Sunday, May 31, 2009

--"I just smile once in a while cause I don't want the lines on my face." Brandi Carlile, "Fall Apart Again"

Tomorrow, when the calendar turns from May to June and my next credit card payment comes due, I will transfer funds and pay my bill. This will leave me with less than ten dollars to my name for the entire month of June and part of July. It seems a strange decision—to pay a credit card bill instead of buying food—but when push comes to shove, I’d rather risk going hungry than know I have to deal with a credit card company. God can feed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish, but I doubt even The Great Almighty can make credit card companies gracious and understanding. So I will drain my bank account and live on faith.

Today, however, I rearranged my room. When you can’t buy new stuff, move the old stuff around! No pictures, yet, though, because it’s not entirely clean. I’ve still got homeless items scattered all over both beds, and finding a home for them requires more energy than I’m interested in giving tonight, considering, once again, it’s past my bed time. My entire day was spent on this project. I was productive. In fact, I was productive enough that I even washed out the bathroom garbage can, which obviously had never been washed. By tomorrow afternoon, my room should be finished and I’m left wondering what I’ll do when there’s nothing left to do. For a little while, I’m sure, I’ll sit in my room and enjoy the change and the cleanliness of it, maybe even read a little (there’s a lot to catch up on and plenty of time for it), but that will get old. And then what? Well, I guess I’ll clean the bathroom and not just the bathroom garbage can.

I also entered a photo contest, today. Just a monthly photo thing. I have yet to have anything come of such contests, but it’s from a reputable source, so I’m giving it a shot.

I enjoyed the space of my room today. I did no movie watching, didn’t watch any tv, only went outside once to empty garbage, didn’t spent time with anyone, and didn’t talk to anyone over the phone (well, except Apple-Care for a little computer glitch). On my computer desktop is a picture of my friends Hannah and Sarah which I took in April when I went back home for Hannah’s wedding. I think, each time I look at this picture, that one of these days it would be nice to call Sarah and to hear her wonderful voice over the phone. But I have yet to do so, because each time it crosses my mind I realize I’ll probably cry, and I want to believe I’ll be a little more mentally stable one of these days, and so I wait. And I don’t call anybody at all.

Nonetheless, today I would mark as better than yesterday. It was fairly peaceful. It was productive. And I’m feeling not quite so apprehensive. Look me up in a week, of course, and I might feel entirely different.

In an email from my dear spiritual director, Jo, back home, she told me to watch for unexpected blessings. Sometimes, unexpected blessings come in the tiniest ways. Today my blessing was the simple discovery of a song: “Fall Apart Again.” I have, in fact, heard this song many, many times. It is by Seattle-based artist Brandi Carlile, and it is mixed in among a list of songs of hers on my iTunes. But today is the first time I really listened to it, and I discovered it was rather wonderfully written. The song made me smile, especially these two dry-humored and witty lines, the first one being, “I just smile once in a while cause I don’t want the lines on my face.” I’m amused by these words, because I have hit the age where ever so slightly, my skin seems to be a little less elastic and I’m finding that the first lines on my face to no longer disappear so invisibly are from smiling, and I recall a conversation with Marilyn just over a week ago about wrinkles and my note to her that I like them. They tell a story. The second line I particularly enjoy is, “I think the world of myself, but the world doesn’t think much of me.” I don’t have a profound explanation for this one. I just think it’s funny. There’s an entire story in those fourteen words. I laughed at this song, because I could imagine Marilyn, in her unsympathetic manner, reciting the whole thing to me, tongue-in-cheek at points, and not so much in others. In fact, these lines, “I don't want to hear you say that you miss yesterday. If you don't like what you see, that means nothing to me,” I think she’s actually said to me, maybe in a few different words, and if not to me then certainly somebody else. This irritates me about Marilyn—that lack of sympathy—but it’s also one of the reasons I love her, and one of the things about her that makes me smile. A paradox, I know, but love is just that way. It’s what makes friendships so three-dimensional and so worthwhile.

So today comes to a close. Three days down, a lot more to go. I’m not one of those people that counts down every day. I like the element of surprise. My room is a new room and I’m pleased with the new space. Today, I received an email from my professor Ellen Marmon to have lunch tomorrow. She knows my past week has been a little rough. I told her I would love to, but I’m out of money for such things and she offered to make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if I wanted it. Who can say no to a homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwich offered by a professor? Surely nothing could be better than that. And I’m very much looking forward to it.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Last night, I set my alarm. I was going to follow Marilyn’s advice (the chaplain) and set for myself a schedule. And so this morning the alarm beeped and I got myself up out of bed and turned it off. 8:15am. I’d gone to bed around 11pm. A pretty good eight hours. I waited a moment, and then I climbed back into bed. Thus began my slow paced day.

