But is it? Is it really?

One single concluding paragraph separates me from fully completing my first semester (and first half) of my Master's degree.

I can't think of anything at all to say in that concluding paragraph, though. At one point in my academic career, this would be call for a total meltdown of failure. 

Not only would that be an absurd response from me right now, as the paper is actually quite good other than its lack of final statements, it also wouldn't fit with my current ideas of failure. 

Failure or the fear of failing is ultimately what drives us in our interactions with other humans, or even in our personal decisions. 

I don't think what we view as failure is an accurate description of what failure is. 

We think that if we're not good at something or we totally tank in an attempt then we are failures or we have failed. I just don't think that's true, especially when we are making those statements in comparison to other people.

Not only do we all have varying skill sets, we also have varying degrees of experience. 

In order to "fail" at something, there has to be a certain degree of experience already gained in that area. 

Think of it like this: If you've never tried something before, it is as though you are standing on the solid ground. If you aren't stellar at your first try, so what? You've nowhere to fall really. 

It's when you've practiced at something, gained skill and ability, that you walk up the stairs. Then, if you a horrible job, you actually fall pretty far. That is failure. 

Am I making sense? 

There's got to be cognizance and awareness. 

For instance, I used to say often what a failure of a friend or girlfriend or person I was. 

However, I wasn't at a place where I could understand what it meant to be good at any of those things. I knew nothing other than what I was doing. It wasn't for lack of trying. It wasn't failure. I wasn't a failure. 

Rather than thinking back and saying, "I failed" then, I think it's more accurate to say that I was not yet at a place where I could be able to succeed. 

I was yet to be equipped with the strength, stability, maturity, or even information at how to be good at any of those things. 

Maybe a better example would be academia. If I'd started this program at Queen's at the age of 18, I would have flunked out. 

Well duh!! I was 18 and without the brutal writing boot-camp Patty Kirk put me through during my undergraduate degree. I would have "failed" at Queen's because I did not yet have any of the training necessary to succeed in a Master's program. 

Those are just my vague, procrastinatory thoughts, but I think that mental shift in definitions is worth further consideration. 

In the Context of the Whole: Letting Yourself Like Poetry

I've just spent my morning in a sunlit sunroom--faithful dog at my feet, faithful coffee in my hand--reading aloud Modern American poetry, which is my favorite sort, though I have read extensively of the premodern variety as well as far too many Irish kinds.

There is something very spiritually clarifying in reading poetry aloud (the right poetry, that is) because it gets to a certain moment when you realize "THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN!", and there, on the page, someone has captured it exactly.

And then there are other times, like in life, that you don't understand the meaning (or any meaning) of a poem at all, and that's okay. So long as you can concede that the poem has intrinsic beauty and greatness in simply existing, you don't need to understand it.

On that note, there is never a point at which a poem can be fully known, not even by the poet him or herself. The meaning constantly shifts from person to person, no two people having the same poetic experience or interpretation.

Some find that aggravating beyond all reason and, thus, refuse to like poetry. But is that not the glory of poetry? That it can communicate afresh with every read?

Why can we not just "press [our] ear against [a poem's] hive"? Why is it that all we "want to do/is tie the poem to a chair with rope/and torture a confession out of it"?

We want to know the "real meaning" because that nebulous in-between place is uncomfortable and doesn't fit with our box-set comprehension levels.

It doesn't fit with what we believe our world to be.

But our lives aren't like math equations. Our lives are like poems.

Sometimes the stanzas make absolute sense to us, and we want to read them aloud to anybody who will sit down long enough to listen to us.

And yet, other times, we get boggered down in the line breaks and slant rhymes and "what does that word even mean in this context?!" and can't for the life of us riddle the answer out.

Yet later in life, we may just wonder how we ever didn't see the meaning in those heroic couplets.

Let today begin a new tributary in your creative wanderlusts. Sit down, strip off your expectations, and simply listen to the stories and structures of Billy Collins and Marianne Moore and Allen Ginsberg and so many others with something to say.

