Dear Seamus, thank you.

Within the first few weeks I lived in Belfast, I visited the Linen Hall Library, which is beautiful and old and makes you feel that creativity lives all around you and literature is alive and breathing and you, too, are alive and breathing and creative. Seamus Heaney had died not a month before and upstairs, at the top of the flight, was a memorial book. I felt the weight of the moment—of course I want to write in a memorial book for any writer I had ever heard of in the upper hall of a library I was enthralled with. I knew of Seamus from his translation of Beowulf, a book I hated in a class I found no purpose in during undergraduate school. I can’t remember what I wrote—I’m sure it was neither impressive nor meaningful. I didn’t know him.

I know him now.

Each time I teach English II, I teach through his entire Field Work collection with my students. We start small with “Oysters”, and by the time we reach “Ugolino”, my students are fiery and on my level in terms of general obsession for the Northern Irish Troubles and for Seamus Heaney’s heartthrob for his people, for reconciliation, and for the willingness of the divisive groups to listen to one another—if only they would listen to one another.

They move from essential non-knowingness (like I did) to being able to describe the man by his themes, his loves, and his heart. They begin to understand his poetry (very hard for people in general) because they can hear his voice and feel the pull of his motivations.

This is when my class starts to shift. We get political. We get real. We talk through the difficulty of listening, of sorting through the hard stuff when divisiveness and fake news surround us. We talk about how bad people can be good, how good people can be bad, and how God is there, swimming around in all of the midst of it, even when we might not even mean to invoke him.

Seamus Heaney loved his wife and he loved his country. He speaks of wounds from their Troubles as though they were imminent and eternal and yet, he spoke through his pain with hope. Together, we feel the pulse of humanity and take that energy into our next two series before the semester’s end.

Were he alive, were I able to meet him, to thank him, I am not certain I could do so without a gush of hot tears, thankful for someone who could create such beauty and such vulnerability and such accessibility and help snotty teenagers learn to open their hearts and their ears to love and care and feel compassion for a situation they could care nothing for beforehand, since they had no heart in the game.

You made them care. You draw us, one another, in and help us to hear in a way we couldn’t before.

Dear Seamus, you planted goodness and hope where we could only see blood, see walls, see bombs. You helped us dream toward a better tomorrow, of white-washed rooms with elbow room, of the smell of saltwater inthe air, and of young women with baskets of green cabbage, new potatoes, andfresh carrots with mould still on the tops of them.

The Keys to Searching

Notoriously, I lose my keys. 

Having a spacial memory, I can distinctly remember the circumstances around which I lost the keys, but the parameters can fit any number of places, which makes finding them incredibly difficult. 

Yesterday, my fiance and I went to my grandmother's to pick up a few things with my mom. 

Right before we left, I misplaced the keys, sending us on a 45 minute hunt. 

It was incredibly frustrating, especially because there was an extremely limited number of places where they could have gone to. 

The four of us searched and searched and, at a certain point, as I was hunting through a basket of blankets there was no chance of my keys being in, I found myself thinking, "I have to find them. I'm hunting so thoroughly." 

Immediately upon thinking that, though, I had a counter thought: "It doesn't matter how thoroughly or diligently you search; if you're looking in the wrong place, you'll still never find it." 

This gave me a lot of pause, as I considered in how many areas of our lives, not just in mine, we find ourselves "searching for _____ in all the wrong places." 

It takes a lot of practice and self-control and patience to begin your search in the right place. 

I found my keys. 

Facing my car, I gave an exasperated sigh and through up my hands, which shifted my perspective. 

There, draped very clearly just above the back door, were my keys. 

All four of us had missed them. Rather than looking up, we focused our energy in dark places we'd already looked, tearing apart the car and house over and over again, even though we knew knew knew they weren't there. 

But, since we didn't have any ideas, we kept looking in the familiar places. 

Sometimes, it takes giving up to find what you're looking for. 

I Only Dog Paddle

All I've gotta say is that something's in the Texan waters this year and applications are pouring in.

We are already at 50% of the total number of applications that I received last year and it's only September.

Yesterday, I was on the phone for four hours calling prospective students.

45 new applicants just this week as well as 13 meetings so far just this week and travel planning galore.

You could say that I've been drowning just a little bit, but it's the very best kind (minus some of the meetings. Really. So very many meetings could be an email).

Our first call to a student is known as an APN call, APN standing for APlicant Not yet contacted.

