Eighteen

Before I went to college, I always thought it was too bad that I was turning 18 when I would have just been at college for a month.  Surely, I thought, there was no way I would have a group of friends to celebrate with that fast.  I mean, I'm not the type of person that makes friends fast.  My best friends from high school I knew for many years before we made that final leap into "best friendhood". 

I couldn't have been more wrong.  Today was the best birthday I have ever had and that is including the two midterms I had to take today.  It's not just because I'm finally an adult (voting and infomercial shopping anyone?).  It's because today was a wonderful blend of realizing how much I belong here and what wonderful friends I still have from back home. I didn't even know that the two could coexist so nicely before today.

Making friends here was so much more beautiful than I thought it would be.  It wasn't just easier because everyone was freshmen and wanting to make friends, it was significant because it was still sincere even if it was fast.  So to all the wonderful people I have met, and the ones I have yet to meet: thank you.  As individuals, as a collective whole, we are a part of something very unique and special here.

Holding onto the friends from home was a great deal harder than I expected.  My tendancy is to live fully wherever I am and with whoever I am nearby.  Technology aids maintaining connections but I love real conversations with real people.  I'm fully aware of the wonderful things Skype can do but there is a drastic difference between a scheduled "skype date" and just sharing the little joys of life with people as they come up.  I believe I fall short in this area of long-distance friendships consistently and while my past history makes my upcoming statement less than trustworthy, I truly wish to improve upon this.  So to all the wonderful people that have been a part of my life, you aren't rid of me yet.

I believe I started off this post as something about my birthday yet I digress more than I ever stay on topic.  In short, my birthday was amazing because it contained wonderful people and friends and family and love and connections and for me, that is all I could ever wish for.

We are our stories.

There are so many stories here.  I noticed this as I walked down the princess staircase this morning.  The stained glass streaming light onto this glamorous staircase was a small action shot of a knight riding his horse into battle.  If that isn't the epitome of a classic story.....well, no need for cliches.  Any story involving a knight must be a good one.  I've been walking down that staircase for a few weeks and never even saw the knight before.  There are so many stories here.

The best ones aren't even the ones captured in colored glass.  They are the ones in sweatshirts and jeans, hands in their pockets, shuffling past Rockwell. They are the ones that are chatting loudly outside of my window.  They are the ones down the hall, around the corner, and next to you in class.

These are stories that defy our English formula for literature.  They may have a beginning, but there is no end and while there is much rising action, the climax is yet to be written.  No one is really sure who the antagonist is here.  We can't figure out if this is man vs. nature, or nature vs. nature, or why we have to be versus anything at all.  Sometimes, we don't even know who the protagonist is but we hope they are a character that someone would like and want to cheer on.

There are so many unknowns and unwrittens to these stories that we tend to hide them.  The most we give out is a 300 word summary or back-of-the-book paragraph that is so vague it could be written about anyone. 

College is mostly about learning.  Most of my homework is reading.  I'm reading about creating good ideas, the fall of Rome, how to record an adjusting entry, and the historical background of the book of Judges.  I've learned a good deal in the last six weeks and will continue to do so.  Yet I want to read more than textbooks or fiction.  I want to know more than dates or philosophies.  I want to begin with the stories that surround me.  After all, we are our stories.

Logic-less

I really am spending more time writng than I ought.  I should be reading and memorizing and studying.  I feel that's a bit unfair though.  If I'm expected to keep soaking up information and knowledge, creating these giant stockpiles of thoughts in my brain than I think I should be allowed to turn the tables sometimes and release these ideas. 

Besides, my entrepreneurship classes and books are always encouraging us to write and be creative.  I like it when I can find other things to justify myself with rather than just my own logic. 

I realized lately that I do that a lot.  I create these little rules and mannerisms that help guide my life along.  No one else follows them but I don't expect them to.  I like the idea that I can create up my own words if the ones I've been given aren't working properly.  I like that I can create my own paths if the ones that are offered don't look like ones I want to sojourn down.

