i do.

“My friends and I don’t belong to each other by blood, by marriage, by law, by ceremony.
We owe each other nothing. Yet we DO take care of each other in sickness and in health.
Till death do we part, apparently. Because we just love each other. We just DO.”
-Elizabeth Gilbert

These words, from Elizabeth Gilbert, have been sitting with me for a full week. They’ve been rattling around in my bones, showing up behind my eyelids as I drift off to sleep. She posted an update on her Facebook page, which I didn’t even know I followed until it popped up on a recent scroll, though I’m guessing I liked it during the “Eat Pray Love” times, or when my own interpretations of that novel led me to make some major life changes (well, as many “major” life changes as a 21-year-old college student at a liberal arts college in Minnesota can make). She had surgery recently and posted an ode to her friends as they helped her come back to health. It is an ode to the voluntary love they share, the unspoken vows they have with another, to care for and be present with and to love, always. If you want to read the full passage, it’s here.

I’ve got a pretty weird and random faith in the divine; I don’t believe that God makes things happen or not happen for us, and don’t you dare console me about a breakup or a diagnosis or any shitty thing (or any good thing, for that matter) with the phrase, “Everything happens for a reason.” And yet! I still believe that words -- books or poems or posts by Elizabeth Gilbert, for example -- come to us when we most need to hear them. That words show up in the display section of the library, or as a gift in the mail, or on our Facebook scrolls for a divine reason. This post and these words struck a particular chord with me (see: bone-rattling and eyelid-movie-screening mentioned above). I needed these words this week, and there they were.

If you’ve been around my Instagram this past year, you may have seen that in the course of a few months in 2019, I became an ordained minister and officiated not one but two! weddings of some of my dearest friends. It was the greatest honor of my life to stand with them, to speak to them, as they made hopeful, deliberate promises to one another and the life they share together. I rehearsed the ceremony in front of my mom for each wedding, getting all of my ugly tears and snot out in her living room instead of in front of Owen and Marilee and Ben and Natalie and their closest friends and family. I believe in their love -- and their love has given me further belief in marriage, partnership, and love in general.

And, if you’ve been around my Instagram this past year, you may have also noticed that there are lots of pictures of me. Just me! I am single, without a partner, though I’ve gone on dates (one day I’ll write a post about the hilarious blind date I went on where a man tried to convince me that the Earth is, in fact, a snowglobe) and actually dated (like boyfriend-girlfriend-level dated) someone this year. But, I’m not near the kind of romantic love that leads to a decision to enter into a lifelong partnership involving the government and a marriage license, or a party involving dancing and free wine. 2019 has been a year full of marriage for me -- writing sermons about love, choosing poems to read that represent that love, crafting vows to carry that love beyond a ceremony and into life -- but it hasn’t led me closer to my own kind of partnership. My family has not-so-jokingly mentioned that they’re going to create a Bachelor audition video for me titled “Always The Officiant, Never the Bride.” (At this point, who knows! Hey, Chris Harrison...?!)

I write about that -- the gentle irony of a human who’s been single for most of her 20s ushering people into marriage -- not to gain sympathy or to have you set me up with your boyfriend’s cousin’s older brother (though online dating is a bit of a drag so maybe I will take that blind date), or even for the unsolicited “You Do You, Girl!” encouragement so often bestowed upon 28-year-old single gals. I write about that because one does not need to be married, or even close to it, to understand the concept and philosophy of marriage, of love, to have the capacity to hold two souls in your heart as they make promises to each other and to those in their circle, to wholeheartedly rejoice with them as they say, “I do.” And I write about this because this year has caused me, like Elizabeth Gilbert’s surgery caused her, to think about all of the other marriage-like relationships I have in my life, particularly those with dear friends.

My friends and I haven’t stood up in front of our loved ones and make vows to one another, though a strong argument could be made that vows are embedded throughout our friendship -- in every action we do, in every word we say to one another. They’re in the Instagram posts I write, the karaoke duets I sing, the weekly phone calls, the cards sent just because, the Venmos sent for coffee on Friday mornings, the gifts outside of birthdays. They’re in the promise to show up when shit gets hard and messy and sometimes a little weird, and the follow-through of that promise.