Start today in somebody else's mind, and maybe you might find your own.

Day Date

I spent the entirety of yesterday with prong two of the Trifecta: Caity Ruth (Kullen) Roberts. Try saying that five times fast.

At long last, we found a slot of time between her married life and busy schedule and my unmarried life and apparent inability to accomplish the one goal which would enable me to go and see her (paper writing...I finished, by the way! Only edits and online submission stand between me and freedom now). 

The day started with coffee, as it should. We sat and chatted for I don't know how long in my living room, Cubby ever watchful. 

Then, after what seemed like an endless struggle against mutual indecisiveness, we headed on down to Brookside. It's this super trendy part of town with restaurants, coffee shops, and shops with stuff that are super cool, but you can't help but wonder who the heck buys from them. 

In Brookside, we split lunch and had high-five one of three for the day. When you share food and end up with the perfect amount, you need to high-five. There's an unspoken law. 

Shades of Lame came next. It's actually called Shades of Brown, but my camp friend Annie Paige always used to refer to it as Shades of Lame, and I've never been able to rewrite it back to the original in my mind. 

Probably because I think it's a definite shade of lame. It's like if a hipster were on hipster steroids. Except that it's so hipster, it's not even hipster anymore. It's just kind of uppity and I feel judged when I go in. Because they are, in fact, judging me. 

But Caity likes it, and anything with Caity is fun. So, we drank an eggnog latte and a brown sugar latte and talked and talked (so sorry to fellow coffee goers). On the list of subjects were people we went to high school with, how everyone we've ever met seems to be getting engaged, Joel Osteen, books we're reading or want to read, and how creepy the guy across from us was. 

Seriously, he was either tripping or had some sort of serious social dysfunction, but this guy across from us just sat there, blatantly staring, grinning, shaking his head, grunting or chuckling in response to our conversation, and giving us thumbs-ups. 

Then he'd leave. 

Then he'd come back. 

In the end, we left and went on a quest to find little HayHay a Christmas present (SHE'S CURRENTLY ON A PLANE HOME TO US OHMYGOSH). 

Mostly it just ended in us feeling really bad for the overly friendly store owners. "Well, she doesn't wear jewelry, she doesn't like trinkets, she doesn't do a whole lot of recreational reading, she lives in China, so it has to be small, no, still no trinkets"...etc. 

Usually, to find her a present, we just have to wander around stores until the muse reveals the correct gift. It's a serious struggle. Thus, the reason I didn't come up with anything to give her from NI. 

Caity, on the other hand, has a veritable stash in my closet. She's the easiest person for me to find gifts for. 

The rest of the evening was a blur of more chatting, searching, food, and ice cream on the kitchen floor. 

The best purchase (only purchase) of the day was a bowl shaped like a lettuce leaf. Since my freshman year of college, I've kind of been amassing ceramic cups, plates, bowls in the shape of fruits and vegetables. Not like have pictures of fruits or veggies, they actually look like they're made of them. 

I have a plumb cup, an apple cup, an asparagus cup, a lettuce bowl, and I used to have three more cups made of carrots, cabbage, and corn, respectively, but I have since given those away.  Jansie hates them. I think they're great. 

It was great, having Caity back. I'm never worried about our friendship, but it's such a pleasure to interact in-person instead of Skyping. 

I guess we sort of take each other for granted in that way, but it's a good way. We can move apart, make new friends, and alter the make-up of our everyday lives, but I always know she'll answer her phone if I need her to think up a word for me and she knows I'll always edit her writing. 

We'll forever share inside jokes, books, and our life stories. She's my best friend, what can I say? 

Forbearance: Patient Endurance

I know what I said about girls calling boys their "little brother" but, like many stereotypical girl moves I make fun of, I am an exception to this rule (don't worry. I'm guilty of a whole host of other things).

Today, I co-babysat with my "little brother" from high school, Taylor Pride. I don't think he and I have seen each other or talked for about two years, but my senior year of high school? We were besties. His word, not mine.

