But because sometimes you just really need someone to let you close your eyes and hang your feet out the window.

I will have this driver on call for night drives, rain drives, Sunday drives, and/or the sky looks almost fake right now drives.

He will be an old man.  And I will call him Ernest regardless of what his real name is. 

Accordingly, I will love him earnestly because Ernest is the right name for a driver and because he will be mine.

Ernest will have grey hair and wear glasses.  He will speak gently, but with conviction.  His eyes will be blue but I will not know it because they will be hidden under the sinking wrinkles of wisdom and the thick lenses of tortoise-colored Berkshire Chase eyeglasses.

Ernest will have lived a very full life.  That way he will have stories to tell on a bored afternoon drive and discernment to share on a cloudy-brain drive.  He will be well read to ensure an extensive vocabulary and timely, poignant literary references.  He will have children so that he won’t mind me eating in the car.  And he will have loved someone completely so that he won’t mind me crying.

Ernest will love Jesus and lightening.  He will have known the fullness of the joy of the gospel so that he can remind me of it on “take me away from here” drives.  But he will have also known the deep shreds of the pain of the world so that he will be quiet on “ignore me while I curl up in the back seat” drives. 

When it rains he will ask me about my parents and tell me about his wife and convince me that I don’t really have to grow up if I don’t want to.

When it’s sunny he’ll sing along to Dixie Chicks and have a comb on hand for when the wind dances my hair into tangles.

He will never hug the right shoulder because he will know how scared I now am of accidents.

He will honk when it’s appropriate but never hold it out because he will carry anger, it will never carry him.

He will always use his blinker, never cut you off, and never leave his brights on when another car’s approaching.

He will hopefully be from England but I will settle for the deep south if I have to.

He will teach me about geography and World War I and other things that I know nothing about.

He will never use a map – partly because he is a man – partly because he will always know where he’s going. 

And I will trust that on the “I hate my life, let’s go anywhere” drives.

Ernest won’t put up with excessive self -pity and/or -loathing.  He will be curt and harsh when it’s deserved.

But Ernest will always keep picking me up, always looking for a train track to be stopped at.

He will drive as far as I want, as fast as I want, and as quietly as I want.

And then he will always, always take me back home. 

Because where you are, is where you should be, he’ll say. 

And where you should be is where there’s joy.

2007.  I turned 17 and no longer had a legal curfew.  The boyfriend, books, and cigarettes remained.  And the convertible was still the highlight.

2008. I was 18.  I was graduating and I finally had my own car.  I was the captain of the varsity cheerleading team.  And I hated everything.  I left Texas.  I wrote no books.

2009.  Freshman year of college.  My roommate was weird and ate so much bacon that it took years before I could enjoy it again.  I lived in Alabama and realized that classy girls didn’t smoke cigarettes or have belly button rings.  I conformed.  I also bought pearl earrings and met Jesus.  Not necessarily in that order.

2010.  I wanted to transfer colleges.  Maybe to seminary.  Maybe to Texas A&M.  Maybe to England.  I definitely did not want to be a business major.  I still just wanted to write books.  I lived in sorority housing and for the life of me could not figure out why.  I dated a Christian boy for the first time and it went horribly.  I loved Jesus but in a way still kind of hated everything.

2011.  I broke my femur and almost died because of a tree.  I chose to major in accounting for no real reason except that I was good at it and felt a little high when my assets equaled my liabilities plus equity.  I dated another Christian boy and it also went horribly.  I spent half the year bound to my bed and a pair of crutches and learned about the Lord’s sovereignty and grace.

2012. I spent a semester in Dallas auditing ExxonMobil’s financial statements.  I accepted a position in the masters of accountancy program and a full-time job with PwC to follow.  I walked a stage and turned a tassel and felt pretty weird doing it.  I started a part-time job as an accountant for Auburn University.  I still just want to write books.  Most days I don’t, but some days I still hate everything.

Years keep trolling by in their muddled and finicky way.  I feel like I’m 17 but am somehow a 22-year-old college graduate with a full-time job in public accounting waiting on me.  I eat enough banana baby food to warrant my own Gerber commercial and yet use phrases like “fiduciary funds” and “when I was in undergrad.”  I go to college bars and feel old.  I go to work and feel like a toddler.  And I keep waiting for the moment when it’s all finally real and normal and right – when being 22 and dating someone with a full-time job doesn’t feel like watching someone else’s life – when being an accountant and having a titanium rod in my leg isn’t such a ridiculous joke – but it’s not really happening.  The other shoe isn’t dropping.  And I kinda think this is it.  And I kinda think when I’m 40 and, God willing, having a husband who actually wanted to for some reason spend his life with me and use my super jacked up genetics to make little people, I’m still going to feel like a 17-year-old wishing it was socially acceptable to wear converse as a mom.

Life is just happening.  And it just keeps happening.  And it doesn’t seem to wait for you to process it all or be okay with it.

That’s probably not news to anyone else but it’s really starting to resonate here and may I just say that I don’t like it very much?

