Idle and Blessed

I'm sitting at Edgehill Cafe and feeling grateful for the sun's victory in poking out from behind the clouds this morning. This coffee shop has always been the site of good writing and praying and thinking for me. Today I'm distracted though. For one, they started enforcing the 30 minute parking rule. So I'm staring out the window monitoring that situation, since I've been here about 1.5 hours. I risk it with parking tickets sometimes. I figure if that's my form of rebellion in life I'm doing really well. Also, the guys at the table in front of me are talking about their love of vanilla peppermint lattes and chai tea lattes and Nashville. And I don't know, that just kind of fascinates me. The truth is, I'm distracted in a lot of ways right now. I have a lot going on. I have four classes to keep up with. I'm working at Pure Barre. I'm President of the Christian Ethics Society, which is leading a couple of huge campaigns at Belmont this s...

If you know me very well at all, you are probably aware of the fact that I drive a Volkswagen Jetta that is constantly falling apart. By constantly I mean constantly. There are very few exceptions to this. The latest chapter in the novel of my car problems has been a radiator/coolant leak, and just so you know, I am now 300% more knowledgeable about automotive cooling systems than I previously was. Silver lining. To a cloud I don't want to talk about, which involved freezing at a gas station staring under the hood of my car in the dark freaking out. Anyway, the point is that while my dad has been faithfully and selflessly repairing my Jetta in his garage for the past month, I've been borrowing a red Lumina which runs very well yet has problems all its own. Such as the cup holder being held together with duck tape. And I don't think the car horn works. Etcetera. I'm so blessed to have this car so I don't have to walk everywhere in January. So don't get ...

A friend told me recently that the way we view nature is generally the way we view God. I think this can be true in broad senses. My favorite thing about nature is not how beautiful it is, although it is beautiful, or how many varieties of plants there are, although it's pretty amazing. My favorite thing about nature is that it's steady. It takes hundreds, thousands, millions of years to change. And no matter what is going on in my head, or my life, or my relationships, nature is the same today as it was yesterday. Radnor Lake and the trails at Chickasaw and the Swiss Alps are going to outlive me. They put me in my place. They put my emotions and my chaos in their place. And I guess that's my favorite thing about God, too. He's not going anywhere. I remember a quote someone put on Facebook once that said nature is not malicious and harsh like we sometimes think, but it's also not beneficent. Nature is simply indifferent. Indifferent to our plight, our struggle...

There's nothing like realizing it's the deadline for a scholarship essay and somehow pulling it off. Honestly I'm not surprised I got it done. I'm surprised I had the energy to actually choose to do it. Because I'm just so tired. I'm tired of essays and applications and I don't want to sit down with any more professors and talk about grad school. I've heard all the wisdom they have to offer and I'm saturated. I'll summarize it for you: any of these schools will be great. Full ride to McAfee to study under Gushee. Amazing option. But I just found out I'm accepted to Candler and am waiting on scholarship decisions. I applied to Fuller and am waiting. The Duke application is done but not submitted. I just don't wanna spend the $50. I don't know. I'm tired of spending $50. I'm tired of selling myself, tired of researching, tired of wanting four different things in three different cities. I literally cannot write another es...

I've never liked nighttime very much. It's weird, because I love sleeping and I welcome silence, and you'd think that would make me a fan of the night hours. It doesn't though, and I think I'm ready to admit after 21 years of life that I just don't like nighttime. I do my worst thinking in the dark. I do my best panicking, make my worst mistakes, decide on my worst decisions, fear my worst fears. You can believe almost anything when you wake up and the sun is shining, or perhaps it isn't, but rain is pattering against the window and you realize it's morning, the first minute of a day with no mistakes in it yet. And you can go through a day, as people weave in and out of your story, alive, walking down the street and down the grocery aisle, with resolve to believe anything. There's something about the morning that brings a person expanse and possibility, and there's something about the daytime that keeps us living as we...

This one is for my roommate, because the world needs to know her a little better. Here goes. She has seen me through some best and worst days of my life. There was the time I got back from Russia and was upset for two weeks straight because I couldn’t run 5 miles without dying, so she wrote me notes about how God loves me anyway. There was the time I hated her pet pig and she knew it even though I didn’t tell her. There was the time our neighbor almost killed me on our roof, and she asked him to apologize to me. She also went in his apartment to do so, which was probably dangerous but at the very least, bold. There was the time we had a guy doing construction on our house for 3 months, and we bonded over our mutual dislike of him. And his singing. There were the times I over-analyzed guys with her, and the dates they took me on. There were the times we had a glass of wine and talked about our crazy families. And when she hugged me while I cried on t...

It's a shame fresh starts are only officially once a year. They're really my favorite things, I think. Maybe it's part of my OCD. I love clean slates like I love clean rooms and organized drawers. Fresh starts are the clean lines of life. They make the mess go away. At least, they're supposed to. And since I'm a big fan of self-discipline, they usually do. I can stick with a diet, I can stick with a running schedule, I can stick with a clean kitchen and rules and plans. But I feel like there are just some seasons of change that don't come on January 1. My fresh start already started. My new job, new post-grad plans, new pet. My hair is already on its way to blonde, I already went vegetarian, and I'm already increasing my running mileage each week. They are good changes. I don't have trouble making changes, really. It's just not on January 1 this time. This New Year's Eve I'm not dreaming up new ways to change for the better...