One of the first places I got to know when I moved to Denver was the Tattered Cover bookstore. I am an independent bookstore kind of person; I am a book person, period. I love the adjective “bookish,” and don’t consider it an insult. Growing up, I earned the nickname “Belle” because I constantly walked around with my nose in a book — even during my brother’s little league baseball games, while rollerblading around the adjacent tennis courts. It was the best display of hand-eye coordination I had shown yet.

My love of books has carried over into a love of bookstores, naturally. Not the mega-Barnes and Noble-type bookstores, but the independent ones with charming names and maddeningly quirky layouts and staff who always look a little unaccustomed to sunshine. At home we have the Open Door bookstore, which is tiny and full of beautiful handmade crafts alongside its books. In college, I had Autumn Leaves, which always seemed to have just the right travel book or unusual novel waiting for me to find. You can take me as far away from home as you like; so long as I have a good bookstore, I’ll be OK on at least some level.

So when I arrived in Denver and my coworker mentioned that there was an awesome independent bookstore downtown that I HAD to go to, I knew my decision to move cross-country away from everyone I knew couldn’t be a completely bad idea.

I can’t remember how I figured out how to get to the Tattered Cover for the first time, but it’s become an almost weekly tradition now. It’s within walking distance of my house, and it’s my favorite way to escape from my home/workplace when I need a break. The walk itself is soothing – a gentle downhill stroll with the Denver skyline rising ahead, over a bridge crossing the tiny Platte River, through a grassy park constantly overrun with dogs, past Union Station and into my own personal retreat.

The Tattered Cover is everything a good bookstore should be: mismatched chairs scattered between bookshelves and nestled into alcoves, cool air and dark wood everywhere, multiple stories to get lost in. I can go in, buy a chai and grab a stack of five or six books and sit for at least an hour, dabbling in Kurt Vonnegut’s latest collection of essays or a book about a guy who tries to live off the grid in New Mexico with no prior experience whatsoever or The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which everyone seems to keep talking about. I’ve gotten to see some amazing speakers: Dave Eggers, one of my favorite writers; Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine and a guy who decided to try to live the laws of the Bible as literally as possible for a year.

My walks to the Tattered Cover have kind of become a yardstick measuring how I’ve settled in to Denver. I’ve been here long enough to see the apartment complex halfway between my house and downtown be completed. I’ve watched as a cool little cylindrical building became a giant old-fashioned milk pail that houses an amazing ice cream shop. I’ve been recruited by Greenpeace and pestered by panhandlers.

But no matter where I am in my Denver experience or how stressed I am, there is a sense of release when I walk into the store – a feeling of being among my people, the pale and word-obsessed. People sitting in the middle of the staircase leafing through one of the staff recommendations, couples browsing shelves together and comparing finds. There’s a little about Colorado that makes me uneasy, with its fitness and outdoors-loving people who are happy to tie a rope around their waists and clamber up the sheer side of a rock for fun. I’m learning to like that stuff, slowly, but it’s a steep learning curve. I am not yet a rugged person. I am a bookish person. But between the Tattered Cover and the charms of Colorado, I may yet have the chance to describe myself as “bookishly rugged.”

Men like to prove they still have worth. Even in our phallocentric society, males tend to feel threatened even in a time of great majority. The rigorous trials of adolescence became more tolerable in recent years so that obstacles to give growing boys breadth and allow them depth have shallowed. For the first time parity rules the field. Men — most men — have come to accept women as equals and understand that our culture that no longer values strength and savagery over brains and social skills. Orators have replaced gladiators.

Though our culture loosened its grip on tough rites of passage, the temptation for supremacy between generations never went limp. We trumpet the image of our heroes: masculinity bonded in matrimony with defiance. In his lifetime, a man is practically required at times to act with sheer irrationality and barbarity. You can spot such men at NFL games, wearing G-strings and crushing Coors cans between their multi-colored ass cracks.

I’m no different. I am concerned about masculinity. The bloated puffery of those dumb beasts flows also through my veins. There is little admiration for the traditional senselessness. Skydiving. Drag racing. Beer chugging. These things don’t concern me. I am far more fond of heroics that lay off the beaten path and are admired not by fans, but by fanatics. The kind of crap that only insomniacs would watch on bad television at 4 a.m.

