Moving On

Lately, I've had a serious problem with blogging. I posted this picture recently:



See all those drafts? Yep, it's a problem. Seeing as you are reading this now, it looks like I finally had a breakthrough.

In my last post, I mentioned how scared of life I am. It's still true. I have no idea what the next few months hold. Don't get me wrong, I'm really excited. Really.

In two weeks, I'll start orientation at Forest Home. It's a Christian camp in Forest Falls, California.

When I tell people where it is, I giggle a little on the inside. My gut screams, "I'M MOVING TO CALIFORNIA!"

My mom and I leave in NINE DAYS. That's just barely over a week, and I can hardly contain myself. Driving straight there, it would take a full twenty-four hours, so we'll break it up into three eight-hour days. When we get to the beautiful Golden State, we'll be good ol' tourists for a day or two. My mom is excited about going to the nearby beaches (and In-N-Out Burger for the first time... or two), and I am excited to see Jay Leno. On Thursday, the seventh, I'll drop my mom off at LAX and drive to Forest Home to start orientation... and meet tons of great people that seem to be absolutely hilarious... and I'll probably get lost too many times to count within the first week.

Until then, I'm doing my best to pack my things away. I've spent weeks away from home (whether that home be Brownwood or Houston), but I've never spent months away. But not only am I packing for the summer, but I'm planning on moving there permanently - new driver's license and everything (that's when you know it's real).

So, if you haven't caught on, there are a few problems with this:

1) I have a job through August 18th. Which is wonderful. But starting August 19th, well, that's when things get tricky. Sometime between now and then, I need to find a full-time job... somewhere around LA, preferably. Riverside sounds nice, but I'm not being too picky at this point.

2) I have a place to live through August 18th. Which means I need some place of residence starting August 19th. Then again, I have to solve problem one before I solve problem two.

3) How in the world do you pack for a summer? At this point, I have these plastic drawer things, two duffel bags (a large one and a small one), and a backpack. Or at least, that's the plan. I don't want to be the girl that brings too much. (Also, there are some things I don't need for the summer, but I packed anyway, in case I need them for work. My scrubs, for example.) Really, my plan is to pack just enough things to last me through the summer and a few weeks into non-summer, with high hopes and prayers that I'll find a full-time job.


People ask me over and over again, "What are you going to do in August?" My answer is always the same, "Weeeeell, I'm not sure. We'll see." It's probably one of the riskiest things I've done - moving somewhere with, at this point, nothing nailed down. Sure, I definitely have a job and a place to live until mid-August. And it's in California. (Giggle.) But after that... I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit anxious.

One thing you should know about me is that I'm all about countdowns. And lists. I love lists. I am currently making one of all the things that will be moved to CA in August. I like to know when things should be completed.

A year ago, I had a countdown to graduation.
Then a countdown of work days I had remaining.
Now, a countdown to Forest Home.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. Not at all. But, here's the thing:

Life isn't a timeline.

Not that I would know anything about raising a child, but I'm almost positive parents don't say, "In ten months and three days, we'll begin the weening process." Or "In twenty-seven days, we are starting to potty train!" "We'll teach Suzy 'da-da' a month from now."

When you start dating someone, you don't tell them, "Okay, I only expect to date you for five months, then you're going to pop the question."

No, no, no.

You work hard every day. You take each day as just that - a day. A single day. One at a time. You learn from mistakes and try hard to not make them again. And you hope that your parents, your spouse, your friends, your children... you hope they are doing the same. You challenge them, you pray for them, and you encourage them to do the same.

I am beginning to learn that there are a lot of grey areas in life. There isn't always a road map or a rule book. There may not be a clear line or letters in black and white.

Yes, there's faith. But there is also reason.
Yes, you can follow your heart, but what does that look like practically?

**TENSION!**
(I like the use of asterisks)

While I know Forest Home is where I am "supposed" to be this summer, and I know that my heart longs to be in California (and it has since sophomore year), I am also nervous and scared over the fact that I have no idea what is going to happen in three months.

Then I remember - life isn't a timeline.

As much as I love lists, I don't have an itinerary for my life at this point. Suck? Yes.

Here's why it's so difficult. I'll be honest.

People tell me God is faithful. God tells me He is faithful. I believe that fully. I can tell myself that God is faithful, and that God will provide me with a job. Okay. We'll go with that. Because it's truth. God is faithful and He will provide something somewhere.

