"living is like tearing through a museum. not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once."

-audrey hepburn

dreaming

i'm dreaming i
can't help it.
it's lavender, my skirt
blooms in riverside park
gold strands in my hair gold
flecks in your eyes gold
shines and rosebud smiles
gold
it's precious i
can't have it
i'm dreaming

wishing i could stop
myself
from turning silly, twittering
it's dangerous, i
have a penchant
of missing things while
they're still here.
and you
have a penchant, love
saying goodbye while
i'm still near.

let's start to begin, this time
towards orange leaf houses in vermont
towards tail-feathers, leather libraries,
soul willows swaying
in glowing cities
kitchen ballet in watercolor
rain rachmaninoff in
cream sauce my pink
lips on your
jawline.
i'm dreaming.

and every time i have, of you,
they don't come true.

to be known

i crave being known. being seen. having all those parts of me, those layered colors and dusty corners of virtues and vices, acknowledged. to be known as a whole, a verity of being and not an image of a part.

and maybe why i want this so much is because even i don't know everything about who i am. to myself i am one giant contradiction, guided by honestly only one consistency: i have love. otherwise, self definition eludes me. i'm stubborn and softhearted. devoted and fiercely independent. i love cities but i need space. i preach loving before judging but one of my biggest hypocrisies is that i judge those who don't. i'm an introvert with ten best friends. i'm snarky and i'm kind. i'm lazy and ambitious. i'm a mormon and a feminist.

and perhaps the biggest contradiction seems to be this: that faith, and doubt, and light and dark, and happiness and sadness are all within me, all at once. i passed through a year where i was at my most critical and faithless. but still, it was the happiest year of my life. the most blessed year of my life. a year where i often felt like a smile on two feet. it still is, and i don't know how that's possible. i was aware that i was going through a cycle of pride. there was no need to smack me awake. i looked at my heart from the outside and i saw it clear as day, but i felt no urge to change. i prayed relatively little this year, but every time i did i was praying for a desire, please, give me some sort of desire to be better. and even now, it's just starting to grow. i'm only on a tinge of an upswing.

this year has been an absolute wonder for my level of confidence. i have never felt so capable or beautiful, in body or in mind. but as a latter-day saint i have never felt so inadequate, so inferior to the spirituality that even i used to hold. at sixteen i was a far more worthy disciple.

but, in recent moments of clarity, i've realized that i am things that i don't see in me. that divinity and potential are what define me. that my identity does not have to be all wrapped up in who i am at this moment. thank goodness for that grace. that there is a god, and that he sees me, all of me, but not even all of me as i am. all of me as i was. and all of me as i can become.

and even in the thick, muddy, stifling silt of it, of it i'm grateful for this doubt. there are things i know, and things i will know, only made possible by the grief of questions.

lithuanian retrospective

as always, my retrospective image of lithuania is romantic in my head. the soggy puddles have turned to dew and the soviet domes started glowing purple, and i know there is still not an inch of me that can claim lithuanian culture. it's just simply beyond me. freelanding, bravehoming american me, ignorant of occupation, unaware of the struggle to thrive in a newborn economy. but what i do know is beauty, and i know how to notice it.

in just one square of the city the age of stones range from medieval to renaissance to baroque to contemporary. i can walk down any street in old town, fingers brushing the plastered pink walls, knowing that I am touching something that is the far-off ancestor of my own great country. older than the soviet union, yes, but still many more years older than america.

on our last weekend in vilnius, the five of us took a new trolleybus route to the cemetery. hilly and wooded, the memorials and crosses rise organically out of the green earth of the cemetery. it is the resting place of heroes: lithuania's thinkers and movers, soldiers, symbolic and beloved figures like m. k. ciurlionis. in tombs or beneath simple wooden markers, all seem noble to me.

for me, this cemetery seems to mirror what i've seen of lithuania: chipped and tired but emanating beauty and rooted in what seems like history that is as old as time itself. that history is complex, and the country has been an independent state for about as long as i have been living. though i can't say who was in the right and who was in the wrong throughout the country's many decades of occupations and revolutions, i can say that lithuania inspires me with its resilience. 

maybe there's too much said for "bouncing back". resilience isn't immediate and energetic recovery. resilience requires time, and grace, and hope. it's steeped in dreams and vision and innovation and yes, it often happens slowly. it's also grounded. for the resilient, for lithuania, and for me, identity is inextricable from the journey. i have learned and grown so much while living there, and i will always have a special love for this complicated, beautiful land of rain.

