Today I Remember

In May I joined a couple of classmates and cool folks in Jackson for a 50th anniversary commemoration of the 1961 Freedom Rides.

{Oh look! It's Charles, Lindsay and me with Joan Mulholland!)

But, as today is the 48th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I will gladly leave reflections on the Freedom Rides themselves for future (well, and past) posts. I'll let the March get its due spotlight. It was, after all, a groundbreaking event.

I'll maintain, though, that while there were many singularly groundbreaking moments of the movement, no one moment stands alone.

(Anyone who tells you otherwise is just trying to sell you a book...I'm looking at you, Ray Arsenault, Eric Etheridge, Andy Lewis). (They've each admitted it, I'm not just taking cheap shots out of nowhere!)

{you, too, are now looking at Etheridge and Arsenault}

Even the March on Washington relied heavily on much precedent.

Especially the March on Washington relied on precedent, really. (The history major in me really wants to expound on this assertion, but I'm doing my best to keep it simple stupid [per the advice of the great Michael Scott}).

I went as far as to say that the 1927 Flood of the Mississippi River helped pave the way for the Civil Rights Movement Proper (largely considered as lasting 1955-1968) in my senior thesis, so I'm big on credit sharing.

The marketing people for all the MLK, Jr. specials around this time don't have the liberty of sharing credit, as they-- much like the authors mentioned above-- have persuasive theses to put out that must come across clear and concise if they have a chance at an audience.

I have no standard of the sort to keep up around here-- clear and concise flew out of the window forever ago. Just ask any one of my professors. Given the implied trade-off (re:audience), they might be the only people left to ask, and only because they were paid to stick around.

The advantage of lower standards, in this case, is the opportunity to celebrate someone other than King for the achievement that was the March on Washington. (Which is almost blasphemous for a girl that pledge allegiance to his dream every weekday of my elementary career).

Oh, yes, I'll let the March have the spotlight today. I won't make it share with the flood or the Freedom Rides or anything.

King? He's gonna have to share. I'm able to live with my blasphemous self only because I think if he was alive-- the responsibility of remembering his involvement in the CRM left a little less to the in-need-of-a-simple narrative media-- he'd be the first to offer a speech acknowledging the others who made his success possible.

This is not just the anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech, after all. (Though how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...)

Today I'm remembering-- in addition to King, Randolph, Lewis, Wilkins, Young-- James Farmer.

If that seems like a contrived effort on my part to find a common denominator between the Freedom Rides and the March to focus on, then

a. there might be a little truth behind your accusation

b. joke's on you.

It's entirely to James Farmer's credit that there is such a common denominator. He did all of the work involved in being linked so closely to two of the greatest Civil Rights initiatives.

All of that work and yet, unlike King, so little credit.

Why don't you hear about Farmer in discussions on the March? So glad you didn't ask asked.

In short, Farmer was out doing the work necessary for King's dream to become yours and my reality. (Not that King didn't put in his own elbow grease, and not that Farmer was the only one getting work done that day).

(That last parenthetical disclaimer is why I'll never sell books or television specials).

On August 28, 1963, James Farmer sat behind bars in Louisiana.

An unwavering believer in the nonviolence model of Mohandas Gandhi, Farmer was in Louisiana leading peaceful protests. There, state troopers went door to door hunting down Farmer. He only escaped the city of Plaquemine by the kindness of a funeral home director friend, who smuggled Farmer out of town in a hearse as the oft-described "larger than life," deep-voiced Civil Rights leader played dead in the back.

"I was meant to die that night," Farmer later said. "They were kicking open doors, beating up blacks in the streets, interrogating them with electric cattle prods."

Out of that town and away from the immediate danger of mob violence at dark (a mob led by no less than the state troopers), Farmer was soon arrested for disturbing the peace. It was not, given the Freedom Rides (this is a contrived insertion of the Freedom Rides) and decades of experience, his first charge for breach of peace.