The vows are in the listening to understand even when the idea or thought being shared is a little bonkers, in the holding space for one another as we get to that realization on our own, in the calling each other out on our unhealthy enneagram-type bullshit when necessary. They’re in sharing a bed when we stay at each other’s homes, even though there’s a guest room or a couch and we are in our late 20s, so we can fall asleep debriefing the night’s wild adventures or giggling over the song we sang in our 8th-grade choir. The promises are in the crying and laughing and praying and dancing and hugging, in the FaceTimes and cross-country flights and the postal service’s delivery of word after word of gratitude, strength, inside jokes, love. 

The vows are this Elizabeth Gilbert post, sent and shared with a little heart emoji. The vows are lived, every day. And these friendship vows are just as valid as romantic love vows, even without rings or a priest or a DJ to mark them.  

At both weddings I officiated, I tried to say something like this. How these couples were gathered on one particular day to make these vows, but that this ceremony -- these words they were about to speak -- were just the start of this love-filled life together, of promises to show up and love and be there for each other, through the best and worst of it. That the not-so-glamorous, everyday living that came after this Big Exciting Day, was what mattered. “I do” is a verb. 

And that’s true for any kind of relationship. Vows be damned, words written in cards or typed out on Instagram or spoken over coffee or wine be damned, too, if they’re not put into action. Words matter, but what matters more is how we make those words come alive, take on meaning with our partners and friends and chosen loves of all sorts. 

Just like I believe something divine planted these words in front of me, I also believe in some kind of magical divine that has connected me to my dearest loves. I hope that, one day, I’ll have a ceremony with a partner where I can write my own vows and ugly cry in front of a bunch of people and dance my ass off and -- above all else -- promise to love and try, and to keep trying even when those vows are broken and get a little beat up over the years.

And though I probably won’t throw a ceremony for me and each of my friends to celebrate our chosen unions (though that sounds like an amazing use of my time and expendable income), let this little blog post be a reminder to all of us -- single, married, coupled, humans in love and searching for love, humans who have given up on love -- that other kinds of love abound, if we choose to see it. That our lives and every relationship we have can be our own ceremonies, our own vows. 

That each day can be a reminder to everyone in our circles: “I do.”

heart-filling times.

A handful of weeks ago, in the midst of some heart turmoil times, I thought of an essay in “Tiny Beautiful Things.” I specifically thought of one particular line that I needed to read to have the courage to carry on through said heart turmoil times; the words I believed would grant me permission to do the thing I had to do.

When I went to pluck my copy off the shelf to locate these words, it was gone! Not totally surprising, since I think I have owned at least six copies of this book and have gleefully given each one of them away. So I did the thing anyway and survived without the line and ordered a new copy for myself.

And now I’ve been rereading. I haven’t read this book cover to cover since I was 22 and unemployed and sleeping in the trundle bed I lugged across the country to Portland. I am going slow, underlining words and folding in corners of pages and sitting for awhile with the ‘Yours, Sugar’ at the end of every piece.

The last few weeks, I’ve been sitting in some heart-filling times — a snap-of-the-fingers shift from the turmoil, just like that. Karaoke singing and nature walks and bookstore adventuring, big belly laughs and big questions and big conversations that get right to the good stuff. In one essay, Sugar writes, “The whole deal about loving truly and for real and with all you’ve got has everything to do with letting those we love see what made us.”

These heart-filling times have only been so because they’ve been filled with some of my heart-people, in Fargo and Minnesota and across the country: the ones who see me, all of me, when I’m at my fullest and when I’m at my turmoiliest. And who let me sit with them, too.

This wasn’t the line I was looking for when I started, but it was the reminder I needed all along.

take care of your soul.

to be
soft
is
to be
powerful
-rupi kaur

“What are you going to do tomorrow?” she asked. 

We were standing at the bar in the middle of 80s night, waiting for the bartender to add a lime to my gin and tonic. Whitney Houston blared from the speakers, and people danced around in their brightest colors and selves. It was a bit the opposite of how I was feeling. I felt small and dim and, surprisingly, like I didn’t want to dance with somebody.

