Fanatic

If someone had asked me a mere two months ago what I thought of baseball, he or she would be overwhelmingly bored by my response.  I'm a fair-weather fan of the truest form: I attend games because it's an excuse to spend 3 hours in the sun on a beautiful day.  I don't do bad weather, and night games are only acceptable if there isn't a neighboring day game that will work just as well.

As the Giants, the only good team near my home, found themselves winning the National League Division Series, I found myself suddenly becoming excited.  I was ready for something good to happen.  As they began the National League Championship Series, something completely unexpected happened in my life: I began to talk baseball.  I'd watch games in between classes at a local pizza joint or watch the play-by-play coverage on a classmate's computer if the game happened to overlap a lecture.  I'd tell people about how wonderful Matt Cain must be and joke with friends about Tim Lincecum's girly hair.  I even corrected a few guys on the lineup for an upcoming game.  As they won the NCLS and headed to the World Series, even more unexpected happened.  I began recording games on MyDVR to watch later so I could see the good plays.  An orange ribbon suddenly graced the locks of my blonde hair on game days, which more than anything was an excuse not to do my hair. (Or was it?) I became superstitious, blaming the one game loss on my failure of ribbon wearing.

And then it happened.

The San Francisco Giants won the World Series.  In the shortest game of the series, lasting only 2 hours and 32 minutes, Brian Wilson and his incredible beard pitched a scoreless ninth inning, leading the team to a 3-1 victory over the Texas Rangers.  I was sitting in the middle of a lecture, after being told by our professor that if we were to continue watching the game, we weren't allowed to disrupt the class.  Talk about a challenge.  I managed to keep my rear end glued to the chair for the next 37 minutes until class was over and I was free to celebrate.

But suddenly it didn't matter.

I didn't care anymore.  My passion and my excitement were gone.  By the time I was free to share about the sweet taste of victory, tweets were already pouring in of the world being sick of it.  "I'm not there yet," I wanted to scream at them. "Let me get in my two cents."  It was over.  The excitement, the buzz, the craze.  I'd missed the moments of celebration while in class, and I did what I could to milk what little conversation I could before settling back into a normal day with a normal classload and a normal commute home.  I felt like I'd once again missed out on something seemingly important by spending my night paying attention to another lecture.  My lengthy list of sacrifices I've made in the hopes of medicine was growing by the second.  Yet, it only seemed to do so for a few of those seconds.

I still have my pink Giants hat hanging from the bulletin board behind me, but neither the team nor the sport come up in my conversations anymore.  I may have relished in the photos from the parade commemorating the win and laughed about the ridiculous traffic for it, but I was done.

This whole process has started the churning wheels in my brain along a track of wondering how many times I do this exact thing in life:  invest my heart and time (and wardrobe) into something for a few seconds, minutes, hours or days, suddenly to have it be over.  How often do I care about something or someone, to simply not be bothered by it the next day?  Even when it works my way?  I make every effort I possibly can to make sure this doesn't happen with the people in my life.  I'm not a "here one minute and gone the next" kind of girl.  But how many times do I pick a favorite restaurant, or favorite movie, or favorite friend?  I simply have to have that new dress.  Until I get it home and the excitement is wears off, that is.

I'm a fair-weather fan to the core, and I prove it everyday it seems.  Thankfully, the One who's a fan of me doesn't lose passion or excitement.  He knows exactly what's coming, including disappointments and joys, ups and downs.  He knows it all because He willed it all.  And even through the wild turns on the crazy adventure of life, He remains my biggest fan.

Will Who?

For many years I've prided myself on my willingness to follow God at the drop of a hat.  It was pretty simple when He called me to Danville, which is a mere fifteen minute drive from where I've spent the majority of years.  I was no less willing when He called me to Boulder, Colorado, and even accepted the news when He told me to stay instead.  However, when He called me to Modesto on a Thursday in the middle of the day, I was less than enthusiastic about answering.

Before you judge, there are a few things you must understand, dear reader.  First, I love the Lord.  A lot.  I've spent the last week wrapped up in Him, and my life, whether in theory or in practice, has always been His.  Second, Modesto isn't exactly where I love to spend my weekday afternoons.  It takes approximately an hour and a half to get there thanks to a ridiculous amount of ceaseless traffic, and for the time being I don't necessarily receive a warm welcome.  Third, Thursdays are a work day.  Enough said.

