The Best Of
The following is a collection of various articles from my blogging, which began in 2004.
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Philosophy of being a camp counselor
It’s amazing the kids you get to know during seven weeks as a camp counselor. During each week, there are kids that stand out from the group, the ones that will define how I remember my summer. There’s Sara from Journalism camp, who talked with me for hours every night about her writing. There’s Ashley and Bethany, who attending Debate camp and made my life miserable for two weeks. And Maria and Jessie came to American History camp and became friends in a few days and a spontaneous pillow fight.
I thought coming into this whole counselor thing, I could just talk with my girls and lead them in their devotions. They would love me and I would look forward to getting out of bed every morning. It was a formula of sorts to make sure I looked good. The first week the formula worked, and then sleep deprivation set in. Kids don’t fit into a formula. They know when I’m being shallow. They require to put away my computer and help them with their monologues or share what God has taught me. They demand my complete attention. Anything less and they know they’re being put on the back burner. Being a camp counselor may be a 16+ hour-a-day job, but it’s worth it.
Giving completely – my summer in two words.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Bubba, n.
1. A term used to describe a man from the South whose wardrobe consists of mostly camouflage pants and vests from Academy or Cabella’s, whose bookshelf is full of titles such as the The Secret History of the .22, and whose vacation is spent in an open field shooting at birds. Often is seen during before hunting season refilling bullets or polishing one of many guns. During season, is not seen.
For female description, see bubbaette.
Sunday, October 30, 2006
Sunday
Sunday is to be a day of rest, but I rarely find any day to be completely one of rest here. It is, instead, a day of order.
I go to church; I am reminded of my state before God. Perspective gives sight and peace after a week of dealing with my sin and struggle. My soul is put to order.
I return to my room and face the remnants of my academic week: a pile of ILL books, Student Life emails to write, reading to finish, and to do lists to complete. My work is put to order.
Next, I turn to my closet, drawers, and fridge top. I grin and think of what Dad always says about “horizontal surfaces” attracting stuff. Shirts are hung, sweater refolded, and belts put in their proper place. My belongings are put to order.
I call home. Doodle is sick and Holly is going to a party. Jared locked himself out of his car across town again. Grandaddy promises he won’t move until after my wedding. My family is put to order (at least in my mind).
Daniel and I take a quick trip to McDonalds for dinner after he gets sleep to catch up from working all night. We talk, laugh, and think about church this morning. My relationship is in order.
“Let all things be done decently and in order.” (1 Cor. 14:40) I find peace in order, if not rest and my heart rejoices.
Feb 6, 2006
Being a bride-to-be, part 1
I tried to explain to a co-worker today what a ironic thing it is to be a bride-to-be.
I was never one of those girls that has her dream wedding planned out. The drag-and-click-a-groom-right-in-the-picture thing just wasn’t me. Suddenly, I found myself with a groom-to-be. So…I did what any normal American girl would do: I bought two bridal magazines.
I had a person tell me she called them bridal porn. Martha Stewart meets Playboy.
I bought them at the grocery store, paying good money for headlines that screamed “FIND YOUR DREAM DRESS FOR ANY BUDGET!” Rushing through the self checkout, I hid them behind a gift bag bought for my fiance’s birthday present. They spent several days shoved in a drawer. The lustre of grinning brides and glittering Lennox ads did not appeal to me. I had only been engaged a week and I wanted to spend time with him instead. So, there they sat, knowing I still had to plan a wedding.
It’s a conumdrum: planning a wedding and being engaged. It seems so simple, so inclusive. Yet the two are the opposite ends of a magnet. Planning a wedding is a group task completed with your mother (“That dress just doesn’t go with your figure”), your father (“Are you sure that programs will only cost 30 dollars if you make them yourselves?”), and every female relative and friend. Being engaged requires two people: you and that guy who you’re just getting used to the idea of marrying. If you’ve ever looked up from planning a wedding budget and noticed how handsome he is in a blue business shirt, you’ll understand my dichotomy.
But the reasoning voices of the wedding planners call you back to reality. So, I pulled out those wedding magazines. Knowing that you are reading porn (with models in white dresses), yet you “have” to read this to know you’re doing, creates a guilt complext that snowballs (tulle-balls?).
