(51) Not Over

Some nights I wish

I could reach across the miles

in an instant

& remind you that this story

isn't over yet

the world is full mixed signals

& changing paths

we're far from who we

seem to be

Blue Skies & Words to Say

("Mutual" from xkcd.com)

Favorite Things of This Very Moment (4:01 pm EST):

• Unsweetened ice tea from Moe's
• Amber's handy-dandy iPod
• Knowing someone who cuts hair
• Having so many excellent weekend plans
• Being almost completely done with my homework for the week
• Zicam
• Sounding like a hysterical Muppet or Disney movie villain when I laugh
• Head phones

My voice is currently crazy, and Amber just a few minutes ago got to deal with my hysterical giggling for a good 10 straight minutes. I was just trying to comprehend some of the things that my life has recently run into, and it just wasn't working out. This is not a bad thing, not at all.

Life recently took some turns that were totally and undeniably unexpected. Wonderful, but completely unexpected. I'm still trying to reconcile myself to the realization that life can change so dramatically in such a short period of time.

I keep asking if life is really supposed to be like this. Are people supposed to walk into your life and throw you this far off balance? I'm not sure if this is rational or normal, but I guess I'm fairly okay with it all. Sure it makes me nervous because some day soon I will fall off this crazy balance beam I'm walking on, and the real question will be whether or not there's anything there to catch me. I sincerely hope so.

And so I leave you with a mix.

Love, Me

Blue Skies & Words to Say:

1. For Blue Skies - Strays Don't Sleep
2. Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.) - Monsters of Folk
3. Wordless Chorus - My Morning Jacket
4. Borderline/Open Your Heart - Glee Cast
5. Going to California - Led Zeppelin
6. My Winding Wheel - Ryan Adams
7. Dream On - Matthew Morrison & Neil Patrick Harris
8. Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime - Beck
9. Don't Move - Butch Walker
10. Hideaway - Karen O and the Kids
11. Twenty-Seven Strangers - Villagers
12. Million Faces - Paolo Nutini
13. Heavy In Your Arms - Florence & The Machine
14. I Believe In You [Acoustic Version] - Tyler Hilton
15. Alone - Heart
16. Holy Roller Novocaine - My Terrible Friend
17. Lie In The Sound - Trespassers William
18. Hard to Love You - The Wreckers

Fight With Honor You Will Win

(Sam and Jake playing some sweet, sweet music together this past weekend)

Favorite things of this very moment (3:34 pm EST):

• Knowing that at some point this afternoon/this evening I will work out
• Having some kind of crazy plan
• Nola being beyond kind and generous with her time, consideration, and love
• Texting capabilities based in Amber's beautiful iPod which spends most of its time with me these days
• Sunshine and perfect weather
• Having a functional camera with which to take pictures of Mitch when he comes in and randomly collapses on our living room floor and then takes the next 10 minutes or so to eat green beans and a brownie while laying on the floor...
• Having Amber on my side
• Prayer, so, so, so much prayer
• And Hebrews 6:19 which starts with these words, "This hope we have as an anchor of the soul..."

I've spent a lot of time this week thinking about honor. Anyone that's been near me for the past month or two has probably heard me yell, "Fight with honor! You will win!" at least once. It's become something that is a running quote in my head. I find this both hilarious and encouraging. It's hilarious because it comes from Jackie Chan yelling those words at Owen Wilson in "Shanghai Noon," it it's encouraging because I'm realizing those are the words I need to be remembering.

Recently I've started finding myself in a series of strange situations. Situations that require me to decide how I want to proceed. I can go the easy way or I can choose to fight. Maybe you're an advocate of peace regardless of the situation, and if you are, I'm sorry that I cannot say I agree. I'm not fighting anyone physically, but I am fighting.

In my family honor, truth and love were the things we were taught to seek above all other virtues. Maybe you don't agree with that either, but I am glad my parents taught us to do these things. And no, I can't say that I always do the honorable thing, but I do try.

Especially right now. Since coming to ABC this semester I have encountered a series of situations in which I've had to decide whether I was going to allow myself to be pushed around, lied to, talked down to, and more recently, forgotten. You'd think that some of these things I should be able to just avoid, but I've realized that it would do little, if any, good to do that. I've come to a place of testing.

Right now I'm watching my boundaries be tested. I'm working on maintaining proper boundaries between myself and other people so that I neither shut them out, but I also don't let just anyone into my life.