Because not even 30 minutes before, I was dumbfounded on the phone as I listened to someone spill out a truth they had been covering for months. As I learned that a relationship I had put everything into -- plane tickets and discretionary income and love -- wasn’t what I thought it was. 

I had hung up the phone and my heart wasn’t quite ready for that kind of processing at 10:30 on a Friday night. So when a picture of some of my beloved colleagues on the dance floor popped onto my phone, I put on my tennis shoes (the only appropriate 80s night footwear) and walked toward them. And that’s when I ended up at the bar with this friend-coworker, who showed up to 80s night in a cutoff flannel, ready to dance; who showed up to me with her full self, ready to listen amidst Prince, Michael Jackson, and Pat Benatar.

“What are you going to do tomorrow? How are you going to take care of yourself?” she asked.

I said that maybe I’d read. Probably write some. That I had plans to get breakfast with a friend. Which was good, I laughed, because I didn’t think I had eaten much today. Maybe I'd have a bowl of cereal once I got home.

“Good. You take care of your body,” she said. “Let others take care of your soul.”

Those words made my breath catch in my chest. They made tears appear in my eyes, they allowed my shoulders and fists to unclench, they reminded me that I wasn't in this alone. When the world feels a little shaky and your heart is aching -- whether that's because of a relationship that's ending, or because of a family emergency, or because you cannot listen to another mansplainer for one more minute -- it's okay to ask others to show up for you. To ask others to be there for whatever ways your soul needs attention.

And they have. Steph showed up at my doorstep fifteen minutes after this mess was set in motion. My mom sat with me over a computer screen and still texts me inspirational quotes every day. Luis binged on late-night pizza and wine with me, and let me yell and stomp around my apartment for an hour. Megan changed my RSVP to her wedding from two to one without asking any questions. A few days later, my Leaven family let my eyes leak through the entire service and gave me a-little-longer-than-normal hugs while we passed the peace. Brigid wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her sticky cheek to my tear-streaked one for ten whole minutes, without moving. That same night, a crew of humans came to my apartment for a potluck, whose presence and voices said, “We are here for you.” And Kim stood at the bar on that Friday night, 30 minutes after I hung up the phone, and reminded me that I have all these people. That I can lean on all these people to tend to my soul.

These humans -- and more -- have been my soul-keepers these past weeks, and I share this not only to thank them for holding me through this, but to remind you (yes, you, who might be reading this right now) that it’s okay to let others care for you. It’s okay to only think about if you’ve eaten, showered, or used the bathroom today. It’s okay to let other people ask you how you’re doing and feeling, and hold you in that -- literally and metaphorically -- when you cannot do so for yourself. That kind of vulnerability, softness, acceptance of our limits when our emotions and souls are taxed?

That is powerful.

for good.

I've heard it said,
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn.
And we are led to those
Who help us most to grow if we let them.
And we help them in return.
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you.

—

We needed a song for the 9th grade talent show. 

Someone — maybe her, maybe our choir director, maybe one of our many musical theatre-obsessed friends — recommended a duet from a popular musical that would be just perfect for an alto and a soprano: “What is This Feeling” from Wicked. We didn’t know the tune but quickly fell in love with it: how it played up our personalities (me, the naive goody-two-shoes; she, a bit more sassy), our cheesy choreography (lots of grapevining toward each other and pointing at each other), and the perfectly timed “Boo!” and “Aah!” at the end. We practiced in my bedroom and decorated green and pink t-shirts with our names on the back, like our own kind of theatre jerseys, and performed for the rest of the choir during 3rd period. “Loathing” became our song, and we called it that even though we knew it wasn’t the title. Our non-theatre friends would ask us to perform it in their basements on Friday nights; if they didn’t ask, we’d make them listen to us anyway. 

—

I stared down at the empty stage, bouncing my legs up and down like I always do.

