Year four.  Week one.  Day five.  It is barely September and I can feel the chill of fall coming on.  A I biked here to write this at the Bean, I realized that strange sensation of sweat from the warmth of the beating Colorado sun and chill from the cool late-august air.  Isn't fall coming a little early this year?  I'm not sure I'm ready to put away my shorts and sandals in exchange for the sweater.  I need a few new sweaters first.

As classes have begun once again, I am reminded of that strange feeling that there is still so much to be learned while also finding myself in places that I have never been before.  Feeling ways that I cannot yet name because they are new.  new New New.  Yet feeling comfortable in new skin, pulling the Danskos from the closet, and donning once again the Teacher Candidate Professional Attire.  The clothes that people who do not yet have real jobs wear.  

It's been a strange week of hospital visits and forgiveness.  A week of headaches in exchange for the farewell to an unwanted companion.  A week of learning a new way of walking without clouds, without that old strange weight of always forgetting something like air but not air.  Beginning to find the answer to the question of how other people who seem more normal do things like enjoy things they know they should enjoy.

It has been a week of other heavy questions too.  Someone asked on Wednesday if I was sure I wanted to paint.  I've been thinking these three days about this question-- is artist the thing that I really want to be.  Last semester I toyed with this idea that perhaps I want to be a teacher more than I want to be an artist, but that becomes scary now that I have submitted myself to something called  Advanced Painting I.   Do I really want to paint?  Am I willing to do the work or do I just like to play?  What is it that I want?  I do not know.  It may be a very long semester. 

I am feeling myself growing up.  I'm no longer afraid of children and am less afraid of my own shortcomings around these young-- not small-- people.  I've enjoyed these two weeks seeking the delight in eyes not yet darkened by discouragement, my heart broken for those I see hurt inside of.  I find working with children one of the most anxiety-relieving activities because suddenly my needs matter much less than theirs.  You forget about everything except finding that place of joy that is inside them.  I like compiling lists:  he loves playing football with his dad, she is an artist that no one knows about, he is caring and compassionate, he needs more love than I think I can give.  There is something about finding these little characteristics like treasure that makes it all worthwhile-- you can't help but search for someone-- anyone-- to tell.  

Sometime near the end of the summer, I set out with a goal to see more positive things in life and in other people and somehow working with these kids-- it seems so easy.  There is so much good in them, even the broken and hurting ones.  Even the ones that never seem to listen and that are always getting in trouble tell you things like, "I went to see the 'feelings doctor' today," and you learn what love means all over again.

It feels like so many things are changing.  Like I've turned down a road that I think I had a feeling might be around somewhere but had no idea what it would really look like or if I'd ever really find it.  And here I am walking down it and feeling free and scared and wondering what will come at the end of this path.  What sort of person I'll be at the end or if I'll make it there without too many wounds.  

What do I want to be?  Where do I want to do and what sort of painting, teacher, artist, person do I really want to be when all is said and done.  When I get to the end of this thing they call school and then it is all up to me and there is no one there to ask me, "Do you really want to paint?"  

Is it possible that this is not the place I 'm really supposed to be all this time-- that even thought I have this gift, I lack the other things to open it?  Or have I chosen wrong?  Is there something I lack that is keeping me from really going after it?  Is there something I'm "supposed" to have that doesn't really exist for me.  Have I failed in some ambiguous way or is it just an feeling?  How does one go about changing her own mind?

So a new semester has started, but it is also the start of new ways of life too.  I am not the person I was four years ago.  In some ways, I feel smaller, weaker, less sure of things, but I suppose that is the sign of true growth.  When our illusions are shattered, that is when we begin to walk farther into reality, although it feels farther than ever.  

I used to be proud of my "differentness" from others my age.  People would say "You are deeper," or "You are more  complicated"  or "You are not the typical whatever-year-old."  I don't feel so much that way anymore.  I feel smaller than other people sometimes.  I haven't plumbed the depths much lately and I haven't gotten out much.  Maybe that element of comparison has been shattered and I've begun to learn that everybody is weird in their own ways and my personal oddity is not something that others have not been given. I don't know.

After this week, I've rethought a lot of the things I was thinking about before.  So many things that I thought were just sucky aspects of my personality, they tell me, are symptoms of something referred to as "clinical."  Strange how a little medication can have the capability of doing away with things you thought were a part of you but really aren't at all.  And I think maybe the best part is being able to write in public without becoming a teared-up mess.

