Nurturing Orchids

Before she left our work and moved to Germany, a friend entrusted her desk orchid to me. It is purple-speckled, lovely, and the sister to my own dual-colored orchid.  

When she gave it to me, I didn't know that I would also join her in leaving our workplace just a few weeks later. Her orchid moved from my desk to my piano at home to the garage when it dropped its flowers and was unpresentable for staging to the floor of a sunroom when it came to Tulsa months later, then, finally, to my new kitchen's terrarium window. 

Orchids are fickle friends. When loved well, they are generous, abundant in their blooms. Three ice cubes a week and gentle sun are what they want. Too much or too little, and they wither and fall to pieces. 

My own orchid gave us 12 blooms this early summer until an ant infestation led to de-soiling, re-potting, and a heavy rinse. The leaves have all dried and fallen, and only 2 blooms remain. 

Tabitha's plant has only remained in our family out of determination--it has been brown and gray for months with no sign of life. Still, each week, three ice cubes are added in with hope. 

Almost a year later, it has regrown a full four huge leaves and is nubbing out for re-growth of a stem. Buds and flowers will follow. 

My orchid will survive with the same determination, but its speed of growth and vibrancy is what drew the predators. What we thought was so strong was being eaten alive below the surface. At this stage, the plant we had taken for dead is the stronger and healthier by far. 

We don't know the roots for the blossoms. Assumptions of strength are mere assumptions and not determinations. All that we can do is be patient, remain consistent with encouragement to grow, and act to protect when enemies make themselves known. 

Policies and People: How to be a Good White Person?

Once, for a job, I had to tell a transgender person that the policy of the place where I worked was to live by their birth gender. 

I said this after talking to this person for an hour. 

I said this after a year of knowing about this person but never having spoken to this person before. 

I said this even though this person did not disclose being transgender to me. 

I said this because I was told to say it. 

I still feel ashamed. That's not what love looks like. 

You see, there are people and there are policies. You can have a policy, but you can't treat people like policies. I did not know them. By speaking out against them, I betrayed their trust, I made them feel afraid and defensive, and I demonstrated judgment. And I just don't think that's what Jesus would have done. 

Jesus led through relationships. He created change through relationships. He opened doors for difficult or awkward conversation through, you guessed it, relationships. 

By having that conversation, I did not communicate love or understanding. What I communicated was that a group of people had been talking about them behind their backs and had sent me as a spokesperson. I, a stranger, knew one of the most personal qualities about them. And, by speaking out against that quality without a relationship first, I nearly guaranteed myself that I would never have a relationship with them. I saw the pain in their eyes. 

I feel that same shame now. Navigating people and policies is so difficult, especially when you have close relationships on all sides of the spectrum. 

I have not been in any way hidden about my sentiments toward our current leader. Those sentiments have not shifted toward the positive in the past four years. In fact, his behavior, his tweets, and his constant fire-poking toward increased hatred and violence have only pushed me further into the political sphere when I once was not in any way interested. I have seen the impact on all ages, as his language use and behaviors validated voices of hate and made them socially acceptable. 

Hear me, these sentiments were already alive and well, but they had not previously been given an allowance to be communicated aloud without condemnation. The impact was immediate--I saw it wash over my small town, and I see it here in my larger city. I see the influence of those behaviors on the day to day of his people. 

Voting for him on a one or two policy ballot is irresponsible and dangerous, as the effects of his humanity are widening the gap of our country. It actually does matter who a person is in their real lives, especially when they broadcast a constant spew of hate and violence speak in such a non-stop, public way. Yeah, guys, his twitter really does matter. You may believe in God using unholy people for holy purposes. He is not creating holy outcomes. Not at all. 

This weekend, he has chosen to come to visit Tulsa, Oklahoma for the largest indoor even since the beginning of the pandemic. It is the 99th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, and tomorrow is Juneteenth (Freedom Day). Many Republicans (and family members) have claimed that this date selection was done in ignorance. His tweets suggest otherwise. 

This decision caused another tense internal debate between policies and people. This rally is in the midst of a second wave of virus reports, this rally is on an extremely important African American holiday, this rally is in the midst of race/police brutality protests all over the nation. My policy, as an introvert and someone who wants to be socially responsible, is to avoid large public gatherings. However, my humanity calls for action. I cannot be another Millenial to claim I care and allow that only go so far as to post online about it. But how do I prevent him from using a peaceful protest somehow in his favor? How do I avoid the violence which may be incited by his trigger-happy behaviors and the equally trigger-happy behaviors of his aggressive followers and white supremacists? How do I show up without somehow making the equally heinous Millenial mistake of acting only long enough to get the photo op or make something very much not about me, about me? How can I speak out without drawing attention to me and not the issue? How do I be an ally? How do I be a good white person? 

After a week of massive backlash, he moved his rally date to the day after Juneteenth. 

I told myself that it was only that which made me worked up enough to entertain the idea of attending a protest. But I don't think I could live with myself if I stand on the wrong side of humanity on this one. Remaining silent is to be complicit. It's to communicate that his behaviors, his lies, his location choice, his calculated language use as it relates to race and riots, and his presence in my city during a pandemic, national crisis, and grim anniversary, is acceptable. It is not acceptable. 

The policy is free speech. But that policy is being abused and manipulated to allow a stampede of the people. It flies in the face of our African American groups here, to the families of victims of Greenwood, and even of the health and safety of his followers. 

My sentiments have marked me as an extremist to many members of my family. In conversations, I immediately alienate myself. But Jesus threw tables in the temple. He cracked a whip, in fact. There are times when righteous anger is appropriate. I would rather alienate myself on behalf of humanity than disgrace myself with defending the degeneration occurring now with ideals of single-ballot issues. How is it less pro-life to defend the full lifecycle than it is merely to defend birth rates? I cannot reconcile it. 

