twenty-five

You may notice a pattern in my blog posts but echoes happen for a reason. I want you to know the truth. Photographs can be liars or truth-tellers. Or both all at once. My brother recently sat across the dinner table from me saying: “Wow Katie, from the outside, photography makes your life look so good.” And a friend asked me: “Do you and Ryland ever fight?”

why yes. yes we do.

“What do you fight about?”

money, chores, being parents, being lovers, time spent, time unspent, where we should live, how we should spend the rest of our lives.–to name a few. Of course we love each other. We have a great marriage—that is true. to be perfectly honest, our marriage has never been better. But photographs don’t show you our messy house, the way we look (absolutely ridiculous) when we get out of bed in the morning, or our bank account. In a sense, you are getting truth when you see this:

But not the whole truth.

So here i am again…trying to make you see the whole truth, in case you have missed it…

I have lived 9, 125 days. ish–give or take.  this lovely yet, at times, hard-to-swallow concoction called life seems mysterious as I compare the things that filled it up to the number that defines it. How did i get here? twenty-five. some memories I can still taste, some are long gone, nevertheless, one thing has always stayed the same:

I have spent the last 25 years believing that if I could just “put in enough”, I would emerge into the perfect life. A life where I dance in white clothes like the girls in maxi-pad commercials, laugh around a dinner table of good friends every night, and have a few rooms of my house featured in Better Homes and Gardens. I could sing along to songs that talk about having no regrets and actually believe what I am singing about. And even the ways I was imperfect would be perfect in some abstract explanation. It’s art. It’s beautiful even if it’s messed up—yep that’s life. Put together enough, carefree enough. Such a calculation that I have never been precise in achieving.

Maybe I just thought that by now I would have mastered soccer, acting, singing, playing piano, being a teacher, being a photographer, being a wife, being a mom, or plain just “me”–isn’t that life? Mastering “you”. Just be “yourself”. What does that even mean? Whatever it means, why isn’t it easy to just be “you”?

Though I love the idea of a command to “live each day as your last”, I can’t hang those cute yet daunting frames in my home–it’s too much pressure for a perfectionist to bear. Some days I just pray that there is one more day Lord. This was not THE day to be my last day. Please let me have a redo tomorrow.

Maybe tomorrow I will be a healthy mix of the girls from Proverbs 31 and Livin La Vida Loca. What else more could I need to be in life than those girls?

And now as I am here at 25 “quarter of a century/ half or three quarters or one fourth done with my life” I admit the other side of our truth. my truth: the realization that if I keep on living this way, I am going to die unfinished.

i don’t want to die wanting. 

I know this sounds dramatic but the drama is true: we are all collecting experiences, photographs, friends, things, “likes”, recipes, crafts, designs, fashions, cars, vacations, self-help books–aren’t we? We are all trying to spend ourselves in one way or another.Spending time. Spending energy. Spending money to “put in enough” because we only get one shot. Aren’t you afraid of what I’m afraid of? What if we get to the end and we still want but there is no time left to have.  What if there are things i haven’t done? Places I haven’t gone? Feelings I haven’t felt? The emptiness lingers.

I put myself “under the gun” and ask: What have I done?

 dug snow tunnels, caught fire-flies, leaped into leaf piles, sported “first-day of school” outfits, dressed american girl dolls, arranged polly pockets, handed out new-patient forms to my stuffed animal vet clinic attendees, stirred up mud-pies for  imaginary children, built forts in the woods, cuddled with kittens, baked chocolate chip cookies, licking the spoon.

{an oldie but goodie from the external hard-drive. Ella, my friend’s gorgeous daughter. An avid explorer of life}

I have played marco-polo, walked miles around the block, hosted sleep-overs, wished over blown-out candles. scrapbooking, shopping, magazines. make-overs, boyfriends, first dates. I have made mistakes.

Lying about rehearsing for flute lessons, forging my parents’ signatures, jealous about clothes, toys, boyfriends, cars, schools, grades, hair…being included. Lying about seeing movies when i hadn’t in order to feel full. To feel “in”. What I had was not enough, greed calls me to want and want, ignoring God, skipping church, talking badly about people behind their backs. Lying when they found out. thinking malice, thinking lust, thinking too much. Wishing people would change. wishing i would change.

divorce. theft. being physically violated. feeling emotionally violated. death. not getting what i deserve. getting exactly what i deserve; neither one good.

performed in plays, sang in church, pitched softballs, kicked soccer balls, threw basket balls, street hockey on roller blades. french classes, proms, tattoos, bike riding, canoeing, rock-climbing, cliff-jumping, campfire singing, swimming, parasailing, plane-riding.

london, paris, rome, spanish country-side, coastlines of portugal and california, japan, mexico, belize.

college classes & dorm life. falling in love with jesus. falling in love with ryland. engagement. wedding. our first apartment. getting a puppy. birthing our first child. buying a house.

And yet…the emptiness lingers. twenty-five years of lists. twenty-five years of days full. experiences, vacations, friends galore. where did they go?  why can’t i still taste them all? they drain out the bottom because i am on to the next thing. frantically trying to become. spending to become. what do i earn in spending? nothing. or at least very little—either way, not enough to sustain a chronic wanter.

What does the bible say? 

{The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. ²He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, ³he refreshes my soul.”} psalm 23:1-3