Oi Vey.

This WAS my living room. (Trash can for scale.) And this WAS my kitchen, until I moved everything all by myself. The carpet cleaners are coming...but I think I'd rather have dirty carpet.

Changes, Pt. 1: Introversion

Metaphor of the Day: Introversion is like having to ask the participants of the Running of the Bulls to take a number and form an orderly line.

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The original purpose of this blog was to be a searchable, categorized resource for how I can be happy in spite of the stressful things in my life. Looking over the things about which I've written, I realize that so much has changed. For example, introversion was once a huge part of my self-definition. Now, it has all but faded into the background.

Two years ago, I rejoiced in knowing that God made me an introvert on purpose, no matter how hard that might be for me sometimes:

"O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken until thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue."

"Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the LORD?"

Now, I relate better to John Mayer:

My stupid mouth / got me in trouble; / I said too much again / to a date over dinner yesterday...

There are still days when I'm "peopled-out". It's still not easy for me to meet new people, or strike up a conversation with mere acquaintances. And there are people in my circle of friends with whom I will probably never deeply connect, because we are both more inclined to listen than to talk.

The biggest change, then, is that all of this bothers me so much less than it used to. I firmly believe that we can overcome weaknesses. This isn't to say that someday our weaknesses will -poof!- cease to exist. Rather, we can learn methods to get around them, so much so that our weaknesses just don't matter anymore.

If men come unto me, I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble, and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me, for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.

You don't have to knock down a wall to get to the other side. You just need the Savior.

1. I've been ward FHE coordinator for three semesters in a row, and I still don't feel like I'm very good at it. But, if this is where the Lord wants me, this is where I will stay. 

2. I prefer to drink out of plastic cups because I think water tastes funny out of a glass cup. Most people tell me that's backwards.

3. I enjoy purple Sweethearts (you know, the kind of candy they sell around Valentines) even though I don't like artificial grape flavor, and I don't really like Sweethearts in general. I'm full of contradictions. ;)

4. In my life, I have wanted to be an artist, a teacher, a ballerina, a singer, a doctor, a psychologist, a massage therapist, a writer, and a mom "when I grow up". 

5. I love having my toenails painted -- sparkly hot pink has become the signature color for them.

6. In my heart-of-hearts, I really, really want to travel. I want to see ALL OVER Europe, and visit South and Central America, and go to Jerusalem. Among other places. I'd love to be one of those people who goes on an AMAZING vacation every couple of years.

7. I crave intellectual conversation (about the gospel, relationships, books, psychology, etc., etc., etc.) like plants crave water in a drought. Especially about the gospel -- I love re-realizing how GOOD Heavenly Father is to me in His infinite kindness and intelligence. He's so much smarter than I am.

8. I love being funny, even if it means I don't always make sense to people. There are few things more delightful than a well-timed pun!

9. It's one of my goals to have childlike delight every day. Sunrises, sunsets, trees, snow, and thunderstorms leave me in awe -every- time.

10. I don't really enjoy watching TV, and I despise TV as background noise. I can handle about an hour once or MAYBE twice a week, and it has to meet some pretty grueling criteria -- well-written premise, fascinating characters, and intriguing plot, among other things. Oh, and amazing people to watch it with, of course.

11. If you were to tell me in high school that I would grow up to become the person I am now, I wouldn't believe you because it would have sounded too good to be true.

12. I have no concept of what I look like without my glasses. I've worn glasses since 5th grade, and my sight is bad enough that I can't really see myself in the mirror when I'm not wearing them. This is one of many reasons I would like to try contacts.

13. I think my eyes are my best feature, but after many years, I have gradually grown to love the parts of my appearance that I am most self-conscious about. This never ceases to delight me!

14. I miss having freckles on my face, but I love having them on my shoulders.

15. About a year and a half ago, I realized that I'm a sucker for guys who play guitar, speak Spanish, and look good with facial hair. Those are purely physical attraction kind of things, although there are reasons behind them. 

16. I love the cold. Negative temperatures are just a little bit silly, I admit (after all, who wants frozen nose hair?) but there's just something delightful about foggy breathing, invigorating chill, and the way the whole world gets quiet. Did I mention that I find childlike delight in these kinds of things?

17. I love to sing. Part of what I look for in the music I listen to is whether or not I can sing along to it. It's a real challenge for me to listen to music without singing with it, and it's pretty obvious if I have a song going through my head. I apologize ahead of time if I have just one line stuck. ;)

18. Heights make me really nervous. It's not so much the idea of falling that gets me as the idea of stepping out into all that nothing. The third floor of my apartment complex gets to be a little bit, and yet I love rollercoasters. 

19. I'm excited to be a mom. I had a hard time paying attention in devotional today because the girl sitting across the aisle had a *brand* *new* baby in her lap. A newborn baby is the cutest, tiniest little alien you will ever see. 

