Things I Learned While Living In Lubbock

I cannot believe that almost two years ago I was writing this post about moving to Texas! In reflecting on our time here I began to really think about what I've done in the last year and a half. It made me realize that this post could also be titled "Where I Became An Adult," because in all honesty Lubbock is where I first lived totally on my own. So here is a list of things I learned while living here:

• Appropriate use of the term "y'all" and how to say it in everyday conversation
• How to be a nurse
• Getting my own car insurance
• Having a budget
• How to plan a week of meals
• Two words: health insurance
• Another word and an acronym: Roth IRA
• How to be a wife (which is in progress)

It is really hard to believe our time is almost over so we're going to make the best of it for the last weekend we're here!

(photos courtesy of my husband)

Attitude of Gratitude

Thanksgiving. It mostly represents the beginning of the Christmas season for me. But I do love the food, the Macy's day parade and spending time with some of my favorite people. To help myself reflect I decided to write about things I am thankful for today, in list/picture form.

0) God. He is inherently a part of and the cause for all of these.

1) My husband. I'm thankful we're married. I'm also thankful he'll spend all Saturday cleaning with me, then yell at me for wearing my dirty socks on our clean floors. I'm thankful for the ways he challenges me and cares for me and loves me. I'm one lucky girl.
2) My family. Particularly my nephew, who is awesome. I'm thankful for my parents who are more adventurous than I am and show me you should always go for your dreams. And my sister and brother in law who love me deeply and give generously. You cannot get any better. 2b) My new family! I am beyond blessed with such fantastic in-laws, from super fun new sibs, to amazing grandparents and a lovely mother and father-in-law. God is good.
3) Friends, new and old. It is so good to know you have the best friends in the world, who despite thousands of miles, still respond to my ridiculous emails about Ryan Gosling, know what to say when I'm in spiritual crisis, and are in general amazing people.
And new friends who do crazy stuff with you, including braving harsh winds, sleeping in the same tent and playing Tiddlywinks.
4) Traveling. I love that I'm a plane ride away from new experiences and I was blessed to get to go to some sweet places this past year (including AZ, Cancun, and more places in TX)!

5) My house. Which means a place to cook, do crafts, sleep, spend time with friends and laze around. This rental will always be the first place I lived with my husband and I genuinely love it. And now, things that don't need explanation/pictures
6) Good books
7) That I have a job
8) My health
9) Shows like Parks & Rec and Modern Family
10) My mattress. I love it.
11) Pictures
12) Camping
13) Online banking
14) Cranberry Banana bread
15) New clothes
16) Laughter.
17) you!

Bottom line here, I'm crazy blessed.

Why I love Donald Miller

This book is all about living a good story. It's filled with inspiring bits about families that interview foreign dignitaries and jump into lakes, climbing Machu Pichu, raising money to build a Mexican orphanage. In it he says this,

"What I'm saying is I think life is staggering and we're just used to it."

In other words, amazing things (like the simple fact that our bodies keep us alive on a daily basis) are happening all around us every day and we often miss it. Which, when it comes down to it is a simple message and is said a lot, but is good to be reminded of. Donald Miller does just that in his usual train-of-thought style in this book. Refreshing and a good book to read on vacation.

avoiding

I'm obsessed with staying connected. I text more than I should. I check my e-mail more than I should. I'm on Twitter just to follow people I will never meet just because I like to know about them. My homepage is set to MSNBC so I stay current on news.

Yes, a tragedy just happened and I know so little about it. No, not because information about the earthquake in Haiti is not available, but because I avoid it. I don't even wait for the homepage to load before I click to check my e-mail or facebook just so I can stay ignorant and self-centered. Deep down I think it's because I would rather stay emotionally distant from sad situations or situations which may require action on my part. It's easier.

One problem with this - my God is not the God of "easier." He never claims to be.

This should stimulate me. I should stop avoiding, be willing to become burdened for a situation and be moved to action.

It's back

By "it" I mean school. I know, you're thinking of course it's back, you've been in it for 5 weeks. But, for the first time this week nursing school has again reared it's ugly head. 2 papers, 2 tests, 2 weeks + reading & quizzes and the normal stuff. C'est la vie.

On the positive side of this I'm learning about balance. I realized at certain points in life it's okay to not have a perfectly balanced life. Different aspects of your life will have more priority for specific periods of time. Right now, obviously, school is priority. I spent a significant amount of my time reading about psych disorders and studying EKG rhythms rather than volunteering or making dinner with friends. This is definitely not how I'd like my life to be but it's what is necessary for life right now. So essentially the unbalance is balance. Eventually, my life will change and so will the balance, but for now I'm working on accepting it.

It has begun

...that new "stage of life" where you have married friends.

That is my best friend and her husband during their first dance. Their day was perfect. I bustled, I toasted, I smiled, a danced. I was so blessed and honored to be her maid of honor on the most important day of her life.

This was the first of many weddings I'll attend, over the next year especially. While it's all very exciting and I'm immensely happy for all of them, its weird. Life moves on. We move into new places, new jobs, new relationships. All the while trying to figure out where we fit. What we're doing. Even with the ultimate purpose of serving God, we still have to figure out what the heck we're doing and how to do that best.

