Be Still.

I'm not very good at resting, which reminds me that I am my father's daughter. He'd rather work than take a couple days off. He's always washing the car or doing the dishes or cleaning the house or just plain pacing because it's too hard to sit down and be still. When I was a little girl, I used to roll my eyes and laugh at this. How is it possible that I have become just like him?
I'm like this (like him) in everything. If I'm not doing schoolwork, I feel as if I must be neglecting something. If I'm not dancing, I think I need to work on improving my technique in some way. If I'm on spring break (which I am), I'm convinced there is something I should be doing...something other than sitting here reading a book and drinking hot chocolate. But I am also like him in another way.
If someone I love is hurting, I think I should do something. I should act in some way to make it all better, to ease the ache. That is what I should be doing, I think, instead of reading this amazing book about Jane Austen because, no matter how much I love reading, I'm not doing anybody any good. Especially not my dad, who happens to not be feeling so well. (That, by the way, has not stopped him from going out and doing the groceries...aren't we a hopeless lot? :-))
So, I was pacing the house a couple minutes ago after dropping my empty mug in the sink (pacing, just like Dad). I was telling God, "There must be something I can do, something I can say, something I can give." Now, every one in a while, God talks to me. It's kind of like a hush. Everything else flees my mind and there's just this word: "Pray."
Well, I have to tell you, that annoyed me a little bit. Doesn't God know I'd rather do something tangible?? But then a verse came to mind:

“Be still, and know that I am God." ~ Psalm 46:10~

I cannot tell you how many times I've been reminded of this. But, somehow, it sinks in this time. I can't always act. There is nothing I can do to take away my dad's pain right now. 

But God can.

Maybe that's the point. Sometimes, it's best to just sit and pray because there's nothing else more powerful. 

Now, pardon me while I ask God for healing. And then, I think I'll go back to my book (we'll see how long that lasts...) 

Dad and I

REACHING

I am a perfectionist. Along with this comes the constant feeling that there is always something to be done, always something that's not good enough, always a need for just a few more corrections.
I'm tired, really.
Sometimes, people tell me they wish they could be like me. I always get my work done on time. I'm always striving for the best possible grade. But I don't know. If they knew, I don't think they'd want to be quite like this. I got an 86 on a short response essay a couple weeks ago. Most students would be fine with this. I am not. In fact, I still think about it in the hopes that it will keep me from getting such a low grade again.
Is it worth it?
I'm beginning to wonder. When I'm so worried about some last tiny detail that I don't take the time to read my Bible like I used to, maybe it's not worth it. When the thought of a paper or presentation or test stresses me out so much that my stomach feels sick for days, maybe it's just not worth it.
Truth is, though, this has never stopped me.
Is this pride or utter insecurity? I've been thinking about that a lot lately, too. Do I think I'm just too good to get less than an A, or is my self-worth so tied up in good grades that I believe I've failed when I get less than an A? Maybe it's both. Maybe they are a little intertwined so that I can't untangle them, a knot of yarn. This is part of the reason I cannot wait to graduate. Chances are, I'll find something else to obsess over. But maybe I'll find some kind of freedom when my progress is not marked by a scarlet letter on a page.
Maybe I should be free of all this nonsense already, knowing as I do that God does not measure my success by how perfect my grades are.
But I don't really feel that way most of the time. Most of the time, I'm too busy REACHING, my fingers splayed, grasping for things that just don't seem to exist in the wind I'm chasing.
I guess that could be the real problem: I am chasing the wind. Aren't there more important things?

Submit.

This is what I did today:
Talked to my advisor and professor about my application to a graduate school I've been convinced for months that I want to get into. After almost an hour of deliberation (which is a long time when a professor has students waiting outside her office), we decided on the changes I should make to my essay and one of the stories I must send. Then, I came back to my dorm, sat down with some iced tea (studiously ignoring the window by my bed that so easily distracts me), and added the finishing touches to my portfolio. Next, I went online and started filling in my online application. Now, this might sound strange, but the nearer I got to to end of the application, the more breaths I had to take. It was partly from excitement, but mostly because I'm scare to death. Finally, thinking that the application wouldn't go through until I paid the fee, I clicked

submit.