Last week my depraved glandular instincts kicked in. With more than a dozen salmonella cases in my state, tomatoes have been designated a health hazard. Red plum and Roma suddenly have become the fugu of American produce. At a fraction of the cost, the corner Piggly Wiggly now offers death-defying meals within consumption of the common man. There is no need to avoid potentially fatal bacteria. Death is merely a scare tactic cooked up by those oafs at the FDA.

I can’t remember how many tomatoes I ate. Maybe three, four. Though numbers are usually consequential, this time it was simply the feat of eating poisoned fruit that mattered. I chewed quickly and sat back, waiting to feel something. I didn’t want to get sick, to contract an infection. I just wanted to feel like I had achieved something difficult. I just wanted to feel like I had won a fight.

Minutes passed, then hours. I waited for the debilitating sickness to wallop my stomach and churn my body into a useless husk. I paced down the corridors of the apartment, driving my girlfriend nuts. I began formulating phantoms symptoms, clutching at my body whenever something twitched. Soon I realized that catching an illness was more of a goal than a challenge.

I went to bed feeling fine, and in the morning I awoke no different. I had contracted no poison from the tomatoes. The result had left me with a mixed bag. I suppose anyone should be excited to learn they are healthy and free of disease. But men don’t always think this way. A man must prove his vitality by cheating death, not avoiding it. As pathetic as it sounds, primal urges still call to even the most sophisticated male specimens; corporate law firms offer weekend paintball getaways and drunken softball leagues to reinforce the egos of their attorneys.

I can’t speak for all dudes, but there is most definitely a desire to create competition and savagery out of the mundane business in our lives. The evolutionary path has brought mankind so far but along the journey our basic patrilineal lust for endorphins never went away. Whether it is through regulated athletics or simply eating store-bought venomous fruit, the need will be fulfilled somehow. If you ever bear witness to a scene of boys acting stupidly, just try not to get recruited. Keep walking and remind yourself that once the high-fives run out, the world will rebalance itself.

“It is the time that you have wasted on your rose that makes your rose so important.” —from The Little Prince

On Sunday nights, my boyfriend and I often plan our week together. We each have a sheet of paper and come up with lists separately.

For my list I want to write: tutor my former patient Nicole, make friends with the new neighbors, not stay at work too late, replace the herb plants that died, rock climb at the gym, read from each of the five books I checked out from the library, call both grandmothers, turn in my travel expenses, make a homemade dinner for friends, train for the half-marathon I just signed up for, enroll in classes for next fall, clean the car, attend my friend’s guitar performance, mop the kitchen, review my bank transactions, set aside time to pray and read the Bible daily, and sleep eight hours a night.

This is where my boyfriend’s help comes in. Glen doesn’t have to say anything. By nature he is methodical, steady, self-aware. He is the sort of person who arrives at my house early, knowing that I will be running late, and asks, “Is there anything I can help you with?” I know before looking up at him that my Sunday list for this week represents trying to pack too much in, the difference between being driven and being centered.

Glen isn’t naturally a list writer. Planning the week together was my idea; saying “yes” or “no” to activities more wisely was his idea. I, of course, love that he doesn’t just write his weekly list for me, but with me.

Two years ago I was pretty good at planning my week and later recording my thoughts on how the week turned out. The collection of papers was a sort of growth log, charting the ways that, bit by bit, I began learning to make more room in my life to live intentionally, with fewer activities and with more presence in the midst of those activities.

Believer. Daughter. Friend. Girlfriend. Steward. Employee. Citizen. These are among the roles that now help me select among the list of activities competing for my attention. How can I nurture the people around me? What do I need to be nurtured? In this way, time, formerly my enemy limiting the amount of activity I could pack in, is becoming my friend.

This week I hit a new milestone. Montreal is holding a jazz festival this week, and I will not be there. My former colleagues went together to a conference coinciding with the jazz fest, but for the first time in my professional career, I turned down a conference in a cool location. With more of a focus on what’s important to me, I was easily able to recognize that the timing wasn’t right. I could say “not this time” without a tinge of bitterness or wistfulness.

