on regrets and being present

Between bites of salty chips and our favorite Cajun-inspired Mexican food, we talked about moving details and  building a new budget and our inability to wrap our minds around the fact that we'll no longer have a zip code that begins with the number seven. Instead it's a new five-digit number that I have yet to memorize. And while watching the sunset over the Mighty Mississippi, we talked about what changes we were ready for and which ones we couldn't bare to face. D had spent his last evening working with his group and turned in his report and notebook, his last engineering undergrad assignments ever. I think I asked him three or four times what it feels like to never have to study on campus again in the hopes that he might attach words to the feeling swirling inside my head and my heart. He couldn't. But there was certainly a rumbling excitement underneath that conversation's surface. And a small but expected heart pang.

Being honest, this is the time that I have been waiting for. The time when I proudly watch D walk across that graduation stage and when we get to begin spending time together in the evenings and when I end my job which I'm very thankful for but also sure it is not what I was created to do forever and ever. And I have certainly been waiting for it. Stubbornly. With frustration and an unsatisfied heart.

You see, I had originally intended to write about my regrets. Regret for not having everyone we wanted to over for dinner. Regret for not exercising more or being a better coupon-er. Regret for not being able to meet with Rebecca weekly as we had hoped and planned. Regret for how little time we spent with our neighbors. With a whole lot of "poor pitiful me's" and "guess I'll just have to move on's" thrown in. But I've been taught and reminded, by a loving and pursuant God, two very important things:

1) God gave us late nights and early mornings and impossible schedules because He has a sovereign purpose woven in and out of every hour, minute, and second of our lives.

2) The only regret I should take away from this year is how I responded to those impossible schedules. Again - stubborn, frustrated, unsatisfied.

When I think about my attitude throughout most of this year, I picture myself sitting on our hand-me-down couch, arms and legs crossed, staring blankly, lips tight. Choosing not to accept what this day to day life has turned out to be. Choosing not to talk to my Father about it. Choosing to stick it out, bad attitude and all, until we can move on. Though it becomes a perfect personification of my heart, the truth is that I wasn't just sitting. I was working late and waiting up for D and crying because I was weary of being alone until eleven at night. Or sometimes five in the morning. It is also true that this wasn't an every day situation. There were plenty of exciting and funny and encouraging moments. Probably more so than not. But all the while I felt my heart slipping into that stubborn, waiting attitude. Even if I didn't show it.

As I think on it and talk to God about it, that blinding sense of regret seems to deflate while the memorable lessons sink their way deeper into my heart and mind. This is one of those moments when I am overwhelmed by the grace that He gives by His ceaseless teaching and by His power to overtake my ugly attitude. If I were Him [and let us all take a moment to offer up a few Hallelujahs that I am not], I'd feel as though  I was an exhausting waste of time. Yet, in His presence and through His eyes, I am His beloved. What a staggering fact.

Moving forward [which is simply what grace allows you to do], I'll hope to do a few things differently. I'll be better at time management instead of letting these new work schedules spin my college-freedom-lover of a self into clamoring ball of exhaustion. And with that time I will not neglect spending time in the God's Word and talking to Him and, most importantly, listening. You would think I would have grasped this one by now. But I am thankful to have experienced the starvation that comes from separation from my Bread of Life. It is not something I want to relive. And a constant, positive attitude and outlook is not something to be conjured.

I'll also, because of God's grace-filled lessons, be better at living in the present. A present filled with life and energy and dimension whether its spent at home with my husband [who I love so much more than when we married that it doesn't even seem possible] or at dinner with friends or in a grey cubicle. I think that will have a lot to do with a satisfied heart. A heart filled with the Spirit because of time purposefully spent with Him. A heart very opposite of my depleted version from this past year. A heart that doesn't depend on an earthly situation. I also think loosening my grip on the overly premature to-do lists will help while purposefully keeping this crazy brain of mine focused on today. Because today is good, and today is a gift.

homeward

At the last minute, i decided to make the trip home to visit with the fam. Because I was still in camp world for Audrey's birthday, we had a mini morning celebration complete with princess packaging. 

