first day of kindergarten...

My high school youth group leaders/great friends Matt and Amy's 5-year-old, Christopher, started kindergarten this week (!!!).

Amy posted this wonderful conversation with him on her blog:

"...We had orientation last Friday and then this conversation on the way to the car...

Me: How was it?
C: (small voice) Fine.
Me: Were you scared?
C: (small voice) Yes.
Me: Did you cry?
C: (small voice) Yes. When we were walking back to the classroom.
Me: (shocked) Seriously?! You cried?!
C: (small voice) Mom, a lot of kids cried.
Me: (suddenly not joking and feeling awful) I am so sorry baby! I didn't know you were that scared. (lean in for a hug)
C: (laughing uncontrollably) I didn't CRY mom! No one CRIED. I'm going to be fine. (continued laughter for most of the car ride home)

Yeah. So, basically he's a crafty little liar and I have no idea about reality anymore."

I laughed sooo hard. I just thought it was too amazing not to share.

I lived with them for several months the year Christopher was three and a half and Hannah was about to turn two, and I absolutely loved it. Reading her blog today made me nostalgic, so I was looking through my journal entries from that summer and found this:

"Today I was on the computer in the living room and Amy, Christopher, and Hannah were eating lunch in the kitchen. I overheard this:

Amy: Christopher, what are you when you put your spoon in your nose like that?
Christopher (age 3 1/2): A... a WAL-rus!
Amy: Yup!
(side note, how much do I love her mothering style).

Then she called to me, "Hey Em, by the way, did you teach them to sing, "I am the eggman, I am the walrus"?"

I totally did!! I'd forgotten but a couple weeks ago Christopher was putting his spoon up his nose and exclaiming about how he was a walrus. So obviously, I immediately taught them to sing "I am the eggman, I am the walrus" in a chorus. But then they went to the beach for a week and I hadn't thought about it since.

Me: Oh yeah, I did! Wait, did they say it again?
Amy: OMIGOSH. They've been fighting over who gets to be the eggman and who gets to be the walrus for a week!!
Me: SERIOUSLY??!!!!! Aahhhh!!! That makes me so excited!!!!!
(and right on cue...)

Christopher: I AM THE WALRUS!!!
Hannah (22 months): No, IIIII the walrus!!!!
Christopher: I'M the walrus, Hannah, you are the eggman!
Hannah: III the egg-maaaan!!
Christopher: I am the walrus!
Hannah: I the egg-maaaan!!

(and it continued while Amy and I CRACKED UP LAUGHING)."

Love you guys madly :-)

Summer 08- a minute before this I'm sure the spoon was showing off walrus-ness




First day of Kindergarten. So grown-up.

Quotes.

• "I'm freaking out!!! I don't know where I'm going to be... and SUFJAN'S GOING ON TOUR."
  

-Breanne, on the true difficulties of the post-graduate transitional lifestyle.

• "I prayed for a dream last night and I had one in which you and I were on a sci fi adventure."

-Sarah, via text. Because, obvs.

• "We want that he be smart boy." (thoughtful pause) "And that he not break things."

-the Iraqi father of one of my 2-year-olds at work, in response to my question on what their goals for his time in our program are.

• "(spluttering)...And... and because... because you could CRY OR DIE OR JUST MAKE PIES, EMILY!!!!!!!" (puts head in hands in utter frustration at my lack of understanding)
  

-Steve, in response to my innocent inquiry as to how it's so clear that the narrator's boyfriend actually died in Patty Griffin's classic song. I'd had hopes that maybe he was just at home that day. Apparently the death is supposed to be obvious. Who knew.

• "Sweetie, we need to go shopping. I want you to wear shorter skirts."

-My mother, approximately ten minutes after waking up from a four-hour surgery.

I love my life.

.tim + ash.

The only thing better than one of your good friends falling in love with a wonderful person and getting married, is when TWO of your good friends fall in love and get married... to each other!


Tim and Asharae are two of my favorite people and one of my favorite couples. EVER. I've been good friends with both of them through most of college (Tim and I were even in the same orientation group our first week of freshman year!). It has been SOOOOOOOOOO much fun to know them both separately, then get to see them meet... get to know each other... fall in love with each other's hearts. To get to see them learn to truly give themselves to each other and to God.