He refused the insistent advice of friends and colleagues that he should bail out early, in order to appear at the March. On the principle of "jail, no bail," he stayed to watch the March behind bars.

Floyd McKissick, a Congress of Racial Equality colleague read Farmer's speech aloud at the March. The protests would not end, Farmer wrote, "until the dogs stop biting us in the South and the rats stop biting us in the North." It might have been less overt, but racism in the north was no less biting. The assertions surely lost something without Farmer's booming voice.

Ultimately, his decision to stick to his guns and hang on to his pride cost Farmer a lot of glory.

(Unless you consider a bust in the center of the University of Mary Washington Campus the pinnacle of glory, in which case, the man has it made. Still, I can hardly consider it a due memorial, considering that 70% of people who ask me where I went to school also ask me if I mean "Martha Washington.")

We use an expression a lot in our family when a member shortchanges another of due credit-- "gimme back the glory." The phrase is accompanied by a waiting, outstretched hand.

The problem as I see it is that there's not really any one person from whom Farmer supporters can request his glory be returned. I mean, can you really fault King supporters? Do you blame elementary textbooks for giving kids a simple rundown of the CRM that necessarily excludes hundreds of important leaders? I guess you could blame the way of the South in the 1960s, but that's (mostly) passed.

I'm not really sure who took the glory, thus it's hard to know who carries the responsibility of handing it back over.

But I do know that on this day I can begin to give James Leonard Farmer a bit of the glory he's due by remembering his sacrifice-- the burden he bore of continuing the work of the dream through a life that long outlasted King.

(source)

{Farmer's on the far right}

One day in our commemoration of the Freedom Rides (the day I was covered in buttons and making a fool of myself to get people to come to an event), I stopped to talk to Dr. O'Donnell and a guest, who'd worked years ago as a student aide to Farmer at UMW. I told that man that I felt a bit foolish, and that perhaps our remembrance of Farmer bordered on irreverent (you know, since we dress up his bust and pose for silly pictures and have a good giggle [learned that expression from Prince William... I told you I'd find a way to use it, Em!] with the thing).

He said not to sweat it, certain that Farmer would've liked the laughter.

So today I remember the man who made serious business his business. I remember the agitator, the rebel-rouser. The conscientious objector, the student and teacher of nonviolence. The professor who patiently spent his final years teaching at the small university where two college girls (and surely others) challenged the legitimacy of his recollections. "Do you think that ever really happened in this Christian nation," one posed casually to the other. The so-called Father of Affirmative Action. The Medal of Freedom recipient (certainly a more fitting dedication than UMW's humble bust). The part of the Big Four (or Six. You decide). The man with a thunderous voice and a roar of a laugh.

Today I remember the man who, in the end, would've liked the laughter.

If you click here, Deirdre will tell you more about "our" man, our collective ownership symbolized in the following picture by a bowl of buttons ;)

{Excerpts}

{not my fireplace}

It's just the kind of morning to curl up on the couch, stare at the fireplace, sip some tea and ponder some poetry.

I visited Fayetteville last week-- always a good time :) As Dad finished packing up for their weekend trip to Branson, I looked through She Walks in Beauty-- a poetry anthology edited by Caroline Kennedy to the theme of a woman's journey through life.

Poetry isn't something I usually put myself through read. I mean, I'm a life ponderer and all (hence, the blog) but poems just seem too... grown up? But the cover looked just like my mom, who has grown up around the same age as Caroline Kennedy, so I took the plunge and bought it for mothers day. She kindly displayed the book on an end table in our living room, so as I crunched on cereal, quite on autopilot, it's colors caught my eye once more. I was sort of in a trance as I skimmed line after line, as I'd gotten approximately 3 hours of sleep the night before. Sipping black tea at 1 a.m. has consequences, it turns out.

Later that day, I scribbled down a few of those lines that jumped off the page.

I felt like maybe they deserved a better home than the horrific resting place that is the bottom of my purse.

