tentatively titled
Donald Miller
Searching For God Knows What
March 30 marks the six-year anniversary of the first TWLOHA shirt worn. Over the years we have heard incredible stories of moments sparked by the question, “What does your shirt mean?” These short interviews are an attempt to share a few of those stories, and invite you to record and share your own or use the #wearTWLOHA hashtag on Twitter. This all leads up to everyone wearing a TWLOHA shirt on Friday, March 30.
Read the blog for more info: http://wrt.lv/zmNmo0
(Not The Blog Post I Meant To Write)
I’ve been thinking about words. Words, that can mean so much or so little with simple rearranging. The elusive combination of words that express exactly what we mean and exactly how we feel. I spend a lot of time trying to find the words I want, because I believe in the power of words.
But I also believe in the power of simple words. I believe in ‘I love you’ and ‘I need you’ and ‘you matter.’ I believe in ‘please’ and ‘you are not alone’ and ‘let’s talk.’ I believe often the perfect thing to say doesn’t need to be eloquent or long or fancy. I believe the words I remember most in my life are simple ones, ones that tell me what matters.
I sat down to write a much different blog post, one about a phrase I love. But I couldn’t seem to write it, and I think its because I can’t explain it. The awesome simplicity of the five words themselves are more than I could ever say about them.
So maybe we don’t need to explain it. Maybe people don’t always need to hear a monologue from a movie. Maybe after the run through the airport or the life saving operation or after pulling someone up from a cliff, maybe when the orchestra swells and the camera pans in for those perfect words, the perfect speech that explains everything, maybe it gets quiet instead. Maybe it’s not a speech at all. Maybe we all just need to hear simple words, and believe them.
I love you.
You matter.
You are wonderful.
You are special.
You are important.
I bring this up because I think sometimes we’re scared of words. We’re scared that we don’t know what words to say. We don’t even know where to start. We think if we say the wrong thing, that somehow it’s worse than saying nothing at all. But simple logic dictates that any effort is better than none. If someone is struggling, if someone needs you to say something, please take that step. They might not be the right words. They might be awkward and weird and uncomfortable. But they say you care. And isn’t that the point? Too often we long for the right words, the perfect thing to say, when maybe it’s much simpler.
I care.
I care truly and deeply and I am here for you.
Someone in your life needs that.
Forget the wording, say the words.
Who I am:
I’m a junior at Auburn University and studying Music Education. I play any instrument I can get my hands on, but my main instrument is percussion, which I’ve played since I was in third grade. I think music is one of the most powerful things in the world, and it is universal….
I don’t reblog much (anything really,) since I want to save this space for things I wrote. This would be the odd occasion where I can reblog something I wrote.
“Monster”
The Almost
My hands were shaking, half from the cold and half from nerves. The wind blew out the small flame a few times, but I managed to light my cigarette on the fourth try. The light from the flame danced across my mom’s face, and I saw a mixture of confusion and sadness.
I blew out the smoke from the first cigarette my mom had ever seen me smoke and started the hardest conversation I’ve ever had.
I’ve never been good at asking for help, letting people in. There’s a part of me that is filled with pride and wants to do things on my own. This causes its share of problems and certainly plays some role in not having shared my struggles with many people.
But there’s another part of me, perhaps a larger part, that is scared to death of what people will think of me. That when I let people in, tell them I’m struggling, it will change their entire view of me. That whatever I say will somehow become their burden, or they might blame themselves for not seeing it, for not doing something to make me happier, for not fixing me. That they’ll treat me different and worry about me all the time. I justify my isolation by believing that I’m saving people from having to worry about me. But when I’m not hiding from the truth, I think it might come down to fear.
“If I were a monster, would you wince when you looked at me?
If I were a freak, would you stare?
If I were a leper, would you say unclean?”
And so it went, exactly like my worst fears.
“Is it something your father and I did?”
“Did we make you feel like you couldn’t talk to us?”
“How could I not have noticed?”
“Why would you keep this from us?”
I listened to her strained voice and watched tears fall from eyes filled with pain. I watched her heart break as I told her about days and nights. Days spent feeling so alone and so hopeless. Nights spent in the company of the vices I turned to instead of people. Days wanting to escape; nights spent sincerely thinking of how.
I talked and listened and talked some more.
No, its not your fault.
No, you are the best parents I could ever ask for.
Because I deserve an Oscar for Best Actor.
Because hiding things is a natural reaction, to hide our pain away and think that no one will understand.
And maybe they won’t understand. Maybe they’ll think I’m weird, I’m crazy, I’m vying for attention. Maybe they’ll blame themselves. Maybe it’s easier to hide my struggles, because maybe that conversation will hurt.
But maybe it’s worth it.
Because there is someone who cares. The people who love me deserve a chance to try to understand. And even if understanding doesn’t happen at the start, it’s still a possibility. It was several months until I got the chance to revisit that conversation with my mom, and although I’m sure she still has questions for me, being able to talk openly with people who love me about the ways I’m hurting is a good thing.