At eleven o'clock this morning when God decided it would be funny to lay on my heart a desire to drive to Modesto, I accused Him of insanity.  It seemed silly and beyond reason.  Accordingly, I ignored the desire, which lasted me a whopping 10 minutes.  I called work and realized that I needed to be there despite being in the midst of a seemingly slower week.  I made up my mind to drive to Modesto as soon as I was done, though I still had no idea why I was going.  Four hours of antsy work later, I was on my way.  Home.  Not to Modesto.

I still knew I needed to go, but couldn't rationalize the $20 in gas and hours of time it would take.  Ironic, since the only reason I have money at all is because God has crazily blessed me with not one, but two, decently paying jobs.  As I melted into the couch I began to understand more of God's nudging to me.  Serve.  Go serve.

So I did.  It involved hopping a fence four different times and a minor contusion to my right elbow.  (Don't you love that doctor talk?!)  It involved washing machines, picture frames and many, many Clorox wipes.  If God had asked my opinion, it would have played out completely differently.  I think the person I went to serve might be MORE mad at me than he was before.  Whoops.

The good news is that I'm not orating this tale to make myself look good.  Rather, it seems to be a perfect example of how God's will frequently does not make sense.  Thankfully, that doesn't change the fact that it's His will.

Before I left today, I attempted to call two of my closest friends to make sure I wasn't losing my mind.  My life is filled to the brim with stress, so before making decisions that matter, I like to double check my judgement right now, especially when it comes to things of a spiritual nature.  Neither of the friends picked up the phone, and then I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I already knew the answer.

I wish I had a conclusion to this tale of my epic fail, but alas, I do not.  I know that God's will is working every detail for the best.  Perhaps in a few days, weeks or months I will be able to update you on how God used me tonight.  Until then, I'll leave you with a passage of Truth I've been grasping to for the last three days.

"Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good."  -Romans 8:26-28

Part of a Family

I’m a planner.  I have been since day 1.  When something’s wrong, I can’t move on until a plan is in place to fix it.  Over the past few years I’ve been growing in my abilities to let go, but this weekend proved to me how much farther I have to go, as well as how ready I am to take on the adventure.

I spent the days leading up to today looking forward to a day on the water.  Since my parents are both homebodies, driving from our home to the doctor’s office 10 miles down the freeway was a huge outing.  Part of my adolescent rebellion has involved traveling, seeing, and doing as much as I can.  In the process I discovered that I love boating.  It feeds my soul.  Something about the sun, wind and water all mixed together just causes the chaos in my head to settle long enough for me to enjoy myself thoroughly.  This weekend was supposed to be about getting together with some people I hadn’t seen in a while and boating, or at least that’s what I had decided without even discussing with them.

Naturally, when it didn’t work out I was crushed.  Crushed because I felt unwanted.  Crushed because I didn’t want to sit at home.  Crushed because my plans fell through.

Boyfriend did everything in his powers to make sure I felt loved and cared for yesterday.  He made plans (yay!) to head to the city with enough time to find a beach before the Giants game.  And it truly was a wonderful day.  But something was missing.  I didn’t realize it yesterday, but at dinner tonight I discovered what was out of place.

Family.

I’d been looking forward to spending the day with family.  And it didn’t happen.

Until tonight.

It wasn’t planned, and that’s part of why it was beautiful.  As we sat around the dinner table discussing bachelor parties and peeing in pools, I felt like I was part of a family.  Again.  Because I am.  Yeah, I am.  When my soon to be insurance agent sends me e-mails with quotes, they’re signed with love.  Because I’m part of the family.  When I’m invited to stay for dinner because I’m there as everyone’s about to sit down, no one’s worried about the awkwardness anymore.  It’s about family.  It’s about people who love each other and would do anything for each other.  Now this isn’t to say that we’ve arrived at a place where everything is hunky dory.  We’re a long ways off.  But we’re headed in the right direction and there’s light at the end of the tunnel.  I’m sure of that now.

Here's a photo from the last time we were a family.  We spent the day touring the SF Bay on a boat and relaxing, and it's one of my favorite memories together.

I'm not just a set of scrubs.

This morning I was reading from Isaiah 45 and was struck by verse 9.

"Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker--
An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth!
Will the clay say to the potter, 'What are you doing?'
Or the thing you are making say, 'He has no hands'?"

See, I spend a decent amount of time asking God what he's doing. What He's up to. Why I'm hurting. Why certain people push me away. This verse convicted me so deeply, and I think it's in part because I've been making scrubs lately.