When we call them, it's this bizarre interaction knowing that there's a chance that this may not just be a phone call to a student, this may be the start of a year long relationship with a student, ending with orientation leaders swarming their vehicle and moving all their belongings into the dorm.

It could end with the start of a new life here at John Brown.

On Tuesday, I took one of my new Freshman students out for coffee because she was feeling a bit homesick and needed to see a familiar face.

While we were talking, I couldn't help but think that I had known her longer than anyone on campus. For more than a year, we have talked once a month at least.

All those interactions--going on a tour, calling when I got her application, a text upon reception of her transcript, seeing her when I visited her school at lunch, her acceptance call, a note on her birthday, ecstatic texts and calls when she raised her test scores to scholarship competition eligibility, a hug at scholarship competition, lots of tears and hugs when she shocked everyone and won the scholarship, class registration advice at early registration, a welcome at move in--became a year.
I've gotten to see her grow up a lot, as I have many of my students as they've gone through the process.

Each one of my APN calls has the potential to become part of our future.

While it may feel right now that I need to just desperately reach out for contact with my enormous list, it's worth the dog paddle, taking my time, feeling the potential gravity of the 5 years ahead.

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.

It's Good to be Smart

It's better to be kind.

The wife of my smallgroup leader, a lady named Heather, was a teeny tiny, quiet woman with a gush of energy inside her, helpful considering she has two boys and now a sweet little girl.

My second semester in Belfast, Heather really took after me, bringing me over for tea, getting me little gifts (like a measuring cup with American conversion rates on it, so I could bake easier), and just showing me kindness.

In small group, she didn't talk a whole lot--I would definitely put her on highly on the introvert scale. But one-on-one, she really connected well with others. I was most thankful for her.

One time, when we were talking about her older son who is wicked smart, she told me that with her boy, she is often drawn to tell him, "It is good to be smart; it is better to be kind."

Being someone who has been born into American competitiveness, a culture where getting ahead by whatever means possible is the only way, this was kind of shocking to me to hear a mother praising her son's braininess but pushing him toward a lifestyle characterized not by wits but by wisdom and gentleness.

In a month, I'll have all 58 of my new students (450 overall oh my goodness) arriving on campus. Some of them I know to be both very smart and very kind. Some are very kind and lack in educational prowess. Others, I know to be intelligent but I have some doubts as to their inter-social tendencies.

I guess as an education facilitator, I'm supposed to cheer on the smart ones. That makes sense. They're the ones who supposedly will do best here.

I was one of those.

But was I kind?

At my core, kindness and gentleness toward others is something very important to me. The manifestation of that, though, is something I have had to work hard to express well.

You see, I can't make myself get on-board with the smarties. Life is more than being smart. University community, not just high data GPAs and test scores, is what makes being at college "the best four years of your life".

Curious, kind students who want to learn and connect beat out brilliance.

Naturally being the best can lead you to believe that you don't need help, that you don't need to connect, that you don't need contribute and respond. And the worst part is, you don't even see that that is hurting you longterm. You see it as a point of pride that you have all that you need tucked inside you.

The thing is, that doesn't stay inside the classroom.
We aren't as compartmentalized as we would like to believe.

Who we are inside BBL_3003 directly relates to who we are at home or church or work.

It all comes down to who we believe we are.

If you believe yourself to be someone entirely self-sufficient, when push comes to shove in your relationship, will you not pull away, throw up walls, and cut out your significant other from relating to you, helping you, or making decisions with you? Will you not turn away from God in the rough times because you can fix the problem better yourself? Will you not miss out from good ideas from coworkers when you are working on a new project?

We are build to relate to one another and to fail and to learn together.
It is good for us to be smart, but it is better for us to be kind.

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.

Forge New Roads

Running outside is the worst. Because of allergy season, I've done my couch to 5k training on the indoor track.

Last week, though, I decided it was time to move my long legs to the outdoors.

I left from my office, which connects to both the graveyard and the trail that goes around JBU and Siloam.

It's the same path Noah and I used to circle and circle and circle for 1-6 hours at a time, the same path my sophomore roommate used to make me run every morning from January to March of 2012.

I hated every second of that run. It was so much harder than running on the track! I was out of breath, desperate, and saying more obscenities than my mother would approve of. And it was supposed to have been an easy run schedule that day. As I ran, my head circled with memories of mornings and late nights and I knew how the trail would turn and twist and could anticipate each predictable frustration.

