where I wanted to go

It just took me over an hour to write the last 295 words of my thesis essay. Some of the more painful writing I have ripped from my soul. But it is finally wrung out of me and it's not getting another word.

This morning I went with former roomie to the airport before she left for real-life important interviews. I am so glad I got to hug her.

I am going home tomorrow. I will see sweet Mo and he will body slam me and slobber on my face and get mud on my jeans and I will laugh and baby-talk him.

I also get to sit in the kitchen with my Mom and just talk to her. I want to sit at the counter and listen to stories and look at recipes and bask in being her daughter. I want to be there when my dad walks in from work, and listen to him walk around the house and sing hymns and songs from old Westerns.

Obsession with Drew/Ellie Holcomb continues. Their music is beautiful and real and warm and aching and exquisitely tender. And they write songs with words like this.

Oh magnolia

won't you stay with me

won't you wake up and see

that I'm waiting

Oh magnolia

won't you walk with me

won't you let me be

your sweet companion

you've been working til your hands they bleed

and your eyes can't see the dress you're wearing

you've been hopingthat you could make it right

but the more you try, the more you're failing

You've been walking through this world alone,

no place to call your home, except your heartache

You've been trying to make it all work out,

when the sun goes down your soul is burdened

won't you please come home

you don't have to walk alone

won't you rest your head on my shoulder

desert

No energy, people. For optimism at least. Confession time: that's why I've been avoiding this blog the past few weeks. Cataloguing mercies drains and dries the soul when done under obligation. It's not good when "supposed to" becomes the reason behind hope.

Things are not okay, and that's okay.

Being close to other people is difficult. And I'm surprisingly comfortable with the mess, in my friends and family, and in me. Problems do not equal loss of relationship. That is a good thing to realize.

"Yet Jesus came, whose will of grace precedes our will, whose purpose of love outruns our desire for salvation"

-C.H. Spurgeon

Right now, those words feel like a rope around my waist, holding me to ground and rock and yes, hope.

a regresar

At the moment, there is a six-pound can of peanut butter sitting on our table. Left over from Spring Break lunch supplies. This makes me yes, very happy.

[Technically, it belongs to RUF. Not me. This does not dilute my glee.]

***

Last week, I went on my second mission trip, ever. To Miami, with RUF. We worked with Deborah's church, painting and cleaning and moving, and I could try to tell you how wonderful it was but I would fail. So you'll have to take my word for it. Just know that it included salsa dancing, lots of rice and beans, and laughter every day. Also the pure turquoise Atlantic waves, the warm and lovely Rodriguez family, and the sweetest, funniest people ever.

I loved it. I loved the sunshine, and the break from academia and thinking, the relief of physical work, and people in a completely different culture. It felt warm and healing and strangely restful.

***

And now this semester is going to fly entirely too fast. I'm trying not to think about that, that my best friend/roommate/clone is going to North Carolina for two years, and then another friend is going to Texas for probably ever. My friends are spreading, to Tennessee and Kentucky and Missouri and Florida and who-knows-where, and I can't let myself feel that right now. I'm just trying to savor every day, the work and the people, and keep my heart from splitting clean in two.

I've got some stuff to distract me from all the ache, stuff like a 12 page story due next week of which I have written not one word. And throwing a wedding shower with (Jo)anna for Deborah in a few weeks, which is thrilling and fun and very strange all at the same time. Stuff like figuring out what exactly it is I'll be doing in the summer/fall. And stuff like wasting less time on the web, which means goodbye for now, children.

Suspended

I'm writing a paper on Denise Levertov. And I found this.

Suspended

I had grasped God's garment in the void

but my hand slipped

on the rich silk of it.

The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember

must have upheld my leaden weight

from falling, even so,

for though I claw at empty air and feel

nothing, no embrace,

I have not plummeted.