20. Even though I don't feel like I fit in with my family, I love them a TON.

21. I can't decide whether or not I like ninjas or pirates better. Ninjas are stealthy but pirates are hot AND literary. I'm convinced that Chuck Norris will reconcile the two forces.

22. I have friends that DEEPLY ANNOY ME, but I find them so fun to talk to that I remain friends with them anyway. This simultaneously amuses me and makes me feel like a terrible person. 

23. I'm very cautious about sharing the sad things in my life -- not because I mind sharing, but rather because I'm not seeking pity. Parts of my life have been really hard, and I want people to understand how I've become the person that I am, but I also want them to understand that I have a beautiful life.

24. I love to cook -- my roommates are constantly amazed by my ability to throw things together. However, as an sometimes lazy and often creative person, I lack the precision to easily follow recipes.

25. It's my goal in life to live fully, in love with life every day. I used to say "fine" when people asked me how I was doing; now I say "pretty much amazing!" and I've come to realize that it's true. I have come to see the value of stepping back and looking at the big picture. Even when the details are hard,my life as a whole is a stunning creation of a loving God.

26. I have a hard time expressing my opinion honestly when it's negative. I want to be seen as a positive person, and I don't want to start a conversation by disagreeing with another's opinion without knowing it. 

Most of the time, I'm really OK with being an introvert. It's taken me a long time to be able to say that, but it's true. 

Every now and then, though, it really gets on my nerves.

I am an interesting, funny, intellectual, awesome person. (I'm not trying to be arrogant, just honest.) But when I am nervous and stressed and trying to be social, all of my brain cells leak out of my head and I revert back to being the shy, quiet, anxious girl I was 5 years ago. The obvious solution to this is to just quit being nervous, but just how do you go about doing that?

I've heard a lot of suggestions, but haven't quite managed to take many (if any) to heart. Maybe that's my problem. Maybe I ought to go out on a limb and just do what comes to mind and accept that things won't always be easy or come naturally.

To Do

I've been promising myself I'll write a new blog post (which was almost combined to be "blost", whatever that is.) There's been a lot on my mind lately, but the things that have put a lot on my mind haven't left me a whole lot of energy.

Take the impromptu party I had on Sunday, for example. It quickly went from a little dinner of three to a toast to the New Year with nine. Five of the nine were guys. The grand total for the evening was 12 different people in my apartment, all of them to see me, at least in part. It was some intense business, but I went to bed wishing they could have stayed. 

I thought all last semester that I had just too many friends. This semester is shaping up to be much along the same lines, at least. But it's also different, too. I can't even tell you how many times I've prayed, Lord, what do you want me to do here? So when I started to feel like the Lord handed me a To Do list that said "Be social, but don't forget Me" on it, it was...interesting. I mean, it wasn't my idea to stay in Rexburg for the winter. I feel like I'm tempting fate a little bit to be so excited to be here, but then I'm supposed to find joy in obedience, right?

I don't know -- I don't feel like I'm being terribly coherant, but that's what the inside of my brain is like right now. Basically I'm excited to be here for the winter, excited for all the friends I have, but cautious and worn-out because I don't know what's going to happen and I'm going beyond my comfort zone. But it'll be okay. 

-drool-

I WAAANT it...!

(http://www.goodorient.com/Chinese_Handmade_Umbrella---Cornflower_Blue_P18668)

How pretty is that?

As the remaining time of my 2.5 week Christmas vacation steadily dwindles, it's got me looking back. 

It's been such an up-and-down couple of weeks, holy cow. I've been homesick for Idaho most of the time, where I have my own apartment, lots of wonderful friend, and plenty to do. While there have been several wonderful moments -- the moments that are the reason I come home -- there have also been many long moments of frustration and questions that just can't be answered. 

But, I decided, isn't that the point? We don't love our families because they are perpetually awesome, and we don't stop loving them because they, like us, are still figuring out this whole agency thing. God loves us because we are His, not because we deserve it. He knows our potential, so we need to believe in the potential of others and not limit the love we give because of our mortal understanding. 

Someday I'm going to have a family of my own. Things won't always be good, but has to be oka. And it will be my job to make it okay -- okay that Jennie fights with David, and Andrew thinks family scripture study is stupid, and my husband would rather watch the Super Bowl than hang out with the kids on Sunday. In spite of it all, we will still be a family that loves each other and is working toward eternity.

Just like my family now.

