And the Vertigo Begins to Kick In...

Alright.  Wow.  I've had a LOT going on the last 2 months, and no time to write about it!  (Well, ok, thankfully I've had some time to write for myself, otherwise I'd be certifiably insane, but no time to condense/filter it and put it into a blog post.... sorry folks!)  Also, in the process of one of the biggest changes I've experienced (and very much still processing that...), I've hardly had any time at all....  AH!  So, this is going to be a not-so-quick update in the form of bullet points because my brain is running WAY to fast to actually formulate full sentences, much less articulate and meaningful paragraphs.  Also, my brain is running a million different directions at once, so this is probably going to seem very disjointed and chaotic... just bear with me:

• - I'm perpetually amazed, awed, and somewhat frightened by the things God has been doing in my life.  Not just in the past 6 months but in the past 19 years.  The way he has orchestrated this crazy, sometimes hellish symphony that is my life continually blows me away and brings me to tears.  I know it seems silly to say, but only God could have been responsibly for such a terribly beautiful thing.  
• - Part of me wants to give up regular school and just go to seminary to revel and grow in who God is, but then I go to Biology class and remember how much i love/hate/love secular classes too... Damn conflictions.  ;)  
• - On the note of biology:  OH MY GOSH THAT CLASS MIGHT KILL ME....  I haven't been in school for a year, much less a hard science. And my professor is covering all this crazy chemistry stuff that makes absolutely no sense to me (thank God for biology coloring books that are simultaneously semi-fun and educational...), all of which he says is the foundation for biology and we'd damn better understand it through and through or we are going to fail the sememster... SHIT!!   Oh well.  Guess I'll be spending a lot of time going to office hours... :/  (On a happier note, it is actually VERY interesting! And I keep reminding myself of my goal...)
• - I decided today that I'm dropping my Gov class for something (ANYTHING) else.  Doreen - THANK YOU for teaching me about government because clearly this lady can't.  And, thank you for treating me like I'm actually an intelligent human being.... (I'd forgotten what it felt like to be condescended towards...) (is that how one would say that?  Condescended to....?  condescended on...?)  I have decided that I am not going to pay a bajillion dollars a year to take classes that I hate and make me frustrated, especially since I don't have to.  Therefore, I shall choose to empower myself by choosing to put myself in a happier situation, and I shall exercise my right as an American, a student, and a human being to say - I will not do this anymore! 
• -  For those of you who were wondering about my other classes:  Spanish is bueno, but not coming back to me as quickly as I'd hoped.  I'm making mistakes that I don't think I've made since about 6th grade, so.... A little discouraging, but hopefully I will remember it at some point.  My martial arts class is SO COOL!!  Way harder than I thought, but I could totally see myself getting into this sport very seriously. Sociology is absolutely my favorite class ever!  It's all about History and the third world and people.... Ah!  So cool.   
• - The masters program here practices at 5am.... And I've been trying for the last 2 days to get up and go swim with them to try it out, but damn 5 is early, especially when one has found themselves staying up until 1 and 2 every morning.... :/  Going to have to figure that one out.  
• - My duvet cover is my favorite part of my new room.  :)  (and my wall collage that I'm working on... I'll put up pictures soon.) 
• -  I miss my puppy.  And Moose and Honey... :(  
• -  I've worn my Toms almost every day, and I'm looking forward to the tan line I'm going to (maybe) be getting....  
• -  On the note of feet:  I have been completely pain free since July 30th.  I don't know if it's permanent or not, and I pray that God will use this experience and whatever related ensuing experiences are on their way for His glory... 
• -  I'm still very much in the midst of processing this very large move, and I don't exactly know how I feel.  
• -  We cannot get anything to stick to our walls (We think it might be the fresh paint, which is nice that our rooms were just redone, but sad that nothing will stay up....), so I still have a bulletin board sitting against my bookshelf that needs to find a way to be hung (I think I may have found a solution, I'll keep you all posted).
• -  I don't know who all knows this, but I adoped a WorldVision child.  His name is Hassen Muhammed. He's 9, he lives in Ethiopia, and his favorite subject is math.  Please keep him in your prayers.  
• -  The more I am here and learning, the more I am convinced that I do not need a degree to do what I want to do.  But the more I think and pray, I am also convinced that I do need this experience.  So I'm currently struggling with this limbo.
• -  Although I've been here for almost 2 weeks, this place still does not feel like home.  I don't know if any place ever will.... 
• -  I have decided that there are some things about me I need to get cleaned up before I date, so don't expect to be hearing about any boyfriends this semester.  End of discussion.
• -  I miss my best friend desperately.  And although we are both in good places - Did we seriously have to go to school on opposite sides of the friggin' country?!?  :(  
• -  The further I get away from high school I realize a couple things.  One - I was so miserable for so many reasons!!! But now I'm not, so happy day.  Two -  there are so many relationships that I haven't maintained for one reason or another, but there are very few people from high school that I wish I talked to more -- I can count them on one hand.  And this does not make me sad, remorseful, melancholy, or even nostalgic.  
• -  I get to walk around my campus and hear anywhere from 3 to 12 foreign languages being spoken per day.  It's kinda cool... :) 
• -  I cannot wait for Glee to come back.  Sad I know, but seriously, I love it.  :) 
• -  I am finding myself getting very antsy and restless, but in a very different way than ever before.  
• -  Mom, I know you're not going to like this but I pray every day that God will find a way to send me to the most impoverished, war-torn, ugly places in the world.  To places filled with hate, with anger, with brokenness and imperfection, and I pray that God will use me there.  I pray that God will guide me and use my inhibitions AND my ambitions for His one singular goal.  I was not built for comfort, and so I pray that God will spend the rest of my life making me uncomfortable.  (Ha! As if the last 6 months hadn't shown me, this isn't exactly something I need to pray for, God is going to do it whether I like it or not)
• -  I keep going over in my head the best way to re-arrange my room without messing up my new wall collage.... and it's hard.  I'm thinking I might need to put it on the window (Which would be super cool since there's tissue paper involved, but super hard to move...) 
• -  I know that people have been pestering me for pictures about my dorm room for quite some time now, and I sincerely apologize for not having them up earlier, but I promise I will get them up by the end of the week!
• -  I think there is a very good chance that my body is addicted to sugary things... this is a problem. And I'm finding the absolutely delicious chocolate chip cookies at TDR very, very hard to resist.  
• -  I'm struggling with realizing and defining my gifts, both spiritual and non, and seeking God in those gifts and how He can use me.
• -  I'm finding that my life (both in the past and now, though in significantly different ways), is becoming dichotomously defined by pride and shame.  And that, my friends, is a very difficult challenge to overcome, as I am discovering. 
• -  There is a hurricane headed this way.  I've never experienced a hurricane before; I love rain; therefore, I'm a little excited because I think by the time it gets to me (and because I'm far enough inland), it's going to POUR!  Yes!!! :)