Today, I am in one of the best moods possible as a result of a severe lack of sleep and a good amount of coffee.  I am just tired enough where nothing bothers me and have enough caffiene in my system to make everything peaceful and happy.  It's one of those moods where I am almost impossible to knock down.  I don't have to look for the silver lining on days like today.  All I can see is the silver, the clouds aren't even existent.  I burned my tongue on my precious coffee today and instead of registering the pain, I smiled because my coffee was still hot.  Perhaps this foolish happinness is completely irrational, but I am determined to enjoy it today. 

One of those little rules that I have is that I have empowered myself to dictate what kind of day I am going to have.  I decide whether it will be a happy day, a tired day, a reflective day, a sad day, and whatnot.  The type of day I have is completely distinct from my circumstances.  Its some kind of buffer I give myself that is built on a solid foundation of dellusion and denial.  It's probably unhealthy, but it works quite well for me.

That's another rule: I can do things that don't make sense but if they work, I can continue doing them.  Today is a happy day.  As was yesterday.  Tomorrow is looking pretty good too.  Once I started deciding what kind of day I was going to have (I began this a few months ago) I have found that is very convenient to choose to have happy days the majority of time.  If you could pick what your day was going to be like, wouldn't you go for the best possible?

A Step Back

There is something incredibly powerful about being in community.  Its encouraging, enlightening, and empowering.  If you are slightly introverted like myself, it is also exhausting.  Which is why I have learned the value of taking a step back.

Taking a step back from a stressful situation can reintroduce the big picture into your stream of consciousness.

Taking a step back from your inner turmoil can help you reprioritize.

Taking a step back from the constantly streaming to-do list, post-it notes, deadlines, and responsibilities can help you be human.

Tonight, taking a step back meant sitting in the chapel garden and gazing at underlit leaves that seemed to shine against the pitch black night.  Instead of standing shoulder to shoulder in a hot, packed, chapel, I sat alone on a bench and closed my eyes and felt the cool of stillness.  In no way am I insinuating that I felt ostracized from worship or this beneficial gathering.

Sometimes, there is greater beauty in the observance than the participation.  To be still for a few minutes and hear at least a hundred of my classmates sing that "naught be all else to me save what thou art"  was moving to say the least.  There is nothing wrong with group worship and it is an amazing thing.  Yet sometimes, it makes it too easy for me to focus on me.  My worship, my experience, my catharsis.  Taking a step back allows me to realign.

 I want to walk around seeing the value in everything: every person, experience, and situation instead of walking around only focusing on what will validate me.

Dusty Old Cabinets

setting:  on my friend's laptop in her room with the remnants of our post-homecoming dance snack (pretzels and peanut butter, goldfish, and the chips I snagged from the Gedunk)

My friend is asleep on the rug but I am most certainly awake.  More accurately, I am very full of life.  Full of the fullness of a life that is brimming with new people and ideas and memories.  I suppose every memory is a new one for a second before it gets filed in a dusty old cabinet in between my 10th birthday party and the conversation I had last week.  That's the odd thing about my memory.  It doesn't prioritize at all.  I can remember the large events with the same clarity as the obscure details. I can quote someone I was talking with a month ago word-for-word and recall the moment I learned to ride my bike as if both were synonymous in importance and both happened five minutes ago.

Yet I forget a lot.  Or I confuse a lot.  I mix up what one person has told me with someone else's story.  Faces can blur together sometimes.  I might get the main framework of something right but completely blank out on the details.  I'll remember that you had three tests and a quiz and a potentially awkward confrontation and I'll even remember to ask you about it afterwards but have no idea what the subjects were in or who the conversation was with. 

I did not intend to write upon memory tonight but since I seem to be making memories a mile a minute here, I suppose it was quite appropriate.  I will probably remember tonight, for instance.  My first homecoming at Grove City College which was quite fun and memorable.  I'm hoping I'll remember a lot of these first four weeks here which is why I need to keep blogging so I can keep an external mental hard drive of sorts.  More reflection on college later to come.

