Can You Run Faster if You Have More Legs?

Earlier this evening I had a rather amusing encounter that I decided I simply must share with you.

I'm sitting on my bed trying to decide whether or not it's worth the effort to move every single box and object from the left side of my room by the window in order to unearth a rather large rather fat spider that scuttled its way in a few minutes earlier. It stopped, we had a stare-off, I grabbed the closest thing that could capture it, a mini Chinese tea cup, from my dresser, and the race was on. 

I jumped off my bed, lunging for the ominous monster, but he saw me coming. I desperately threw the cup in its general direction, but it simply bounced off the carpet as the furry alien shot around the corner of my bed, safe for a moment. I followed in hot pursuit, attempting one more time to capture it. This time the cup stayed firmly put, and I emptied out a large canning jar as backup (something I should have done much earlier!). For some stupid reason I decided to lift up the cup to see if my nemesis was underneath. If he had been, he would have flipped that cup up and over like a weightlifter in a category below its weight limit and I would have had to figure out some other clever way to capture it. 

Alas, like the magic game where you have to guess which cup the egg is under and you never get it right, the spider was nowhere to be found. I stared sadly at the empty patch of carpet. Then revenge took hold and I grabbed a super bright flashlight, started pulling things away as fast as I could, shining the light into every dark corner I could find, hoping to see evidence of scuttling legs and black beady eyes. To no avail. 

A while later, I heard my mom stumbling about out in the kitchen and decided to find out why she was still up. I found out my dear fat furry friend either has an identical twin (which I hope not!) or decided it was too bright in here and so he rushed out as fast as his 8 legs would carry him and skedaddled right into my mom's room!!! She was not amused, she also couldn't get something to smack him with fast enough, so she grabbed the vacuum cleaner. She thinks she got him, there's less stuff under her bed to hide behind. I hope so! At least now I can sleep in peace.

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

I watched them sitting there, side by side, quiet on the garden swing. Perhaps she saw a squirrel run up the tree and pointed it out to him. He couldn't quite hear what she said, so she repeated herself louder and close to his good ear. They swung some more. Then she said it was time to go and they got up. His legs were a bit wobbly; she was hunched over from an old muscle injury. They clung to each other and managed to stand in an upright position to begin the slow walk back home. It was less than a hundred steps to their little place but each of those steps took an eternity to traverse with their aging bodies. An eternity.

I thought about what it must have been like when they first met. Was she as loud then as she was now? Did she have that same fire inside of her and was it even more pronounced? Or was she a quiet demure young woman and only now did she feel comfortable to let her true spirit be shown? Did he gently care for her as he did today? Was he interesting to listen to, a learned man who was always ready to share so others could grow?

They lived in a completely different world back then. People met and then they got married. Oh I'm sure love was involved, to a degree. But they were much more practical. Could she cook and clean? Would he provide and was he a hard worker? Were their life goals compatible? They took a simple approach to life, they were choosing to marry because they were looking for a companion, someone to make the load easier to carry, and someone to share in the duties of life. Now, over 50 years later, they were still married.

The world we live in today has gone completely topsy-turvy. Marriage in its traditional sense is mocked. People marry then divorce days or even hours later only to marry again multiple times. We become so particular about the person meeting certain specifications that we end up single because we're unable to be content with quality spouses. Women have babies first, then get married, often not to the father of their child. Cohabitation is the norm.

As I watched the couple slowly tottering home, I thought about what it meant to be selflessly dedicated to someone else, committed for a lifetime, as one learned to love the person they said Yes to. They came from a generation who chose to value the blessings God had placed in their lives, grateful that they had each other, determined to be faithful to their companion. And as I watched them I realized, they had chosen for eternity.

A Little Girl Dancing

I paint my toenails. Purple, blue, tonight they are bright cotton candy pink. When I look down at my toes, they make me smile! You know how you have those days when things just aren't going the way you'd planned, you feel lonely, or sad, or frustrated? Where are you looking? That's right, you're looking down. You feel discouraged and don't have the desire to face people as you pass them so you study your feet. When I look down, I see my happy pink toenails and I don't feel quite as downhearted anymore. I'll admit, sometimes I even choose open-toed shoes just so I can look at my toes and be cheered up.

Now you can look at me solemnly, declaring my desire to paint my toes a sinful one, that only clear toenail polish is appropriate, blah blah blah. The other day a pint-sized little thing informed me in a very sure voice that God didn't want me to have pink toenails. I would have to disagree, though. See I've spent almost half my life trying to be sure I wasn't doing the wrong thing. I also spent that time feeling angry with myself because I knew I could never be perfect. I just knew I wasn't going to make it to heaven because I was still eating cheese on my burrito, listening to Steve Green and Boyz II Men, wearing jeans and tank tops, putting on eyeliner and mascara, and watching 7th Heaven.

