Peace out, America

The obligatory "2013 is ending I have to reflect on it properly" post. Here we go.

To be honest, this hasn't really felt like the end of something as much as it's the beginning of something else. I leave for Kenya on January 2nd, so there goes that whole reflecting stage, taken up by shopping and packing and preparing for summer weather in the middle of the coldest month of Minnesota weather. It's the strangest thing. I have almost no desire to even celebrate the new year because that has been consuming my thoughts for the past couple weeks. 

I'm preparing for healing, heartbreak, sunburn, friendships, and toilet trauma. I'm not prepared for school, American society, and not in the least prepared for celebrating new years the typical way. I sometimes feel like making a million little new years resolutions or one big unachievable one, but this year I just don't feel like it. And I don't think I will! So there. And that's okay.

I'm preparing for rest. For peace about my circumstances, for happiness in the moment, for loving people I'm surrounded by. I'm preparing to be uplifting, to be the one that comforts and encourages, to be the one that gives perspective and peace to myself and others. 

This year has been hard. And incredibly busy. The busiest of my life. And I'm ready to start off the new year in peace and relaxation, in no need to hurry along, to do things the Kenyan way. Take your time to make things beautiful, take your time to make something you're proud of. This is what I want to learn this year. And there is no particular goal that goes along with this, just peace. This is what I want.

xoxo

"Give me a museum and I'll fill it" -Picasso

I made these.

Enjoy.

xoxo

A single girl's priorities in a world full of couples

A somewhat unrelated picture, because blogging.

I live on a Christian College campus. Needless to say, I hear plenty about relationships. "Did you HEAR the news. You will NOT believe Matt and Sarah got ENGAGED!" (giggles/screams to follow). You know the drill. Give the appropriate amount of excitement and move on with your lives.

Yes, engagements and relationships are exciting! That's why we frikin talk about them so much. And they are interesting. The dynamics of relationships are complicated and fascinating. And, being Christians living dutifully on our Christian College campus, we go to the seminars and the chapel sermons about relationships, get adequately excited, and after it's been a sufficient amount of time, we pretend we aren't anymore, but secretly on the inside we still are. 

Don't tell me this is just me.

Lately, though, something has been bothering me. It happened a couple nights ago, and it was actually something I said to someone else. BUT, in my defense, it is something I have heard said to me and so many other girls countless times. I said to one of my friends: "you deserve a guy who is going to love you the way you deserve to be loved." If you are a girl, guaranteed you've heard something along those lines from another girl. 

Okay ladies. This is true, I'm not trying to say it isn't. But this is also true: our future guy deserves a girl who is going to love him the right way. The way he deserves to be loved. 

We spend our time dreaming about relationships and about the right guy for us, and we forget to develop our own loving skills. If we just wait around for a guy to come for us, once he does come, we will just be taking love from him that he's giving us. A relationship is about giving love to each other, not about just being loved. 

You are not in the relationship because you deserve someone to love you. You are in the relationship because your partner deserves love from you. 

If we just wait around, we will forget the purpose of a love like this. Be in a relationship with someone because you have the capacity to love them well. Not because you are searching for love. 

Next time you are feeling sorry for yourself, remember that your purpose is to love, because someone is out there for you and they deserve your awesome lovin'. Work on loving others well. Please, don't just wait around for "the one." They're not going to come until you're ready. And if you can love them well, it will be glorious. Bells will ring, fireworks, emotions, maybe tears, etc. 

Send your lovin' to someone who deserves it!

xoxo

In which we go up north to see the fall colors

I know, I know. You wish you were there.

In my last post I wrote: Knowing that it will all work out in the end. If not the way I wanted, the way it's intended.

This could not be more true currently. I am officially staying at school for second semester, despite all my excitement and dreaming about 3 different options, getting optimally excited about each one individually, and having them slip through my fingers. This has been the cause of many sleepless nights and application filling-out only to have to cancel or abandon them later. I am staying at school, which was the furthest from the original plan. But it's what's happening currently.

I was able to find peace with it this past weekend while up north. We went camping on the North Shore of Lake Superior, with the intent of finding peace, quiet, and brilliant fall colors. That's exactly what happened. These incredible views have helped me find peace about my future.

This sounds dramatic. I know. But so far, it's whats getting me through. Onwards.

Taking Stock

Been excited by bloggers lately. Taking a page from Pip's blog, as inspired by ms Sydney. Enjoy.

Making : lots of money doing really fun work and serving people.

