Fresh

Coming home -- fresh start

I want to do the things I used to do.

There's nothing like going on a two week trip to completely re-focus your perspective. Some of these things have been in the works for a while through friends encouraging me and small opportunities popping up, but coming back from Brazil, I can feel the wind in my sails.

I think for the whole first part of the school year I was running uphill and giving it all I had for so many weeks that it totally drained me. I feel more confident now that I can do my work, and I feel less stressed by it. Things are looking good heading into the end of the quarter. Still more to learn, but it seems doable. And I am more willing to try things, take risks, have fun, be more open.

I want this to be the year of creativity. I want to write more, make more music, read more, think more. My brain is coming back to life. All the tendrils are uncurling stretching basking.

I want to live. Really live. Not be a machine.

I want to share more of who I am at my new school and with the staff. Shout-out to CF!

I want to live free. Or die hard. Just kidding. hahahahahaha that's all for now.

New Year's Day

Some people say don't bring the old
to the new. Now is the time
to throw away bad habits.
Maybe we humans need more than
sheer will to do what is good for us.
A baby was also born on December 31.
Lines float to us in neat rows shining
on screens. We watch the world,
see things we wish to never see,
say "Happy New Year"
because that is what we hope for
deep in our hearts, but, deep in our hearts
we know that someone is dying
and the world cannot always be
the rosy place we'd like.
We hope that it will be Happy for us.
We have made it this far, hurrah!
We sign on for the next twelve months
like soldiers signing up for another tour.
And after all this, my body speaks
unbidden, come Lord Jesus.

Idealist, Disappointed

As a die hard idealist, I often struggle with reconciling all the "should's" with the "are's."

Politicians should tell the truth. We should have friends in Madison. My mom's store shouldn't be closing. My church should be a great  place to meet God.

Reality isn't always kind.

But then, there are a lot of good things that happen out of the blue that by all rights shouldn't happen.

What do you do when you are disappointed? My personal trend is to run. Hit the deck and run like hell. Get out of there before any one else can hurt or disappoint you. But I have been thinking about this a little and have decided that while this is the easiest option, it might not be the best option long term. If you keep running, you eventually arrive at a place where no one knows you at all. None of your relationships can survive beyond a conflict. I learned this from C who for some reason doesn't consider running. Once you run, there is no way to fix it. You can't make a change (and neither can the other party) because you are gone. You stop giving the other side a chance. You take control.

Control is something I am a pro at in this context. I usually justify my decision to run with statements like "I'm not getting what I need, and I need to go somewhere where I will. Nothing's going to change." Or, "if I don't fight for myself, who will?" Or, "Why should I wait to see what happens?" It's all very "I" centered. It's gets close to the self-preservation instincts, and it's all about control.

I am not always sure how to fight the instinct to run. It's a habit that's been ingrained through a life of moving. It's easy to believe that my decision to leave won't affect anyone, but that's my impression of reality,  not necessarily the facts.

I have so many questions about how to live. I don't want to put a gloss over everything and pretend to be happy. I feel like a little kid in a pink dress outside under a tree. The bad guys came and knocked my glasses off and now they are standing around laughing at me while I grope around on the ground and try to find them.

Good Seeing You

Sometimes it's hard to hold on to yourself. That's what this summer has been like. I'm coming back down from working full time, school full time, friends moving, family trauma, big church changes, if it wasn't nailed down, it's gone. But, there were and are some bright spots. For example, I have become a semi-expert on the Civil War. And also I love playing softball. I never would have seen those two coming. I'm also very excited about my new food processor.

I became a Civil War expert through this online class I had to take as a pre-req for my certification program. It was among the classes that I have done the most work for in my life. I read over 1,000 pages and watched 9+ hours of video (so did loyal Caleb) with the same music playing in the background. I learned so much and I got really into it. To celebrate finishing the class, I went to the Wisconsin Veteran's Museum and explored their Civil War exhibit. They had a giant interactive table-screen that was like a general's desk. You could tap on the different objects (a hat, a coffee mug, various maps and folders) like on an iPad and read about their significance. You could also trace all the regiments from WI through all of their engagements, but they only had the data for up to 1862. It is hard not to get carried away talking about CW facts whenever something comes up in conversation that relates to it, because, you know, everything goes back to the Civil War. I've also been reading a couple of books set in the 1850s and I find myself fact checking the authors. For example, "I don't know if they would have had paper money at that point because the Civil War wasn't in full swing."

Softball is the fun sport I never knew. I am really enjoying the people in my cohort for the ed. program. I feel more and more affection for them as the weeks go by. We are having a cohort softball game this weekend that I am very excited about. It is good to have some more friends. After over a year in Madison, it is our closest friends that we long for, and our mentors. We realize even more how good we had it. But we are still trying to build, one step at a time.

That's all for now, folks!

I Thought Those Days Were Over

Today I left home at 8:30 and returned at 8:30. Before I left this morning, I finished reading a chapter about language development and wrote a paper. I packed lunch and dinner from fridge leftovers and heated them up in the two respective schools.

(My Thursday night ritual when I get back from class is to eat a bowl of Quaker Oat's Oh's.

I don't know how I am going to make it. You chop off a dragon's head and up pop three more uglier ones.

I want to stick my head in this delicious bush outside our window. It's the best thing I've ever smelled. What is the name of it?)

Sometimes I don't get the people in my class or they don't get me. I am too young or something. I don't think certain things are important. I want the facts. Just give me the info and let me go. Don't ask all these questions in language that doesn't really get at what you want us to answer. The problem with having different professors every four weeks is that they don't know what the previous ones have already talked about. There should be more communication and syllabus sharing. I am already picking out strategies I want to use and not use. I learned about smart boards today, on the ground. I love the fourth and fifth grade. They are writing papers and it's so much fun to help them out and talk about ideas. One of the teachers used the word "schema" today in her lesson, "if you don't have a schema for this..." and I just read about Piaget last night. It was sweet. I was like, "dang, she just did that in a 4/5 class. Do they know what a schema is? Do they know what she was saying?? Piaget? Really???" It's great motivation to learn it because in the chapter, there were so many examples that I've seen of testing for Piaget's different stages of development, testing for specific principles (esp. conservation), and then she said the word "schema." That means this stuff is important.

Everything I did today was about school. I did my work for class tonight. I did observation hours at my school for my program. Then I worked at the same school. Then I left early to go to my 4 hour long class. You couldn't fit any more education into my day (please don't let me end up being wrong about that in some freaky way). It's all I think about. Except for all the things that I have to do that I didn't do and should do...

The apt. is totally trashed. One of the teachers made a joke today in the teachers' lounge about how she couldn't believe she left her house the way she did this morning and that social services was going to come... hah. They should see mine. Dishes, clothes, stuff everywhere-- the chaos of a life well lived, right?

For every hours that I spend at the school doing clinicals, I have to write a certain page length reflection. I think I owe probably ten pages by now, just from this week. Maybe eight or nine. We'll see. I signed up for an online class to meet one of my pre req's and now I have to do an online orientation!!!! What is there to orient???? What is there to figure out that will take three hours?!?!

Going at this pace makes doing laundry sound like a vacation. While I was sitting in my class, I was wondering which task I should try to knock out next (probably the "success stories" for my job that I didn't know were due tomorrow until today!!!!!! talk about frustration. I told one of my coworkers that we stopped being successful a couple of months ago haha nothing to write about), but now that I am home, I would like to paint my nails and watch a very familiar chick flick. What will win? Washing the dishes and going to bed early.