We are still navigating the safest road to take, but safe is also not Jesus. Justice is Jesus. Truth is Jesus. Standing beside the oppressed is Jesus. Resisting evil is Jesus. So we will shut our mouths and put on masks and stand alongside our brothers and sisters in solidarity and, with hope, peace. We will listen to the stories of both joy and pain. And we will be there as a physical demonstration that balance and justice are necessary for trust. We are going because we don't know what else to do and it is no longer an option for us to sit back and watch from our place of privilege. 

Even Change

I neglected to spend any time reflecting when my 24th birthday came along, but I did at 23.

Today, I turn 25. A whole quarter, the coin and the fraction of a century.

And, while my 24th birthday didn't leave much to mention, my 25th does.

In the past year I:

1. Kicked off the year by getting engaged to the very best person.

2. Together, through a fantastic real estate agent (the husband of a coworker) we bought quite the fixer-upper and embarked on a ridiculous journey with our entire families of getting it to a state of livability. 

3. I finished my second full year of working as an admissions counselor and decided to stay on for a third year. 

4. We got married, surrounded by our very best friends, our families, and waffles. :) 

                           

                                 

5. We moved in together, made it through a particularly long and brutal travel season, continued working on Cliffhouse, spent Thanksgiving with my three brothers, their wives, their six kids, and my parents in Atlanta, Georgia, and spent Christmas with his parents and grandparents. 

It's been an emotional year, a constantly evolving year. 

I deeply loved living with two of my best friends, Sarah and Makayla, but it's such a feeling of peace to have removed division of my spirit that I felt being apart from Julius. 

This year, I made wonderful friends, strengthened my relationships with my coworkers, and had to let go back to her home in Arizona one of the bedrock friendships that I have had in Arkansas. 

This year was the first that I really felt like I had to take true ownership of my adulthood, much more than I ever had before, though others would probably say I had already done that. 

It's been a journey, but I am happy. So, so happy. 

You never know what the next year will hold. 

The Orange Ceiling

It's been three weeks since the election results, and I still can't come to grips with what has happened.

I woke up on November 9th feeling lost and grieved. Texts from friends across the world flooded my phone with fear and empathy and horror. Oh God, what have we done?

In my office and in my family, I hear people talk of his policies. That's how they justified casting their vote for the Grabber. At best, I hear the phrase, "lesser of two evils." At worst, I hear actual praise of him. My heart is grieved to its very core that this is who we've become.

They say it's not about who they are as a person; it's about what they will do in policy.

In my job, I am known as the "face" of the university.
I dress, walk, talk, and make myself think as such. No matter where I go, no matter what I do--especially when I am on the job--I am conscious of  that responsibility.
I may be the best at my job, the most thorough and practically compassionate, but if my words and behavior are ugly, then that is what people see and what people will believe the university I stand for is.

In the same way, the principle is true across the globe. They see him first. They hear him first. My God, follow the man on Twitter if you don't understand my point. We are being led by a hissy-fit of a man.

My Hispanic minority friends are afraid.
My LGBTQ minority friends are afraid.
My foreign friends are afraid.
My female friends are afraid.

Just before the election, I was in a Walmart and was sexually harassed. These guys just followed me through the whole store cat-calling and making comments and laughing to themselves because they saw how clearly uncomfortable they were making me.

When I got back in the car, I had myself a long, angry rant. Right now, we have a president who has made decisions I do not always agree with, but I know, at the end of the day, he is a good man who promotes kindness and mutual respect.
The man who is now our president elect has been caught on camera bragging about how he can do whatever he wants to women because he is a powerful man.

Any God-fearing man who can imagine himself explaining what "grabbing [a woman] by the pu**y" to their young daughter means when she asks and can still put himself behind that man is a disgrace.

Adults should know better. They may use a truly awful man to justify their choices, but kids don't know any better. The leaders of our country help shape who they become. We now have chosen a model for behavior that communicates to them that sexual misconduct and disrespect is normal and acceptable in society, just as long as you're in the power seat.

We have a Republican house and senate. They hate Hillary enough that they would have curbed anything nutty. Now, though, we have an absolute whack-job in the hot seat of the same party. A man who got grounded from his Twitter account in the final days of the election because he was making a fool of himself is now in charge of the nuclear codes.

I hope to God I am wrong. I hope his unbelievably horrendous behavior is beaten out of him as the reality of this new position sinks in. Until then, we pray, we seek peace, we choose not to completely lose it in political conversations with our families, and we hope tomorrow will be different.

Into the Fold

I cried at work today.

We were doing our morning devotions, and today, we decided to do a devotional thought over "O Come O Come Emmanuel", which happens to be my favorite Christmas song.

It also happens to correlate with my favorite Bible verse, which had been weighing on me heavily for the past week or so. This is what I shared and what brought me to big tears of remembrance and of thankfulness and humility.

It re-appeared in my heart last Thursday. I was sitting there beside my boyfriend, our mothers, and our fathers, in the Candlelight service at my university.

As I sat there, I marveled at how far removed and redeemed both our families (and us) had been in the past two years. In the past two years, both our parents had been at places where they thought they had lost their children to darkness forever.

We had thought the same about ourselves.

And in the past two years, we have been restored to joy, to God, and to our families. Granted, more work is yet to be done, but God is so good.

