I am tired tonight, but not tired enough. Not as tired as I thought I would be. Not as tired as I should be. Or should I?

I am getting my eyes examined tomorrow. That is my only plan.

Funny how we make plans. And then they change. We set our eyes on things. And then they shift.

Things don't seem to work out they way we thought they would. Our prediction of the future is never quite accurate. Hard as we try.

I am tired tonight. Longing for a bed but legs yet unable to crawl in. This isn't the way it was supposed to be. This isn't what I planned. Far from what I hoped. But why do I feel so relieved?

What do you do when the floor falls out under you. I've been thinking of the words, "fell through" a lot today, how you think you've found these sources of security and then suddenly the wood under your feet crumbles into splinters and you find yourself... freefalling. Again. Still.

I leaped. And the ground doesn't feel like I thought it would. It doesn't feel like falling anymore-- just a different land again. Still.

I wonder if this is what the Israelites felt. Always wandering, never home. Where is the promise? I'm sure they asked over and over, step upon weary step over blowing, burning sand. Is there a land for me or is my home this transient existence. I am weary of these lessons. I'm sore from grasping at air. I had a little glimpse-- my finger tip brushed it-- but I let that go too. So I join the weary footsteps of those who came before me. Where shall we walk next? Is there a point? Is there a destination or is my destiny this incessant walking?

Is God in control of all of this? Does God have a plan that will end with something easier than this hard road full of stumbling that I've been on? Is he allowing all of this for a specific plan or is it just happening to me? Do I have any control over my circumstances? Is this my fault? Who is to blame? He has something up his sleeve.

Sometimes I don't know what to believe. I feel like for almost a complete year now I've been asking these questions that seem to flock around very important peices of my life. This aspect of adulthood that seems to be so tricky and yet so important? Where the hell am I supposed to end up? Is the journey towards discernment rather than security? Is the journey to trust rather than certainty? It feels like a journey towards grasping puffs of fog-- you reach out your hand and... just barely miss. Nope, not this one. Not here. Nothing is certain. This is something I am learning. There is no rest, no one place of safety.

I am not even angry this time. Not exactly surprised. Something else has fallen through. I've closed one door and opened another just to find that it too is the wrong one. At the start of the year, I felt this sense that I was embarking upon a journey of the unexpected, opening my heart and my life to experiences that I could not conceive for myself. Walking through door after door after door. By my hands are sort from splinters and knobs and I wonder if the walking will ever stop.

Does he have a plan? Is there one good, right thing at the end of this winding labyrinth? I used to find a lot of comfort in thinking so and I still want to believe it, I just don't know if I can. I don't know if that is true. Even to believe that he has a plan is a bit of a leap at the moment.

I'm not angry. I don't even feel hopeless. I just feel this posture in my soul that looks up, hands up, "what next?" I don't really care to know why. But I just wonder how many doorways I must go through before we can move on to some other lesson-- I'm tired. I'm tired of being a transient. I'm not even living paycheck to paycheck-- it feels more like day to day. What will tomorrow mean?

I find that I've developed a fear of my own phone ring. I actually had to tell myself last night to break the habit of letting numbers I don't recognize go to voice mail-- just deal with it.

What does he have up his sleeve? Can we really feel it like we can feel a storm coming? Or is it just wishful thinking? Are you really preparing me for something? Do you have a purpose in all of this? Can I bear to hope that it might be somehow related to the circumstance itself? Or is this preparation for a life in which nothing is certain. Nothing is certain.... nothing is certain...

There is this guy who lives in my apartment complex with his golden retriever who comes out to play with the dog in the courtyard out my front window everyday. I like to watch him because he gets so much joy out of this simple activity. He likes to talk to people as they walk by on the sidewalk. My first thought was that he seemed like this lonely, single, middle aged man who lives with his dog in an apartment, but there is something comforting about the joy that he gets out of this simple companion. He lives in the building adjacent to mine and sometimes I see him on the deck across the way, still caring for the dog with a wide smile.

Today as I looked out the window at him, beaming as the yellow dog ran after the green tennis ball, I felt a little jealous of his simple pleasure.

I often think about how sometimes people do what they do in the world out of a mission towards the work of the kingdom but end up actually only perpetuating a system out of habit or convention rather than simply working towards the awakening towards realities that are a part of this kingdom.

It is easy to get displaced, isn't it? We tell each other that we must love because that is what we are supposed to do without actually considering the raw action of loving. It gets tangled up in other things.

We also get mixed up in labels a lot too. What he is doing isn't a part of God's Kingdom because he doesn't call himself a Christian. And yet, he is outside enjoying air made not by human hands, beaming at a dog running across some winter-sleeping grass. Love, joy, and peace are all realities for the man who likes to play with his dog-- I can see it all over his face. I don't know this man-- I only watch him from my window, but somehow he displays a few of the things that we are told come from the Spirit of God in us.