Why was all of this so much fun in college? I am trying to figure it out. I didn't have a job with last minute demands. I didn't have to cook for myself. I didn't have to drive half an hour to get to work. Everything I did was in one place. Now there are so many pockets of concern and they are spread all over the city. Three-headed dragons on every corner. I would probably forget some of them if not for the gnashing teeth.

(Anyone know how to find an online biology class that isn't thru BYU?

Go to the post office. )

Wish me luck. And don't abandon me, friends, even though I am too busy to call you like I should (and want to).

Approaching One Year

I still have the dashboard widgets up from graduation and getting married and I'm on day 349 since graduation and day 322 since marriage. We're also approaching the anniversary of moving to Madison. And Caleb's bday and my bday. We always look ahead in the White house- plan trips, write things on the calendar, book flights, etc. But now I am going to do some reflecting, not planning. Reverse the direction that I look. 

It has been a good year. I think when you move to a new place, there's a period of time where you're trying to get your feet on the ground. You think you are fully there, but you aren't. Now I know I am really here in Madison. I saw that coming back from Brazil when I couldn't wait to go to work and see my kids and see our friends from church and other places. We reached out to so many people spontaneously during our first two weeks back because we were just craving some connection and familiarity. Not everything is settled, but we are getting there. We feel like us here, if that makes sense. 

It is kind of weird getting further and further away from college and realizing that I will never be moving in a direction back towards what used to be my life. All of those friendships and people. I had been trying to keep extending it and extending it with phone calls, but now I don't see it the same way. I have been able to (somewhat) grieve and appreciate what I had and recognize that it was a unique and incredibly special time in my life. I have felt the pangs at different moments throughout the past year, and I might keep feeling them later. The friendships will morph as they naturally should to reflect where we all are now, and I don't feel the need to fight to keep them the same as they were. 

And I see that in other areas of my life too, like with church and with my job and with other commitments. I am done fighting and carrying things I don't need to carry. Let God do what he wants and I will accept my part. 

On a totally different note, I love seeing all the pictures of newborn babies on fb. Everyone is having a baby these days. Not me. Don't get your hopes up. Maybe it's the springtime or something, but I have been wanting to get a pet. Usually I hate animals and I think newborns are ugly, but I think my heart is softening up. If we didn't have this apt. where pets are not allowed, I could go for a kitten or something small and cute and soft. 

Caleb is tearing it up at his job, always learning something new and talking about excel macros and things that I have no idea what they are. I am loving my job, too. I love it more and more. I love those kids. I keep learning new things about them, and some of the things I learn are really sad, like things parents or big brothers do or how they got that scratch which I don't believe, but an equal or greater number of things are great. This one kid loves cook books and I like to look at them with him and other kids. We are doing a unit on the DR right now and building a float for the Celebrate Diversity Parade. We had a total blast building it on Friday. We spent about two hours on it because they never have homework on Friday. I like seeing what they are good at. This one kid has huge sports talent. Another one is really good at reading even though he has a rough background that doesn't really lend itself to trips to the library during the summer. This kid in particular has got me thinking a lot of radical thoughts, very radical thoughts, but thoughts that are in line with who I know I am and what God has put in me. They just scare my socks off sometimes when I think about actually doing them, or what it would mean for my "orderly" and seemingly normal life. I am realizing that when you do crazy things, only about 5% of it looks like a movie and the other 95% probably looks like hell that you want to get out of, change takes time and pain can break your heart, and when you think about how long it would take for someone to heal and all the work that would go into it and how much it would cost you. It's not very much like a movie at all, but it's better, if you can make it. If you are called down that road. Oh boy. 

I just started school to be a classroom teacher for 1-8 grade. It's gonna be great. Have only had two classes so far, and they've been good. I'm ready to get into the meat. I have a full-time job for 9-10 weeks of the summer at the school where I work. It should be good, but I still know nothing about what I will actually be doing and I have to help plan it all starting on Monday. PRAY for good communication within our team. 

I can't wait to see my family at Memorial day. All of them. Immediate, YES. Mandy, YES. But also the parts of this side of the family that I have never met! And a cousin I haven't seen since she was 2. I am looking forward to the catching up and for them to meet C. And I can't wait to sit around with my parents in the morning and drink coffee. I can't wait to give all of them the sweet presents I got them in Brazil, especially Jon. He will die laughing. And Mom will die of delight. Cannot wait. 34 days. 

And now C and I are going to get some nachos at Taco Bell because he and I have never ever been on a late night taco bell run together, something characteristic of the good old days of college and living in a dorm. sigh. but also so glad I do not live in a dorm anymore. I love my bed and I can sleep in peace without running footsteps at 3 am. 

End of post. xoxo 

Earl Grey, Hot and a Meditation on "Household Stuff"

It's wonderful to have a slow day without feeling either restless or lethargic. The pace feels just right. We've finally got some snow on the ground up here. I've been sitting at the kitchen table for a couple hours requesting books about Brazil from the Southern Wisconsin library system. I'm surrounded by dishes from every meal I ate today, but they feel like friends, not like clutter on the brink of overwhelming me. The latest addition is the Earl Grey in a cup Caleb got me.

I used my day off work to resume going to crew practices. You know that feeling when you haven't worked out in a while and your lungs start to burn with every breath because you can't process the oxygen? That happened.

For a while, I've been experiencing this feeling of dread and futility related to household tasks. Why buy food? You just eat it all and have to buy more. Creating interesting menus, wanting to cook, wanting to clean (let's face it, that one's never easy), it's getting harder. Except for today, when it was fine. I think the problem is perspective. In my head, it's all a lot more difficult than it really is. I even have some new tools to help me. Inspired by Mom, I purchased some rubber gloves. Makes dish washing a lot better because my hands don't get chapped afterwards. I got a new cookbook for Christmas with lots of interesting recipes to try.

I didn't have many diversions into the world of "household stuff" in college. I don't know if we even vacuumed our dormroom... I remember cleaning when we had an apartment, occasionally. We had to wash dishes, but the solution to that was easy-- don't eat in the room. Go to the cafeteria. Even in our house senior year, I never cooked because I didn't like the clean up part. Or the planning would stress me out. It seemed like another thing added on that I should try to eliminate if possible. When faced with the choice of household stuff and writing a paper, I would choose the paper, gladly.

Yesterday, we had all the blinds open and the southern sun was shining in and it was so warm, and then, I saw my dresser, and it was covered in dust. Dust that you cannot see without bright, clean sunlight. Where does dust come from? How does it get onto my dresser? And why does it stay there? Does dust accumulate on other surfaces besides those that are hard and shiny?

Another thing I have been thinking is if anyone actually likes doing this stuff. Is there a group of people out there who find housework enjoyable? When I was in the Dominican Republic, I watched my house mom, Lidia, prepare the meals. She did so much work for every single meal, dirtied dozens of bowls and platters, and then she cleaned it all up. On a Sunday, it took her about half of the entire day to do all this. No dishwasher. She started with the most basic ingredients and came up with these delicious masterpieces. I thought to myself that I never wanted to do that. I didn't want to stay in the kitchen for seven hours a day. And she did it like it was no big deal. Oh yeah, just another day in the life. Did she do this when she was a child? How did she learn it?