Today, I changed route. Running through the graveyard and into residential zones, I ran places I had never been before with anyone else and had no idea of what to expect. The hills were steeper, the twists were sharper, and cars came from both directions. I didn't know where I was going, but I kept track of my turns.

The run schedule for today was more arduous than last week's, but I found myself energized and capable of doing it without wanting to give up.

Change: I think that's what it takes, sometimes, to find new motivation. Kind of like the saying, "if you always do what you've always done you'll always get what you've always gotten".

I find myself frustrated by people who won't change any of their habits but constantly complain about the outcomes of those habits.

You're overweight but you won't run.

You're broke but you won't give up your iPhone or monthly manicure.

You're friendless but you won't go out to meet new people.

I accuse, but I'm certain I have my own which are blatant to others. 

One of my vices was pointed out last year at this time by a professor I very much admire. When hearing me complain about a recent romantic annoyance, he looked at me and said, "Odom, you're attracted to the wrong people."

What.

But he was right. All my relationships or flings or trysts followed the same trajectory because each person I had shown interest in was basically the same as the last. And I had wondered when they ended why they did.

And that's when he brought me (yes brought me) Julius.

I couldn't have made a list of things I deeply needed in a person because I didn't know until I re-met him. And piece by piece, it became clear that his innate facets fit into mine.

Never would I have chosen a path with him, I had my chance freshman year when we had met the first time.

My road run with him, though, is an easy burden. There's always something new to challenge us and inclines are a thing, but at the end of the day, I'm not exhausted. I feel good. I feel ready for tomorrow.

So whether it's a person, place, or thing, if you've come to a path where the rock always melts just before you reach the summit or the water always drains just as your lips reach its rim, try something new.

Advice for Aspiring Writers

It's rather ironic that I'm writing this considering that I haven't written creatively in two years now. Nevertheless,

1.) Spend some time each day reading. Read everything. Read non-fiction, fiction, newspapers, smut magazines (People is my favorite), poetry, prose, essays, philosophy, theology, modern, classic, contemporary. Broaden your scope as widely as you can. Inspiration comes from collaboration.

2.) Find a writing friend. My best guy friend for a very long time was named Peter. He is bursting with passion and ideas and words and talking to him is like plugging in to to a supercharger. Every time we would meet up for coffee, I would leave buzzing with residual energy, ready to write volumes of work. Actually, it was after he took me to Panera for my birthday that Woodsy was born. It's my favorite thing I've written, a short novel for a class. Bounce ideas off your friend, exchange pieces with one another for critique and accountability. Friends help you build and keep momentum.

3.) Schedule. Each and every day, whether it's in a notebook or a computer, write. Every day. Preferably during the same time slot every day but at least half an hour every single day. Journal, write a vignette of someone, copy down a conversation you overheard, paint a word picture, music and restaurant and coffee shop reviews, something.

4.) Stay away from screens. Speaking from experience, screens suck out your brain, soul, and creative energy. If you have to be glued to a screen for work, write in a journal for a change of pace.

5.) Get out. Leave your house. Leave the office. Go sit in the lawn and garden section or Walmart, go sit in a coffee shop, go to a local art fair, go to a local flea market, go people watch! Talk to strangers, non-stalkerly watch and listen to strangers, volunteer at nursing homes and talk to old people, babysit, go to museums and make up stories about the people in different paintings or the people who painted them, take a foreign language class at the community college, take a pottery class, go to a wine/painting session (Pinot's Palate is fun). Go, do, collect stories.

6.) If you're a recent college graduate especially, get a job straight out of college that has absolutely nothing to do with your english degree and don't take any crap for it. Work as a dental assistant, waitress, night guard at a museum, do something that will force you to build experience outside of the pages of a book. Collect stories. Make up stories. Re-vision stories you have lived.

7.) "Write shitty first drafts" (in the words of my college writing professor). Don't worry if what you're writing is worth a Pulitzer prize. It's not. Accept it and have fun creating without self-consciousness. You can revise and redesign later.

8.) Write everything. Write poems and prose and non-fiction essays and fiction chapters and short stories and children's stories. Write about the construction and maintenance of garage doors, about the men who maintenance them, about the families of the men who maintenance them, about the hopes and dreams of the kids in the families of the men who maintenance garage doors, about the adventures of imaginary friends in the hopes and dreams of the kids in the families of the men who maintenance garage doors, about the glitter pony unicorn pets of the imaginary friends in the  hopes and dreams of the kids in the families of the men who maintenance garage doors.