Well, it went through without my paying the fee, in a way. I have to mail a check, now, instead of being able to pay online. But right about now I'm beginning to wonder...who am I to assume I can make it in grad school? I didn't intend to submit my portfolio until March! Here it is, the 16th of February, and I've suddenly taken a huge step I didn't mean to take. So maybe it isn't that my work isn't ready to be sent.
Maybe I'M not ready to have sent it.
But I have to think back to a Sunday when I learned about impossible faith. Not the kind that people have every once in a while in moments when there's nothing left to cling to but God.
No, I mean the kind God has in us.
I'll be the first one to admit that I'm often insecure. This is why it strikes such a chord in me...this possibility that God believes in me (in you) against all odds. Imagine! We think it's hard to believe in a God we can't physically see. But he believes in us.
Wouldn't it be so nice, so simple, to just lay back against him and breathe? To know that we cannot do anything that separates us from his love? But I guess that's the way it really is, after all, and it's not just wishful thinking. I guess, no matter how many times I prove that I'm fallible and that I will always, always mess up, all I really have to do is

submit,

and there he is, believing in me, even when I don't believe in myself.

A Good Friend

 I went to a different cafe this past week. Shocking, I know. :-) If you live in Lock Haven (or Jersey Shore, for that matter), you should definitely check out Avenue 209.You know, it's even got windows all around the shop. The best part about 209 isn't the shop itself, though. It's not even the drinks, which is saying a lot since the chai tea latte is amazing.
It's the atmosphere.
There's something about it that's so welcoming. And when I really want to write, but can't seem to focus in my dorm, I go there. I can sit there for hours and just...imagine.
What's even better is the people, though. I tend to have some pretty deep conversations there, and one specifically comes to mind right now. A good friend once told me people are too guarded, too closed, too intent on looking the way they think they should. What would happen, he made me wonder, if  we just told our friends the truth when they asked how we're doing?  It was this discussion that inspired me to write. Here's what I came up with a little while ago:

I am broken, I should say. Cracked at least.

Honestly lost, but pretending to be unblemished.

I am crossing my arms, covering the beating heart in my

chest because I should be saved, and holy people are not

human.

But I am.

Human.

Ugly as black, shattered coal,

aching to heal,

my edges dull as jagged fault lines in clay.

Clay is meant to be a vessel, I do not say,

and what can I hold when I am crumbling, parched and dusty in a potter’s hands?

But maybe I am not meant to hold, but to let go, to set free, to illuminate.

It is that pretensions are bushels to hide behind, not flaws and cracks that widen.

If I reveal my heart of flesh, uncross my arms, my walls,

you will see that I am human.

And so, God is not.  

I'm not suggesting we bare our souls to everyone who asks, but what if you knew you weren't the only one wondering if you can live up to everyone's expectations? What if you found out your friend had the same health issues you did? Guilt or doubt or shame wouldn't be the result. But maybe a knowledge that God chooses people like everyone else, would be. 

Little Girl Dreams

"We're going to be perfect when we're eighteen," I say, the  innocent hope of an eight year old swelling in my chest like a balloon. 
"We'll be beautiful and thin, and we'll have boyfriends. I think we should have an apartment together, too," my best friend answers as she brushes deep purple eye shadow onto her eyelids. Her smooth skin begins to look bruised, but neither of us knows this even as we glance at ourselves in the mirror.


Fourteen years ago, when I had this conversation with my friend, I couldn't see past age eighteen. Eighteen was the epitome of grown up. It was the apex of vitality, the ultimate goal. But I am not what I thought I would be, and the mirror is still a magnet.
Twenty-two years old, almost out of college, and I wake up some mornings wishing I could disappear.
I am being honest and, right now, I'm a little happy you don't know me.
Yet, this is what God says about me:

I am fearfully and wonderfully made. ~Psalm 139:14~

I am the apple of His [God's] eye. ~ Deuteronomy 7:6~

He means it, too, which surprises me often. I am so...human. So not the woman I thought I would become, so imperfect. I pretend that I am not. I guess we all do that to some extent. I wonder what it would be like if we told each other that we are clay. So, maybe I should let you know me. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote in his famous novel, The Scarlet Letter, that we should let the world know something , some little part of us, that is not perfect so that people can guess at the things in us that aren't quite right. This way, he wrote, no one can be too proud or hypocritical. Above all, no one can believe that anyone is perfect other than God, and this will bring true glory to the Lord. 