In the DR, they have people who do the other cleaning. The moms do most of the cooking, but someone else does the laundry and the hard cleaning-- the floors, the bathrooms, etc. One time, Lidia's son got in big trouble because he didn't tell the lady that he needed his clothes washed (something like that) and Lidia got really mad at him and made him wash them himself, but he didn't know how! He was in college. It's funny to picture a bunch of guys from my college standing around the laundry room wondering what to put where, although I'm sure it was the case for a couple of them. Laundry is the one job I actually like. And vacumming's not bad either.

Then there are those jobs that will never get done: 1) Washing the goo-gone off the mirror from when we moved. It only comes off with hot soapy water, not Windex. Windex just smears it around the mirror 2) Cleaning the table and chairs we got off Craig's list. We use them everyday, but in certain places they have white residue on them that needs to come off. Not sure what it is, but it doesn't interfere with their use, so the cleaning doesn't happen.

The problem with some of these jobs is that they don't have to happen for you to live. No big deal if the mirror's streaky and the dresser's dusty. No one's going to die. But I always feel this sense of dread when things get dirty/are ditry. It's like those reading assignments that you wanted to do in college, but never had time for, and they kept getting further and further away, and the new ones kept coming, and it was better just to start on the new ones so you weren't behind, and even though you wanted to learn, you couldn't do everything. But they still nag you at the back of your mind. No one's going to die, but you would feel better if it were clean.

So why don't I clean the mirror? When I think about it, I visualize the soapy water from the rag dripping all over the carpet... this is ridiculous! I'm going to clean it right now!

Thankful

According to Facebook, almost everyone I know is flying somewhere this weekend. Statuses are filled with names of States and airports: "Rhode Island," "O'Hare," "packing is confusing." The last I heartily agree with. Whenever I pack for a trip, I end up cleaning out my desk or reading a book I've been meaning to read for a while. I am thankful this Thanksgiving not to be flying anywhere (I used to think I liked flying, but I really don't, esp. not with hoards of other people). Instead we will take a short drive over to the state of Iowa. My favorite part of the drive is through the hilly rural farmland of Wisconsin, so beautiful and so varied, with even an occasional llama farm. Then we cross to Iowa and it's all corn. Dubuque is interesting because it's on a river, but the rest not so much, no offense. My friend Brittaini would disagree saying that "this is one of the most serene and austere landscapes..."

At our waffle night last night, our friends, one friend in particular, was dismayed to see our new Christmas tree already decorated. He said, "Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. How can you celebrate it right if you already have your tree up?" We answered by saying that we were going to be traveling a lot and wanted to get full enjoyment out of it. Otherwise, I share in his sentiments. Thanksgiving is the bigger holiday in my family because my grandparents are Jewish-- they're not as interested in the birth of Jesus. Every Thanksgiving we are together. Grandpa carves the turkey. Grandma makes the orange jello mold and sweet potato yumminess and Mom makes the pies that always come out perfectly (that reminds me, I have to make a pie today!). Setting up the Christmas tree is also a Thanksgiving tradition. My dad wrote to me saying, "why don't we wait until you're home in December to do it?"

 Part of getting married is starting new traditions or incorporating the old into the new. We've got our tree up now because if we put it up after Thanksgiving, we would only get to look at it for two weeks before leaving town for Christmas. However, when we put it up, we still listened to the same Christmas cd my family listens to and drank eggnog. Those are the requirements for tree trimming. Another part of this first stage of marriage is being able to do whatever you want. There's only two people. No kid, sibling, friend, or relative is going to argue with you if/when you decide to go out and buy all the Christmas stuff you can think of and then outfit your apartment in a matter of hours. You can make your own rules. This is nice. "Do you want a wreath?" "Yeah! Let's get a wreath!" "Let's get it all!" "How about this star? Isn't it the prettiest star you've ever seen?" Later, we found out that the base of our star was actually made of lead and the back of the box said we should wash our hands after handling it...? "I like this stocking for you." "Awwww really, you do? I like it too." I think we spent more money on the Christmas decorations than we've spent on clothes and shoes for the past six months, but if you know us well, that's not saying too much.

One Thanksgiving tradition that my family observes on and off, also on people's birthdays, is to go around the table and say what you're thankful for. This year I've got a big list. Every time I listen to Marketplace on NPR, I feel like the world is falling apart and there's nothing I can do about it, but then I come back to reality and am overwhelmed by the blessings. I won't name them all because I don't want to sound like "oh, look at my wonderful life." But I will name one-- friendships. When we moved here, we knew one person through my aunt. And last night we had seven or so people over who have become our good friends over a period of months. Everyone brought something to eat and we feasted on bacon and eggs and apple juice and pumpkin waffles and tater tots and even a giant box of Godiva chocolates. It felt like a Thanksgiving dinner to me. Everyone shared out of what they had, their food, but also themselves.

Soup and Self Righteousness

Disclaimer: now that I have a job, there is no time to blog, so things that aren't necessarily related get lumped together where before they could have been two posts. 

Snow and cold weather make me want to eat large quantities of soup. Yesterday at the grocery I caught an unmistakable whiff of potato soup and decided that's what we needed in our menu for the week. Unfortunately, they were not only completely out of potato soup mix, but also out of all the other common soup mixes so that the only flavors that were left involved wild rice. Don't get me wrong, a little wild rice isn't bad once in a while, but not when you're in the mood for creamy potato. This is the fifth time that I have been distinctly in the mood for something that my grocery store has been inexplicably out of. First it was the kikoman soy sauce, then, Campbell's tomato soup, then the correct size Mission tortillas, then the Barilla lasagna sheets, and now this-- potato soup mix. It seems like everyone wants to buy exactly what I want to buy, only they get there first. It could be attributed to the change of seasons; yesterday was the perfect day to buy soup mix because it was cold and rainy. And, smart people would have looked at the weather and anticipated that it was going to be cold this week, or, they could have just looked at their calendar. Everyone knows it's November, but I keep refusing to believe it, and the consequence is that I miss out on the good soups! I think I am somewhat justified in not believing that it's November. First, we've had pretty mild weather. Second, we haven't had to turn the heat on in our apartment yet. For some reason, our apartment retains heat very well, which is a blessing in that we will have a remarkably low electric bill for most of the winter, probably, but, I wake up sweaty most mornings even though it's 30 degrees outside. We haven't even switched to our comforter yet. So I was in denial... until today. Today, I heard the sound of little ice chips hitting my bedroom window. I left for Bible study, and it was sleeting. I don't think I've ever seen sleet. Always missed that one, somehow. So, it sleeted all the way there, and I was thinking, "This is so bizarre, but it's kind of nice, because you don't get wet because it bounces right off of you." I went to the first part of my class in a room with no windows, and when I walked out of the room, it was blizzarding outside-- big, wet snowglobs. And all the moms said, "my kids will be so excited!" I was in shock. Once it snows, there's really no turning back. I finally have to face the reality that I live in Wisconsin and it's going to be cold cold cold until April/May. I actually really like snow. But now I have to go to Target and buy those inside floor mats for our snowy shoes, and you know what, all those other rational/plan ahead people will have gotten to them first and they will be out of stock for weeks!

