Hope.

I believe in hope that stems from the past, present and the awaiting, promise of the future. This is the hope I catch a glimpse of on the face of a father after seeing his newborn child for the first time.  The hope that this precious child will know peace not war, plenty and not hunger, happiness and not sorrow in the life that waits.   This is the hope I feel waiting with fellow Americans for the Presidential election results every four years. We are all hoping in spite of differences in party affiliations or political leanings that the next term will be different from the last. 

This is the hope I see when I watch a child learn how to ride a bike for the first time.  The genuine excitement and ecstatic happiness at this rite of passage that the child feels reminds me of the hope that innocence brings to the world. This is the hope I feel on every first date, the hope of a life with a husband and family whom I will adore one day.  This is the hope I see watching the news and seeing a cease-fire in war zones.  I witness hope in the victim’s eyes as they realize the  fighting, bloodshed and death will end soon. 

My hope grows when I see Good Samaritans offering help to others.  Hope that builds when hungry children are fed, nakedness is clothed, unemployed are employed, and when the restless achieve peace of mind. During Advent, my expectation of hope abounds in the preparation of the celebration of birth of Christ.  Hope I feel that Jesus did dwell among humans like me to understand what we experience.  My hope rests upon reality that the Kingdom of God is here all around us when love is shown, mercy is granted, joy is felt, peace overwhelms, and justice is served.  When these aspects of the Kingdom appear, hope will abound and grow for generations awaiting the coming of the Savior. 

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is tomorrow.  My house was chosen as the site for Thanksgiving dinner this year so there is much  planning. cleaning, and cooking happening in the midst of these walls. We have the massive Turkey thawing in the refrigerator, pies cooling on the counter, and all the ingredients for the stuffing laid out to be assembled for tomorrow.  When family arrives tomorrow the parade will be watched, football analyzed, and politics and religion themed conversation topics hopefully avoided.  The Black Friday sales brochures will be browsed extensively and a game plan will be laid out for the after Thanksgiving shopping.  In the midst of this day set aside for giving thanks for all we have, have had and yet to have sometimes we forget to just simply be.  All of us have gotten so busy and stressed at one point or another trying to make everything perfect and memorable that we forget to actually be thankful which is the entire point of the holiday. This is for sure true of myself.  Tonight and tomorrow I will enjoy my time with my family and try to remind myself and my loved ones that being thankful is the purpose of the day, not whether or not the pie crust is impeccable with no flaws.  Let us be thankful to the Lord for all we have been given and have a heart full of thanksgiving as we go into the Christmas season.

The Southern Girl's Guide to Dating

Dating. Throwing that word around is like a boomerang except it brings a whole cartload of connotations and issues back along with it.  If you mention dating around a group of girls its almost like taking the pin out of a grenade.  The blast is always unique and the damage can not be foreseen before the blast. You never know what is coming.  The reactions can range from someone who just got out of a bitter breakup and all men are the scum of the earth who are out to rip your heart out (this is putting it in nice terms). We will call her Carrie. The girl who is super boy crazy and immediately wants to explain all of her "encounters" with boys (by encounters I mean glances in the hallway, borrowing of pencil in class, brief eye contact etc.) that of course means that these boys will ask her out in the immediate future and they will live happily ever after. We will call her PG Samantha. There is the girl who is very independent and views dating as a possible waste of time when she could be saving the dolphins or doing her taxes or possibly both simultaneously. She really craves attention and a relationship but she hides it under a facade of bitter comments and secret Cosmo subscriptions.She shall be a nicer Miranda.  Lastly there is the girl who always sees the bright side of EVERYTHING.  No matter what the situation or the heartbreak someone will always be happy, dancing with cotton candy and rainbows and be in love in her mind.  She is in essence a Charlotte.