Thicker than Water: A Short Story

For my creative writing class, we're required to meet with our professor 3 times during the semester so that we can receive one-on-one critique on a work of fiction we've written this semester. I met with Brother Harrell today, and I swear, I floated home. He said he really, really enjoyed it, that it was just plain well-written. He was so delighted to hear that it was the 5th draft of the story, because he could TELL I'd put the work into it. His only criticism was that the conclusion was too open-ended, but then as we sat and talked about it, the less he felt like it deserved the criticism. (I added more to it anyway; the expanded version is included below.) He said my writing was "beyond my peers". It was so good to hear that yes, I am good at this, yes, my work does pay off. When he ran out of things to say (which was pretty early on in the appointment!) he started asking me about my plans for the future -- "Are you a creative writing emphasis? Good." "Have you thought about publication? No? Good. It's good to have humility. Publish in the school's literary journal before you graduate, and then in one or two other tiny journals in the next ten years and you'll be doing really well." It was so awesome. 

So without futher ado, here's my magnum opus of Fall semester 2008, a literary-genre short story entitled Thicker than Water.

Her mother’s room smelled like stale cigarette smoke, cats, and dirty clothes. The aroma surrounded Katie in an uncomfortably intimate way, like the arm of a stranger around her shoulders.

“So…this is it.” Katie shifted the position of the box tucked under her arm. The amount of stuff crammed into her mother’s room – under tables, on dressers, piled high on shelves – was incredible. “I guess I’ll start gathering up some things for her then.”

Aunt Jess watched Katie attempt to marshal her fortitude. “Are you sure you’ll be all right here by yourself for a little while?”

“Oh, yeah, of course. I’ll be fine. You go bring her some dinner and I’ll head off to the hospital to meet you as soon as I’m done.”

“Well…if you’re sure. But call me if you need anything, okay sweetie? And – thank you.” Aunt Jess gave Katie a quick hug before she walked back through the tiny front room, spoke for a moment to Cameron’s roommates, and was gone. Katie smiled vaguely at the hug – she’d only opened contact with her aunt in the last four months, but she already felt closer to Jess than she’d felt to her mother for years. That was why she offered to gather things for her mother’s hospital room – to give Aunt Jess a little less to do, and so she wouldn’t have to see her mother, not yet.

Katie reluctantly turned her attention back to the disarray. All of the floor space was taken except for a shuffling path from the door to the bed, which Katie dropped onto. She had no idea where to start. For now, Katie was on her own in an oppressive tangle of puzzles, quilting squares, boxes of who knew what, and glass unicorn figurines.

Katie waded carefully across to the other side of the room and picked up one of those unicorn figurines. It was heavier than she expected. The figure was reared up on its hind legs, front hooves waving in the air. There was something vaguely familiar about it, and as she held it, bittersweet memories began to edge heavily into her mind. She put down the glass unicorn and turned away from it, and from the memories. It had been hers as a child.

Katie stared around the room, wondering again where she should start. She leaned over the side of the bed and extracted a shoe box from the wreckage. In it were a mostly-empty pack of cigarettes and prescription bottles of Lithobid and Symbyax. Holding her mother’s bipolar medication was startling and surreal; it was a tangible symbol of her mother’s mental illness, something that had always been so vague to Katie. Underneath laid a pile of letters, many of them still in their envelopes. Katie pulled one from the box and turned it over. Her own name, in childish scrawl, stared back at her.

She kept my letters.

She slowly pulled the letter out of the envelope and unfolded it with trembling fingers. Dear Mommy, said the letter, dated the year she was ten, I miss you! Daddy says you live near Grandma now that you don’t live with us. Is that fun? Do you play tea party with her like you do with me? I want you to be here to put braids in my hair. Daddy says he needs more practice with ponytails before he does braids. School is good. Miss Shell my teacher is reading my class a story about a mouse who talks and fights with swords. I don’t know what the book is called but the mouse’s name is Martin. I like it a lot. Do you have kitties at your house? I miss you Mommy! I love you. Love, Katie

Katie dug into the box and pulled out another letter at random. Cameron, she had written the year she was sixteen, I haven’t heard from you in months, again, and I don’t know why. You’re supposed to be my mom, and I’m hurt that you won’t even take the time to write me. What do you want from me? That was the year she had given up on her mother.

For the next five years, she made no attempt to contact her mother. Her family moved across the country, she fell in and out of love, she went away to college. Katie didn’t tell her mother any of it. She moved on, learning to forgive her mother, but mostly just to forget. For years, Katie had dreamed she and her mother could be best friends, sharing the same quirky sense of humor and the creative, girly side she only roughly remembered. It had been the great emotional success of her life to finally give up on that dream and accept that her mother’s illness left her with nothing to give to her daughter.

Then, Aunt Jess had found her profile on MySpace. She sent Katie a tentative, hopeful note, asking to initiate a relationship with her grown-up niece. Katie tried to make her reply as encouraging as possible – Jess sounded so nice, and so sad about never making herself a part of Katie’s life – but Katie left no question about how she felt about her mother.

