The Day I Realized How Much I Missed Home

I haven’t blogged recently, because in all honesty there has not been much to blog about. I started a summer job that I sincerely enjoy on many different facets, but there is not much to say there, other than it is fun to work where you like to play, and it is a huge blessing to get along with my awesome boss and co-workers. Other than that, life has continued to trod along.

I continue to try to find my niche in this new place. I knew that starting over is hard work, but I have never really started over like this before. So many people expressed there concerns to me about the move over here, and one of the main points was that of suffocation. I understood them then, and I understand them now. There are many things over here that bring out the true vibrancy of life, and make me see how beautiful certain things are. I discover new things about my thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and myself almost every day. I am once again forced to look at life with a new pair of glasses on. There are days when I think that I can’t do this. That I won’t make it for one reason or another. Some days it is something plain silly like how horrible inland US drivers are. (I might write a whole post about this to get it out of my system at one point). Other days it is the feeling of isolation so intense that it literally makes me physically ill. On those days, the bad ones, Jesus and I have some tough conversations.

What fascinates me, is through those conversations, I never feel the need to run away, to concede defeat, or to become downtrodden. He truthfully blesses me in so many different ways. The thing is, today, I let myself stop and just think. I had a day off a work, and we are in a miserable heat wave, so I did close to nothing. Doing nothing is very dangerous. The heat is also very dangerous. Not one of us enjoys hot weather, and it tends to only increase our hot tempers.

After a rather stimulating conversation, solitude was needed, but no matter what, one thing or another ruined it. I just didn’t understand why I was so upset. I honestly could normally care less about things like kids screaming around the water or such. What was eating away at me. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I missed my kiddos. The ones that wormed their way into my heart like they were my own for so many years now. I missed seeing people I know at the grocery store. I missed knowing my best friends were just a small drive away. I missed the sense of belonging. I missed my home.

I have been homesick before. It is a natural occurrence whenever you up and leave the place that holds so much of your heart. Jesus and I have talked about this too, and the cool thing is that I know he gets it. He gets the grief. He knows how much I want to hug the kids and play with them. He knows how much it sucks to be separated from your happy place. The feeling of being alone isn’t that bad when I remember that. I watch this new world that I am now a part of, and watch to see what he would have me do here; his plans to continue to bring joy in place of sorrow.

I know I will always miss home, where you grow up is a special place that nowhere else can touch your heart in that way. But I also know that life is always an adventure, and I don’t do well doing nothing. I miss home, but I am excited to see how this unfolds.

The Day I did…Well Not Much

The weather has been absolutely beautiful, no stunning since arriving here; however, yesterday it took a turn for the worse. Buckets would be an adequate description of how much rain was falling down from the sky. So what does one do when you have a bunch of outside work to be done, and the inside is at a bit of a standstill until certain things arrive? Well you do you a couple of things, the first being you go and clean the concrete in the basement with an acid wash treatment. It came as a surprise to me that the bottle specified to wear acid resistant shoes. Acid resistant shoes? Ummm doesn’t acid melt approximately everything, and most of my shoes are still packed away in a box…somewhere. So I put on my old rainbow flip flops, pulled some grocery bags over them, tied them around my ankles, and proceeded to commence with the concrete treatment.

The acid in the treatment melted the bags, big surprise, but luckily my feet and flip flops came out mostly unharmed. Acid burns on your skin aren’t that big of deal anyway. After the initial treatment and wash, one must wait for the floor to dry before you can do anything else to it. So now that the one big household task has been accomplished, what is there left to do? I will tell you what was left to do, go through my embarrassingly big movie case, pull out some old school seasons of Buffy, which I may or may not own, and have a 90’s vampire slay fest.

I am a child of the 90’s. I love the 90’s. Okay, I even own more shameful 90’s television seasons than Buffy, whose names shall never be disclosed in writing. While zoning out to the cheesey vampires and demons trying to take over Sunnydale, I had fun counting how many red welts were raising on my skin from the acid. I never came to a final conclusion, but it was a day, where I played with chemicals, watched some good ole Buffy, and did well, not much.