I did learn something today, and it's not at all related to the weather. I just wanted to get all that off my chest, but today at the Bible study we were talking about the Acts 15 passage and the Jerusalem council. The context is that Paul and Barnabus have gotten back from their first missionary journey where they saw huge numbers of non-Jews believe in Jesus. They are spending some time in a city called Antioch. Some guys come up from Jerusalem who are part of this group called the "Judiazers" (cool name, huh?) and they are telling everyone at the Antioch church, people who are mostly Greeks, not Jews, that they need to follow the law of Moses and get circumcised if they want to be saved. Basically, they have to become Jews before they can become Christians. Paul and Barnabus are like "No way Jose! We have worked too hard to teach these people the truth for you to come up here and wreck everything." So they go up to Jerusalem (one always goes "up" to Jerusalem no matter what direction you're actually coming from because of the altitude) and have this meeting with all the leaders and elders of the church there. And they decide that it's by grace through faith that both Jews and non-Jews/Gentiles/Greeks/everyone else are saved, not through following the law or being circumcised. The law and Jesus aren't of equal importance. Jesus gets all the importance, and nothing can be added to him and his work on the cross.

I thought I understood all this pretty well, until the speaker started relating this incident or crisis in the church to today. She asked this killer question about the things that we add to the gospel that aren't actually a part of it. And immediately my mind flashed to my church, and all the homeless people who are part of the congregation, and the people who didn't grow up in the church the way that I did. People who had wild lives before they came to faith. It is hard for me to accept people in the church who lived in what I would deem "big-time sin" before they got saved. And God has worked with me on this before through the parable of the prodigal son where I am the older brother who says, "What the heck. How can you let them in? I've done everything you ever asked (a far cry from the truth)." But, the point of that story is that the brother was too caught up in his own achievements when he should have been looking at God. It isn't about what he did or about what the brother did. The point of that story is to showcase the mercy of God, without which neither he nor the brother would have had anything.

What are we adding to the gospel? I had to sign the community covenant again to do some editing for a Wheaton prof. For those who don't know, the community covenant is a document that all the students and faculty at Wheaton commit to uphold. It basically outlines what the Bible says about how to live. There was a clause that I noticed this time through about self righteousness. It defined self righteousness as "the imposition of extra-biblical standards on others." Whoa. Wait a minute, I'm not self-righteous... at least, I didn't think I was. Yeah, I can relate to those guys who went up to Antioch, because they were basically saying, "We wish that all of you pagans who now believe had lived like we had-- without idol worship or big time sin." They saw the Greeks from their Jewish perspective. They wouldn't have even been allowed to go into one of these people's houses to eat a meal because it was against the law. But then Jesus came along. Dr. Duane Litfin would call this a watershed moment. After Jesus came, Peter was directed by God to go to the home of a centurion named Cornelius, a Roman (this is in Acts 10, and it's a great story). He goes into the house and tells them the message of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit fills all of them, just like it filled the Jewish disciples. Whoa! What about the law? God told Peter, "don't call anything unclean that God has made clean."

Whatever the past was, it's totally obliterated in Jesus. And his followers are supposed to act like it never happened. Oh, you used to worship idols? No biggie. For the Jews and Greeks/Romans/Gentiles, the difference between them was still probably outwardly visible because of culture. For us today, the difference is visible as we get to know people and hear their stories. But, learning about someone's past shouldn't cause us to draw back from them, it should cause us to praise God for his mercy in bringing this person to a new life. This is hard for me, and maybe it's hard for other people who have lived their whole lives in the church and don't know much from their own experience about what it feels like to live outside the church. You would think that being a part of the church would give people better experience with welcoming others from different backgrounds, but that is a topic for another day. If we can only relate to people who are like us, where's the hope for everyone else? I am learning how to do this better at my church where I can talk to homeless people and I can watch other people interact with grace and love.

Callings

All my friends are thinking about callings. What are my passions? What am I good at? What do I love? It's the post grad season and you've come out of college thinking you're one thing only to find out that you really aren't. Thinking about doing something  someday in the vague future is completely different than actually doing it every day-- then you know that a) you were disillusioned b) you might not want to have this job for the rest of your life c) you have no idea what you really care about.

But I don't think there's any way around this. How do you know something fits or doesn't fit until you try it? And don't tell me those experiences don't benefit you later in life. You've gotta learn something on those jobs. And how about the time-- all that time to think about what you really do want, what's your next move, what lessons are there for you in the season that you're in? We always want to "get there," that place where we're happy and perfectly satisfied. Things are in order and there's no unsettled feelings or doubts.

One friend talks about a "life plan." Should we have one? One benefit of moving so much as a child is that you never get too far ahead in your planning. I started to think about life in terms of where I lived. When I lived here, I did this. When I lived here, I did something else. And that rhythm carried over into my life even when I wasn't moving so that I liked to try new things every year. Crew one year, SMP another year, etc. Lots of change makes you more tentative about locking in your options and staking it all on them. You develop more of a "we'll see" attitude. But having a "we'll see" attitude is not a license to stop engaging with the people in your current world. In every world, invest fully and the fruits will come, albeit mysteriously at times.

How do you know what you love? Is there a fast-track way of figuring this out? I don't know. For me, it dawns on me during or after I do something that I really love it and it jives with who I am and I can't live without it. It brings me joy.

One thing bringing me a lot of joy these days is working with my class. I am more and more enchanted with them as I get to know them, even their mistakes are endearing. They got their school pictures back yesterday and I had the impulse to stop homework time and say, "Everyone hold up your school pictures for me to look at!" One of my bosses was in the room with me for the first hour, and she was telling them all to put them away because they were expensive and it was homework time ; ( But I wanted to look at them and tell them how good they turned out, etc...

Discipline can still be hard. So can getting them to be quiet when we go to the gym.

Tonight is our culmination activity for the month-- the costume party. We're having one this afternoon and one tonight at a library. My favorite costumes are Mario and Luigi that I made the hats for. Yesterday we added white gloves and mustaches and they looked fabulous. I'm excited for the fashion show today when they get to flaunt their costumes. We have an abundance of sweet props too. For spongebob we have a spatula and jellyfish net. For the two cheerleaders, I found some pom poms at the dollar tree. We have plastic crowns, Gokou hair (thanks, Jon, for making me watch that with you), hot pink gloves, and a purple boa. Peter Pan looks like Peter Pan.

Is this my calling? Not sure. Not worried about it right now. Just enjoying where I am. Thankful to be here.

The last time I logged into this thing, all of my friends had blogged so that there were about twelve different posts to read and I was thinking to myself, "What happened? Has it really been that much time?" It had been. I get so easily thrown off by cumulative travel. I drop things completely, blogs, friends, cooking delicious foods, if it's not nailed down, it might get lost. Sorry, friends. I still love you more than life.

Have there always been this many Halloween parties to go to? Costume inspiration is at an all-time low. I think I'm going to be Little Red Riding Hood because I saw a red cloak at Target for $8. I hope it's still there... Halloween isn't the holiday I go gaga over. It's Thanksgiving and Christmas that I love. I am practically counting down the days till we can start putting up Christmas things in our apartment, writing a Christmas letter and cards for all our friends and family, going shopping for a tree and ornaments (what theme should we do? Of course, whatever we pick now will be outdated by the time our kids are old enough to have opinions about that sort of thing), finding the perfect presents, making buckeyes, drinking eggnog, and you can never forget the Amy Grant Christmas album. No Christmas is complete without it.

My class is going a lot better. We're working on costumes for the party next week, and they are loving it. We get to paint, and today we're going to start working on props. Mario hats and gloves, a Spongebob spatula, sunglasses, other things. Yesterday I started to win over one of the slightly difficult kids. I loved seeing the light dawn in his eyes that I actually cared about him. More good to come. I am glad I work here. Last week we got to carve pumpkins with our kids, and that was great. We were outside so they could be as loud as they wanted. I love doing things like that where it's just pure fun. Telling them about roller coasters at Disney during snack is also wonderful. They want to know if they are tall enough to go.