Until next time,
Chloe of life

Church "Shopping"

I hate the term church shopping.  I absolutely hate it but that's exactly what I've done for the past three Sundays.  First off, it assumes that I am going to church to get something for myself, like you would go to Meijers to buy food or Target to buy, well, everything.  I'm not.  I'm going to church to worship God and serve him. 

Yet it's so hard to know what church would be best (see, even the word best assumes some qualifications a church must meet to "suit" me and again, that is not what I want to be doing).  So my subconscious starts to create a list of specifications and desires.  You don't want it to be all college students or all grandparents.  You don't want it to be all hymns or all Chris Tomlin.  The sermon should be scripture-based not just a self-help guide read out loud.  The list goes on and on and it makes me feel like a horrible person for even having it.

Second problem:  there is some unspoken rule that you only have about 5 or 6 Sundays to "shop" churches and then you are being too particular or not receptive to the Holy Spirit or whatnot.  I would absolutely love for the first church I walk into to be my home church and have a family there and feel like that this is where I need to serve God but it really doesn't work that way.  Considering there are 25+ churches in the area, this puts a lot of pressure on the preliminary church selections and really, there is only so much you can find out about a church from its website.  You can't get to know the people and see how authentic the worship is or if they will glare at you for not going to Sunday School (my experience this morning). 

Perhaps the largest problem is that I don't know where I should be.  I've grown up in the same church all my life and I'm just now realizing what a blessing and a curse that was.  I love that I know almost everyone and have a history there and that the worship is authentic and the preaching is sound but that's all I've ever known.  Do I limit myself and possibly God by choosing a church that is as North Oaksish as possible?  I don't think that is smart but I feel like I keep measuring up churches to my home church in the back of my mind.  I'm in a new place of life and what was right for me last year might not be the same this year.  Or it might be.  I honestly have no idea.  So I'm back to the drawing board, or more accurately, the praying board. 

This concludes my rant on churches and the "shopping experience".  Thank you for reading.

P.S.  Signs are really, really helpful and the lack of them is really, really frustrating.

Just a few disconnected thoughts

Nowadays, I have two motivations for blogging.  1)  I have studied in excess and am about to disconnect from this world, its lovely people, and sanity.  2)  I am waiting for my laundry to be done.  Tonight falls into the latter category.  I keep finding new ways to make the laundry process more efficient.  This is wonderful as it allows me to spend less money on laundry aka more money on coffee.  I don't have a great point to make or structure to follow tonight.  Just a few disconnected thoughts.

It's funny how you can be with people almost 24/7 and be social and all those good things yet still be completely alone.  Perhaps that sounds sad and lonely, but to me, its absolutely wonderful.  It's impossible to engage all the time; learning how to be in your own world while still functioning in the real one is a very valuable skill. 

Two things happened to me this week with counteracting effects.  First, my headphones completely died.  Later that day, my phone decided that it would no longer let me hear whoever I was talking to.  Once I realized this, I completely abused my advantage and delivered lovely long-winded monologues to the unfortunate person on the other "end of the line".    I'm sad to say, but my headphones dying was much more inconvenient than my phone.  I didn't realize how often I used them to block out the world. The music I didn't miss all that much and it wasn't that I couldn't find quiet places to study, its just that now I had no legitimate excuse to ignore people.  I don't like this about myself, that I have this intense need to only listen to my thoughts at times.  Its really quite selfish. 

I am content with a silent world where I can only see the lips moving and the trees swaying and never stop to hear what the people and the wind have to say.  Not all the time, mind you, this is only a temporary desire that passes once I find the opportunity to be an introvert.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that, by the end of the week, I genuinely missed hearing someone's voice on the other end of the phone.  It may have taken me a week, but at least I got there. 

And now, I believe/hope that my laundry is done so I can go to bed. 

Until next time,
Chloe of many worlds