If you run out of creative juices, remind yourself that you are a creative person because you were creatively made. It's in your genes, in your very DNA. Sometimes it just needs be a little teased out into the open again.

I guess that's where I am, in the phase of telling myself, "I have written, I can write, I will write again."

Rising to Requirement

I've taken to picking up the mail in order to get me out from behind my desk. Yesterday, there was a large package for one of my bosses needing to be taken across campus back to our office.

Instinctively, I hoisted it and the tray of other mail up on one hand above my head just as I had learned to do when I waitressed.

When I did so, I recalled my training days and how intimidated I was at the idea that I was not just encouraged but required to carry each tray full of food with one hand above my head, grabbing a tray stand with the other and maneuver my way to the correctly numbered table.

Some of those trays were 30 or so pounds or more--don't even get me started with fajitas for a table of four.

Muscle is not something I've ever prided myself on. Ain't no pictures of me flexing in front of a mirror. This task was my personal fear factor. Images of dropping hot plates of enchiladas on children and the elderly danced through my head during my entire training. How was I going to do this?

But I did.

Fajitas and I never became bosom friends, but I got some very nice shoulder muscles and learned to do my job quickly and efficiently, with a smile on my face.

It's amazing how much capacity we have to rise to the occasion even when, at the start of a project/semester/job, it's easy to become overwhelmed and discouraged.

When I began my MA program, it was 5000 word papers that caused anxiety.
Waitressing brought "big tops", timed everything, and tray carrying.
Admissions brought travel season planning, events coordinating, and dressing like an adult every day.
Running brought running.

We rise to requirement, whether that's psychological, emotional, spiritual, physical, or mental.

The times we don't, I truly believe it's because a piece of us doesn't want to or doesn't believe we can.
Sometimes, like obedience, the actions come before the feelings.

If I think about running, I won't go. If I think about the distance that I need to run, I will give up.
If I had let myself ruminate on my papers when I was coping with my depression, they wouldn't have gotten written. I'm still unsure how they got written in the first place, but they did.

Looking at the whole can be wholly exhausting.
One step, one phone call, one mile (or one lap), one tray, one chapter, one paragraph, one outfit.
Small achievable goals.

And someday, you'll be walking across your own quad with a heavy box above your head/walking across the stage to receive your Master's/finishing up 6 weeks of travel for work/running 3 miles for the first time/effortlessly pairing a business casual ensemble for the 3972 time (or whatever your equivalent is) and think to yourself, "I can do so much more than I can imagine. Thanks be to God".

Toilet Snakes

My best friend moved to Australia this past weekend, the land Steve Irwin (RIP), giant spiders, and toilet snakes. It's also the land of sand, surf, and sexy accents, not that she'll be much seduced by them, as she moved there with her sweet husband.

It's a time of transition indeed for so many of my friends and loved ones.

For Kira, it's a time of, "Good Lord, finally!!!" Tyler's job has him on the go and away from her for months at a time. Moving to Australia will enable them to be like a real life married couple.

The next three years are going to bring her so many incredible, life-altering experiences, probably a horrible partial accent, and gobs on gobs of joy.
It'll also be difficult: "How do I make new friends?" "Where do I start looking for a job?"
It'll be wonderful, it'll be lonely, it'll be worth it.

I think that's one thing I'm really starting to learn. Wonderful, lonely, and worth it are kind of integral to "new". It's hard to forge new paths in your life. It's especially hard to do that while forcing yourself to choose against remembering, rehashing, recreating the old paths in your head, wishing old things were back, even if you didn't really like them or benefit from them.

They're familiar.
You know how they work.
If they didn't work, you know how to fix them now.
The choices in front of you are all unknown and scary and different.
Maybe better, maybe worse, but definitely full of maybes.

On Being Adult

Two weekends ago, I traveled down to Dallas for a college friend's wedding.

It was beautiful and strange to see her get married. She's had a pretty crazy journey through the past several years. These friends' weddings are a fun time to be able to get back together with people I was close to in college and have now been dispersed throughout the states.

These girls comprised a good portion of my freshmen year hallway, except a little sister, a husband (who was in the male half of our freshmen friend group) and a hometown best friend that have since been added as honorary members.