Junior-Senior prom. Caity and I robbed the cradle and went with Juniors. Taylor asked Caity & Will (Tay's best friend) asked me. It. Was. Epic.

By co-babysat, I mean LibbyRosie slept, and Taylor and I chatted it up. He's doing International Relations up at Wheaton in Chicago.

Meeting new friends at University or even reconnecting with old friends is often frustrating. Either you have to give 22 years of backstory for the current story to make sense, or you have to catch up on however long you've been absent in order for your story to make sense.

But then there are those people that the story doesn't matter as much as the heart. I try to collect (or at least keep) as many of those people as I can. Taylor is one of them.

We spent the better part of our time together "real talk[ing]", as he puts it.

Along with arranged marriages, divorce, cross-cultural differences about both of those topics, and being a spy, one of his main proposed topic questions was, "Why do people of our generation try to avoid pain and hardship?"

My response? "It's painful. And hard."

It was a good question, though. We're a pretty hedonistic society.

When something stops "feeling" good, we take it as a sign that it isn't good anymore, and we go seeking for the nearest available thing that will give us that feel-good feeling again as quickly as possible. A very processed sugar society.

But insta-happiness, like processed sugar, only lasts so long, and the crash hits hard. Because you're not spinning life with anything substantive. When the crises of life come, you think that cotton candy is going to protect you or give you the strength you need for a long-term struggle? No.

My cousin Kristina said that in the army, they repeated to themselves the mantra, "Embrace the suck."
They'd be sweating and feeling like Hell out on the field, but there wasn't any way to make it end sooner, so, they just had to engage with it. Accept that it was going to happen.

They survived it. "The Suck", while sucky, made them strong.

I think it's about time more of us learned to embrace the suck, suck it up, and start taking the time to seek out and build our lives with complex sugars. They may not taste as good on the go-down, but when the fight comes, they will be what give fortitude enough to continue on in a manner which will bring glory to the one who created us.

The Makings Of

Today is my twenty-second birthday.
Old, but I'm not that old. 
This is also the first birthday that I've actually truly felt ready to be the age I'm turning. I remember driving around Tulsa on the eve of my twentieth in an absolute panic, not ready to leave my teenage years.

For this birthday post, I'm going to drive you on a brief tour through the past six birthdays. Each section heading is the name of a mix CD my best friend Caity made for me on every birthday. Also, it should be noted that since I'm a student, the years are counted by grade.

Dance Like You're 18

It's senior year of high school, characterized by determination.
I was out to stick it to the world. Who I was was what I was involved in or achieved:
-Student Council Chaplain
-Worship team leader
-Debate team
-Winter Guard captain
-Swim team member
-Bowling team captain
-National Honor Society
-National French Honor Society
-French Club vice president
-Salutatorian (co-salutatorian with Fran Brower. Our speech at graduation was absolutely so fun).
Traveled to:
-Colorado with the senior class
-Chicago with AP Biology and AP Art
Notables:
-Acquired the friendship of a Miss Caity Kullen (Roberts) and, with Haley Vogt, formed the Trifecta.
-Gained an entire friend group due to a popular girl deciding I was "hott" one day.
-Niece Gianna Aloisio born to brother Joey and wife Cristin
-Brother Jacob married to now wife Allison
"My People":
Haley Vogt
Caity Kullen
Dehra McGuire
John Brothers
Taylor Pride
Will Watkins
That Summer, I lifeguarded and taught the Naval Art of War (canoeing) at New Life Ranch and got my nose pierced.
19: Eat your feelings. Boyfriend forgot the birthday. 

Welcome to my Freshman year of college!
The first semester was an absolute dream. Everybody's first semester of college should be like mine.
Timeline:
-Tried out for a play for a joke. Scored one of six parts. Annelle in Steel Magnolias. 
-Had a super tight friend group of artsy type folks. Spontaneous dancing, singing in trees, and group adventuring was a must.
-First boyfriend. Fell in love--hard.
-Spontaneously traveled to Chicago with a carfull of friends.
-Eating disorder hit highest point of unhealthy.
-Best friend literally lost her mind. Was thousands of miles separated from her.
-Boyfriend shattered my heart.

