past the hurt, looking past the burden and choosing to always see the good in people. Growing close to people is hard because it takes effort—effort to put work into relationships with the risk that the effort may not be reciprocated. It’s hard because in the process of growing close, there becomes some sort of dependence on each other—a dependence of time, support, love, friendship, and community. It’s hard because somewhere along the way, this dependence is barely noticed. It is just accepted and kept as the norm. And while this dependence is not necessarily unhealthy, it is hard because you do not even know that it is there. And then comes the hardest part about growing close—having to say goodbye to someone on whom you didn’t even know you depended.  Life is funny that way. You can go months on end without even noticing someth...
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