And on that delightful note, my friends, I shall end this somewhat kerjumbled and slightly ridiculous post.  I hope you all feel slightly more updated -- I know I feel better!  :)  I'll try to post more frequently in the future.

Much love to you all.  

Goodness

This was going to be my last post from Colorado, but things got a bit out of hand during the packing/getting-ready-to-move process, and so it will be my first (and possibly only) post from the lovely in-between stages in North Carolina.  (For those of you who aren’t aware, I left this morning from Denver to fly to North Carolina to look at schools for my sister and pick up my aunt before driving to DC on Wednesday.  So I’m going to be spending the next 3 days in limbo between parents “home” and new school home.)  Ironically, this post has almost nothing to do with moving, nor with packing, school, or anything else of the sorts.  It’s actually an update from a few weeks ago, which I should’ve posted earlier but just haven’t gotten a chance. 

I’m sorry if this is repetitive for some of you, but for those of you who are relatively new to my life (or to this blog), I will try to catch you up as concisely as possible (although for those of you who know me, that may not actually be the case…)  J I grew up going to the Episcopal church on a VERY regular basis, and grew up a “Christian” but never really had true faith, in part because I didn’t know what true faith looked like.  I thought that what I had was a solid foundation of faith but I was really just a pretend Christian, trying to live a good life without the presence of the Living God in my heart. During high school (in part because of my desire to distance myself from my parents, in part because of internal struggles, and in part simply because of the rigor and structure of the Episcopal church), I pulled away from God.  I was an atheist, then an agnostic, then an atheist again, then a doubting Christian, then just confused.  I was still forced to go to church, but I found my faith decreasing every time I went. Then, in part because of a series of people, in part because of life circumstances changing, I found my faith again.  It was a miracle, and I’m still not entirely sure how it happened, but I found myself craving God and His life, I just didn’t know how to get there.  I only knew that I didn’t want the Episcopal church (not that anything’s wrong with the Episcopal church, I just struggle with organized religion, particularly when it’s that organized and structured.  It’s simply not how I process, interact with God, worship, or commune with other people.)