Our God is a good God and my life is not about me so watching his will unfold should be something I rejoice in.  And there are certainly moments in which I do.  But, forgive my honesty in saying that there are also moments in which I am sans converse, sans published novel, calculator in hand, and slowing metabolism in clear sight and I would like a big fat do-over.

2007 Bailey would’ve been in Portland or Charlotte or Chicago eating toast and drinking black coffee and writing books and weighing 115 pounds.  But 2012 Bailey is in small town Alabama making Excel spreadsheets for university rebates and taking classes called Tax Research and  Governmental Accounting and carrying a 115 pound backpack around campus.

And there are blessings – so many of them – all along the way.  But some days it’s hard to see them past the calculator.

I’m all about moving forward.  But I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you see me donning a new pair of converse some time soon, chalk it up to my quarter life crisis.  Because I might just be having one.

We put our feet on the water’s surface and tried to decide what it would have been like to see him walking towards the boat that day.

Then we talked about being astronauts and going to the moon and how small we are.

I got scared by a bug and wanted to make him squish it with his shoe but then I thought about how small it is and decided against it.

And in that moment I felt like I understood the world just a little more.

Because some days I am a bug.

And some days I am an astronaut.

I’m perpetually living in the swing of a pendulum between seeing my life in light of the enormous sovereignty of the Lord’s will and thinking I’m bigger and above the world itself.

I keep finding myself swimming in nostalgia and regret and fear as graduation looms and as what I’m sure is a wholly inaccurate screenshot of my future gets increasingly larger in view.  I analyze the choices I’ve made, the people I’ve known, the places I’ve been – always fighting this idea that somewhere along the way I really screwed things up.  Like my whole life I was supposed to be yellow and do yellow things and meet yellow people but I’ve been running around like a rabid dog throwing green everywhere.  And now I’m this giant orange mess that people and God and myself just don’t know what to do with anymore.

But in reality, I’m a bug.  A teeny tiny bug that’s covered in more grace and mercy than it’ll ever know.  A bug that always has been and always will be loved and provided for by the maker of all bugs.  And that has no more power to deter the will of the maker with bug-like mistakes than to dive to the bottom of that pool or to jump to the moon and swirl amongst the astronauts.

A little bug with a little life in a big world with a big God.

And I’m not all that mad about that.  A bug’s life aint bad.

If I’m honest, it wasn’t really something I wanted.

But things happen.

To be cliche, it had been a long time coming.

To be pointed, it was about damn time.

Things were messy from the beginning.  I was told for so long that it was unhealthy, that I’d be better off with out it.  And I knew it was true.

It’s just that some times you want something so much you almost feel like you need it.  And being “healthy” doesn’t really weigh in anymore.

But alas, what’s right will always find its way, I suppose.

And here I am, writing my farewell note to a relationship that once meant so much to me.

It’s hard.

But it’s right.

So here’s to you, carbs.  Thank you for the 22 years together.  Thank you for the chips and the pasta and the funny little grains you always left in my teeth.  I’ll always remember the way your pita held my hummus so tenderly.  Or the feel of your buns on my grilled chicken sandwich.

I’ll never forget what we had.

But I have to move on now.  My metabolism just can’t take it anymore.

It’s not you, white bread.  It’s me.

I’m sorry.

I hope we can still be friends.

A friend walked into my bedroom this afternoon to find me strewn across my floor, eating banana baby food from the jar, and listening to an album titled “Love & War & The Sea In Between” (which is a very lovely name for an album).  He asked about my weekend and I melted further into the carpet as we talked about families and vegetable lasagna and Ernest Hemingway.  He told me I should “own” the fact that I eat baby food and I told him he was wrong to think that I didn’t already.

Later, I sat on my porch and let a tiny army of ants march around my bare feet.  I pinned my hair up with a pencil, drank iced tea from an old jelly jar, and read a few chapters of a book titled “A Partial History of Lost Causes” (which is a very lovely name for a book).  I stopped reading because a honey bee began to fly around my head and I closed my eyes to try and imagine what it would be like to be a bee and hear yourself buzzing all the time.

Tonight I will eat a zucchini with too much pepper, light the candle I bought this morning from an incredibly beautiful elderly woman, and drink a glass of wine at my desk.  I will glance over some notes for a class and then wander once again through the perfectly smoky words of Tennyson because he is a good man to spend an evening with.

I will go to bed and it will have been nothing more than a very simple day.

But the power of very simple days and very simple things to heal and to mend and to minister has lately been very simply overwhelming.

I am finding relief in the color yellow.  Comfort in a well-told story.  Reassurance in lace and pickles and the sound of a train in the morning.

There is grace in chicken salad and pink azaleas and words that have only one meaning.  There is renewal in patio dinners and cinnamon-sugar toast and the presence of tiny babies in a very big world.

There is tangible restoration in the power of things so strikingly modest, so wholly unassuming to instantly still the vaulting fears in my mind.

I think that’s what God meant when he said he would lead us to lie down in green pastures.

