Final Things

These days fly by faster than I can hold on to. It seems everyone is graduating or getting married or engaged or having babies. Me no less than anyone else. Finals week of my senior year is only a day away. A week after that and two of my best friends, Ryan Martin and Kristen Powell are marrying each other in Cottonwood, Texas. Two weeks after that Phil and I are moving into our second house just down the street. A month and half after that the precious baby in my womb is due to arrive in this world.

School still looms in the future, as I still have one year left. (Going the five year plan) It seems nearly insane that I've made it this far. Summer of 2012 is looming ahead of us. Anxious, expectant and full of a lot of growth. The excitement of having friends to walk besides and live life with us this summer is an amazing blessing. I don't know where the Lord is going to take the three of us couples, but the fruit we are already seeing over the past few weeks speaks expectancy into the the things to come.

Its been a painful void of writing during this last season or last year really. I hardly ever write unless its an assignment for school. I can feel the weight of this bearing me down. There is much to be done...How in the world do I start. I feel it would take a year to catch up and that realization is overwhelming. I secretly want to do photography, but am afraid to invest the time and money for fear I would give up or lose interest. Yet, the desire to capture memories and life to illustrate my written words is very attractive and alluring.

In many ways these next few weeks are a tying up and completing of former things and moving on to the next stage in life. Goodbyes to graduating friends and hellos to those moving into our lives are a constant reminder of this reality. I feel like every week a separating between what was and what is becoming. I like it, most of the time. Sometimes I feel confused and lost. I am not exactly the one always moving, but it seems the world swirls around me with change. Yet I am changing too. Everything seems bigger than it used to be, in the best possible way. The world is full of choices and opportunity, of sweet friendships, both old and new that flow in and out of our lives.

It seems the one thing that remains is family. I am realizing this more and more. And find this discovery very fulfilling and comforting.

A normal day in the week

Well, it's that time of year again for a new look and feel. The cool air from our first autumn cold front of 2011 has me all inspired and giddy. Today is the second day of the second week of school. I love Tuesday/ Thursdays because I have no work or class until 9:30am. It is a beautiful change from the last three years of all 8:00ams. My living room windows are open, the sun is up, my kitten is purring and coffee is brewing in the kitchen. Hazelnut brew...mmmhhh...my favorite.

I'm looking forward to my Nonfiction class with Bill Carrol this morning. We are reading our first text "The Sacredness of Questioning Everything" by David Dark. It was quite a wild and strange read. I've never read anything by an agnostic before and he had my head quite spinning with all of his ambiguity. It prefaces itself for an exciting discussion in class today, which I am actually pumped about. That is what happens when you hit your senior year as an English major, you start waking up and actually want to talk in class.

After my morning class I have chapel, which is only 30 minutes, always a good time too see my community in Section C. Then work for an hour and half...and then Business and Professional writing with Haley at 3:00pm. See as all my homework is done for that class and the one this morning I feel ready to seize the day. Being prepared just makes life so much more relaxing, don't you think?

I might even get Phil to put the hammock up in the yard this evening so I can do my homework out there before the sun goes down. He's leading Fire in the Night with Ashley at 9:30pm (which I also need to be at) so hopefully he won't be to busy preparing for it.

Two more weeks and maybe, just the weather will be cool enough to wear my boots all day. I love pulling out all the fall clothing. Makes me want to eat apple pie and take pictures in the leaves.

Hold on.

A thousand little pictures, they flash, in between blinking lights, faded memories of sorrows and joys. It's like a heartbeat, pulsing under the flesh of a human body. Slow and steady. The rhythm of another world, the unseen life source behind the veil.It grips you and then releases. One minute your free and the next your are enslaved. The force of the wave you leave behind in your wake can cause the driest tree to bloom and yet leave a trail of causalities with the deepest wounds.

You would die if asked, for a taste, a glimpse, a simple kiss of the one you ached to know. And yet to know is surrounded with heartache, with loss and with thwarted desire. You bend to not break and break to be healed. It's not easy, when a gun is pointed at your head and the trigger decides your next breath, your next embrace and your next life.