I sat on stage right, high up in the balcony, nestled between two of my best theatre (and real-life) friends. It was my first time in New York City, my first time to a Broadway show, and my first time hearing the entirety of the Wicked soundtrack. The first note blared from the pit orchestra -- no peaceful musical overview of the show, no calm introduction to the night, just a straight shot into "No One Mourns the Wicked" -- followed by the next note and the next note, and I was in tears. There were no humans on the stage yet, no words spoken and no lyrics sung, but the chords were enough. I don’t remember if I had thought to pack Kleenex, or if someone handed me one after that first song, or if I just sniffled my way through the entire show, wiping my tears on the coat I had bought just for this senior year trip. I do remember turning to my right and grasping one of those best friend’s hands and holding on for dear, dear life until applauding like the high school girls we were when the song was over.

—

It was always 82 miles. It was always one hour.

Every other weekend during college, I drove north on Friday nights to spend the weekend with my boyfriend at the time. I threw my backpack (thebooks and pens and highlighters replaced with clothes and makeup and a hair straightener) in the backseat, lowered myself into the driver's seat, and grabbed a burned CD from the glove compartment given to me by that same best friend whose hand I grasped so tightly years before. As I merged onto I-94, I pressed play and listened to that same, blaring first note. That hour was almost the perfect amount of time to sing along to the entire soundtrack -- always skipping "A Sentimental Man," but replaying "As Long As You’re Mine" a few times -- before I arrived to my own, 20-year-old, a-bit-more-scholastic version of Fiyero. For that hour each weekend, and sometimes on the return trip, I paused the real world, full of papers and decisions and my own feelings, and belted out words about flying and being green and also being blonde, because when you’re driving alone you get to play both lead roles.

—

Some things were the same. Some things were different.

A few weekends ago, I took myself to see Wicked. I took the bus downtown instead of wandering through Times Square to get there. I sat center stage in the 2nd tier balcony instead of on stage right. I was alone, but that was okay: I brought my own wad of toilet paper from the bathroom stall just outside of Aisle 4. I still bounced my legs and got butterflies in my stomach as the lights went down. I mouthed the words to every song and laughed along at every joke and found new ones I missed. I spent intermission furiously typing most of these sentences in my iPhone’s Notes, recalling the 9th grade choreography and the senior year trip and the college year drives. I held my breath and then quickly exhaled as (spoiler alert!) Elphaba emerges from the trapdoor. I was one of the first in my balcony to pop up at the curtain call, fiercely clapping my hands and sneakily wiping my eyes. I took a selfie with the poster instead of a dramatic, posed photo in front of the billboard.

—

It’s amazing how this one little thing — two-and-a-half hours of words and lyrics composed in the late 90s, which was based on a book written in the mid 90s, which was based on a movie that premiered in the late 30s, which was based on a book that was published in 1900 — can show up so frequently and have such a strong hold on my life. It makes me wonder where else Elphaba, Glinda, and that first, blaring note have shown up for people. How have these songs, these characters, and this story shaped and accompanied and held people? Did Stephen Schwartz and Gregory Maguire and MGM Studios and L. Frank Baum know how their music and words would become permanent placeholders in so many lives?

How many other things like that — like songs and books and quotations and even other humans — show up for us?

I wanted to call this essay anything other than For Good. I mean, really — I can’t think of something more creative than the most popular (and semi-cheesy and sentimental) song title of the musical about which I’m writing? But the answer is no, I can’t. Because cheesy or not, these vignettes of my life over the past ten years — involving friendships that have lasted over distance, other relationships that haven’t, and reminders of music’s powerful ability to reach you no matter where you are — have all had a common note: Wicked. Elphaba and Glinda. That first, blaring note is what has shown up for me. I’m sure I could have found another musical, or a song or a book or a human, that has been a similar throughline in my life.

But maybe it’s true, what they sing in “For Good.” That people — and musicals and songs and books — come into our lives for a reason. My duet partner and my Elphaba, Sara. My best friend and my hand-grasper, Catherine. My then-boyfriend and my then-Fiyero. That they bring us something we must learn, even if we don’t recognize the importance of it until years later. How friendships can last across time and distance. How performing will always be part of who you are, even though now it looks a bit different from when you were 14. How it’s okay to take up space and be in the spotlight instead of the ensemble, and how everyone really does deserve that chance to fly. And how we’re led — drawn or pulled, even — to those people and things, those experiences and moments, that help us to grow — into how to be a friend, how to be a girlfriend, how to be a human.