For the purpose of consolidation, two work friends and I decided to drive together and picked up a student who needed to attend a friend's wedding of her own.

She was very perky. One of the questions she posed to me on the way there was if I was sad that we didn't get spring break like the rest of the campus.

It resulted in this conversation:

"Well dude, when you become an adult--"
"--I AM an adult!!"
"No. You are not. Anyway. When you become an adu--"
"--which I am already"
"No. You are not. Anyway. When you--"
"I'm already an adult though."
"Do you work a 9-5? No? Do you pay your own bills? No? Have you ever lived on your own for any amount of time? No? Not an adult. Now then. Allow me to answer your question."

I went on to explain to her that when you become an adult, you learn to appreciate different things. Life is not a hallway of your best friends, playing music on the quad, learning, and every meal prepared for you by someone else.

I've learned to appreciate the good coupon (there was an online deal for half off pizza from Dominos last week that saved a ton when I went on a school visit), the way I can make a shower floor shine, when I get to go to the post office, a well written grocery list, a pencil skirt that is functional, fashionable, and comfortable, the fact that on spring break we get to wear jeans to work.

It's a different life, this chapter of realism. It takes a lot of energy to be a college student. Ha. This slower pace works well for me, but it is funny. From her perspective, it all sounds miserable what I said; but those are all things I genuinely appreciate about the day to day.

Different years will bring different stories, and this is mine right now: the daily grind of the newly adult.

When We Talk of Home

When you speak of home, what words come out?

When I speak of home, my home now, it is not with a whole lot of fondness. Because I'm smack dab in the middle of it. I take the same two streets, maybe three on an adventurous day, and that's just so...discouraging. Dull. Drab. Uck.

If I want to go out? I have two coffee shop options in Siloam (be prepared for all students). Or I have a coffee shop in Springdale. Woo.

Sometimes I just feel so damn stuck in this awful, awful hamster wheel life.

And then, I have a conversation with one of my students.
And, in telling them a bit of my own 17 year old heart, I fall back in love with my 23 year old life.

The message:

 "Eeeeek! I'm so excited Jamie. I called my best friends this morning [to tell them I made my college decision] and they're super excited too!...I think the thing that got me the most is when I was talking to [my future roommate (who, ironically is the sister of my own freshman year roommate)] last week and she said, 'JBU is home.' I don't think any other combination of words can describe my heart at this moment. Thanks for letting me freak out in pure excitement and joy on you!"

My response:

"I could not understand that feeling more.
I felt it too a long time ago. And now.
From the second I stepped onto campus, I knew it. When I was your age, I was unsure of a lot of things, but I was sure of JBU.
It's the reason why I came back from Europe.
JBU, Siloam Springs, is the place you want to build your bookshelves, the place you want to unpack your life for the long-haul.
And no matter where you go, no matter what you do after, it will always be your home." 

I meant it.
This is my home.
Here's to seeing your home through the eyes of another and re-learning how to love.

Blank Space

That new T-Swift song is great, but I've got a completely unrelated story.

I'm a writer, right? I'm designed to be a bit broody and ruminate and turn that into words.

So maybe it's my disposition toward slow processing that's made my experiences of last fall so difficult for me to...get out of my system.

There's a lot I don't remember. There's a lot I do remember.

Last year: three weeks of silence and one week of fighting to complete November, the waiting month. Sometimes, good things don't happen to those who wait.

A whole host of awful happened after. Awful that I only found out in segments. Awful that I still don't understand. And I don't need to. And I probably won't ever.

I came out of chapel today to see the retreating figure of a girl I have spent nearly a year's worth of energy and thoughts and behaviors in practical hatred.

And, though I had contemplated it before and decided against more than once, it was finally the right moment.

It does not matter what happened last year.
Or how it happened.

My response to it has been entirely my own to own.
And I have allowed myself to hate and behave in every manner contrary to the grace that I have been shown in my own life.

That ends today.

Today I apologized for my sin.
Didn't wake up thinking I would.
Still kind of shocked that I did.
And I've got that just-graduated feeling where you're having to readjust to not having homework hanging over your head or dreading the homework that will be hanging over your head.
All this space.
All this opportunity.

I don't know if I did it right or if I would go back and revise to make it perfect, but it was sincere and hard and time.

God is good.
God redeems.