I've always liked Hawthorne. He's got a point. :-) To that end, here are some things about me that aren't perfect so you know that I am not always happy or content. Now, (since you had no idea before ;-)) you can be sure only God is truly holy. Doesn't that make his grace all the more amazing? 

~ I cannot get enough of Starbucks! (Didn't you know I'd always mention it??)

~ I worry too much. Way too much.

~ I don't like crowds. In fact, I'd rather be with 2 or 3 people because I feel completely out of control otherwise. 

~ I'm scared of losing control.

~ I'm emotional. 

One more thing: I felt kind of down when I started writing this, but I'm feeling better now. God's word tends to do that to a person, I think. So, thank you for "listening," and just so you know, I'd like to know you and your strengths and faults, as well. Fell free to share. :-) 

Snow Day!

Aaaahhh...It's a snow day! It isn't actually snowing, but who understands the mysteries of LHU anyway? The roads look like quite a mess, so I guess that's a good enough reason. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. This reminds me of being in high school. I'd watch the news just to see the little ticker at the top of the screen that listed the schools that were closed or delayed. Of course, avoiding the school bus (or cheese wagon as everyone called it) was reason enough to be excited about having a day off. Today, I'm still doing a little bit of class work, but the farthest I'll go is across the street.
To Starbucks. :-)
Yeah, I might be a little too dependent on caffeine. But you know what else is great about that coffee shop? It has a great view of the woods and the pathway winding through campus. Right about now, I'm not sure it's as pretty as home...

But I bet it is a lovely sight. Which reminds me of something that strikes me every once in a while. I've always thought that God is an artist. Have you ever just stopped and admired your winter world? I don't like winter too much, but it's a little hard not to appreciate the beauty of ice clinging to evergreen branches like dripping diamonds. Also, I'm not certain why I decided I should take an 8 am class this semester, but the sunrise does seem like a pretty good reward. One morning, while I was on break, I woke up to a snowy morning and the sun shooting up high, leaving a rocket blaze of gold behind it. Brilliant watercolors splashed across the sky, and I wondered if God dips his fingers in celestial paint sometimes because, like the people he made, he just has to release some kind of artistic tension.
Is it a compulsion for him like it is for me?
Does he know joy like I do, or does it bubble up even greater in his heart?
And then I realize that, in this at least, I am like him: I love to create. Little pieces of his heart are in mine.
Did you know it's the same with you?

Windwhispers

I love Starbucks, if you hadn't already guessed. It helps, of course, that there is one right across the street from my dorm. My seat is always by the window. I don't like dark corners, so I claim one of the little round tables by the wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor window. That way, I can watch the seasons change, which somehow relaxes me even when the class work gets frantic. Of course, it reminds me, too, that time is going by quickly, and I'll be graduating in May. But after 3 and a half years of being a college student, I think I've finally learned something really important (not that the names of every one of President Lincoln's generals weren't important): God is in the little things. And this is what keeps going through my mind, lately:

The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”

   Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake.  After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 

~1 Kings 19:11-13~

God's voice is in the breeze, the song that rustles the pastel flowers off the trees that line the sidewalk on my college campus. It always dawns one me at the end of the semester. Just when I think I can't do anymore, I can. And not by my own power. The moment I'm overwhelmed by all the work I need to get done, a class gets canceled. Just about the time I'm ready to give up doing by best and let everything go, someone tells me I'm going to be OK. My mother calls just to say hi, a friend makes me laugh, the snowflakes outside my Starbucks window suddenly resemble lace. So, I'm determined this semester. I'm not going to wait until the end. Every day, I'm going to look for the little things. Who knows? Maybe these last few months will be better than all the rest combined. 

Oh, and that little thing this weekend? I got to hold my newborn niece. I couldn't take my eyes off her even though all she did was sleep! And so, I imagine that God must love us that way. We enthrall him even when we are helpless, tiny in his hands. Maybe that is actually a big thing.