Being nice is not overrated

Some days I see the point of all this. I wake up passionate and ready and brimming, almost spilling over with effort. And it's easy. It's easy to sit through the lectures. It's easy to read the countless articles and pages of pages textbooks. It's easy to watch the documentaries. It's easy to memorize and recite and practice and discover and explore.
And then there are days.
Then there are mornings.

There are mornings when all I want to do is quit.

But I am coming to see that this is only what I make of it, and those mornings, those mornings are my choice. I choose whether or not to fully embrace today or every day. I choose that.
So I am choosing to make this what I want it to be.
I am choosing no bad days.
I am choosing to forgive others + myself.
I am choosing no regrets.
I am choosing to work harder, and then harder.
I am choosing to hide the love letters in the hallways and books and cracks and desks and chairs.

I am choosing to make a difference + an impact in these years.

I am choosing to love.

I am choosing to be salt.

I am choosing to be light.

This morning was one of those mornings. I woke up and poured my tea on my hand not in my mug + I wanted to cry for no reason at all. I had a sad song in the back of my mind, my French homework was hard to understand, and I hadn't gotten enough sleep for precisely those two reasons. I missed people. I wanted to mope. And sob. And give up. And frown. And do everything but exude joy + bursting.
So I wrote a love letter.
I scratched some happy truths out on a small painted card. I sealed a creamy pale yellow envelope. I pressed some bright fall leaves into the back pages of my Bible. I put my headphones in + listened to Josh Garrels while I walked to the bus stop. I pondered grace. I got over myself.
And I made a choice.
I made the most of today.
I know that sometimes it is hard. I'm definitely not preaching happiness constantly and in a never-ending manner, but I am preaching persistence. I think that oftentimes we don't try hard enough. And yes, I have my teary-eyed moments + I sob my tiny heart out in very true form, but many of those times have been more of a lie than a truth. It was just me giving up. It was just me wanting to quit. It was just me, all about me.
A + I are by no means doing everything perfectly over here. We've been down south for almost two months now — longer for me — and we still don't have jobs. I have turned in over twenty applications and resumés. We sometimes lack motivation. We deny ourselves things we want or need because we fear the future. We procrastinate. We don't understand. And we stand for Jesus in a way here that is already beginning to bring condemnation in a fiercer manner than I would have thought.
But all is well.
We choose for all to be well. I choose it, daily + with an anchor of a soul. This will be one of the greatest portions of my life. This will be one of my best mountains I conquer. This will be beautiful. I am determined for it to be so. With small paintings of letters + flowers at our kitchen table and love letters and dedication and a perpetual pressing forward.

I just want you to know, this morning I chose to be nice.
It was one of the best things.
You should try it.

I have some dear, dear things to share with all of you soon, about changing churches + being a single woman + pursuing things. I am learning a lot these days as I am striking out on my own, and I hope to be more of an encouragement as I express the things that God is working in me. He is so constant + good friends, always, always. He is blossoming some new dreams in the pockets of my heart — or — more likely I am only just now uncovering the buds that were already there, but they are wondrous. That you need to know. They are wondrous, and you have some too. I promise, I'll help show you. 
Sometimes all we need is someone to help us out a little bit. Sometimes all we need is a little niceness. 

Africa is big

Sometimes while I'm in class, I feel like all we are doing is creating a stupid world full of hopelessness and not so passionate people and we only talk about problems not fix things let alone build them and we really waste hours days months years calling it learning but in reality all we're really doing is indulging our minds in circles spun from the silk webs of the people who decided long ago that we need to know everything in order to be someone.
And then I think to myself,

These times are hard, but dreamer hold on.

I had a nightmare the other night. There was a little boy in Africa who was still small but I knew that one day he would know and discover the cure to cancer. I couldn't find him though. I spent my entire life walking around Africa with just my backpack in that dream, and my feet were dusty and my clothes were sweaty and I was dirty, and I couldn't find him. I ended up in some rural village sobbing while the people stared at me.
Then I woke up.
I was clutching my throat and real tears were on my face when I sat up in my bed.

My saving grace these days are my morning time in the Word + the love letter campaign I have taken upon myself. Most of them as of late have small envelopes and tiny paintings that say, You can change things or You are wonderful wonderful wondrous.  I am growing tired of the perpetual + incessant message being preached in the classrooms here of we are not capable and it is already too late. It's showing, in the love letters, it's obvious.
But I like that.
There is something so dissatisfied in me at this point in my life, this part of my mountain, that I really can't ignore it anymore. We are beautiful creatures, fearfully + wonderfully made. And too often we belittle ourselves which in turn belittles the Carpenter and His power. I am fed up with that. I mean, I'm nothing incredibly special, but I am not simply just a human being who exists. I have a purpose. I am almost required to be passionate. In fact, it's possible that I am required to be passionate. Passion is necessary. It is holy + beautiful + desirable.
I don't want to just be here anymore.
I need to be more.

I am not preaching selfishness or a me-centered life. I promise. I only want you to recognize that when you have Christ, you have undeniable storehouses of power. I have that power. And what do we do with it?
What do I do with it?
Nothing.
We just keep breathing.

So, here's for a change.