The Day I Painted a Concrete Floor

I painted a concrete floor today. I have never been good at painting. It is one of those things that I am happy to help, but in the end, most of my work needs to be redone. So imagine my trepidation when I had to paint a whole floor! The thing is, painting a floor is actually a lot easier than painting walls, at least in my opinion. The only thing about this particular floor, well the house really, is there is a bit of an ant problem. Apparently, they have bad years for ants over here, and ta-da this is one. The pest control guy is coming on Friday to spray, can I get a hallelujah! Anyways, the basement definitely has a lot of creepy crawly ants around. I have started making up theme songs about being a super hero ant killer. I have lost track of how many ants I have stomped, thwacked, smushed, and all around obliterated. I added quite a few to my number today, because they would go crawling in the way of my paint roller, and splat, smush, spread, they went. The floor is a now a nice bronzed ivy (no I am not being a smart-a, that is the actual name of the paint chip from home depot), but it has a lovely texture and make-up of insect bi-product and exoskeleton proteins.

At the end of the day, it made painting a concrete floor all the more entertaining, and washing out the roller all the more absolutely disgusting. Can you say ant massacre anyone?

The Day I Said ‘You Too’ With a Southern Twang

Enough said.

The Days I...

The Day I Drove 12 Hours, But it was Only Supposed to Take 6 ½ Packing up the house back in Washington was not too horrible, now, loading all of our cra…stuff into cars and u-haul was an entirely different story. However, after my cruiser was loaded, and I had attached a bike rack to my hitch with four bikes on it, I was off. I pulled out of the Harbor, and watched my rearview mirrors as 16 turned to 5, 5 into 18, and then 18 into 90. I had my trusty navigator with me, my ever faithful, Scout. Now we all know Scout, we all love Scout, but let me tell you, when it comes to car company, Scout is an epic failure. In her little Newfoundland puppy mind the car is to be used for napping, napping, and oh some more napping. So although my pup was by my side, it was mainly myself being left to my thoughts. My thoughts for the trip I would like to claim were deep and profound, you know the real life changers, but I confess they were nothing of the sort. I think the most frustrated part of my thinking process was the fact that I could not remember the country radio station in Ellensburg. Ellensburg brought the promise of seeing a best friend for a quick bit, but then it was back on the windy road. I made okay time, but by the time I had pulled into Spokane, well, between the pit stops and everything else, I was down for the day, but alas it was not to be. I still had two and half-hours to go at the rate of speed I was going. The wind had started blowing the moment I had crossed the pass, and it was still blowing hard all the way into Cour de Alane. So as a way to pass the time I started counting tumbleweeds. I know, thrilling. Now you are probably wondering why is she writing about counting tumbleweeds, and I confess that it is because I wish for you all to share just how desperate for entertainment I was at this point. I had of course timed my drive perfectly for the sun to be setting over the lake and mountains as I drove over the HWY 95 water bridge getting into Sandpoint, which was gorgeous, and gave me the extra push to finish the hour drive left. But sometimes fate is not kind. I quickly met up with part two of our three part fake convoy, and after spending some time getting food and such learned that part three, the U-Haul truck had gotten a flat tire in the middle of no where. OH NO! What to do!? It actually just required some common sense, an 800 number, and a lot of waiting on our part, but it was fixed that night. We made it up the house in the pitch black of night, to just unload some food, my dog, ourselves, and plopped ourselves down on some sofas that had been moved in previously TTL. It was a day full of epic proportions, but it really was just a day that took 12 instead of 6 ½ . The Day I Learned to Operate a Back-ho on the Back of a Tractor Anybody out there know what a Yugle Beat is without googling it? If you do, then you win five points and are beating me in the knowledge game, because when I heard that I had to go dig out some Yugle Beats, I am pretty sure my face said, ‘And just what might those weird sounding things be?’ For those who don’t know they are a garden bed technique where you dig pits, put in logs, and then cover them up with a mound of dirt. Now I am not sure when this idea came into existence, but I hope for all involved it was after the invention of farm machinery. I love tractors, no, I adore tractors, I have an affinity for the things. There is a tractor museum somewhere I think in N. California off of I-5, that I desperately want to go to every time I pass it, but no one in the car ever thinks it is a good idea. Anyways, I love tractors, but it is more a nostalgic and physical love than it is a knowledgeable love. I know close to nothing about the things. I know that they you use a clutch, they have different gears, John Deere is Green, Honda is Red, and Kabota is Orange. I thought that was enough, but nope. We have a nice big orange tractor that has a bucket on one end, and a back-ho on the other. I learned to operate the back-ho. I stuck that serrated bucket in the ground, and tore it up. I never thought I would be good at something like a back-ho, but maybe it is because I come from the joystick of gaming generation that I had some serious skill. I quickly became back-ho dexterous. The Day I Literally Became a Redneck This day is the day that I had some more Yugle Beats to dig, and I started super early in the morning, and by two in the afternoon the 90 degree sunshine had done its sincere damage to my neck and upper back. We are talking the scorched, when someone puts their hand hovering over the burn they can feel the heat radiating off of it burn. My neck was as red as it could ever be. It hurt, it burned, it was confusing. Now I am not saying that I was super tan, and that sunscreen would not have been a bad idea, but I had some base, and I usually don’t crispify that intensely that quickly. So what had been the culprit? Maybe Mother Nature was just trying to help me identify with my new surroundings? Or maybe it was the DEET that I had sprayed to keep the swarms of mosquitoes from draining me of all of my life giving hemoglobin. As much as number one is funny, the conclusion was numero dos. So word to the wise folks, if you don’t want to become a redneck, well wear sunscreen, and don’t spray DEET directly on your skin to go bake in the sunshine. The Day I Found Some Mountain People My burn was so bad that I took two full days of mainly just doing work inside to give my skin a break from that ever so wonderful thing that gives us the burning UV rays. There are many eccentric and fun nooks and crannies to be discovered in the mountainous countryside. One such place is a root cellar that is off of some obscure little road. Now it is not just any root cellar, nope, it is a root cellar that is open to the public 24/7, that has all organic seed starters, produce etc. It is completely honors system to leave the amount of cash or check for what you took. CRAZY! I met some of the girls that run it, and garden for it. They reminded me of Fremont, but just with a little bit more country in them. I walked away knowing that I had met some of the mountain hippie contingency, and that made me smile. More than just a few miles up that same small obscure road that leads to a beautiful tucked away public lake that I plan to sit in the middle of and do some moose watching is a place that has a lot of…cows!!!! It is a grade-A dairy facility that specializes in Raw Milk and is expanding to branch out into yogurt, cheese, ice-cream etc. Yummy! At first I thought the place was deserted, but after being out the car and near the barn for a good little bit, a mister came roaring up in his camo hat and full on Honest Abe beard on his ATV. He was a super nice guy who is also a transplant to the area, just not quite as new. He gave a tour of the facility and showed where they kept the milk and how you can just drop your money or check into the cooler and take what you want, when you want as well! We talked cow, horse, chicken, wolves, and felines. He is of the mountain people, but the more raw of the mountain people, and that made me smile too. The Day I Discovered My New Life Theme Song There are no radio stations that come in out here except for an opera station. They all get to be pure static about two miles before the house. There also is still no Internet connection at the house, so no online streaming for me. Needless to say, I have had my i-pod plugged in a lot. (Shameless plug going in here: If anyone wants to take pity on my poor soul, and send me some music or comedy or whatever to listen to, I would love them forever, and Jesus would surely put another jewel in their crown in heaven.) Anyways, as most of you would know I enjoy folk music, some call it sad, some say it tells stories, and some just say well that is eclectic and hard to define. I also enjoy acoustic and uncut music. So for me, every year when the Mountain releases their Live From the Mountain Music Lounge, I get giddy. I have a full playlist with all the albums on there. It holds some stuff that I can skip over, but it also holds some gems of gems. A song popped up, and it is not new to me. I have known it for quite some time, but listening and singing along to it made me realize I have a new life theme song. My life theme songs come and go at odd variances, and sometimes I have doubles and triples, betraying the movie soundtrack rule, but life is not a movie so nana nana boo boo to the rules. So you say, if I am bothering reading this very actual dull post, I better at least get the name of the song. It is called The Outsiders by Needtobreathe. I highly recommend a listen, not so that you can identify with my life feelings, because that is just slightly too needy and creepy. I really don’t want people trying to get into my head and analyze me from a song. Nah, I just recommend a listen because it is a good listen, and I am all for people expanding their musical horizons, call it another passion of mine, right up there with cows and tractors.