But I finally did get up for good perhaps an hour and a half later to fix myself breakfast. Then it was time to tackle the room which looked this morning much like it did when I took that picture yesterday. A friend distracted me long enough last night to keep me from beginning anything beyond moving my bike to the hallway. Or did I do that this morning? Yes, I keep my bicycle in my room. Not because I had extra space and thought it made for a nice decoration, but because the harsh Kentucky winter weather so destroyed it that I think I have to replace the chain if not the whole gear changing system. That’s floating around the “Things to spend my money on the moment I get it” list. Thanks Kentucky and thanks Asbury for the proper bike storage facility. I was searching for ways to spend money I don’t have. I appreciate this opportunity. Nonetheless, the bike is out of the way for now. Well, except that it’s currently blocking my suite hallway.

I woke up feeling as if yesterday were continuing into today. I wasn’t out of it like I was at points yesterday (when I said I fell apart, I was not exaggerating—the description to a friend today was, “I bit the dust.”), but I felt as if the stress on my heart were still there and my biggest thought was, “I don’t want to see or talk to anybody.” When I get stressed, I retreat. Some throw themselves into their relationships. Some throw themselves into work or busyness. But me? I retreat, and usually I don’t do anything at all. But despite already failing at Marilyn’s scheduling advice, I still wanted to see if being productive was going to be as worth it to me as she claimed it would. And so I began to clean which first included reorganizing my books, many of which, were sitting on my extra bed and had been there for quite some time.

In the middle of it all, I picked up my Christmas present from Marilyn. She had given me a fantastic book called Wreck This Journal, which, in fact, is a journal with different instructions on each page for ways to destroy it. I carried it with me everywhere for the first week or two and flipped through it each day looking for which page’s instructions I might want to participate in. But over time, it got lost in my messy life. I saw it a few times, but it wasn’t till today when I finally opened it back up again. And made a funnel. It went a bit like this.


This, of course, is usually how cleaning my room goes, and so it takes a long time. It’s still not done, so no pictures of it today. But after that bit of fun, I continued on with the room. The books took a long time. I didn’t get much else done. And so went the productivity. I reflected a bit on how I felt versus how I felt yesterday. Did being productive help? As I thought to myself, I realized today I felt useless, still, but not pointless whereas yesterday I’d felt both. In a response to a text message today, I told Marilyn, “I feel like I suck, but then I sort of feel like I don’t suck that much.” Maybe that’s the best way to say it.

But productivity stopped around dinner time when I suddenly remembered I was spending the evening with my friend Ann who had just graduated and was in town for a few days for what is likely the last time for a long while. I wasn’t sure I’d have the energy for her, but then I convinced her to watch Gandhi, which she’d never seen.

Gandhi, if you don’t know, is one of my favorite movies, and I have a tradition every year in which at the beginning of my summer vacation, I watch that movie. Seminary sucks the life out of me. Not the life that makes me breathe and eat, but the life that makes that all worth while. In a religion that is all about prayer, suffering, and self-sacrificing service, our schools shove our schedules full of debates, dusty books, paper writing, the reference section of the library and very little with the hearts of people. And so I watch this three hour long movie at this time every year to remind me of what I’m passionate about, of what matters in life, of who I am. Because in seminary, I lose that, and this time, I really lost it. Today, though, was not me participating in that tradition. I did that earlier this week. But any chance I can get to introduce it to a friend is a chance I’ll take! Watching Gandhi reminds me of the faith that Jesus Christ died for us to have. Each time it teaches me the same things and new things. It teaches me that the best causes will take our whole lives, that we can never accomplish anything alone, that the desire to make a difference must come from a place deep within ourselves that reaches beyond the approval of others (we will otherwise fail), that the biggest things that will happen in my life will simply be a culmination of a lot of smaller decisions and actions. And today it taught me that before the glory of the front lines, you must do the dirty work, the grunt work that no one sees but that builds in you stamina and a resistance to adversity. When I watch Gandhi, I feel more alive than I do all school year. And so Ann and I watched, each of us learning new things and Ann getting to learn about Gandhi for the first time. By the time the movie was over, it was almost midnight.

And so my day has come to a close. As I write this it is currently 2am, and it’s long past time for me to go to bed. From my window I can see the lightning from a storm that is moving in over Wilmore, and it gives my heart a little joy. Storms are by far my favorite thing about Kentucky. As the rain begins to fall, I’m shutting myself down for the night and to the lullaby of rain drops on my window and rumbling thunder, I will fall asleep.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Today is the first day of my summer. Well, officially it was last Saturday and really it was the previous Wednesday evening. But today will be my first day, because today is the day I fell apart. I was on my way, but today I broke. Today I thought I just might go crazy, for real this time. I am out of money to the point where my credit card payment will go unpaid for the month of June and maybe even July depending on when financial aid disburses the summer term money, I don’t have a job, I don’t have a vehicle, I live in a dorm room, and I miss home. Not in an I-want-to-move-back sort of way, but in an I-miss-what-I-love-and-know way. This is what my life is.