-Lost entire friend group. The ex got custody, apparently.
-Fell in love with Jesus--hard--in an absolute, final way.
-Delivered completely and instantly from eating disorder.
-Joined a band with friend Jordan Weeks.
-Presented a paper at a regional academic conference.
-Reconnected with camp best friend Kira.
-Restoration of best friend's sanity. Thank you, Jesus.
Spent the summer in Tulsa with Kira and Haley. Lifeguarded at the Jewish Community Center. Together, we created Monday Game Night. Everybody the three of us collectively knew in Tulsa came. It was a blast.
My People:
Matt Tintera
Abby Fennema
Allison Harper (roommate)
Peter Myers
Adam Howard
[the mass rest of the "granola poser" friendgroup]
Trifecta & Kira

20 Years Young
Made it! Helloooooo junemore year! (I combined sophomore and junior year)

This was a year characterized by dryness and slow growth. Not a good year, not a bad year. Just kind of...existent.
I was an orientation leader with Drew Duffy and also an Honors Orientation Leader of six blonde girls.
That, actually, was truly significant. I continued to mentor one of those girls throughout the remainder of my time at JBU.

Got a job working as a content developer for Creative Content Experts.
During Spring Break, I went to Jackson, Mississippi for a week long missions team thing and dug a trench.
Gained niece Libby Rose, born to brother Jon and wife Emily.
I presented my favorite college paper at a regional academic conference (the sacramental theology of spit)
This was also the year of my...boycott. It's exactly what it sounds like. I didn't do it legalistically or as a rule, there were just a lot of instances which occurred the second half of my Freshman year/summer that really put me off to any form of interaction with guys.
That summer I traveled to Northern Ireland with the Family and Human Services team. Fell in love with the country and culture. The rest of the summer, I interned for Tate Publishing. Among other things, I actually got to be both the ghost editor and "back matter" writer for a whole book. 
My people:
Lauren Ware (roommate)
Laura Parker (first semester)
Abby Chestnut (second semester transfer)
Anna Jackson (a reconnection from camp years)
Tracy Balzer (mentor)
Trifecta and Kira

Young and Wild and 21
Senior year was characterized by deep satisfaction and fountains of happiness and joy.
Sure, there were struggles and anxieties and I was really busy most of the time, but it was very near perfect.

-Orientation leader with Steve Sullivant.
-Class mentor for a Freshman Orientation Harry Potter course
-Spoke in chapel.
-Fell in love again, different than the first time.
 -Began mentoring another girl in addition to my H/O blonde.
-Taught Sunday School
-Played a pink panther and an assassin in another JBU production
-Wrote for the Threefold Advocate student newspaper
-Traveled to Chicago again for a weekend "immersion" trip.
-Lived in an intercultural townhouse. Abby and I found them on the eaglenet classifieds. It was amazing. A vanilla latte dream of latina/gringa goodness.
-Best friend Kira engaged to Tyler, best friend Caity engaged to Greg, niece Ella born to brother Jacob and wife Allison.
-Was accepted to Denver Seminary and Queen's University, Belfast.
-Spring Break Missions in New Orleans. Learned how to insulate a house.
-Wrote two books: WaterWorks and Woodsy
-Presented work at a national academic conference in Wisconsin.
-Placed 4th in a national writing contest for a paper on homelessness. 
-Graduated John Brown  University
-Cut off 9 inches of my hair.
The summer was spent in two parts. The first, I waitressed at Ted's Cafe Escondido. It was great learning experience, but I was unable to continue. The second, I worked with  my father at Iron Cross Automotive. Loved it. On the weekends, though, I trekked up to Siloam Springs and got loved on by my best friends. It was perfect. The best year of my life. No regrets.

My people:
Noah Baslé
Abby Chestnut (roommate)
The Perch (housemates)
Madison Stewart
Becca Ridings (Irish studies roommate)
Leslie Lancaster (Irish studies roommate)
Kristina Grimes Pugatch (cousin)
Steve Sullivant
Daniel Williams
Andrew Layden
Peter Myers
Adam Howard
Trifecta and Kira
Anna
Tracy Balzer (mentor)

I Guess We Made It, or At Least We Made it this far. 22. 