And when I say, "get to see them", I really mean it. One of the coolest things about them is the way they have included their community in their relationship, and worked to love others as a couple.

Case in point: lucky me :-)




(I love these pics :-)).

One particular favorite memory, they woke up at 5:30 AM and walked across Honey Rock to hug me goodbye before I left for HNGR. Who does that? They go out for coffee with me as a couple, they pray for their friends together, they 100% enable and affirm the other's gifts.

And they are even nicer and kinder than they are adorable.






Hard to believe, huh?

Love you guys so much, and couldn't be happier for you!! Thank you for letting me be a part of your journey.

nothing's as helpful as remembering that He suffered too.

The sovereignty questions flip me out.

Sometimes I have to give up what I don't know and just focus on what I do...

Been listening to this song over and over.

I don't know the rest of it, but I know He went there.

up on a mountain, our Lord is alone
without a family, friends or a home
He cries, oh, oh, oh, will you stay with me?
He cries oh, oh, oh, will you wait with me?

up on a mountain, our Lord is afraid
carrying all the mistakes we have made
and He knew, it's a long way down
do you know, it's a long way down?

up in the heavens our Lord prays for you
He sent His spirit to carry us through
so it's true that you're not alone
do you know He came all the way down?

so it's true that you're not alone
do you know He came all the way down?

-lyrics by The Welcome Wagon

Daybook: Aug 8

I love reading Elizabeth Foss's beautiful blog and I enjoy the "daybook" entries she does weekly. I thought I'd copy for the day, if for no other reason than to reflect a bit and have to look back on... Most of the prompts are straight from hers and some I added.

Outside My Window

The Wheaton train station and the ever-familiar sight of the street next to Caribou. Getting a window table here is one of my favorite things and I have spent more hours at them over the last four years than I could ever count.

I am Listening to

At the moment, just coffee shop talk drifting by. A few minutes ago, it was Deb Talan on my iPod.

I am Wearing

Black tank top, jean shorts, Tevas which thankfully I just found under my bed.

I am So Grateful for

• A wonderful catch-up breakfast with Sarah yesterday, passing through Chicago on her cross-country road trip.
  

• God being greater than my emotional ups and downs. It is easy in these days for me to think that I will always be such a victim to moods, tears, lack of energy, and I am grateful that God is stabler than me, faithful to me when I am unstable, and that "how I feel is not who I am".

I'm Pondering

Friendship. How grateful I am for it, what makes some work, its place in the post-graduate life, how to pursue it in a non-selfish, God-honoring, and healthy way.

I am Reading

I am in the middle of like eight things at the moment. I think I really need to structure in some committed reading time daily or at least weekly to make sure I am a) reading and b) finishing things. Over the last month, it's included the awesome biography There Is No Me Without You (about the AIDS crisis in Ethiopia and the importance of adoption), Loves Me Loves Me Not which is so thought-provoking and helps me love God more, and the audiobook version of Walk Two Moons, an old childhood favorite which has all the amazing deep character development and life truths of the BEST children's lit. I don't know if I'll ever love adult fiction as much as children's.

I am Thinking

See "pondering". Also about how I'm annoyed at myself for being so emotional. And about how I want to go into this work week rested, with a good attitude, ready to lesson plan creatively and with energy and truly put heart and joy into loving these kids and families as much as they deserve to be loved and served.

I am Creating

I've spent the last couple of hours working on a long encouragement letter to someone who completely deserves it. Also I'm trying to make my bedroom look pretty... more framed pictures (of people I love!), and I lost the quilt covers in favor of plain white duvets.

I am Missing
Being able to make spontaneous errand runs, hang-outs, dinners with Rachael (sob!!). I wanted to go to Target today and it hit me for the first time for REAL that she's really not here. She left for her amazing organic farm adventure this week. Matt, preemptively... he left for his amazing DC adventure today.

On my iPod

My playlist at the moment includes Steve Slagg, Shane & Shane, Rosie Thomas, and Over the Rhine.

