On Growing Up, Car Accidents, and Bombing US History

Pictures showed up on Facebook today from my old church's Valentine's Day Banquet (two years after the one ranted about in this post) and, well, things change, don't they?
Time seems like it's flying so fast. School has been a thing and the little Mission hasn't for almost six weeks. Funny, that feels like equal parts five minutes and forever.
Life? Life is good. Life is living with my parents and getting to know them again and eating Mom's cooking and hanging out with my brothers and sister and looking for a proper job. Life is throwing myself into my studies and working hard and trying to keep up. Life is being around the little Mission, still being a part of it, but not being sucked down deeper into the vortex that was eating me alive.
But school is hard. School is harder than I gave myself permission to consider it being. The schedule's a killer, motivation is hard when I'm going it alone over the internet, and half my professors don't care if we pass or fail. I love it...but it's hard. Some things are, predictably, better than others. English has been a joy. I love the professor and have, conveniently, made a good impression on her. Government is surprisingly okay, I've been keeping up well, maintaining a good score, understanding the concepts, even to an extent enjoying myself. Another good professor. Sociology is, well, okay. The course is well structured, and I'm not having trouble with it, per se, but the raving humanism is a bit hard to stomach sometimes, as are the obvious liberal agendas and the teaching of evolutionism as cold hard fact instead of theory. But this is nothing new, and I will be okay. History, though? History sucks. The professor couldn't care less about the class, has barely communicated since day one, lets the online interactive textbook do the work for him, and only sets a deadline every two months. Is anybody going to actually do that work? No. Am I? Well, yeah. But between the poorly structured class and my own lack of care, the first couple quizzes aren't going so well. I'm going to have to make some adjustments to my approach.
Quitting my old life cold turkey is hard too. Trading the dizzying, yet constant, concentric orbits that were my life there for sedentary-ish and time to think kinda sucks sometimes. And, as hard as things got there near the end, I miss my friends. I miss my girls. Going from social overload to social...isolation, isn't easy. Some days most of the words out of my mouth are "Such-and-such said..." and here's the hook: I think my family's heard all my stories before. Already.
Going back to the mission is even harder. I've kept my afterschool program and everything that goes with it, and I still try to go to the Sunday night staff worship service when I can; but there's this sneaking, sinking, entirely unfounded feeling of being out of place. Not belonging. Being superfluous. Sometimes, I convince myself I'm being silly and it goes away. Sometimes it doesn't.
And, the whole thing'd be a heck of a log simpler if it hadn't been for the car accident last Friday night. Just a fender bender, hit-and-run, and I'm okay, but it's...complicated. See, Friday was youth gym night. I took one of my girls from the place I do Bible study. Borrowed a mission vehicle, picked her up, took her to the gym. Everything was awesome. Hung out with old friends, talked with the boy for probably longer than I should've, Bible study, took the girl home, perfect. Except that another Bible study leader needed help getting her kids home, van broke down and her car was over-loaded. So I drove back to the gym, picked up half of her kids and followed her out. Everything was still fine, we took the kids to McDonalds, then to their apartments, and the night was over. Just had to get back to the mission and drop off the vehicle. But pulling out of the parking lot to follow the other person back, a big white Ford pickup came flying around the corner, removed the front bumper of the vehicle I was driving, and conveniently deposited it in pieces strewn across the roadway.
Guys? If I had pulled out even a little further, this girl wouldn't be talking to you today.
And the more I try to move past this, the harder it seems to get. It wasn't my fault. The fact that he didn't stop says it wasn't my fault. All of the lovely people who stopped to make sure I was okay, who picked up the pieces of the vehicle, who tried to chase him down to get a license plate number, told me it wasn't my fault. But what does it still feel like? My fault.
I haven't been back to the mission since. I feel this ridiculous notion that I don't want to show my face. Scared somebody will say something. Embarrassed that I'm that chick, the one that wrecked a company vehicle her very first time. What does it mean for next month? I promised the little girl I'd take her to the next gym night, but I don't know if they'll let me. I don't know if I can. Except for driving back to the mission after all was said and done and driving myself home that night, I haven't been behind the wheel of a car since then, and I'm not looking forward to it. I've got this knot of anxiety in my stomach that explodes every time I think about it.
Guys? I'm gonna be twenty in a couple of weeks. Twenty, well, it doesn't have the word teen in it, does it? First time in a decade that's happened. And I don't know what to think. I mean, I've moved 1500 miles away from my family by myself, lived alone for a year, held a (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually devouring) job down for a year, got my drivers license, opened a bank account, and started college. And yet, here I am, living in with my parents, doing school from home (not, though, home-schooling, really!), without a job, and scared to death of driving. The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. And, in a lot of ways, I feel like I've got even more question marks about the theoretical concept that is the rest of my time on planet earth than I did in high school.
God?