My heart felt full to burst, and the words of Psalm 126 pushed their way into my thoughts:

When the people returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon, they became as those who dreamed. Their hearts were filled with laughter; their tongues with shouts of praise. The people of Earth said to them, "The Lord has done great things for you." Indeed, the Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.

That's the verse I shared this morning after we sang.

I reflected on my own "return from Babylon" two years ago tomorrow.

I was broken. I was ugly. I was beyond all reckoning.

And my parents opened their arms up and loved me. My aunt, my uncle, my cousin, my grandmother. They loved me and took me as I was: broken. ugly. lost.

And yet, and yet!! the Lord has done great things for me. 
Though Decembers cause me to get way too deep in my head and heart and ache with the past woundedness, I know too of the deep joy of restoration to hope and light and life.

The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.

We Made Them This Way

Last night, I went to a college night in a very small town that I'm sure is very nice, but I've only had weird experiences in.

Sometimes, Arkansas lives up to its reputation and, unfortunately, this is one of those towns that keeps the stereotypes alive.

The reason I admit this is because it became very clear that it isn't personal prejudice--this is what they are seen as by the general public.

How do I know this?

We were put on a panel and each "college" spoke for 3ish minutes on the highlights of their schools.

Each and every one of them talked about their welding programs, their mechanical programs, their 8 week programs, their agriculture programs. Even the non tech schools focused the entirety of their elevator speeches on their technical programs.

Two of them even told the kids in prettier terms that college wasn't meant for them and they would drop out/fail out if they tried.

Ultimately, the message being sent to these kids from 20 different presenters was: "You can be anything you want to be!!!!...in the technical industry."

What I have disliked about these kids before last night is that they are undisciplined, they've got gnarly test scores, they are rude and loud and crass, and they seem to just not care about themselves at all.

What I realized last night is that for their entire lives, these kids have probably been sent the message that they aren't smart or good enough to succeed, that they are meant to be future garbage collectors, mechanics, chicken collectors.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with those careers, no shame in them at all. However, when they are presented to you as your only aspirations, I get this twinging feeling that something is wrong.

Maybe it's the millennial in me that says, "No! We can do anything we want to do!" or maybe its the deep seated sense of justice and fairness in me that thinks that maybe if these kids were raised to believe that they had worth and meaning and the capacity to learn and grow and be then they would maybe take more time with their studies and personal care.

Speak words of truth and hope always, to old, to young, to those you know you'll see every day after, to those you know you'll never see again. Never allow yourself to contribute to the self-fulfilling prophesy of worthlessness in another person's life.

Because no matter their age, no matter their station in life, no matter how sticky or stinky or snarly a person is, everyone has value and purpose, even if they don't see that yet.

In the Office and Off the Road

My travel season (the main portion at least) has finally ended.

The odd thing about travelling is that while the months seem to go extraordinarily quickly, they finish leaving you feeling as though you have lived 8 months.

That's actually a pretty fair assessment since you're (willingly) dragged from city to city to hotel to hotel to school to college fair to random restaurants and crappy fast food joints and awesome holes in the wall. Thousands of people, thousands of stories.

Then home, you hope, to breathe, breathe, breathe, but in reality it's to attend meetings, answer emails, answer the phone, facilitate preview weekends and tours and visits, drop by local schools on your list, eat food you froze knowing you weren't going to be home long enough to buy more groceries, see your housemates and workmates and "special friend", and go home to crash every night.

My schedule this year was pretty nice because I was basically on a week, "off" a week. However, since I have local schools, my weeks off were spent out of the office as well. At least I got to sleep in my own bed, though.
Another counselor was out of the office for nearly 6 weeks straight.

Even then, though, we have it so good. At fairs--which we love because we get to meet other counselors who understand the job and don't say things to us like, "Oh, your students see you as professionals? I thought you were, like, student buddies"--we talk with one another, and it always makes me cling so tightly to my school when I hear them talk of how they are set out on the road for 9-12 weeks at a time.

When we're on the road, it's hard to remember our office and real lives are still existing without us. We miss announcements, jokes, fun local events, birthdays, etc. What we gain is time with our applicants, our soon to be applicants, family members of our applicants and soon to be applicants.

We love it. I think the time that we realize just how much we missed home is when we turn the car toward the barn or when we get that first hug and can't seem to let our loved one go.

On the homefront, it's a season of deserts and floods.
You try to cram in all the love and snuggles (and emails) you can before you leave and in those intermediary pieces between trips, then spend all the time on the road subsisting on text messages, crappy internet connections, and promises.

Now I'm home. Time to settle back into routine as well as I can, buy some groceries, re-learn how to spend appropriate amounts of time with my friends (reassuring myself that I can see them again the next day), do my chores, and sleep.

Mind Your Mind

Today at work, it was my turn to do the devotion.

It is not my habit to sign up, but someone was covering a college fair for me, so I took his devotion day for him.

It is also my intent to choose a day for devotions in which I am feeling particularly holy.
This is not that week.

It has been nearly 7 days of stress and frustration.
Overlapping travel planning with the final details of student move-in is a lot more work than you might think. There are also people everywhere, and my introverted self is just not used to it.

I could give a series of excuses, but the end of the story is that I'm just being short with people because I feel a little overwhelmed.

Yesterday was really bad.

Work was bad, tried to go to yoga and came across an unexpected face so I left before it started, went to a girls' night with some people I didn't know, then ended up just going out with friends.
There didn't seem to be any sources of relief for anxiety.

So I wake up, right, and I have to come up with something inspiring and holy to say.

First, I checked Oswald Chambers, but that just wasn't really apt, so I glanced through my bookshelf and found Jill Briscoe and a section in one of her devotions entitled "Doing Yesterday".

It fit.

