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. 

Faith like a Lunchbox

My husband has a new habit of taking everything but the correct lunch. We'll have a full conversation about where the right lunch is and what the right lunch is but, as soon as he gets to work, I'll get a text with the truth of which lunch he actually took.

Last week, he took both his lunch and my lunch instead of the muffins I'd baked him for breakfast. Husband up two lunches and down one breakfast and wife left with no lunch.

Last night, I packed up his lunch and didn't even tell him about the second one hidden in the back, just saying, "Remember, your lunch has the blue lid." And, since blue is his favorite color and the lunch was the only one visible and sitting right at the front of the fridge, I thought we'd be golden.

I actually thought he was joking when he texted me this morning saying he could swear I'd said red push lid.

Allow me to explain. The red lidded lunch had about 4 stale noodles and a drizzle of marinara. It was also buried in the back of the fridge. The blue-lidded lunch had a big, delicious slice of homemade quiche in it.

**When I say stale, I mean, we forgot them in the pot in which they were made on the stove all night and a full work day sometime last week.**

Instead of a healthy well-balanced meal for lunch, he will be jawing his way through his handful of mostly naked penne that is not going to sustain him through his work day and night class.

As I was joking with a coworker about this, I thought about how often God must think the same thing about us:

"Jamie, I prepared and set aside for you this amazing, healthy choice for you. I wanted that for you. Did you take it? No. You went digging around the backside of life and found door number 3 which, I know for a fact, will not satisfy you."

It's so easy to make the right choice, but we get caught up in ourselves at the last second. We think, "this is too simple. I must have misunderstood." We convince ourselves it has to be someone else's, that we should look for something other. We think that we deserve something less, that it's too good for us. We're simply not paying attention.


"Wake up, you sleepyhead city! Wake up, you sleepyhead people! King-Glory is ready to enter."
(Ps 24:7)

May our minds daily be awakened to truth, to God, and to lunch.

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. 

In the Human

People ask me all the time how I spend my days in the office.

If I'm not travelling, what could I possibly be doing?

The answer is, I answer emails, text messages, and phone calls from anxious parents and students trying to figure out all of life's challenging questions like, "Where do I send my shot records?", "Which of my clep courses will transfer as credit?", and "Where is the best place to buy twin xl sheets?"

Even if I've met them before, after that 16th email exchange, it's hard for me to keep my students (and their parents) in my mind as real life people. It makes it difficult to remember to respond to them as though they were human beings with feelings and anxieties.
It's difficult to remember that I once felt similarly, just stuffed with over roommates, refrigerators, and registration.

This past weekend, I tried to play a video game with the beau and, despite telling him that I had never played it and hadn't actually played any video game in years, his instructions were bare minimum. At each turn, I would ask ten more questions, and he would give me answers with words for which I had no foundation of definition, leaving me more confused. I didn't know how to move or shoot or what my goal was in each level or even which direction I was supposed to be heading. And there he was in the split screen below me kicking butt (He may not have actually been, but to someone having her butt kicked, everything above that seems awesome).

We finally paused the game for a tutorial when I got irked at his partial answers and explanations, and he admitted he hadn't played with someone that unacquainted with games in a really long time, so he hadn't thought through totally how basic he had needed to answer.

I'm only so calm about it all now because I've made college my profession. I know all the ins and outs and professors and it came from experience and training. These little greens don't know that. They have no foundation for that and neither do their parents, if this is their first kid headed off to college.

When I answer the phone or the thirteenth text in a row with (what I think are the dumbest ever) questions, I need to remember that I have the opportunity to serve them, relieve their anxiety, get them excited and not afraid, and give them all a sense that they are making the right decision.

Other than a kind email, there is little emotional "return" in my job.
That's okay, I'll keep doing it despite that, we don't need a hug and box of chocolates for being sufficient, but by the nature of my business, sometimes it can feel like nothing we do matters.