And yet, simultaneously, I watch him from my window, jealous that I do not feel these things. That it is difficult for me to take the luxury of a few minutes of my day simply to enjoy it in the midst of all my other work.

There is this guy who lives in my apartment complex with his golden retriever who comes out to play with the dog in the courtyard out my front window everyday. I like to watch him because he gets so much joy out of this simple activity. He likes to talk to people as they walk by on the sidewalk. My first thought was that he seemed like this lonely, single, middle aged man who lives with his dog in an apartment, but there is something comforting about the joy that he gets out of this simple companion. He lives in the building adjacent to mine and sometimes I see him on the deck across the way, still caring for the dog with a wide smile.

Today as I looked out the window at him, beaming as the yellow dog ran after the green tennis ball, I felt a little jealous of his simple pleasure.

I often think about how sometimes people do what they do in the world out of a mission towards the work of the kingdom but end up actually only perpetuating a system out of habit or convention rather than simply working towards the awakening towards realities that are a part of this kingdom.

It is easy to get displaced, isn't it? We tell each other that we must love because that is what we are supposed to do without actually considering the raw action of loving. It gets tangled up in other things.

We also get mixed up in labels a lot too. What he is doing isn't a part of God's Kingdom because he doesn't call himself a Christian. And yet, he is outside enjoying air made not by human hands, beaming at a dog running across some winter-sleeping grass. Love, joy, and peace are all realities for the man who likes to play with his dog-- I can see it all over his face. I don't know this man-- I only watch him from my window, but somehow he displays a few of the things that we are told come from the Spirit of God in us.

And yet, simultaneously, I watch him from my window, jealous that I do not feel these things. That it is difficult for me to take the luxury of a few minutes of my day simply to enjoy it in the midst of all my other work.

It feels like it has been a long time since I've written here, maybe an equally long time since I thought about my heart, my self. Midterms are in two weeks somehow-- how did it come up so fast? So many things have been changing and re-beginning, it still feels like January.

This is the second week I've been doing my practicum in an art classroom at a local junior high school and I am finding it to be very difficult. I am finding the aspect of connecting with students to be very difficult and overwhelming in this situation. What do you do when students don't seem to care much about learning when it isn't your classroom? At times, the atmosphere of the classroom seems to actually discourage challenged thinking or a respect for learning. I don't know what to do with that coming from the perspective of an avid learner, always asking, "what is the lesson here? How does this translate to my future or other areas of my life?" How do you even impart that sort of thinking to a student who doesn't even seem to care about your presence at all?

I'm not sure what the objective of this post even is, but I just feel far from success here. I am waiting to be reprimanded, corrected, something. "Stop being confused and overwhelmed and get to being a good teacher already." This is the voice I am braced to hear.

I've been noticing some voices of shame sneaking into my inner ear these days. Sometimes when I get tired, it is easier to give in to habits with these dialogues when I don't have a lot of energy. I get mean, I loose sensitivity quickly when I loose energy. I also forget about grace and forgiveness and totally ignore my own right to humanity.

I'm just tired today... maybe things will get better after a nap.

This is my last day of the week as far as classes are concerned and it seems to have arrived much sooner than I had been anticipating, which is nice considering my head is still a block from the cold epidemic circulating around this city. It is also that week in the semester when the other shoe falls-- I was already so busy, I didn't think I would feel any shift, but somehow I am recognizing that moment in each class where I say to myself, "oh, there's more...."

I quit one job, have anticipating the start of another, and turned down a third. I find myself in a bit of limbo again, searching for that blank space where I say, "here Lord, is my tomorrow, because all is uncertain now." Hopping from stone to stone.

I feel as though this week has also been pretty significant in the number of things that have begun. I started working in the classroom for this semester's education class, this time a little more extensive and I already see myself being challenged. Teaching is an endeavor that takes a lot of personal energy, I am finding, because it consumes so many parts of you as your find yourself face to face with students.


Today, after my field experience, I had to ask myself the question: Do I have what it takes to be a great teacher? I feel as though I have what it takes inside of me to do this thing I am so passionate about, but I just wonder if that stuff is coming out. I believe that as teachers, we are teaching values whether we articulate them with our mouths or not-- our very presence tells students a great deal (and they certainly are watching!). There are many thoughts, feelings, experiences within this bodily frame that make me want to teach more than anything, but the thought of interpreting the internal in external terms is daunting. However will it be done?

