the word "alto"

“Alto” is a familiar Spanish word - it means “STOP” and is pasted on every red octagonal stop sign in Latin America. It was also one of the first words I learned in the language, but not as an imperative, as an adjective. Alto also meaning, “high. upward. tall.”

Stephanie es alta.

True and false. Stephanie is not tall or high or upward. But she has stopped. Stopped what?

Somewhere along the way, I’ve graduated college, traveled for work, got engaged & married…and stopped. Writing, that is.

Life has a way of revealing bitter realities to you - most people in this world don’t truly want your best. They just want you to hurry up, or at least get out of the way so you don’t hold up the rest of the line. That’s one I learned in 2008.

Another was…my thoughts are not so special or original. Everything I wrote in college - at the Goldfish Cafe, at the Claire de Lune Cafe; in any cafe that set the mood with vintage furniture, bright colored walls, big cups and chai lattes - seemed truly inspired. But as I got older, it became harder to find the one golden thread amongst the thousands of brown ones. Maybe it’s because I could only imagine things unfolding a certain way. Maybe creativity does have its limitations & that’s why everything in this world just keeps repeating itself. Repeating itself. Repeating itself.

And slowly, but surely, I began to believe that my inspiration was truly spent and that I hit the wall, my dreams intangible and only attainable in wistful asides.

But I learned something, early for even this young, fresh 2011. As God creates every man into His image, and makes each creature refreshingly unique, yet universally connected for all our heartaches, troubles, goals, sins through One Creator, what motivates & propels us forward isn’t the hope for ingenuity or winning the rat race, but the hope for something greater. The upward call. Christ. I’d write more about this, but one of my resolutions is to finish what I start - and I don’t think I’d be able to finish that thought here.

So even though most people would rather you hole away in your home forever than clog up the fast lane on the freeway, I find there are a precious few who have also received the calling to make their lives about something much more essential than picketing about and stamping their feet over their own preferences and petty jealousies - finding the glory of God and turning it all back to Him, and loving people, truly loving them and being loved in return.

Alto. Here’s to hoping that Stephanie es alta this 2011 - not Stephanie is stop,as I was much of 2010.Stephanie is upward! I don’t care if that doesn’t make sense - I’m terribly rusty at writing now, but I’m confident it’ll come back to me, as an old friend.

If I take the next two, three posts to rant about my break-up with writing, bear with me. I give you full permission to skim or *gasp* not read at all.