Without that one catalyst (and all the ones that followed), literally everything in my life would be different. I would not be in Arkansas, I would not be with Julius, and I may not be who I want to be, but thanks be to God I'm not who I was.

The journey continues.
And it's slow and annoying and endless feeling, but I'm really thankful for these kinds of moments, when I see how God is making good on pain and moving me forward.

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.

Begrudge Not Joy

There is nowhere more beautiful than Northern Ireland in the sunshine.

The flowers all abloom, the daylong-morning sunshine lightly brushing against your cheeks, gently swishing air. That's how I met her two years ago. It was in that garb that she entranced me, gave me something in which to fall in love.

So I get it, I do, when my groups of Americans come and spend the majority of their time taking selfies and gushing, "OMG I could like totally live here. That's it. Seriously. I'm coming back and living here. No question. OMG."

I was one of those people. Minus the OMGs and the selfie taking (mostly). But I absolutely did say, even then, that I was coming back.

And you know what? I did.

So my disdain for those comments isn't in their frivolity really because I know that it's possible.

Rather, I detest the ignorance. I detest my own ignorance, not that anyone could have really prepared me for here.

The emotions that run through my head:

-annoyance: They meet NI in spring. Not winter when there is no sun. They see her at her very best.
-pre-anger/jealousy: If they do move here, do as I did, and out-do me, succeed where I failed, thrive where I survived, it will rub salt and lemons into my wounds.

Two years ago I was that girl. I came in a wonderful group, bonded with the country and its people alike and, essentially, had a wonderful honeymoon period.

Last semester, was the statistically awful first five years of marriage when the highs are high and the lows are low (that's a joke. There were no highs.) and it takes very nearly everything you've got not to throw down the pot of gold and get a divorce (you'll need that gold for the divorce. Don't throw it too far).

Then, after that, you learn the rhythms of what it means to live with one another peaceably and joyfully. You made it past the culture shock of marriage. You can do this.

I firmly believe that if I were to have stayed another year or two, I would be so okay with it. I may have even had the capacity to thrive. But that wouldn't have been possible without those first few months.

I, unlike past Jamie and present student teams, am not infatuated with Northern Ireland. I am in love with her. Love is a choice, a devoted, daily, obedient, faithful choice.

At the same time, I want those kids to love my adopted country as I love it.

This is a resilient place with its nooks and crannies full of strange and wonderful humans and sheep and cows and green, green grass and wet rain and gale force winds and universities that look like castles. and tea.

The kids to whom I will promote the NI studies trip to will need to hear those things.
About the rest, I honestly just need to bite my tongue.

Because they will come with a group and be dazzled off their toes. They will leave with clovers in their hearts and tea in their veins.

And to the person who will become the next Lord or Lady of the Manor, I can hold no vindictiveness if they assimilate into this country better than I did. Ain't nobody could have predicted what happened to me in any of those insane categories. I learned and grew and am thankful, but it will still be a challenge not to wish upon them pain and throw a childlike tantrum if they get off scot-free (Why me and not them???).

That answer is not important. The Why really doesn't (rather, shouldn't) hold much ground. Ever. I'm not called to know, I'm called to follow.

Again, I find myself in a state of discipline, practicing grace, practicing how to rejoice with others when they rejoice and not just hurt when they hurt.

Striving for Stepford

I caught myself yet again in the beginning phases of self-construction recently.

Now, to some that might not at first seem like a bad thing. Construction is moving forward, moving up, building on.

I guess, for me, that's kind of the thing.

When things start going well, it's easy to start sliding God to the middle, then the back burner. "Thanks for handling that rough patch there, big fella. I've got it from here" sort of thing.

That's how they get you.

In Derek Mahon's poem entitled, "Circe and Sirens", Tiresias the blind prophet speaks to Odysseus about dangers to come, how those dangers will be unlike what he's prepared for.

We're so focussed readying ourselves for battles that we don't notice when the danger slips in through the side door dressed as a soldier.

Following God is putting on pants.
That never changes.

Sometimes I just forget.

And then I wake up with thoughts and concerns and anxieties that really ought not to be any of my thought or concern or anxiety to hold.

In that mindset, I begin to strive again, working to make people like me, respect me, and approve of me.

It's easy to do, is it not?

This slow shielding of ourselves to better our chances at convincing people we're just as glossy as we seem.

The more we do it, the more we're numbed to the memory of why being "good" ain't so good as it seems.