Time to go look for costume parts, for me, for them.

This morning I woke up one minute before my alarm went off with a feeling of deep satisfaction and contentment with my life. I'm not perfect. I can't accomplish everything, but I'm starting to begin with that expectation. It's okay if I don't. At the Bible study I go to, one of the ladies has this saying, "don't persecute yourself." It's a good one.

They're Just Kids

My job=incredibly volatile. Good days bad days, days that I have no idea what to call them.

Today. Drive home. Time to decompress, but not really enough time. I'm too serious to shake off a bad day on a thirty minute drive.

I'm too strict. I'm not strict enough.

They walk all over us. They don't respect us. We don't draw the line enough. because there are too many things to keep track of: can I go to the bathroom, can I get a drink, can I get something out of my backpack. I don't want to sit down. I don't want to do my homework, or this project, or anything. I hate school. I hate everything. Slamming chairs, slamming fists into cabinets, biting other children. No, we aren't in the Dominican anymore, we're in the United States where children bite each other in the second and third grade to get what they want.

I'm not sure if this is the job for me. I'm not really teaching. I'm doing behavior management, and I'm not even doing it that well. Maybe because I'm not trained for any of this. I'm not sure if I want to have a job longterm where I have to tell people not to touch each other.

Add on all the expectations of the school that I don't know about. Things that no one told me. I'm supposed to be out of the room at a certain time? Do they even know I'm new? Why isn't there an information packet on this? I want to do my job, but someone has to tell me what that is, preferably before I mess up.

And for behavior, what am I supposed to do? What do I tell a kid to do when he gets angry instead of lashing out at whoever's closest? Count to ten? And I'm still disappointed in them when they don't listen to me, but I can't make them. I can't make them do what I want them to do. They have to choose it themselves. And that's kind of the frustration and the freedom of it. It's not up to me if they adopt the behaviors I suggest to them. It's up to them. It would greatly benefit me, and I'm going to keep telling them to listen the first time, keep their hands to themselves, raise their hand before they talk, tell the truth, use words, and I'm going to keep punishing them when they cross lines, but sometimes it feels so futile. I believe in them and I want them to change and develop these behaviors, but they have to want it too. I believe in them, so I am overly disappointed when they don't listen to me. I shouldn't let it affect me so much.

Maybe I'm not communicating my expectations. Maybe I'm not being consistent. There are just so many things to keep track of and someone always needs something. Also, I'm not that uptight. I want them to have a good time and enjoy what they're doing, but we have to put up the rules at the beginning because it's really doing us a favor longterm.

I discipline other people's children. I went to a Bible study today, and the children's teacher got up there and said how much love was in their classroom and how they were teaching Bible truths and singing hymns and the classroom was such a great place and they were giving love to all the kids who came. And I wondered about what would happen if I invited one of my kid's moms to the class. Would that child would be loved so well in the children's class? It's easy to love well-behaved children. Good little Christian children who have two parents with steady jobs. They want to spend time with their kids and don't swear at them. It's harder to love kids with bad attitudes who lash out at you when you ask them to do something. They get angry seemingly for no reason. Everything is life and death with some kids.

I don't feel in control, and I don't know how to get there. I am the adult, but I am at their mercy. This is not how it should be.

I don't have training for this. But if I'm not supposed to be here, then where am I supposed to be? If I'm not an elementary teacher, am I some other kind of teacher? Crisis of meaning in the world... time for dinner. Tomorrow will probably be better.

Small Little Just-Right World

I don't want a lot of influence, just a little. But I want it to count.

I don't want to live in a big city. with traffic. With tall buildings and places to get lost.

I don't care about California and the food carts. I will never know what the "next thing" is.

I like my things to be nice, but I don't want to have that many things.

I don't want to go to school to know God more, that will only make me tired of him.

I don't like twitter or excess autobiographical devices. I want my world to be real with colors and dirt and the pages of books.

I like the old people at book club with their old ways and old brains.

I can resist change.

Maybe I should move to a small town. I like my town. It is just right for me.

I like little routines like rowing, little worlds that no one else knows.

I still have that longing my friends have, but I don't know what it's for.

I want to be the fullness of myself, relaxed, able to receive others, ask how they are and really mean it because I'm not thinking about myself. I want to be full. and free. and new.

I want music to be a more regular part of my life. and worship.

I like my small world. It is hard enough to manage. To me it feels just right.

I will never be a great dresser, but I am great at other things.

I will never be perfect, but neither will anyone else.

I wish them well, I wish myself well.

What are my dreams? Will I reach them? Will they show themselves in time? Will they come upon me unexpectedly while I'm in the middle of living them?

Am I getting left behind? Is it wrong to have no ambition?

I used to be full of ambition, but it was for things that didn't mean anything like getting a Ph.D by a certain age.

I think this season is called "wait and see."

Everyone searches for contentment, but now that I seem vaguely content, I wonder if it is wrong to be so.


"Ambition, which is only a craving for honor and glory when you alone are to be honored before all and you alone are glorious forever" Confessions, Book II Ch 6. 

After Jonathan Safran Foer*

Wow, a whole week without a blog post, probably because the week was filled with more people than thoughts. I did consider posting a list of all the things I had run into in the past week, but that wouldn't have been very interesting. I also thought about posting "Church with the Homeless" and I still might at a later date.

On Tuesday night I started job training, and I have that again tonight. I think I am going to love my job, and that is a great feeling.

Loving Caleb more is also a great feeling.

Reading a book that talks a lot about people dying is not a great feeling. The book is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and I think I am too much like the kid protagonist to read a book like this. He thinks of too many bad things that can happen, and it's not good for me to read all of his ideas about fear and danger around every corner. The story is very good and it's very intense, but I realized yesterday that I should take smaller bites. I'm almost done now... I do like reading about September 11 for some odd reason. I don't know if that's good for me either. I think part of me wants to get close enough to grief so that I'm not afraid of it anymore. I like reading about people who are able to move on through the pain, but the characters in this book haven't been able to yet. I want to punch this one guy really bad: this is the second book I've read in the last couple of months where the husband selfishly leaves the pregnant wife. I like way that the book is written with pictures and other unconventional devices. I also like all of the ideas that the eight/nine-year-old kid has. They are fascinating. Too fascinating for a nine-year-old. He is a weird kid, but endearing.

Wednesday night we had dinner at Laredo's (yummy Mexican food) with a couple from church, and agreed that we need to do more things like that because they fill up your soul. Not just Mexican food, but being together.

Also, this morning, we had perfect water for the first time in over two weeks. It was a beautiful and wonderful and awesome and secret and perfect gift. Rowing isn't fun if you can never actually go out on the water. That's why people row-- not so they can erg all the time. I got to stroke, and it was wonderful. So refreshing. Best workout I've had in weeks.

Monday at waffle night Tom Fowler presented his 2040 presidential campaign and we had a great discussion about what would happen if the states broke up and blah blah blah Hunger Games. I love talking with those people. It feels like college because everyone is from somewhere else. I don't usually have conversations about what-if scenarios because my brian doesn't work that way. That's why I can't write fiction. It's hard for me to stop seeing what is.