Being able to do this takes a lot of risk, I think. It takes a will for vulnerability to turn our insides out, doesn't it? It's one thing to have a professional exterior, but another to find a heart that drives the profession, to be touch with the center. Maybe I'm thinking too hard about it.

I remember learning in eighth grade the symbol for change: an upside down triangle. Cycles. Seasons. Stages flowing into new stages.

I walked past where there used to be shelves of reference books and saw only the imprint of where heavy end caps used to rest on carpet now breathing, relieved, beneath desks of new computers. Things change.

As I parked my car in the Z lot, I thought about the room I was just sitting it-- safe and warm surrounded by classmates I knew all the names of. "I don't want to make this hard for you," the instructor said. It felt like a long time since I heard that. It felt like never since I've felt that.

Stress. I find a leave words out more when I type these days. I forget to change an -ing to a -ed sometimes as I rush out, grabbing the sheet of paper from my deskjet.

I wear dress pants and shoes actually called "professional" by designers, three days out of four.

"Your interviews begin today," she said kindly, looking into our calmly anxious faces. What lies before is the rest of your lives. "I've been in this profession for 37 years," she announced, looking back at us from the stairs,"and I still don't know everything. But now we just make room for you guys."

Last week a professor said he thought the first two years of college were a waste. People ask me how old I am, what year I am in school, and I find myself wondering if I should say "my first semester of being a junior," or if it is enough just to say I'm a third-year. Either way, it's as though I've walked out of winter break into a new world that is harder but less hostile.

I've been thinking a lot these past few weeks about stress-management. "Do breathing exercises," they say. "Go for a walk." But I can't stop and I don't have time for these things. But I wonder if perhaps the most effective means of stress-management is trust. The ability to go to those who are piling on the stress and asking for help. "This is a time conflict," are hard words to say to someone asking you to be reliable. "I don't know what to do, but I've got myself double booked." Is there grace for those moments when you simply cannot be in two places at once?

Last weekend I took a leap. After teetering on the ledge for a week or so, I jumped. I don't know what will be at the bottom when I hit, but I jumped anyway. I've still falling, my stomach turning, the chute is yet to open. But there, in those brief moments, as I walked up and down isles pushing a broom, I realized that sometimes you just have to make a decision and jump-- there is no safe, there is no perfect, and there is no ideal. It is just life. And all the things I really search for are not found in the circumstance or situation but the overarching constant. The hand that stays steady, the voice that says keep following.

So I'm following, the air is rushing past my face and I don't even know what I will be doing tomorrow. But somehow it will work itself out, life will go on, and maybe one day my feet will land. And maybe they won't. At least the question is constant.

There is a difference between I don't know what to do and This is so difficult that I do not know how to face what it is that which I know I must do.

There is little difference between these things that get all wrapped up together: Putting too much pressure on oneself to be super-human, super-professional, or super-grown-up.

Today I am legally an adult. It has been difficult today to realize that I am at a point in my life where that means having already had to make so many difficult decisions. Isn't it interesting that when people talk about adulthood in terms of age, it seems to be often in reference to the ability to make wise choices. Does that mean making less mistakes or being in a place where everything in life is wonderful and perfect and all sorts of doors swing open for you? no. I don't think so. The capacity to make good decisions. That implies another portion that is action-taking. If adulthood means making decsions and making decisions feeds into taking action, that what does that mean about this point in life? Adulthood implies this aspect of doing-- the capacity for action is endowed by this confidence others have put in my like labels such as "adult."

"A whole new world opens up when you turn 21," someone at work said to me last week. I had never really thought about that before, although it seems sort of coincidental as I have found so much of the young 2008 has been pointing to open doors, new experiences, being receptive and ready for the unimaginable. Maybe this person was speaking in less general terms than even he knew.. huh? hm, we'll see I suppose.

I arrived with my bicycle and it was swarming. Brothers and sisters, moms and dads. She ran by with the pink sweat-suit, ready to race in her clunking snow boots and sparkling tutu. Even if there was no one to challenge-- she was off.

They all bunched around the rock face with the gaping hole, giving way to a slide carrying each to the arms of dads down below.

We secretly rejoice in our growing up together. Sharing experiences of going away for a while, rites of passages-- taking our turns at the same firsts, remembering our own in the lives of those a few months younger. Understanding the busy schedules, enjoying the one-per-semester viewings of each other's faces.

Things are not always as we thought they would be. We fall down and get but up-- walking, walking, walking, towards our each different goals.

We look through the crowds looking for the faces that look like ours for a few minutes-- a few faces that may understand our struggles. We celebrate together, cry together, rejoice together, collapse together.

I need a place where I can be safe, where I can be myself, where I can be a mess sometimes. A place where I can fall down at the end of the week's race, someplace where I don't have to worry about my professional clothes, my black shoes-- someplace I don't have to worry about being taken for a 16 year old.