Instead of networking at the international conference with my colleagues, I’m using the money I would have spent there hob-knobbing for a vacation with my parents. My dad is turning 80, and I know he’ll like to spend it best with the biological child he never thought that he would be able to have. With my heart and head cleared for the important stuff, my schedule has room for surprises.

As the lists that Glen and I have made on Sundays past accumulate, the items on them are forgotten. It doesn’t really matter too much if I ended up mopping the kitchen floor or not. But how I choose to spend time is how I choose to love. Sometimes mopping the kitchen floor counts as a deed of love and becomes more than an item to check off for the week. At other times the true deed of love is to say “no” to seemingly important tasks in order to schedule time for love to unfold with no agenda at all.

I got the text message at 4:34 a.m.:

Alert: KU Police (Lawrence campus) - Student found dead off campus. Use caution w/ person of interest, Adolfo Garcia. Go to www.ku.edu.

I don’t know anyone named Adolfo Garcia, but I had already been buzzed out of REM, so I logged on.

The KU Web site gave more details: Jana Mackey was found dead in the home of Adolfo Garcia-Nunez just before midnight. She was 25. Garcia-Nunez, 46, was a “person of interest”… police were still looking for him.

That’s Jana. Dini’s Jana. Shit. Shit. Shitshitshitshit.

And that’s Fito.

Jana lived with my friend Autumn’s ex-boyfriend, Dini. Adolfo Garcia-Nunez had to be Fito, Jana’s ex-boyfriend. They weren’t friends of mine, but they weren’t strangers either.

As soon as it registered that Jana Mackey had to be Dini’s roommate Jana (because, I figured, how many Janas could possibly be spending time with much older, hispanic men?), I called Autumn. That was at 4:42.

Autumn soon confirmed what I had figured out, but it was at 4:34 a.m. that my everything changed.

Michigan Street.
Slain.
Hanging out.
Artist.
Relationship.
Law student.
Murder.

Murder.

I don’t know that I will ever read these words again without seeing Jana. Jana in that ugly orange shirt, with Fito, playing soccer in South Park last week. Last week. Jana, her long limbs almost tangled up, in the beautiful portrait he painted for her. Jana, laughing, her smile revealing more gums than imaginable, on the porch at FreeState the night Andrew and I made Autumn and Dini come to the Red Lion.

Jana.

We weren’t close. She was mostly just images and stories and the girl who raised the cat who swatted at my legs when I sat at the kitchen table. She was mostly just the owner of a lot of stuff in Dini’s house. Mostly a woman my friend looked up to and, though she never said it, felt she must compete with just a little.

Two and a half (or so) years ago, Jana met Fito. Yes, he was older than she. Yes, he had two kids. No, she didn’t know much about him… then.

But that was two and a half years ago.

I don’t know when they started dating, but Jana and Fito broke up a week (or so) ago. I don’t know much about it, but I know she knew they had different lives ahead of them. She understood how the age difference and his kids could factor into her life if she so chose. But he wasn’t just an old father. By that time, Jana knew him: He was an artist who played recreational soccer and cooked her dinner.

She knew he had spent two years in jail, but Fito didn’t just lie to Jana about his name. He told her his ex-girlfriend had manipulated the system, that she was crazy, that his sentence had been unjust. He was 46, yes. He had spent two years in jail. But to Jana, Fito proved himself to be more than those numbers.

And so, somehow, a week after they broke up, Jana ended up at his house. And, somehow, she ended up dead. Murdered. But police say she fought like hell; Fito was beat up pretty badly when they finally caught him a day later. That’s Jana.

But she could have been me. She could have been any of us.

Because she didn’t do anything wrong.

I want to be able to point to the details, to say “Look. It makes sense that she died because _____.” But it doesn’t. It might never make sense. I might never have enough information to make a rule. I want (I need) to be able to say, “I’ll be OK, as long as I don’t ______.”

Jana was at the home of a man she trusted. She had known him for years. She had ended a relationship that had needed to be ended. It was just another breakup. She didn’t do anything wrong.

So what do I put in that blank? I’ll be OK, but as long as I don’t what? Trust? Love? Forgive?