A theme that comes up frequently in circles of southern single women when they gather is the issue of men not making the move to ask them out.  Why do we waste so.much.time. mulling over what it meant when he bumped into me in the lunch line, the time he opened the door for me or the intriguing time he possibly winked at me (it could have been an eye twitch but we are going to always go with that it was a wink. I repeat always.)?  After doing some research (by research I mean polling some of my friends who are from Southern culture via text message.  Super professional and accurate.) I discovered a trend that correlates only boys asking girls on dates and rarely are girls to ask the boy out.  If the girl does ask the boy out it can be perceived as okay (that is if it ever happens. Most of my friends could not name a situation where the girl had asked out the boy) or can turn negative in that the girl is seen as pushy, or other not nice words.  When I asked my friends who were removed from Southern culture in their upbringing about this they were confused as to what I meant.  They knew of no such gender boundary in dating.  I find this completely fascinating.  In my mind I view myself as an equal to men.  I value my opinion, well being and place in society as valuable as a man's.  Yet in my mind there is this barrier when it comes to issues of the heart.  It is second nature to always wait for the man to make the first move, and for my strict adherence to the game of coy nativity.  I am obviously being dramatic because I am pretty bad at acting coy.  Hey. We can't all be perfect.  Getting back to the topic at hand.  Is this my embedded dating theology? Is this what I really believe?  Or is this just my southern upbringing where girls are to act a certain way and boys another?  I do enjoy chivalry and a good gentleman, but does that mean I should always wait around or is that too forward?  I am perplexed with the disagreement in my mind between what is rational and what is culturally acceptable.  I definitely don't have the answers to this but instead am just putting my thoughts out there.  I know that other Southern girls like me somewhere must be thinking some of the same things. I surely am not that original.  If you are reading this and you have thought the same perplexing thoughts or have a positive comment then lets hear it.

True Life: I lived in a commune (well not really but sort of)

Post college was a very interesting time for me.  I was very lost and just kind of wandering around aimlessly trying to find my way.  Since I had decided not to attend seminary the fall after graduation I decided to apply for jobs and save money for a year.  Considering rural Arkansas (where I am from) is NOT the ideal job hunting ground I began applying in Jonesboro.  A town of around 90,000 people there should be numerous job opportunities and something should open up fairly quickly.  Hah. This scenario rarely plays out the way we want it to.  Finally in August I found a job at an OBGYN doctors office as the telephone operator.  With this new found job I obviously needed somewhere to live.  In comes the commune.  My friends Phillip and Lauren, whom I entered college with, had recently gotten married in the spring right after college graduation. They were living in Jonesboro and since we were really close they offered to let me stay with them until I found a place/roommate/something I could afford.  We heaved all of my stuff up the most narrow stairs ever and we joyfully lived the rest of the summer in that tiny 2 bedroom apartment where the heat could suffocate and the mosquito's annihilate.  We began discussing how we hated living in this box and how together and apart we could not afford anything larger or nicer.  Thus the brainchild of forming a "commune" was conceived.  We began searching for affordable houses that would rent to a bunch of recent college graduates that wanted to live together and to find potential roommates.  This search was full of big dreams and shady schemes.  We actually uncovered a Craig's List scam during this process and it was super creepy.  We finally convinced our friends Amanda and Jeff to sign on to this social experiment and after finding a 4 bedroom house that was actually really nice we got all set to move in.  The number 1 perk of living with married people is that they have all of this useful stuff that single peeps just do not own and they got it all free.  Super awesome.  After we move in and claim our perspective rooms the social experiment begins.  Of course we all had our place in the house and had quirks that defined us.  I am the definite night owl.  I could be randomly watching How I Met Your Mother at 2 am even though I had to go to work in the morning.  My clothes were always a mess in my room (which Phillip dubbed "the hurricane") and I cooked a lot of soups.  Lauren always made sure I was awake before leaving for her job.  I have a bad habit of not waking up to my alarm.  She always made yummy things and loved to experiment with baking healthy.  Phillip was never there the first half of our commune  life together.  With school and his jobs there was not a lot of time to be spent anywhere else.  The second half however was full of Chuck, Star Wars, any and every vampire movie, and Underworld...oh yeah I can't forget Fight Club.  Discussing theology, comic books, playing a lot of Sky Rim and Modern Warfare (I am impressed that I slept through all that gunfire). Phillip and Lauren were "the mom and dad" of the house.  Amanda and I were single buddies.  We tried to discover where people our age hung out int this town and still haven't succeeded.  Work stories were the best from her clinic and her ever present dilemma that her scrubs were too short.  Oh yeah and I cannot forget our still ongoing game of dibbs. By the way I still have dibbs on Zachary Levi.  And then there was Jeff. Jeff was literally rarely there.  I absolutely loved to bang on his door just to annoy him and make him pause his video game.  His stories of Hastings and his job there were NEVER dull.  The final member of the house was Phil and Lauren's great dane puppy Daisy.  Daisy was taller than me.  She was/is huge.  She wasso sweet and lovable and yet I saw her shred a $20 bill with her teeth one time.  She was insane.  Since she was bigger than us she liked to bully me and would literally slap me with her paws.  I truly miss that dog. Living in the commune (though a lot of people find it completely strange but I say don't judge till you have been there) was a great experience.  Living with my friends in one of the most transitional years of my life was SO helpful.  We were all finding our way, learning who we were outside of college, truly learning what we wanted to do when we grew up, and truly seeking God's will for our lives.  Those times together in that house will be with me forever.  They were and are my family in addition to my parents and I am thankful for that.

