I Need Words As Wide As Sky

I don't really care to know how idiotic I looked jumping on the trampoline all by myself this morning at precisely 7 a.m.

I just hope to remember for a while the joy that led to the jumping.

I just pulled an all-nighter to finish my senior thesis. I might not ever go to sleep because I keep looking around, marveling that I've made it to this moment after pushing for so long and it's quiet. Such peace after such toil. 

It isn't all still. The puppies bustle and chase. They're so irreverent.

The final thesis is finished. I should revise it one last time. I'm waiting for my professor to answer an e-mail, though, so I have time to kill... to live?

There's something in me looking for the next assignment. But this time there isn't one. It is a pretty surreal place to be. And I'm loving the change of pace, not just rushing to the next task.

Which of course has me thinking.

I want to live like a woman who knows she isn't assured the next assignment. Not just an academic assignment. I'm talking about the way a woman is forced to live in the face of a terminal diagnosis. Those women ill concerned with things like schedules to make or appearances to keep. The still ones. The kind clinging to God instead of chasing life. Because sparrows don't grocery shop and flowers don't concern themselves with fashion trends. Because as life begins to evade you, I suppose you start seeing it for the wind, the vapor that it truly is.

I know that sounds depressing. But I don't want the type of moment I'm experiencing academically to shock me when it comes to my life at stake. Our "assignments" are limited. That abstract idea somehow manages to catch people off guard when it crosses the fine line into present personal reality.

You know what I feel like should catch me off guard? The sunrise. It's beautiful and miraculous. But I miss it. I don't let it catch my attention or stir my awe.

I don't have to wait for a diagnosis to walk out the front door with a blanket and humility enough to know that I don't deserve this day. And yet grace and beauty surround me. 

Yes, in the sunrise. In the jumping. In the game of puppy chase. But those, yes even sunrise, are circumstance. And I am not forever entitled to sit as audience to them. They point to something else. Something more.

There is something better than expanse filling with all the light of day from seemingly nowhere?

He came into the world and brought the more.

Something more than law. Something more than routine. Something more than sunlit sky. He brought the life. And took the death.

So the dying lost the victory. And the life gained abundance.

But maybe abundant life doesn't mean more sunsets. Maybe it means contentment with this one. Maybe abundance doesn't mean increasing the wealth as so much it means sharing it. Maybe it doesn't mean chasing a future of dreams, but rather living a present of promises.

The sun didn't rise this morning to tell me God will be faithful tomorrow.

Jesus didn't come to Earth to tell me God will just fulfill his promises in the future.

His coming was the fulfillment. Today's sun was for today.

And tomorrow's will be for tomorrow.

I was reading a part of Acts yesterday that got me to thinking this morning. Saul's walking along the road at Damascus when the bright light flashes and he's blinded. He falls to the ground (because I'm beginning to figure that's just always going to be the posture of the person poised to hear from God) and then asks, "who are you, Lord?"

Paul's conversion moment was more than a sunrise-- this much I can reason. But I found myself in a similar position this morning. I see the light coming up and I know who's doing it and I believe he's got a plan and I don't question his existence or even his relevance.

But I want to know who He is. "I know it's you Lord, but who are you?" And how do I become more like that?

Joshua, ready for battle, asks the commander of the LORDs army his plan of action. He's all ready, or so he thinks, to go all in. But the commander said to him-- as the Lord spoke to Moses in the years prior-- "take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy."

So Joshua did.

There is much ahead for Joshua to do. But at that moment, showing reverence to present holy was more important than anticipating accomplishment. Or accolades.

As graduation looms ever nearer, I'm so thankful for this moment. And at Easter, most thankful for the present holy.

I need words

As wide as sky

I need language wide as

This longing inside

And I need a voice

Bigger than mine

And I need a song to sing you

That I've yet to find

Never Been

more proud to be a student at UMW

than when I put this kid

in this onesie.

And it's providing the motivation I need

to finish this thesis well

today, tonight, and in the morning.

(this is his "Auntie, I'm stressed out for you" face, I'm sure.)

(even though I'm not really that stressed-- looking forward to hunkering down in MaisonYate and doing this thing up right!)

Not Every Friend

It's 2 a.m. and I should go to bed.

Two reasons.

A. Because I have to do the final revisions of this baby tomorrow:

B. I'll have to be up early to tame the wild beast that is my hair after this fun-filled day.

But first

I just have to say

that it's not

every friend

who will go

to Arlington Cemetery

and the Marine Corps. Memorial

with you

on her weekend off

(in the rain)

because you're

a nerd

and tell her that

you'd like to

pay your respects

with your Saturday off.

Luckily for me,

Ashley isn't every friend.

And she didn't just bare the rain,

She jumped in the puddles.

Hallelujah and Amen.

False Start

In the days before I absolutely have to start working on an assignment I tend to drive myself crazy with guilt for not getting a head start.

I'm not a proud procrastinator. I'm an extremely anxious one.

So I don't do things like write a blog post about all that's spinning in my head or go out and do fun things with friends in these final days I have with them because I think I should be doing my work.

Some days (like Friday) I even skip class because assignments feel so immanent.

But the stupid thing is that in all of the fretting, the stomach pit moments when I think "hey, I have a lot coming up," the hours I spend in my apartment because I should start doing the work, I don't actually start.

So then the guilt is not really about the fact that I'm not doing my work, it's over the opportunity cost--what I could be doing with the energy and the time I spend on selfish anxiety.

And then I get to the moment that I really do have to start doing my work (now) and my thoughts feel jumbled and even though I know they'll make for a terribly uninteresting, uncreative blog post I write the words anyway, because it just helps to get the junk out. The nasty, real junk of admitting that sometimes I don't do life well.

