Check Please!

Jeep Girl here…

I hadn’t slept more than four hours per night in days, and I was feeling less like a Jeep Girl than ever. I laid on the couch in front of a fan trying to cool down long enough to take a nap, but it didn’t happen. My mind spiraled to a bad place. I’m not good at being alone. Not for long periods of time anyway. As I’ve gotten older I have come to appreciate personal space, and I definitely need time to myself to feel healthy emotionally, but a day or two of that every week is more than enough for me. The last week, all the friends I have made here are attending a special intensive on the theology of the Holy Spirit. It is about an hour out of the city, so they all leave very early and get home very late. The Pastors are on vacation. So I’m left having a lot of time to think, and the lack of sleep means that my emotions aren’t working well. 

Then I got a call from some of my best friends back home. I had mentioned my insomnia previously, and they were calling to say they had booked me a room in a beautiful air-conditioned hotel! I could go there tomorrow and spend a full 24 hours sleeping if I wanted to. I cried. 

When I arrived, I can only say it felt like an oasis in the desert for me. As I opened the door to the crisp inviting room, I felt overwhelmed by the love of God. I felt guilty at first, that I should be such a spoiled American, but the truth is that I wasn’t being such a wimp about the heat, it was the lack of sleep that was really getting to me. I had found ways to deal with the heat. Including getting into a cold shower every night before bed wearing my PJs, and going to bed in wet clothes. Within about an hour and a half, my PJs and my bed would be completely dry. Sometimes I would get up two or three times in the night to do this. It was my only relief, from the 90 degree heat that was still permeating the apartment at 2am. 

I had taken to sleeping on the couch near the one window in the house that opened to the outside.  All the other windows opened to the stairwell/elevator shaft. You see all the buildings were built in the early 1900’s before elevators. When elevators came on the scene, they were added to the buildings, but there wasn’t much space, so all the elevators are tiny. They usually fit two people standing parallel to each other. If you have groceries or other items, you often need to ride up one at a time. 

The buildings are built around the stairwell and the windows open into it. Essentially opening into the center of a building where the sun beats down through the glass ceiling and adds to the heat created by the elevator and then flows into the open windows of all the un-air-conditioned apartments. There is little to no airflow, and my neighbor's window on the opposite side of the building is no more than 12 feet away. 

At night (before my move to the couch) I would lay in bed and listen to them cook and clean and I would make up stories in my head about the life they led. When they reached for a utensil out of the kitchen drawer, I could tell it was a spoon, and imagined the chilled gazpacho it would soon be lost in.  If they dropped a piece of paper on the floor, I could hear it, and pictured a small child picking it up and making it into a paper airplane. Sometimes I waited expectantly of the imaginary plane flying through the space between our windows and making its way into my room where I would catch it and then thrust it back across the small expanse engaging in an artful game of catch. There is little to no privacy, which makes it both entertaining and annoying. I heard all kinds of arguments I couldn't understand exactly because they were speaking Spanish, but it's amazing how much is communicated through tone of voice, and I'm relatively confident I understood all too well.  I momentarily considered writing a novel about what I imagined went on in the apartment just outside my window, but it felt a little stalkerish so I did not. As my time in Spain neared the end, I found myself wanting to knock on their door and say goodbye to my little family. They had been my companions nearly as much as anyone I had met in real life. 

Alas, I was at the hotel and I took full advantage. I slept most of the time, but I also laid out at the rooftop pool overlooking the city and also dinned a the fancy 15th-floor restaurant. It was one of the most memorable meals of my trip. I had seen grilled octopus on a Food Network special about Barcelona months before I came, and I was determined to have some. It did not disappoint. If you’ve ever had overcooked calamari, (which is actually squid) you might be expecting a rubbery texture, but that was far from the truth. The only word for octopus is succulent. I think I shall dream of that meal for the rest of my life. 

While I dinned, I took some time to reflect. I had brought along my journal, as I always find it awkward dining alone. I needed something to occupy myself so I wouldn’t be distracted by my own self-consciousness. Even though I was feeling relieved to be in such a cool temperature, I had enjoyed a nap and a rather luscious meal, I was feeling discouraged about my time in Spain. I hadn’t accomplished nearly as much as I thought I would, and I wasn’t sure I had done anyone any good at all. I thought it would be a good idea to write down a checklist of things I had done.

 As a result of my bad attitude, I started the list with a rather self-deprecating list of series I had finally completed on Netflix. I absolutely love making lists. They calm me, so I drew a little box next to each one and put a check mark in it. Downtown Abbey. Check! Virgin Jane (which is not what it sounds like) Check! I was literally rolling my eyes at myself, disgusted. 

Then I felt like God kind of tapped me not he shoulder and said, “Hey, stop being so hard on yourself. I don’t like it when you treat yourself that way. You’re treating someone I love, badly.” Yeh, can we just let that soak in for a moment? That’s really a deep revelation. Would you approve of treating another person the way you treat yourself? Would God?

In an effort to turn the tide and make God proud, the next thing I wrote on the list was that I had led worship 14 times. Check! Then I added up approximately how many people I had led in worship. Thirty-eight hundred. Check! Wow, that one got to me. I felt my heart soften and I started to cry. Then I thought about the ten new friends I had made, Check! Prophetic words I had given. Check! Then the hours I had spent in prayer. Check! Then the new songs I had worked on. Check! The blogs I had written. Check! The book I read. Check! The things I had learned about myself, how my perspective on the world had forever been changed. Check! Check! The Writers Room event I hosted where I taught songwriters. Check! And on and on until I had over 50 things!

As I finished the list with tears streaming down my face, I felt a sort of closure. It was okay for me to go home. I had accomplished all that God had wanted me to here, including learning that it’s not always about DOING but it’s more about BEING. I was just myself here. I just did my life how I do it in Nashville, but the gifts God placed within me affected the atmosphere here simply because I was present. I just had to be the best me I could be and that was enough. I realized that all too often I look to do impossible things because doing things that are easy sometimes seems insignificant. That I equate significance to effort, and I think God is trying to move me into a season in life where the burden is lighter. Not that there aren’t things you need to fight for and try hard to accomplish, but if all your life is striving for hard things, there is never rest. There is never peace. While this is a very spiritual principle, it also seems like something Jeep Girl understands. She’s easy breezy, but if she gets stuck in the mud, she knows how to dig herself out. She is both things. She is not always digging. In fact, most of the time she is singing at the top of her lungs while the wind blows through her hair. She's totally in the moment. She only digs when she has to. 

I was ready for a good night’s rest, and I wondered why I hadn’t gotten my check yet. Then I remembered something else I had learned here. In Spain, and in most of Europe, they so value relationship, connection, food, and pleasure, that they will never bring your check to the table until you request it. They never want you to feel rushed in any way. They are showing respect for the memory you are making, the conversation you are having, the pleasure you are enjoying. That's what God did with me here. He slowed me down. He taught me to enjoy the moment as if we had all the time in the world. There was no timer over my head, nothing to be late to, no one to disappoint. I thought about how I could take that back to my life. How I could enjoy life and people and time more. In fact, it made me ponder some very deep questions about how I spend my time, who I'm called to, and if I'm really being effective or if I'm just being busy. I realized I have some changes to make, and without this new perspective, I would never make them. I wanted to change Spain, but Spain after all has changed me.  I smiled as I raised my hand in the air and said, “Check Please!”

XOXO

Jeep Girl