She's three. But if feels like this was, well, yesterday:

My old dollhouse made its way out of the attic. There's something cool about seeing your old toys. Especially those that you spent hours playing with. Nostalgia - I love it.
I also realized that I'm old and the wallpaper in my dollhouse is peeling off. I'll get over it.

I love those moments when I feel like my Southerner Points sky rocket. This morning, I woke up to my family sitting and swinging on our front porch, enjoying the surprisingly beautiful weather, waving at the neighbors as they drive by.

I revamped my trusty jorts. By the end of the summer, the button had fallen off and the safety pin just wasn't cutting it any more.

Going to the park with my fam and bestie. Wearing my jorts, of course.

What makes you feel Southern?

an obvious topic

Deciding what to write my first "real" blog entry on out of the Rolodex of ideas spinning through my head was a no-brainer. The subject surrounds, enriches and challenges my life.

Friends are people that I've been unbelievably blessed with, wrongly let them act as a god in my life, and have been forced to find a sweet balance between the two. There is something else that the Lord has blessed me with, that comes from Him and Him only. Among the long list of weaknesses, the Lord gave me a large helping of loyalty to those who I am close to. Loyalty is good. Good things only come from the Lord. This quality is not of myself.

To continue with this listing of blessings, the Lord has given me amazing friends to spill this on to and those who continue to teach me what true loyalty looks like.

I have three best friends from high school. We've been an inseparable foursome since our sophomore year, and our relationship remains today. Until we moved a total of 2,000 miles from our comfort zones to various colleges, we didn't realize that our hometown friendship was a rarity.

 Their names are Abby, Ashley and Hannah. If you've been around me for a total of five minutes, I'd bet that you've heard of them. I may have sounded something like, "Abbishlihannah." I shamelessly find various ways to work them into conversation. When you love someone as much as I love them, you can't help to talk about them. This is how I should be when it comes to talking about Jesus.
 

About a year ago, the four of us had a conversation which we all sensed in our heart-of-hearts that it needed to happen. It came naturally, late one night while the lights of Austin, TX disappeared behind us as we drove  back to Ash's apartment in Waco. We talked about the mutual realization that we were no longer the same people we were in high school, that different states, schools, life choices, majors and new friends had caused four separate changes. It was like slightly changing the edges to a four piece puzzle so that you knew where the pieces were meant to be, yet the fit was now slightly awkward, slightly forced.

Because of that conversation which was overflowing with understanding, acceptance, and desire to survive these changes, I began a new mindset. It's a mindset where I expect changes, expect disagreeing on various topics, expect different lifestyles but pledge to love unconditionally. It's a daunting task, but while my love could quickly run out, the Lord's is a bottomless, overflowing cup. I often [jokingly] tell them that they could become drug dealers or decide to be a Wiccan, but they "aren't getting rid of me." I pray that the prefix "my-best-friend" would never seem unnatural with their name. This new mindset has caused our relationships to grow and develop in great ways. We are no longer required to fit into the mold of who we were in high school. Instead of that puzzle, I now see us as four separate masterpieces that can stand alone but have an unexplainable beauty when hung side by side.

It's unbelievably to me that we have entered the school year in which we will all turn 21. I feel that it could have been last week when I got off the phone with one of them, excited about homecoming dates and drivers licenses. I was extremely fortunate to get to fly to Savannah, GA for Abs' 21st birthday this past weekend. It was amazing to see in action her life that I have only seen in pictures and heard about over the phone for more than two years. It was a weekend filled with celebrating an extraordinary person. Beyond that, I felt like I was anonymously celebrating our friendship. Not with presents and cake, but by heart-felt conversations before we fell asleep, that sweet and comfortable companionable silence, and choking back tears at airport security. It was an amazing weekend to be together. I can only imagine what it would be like if the foursome was complete.

As I sat in the Savannah airport waiting for my delayed plane and feeling sad to leave, I realized how blessed I was to have friends in Baton Rouge to come back to, to miss while I was gone, who would be waiting up that night to exchange stories from the weekend, who I couldn't wait to see while passing on campus or who I hoped to hang out with at the B. I have no doubt that the Lord loves for us to have friends and for us to glorify Him in those friendships, because I definitely do not deserve these people with my own efforts.

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Proverbs 18:24 (ESV)