Time Machine Deliverance

You know those moments in life when the most odd flashback comes up. It is almost like you feel like it could be a déjà vu moment, but you know for a fact that the memory is real; even though you feel as if you are watching it on a screen. I will willingly admit that I automatically assume most church events that I am going to attend, I am going to dislike, and I realize that this attitude probably does not help in any way, shape, or form, but it seems to be a part of the general glass half-full mentality that I have come to adopt in the past recent months. (Apparently, I have also developed a liking for excessive run-on sentences.) Tonight I sat in a church sanctuary that I have never been in before, and had low expectations for the evening. However, after an opening song that I had not heard in forever, I was transported. Now, it was not some religious experience, nope, something way more corny, and occasionally moving. It was a hot Northern California July night, under a huge white big-top tent filled with low blue chairs that were set atop a bed of woodchips.

I did not realize that I was getting old enough to be nostalgic, but apparently, I have arrived to that point, because not only was I transported back to a time and place, that seems like it barely exists anymore, but to an old church building that had red stained carpets, and stone walls. A bunch of young kids acting like complete idiots, doing silly motions to songs that I thought I had long forgotten. I remember not caring much about what people thought about me, and we acted like idiots. It hardly seems as if I lived that life, for it is so far removed now.

These thoughts and memories realized that for some strange reason, for the last several days, I have been living in a time machine. For the first time in a while I put my ipod on shuffle, and just let it take me on a musical journey of sorts. One of the first songs that caught my attention was a good ole fashion 1990’s boy band ballad. I was serenaded by the melodies of the Backstreet Boys. The teeny-mushy-corny-and oh so catchy lyrics transported me back to being so much younger than I am now. I could not help but belt out the words of, “I don’t know who you are, where you’re from, what you did, as long as you love me.” It made me feel so young again, and the memories came. Times that I remember singing that song; who I was at that point in time in my life.

I do not think I was a bad kid or youth, but I know for a fact that I was challenging. A lot of who I was back then, is still who I am now, but I have learned to harness, capture, and surrender a lot. I guess it would simply be said, I allowed myself to start to grow up. The thing is, in that, I look back, and I see aspects of my life that I have lost in this refining process that I wish I could have retained. These are not just limited to personal characteristics, but other things as well. A key part of a lot of the memories, of my own personal time machine are people; there are very significant people in those memories, who I no longer have any form of relationship with. Now, that is a part of growing up, but when I think about the end of those relationships, I feel quite sad. Living in a time machine is not healthy, but a couple days spent there I think can be quite prosperous.


God loves you just as you are, but he loves too much to let you stay that way.

I might have just butchered that particular quote, but I am almost completely sure that anyone who reads this has a high enough competency that they will get the point. A couple of days in a time machine, with a few key moments, and my heart becomes overwhelmed by the idea of sovereignty and deliverance. Nostalgia is an interesting thing. We overlook the bad, and focus on the good. That does not mean that it is bad to remember the good times, but in those memories, I completely forgot the pain, devastation, and the negative aspects of my life at that point in time. I cannot start to imagine what my life would look like, if I would have stayed locked into who I was at those points in my life.

God in his sovereignty has delivered me from myself and my past. He continues to mold, grow, heal, refine, and do miraculous works in my life. It was kind of funny the way that this time machine came into being in my life. However, this great realization is a very welcomed piece of the jigsaw puzzle. I think that it is always good to be reminded that God works all things to the good of those who love Him, and how fortunate we are to be in that category.