An extensive autopsy has left those who knew her (and those who didn’t) with no more answers than the newspaper articles about her death. Nothing in this murder can tell me how to protect myself. Nothing in this murder is telling me it’s OK to trust, love and forgive.

Jana’s life will be celebrated at Liberty Hall on Wednesday afternoon. And if the joy I saw each time she smiled in my presence (and in Fito’s representation of that smile) is any indication, the music hall will be full. And maybe that’s where I should look for answers. Maybe Jana’s friends and family members can tell me that it’s OK —that it’s safe — to love.

Judging by the way she lived her life, I know Jana would.

I will readily admit that I am a bit of a nerd. Actually, I am a huge nerd. I love to learn, and I love being a student. So it should come as no surprise that I took four-and-a-half years to finish my undergraduate degree. I wanted to take a victory lap, as they say. However, nothing about my last semester could be called academically challenging. In fact, I didn’t have a single academic class. As a Kinesiology major, there were a certain number of P.E. classes that I had to take. I kept putting these requirements off in favor of more interesting subjects such as Exercise Physiology, the Care and Prevention of Athletic Injuries and introductory courses in Cardiac Rehabilitation. But when I got to the end of four years, only eight semester hours stood between me and graduation, and they were all P.E.

Not that I really wanted to graduate. I almost didn’t want to. Not only would it mean that I didn’t get to take any more classes (at least for a while), it also meant having to sit through an incredibly long and boring ceremony. Commencement at Texas Tech lasts about three hours. There are speeches by people you don’t know and who will probably have no lasting impact on your life, and then you have to sit in agony as thousands of people walk across the stage to get their diplomas. I mean, I know graduating from college is a wonderful accomplishment, but it seems to me that the way we choose to acknowledge this occasion is more like a punishment than a celebration.

So, knowing what kind of torture lay ahead for me on graduation day, I decided to go and visit my brother, Andy, in California the week before I graduated. He had just moved to the San Francisco area that summer to work at a church as an intern with the youth group, and I was just dying to see what his Cali lifestyle was all about. I had heard many stories of sunshine, many interesting people, and IN-N-OUT burger. IN-N-OUT is a fast food chain that, supposedly, is so good that it would be worth my trip, in and of itself. I’m never one to turn down a good burger, even if I have to travel halfway across the country to get it. Besides, I was graduating; I deserved it.

My plan was perfectly laid out to allow maximum Cali time. I was to arrive on a Saturday, exactly one week before graduation, and fly back to Texas the following Friday, the day before graduation. My parents would pick me up at the airport that night, and I would be able to be back to my apartment to get a good night’s rest before my 1 p.m. graduation the next day. Mom and dad had hotel reservations, and we had dinner plans with various family and friends set up for after the ceremony. At least I would get some free food out of it.

Cali time went exactly according to plans. As soon as Andy picked me up at the airport, we went to play Wiffle-ball (a plastic baseball with holes in it) with some of the kids in his youth group. I got to meet all of his friends, and I really got to see what his life there was like. We even made a trip down to L.A. (where Andy currently lives) with the intent of going to Disney World. Sadly, that didn’t happen (and is another story entirely), but it was still a fun trip, and I got to meet some more of his friends. All in all, it was an amazing time that will live on in my memory as one of the more epic trips that I have taken.

So you can understand how we were sad to see it end. When Thursday evening rolled around, and we were making preparation to get me to the airport the next day, I just had a feeling that it wasn’t supposed to be over. It just didn’t feel like my trip was complete, and I couldn’t exactly say why. I knew that my graduation ceremony was waiting for me back in Texas, and that wasn’t particularly exciting, but I had this pervasive feeling that I had unfinished business in California.

Nonetheless, we were committed to seeing the plan through to completion. So I packed my bag on Thursday night, and we loaded up the car the next morning to head to the airport. As we drove, we talked and laughed about the previous week, and about how boring graduation was going to be. I was intermittently gazing out the window, looking at the street signs and the billboards.

And then I saw it: an IN-N-OUT sign. I had not yet had an IN-N-OUT burger.

I instantly knew that this was what I needed to complete my California experience. This was my unfinished business. I had no sooner said these words to Andy, than he had whipped us into the parking lot.

