restING, resolvING, and laughING with my mouth full

So, I could go into a big explanation as to why I haven't posted in so long, but I won't. Life has just been busy, now I'm on break and my laptop was the last thing I felt like looking at for awhile.

Anyway, I'm still on break, and its lovely. This has become one of my favorite times of the year. As much as I love all the hustle and bustle and glory and excitement of Christmas, I love this quiet, lovely, restful time afterwards. There's something about it. The slow putting away of an old year, and the bringing in of  new one.

For break I have simply been resting. Resting. In all its many forms. I would like to say I'm one of those people who do only  wholesome things with my break like, meditating, prayer, or even just reading (I've done a little of all of those things). But, I can also safely say I have watched every episode of 30 Rock (while eating McDonald's most of the time) and rewatched the episodes I found to be particularly hilarious. Laughing out loud...by myself, in my sweats, probably with my mouth full. It.was.glorious.

 I have been cleaning, here and there, little by little--putting away some Christmas decorations, reorganizing a cupboard here, and a drawer there. I think every stitch of clothing in our house besides what Dave and I are currently wearing, is clean.

I've been knitting. Working on that lovely kid mohair wrap. Its a creamy natural white, on wooden needles (I usually use metal) and something about that combination of the cream colored fuzzy yarn, and the grainy wooden needle is lovely to look at as I knit.

I've been sleeping. A lot. Whenever I want for however long I want, and staying up as late as I want.

It has all been wonderful. So very wonderful to just rest. Rest.

It has been this time of the year, that has slowly, year after year, developed into my own little sabbath. Kent recently shortened Christmas break in attempts to get us out earlier in the spring. While I know that once spring rolls around and I am done by the end of April, I will be elated, I sort of miss the extra time in the middle of winter.

I love this time to recharge, refresh, create, vegetate (hence the 30 Rock marathon), renew, and even prepare for the busyness ahead.

I love this time to reflect. I always say I'm not resolution person, but I think I secretly am.

I've been thinking about what I want from the next year. I know I want simplicity, I want rest (which I am still trying to figure out how that fits into the wild amount of work that comes a long with this final semester of classes and then student teaching in the fall...ugh...who wants to think about that right now!).

I want to be a resting place for others too.

I know one small goal I plan on moving towards in order to be that resting place, is listen more and talk less. Simple, maybe difficult. ??? Most people just want to be heard. I have ears. So I guess I'll try and  listen. Words are precious too, and that's just it. We use them like they aren't sometimes. I want my words to be valuable, to always leave people better if possible.

So, listen more, talk less.

So, that's it, break so far. Rest. Resolutions. Junk food. I have one more glorious week left.

Happy New Year everyone! I've really missed this online community and plan on being around more often if I can.

Image Credit: Somewhere on pinterest.com...

makING it through

It has been a long time. A long long time since I have really posted or read anyone elses blog. Life has been busy and difficult for me lately.

There are many many factors contributing to life's difficulties and busyness, and I don't feel like this is the time or place to really go into it, but suffice to say, I've been going through a period of burn out. Burn out on school, and church. I'm burned out on people--some very critical and exhausting people.

However, I will say this, that even this time--this funk, I guess-there is still goodness. For one thing, I have learned that with all of my heart, I believe that encouragement will carry people much farther than criticism..."constructive" or not. I am thankful for this, and hopefully a better person because of it. I hope (hope hope hope) that the next time I am in the position to criticize, that I choose to encourage. I hope I choose to search for goodness.

Also I recently attended a literacy conference required, but still enjoyed, for my undergrad work. It was just what I needed to get me through I think. To keep me going and hoping and trying and dreaming. It reminded me of not just why I want to teach, but it even reminded me of the loveliness in the people I may have the honor to work around and with someday.

I met a lady who did a session on found poetry. Found poetry takes words straight from a text (we used an excerpt from The Tale of Despereaux). You use the authors own words, fragments, etc. and restring them to create a poem. Simple enough, but powerful.

More powerful than the strategy though was the woman who taught the session. She was quiet and passionate and giving. With everything in her, she wanted us to create a poem close to us. She wanted us to share and to learn, and to connect. She created a beautiful almost unexplainable sense of community with the people in that room. We shared and laughed and even cried together.Coming through this time of  being face to face with critical, negative people, this was a chance to regain some confidence in humans in general.

When I wrote my poem, in this rich, warm, environment--a resting place really. It was cathartic. Here it is:

The Dark Things

Somedays the dark things win,

the days that are deep down, and heavy hearted

The dark things are down in our shaded souls, tremendous, cold and vast,

When try as we may, we cannot imagine life any other way.

We cannot pull ourselves from those dungeons deep and spiraled down.

We know what it is to want.

But we know to, that it's not all that we are,

We know in us lies light and loveliness, beauty and bravery,

and that quiet, wild, courage to carry us through

but that all seems worlds away, in some high castle tower.

For somedays, some days, the dark things win.