“When I am a monster
You never wince.
When you look at me,
When I am a freak, you never stare.
When I am a leper,
You never say unclean.
And when I am lost,
You come and get me free”
And right there, on the word “free,” is the absolute best part of the song. All the tension and emotion from the past few minutes of the song come together in a seemingly inevitable, but undeniably beautiful explosion of sound.
So perhaps the tension was there to lead to that moment. Perhaps through our pain and struggles, we can find strength. The strength to recognize that although we often try to do it on our own, we simply don’t need to. The courage to have conversations that let people in and to accept help. To know the initial reaction might not be the one we want, but to have the conversations anyway. To let go of the fear. To talk.
We don’t have to hide. We don’t have to be afraid. To talk, to share, to ask for help.
Please, don’t be afraid.
—Robert
Spring 2012 Intern
The product of a few days hard work at the office!
Robert and Krista are the two interns helping with The Storytellers high school campaign. They have been absolutely incredible.
We just wrapped up the first month and are so impressed by everyone’s hard work. Two weeks ago Robert and Krista came to us with an idea to make a video for all of the student organizers to keep them motivated as the term continues. They wanted them to know how much their work matters and to encourage them to keep it up.
Check out the video above. There is an awesome little dance number by Krista at the end as well.
Allen, We’re Houses.
A few weeks ago, Allen and I stepped out to walk his dog. We talked about a few things, and landed on the topic of change. It came up because I was moving to Florida soon, but it was relevant for far more than that. I told him I thought we were all houses.
Say you live in an old rickety house, rundown and broken. The wood is rotten, the windows cracked, the floorboards creak. Aside from being unsightly, the house is clearly unsafe. It’s clearly not in your best interest to stay there, but you do because it’s what you’ve always known. It’s comfortable. But its unsafe. Remain there long enough, and its bound to kill you. So what are your options?
You can paint the old house, fix up its appearances, do small patchwork here and there. But to what avail? Perhaps a temporary fix, but it no more changes the house itself then doing nothing at all. In fact, it might have been better to refrain from patching anyway, because then you could see the problem. The patches and sloppy paint jobs, desperately tossed on over the decaying walls and broken glass, served to mask the thing that needs real attention.
To truly make a safer, better place to live, you’d have to relinquish the comfort. Perhaps the house is all you’ve known, but you know you need to leave. So you tear down the old house, which in itself it work. It takes awhile, and it seems counterproductive. Aren’t you supposed to be fixing something, not destroying it?
But once you’ve gotten rid of the old, the decaying, the garbage, you can begin to build anew. In place of the old house, requiring constant amends, you can build a new, safe house on a solid foundation. This house will take even more time to build than tearing down the old one. Your hands will be cut and calloused from the process, it will not be easy. But eventually, with help, you can have somewhere to live in peace.
We all have old houses. Whichever part of your life they reside in, you have some old, rickety houses. We constantly strive to fix them, to make them appear better. To fool others into thinking we’re ok, perhaps to fool ourselves. But we can never truly fix them without the effort it takes to tear away what we no longer need. To tear away the decay and grime and mold, to demolish the old house and start from scratch. To build, with painstaking precision, the place we desire to live in. The place we need, the place we deserve. Its a long process, when you consider it all. But it’s worth it. Don’t we all deserve to live where we belong?
In Which We Are Playgrounds
In between Moe’s for lunch (somehow a $5 combo is $8.31) and visiting the sketchiest Wal-Mart I’ve ever been to (in search of my parents’ Christmas presents), Meagan and I stopped by a playground today to enjoy the (finally) cooler weather. It was an older playground, and it was a bit worn down. The paint was peeling in more than a few spots, there were names and other things carved into the wood. My first instinct, admittedly being used to nicer areas such as Alpharetta and Auburn, was caution and slight discomfort. A subconscious desire for a nicer, newer place for us to spend our time.
There was a funny thing about this rundown old playground though. There were children playing on it. Three or four families were clearly enjoying their Sunday afternoon, making the sort of childhood (or parenthood, I suppose) memories I made with my parents as a child. Chasing each other, sliding down the slides, climbing on the monkey bars; the children had no problem with the somewhat shoddy appearance of the playground. Appearance is irrelevant, the function was in tact.
It occurred to me that the playgrounds I experienced as a child were no better than the one at which I was currently looking at. The playground I played on in Maryland every Christmas had been there for ages, the one in Alpharetta was built probably around the same time as the one I was at. You can still slide down the slides, swing from the monkey bars, run across the shaky wooden bridges between towers. What had changed was my perception.
We’ve all been new at times. Fresh coats of brightly colored paint, new swings that don’t squeak, no obscenities carved in the wood. Over time, however, the world takes it toll. Natural wear like the peeling paint, pain inflicted by others like the carvings. This can appear to us as a diminishing of quality, we’re worth less for the wear. Our function remains in tact though, we’re still the person God made us to be. All it takes is a person or people who have the desire, who want to take the time, who care enough to help us. To buff out the scratches, put on a fresh coat of paint, put some oil on the squeaky swings. To point out that while the world has taken its toll, our function remains entirely in tact.