I got up at 4:30am on Wednesday so that I could write a letter to Dr. Stackhouse about our little article toss back and forth on beauty because I knew that if I didn't get up and write it while I was unable to stop thinking about it in bed at 4:30 am that I would never write him a letter at all. I still think I'm mostly right. It started to get too philosophical because I started talking about people's pain being based in the true reality of their circumstances or being based on lies they think about themselves, but all pain is felt pain no matter what it's based on-- lies or truth-- so then that didn't work. And I was stuck.

List of the beautiful and good: Kickapoo coffee, Kelly, Danielle, Kathy, Ashleigh, Katie Van, strip of Whitney Way with yellow leaves, weekend vacation, family coming in one week!, perfect water, Water the person and Elizabeth, Caleb, Brittaini, fall, pumpkins, purple nail polish, new job, discovery of path by pond with two long-legged birds, wearing high heels.

*This is why the tone is how it is in this piece. Once I read someone for a while, I start to write like they do. He wrote Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. 

This Week's Cooking Adventures

This week, we had two significant cooking adventures. For waffle night on Monday, we decided to make a feast of apple goodness since we had just gone to the orchard. We were planning meals for the week, and Caleb took down the German cookbook we had been given as a wedding gift and started looking for apple-y things. He found an apple compote with clear and very detailed instructions. I love when there are detailed instructions that answer the "why" questions. I kept looking through the book for other apple things and found a recipe called "apples in nightgowns" where you wrap an apple in pastry and then bake it. We decided on apples in nightgowns and Dutch babies with apple compote. 

Needless to say, making all of this took a very long time. This was not helped by that fact that I didn't realize until I got home that the new apple peeler/corer I bought couldn't core without also slicing, so I had to go back to the store for an additional tool. The compote didn't look very syrupy, but it tasted oh so good and we ate it all on the first batch of Dutch babies. The apples in nightgowns were very involved because I had to make the dough, and there were various phases of chilling and rolling and stretching it out over a springform pan, which I'm not sure what that accomplished or if I did it the right way. Caleb peeled and cored all the apples, and then I rolled out the dough, stuffed the hole where the core had been with a mixture of raisins, cinnamon, sugar, and marmalade, and then wrapped each apple in dough and sealed it with milk. They turned out about average as far as beauty. Some of the apples had sort of melted out of their nightgowns onto the pan. And they were not sweet at all. Caleb said that he forgot how not sweet German "desserts" are and that next time we should roll them in sugar. I'm not sure if there will be a next time.

Adventure two was yesterday. I really wanted to make butternut squash soup this week. I don't know why, but I did. It's fallish and yummy and yesterday ended up being the perfect day for it because it was cold and windy. This soup presented a slew of firsts: buying and cooking a squash, buying and cooking a leek (I still don't really know what a leek is), making a homemade soup, going to the Willy St. Co-op, and more.

The soup: the squash was perfect-- bright orange and it cooked really nicely. I didn't know how to cut it and probably did so in a very dangerous manner (I know that because I watched a youtube video about squash after I had already cut it and she kept saying how dangerous cutting it could be... whoops!). Then, once it had cooked, I didn't know how to get the skin off and couldn't find anything on the internet about this, so I used a peeler! Is this right? Does anyone know? The rest went fine, it was just kind of comical. Here's this huge vegetable that I have no idea what to do with. We put the soup through the blender in batches-- never had done that before either-- and it turned out really creamy and nice. In the end, it was a little gritty and had too much cayenne pepper in it, but Caleb liked it. We ate it with perfect buttery crescent rolls. So good. 

The store: quick word about Willy St. Co-op-- I went to the one on the west side because I suspected they would have great produce, and I was right! They also had my favorite coffee, Kickapoo Coffee. It's a local thing. It's the house coffee at Harvest restaurant downtown, and it's sold in the coffee shop Bradbury's, also downtown, and also at Willy St. It is so yummy. The aroma in the morning is like a soft blanket surrounding you. The other great thing about this grocery is the spice shelf. They have three or four shelves filled with glass jars the size that you would normally see candy in, but these are filled with spices-- whole, ground, they've got it all. I love this because instead of buying a $5 spice jar of something like ginger root that you're never going to use again, you can fill up a little bag with just the amount you need and get it for 23 cents. What a genius idea. Not for the germaphobes or those with allergies to certain spices, though.

I am learning how to choose my stores based on the item I'm looking for. For example, it's better to buy squash at the co-op vs. at ALDI because it will be a much better squash, but it's hard! It takes so much time to go to two or three different stores. I'm hoping it pays off in the end. ALDI is nice because you save money, but then I always wonder if the food tastes weird because there's something from ALDI in it. Example, I made homemade chicken fingers this week. They always taste amazing and this week they tasted awful. Was this because some of the supplies were from ALDI? Or was it because I accidently put parsley in the breading? Still learning what's okay to buy there and what's not. When I go there, I want to buy everything because it's so enticingly cheap. Caleb says it's so cheap because of the way the store is set up, but I wonder if that's not the only reason... How do you know where your food is coming from? Questions, questions.

The butternut squash. What a color. 

What's for dinner on Friday: Spinach Pie! 

Book Club: West with the Night

I'm in a book club at the local library, and I love it. My grandparents are in multiple book clubs (two, I think) and read great books with fun people, so I was inspired to find my own in Madison. The book for this month was Beryl Markham's West with the Night. It was one of the best books I've ever read, although there was great controversy about it at the book club discussion. I love book club because there are so many interesting people. There can also be annoying people, intriguing people, and people with accents. There are lots of old people, and this probably contributes to how exciting it can be. The older people who come to book club can be grouped into two categories 1) those whose personalities have crystalized on the very outspoken side so you learn a lot about them throughout the course of the evening as their eccentricities leak through every word and 2) those who are quiet and nice and only say one thing the whole night. 

This was a great book, West with the Night, and I've been recommending it to almost everyone I know, so I was surprised that there was so much controversy about it. The book is a collection of stories about the author's childhood and life in British East Africa in the early 20th century. She tells exciting stories about hunting with the Masai, learning how to train and race horses, learning how to fly primitive planes and scouting elephant from the sky. She is an excellent writer and has a couple of really powerful prophetic moments. The descriptions of the land are captivating. From a writing standpoint, it was one of the best-written books I've read in a long time. To me, the most exciting part was when she described a horse race. I read it at the airport in D.C. and I could barely stay in my chair. 

The first issue raised at book club was that the book was false advertising. The title, West with the Night, was deemed too misleading by one thirty-something woman who only wanted to read about flying, not about Africa or anything interesting. Only flying. And she elaborated her point, which, when stripped down to what she was actually saying was only that she wished the book had had a different title, for about ten minutes. A lady we will call Jane who was older agreed and suggested an alternate title, "Africa Made Me," and I laughed in spite of myself, not in a mean-spirited way, I just thought it was funny, and I couldn't believe we were disputing the title and content of the book. Usually you don't spend so much time on this in lit. class. Not only were several people upset that she had written about her life growing up, but they were also a little miffed to find out that she had been married three times and failed to mention anything about it. I was sitting there thinking to myself, "she's the author, she can write about whatever she wants. It's her book, she can choose what to include and what to leave out. She obviously had reasons for making the decisions she did. It wasn't an autobiography, it was a memoir." Someone from my side said that the Africa stories were the frame/context/background/what shaped her growing up. If she had written a book just about her flight across the Atlantic, it would have been way more boring than the book she actually wrote. An advantage of writing it the way that she did was that it was believable when she wrote so nonchalantly about the trans-Atlantic flight because it matched the way she did everything else. 