{From A Minor Bird, by Robert Frost}

The fault must partly have been in me.

The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong

in wanting to silence any song.

{From The Bacchae Chorus, by Euripedes}

In various ways, one man outraces another in the race for wealth and power. Ten thousand men have ten thousand hopes. A few bear fruit in happiness, the others go awry. But he who garners day by day the good of life, he is happiest. Blessed is he.

{From Going Blind, by Rainer Maria Rilke}

Her lighted eyes, which spoke of gladness, glistened with outward luster, as a pond is lit.

She followed slowly and it took much trying as though some obstacle still barred her stride.

And yet as if she on the farther side might

not be walking anymore but flying.

{From To Be of Use, by Marge Piercy}

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters,

but move in common rhythm

when the food must come in and the fire be put out.

...

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

...

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

{From Girlfriends, by Ellen Dore Watson}

I mean the ones who say the unwelcome

when it matters.

...

The lifers

who, even seven states away

are the porches

where we land.

{From Write It On Your Heart by Ralph Waldo Emerson}

Tomorrow is a new day,

begin it well and serenely

and with too high a spirit

to be cumbered with your

old nonsense.

{From Leisure, by WH Davis}

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

...

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

we have no time to stand and stare.

{From The Waking, by Theodore Roethke}

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

{From Leap Before You Look, by WH Auden}

The sense of danger must not disappear:

The way is certainly both short and steep,

However gradual it looks from here;

Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

...

Although I love you, you will have to leap;

Our dream of safety has to disappear.

{From PS Education, by Ellen Hagan}

Tell him, teach him to say, "I will look at you Rachael and I will see you" 1,000 times over.

Rachael, where Trinidad and Guyana meet. Tell her the truth, that you never knew where she was from until you asked, and when you finally asked, it was way later than you wanted.

{From She Walks in Beauty, by Caroline Kennedy} (alignment edited)

Sometimes we struggle

Sometimes we adapt

and at other times, we set a course for others to follow.

We are all leaders and followers in our own lives.

We are constantly learning from and teaching one another.

We learn, too, that the most important work

is not done by those who seem most important,

but by those who care the most.

...

Most of all I would like to thank my friends and family

who make me happy to get up every morning,

knowing I might get to talk to them that day.

Dear Truett,

{my "introduction" to the scrapbook I made Truett for his birthday}

I distinctly remember the first time I got to hold you. Though we'd waited hours (months, really) to come in to see you, it felt so sudden once you were in my arms. Love for you and thankfulness to God rushed over us all. The Bible says that the LORD gives and takes away, that his name is to be ever praised. On August 21st, He gave.

With jubilant souls housed in exhausted bodies, we kept whispered praise on our lips in those early morning hours-- so grateful for every healthy inch of you. Given all this collective emotion, I probably could (and maybe should) have come up with something a bit more sentimental to share with minutes-old you. But after the obligatory (still heartfelt) "I love you," Emily and I instead decided to issue a warning together.

"Truett, we are cah-razy."

In the days since -- 365 to be exact -- you've seen both the love and the cah-razy up close and personal. Many of the pictures I've included in this album are a testament to those moments -- big and small -- of affection and antics. As I danced or played peek-a-boo behind the lens, your facial expressions conveyed your thoughts perfectly -- "Sadie, you are crazy!"

Well, kid, I warned you.



I can tell here recently that my enthusiasm doesn't much surprise you anymore, as you no longer stare, confused -- you just crawl swiftly on with a demeanor that mumbles, "not this again."

I really don't expect you to understand my humor. But you should know that the intense crazy is rooted in love. And you should know that you are loved. It is a truth that will sustain you. On your first birthday and always, it is the best gift you will receive. I pray that the Lord gives you so many opportunities to learn about His perfect love, free of condition. I also hope you find creative, courageous ways to share it. You see, all people are loved by our Creator God. But not all people have the privilege of parents whose priority in marriage and parenthood is to emulate Christ, the ultimate display of God's great love. You and I, Truett? We got those parents.