Any woman will tell you that the first step to planning a wedding is finding just the perfect dress. Your dress sets the tone of your wedding, your style, and your hairstyle (which of course, should be decided about 6 months in advance, immediately after getting the dress). My mother and I went to David’s Bridal, a chain bridal store. An old memory flashed through my brain. When I was in high school, I went shopping for a prom dress. The same store advertised prom dresses, so I gathered enough nerve to look. As soon as I opened the door, all I saw was white dresses hanging in clear garment bags.
“Can I help you?”
I don’t think I answered in my hurry to leave. It wasn’t worth the white.
Five years later, I’m looking for white. God has a sense of humor.
“Can I help you?” Knowing the saleswoman is looking for my engagement ring to see if I want to spend $6,000 instead of $400, I hide my left hand. “Um, yeah…I’m looking for uh, a wedding dress.”
“Oh sure. Just fill out this form, and tell me what you’re looking for. Here’s a catalog of our latest styles and the business card of your dress consultant. Oh, don’t forget, if you buy both your dress and the bridesmaid dresses here, they get a discount.”
As the girl finds five dresses that match my definition of “um, looks like this (hand motion), and doesn’t have a huge train, and is white,” I start watching the other customers, all graduate-aged girls and their mothers. A petite Asian girl beside me is getting her dress altered while her mother reads out loud from a Hawiian travel magazine. A bridal store is the perfect place to learn about left hands – the rocks there are big as the tip of my finger.
The first dress I tried on weighed 40 pounds. The shopgirl instructed me on the petticoat, the store-owned bra and how to go under the dress to put it on.
“How old are you?”
“21.”
“And your parents are letting you get married that young?”
“They’re not letting me, they’re forcing me. Does this dress come in maternity sizes?” Perfect comebacks come too late.
Three weeks after eagerly saying yes to the man I love dearly, I find myself surrounded by diamonds, tulle, satin, and ditzes. It’s enough to make a liberally-educated undergrad want to yell “Hello, people! I’ve studied Nietzsche, Machiavelli, and DeToqueville in depth. I can recite constitutional doctrines, I’m writing a book for academic credit, and I can write detailed anaylis papers about congress and its leadership structure in three days! And now…I’m in a white dress and a store-owned bra, just like everyone one of you…oh, nevermind.”
“The” dress was found and honestly, it’s gorgeous. It’s the prettiest dress I will ever own, and I do feel like a princess in it. Like any princess, I wanted to tell my prince what it looked like. And I ran into the dichotomy again.
“It’s so pretty, Daniel. You’re going to love it.”
“What does it look like?”
Realizing the Laws of a Wedding prohibit him from seeing the dress, I respond “It’s white.”
Monday, April 3, 2006
Remembering and believing
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
This week, I have cried more than any PHC week I can remember. And not because professors are leaving either, though that saddens me. Watching students react to fallen men’s actions by hurting each other and dividing among themselves is really hard to watch.
The LORD works righteousness
and justice for all who are oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses,
his acts to the people of Israel.
The LORD is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.
To add to the excitement, I ended up in the ER Friday night with severe stomach pains. Sitting alone in on a hospital bed wearing a flimsy gown shifted my world into perspective. Suddenly, all I had was the clothes on my back, my wallet, and my God. Nothing else mattered. I had forgotten. And I was grateful.
As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children’s children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.
The LORD has established his throne in the heavens,
and his kingdom rules over all.
Sunday, I didn’t expect God to work like He did. I was reminded that He is bigger than any madness I go through. Pastor Donahue reminded us that eternal life is God, not just heaven. In God, there is unity and peace. My heart has been longing for that and I burst into tears before realizing it. God will wipe away our tears one day, but they can be reminders of His goodness and healing power. I had forgotten. And I was grateful.
As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children’s children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.
The LORD has established his throne in the heavens,
and his kingdom rules over all.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Moving On
As Daniel noted below, I graduated this Saturday. It was mostly surreal, both something I had looked forward to for so long and something I couldn’t believe was happening.
My Bachelor of Arts is Journalism, but my degree is in growing up.
When I came to PHC in the fall of 2002, I was a very different person than I am today. I was scared to leave my hometown, much less my state. I shrank from all relationships except for those closest to me (I am so grateful for Julia, who was there from the beginning!). One night, a disagreement boiled over and harsh words were spoken between even those friends. I remember hiding in Founders to cry because I didn’t know what to do.