Which, for some reason, surprises me just about every single time.

Well, it doesn't surprise God. And He made a plan for it long before I entered the scene so that I don't have to sit and wallow in my human-ness and terrible habit of mismanagement as if I was ever my own source of hope and fulfillment.

And then, when I don't have my own words to adequately express the thoughts my studies have set spinning in this feeble mind, I kill time reading other people's words and sometimes they have just the right ones.

Like Candice over at Sufficient Understanding, for instance.

She writes,

"why I didn't get any participation points today

To American Studies:

I don't know how to end poverty, racism, institutional discrimination, hunger, educational inequalities, the exploitation of the poor by corporations, or any other social injustice. I've read these books, and thought deeply about them, and I am in no way blind to these issues you want me to not only see but to solve. I don't have a sweeping solution, not because I haven't thought about what one might be, but because I already know what the ultimate solution is, and I have a hard time coming up with anything past Him.

I know that corporations will not solve the problem, that capitalism is at its core based on selfish interests, that America is really a place of great and lofty ideals trampled by the reality of inequality, exploitation, greed, and most of all lack of a solution. This is human nature. I know this because I am human and I see it in myself every day.

My professor today taught that "evangelical, Protestant Christianity" propagates the notion that wealth indicates favor with God, that the poor are being punished for laziness or some other sin. For this, I am sorry. That followers of Jesus could ever be associated with a belief so deeply opposite of everything Jesus taught is appalling and I am heartbroken and embarrassed at the thought. We who have the only solution used it instead to further power the negative cycle, and for that I know that we will be held accountable.

But please do not assume that because I pessimistically cannot see government solving these issues that I am resigned to these realities, that I don't care, that I am blinded because I am white and middle-class and have never been poor, or that because I place my hope outside of this world I have given up on the one in which I currently live. I understand that personal responsibility goes both ways, and though I do not exempt the poor from it I place the heaviest burden on myself. To passively pay slightly higher taxes and claim the act as having sprung from the generosity of my heart is not the same as freely choosing to give, both in numbers and in intentions.

But most of all, I know that for all the solutions I lack, my God lacks nothing, even answers. I can't see a solution the same way I so often can't see past the limitations of human nature. I wrongly view it as invincible in light of problems like these and cannot imagine a way out of so strong a reality as that of human selfishness. In doing so, I deny God's power. Not only is human nature not the dominant reality in my life, but it is one which has already been so thoroughly, beautifully defeated. My God not only is capable of envisioning a solution but has already provided One.

So I will keep on going in American Studies, and keep uncovering more depressing truths and delving into complicated problems only to find that there's no clean solution to be had. I will think, and overthink, and work myself into a frustrated state trying to understand how everything got to be this way, and more frustratingly why I can't understand it, and why I can't think of anything to do about it. But I will not be tripped up by it, nor will I fall into the trap of human band-aid solutions, but try instead to revel in the joy that God does not leave us in our confused state. He is not unaware nor uninterested.

Where my analysis and reason stops, there enters God's grace."

Praise the Lord for people who say what sometimes you just can't.

Thank God for Candice.

(who hopefully doesn't sue me because I definitely didn't ask if I could gank her post like I just did).

(one day I think I should share the excellent, beyond brilliant essay she wrote for me about play-doh).

("So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." -Psalm 90:12)

(apparently I'm just getting worse at parenthetical splintering)

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

We've been commemorating the Freedom Rides around these parts lately.

Everywhere signs beg the question, "could you" "would you" or "will you" get on the bus? They are big questions that seem like some throw away ad campaign-- at best catchy, at worst cheesy. Few care to understand the question in its depth and allow it to make a difference in how they view the history of the Civil Rights Movement or the future of their own engagement of an issue that merits involvement.

Either unfortunately or fortunately (I haven't decided), as a member of the Freedom Rides seminar, I do have to give an answer considering the breadth and depth with which the question was posed. Would I get on the bus today and why?

Well, I'm working on that.

In the meantime, as the world over (ha!) grows in excitement for the premiere of the Kennedy miniseries, I've been meandering through the website's links to Kennedy images. It's image searching that feels slightly more legitimate than usual seeing as how Jon Cassar is asking me to do it and it's not just something I one day decided would be fun to do with some down time. (though the nerdiness implied with the latter never kept me from my fascination before). (This fascination is apparently not a secret since Robyn Modly texted me earlier to ask if Jackie was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, fully expecting me to divulge the details such as the fact that she and John are buried next to their stillborn baby girl, rumored to be named Arabella, and baby Patrick. I did not disappoint).

Thinking about if I would "get on the bus" today has me thinking about if I would've gotten on the bus in 1961. I can't say for certain that I would not have. But I also can't emphatically say I would have.

What I can say with great certainty as I look through these Kennedy images is that there are some magazines I definitely would've had back in the day. I like to think Mom would've surprised me with them as a "happy" the same way she does with People magazines today. Although for $7 a year I could've just had my own subscription.

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Yeah, I'd have totally bought into the Kennedy mystique.

And yet I spent the week focused on the Freedom Rides and fervently believing in their effort.

The Kennedy's had a complicated relationship with the Civil Rights Movement in general--specifically with James Farmer-- but I cannot discredit the effect of their celebrity on America.

It would be dishonest to consider the sixties without the Kennedys. It would also be dishonest to consider the sixties outside of the impact of events rarely remembered by the magazines.

Somewhere there is a balance. And I am so very thankful for a place where I am actively encouraged to find it.