Roots

When you're a freshman at a big school like Ohio State (or any college for that matter), people tend to ask you a few basic questions:

1. What's your major? (Which will almost definitely change by the time you graduate.)

2. Where are you living? (If they are upperclassmen and/or have older siblings at the school, they will almost certainly have an opinion about where you live.)

3. Where are you from? (The answer to this question will immediately make you interesting or realize common friends.)

My answers to the first two questions were always somewhat basic. I'm thinking of majoring in Political Science. I live in Nosker House on North Campus since I'm in the scholars program (humble brag).

The third question was where I always got tripped up. So I varied it.

"I'm from a small town in Virginia."
"I'm not really from anywhere... my dad was in the military."
"I was born in Hawaii, but I don't really claim a hometown."
"Where do I look like I'm from?"
"Here. Columbus. I've just been gone for a while."

I didn't have a good answer for anyone who asked where I'm from. My dad was in the Army, so we moved around every two or three years until we moved to Virginia in 7th grade. I spent the most time there, but it didn't feel like any more of a "hometown" than did Ft. Kobe, Panama or Ft. Riley, Kansas.

My family was a troupe of wanderers. And I was okay with that. In truth, the most accurate thing I could have said when people asked me where I'm from would have been, "I'm at home at the kitchen counter watching my mom make dinner with the hum of my dad watching football in the background."

Although some of that is still true. I love watching my mom make dinner. I love watching the latest Netflix movie with my parents on the couch with my feet stretched across them. I love following my mom around the house and annoying her by "being bored" while she cleans and does laundry. That will always be my home.

But something strange has happened in the past year. When I was a freshman in college, I was afraid of putting roots anywhere, lest it be an angle for people to judge me. It was better if I was a wanderer and I was convinced that I could not be a wanderer with roots.

"Wickedness never brings stability, but the godly have deep roots." -Proverbs 12:3 

As I started my long process of leaving Ohio in my rearview mirror about three weeks ago, I got to thinking about roots and wings. Was it possible for me to have both? And could I have roots in more than one place? I don't think I would be satisfied if I was anchored to one place my whole life.

I think God has a funny way of filling us in on exactly what we need to know at exactly the right moments. (Omnipotence, maybe?) But as I was saying goodbye on the night before my departure, I knew full well that I could have roots and wings. God had given me beautiful people to help shape me, challenge me, and love me in Ohio. He had done the same thing in Virginia (and apparently they weren't done!) and I have a feeling there will be amazing people waiting for me in South Carolina when I arrive at the end of July.

I want to be able to put down roots in different places. It's okay to. No, I think it is best to. Because no matter where you go, you'll always feel at home. You'll always be establishing new roots while expanding your wings.

Home isn't four walls and a door. It's not a sticker on a map or a destination on a GPS. Home is where you feel loved. Where you feel welcome. Where you want to come back to. Where you can cry and laugh and celebrate. Home is not a place, but a people and a community.

And no matter where I go, as long as I can talk to Jesus, I know I'm home.

What Matters

Sometimes God likes to hit you with everything at once. 

I wrote this blog post about three days ago, before I had internet with which to post it: 

I don’t know quite what I was expecting when I packed my bags (tightly) into my little red car and started on my way down to Richmond, Virginia.

But it wasn’t this. 

I’m living in a friend’s house near Cary Street for the summer while he is in graduate school in New Mexico. I adore the house. It’s in a cute neighborhood with lots of old skinny front then back for days types of houses. It’s old. It has character. 

Unfortunately, one of those characters is a toilet that doesn’t work. Another one of those characters was a shower head that didn’t work. Yet another was a shower that has no hot water, a tub that won’t drain, a padlock with no key to be found, a really creepy basement area, dogs that poop in the yard that isn’t theirs, overgrown bushes, halfway done renovations, and no curtains on the bedroom windows. 

Oh, and my allergies are making me look like I’m addicted to drugs. 

Also, I lost my credit card. 

I don’t know what I was expecting when I came to Virginia, but when things really started to get frustrating, I did what any twenty-one year old chick would do- I texted my girlfriend and requested some sparkling wine and good company. 

Although that helped a lot, I was still conflicted with a feeling of loss. Something was missing. I was bored. Or incomplete. 

Then I realized that I hadn’t prayed all day. It’s amazing how we can forget what is most important in our lives when the less important things start to take priority. 

Sorry, God, I didn’t mean to neglect you. Thank you for being here for me even when I turn my back on you.

