Christmas isn't Merry and the Holidays aren't Happy.

It's Christmas Eve and as I lay in the guest bedroom of my parents house under a powder blue quilt I am overwhelmed, as I have been for weeks, with one thought. Loss. So many of us have lost loved ones around the holidays and quite simply, Christmas isn't Merry and the Holidays aren't Happy. It's like being in an emotionally abusive, bi-polar relationship with a season. The days leading up are filled with strangers cutting us off in parking lots and grocery lines as happy songs about Santa and Jesus dance in the air, arguments about budgets and what to get or not get the kids just to see a moment of excitement, or gentle reminders from family members that we are still single and we are so lucky to have so much loneliness freedom. Yet in the midst of all the chaos there is still a dull still ache that doesn't seem to want to go on holiday vacation. It is the smell of dessert baking in the oven, or the red mailbox at Macy's and a letter to Santa reading "Please bring her back", or the deafening silence of the early morning in a hospital hallway. It's a certain song. It's an empty chair. It's a loved one gone. Joy to the World is replaced by grief in our hearts.

My Granny died on New Years Eve a few years back. Two years ago we lost the woman who was my second mom the week before Christmas. Just over a week ago a young man from my hometown froze to death just off of his college campus. Two days ago a beautiful soul from my childhood, lost his battle with cancer before getting to celebrate his 30th birthday. A few days ago a friend's grandmother fell ill and passed on early this morning. The celebration of a new born King sure feels a lot like death. How can a season be so filled with joy and so filled with sorrow all at once? For some of us the holidays just feel a lot like heartache.

Over my years here on this Earth I have been bruised up, hospitalized, had multiple surgeries, multiple cancer scares, lost consciousness, been beaten up, been in car accidents, bus accidents, can't walk on flat ground accidents and somehow I still get to live this thing we call life. With every passing instance I have had to face the decision to hide away in my pain or to embrace life's frailty and continue on in gratitude and joy. I don't understand why I have been allowed the utter privilege of continuing on this adventure of mine while other's journeys have had a much more abrupt end. But I do know this... It is important to be kind to one another along the way. And while you are at it, practice being kind to yourself.

The holiday season is about being together because we simply don't know how many more chances we get. I will never forget standing in my grandparents kitchen seeing my Granddad cry for the first and last time as he prayed a Christmas prayer of gratitude "for just letting us all be here." There is no greater gift in this world than each other. I pray we treat each other with understanding, tenderness and compassion, because someone lost their son this week, someone lost their brother, someone their mother, someone their best friend... And in this time of more digital connection than ever before, we are disconnected from each other, lonely, hurting... now more that ever, we need each other.

We are a messed up, broken, grief-stricken, sometimes mean spirited bunch us humans; who long to hear the genuine words "Welcome, I am so glad you are here. I could not dream of a better gift than you."

To all of you suffering great loss this holiday season, my thoughts and prayers are with you. May your tears of sorrow be held with kindness. May your hearts be heavy and someday hopeful. May you find rest amidst sleepless nights. May you find some sort of peace in all the pieces. And may the Christmas season be a reminder of the beauty we have witnessed in our loved ones departed, but forever with us. Amen.

Peace be with you.

KBC and MTN

It is surreal being back in Africa. It is not any different to me than going to Canada to see old friends, except the sounds of birds and car horns, the quick transference into the minority, the lack of linguistic understanding, the food, and the smells. It is foreignly, fantastically Africa. The people of Rwanda are naturally beautiful, spiritual, stoic and lively all at once. It was so dear to embrace the necks of old friends. I have met people in these last few days that have become so naturally a part of my life, it feels like an internal tearing as we prepare to go to Kenya. To see the delight in smiles and laughter. to be embraced as family. to dance. oh to dance. yes i feel beauty and beautiful here.

How healing this time. How perfect its placement in the timeline of heartache. These last few months have watched me raise my head, steady my stance and allow tears to fall in the places they choose to gravitate to. i have allowed their travel without interference or tissues. I have found a painful strength and delight in the growing of my years. Being here is a poetic gratitude from life as it whispers to me "celebrate, for you are magnetically glorious.' i have never felt so strong and so pleased to write such words.

Today i was asked the question of where i saw myself in years down the road. I laughed at the question. I was brought back to a podium in nashville where i told my college graduating class that i had no idea where life would take me. i suppose then i would have assumed i'd be married with at least a kid or two by now... and here i am in Kigali Rwanda laughing and dancing the night away. as i look to the next season of my life i have to think to myself, not what do i want to do, but who do i want to be? who am i becoming down this road? it is an incredible life, in an incredible world that we share. be kind. do something nice for a stranger today. hug someone and hold onto them for a minute. laugh at yourself. do good by people. give yourself some grace. let go of what needs to be. forgive each other. stand up for what's right. stand up for yourself. learn something new. travel. say nice things instead of mean words. cook a nice meal then eat good chocolate. and in the inbetween moments, dance. on top of everything, love. love well. it is all that we have in this lifetime. love fiercely and unreserved. there are no second chances at this. worrying about the future or the consequence, whether it be heartbreak or joy, only steals our moments from love. go live your life. and go love your life. blessings.

Aurora

My favorite of all the natural wonders. Captured in time lapse somewhere in Russia.

The Aurora from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

The Mountain

A time lapse video capturing raw beauty of the Milky Way and El Tiede in Spain. At 0:32 begins a sandstorm captured at 3am in a way the naked eye could never see. What a wonderful world.

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

it's trying to lead to somewhere...

This road we travel. This journey of life. We deviate from our paths for no reason at all sometimes, and other times our reasons appear silly, but the turns happen and our lives take a right at the falling rock and follow the sun's rays to the west until your soul is found in a gypsy town. It is a remarkable thing to pack a car, merge onto a highway that runs down the middle of the place i call my home forgetting that HWY 40 is so much longer than my imagination had dwarfed it to be. For as much as i travel, 40 seemingly ended somewhere just beyond Memphis. it's funny how your mind can trick you into subtly thinking such things. Things i believed when i was a child, like how in my 7 year old mind Watertown Rd. ended shortly after you took a right onto County RD 92. I wonder if i have begun to believe this about the highway of my life. I have grown, i am the person i am, HA! there is so much growing left to do. So much traveling within my soul to uncover more of the person that I already am.

Today my wandering soul took my wandering body to a place high in the Tonto National Forrest. Standing in a bar prolifically named The Spirit Room, these words were spoken into my own journey, "find a place that makes your soul feel good." Beautiful. And as the sun fought to break through the storm clouds over the Verde Valley, this place i find myself in is simply remarkable.

bricks and Berry

Most times when i sit to write these blogs I don't know what to say. for the last year i have found that articulating in a written form never quite matured into what i wanted it to. there are better writers, better painters, better dancers, better lovers, better servants... and on and on and on... so now i write, in my own voice, in my own time.

it's funny what people build their walls out of i.e. doubt, fear, pain, abandonment, bitterness, pride... and on and on and on... and i wonder how concrete those walls may be. some a shield of feathers cast to a whimsy by the first warm breeze and other bricks of steel coldness will be what weighs down the casket of a life lost and unloved. who gives them such strength but the builder themselves?

I read this from Wendell Berry earlier this week and have so loved it. "The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it."

I cannot change the events of my past, nor can i out run them (no matter how many trips i take). I can choose how today goes. I can choose to take down my bricks, one by one, and who knows they might just pave a wonderfully glorious path. My life is filled with wonderful people, remarkable people. For that i am so thankful.

Today has glorious potential. Live well. Enjoy the journey.

slow dancing...