My devotion of the morning, using her words, was about the tendency of ours to replay yesterday over and over and over again, how we could have done different and said different and all the bad things. We avoid God and just try to talk with ourselves, knowing full well we do so just to avoid the words we know are coming to us from God.

It's over.
Move on.

As a writer, I recognize the capacity of one chapter to be six different things depending on perspective. I can change the entire story just by giving it a revision of outlook.

In the same way, each day we are given the opportunity to look back on our words and actions and the words and actions imparted to us. We are given the opportunity to filter them, judge them, color them however we do so choose.

I can look back on yesterday and see the aggravations and set-backs or I can look back on the hidden pieces--like the gem of a student who appeared last-minute and, despite his financial setbacks, is going to make college happen. Or like my sweet housemates who have become to me inseparable friends and confidantes. Or like church friends who seek me out. Or my sweet boyfriend who is willing to be gracious and give me the benefit of the doubt when my hurt communicates messages I don't intend them to mean.

In any situation, there is so much good underlying.

Jill's prayer is for the Lord to help her mind her mind and for the Lord to mind her heart.
It is up to us not to forget and move on or push out of our minds but actively choose to see the world just a little differently and revise our yesterdays just a bit more constructively.

Change what you can change, apologize for any misplaced words or actions, learn what you can, then look forward.

Wish Says, 'Gotta Keep Movin'

My Aunt Joycie used to be integral to the coordination of an event in Tulsa called the Wish Lemons run.

The run was designed to raise money for missions, and it fit Wish well because he himself was an avid runner. On all the cups and t-shirt designs, his mantra, "Gotta Keep Movin'" made you feel like you could actually accomplish something.

Moving isn't running, isn't sprinting, isn't jogging. Moving is determined progress in an intentional direction.

You may be wondering if this is a post about running (it isn't, but I'll get there), since I've mentioned my running progress more than once recently, though I did, in fact, complete a 5K with my coworkers without walking once:

It was on the coast of Florida, and it felt like I was chewing my oxygen.

My stamina is pretty pathetic generally.
It took two months of training with the Couch to 5K app to be able to do it.
Have I run since?
No.
Running is the worst.

More to the point, though, building stamina through slow determination and a time-oriented goal can be really helpful.

If I had been asked to run a 5K in a week's time, I would have been miserable. Miserable miserable miserable. There would have been shin splints, vomit, walking, stopping, and a lot more complaining. Because I hadn't run in multiple years really. At least not with any consistency.

The app started me slow. Lots of walking, with spurts of running, just short enough that they were doable, but just long enough that they winded you.

By the end, I could do it. I did do it.

Reading is something that has been important to be since long before I could actually read. Words, movement of language, poetry, the poetry of communication, the communication of poetic experience. I love it. I have felt more known by books and language than by other people for most of my life. It's interwoven with my identity.

Then it was tidal waved out of my life.

There comes a point of fear when we realize that what we thought was a temporary phase of complacent mediocrity has become a sturdy "normal".

My diet of philosophy, history, historical fiction, modern poetry, creative nonfiction, and science fiction became replaced by pinterest, twitter, and facebook status updates. Neither my eyes nor my attention span could hold on for much longer than 8 or so seconds.

Scroll scroll scroll.
I missed movement, but I couldn't move.
Depression robs you of all you love.
Worse, it  makes you feel as though you weren't robbed but rather have made a choice to abandon.

Perhaps because that's easier than admitting the truth. It's better, you think, to claim you have power, even if in doing so you're communicating that you knowingly want to make the choices that your life is now characterized by.
For me, that's been lethargy, apathy, and mass consumption of the digital world.

Where I had read nearly 60 books in 4 months, the next 4 were only 20, reduced to 8 in the 8-9 months after.
I can't even tell you how many more I started and failed to progress past the first chapter. Didn't even make it through the first chapter, actually.

My pen was just as dusty as my bookshelf. I used to fill pages a day with thoughts and curiosity and updates.

There's not a record of the existence of this past year. I have nothing to say.

Frustration with myself grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.
Grew.

Is there a point in frustration that frustration becomes your new identity?
Where your words about your inabilities become who you are?

Yeah.

There is.

I also wasn't being very fair to myself.
The books I was choosing were either far above my "reading level" or so far below that they were children's books that I had already read.
Neither are something to build momentum on.

Then, I don't know, I chose one that looked fun and easy, but it was new and interesting, too.
And I finished it.
In two weeks.

After that, I finished A General Theory of Love, which I had started in October and a bunch more technical. The next day.

Two days after that, I finished a book on the history of JBU, which I had started a year to the day that I had started both the book and my work at JBU.

Then I started a totally new one last Thursday, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. And finished it yesterday.

That's more consistent reading than I have done in more than a year.
My pen has been more active, too, beginning to fill up the final pages of a tiny journal that's taken me more than a year to fill a quarter of.

It's now been a year since I moved back to The States.
This is the first time in that space or even more than I have begun to feel a return out of the ditches of my dead mindedness and back to me. I'm starting to feel ebbing relief in knowing that the part of me I love most isn't lost for good.

I no longer feel defeated. I feel like moving.

Remember Your Editor

I have now worked at JBU for exactly a year.

It's fitting that today I should find myself helping to train our new counselor: sending her informational emails/templates/codes, helping her learn the day to day and mark her calendar for different fairs and school events.

In this year, I have learned a lot.
Basics such as how to look like a professional (still a work in progress), how to plan for travel season, how to fill my desk days. I've also learned how to make a shower floor shine white, how to plan a weekly food menu, and how to solve my lava-hot room problem by picking out functional (and cute) thermal curtains.