It is a blessing out of which we must learn to bless others.



When I scan the pages of this book, I see so many imperfections -- crooked lines, fingerprints, awkward spacing, bad penmanship. I also see what it lacks-- there are, after all, so many more proud, loyal family members and friends than I was able to capture on camera and include here. But I hope that what I have included gives you and others who look on a sense of just how precious these 12 months have been.



Put simply, you've changed our lives.

With so much love,

Sadie
August 21, 2011

The Road Less No Longer Traveled

I'm not torn up about it.

It doesn't consume my thoughts.

My time there is finished and I took the time to soak it up before I left.

But, moving forward as I am, it is still worth confessing-- especially given the time of year-- that man I miss this place.

Such a generic name for a place so singularly significant to this sentimental heart, College Avenue.

I must've crossed it a thousand times.

One thousand gifts.

Such privilege.

Want.

to be without or deficient in.

to wish, crave.

to fall short by (a specified amount).

In going through all the boxes of things piled in my Fayetteville room, I found my farewell note from the flirt of Cusco, Juan Carlos.

Sure he was sweet with many girls on our June 2010 trip, but he drew me in anime, so ours was true love.

(For the record, anime is my absolute best look.)

When expressing her desire for me to come and deal with all my junk (she put it in nicer terms), mom noted, "you've gone without the stuff in those boxes for months, you must have a lot in there you don't need."

More than you need, more than you need, more than you need.

It's like a broken record playing in my head, day in and day out. Except for it's not broken-- it's the truth. It's not some fluke on a record, it repeats for a reason.

I've always heard that the passage of the bible where Jesus commands the rich man to sell all of his possessions and give is not a chastisement of wealth, but really more of a warning. I've also heard that it isn't a direct command to every Christian, only really those who feel that call or whose wealthy living directly inhibits his or her ability obey Christ.

More than you need.

This is the part where I try telling myself that I'm not really that wealthy.

I tell myself that I know plenty of people with lots more money than this college grad who are perfectly lovely, obedient Christians.

This is where I try and crawl out of that box marked "felt called"-- the one that obligates me to the command first directed towards the rich young ruler.

obligate.

To bind, compel, or constrain by a social, legal, or moral tie.

Who wants obligation? For a long time, not me. I would see commercials and ads and, yes, blog posts with statistics like:

• Half the world - nearly 3 billion people - live on less than two dollars a day.
• 640 million have no adequate shelter
• 1 in 7 has no access to health services
• The richest 2% of the world's population own half of the world's wealth.

I'd see these and harden my heart to it all-- how dare they tug at feelings of moral duty or try to attack me for my social standing? How dare those people obligate me?

But the Lord is doing a number on that hardened heart. Partly through that broken record. Partly through making my peace with the fact that it is true, not everyone feels the burden of the call, and not everyone is obligated to the command. But mostly, he's accomplishing the softening of my heart in making it not an obligation at all.

Slowly, over time, it's turned into an invitation and I am eager for the approaching occasion.

invite.

To ask for the presence or participation of.

To attract.

The pangs aren't annoying feelings of duty or guilt.

I don't have to give up major aspects of my life here. I don't have to respond to statistics of hunger and poverty. I don't have to believe Christ and give out of what I've received from the Giver.

I want to.

want.

to be without or deficient in.

to wish, crave.
to fall short by (a specified amount).

I always thought "wanting for nothing" meant having more than enough. Yet I have more than I need and still want.

Poor little rich girl, right?

The label is just another resemblance to the rich young ruler.

Yes, I want in a way that increasingly makes life here feel like it falls short. A way that kinda stinks because, honestly, I love life here. I love living with my sister and celebrating birthdays altogether and babysitting my nephew when needed and nannying and surprising my parents with visits. What more could a girl want?

More than half the world dreams of a life like this.