Cooking : only when ABSOLUTELY necessary. I only microwave frozen things.
Drinking : coffee by the bundle, from the french press.
Reading: textbooks, artists' books, typography books, Gary Haugen's "Good News About Injustice."
Wanting: more time. period.
Looking: forward to what next semester may bring.
Wasting: away on blogs about travel. 
Sewing: absolutely nothing. you know.
Wishing: for peace about my future
Enjoying: ALL my classes... that's a first. they are all connected somehow and I love that.
Waiting: for my time to come to explore this earth.
Liking: being caught up on homework
Wondering: do people who work in tea factories have coffee breaks?
Loving: love. period. I love people who are in love, in a genuine honest way. those are the best in-love people.
Hoping: to find peace and happiness in the present.
Marveling: over the way our world turns, and how all the earth is a mystery, and how everything seems to work out just the way it was supposed to
Needing: more sleep. what else is new.
Smelling: cinnamon and apple pie (the fake kind, of course. we do live in a college dorm.)
Wearing: flannels and denim. all day every day.
Following: my heart and not my mind. in this case, its successful.
Noticing: the ungratefulness of our generation. but also, their need to rescue and do. 
Knowing: that it will all work out in the end. If not the way I wanted, the way it's intended
Thinking: I should probably clean my room. but also do my homework
Bookmarking: travel blogs, typography inspiration, the reason my schooling has purpose
Opening: my textbook, staring at it, closing it out of intimidation, and (I'd like to say) laziness. but it's mostly intimidation.
Giggling: often.

Playing: always. 

Feeling: satisfied.

xoxo

The day I figured out what I want to do with my life

Surprise! Last night I was doing homework (what?) and I was inspired in a big way. Who knew that college classes could make you excited about your future. Didn't see that one coming.

I'm taking a class called Theology of Justice, and it's by far my favorite class I've taken at Bethel yet. We are reading a book called "Good News about Injustice" by Gary Haugen, the CEO of International Justice Mission, and last night I had a full on, earth-shattering, head-spinning, career-shifting breakthrough. I read this passage:

In many communities the most powerful way to heed the biblical injunction to bear each other's burdens is to hear the stories of those who are burdened by the oppressive abuse of power ... the two stories that deserve to be told with passion and excellence are the stories of the victims of abuse and the stories of what God has done to bring rescue ... they all deserve to have their stories told with honesty, authenticity, power and life ... by vividly telling the stories of victims, we not only lend their stories the dignity and honor they deserve, we also provide the essential service of love to fellow Christians and citizens who are isolated and alienated from the hurting neighbors God created them to love. Through the stories of victims we can render the reality of injustice in a way that overcomes the barriers of distance, vagueness, remoteness and emotional numbness, and we connect them to the intimate human drama of their suffering neighbor. 
(223, 229, 230)

THAT. Holy cow. I know what I want to do with my life.

The entire time I have been reading this book, I kept thinking "holy gee, how can I do something like that?" If I'm being completely honest, I've been struggling lately with what I can do with my majors that will actually make an impact in people's lives. Yes, everyone needs journalism, and art is an essential part of humanity, but there is no real and tangible impact other than what we see everyday. I'm interested in the radical.

I want to write about the injustices I witness. I want to witness them, first of all. I never thought I'd say that, but I do want to know what's out there. I want to be exposed, I want to listen to painful and inspiring and amazing stories, and I want to record them for those of us who don't know about these injustices. I want to be the transfer of information, in a beautiful and honest way.

I never knew it was a possibility to be able to tell someone exactly what you want to do with your life. I have never known the feeling of "having a calling."  Its pretty rad.

So life fairs well here in Arden Hills. School, work, homework, repeat. At least now I know that there is a higher purpose, and it feels so good.

a summer recap + confessions of a Twin Cities biker

I drove a car yesterday for the first time in about 2 months.

That might be an exaggeration. But that's what it felt like. I forgot how to put it in drive.

Since I bike to work every day, I have been biking quite a few other places as well. I biked all the way to Lake Nakomis last week to check out a new coffee shop, the Angry Catfish Bicycle Shop + Coffee Bar (since it was a bike shop too I felt that driving there would be quite tacky). It was really interesting, but felt more like a bike shop that happens to serve delicious coffee then a coffee shop that happens to have a bike shop too. If you know what I mean.

I also do quite a bit of biking at night. I have found that though everyone seems to think it's dangerous for a 20-year old girl to be biking at night alone, it is almost my favorite time. I bike home from work around the lake, and the city lights on the water look like a glitter-covered dance floor, and make me wanna pull over and bust a move in this gigantic ballroom I seem to have all to myself. The crickets in the bushes have a constant buzz, and it's like they are cheering me on while I bike (either that or they are wondering who this interloper is to their nighttime festivities). Even though the occasional couple making out on a bench by the lake make me want to hurl on them, I love the feeling of being the only one who gets to see this beauty. Like, this city is MINE, man. It's secrets are all mine and I love it. I belong here. 

In other news, I love seafood. You know how when you are forced to eat something day after day, you kinda get sick of it? Not me, I ate seafood for almost every meal this summer and I couldn't get enough. Monday was my last day of work at the Tin Fish on Lake Calhoun (best place to get a fish taco EVER, people. I'm not just saying that cause I work there.) and besides the people I work with, the thing I will miss the most is those dang fish tacos. What. The. Heck. Best things ever.

I go back to school soon, and I will miss the biking everywhere. I will miss the lakeside kayaking, eating fish and beachgoing. I will miss the sound of the sailboats' masts clinking, and the sailors that come to the restaurant to fill up on Diet Coke. I will miss the walking into uptown after work for Tea Garden, H&M and Mesa Pizza. I will miss the Ice Cream truck and the boat launch. I'm gonna miss this place. 

xoxo, Twin Cities