OKAY. BUT. (There's always a but. A big one.)

I don't want to belittle that and sound like a terrible Christian, but I do want to know: What is my part? What do I do in all of this? Yes, God is faithful. But that doesn't mean that I sit around and do absolutely nothing. While God may pursue His children even when they are idle, I don't want to be idle. I want to pursue Him at the same time. Actively. Intimately.

I don't want to sit lazily (is that a word?) and wait for God to give me a job or provide me with a place to live.

You hear all the time, "God will open a door." But what if God only unlocks the door and we must pry it open? What if the door is open, but we must go through the maze of hallways and dead ends to find it?



This summer will be something new. It will be hard, but it will be beautiful. It will be challenging, and it will be rewarding. My hope is to learn more about myself, more about others, and more about faith.

And practice what I learn.



What are your plans for the summer? (Or next three months if you are a real adult without 'summers'?) If you are bold, what are tensions in your life that you can't quite resolve?

Scared of the Things You Can Control... and Terrified of the Things You Can't

It's been a rough week. I've come to realize that I'm a very frightened little girl on the inside.

Every day, I think about California. I think about how much I want to live there. I remember the first time I visited... and the second... and the third. I get really excited knowing that it's just around the corner.

But then I begin asking, Where am I going to live? What am I going to do? How am I going to to pay off my college loans? And how in the world is my car going to make it 1500 miles when it barely putts around town - and makes the craziest sounds when it does?

Then I think about people who have invested in me, and I wonder if there will be anyone like that in California. I think about my parents and, even though we don't see eye-to-eye on everything, how different life will be when I can't see them every few months. I think about Soren and So Aware... and how much things could possibly change. Every night as I fall asleep, I think about the coming months... and my mind goes in circles. As excited as I am to move and to learn and to experience something completely new, I would be lying if I didn't say I'm absolutely terrified. I think about all these things, and I tell myelf over and over again, I'm not ready.

Rachael, you need to work on your first-impressions before you move.
Rachael, you have terrible interviewing skills, how will you get a job?
Rachael, you are going to lose everything you have.
You won't have friends.
You won't have a job.
You'll have to move back home.
And by that point, everyone you know will have real jobs and you will be left with nothing.

As I work on my resume and look through applications and maybe transfer to a different Walgreens, I long to be faithful in each moment, even though this is easily the scariest thing I have ever done.

I have so many doubts and an unbelievable amount of what-ifs.

I have fears and terrors, but I also have so much excitement that I can hardly control myself.

I can't wait to learn new things and meet new people. I can't wait to learn more about myself. But with those things, I know comes hardships. I will see things about myself that I hate. I will miss people I love.

But my biggest fear is that I'll end up doing something that I regret. And that fear makes me lose sleep at night. It tosses me from side to side as I sleep. As I think about it, I know it is almost a ridiculous fear, but it also consumes me that much more.

Lord, teach me faithfulness, and please, cast out my fear.


Have you ever moved? What were your biggest fears? What were you most excited about?

Motion City Soundtrack was right.

Well, graduation in less than six weeks. Forty days. Just a countdown for you... in case you were curious.

Last week, I was doing a mental calculation on how much in loans I've accumulated over the last three and a half years. But in this little equation of mine, I accidentally left out one of the loans from each year. It just about doubled when I added it back in. Poop.

My poor car is always a little sad. Right now, she makes three different sounds. The first is when I'm going anywhere above 40 or 45 mph. It sort of sounds like my tires are going to fall off. It's a "whomp whomp whomp" noise. (Yes, I am that person that tries to imitate how her car sounds.) The second happens when I go less than 30 mph, but is especially bad when I'm turning or slowing down. It's the most obnoxious high-pitched noise. It's like the noise you hear when you think you are going crazy - a ringing noise. But, no, you aren't going crazy, my car is. Poor Naibo. The third noise is the saddest noise of them all. It doesn't happen all the time, which is probably why I'm most depressed when it does. It's this little clicking noise that happens when I'm coming to a stop. Maybe it's more of a squeal than a click. It's as if Naibo is finishing a marathon, and she gave everything she had just to finish that last two-tenths of a mile. (I guess 26.2 miles isn't that much to a car, really. But just go with it.)