The journey has been a rather rough one, which you may have picked up on some through various blog posts here and there. I shall not spend much time working through it tonight, however. One thing I have learned from my years of struggle is that I can never be perfect. That I need to stop trying and start surrendering to God Who covers me in Jesus' perfection. I've also learned that God wants me to be happy. And so I step out, hesitantly, trying to figure out how to be happy in this sad world. Sometimes I don't get it right and I have to backtrack. But when I study my friends who have chosen to embrace life and seek out joy along the way, I realize that is what I am looking for. So I paint my toenails cotton candy pink.

Another Late Night Post

I really should be sleeping, it's almost midnight and I seem to have made a habit of staying up rather too late this past week. Perhaps it's the heat, even with an a/c going almost non-stop it still takes a long time to cool down at night. Perhaps I'm seeking to avoid responsibility and the doing of tasks that are not interesting in the slightest to me, such as cleaning and tidying and studying. Perhaps my circadian rhythm is completely off and so even if I were to try to turn the lights off and enter dreamland closer to 10 pm, I would be unsuccessful. Or perhaps it's just because I can, therefore I do.

When I turned 16, my mom told me that I no longer had a set bedtime. I could now go to bed whenever I wanted and boy did I take advantage of that! I don't think I stayed up all night then, but I did decide that my new mission in life was to record Mission: Impossible (the old series) which came on around 11 pm or so at night, as my brother really enjoyed it. I would sit curled up in our family rocking chair, a blanket wrapped around me, tense with the suspense as they would attempt the impossible, succeeding every time. When it was over I couldn't go right to sleep so I would watch cheesy sitcoms like Golden Girls to try to laugh away the action-filled show I had just seen.

I grew up in countries where nightlife was where it all began, so it wasn't too much of a transition for me to stay up late at night watching, listening to Radio Delilah, or writing in my journal about the teenage angst that gripped my heart. However, a not-too-pleasant side effect of staying up so late meant that I wasn't up with the birds at 6 am, but rather grew accustomed to beginning my day closer to noon, or even afterwards if I was feeling particularly generous. It became an easy habit, one which I seem to fall into too often even today.

As I find myself facing a week that I know can be either productive or a completely waste of my time, I find myself wondering how to startle myself into a way of life that gives me a greater sense of achievement. I am a great list-maker and will often create lengthy scrolls that are about impossible to accomplish in a day. Then I'll feel discouraged and won't even try for the next week or two. I enjoy looking back at my day and realizing I did more than I had planned, but it's not so easy to do so when I find myself stumbling out of bed with just enough time to dress, grab a sandwich, and rush out the door to work.

Just because I can do something doesn't necessarily mean I should. Paul writes about it, in 1 Corinthians 10:23, where he says that just because something is lawful, or not going against the law, doesn't meant that it is helpful to do it. As the NIV says, not everything is beneficial or constructive. There is a lot in the Bible about self-control and self-discipline and fighting a good fight to earn an eternal reward. I think perhaps I will spend some time figuring out how to reset my priorities from "I can do this, therefore I shall," to "How can I please God in what I'm doing?" It requires purposeful effort but somehow I think it will be worth it.

Marching

Finished taking the GRE today. Been studying for it for ages, since July of last year, actually, on and off. Now that it's finally over, I can't believe I can move on to the next project and don't have to worry about x and y and z (pronounced "zee", how sad I have become). I got a good score, enough to make the 25% scholarship level where I plan on studying, but 4 points away from the 50% scholarship level. So me being me, instead of being excited that I can now save almost $4,000 I get upset that I couldn't save $8,000. I know I couldn't have done any better, though.

So this is it. Time to step out into the unknown of graduate school. I've already dipped my foot into the waters, but this time I have to jump in completely. This time I have to commit to completion. Envision my end goal: a piece of paper, no debt, a gown and hat. That's what I am looking forward to the most, actually. The graduation gown. I never got to wear one, thanks to homeschooling and conservative ridiculousness. In three years, though, that will change. Hopefully.

Now to go and place myself in this new reality.

Please Don't Go

So here I am, trying to deal with loss again. It's not as significant this time, as in, someone hasn't died so I still have the ability to connect. Yet in some ways it is more significant because these people are very close to me. I went through this a couple of years ago, and back then I don't think I felt as sad as I do this time. Perhaps it was because I was only processing one loss, instead of multiple losses. Or perhaps this time I have words to put to my emotions.

