It's been awhile since I've last blogged... Not much has happened of note, except that now anytime I type a word with the letter d in it, I have to massage the key in circles to get it to type. This new development is due to my odd pick-and-choose neat freak tendencies. I spent many days removing various keys from my laptop keyboard to clean underneath them with a pair of tweezers. And this is what I'm blogging about.

I spent almost all of my twenties waiting for something that never materialized—a marriage proposal. In the meantime, I did whatever I could to pass the waiting, including getting both a bachelor’s and master’s degree. To the untrained eye I appeared to be achieving goals and following my dreams; but those with more discerning vision were able to see that I was just biding my time, waiting for the ring at the end of the seven year old tunnel, so to speak. I’m not trying to take away from what I did—I’m proud of my educational accomplishments, but the truth is that my motivation all along has been matrimonial. And now I’m 29, single, and struggling to find a path for myself.

Oh, but this morning! This morning I found a new direction! The irony is that I have no idea where it leads. I was out for my usual walk along the canal when I stopped at a bench along the path to pray and meditate and sing. I do this often. And what I prayed for today was that God would guide my path—and that it not be an ordinary path. I prayed for God to manifest in extraordinary ways in my life. To me, this does not mean giving up my dream of marriage and a family, but that the shape of my dreams will change. During all the years I was warming the bench and twiddling my thumbs, God was preparing me for something bigger.

The last few years, since I survived the tsunami, I’ve developed a keen interest in feminist spirituality. This interest further developed in grad school to encompass women’s rights—at home, but especially in the international community. I feel strongly that God is going to use me in this capacity somehow—as an advocate or a teacher or whatever—to influence and empower women. I’ve got no idea how this is going to happen, but my heart and eyes are both wide open, and I’m searching for the right opportunity. I’m confident that I’ll find what I’m looking for, and I’m also confident that I may not find it right away. I feel like there’s still work to be done so that I’ll be truly prepared for the challenges that lie ahead for me. But I’m excited, and my new direction has given new purpose and meaning to my day. Whenever this path begins, wherever it leads, I’m ready.

I’ve been recording my dreams for years. As a kid, I had three-subject mead notebooks filled with dreams—silly dreams about losing teeth, epic dreams about being lost in storms, and even nightmares about serial killers hunting down my family. It’s no surprise, then, that as I got older I took an interest in analyzing what these dreams mean. Sometimes I look up key objects and symbols from my dreams on dreammoods.com for potential meanings, but sometimes the underlying meaning is so clear no outside help is necessary for interpretation. Such is the kind of dream I had last night.

Since my ex-boyfriend of seven-plus years and I broke up eight months ago, I’ve dreamed of him. Usually the dreams are about unexpressed anger, disappointment about the way things turned out, or potential reunions. But last night my dream was not about any of these things. Last night, I dreamed that his sister, who is still a good friend of mine, sent me an email letting me know that he was dating someone else. And while my feelings about the issue were slightly complex, what I realized is that I was OK with it. I realized that, after holding on a little too long to what was, I was finally ready to close that chapter of my life.

I woke up from this dream feeling liberated! And that feeling was so much more than a dream—it was my heart letting me know that I’m truly open to the possibility of miraculous, earth-shattering, life-changing love once again.

So watch out, folks, cause here I go—and this time I’m riding with no hands.

As a child, one of my most favorite things to do was to go to the ocean and climb the rocks along the jetty in Plymouth harbor, MA. My parents and my brother and I would descend from our home in the White Mountains of NH to visit our extended family on the South Shore, and in the summer, we’d all often end up at a restaurant called the Lobster Hut that’s settled right in downtown Plymouth overlooking the harbor. After dinner but before heading for ice cream at Peaceful Meadows, we’d always go for a walk along the jetty in the harbor there.

I can’t pinpoint exactly what it was—maybe it was having all my family gathered in one place; maybe it was the fact that the beauty of the ocean was so strikingly different than the beauty of the mountains to which I was accustomed; or maybe it was just that this place, Plymouth harbor, was in my blood, part of my heritage as a direct descendant of Mayflower passengers—but something about running along that jetty was like magic as I tried to find just the right place to put my foot to bring me to the end of the jetty as quickly as possible.

Today I climbed the rocks of a jetty at a beach near my home. I went all the way to the end, where I sat down, stared into the distance where no land was visible, and cried. There are so many things going on in my life, so many changes and new experiences, and sometimes I struggle with the old emotions that I can’t seem to scrub free from my soul. I felt stuck in that moment of life. So I cried, and I prayed, and I sang to God from my spot on that rock. And when I was done, I lied down and found shapes in the clouds in the sky: a duck, a giraffe, a broken heart. But here’s the thing: when you watch the clouds long enough, they metamorphose into other objects—a duck becomes a fish, a giraffe becomes the loch ness monster, a broken heart becomes whole again.

And all of a sudden, that moment wasn’t such a bad one to be stuck in. I may not have the perspective necessary to watch my life change the way I watched the clouds changed, but I know someone who does: my Father, my Mother—my God. The magical properties of the jetty still exist, but manifest themselves differently in my adulthood. Only instead of magic, it’s an intrinsic spiritual connection to God. And instead of inexplicable joy, I felt inexplicable peace.

Slowly, I stood up from my rock. I made my way back along the uneven jetty to the parking lot beyond, knowing that, while this moment of my life seems long and difficult, it will change with the wind into something different. Someday this moment will become beautiful and whole.

Before today, the last time I was tempted to have a temper tantrum was a few years ago outside the Gordon's Jewelers in the Providence Place Mall after eying a particularly beautiful engagement ring in the display window. I was with my then boyfriend of many years, and seriously considered stomping my feet and screaming, "But I WANT to get married!!!" for every other Christmas shopper to hear. Instead, I took a deep breath, went home, and got a good night's rest. I didn't get my wish that day in the mall (or ever, actually, but that's an entirely different blog post), but I did, eventually, learn a thing or two about myself: I, like 99% of the human beings on the face of this planet, am selfish. I want what I want, when I want it. And, also like 99% of the human beings on the face of this planet, I have moments when I don't want to accept responsibility for my part in why I don't have those things I so desperately want.

Ten years ago I was convinced that I was going to be a Christian rock musician. Everywhere I went I carried around a Mead notebook, the blue plastic cover a collage of pictures and words that I had torn from various magazines, and wrote bad teenage angst-filled poetry, often while riding the red line into Boston. Later, I would take my poems and turn them into song lyrics, and later still I'd turn them into songs, the melodies of which I'd plunk out on the keyboard as I sat at a piano in one of the practice rooms on the Eastern Nazarene campus.