Taylor Swift v Pearl Jam: Fail

I was sitting around today, and as per usual, writing out song lyrics on lecture handouts, when my mind completely blanked. The drollness of the lecture would usually cause this happen, and the stimulation of accessing the lyrics locked around in my brain usually keeps this from happening, but not today. I was in the middle of finishing the last verse of Last Kiss by Pearl Jam, and my mind just froze. No thoughts, no words, just a whole bunch of blank nothingness. I am going to choose to blame the fact that the lecture in the background was fit for a kindergartener. So I did something that I hate myself for. I googled the lyrics to a song that I know I know, and then the unthinkable happened. The first three hits on Google were links to a Taylor Swift song with the same name, followed by one link for Pearl Jam, followed by even more TSwift links! Now, do not get me wrong. I love Taylor Swift as much as the next girl, but even to me this was beyond depressing. It started to make me think about the culture that I live in today; a culture of the here and now, shallow and easy, of lazy and not bothered.

Where does talent and hard work come into play anymore? Lets be honest, thirty years ago, the idea of Justin B…whatever his last name is, would be not only laughable but deplorable. Now this goes so much further than just music though. I think of how we handle life in general. It really is quite devastating. Scapegoats have existed since the dawn of time, but it seems that we are brought up now to constantly use them. If there is a way to get out of what you have done, to blame shift, to use a scapegoat, it is glorified. Life is cheap and easy. I find it to be depressing.

I have sat back and watched an academic institution act this way for the past two months. A place of higher learning, succumb to the pitfalls of morality of modern society.

I have always been a people watcher. I do not remember a time when I did not enjoy it. However, I have not only always been a watcher, but an analyzer as well. I like to sit back, watch, assess, and analyze people and their actions. Sometimes this is not an actual physical view of what is going on, but reading articles or listening to other people’s life situations. The thing is, if you are in the habit of doing these things, you automatically start making tables and weighing measures in your head. So when you see a situation happen, you have a presupposition of how it could be handled, and what are good or bad actions to take. It can be a useful thing to use, but at other points in time, I find ignorance to be truly bliss.

I have found life over here to be beyond difficult this term for those reasons. As more than one extremely negative situation has arisen, and in my mental charts and measures, the actions following them have been severally lacking. So what does this mean for now and the future? It means that I am dealing with frustration daily. It means that I have some very rational and righteous anger, and some very irrational and unrighteous anger to deal with. It means that every single morsel of trust that was even slightly placed is completely shattered, and probably will never really be replaced. However, through it all, there are irreplaceable life experiences that continue to grow and shape who I am in faith and myself. I count my blessings that my faith has not faulted through it all, well my faith in God at least. It just reaffirms to me that He is my firm foundation, and that everything else is going to crumble and fall, including me. And even though Taylor Swift is no more important than Pearl Jam to Google, well His love will persevere.

End of Term well, ish

It is Monday morning, December 6, 2010, and I am sitting in class. I really should be paying attention to the fact that we are discussing how Post Modernity is affecting the world that I live in, but I can’t seem to concentrate on anything other than the fact that this is the last Monday I will be sitting in a lecture room until Mid-January 2011. I have been in England for 10 weeks, and have completed 1/9 of my degree at this point. Those facts create an odd sensation within me. As I reflect on this time, there are a few events that stick out, but in truth, I am living my life here just as much as I would be living my life back in the Harbor.

I arrived in England in all reality, alone. I flew by myself, stayed in a hotel alone, shopped, traveled, figured out things like phones, banking, and really odd food all by myself. To sum it up simply, I had to be a grown up. I had to be a grown up that was isolated from everything that I found familiar, and had no community at all to lean on. It was a thrilling experience, but at the end of the day, I was relieved when the day came for me to move into college.

It is easy to skip over all the awkward getting to you know bits that inevitably exist when you move into a new community, but those things are what truly bond you to the people around you. I was thrown into a mad house full of people who spoke with funny accents, and used funny words that had a completely different meaning if no meaning at all in America. The thing is though; the laughs that just those words and accent differences created are some of the iron strings that created the strong friendships I now have. Within several days I was no longer alone.

I have had experience upon experience that were highly unique and invaluable to me. I have lived life with people in a different way from anything I have experienced before. I suppose most people could say that when they leave to go live in a dorm situation, but something tells me this is a lot more different then going off to live in the UW housing. We became a family.

I think I have mentioned it before, but I am so blessed. I now have three amazing families; they all have different aspects and feelings to them, but they are all dear to my heart. My Moorlands family is quite the lot, but I am pretty sure my other two families are as well. I think they have stretched me more than any other family though. They have touched my heart in ways that none of them could even begin to comprehend.