More than you need. More than you need. More than you need.

Finding Juan Carlos's card earlier today sent me clicking through my flickr album of the Peru trip. Immediately I recalled the results of a dozen gifts inventories I've taken over the years. My strengths?

1.) Hospitality-- "the ability to meet the basic social needs of and to extend care to persons beyond ones immediate circle of friends."

2.) Helps/Service-- "the ability and overwhelming desire to aid persons in need. The ability to perform the most basic acts of kindness as a means to embody the gospel."

3.) Mercy-- "the ability to identify with and feel the pains and hurts of another person and the capacity to help that person move beyond those pains and hurts."

(A discussion of strengths is not complete without due regard to

weaknesses, which for me include:

1.) Administration-- "ability to organize resources and persons for effective ministry."

2.) Prophecy--"receive, reveal or interpret God's truth, publicly, no matter the risk or consequence."

3.) Leadership-- "understand ones own principles and vision to communicate those and to challenge others to move into the future").

It's my smile in the pictures that brings the gifts to mind. Is it any wonder the smile is brighter when I'm beyond my immediate circle, encountering admitted need, and concentrated on embodying the gospel?

"Overwhelming desire" is included in the description, for crying out loud. Lumiere is right. Life is so unnerving for a servant who's not serving.

Unnerve.

To deprive of fortitude, strength, or firmness of purpose.

The truth is that I've never once had to talk myself into caring about the statistics and the pain.

I've just spent a long time trying to talk myself out of caring. I've done my best to harden my heart to it all because I am happy here.

The broken record shows back up and I feel like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, accosted by the taxi cab. "I'm GLIDING here!"

But the smile is out there-- the smile of a girl overwhelmed by the privilege of the invitation and the joy of humbling self to the occasion.

All of this is to say that this is the weirdest season.

I'm living happily, without want while living longingly, with great want.

Out of all the gifts to you, you shall present every contribution due to the LORD; from each its best part is to be dedicated.

Numbers 18:29

Conclusions

{July 6}

Library again.

Nothing else quite indicates the passing of time like listening as Parson reads me a book.


Crazy.

This place brings out in me an important quality that I otherwise lack notably: ambition. Here I want to pick up a book and finish it. I want to know more and think more and solidify all those fluid emotions and elusive pangs of the heart into a worldview that best helps me love the world and, most importantly, the people in it.

Here I feel pulled. I might never be smart enough or good enough or experienced enough or ambitious enough to accomplish truly accomplished things. But I know I can feel, think, care, learn, listen. Sitting here, I feel I'm listening best-- at the one place that makes me feel ambitious while simultaneously, physically showing me how much I don't know. It's a forced humility, a literal display of what I've left to learn. That God would care to teach comforts me; that knowledge fills shelves so near nudges me.

I love this place.

Because, alas, time is passing. Beside me Parson sits patiently (though not still because that's a little impossible for a boisterous boy of 6 years), ready to read me something new.

I make a note to remind him he used to rely on me for help sitting up and heating a bottle, just to keep things in perspective.

That's it, perspective. I walk to dictionaries because I can and it sometimes it's fun to take the old-fashioned route. I learn that in science, it means "the appearance of depth in objects. " I read on to find that it also means, "the state of one's ideas, the facts known to one, etc., in having a meaningful interrelationship."

Maybe ambition builds here because perspective seems nearer here. And because ambition turns disastrous if blind, here I feel most compelled to ask God to bring "meaningful interrelationship" to this day. summer. life.

His patience runs thin, the 6 year old's. It's time to read "The Present."

The title is shockingly fitting for my reflections, I think as he begins. Pensive eyes study pages as he works to bring meaning to the script. Ambition is well and good, but as his finger lines the words I can't help but think that perspective means knowing you've got places to go, knowing there's a bigger picture but having the presence of mind to appreciate life presently.

--------------------------------------------------------

We finish the book and he leaps (this is, in fact, his slowest pace) off to the computer. My eyes wander back to my pages. My interest piques when he starts conversation. He thinks he's whispering.