I don't know what this next season holds, but more than anything, I want to make the most of it.  I want to hear the things that matter most and I feel like I've turned down the road towards real freedom.  In some ways, I feel like I've begun to walk towards the thing that I started writing about here in the first place-- finding the freedom to really be the person that I was designed to be.  To love the things I was made to love-- maybe I don't even know what those things are yet.

ps 121

I look up and see

all that lies ahead

The daunting future-- all that tomorrow holds

Look back at where I've been

How will I ever make it there?

Who will carry me through?

My help, my strength, my breath--

It all comes from the Maker himself

The one who designed every crag and incline is here with me

No matter where I've been-- he does not abandon nor sleep.  

He finds delight in each step on the path he already has known because my footsteps are there

It is he who will guide each step tomorrow

I need not spend today in worry

He keeps his hand over each step

pursues me daily

thoughtless of the trouble I've been in yesterday

I look up at each rolling hill

and find peace in knowing I will find Him there

Most recently, I've found myself asking the question: What does it mean for one to be present?  What does it mean to simply be wherever I am.  This issue seems to keep coming up, popping up in places like training for new jobs, my daily prayers.  Be present.  

The summer is drawing to a swift close, and new seasons are beginning.  Even yesterday feels fat away sometimes.  The worries I held just two weeks ago have taken vacations from my thoughts as my daily routine abandons certain duties.  New friends are packing up for a while and going away while old friends are coming back.  Life changes.  Certainly this is true.

As I've reflected in the midst of my spotty schedule this week, I've realized that may pieces of my life have gathered in corners, moving from small areas of dust to piles of heacy books, filed with the writings of yesterday.  All that has gone wrong, all the failures I've been remembering. I tell myself I'm attempting to sort them out, working out the kinks of what went wrong, who was wrong, why was wrong.  But I've realized that I've simply justbeen carrying them around like textbooks from previous semesters.  The "lessons" have become a part of me, but I still want to carry the hardbound text around, just in case there is another test.

So, the lesson in presence for the day is letting go of all books.  Burning old pages of failure.  Ceasing the constant re-hash.  Just allowing yesterday to be yesterday and not all0wing that second-hand account of myself color my picture of tomorrow and keep me from today.

It is so tempting to want to keep looking back there, wondering why things were the way they had to be rather than simply taking in what is left-- the lessons, the hurts, the little residues that became a part of me by way of life lived.  

I've started to see in more clear vision the way hauling around old garbage-- who I was then-- keeps me from being alive today.  I don't want these things stealing my vision, blurring my eyesight because there are all sorts of people coming in and out of my life each day that I want to see clearly.

I woke up this morning with this strange feeling that I was somewhere else... like two years ago.  This strange memory of waking up in another bedroom, younger, different.  I decided again today that I'd like to stop judging people, including myself.  It's been raining for three straight days and sometimes it is lovely and sometimes it is frightening.  Drops of water pelting against window panes that lost their screens in the wind in the middle of the night.  Water rushing and cleansing as it flows through gutters like rivers above my head.  I don't feel very clean today and I don't feel very pretty.  I feel ugly and broken, asking questions about what good means and what that has to do with red and white under florescent lights and bits of rejected hamburgers.  Dreaming of school cafeterias and children who need our extra love while their parents are at work.  Jobs, moving, waking up in other bedrooms still.  Feeling lost, buried under the future and wondering if I'll always feel this sad while making lists of things that I love.  Wondering where I put my self and if anyone else has found it on the sidewalk somewhere and decided to love it anyway.  Wondering if I'll ever find that person who picked me up like a lost penny.  Thinking of good friends who wait outside in the rain to go home and watch a movie we already had.  That weird smell in King Soopers that is sort of like metalic bread and really old linoleum, and wondering if they've ever wanted to get rid of it or if it is engrained in those employees senses and they don't notice it like I do every time I walk in.  Thinking about making blueberry pancakes all by myself as friends are off on other adventures of their own and wondering what chocolate chip cookies would be like with hershey bars rather than chocolate chips.  Wondering if maybe I should adjust the recipe for the altitude afterall or if flat cookies are okay.  I've been waiting for his voice to appear even though I haven't been sitting down much and my head feels full of hurt and confusion.  Judging myself, telling myself to read when all I really want to do is stare out into space in hope that perhaps I will find myself out there in the abyss.  And hearing some other voice telling me to give me a break.  Stepping back and counting all the things I've been scolding myself for.  Remembering someone who once said, "I will not should on myself."  I've been shoulding on myself lately.  Maybe I'll quit.  And maybe I'll just work on catching one raindrop at a time and allowing everything else to flow out the gutter and be caught by the water below.  Since there is already a pool forming to be washed away anyway.