“Should we go through the drive-thru?” I asked.

“Nah, we’ve got time,” replied Andy.

What I experienced inside was not earth-shattering. I did not have an other-worldly experience, or see the face of Jesus in the bun of my burger. I did, however, have a very good cheeseburger and an excellent chocolate milk shake, and gave me some closure on my Cali adventure. Or so I thought.

Even though it had not been half an hour since we had exited the freeway, traffic had become so clogged that it caused us to get to the airport only 12 minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave. As it turns out, airlines generally consider this unacceptable, and there were no more flights that day. The best they could do was give me the same itinerary for the next day, which would not get me back in time for graduation. Oops.

To be honest, I was a little disappointed. I had spent close to a $100 on a cap, gown, and honor cords that would now go unused. I also wasted all of the money that I had spent on the plane ticket, and now had to help pay for gas since I would be driving back to Texas with my brother a few days later. I was more disappointed for my parents, though. They were so excited to see their oldest child graduate from college, and I missed it. And for what? A cheeseburger.

Then I reminded myself how boring graduation ceremonies were, and thought about all of the extra fun I had on my bonus time in California. I got to go on a retreat with Andy and his youth group, and he even held a fake graduation ceremony for me. Sometimes I think I should have planned it that way and not even have tried to make it back for graduation. Then again, it probably wouldn’t have been as much fun if it had been planned, and it definitely wouldn’t be as funny. Now I get to tell people that I missed my college graduation for a cheeseburger. It’s a great little factoid to use while playing get-to-know-you games, and I loved telling the story to my students because it allowed them to see that I am, in fact, human. More importantly, I didn’t have to waste three hours of my life in a silly outfit listening to people tell me how great it is to graduate from college, and pretending to be excited about it.

That tasty cheeseburger was five-and-a-half years ago. I still got my diploma, and my parents were able to see me graduate in 2007 when I was awarded a Master’s degree. I have had the opportunity to do and see many amazing things since I missed my college graduation, yet this story will always hold a very special place in my heart, probably because of its uniqueness. The question I get most often when I tell this story is “Was it worth it?” The answer is an unequivocal “Yes!” and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I made my way down the winding, gravel driveway that connected the secret world of summer camp with the busy reality of normal life. I was working as a counselor at church camp, and I tried to make the most of my precious two-hour break each day. I usually chose between napping and going on a run. This afternoon, I calculated I would have time for a four-mile run and still be able to shower and rest a bit before dinner. I had already measured earlier in the summer where the two-mile turnaround point was, so I slipped into autopilot.

I approached an intersection, where I was going to be turning right. To my left was a house up on a hill. The only other residence in sight across the fields of corn and the woods was a trailer parked right on the corner of the crossing streets.

I began to hear dogs barking coming from the direction of the hill house. I glanced to my left to see two mutts with shaggy dark hair racing down the hill toward me. They were medium-sized dogs… maybe even on the larger side of medium. I became a little nervous but remembered my runs in high school back home. Whenever dogs would chase me, they always gave up and turned back toward home, playful tails a-wagging.

So I did my best to ignore the dogs by gritting my teeth and closing my eyes, trying to stifle my flight instinct and continued jogging. The dogs ran alongside me for a brief second, then turned around. Small sigh of relief. I tried to let my mind wander… to the girls in my cabin, the evening’s campfire program, my upcoming free weekend… but I couldn’t shake a certain nervousness about my encounter with the loose dogs. I prayed that they would be gone when I came back around. Before I knew it, I had turned around and was approaching the intersection for the second time. I was relieved to see the dogs were nowhere in sight. Yet as I began down the road toward camp, I heard them again.

Maybe my fear was heightened, or maybe I just paid more attention. But I didn’t just hear them bark. I heard their collars tinking with their tags. I heard their paws pound the packed dirt. I heard the snarl of their saliva slap around on their teeth as they shouted at me. I slowed down to a jog, unsure of what to do. They tore at me across the yard, much faster, it seemed, than last time. I kept looking straight ahead, hoping they’d leave me alone once they noticed I was harmless.

