You and you only, first in my heart

You have been partly privy to it.  You've seen the reflection of changes in my life.  How experiences - gifts from God - have shaped, redirected my life.

You can recap if you like:

Ok, I'm ready!  Except, I'm not...
Rewind: Israel
Israel Rewind Part 2
Hobbits, Koreans, and Courage
Middle East, Episode II
Arrival
Seeds

Over the last couple years, my desire to serve long-term for God's Kingdom has been growing, gradually but steadily overcoming my desires to do anything else.  When I got back from Wales, I had a swell plan: get a nice job with my nice degrees, make money for a couple years, then go.  Except, I was having a really hard time finding a job.  And my heart wasn't into it.  And the thought of doing the 9-to-5 for two years while my true desires were elsewhere was seriously depressing.

You see, I was approaching it wrong.  I thought 1) I need to be a " financially responsible and respectable individual" before I can be a crazy missionary, 2) I need to get my house in order before I give it to God, 3) Work is separate from mission.  I still wanted to go....I was just, well, sidetracked.

A few months ago I had the honor of fellowshipping (it's a word, ok?) with a leader of the Chinese house-church movement.  If you know what Back to Jerusalem is, you've probably heard of him.  A few of my closest friends and I got to have dinner and spend quality with him.  At the end of the night he put his hands on us and prayed for us.  This man, who has suffered for Jesus like the apostles, who laughs and emanates the Spirit, prayed for us.  Prayed for our service to the Kingdom, on the mission field.

And I thought, what am I doing?  If I feel God calling me, why am I still frittering away my life on "man's empty praise"?  It's time to be obedient.

When he walked the earth, Jesus didn't call only people with respectable jobs, people who had it all together, and he didn't call people to follow him part-time.  He called people out of their respectable jobs, he called people without jobs, he called people with menial or really terrible jobs, and he said, "Leave it all and follow me."  He called people to give up their old lives and live a new one entirely for him.  He still does that.

God has blessed me with the opportunity to get hands-on training in a city that I love with people that I love while doing a job that I love.  So that's what I'm going to do.  I'm moving to Alabama in June to start all this.  As a big dreamer, I do a lot of talking about the things that I'm going to do.  It's time to stop talking and start doing.

Is it just me or does this tree look like a troll?

Ran across a troll recently.

Luckily he had already been turned into a tree.  Wouldn't wanted to have met him (or her) as a Real Live Troll.

Exactly two weeks remain of my stay here in the D.C. area.  Three weeks until I move back to Alabama.  That's three weeks of jobless, aimless fun (and some packing), still feeling like a student but without all the homework and the pressure of graduation.  Two years since I graduated from college, seven months since I came back from Wales.  Sheesh.  If I often ramble on about the passage of time on this blog, it's because I can never quite grasp its ever-fluctuating but never-ending march onward, as places, experiences, people slip behind me.

Which is partly why I aim to be a good bit more intentional with my time and my life from here onward.  I'm sure I'll explain a little more in-depth in a future post.

The Books Strike Back

It's movin' time.

Or, at least, packin' time.  Movin' time is kind of complicated, and involves more than one car trip south.  What that means for right now is shuffling my stuff around, getting rid of the excess, and packing it all in a well-ordered fashion.  This of course is super fun for me.  I'm not joking, it is legitimately fun - I may misplace things on a daily basis, live in a constant state of disarray, and put off necessary tasks until the last minute, but I LOVE to arrange and organize things.  It's like a puzzle - how can we arrange and store these items with the most efficient use of space, with the accessibility necessary, in the most logical way possible?  (I should mention that my tendency to live in disarray means that, when I do organize things, they don't stay organized, which means later I get to organize them again.)

Sometimes, organizing or packing is like real-life Tetris.  Especially when you're packing books.  Yesterday, I fetched a few book boxes from the garage (they're book boxes because they're small and sturdy) and went Tetris-crazy trying to fill every inch of space with book.  And I did a smash-up job.  Filled a box top to bottom with books, with hardly any nooks or crannies left unused.  Then I tried to move the box, so that I could start in on the next one.

It didn't budge.

So much for the most efficient use of space.  I took out 10-15 books, tried again.  Still wouldn't move.  Took out a few more, a few more, until finally it was light enough for me to pick up with some effort.  By then it was only about half-full.  Resigned, I filled the other two boxes half-full.  I need smaller boxes, and more of them.  Or I need to get rid of some books - but we all know that's not going to happen.

