Fast Car

For reasons I would rather not blab to the internet at large, it's been a particularly emotional few weeks around my house. Oftentimes it seems like a disappointment or a concern in one area of your life can spill over and affect other seemingly unrelated things. I think that's all it is but lately I find myself feeling a bit irritable, letting little things bother me that I am usually able to brush off. I am frustrated with the way I feel but I also know that sometimes you just have to ride out these moments, let your brain or your heart work out the things it needs to and wait to feel like yourself again.

It will come as no surprise that I like to use music as a way to draw out emotions I've buried or don't know what to do with. Tonight I found myself drawn to my old Tracy Chapman CD's. I realize that almost no male on earth is able to understand the allure of Ms. Chapman but I have loved her since about fifth grade when I first heard "Fast Car" and couldn't quite figure out if she was a boy or girl . I feel like I've grown up with her, from her first more political, questioning protest CD, to her quieter and more spiritual work later on-I always find truth and comfort in her lyrics. My sister and I went to see her in Salt Lake a long time ago and although I think we were some of the few straight women in the audience, the show was near perfect. Just Ms. Chapman and a small band playing pretty much everything off every record.

Anyway, I grabbed her self-titled album on my way out the door this evening and ended up sitting in my car and not going into the activity I had planned to attend because I was too busy sobbing through this track. It was partially the familiarity, I have listened to that song so many times in so many different times of my life so there was is definitely a comfort in hearing it. But the lyrics sunk particularly deep tonight:

"deep in my heart, safe from the guards of intellect and reason"

I catch myself wishing sometimes that feelings made more sense. That they could follow some kind of logic. That I could say to myself, "this is no longer a thing that it is good and right for you to feel so it ends now." And then I would turn it off and move and that would be that. But I guess a wise Creator knew that would not be a good way for all of our feelings to work. So He placed some of them just outside of our control.

"but with feelings this strong, i am no longer the master of my emotions"

Because if I am honest with myself, I am glad that intellect and reason have played only a peripheral role in most of the major decisions in my life. I enjoy being a person who has been led my what felt right for me, not by what looked logical to everyone else. With all of it's ups and downs, it has been a rich and fulfilling way to live. But it is also an exhausting lifestyle and one that can wear down those close to me. And on occasion, I end up a little worn down as well. I've been sick all week and although there is a bug going around my house and my office, I think perhaps it is also a little bit of me sputtering out at the end of a high octane year. It will be really nice to be in Utah for Christmas for the first time in a couple of years. It will be nice not to think about selling shoes for awhile.

I think it's time for some real rest.