When Everything Hurts

They tell you that things that are worth doing are hard. But how can something that is supposed to happen feel this much like getting torn limb from limb, shaken apart on an atomic level? It all leaves me with this general sense of wanting to run away, leave everything behind me, and not look back. Be the bird I'm getting tattooed on my wrist after Christmas or the butterfly whose wing I'm buying myself a necklace of (both to remind me that when people hurt me, I have the ability and the right and the responsibility to fly away). And then I'm reminded, that that was what I was doing when I came here. I was running away from complicated and into the great blue yonder...and then life happened. I became a person, and the people around me wouldn't submit to being the scenery in my epic adventure, but stubbornly insisted on being people themselves. And anywhere people are people together, life happens and things get complicated.
I'm hurting more than I can say right now. Maybe that's selfish, maybe life's not supposed to be about me, and maybe that's my whole problem, but knowing those things doesn't make the hurting go away. One boss is treating me like I'm already gone, the other like I'm a wasted investment. My coworkers are talking about each other behind their backs, which only leaves me to wonder what they say when I walk out of the room.
And then I get through women's Bible study and ask the friend for a ride home, which turns (halfway against my will) into grabbing dinner along the way and communal griping about our days and our jobs and it's a rough environment. A playfully abusive one. It isn't healing or comfort. It isn't recharging. It's draining. And then I get home after my family has gone to bed and it's too quiet, which is almost easier than getting home when everybody's still up and bustling and I can't figure out to save my life where I fit in with them anymore. And when I feel like one tightly compacted ball of pain and hurting, loosely contained by too-thin, easily-bruised skin, it's hard to enter into their conversations and their playing and their tv-watching; but when they ask what's wrong, I can't communicate, I can only complain, and so they don't understand. All Mom can say is "at least it's almost over." And I don't know how to make her understand that that's half of the problem, even if it's 100% of the solution. Quitting this job that has been my life, my waking and my sleeping and my eating and my breathing for three-hundred and twelve days (7,488 hours, 449,280 minutes, 26,956,800 seconds) is like quitting a drug. Is it what's best for me? Yes. Is it God's will for my life? I think so. Is it easy or walking on rainbows or fluffy bunnies? Um, no. It feels like lying and betrayal and cowardice and losing a vital organ and losing everything I've worked for. It feels like losing friends I love and kids I love and work I've let become a part of me and a world I've fought tooth and nail to become an integral part of and someone I legitimately care about, faults included. It feels like everything is upside-down-inside-out-backwards and I can't get my bearings.
I'm already gone from the place I have belonged for a year, even though I haven't gone anywhere yet. I don't feel like I belong yet or anymore in the place I have always been and have always been able to return to, until now. Doing the math, that adds up to a whopping zero places where I feel at home right now, and that's starting to really take its toll on me.

On Choosing OR How To Breathe

Did you ever have that moment when your heart starts beating again? When you find that the self you had thought was shrinking away to nothing was really there all along, waiting for you to remember it.

When the person who probably loves you the most of anyone alive tells you you're in danger of disappearing, you listen. You sit up and fly starlight. You cry, because you realize, like knife points, the truth of every word. And you change.

And when the person you thought was to blame tells you they're on your side, tells you you have to do what's right for you without worrying about anyone else, tells you they could tell you weren't breathing, well, that helps too.

When I came here, I was running scared. Since halfway through high school, the thought of there being an ever after to this girls story seemed inconceivable. I don't know why, or if that's my fault, or what it says about my mental health, but it's true. So when I got here, it felt like clambering onto some sort of tenuous reality. I needed it. For a moment, it kept me sane. But it it isn't the only reality. More of a pocket universe on the larger bubble of the rest of my time on planet earth. 

Good things have happened here. God has used me for good here. I've met people who will never not be a part of me. I've learned things about myself: like the reason that I will love teaching-I love meeting new kids, like I don't mind shouldering and consuming and swallowing more than my fair share of the world's bitterness and ugliness and negativity-as long as I have ample time and opportunity to release it and enough tying me down that I can return to myself after it's all over. It's a useful human being to have around-one who doesn't have to have the upper hand. And beyond that-I'm braver now, just in the silly things. In the making phone calls and  the answering phone calls and the talking to people and the saying hello in the grocery store and the running into acquaintances in Starbucks and the ordering what I actually want for dinner. My brother was saying just the other day, 'You're so good at that. Talking to people, looking like you know what you're doing.' That's something I used to be incapable of, and now I'm not anymore. I'm less the scared child, more the self-assured adult. I'm braver.