Towards Being Faithful In This Time

I know that walking or being in some form of action makes it easier for me to pray, and I've fought against that lately because I'm lazy and it's more convenient to be able to pray sitting on my couch in my house for half an hour before I leave for work than having to do something (plus it's been too hot to walk). But last night I gave up and admitted that's what I need, and drove to campus and just walked around for an hour talking with God about multiple things. It was wonderful. I'm going to try to do the exact same thing multiple times this week. It works, and if something works for prayer, we should keep doing it, yeah?

One Thing I Love About My Job Right Now

Feeling like I can actually make a difference in a few of the families' lives. Two-year-old giggles. Praying for the families. Speaking Spanish. Whoops, that was more than one.

One Thing I Love About My Living Situation Right Now

Well, it's quiet because my roommates are away. I miss them. (Kendra wrote an interesting description of our living situation here :-)). I love the garden in the backyard, the fact that everyone thinks the house is adorable, and all the natural light.

One Thing I Love About Wheaton Life Right Now

Caribou :-)

One Thing I Love About My Church Right Now

Um, everything. OK... today there was violin and cello during worship. And we took Communion. And I saw a favorite professor and I'm having dinner at her house next week. And I love my church.

I am Hoping and Praying

To have a good and joyful and hard-working attitude this week.

From the Kitchen

I made artichoke-chicken for dinner on Friday when the Hiltibran clan and Steve came over (which was so so fun). A super simple Trader Joe's recipe. Yum.

One of my Favorite Things

Friends.

A Few Plans for the Rest of the Week

Work, trying to pray, a sleepover with sweet Christine and hopefully meeting up with miss Mary Gallagher... and it's my birthday!

A Couple Picture Thoughts:

• My sweet roommates- they like each other :-) On our new beautiful deck!
• And me with my wonderful friends Christine and Meghan at a really fun hang-out at Meg and Josh's apartment last week. Meghan and Josh are rocking newlywed life by having us all over a lot :-). I love it. It's been a wonderful part of summer.

Paul said to Petey, You gotta rock yourself a little harder.

A sweet best friend "felt compelled" to spend her lunch hour yesterday in one of the chapels on Wheaton's campus, praying for me and my family.
(No words for how much that means.)
She shared this verse from her time with me:

"Lord, through all the generations
You have been our home."
(Psalm 90:1)

A favorite.

.community: mine.

choked up reading Mark this morning.

And they came, bringing to Him a paralytic carried by four of them.
And when they could not get near Him because of the crowd,
they removed the roof above Him,
and when they had made an opening,
they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay.
And when Jesus saw their faith,
He said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."
ch 2, vs. 3-5

That story felt familiar.

:grateful.

.true love.

I'm in it.

With this face right here (as you will soon be too- press play!):



He does that head bobbing thing IMMEDIATELY anytime that song comes on. Seriously. Omg. The cuteness.

Over my recent visit home, Mary and I were discussing our incredibly special and beautiful mentorship/friendship, and remembering how it started when she was 18 and I was 14.

Bet she didn't know that when she "adopted" little freshman -in-high-school-me, pouring all her love and prayers into lots of coffee dates, sleepovers, Bible studies and encouragement letters...

that someday I would be plotting how to steal her son and take him back to Wheaton with me. Mwahaha.

(Maryyy, I TOLD you that God TOLD me that you and Wolf are supposed to just MOVE HERE. Reallllyyyy. So then I won't HAVE to steal any babies, okkkk?? Ok great thank you. See you soon.)

See? Rex clearly loves the idea.

Hilarious.

Lindsay, my sweet best friend in Bolivia, just posted this picture that made me laugh soooo much. It's at a recent wedding they attended. This was during the ceremony... all those people up there taking pictures? Photographers? No no. Guests who wanted to make sure they didn't miss the shot.

Aahh, I miss that country yo.

(I miss that beautiful girl and her husband even more!)

Ohio!

I just got to spend a lovely weekend in Ohio with one of my favorite families, relaxing and partyin' it up Hiltibran style...

Lots of intense games of Settlers...


And cornhole...

(I just really enjoy Matt's facial expression in this one)

And corn-shucking...

And tree-climbing...







And, it was all really beautiful. Mostly the people, but also all of this:






Mmm country!