This is what the plan was: Once dropping Amalija off at the airport last August, I was going to go to the Nicholasville Domino’s, who I had talked to on the phone while still in Oregon, and see if they were hiring for the same job I’d been doing back home (delivering pizza). It seemed like a silly job, but grad students do silly jobs and I thought it would be a good escape from seminary life. I was then going to have an income. I was going to live in the dorm for the first year as a way of getting connected and then was going to move out after that and into a house.

It hasn’t worked that way, not at any level. Instead, I totaled my car on the way to dropping off Amalija, eliminated my job prospect(s) in doing so, and thus, because I was unsuccessful with the workstudy jobs on campus I applied to this year, am still without a job and an income and so I’m stuck in the dorm because I can’t make monthly rent. That car crash had a snowball effect. It ruined my year, or at least that’s what it feels like at this place in my life.

But the full effect hasn’t hit until now. Now that the school year is over, the stress of all that work is over, many of the people in the dorm have left, and the weather is really nice. And the realization that my summer would not be the one of traveling around and discovering the South like I’d wanted hit me at full force, like I ran into a brick wall and fell back, stunned. It was actually last Friday, when I got to spend some time with my chaplain and another friend at my chaplain’s house. This house is not just a house. This place is a home. It’s the last house on the street and beside it is an old stone wall with trees lining the other side of it and on the other side of those trees is a beautiful little creek. When I walked through the little walk way and into the tree covered area where the creek runs through I thought it was just like home. For a good while my friend and I sat with her on her porch, sitting in rocking chairs, drinking tea and eating homemade banana bread (my bread—it’s good). Before we were about to head out to lunch, she showed us her screened in room (I’m sure there’s a name for those) at the back of the house. It is an amazingly peaceful space with lovely light weight cozy, outdoorsy, countryish furniture. I relaxed on one piece and didn’t want to get back up when she told us it was time to head out for lunch.

And that’s when my mood turned. It didn’t help that I sat in the back seat, where it’s really easy to lose myself when the windows are down and I can’t hear the conversation up front. I wasn’t sure why my mood changed and went sour and all I knew is that I shouldn’t have been in such a bad mood and there wasn’t any good reason to have suddenly switched. It wasn’t until that evening when I figured out why—when it dawned on me that being at my chaplain’s house made me miss living in a house more than anything that year had. It made me miss having a space separate from school where I could be a peace, and for the first time while living here, I was incredibly depressed to go back to my dorm room. If I were three years old, I would have screamed and cried and thrown a fit because I didn’t want to go, but I’m twenty-seven years old and all I was thinking was that nothing was supposed to be wrong, so I needed to act like nothing was wrong, except something was wrong and I hated that I was suddenly is such a bad mood.

It took hours for me to realize what my problem was, but recognizing the issue only made me more depressed. I was back in my dorm and that only escalated the problem, because a dorm room can never be a home like a house can. Rules bar you from nailing holes in the wall, denying you the ability to hang framed pictures and thus forcing you to revert to college style decorating with sticky-tack, you can’t install curtains, and you can’t paint your walls so the room feels more like you. And as a dorm, there is no porch, no deck, no space to just be with a rocking chair and a breeze. Deep down inside, I believe if I were to live in a house with a front porch, I would be so much better here—happy, even. A little part of me wants to say, oh, you’d be just as miserable—it’s all a state of mind—but a bigger part of me believes I’m right.

And so it is a week from that Friday and it is Friday again, and here I am. This afternoon, I cried in my chaplain’s office. I cried because I’m living a life I hadn’t expected to live and I don’t know how to handle myself. I don’t know what it means to live a life where entertainment must be in walking distance (if not in my room) and free. I can’t go see movies. I can’t go out to eat. I can’t go to the coffee shop. I am distressed to realize that I don’t know how to be happy without money. Being in this space causes me to realize that money really is the maker of all things in the American culture, not community. It doesn’t help, of course, that most of my closest community is gone, and now that today’s workday is over, I can add one more to that list. Community, it seems, when it is gone, is replaced with money—a lackluster substitute—and when you find you don’t have either, all that you discover is left is that void where it all used to be.

And so Marilyn, my chaplain, told me I need to be productive. “You are not being productive,” she said to me, which was not news to me. Do something, she told me. It doesn’t have to be anything big. Just do something. Make a schedule. It may seem unimportant to have your meals at the same time every day, to take a walk at the same time every day, but it makes a big difference. Clean your room. Go clean your room. She had told me that the other day, that I should go clean my room, but it was more like the way my mother used to tell me to clean my room which often made me so angry I would throw things across it instead of cleaning it. But today the way she said it was different. And so today I am taking her advice, not so much because I think she’s right, but because I feel I have more to lose if I don’t do it than if she’s wrong. She also said to me, “You’re writing a book this summer. A book of your life. You have to make your life happen. You don’t have to actually write, or maybe you should. Maybe you should journal.”

So I have decided to journal every day for the summer starting today. I imagine most entries won’t be this long, or maybe they will. And I may miss a day here and there. But this is the start of a summer that is not at all how I’d planned it to be. You are welcome to take the journey with me.

Today, I’m journaling, and then I’m cleaning my room and rearranging it. This is the before shot.