But there's more to it than that. I needed the time to become brave enough to choose the rest of my life, to choose the person I want to be, the person I'm supposed to be. I had to find the courage to decide, for myself, to go after my existence with everything I have. I needed  to find the place inside myself that wants to be me badly enough to keep trying it. And when you choose that, when you make that decision, the decision to love yourself and keep trying, you're heart beats again and your lungs fill with air and art happens again because "art is what happens when you dare to be who you really are."

Today? I chose. I choose.

("Wrote 'love' on arm. Saved self.")

And maybe it takes time and maybe changes don't happen tomorrow, and maybe the struggle isn't over yet because there's going to be hard conversations and some people won't understand (but hopefully the ones who matter will and the ones who won't don't matter) and maybe you never wander far from a mission you believe in with your whole self, and maybe you can't live in this town and not participate in what God is doing through it, and maybe you come back sometimes, and maybe the only somebody who could tie you here makes up his mind and reaches for your hand and then some things (but definitely not all the things) are subject to change (or maybe he doesn't and life goes on and maybe you don't really care that much anyway). And maybe there are other changes that will be hard, maybe living at home again, even as much as you ache for it, won't be without challenges. And maybe you're going to have to look for a real job, and maybe having a drivers license isn't much good without a car, and maybe your cell phone is on a company plan, and maybe life is complicated.

But everything is going to be alright.

On People Younger Than Myself Starting To Encounter the World the Way It Is

Please, world, just be perfect and safe and clean and bright and without ugliness or dirtiness or things that sit on consciences like sugar and caffeine on a sleepless, empty stomach, for my little siblings. For the sake of my brothers and sister, who I'd like to be able to run barefoot in all places without being afraid of stepping on sharp things that will hurt them and make them bleed or germy things that will make them sick or dirty things that will make them feel dirty. Who I'd like to be able to feel always perfect and safe and clean and bright and without ugliness or dirtiness or heavy, sick, unsettled consciences.

The world doesn't work like that, does it? There are germs and sharp things and dirty things, there have always been germs and sharp things and dirty things, and there will always be germs and sharp things and dirty things. So God? If You won't take away the germs, give them, give us, give us all stronger immune systems, stronger defenses. Protect soles and souls like callouses, but keep them soft as infants'. Make us always brave and bright and innocent, even in the face of the scary and the dark and the dirty and the ugly. Don't ever let us be afraid of the ugliness, or of ourselves. Do not let the world weigh too heavy with us. Let us wear Your forgiveness and Your holiness like armor, like skin, like favorite clothes that make us feel strong. But more than anything, God? Stay with us. In Your strength and Your gentleness, like the sunshine, never let us feel alone. Teach us to guard our hearts and minds, and to live in this world without being of it. Let us pass through mud and mire and emerge unsullied. 

"Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching." Hebrews 10:19-25

Hallowe'en

I stepped out my door about five minutes ago, after about two day straight of hiding from Sandy, and realized that the seasons had changed while I'd been inside. Leaves were whipping across the street in a chilly breeze. It's.....fall! One does have to be careful about blinking, doesn't one?
And it's not only Fall, It's Halloween. So this is what started running through my brain:

~ HALLOWEEN ~
By Harry Behn

Tonight is the night
When dead leaves fly
Like witches on switches
Across the sky,
When elf and sprite
Flit through the night
On a moony sheen.

Tonight is the night
When leaves make a sound
Like a gnome in his home
Under the ground,
When spooks and trolls
Creep out of holes 
Mossy and green.

Tonight is the night
When pumpkins stare
Through sheaves and leaves
Everywhere,
When ghouls and ghost 
And goblin host
Dance round their queen.
It's Halloween.

Memorized that one ages ago, but had forgotten most of it. I had to look it up, and I'd completely forgotten the poet's name. 

Also, the subject of ghouls and ghost and goblin host, go and download Neil Gaiman's super-creepy (and also free) audiobook 'Click-Clack the Rattlebag' before it's too late. Today's your last day. It's magnificent.

There'll probably be a post following this one later, another Halloween post, about the adventure of taking Riley trick-or-treating and hunting for Whovians in our sleepy little neighborhood, but, for the moment, Happy Halloween!