Not pictured: The other three (four?) games of Settlers, one game of Croquet, one game of Scrabble, two trips to get ice cream, maple fudge, Amish people (they don't like to get their pictures taken, but I waved at some of them passing in a buggy!), Matt's sweet grandma, the Hiltibran men wrestling, and late-night pillow talks with Katie and Beth.

I really like all of them yo.

(Especially the Amish people. I mean...)

It was so relaxing and fun to be with them. On the drive home I prayed a lot and thought about friends, and family, and friends' families, and friends that become family, and got so filled up with gratitude that I actually ached a little bit.

Thanks for having me, Hiltibrans!

"Prayer is not easy. Jesus spent the night in prayer...

"...That's a picture of the fact that prayer is not something you always feel.

It's not a voice you always hear with these ears.

It's not always an insight that suddenly comes to you in your little mind.

(God's heart is greater than the human heart, God's mind is greater than the human mind, and God's light is so great that it might blind you and make you feel like you're in the night.)

But you have to pray.

You have to listen to the Voice who calls you the beloved..."

-Nouwen, from my favorite article.

(I'm better at typing it than doing it, but I wanted to share anyway.)

Your hands...

I first heard this song a few months ago and have listened to it over and over again. Seeing the sincerity on the singer/song-writer's face as she sings it herself in this video made it even more meaningful for me...

K-LOVE - JJ Heller "Your Hands" LIVE from K-LOVE Radio on Vimeo.

as are all things.

One of my best friends once wrote this:

"...The last four months were hard. But if a semester is the cross, as are all things, then maybe the last four months saved my life. Maybe all those other things taught me to see my One thing better."


Prayer this semester didn't look anything like what I have known it to look like before. I couldn't journal. I couldn't sit in a coffee shop and follow any train of thought long enough to feel like I was praying. The cheerfully-voiced and neatly patterned prayers I said with friends in the cafeteria before meals bore little to no resemblance to the way God and I were actually talking.

Me and Jesus, the me and Jesus we have been since I was 12, wasn't happening. I didn't know how to talk to Jesus in a world that lets little girls get raped and beaten and abandoned. Not in a fake, "Well, I just don't know how to talk to you if you're going to be like that" haughty way. I mean I literally did not know how to talk to Him in this new world in which I found myself. Sometimes I'll try to tell someone that I feel 'different' since HNGR and I don't know how to explain it. Because we're all different, all the time. We're different every year, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. But I don't mean like I grew, or even I regressed. Sometimes I feel like my entire foundation that I stood on has been taken apart and put back together and I'm standing on something I don't even recognize. Now that I can breathe a little bit more I'm realizing that what I'm standing on is still pretty good. Sometimes I get these tiny glimpses that it might even be better. Stronger. But I had to learn how to do all these things on it that I knew how to do before, but the ways I knew how to do them don't work here. And the main thing that didn't work, was praying.

Praying with the expectation life is going to work out just beautifully didn't work. That sucked, but it was good. That was a wrong foundation I'd had. That's not how God works, and it's not how He's ever said He was going to work. I'm not sure why I thought otherwise, and it's been- it is- painful rearranging that. But it's good.

And, praying with the knowledge that God is good, didn't work. Because I wasn't so sure about that all the time anymore.
That sucked, and it wasn't good.

I didn't know how to pray without knowing that God is good, which means I didn't even know how to pray about the fact that I didn't know God was good. And so praying (and pretty much everything else, actually) felt terrifying.

So prayer this semester felt like it almost never happened. Because it didn't happen in any ways I had known to recognize.

Prayer this semester, instead of feeling like I was "keeping company with God", instead of quiet times in Starbucks or Caribou or long letters to God in my journal, was a lot of long walks, in the snow, by myself, with my iPod. Sometimes if it was cold or too late at night instead of walking it was driving, through my neighborhood, through the campus, going the speed limit and using turn signals, going slowly and mindlessly over the same route again and again as I tried to line my heart back up, in the quiet, for just a minute with the God I was missing.

Prayer was chopping vegetables. Really. So much so that I once heard a housemate confess to her boyfriend that she "kind of love[d] it when Emily gets depressed because we get a good soup". Prayer was hymns playing in the background as I focused on the purpose of peeling and chopping and stirring and found peace in the rhythm and the use of my hands.