Scrubs are expensive, especially for me because my legs are so long. It's been easier and cheaper to buy fabric and make them myself. But fabric is expensive too, so I've been buying flat sheets and cutting them up. Then I realized that what I'm doing, and what is being talked about in Isaiah, is kind of all the same.

I take my flat sheet, who if it could think would think that he was completely finished and ready to serve a great purpose of protecting my really pretty comforter, and I cut it up. Usually I'm not very nice about it and I use super sharp scissors. I shove pins into it to mark my place, and when I'm done it looks like a hot mess. Then I shove a needle into it over and over again, inflicting more pain. I fold it over onto itself and cut some more.

But in the end, I have a new outfit.  The flat sheet that thought it was finished has now become something more purposeful and more useful for what I'm up to.

The same thing is happening with me.

God is at work cutting me and trimming me. So often I feel like a hot mess. He's shoving a needle into me over and over and over again. But when he's done, I'll be something so much more incredible than a simple set of scrubs, and not just because I started out more complex than I piece of fabric.

The same is true with you.  God is at work. He's cutting and pinning. Stitching and folding. Working. Hurting. Making. Shaping. And the end result will be so much better than anything you or I could ever imagine. I can't wait for that.

I'm a Nerd.

Ok, this totally hasn't been expressed nearly well enough here, but I'm quickly showing my nerd colors to everyone in my life.  As a result, I'd like to introduce you to the following comics from a new favorite site.

On computers:

On scientists:

On life:

Update

It's been a while, hasn't it?

I still have plenty of witty and wise things to fill your minds with, but clearly they have haven't made their way to grace this blog lately.  Between a work schedule that allows me massive breaks twice a week and a class schedule that has a bit of flexibility, I haven't found a need to procrastinate in quite the same way this quarter.  I've been filling my hours with mindless conversation about relationships, polka dots and travel, three things that there aren't nearly enough of in my world.  I've consumed too much coffee (is that possible?), stayed up way too late, and lost my voice multiple times in the last week from talking too much on the phone.

Long story short:  life is good.

There's always something I'd rather happen a different way, and there's always things I have no control over, but for now things are good.  In spite of the good, though, I feel like I've lost a bit of my voice.  At one point not too long ago, I decided I would blog to find my voice.  Sometime soon I have to write one of the most incredible papers of my life summing up everything about me in one page.  Ugh.  In order to do that, I figured I could tell my story through witty and entertaining prose rather than the standard jargon I typically use.  And what better way to develop my writing than to force it upon your poor eyes?  Either way, the craziness of what is my life right now has left me dry and lackluster, and therefore has done the same to this blog.  I have dozens of half-written posts simply waiting for brilliance to strike them to life.  Maybe it will come sooner than I think.  For now I have midterms, birthday week, and getting better to focus on.  When life settles a little and the dust clears, you can count on me coming back to rant and rave more than you ever really wanted to hear.

Break Down

Sometimes it's easier to destroy something completely and start over than it is to fix the damage done.

Ever watch the show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"?  I know, it's a little 5 years ago.  The point is still valid.  For those who have been deprived of this sob-inducing goodness, the premise of the show is that the staff find a family in desperate need of a help in fixing their home.  The first episodes usually involved fixing the bones of an older or worn down home, and typically building an addition to help the family.  The more recent episodes rarely salvage much from the primary structure, because it's much easier to start from scratch than to work around what's falling apart.  Makes perfect sense.

Sunday at church Pastor Danny was speaking out of Haggai, which is a book I honestly have never had the desire to read.  When I try to read through the OT chronologically, I get discouraged by the Kings.  I've always known Haggai was there but it's never been high on my priority reading list.  God scolds the Israelites for being stupid yet again.  Hmmm...  In order to understand what's going on in Haggai, you have to understand the story of the Israelites.  You know -- the one where God had this sweet plan of incredible promise, and the people managed to screw it up because they thought they knew better.  Funny.  I seem to know that story well.  Too well, really.  It's my story too.

Luckily for the Israelites and for me, God is good.  He doesn't flake out just because the going gets tough.  That doesn't mean that He'll let us keep floundering in our mistakes or in the consequences they bring.  Sometimes it means He has to break down what we've put up.  Sometimes it means He has to break down what He's put up.  Either way, it's so He can rebuild well.  Maybe it's a friendship.  Maybe it's a relationship.  Maybe it's a hope, a dream or a passion.  Or maybe it's an entire being.

Either way, I'm ready to be broken.