July is rapidly spinning towards its close, and I find myself sitting by the window, letting the sunshine and the sounds of the late summer morning wash over me. It's quiet here, my little neighborhood, the silence only broken by the rumble of a passing delivery truck or the laughter of the little boys next door bursting outside to play for just a few more minutes. The crape myrtle waves in the breeze outside my window, and when I look down at my keyboard, tiny pieces of glitter dance in the light, still clinging on from the best birthday surprise. Today is a breath of quiet after the craziest, most wonderful week, and I'm letting myself sit in it, tired in the way that only comes from days you know you'll remember.

When I graduated at the end of 2021 and stepped into the new year, I found myself overwhelmed with the prospect of how isolating post-grad life would be. It was the coldest, dreariest time of year, I was working remotely, and it felt as though everyone's lives were spinning on but mine. It was stagnant and strange, and I remember thinking that there was no way anything would be shifting anytime soon.

I don't think I would have believed it if someone told me then about the ways the next seven months would go - the old friends who would fall back in rhythm, the new humans I never saw coming, the way paths would cross for people I've known through this space for years and years to finally become in-person friends, too. It's been weird and baffling and I'm so grateful for it, so grateful for how wrong I was.

I remember writing a Tuesday Letter a little over a year ago about community, one of my favorite letters from last summer. I wrote about the fact that we're hardwired for connection, and about the fact that God isn't going to intend something for us without also providing. My doubt is so quick to jump in there, to jump to a mindset of scarcity, and yet over and over again, He reminds me of the lack of truth in that, in ways I never see coming.

This past Sunday, through the wildest chain of events, I got to hug the first three friends I ever made through the blogosphere - friends who've been one of the dearest parts of my world for the past seven years. We met as fifteen-year-old bloggers, throwing words out into the void, until one day someone was on the other side of the screen. I remember the summer we all met so distinctly - lying sprawled across the living room floor, afternoon sun streaming through the blinds as I messaged these girls that lived states and states away, daydreaming of the brunches and sleepovers and adventures we would have one day. We were determined, we said, but we were fifteen, and our worlds didn't extend within each other's grasp.

One day, we agreed. One day, it'll happen.

There were a thousand misses over the years - close calls that didn't quite work, layovers that were just a bit too far out of reach, trips and hopes and one wildly wistful New York internship that just never came to be.

So when Rachel texted us in November that she would be flying to the East Coast in July, I didn't let myself hold on too tightly.

It was eight months away, after all, and all of our lives felt a little up in the air. Who knew what the next eight months would bring? We'd been living in an era of shutdowns and shifted plans, and it was all-too-likely that this could be yet another round.

And then, a few months later, she bought the tickets.

"I have the morning free!" she texted us. "If anyone wants to meet for coffee, I'd love to see you!"

And so I held the date tight in my mind. Didn't circle it on my calendar - it felt too much like tempting fate - but tattooed it behind my eyes, July 24th. Crossing fingers and biting my tongue and sending hesitant texts -

"Want to ride together?"

"What are you wearing?"

"I found three coffee shops - you pick."

Eight months later, July 24th rolled around, and friends - it was perfect.

There's just something about sitting around a table with people who know you - really know you - and who get the pieces of you that can't quite be put into words. But they were there, too. They know.

It was sweet and special and healing, and it felt like a little miracle in the palm of my hand. To sit with people who knew my fifteen-year-old dreams and my eighteen-year-old fears, to be twenty-two and unpack the ways that things have changed - the ways we've changed - together. To see something we spent seven years hoping for come to life, even just for a day.

There's something magical about getting to see a beautiful impossibility become real. To remember that there may be days where it feels like the world is burning, like everything is too heavy to hold, but that there will be other days that remind you that sometimes, good things do take time. That something you hold on to can still become tangible, no matter how afraid you are to believe it.

And I'm just grateful for it all - for the miraculous magic of internet connections and steady friendship and community in all of its forms.

Here's to the impossible - may 22 be filled with its wonder.

and with grace and grace and grace

Last night, a friend asked me how my summer had been going.

"Lots of work," I texted back, "lots of back and forth. Lots of chaos. I feel like I can't even remember it all."

No, I can't seem to remember it all, and if I'm being honest, I struggle to describe it. Life has spun a thousand miles a minute the past few months, and in so many ways it has been so good, so special - though I'd be lying if I said I didn't find myself craving a moment to breathe every now and then. So far, this year has been a bundle of contradictions: slow and hectic, uncertain and stable, heavy and light. I talk to friends and they feel the same way - is this the erratic rhythm of being in your twenties? I find myself certain yet confused, hopeful yet worn, and I wonder how to make sense of it all, how best to move forward when things feel murky and strange.

"Happy, free, confused, and lonely" never felt quite so close.

-----

Today, I turn 22.