Thankful for the past and looking expectantly toward the future...

I have been thinking about my past quite a bit recently.  Being 8 hours from home, living in Atlanta and recently writing my Spiritual Autobiography there has been lots and lots of contemplation regarding the past events of my life.  Remembering as a little girl walking around in my grandmother's high heels because I wanted to be fancy like her.  Having my mom braid my hair and having a freakkk outtttt when washing my hair. (I was strange. It happens).  My dad letting me name whatever cows I wanted on the farm.  We had cows named Tinkerbell, Barney and Princess.  I was five thus not very original.  Then came the school years.  I was bored a lot of the time in school.  I got a C in conduct once for reading a book instead of listening to the teacher, because I had already finished my worksheet before she explained it.  I remember my mom having a "little chat" with my teacher hence I was vindicated.  Sometimes the teacher would make me sit by the "weird" kid in class so I would be a good example of classroom behavior. (Obviously this was not the teacher that gave me a C in conduct.)  I got stuck by T.J. whom we referred to as "The Cat Kid".  He earned this noble name from frequently meowing like a cat and was a cat every year for Halloween.  But I was nice to him.  He was always entertaining.  I remember learning how to square dance in 6th grade.  If you ever need to know how to dose doe I can teach you straight up.  Junior High.  So much awkwardness, so little time.  The whole "does he like me, or does he like my friend and if so I will be so mad and she can't date him because I liked him first" mess going on.  I vividly remember every girl in my class liking the same boy in 7th and 8th grade.  It got cutthroat and real....fast.  I feel like 9th grade was my year.  I wasn't so shy anymore (YES believe it or not I was painfully shy in my younger years. This is shocking I know.)  I had my real boyfriend. First real breakup which included watching a lot of girl movies and eating ice cream in my pajamas.  High school just kind of flew by.  I was so excited about college.  I was OBSESSIVE about having a 4.0 GPA.  I drug my parents to every basketball game in the world my senior year.  They were sweethearts for taking me.  It was the social scene in my "town". Sad but true.  Then came college baby.  My mom and dad tearfully helped me unpack all my stuff into my dorm room. Then we attended that "launching" ceremony at the end of move-in day.  It was the most emotional moment ever all because they played that song "Find your wings" by Mark Harris. If you have never heard that song don't listen to it when you are going through a major life change.  Definitely a waterworks facilitator.  I saw a mother straight up rocking her daughter in the row in front of me.  Things happened in that room we just don't talk about.  Soooo many memories I have from college.  Snow days, staying up until 2 am every night and barely making it in the dorm before curfew, having my dress for Winter Formal rip and having to be sewn into it in order to have something to wear, and running crying from the cafeteria in the weeks following a breakup.  Being fortunate to live so close to my family and spend sweet and precious time with them.  Too many Sonic runs to count, driving to McDonalds in some real bad storms after midnight, driving around campus with ice on the windshield with our heads out the window to see where we were going, driving around with the traffic cone on top of Jennifer's car, locking people out of the car and making them dance.  These are such sweet and amazing memories.  As I reflect on all of this it excites me to be making new memories now.  I am making such great friends here in Atlanta and I am exuberantly excited to be "making memories" in this new phase of my life.  As I tell Karen (my roommate) every time something weird and definitely memorable happens "we are defff making memories."

It is definitely 5 o'clock somewhere...