And then I read it again today. 

Today, after I have been blessed too mightily with a full scholarship to seminary. 

Today, after I was able to run over four miles on my healthy legs. 

Today, when I was able to feed myself healthy food (and a lot of it if I wanted).

Today, when I am lying here in bed watching Netflix on my laptop. 

And I feel sick to my stomach. I can't believe I tried to take "trials" like dogs pooping in my yard and turn that into some sort of sermon. Yeah, okay, people deal with that stuff. And it sucks. But people also deal with things you wouldn't consider sarcastically to be "first world problems."

Famine. Poverty. Sexual abuse. Slavery. Abandonment. 

People being thoughtlessly slaughtered in Boston. A war in Israel. Soldiers dying around the world. 

Those things matter. It makes me sick to think I could look at my own life and want pity. 

I do this more times a day than I would like to admit. I commented to my dad tonight about how I wish I had enough money to go to all the swanky restaurants in my new town. While men and women around the world are saying, "I wish I had enough money to feed my children."

I'm not saying every person around me is like this. I try not to generalize humanity. And I'm also not trying to guilt you into a mission trip to Africa. All I'm saying, is how many times have you looked at the 'E' on your dashboard and thought, "damn I hate buying gas," instead of, "thank you God, for providing me with a car to take me to work and back?" Perspective is everything. We, society, (okay, I'm generalizing...) worry way too much about the little things and way too little about the big things.  I'm not any different. I'm probably worse than most people reading this. But it doesn't mean we can't change.

I wish I was satisfied by thanking God for His amazing blessings on my life and the lives of my friends. I wish I could go to bed in my (not air conditioned, but very comfortable) house every night without the hurt and anger and sadness I feel for the world. Some nights I can. Some nights I don't think twice.

But tonight I won't. I cannot continue to be satisfied with being comfortable. 

I don't want to be comfortable anymore. I want to be courageous for God in ways that I haven't even thought of yet. Because God has not only blessed me with health, money, and a strong faith, but He has blessed me with the ability and the opportunity to do something with the gifts that He has so graciously given me. 

And I want that something to be good. I want it to be worth dying for.

It would have killed me.

Part of the preparation for a Lutheran (ELCA specifically) seminarian is to go through a psychological assessment.  With real psychologists and real counselors.  For two whole days.  It sounds a bit intimidating right? It is.

But it is necessary to the process of discernment - a type of inward journey to find out how/what God is calling you to do.  One of the main objectives of the psych assessment is to help you recognize and "treat" your weaknesses or vulnerabilities.  They focus on your strengths toom but typically you have a good idea about your strengths before you go in.  Sometimes your vulnerabilities are harder to identify - or at least admit.

One of my flaws/weaknesses/things-to-work-on is my business.  I always feels like I have to have a new project.  This wouldn't be so bad if I handled this compulsive behavior in a healthy way.  But my other vulnerability is feeling it necessary to care for other people before - and often in place of - caring for myself.  I neglect my own needs for the needs of others.  So much so that I make it my eternal project.  If I'm not constantly doing something for someone else (solving a problem, editing a paper, being a helper), I feel like I am failing.

This probably doesn't sound so bad, right? Pastors and volunteers are supposed to think of others before they think of themselves.  The problem is that it has manifested into unrealistic expectations for myself. I push myself to the point of exhaustion and then I take out my frustration on the people I care about most. It's not healthy. I don't know how to rest.

A few weeks after my psych assessment I had a full-blown panic attack at the Shrove Tuesday pancake supper at church. Uh yikes. That opened my eyes to the problem and made me accept it as a reality.

The second step after the psych assessment and before my entrance interview (on April 11th!!) is to work on my vulnerabilities.  The psychologist and counselor diagnose me, and prescribe me actions to take and books to read (just as a medical doctor would prescribe medication and exercise to a person with heart disease.)

Identify the potential problem (or completely manifested problem in my case).

Take action to treat the problem.

Although I still have a long way to go, I have started to do some of the things on my to-do list from the psych assessment:

I am reading three books about resting, taking time for yourself, and self-care in pastoral vocations.
I have started observing a sabbath every week. (This is so hard!)
I am trying to take time out of every day to relax and sit down.
I am praying every night with my (very) patient boyfriend.
I reevaluated my priorities and uncommitted from some things at church and work.
I am continuing Bible study of the Old Testament.
I am talking with people, pastors, parents, friends about what it means to care for yourself and take time for yourself in a society that is so concerned about doing the next big thing and always being on the move.