I promise I did not arrange these books to make me look as nerdy as possible.  It just happened that way.

This is maybe one-third or one-fourth of my books.  MAYBE.  

Suddenly, Summer

I have been complaining for months now about the cold weather.  "I haven't had a summer since 2011, I am so tired of being cold!" was my main complaint; you see, Welsh "summer" is significantly cooler and wetter than even the coolest Georgia/Alabama spring.  Even if I say I prefer cooler weather, the (not cold) hard truth is that I'm Southern deep in my blood, and it's going to take more than 12 months to acclimatize me to a cooler climate.
Therefore, up until last week I was bemoaning the Spring that yet to show its face, still wearing sweaters and scarves.
And then Summer came.  And now I'm melting.
But at least it's pretty.

This is not a cherry blossom.  But it's still pretty.

Let's Have Dinner

 Sharing a meal is often at the center of socialization.  Eating out is often at the center of socialization.  Why is this a good idea?  Well, you have a lot of choices, you don't have to do any work, and within a couple hours you have an out if you decide you've had enough socialization for one evening.

What about eating in?  I appreciate a good meal out as much as anybody, but as far as spending time with friends goes, I'd rather have a meal in with friends rather than go out.  Here are my top 5 reasons.

1) Communication.  Restaurants are often loud, you're crowded around a table surrounded by strangers, your server keeps popping up, and once you've finished your meal you have a limited time before the server starts eyeing you for taking up a table.  It's no coincidence this is at the top of my list; maybe it's because I'm a big fat introvert, but I'd take a quiet, private venue with the opportunity for sustained, personal conversation over a noisy, public place nine times out of ten.  I like to really get to know people and enjoy their company, and I think that a private atmosphere goes a long way in fostering that.  I mentioned above that eating out is a good way to have a set end to the socialization if you need to bow out early.  That's still true - but hopefully your friends would be sensitive to time.

2) Comfort.  I think it's far more comfortable to chill out in someone's kitchen/living room than in a restaurant.  And you can pop in a movie or play a game.  Relax.

Soup is easy, cheap, and delicious

3) $$$.  Assuming we're talking about restaurants a bit nicer than fast food, if you get everyone to participate in the cost of food, it's going to be significantly cheaper to cook in than eat out.  Now, I'm not suggesting that you prepare a huge meal and invite all your friends over for a dinner party; there's a time for that, but what I'm talking about here is casual, like hanging out + food.  Share the burden - if you're not hosting, bring food, come early to cook.  It doesn't have to be fancy.  Spaghetti is good, and cheap.

4) Fellowship.  This is kind of connected to Communication and Comfort, but goes a bit deeper.  Preparing a meal with people, helping clean up, hanging around while it's all going on - you get to know people.  You're doing life together.  If you're trying to make new friends, inviting them into your home to share a meal can go a lot farther than meeting them somewhere.

5) Food.  It may feel like there's more food options at a restaurant, but as someone with food allergies, I can attest that finding a dish that's free of allergens can be a seriously big hassle.  More than once I've ordered a dish and pushed part of it off to the side - or I've had to send something back because I asked for it without dairy and it came out with dairy.  This has been getting better in the last few years as more and more people are jumping on food-craze bandwagons or discovering they have food allergies, prompting restaurants to offer more allergy-conscious choices.  But then restaurant food often turns out to be a lot worse for you than you'd expect - cooked in creamy, buttery, sweet, delicious sauces.  Sometimes eating healthy means getting a salad without dressing, and honestly that just doesn't always fill me up!  When you cook at home, if you distribute food responsibilities, you can a) know what's in the food, b) be sure that there's an allergen-free option for your friends, and c) easily have healthy options.  Also, some of us (cough, me) love to cook, and feel silly going all-out for one-person meals.  Having friends to cook for makes me really happy.  You can share recipes and ideas.

Half cheese, half no cheese - perfect for sharing!

Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting you never eat out with your friends.  I'm just advocating for swapping some of those meals out for meals in.  You might find it's more fun and more rewarding than you expected, and a little easier on your wallet.

Another perq to having spaghetti is the artistic possibilities

D.C. Bucket List

I'm moving in a couple of months (again).  An important task remains.

To see as much of D.C. and the surrounding area as I possibly can.