when i think of vilnius, a flurry of images spring up in my mind. indulge me with them, will you? red and white rickety trolleybusses with windows stamped with "made in czechoslovakia", the old man who perpetually bummed cigarettes of people at the bus stop, the stomach dropping fear of seeing the transport control police step onto the bus when i hadn't tapped on. laser lights transforming the presidential palace on culture night, plates of fries ordered from cute late night bartenders, dancing the ymca at buddha. the undulating edges of baroque cathedrals, sitting on the wooden swing with imantas, or laying on the grass underneath the sprawling trees of bernadine park and feeling the river breeze and little kids' fountain squeals. the glowing milka-purple chocolate aisle at maxima, green floaties around our waists, the supermoon and our skinnydipping bodies at the lake. the dandelion fountain, the taco guy's dreads, hot air balloons over gediminas tower, my pirate cat wallpaper. kitchen table evenings killing bugs as we talked, schemes of how to get rid of endless bowls of soup, and the agony of waking up at 9:30 for breakfast. and, most importantly, 20 something different sets of arms around my neck. "teacher". teary eyes listening to the students singing "count on me". and the rewarding, beautiful drudgery of walking up taikos programnizija's concrete steps every day. 

i miss it for everything it was, but mostly for everything i was when i was there. it was beautiful. i felt beautiful. i was a certain me there that i will never be again. and that's what makes experiences like this so hard to leave.

from there to here

i'm sitting in my bedroom in justiniskes. i'm cross legged on my hollow children's mattress, surrounded by the infamous cat pirate wallpaper, the words on the cabinet above my door still encouraging me: "wish it. dream it..... do it." precisely 5 ellipses. my phone and i are singing budapest together, a song i first heard in a little restaurant in italy, titled after my homeland, i place i was just about two weeks ago.

i'm watching a china video. i'm watching what was once my present, me surrounded by my sweet sweet students, fielding kisses and i love yous. a shot of phillip's hands comes up, when he had me draw him and i on each of his palms the day before i left. tears sting the corners of my eyes when i remember saying goodbye to him on the steps outside of the cafeteria and how he kept turning to look at me as he walked away. then i giggle a bit when i remember how tear-drenched we all were, red faced, eating kfc on the bus to the airport in our panda hats. despite it all, i'm watching myself at my best. the happiest, purest, most confident self i've ever been.

i read the alchemist when i first got here to lithuania and this quote runs through my mind often. it keeps me grateful and amazed:
he still had some doubts about the decision, but was able to understand one thing: making a decision was only the beginning of things. when someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.

everything i've done since china happened because of china. sometimes i'm amazed that i even decided to go in the first place, but i suppose my streaks of spontaneity and courage have always been active. i remember when i made my final decision, behind the steering wheel of my little blue acura on a drive home. i was at a stoplight in front of mack's house with my basket full of laundry in the passenger seat and i said out loud, that's it, i'm going, it's yes. and i can't even believe what's happened since then.

going to china opened me up. i had all these qualities, all these capabilities before i went, but it wasn't until i made that decision that i started to really become myself. all this restless bravery, all this boundless love, all this self-awarded freedom unwound in china. that decision took me to buddhist temples high above clouds, to the ancient stones of the great wall, to the dumpling filled kitchens of families i now love. it brought reed running to me down the hall when i returned to school from beijing, when i first felt that pang of calling, a passion for education and for children. it brought the independence and sense of adventure that motivated me to create meaning wherever i was, which in turn made up my mind about my career path, which pushed me along to things like watching brian kershisnik paint a new canvas which i had hung on the gallery wall, to internship coordinators who told me i was actually really good at this, and recommended me to every museum in washington dc. that decision brought me to work the first day in the united states national archives, it helped me climb out the window of the museum's learning center to stand in that forest of neoclassical columns and feel like i was in the center of the world. and, in turn, it brought me here. to this complicated, nuanced country that has taught me so much about how blurry lines can be when it comes to history and politics. it brought me to this european dream where my days are filled with things like praying in pink cathedrals and waking up in renaissance abbeys and kissing austrian boys in front of baroque fountains. in this country i have gained more confidence and gratitude for my body, a new awe for sunsets, and four dear friends to laugh around the tiny kitchen table with at night.

but it's not really those fluffy things that are significant about my experience here. what i've learned through it all is the level of capability i have and how crucial action is. how intentional you have to be about creating an authentic life and gathering meaningful experiences. the current of my decision to go to china certainly led me to all the wonderful experiences i just listed, but those things didn't happen to me. i had to seek them. i had to take them. my mother calls me lucky and my father calls me spoiled, but i adamantly insist that i am neither. what i am is ambitious and very, very blessed. opportunity doesn't fall into my lap and finances don't rain into my pockets. the reason i have done all of this is first, because i wanted to, and second, because i allowed myself what i wanted. and once something becomes a great enough priority, there is very little that can stop you from achieving it. i didn't always know what i wanted, and i still don't know what my life will look like in the next few years, but it all starts with a decision. an action. the bravery to make a change.