Results inconclusive. 

Forget and Not Slow Down

Relient K really does have a song for every life experience.
I don't care what you say, they're lyric geniuses and I have no intention of growing out of them.

New Years Eve.

Even though the conference still had a full day left, I had a tradition to uphold in Tulsa. And, because I am all about traditions and following-through, I came home to the arms of my beautiful best friend.

Now, we thought that no New Years party could top last year, but we were wrong.

Last year, Kira and I kicked off the night in our Forever Lazies, watching Pitch Perfect with champagne in hand. Then, after 45 minutes of desperate texts, heytells, and phone calls from Haley, we finally took pity on her, got off the couch, prettied up, picked her up, and headed over to Caity's.

Meant to be super creepy of us. This is just to give you a visual idea of the magic that is the Forever Lazy

Craig loves us. 

There, pie.

Next stop, our buddy Lauren's for bunko and silly string. Finally, we packed back into Bess (RIP, car) and took the party to my house. We blasted Ke$ha all the way there (making sure Hayhay kept all body parts in the car. Challenge) and howled at the moon in the street after I parked. More Pitch Perfect, some Barbie Sparkle Kingdom, and champagne, then sleep. Great night.

This year, Haley is in China and Caity is married, leaving Kira and I to our own devices.

Our group involved Kira's parents, her aunt and uncle, her brother and his three friends, her, me, and two other girls. And the dog. Can't forget the dog. Petunia hounded me all night. (HA).

I guess there wasn't anything super dynamic "do" wise, but it was, I think, the best New Years ever.

Her family is loud and brash and really loving and wonderful. We danced in the kitchen, laughed, played Uno, yelled (a lot), ate a lot of food, enjoyed contextual beverages, silly stringed one another, tried to watch a movie (asleep before a quarter over. all of us), got perpetually attacked by Petunia the dog, and ended up asleep, piled on the couch together. The next morning, we slept in till past noon and started the year off right with cookies and coffee.

Like I said, simple.

I've never liked parties. I always feel like I'm supposed to be doing or saying something and not doing it right. Not comfortable and more than usually have somewhere specific I'd really rather be.

I think that's why I liked it so much. Yeah, I kinda wished I could still be with my OneThing group (they actually missed me and FaceTimed me at midnight. So sweet), but where I was where exactly where I wanted to be. And Kira was exactly the person I wanted to be with.

Two Christmas breaks ago, I crawled into bed with my mom (yes, at 19) and cried, with just this weird gut feeling that by the next year, everything was going to be different. It was.

By the end of last Christmas break, Caity was engaged (Craig actually joined us for New Years last year). And Kira, too, was engaged by then.

Caity got married this summer. Kira gets married in six months. Haley is in a serious relationship and living in China.

So, this New Years wasn't like it it, necessarily, but in a way, it kinda was. Technically, last year was our final group of singleness and freedom, but I'm digressing from the point.

Things are changing. 




We're like, to that point where people are expecting us to do things like grow up and get married...or a dog. (Ten points, Cubby!). This time next year, Kira will join Caity's wife club. For that matter, so will Haley probably. And me? Who knows where I'll be or what I'll be up to.

But for one night, none of that stuff mattered. We just let ourselves forget about all it all and everything that's staring us in the face, and we were back to being silly teenage best friends. That made it the very best.

Game Changer

It's been a long time since I've felt normal. Or like myself.

There have been brief moments (really good ones!) that I've felt it this semester, but they have been seldom. I think the closest I came was the last couple of days I spent in NI. I guess I finally felt free and non-pressured, and my fun came out.

When anxiety-ridden situations arise, my serious side comes in full force and puts my playfulness in permanent time out.

The OneThing conference was top five best decisions I've made (or others made for me) possibly in all of 2013. I only knew two of the people (there were nine in our group) well, two girls didn't want me to come at all (was told this after I was already there), and the rest didn't really know me at all.