Heya from the arctic circle...or maybe that's just me. It certainly feels like it. We're under, eee, I don't know, ten inches of snow? Maybe a foot. Two years in a row we've had major snowfall, and, according to my grandmother, only the second time in thirty-nine years there's been snow on Christmas day. Guess it's one for the books.
Last Thursday was a blog-worthy event, I think. It was the Christmas gathering at Grandma's house/here at home (one and the same, remember?) with Mom's side of the family. I could probably come up with something snarky and clever there, probably a play on the lyrics to that old song about "Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go..." but I'm not really in the mood.
Anyway, Thursday, food was prepared (including my macaroni bites, but more on that later), then around six, my aunt and uncle, and my cousins Nikki and Dawn, showed up for presents and dinner. Pretty standard family Christmas goings-on.
But there was a twist. See, my grandmother has an . . . odd sense of humor. She got each of the six of us grandkids a pacifier. Like, rubber-and-plastic, babies-suck-on-them, pacifier. Weird thing the first.
We were each also given fire-engine red tube socks with jingle-bells and ribbons pinned to the toes. Weird thing the second.
We were then, thanks to a note in each of our gifts, lead on a chase after a final gift to share. Brown glass bottles of root beer, hidden in the trunk of her sedan. Weird thing the third, and, I suppose, the final.
So, somewhere, there's a picture in a camera of me, my three little siblings, and two little cousins sitting on the ground with our knees up to our chins, the better to show off our socks, with pacifiers in our mouths, and holding suspicious-looking brown glass bottles. I love my family.
I asked my aunt, who took the picture, to post it on Facebook so that I could get it, and my (eleven-year-old) cousin Nikki automatically said, "NO! I have friends on Facebook."
My (also eleven-year-old) brother, wasn't even still in the room. We were all eating his dust, and the socks and the pacifier lying on the ground.
So to my cousin, I said, "You'd be so much cooler if you just rocked the uncool-ness."
To which her mother replied, "Listen to your cousin!!"
And it occurred to me. I didn't used to be like that. I was the one shaking in my boots because I was petrified of doing anything embarrassing. I asked my mom when that had happened. When I had become okay with being myself. She didn't remember either. But, I guess it happened. :) Good to know.
Friday was, obviously, Christmas eve. My stomach tied itself up in knots, and refused to come untied. Solely because Friday night was the Christmas eve service, which meant our Christmas dance. Oh, was I nervous. Less about the three-minute dance itself, and more because of everything I had to remember and accomplish and such beforehand.
It went off without a hitch, though. Well, that's not entirely true. We couldn't find the belts, so the other girls wound up in pieces of curtain leftover from the live nativity, we didn't realize until the last minute that they would need slips, so we had to call someone and have them bring them, and we never did get the stage rearranged like we needed to, so nobody could see me from the neck down, but as far as stuff that really matters, it was perfect.
Saturday was, even more obviously, Christmas day. Typical Christmas morning, plus Grandma, Grandpa, and my Grandpa's sister, who was staying with us. So, we felt kind of . . . on display, but it was really okay. Aaaand my mommy got me my favoritest movie everrrrs. Whispers of the Heart, I've talked about it before. So, now Netflix can have their copy back.
And she got me knitting needles. For years, she and Daddy have been bugging me to learn how, and I've always told them that if somebody bought me some needles and a book, I'd learn. So she finally broke down and bought me a pair of knitting needles. Learning has been a bit harder than anticipated, but I'll get it, eventually.
Saturday night, we went to Nana's house for Christmas there. That part's always among my favorites. Somehow, it just doesn't feel like Christmas until we've celebrated it with my Dad's side of the family. Things always seem to, I don't know, matter more there. Like, before we opened presents, we all shared one thing that had been a blessing to us this Christmas. And it was all really serious, Like the families you read about in books and email forwards. But maybe that sounds a little dramatic. I'm not sure what I'm trying to describe here, but all I know is, I love my family.
Christmas time with Dad's family always makes it that much easier to remember that there's a part missing. Holidays are always the time we miss his sister (my Aunt Becky) and her family the most. They were just home last summer, but it still feels like it's been an eternity. Papaw got her and my cousin Cara on Skype later in the evening, but that's just not the same. It's like, "I know in my head that I'm talking to you, but it still feels suspiciously like talking to a computer screen." Which, besides making me feel slightly schizophrenic, makes it awkward.
Since Christmas, life has been kick back, chill out, watch movies, work on my knitting, and so on. I adore Christmas vacation.
This afternoon, we're set to go see Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Being a HuGe fan of the book, I'm a little wary. I'll let you know.
Ttfn!! :)