"What school do you go to?" he poses to the braided girl in pink. They're both clicking away at games.

"SSSSHHHHH!" Jackson hurries to intervene. It is true, the tone needed to come down a notch, but that wasn't the impetus for Jackson's equally noisy command.

His concern is for the girl, whom he feels shouldn't be bothered. He seeks to build a wall because he's picking up on the fact that the most socially acceptable move regarding strangers is to leave them be.

"It doesn't matter," he informs Parson. That's an issue, I think. In trying to do right and keep to ourselves, we communicate, one to another that the life and thoughts of the other do not matter. Diana saw the issue and observed, "the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of feeling unloved."

6 year old wisdom is shushed too soon. He cares about the school. And, in truth, it does matter. To her, and thus to him. Sweet boy.

Jackson cares, too, really. But experience tells him that the best way to care is to maintain boundaries. The philosopher Kant argued that all knowledge is experiential. Sometimes wisdom, though, is unlearning what experience taught.

Most of the time love means stepping across the boundary.

---------------------------------------------------------

{today}

Well, friends, summer is over. The boys go back to school tomorrow, and so this is my last day of 8 hours with straight up humorous, fun-loving, sometimes frustrating, oft-brawling, snack-seeking, precious, ultimately-adoring balls of energy.

We've had a good go of it. (Steve Irwin taught me that expression).

They're still alive and healthy and happy (though I'm apparently Jackson's second best babysitter because I only let them eat at snacktime... ha!). I've further learned what it's like to at least maintain the health and life of two boys on the days when happiness is allusive and they just can't "get right."

Along the way I've tweeted their moments and comments of noteworthy humor or delight, but I fear those will get buried under a pile of tweets as life moves on. Here I'll keep the full record for easy remembering.

Me: Jackson, how'd you get so smart? Jackson: I watch Harry potter

Me: what are y'all doing? J: pro wresting me: I think you have to be "pro" for that. P: well he keeps chunkin my pineapples like a pro

Popcorn with "9 cracks of pepper and precisely 3 pinches of salt" and catching butterflies. Delight!

Am I a terrible babysitter for not seeing a difference between the frog, rocket, popcorn, and bunny dives?

Jackson: "miss Sadie, can you please ground me from the wii so I can't be grounded from anything else?"

Proof that I'm not chuck e cheese dependent. Me: salmon J: noodles P: snap peas

In pool. J: "oh I never took my underwear off. Just as well, this suit doesn't have a net, anyway." I am not familiar with these troubles.

J: just close your eyes P: okay, but I am petrified. At best, I'm apprehensive. (he's SIX, people!)

J: miss Sadie!! Parson has another loose tooth!! (sighs) ... they grow up so fast

Well after 21 years with zero major cuts (unless we count the fish hook), the thumb found competition in a watermelon

Me: "nevadas capital is Carson city." P: "so it's 'parson city' with a 'c'. Critical mistake."

Trying to get a kid to do math on August 2 is like trying to bathe a cat. J: but I'm already terribly smart, miss Sadie. ... I know how to make glue-- get some spit, swirl it around in your belly button with a finger and there you have it. I don't need school!

And now-- "miss Sadie, I don't know how this is happening, but it feels like I have water up my nose and it's too distracting 4 me to work."

P: I just got a bite of burnt on my salmon. Me: I'm sorry, dude. P: that's okay, miss Sadie, you can just try harder next time

Jackson just tried to buy me out of timeout. Coulda made 10 bucks, folks-- hard to pass up, but I managed

P asked me "why is it the J is bigger than me, older than me, had more school than me" an tho I think he was going somewhere deep... ... I chose to start rapping a la Jaden Smith of Never Say Never really loudly. Couldn't resist! Then P finished his sentence, unphased "but I'm still way better at jumping and flipping." I've introduced him to the phrase, "street smart"

J: I really wish there was no school. P: well you also wish I wasn't alive and you could have candy all day, but that's just not real.