Thankfully, I realized what I was doing a lot more quickly than I usually do. Does that mean my screwing up is actually progress? I'd like to think so. And even if it's not, I choose to believe it is. Because either way, it is my chosen perception and God's direction alone that will alter the trajectory of who I will become.

I'm tired of playing games and being amusing to other people. I don't want any part of being in somebody's life just to amuse them or pass their time.

I'm not going to get huffy or shun others, but I also want to surround myself with people who actually like me, who are willing to engage with me in conflict but who are also just as willing to delight in who I am and where I am, no matter where that place is.

For me, that entails admitting when I do wrong, allowing myself to own up to the responsibility of whatever that is, entering in to that horrible, vulnerable state, and seeing who's still standing there at the end of the day.

The best part in doing that is just how daily it forces me to remember that I need Jesus and that, if any construction is going to be done to my person, it's gonna be him that does it. Not me.

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.

Let Us Now Forget One Another

I'm working on it, I am.

This whole, making friends outside the house thing.

It's a struggle for me, not like that's any surprise. There's a desire for connection and relationship, but that seems to be equally matched by intense resistance to "putting myself out there."

This past Monday, though, was a moderate step forward for me. About a week ago, I made nice with a classmate (one  of the five in my program) in the Special Collections room (the same day I got in trouble for sprawling on floor). That conversation was followed by middleschoolish note passing during class, orange eating under the table (also during class), and an invite to join the weekly group ritual of pre-class lunch (didn't even know they had been doing that).

Therefore, half assuming that they weren't going to actually show up, I arrived at Monday lunch. And you know what? They did.

Each of we five brought a contribution to the meal (mine was orange bread. Yum!). And we chatted and got on. It was actually very fun, and it made class dynamic feel like, well, like it actually had a dynamic.

The social doesn't end there. After poetry class (and my presentation which went quite well I will add), lunch, and modern Ireland class, two of my church friends lifted me from Queen's for dinner.

Over dinner, we caught up on everything we'd missed while I was away in The States over delicious food at Benedict's. A note on them: they've got this stellar deal for dinner where the time you order is the price you pay. So a £12 meal could potentially be gotten for a mere £5.30.

Afterward, we FINALLY got to go to Bible study. The whole group--by nature of it being the Newcomers Lifegroup--had changed over, so there were lots of new names to learn.

After a full 13 hours away from the house, I came home to my Kanukukers.

Things with them are still going well, but I'm beginning to feel the start of separations and, while still enjoying them in spurts, pulling away bit by bit so as to lessen the social "cold turkey" that'll happen in a mere 7 days when they leave.

I never intended to like them or to get attached to them. I can't express how wonderful it's been to have them here as a transition resource, though. They could never understand just where I was and just how much of a blessing their just liking me has been.

With their leaving, the old fear of forgettableness is coming back up.
They will leave.
I will stay.
They will continue to build relationships with one another and live in community.
I will not.
The journeys divide.

I've had thoughts on that particular note of fear over the course of the past few months, and if I'm sincere in them, then this will be okay.

I've always worked so hard to make myself unforgettable, so that people don't want to let me go. But life isn't about me.

All of creation is oriented around the glorification of Jesus Christ.

I'm not meant to be remembered. The pieces of my own fabricated persona are probably pretty revolting in the eyes of God and not worth being remembered.

So if I'm to be remembered by anyone at all, I would hope that they would forget everything about me save that which is of my God.

I Make a Truce With You, Valentine's Day

Loathe would be the most correct verbal form of my hatred for Valentine's Day.

It's consumerist, materialistic, and puts enormous amounts of pressure on everyone involved.
---What does she expect? What does her best friend expect? What if she does something for me but I don't do enough for her? What if her best friend's boyfriend does something crazy romantic and I didn't come up to par? What if there's a glitter cannon mixup and chocolate syrup comes gushing out instead and she's wearing her new dress and it gets all ruined and she starts to cry and there's mascara everywhere and oh my gosh we're out in public and she's gonna hate me forever and won't even let me scoop up some of the chocolate off her arm with a pretzel?!?!

You get my point.

And, even if a girl (such as myself) truly is not a fan of large romantic gestures, nobody will believe her because it'll seem like a cover-up for her actually really, really wanting a romantic gesture. What.

V-Day has also historically been for me a day of bad news. There was a space of about four years there where something legitimately tragic happened on Valentine's Day.

