remains of the day

This morning my gender studies professor declared, "it's your body, you have to protect it, its all you have!"

False.

So so false.

Often I forget that belief in greater purpose is neither universal nor inherent. I can barely comprehend what it must be like to walk through life without the assurance that there is more. That this is not my home.

The other day a friend looked at me and asked, "why aren't you dead yet?" (She wasn't referencing a surprising survival in the face of dangerous behavior on my part, most likely because there isn't much aforementioned dangerous behavior on my part to survive). She was asking me what I was living for, why the Lord hadn't taken me home yet. She was telling me that there is obviously a reason I am still here, that I have purpose on this earth whether I am aware of it or not. My body is essential to my life here, but it could not be farther from "all I have." In fact, more than anything it is simply a tool that has been given to me in order that I may fulfill my greater purpose. So that I will bless the Lord. So that I will bring glory to His name. So that I can be forgiven. So that one day I can go home.

One Twenty-Four Eighty-Eight

There are no words for how I am feeling right now.

Oh wait, yes there are:

Loved.

Surrounded.

Humbled.

Loved.

Treasured.

Understood.

Loved.

Today I was showered with love on all sides, with many of my most favorite things: people singing happy birthday in my voicemail in French, (well, at least once - I still appreciated it in English!) and surprise ice skating trips, and red velvet cupcakes, and people photoshopping me into pictures with Michelle Kwan, and blisters from birthday shoes, and astoundingly thoughtful gifts, and sangria, and books, and m&ms, and Sermet's sweet potato fries (and that blessed salmon salad), and prayer, and texas sheetcake (and strawberries and vanilla ice cream duh) and sweet words, and friendship and laughter and I'm getting carried away.

After all that here I am, sitting in my bed alone pondering all of the blessings I have in my life, and it just started to rain. And then it started to pour. And then it started to thunder. (Key detail to understanding the rest of this: I. Love. Thunderstorms. In a giddy sort of way.)

This, I understand, is my birthday present from Him. In that one peal of thunder I heard and understood the Lord's love for me. I heard and understood that all of these blessings came directly from Him. I heard and understood that He somehow believes I am deserving of these blessings. I heard and understood that for some inexplicable reason, I matter to Him. I hear, and I understand that I am humbled. I am grateful. And I am in awe of the mercy and grace He has showered over me.

jargon.

I do believe I will strike the phrase "I think the Lord blah blah blah..." from my vocabulary. I do believe I will replace it with "I feel the Lord x y z's." The alteration may seem Lilliputian, but its impact is more thank skin deep in that it reminds me to relinquish control of my faith.

My point is this: yesterday I talked to a friend about worry, I talked to a friend about "boy trouble," I talked to a friend about her loss, I talked to pretty much everyone about Haiti, I talked to my roommates about our impending "futures," I talked to a friend about her wedding. In every one of these conversations the Lord was a dominant figure in the discussion. If you word searched a transcript of these chats, His name would most likely been frequently sprinkled throughout. I know that the words I spoke about the Lord were genuine, born out of a genuine desire to share what is on my heart for them, but as I reflect on my days I am realizing that I periodically talk about the Lord before talking to Him. In addition, by virtue of the fact that I am so often surrounded by individuals possessing staggering faith, I find myself leaning on them as if they were crutches as I hobble my way down the road to Heaven (sometimes quite literally hobbling, as in when I get tendinitis in my left foot and become a gimp, as in right now). And this has to stop.

What's funny about this to me is that literally nothing I say after "I feel the Lord..." has to be different from what would have followed "I think the Lord..." and in no way do I have to begin ignoring those who have embraced me, challenged me, confided in me, questioned me, and loved me well - - I can have the exact same encounters and experiences. As usual I simply need to be more conscious of the source of my speculations - because all I say will only ever be speculative until I cease looking to myself for words first. When I put aside what I think or what I hear from others and begin to rely more on what the Lord is whispering in my heart, I believe He will use my tongue (and my thoughts) to serve Him more fully. I feel like Camus' Sisyphus, pushing my rock back up the same hill every day, but it is a continual struggle for me to look first to the Lord.