I'm convinced that if I hadn't identified my vulnerability it would have killed me. Maybe not tomorrow or next year, but eventually I would have died of exhaustion.

My plea to you is to identify your vulnerability.  Grasp it. Caress it. Love it. Then work on it and treat it like a disease that is bound to kill you.

worth it

"Mountain" I climbed

One of the most amazing experiences of my life was traveling to Hawaii by myself last December.

I claimed that it was a reward to myself for graduating college early, but in reality it was so much more than that.

At that point in my life, it was an escape. An escape from hurt and rush and my parents.  It was an escape from the things that scared the crap out of me in the future. It was an escape from the fact that I might never be the person I always wanted to be. And an escape from the expectations of others.

It was also a test. I wanted to know that I could function on my own. I needed to know that I could be by myself and be okay.

During those ten days on Oahu, I was able to do some amazing things. Some of my favorites included watching surf competitions, eating local food, and sunning myself every single day.

My favorite thing, though, was an accomplishment I can't get out of my mind this week.

I climbed a mountain.

Okay, so maybe no exactly a mountain... but for me, it felt like a physical, emotional, and spiritual mountain.

We got up before the sun rose on the Sunday morning before I left to fly back home and drove to my mountain. The minute we got halfway to the base of the trek, I was done.

I'm not a physical type of girl. I don't work out. I don't particularly care to prove my physicality by doing physical things. I'm more of a thinker. I'm more of a writer. Not a hiker. Or a railroad tie hurdler.

 

But we climbed up the mountain on railroad ties.  I wanted to die halfway up (or a quarter of the way up) and I was definitely winded by the time we reached the top (after multiple stops to rest). There was a bridge we had to cross that was just made out of railroad ties. You could fall right through it into the rocks. I was terrified and exhausted the entire way up.  But it was the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my life.


Let me repeat that: It was the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my life.

It wasn't just the view. The view was amazing. It was the fact that over and over again I told my hiking partner that I didn't want to keep going. I said, "I'm too tired" and "I can't do it" and "this was a terrible idea."  But despite my mind and my body telling me to stop and turn back. Despite my legs saying, "it's not worth it," my heart just wouldn't let me stop.

It is the first time my heart convinced me to do something that the rest of my body didn't want to do and didn't think it could do.

Now that I know it's possible, I feel like I can do anything.

God gave me the strength (because honestly, it had to have been divine intervention) to start climbing my spiritual mountain a few months prior to this physical mountain climbing.  I'm nowhere near the peak of this mountain, I can't even see it. It's blurred in the morning fog. And it's a much larger mountain than I climbed on Oahu.  The obstacles are larger than railroad ties and bridges without floors. But I know that it is possible. I know that when my body and mind feel defeated and broken, my heart and my Lord will be there to keep me going.

Because it's worth it.  The view at the top will take my breath away and make all of it worth it.

Little things.

Sometimes it's the little things.

Wednesdays are some of my less exciting days.

I'm not required to go into work, but I go in anyway to make some extra cash. I usually sit around for about four hours, alternating between reading, blogging, and chatting with the people in the office.

Then I find something to eat and make my way to Bible study at Jacob's Porch.

I still wasn't fully convinced that I wanted to go to Panera as I pulled into the parking lot, but I went in anyway. You can't go wrong with broccoli cheddar soup and a baguette, right?

As I was sitting down with my laptop and food, a man asked me to help with something. He was sitting with who I am assuming was his girlfriend and her two daughters. He made the older girl turn around to me and ask for an adverb. After a brief freakout that I wouldn't remember what an adverb is (modifies a verb? Ah crap, that was 3rd grade!), I came up with "quickly."

It was then explained that the young girl was finding words for her Madlibs, but she could only ask strangers around Panera for words. I guess it was an exercise to help her come out of her introverted shell.

As I sat at the next table for an hour, the young girl got up the courage to ask at least ten other people for words for her Madlib. When a few friends gave her the very last words, she read the Madlib aloud to the group.  I looked up and saw that the various people she had asked before had gotten up and listened to the finished Madlib as well. People sitting around them all leaned in to listen. Students stopped studying and took out their headphones to catch a line of the Madlib.  Everyone was giggling and smiling.

This shy little girl brought unexpected joy to a dozen people during the dinner rush at Panera.

Just by bringing them together for a common goal.

Sometimes it's the little things.