Jess Boctor

Category: Adventures

  • Breaking the Silence

    Life has taken a few tumultuous turns over the past few weeks.

    As I look guiltily at the date of my last post, I struggle with the same heavy question I have whenever life takes my attention out of the blogosphere for a while…how do I break the silence?

    Do I make lame excuses? Do I make false promises to be more disciplined in the future? Do I confess everything which has been going on in a vomit of text?

    Or, do I just write the first words and trust the ether to welcome me back into the fold?

    Here’s to breaking the silence.

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess

    PS. Meet Brownie, one of the many changes in my life.

    This is Brownie. She is our new puppy. Half of the time she is small and sweet. Half of the time she is a goblin. Either way, the name fits.
    This is Brownie. She is our new puppy. Half of the time she is small and sweet. Half of the time she is a goblin. Either way, the name fits.

  • Becoming A Student Again

    I just celebrated my 29th birthday.

    As a joke (though, only partially) I told a friend I needed to make this year the best year ever. Since I’m such a procrastinator, it would make sense to push as much as possible into the last year of my twenties. For some reason, I (like many people) feel that turning thirty is some sort of deadline. I have to have a list of things I accomplished while I was still a twenty-something in order to start out the next decade of my life on the right foot.

    Insane, I know, but this is my strange little world.

    The reality is though, I probably won’t accomplish most of the things on my imaginary list of ‘have-to-do-this-before-I’m-thirty’. I don’t say this because I doubt myself, but because I realize that I don’t want to live my life according to checklists any more. I don’t want to live under the cloak of proof or the shadow of external worth. It’s too exhausting.

    Rather, I decided that 29 is the year I will become a student again. I want to become Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet. I want to study great storytellers. I want to form a study group. I want to listen more, practice more, and find out all the things I don’t know. I don’t want to pass the test, I want to digest the lesson.

    I think this is the next stage of my journey, and I am looking forward to walking into the unknown places it will take me.

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess

  • Who Is Massaging Your Soul?

    Saturday morning I woke up with a kink in my neck. The kink became progressively worse on Sunday. After two days of wincing every time I looked at him, Abe (and his wife Rowe) made me an appointment for a massage.

    Now, this was not a girls weekend out and relax type of massage. This was what Jacob, my massage therapist with Muppet hair, called a ‘fixer upper’. Jacob worked my back, neck, and shoulders in a way I didn’t know was possible. He found muscle tissue I didn’t even know I had. However, the pain was worth the end result when I regained a range of motion lost to me for the last four days.

    As I laid on the table, I began to wonder when was the last time I had given my soul a massage. When was the last time I let someone else probe through the skin of heart to find the tightly wound places which hindered me? I couldn’t really remember. This used to be a common practice for me, but has given way to the business of life, and I think I am beginning to feel a kink.

    During the massage, Jacob–who has fingers I believe to be made of steel–would find a place of tension and push, holding the pressure there for an uncomfortable few minutes. Then a magical thing would happen, the tensions would start to melt away, leaving freedom to move in place of the knot. Now, I can’t undo weeks of damage and neglect to muscles in one hour, just like I can’t undo the tension in my soul in an hour. I can, however, begin the process of asking for help and letting others start the work of unknotting my soul.

    Who massages your soul?

    Continuing the adventure,

    Jess