I cannot wait to go home. I cannot wait to see my other two families. I cannot wait to eat American food. I cannot wait to sleep in. I cannot wait to drive on the right side of the road. I cannot wait for so many things, but I will miss it here. I will miss the people who have become a part of my extended family. We have lived an INTENSE 10 weeks together, full of love, laughter, tears, boredom, drama, and joy, and it is going to be weird to just up and leave it for a while. Hopping the pond, it is going to become a rather regular thing in my life, but I now know that every time I get on a plane, whether it be in Seattle or London, that I am leaving pieces of my heart on both continents.

Changing Seasons

I heard it was snowing back home. Even though it is still technically fall, it seems the transition into winter has happened. It makes me think about life in some melodramatic and poetical way. How life is constantly changing, and even when things hit when they are not supposed to, life goes on, and changes; just like the seasons. The thing about changing seasons in life though, is that it can happen way more or quite less than four times a year. This last September was the start of a new season of my life, but as I sit here today, in a foreign country, studying things I never thought I would, surrounded by completely new people who don’t know my past seasons, I reflect. I reflect on a season in my life that was quite sometime ago.

Five years. It was five years ago that I called out to God, and his answer was, “No.” The God of love, grace, mercy, and compassion became the God of anger, resentment, punishment, and abuse to me. “No,” When you are two it is your favorite word, when you are a teenager, it is the word you hate the most, and when you are an adult it is a word that gives power to the one that uses it. The thing is, no one really stops to consider just how powerful that one syllable is. That word simply shattered my heart.

Anniversaries, they make you think of the what, ifs, woulds, and all of those other words that create a haunting of heart of mind. Who would he be today? He would have graduated in the spring. He would be doing Kingdom work. He would be loved by many. Instead, he has gone back to the ashes from which he was created. His life ended all too soon.

It has been five years. Five years to come to grasp with the fact that I won’t see him on this imperfect earth again. Five years of trials, tribulations, and growth. It has been difficult. I find myself in a place that I never thought I would end up. God has twisted and turned my path in such a drastic way from where I thought I would be now.

God is good. I find the God of the universe overflowing my cup that my flesh, the world, and Satan try to deplete rather quickly. I find suffering and loss staring me in the face all over gain. And I find peace. Yes, there are trails that I am led down that have me screaming, kicking, and crying, but at the end of the day, after the only prayer I can scrounge up is a scream, I know in my heart of hearts that God is a good God. I know he holds everything in the palm of his hand. That every singe person I love, he loves more than I could ever comprehend. That he is the Sovereign Savior and Lord. Even when life goes completely upside down, he is still God, and he is still in control.

It gets tricky though, doesn’t it? Because when life does go upside down, and God is in control, why doesn’t he just fix it? It is one of the ultimate questions, isn’t it? There are all these biblical and theological answers, but they don’t really help when you are in intense pain. What I have come to realize is really quite simple, and yet the most complex thing a human being will ever have, faith.

I have faith in God, and he will work every horrid, terrible, painful, and soul-destroying thing to his good. God is neither cold nor callous. He weeps with us. He has given us everything. Because of him, we are able to truly live in this life. “Oh praise the one that paid my debt, and raised this life up from the dead!” “Because the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted free! For God the just is satisfied, to look on him, and pardon me!”

This life, my joy, my suffering, my strength, my weakness, my sin, my righteousness, everything of mine is God’s. He gives what I needs, and takes what I am not meant to carry. Why do I doubt him? He sent his son die for me. His love is all encompassing. Even though I believe all of that, it is still hard. There are still holes in my heart from pain that will never truly disappear until glory, but I have faith.

I have faith that lost children are being loved and looked after until their parents join them, faith that relationships can be healed, faith that hearts shattered beyond repair can be healed, faith in miracles, and faith in the glory, grace, and providence of God. Five years. It has been quite a journey. Five years. It has been quite a story. I can’t believe it has been five years.

The seasons have changed many times since then. They will continue to change. Life will continue to go on. Sometimes things will pop up when I don’t expect them to. Sometimes, during one season, it will seem like another completely, but I have faith, because God is faithful.