The one word that I realized with certainty I was feeling was "Grief." As I went about my day, seeing and remembering things that brought back a flood of good memories with the people who were no longer in my life, I realized I was grieving. I tried to understand why it was affecting me to such a strong extent, and while I cannot say exactly why, I think perhaps it ties back to the TCK (third-culture kid) experience.

TCKs grow up living in loss. They lose their culture, their country, their extended family, their immediate family, their favourite foods, their role models, their friends, their favourite places to go, their schools and their churches. A majority of their losses are set in the context of connection which defines their loss as emotional and social. It also means they must either learn to process those losses or live among them in a way that they can cope.

I'm not sure I learned to deal with loss appropriately. Every time I experienced a significant loss, I would go through a period of time when I was sure my world had ended. I felt like I had no anchors, I became angry with God for allowing me to be hurt, and then I learned to seal off my emotions and pretend I wasn't affected by it all.

This time around, though, I'm trying to figure out how to grieve the loss in a healthy way. They say the 5 stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I have the first four down pretty well; it's the acceptance that I struggle the most with. Perhaps because I struggle to understand why loss is a part of life and why God allows us to love so deeply and then we have to figure out how to handle the pain that mirrors its depth.

I am learning that emotions may reflect pieces of God's character. My one goal in life is to seek to understand Who God is and when little glimpses come through this haze of a world of sin between us, I stop in awe and amazement. I think God places love and laughter and joy and happiness in our hearts; I don't think He has anything to do with pain and sorrow and grief and fear. I am still trying to figure out anger because there are several passages in the Bible that talk about His wrath.

"Finding acceptance may be just having more good days than bad ones." www.grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/ I'm still working through the stages and it may take me a while to reach the point of acceptance of reality. Right now I just want to hold on to memories, because those were good days and I didn't realize they were about to end so abruptly. I wasn't ready, but then again, a TCK is never ready to face loss. Even as it defines their existence, they must learn to shape their reality around connecting and rebuilding through the grief. It is not an easy task.

Tonight I will claim the promise that God has given in Psalm 16:6. "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places, I have a goodly heritage." I will choose to believe that if I cannot see the places of peace here on this earth, that there is a place filled with goodness waiting for me in heaven. There are two reasons why I am determined to stay faithful. So I can see God and know that He is proud of me for never letting go of Him, and so that I can always be close to the ones who are so dear to me. That will be a day of no more loss, no more sorrow, no more grief. Only Joy.

Missing You

It's late, I'm tired, and I will have an early morning Sunday so I really shouldn't be writing. But it's been too long since I wrote, which is why I am writing! And I'm too lazy to get out my notebook and hunt out my favourite uniball pen which is the only one I like writing with when I journal. After all, when one is an English major, one has to insist on certain standards when it comes to crafting words on a page!

Got a chance to catch up with an old friend this evening which was really special. She popped up on Facebook, got my number, and gave me a call. When she said goodbye 40 minutes later, as she still had a load of laundry to do before sunset which happens to be 11 pm in Alaska, I hung up and returned to surfing Facebook, my favourite pastime to pass the time. One of the students from the program I work with had just posted some pictures from the last four months so I spent some time looking and commenting. And remembering.

Seems sanguines are rather emotional melancholy people as well, which is kind of strange. You'd think a sanguine choleric would just be a pushy happy person, but either we're masking or we can't sustain the high for so long because while we have our highs, we have our lows as well. Being emotional is part of the whole mix. I cry at the drop of a hat, literally, not because I want to but because it just happens.

So here I was, looking at pictures, chatting with old friends, and starting to feel melancholy. I am so grateful for the friends that God has gifted me with, but I am so sad that none of them seem to stick around for more than a few years, if I'm lucky. I'm blessed to be able to travel to visit them when I can, or to have them return for homecomings and things, but I miss having them in my life!

Perhaps I feel stronger about it because I am far from cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. We grew up seeing them once every 2 years on average, though that average dropped drastically once we arrived in the US. Kind of ironic, really. So as we migrated as missionary nomads from country to continent, I learned to create family with the people around us. I had more aunts and uncles than anyone else back home, and to this day I still refer to them as Aunty or Uncle so-and-so.

Coming to the US I was once again blessed with so many international friends who easily fit into my heart. Yet as with my adopted family, their stay was not long. I learned at an early age to say goodbye without crying, as the tears slid down on the inside, but even today, at age 32 it is not easy to carry through. Perhaps, though, one day we will all be together again. Till then, I must learn how to keep loving without breaking.