Personal Neil Armstrong

I just stumbled across the US Championships (of figure skating, duh) on TV. There was a time in my life when I would have known the exact schedule of this event a full month before it began, and here I am today happening upon it by chance. There is a simple reason for this travesty (because I'm sure you all see it as such). Her name is Michelle Kwan.

Michelle Kwan was my man on the moon. No really.

I listen to my parents tell stories about their parents waking them up to watch the news the night Neil Armstrong bounced around the surface of the moon, and all I can think about are the nights (and there were many) where I would grudgingly tromp up the stairs at my bedtime. I was obviously a bit tetchy about this. What's that? You don't understand why I would be upset aside from the long standing tradition of kids hating bedtimes in general? Well you see my bedtime was predictably slotted to take place before Michelle Kwan stepped on the ice. It was just because she was so daggum talented so she of course was always the last one to skate. Drat you NBC and your ratings-hungry schemes.

Anyhow where was I? Oh yes, begrudged tromping. My specialty. Well my parents, being that they are lovely people who care for my emotional well-being (and in this case stability) would often whisper-yell my name upstairs to come back down. We all pretended I hadn't been lying in bed with my eyes wide open for the past two hours, straining to hear everything going on during my absence (because I was pretty much naive enough to assume they were still glued to the Grand Prix or World Champs or whatever it was). Without fail my covers would go flying (along with my poor Bitty Baby Sarah-Claire...Yes I gave my doll a double name. I'm such a Richmonder it hurts) and I would hurl myself down the stairs until I reached the corner where I would be visible to my parents. At this point I would slow down to a relatively normal speed, and enter the room in a dignified manner. Okay thats a fib. I Tazmanian-Deviled my way into the room every time. And then literally sat on my knees in front of the TV Sound of Music style (a la minute 1:06) and breathlessly awaited her appearance.

She may not have been achieving anything as great as old Neil did, but she meant that much to me. When I think of being a kid I think of those nights, and how earnestly I admired her and how much I loved getting to tumble down the stairs in my pajamas and sit with my parents while she kicked ass (ubiquitous side note: the footwork in that one still takes my breath away). Whether you like her or not you do have to admit that she did what she did well. She has 9 gold medals at the US Champs, 5 golds at the Worlds, and 2 medals at the Olympics to prove it (plus more, but I'll spare you at least that). I actually got see her win one, but that's a whole 'nother story.

I can't necessarily prove it, but I'm pretty sure that everyone has their own version of my Michelle Kwan homage - their own personal Neil Armstrong they tumbled out of bed to goggle at. Someone or something that whips them into an unabashed frenzy of excitement and admiration and support and joy. I sure do miss mine.