"sometimes the repairs you pay at a shop exceed the real value of that which is being repaired (happy God doesn't view me in the way I view the bicycle.)"

The above is a line copied from an email from the guy who does the talking sometimes at Timberline Oldtown regarding a bicycle left at the coffeehouse over the weekend, and it seemed appropriate for what I wanted to say here today.

Sometimes it feels like I am fighting a loosing battle aboard a sinking ship.  Can't seem to climb out of the hole.  

And the thing I've been wondering is if other people notice the decent of said ship.  And I've been wondering how much love is left for me in this world and outside this world because I don't feel like I can keep it afloat.  I feel as though it would often be best if I just went somewhere that my gray cloud wouldn't have to touch other people. I can't seem to have the ability to control it.  

And then there are times I remember that God doesn't treat us like bicycles.  And then there are times that I remember it isn't that I am defined by the darkness that I feel emanating from my psyche but from the other person that He is making, the person that I just can't seem to find.  Things that define me.  Sometimes this sort of identity and definition is misleading.

Regardless of my need for medication or my need for a sharp kick in the backside, I am loved the same.  Yesterday, as I swept up french fries and peanut shells, refilling ketchup dispensers and restocking sugar, it took just about everything I had to remember this.

It seems like this summer has been spent working at keeping everything swept up.   Walking around tucking in the rough edges that are actually too much for my two small hands.  I've been fighting with this thing about not attempting to live life alone, dealing with this urge to hide it all, act normal, calm cool collected when everything is actually falling apart in a corner I've refused to really look at.     Because I'm not sure I have the right to have such corners.

Does he still love me? Do you still love me?  She keeps on giving me hugs in doorways, between dishes and laundry.  And I don't get it.  I feel like I should be sent to my room for my unrestrained honesty.  And you should have a medal for putting up with me.  

And I suppose if I really thought about it,  if I really let it in, I would realize this is how He loves me too.  I suppose if I really thought about it, if I really listened, I would hear his voice saying, I love you the same regardless of how dark you feel inside.  I love you no matter how much you wish you weren't who you are.  My desire to be with you is not dependent upon your ability to face the most painful of circumstances with the joy they tell you you should have.    

Sometimes I wish he made me different.  Sometimes I write things in red markers about what I would give to be someone else, with a different chemical makeup.  Sometimes we are tired of asking for more strength.  Someone prayed this a few days ago and I sort of wondered if this was allowed.  Are we allowed to get tired of asking for strength?  

I don't know the answers to any of this stuff.  In a week maybe someone will be able to give me a little more help. In the meantime, I suppose what I could use is a little more grace (since I've already gotten more than I've accepted.)

I'm a little ashamed to say aloud that today is the day that I've been shamelessly counting down to for about two months.  I've said if I just make it through the summer, then things will be okay.  I don't really know how true that is, but I do certainly know that I am glad to have the summer ending and find myself peering through a window of hope-- there are a few things that I know about my future and that feels really nice.  Today marked the end of my photo class at Front Range, this week the end of tutoring.  In a week from yesterday I'll be staring my new job-- the possibility of a job that a) I enjoy, b) can be proud to tell people I have and c) will most likely last for longer than a month and half (if that could possibly be in the cards for me).   Sadly, I'm not sure I've eer been so happy for the fall to come.  

Hope.  It's the end of many things and the beginning of others.  The next couple of days will mark the end of an entire year since I've left Boise.  Next week will mark four years since I began writing here.  Two weeks will begin my last official year of college, as far as coursework is concerned.  Soon a new roommate will be joining our little home.  A new job.  In a year from now I will be preparing to student teach and will be entering the "real world"  in a way I have yet to truly know.