Airports. They are the absolutely most fabulous place to watch people in the world. You see such a wide variety and assortment that you cannot be bored.  It is just not possible.  I flew home to Arkansas by way of the Atlanta airport through to Memphis last weekend. When I arrived to check-in they informed me that there was not an available seat so I should wait and see what they could do for me.  I stood to the side of the line and watched everyone check in and proceed to their seats.  I have always seen that person standing there awkwardly, but this was my first experience being that person.  People look at you and are internally thinking and glaring at you: "I am so glad that is not me", "I wonder if she is a terrorist", "She better not hold up our flight" and etc.  Finally my turn came and the sweet lady that was checking boarding passes began to click and pound the keys of her keyboard. The woman seriously was flying across those buttons like nobody's business. I just knew I was going to have to wait and be bumped to a later flight.  Instead she happily informed me that because of the airlines mistake I was sitting in first class. FIRST CLASS! This is on my bucket list to sit in first class and even better it was FREE. I get settled in my seat and I immediately notice that my shoulders have so much more room and my legs are not all scrunched up like back in coach.  This is the best.  While we were waiting to take off the stewardess comes and asks what drinks we would like before heading toward Memphis.  I tell her I would like water.  Considering it is 8 o'clock in the morning I mentally assume that everyone around me will have coffee, water, orange juice or maybe soda.  No. Everyone around me ordered Baileys and coffee. It was like wild fire.  One person ordered it and so the entire first class section besides me ordered it as well.  They had two rounds before we even were off the ground.  Once up in the air I settled in reading my book and the stewardess came back around to check on if we needed anything.  Then the serious drinks started coming.  Everyone ordered vodka tonics and then they started on bloody Mary's.  The first class section drank the airplane out of alcohol.  This is an hour flight mind you.  It was nuts.  I have never seen people get slammed first thing in the morning on an airplane as a collective group like this.  The group was very diverse.  There was the standard know-it-all business man who has been in every business venture from contracting, golf cart manufacturing, enlistment. and some sort of sales.  If he hadn't done it I am pretty sure it didn't exist.  There were the parent and adult children group who were going to a golf event while wearing matching Ralph Lauren Polo outfits.  They discussed their "wealth" the entirety of the flight.  As I sat there with this indeed eclectic group I wondered do I seem like this to all the coach passengers who passed by? When they see me in the airport later are they going to assume I was imagining I was at Margaritaville while on the plane like these other peeps?  (Just as a note I happened to be wearing a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt that day.)  Hopefully they could distinguish that I was not at the party barge first thing in the morning considering I was able to walk straight off the plane and could pass a sobriety test if needed.  I guess this whole bizarre and very amusing experience just goes to show that it really is 5 o'clock somewhere or at least that's what these folks were counting on. 

You can take the girl out of Arkansas but you can't take Arkansas out of the girl

If you were unaware of this and it is quite possible if you are reading this you do not know I recently moved to Atlanta. Yes. I said Atlanta, Georgia.  The peach state.  Home of former President Jimmy Carter.  Okay I think there are all the Georgian facts I have for the moment.  The reason for my move was to attend seminary.  I feel a call to ministry and at the moment I see it being in the area of teaching hopefully Christian Ethics at the collegiate level.  Pretty much everyone who has found out that I moved to Atlanta has questioned my ability to survive in this urban jungle.  This rural Arkansas girl will surely be trampled by the city folk here in Atlanta.  On the other side of the coin most everyone I have met here in Atlanta is taken aback that they can now say they have met someone from Arkansas (because apparently you don't meet folks from AR every day) and they are concerned that where I am from is three hours from an airport.  To everyone at home I have survived a week. I have successfully located Target (of course one of the essentials to locate in any city) and have managed to maneuver my way on both the perimeter interstate and the other one (I can't remember the name right now) which are both located minutes from my apartment.  Aside from the haters it is kind of nice being a novelty.  I am educating all my new friends on the quirky and interesting (well I think they are interesting) facts about my beloved home state.  Williams Baptist College is now known here.  They are aware of the earthquakes we have, the diamond mine, Razorback pride, and the wet/dry county issue.  My Georgian friends have shown me Stone Mountain and its Confederate glory.  I feel like I can confidently say I am a true Southerner after seeing the monument to the Confederate heroes.  My roommate is from North Carolina and we trade facts daily.  I do await getting to visit the beach there one day soon. On a more serious note since I have arrived here I have seen the Lord again show His faithfulness.  My grandmother passed away yesterday.  I already have community who is praying for me and my family here and that is most appreciated.  I am blessed to be able to fly home for the funeral and to be with my family as we grieve the loss of this amazing woman who has forever shaped my life.  (I plan on writing a post dedicated to my grandmother soon).  Arkansas will forever be my home but for now while I am in Atlanta I am excited and comforted by my experience here so far.  God is with me as I pursue my education and the Lord's hand will be over me no matter where I am.