You fingers grasp and yearn and the pictures keep dancing, reminding you of what you do not have and yet what you long for. You would scream if you had enough air to breathe and you would cry if indeed your tears would be enough.

But none of it is...so you keep searching.

...Lucy

We adopted a kitten this summer. Since I've been in college, these have been the only three years I've not had a pet. I've been begging my husband, since before we were even married to get a cat. On August 1, 2011 we did it.

Her name is Lucy.

Film

Its not hard to see why so many people find life in front of a TV so easy. It makes you forget real life for a while, with all its pain, struggle and heartache. Instead you watch other people's pain, struggle and heartache and then rejoice that it isn't you. I've found myself watching too many movies and TV shows this summer. So I keep asking myself. Why this fascination with a story? This addiction to drama? This obsession with the lives of other people, both their joys and their sorrows, their adventures and their losses?

What is the secret to a story as its plays itself out on the flat screen TV in your living room? (I personally don't own one, I just use my laptop) I wonder this question over and over again as we watch millions of people flood the theater's on opening nights; as we watch billions of dollars being poured into the film-making industry. I'm not against it, but neither can say that I am for it. You can't just say that those stories that flicker across your television screen are all entertainment and nothing else. If it was simply that I'm not sure that it would be such a big deal. No it's something much deeper, even as it numbs you to reality, it also awakens you to something you can't quite put your finger on and every time you the credits scroll you feel it drop away just out of reach and you are left with that burning desire to see the next sequel or the next episode, anything to feel it again.

And so it happens over and over again. More movies are filmed, by tickets bought and more shelves built for their showcase DVDS. Why?

Memories

I was in Hawaii less than a month ago. Sitting on a beach with a book in my hands, sun tanning my skin and sand creeping its way inside my bathing suit. I was staring out into rolling blue waves, watching my husband of only a few days riding the wakes with his surf board. Kauai's impressive mountain range pushed its way to the clouds behind me, where four-hundred foot waterfalls tumbled down to the island's valley floor.

I'm pretty sure every thing is several tones brighter in Hawaii. Also the rain is clearer and fruit is three times as big. When I took  my first step off the plane in Honolulu I swear the air tasted like sugar. Maybe not the most accurate description, but it was what I felt, plus the breeze blowing in from the ocean was like heaven.

People can say I was on my honeymoon and perhaps every thing was romanticized, but I'm pretty darn sure that was the way it was. In any case, now that I'm back in Texas, and the weather is sizzling hot and the air dry and your sweat tastes like vinegar salt I can't help remembering Hawaii. The only way of enjoying a good book here is in the cool, air conditioned atmosphere of your own home or sitting on your computer near an electrical outlet.

Like today I'm inside, with the curtains drawn and cool cup of sweet tea in my hands. A cool, deep, blue ocean of water would be real nice right now.

You can feeling the yearning.
You can taste.
Hear it.
Almost touch it.
It follows you around, on the hem of your jeans, hanging there silent and heavy. It pulls with uninhibited inconsideration at what you are doing, jerks at you with dogmatic precision and whispers with gentle caresses. It never leaves, but neither does stay close enough for you to hold and real enough for you see. It dances just out of reach, teasing, laughing and winking and then falls back in step just behind, dust in its wake and fire in its eyes.

If you look back it will slide to the left and if you look to the left it will slide to the right, but it always pushes you forward, pleading for a chance to show you it's dreams. One by one they flash in before your eyes, leaving you breathless and aching. And when it touches your belly with that finger of desire you flail and writhe, begging for mercy and but asking for more. You cover your ears, but your heart is unguarded, then you close your eyes, but your feet keep moving. There is no power to stop it on earth or in heaven.

And so you walk and then you run, but the yearning remains, holding your hands and kissing your feet. The strength of its will and the fury of its devotion sweep you off your feet and you fall panting in the dirt.

It really does not have a name, but the only one I can come up with today is this: Heaven is out there, reminding me I belong there and not here and it will never let up until I am home.