It's been a good chapter, but it didn't start out that way.

During the first draft, there were late mornings, nose rings, frozen chimichangas, late nights, and a lot of energetic flailing.

Each month, each chapter section, brought changes wrought by many editors: my bosses, my housemates, my family, my friends, my God, and myself.

A good writer recognizes the reality of the "shitty first draft". The SFD is the first go-round of thoughts in the book writing process, and usually the most excitable.
Ink pours out of you, as new characters, setting details, and big picture ideas spurt into your right brain.

There's all this stuff!! All this new!! And for a while, you think it's the best thing ever brought into creation.
Until you meet your editor.

Enter: opposition.

They give you feedback you usually aren't ready to accept graciously (or at all), and you emotionally recoil and fight back vehemently, defending your paragraphs like a banshee.

All alone later, though, you take a look back at what you've created.
There's been enough distance now that, "Oh gosh...my editor was right", and you start implementing their corrections, awkwardly at first until you learn to merge your voice with their ideas. You practice and you correct till it begins to feel natural, as though it had been you all along.

We finish and we forget: this chapter isn't ours.
Without our editors, we would have pages full of microwaveable Mexican food, unprofessional-ism, the wrong addresses, lethargy, loneliness, and exhaustion.

Our editors bring with them momentary anxiety, frustration, pain, and sometimes embarrassment, but they are the ones who turn our outlines into books.

Irish Rainbows Unchained: The Marriage Equality Vote

Black and white views and legalism are things which come easily to me.

Maybe it's my education and maybe it's my travels, but I have become what I am sure my family and other conservative Christians would view to be more liberal in my thinking. 

 It's not necessarily that I condone certain thoughts or behaviors but more that I believe a religious order ought not have power to legally regulate behaviors. Following God is a personal choice, followed by all kinds of other (hopefully) spirit-led choices. 

When Jesus came, he abolished the Old Laws. Why, then, do we seem to have fallen deeply back in to law-based Christianity? 

Moreover, why would I believe that it is right to hold any particular country's people to a set of religious bi-laws when religion is both an option as well as an option not held by everyone in the country. It just doesn't sit right with me. There's a difference between legal morality and religious morality. One maintains the health of the nation and one the health of the soul. The latter cannot be regulated from a legal institution. 

When I lived abroad in Northern Ireland, I had to read a ton for my Master's degree. 

Because my coursemates were full-blooded (and hot-blooded) folk from The Republic, they knew the history, political and religious structures, and folklore of the land in which they lived. 

My learning curve was insane. 

I read everything I could get my hands on to make up for my obvious lack of foundation. 

In my studies, I came across layers on layers on religious persecution. Not people persecuted for their religion; people persecuted by their religion. 

My friends could tell me personal stories of the ways in which their practical and spiritual lives were negatively influenced by the Catholic Church. The oppression is excruciating, even in these modern times. 

Now, though, there's this incredible thing happening. 

The Republic of Ireland is undergoing a vote to alter their constitution: "The proposed amendment applies to Article 41 of the Irish Constitution. And it wants to insert the following line: “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”

If it passes, the Republic of Ireland will be the first country ever to democratically alter their constitution in favor of marital freedom. 

The Catholic religious order has, for centuries, controlled their people socially, sexually, politically, and educationally. 

Take a moment to see the forest, despite the trees. 

Rob Bell, in his book Sex God, would tell you "this is really about that". 

Yeah, this is about same-sex marriage. 

But it's more than that. 

If this were to pass, it would be a country-shattering stand of the underdog against the schoolyard bully. 

Maybe that underdog won't win every battle against the bully--the people may not immediately be able to shake off the saturation of the Catholic religions order--but this vote would be a symbol that the system which has suffocated them for centuries no longer holds all the power. 

Some fear that this vote is a vote against family and morality, and honestly I can't see it that way. Imposing faith through fear-tactics is soul-destructive. God can use whatever he wants to bring his people back to him. If they're driven his way like whipped slaves, they may follow but they will not love their master. 

It's time to end the rein of the Catholic Church in Ireland. 

It's time to give the people a choice, it's time to shake the foundations, it's time to vote. 

Nowata Pond

Each week (that I'm not working or otherwise in Texas), Julius and I go to craigslist Bible study together.

To get there from my little baby town, we take Highway 16, which is a deathpath of twists, small lanes, dumb, running woodsy creatures, and Arkansas drivers. And, because of the winter, darkness. No street lights to be found. It can be pretty terrifying. For Julius. He holds on. I'm not proud of that, but it's also not completely my fault.

We've been driving for weeks on this road and have thought we've gotten to know it pretty well.
Then, Daylight Savings happened.

It's light at 6:20pm when we leave.

The entire drive there, it was: "Woah! Look at that field of sheep!"
"Woah! That barn has a roof of solar panels!"
"Woah! Since when was there a church there!"

And my personal favorite: "Woah! Wait. That's not a lake?"

That's right. There's a certain place on the road that we were both convinced was a big pond.
It's a giant hole filled in with gravel. I guess neither of us ever thought it was odd that there was no reflection.

Darkness and light. It changes everything.

Things you thought were beautiful and good turn out to be a pit of black rocks.
Things you thought were nothing turn out to be full of life. And sheep.

For me it was just a reminder that life isn't always what it seems, both good and bad.
And what's fascinating is that you aren't able to know what's what except through discovery or time.

If we had pulled off to go check out the "pond", we would have had our imaginings about it disillusioned pretty fast. Otherwise, like what happened, it took the seasons changing for us to be shown the truth of the matter.

What it Takes

Recently, I've been contemplating the concept of the "best friend."