You work closely with a family for 11 months and they drop last minute.
You work with them as hard as you can, and they tell you you're their back up back up back up school and they'll come if they have to (local students).
You communicate with them about the importance of choosing a university for it's community and professors instead of major (they're 18. It'll most likely change), and they drop you for some low-grade school you know they'll hate.

This weekend, though, was early registration.
600 people on campus, 319 students registered.
All but four of mine showed up.

And they take selfies on your phone and they cry and tell you how thankful they are for you and they tell you how you've become part of their family and they talk about you at the dinner table. And they're THERE, in the human, not a text, email, or transcript, not a number.

And suddenly, there seems to be a lot more room for grace.

Ugly Running

After about a week and a half after I downloaded the app onto my phone, I finally worked up the gumption to start C25K, a running app designed for lazy non-runners.

Also, it should be known that by "gumption" I mean "the leering guilt which came through devouring an entire box of macaroni and cheese by myself in one sitting...again".

I am not a runner.

Tried Track for a couple months in high school, made it two months under the regime of the interim coach and one day of the actual team.
My sophomore roommate Lauren got me to run for the same two months 5 years later. We ran every single morning. Mile and a half, ending with the 100 stairs on campus. It was miserable.

I've been four years clean from running, and thank goodness. That stuff is terrible, and I get just the worst shin splints.

And yet.

C25K.

Why?

You guessed it.
Office peer pressure.

We're going to a conference for nationwide admissions folk and guidance counselors at the end of next month and, for some ungodly reason, there is a "fun" 5K involved.

Basically, I was tricked into believing that we were all going to do it.
We're not.
But I have been promised a tank top.

So there I went to the health complex to get my run on on the track above the intramural gym. Because it's beautiful outside, nobody else besides me (the Allergic Wonder) was there.

5 minutes of warm up walk, followed by variations of a minute of running to a minute and a half of walking for 20 minutes, then 5 more minutes of walking.

It was all good and fun (ish) until I hear thumping behind me, see a runner (CAME OUT OF NOWHERE I TELL YOU), and scream. Like a little girl. That poor guy. He finished half a lap and escaped out a side door not to return.

The idea of running has always appealed to me. I have visions of running through fields, down country roads, or down really really long hallways in the basement of Pentecostal churches after hours, with my hair streaming out behind me and my 3 mile legs taking me so far so fast.

Reality? About 15-20 seconds of glory before I'm panting and feeling the start of shin splints.
I've got no endurance. Or patience to learn endurance.

Many things have come easily to me learning wise.
If someone makes me feel stupid or less than, I will kick their expectations right off the table. Nothing can sidetrack me from my goal.

It takes that challenge, though, to make me change, to grow, to...try.
I've tried tricking myself into different challenges, like a weird self-antagonism, but it just doesn't stick. I need that outside antagonist, just one person that I've got to prove wrong.

That's how I passed Honors Algebra 2 and AP European History, why I was able to hold to my determination against slipping back into anorexia, how I managed to complete my Master's degree.
I still know the triggers from each. And there are more.

There have been other things I have vaguely wanted to accomplish, but the hard-nosed drive just isn't there.

I suppose I've always seen it as one or the other: either I'm so determined I'm scary or so apathetic others are scared for me. The gentle incline of appropriated endurance is not something I've endured long enough to see the fruits of. I try once, get irritated with my failure, and quit.

That brings me back to running.
I'm going to finish the 8 weeks this dumb app makes me do, and I will do it on its terms, not mine.
Honestly, I don't really care if I become a passable runner or not. It's more that this is a practice in a form of discipline that no one else would even know about if I didn't tell them.

So many areas of my life I wish were different. At the same time, I only think that because I keep focusing on all the large battles lost when I'm not even paying attention to the small battles.

Of course I can't read a 300 page book when I can't read a 300 word article on TheDailyBeast.
Of course I can't turn my phone off for a full day when I can't turn it off for half an hour.
Of course I can't write a new book when I can't write a letter back to Leslie.

Small, consistent practices of discipline. The gentle incline of appropriated endurance.
That's what I'm lacking; that's what I want.