Prayer was reading Rilke out loud before bed with my roommate and being able to, yes, line my heart up to these words. It was lighting a candle for five minutes at night as I asked God to bless the girls at Mosoj Yan- candle-lighting is something we did on the HNGR retreat which I found helpful.

Prayer was interceding for others, which I didn't do enough out of sheer laziness, but which by some beautiful miracle did not hold the difficulty that attempts at casual conversation with God did.

Prayer was and is, in an incredible gift of grace, the liturgy. It is going to church and saying and singing the same words every week, and in recent months being blessedly able to affirm them more and more. It is the gratitude that rises up in me that, in my inability to tell God these truths about Himself out of any spontaneity or warmth or even sense of friendship, I can sing them and raise my hands for an hour on Sunday mornings and get to tell Him them in that way. That I can find myself more and more knowing that I do believe these things, and that this liturgy, this church, is providing a way for me to affirm them before my own emotions or abilities are going to let me do so on my own. Oh, how grateful I am to get to praise God through words others have written and songs others are singing when my own heart is so confused and cold.

Prayer has been, greatly, others praying for me. That is something I think I underestimated the power of in these past seven months. People have prayed for me and that has been important.


Mostly as I have looked at myself and my interactions with God in the past seven months I have felt ashamed. Who am I to not pray? To not know how? To be so faithless? Clearly, to feel so far from prayer must mean I am far indeed. And how does this show gratitude to Mosoj Yan and the work they do?

But recently I have been realizing a bit more that it was a good thing for me to learn that prayer that does not look like journaling in a coffee shop and leaving with the feeling of peace, can still be prayer. That crying myself to sleep, God still heard me. That prayers lifted by others on my behalf and the behalf of my girls, do something powerful. And that if walking in the snow and chopping vegetables until my fridge was too full enabled me to be in front of God, then He was happy to meet me there.

I'm not very proud of how I lived the last seven months, but good things came out of them.

Mostly this year I felt like I couldn't see "my One thing". But maybe in His great and crazy mercy, He let me go for long walks and chop vegetables and rely on others' prayers, to teach me something about walking on without clarity or feelings of peace or any pride. Maybe He let me rely on the prayers of the church to teach me about the power of community worship, of the history of the big-C Church, of the importance of repetition for our souls, of the power that is in praising Him by choice and even by rote when we feel cold and dry.

I hope and pray that maybe in the long-term, these will be things that will let me see Him more.

If a semester is the cross, as are all things.

.prayer.

As a mother stills her child,
Thou canst hush the ocean wild
Boisterous waves obey Thy will
when Thou say'st to them, "Be still!"
Wondrous Sovereign of the sea,
Jesus, Savior, pilot me

Obsessed with my Job. Part One.

Oh hey not posting for like two weeks!

Uuuupdate:

I started working full-time 43 hours after graduating from college. This would have been a bad idea except that...

I love my job. LOVE my job. I. Freaking. Love. My. Job. So much I basically feel like it shouldn't be allowed. I am working for an AWESOME program that works with/for low-income families, as a "Home-Based Teacher". Basically what this means: I am in their "early" program, which is babies from pre-born (prenatal care for pregnant mamas!) through 3 year olds (as opposed to 3-5yos). I have 10 families, each of whom I meet with weekly. I come to their homes and do a pre-school-esque, age-appropriate lesson with the baby or toddler. Think lots of reading (YAY!!!!!), lots of simple, sensory-focused toys and games, lots of puzzles, lots of counting and colors and "Oh wow, this texture is different, huh?!!".

Oh and did I mention... it's all in SPANISH?!!!!
(Friends from Bolivia, you may commence laughing hysterically... now. Yeah, get excited to come back to the States. "Really sucky at Spanish in Bolivia" somehow translates to "Bilingual" here. It's pretty awesome.)

Almost all of my families are Mexican immigrants. I am pretty much in love with all of them (today I told Mary I saw one of my "favorite" moms, and then I realized I've said that about the last three I met with). In addition to working with the baby, we are there to provide social support for whatever the family needs- translating, answering questions, trying to provide some insight into the systems, and maybe most importantly just trying to help connect the family with the awesome resources they already have- within themselves and their surrounding community. We try to point out the parents'/families' own great strengths, focusing on coming alongside them to support them as they raise their kids.