What does it mean to be a best friend or to have a best friend?
Are best friends only to be added in the "teen years"?
Does one ever cease to be a best friend?

At various points in my life, I have claimed and have been claimed as best friend.
However, the entire institution no longer makes sense to me.

As a child and high schooler, the best friend was the one I had sleepovers with, kidnapped other best friends with, ran through wal-mart (and, okay, maybe deserted her in a shopping cart when she broke her leg...sans her crutches-turned-oars).
The best friend is the one that calls you at 11pm to show up, let yourself in to the house (because of course you know the garage code), and help zip her into a suitcase (because of course).
The one who kicks it with you in a movie theater parking lot drinking cocktails out of quik trip cups because it's your birthday.
The one who belts Muppet Treasure Island quotes/songs with you in inappropriate places.

But now?

We're all separated. We can't do life together. We get updates but not the live-action.
So does that mean that a best friend is the one you want to see when you go home? Or the one you still call to talk through the minutia of life? Or the one you talk to bi-annually? Or are best friends situational?

I posed my question to my best friend Haley (to which she would say, "your very very best friend Haley?")

Haley's solution to my query was that there are your best friends in various situations and then there are your long-term friends and then there are those who used to be both, who may one day become both, or the lucky ones who were, are, and will be both.

This answer helped me in my classification process because it takes more than mere consistency to be a best friend (though that is important). It's not mere furniture, though.
It's a combination of consistency, of no crap taking, of conflict resolution, of clear communication, of charm and laughter, of compatibility, and of care to understand who you are, even when that person changes.

The long-term beffers have been with you before you became "you" and have weathered the changes and breakups and insanity and distance and all the other pieces that have contributed to your personhood. They stay.

Processing Forgiveness

When I came into University as a Freshman, I, along with my other fresh-people, had to take a "StrengthsFinder" test.

Unsurprisingly, my top strength was "Achiever."
I enjoy recreationally being good at things, pretty regardless of what that thing is.

I study the situation, figure out a method and plan of attack, and start in slowly toward success until success is achieved.

The funny thing about forgiveness is that it doesn't really work that way. At one moment, you might be all in, all there, truly "feeling" the forgiveness.

Then it's two weeks later and the anger is like lava in your rib cage, seeping toward your heart.
It's ugly. And you're confused. "Didn't I work through this?"

I am right there in the midst, yet again, of cooling and chipping off that volcanic rock.

Life happened while I was away.
Shoot, life is happening in NI while I'm gone from it, too.

And that's weird, but it's true.

I still don't think I've experienced any culture shock--other than the professional kind--but in that way, in the sense of turning into my own present reality all the little and big changes that have occured in my absense, I am still reeling a bit.

My first "test" did not go super well, but I'm learning. I'm growing. And I'm letting go--again--of what I thought I had already let go of.

Every day we re-start over.

Look Up, Look Down, Look Out

It seemed a little odd to me momentarily how spotty my postings from this semester have been.

Then, when I consider the fact that, rather than listening to the sound of the life of my mind, I have been listening to the voices of my friends as we live life with one another, I'm no longer confused at all. 

I stopped writing about life because I started to live it. 

When I imagined living in Northern Ireland, this is what I imagined. 

Books and learning, sure.
But this--on the go, travelling, spending time with school friends and church friends and the friends of friends, skyping with loved ones from home, having a clear direction, full of joy and fun and banter--is the stuff of all the things I had ceased to believe were in the books for me here. 

God turned this, the greenest desert of my soul, into an oasis. 

Over and over and over since my February return, God demonstrated to me more unexpected goodness than I had even begun to hope for by handing to me (in exact) the deepest desires of my heart, the ones I dreampt up and wished for but never even considered asking after. 

I had thrown them, my expectations clothed as "hopes", from my mind and gritted my teeth. For good or bad, I told God, I was coming back to NI, just because I knew this was the place he had laid out for me in this time. Unlike last semester, I armed myself and prepared for the blows to start. 

Unlike last semester, they didn't come. 

It is a humbling thing to be loved. 

The God who "destroyed" my life has rebuilt me from the bones out and set my feet in an entirely different direction and equipped me for what is to come. 

I will get distracted and dramatic and a little bit lost. 

I'm human. 

But I can tell you this much: I am irrevocably changed. 

All thanks and praise be to God, my father, my glory and the lifter of my head. 

Overlooking Home

To get to my home in Tulsa, you take 71st west until it ends. Literally. No more 71st.

Actually, at the end, you take a left hand turn, but if you don't, you drive up this winding hill and land up at The Oaks country club.

I used to lifeguard up there.

Coming down the opposite description off a late night-shift, you can, for a few moments, see out all across Tulsa.

The blue lights from the Jones airport, the wee lights from "little Jenks," the brighter ones that line 71st and down past that as well.

Something about that sight--much like the sight of rain and stoplights on pavement--I find soothing.

A galaxy of my own. Accessible.

And I'm separated up there on my hill, in my car, but still connected and descending.

For me, judge as you will, it's a bit of a transcendent experience in its own simple way.

Spent "submission evening" with my friend Amy from Uni. We ate pizza, drank contextual beverages, and watched the office, periodically stopping to talk over Jesus and "right now."

The question of the evening was, "Do you feel like yourself right now?"

Yes. And also no.

I felt the most myself in February am the start of March.

Then the closer I've gotten to the end of my time here, the further along and more concrete my "future" became, I sort of started not feeling quite me.

I hear myself saying things I don't really mean and behaving oddly or out of character or inconsistently. And I think that's normal.

