Thanksgivings

I guess the family Thanksgiving is over for awhile.

Over until I have my own family. I don't even remember the last Thanksgiving with my parents--it could only have been two years ago or three at most. It was the same as every family Thanksgiving, I know that much.

Thanksgiving with friends is different than with family--at family holidays there's always tons of people that are older and more gluttonous than me, trying to convince me to eat twice my weight in cranberry melange or stuffing, and doing a pretty good job. Maybe that's not the best thing in the world, to have that kind of peer pressure...but it's nice to have someone talk you out of your ruts every so often.

Thanksgiving with friends also lacks the family tradition of going to the movies to see the latest holiday blockbuster. We had a great run of movies during the late 90s and early 2000s when Tom Hanks seemed to have a good movie come out every Thanksgiving.

But with all the changes, I guess I'm still thankful to have friends at all. To have a place to eat, and to have the food be so delicious. I'm heading to bed and my stomach is full.

This year I'm thankful for:

-Going back to school
-The bed my mom gave me a few years ago that is so wonderful
-Gym workouts that relax my soul
-The best friend in the world
-Eggs (easy to cook and enjoy)
-People who are there for me when I need them
-Tears, how they cleanse
-Dark blue jeans & UGG boots to keeps my feets warm
-Blonde highlights
-Gigi's cupcakes
-Taking chances (even if they don't work out)
-Hope
-Privacy
-Old friends who keep me sane via telephone
-Lindt chocolate 70% Cacao bar
-Chocolate soy milk
-Oil of Olay sensitive skin moisturizer
-Soft brown towels that I almost didn't buy
-Always having enough food
-Morning Joe news EVERY weekday morning
-The old Hillsong albums
-Sunny days (already hard to remember what that feels like)
-That summer mortgage job
-The fact that my retainers still fit

There's really so much more. So much to be thankful for.

A Rambling Set of Thoughts

If I could show this world to my unborn children, I would show them the way the plaster of one of the buildings on campus curves into an arch with sunken light fixtures that are always on, even in the middle of the afternoon. The way sidewalks are worn and greasy in the middle along the main pathways but clean and fresh in the more inconvenient places. Those clean and fresh patches of cement, usually bordered by grass or a brick wall, are my favorite places to sit and lean my face into the sun.

Today the blue sky is crisp and alive, with moving clouds that are whiter than any cotton sheet I've ever seen. They're full of light, dragging across the sky above me.

This is the most peaceful place--Bowling Green. If nothing had a sound, Bowling Green would be full of it, because nothing seems to be the only thing around for miles. I ran down my street for nearly a mile into the downtown redevelopment district and less than ten cars passed me on that long stretch. The edges of the streets are piled with quiet, orange leaves and the barren branches of strange bushes poke straight into the air like some sort of knifey monster (I'm thinking Edward Scissorhands-ish) holding his knifey hands straight into the air.

I ran for an hour and a half and then sat on the grey steps outside Snell Hall, watching and old man with a bright yellow bag walk slowly to the end of the street. Old people make me wonder. About myself--about my ability to live a moderately paced, practical lifestyle. Even in the same breath as watching him and wondering about my future, I thought about how much I'd like to be wearing a really awesome new outfit. There's very little hope for people like me to convert to moderation. But that's not today's problem.

Today is the day before Thanksgiving. I still don't have a plan for what I'm bringing to Thanksgiving dinner with T&C and Co. Something vegan would require me to buy about $50 in ingredients. And it would require me to cook. Neither sound very appealing right now as I'm still sitting in my running clothes, covered in stank and wanting to already be with my friends in Nashville. Something not vegan wouldn't be organic or otherworldly enough for this crowd who make all of their own foods using types of flour that sound like something out of a Chaucer story.

I wish that it weren't Thanksgiving. That we could still get together and eat, but that it wouldn't be food for a 1700s American farm theme. I've always considered turkey to be one of the foulest foods ever. I've eaten it about 25 times in my life and don't remember even once thinking, "Mmmm, I wish I could have this more often."

But yams with brown sugar and marshmallows? That's a different story. I could eat that every day.

Rest for My Soul

I read a self-help book yesterday.
A workbook, actually.
I used to be into self-help hardcore, because I believed that we can shape our future selves by learning new habits and ways of handling our problems. That was before I was a Christian. A few years into being a Christian, I stopped thinking that I had any problems. Chalk a bad day up to an attack from the enemy and chalk a bad pattern of behavior up to generational curses, you know.

These last five months have been excruciating. That's not what you want to hear, but if you've read this blog any time since July, you're probably standing over your laptop with a First Aid kit every time you click on this site, wondering if I'm surviving myself or not. But most of the people that see me on a regular basis don't even know how bad I'm doing, or how good that bad is for me. And there are some things that are too hard to talk about. Some feelings that are beyond expression.

What I know about these last five months:

I know that things got harder instead of easier.
That instead of finding the pressure exciting, I found it destructive.
Instead of making measured attempts to solve the challenges, I froze in place.

And I also know that:
I would rather not have to find a cure for this.
I would rather not have to answer questions in an 8"x11.5" workbook.
I would rather not face any of it--

death
grief
anger
sadness
loneliness
frustration
disappointment
despair
silence

My twenties could be retold as a story in which a girl lives very carefully in order to avoid all of those things. If you're always going, always growing, always developing ... it's hard to imagine what any of those things feel like. It's hard to imagine what any of those things can do to a person's hope and joy.

And yet.
I can imagine it now.

Yesterday, because of God answering my prayers, and not because of anything else in this world, the intensity of what I've been going through broke. Relief flooded me and I was reminded inside of the verse, "Come to me all who labor or are heavy laden and I will give you rest for your souls," and I was happy that it was really true.

Tomorrow is another day, full of its own emotions. But for today, I'm free.

Almost Done

When the pressure tightens around you, it can be tempting to disengage. I'm absolutely certain that, here at the end of the semester, my hard work is imperative, now more than ever.

A long conversation with a professor yesterday reminded me that I am exactly where I belong. Only four weeks left ± a week of finals.

Leniency

Last night, as if I needed proof, I proved that I can pull no rabbits out of hats. I waited outside my prof's office after lunch to turn my paper in late because I missed his morning class (a first for everything) and seeing him I smiled and told him what my deal was. The first thing I said was, "I know your policy; I'm just hoping you'll accept it at all."

He said, it's near enough to class to be counted on time (his policy is that it has to be turned in during class to be on time). He was good to me. I don't deserve mercy or leniency.

I am grateful.

If I Can Hold Out a Little Longer

I keep saying I wish I could stop time. But now I want time to speed up.

It's almost the end of the semester.

Holiday travel.
Family.
Joy.

The Long Fall

The fall, although beautiful, brings with it a deafening and murky silence. I wonder about the information I'm learning. I walk from class to class out of habit rather then with a confident sense of purpose.

To be honest, a lot of my days feel this way.

Confusing.
Long.
Exhausting.

In a little snickerdoodle of goodness that brightened my week, today my abstract algebra professor asked me about my future plans. And he admitted that I remind him of the European women he met when he did his graduate work overseas. He said that they never felt they had to compromise or make choices between being coquettish and being taken seriously in the math department. He is recommending that I do my graduate work in Barcelona, Paris or England, and there are a lot of reasons why that might be a good idea. He's already started the process of directing me to one of those places.

Of course, on a murky, quiet day in fall, I'm grateful to feel like the future is out there somewhere, unlocking the door for me and making tea.

Out the window is another 7:30 p.m. fall evening, however. It is a little more immediate, unfortunately, and it offers me no tea.