About a month ago, I opened a third bank account. (Did you know you can just open bank accounts whenever you want? I mean, it's just added to your other accounts, so I'm not going to open ten more or anything, but that's still cool.) Basically, I have my checking account, and I have my savings account, and now I have my California account. This really means I have two savings accounts, but I refuse to take money out of my California account until the summer, when I'll actually need it. I've started moving funds to the account... and it's all becoming more and more real.

My graduation invitations came in the mail on Friday. I'll start mailing them out this week. I ordered my diploma, cap, and gown all by myself about a month back. My parents made their hotel reservations. I've been having an ongoing conversation with some girls I'm moving in with after graduation.

Everyone keeps asking me what life will look like when I move to California. I don't know.

I need a resume.

There are things I still don't understand at work.


One good thing is that I have taken up reading... and I am enjoying it. I am now finishing a book called Honor & Shame. I am actually reading it for a class. It's about guilt, shame, and fear-based cultures. I'm trying to get through St. Augustine's Confessions, but it is harder than I had imagined it to be. I guess I should actually say that, instead of "taken up reading," I've just been reading for class... and enjoying what I am reading. We finished up The End of the Affair by Graham Greene a few weeks ago, as well as Screwtape Letters a month back, and I loved both of those... especially End of the Affair. I hope to read more by Greene in the coming months... probably after I graduate.

I think I'm ready to graduate. Well, I am ready... but I'm a bit freaked over it. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's super exciting. But, come January, I'll be that much more of an adult, and that's what I'm not ready for. I'm not ready to repay loans or fix my car (or consider getting a new one) or even live 1500 miles from everything I've ever know, even though I'm most excited about moving to California.

I'm scared of not living up to the expectations that people have for me. That friends have for me, that my parents have for me. I'm scared I won't live up to my own expectations. I just don't want to let people down. Maybe that's just me caring a little too much over what people think...


In case you haven't noticed: the future freaks me out. And the present is pretty scary, too.




My last blog was about dreaming about the future and looking forward to things... but, in those things, does anything scare you? What about your future freaks you out?

Classroom Complaints

If I've learned anything in college, it's how to make an alliteration.


This one is going to be short. For real this time. Don't worry, one's coming for Wednesday that may take you the whole week to read. I have to make up for this.

*I'm going to preface this in saying I'm not a grade slob. I don't have a 4.0. But I do care about my grades. I also work for my grades. I work for my As, and apparently my Bs, too.


I looked at my midterm grades today. Fairly well, I think. I have two Bs, which is okay with me. EXCEPT for the fact that they are both in classes that I actually participate in.

And by participate, I mean that I ask questions, I voice comments, and I show interest in what the teacher is saying. These are also the classes that I read for.

I've actually kept up on reading in all my classes this semester. Not just ones here and there.

In my other classes, I like to show interest, not by asking questions and voicing comments. but sitting quietly in the back and taking (handwritten - not typed) notes.

So PLEASE tell me why I have an A in those classes that I sit there quietly, seemingly unengaged in the learning environment... and a B in the classes in which I am actively participated and quite engaged?



Your turn: Have you ever been thrown off guard by a professor's way of grading? Do you freak yourself out over the conversation you plan to have with them - even though you know it will probably go better in real life than in your head? What does participating in class look like to you?

"What if it's not everything I dreamed it would be?"

I saw Tangled for the first time this weekend. It was wonderful. I laughed, I cried, and I laughed some more.

If you've seen the movie, you can imagine the parts that made me laugh. I mean, really, it was the whole movie. Except for that one part where they had to go and talk about dreams. Dang it. Dream-talk gets me every time.


Stupid. Of course I cried. And I had it hidden until a few seconds later when they release the lights into the sky and a sighing "awww" comes out.
 
"...are you crying?"
"...yes..."
 
I'm a sucker for people with dreams, alright? (Plus, thanks to my last post, we all know I cry all the time anyway.)
 
I started thinking about next summer. I thought of the twenty hour drive to the west coast. I imagined myself with a cool apartment with not very much in it. I remembered the beaches and the people and the good music. Oh, the music! I thought of So Aware and what the future holds.

Then, that question: "What if it's not everything I dreamed it would be?" Oh gosh. I never thought of that. Thanks a lot, Repunzel.
 
What if everyone is right and the smog is terrible or the economy crashes or I get a bad sunburn from going to the beach all the time? (No one has ever said that last one to me, but I needed a third option.)
 