If I weren't being a bit odd, I think that would be indicate of a larger problem. It's good that I'm feeling the anxiety of this new and major transition: out of studenthood and into the workforce, out of one county into the next, the old. Shoot, even out of one state and into another.

It's a lot of change.

As she was pulling out of her housing area, I realized we were atop quite a sizeable hill. And from where we perched, set to descend, I could see the lights of Belfast.

I felt home. I felt, for just a strange wee second, calmed and ready and desirous to return and start over.

I'm nervous, at times very frightened, but this is going to be a good thing. God is good. All the time.

April Showers (of Blessings)

At the start of this month (in regards to The States), I was phoneless, carless, homeless, and jobless.

And by the end, I have a great vehicle I plan on driving until it dies in a nursing home parking lot sixteen years from now (its predecessor Bess set some pretty tough standards for Toyotas. 500,000 miles logged into that car over 16 years, five of which were mine. And, though she did die in a nursing home parking lot, which really is just ironic, she is still kickin' with a nice hispanic family my dad knows).

Secondly, I have been invited to join a home. I'll have my own room, the kitchen and living areas are lovely, there's a fenced-in yard so they're letting me keep my wee pup (Oh how I've missed him!!), and my roommates, though I don't know them, seem so sweet and warm. They are introverts, too! From our one FaceTime and emails/Facebook posts of theirs, I can already tell I'll enjoy living with their quirky selves.

Third (which I have already mentioned), I have occupation. Signed my contract just this week, actually, when my new boss came to visit Lakeside. I was very thankful for the chance to get to chat with them and rewrite my first impression on them. The first impression? My roommate Lauren's wedding rehearsal was at their home. I had the flu. And spent the majority of the rehearsal puking and hiding out in their kitchen hoping nobody would notice my absence. It was super classy.

My favorite part of all three of these was that they took me entirely off-guard. Honestly, I prayed for a car that worked, a roof that preferably didn't leak, and a direction. At the same time, I had in my mind what would be considered The Dream, the best possible situation. Did I ask for this? No. Because I would have been thrilled with the basics.

In return, I have had the complete shock of not once or twice but three times over being given the EXACT parameters of my dreams.

This is not a "suffering leads to gifts" or rewards for service. Not at all. Don't misunderstand me.
I see this as grace and confirmation over and over and over that the direction he's sending me in is exactly where I am supposed to be walking toward.

Hurt People Hurt People

One of my university professors from back home, Dr. Nick Ogle, says, "Brokenness cries out to brokenness."

Those two catch phrases, if you will, are very similar, I think.

It's similar to the old cliche, "Misery loves company."

We're all pretty messed up, it's true. And we're all messed up both the same and different than one another.

And yet, and yet, we all like to think our messed-up-ness is completely unique. Nobody in the entire world understands!!!! To a certain degree, that's true. There has never been another person like you, so no other person has experienced or processed pain in the same way as you.

However, in our confusion and in our partial/poor processing and understanding of our problems, we act out.

We become cagey, reckless, electric.

We find people who are similarly cagey, reckless, and electric and form destructive, dependent bonds with them.

Or/and we lash out at everything that moves.
"She looked at me weird."
"He sent me a smileyface emoticon as her entire text response."
"How hard is it to take two seconds and return an email?!."
"GET OFF MY TAIL, JERK! I'M GOING THE SPEEDLIMIT"
"Slam that door one more time. C'mon. I dare you."

Anything can set off the trigger.
All that self-anxiety and tumbles of frustration (that honestly we may not even recognize what the source of it is) is then tunnel-visioned onto whomever gave that twitchy finger the go-ahead.

In response, the squinter/emoticon abuser/slow emailer/butt-face driver (who, in defense of shootey-mcgee over there, probably deserve at least a paintball to the gut or an airsoft gun bruise or two) receives an avalanche of venomous slush.

Nearly all of it deserves displacement.

That's not what it seems, though. And it's definitely not how it feels.

But we don't take the time to analyze that.
We let it happen.

We, the offended, leave that interaction burning hot with rage, all at the offenders.
The offenders leave angry, hurt, and confused at what the heck just happened??
And, in response, transfer their anger, hurt, and confusion onto their own personal trigger people.

And honestly, at the end of the day, it doesn't make a whole heck of a lot difference if we do recognize what we have done and why we have done it.

Apologies are great. Recognizing and verbalizing that you have wronged is an incredible step forward. And it could indeed mend that acid-burned relationship.

But it still happened. And those dominos still fell.

Your words have power. Your actions have power. Don't be so smallminded as to think you can do whatever you want without broad consequence.

Be careful not to let tumble from your lips words that do not deserve existence.

That's not to say hoard offense. Rather, seek God, seek truth, seek understanding, and seek ways to word your pain which demonstrates knowledge that you are not only one in the battle.

Everybody's got their stuff.
Take the time to ask.
To give the benefit of the doubt.
To exercise mercy even if they deserve your wrath.

Because hurt people hurt people, yes.
But  blessed people bless people.

It works both ways.

Vim: Flipping Christians

Do I believe in the possibility of instantaneous change?

Do I believe in change at all?

Sure, it's possible for me to change, and sure it can happen for people in the Bible, but now? In others? It just isn't rational or sensical to think so.

We make people serve some sort of trial period before we are willing to believe that what they claim as change is true, has really taken hold, not just a phase or passing fancy.

In treating them and speaking to them as the "old self," though, are we not perpetuating old thoughts and behaviors from no-longer-applicable identities and, in so doing, pouring acid rain on the seeds of their new life?

And all this, in the name of wisdom and the "test of time."

What would happen if we acted out in faith and chose to join with them in speaking character revolution into existence and allowing ourselves to foster the steps (both backwards and forwards) of its growth? What would happen if we delighted with them?