So in the past week, I: went with a mom and her baby and 2 year old to get a library card, set up a doctor appointment (after a valiant effort on the mom's part to find a translator), gave out the number for a speech therapist, found out how someone can apply for a free medical card, held a three-month-old baby with the softest black hair you've ever seen, oohed and aahed as a two year old put wooden blocks into their corresponding properly shaped holes, searched for a Spanish copy of "What to Expect When You're Expecting", discussed healthy marital communication (this is part of my job, but I must say I feel very young and inadequate for some of these conversations... hi, I'm 21, how's your marriage going?), pointed out how great a job a mom did at patiently helping her child work with blocks, talked about how easy and discouraging it is to compare yourself to other moms/people, apologized for how much my Spanish sucks, read Clifford El Perro Rojo (and received a wide-eyed realization that "La Maestra es Emily, como la amiga de Clifford!!"- the teacher is Emily, just like Clifford's friend!!), read Pat the Bunny and got excited over different textures, discussed ways to incorporate vegetables into meals and to find time for family walks, played LOTS of peek-a-boo... and of course... gave and received muchos besitos.

Did I mention I love my job?

I am so privileged to get to be knowing these families, playing with and delighting in these children as they learn, and doing whatever I can to strengthen people who already have more strength than I seriously could ever imagine.

the sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.

"...how pleasant thy banks and green valleys below,
where, wild in the woodlands, the primroses blow;
there oft, as mild Ev'ning weeps over the lea,
the sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me.
thy crystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
and winds by the cot where my Mary resides..."

-from Sweet Afton, originally by Robert Burns (the connection of which I didn't get until just now- hilarious!)
put to excellent music by Nickel Creek
...and sung in the heart of ME!

MY Mary arrives today... sweet bosom friend time for THREE AND A HALF WHOLE DAYS...
Praise. God. From. Whom. All. Blessings. Flow, is all I can say.

When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention.

"As long as we are able to
be extravagant we will be
hugely and damply
extravagant*. Then we will drop
foil by foil to the ground. This
is our unalterable task, and we do it
joyfully."

And they went on. "Listen,
the heart-shackles are not, as you think,
death, illness, pain,
unrequited hope, not loneliness, but

lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,
selfishness."

Their fragrance all the while rising
from their blind bodies, making me
spin with joy.

-Mary Oliver
Emphasis' sooo mine.

THIS WAS SO TIMELY I cannot even tell you. Oh Lord, write it on my heart...
"the heart-shackles are not, as you think."

*"Freely you have received; freely give..."

something about the Cross and how her Jesus died for her

people who think following God is worth living with pain
and who choose to do so
make God appear so worth loving and following.

seeing people live this decision with joy and gratitude and determination
brings me to tears, amazement, and feeling oh-so-humbled
at my own so-selfish worldview.

maybe "it" (life? Christianity?) is really not about my personal happiness
(she thinks for the 8 millionth time in the last six months, in yet another light).

how far i have to go...
let me follow their examples.
nothing makes it appear more valuable than seeing it lived out in front of me.
how lucky i am for that.

"The next best thing to being wise oneself
is to live in a circle of those who are."
-C.S. Lewis

i will mark which must be mine.

i will be the gladdest thing under the sun
i will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one
i will look at cliffs and clouds with quiet eyes
watch the wind bow down the grass, and the grass rise

and when the lights begin to show up from the town
i will mark which must be mine
and then start down


-originally by edna st. vincent millay
put to excellent music by deb talan

how have i spoken blessing over others today?

"There is a reality in blessing... It doesn't enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. I have felt it pass through me, so to speak.
The sensation is of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time."

-Gilead, p 23

Loving it so far. (Thanks for the recommendation SLAGG!). It makes me want to fold down the corner of every page to remember and weep and do great things like love people.

After an hour reading it today sprawled on Ryan and Kendra's couch with rain coming down outside and Kendra puttering around in her office and the cat grooming in the corner life felt so beautiful I couldn't stand it anymore so I had to get up and do something totally unimportant and non-life-giving like check email.