It crept up on me this year, courtesy of a July that has flown by in a blur of humidity and friendship and hastily scribbled journal entries. Normally, the time between my sister's birthday at the beginning of the month and my own feels more marked, but this time it's slipped through my fingers like seawater. I don't even think I really processed the fact that it was nearly here, which, knowing me, might have been for the best.

Birthdays have always made me existential. (And I truly do mean always - according to my mom, turning four was absolutely devastating to me.) I find myself spending the weeks leading up obsessing over all I've yet to do and accomplish, panicking over all the upcoming year will hold. This year, though, has been such a whirlwind that I find myself unusually calm as the next trip around the sun approaches. Maybe August will be the month that brings my latest existential crisis, or maybe I'm finally coming a little bit more to terms with the fact that there's no use in anything but open hands.

-----

21 was a year of hurting and healing. It was fast and strange and full of so much that felt new. A year that felt like a demolition of sorts, but also like rebuilding. I have a feeling that 22 will be a little like that, too.

I never pictured that I would be where I am, that life would look like it does, but I'm finding that there's a special sort of hope in that, in the knowledge that I'm not steering the ship. In the fact that I'm here, and my people are here, and that's more than enough. Months and months ago, I remember coming across a post by Written to Speak that read, "let mercy meet the madness", and in so many ways, I feel like that's the defining phrase of the past few years of life - so much madness, but mercy that supersedes it all, that's carried me through in ways I'll never begin to be able to put to the page.

It's 2am now, and I'm penning these words in the dark, listening to the hum of the cicadas outside my window. I'm wrapped in my favorite sweatshirt, a soft gray one with long drawstrings that I bought at goodwill for three dollars because it reminded me of the beach, and my cat is curled up asleep at my feet for the first night in months. The quiet is comforting, and the summer night is warm, and I feel my eyelids beginning to grow heavy.

And maybe I don't know what the year will bring, but I know that it began with doughnuts in the kitchen, because according to Taylor swift, 22 is breakfast at midnight. I know that it began with laughter, and dramatic singing, and texts that leave me marveling at the people God has let me have in my world. It began with my mom and my sisters and the peace that comes from a night after a July thunderstorm.

There is a very big piece of me that is purely terrified of a new year - that's scared to death to keep building this life, to make so many different decisions and jumps. Scared of failing, of making the wrong call, of all that will come that I can't control.

And yet, over and over, when I think of life and 22 and whatever wild adventure this year will be, I think of words that my dear, dear friend, Hannah wrote this past week that have been dancing through my mind ever since:

"Do it afraid, do it badly,
But do it earnestly
And with grace and grace and grace."

Because, as she has often reminded me, doing it afraid is just as brave - maybe braver. And so I carry that with me in my pocket, clinging to grace all the more tightly - do it afraid, do it badly, but do it earnestly. Do the next thing - and the next and the next and the next.

And I think maybe that's how you build a life - how you build an adventure.

So here's to you, 22 - to being uncertain and shaky, but here and sustained despite it all. To being happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time, to hopefully being a little less miserable and a whole lot more magical, and to a year of breakfast at midnight and falling in love with strangers. :-) I don't know what it will hold, but like Taylor says - I know that I'll just keep dancing.

chasing stories

There's never been a time in my life when I wasn't writing or telling stories.

When I was little, that meant every game of imagination that you can think of, from make-believe with my sisters to sitting with my grandfather, going back and forth making up stories together about being detectives or spies or stranded in the middle of nowhere, trying to find a way back home.

Once I got a little older, the stories hit the page, and I was constantly scribbling messy tales into battered notebooks with a reckless abandon. Novels and journal entries, short stories and angsty preteen poetry — trust me, I wrote it all.

It was the summer I turned fourteen that I made the jump into blogging, and suddenly the stories I was weaving together were about me, too. I don't think I fully realized what creative nonfiction writing was until that point, but I fell in love with it, fell in love with a community of people writing about life and God and all of the beauty and hurt that filled the cracks. This summer marks eight years of my corner of the internet, and I genuinely can't fathom my life — any facet of it, really — without growing up in this space, surrounded by these people. So much of me has been made from you, and I'm grateful for every second of it.

And yet, I would be remiss not to admit that sometimes, a part of me wishes I didn't always live life chasing stories.

-----

Being a writer is a beautiful, sacred thing. My life has been shaped by words, and I wouldn't change that for the world. But writing is deeply personal, too - so much of what you write comes from your own life, especially when you write nonfiction. And the thing that often isn't talked about in regards to being a writer is how quickly you can find yourself looking at life as solely a story you can tell.

There's a pull as a writer - especially when you're sharing your work online, because there's an added level of immediacy - to constantly have new stories to share. Life is a content well, and you'd better be bringing stories in by the bucket. If those stories involve a miracle from God, even better - you're succeeding tenfold.