I’m laying here, on a carpet covered in hair because our vacuum is broken, surrounded by school work that needs to be done, weighed down by the fear of graduation and the daunting course my life seems to be taking.  And there is doubt and anxiety and a little bit of heartbreak swirling around my head.  I have shame on my fingertips and guilt in my bones and scars on my insides that just won’t seem to heal.  And at times I can’t understand how anyone ever survives it all.

But because of the Jesus I find in lemons and interior brick walls and songs tied to really great memories I am taken to green pastures and quiet waters.

And it is a simple, beautiful thing.

I feel like I’m doing this all an injustice by not describing it well.  But honestly I don’t know much more than the fact that tonight I will go to sleep and this will have been one of the best days I’ve had in a very long time.  And tomorrow I will wake up and I will go about my very simple, very tiny life and I will be loved by a God that created even the simplest of things to remind us that in the thick of our mess we are still very lovely to Him.

And that, simply, will be just fine with me.

Tonight it’s storming outside.  From the window I can see the tree branches bending with the wind and the cars scattering raindrops as they skate over wet pavement.  The rain disappears into a blackish hue, exposed only by the tiny fragments of headlights slicing past.

My therapist told me this week that my world wouldn’t be so grey if I didn’t crave such tight-gripped control over everything.

She’s probably right.

There’s a window a lot like this one in my grandparent’s house in Sylacauga.  It’s a bay window with dated amber trim and sun-stained shutters that open up to the bird feeder in the side yard.  My granddaddy could sit and watch those birds for hours, I think.  I’ve never really understood what he finds so interesting about them but it’s one of the things I love about him most. He’s always appreciated what I would call the little things.

But he told me once that there are no little things.

He’s probably right.

Around Christmas time my GiGi always puts out this display of plastic reindeer by that window.  I loved them when I was younger.  I gave them all names – none of which belonged to any of Rudolph’s friends – and made up stories about which ones were in love and which ones were best friends.

But the rest of the year it’s just the window.  Maybe a fake plant or two.  And my granddaddy watching the birds with a gentle intensity.  He never looks at something, but always into it.  His eyes are deep and inquisitive, but peaceful and soft at the same time.  I don’t think anyone has ever appreciated birds the way he does.  It’s like he’s solved a certain mystery about the world and they’re the only ones he’ll share it with.  I envy the freedom he finds in that.  I want to understand it, too.

Anne Lamott wrote a book I love titled “Bird by Bird.”  In it she says this:

“You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn’t nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.”

She’s probably right.

And she would probably agree with my therapist, or my therapist with her, that my all-too-rational, control-craving mind is the golden calf of my grey little world.

…

I need to find the birds in my empty room.

To start looking into things instead of at them.
To stop the chattering of the rational mind.
To stop grasping for control every time I feel like I’m losing it.
And to start trusting the One who made the birds and who controls their very livelihood.

“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” Matthew 6:26

Because otherwise, it’s just an empty room.

Okay, plan may be a strong word.  That indicates that this was a preemptive strategy.  It wasn’t.  But we’ll go ahead and call it that because it sounds better than the truth.

You see, I made the fatal mistake of letting a few people know about the blog.  Which, in turn, resulted in more than just a few people knowing about the blog.  Which, as a result, was too many people knowing about the blog.

So I stopped posting anything.  Well, anything of any real value.

It was completely out of insecurity and pride (although, aren’t they one in the same?).  There were just too many friends, ex boyfriends, ex pseudo boyfriends, potential boyfriends and potential pseudo boyfriends reading for me to post anything, dare I say, honest.  (Just kidding about the boyfriends. (Mostly.))  And that pretty much curtailed any desire I might have to write.  So I didn’t.

But now I think enough time has passed that all the above stated undesired patrons of Half Price Thoughts have ceased to return.  Hence, the success of the not-planned plan.  And thus, I am able to return to the good ole’ blogging days circa 8th grade of sitting alone in my room, drinking wine from the bottle, and forcing my skewed view of the world and the Lord and my life and other peoples’ lives into haphazardly arranged sentences.

And as such here I sit, spread out in my frameless double bed, donning a black, cotton nighty, over-sized glasses, and a mismatched headband, joined only by the familiar sounds of street noise and the AC wall unit, excited to make my round 2 blog debut here at Half Price Thoughts.

One day when I finally publish my best seller, I will look back at this post and think to myself, “that’s where it all began.”  And I will rise from behind my excel spreadsheet, gather any belongings I might have from what I’m sure will be my undecorated desk, toss my 10-key and calculator in the trash can, and go meet Ayn Rand and Anne Lamott for a celebratory glass of wine (because in my dream world they are friends).  And we will laugh at all the insecurities and the friends and ex boyfriends and ex pseudo boyfriends that almost stopped us from getting there.

Until then, however, I’m just going to blog and drink this wine alone.

A girl can dream.

The point is, I’m back.  To WordPress (and to Auburn, for that matter).  And I’m coming back with a vengeance.  I even have bangs now.  They’re serious.  And so am I.

So get ready, blogosphere.  I’ve had my second wind.