Right now I'm watching my heart be tested. I'm trying maintain purity of heart and strength. I'm working hard to hold God first in my heart and let all other things fall into place after Him.

And I'm trying so hard to trust. To trust that God will protect my heart as long as I let Him hold onto it. That He'll provide for me. I think that's the hardest part. The trusting. It's not my strong point, and I know I need to be better about this. Plus, God hasn't failed me ever. And lately, I've been seeing Him work in my life more and more. It's not that He hasn't been before, it's just that I know I haven't been listening or watching for it.

And now I'm fighting so hard to stay on the radar. To not be forgotten. Ever. In fact, I'd like to be a priority eventually.

Hope though...that's what I'm really working with. I'm stepping up and fighting with honor. I'm holding onto the hope that recently showed up in my life for dreams I've been fighting and/or ignoring for awhile now.

Hope is the anchor of my soul.

Fight with honor, my friends. You will win. With hope, I will too.

"For I Know the Plans I Have for You..."

(The picture above was taken by Nicole Rowell, and I think it's beautiful)

Favorite things of this very moment (10:34 pm CST):

• Knowing the outcome
• Crazy Love by Francis Chan
• Ice water
• Long, prompt emails from Jay
• Having breakfast with Kayla and T to look forward to

Today has been a little surreal. Actually, this week has been a little surreal. The whole of it. The week started out with me running through a list in my head of all the places I could still try and apply to find a job. Not my favorite task, but a necessary one. A new job must be found. This is one quest that can not be thrown aside.

Monday was a holiday, and that day was spent with my family, and then also in going to Augustana College in Rock Island, IL to see my youngest brother, Joel perform in a concert as part of the Gold Honor Ensemble. The concert was fantastic. The Augustana Ensemble played, the Gold Honor and the Blue Honor Ensembles also played. Everything was wonderful. Augustana is a beautiful college. If only they offered library science there...

Tuesday started off fairly quiet. I'd made my to-do list for the week, and was getting some of the chores out of the way like laundry and cleaning of catboxes (oh the joys of catboxes...gick), and then my father called. He told me that he had a job for me. I needed to come over to the bank, they'd had a problem with some calendars they ordered, and they needed someone to go through them. I ended up there by 1 that afternoon.

Wednesday, I spent all day working at the bank, but also set up an interview on Thursday at a home for the mentally disabled. Listened to a great deal of The Return of the King. Tolkien is brilliant.

Thursday...ah yes, today...

Today has been weird. I battled a great deal of ice and spent some time salting our driveway and walkways here at the house, and then I got ready and went off to my interview. The interview seemed to go pretty well. I had to take a 25 questioned, short standardized reading test while sitting in the dining room. One of the residence was in there eating lunch. Very sweet, but very loud. Imagine trying to write an important paper with the TV all the way up and your siblings talking to you. That was basically what the test was like. Aparently I did alright on it though. I then filled out the form giving my consent to having them run a background check on me (I have nothing to hide). Then I went and talked with the woman in charge of the home as well as the clerk for both the homes in Oregon. That seemed to go pretty well. They seemed to like me fairly well, and they answered all the questions I'd been saving.

They told me that they would contact me this evening if they needed me to come back in for a 2nd interview tomorrow. It's almost 11pm now, and I haven't received a phone call. They aparently don't need me. Hopefully though, Kayla will get a call. She also applied there and her interview was yesterday. Tomorrow I get to meet Kayla and Terrence for a breakfast-esque type coffee outting before Kayla and I head over to Stillman to work with the calendars (she started helping out there today), so I will hear whether or not she got a call at that point.

What this all comes down to though is that this week has been rather bizarre. I am exceedingly grateful that someone in China screwed up the printing of hundreds of calendars going to a small, locally owned set of banks in a rural IL area. Those mistakes have provided me with a short term job that will help me make yet another car payment without having to touch my savings account, and that is a truly blessed event. Beyond that, I've also realized how terrifying I find the concept of working with mentally disabled adults. I need to learn more about what working with them is really like. I'm sure the work is very rewarding, but I've never been around adults with mental disabilities, so I'm just not sure what it's like.

This also means that I am back to handing out more applications and collecting still more. There will continue to be odd jobs until I can find something permanent. Of this I am fairly certain. There's always someone needing something. See a need, fill a need, right? *smiles*

Besides, this is just one small part of my life, and an even smaller part in history. One never knows where it leads.

Have a wonderful night.