Tuesday, February 16, 2010

All that I have seen teaches me to trust God for all I have not seen

The number one response when I tell people I'm a political science major: "Um...why?" Number two: "Well...what are you going to DO with that?" My number one response? "I don't know." Throughout the past year I have seriously considered law school, Peace Corps, overseas missions, grad school, and simply finding a crappy job and living in Chicago for awhile. Next year I'm going to take the GRE, take the LSAT, and apply to go into the Peace Corps with not a clue about how seriously I am considering any of those options. I have no idea where I will be in a year.

The truly awesome part is that I am not scared of this one bit. I deliver my "I don't know"s with a smile. I know that I don't have to have my career all picked out at age 22. I know that if I'm not married at 22 that doesn't mean I'll be lonely forever. But the bigger reason that I'm not scared is that I have learned to trust God. I know that he'll show me the next step that I need to take, and that's all I need to know.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Friday, February 12, 2010

peace like a river.

Tonight I turned off my phone. I shut my computer and turned on the record player. Then I finished my book, talked to Jesus, and began to make a journal...all with a beautiful sense of being disconnected from this hectic world at least for awhile. Why did it take Midwinter Break to make me do that?

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

calling us back to why, how, whence such beauty and what the meaning

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles, nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain — not a single
answer has been found –
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

- Mary Oliver


Sometimes I miss summer but then a day like today happens - perfect, fluffy, glittery snow - and I remember how truly grateful I am for the beauty of all the seasons.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

I have finally reached a point where I'm not embarrassed about this.

Poetry by me, age 7. I had checked out a rhyming dictionary from the library; can you tell? Spelling/grammatical errors kept intact.

"I hoped"
I hoped to the pawn shop
to buy a cough drop.


"Flower"
I saw a little Flower
growing in the ground. it was
such a sunny morning That
it led me to another flower.


"Bear"
I saw a bear in underwear, I didn't care I dared go.
Just then a mare apered holding a pear.
He saw the Bear and disappeared


"Sneeze"
I sneezed in the breeze
I wonder if I have feas?
do you sneeze in the breeze?
you must have fleas.


"Blue"
Blue is the blue-birds,
and the ocaen so blue
and blue is. you, you, you!

There is so much more and it's all this good. Wow.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

i miss my puppy.

"The third thing-which also happened at the same moment- was the only really beautiful thing that night. Every single Talking Dog in the whole meeting (there were fifteen of them) came bounding and barking joyously to the king's side. They were mostly great big dogs with thick shoulders and heavy jaws. Their coming was like the breaking of a great wave on the sea-beach: it nearly knocked you down. For though they were Talking Dogs they were just as doggy as they could be: and they all stood up and put their front paws on the shoulders of the humans and licked their faces, all saying at once:
'Welcome! Welcome! We'll help, we'll help, help, help. Show us how to help, show us how, how. How-how-how?'
It was so lovely that it made you want to cry."

- C.S. Lewis, "The Last Battle"