More on blessing and calling out blessings in others here.

streams of mercy.

oh to grace how great a debtor
daily i'm constrained to be
let Thy goodness like a fetter
bind my wandering heart to Thee

guard my way to You...

I love that we have the freedom to pray spontaneously and easily. But I also love that when we for whatever reason can't, there are things to help us. I wish I remembered that more often- so often these past few months I have wanted to throw up my hands, scream, or worst of all, become indifferent, at my lack of attention span, lack of words, lack of desire to pray. And then every once in awhile I'll remember with total "Duhh!" clarity- oh yeah, there are things to help me with this. Somehow every time it seems like this novel concept to grab Celtic or the Psalms, to remember that God accepts any prayers we can offer, is happy to meet me through others' writings. I'm so thankful for prayer books, for words I can read and set my heart to- letting my prayers be formed by their truths and not by my will.

I started praying this prayer regularly a couple of months ago. I picked it back up this week and was encouraged by its simplicity, by its statement, and by how it spoke my desire, need, and dependence perfectly... and I experienced gratitude and dare I say, even wonder, to see just a bit how God has been answering it this spring.

"Lord, I have heard Your voice calling at a distance.
Guide my steps to You, Lord, guide my steps to You.

Lord, I have heard Your voice calling at a distance.
Guard my way to You, Lord, guard my way to You.

Lord, I have heard Your voice calling at a distance.
Keep my heart for You, Lord, keep my heart for You.

Lord, I have heard Your voice.
Amen."

-from Celtic.

I need my way to Him guarded. He is doing it. I'll keep praying it.

And I am grateful always for this:
"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." -Romans 8:26

Rooming with Amy Grace Martinez

Three weeks before I got to Wheaton, I received a little letter from the Student Life department, welcoming me to campus and informing me that I would be sharing Smith Hall Room 115 with some California girl named Amy Grace.

I am not exaggerating when I say that I am not sure it is possible to have a more positive freshman roommate experience than I did.

Ways rooming and friendship with Amy have been shaping for me:

• I had a lot of hard stuff going on at home coming into Wheaton. This could have been completely disastrous depending on who my roommate was. Amy was PERFECT. Perfect. She was compassionate, perceptive, prayerful, present, and nonjudgmental. I really could have had a very different Wheaton experience had I roomed with someone who had been less fantastic about the situation that year.

• On the same kind of note, I felt really weird at Wheaton sometimes freshman year... I had definitely grown up in a different culture than a lot of the other people, at least it felt that way. I felt pretty self-conscious a lot of the time. She was great about loving and accepting me as I was, never making me feel judged or awkward about not speaking Christianese... among um, other things... (cough). As well as about not being super academically successful that year.
  

• She is a truly compassionate and inclusive person. Freshman floors have a tendency to get cliquey and ours was no exception, and Amy really rose above that impressively. She continually made efforts to know, celebrate, and include all sorts of different people. I learned a lot from her about that.

• She is an incredibly solid and consistent person in friendships. She is super loyal, would do anything for anyone, plans on keeping her close friends forever. She doesn't speak words of affirmation superfluously, but when she does speak them they're really thoughtful and encouraging. She was one of the only people outside of my immediate family who bought Skype credit and called me on my cell phone while I was in Bolivia.
  

• She connects with God in some really different ways than I do. This was REALLY good for me. I came into college pretty much thinking (subconsciously, but still) that relating to God and praying needed to look a certain way (A morning quiet time with your Bible and your journal, basically). Amy does all those things but she also connects with God beautifully and real-ly through lots of other things, like serving others, like music, like going to church and worshiping communally uber-consistently. I learned so much from her just in terms of all of those things, but I also learned a lot in terms of the fact that connecting with God CAN look different for different people, and that's totally valid.

• On the God note, we have this thing which has been one of my totally weirdest spiritual experiences ever. Sometimes God just TELLS us when the other one needs us. I'm not joking and I think that sounds weird too. Several separate instances this has involved one of us waking up in the middle of the night and randomly CALLING the other one to find them (several states away usually) crying. One time, it involved me calling her to find her like seriously ill to the point of being unable to leave the room to get someone to help her. Our friendship seriously makes me believe in prophecy.