It makes life worth living when we find friends who go out on secret errands, people who give free grace because it gives them just as much joy to give as the recipient. To have friends that you simply cannot repay, even if you tried.

This is fulfillment.

I need a space where I can be human.

I've been thinking about my life over the last few weeks, maybe the last few months even, and seeing a lifestyle where I forget that I am entitled to my humanity. I've been working so hard to be SuperStudent, SuperEmployee, SuperFriend, Superteachertobe, SuperJobCondidate, Superwhatever (to steal a little from Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis). And I am exhausted. I've been thinking-- "Man, how great would it be if I could just get a little break from my life," the pressure has been high.

And this morning, after I finally sat down and thought for a few minutes, I realize how much I need to give myself some room to breathe. Entitle myself to a few mistakes, give myself a few Screw-up-free cards.

You are now in phase two, my Intruction/Management/Practicum teacher reminded us yesterday-- time to get serious. And in the midst of getting serious about teaching, I am sorting out what it means to still be a student, to still be paying for what I do full-time rather than getting paid for it. And I'm trying to distinguish the difference between career and job, way of life, and paying the rent. I am sorting out the difference between learning new things about myself and getting things right.

My home is flux right now-- things change from day to day in my life and I fear that everything else is never going to catch up. I am afraid of people who are unable to provide space for this time of my life in which everything is mixed up, and I think most of all, I am not giving myself space for everything to be mixed up.

Everything feels so serious, so heavy, and it is difficult to distinguish the things that bear more and less weight.

But I take comfort this morning in the fact that I get to be human too. I am entitled to moments (or days, or weeks, or years) of things just being a mess. I am entitled to a mistake here and there because these are, really, the places that we learn the most.

I want to be able to be a person who is okay with my humanity because I want to be a person who is also okay with other peoples' humanity too. If I cannot hold my need to be whatever it is that I think I need to be with a loose hand, than I will surely be heavy-handed with other people as well. This is not the person that I want to be.

Today I am simply reminding myself to seek spaces where it is okay to be human because I think this is what I need more than anything else. I hope you will stop and give yourself that right too.

My eyes are tired again today and I so badly want to stop pretending to read this obscure article for my Concepts in Art Ed class. I'm sure it is interesting and I am sure this class is full of great, deep, and heady ideas about what art is, but I feel a bit too distracted these days to stop and engage. Breathe and engage. My head is lost in the clouds somewhere-- I find myself at home again in amidst the haze of an ever-shifting life and an ever-shifting identity. I feel as though I have been swept into this lifestyle of what it means to become a teacher and little else matters these days. No longer am I just some young hooligan trying to make it through classes, I am trying to keep up with an observed shift into being a professional, and adult. I'm not sure if I like it. I find myself wishing for one day a week that I don't have to worry about looking nice and upstanding and yet feeling strange in jeans and a fleece.

I feel as though I'm getting confused about my lifestyle, my job options-- what stage am I in again? I feel as though I am straddling these two lives, these two persons and all I can see it gray haze down below.

So here I am, standing in a fog where I feel as though there is much to be navigated and little that I cam able to discern. What would be the most appropriate place for me to stand right now? I attempt to strip away all the distractions, weed out all the stuff that isn't actually relevant. But it is still that state of being bombarded...

I need a break.

It's been cold and I feel tired from feeling heavy, full of questions and scenarios in the midst of classes at 7:30 and rooms full of mineral spirits at 8. Reading until my eyes get too tired and writing until my fingers are stiff. The things I'm thinking about are tile floors and florescent lights and black shoes that feel hard to sore feet. Humility outside, pushing carts, wondering how much it should bother me when people ask if I am in high school and then when I say no they ask if I am a freshman. Junior, actually, I say. Believe it or not.

Humility, I think to myself. Humbling. And then other phone calls that make me excited but also afraid of the conversation that I cannot imagine. What words are appropriate? The last one lasted a week, they said, and I thought to myself, that makes it much easier. It makes me feel less alone and more expected.

And nothing is for sure yet except for what is and now. And all the while, I feel tired of this up in the air-ness, and I feel tired of being tired and wondering how much tiredness is justifiable given my life and all that is.

In the midst of all the articles and books and papers and projects, this floating fear looms distracted in the background, with this sickening feeling of this momentary occupation that I have embarked upon and now want out of. I have to keep reminding myself about the power that is mine, the freedom and ability that I have to face that which is ultimately and simply difficult. Remembering to claim the freedom that is mine, regardless of the ways that other people make me feel or the way that I expect other people to respond.

Perhaps I am just tired, as often is the case when all of these sort of thoughts seem just a bit too overwhelming...