So thank you, Lisa Patrick, where ever you are. You got me through.

makING my excuse

The Vacation


Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.

He went flying down the river in his boat

with his video camera to his eye, making

a moving picture of the moving river

upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly

toward the end of his vacation. He showed

his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,

preserving it forever: the river, the trees,

the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat

behind which he stood with his camera

preserving his vacation even as he was having it

so that after he had had it he would still

have it. It would be there. With a flick

of a switch there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.


--Wendell Berry



He said it better than I. I would like to think this is why I only post pictures from Google Image. Although, maybe it's because I always forget my camera....

Oh! And before I forget , feel free to vote in this month's poll (to your right).

restING

Today, I got up and tried to get some school work done in the house. Of course that didn't work. It usually never does. So, I got myself ready and left early for class so that I would have two extra hours on campus to sit and research. So, here I am one hour before class starts and no research is done....imagine that. I am however, caught up on facebook, I've been to Starbucks and I did finally submit a poem to a local zine to try and get it published (for some reason, I've been terrified to submit it....its scary!) However, I have to say it was worth coming up. It's snowing up here. Big, fluffy, wonderful, flakes. Everyone hates it. Normally I would be with them, talking about how it is actually officially spring and so really, all this snow nonsense should stop. Somehow, and I have no idea how, I've changed. I think I like winter. I'm not saying I like it more than summer. Maybe I've just learned to accept it. I remember when I worked at Gradall for 3 months when I very first moved back to Ohio. I worked there January through March, and my job was to go down to the dock pit and dig through giant boxes of greasy parts, retrieve the part numbers and enter them into the new computer system. Anytime the word "pit" is in your job description, that should be a dead giveaway that its going to be awful--and it was. It was cold and greasy and I worked for the meanest man in the world. Really really, he was so, so mean. It was really the most miserable job ever. While I worked there I met a man name Harry. Harry had a cubicle beside me, and he smoked. So, anytime I wasn't in the cold awful pit, and Harry had just returned from a smoke break ,he would give me a weather report. Most of the time it contained snow and I would sigh, and complain, and talk about how I missed the California sunshine. Harry usually just laughed. But one day, he stuck his head over the ugly cubicle wall and said, "Al" that's what he called me, "Winter is a season of rest. Use it." One would never expect such sage advice to come from Gradall, the land of welders, steel, part numbers, freezing cold dock pits, and mean mean bosses, but somehow this advice made its way permanently into my mind. Rest is such a hard thing for us to learn. For me to learn. What Harry reminded me of, is that each season brings with it some benefit. Big or small, easy to find or difficult, its there, you just have to find. After hearing Harry's words, I learned to embrace winter. I began to use it as a time to settle in and read or watch a movie. Then I learned to knit. I finally got some sensible boots and stopped trying to wear flip flops in January. Now, I might even prefer my boots. What I am taking forever to say, is that I think I've grown to not only accept winter, but to actually enjoy it. I've learned to accept what is, and find joy in it. Rest has been a theme in life lately for me. I am happy for today and one of the final days of snow and of a season made for resting.

Note: Sorry this is all one big long paragraph, thats not how I wrote it and I've tried to fix it. Everytime I hit "publish" this is what I get.

fillING the empty space

Life has been quiet. I don't know why, but it just has.

Quietness is rare.

Lately I've had a chance to "catch up" with a lot of far away friends on the phone. Their lives are so eventful and I've found myself saying over and over "Well, not much is going on here. Just the usual, you know, school and everything." Many of my friends are moving or having babies or raising babies or working a million hours or some combination of all of those. Many have big and exciting things going on in life.

At this current season in my life I just....don't.

At first I fought it. I was restless. I felt like I should be doing more. Maybe I'm not walking with God like I should. Maybe I should join a new ministry, be more outgoing, maybe I should be moving or having babies (don't worry Babe, I don't really want one right now). Maybe, I should be filling the empty space...with something....anything. Finally I realized,



quietness is rare



and we need it.
My life won't always be this way. Someday there may be kids, or a move, or a ministry (again, I have no current plans for any of these things), and I know there will be more work hours. I look forward to any or all of those things. For now though, I've decided to embrace it. I've decided to embrace the normalcy, and the quietness. This time of just Dave and I, in our quiet house, doing simple things like dishes and laundry and petting the cat.

It's funny, even as I say this, I have that little voice in the back of my mind saying "There should be more going on. Go! Do more! Change something!" It's that feeling that something spectacular should be going on. I'm a little bit of a change-o-holic. Be it good change or bad change, sometimes change feels more normal than routine.

But still, I know that this quiet time, this time of routine, this time to breathe in and out is ok, even needed. So I've just decided to let it be, for I know it won't last forever, and that someday when life is busy and full of change again, I'll wish I hadn't wasted it trying to fill it up.

"Time’s this priceless currency and only the slow spend it wise enough to be rich."

- Ann Voskamp