These kids think I'm ancient because I can't remember how much "moneys" the tooth fairy left me for my first tooth. @olemisstrudy, help?

After this impromptu trip to walmart, we are the proud owners of Rio. Also, "Miss Sadie, your car is cold for the first time ever."

well my alarm sounded like the beginnings of WWIII in volume and intensity. i blame the 9 year old.

A little QT and a little OT.

Best part of my day is a toss up between lunch with @emilyss2086 and the boys and errands with @StephSmith627 and THE boy (& it's only 5pm!)

Watching march of the penguins with p. Watching one do a mating call, he informs me that the penguin is "attempting contact." well... Yes.

A few weeks ago I took some pictures of the boys for their dad's birthday gift, and I jumped in a few. This is what photography looks like with a 9 and 6 year old behind the lens.

(he's not pained because he's having to take pictures, but rather because it took approx. 5 minutes for Parson to find the button to push... learning.) ;)



This is the result of efforts to get one of us all together.







Thus concludes another summer of learning about life and laughing at it, kids in tow.

The Old College Try

When I get out of the swing of writing, it gets harder by the day to know how to come back.

(hence, the two months)

But.

I'm willing to give it the old college try.

(the writing is undeniably less subtle following a break, too. I do apologize.)

Funny how when you look endlessly for something deep and important, or else at least really comical and charming to prompt the typing, it ends up being an episode of the Bachelorette. And so no matter how fluid the words come, or how clearly the thoughts get conveyed, both you and I know that they were inspired by the Bachelorette, setting a ceiling, really, on how profound or charming the following can really be.

What can I say, Ben F. the Winemaker from Napa really made an impression.

In truth, the difficulty hasn't been finding the words as a "writer" to convey a message as so much not really having a message to convey. Maybe that doesn't make much sense. If not, it's probably because Emily won't quit keeping me up late. (Watching the Bachelorette, no less).

Sure there have been plenty of things to write on. My parents moved and I really enjoyed getting to help instead of having to work my tail off on the weekends to make money. Cousins came and went and we got to catch up in a way thats been lacking since we stopped trying to make extended family holiday plans. I got sick and became the recipient of so much care and good friendship. Fourth of July happened and you *know* Sadie always has something to say about America. There are an endless amount of nannying anecdotes to share. Mom made us listen to this terrible Danielle Steel novel on tape the entire way to Destin, which could lead to a fantastic post regarding what in the world I did to deserve that. Realizing all over again that I am but one in a long line of beneficiaries of my parents kindness and faith was a humbling moment worth sharing.

But beneath all of these subjects was a mind of scattered thoughts and a heart of heavy burdens.

No one particular situation making that so. Part of what makes the burden so difficult to identify and write on is that the burden isn't situational in nature at all-- it's just there. I've had an excellent summer by many accounts and I am so, so grateful for the opportunity to even have time to ponder life and purpose the way I have in the past months. I know even that is a luxury. A heavy heart can still be so deeply thankful.

It's just hard to get on here and gush over all the things that I am downright thankful for when it's all I can do to call out for insight and cry for understanding, wondering every day where in the world this [i'm scanning my body with my eyes and a hand gesture, when really I mean to indicate my entire set of experiences laying below the surface] is headed.

That question is directed towards the Lord both figuratively and literally. Where in the world?

Everything inside of me believes, trusts that I'm going somewhere--the place where my passion is best expressed and my heart is best molded and my life is most meaningful and my hands are most helpful. But when? And how? And does it really not rely solely upon me, because 3 months post-grad and with no insurance and with a seeking heart that waits for the Lord before heading into the metaphorical "battle" a la Joshua, it sure feels a lot like self-reliance is the solution. At least then, with the self relying, I could pay the bills comfortably and plan it all out and I could've just gritted my teeth through penning highly perfect answers on an application that asks me to look my most Christian.