i sit here smiling to myself. big. because so many of my dreams aren't dreams anymore.

by grace

my name means grace. as a child my biggest aspiration was to be an olympic ice skater, a dream which had no hope of ever coming true due to my complete lack of physical grace. i thought the meaning of my name was a little bit funny because i thought of grace as the ability to balance books on one's head while walking in high heels or maybe even while doing triple axles. it wasn't until recently that i recognized that i could still be full of grace, a different kind, a more important kind. the kind that god is.

grace is my favorite thing about god. i can't tell you how impossible being a good, worthy, progressing person feels sometimes. i can feel so stuck, so inadequate of latter-day sainthood, so clumsily but also sort of beautifully flawed. the most important thing, and perhaps the only thing i know is that god exists, and that he will make up the difference between my potential and my often halfhearted and flailing attempts at discipleship.

so, clearly, i have doubts. i have questions. very serious ones that i'm not sure have answers.

and, should i dare to mention her name, so does kate kelly. i sat in a basement across from her a few months ago. she took off her boots, propped her feet up on the coffee table, and she answered our questions. regardless of right and wrong and questions and methods of asking, i think what we have been failing to do as a people is to recognize kate kelly and ordain women as representative instead of a fringe minority. while the easy road is to dismiss OW as a group of angry feminists who are bitter just for the sake of being bitter, it takes much more humility and compassion to see what this mormon feminist movement really means: that there are many women within this church, myself included, that feel hurt, limited, and undervalued. we can try to explain away this feeling with scriptural evidence and conference quotes that woman are equal in our institution, but all that jargon and frankly mental gymnastics doesn't change what it often feels like to be a female member of our church. it feels lonely, it feels constrained, and it can be heartbreaking.

still, at the end of the day, i feel god's familiar presence through the holy spirit. he reminds me of my worth. he comforts me with my divine potential. i feel it like a giant, fluffy, favorite blanket around my shoulders, mismatched patches of floral fabric woven through with a few gleaming golden threads, every inch of it symbolic, every mismatched part of me acknowledged, planned, usable, and wanted. this is why i am a saint: because god knows me. because he wants me, he opens up pathways for me to use my gifts, because he gave me power simply because i am his, and this power does not lie completely and solely within my physical/symbolic womb. i don't often get this from the church as an institution. i can talk a lot about the reasons why i feel this way, why i feel OW has merit, and how we can respond to these issues as a church, which i would be happy to do individually with anybody. but this is my space, one where i want to move past justifying the existence of feminism and do what i sat down to do: talk about grace.

i don't think god's grace is something he only uses at the very end of this world to save us or something only he holds. i think he is constantly filling in our gaps, forgiving us, and being compassionately patient with us as we fall short as his servants. i also think we have to capacity to do this for each other and that god expects us to. i think he expects us to forgive ourselves and others of shortcomings, to do what we can to make up for them, and to offer each other space for change and room for progression.

i wish we could act with more grace. when we mess up, when anger flames through us, when we suffer at the hands of each other, and when we fail, when we brilliantly and outrightly fail as saints, i wish we had more grace with each other. i wish we had the confidence in god and in our own faith to feel secure when it is challenged instead of placing blame and using big words to explain away doubt. i wish we had the capacity to forgive and the kindness to tenderly listen to each other before we pull out our defenses. i wish that we could admit when we are wrong and forgive ourselves with enough grace that we have room to grow again. i wish we could envelop each other with it, i wish we could truly mourn with those that mourn, i wish that we could fight for each other as sisters in zion. for us, grace and works go hand in hand. grace is action.

by grace we will be saved. with grace we will save each other.

littles

i adore lithuania. i adore the translucent green trees and the ubiquitous lakes and the baroque architecture and the breathtaking train rides. i adore lithuania's complications and contrasts and the spectacular 10 pm sunsets. i love my free sunny mornings, my evenings brushing through fields as tall as me and my nights on the swing set. i love touching little heads and holding little hands, and oh, how i crave those little hugs.

for some reason i'm resistant to saying i'm a kid person. it's some kind of feminist attempt to prove the point that women can be women regardless of how nurturing they are, but in all honestly i am 100% "a kid person". i love them. i'm not the kind of person that hits it off immediately with kids but i do have this pretty powerful ability to bond with them through quiet love. i am happiest when i have them in my life, and i think there are two reasons for that. one is their loyalty, trust, and their simple, straightforward, and bottomless love. the other is their wonder, spontaneity, imagination, spunk, and joy. the world is full of love with children, and it is also filled with beauty and adventure.

i'm starting to feel that completion again, that wholeness of self and purpose that came to me in china and that was so very hard to leave. i love who i am when i am a teacher. i sure as hell don't get it all right, but luckily i work with the most forgiving souls on this earth.