You are not worse for the wear, you have more experiences to build from.
You are not worth any less, you are further along in your story. It may not be your favorite part, the easiest or happiest part, but it leads to the next part.
You may be down, but you’re not out.
On Endings
“I might never see you ever again after today!
Or I might see you Wednesday”
-Kim
I’ve been faced with a lot of endings recently, even if they’re temporary. Moving to Florida next semester means I’m leaving my friends, I’m leaving school, I’m leaving my job. I’m leaving several positions and passing up my shot at various other ones. I’m ending (for now) this chapter of my life, one I’m finally comfortable and have found some semblance of footing in.
I walked out of the percussion studio today and took my stuff with me for the first time in 3 years. The portion of my wall reserved for paddles symbolizing positions in Delta Chi is empty for the first time in 3 years. I’ll walk out of Big Blue later this month and take everything from my desk.
What will remain with me from this part of my life is a source of no small contention within myself. The relationships I will maintain, the contact I’ll keep, the places I plan to return. It may seem overdramatic given my planned return in the summer, but it’s a time for me to contemplate and evaluate what I value.
I’m leaving things I love, places I love, people I love. My Highlands Kids family, my percussion studio family, my music department family. I can’t go home and see my parents and my brother for a weekend if I want, something I’ve taken massively for granted for quite some time now. I’ll be even further away from someone who I’ve grown to be closer to than I could ever have imagined. I’ll spare the embarrassment of calling them by name (:cough: Meagan), but the time I look forward to every few weekends to get to spend with my very best friend, my girlfriend, someone I love more than words, will be on pause.
And there are things that come out on the other side of the evaluation. I tried to be the bigger person, to salvage a friendship before I left that has been faked and tense for months, only to have it thrown in my face with more of the exact reason it was broken in the first place, but so much worse. So I’m done with some things, some people.
But with these endings come beginnings. New places, new opportunities, new experiences. These, paired with the things I choose to keep from the past few years, will be what I move forwards with.
On to new things, keeping the current things worth being kept.
I think that’s how anyone hopes to transition between phases in life, so I’m sure I’m not bringing anything new to the table. But for me, its the first time I truly get to make that decision.
Tentatively Title’s Tentative Title
In thinking of a name for this blog, I came to an interesting conclusion: I am nowhere near witty enough to think of a blog name. I was contemplating having a temporary name to get it going, and thought of an album by Pete Davis named ‘Tentatively Self-Titled.’ I find it intriguing that the word tentative has such contrasting, yet remarkably similar definitions; both of which are so fitting. (Although admittedly, the following excerpts are from the thesaurus, not the dictionary.)
The first entry describes a time, a waiting period before something else. ‘Provisional,’ it says, ‘speculative.’ ‘Untried, unproven, experimental. Antonym: definite.’ A friend of mine has an interesting thought on waiting. He says “If waiting could crush, you’d probably find me underneath 21 years of anticipation.” He wrote that for the longest time, he’s wanted to become a part of something incredible. To actually “do” something with his life. I couldn’t agree with this sentiment more. For the longest time I’ve felt so out of place. Sitting in classrooms, going to various jobs, going to meetings, rehearsals, practices. I’ve always felt (and on a few occasions expressed) as if I were simply waiting. Waiting for class to end, waiting for rehearsals to end, waiting for semesters to end. Waiting for high school to end to go off and start doing real things that mattered in college, only to find myself waiting for classes to end, waiting for rehearsals to end, waiting for semesters to end. Feeling as though I were wasting my time, not doing some grand thing I should be doing.
I’ve always hated the night. Its so dark, so quiet. As a child I would hide Archie comics and flashlights for when my parents would send me to bed, because I couldn’t stand the time it would take me to fall asleep. To this day, I almost always fall asleep to a tv show that I’ve seen a million times, so my brain doesn’t have to think about it. Being alone in a quiet room requires being with yourself, spending time with yourself, knowing yourself. I subconsciously avoid quiet in my everyday life; I live in a house with 20-something other guys, my ‘studying’ consists of banging on things (rhythmically and melodically, of course.) I think this comes from my lack of comfort with myself. I’ve always struggled to define myself, even in those ‘get to know each other’ games where you have to have three interesting facts about yourself. While discussing this with Meagan, she asked me these questions:
- What is it you like or enjoy?
- What is it you want to learn?
- Where is it you want to go?
- What is it you want to accomplish?
- What is it you’re living for?
I’m not sure I can answer any of those.
Now before this comes off as the ramblings of a madman (too late?), this is really just a long, drawn out explanation for the title. I promise everything I write isn’t going to be as mopey and introspective. In fact, future postings promise to be much more interesting, as the main reason I had for starting this was to keep up with some (what I can only assume are going to be) amazing experiences I’m going to be having this Spring semester as an intern for To Write Love On Her Arms.
(Oh, and I know the URL is spelled wrong. Someone already took the correct spelling.)