Then I met M.  She’s amazing.  I love her to death, and despite the fact that I’ve only known her for a relatively short time (just over a year, I think…), she’s one of the people I’ll miss most in my move to DC, and she’s somebody I plan on staying in touch with for the rest of my life.  She’s a friend and, in some way, a mentor to me (if she’s up for dealing with me for the rest of our lives…haha).  Her story is incredibly similar to mine in many ways (though not all), and in talking with her about faith and God and church and life, we found similarities in the way we thought and (more importantly) felt about all these things.  I’ve come to trust her and her judgment a lot.  She first invited me to her church (Mile High Vineyard) at the beginning of the summer, but that’s not what this story is about.

This story begins one Friday, when I got of work to a text from M inviting me to a conference her church was having, that she and her sister J were attending.  Although that’s not normally something that would be of great interest to me, I found myself feeling like I really wanted and needed to go (in retrospect there was clearly a reason).   I rearranged some things and made it to M and J’s house in time to carpool to the evening session for the conference.  Despite my newfound faith, I still struggle with doing things that are even remotely connected to “organized religion”, and so waking into this group of people was a challenge for me.  I thought that perhaps God was going to use this time to show me how good His people can be, that I don’t need to be afraid, and that I can, in fact, be a part of a good church home.  I thought this was going to perhaps be God’s way of easing me in to finding a good church.  I should’ve known how foolish that was, God does not ever “ease” me into anything – if I’m not throwing myself headfirst into something, then He certainly will!   The talk, although not a “set-your-soul-on-fire” sort of talk, was from a couple who lived in Beirut for 13 years doing ministry, and I found it interesting and informative because that’s the part of the world that God’s given me a heart for.  I thought perhaps God was going to use the active ministry after the talk to reveal something to me.  I was simply trying to be open to whatever God had to show me on that particular evening.  At the end, the leadership group came up and said that before worship, they had a few people that they felt called to pray for. Sidebar: for those of you who don’t know me, I have chronic pain in my legs from a bone structure deformity that causes my feet to collapse and things in my ankles, shins, knees and hips to wear wrong.  I’ve been struggling with chronic knee pain since I was 7, and I’ve also been struggling with severe shin splints for over a year (which is a very long time), and Friday was excruciating.  I’d actually cried at work earlier that day, partly because of the pain and partly because I was simply so damn frustrated with the pain.  Back to the story:  One of the women from the leadership team said that God had given her a vision of someone there who was struggling with intense foot pain, particularly in the arch of their foot. Well shit.  I guess God is simply going to talk to me in front of an entire conference of people.  I had a fast argument with God going something along the lines of: I can’t go up there! Go! No! Go! No! Go! Fine!!!  Knowing that J and M were there for me was enough of a comfort to motivate me outside my comfort zone, and so, scared out of my mind, I went up.  A very nice man from the leadership/prayer team joined me, and we talked and prayed for about 10 minutes.  I could feel a distinct difference in my legs between walking up and walking back, but it was still painful: just a different kind of pain.  During the course of praying, my ultimate prayer was that God would simply do His will: if there was a way for him to take away my pain and physical suffering, that He would do it, but if it was a weakness that I was meant to have, then so be it, that He would give me the strength and the perseverance and the patience to deal with it.  I woke up the next morning completely pain-free, and I have not dealt with any sort of pain since then except split-second moments when I am being boastful, prideful, or taking credit for something that belongs to God.  It is, I think, God’s way of reminding me who is really in charge, and that He IS powerful enough to do absolutely anything!   It’s an absolutely indescribable feeling, and in a way very exciting.  I’ve never experienced physical (or instantaneous) healing from God, and I find myself discovering new facets of my faith through this experience.  I know that God can allow me to be in pain again anytime, and that ultimately I must stay humble and remember that God is GOD and my savior.   But, I was able to climb 3 fourteeners yesterday, and although I am sore and exhausted, I am experiencing absolutely no pain whatsoever from my feet, ankles, knees, or shin splints.

Climbing yesterday was one of the absolute best ways I could possibly imagine saying adieu to Colorado, I was able to enjoy the company of good friends, and more importantly, the intense and unique beauty of Colorado that God has created.  If you’ve never climbed a mountain, I highly recommend it – it’s an addicting and exhilarating experience, and to experience God’s beauty and grandeur in that way is incomparable to anything else! 

I thank God every day for rescuing me from that pain and for allowing me another chance at life, and for giving me back opportunities that I wouldn’t have otherwise had.  It led to a perfect goodbye, and a perfect start to a new life in which I can begin anew.  But most importantly, it has become a part of my Living Faith, ever changing.  It seems as though just when I think I am full of God, He steps just a bit closer to the light and suddenly, He exposes a new facet of Himself and His perfection, and I find my whole world turned upside down. 

I can’t wait for my world to be turned upside-down again.