Bliss

Last semester I took this awful class that was filled to the brim with cynics, which wouldn't have been all that terrible but for the fact that the professor at the helm of our discussions was a lame duck if I've ever met one. Considering the man gave us study guides with 25 bullet points before every one of our 25 question tests, the class was not all that... well, riveting. Let's just say that as long as you went to class the day he handed out the study guide, and were willing to put half an iota of energy into finding the answers, you were set. So needless to say, being that I am an avid people watcher, I found something other than my professor to divert myself every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10 to 10:50 in the morning. Amidst the ever so opinionated and assertive members of my class, I found one very intriguing girl. Lets just say she was hard to miss. While she was beautiful, funny, loud, tall (humph), a cute-if-over-accessorized dresser, intelligent, and so forth - I bypassed all of these things to fixate on one thing. Every morning this girl would waltz into class fashionably late (I'm pretty sure no one has ever told her that rule does not apply to classes- moreover she never seemed the least bit frazzled by her lateness, whereas when I come to class late I usually slam the door, drop my notebook, have trouble finding an empty seat, and then sit there with my stomach growling for the whole class to hear because obviously, if I don't have time to brush my ridiculous hair, I don't have time for my multigrain cheerios) with a delicious and nutritious looking smoothie in tow. And this was no ordinary smoothie either; no it was most painfully obvious to me that this fortunate girl was in possession of a miraculous little thing I feel is perfection beyond words, but the rest of the world knows as The Magic Bullet. Ugh, I will not lie I totally coveted that girls sleek little cup with the convenient handle and removable lid (which I'm pretty sure she color coordinated with her outfits, and I'll admit thats a bit of a stretch. But I'll also admit thats just the sort of thing I would do). Anyhow when my mom texted me for my Christmas list early in December you can be sure that I sent back MAGIC BULLET without delay. And guess what, Santa found me! Or rather, my aunt and uncle found me. To put it simply the Magic Bullet, in all its 17 piece glory, is living up to its name. I skipped into class the other day with my vitamin packed and scrumptious smoothie, on time and with a head full of hair in somewhat respectable order. And yes, I matched the lid to my outfit. Heck, why not!?

yellow formica

I am sitting at the kitchen counter writing an email, and I just had an unbelievably massive flashback. From where I am sitting the TV in the sitting room area is reflected in a window that provides a perfect (well, reversed but otherwise perfect) view of the screen. Its funny how much has changed around me, and yet that tiny and fairly useless ability has remained a constant.

Well, back in the day it wasn't so useless. Lets just take a walk down memory lane, shall we? Back in the day was about, oh sayyyy, 12 years ago. So, back then I was ten we had lived in our house for about two or three years. Back in the days even before that the house had been owned by a family that consisted of two doctors and their four children, and their terrible taste in shag carpet. Needless to say the brown and orange shag left the same day as the doctors, along with their top to bottom fridge full's worth of Ukrops prepared foods. Within a matter of weeks my mother's exemplary taste had already begun to transform the house, but some remnants of the old regime remained longer than she probably would have wished. In particular I am referring to the kitchen (and to the awful blue carpet that stayed in my room until I was about 16, which I am still petulant over). Whoever designed said kitchen decided it would be a good idea to plaster the room in yellow formica and laminate flooring. Ich. The kitchen was essentially a yellow cubicle attached to a huge glassed in porch that had the same aforementioned blue carpet. This porch was our schoolroom, as "back in the day" was when we were all home schooled. That room, while we are on the subject, was wondrous. We had one of those short tables with the mini chairs, our own cubbies, and a drawer full of dry erase markers which we were constantly using to coat the windows with solar systems and diagrams and doodles and occasionally a dreaded math problem or two, as well as a TV which probably had no idea there were shows that weren't Bill Nye the Science Guy or Wishbone (TGIF? What's that!?).

Well in the spirit of honesty, back in the day I occasionally provoked a bit of deserved punishment from my teacher (or in really dire cases Principal Carter) and back in the day one of the ways we learned our lessons was by being deprived of our dose of Magic School Bus. Trust me, it was a fatal blow. What Momma Carter didn't realize was that if you sat juuuuust right on the counter in the kitchen you could see the reflection of the TV through the window between the kitchen and the porch superbly.

Okay, she probably did realize.

Either way tonight I was sitting at the bar in our long since renovated kitchen and my sister switched on the TV. I caught sight of whatever it was and was immediately whooshed back into my childhood (despite the fact that it wasn't even PBS on the screen). For everything in the structure of our house, not to mention in my life, that has shifted and changed - I might as well have been sitting on that counter with my bowl cut bangs and mismatched jelly sandals pretending to read the Boxcar Children while sneaking in an episode of Zoom I was supposed to be missing (probably as a result of my insistence that even if that is the right way you do long division its not how I do it). It was a rather soothing moment given all the changes that are coming up in my life over the next year. And yes, 'whooshed' is the technical term for such an experience.