Sure, I've seen the highlights - the monuments, the Capitol, the White House, Mount Vernon, various exhibits in various Smithsonians - but it's time to cover the nooks and crannies of this history-obsessed place.  Time to be a professional tourist.  

Part of the Berlin Wall

Today we went to the Newseum, which is, incidentally, a museum of the News.  News/media/journalism, etc.  It's not a free museum and maybe not as exciting sounding as the Spy museum (which is a pretty cool museum) but it's massive, contains a huge number of interesting, engaging, and well-laid out exhibits, and it's interactive (if you want it to be).  Highlights include an exhibit on G-Men (the FBI) and the most famous criminals they've pursued, part of the Berlin Wall and a guard tower from Checkpoint Charlie, and a huge gallery of hundreds of newspapers and headlines  - the actual documents themselves, not pictures or copies - from the 1500s right up into the 21st century.  Papers from the American Revolution, the sinking of the Lusitania, WWII, the first Star-Spangled Banner (the newspaper of the US Armed Forces), 9/11, etc.  

Maybe you can tell that I find that really cool.  Of course, you can't touch them.  But you can peer at them in their little glass drawers.

The also have an exhibit about freedom of press and censorship around the world, with this map you may have seen, or seen the likes of:

Red covers countries with heavy censorship, Yellow for countries with a moderate amount of censorship, and Green for those with the most freedom of press.  Norway is said to be the country with the most free press.  If the status of press in a country changes significantly, they change the color accordingly.

Those are just some of the exhibits, off the top of my head.  If you go to D.C., try to take some time to see this museum.  It's not some collection of facts about news media history, it's an examination of how we perceive events (and how they're allowed to be perceived) and how that perception in turn shapes those events and later ones.  It's also a refreshing break from the ivory-columned galleries of Important Dead People's Stuff. (Not that I don't enjoy looking at Important Dead People's Stuff.)

Sorry about the lower quality photos than usual.  I was using R2D2.  R2D2 is my phone.  Because it's a (An)droid.*

Does it bother anyone else that R2D2 is a "droid" but he's not an android because he's not human-shaped?  Kind of like my phone, actually...

*I named it after R2 rather than C3PO because it's white with a blue case.  Also because R2 is way tougher.

A home

A home is full of places for people to sit.  

It's comfortable, clean (although maybe not always tidy), and lived-in.  

It brims with function and beauty.  If something isn't useful, it's meaningful. 

Love rests in the corners and quiet comfort sits on the pillows.  
Stories linger in the air.  

There is always food and tea.  

Extra beds and blankets are tucked in the closets, because well, you never know who will come to stay.  

Every one who enters belongs.

Get Smart: A Sophomore Perspective

A recent quest for some missing books and files led me to a wadded stack of student newspapers from my college days.  From sophomore to senior year, I wrote a regular opinion column, and I saved the newspapers to have print copies of the articles.  Yesterday I finally took the time to cut out and file away each article (though not the ones from senior year; I seem to have stopped collecting the newspapers after junior year).  This afforded me the opportunity to re-read all of my columns and come to grips with the fact that I have a past as a major smartass.

Truly, I was a smartass, and I reveled in it (and I think I would be lying if I said some smartassery didn't still linger within me).  I was sure that I had some special insight into intelligent, rational thought, and my column was my means for the enlightenment of others.  I was a fair epitome of the term "sophomore", i.e., someone who thinks they are much wiser than they actually are.  My column was actually called "Get Smart."

The day we took pictures to printed with our columns, we took "serious" and "silly" photos, and like any normal college students, picked the silly ones to print.  I was wearing aviators in mine and making a "wry" face.  My (affable and forthright) philosophy professor said to me once, "You know...you kind of look like a pothead in this picture!"

My column was fairly popular and sparked discussions in some of my classes, at least, and I don't necessarily disagree with most of what I wrote.  It's hard to articulate and back up an opinion in 400-500 words (just look at my posts here), and I favored the blunt, witty approach.  Towards the end of my time there I had already begun to change, though; my topics turned from political to philosophical & theological, I renamed my column "Truth in Fiction", and I requested to write less frequently.  Apparently from that point I didn't care to save the print copies.

I truly enjoyed writing the column, up until the end when I just got tired of everything college.  I enjoyed being a fantastic smartass.  Yet, while I wouldn't mind writing regularly for publication again, I think I'm going to (try to) leave the sophomore me in college and instead make clarity and perspective my bywords.