Again, they began to travel alongside me. But only for a second. As if in slow motion, I heard the dog on my left… the darker and larger of the two… suck in air as he opened his mouth, aiming at my leg. The air gushed out as his top and bottom teeth dug into both sides of my thigh.

In the tiny span of time that passed between being bitten and reacting, an entire scenario played itself out in my head. It wasn’t my life flashing before my eyes; it was fear catapulting me into the very near future. I saw the dogs tear my 125-lbs. of human flesh to the pavement with a sickening thud. I saw myself trying to flail and shake myself free, and no one was around to hear my cries.

I yelped in a throaty voice and once I regained my composure and my lungs, screamed. Startled, the dogs backed off a little. In a split second, my fear turned to seething anger.

I waved my arms at them and stared them square in the face. “NO!” I snapped as mean and loud as I could possibly muster. “GET AWAY! NO!” They backed up, seeming dazed. I began walking quickly away, calculating in my mind what my next move was. I was a mile away from camp. Walk back? Approach the trailer and ask for help? No one else would be down this road. I knew it. I stopped and stared at the trailer for a bit. It looked abandoned, incredibly dirty, and in all honesty, creepy. Sporting an extra sensitive intuition as well as nerves that were heightened like leaves in a tornado, I chose to walk back.

As I calmed down, constantly checking to see if the dogs were following me, I stopped to examine my leg. My shorts were ripped clear up to the elastic waist band on the left side, I had a deep inch-long cut on the left side of my thigh. Blood had begun to drip clear down to my sock and shoe, staining them red. There were deep scratches clear on the opposite side of my leg. I frowned and realized he managed to nearly fit my entire leg in his mouth.

That was when I started to cry. My anger melted away, and the fear surfaced again. My breathing became a little more labored and hot tears washed salty sweat onto my lips. I sped up my walking, clinging to my shorts to keep them together, as I imagined diseases and rabies traveling to my heart and quickly taking over my body.

The next few minutes passed slowly as I walked. I kept imagining things, like my body all of a sudden showing symptoms of some mad dog disease that I knew must exist. I kept licking my lips… was I foaming at the mouth? I kept feeling my cut throb… was it getting infected?

I finally got back to the camp owner’s house at the foot of the camp driveway. Laverne, the mother and keeper of all that is camp, immediately grabbed me and threw me into the bathroom, pulling soap and alcohol out of nowhere. She demanded that I wash the wound as many times as I could while she called the sheriff and found me an extra pair of her daughter’s shorts.

The sheriff arrived just about the time Laverne’s husband, Dave, drove down from camp in his truck. After filing a report, describing the dogs, and enduring photos of my injuries, I readied myself to go back to camp. Before I did, Dave sat me down.

“I’ve told you counselors before running out there on those roads is dangerous,” Dave said. I looked down sheepishly. I knew he was right. “But now you know what to do when you’re being chased. You stop and you look those mean old dogs right in face.” Dave made a scowl, his bushy eyebrows lowering over his eyes and his wrinkled lips puckering out. He pointed at an imaginary dog in front of him with his big, tan farmer hands. “And you show ‘em you’re not afraid. That usually does the trick. Running will just make ‘em chase ya more.”

That day essentially turned into a metaphorical chalkboard for the three things I learned about how life works:

1.) When something threatens me — my safety, my happiness, my well-being, my peace of mind — sometimes I run. And running makes it worse. Ignoring conflict can lead to anger, which is only a form of hurt and heartache. And these can nuzzle their way into my heart until I don’t know how to root them out anymore. Addressing conflict makes me a stronger and more confident person.

2) While it might have hurt at the time, anything that ever caused me pain didn’t disappear from memory very fast… if ever. I remember every wretched detail of times in my life that have led to heartache. In fact, I still bare some of the scars to prove it. These times made such an impression on me that I’ve since learned to tread lightly the next time around. This has served me well.

3) I better understand God’s discipline and guiding through trials. Why can’t everything be warm and fuzzy when we allow God to lead us? Because we wouldn’t grow… we wouldn’t learn, and we wouldn’t budge.

Sometimes instead of running from the hurt and pain and fear of life, we need to stand our ground and look it in the face. Only then do we learn what life has been trying to teach us all along.