Build. Anything. Everything. Big + small. Build wooden boxes and friendships and relationships and churches and huts in tiny villages. Build bridges and treehouses and castles. Use your hands.
Change. Change yourself first, then change your neighbor, then your community, then the world. Change a town. Change a person. Make change, find things that need changing, be a change.
Pursue. Hot + fast + with a ferocity unmatched. Be determined. Live brighter and saltier. Run after the things you know you should, and even only those you think you should.
Climb, higher + with more determination.
Love harder.
Do better.
Try more.
Fall often.
Get. Back. Up.
Stand firmer.
Hide in the cleft of the rock.
Sing louder.
Worship real-er.
Live by grace.
Believe always.  
Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly.
Live righteously.
And remember,
these times are hard, but dreamer hold on.

As I sit here at a table on campus with barely anyone around me and I write these small notes and letters that are becoming such a big part of my life I can and will only conclude again again again that this is important this is big this is something good because people need these letters and they need to know the simple truth of the matter.
We are all human beings.
We are all very vulnerable.
And things are hard.
But we will never find the boy who is going to find the cure for cancer unless we are all searching + guiding + looking + discovering, because Africa,
Africa is very big.

Fleeting bravery

More + more as I wake up each morning and watch the sun rise over the long, stretched out hills here, I am coming to the same conclusion.

All is fleeting.

This life is so momentary. So weighed down by time. It is hopeless and unromantic and ending. It is not all that there is though.
I have been saying that so much these days.
There is more though. It's true. There is an eternity. And we, even us pitiful little carpenter-lovers, we even sometimes forget that. So I can't blame them anymore. I can't really look down on them for being afraid. For not caring. For not trying. For giving up.
I understand now, the depths of their despair + heartache.
And I want to change it.

A desire to be able to speak more eloquently has slowly been blossoming in my heart. I write just fine, that I know, but I want to be able to talk too. I want to be able to make the sky even bend just a little to hear what I have to say.  I want my words to wrap around people's souls as they come out of my lips and to brush their cheeks and to offer comfort when I can't write it.
I want to speak life.
I was never very good with my mouth. Always stuttering or mumbling or not finding the syllables caught in the back of my throat and finally just swallowing them. But as my vision + purpose + passion have all broadened with the growing, learning woman that I am, I find myself more desperately in need of verbal beauty, a vocal cadence that is smooth and rhythmic and assuring, an ability that I don't have.
I stumbled my way through three speech classes thus far in my college career, and my teacher sought after me with a fierceness ever since the first day he read the words I wrote.
You need to talk more, he would say and write and email to me. You have so many good things to say. 
I can't, I finally told him halfway through our second quarter together. I'm just not that kind of girl.
And he looked at me and said something no one ever had before. Then you need to be her, because if you don't try, you're robbing people. 

You need to be her.

I was devastated for days afterwards. For the entire school year actually. I couldn't. I couldn't find my voice. I couldn't raise my hand. I couldn't tell people what I knew I should say.
I couldn't speak.
But now. His words have always been there, in the back of my mind tucked in the pocket of thingspeopletoldmethatireallyshouldnotforget. They are surfacing again, those things he said that at one time I thought were unkind. That unheeded advice. But they're not about school anymore. They are not about the things he said them about. I hear his voice, deep and caring and perfectly measured. His slight laugh behind each word even when nothing was funny. His presence and the manner he carried himself in. I hear all of that still.
But now it's about this.
It's about hope.

Knowing Jesus is not really something we should have the ability to hide from other people. And I want everyone to know, I want to tell them all, I want to say it with my voice.
This is not all that there is.
And then I want to say,
Would you like to know what else there is?
The greatest love story is hard to stifle. Not sharing the carpenter is like reading "Romeo and Juliet" and never telling anyone about it. It's like shoving "Tristan and Isolde" underneath your pillow whenever anyone else comes in to whisper goodnight. It's like finishing the last words of "Jane Eyre" and not crying.
It is impossible.

After my last class with that speech professor, he + I were alone in the classroom. It was almost the last time I spoke with him, only once more after that did we cross paths. I held an empty pan sticky with icing that had covered the cinnamon rolls I brought to share with the class and he sat on the edge of his desk with his hands on his knees and his blue eyes looked straight into mine with the engaging stare he begged everyone to use. You're a good student, he told me. I only nodded in response, because he ended on a high note and I knew he had more to say.
Be brave, he told me.
Okay, I said.

Now is my brave time. Now is my brave moment. I feel it in my bones. I can't keep Him to myself anymore. I have the best one, the sweetest of ever, the savior, and I can't keep Him to myself.
Because all is fleeting.
But this is not all that there is.

Numbered for their worth.

Today was my first morning back to school. Spring. Term.
I woke up this morning. It's like dying, I thought. Even the words they use. Term. Terminal. It's like school is a cancer. 
And then I cringed and rubbed the sleep off my five am face and asked myself the question I was not literally dying to ask.
Is this even worth it?
I tried to think back on how many things I have asked that question about before I pursued them. And then I tried to think about if they actually were worth it in the end. 
Most were.
Most are.

So. I am counting the weeks, and I am doing the work. I am pushing myself. I am drinking the coffee. I am waking up early, and I am walking, walking, walking.
I am building the worth.

My days are worthwhile.
I am proving that to myself.

Now, I will go buy 75 cent coffee from the vending machine and head to astronomy class.
I get to learn about the stars.

i wish i were drawing a picture of the sky instead.

Placement Test.
10AM.
Building 3.

Community College?
Isn't that a nerd thing?

Like it matters...

(I think I would rather go stare at the sky all day. But isn't that why you go to college? To learn to do something so then you can stare at the sky all day? HECK YES.)