I'll cover another incident involving the only woman I knew by name who I remembered from a different bookclub. She had been waiting to bring up her point, because at this book club, everyone talks, and you have to fight to get your piece in. It's Madison-- everyone is smart, and everyone has thoughts they want to share. So, my friend finally got her turn and brought up the issue of Markham being a really cold person because of the way she wrote about the people she was close to. I disagreed, citing the passages when she has to say goodbye to important people or when people that she is really close to die. She always used distancing language in those passages because I think she didn't know what else to do with her emotions. There is a really powerful passage when her, well, I won't spoil it in case you read it. Then, my friend brought up another passage where Markham wrote about a destitute woman, and my friend gave a really pointed accusation that the author was cold-hearted and there was tension in the air, and then about two seconds later, another character on the opposite end of the table started talking about something completely different that didn't answer the question at all. My friend got an expression of anger mixed with disbelief mixed with scorn on her face-- that look you get when you throw your hands up in the air and say "ugh! I can't believe that!" It was not a good moment, but I seemed to be the only one who noticed. Again, I laughed, because it was a ridiculous moment. I talked to her about it afterwards, and she had an interesting theory about why certain people liked the book and others didn't. She thought it was about projections, and the people who wanted to have adventures like Markham's liked the book, and those who didn't want to didn't like the book. That fit with me because I would love to have had half the adventures she had. 

Some people thought there were too many animals in the book: elephants, dogs, horses, parrots, zebras, wild hogs, ants, giraffes, and more. They reasoned that she liked animals so much because she couldn't connect with people. How could anyone write about Africa in the early 1900's without writing about animals? It turned out at the end that the woman who wanted the book to be all about flying was a pilot herself, and that's why she was disappointed. After that information was revealed, the book club turned into flying club and everyone asked her questions about flying and where she took lessons and where she flies to and what it's like and had she ever flown at night, etc. Coupled with this, Jane, who was by far the funniest, kept asking us questions like, "Have any of you ever been to Africa?" We said no. She said, "Well, one time I went to Kenya and this and this happened..." Or, "Have any of you ridden in a helicopter?... Well, I have and it was like this..." Or, "Have any of you ever been in a hot air balloon?... Well, I have..." It was a great time and I left feeling happy, very amused, and shocked that there was so much disagreement about a book that I loved. 

Before I left, I checked out the movie Out of Africa with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. This movie takes place in the same community as West with the Night, and watching it was like seeing the world I had read about. I was talking to Caleb the whole time we watched it, "Well, there should be telegraph lines running alongside the railroad because she talks about all the animals getting tangled up in them." Later in the movie, it showed them installing the wires. "He's in the book! He turns out to be one of the most legendary hunters in British East Africa." It was such a sad, sad story, but the Africa was the same. I wish I could do Meryl Streep's Dutch accent. She was fabulous. I looked her up afterwards, and it turns out we have the same birthday!

I must mention that I was surprised to learn how racy the society was during this time. You didn't get any of that from the book, but the discussion leader mentioned several things about it, as did another man who found a biography on Markham. The movie did a better job at revealing how the values of the society played out in relationships, and that's part of why it's so sad.

Today, I just finished reading Roald Dahl's book Boy, and it turns out that he also went to British East Africa around the same time. I want to see if he has written any books about it and if he knew any of the same people. I have discovered a new world, and now I want to learn everything about it. 

Limitations

The nice thing about moving to a new place is that you are no longer restricted in your pursuits by other people or their thoughts about you because no one knows you. They don't know if you can do it or not. You are your biggest limitation. Are you going to go for it or not?

This morning I played piano at church. I haven't played the piano since 10th grade and I played it in front of a bunch of people today. I told them I couldn't do it, but then they gave me the keyboard, and then I did it. That's funny. I didn't know I could row starboard either until I was stuck in a boat on that side.

Sometimes people not really knowing you and people believing in you feels like the same thing. If it feels like they think or believe you can do it, you're probably more likely to pull it off. Is there a psychological effect/name for this?

There's something really freeing about this aspect of moving to a new place-- it helps you to try new things that you never thought you could do. Why did we hold back or think we couldn't? Why didn't anyone stick a keyboard in front of me at Wheaton?

Maybe I can be a cook. Maybe I can be a writer. Maybe I can be a rower and a piano player and a bilingual program leader. Maybe I can take the intimidating German cookbook down from the shelf where it has sat for three months and make delicious apple pastries.

When I wake up in the morning, I will practice defying my own self-imposed limitations.

Appleberry Farm

Some friends from Caleb's work invited us to go apple picking with them this weekend. I haven't been apple picking since I was a kid, and this was a fun way to get my reluctant self used to the idea of fall. Four types of apples were available for picking this weekend: Cortland, Macintosh, Empire, and Jonathan. We stuck around for lunch: cider infused brats with apple onion relish on hearty buns. It was a very relaxing and enjoyable way to spend a Saturday. Appleberry Farm is open on the weekends for PYO (pick your own) and would be a great place to take kids.

Caleb getting a high up one. This picture reminds me of a book I had as a child that had to do with Tom Thumb.  Anyone remember it? Mom? It was kind of I spy ish and had lots of fruits. "Each peach, pear, plumb, I spy Tom Thumb." It was that book. 

Took this one for my brother. I'd pick him any day. 

Beehives-- you don't get apples without bees. This was the first stop on our hay ride around the orchard. We learned a lot about bees-- the lifespan of a bee in the summer time is nine weeks. The queen bee has to lay 1,000 eggs every day during the summer to get the numbers of the hive up to 50,000-70,000 bees. 

I really liked the guy who gave us the tour/hay ride. He was very knowledgeable and told us all kinds of interesting things about apples. For instance, I had no idea that they could change the roots of the trees. They can graft the tree to certain kinds of roots to make it dwarf-sized and that's better for air circulation and reaching the apples. They can engineer roots to be hardy for the winter, too. 

Map of the farm. 

They also had a couple of pear trees! I will definitely be going back to pick these when they are ready, especially after looking at the slideshow of fall desserts on the Better Homes and Gardens website. A lot of them use pears.  

Apple donuts. Yum. 

Humidifier, Screwtape Ch. 5 & 6

I turn into a baby when I get sick. Any far-reaching vision that I had of my life including other people is immediately extinguished and all I can see is myself and what hurts. I didn't leave the apt. for three days I think? and yesterday Caleb finally forced me out to take some DVDs back to the library and to go to Walgreens to buy a humidifier and some Wether's Originals. Then, a bunch of our friends came over for the weekly waffle night, and suddenly I was better. I still have a craving to watch The Princess Diaries, though. All of my sicknesses are accompanied by a craving to watch a different Disney movie. When I stepped outside yesterday, my eyes were like, "Whoa!! there are trees. They are really green and three-dimensional. There's color and wind. Whoa." Yeah, it was weird. I watched a lot of tv including the US Open semifinal round with Rafa and Murray. We watched this movie about the Madness of King George III with the guy who played Bilbo Baggins. I read Lisa Beamer's Let's Roll! book and C and I watched the two hour 9/11 documentary on Sunday night.

It's funny what happens when you're sick-- two really good friends called that weekend both of whom I hadn't talked to since May. I got emails from friends with requests to edit creative writing pieces. I missed the Portuguese night, and the Food for All at our church. Things get so busy when you don't feel like doing anything, but when you're well, nothing. I guess that's not totally true.