Like I've said before, I've only got a year left of "fake life" also known as college. And after that its on to bigger and better things. While I'm excited for it all, I can only hope that I end up in community that I love as much, surrounded by people I love the most. Until then I've got to embrace my life now and while it changes around me, or rather as I change with the rest of the world.

why I am like Bilbo Baggins

I'm in on page 108 of The Hobbit by Tolkien. it's one of my goals to read more classic novels this year, and in my mind, this is a classic. In reading these novels I didn't really expect to come upon stories that teach me lessons about myself. At about page 28 in The Hobbit I came upon a part of the story where I realized that I am like Bilbo Baggins.

Bilbo is going about his normal life when Gandalf stops by, awhile later his house is invaded with a party of dwarves. Very important dwarves. Thorin, the most important dwarf, starts the serious part of this very odd gathering by explaining their journey and says, "We shall soon before the break of day start on our long journey, a journey from which some of us, or perhaps all of us...may never return..."

This is Bilbo's response...

"Poor Bilbo couldn't bear it any longer. At may never return he began to feel a shriek coming up inside, and very soon it burst out like the whistle of an engine coming out of a tunnel....Gandalf struck a blue light on the end of his magic staff, and in its fireword glare the poor little hobbit could be seen kneeling on the hearthrug, shaking like a jelly that was melting. Then he fell lat on the floor, and kept on calling out "struck by lightning, struck by lightning!" over and over again..."

they have to put him, in this state, in the other room. Gandalf says, "an excitable little fellow...gets funny queer fits, but he is one of the best, one of the best - as fierce as a dragon in a pinch." and the dwarves continue on with their meeting.

Eventually Bilbo revives a bit and "after a while and a drink he crept nervously to the door of the parlour...then Mr. Baggins turn the handle and went it. The Took side had won."

This Took side that Tolkien writes is Bilbo's adventurous side of his family (you see, hobbits are not adventurous at all but Bilbo had an adventurous relative and that side of his family has always been a bit crazy. yet, until this moment Bilbo had led a quiet life...)

I see a remarkable similarity between this story and my story on an almost daily basis in my relationship with God. God puts me in this place, like Gandalf puts Bilbo in the situation, because He knows the potential I have, the same way Gandalf knows the potential Bilbo has. I think Gandalf knows perfectly well that Bilbo is capable and wants to do it...yet in the midst of this Bilbo has this complete freak out.

How often have I done this with God?

God calls me to this huge, incredible, hard, amazing journey EVERY DAY and nearly every day I spaz out and turn into a blob that quivers and mumbles and melts like jelly. I let out this shrieks of fear and have to be struck by lightning and put in a quiet room until I realize that I do want to be a part of something bigger. I do have this innate desire to greater things. Journeys that are bigger than my everyday comfortable life of eating and sleeping and sitting around. I'm called to fight goblins and find powerful rings and impact those around me.

Ultimately I am called to a journey from which I may never return. It will not be comfortable and I will often think that I wish I were back in my comfortable little hobbit hole. I will be hungry, tired, cold, scared...but the journey is bigger, the mission is more important. Just like Bilbo, my Took side will win me over, God will sigh and say that I am queer but he knows I can be as fierce as a dragon in a pinch. And I will open the door and start my journey.

Contentment

the neuro-physiological experience of satisfaction and being at ease in one's situation, bodymind, body, and/or mind. (thank you Wikipedia)

I realized the other day that my favorite feeling in the world is contentment. A combination of happiness, peacefullness, joy, basically all the good feelings in the world combined in one little package of emotion.

“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty” Socrates

it's just not fair

I had the opportunity to see something really cool. A miracle of sorts. It was humbling and touching in so many ways. I almost cried, which is kind of a big deal for me. 

but in the midst of it all, I realized that life isn't fair. now that's something that is sort of ingrained in you (well, it was in me...) your whole life. people say things like "finish your kidney beans, there are starving kids in China." which is true. and people always talk about how just from being born in the US we're part of the wealthiest part of the population. which is also true. but i don't think the unfairness of life hit me until this very moment. 

more than the country we're born into, how much money our parent/guardian's have, where we go to school, life is just plain unfair. We have different parents that bring us up uniquely. Some don't have parents. Some have aunts and uncles or stepdads or grandmas. Some have lots. Some have nothing. Some have "everything." the love we feel isn't the same. now this is definitely obvious, but even within our country the range of living people have is phenomenal. 

I don't think there is anything anyone could ever do to make anything fair. There is always going to be something that's different. Always. it's weird to realize. 

people you think that have less maybe have more than you in other ways. but it's really hard when you see situations that you know are unfair and leave a person disadvantaged. What do you do with that? Even with things that are good and right that try to make things "even" like giving money to feed children, you're still not making things fair. 

Is fairness even something we should want? i'm probably keeping a really wide definition of fair in my overly tired state of mind, but this is definitely something i'm thinking through and wrestling about what I can do. I would love feedback/discussion about this because it isn't something I'm gonna work through on my own...