So, I've held a grudge against it. In my mind, not unwarranted.

This was even to the extent that I cancelled Valentine's Day last year. Cancelled it. As in, I didn't even see my now ex on the day.

I've had a lot of time for reflection since I moved to NI in September (by that I mean that I have thought through everything on God's green Earth for lack of something better to do with my ungodly amounts of free and alone time). During that time, VDay and I have had an all-out.

It's amazing to me how many of life's decisions and revisions are driven by a deep deep rooting in fear.

For this day, there's a fear of not measuring up to expectations, of having expectations and being disappointed, of being vulnerable enough to let yourself be loved in unnecessary ways. It's what I talked about once in my definition of intimacy. 

Intimacy as that moment of tension, that point at which you're dancing on the edge and could either fall to your death or jump to a higher ledge.

When I realized at what depth my hatred really did stem from terror and how much I was denying myself as well as other people an opportunity for relational growth, I owed VDay some reconsideration and an apology.

Still not a fan of the gross spectacle it has become, nor am I cozy with being fussed over in almost any capacity, but I recognize that there is some intrinsic value in its existence, if not solely its history.

For that reason, Valentine's Day, you are safe from my slander and cancellation tenancies.  We can now be friends. 

Finding Neverland

26 hours and I'll be on a plane back to Northern Ireland.

It's funny, I have a really vivid memory of sitting on Tracy Balzer's living room floor eating dinner with her, her husband, and two of my gateway students. They were asking me about grad school applications and why I wanted to go to Ireland.

I gushed with radiant energy and excitement and absolute passion for that country and grad school program and adventure.

And now here I am, trying to convince myself to go back, knowing very well that I am "living the dream" of so many. And feeling very much like an ungrateful brat.

NI has taught me so much already. If the Lord sees it necessary to repeat a version of the second half of last year, He will. He is not unkind, but He is just.
And if he doesn't find it necessary, he won't do it. He is just, but He is not unkind.

I was given a great gift of mercy in being able to come home for this long. Many have asked me over the past week or so if I'm ready, and I haven't known exactly what to say.

However, my default quote-bank movie came to me with the perfect visual image of my sentiments toward the situation.

Princess Bride: Westley, in pursuit of the kidnapped Buttercup, follows the trail up the Cliffs of Insanity (which are actually the Cliffs of Moher in The Republic of Ireland), climbing quickly up the rope set out for that very purpose.

Then, the rope is cut! This leaves Westley clinging desperately to the side of the rock face, climbing every slowly upward.

When he finally makes it to the top (with the reluctant help of his impatient enemy), exhausted Westley pulls out his sword to begin the duel, but receives an unexpected reprieve first.

After a few minutes, Inigo asks:

"You ready then?"
"Whether I am or not, you've been more than fair."

And they duel.


I've climbed the rope, held on to the cliffs, received help in unexpected ways by unexpected people, made it to the end of the semester, received mercy and rest, but now, whether I'm ready or not, the Lord has been more than fair, and it's time to duel again.


While I rested on the floor of my soul and the floor of my bedroom, I've given some thought back to that night with the Balzers and my initial love. What was it? And what have I found to love now?

I love Ireland because:
-The people are kind and warm and understand how to value relationships over tasks.
-The grass is greenest on every side.
-If there's any conversation, it's everybody's conversation. You hear someone ask for directions, feel free to answer--even if you weren't the one asked. Weigh in on debates, shoe choices, anything.
-The pub culture. It's not a sleezy thing. It's just this culture of togetherness, in a way. They don't try to hide away from their neighbors (unless they differ on the Catholic/Protestant question)
-My church. Warm and loving and accepting and my safe place and my place of prayer and the place where I refound my roots in the Holy Spirit.
-The food is better. Period. Fresher, healthier. Except they have some serious blindspots in the realm of Chinese and Mexican.
-Public transportation. It is clean, mostly efficient, and means I don't have to find a parking space.
-The little green men who clean the streets at night.
-The traffic officers have hilarious wee red suits that I just can't take seriously.
-The material I read, I can have first copies of it. And see the actual places they were written. And see the actual places they were written about. And talk to people who experienced the things written about first-hand.

I'm seeking out that initial love, joy, and anticipation. That kid on Christmas eve frenzy.

It's there--somewhere, buried under heartbreak and exhaustion, but it's there. Few things lost are lost forever.