I have some great memories of my childhood vaporizer-- a giant dark brown tub with a white lid and the most delicious stream of cold air that you could point wherever you wanted. I remember the sound it made while it chugged along, spouting out air. That thing was awesome. The one we got doesn't hold a candle to it, and it makes weirder noises that wake you up in the night when you're trying to sleep so you can get better...

Anyway, here's the Lewis blurb for today. Chapter five is all about war. I find it interesting how much the environment created by the war described in ch. 5 differs from the way that we think of ourselves in a war in the U.S. Undoubtedly part of that is because of the way that war has changed since WWII, this war is not being fought within our borders, there is no draft. Most Americans probably don't wake up in the morning thinking "we're in a war." If everyone did wake up thinking that, maybe we wouldn't be in one.

Lewis has a great essay as part of his collection The Weight of Glory called "Learning in Wartime" in which he outlines thoughts similar to the ones in this chapter. One great insight from "Learning in Wartime" is that being in a state of war reveals to us the condition that we are always in. War keeps us from dissociating and in the mindset that we could die at any moment. "Normal life" is insular and creates a feeling of safety in individuals. Oh yes, of course everything will always go on in this way. But wartime shows us that we are always, always, on the brink of life and death. War puts us in that state of mind and ensures that we prepare our hearts for what could lie ahead. For this reason, Screwtape says that war benefits the Enemy (God):

Consider too what undesirable deaths occur in wartime. Men are killed in places where they knew they might be killed and to which they go, if they are at all of the Enemy's party, prepared. How much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained them, promising life to the dying, encouraging the belief that sickness excuses every indulgence, and even, if our workers know their job, withholding all suggestion of a priest lest it should betray to the sick man his true condition! And how disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless. In wartime not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever. pp. 23-24

I love the phrase "contented worldliness" (If you take the phrase itself out of context, I would argue that  Lewis doesn't even believe there is such a thing because he knows that you can never be truly content by filling yourself up with the world because it is empty. Contented worldliness is a never-ending quest. See Lewis' book Surprised by Joy or my blog post about it from years ago). Here I think it means "the belief that life will go on as it always has" without the need to change anything or answer any serious questions.

This is not to say that the desired state for living is a constant state of non-dissociation. In one of my psych classes last semester, we talked about anxiety disorders stemming from an inability to dissociate. Example: every time you get in an elevator, you think it's going to plummet to the bottom. Every time you get in a car, you think it's going to crash. Every time you do something that has become normal in our society, but when scrutinized, could have potential dangers... I am actually very familiar with these types of fears. I am the only one who will go hide in the pantry when a tornado is near by.

I think Lewis is saying that for the fear to be brought up is a good thing in that it forces us to remember ourselves as temporal beings on earth. But, the fear is meant to bring you to a point of resolution i.e. trust in God and the knowledge that your spirit is safe with him in the event of disaster, emergency, or death.

In chapter six, he explains that we are not to conquer the thing we are afraid of, but only our fear of it. The fear coming to us is the true reality, while the "thing" we dread is still out there in the future and largely immaterial. "It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross, but only of the things he is afraid of" (pp. 25-26). Most of the things that I spend time being afraid of will never happen, and the real enemy is the fear itself, not the various scenarios I can concoct in my head. It is to my and our advantage to recognize when we are entering "a state of fear, anger or lust" so that we can then go in the other direction.

Reflection over, time to plan meals for the week and go to the store. Tune in next time for ch. 7 & 8...

College Kids and a Letter to Mom

College students. I just love them. I went downtown with a couple people from the MAC (Madison Alliance Church) today to hand out invites to our preview service on 9/18. Picture this: people from a bunch of churches with all their stacks of paper inviting students to come to their events, free iPad drawing by the Catholic group, people from banks, people with football ticket info, Navigators, Campus Crusade. Everyone was there. Then, the students get off the bus and walk towards the stadium for their next orientation event. There are swarms. And you try to get them to take a flyer by holding it out to them when they pass. Making eye contact is good, smiling, wearing a cute outfit, saying hi. Those things generally worked. We ran out of invites.

The Kohl Center where we were--
imagine going to orientation
in a place so huge!

But the greatest thing of all was that I had forgotten how much I love love love students. It was total bliss. Even though we were just handing out invitations as they all lumbered past (need some livestock imagery here because they were a giant herd. When I think "lumbering" I think cattle or other small-brained but large-in-size animals), I loved seeing their faces. I don't know if I was the only one who could read their minds, but I could. Some were excited, others indifferent, some irritated at being thrust so many pieces of paper, others curious. Some of them looked like they really wanted/needed a friend or were homesick-- they hadn't found a little group to go around to the events with-- and those were the ones I had the extreme desire to pull out of the line and ask, "How are you really doing? Are you doing okay? I know you're not having very much fun right now. Orientation sucks, but it will get better. You will make friends. You will love college. You will discover who you really are and what you love." I wanted to hug them and tell them it was going to be alright. They were the ones who were looking for somewhere to go where they would really be seen and valued. They needed a little hope and love and not to feel alone. The worst is feeling alone when you're surrounded by thousands of people and no one sees you, at least, not the real you that you know you are.

Man, I loved it. I walked out of there on cloud 9 with so much energy going through me, I think I was annoying to the people I was with. It reminded me of OCO days and talking to students about SMP trips. I never thought I would reminisce about the ministry fair. Hah! But I think it reminded me of Wheaton because of the students. Being a freshmen in college is such a unique experience because you can be anyone you want to be. You can try new things and no one will know that it's totally different from who you were in high school-- for me, I tried crew (there were people recruiting for UW crew there today, too. I would have handed out their papers too if they had asked me). That was definitely different for me. College is the time when you're looking around to see what really matters to you. Freshman year is fun, but the rest of college (maybe freshman year, too) is one of the most formative times when you learn what you love and what you are for (in the sense of being for or against something). I loved talking to students at Wheaton who were a couple of years younger than me and watching them wrestle with important questions and grow and change and see who God is and who they can be. It's a time that's full of potential, and that's why it's so darn exciting.

My sister is a freshman this year at Wake Forest, and any one of those students today could have been her.

In other news, I had a moment today when I realized that I sounded just like my mom. I would like to dedicate the rest of this post to her:

Dear Mom,
I hope you realize what you've done. Somehow, in raising me, you imparted to me, along with all your noble qualities, your idealism, indignance, directness, strong will, and disregard for the establishment (Mandy and Jon probably have them, too). Today, I was talking on the phone giving a fairly routine spiel on all the reasons why the things an institution is doing are wrong, and then elaborating the way the institution should be and why. It was crystal clear. Then, the person I was talking to said, "Well, do you think God's put you in this position so you can learn submission?" And then I said no and that I didn't believe in submission. Midway through the conversation, when I was contemplating a loaf of French bread, I realized that I was saying the all things that you would say if you were me (or, if I was you, which is more likely!). So, thanks. Neither one of us got to be hippies, but this strand of brazenness will probably inevitably continue through the generations and you and Grandma will be legends. Why is it weird to be women like us? I don't get it. I guess I did get some of it from Dad too, so I can't blame you entirely ; ) Watch out that I don't turn into some kind of radical living in Madison, WI. The climate here might trigger my Roann-like-ness to grow to even greater depths.