I think I do believe that’s true. I don’t think I would have written this if I didn’t believe that, somehow, the things that show up in our lives are meant to be there. That we are who we are because of them, because of how they have shown up — once or twice or repeatedly, quietly or loudly or sometimes annoyingly — in our lives. That these things know us as much as we know them. And that (and here it comes, the real cheesy kicker you have been waiting for since you read the title of this essay) they have changed us…

For good.

Wicked in NYC, 2009 & Wicked in PDX, 2015

i'm sleeping on the floor.

“I’m sleeping on the floor.”

It was the middle of the night in the middle of a 36-hour Amtrak ride from Portland to Fargo, and we were trying to figure out just how we were going to sleep. Falling asleep is hard when you’re squished into two seats that only recline 45 degrees. It’s even harder when your seat partner has five-foot femurs (Steph) and when you have never been able to fall asleep on a moving vehicle (you) and when you’ve already been on the train for 24ish hours (both of us, along with 14 other students returning from an intense alternative break trip where we slept on a church floor for seven nights). After shifting and cuddling and tangling our limbs, we decided that our best chance at success was to divide and conquer: one of us would lie across the seats. And the other would sleep on the floor.

This sparked the biggest “fight” in our almost-six year friendship. And by fight, I mean we spent the next 30-ish minutes discussing, debating, and arguing over why the other person should be the one to sleep on the train seats. Steph is the most stubborn human on this earth and explained all of the logical reasons why I should get the chairs: I had just worked so hard to coordinate all the logistics for the trip, and didn’t I have to work in the morning?, and she would actually have more room for those five-foot femurs if she could stretch out on the floor. I don’t have a persuasive bone in my body, so I’m sure I just said things like, “But, but...no! You take the seats!” or, “No, Steph, I really don’t want to sleep on the chairs. I like sleeping on floors!” We went back and forth, raising our voices ("NO! I am!") and making empty threats ("I won't talk to you for a week if you won't sleep on the floor!") and laughing ("This is ridiculous -- we could have been sleeping by now.”). We kept saying, "I'm sleeping on the floor," only to be met with, "No, I'm sleeping on the floor."

We've said this sentence hundreds of times to each other now. When I stay late to do the dishes after she’s invited me over for dinner, because I know she hates them and we’re far past the point of the typical “the hostess has to take care of everything from start to finish” relationship but she still argues with me: “I’m sleeping on the floor.” When she gets in her car before I can protest and drives across town to pick me up because my car's fender is about to fall off, and then claims it gives us an extra 15 minutes of catch-up time before I can apologize: “I’m sleeping on the floor.” When I stay long-after the end of a sold-out pizza and pie event to haul garbage and unload the uHaul and then drop off the uHaul with her, only to then be accompanied to my post-midnight housesitting and cleaning and laundry duties, even though she’s been pizza-ing and pie-ing for 17 hours: “I’m sleeping on the floor.”

“Me too."

I don’t remember who slept on the floor that night on the Amtrak. Honestly, I’m sure we both did at some point. But who slept where isn’t the point of this story. Keeping tabs on who slept on the floor, or who did the dishes twice in a row, or who paid for the last beers during happy hour — these things don’t have a place in this deep, true friendship. It’s an unspoken rule: we give when we can, whether that’s doing the dishes or taking the check or sleeping on the floor, and we take when we need to, whether that’s staying seated for an extra five minutes or pocketing that extra five dollars or curling up on two Amtrak chairs. Friendship is all about that give and take, push and pull, yin and yang, floor-sleeps and Amtrak-chair-sleeps. Sometimes you sleep on the floor, sometimes she does. Sometimes you join each other down there because you'd rather just be together, even if it means being squished next to her five foot femurs.

In Steph, I have found a soulfriend who laughs and cries and dreams and frets and rages and eats and shares and exists — so authentically, so compassionately, so truthfully — and meets me wherever I am in my brain or my day or the world. I hope that you, too, find a friend who will join you where you are, who will sleep on the floor for — or, better yet, with — you.

Before the Amtrak Debacle of 2013. (Portland, OR -- February 2013 -- Photo: Cathryn Erbele.)