But none of those answers sound adequate, much less perfect, when they come from a place of self-reliance because as my soul longs, crouches lower in a desperate attempt to look my most Christlike, I become increasingly aware of how inadequate and imperfect "self" truly is.

Sadie, you sound too self-deprecating. I've tried and tried but I can't make taking up one's own cross in favor of life with Christ sound more self-appreciating.

All around me there are people and things and a general season that each tell me it's okay to enjoy myself while I push forward towards adult life. But all inside of me there are thoughts and burdens and a general desire that beg me to enjoy the Lord, to share in his suffering as He guides me through adulthood.

I get that there are logistical concerns and I feel less accomplished by every passing day that I don't have a plan to forever meet my own logistical needs. All my life I've heard and sung about the God Who Is Able to meet all needs. I've never hummed along to a worship song that says, "I'll get myself squared away and then you can feel free to tweak it, God." I mean, that is sometimes the heart from which I sing along diligently, but the words never say that outright.

So me and my old sunday school friend Josie sit in the surf and wonder, was it all a trite, godly sounding sentiment, the whole wait-for-direction-and-God-will-provide thing? Because living it out seems downright irresponsible, sometimes lonely and way less desirable than the catchy songs let on.

{Josie and me on the beach, in case you needed a visual}

Nearing graduation, you can gather that you'll miss the people, the environment. You can piece together an idea of what you wish to look like at the reunion that no one is actually planning to attend. You get the notion of job-finding and income-gathering. You prepare a resume and imagine doing life outside of the school routine for the first time in approximately 18 years.

No one can really prepare you for it, though. That sounds dramatic and I really don't intend for it to. All I'm saying is that there is no easy way to go from one phase to the next. It may only take 48 hours to go from graduation in Virginia to "grown up" in Arkansas, but the transition is much less cut and dry.

Kind of like how the day you turn 13 you're a teenager, and while you only really feel one day older, the paradigm by which others see you dramatically shifted in that one day.

The paradigm has shifted. I am no longer a college student. Academic pursuits should subside, the soul should be done searching, moments belong to memory, and memories to nostalgia. That time is past.

No one prepares you for how it lingers still in the present. I may no longer be a college student, but I was one. All I learned, felt, struggled with, resolved, it carries over and there is still a burning desire to do something with it. Not so much with the diploma as with the experience.

I hadn't a clue what I was doing in September 2006 when I googled colleges so I could say I'd researched them. 11 months later I strolled in disbelief along the red brick sidewalk of the University of Mary Washington, sure only of God's providence. Sure that if I stood there 4 years later, it would only be by profound grace. I knew nothing else, no one else. With that information I set off to sing the alma mater and pledge my honor in Dodd Auditorium, ready to give it the old college try.

4 years later I stand similarly clueless, sure only of the providence and the grace. Amazingly affected and burdened by what I learned from and about the world that God loves. Christ applies to, cares about every issue, every person I encountered, and I am desperate to learn those ways, learn the caring.

I stand a college graduate that still yearns to give life, give God the old college try, desperate to know in which direction to concentrate my efforts.

After rejecting him, Bachelorette Ashley pleads with Angry Ben F. the Winemaker from Napa not to let it end this way. He responds, "good things don't end unless they end badly."

I know you're blown away by the new philosophical direction of reality television.

I see where he's coming from. But sometimes good things do just end. They end well. They end with lots of friends surrounding each other with lots of love and teachers extending best wishes and material reflective of the effort put into it, and brick sidewalks trekked one last time. The end isn't bad, it can just be hard, especially when trying to figure out how any of it will transfer to the new beginning.

It caught me off guard, how difficult it would be to transfer the God-reliance. Guess it shouldn't have, per the example of every single story of the Old Testament that each land somewhere in the cycle of apostasy.

Nothing says adulthood like puppet videos and Bachelorette insights, right?

What can I say? I'm a college graduate.