In Defense Of My Phone Odium

I hate the cell phone, truly I do. I will concede that as far as communication tools go, the phone is fairly useful. But to me, that is pretty much all it is - a tool. I don't have such a developed aversion to most internet forms of communication, but to me they serve a different purpose. In short, I never try to have a lengthy or meaningful conversation with anyone online, so therefor I am blissfully oblivious to any of the myriad of limitations I might run into, and as a result I am not blogging about how much the internet bugs me (which would have been blatantly paradoxical anyhow). Someone somewhere once said "a ringing phone is a request, not a command," which I immediately contemplated needle pointing on a pillow. Sadly, that sentiment is not often reflected in our culture's perception of proper cell phone behavior. Which is why I am mercilessly hailed as "the worst phone person ever, seriously." Its also why no one ever dreams of putting me as their ICE contact. (Which, once you get past the "Wait, I'm not the dependable and trustworthy rock of a person you'd want beside you in a dire emergency???" moment of sadness - you might realize is a boon. Think about it: no 1 AM dashes to the ER because your roommate sliced her finger open with a fancy carrot shaver doo dad and you are the only one in the house who can stand the sight of blood. Oh wait, already done that. But if I hadn't been in the same room as her the odds are I wouldn't have picked up my phone, so there you go.)

But seriously, here is my beef with the phone:

Issue Number One: Apparently its rude to not answer your cell phone any time it bleats. I mean rings. When did this become an acceptable expectation? It was never a problem with the home phone, people just went merrily on their ways and thought "oh they're probably just out in the yard or running an errand or some such something." But not so with the cell phone. I'm sorry that you get indignant when I don't lash my phone to my body and hurl myself at it whenever it beckons. I leave my phone pretty much anywhere but on my person as often as possible, and apparently that makes me a Nathaniel Hawthorne character who has been tempted away from the path of all that is good and righteous straight into a circle of dancing devil worshippers.

Issue Number Two: I am a visual person. On the phone I can't see your face. I can't tell if you are just laughing with your lungs, or laughing with your eyes. I can't read your body language. I can't see when you are nodding because by some miraculous chance you want to hear more of my jibber jabber. I can't understand you clearly when you mumble (Ye Shalt Not Mumble should probably have been a commandment.). I in fact, thrive on these cues when I am conversing with someone. Without them I am rendered almost entirely useless. When (okay, if) I am on the phone I probably come off as a rude, impatient, unamusing, awkward person who interrupts constantly and sounds like a broken record with my constant chorus of, "Whaaat, can you repeat that last part? No the other last part? No, the last part from the beginning." Seriously, people that I have close friendships and deep conversations with probably hang up after an attempted phone chat with me and are left wondering if I have become prematurely senescent.

Issue Number Three: This is particularly applicable to people who are occupying space in locations far far away from me. There's no such thing as a quick chat. What more can I say, except that sometimes I just simply thought of you and wanted to let you know. This does not mean that I feel the need to update you on every inch of my life at that particular moment. Baby steps guys, baby steps.

Issue Number Four: This really only applies to phone calls that occur between me and anyone within a reasonable distance of my person. WHY ARE WE TALKING ON THE PHONE??? This is probably my most monumental pet peeve where the cell phone is concerned. I repeat: the cell phone is a tool. Call me. Better: text me. Time, date, place. Bingo. The fact that I loathe the phone doesn't make me antisocial, okay people? For instance, I deal with it for the people I love that are far away. It just so happens that I much prefer to see your lovely faces, and really, who among you can complain about that?

My parents used to regularly tell me, "hate is a strong word." And when I say regularly I mean constantly- I was a very opinionated kid. Anyhow hate technically means "wished dead or gone" so I feel that it is safely applicable in this case. Plus, as if all of this was not enough, cell phones can totally give you cancer. If you think I just went overboard, then please don't ever get me started on the movie He's Just Not That Into You.