I haven't written for a while. I don't know why. Maybe because things have felt too complicated to articulate. There haven't been many grand revelations and the day to day is full of shift and change. I keep getting cards in the mail reminding me that the next stage of my life may be the most difficult of all. words like "long road" and "challenges ahead" seem to ring out and each reminder brings me back to the question of whether or not I'm just walking around with my head in the clouds. I know the winds are changing and transition is the name of the game, but I'm not all that worried. Maybe because the future is so unknown that worry over its contents totally evades my understanding. Maybe because tomorrow is so up in the air, that next week or next month, or six weeks from now seem quite impossible to even wrap one baby finger around.

I am going to be a teacher soon, I think. But it is summer and I enjoying tank tops and flip flops. I am learning a lot about myself and about teaching and management with the impossible little trouble-makers at work, but I feel as though the life that awaits me in a short number of weeks is far off, floating somewhere near mars. Maybe orbiting. And I wonder how long until I really do have my own classroom, wondering how long before it really hits the fan when i am just out there on my own. In charge. yikes. And realizing that maybe no amount of practice will prepare me for that day because the dynamics are so very different. The difference between guest and hostess. The shoes fit so differently.

So it is summer. my income and lifestyle and goals and ideas are changing so swiftly I hardly have time to stop and adjust my glasses. Full time to unemployment in no time to part time to maybe full time to too much and too tired and too confused. and unbalanced. out of whack. out of sync. unclear. change. I'm okay with change as long as things stay the same.

There is a little sign up at the school where I work that says, "raising teenagers is like nailing jello to a wall." And I think that is also true about being a teenager or a young adult or a recent college graduate or a person. Figuring out life feels much like nailing jello to walls. You nail it, turn and watch it slide down the wall, morphing into something you never thought it could be.

It's a weird time of life, this transition. This space. Finding shifting sands as a normality. Finding the thought of a mortgage and matching silverware and furniture that came from somewhere other than the garbage to be quite appealing and yet also quite out of reach. Living a life not quite ready to spend money on anything due to the impermanence of everything. Choosing things to furnish my life based on their moveability-- included carrying cases are still significant factors in the appeal of certain objects.

And I think in some ways this constant state of flex, this preparedness for movement is a good trait, a valuable habit, and yet I find it tiring and long for a place to settle. Wishing for the day when these considerations would leave me alone.

open

"He told them a parable: 'No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine in old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, then wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'the old is better.' " Luke 5

Back in March, I received student teaching placements outside of what I wanted. I had an image of my life in mind and reality stepped in to change the picture.

I have an image of a dwelling with wheels. My life is still moving, still shifting. I do not know what tomorrow is going to be or what to expect next. Life is proving to be much more complex than I realized. The wind is blowing in directions I do not know.

The last project in my sculpture class revolved around the idea of movement and emotion and I couldn't stop thinking about open. open. open. open. Open and ready for the call to pick up my mat and leave everything. Leave it all to follow me, he says.

Almost five years ago, I started writing in this space I designated as a place to record my "lessons in freefalling." I was reminded this weekend of a prayer I used to pray about being okay with only a rock for a pillow-- being an obedient wanderer and happy to leave it all. I was thinking this weekend that I don't think that this is really what I want afterall. I do want the real pillow. I want a place to come home and night and I want relationships older than just a year. I want to be planted somewhere. My feet are tired from wandering.

And yet I want to be open. I am still praying for a posture that is awake and aware of an imminent call upon my feet. Go here. Do this. This is the purpose I have for you-- walk with me in it.

And I wonder if both are possible. I realized this week as I cleaned out my closet yet again, searching for a few more things that could take a trip to Goodwill rather than to my newest place of residence, that a great deal of my life is postured towards the consideration of how hard things will be to move. Most of my purchases revolve around thier hierarchy of importance within boxes and the weight and space they would take up in the back of a truck. And I find myself spanning the tension between these two-- a desire for some permanence, a hope that someday I will have a place to put down a few roots, but a companion of knowledge that tells me that the best wine comes from skins that are flexible and ready to move. Is there a balance? Is there some balance of grace that I am yet growing into?

So things are changing again. A season of friendhips is shifting again, lifestyle is in flux, and a certain transition in planning has moved closer than I had anticipated.