Saul, though he tortured countless Christians and lived his ugly life just stuffed full with sin, turned completely around and faced up to it when God dropped the scales from his eyes.

That was his moment.
And it stuck.

3 years ago February, a heartbroken, skinny, mind-tortured anorexic girl looked in the mirror in the English Department hallway bathroom at John Brown University and finally saw a sliver of what Jesus saw in her.

Seven years of eating disorder exoskeleton fell to the floor and she walked out free.

That was my moment.
And it stuck.

When Jesus sparkles through that crack in the door for the first time, everything changes, and it is not one single person's place to doubt the credibility of that experience.

Even if "time tells" that your change isn't for always, it doesn't alter the possibility that it could have been.

I ran into a very sweet older lady from my church community group this morning who saw me at my very worst--the end of last semester: broken, shaking, vampire pale, sleepless, and thin.

Today, she greeted me by taking hold of my arms and shaking my whole body: "You've come back to use alive! Alive! Full of vim!"

It was very Irish.

It's true. I have come back to life. I doubted and struggled all last semester and most days I was back in The States, to the very week of my departure back here, but every day of February I seemed to resurrect more and more, if progressive resurrection is possible.

When she said that, though, even if it hadn't been the case, I think I would have believed her and been given the stamina to keep on fighting for my life and seeking joy.

Oh lovers of pathos, can you not hear God's heart for his people?
Oh lovers of logos, can you not hear the empirical evidence?

The Lord seeks to ransom his people in full.
It has happened and will happen again!

Positive personality flips are part of our Christian history and our Christian present.

Why then can we not widen our minds enough to see Jesus shake up our brothers and sisters in Christ?

Why cannot we call out and CHOOSE to have faith in that glimpse of vim, of electric Jesus energy in their eyes and voices?

We serve a seemingly nonsensical Father.
One for whom I choose to expect nothing and risk everything in order to trust in his unreasonable works simply because he loves us and delights in twist, shocker endings.

The God who moves mountains deals also in hearts.
Close-mindedness is safe; faith is infinite.

The Domino Effect

What's crazy is, if my phone wouldn't have drowned, if rice would have solved the problem, if Apple was helpful, if the water damage man had been there on Saturday to fix it, if the phone repair shop had been open the first time I checked on Monday, if I hadn't gone back to Starbucks after dropping off my phone, and if a couple hadn't stolen my cozy window spot, none of what happened would have happened.

As it was, upon sitting down in space number 2 in Starbucks, a girl asked if she could sit with me before seeing that it was, in fact, me whom she was asking. It was my coursemate. 

Of course I was delighted to have her sit with me, regardless that we had never spoken really before. 

I offered her a cookie (baked lemon lavender cookies at Eli's idea. Note to self: always trust Eli's cooking ideas) and we began to chat. 

We ran from how long I'd be in the country to young marriage (I'm leaving in June to make it for Kira's wedding) to Presbyterians (I guess in this country, Presbies get married very young). Naturally, this led to me asking after her own religious beliefs and her divulging a lot of pain and bitterness about the religious abuse she (and a heck of a whole lot of people in this country) has experienced. 

I asked a couple handfuls of probing questions (as I am known to do) and, after fully answering them, she asked me after my own religious views. 

Now, there's something I've started doing since this past summer waitressing, and that is this: I don't volunteer the fact that I am Christian. If there is nothing in me to set me apart as different, I don't want to be any part of furthering the bad Christian title. However, I will tell you all you want to know if you ask.  

Therefore, I told her straightforwardly that I agreed with her view that organized religion has achieved for itself a pretty priggish name for good reason but that I myself had found Jesus himself in a pretty profound way. 

Next came some questions as to a few specifics in my theology (particularly homosexuality, sex before marriage, and "how far is too far?"), and she was a little surprised (in a good way) by my answers' balance of theology and reason. 

She asked about my depression and counselling, and I briefly shared about my last semester's horrors but necessities and reciprocated the question as to whether she herself had ever experienced a wretched time that she would keep in her history anyway, if given the chance to remove it. 

I was given the great honor of hearing her story, known only to half a handful of people. 

Digging deeper, I asked after what it is that gives her the most satisfaction and joy in her life. 

Horses. They're quiet and they listen. 

The way I see it (and told her so as well), the reason we all love dogs and horses so very well is that no matter how many old ladies I kicked in a day, no matter how many homeless people I passed up on the street, no matter how many times I broke my diet, ignored texts from well-meaning friends, or cursed at wait staff, that little ball of fur is going to come running to the door for snuggles and love, treating me like I'm the greatest thing on two legs. 

And if there were a person like that, well, then there just might be grounds for reevaluating everything. 

That, in a nutshell, is why I love Jesus. 

He loves out the very best parts of me regardless of what I've done. 

Love like that changes a person. 

I am a new creation every day because of the wild love I receive and could not ever be good enough to deserve. 

He makes me a better woman, gives me the equipment to love, in part, others in the same way: seeing all and holding onto and speaking truth into the very best pieces. 

My coursemate didn't open up her life to Jesus right then and there, and she may never. But she didn't shut down the conversation either and has asked that we do it again. 

Maybe nothing will come of it, but I am humbled to have been able to even have that one talk. 

My phone is dead. Really dead. And a lot of dead memories that I'd been holding onto in its archives are now gone forever, along with a few pages of writing notes I'd really like not to have lost, but I've no room to be bitter or even upset. 

Scrubbed-down slate for brand new memories, one of which went down in Starbucks over broken Apple products and cookies. 

God is good.