Feel free to update my mother on how I’m doing, Katie remembered writing, but I do not want messages from her relayed to me. I would be happy and eager to hear that she is doing well, etc, but I'm not ready to talk to her just yet. I don't mean that in a mean way, just that I don't want to get my hopes up only to get hurt – again. As a child, I was so hurt by her leaving, by how she’d write pages and pages of letters, and then nothing for months or sometimes years at a time, and then try to step back into my life after all of the hurt she caused. I realize now that that was just part of her cycling through mania and depression, but I can’t do that again.

And yet, just months later, she was here on summer break, visiting Aunt Jess and about to reconnect with her mother.

She pulled her cell phone from her back pocket and hastily punched in the first speed-dial number. Katie sat through two long rings before her father’s voice came on the line.

“Hello?”

“Hi Daddy…how are you?”

“I’m all right.”  The sounds of the football game in the background quieted as Katie heard him turn down the TV. “How are you?”

She sighed. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m…frustrated. Confused.” Katie imagined him there, sitting in his big recliner in the living room of the house where she grew up. His voice crackled slightly over the phone, and re-realizing that he was a thousand miles away hurt enough to make Katie’s eyes prickle with tears. “Dad, why am I even here?”

He slowly exhaled. “Because you thought it was the right thing to do?”

 “But I haven’t seen my mother in more than ten years. I haven’t written to her in five. It’s like I’m some kind of glutton for punishment.” Katie swallowed hard, and held the phone a little tighter. “There are so many memories here, Dad.” Or, Katie thought, things that should have been memories, if her mother could have stayed. “I know she left us for a good reason,” she continued. “But part of me is still that little girl who doesn’t even know what manic-depression is. All the little-girl part of me knows is that my mommy left.”

“I know, princess. It’s not fair. But think about the part of you that isn’t a little girl any more. It’s not fun being the adult, but now that you’ve accepted she can’t take care of you, you need to remember – you’re the one who decided to be there.”

Katie sighed. “I know. But what else was I supposed to do, though, you know?”

“Yeah…it’s like that country song. ‘Blood is thicker than water’.”

“But ‘love is thicker than blood’.” Katie shook her head. “I’ve loved Jenny like a mom from day one. I don’t need another mom.” Because Katie and Dad were friends, in addition to father and daughter, Katie knew what he would say next. She also knew that deep-down, she couldn’t disagree.

“Jenny is the best step-mom you could ask for, I know. But no matter what, Cameron is still your mother.”

***

When she finished filling the box with pictures and knickknacks and magazines, things to make the hospital room more homey, Katie finally talked herself into driving to the hospital. The smell there was like her mother too, from long ago when she worked nights at Sharp Memorial and would let Katie wear her nurse’s cap. Katie stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the eighth floor. She leaned back against the elevator wall and tried to smile at the other woman there, holding a bunch of get-well balloons.

“Visiting someone?” the woman asked.

“My mother.”

She made a sympathetic face. “That’s so hard.”

“In more ways than you can imagine,” Katie sighed. She glanced at the bright balloons in the woman’s hand. “Are you visiting someone too?”

“My daughter had surgery yesterday. I’d bring one of those big obnoxious singing cards, but she’d never forgive me for it.” The woman grinned.

Katie laughed, and watched the elevator doors open. “This is my floor. Nice talking to you.”

“You too. Best to your mom.”

“My mother,” Katie corrected automatically as she slowly walked through the elevator doors. 

My mother, Katie repeated to herself, moving toward the bleak, graying door of the hospital room where Aunt Jess and her mother were waiting. Daddy’s voice replayed in her head – I know it's not fun being the adult. But remember, princess – you're the one who decided to be there.

Katie took the last heavy, hesitant steps toward room 845, the room with Cameron Hendershot printed in sterile letters on a form posted outside. She was here out of obligation to a deeply-rooted idea that what was easy and what was kind weren’t always the same thing.

She is my mother, at least, if not my friend.

Katie knocked softly on the door.

Preference

Okay, I'll be honest. It was the best date I've been on so far.

Fragile

I've recently become aware of the fragility of this beautifully chaotic life that I lead. 

There are days, like today, when I completely crash and burn. Days that reach an internal intensity, and then snap! something brittle in me is broken. I sleep for 2 hours when I only plan to sleep for a half. I skip class. I listen to very specific music in an effort to bring a little peace into my soul. With no attention span and no motivation, I sit and think about the things I want to do, or I just don't think much at all.

A little voice in my head mumbles panicked phrases like family history of manic-depression and the like. Even now though, I know that's silly. I've seen mania and depression -- it's rather more polarized than this. No, I'm just a college co-ed who is stressed out and doesn't spend enough time seeking God. Someone who gets fed up and hasn't quite figured out how to deal with it.

I've had many, many moments recently that have left me deeply in love with this life, though. Moments when I look up, out of my window, and see the face of God, everpresent and all around me. Moments of grateful, secret prayers for the simplicity of it: I am encircled eternally in His love.