And yet, somehow I have peace. Again, the reality I know is faithfulness. I have no doubt in the undying love of my Father-- a love that is jealous, is a hurricane, and bends me under the weight of its wind and mercy. No word seemed more real than the "Oh how he loves us," this morning. Oh, how he loves me.

So-- bottom line for me now-- I have no regular employment for this summer. And yet, I feel that God has been preparing me for this reality for quite some time now. he has known all along, he has been cupping his loving hands around my life, forming and comforting me in anticipation for the ready moment for me to be let in on this part of the story. And the softness of his arms have carried me through.

Wait. wait. wait. These words whispered through my heart a lot this week. It is as if the spirit was holding its breath, waiting for the silence of the floor slipping out from under my feet. And now I freefall.

Sometimes things don't go the way you think they are going to.

Hi friends.. It's been a while. My last on-campus semester has officially come to a close, i've had the party, walked across the stage, and now for a few months I continue to wonder just how hard student teaching is going to be. But I've made it. This far, anyway. I'm in the process of selling painting, which is big deal for me, but this last week of school-free living has got me really creatively motivated and I am hoping to put a lot more of my work out there in the near future. It is strange to see myself as an artist who actually is making art and (at least working on) doing something with it.

It has been a really great semester. I realize I've written very little here, for which I feel a bit guilty, but life seems to be taking me in directions less tied to this little webspace into more three-demensional arenas. And I've also been much to tired and busy to write.

I've been wanting to do some reflecting here though, as this seems to be the thing I do here. As I look back on the last five months or so, I can't help but find myself filled with awe at the faithfulness of the father. I started out the semester with the simple goal of getting through it and somehow Abba didn't seem to think it fit to allow me such a shallow and disconnected existence. And so he had mercy on me. I found his face in the eyes of many supportive instructors and in some great experiences. I see an image of myself much grown into myself, an artist developed in her work and a teacher ready to face whatever comes next. Some of you might recall a number of thoughts revolving around the desire to teach more than paint and the end of the semester has brought with it a dueling desire between the two. I want to do both for 100% of my time and self and energy.

And so-- this brings me to this day. Saturday, May 23. yesterday, I recieved a phone call informing me that the full-time job I was intending to rely upon this summer is no longer available to me. My plans have changed. My prediction of the future seems to have met a foggy spot. And so, I see a cloudy abyss of questions about rent on where I am now as well as the prospect of coming up with a pricy deposit for a place in boulder in the fall. how it will all work out, I do not know. And yet, somehow, I feel peace about it today.. I am ready in anticipation to see what the father, who is good, has in mind for me. I am open and waiting to hear his voice and follow his call.

I'm listening to snow melt and drip down rain gutters on this quiet Sunday afternoon. Although I've been counting for most of the semester, I'm coming to the realization that in just 6 or 7 short weeks, these last demands of school will conclude and life will be different. Despite this continual onset of realization concerning the transition that stands before me, I am learning that perhaps I ought not set my heart and mind so firmly upon my own ideas about what life looks like beyond the short threshold.

It feels that these last few weeks have been heavy with change and heavy with the voice of the Spirit within my heart. My student teaching placements are set and the personal decisions accompanying these somewhat definitive arrangement are far from determined. The radius of possibilities is vast and so are the questions about where to plunk down in their midst. Places to live for free and places to live for a small fortune and choices about family and friends and aloneness and relationships that I do not yet have any hint of and yet know I will quickly be in need of. And then there is the whole matter of getting too far ahead of myself.

I've been thinking a lot about this time in my life, being 22, being surrounded by friends (of all sorts of ages) who feel lost in purpose. And although I have a somewhat clear path ahead of me, the generalities are the only real guides in my case. The world is still fairly open and I begin to wonder what sort of life there is to be pursued outside the constructs of university life. The 9-5 life that is kind in its stability but dangerous in its potential for stagnation.

I've been thinking a lot about who I used to be and I've caught myself reflecting on whether or not my value has increased or decreased in the process of the last four years. I've been attempting to write essays about a spiritual and personal life that feels as though it has been ravaged by the daily shift of personality change. I've gone from child to student to artist to painter to this thing they call pre-service teacher, all in the context of this square mile. And I've been shaped and formed by this institution, I've been molded towards this end and then wonder what to do when friends ask me not to be that person in the context of our relationship.