I've thought often about the increments of time marked by the distance between now and when I began school, when I left for my grand adventure, the time I came back to Colorado for a second try.  Where have I been in the last year?  I've wondered if it's been the hardest year of my life so far.  It has definitely piled on all the hardships of adult-ness; jobs, finances, bills, responsibilities, and real career-related choices.  It has involved work through relationships with family and all that comes with sorting out friendships.  I've gained new friendships, found a place in a new family, found peace and love in an old family, experienced the death of a friend who was practically family.  

As I look back on the past year, perhaps the two, I feel as though I've grown up.  I've started wearing wool slacks, bought a pair of Dasko clogs, and words like "differentiation," "classroom management," and "advocacy" have become permanent fixtures in my vocabulary.  There are times I've felt very childish, but nevertheless have built new muscles and discovered parts of myself I never knew I had.  I'm mid-river in some ways too.  I'm deep enough in the mess of education to be committed, but still feel the distance to the other side.    

I feel as though the spiritual person I was two years, maybe three years ago, is also different.  I don't have the questions I used to have-- I can hardly remember what they were because they were more of feelings than articulated inquiries.  The confusions I had about community and rightness and places and people and families just don't seem to matter much anymore.  Maybe I've had less time to read spiritual diatribes between pedagogical theories and cleaning the paint from underneath my fingernails in the few extra minutes before bed.  Or maybe I'm just growing up and that's how things are.  I don't really know.

But as I head into what feels like a new chapter, the calm after the storm, I've been thinking a lot about goals.  Where do I want to be a year from now?  Who do I want to be?  What do I want to get out of the last two semesters of college?  As I remember what the school year and subsequent summer has been like, I realize that a majority of my energy has been spent on the simple goal of survial.  I've been stressed and tired, and haven't felt as though I've taken time to love and enjoy-- and I think it has taken its toll on my heart.  In many ways, I feel as though I've lost me in the midst of the hurt and frustration and fear.  That is not the person I want to be, yet I'm not sure how to balance it all to keep myself from the hole.  I suppose what I need is some help (as some have mentioned).  

The question I've been asking is how exactly can I balance bills and money and needs and finances and all of this while keeping afloat in school, doing all I can to put what's left of me into the teacher I want to be later?  how do you sort out yourself from the obligations that come with living on your own, cooking your own food, being the grown-up you are supposed to be?

I don't know the answers exactly, but in some ways I do feel like I am moving closer to figuring it out, sorting out the tangled bits of yard that my life is at the moment.  Somehow, the next school year holds more hope than last year did.  I'm gainfully employed, which helps a great deal and I feel more accomplished in the area of my education studies as well as my place in the art program.  

As I was coming to the realization yet again this morning that this is the last fall that I'll really be needing to buy school supplies and figure out class schedules, I really hope to emerge next spring as a person who has learned a bit more about how to love.  I want to be a person marked by love rather than fear and stress.  Last summer, a mentor said to me, "the way you build relationships in college will determine how you build relationships for the rest of your life."  AS I thought about that this morning in the context of this being my last real year in college, as an undergrad at least, I realize that in some ways this is my last shot.  Not that there will be no second chances after this, but simply that I want to make the most of the year I have.  I don't want to take things lightly or spend my time counting down towards the end.  I want to savor the life I live in the next nine months, the next twelve months.  The next howmanyever months.  

I find myself doing things a little differently this AUgust.  I'm preparing more, organizing my workspaces and school supplies, and I think in many ways in the process I am also preparing my heart.  My first year of college, I was preparing for a change in living space, a total change in my way of life.  Sophomore year, I was preparing to leave for Idaho in the spring.  Last year, Junior year, I had no idea what to prepare for when I returned to finish.  And here I am now.  I feel as though I'm at the point where I have enough experience behind me to know what to expect, to understand better how to prepare my heart and my mind for the significant steps I will be taking in the next few months.  Often I reflect on how it's taken me a year to really pick up the pieces of things and fit this transitory space of life together.  

In some ways, I feel as though I've passed a test.  I've made it through and the light at the end of the tunnel has become more tangible.  I'm on my way out.  Perhaps.  And I'm sure after this year, everything will start again and there will be new challenges, but I've learned a lot-- I know I have.  The preverbal  "college experience"  has equipped me for many things.  If anything, maybe it has taught me not to freak out so much, even if I still rely much too intensely on spell-check.  

