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.

David and the Golden Finch

The British don't say "You're welcome".

Unless of course they're greeting you as you enter their dinner party or church or unless they've just done you some unfathomably good deed.

In fact, to say "You're welcome" is nearly offensive, as it connotes to a Brit that you are nearly pompous, that what you've done for them is, actually, an unfathomably good deed.

I had a British friend explain to me that even if her mother had cooked an enormous, extravagant feast, she would still not say, "You're welcome".

So when they do say it (and it's not an arrogant fool of a person), you understand something deeper about the character of the person speaking. It shows, through pomp and circumstance of a small phrase, what they value, what's of pristine importance to them.

I have often spoken before of my man David in Belfast.

David the quiet.
David the humble.
David the steadfast and hardworking.
David the kind.

When David spoke to me or showed me something, he had my entire attention, such was the unobtrusiveness of the man. If he requested my focus, it was important.

One day, David was in the kitchen, which had big sweeping windows all along the side wall looking into the front garden, and called me in when he heard me close by.

"See them finches there in the tree there? Them's golden finches. Haven't seen 'em here for ten years near."

"Uh...oh? That's great."

And he told me about the finches. And then he was done telling me about the finches.

I was half out the door back to my books when I remembered to thank him (as one should always do when a non-share-er shares) for showing them to me.

From the kitchen, I heard a quiet, "welcome".
You could have pushed me over with a bird bone.

It was the first time I had ever heard David say that word.
And it was said over finches.

My next text was to my mother, who was equally nonplussed till I told her what he'd said after.

The finches are a big deal.
Nature and creatures and creation is of great value to my master gardener friend.

He notices the living world with acute detail and stores it up.
To be let in to what fills his heart most was a great honor.

I didn't know it was an honor and a privilege until his final word, though.

In an episode of "The Office", Andy Bernard says (in my recollection of the quote), "I wish there were a way to know you were in the golden years when you're in them".

There are moments when the opportunity for connection is right there and we don't realize it. Sometimes, if we jump fast enough, we can catch them. Other times, though, they fly away like finches.

It was a lesson to me to listen, not just to the words but to all the pieces of the context and the speaker I'd gathered before.
Listen with your whole self and mental history. Hear behind the words when your people speak to you. Hear their hearts and values and interests. Hear them.

Happiness is: Haley

I've known my best friend Haley for two decades now. 

Fairly, the first was spent in bitter enmity. She'll recall my bossiness, I recall her wild ways.

When you grow up, though, sometimes the things that prevented friendship are the very parts that keep it together.

Tempered, my bossiness turned into a general maintenance of stability.

Tempered, she learned to understand when to whip out the fun.

Together, we can go out or stay in and make a party out of anything, keeping it small (for me) but raucous (for her).

My mom loves when Haley is around because she's the only person who can evoke a true gut laugh from me, and so easily.

I love when Haley is around because everything seems to have more sparkle and sun when she's with me.

It's been a really long time since we've gotten to hang out but have pieced our long distance together through phone calls and Pinterest and the single hour we shared in person a month or so ago when she was down for her sister's wedding.

It was a great relief and great joy, then, to hear she was coming down from Denver and coming over to me in Arkansas for a day.

I got off work early, we girl talked, went grocery shopping, made enchiladas, went on a run to Goodwill for a Twister search that ended in a blue sequin spandex onesie, had friends over, ate ice cream on the kitchen floor, played games, and talked late into the night.

Growing up can be especially hard on friendships, as you move around or move out of them.

It makes you especially thankful for those friendships which grow with you, flex and form and flow.

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.

F is for Fitness

And other words.

My two housemates and I are often on vastly differing schedules from one another, and that often causes us to pass like ships in the night. If we didn't like each other, this would actually be pretty nice, but we do like each other.

For this reason, M and I decided to go on a run last night, despite the fact that it is 1000 degrees of humid outside, and neither of us have run in over a month and never super consistently before that (save my training for my 5K).

And, because we love her, we invited S, too, who apologized profusely for how slow she was, for how she trots instead of runs, and how she was going to inevitably slow us down.

M and I assured her that our "running" was really more of a meander, how our ideal run involved 3 minutes running, 3 minutes walking.

S started the canter straight out of the gate, and we didn't stop until we reached home 3.4 miles later.

We lost M after mile 2--it was a valiant effort.
I'm not sure how I held on, but I'm putting it to sheer curiosity. I really wanted to see how long S was going to hold out for. Forever is the answer. I'm pretty sure she could have gone farther and faster than her pace due to me.

When we turned on to our street, she told me she was going to speed up a bit. That's fine, I thought, I'll speed up a bit too.

She disappeared in some kind of time warp.

When I reached the house, the two of us turned around and walked to go find M.

The moral of the story is, when someone makes apologies for their running, ask more questions or you will end up on an impromptu 5K.

Yard Work and Summer Good Feels

At Glenwood Gables, our yard owns us.

A few months ago, I attacked two of the three enormous bushes (fondly known as Monster and Devil).
They grew back.

We poured poison on them, chocked their roots full of epsom salt before a rain storm, hacked at them.

They grew. In fact, our efforts seemed to fuel them.

Monster grew back with a vengence and took over a huge section of the back corner.

And then there's Demon.
Trunk to tip thorns, and it was growing by the day, gaining speed and covering an entire kitchen window as well as part of the gate to the fence.

I don't think they would have bothered me so much, but from my spot at the kitchen table, they were all that I could see.

I needed them dead.
I needed backup.

Enter: The Julius.
We put our bets on him, and we were proven correct with our choice.

Down went Demon.

The garden was a whole other situation, and Makayla (and some me as well, but I mostly handled the irises and a strange buried stack of bricks that was preventing mowing) tackled it with perseverance weeding, cutting down the outer levels of grass, and mulching.

We're all very busy and usually stressed (the life of an introvert doesn't take much to overwhelm) but finally our house is starting to look less like a fairy tale villain lair and more like a cozy cottage, complete with gnome.

Then, with our two-day yard work extravaganza done, we went to the pool, put together some delicious homemade pizza, played games, and napped.

Happiness is: friendship and achieving goals.