I feel like things were a lot more clear a few years ago. And now they are complicated and I'm different today than I was yesterday and I find myself longing for roots. I'm ready for the day when things become more clear in retrospect. I'm ready for the day when I don't see so much of a stranger when I look in the mirror upon awakening.

Personal change is a funny thing. One moment you feel like your normal self and then the next moment you are wondering where your old self went while admiring aspects of a new face. Some parts of you become unrecognizable, other parts in which you placed so much stock are buried or erased, and you see in yourself a developement of something else that is some sort of synthesis of it all. Or so you hope.

It is difficult not to hang on to who you were and what you had a few days ago. It is difficult when you realize that you don't think in exactly the same ways and sometimes it is sad when you realize that you've left some old part of yourself on the side of the road along the way. It is difficult navigating a new body, a new brain, a new heart, while also navigating realtionships and rush hour traffic.

So I've been thinking and praying a lot about taking things one day at a time. Stopping and asking the Father for directions for the self that I am today. It takes a lot of grace and trust when you inhabit a changing self. You hope and pray that someone else is in control of this spinning mess.

 
 
 
 

A lesson in accepting people and things just the way God made them (even if it wouldn't be my way of choosing them). Things feel different again. I've been doing a lot of thinking about this blog and the fact that I don't seem to have the stream of thoughts to record here that I used to. I've wondered if I've grown out of the purposes that writing here used to fulfill. I've wondered if the loss of depression has led to the discontinued need to write here. I don't know. Regardless of all of these things, I do find myself with something to write here today.

It has been quite a different school year, but an even different-er semester. I'm to the point of feeling ready to emerge from the cocoon dutifully called "school" into a different life. I've been reminded, however, in the last few weeks of the eminent change and uncertainty that I've been ignoring with a personal sense of control I like to misguidedly apply to all elements of future life. I hear the voice of reality calling me a bit louder each day out of my illusionistic stupor. Change is coming, I hear it whisper, and it is not going to be controlled by you.

Yesterday I met with a teacher in Longmont to speak about a student teaching placement in her classroom. This location, this teacher, this school would not have been something I would have chosen on my own, but seems to be a place that I can grow and learn. Things felt good. I could see myself transferring my settled life to this place, finding an apartment or some space to put a bed and couch and table and making a new life there.

And then I drove home, opened my computer to greet the awaiting email from a possible part-two placement in Loveland, a good 40 minutes away from placement #1 and a good much too close to the place I was hoping not to be that close too. Within an instant of reading the words "Mary Blair," my plans changed. Hope you like commuting and temporary housing that other voice said. Things don't always go the way you think they should.

Change is rolling in like gray thunderheads. I see them coming, but the magnitude of the storm is yet to be determined. Friendships are changing. I'm clenching my stubborn little fists around keeping things the same, keeping people where I want them to be.

I've been thinking a lot this semester about realtionships. Relationships with people who are different from me. Relationships with people that take work and acceptance and understanding. Relationships that require a daily reminder to myself that the acceptance of others does not determine my worth. Daily working through the reality that just because someone thinks slightly differently that I do does not make either of us less important or more right. I've been struggling with the butting heads and clashing opionions. My easy friendships are absent and the difficult ones, although no less beautiful or important, have defined much of this season. I'm realizing my need to accept people as they are, even if I don't get it, and to accept myself, even when it feels like nobody else gets me.

I don't know what this next season will hold. I do not know where I will be, what my environment will be like or if I'll even have a say in the furniture of my life. But I cannot help but listen to the sense that I may be asked to give some things up, to give some things away, to let go of a lot of things. As I put red ink down on creamy paper surrounding these thoughts, I could not think of the Isrealits reminder, "Our fathers were wandering Aramaics." I couldn't help but conjure images of the wilderness along 287 and the small neighborhoods along the way that appear lonely and isoloated now and long drives ahead of me.

I realize that I've been applying my belief in God's provision to my own plans. The last couple of days, however, have opened my eyes to the reality that I am purusing a life in which He is the leader, and my life is found inside of his heart. And perhaps I am being led into the wilderness and He holds his hand open to recieve the sense of security that I can create and maintain so he can give me something better.

Inspired by the "Handmade Spaces" featured on Modish, I thought I would post some pictures of my own "Handmade Space," including the bookshelf I built out of some old shutters and a new project I'm working on.