And so, very quickly, you find yourself looking for stories in your breakfast cereal and signs from God in your coffee cup. Your brain sifts through your day as your drive home, sorting out what could be expanded on or twisted into a clever metaphor and what can be tossed aside. It can become all-encompassing before you've even realized it's happening - and by then, it's such a habit that it's second nature.

Worse still, what I realized a few years ago was that I was writing the endings to scenarios before they'd even begun. See, I'm someone who always likes to be two steps ahead - it's just how my brain works. I'm always trying to determine the outcome so that I can prepare should the worst case scenario come to pass. But if I'm not careful, I can quickly reach a point where I'm predicting the end of a situation that I can't possibly predict, and I convince myself that I know exactly what's going to happen, because narratively, it makes sense. It's just another story, and let's be honest - stories can become pretty formulaic. The more time you spend in them, the easier it becomes to see where they're going, and I was convinced that I had hit that point in just about every area.

I would find myself in a hard situation, and I would immediately jump three steps ahead, convinced that I knew exactly what God was going to do and what lesson he wanted me to learn.

"Well," I would think to myself, "x happened, which means y will happen next, and then z will get taken away because God wants to show me _____ and I need to learn _____." And it probably goes without saying, but the lessons I would find myself envisioning were never very pleasant - they all involved some horrible loss or disappointment or grief that I would have to endure for the sake of a lesson.

In a lot of ways, I think it was a defense mechanism. If the worst case scenario came to pass, it would hurt less if I'd already prepared myself, right? If I was never caught off guard, I might not have a very optimistic outlook on life, but at least the ground couldn't be ripped out from under me. It was a very desperate attempt at grasping onto a shred of control, and I threw myself into it with everything I had.

But the thing is, life is more than just a story.

And while I'm not here to claim I'm just a pawn, I'm not the one writing it.

I say all of this because I know that a lot of you who read these letters are writers, too. And I know that, as a writer, it is so incredibly easy to live life chasing a story. It isn't always a bad thing - we need stories. But when we step away from the pen, we need a life that isn't just content. We need a life that's ours.

Life isn't always going to be miracles and gutting loss. It's also laundry and taxes and cleaning the pantry on a Saturday morning. It's long walks that don't lead to epiphanies, and conversations with friends about things the internet will never know, and going to bed early at the end of a long week. And maybe there's irony in the fact that I'm writing about the fact that there are parts of life that aren't meant to see the page, but it's one of the truest things I've come to know. And I wish I could tell my nineteen-year-old self that as she walked through life desperate for a story to fall out of the sky. I wish I could tell my twenty-year-old self that when she was tired and afraid and desperate to never be surprised again.

I wish I had understood sooner that to write is to hold the magical and the mundane together. That life is more than a story dropped into your lap - it's a thousand moments of noticing. That you can't be present to the world around you if all you can think about is the end that you think is being written - that you won't notice anything at all.

Your life is your life - beautiful and terrible and boring and confusing and sweet and strange. And it's going to be filled with some absolutely incredible stories, but sometimes, they're not going to be for the page - they're just going to be for you.

Sometimes, those will be the best of all.

seashells like manna

 

I'm fully aware that this story might sound a little bit crazy. 

But gosh, it's one I won't be forgetting. 

One of my favorite things about relationships is the way in which you build your own language with another person. You create a lexicon of inside jokes and old memories, bandaged broken pieces and patterns that feel like home. It's unique and familiar and something that can't be replicated.

I think it's like that with God, too. 

I know a girl who swears that whenever she needs a little pick-me-up, she finds a ladybug - her and God, that's their thing. For another friend, it's a song. Everyone has a different story, and I love the specificity of it all, the intentionality. 

As for me, Jesus and I like to hang out in the seashells. 

I've always loved looking for shells, the product of growing up with a mother and grandmother who were shell-finding fiends. Most of my earliest memories of the beach involve walking with them, looking for shark's teeth and shells that sparkled in the light. But a few years back, I realized what a breath of fresh air they could be. 

I've never been good at slowing down, which comes as no surprise if you've been reading my words for any amount of time. I always want to keep moving, to keep going, to check as many tasks off the list as I can. But when it comes to finding the best shells, you can't do that. You've got to stay put, to dig in. It's when you take the time to look closer and to really sift through all of the broken pieces that you'll find the most beautiful ones. 

And so, when I was at my most shattered, Jesus plopped me in a bed of shells and let me sit in the sunlight and sift. And along the way, we made our own language out of it. 

Nowadays, my shell-hunting is a little less therapy and a little more of a treasure hunt again, but it's still one of the most calming places to land for me. 

