In my favorite childhood novel “Love, Stargirl” by Jerry Spinelli, fearless and joyful Stargirl leaves behind orange halves throughout the town as a treat for birds and other animals. These oranges come to mark her path. If someone in town saw an orange half on top of a fence, they knew Stargirl had been there.
I write Kimber Was Here to have a record of how I make sense of the world. These essays are my oranges.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for following along.
This is the last month I am living in Austin.
I’ve been in denial – hence detaching myself from April (like I wrote about in this poem).
We have a great opportunity to live rent-free in Utah in Jonny’s parent’s house while they are on their LDS mission in Thailand for a few years. It’s a great cushion to save money and explore more of what we want to do with our careers, and we are helping his parents, too! So, after much deliberation and tears, we decided we’ll move this summer after my school year ends in May. And suddenly… it’s May. I won’t write my ode to Austin yet, though that’s sure to come. But I feel so sad. I can’t even describe it – I just feel sad. The community here, the friends here, the weather, the food, my job, my students, my classroom… I’m sad. I’m just sad.
I have had the same song stuck in my head for a while, Trevor Hall’s “the old story”:
you just gotta let that old story go
you just gotta let that good river flow
into your heart
it's a start
I feel like I’ve been in that river, trying to stand up straight against a current that is obviously pushing me in a different direction. I’ve been resisting, ignoring. But now the time has come. And I need to go where the good river is taking me.
It was shortly after leaving Utah and moving to Austin that I started to confront my questions about the church head-on.
Honestly, I wanted to know everything about everything before moving back to Utah. I wanted to be confident with my beliefs and myself before returning to confront the asylum where they raised me (haha, Taylor Swift reference). I can’t tell you how many books I’ve read, podcasts I’ve listened to, opinions I’ve considered. I really wanted to have it down pat. Written, signed, sealed, delivered: what my status was with the church. I wanted to have a strong knowledge of how I’d move going forward with religion. I wanted to know how I was going to raise my future family.
And so maybe some of this is mourning. Mourning that I haven’t “figured it out” yet. Mourning that God hasn’t answered my questions in the way that I thought He would. Mourning the loss of a life here that seemed to have everything for me. Mourning a time of my life coming to a close where it’s just Jonny and me in a whole new place figuring everything out together for the first time.
There’s a story that goes like this: There were some travelers headed East. Each time other travelers stopped them and asked where they were going, they said “East.” They just kept going and going, always following East, never reaching their destination.
That idea is haunting to me: do I ever get East?
I’ve felt so swallowed up in myself lately, just consumed with questions of me. What do I believe? What do I think? How do I want to live my life? What will others think of me? How will this impact me?
All of this me me me me me has felt suffocating, and in a way, I feel lonely just thinking about me.
I read this newsletter this week where the author said that when she feels Big and Lonely, she goes on a walk to find “proof of life”. So I went on a walk yesterday at a park near where we live.
It was a little misty, and when I looked closer at the air around me, it hummed with life with bugs, bees, butterflies, birds. They flew all around me, sometimes right in front of my face, like I wasn’t even there.
I saw the plants and the weeds growing underneath me, I saw the trees up above me, I saw the bugs and the birds and the bees and the crickets and the caterpillars and it was all just going going going!!
And it was a good reminder to me that life still goes on even when you feel like you can’t – that’s a hard and beautiful truth. It goes on. The Church keeps making decisions without MY PERSONAL stamp of approval (🙂), the birds continue to build nests, the bees continue to jump from flower to flower, my friends will make new friends, my students will get new teachers, and I will continue to walk with my face turned towards the sky.
That good river, the river of life, it keeps going. Along the way, it feeds the plants and the animals, it clears out the old and brings in the new.
In May, I am surrendering to God.
In May, I am trying to be like Peter – holding still enough to let God wash my feet. To humble myself enough to let Him wash not just my feet, but my hands, my head (John 13:9).
I give up, God! I’ve tried it all myself. You’ve seen me try. Now, I am surrendering it all to you.
Thanks for reading,
P.S. This newsletter hit 100 subscribers this week! Wow! Thank you all for being here. :) If you know someone who’d like this newsletter, my posts are all public, so feel free to share it!
Here are some pictures from my walk that prove life goes on, even without you:
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. That Trevor Hall song gave me chills. It would be so nice (maybe?) if we could have it all figured out and know where everything is headed. Surrendering to the flow of life is so hard. I think there’s a purpose to only being able to read our stories one word at a time, line by line, page by page, and chapter by chapter. If we skipped ahead to the last paragraph of the book, it probably wouldn’t even make any sense. We have to understand the rest of the story first.
I look forward to reading the next lines of your story. ✨
So many beautiful concepts: a flowing river bringing in the new, looking for proof of life, surrendering to God. Thank you. 🌸