Turned out, though, that we had a great group dynamic. The other 8 were all music majors, which meant they were all on board to sing loudly and dance in all times and in all places. In multi-part harmony.

Steve and Alec with their dream lady

There were a few awkward moments the first evening like walking into the house and being told I was sharing a bed with the one girl I'd never met or like when two of the girls made it very evident my presence was unwanted. However, the awkwardness was fleeting.

My roommate and I hit it off as though we'd known each other for all of college. And, it turns out, she knew all about me before I even got there, had seen pictures of me, too. Just didn't realize it until we got to talking (I told you my looks have changed). Then, after an, "Oh my God. You're her," she and I didn't stop talking for the next 6 hours or three nights.

We had a lot in common, she and I, and were both relieved to meet a person who "gets it." Really, so odd. The chances of the two of us specifically being put in that situation are uncommonly low. She's a sensational human. Don't think I've met anyone like her. She will be (and is) a force the devil is going to have a hard time contending with.

The conference itself was okay. Neither unbelievably lifechanging or the worst experience of my life. In many ways, it was exactly what I remember charismatic events to be:

smoke machines, laser beams, light shows. Definitely a concerty vibe. Then mix in mass chanting, dancing in the aisles, and the truly incredible talent of singing the same line over and over for over an hour, and it pretty much sums it up.

Favorite line of the conference was the (my) last evening when Francis Chan spoke. Chan, though he does recognize the Holy Spirit, is not charismatic. Many people actually resented the fact that he was a speaker because of his mainstream ways. However, he did an excellent job of connecting to us and criticizing us. The line: "I think often we fall in love with 'revival' and forget to fall in love with 'Jesus.'" Excellent. So excellent. And true. Our people like a good revival like we enjoy a good pot luck dinner. They should be plentiful and well-attended.

Every night when we'd come home, we'd all sit around in a circle and crack open my Christmas present from Kira: a book entitled "4,000 Questions to Get to Know Anyone and Everyone."

We probably logged 9 or more hours into that book, starting with the Childhood section, travelling on to the Love section and ending with the Habits section.

My two favorite questions that I answered were definition questions, asking after "Intimacy" and "Betrayal."

I'd never really given any thought to my personal definition of either, but I was really glad I was forced to.

For Intimacy, I said that it was anything which created tension. For example, silly things like playing play-doh or dancing or reading a poem you wrote aloud are intimate because there's that moment when the person you're attempting to engage in your special thing has the opportunity to laugh at you or think you're being stupid. It's a moment of brilliant opportunity. The same is true with larger things like sex (literally being naked with another person. yikes) or sharing memories or your fears concerning your character or the future or any sort of argument. Any situation in which you make a terrifying decision to reveal and share with another person something sacred or nervy to you is intimate. Even answering this question was a moment of intimacy and risk.

Betrayal comes when one person makes the conscious decision to sacrifice intimacy in favor of selfishness.

The group I shared with?

To clear up the tension about the two anti-Jamie girls, it came down to perception. They knew me by their perception of my character and not my character itself. Secondhand chatter just isn't fair, neither against me or by me. If you have concerns, go to the source or shut the frick up.
When they took the time (were stuck with me) to understand me, it turns out I wasn't what they expected, especially currently.

I don't think I've conversed or laughed that deeply for that long...possibly ever. There's a lot more I could say about it all, but I'll leave it at that.

Yeah, I shared my struggles with them and they with me, and we made each other actually engage in the discussion about them, but it was constructive and characterized by joy. The deep kind that exists even in the midst of sadness or pain. Happiness is a complacent emotion, the kind that can kill you if you hedonistically chase it. But joy? Real joy? Only beautiful paths are broken-in by joy.

We didn't do any of the prophecy rooms or such that would have been instantly set in the "soul building" category, but my soul was more fortified by those three days with those eight people than I could have even begun to think that it would or could.

I felt normal. Better than normal. I felt delighted and delighted in.