If you ever find yourself wandering the Carolina shore looking for shells, you probably won't be the only one. We frequent a handful of sleepy towns along the coast, and more often than not I find myself falling into conversation with someone else spending their golden hour scanning for shark's teeth and sand dollars. Everyone has something specific they're on the hunt for, and it's fun to compare notes on the best spots for different finds. 

Me? I'm a sucker for anything tiny. I love the big, gorgeous shells as much as anyone, but I get the most excited when I stumble onto something tiny and perfect and beautiful, the kind of shell that you have to work extra-hard to land on. My favorites are the ones that I refer to as baby conchs - technically whelks, since conchs are found in more tropical regions, but that same classic, dramatic look.

They're rarer than most of the shells that I find myself bringing home, and I'm always excited when I stumble onto one. If I find a few over the course of a trip, I'm counting it a success.

A few days into the trip, my family and I went on a long walk down to the end of the island - my favorite spot. The tide was low, and there were shells scattered everywhere. My family has long since learned that, in these situations, the best plan is to abandon me to my own devices, and I ended up spending several hours wandering home by myself, traipsing up and down the beach. I hadn't thought to bring a bag with me, and soon I was cupping handfuls of shells in my palms before remembering that, for once, I did have pockets. I ended up stuffing them full, and along the way, I found several tiny, beautiful baby conchs. I couldn't believe my luck - it was the best kind of afternoon. 

As I finally began to make the trek back to our little blue house, I remember thinking to myself, Wouldn't it just be so sweet to find a baby conch every day while I'm here? Just one? That would be so fun. It wasn't really a prayer, not much more than a passing thought. 

But the next day, as I wandered down the beach in the opposite direction, I stumbled onto another one. 

Huh, I thought to myself. That's crazy. Two days in a row?

Then the next day, I found another. 

I froze. There's no way...

That's right, dear reader. By the time I was packing my bags to head back to my own corner of the south, I had found a baby conch shell every. single. day. 

More often than not, I found two. 

Sometimes they were the result of careful scanning, of sifting through a bed of broken shells until I landed on the perfect one. More often than not, they were just sitting atop the sand as I walked, as if they were waiting just for me. Whether the weather was gorgeous and we were out until the sun went down or rain or wind had us scrambling for cover, one always seemed to cross my path before the day was done. 

It was like a seaside manna, just for me. A daily ritual of intentionality, an inside joke wrapped in salt air. 

Our trip wrapped up on Saturday, and on our way out of town, we decided to check out a spot my mom had read about on Facebook - a hidden gem of a shell spot that we had somehow never known existed, despite visiting the island for years. We're never in a rush to leave the ocean, and what could it hurt to check it out? 

When we finally pulled ourselves away four hours later, I immediately texted a friend: I have seen the promised land.  

It was absolutely spectacular. One of the widest beaches I've ever seen, with huge beds of shells everywhere you turned. People would pass holding giant conchs in hand, or walking slow, keeping their eyes on the surf and all it brought in with each crashing wave. 

As you can imagine, I was lost to the world in a matter of minutes, my drawstring pack slung over my shoulder, a grocery bag in hand for more fragile finds. I think that I could have stayed there forever. 

And in those four hours, I found more baby conchs than I could count. 

I lost track completely. They showed up everywhere I turned. I could barely take two steps before stumbling upon another, crouching back down on the sand a mere foot away from where I'd found one moments before. It was more than a little mind-blowing, and entirely magical. 

Everyone has certain lies that they're prone to falling prey to. It's something that's come up a lot in conversations with friends lately - the way our own minds trick us into believing things that couldn't be further from the truth. One of mine that's popped up more often than I'd care to admit over the past several years has been that I've been forgotten by God. Left behind. And while I'm grounded enough to know logically that I'm being irrational, it's still a feeling that has to be fought all the same. 

So to experience something so sweet, so intentional on a thousand different levels - it's special and meaningful and centering in the best possible way. 

The thing about God that blows me away is that it was one of those things that wouldn't mean much of anything to anyone else. To most people, shells are just...well, shells. They're pretty, and it's fun to stumble onto a unique one, but at the end of the day, they probably won't give them much thought. But for me - that's my language. It's what will catch my attention.

So, for me, it was a reminder - something tangible - that even when it feels like my world is in disarray, I haven't been left by the side of the road. A reminder of goodness, and kindness, and of abundance. And as the week went on, every time I would catch that familiar spiral shape out of the corner of my eye, I had to laugh. Okay, God, I'd think. I get it. I see you.

And so this week, as I unpack and regroup and fall back into routine once more, I'll brush the sand off of my finds and line them up on the edges of my bookshelves where I can see them. I'll bring a little of the ocean into my everyday rhythms - and keep that reminder close.

I don't know what May has held for you so far, my friends, but I hope that if nothing else, you're reminded of just how known and cared for you are by Him - and that you see that intentionality come through every single day, even through something as small as seashells that feel like manna.