Archive for May, 2008
beside myself
I can’t stop, this half-smile, half-laugh I’ve got going. It’s too much, this news I’ve just discovered. I first got word at the gym two days ago when I glanced up from my book to the TV mounted over my elliptical machine. There was something familiar in the images flashing across the screen, a black-and-white blur of stonewashed jean jackets and old factory buildings.
Before I could put my finger on where I’d seen that video clip, these words flashed on the screen:
NKOTB
MAY 16
TODAY SHOW
“Holy shit,” I said to the guy next to me. “They’re getting back together.”
The video clip had been a montage of their video “The Right Stuff,” a video I had memorized and watched repeatedly as a 12-year-old fanatic. Fast forward to today, a decade and a half removed from my infatuation and 48 hours after I learned that the boys from Boston were reuniting. I performed a simple Google search for NKOTB and discovered the great good news…that they really have reunited. For a tour and everything.
I clicked on the videos available through their slick, shiny, 21st century site and got tears in my eyes as I watched them rehearse new moves, sing new songs. I bought their new single on iTunes. I checked for tour dates. And, though I’m still reeling from the fact that I’m old enough to have liked a group that is reuniting after a 15-year hiatus, I am otherwise completely beside myself with delight.
Only problem is, I don’t know why.
What is it that these New Kids (er, old guys) have stirred in me that makes me smile, laugh, even cry? Could it be that they provided so much of the soundtrack and backdrop to my adolescent life moments?
Like the October night my parents and I slept outside a TicketMaster (back when you had to go to TicketMaster) to get floor seats to the New Kids’ concert. Or the night I sneaked around hotel staircases and used a bobby pin to unlock the door to the penthouse floor where the guys were staying – and actually saw Donnie! Or the day after their concert when my mom nearly chased Jordan from the hotel onto the tour bus to tell him that her daughter loved him. Or the time my dad came back from a business trip to Boston with grass from Jordan’s yard, a picture of Joey-Joe’s mailman and an autographed picture with Danny Woods’ brother and sister. (Yes, I still have the grass.)
Lest you think I was a bit crazy, obsessed even, allow me to set you perfectly straight: I was. I have a trunk brimming with New Kids buttons, trading cards, magazines, posters, books, cassettes, videos, and one sleeping bag. I have a head full of memories. I have a heart chock-full with something I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s not obsession anymore. It’s not even a crush (although Jordan is still pretty cute). It’s just something that makes me smile. And that’s enough for me.
5 Commentsremember sandals
Woosh. I feel the whip and wind of life rushing through my mind, beating on my heart. I seem not able to find a soundless street these days, some corner I can duck around, a refuge to get out of its relentless path. At least not easily.
It’s a battle for me, I am finding, to dodge the debris anxiety picks up in her cyclone and throws my direction. There is a constant eye out for hailstones thrown by my own Type-A-ness, a tendency that keeps me perpetually keyed-up. There is a ready guardedness I must employ as I step out into a hungry, hurting, hating society.
But today, as I sit in a locally-owned café near my home, sipping herbal tea whispering to me about the perfume of rosehips, chamomile and peppermint, I am as close to quiet as I’ve been in a few weeks. And as I listen to my heart slow its beat, I glance at my worn Birkenstock knock-offs and hear my soul say, “Don’t forget.” So I remember. I remember sandals.
I got these sandals, the sandals I’m wearing this very minute, exactly 15 years ago, which means I’ve lived more than half my life in them. That was also the week I decided to live out my belief in Jesus in a tangible way. I had believed on Jesus at age four, believed with that real and simple child-like faith that I invite into my life like a dear old friend again and again. But that rainy spring in 1993, sometimes stirred me, moved me, and called me beyond a child’s trust.
I answered “Yes” that May day as I read over and again Paul’s letter to Roman folk. “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
I fed on those sustaining words in the early days of my heart’s transformation, eating them the way Ezekiel ate his God-breathed scroll. I feed on them now, in the midst of velocity and volume, always in need of the truth about my desperate lack and Christ’s infinite sufficiency, His “being-here-for-us” as Eugene Peterson puts it.
So here I am, so many miles down this journey’s road, more than half my life captured by this love, this life, this relentless Saviour. So many steps taken in these trusty sandals.
But it’s hard to cease, stop, breathe, remember. When so much outside and inside is thrusting me forward, throwing me ahead. It’s hard to bring to mind a May afternoon, where a 14-year-old girl shut herself up in her yellow bedroom and scribbled in a pink Precious Moments journal that she wanted to become more like Christ with every atom of her being. That she couldn’t live small anymore. That she was strapping on new leathery sandals for a journey that promised finally, someday, to find her on the true side of things where remembering and breathing and living will occur as intended. And the only woosh will be the rush of wings before the throne.
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