• Whenever I hug her, smelling her "scent" makes me feel like I'm back in freshman year. (I once said this in a psych class and everybody looked at me like I was awkward.)
  

• Over time, our roommate-ship deepened into one of my closest and best friendships. Amy is a loyal, encouraging, fun, easy-to-be-with, and inspiring friend. I enjoy her, I trust her completely, I learn from her, and I want to be her friend forever. And our initial experience of being each other's haven through that first crazy, homesick year, and building on all of those memories, has cemented our friendship into one I hope is lifelong.

Other fun things:

• She is quirky and hilarious: she owns a stuffed germ (seriously. Like a stuffed animal but... it's a plush, furry version of a bacteria); she makes hamster noises when she's excited; she owns very tall, very fancy leather boots which she refers to as her "Empowerment Boots" and wears when she's facing a stressful day; she taught me to use the word uber.
  
• She has great fashion sense and taught me how to accessorize (match your earrings to your scarf and wear a sweater in a complementary color!).
• She is impressively skilled at flirting. It's pretty funny. Unfortunately, I didn't pick this one up quite as well.
• Great musical taste (well, once you get over the Techno). Rosie Thomas and Rufus Wainwright, heck yes.
• She has a breathtakingly beautiful singing voice.
• She's obsessed with her nieces and nephews (rightly so, they're adorable).
• When she was an RA her floor theme was children's books.
• She paints poems on huge pieces of fabric and hangs them in her room.
• She graduated in December so wasn't here when I got back from HNGR, but she left me her entire bedroom set to use for the semester plus a bunch of food to eat until I could get to the grocery store and a wrapped and carded Christmas present (who does that? see what I mean about being an incredible friend?).
  
• She's academically brilliant but never brags about it.
  
• We talk about loving each other so much that random people comment on it (and our RA told us we were the cutest roommate pair on the floor).
  
• Too many memories to even write... here's a good one, and here... and this might be my favorite.
  

In our room freshman year- how we do.

Showing off our matching roommie pajamas!

I am so thankful Amy was my freshman roommate!

(PS so much for brief)

College.

Some months ago, I saw a series on a blog where every day for the 30 days before her 30th birthday, the writer wrote on one of the top 30 moments which "have helped shape who I am and want to be".

I thought that was a creative and great idea, but my next birthday was 22, which wasn't as exciting. Plus, I felt a little young to be able to name which things have shaped me- I'm not that shaped yet! (Because I'm sure by 30 I'll be ALL DONE, right?)

However, in the two weeks since graduation, I've been reflecting on my four wonderful years at Wheaton. I've been thinking a lot about the many moments, people, experiences, and qualities of my school which were so influential in my college experience and to who I- well, am and want to be.

So, I decided I'm going to do a similar thing on here- a list of ___ shaping parts of my college experience. I put ___ because I have no idea how many I'll end up with. 30 seemed like a good number, but my initial brainstorming list was 28 and that left a lot off. 50 seems like a lot. Chet pointed out that since it was Wheaton's sesquicentennial this year maybe I should do 150, but that REALLY seems like a lot. So we'll see. Who knows, maybe 4o is a nice medium.

This is mostly for me- just starting to make the list was really interesting and as I've kept it running in my journal the last couple of weeks I've started to reflect on some seemingly small things which I can tell have influenced me and my time greatly. And I honestly really wish I'd done it after high school- I could name a bunch now but it would have been interesting and more relevant to see what I would have picked immediately after. I hope it will be fun to read too though! I'm going to tryyy really hard to keep them each brief :-)

I'm already stressing out about naming individual people, simply because there are way too many wonderful friends who have been influential in my life at Wheaton. I'm going to have to because duh, but yeah... I love and am thankful for everyone! And I'm just not including any Maryland things. Obviously Maryland people have been influential over the last 4 years, but then it would just never end.

So yeah! New blog series. Holler. Then maybe I can actually finish one single entry about real things from the pile of half-done ones I have in my drafts folder.

Stay tuned for the first one tomorrow...

More Graduation: Suite

Looveee these girls.

And possibly my favorite pic of the suite and the Suite Husband ever:

Graduation station.

Five of my favorite people on the planet...







Possible to be more blessed?





I'm thinkin'... no.