Bottom line-- I'm am thrilled to be entering a new space.  I feel as though things are looking up, the dark nights are letting up as the rain washes away the old and the new is easier to find.  As I enter a new school year, I really hope it will be one marked with love, hope, and peace.  That the experiences I have in the coming year will lead me deeper into a life of enjoying all that the father has made, that my lie would be something to love and that the people that I come into contact will feel that love in me for them.  

patriotism and learning about people who are different

Today, for our last day of tutoring, I took my student to FCMOCA to see their exhibition on Patriotism.  THe content of the show and the background of my companion got me to thinking about the whole issue of patriotism as well as opened all sorts of reflection on the summer as a whole.  The focus of the show was on what we are proud of as Americans as well as celebrating the heritage of the various peoples who make up our country.  The interactive show featured various activities to reflect upon and share ways we commit "acts of patriotism,"  things we are proud of our country for, and what America means to us.  

Today was actually the second time I attended the show.  The first time I saw it, I was with a friend and my younger sister and today, I attended it with the sixth grader I've been working with for the summer whose family moved here from Mexico within the last 15 years-- definitely yielded various responses.  While participating in one of the activities, the student mentioned that the only reason that he and his family did not return to Mexico was that he was the only one with a passport.   

I was struck on Friday when I first went through the exhibition that the focus of the show was on positive opinions about the United States.  Although various responses from viewers were sarcastic and cynical, which is to be expected given the current climate of our nation, the show seems to be intended to steer people towards focusing on what is good about lovely about our country.  The response of this eleven-year-old, however, got me to thinking about our attitudes about ourselves in the United States, even despite the open disdain for current politics and attitudes.  

I think we have this belief in the U.S.  that everyone here is happy to be here, that it is their dream come true and there is never any reason that they would have a desire to return to their country of origin.   I suppose I say we because what I mean is that I realized today that perhaps this was a belief I held without knowing it.

I do not know why this family I've been working with all summer is here.  I do not know what brought them to this country and I do not know whether or not they truly would return there if it were possible.  I do not know what sorts of beliefs this student has been brought up in, but I do know that his parents want the very best for him.  More than anything else, it is obvious that his parents do everything they can to help their children be successful.  Even though neither parent speaks english, both of the children I have met in the household do so very well and it seems that both of them are doing what they can to learn the language and to work and to live good lives.

But what I wonder is this-- is the American way of life the best way of life or do we simply make that assumption.  I've wondered about this idea off and on throughout the summer as my job is to help this student learn to speak our language and understand our culture more effectively so he can survive in American schools.  I've asked myself questions about acculturation and assimilation-- is it right? I mean, maybe the answer is yes because regardless of the reasons and desires, they are here now and in coming here, they have placed themselves under the systems of our country, which, given the opportunity to participate in the program I was employed by for the summer, seems to be benefitting them well.  

The question I am forced to ask, nevertheless, is what about our attitude?  Do we assume that America is the great promised-land, bringing joy and blessing to all people?  Do we neglect that there may be immigrants or any people, for that matter, who have genuine reason to want to live elsewhere?  In our conversations about immigration, do we come from the perspective that the only issue at hand is how to treat the people who have come here to gain all the benefits so abundant here?  Or do we consider that other side-- that some may not choose it, that some may not be as thrilled about the American way of life as we are.  

These are questions I do not have the answer to.  Despite my fears and the recurring struggles of the last two months, I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to spend 80 hours in the hoe of a family living a life different from my own.  I feel honored to have the experience of seeing how "they" live and learning to love them as much as I love the people who are just like me.  

This summer I have been reminded of all the qualities of people that can be seen regardless of common or uncommon language.  I saw the language of a mother who loves her children enough to do all that she can to get ahead, even in a culture she may not wish to be a part of and when her children may not appreciate it now.  I saw a family who cared for one another, a typical eleven-year-old boy pulling typical eleven-year-old tricks on his teacher.  I saw into a family who lived out the cultural traditions of many that I have observed from a distance for most of my life.  And I got to build a relationship with a student, to show him things that he may have never seen before and asked him to consider things no one has asked him to consider before.  And that is enough.