God was there, then. He gave me what I needed then: friends who showed me conflict was good because it brought resolution to unspoken tension. This theme was repeated in my academic world as my English professor was suddenly dismissed in the middle of the semester. A new teacher was brought in to salvage what little teaching we had. Something was redeemed, even if my paper on yellow journalism (chosen at the beginning of the semester) didn’t go over so well with the head of the journalism department.
I began to expand, to trust a little more. I found friends, study partners. I campaigned for a class president. Looking back, I could have used a little more judgment, but I was learning.
Then came The Semester We Don’t Speak Of. All the information you need: I was in San Antonio, broke, and not writing. But God, once again, gave me hope. Three days before school began again, I got a last-minute chance to go back. I gambled, blindly throwing everything aside: my job, new forming friendships. My last tie to home was cut.
That semester was both a gift and a trial. On campus, I felt outside the friendships I knew before, but was constantly awash with gratefulness. Enter some boy I never talked to before. Now, he tells me, “You came back grown up.” Trial and work will do that to you. Between the tension of old and new friendships and this awkwardness with The Boy, I was grateful for 12 credit hours.
That fall, somebody gambled on me and made me an RA. Talk about growing up in a hurry. Some RAs have a great wing, with girls who are quiet, like to clean, listen to classical music, and have a wonderful, supportive family. Mine was everything opposite. I found myself taking 21 hours, wondering constantly about The Boy, and going to the hospital every other week (caffeine overdoses, anyone?). My girls wouldn’t clean, fought amongst themselves, and managed to keep me hopping for everything from toilet paper to chapel skips. Some of them became very good friends and we can laugh now, but it was a growing experience, to be sure. I kept telling myself it would make me a good mother in case I ever have 10 twenty-year-old girls.
The Boy entered my life, officially, and so did much happiness and wondering. We began to conquer the world together and loved doing it. We fought, argued over writing, and helped each other with our wings. We were amazed at how we complemented each other months before we began to talk about marriage. Somehow, we just knew.
The next year, we got engaged and began to realize what life after school might look like. He became RD and our leadership on campus was heightened. I began to realize this as other couples on campus would time our hugs to see what the standard for “long embraces” were. The Semester From Hell was that spring. My worlds of both academics and friendships were blown apart. I could no longer be guaranteed a dinner without harsh words or extreme division. The lines were drawn for me and I didn’t know where to turn.
God was there too, but not with the exiting salvation I wanted. He caused another wound that was so painful, it knocked everything out of the picture. Before, I would have collapsed under the weight. But the strength was there, to my utter amazement. God worked through me, even as I was struggling to believe He was good. The memory of His gifts of help, perspectives, and that dark time stay with me now.
That summer, The Boy and I ran away, got married, went to the beach, and made a home. I began the long process of healing, both physically and emotionally. The spiritual part is still in progress. After the years of stretching, God gave a refuge.
And now, it’s time to move on. It’s 2007 and I’m five years older, but I feel as if much wisdom has been crammed in those years. People keep asking what my next step is. A couple of years ago, I might have chosen an easier “next step” path, but the gifts of God have guided me down a road not so obvious.
Right now, the plan is to teach four writing/english classes in the fall. I did that this past semester and enjoyed it more than I thought. Meanwhile, I work one day at week at J. Crew for a little money and begin The Project (I’m not ready to talk about this, but you may hear more as time goes on). I will also focus on home, Daniel, and my health. As opportunities arise, I will continue freelancing journalism articles. We plan to explore a lot this summer, taking trips to Delaware, Canada, California, and Kentucky.
God is here for me now, but is not leading toward a full-time journalism job. But it doesn’t he’s leading me to stay at home to wait for kids, either. His gifts for me now are the restoration of body and soul, continuation of the pursuits He has given me passion for, and pursuit of Daniel. Those are my delights and my focus.
Please don’t believe that I’m tossing my multiple-thousands-of-dollars degree aside to chase some clouds. I wouldn’t be what I am without that education. I am pursuing what God has laid in my lap. Through the combined direction of my professors, my leaders, and my relationships, I am a better person. To those who were there (especially my parents!) thank you for your faithfulness. God worked through you. Maybe it was unconventional, but you are His gifts to me. My future is shaped by you.
