three more days

I just got to get you this good job done
so I can bring it on home to you.
-Ray LaMontagne, Three More Days

Things I'm interested in pursuing over the break:

1. Yoga on Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at the Y.
2. Visiting the eye doctor [new glasses].
3. Pizza from Little Italy [It's true, we have one in Athens, but it's just not the same].
4. Spending some time at Holly Park.
5. Illustrating a children's book called Carl's Cochlear Implant.
6. Giving blood.
7. Hiking.
8. Watching Seinfeld every night.
9. Sharing a bed with my baby sister.
10. Chasing my baby brother around the house.
11. Family Christmas picture.
12. Running with new puppy.
13. Seeing my family.
14. Consuming 4x an appropriate daily caloric intake in one sitting.
15. Cooking with my grandmothers.

Three more days. Please share your list.

it's not easy

People, people, people, they make it sound so easy
They say just do what your heart tells you to
But sometimes you cannot feel it
Sometimes you cannot hear it
Sometimes it won’t talk back to you.
-from Pretty Girl From San Diego by The Avett Brothers

Do you ever feel like you're just barely treading water? Like you're using every ounce of energy to keep your head in the air so you can breathe? Do you ever feel that way for no apparent reason? Perhaps it can be attributed to some weird reaction between senioritis and anxiety about graduating a year before most of my friends. I feel like I'm losing sight of the vision I've been so sure of for months and years even. I'm questioning the choices I've made regarding my career path. I'm worried that I will, as so many others have, forget the compassion I now feel for refugees, widows, and orphans when I transition from youth to "real" adulthood.

How do you know if your choices are pleasing to the Lord? How do you decide between good, better, and best? Can I honestly place any amount of trust in decisions that I made my freshman year apart from God? Why have I had such overwhelming peace about all of this until now? Are these doubts something that I've conjured up within myself, or are they meant as a way of communication from the Holy Spirit?

appalachian

I know it's hard to see Me darling
let your eyes adjust
if you go blind just trust
you were made out of My dust.
-from Dogs by Page France

Sometimes I get confused about where I'm headed. I expect that that statement makes a lot of you laugh because I've always been the kind of girl that knows where she's headed and how to get there. While it's true that I am blessed with a substantial amount of clarity (especially for a college student) on most days, my mind can get pretty foggy on others. It feels like driving up an unfamiliar twisty mountain road at night; the headlights of the oncoming traffic seem to temporarily blind you and you hope your impaired vision doesn't last long enough to make you careen around a curve and off a cliff. (...better try the emergency brake!)

I wonder if I'm making the right decisions, or if I'm extending grace as freely as it's been extended to me. I worry that the things I desire are not the things I'm "supposed" to desire, or that I'm slipping back into the habits of my old slave-to-schoolwork self. I know that I make the world about myself far too often, and I second-guess many of the ways I've chosen to interpret reality.

I suppose there are a lot of things that I would sort of like to happen, but I think that I'm finally learning to surrender my own personal agenda to the will of the One that loves me more than anyone ever has or ever will. You see, I have a history of holding on too tightly to good things that just were not best for me; my grandmother once described me as "loving hard." It sounds like a good thing, but I'm not really interested in going down any more dead-end roads.

I'm confused about a lot of things, but in this moment, as I type this, and for the last few days really, I have wanted nothing but whatever God's very best is for me. I feel as though I can say that with more honesty than ever before.

My mom and I went to visit Appalachian State University this weekend and I loved it. I won't say too much, but Boone felt ten times more right than Seattle felt wrong. There was space for my heart up in the mountains.

baby teeth

Last night one of my dearest friends came over to my apartment for a pajama party. We made quesadillas and ate fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies [read: cookie dough]. We created artwork and watched P.S. I Love You. We talked, and between fits of laughter, she helped me realize something incredible around two o'clock this morning.

Do you ever question the purpose of some past occurrence? The feeling I'm referring to is different from regret; I simply wonder why the Lord allows certain events to transpire - people or things that change us drastically if he knows from the beginning that they will end in heartache. I posed this question to my friend and she answered with wisdom. She suggested that the absence of pieces of my heart that I felt I had lost is creating space for new things - better things - that God wants to fill me with.

kind of like losing your baby teeth.

This morning I found myself wondering more about the concept of baby teeth. So, naturally, I googled it. This is what I found:

Baby teeth are widely found in the animal kingdom. Fish an reptiles continuously lose and replace their teeth throughout their lives, but mammals have just two sets of teeth. . . . Young mammals' skulls are small, and it's impossible for them to accommodate a full array of adult choppers, so juveniles have cute little temporary teeth to fit in their immature jaws. Once the bones of the cranium have developed to adult size, the tiny teeth start wiggling and fall out. . . . The process for initiating the formation of permanent teeth in humans is not completely understood. Normally, permanent teeth come in at about age six as part of a genetic development sequence whose temporal trigger is not yet known. Perhaps these teeth start jumping ship after being made to chew all sorts of stuff off the floor for the last five years. . . . As the enzymes break down the tooth's root and surrounding connective tissue, the tooth loosens until it's time for the old 'dad and string ploy' to provide space for the adult tooth.

I could take this metaphor so very far, but I will spare you. All I will say is that about a year ago I was (spiritually) walking around with a toothless grin.

In answer to the question of the purpose of baby teeth, I simply have to look at my little brother. Yesterday dad and I took him up to Dockery Lake for a quick 7 mile in-and-out. On our way home we stopped in Dahlonega for lunch and three chocolate-covered pretzels from the Fudge Factory. This is what happened:



Robby's baby teeth provide sustenance for him at this stage in his life, but he will eventually outgrow them. That is not only okay and normal - it's beautiful.

[definitely something to smile about]

pause

Check it out. I just wrote on my friend's facebook wall and had to laugh at the irony of my words. She asked me how life was, and I told her that it was busy but good - flying by - and that I often wish I could press pause.

Oddly enough, I used the same VCR metaphor in a slightly different sense on my second-ever Speculations post, Fast Forward, which I wrote on the last day of 2007.

Thankfully, 2008 has been a year of new beginnings.

basil, meet italian parsley and mint.

Given the title of this blog, I thought it would be appropriate to announce that I acquired two new herbs today, Italian Parsley and Mint, to add to my collection. I felt as though I lived up to my nickname for the first time since December, when it was first given to me. I had packed up my car to head home for the holidays and all three of my roommates accompanied me down for a proper send-off. In the passenger seat, they noticed a box of plants that were coming home with me, and Lindsey said I was like a plant lady instead of a cat lady.

Today on the elevator, one of my neighbors asked me about the plants in my hand. When I told her that they were herbs, she wondered if I used them for cooking. I told her yes, and that they made my room smell lovely as well. She asked if they were difficult to keep healthy. I explained that they like a lot of sunshine and just a little water. She said she was going to head over to Publix to get some of her own.

I guess I am kind of a plant lady.

fifty percent chance of rain

You know how when the sky starts to clear after it's been raining all morning on a day when you have something planned outside in the afternoon, and you're not quite sure if the sun is truly going to come out or not? And you know how sometimes in those moments, you hear a bird singing, and even though you don't speak bird, you somehow know that the song means that the sun is definitely coming out - that it's just a matter of time?

I like that.