Or what if it's just plain ol' life? Is that okay too?
 
But... what if it is as beautiful and magical as I expect it to be? What if it's the best twenty hour drive ever, and I have a cool, empty apartment (full of love!), and I meet people at the beach and listen to cool music, and So Aware has a gig every night?

What do people do once they live their dream?


I probably talk about California too much. But if people wouldn't ask me so much what I'm doing after graduation, I wouldn't be forced to go into the long story about how I don't really know what I'm going to do when I get there. After each conversation, I ask myself, "Is it okay that I don't know what my life will look like once I'm there? And that I'm okay with that?"

They ask me how I know I want to move out there, so I tell the story of visiting my freshman year and telling my mom, jokingly, "I'm going to move here one day." Then I visited my sophomore year and saw the most beautiful bay I'd ever been to. (They come close to all those pretty southeast Texas bays I've seen...) I took a picture of a beach outside of San Francisco, knowing that one day, I'd be living on the West Coast. And after another visit last spring break, it became like home - even though I've never spent more than a week there. It's like home even though I don't know what I want 'home' to look like eight or nine months from now.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend at some point last semester. He said to me, "Lauren," (he calls me by my middle name. I like it.) "If you aren't worrying about what you will be doing five minutes from now, why worry about what you will be doing a year and a half from now."

I'd be the first to say I don't know God's plan for tomorrow, let alone nine months from now. Someone asked me if I was only selfishly wanting to move to California. The most honest answer I could give them was, "Not only." I can admit that I - Rachael Amy - really want to move to CA. But, I can also admit with 95% certainty that I didn't necessarily put this idea - this calling, if I may- in my head on my own.

I don't think their is anything wrong with dreaming. God puts some dreams and desires into our hearts and minds for His purpose - His purpose which we may never know, and it's what we do with those passions that matters. Will we be obedient with them? Or simply hold them within our minds, only hoping for a day that they will magically come true? The more I think about it, the more I realize that "dreaming big" isn't necessarily about imagining my life ten months or even ten years from now, but seeing God's potential in the dreams He has given me - and being faithful to His purpose and His intentions... not my own.


What are your dreams? Are you ever scared they will be nothing as you imagined or everything that you had expected?

Hush. Ignorance Isn't Bliss.

I just want you all to know that this is roughly the fourth blog post I've started in the past forty-eight hours. I really am a terrible blogger. I wish I was better at it.

I should also add that I have three exams tomorrow that I don't want to study for.

Anyway, here's what happens most of the time:

1. I start a new post with full intentions of finishing it and posting it.
2. As I begin writing, I somehow divulge some sort of embarrassing information about myself.
3. I keep going with the blog, thinking that the embarrassing information will become less embarrassing at some point throughout the entry.
4. I can't continue writing, because I'm too freaked out over what people's reaction will be to whatever has already been written.
5. I convince myself that I need a break and that I'll, at some point, return to the post to finish and post it.
6. Those blogs go to the same place as the lost socks and hair pins.

I'll just go ahead and tell you that most of the time, the 'embarrassing information' is that I cried about something. If you don't know my thoughts on crying, it is as simple as this: I think it is horribly embarrassing. I don't mind if other people cry around me, even though I often don't know what to do when they are, but I feel so insecure and helpless when I cry. And I don't like putting people in that awkward, "Crap, what do I do know" situation. Plus, my whole face turns blotchy and red and my eyes become swollen. There's no hiding it. It screams, "I'm a mess right now."

So, for the sake of actually posting something, I'll just tell you what's going on in my life, and how I am responding to those things.

And, just so you know, I'm not normally the "sit on the front porch while writing a blog" type of girl. But I guess we all need a change of scenery every now and then.

Two nights ago, I was sitting on my front porch (if you can call it that), trying to put together the difference pieces of my semester. I was talking with one of my roommates the other day about how quickly December is coming. In eleven weeks, I'll be walking across a stage, getting ready to enter into a new phase of my life.

People ask me if I'm scared of graduating. It's funny to me; why would I be scared of that day? Then they ask what I'm going to do when I graduate. I tell them I'll stay around for a few months, then I'll move to California.

Of course, they're surprised by this answer, wondering why anyone would ever want to leave Texas to go to "the state full of gays." (...and/or "liberals.") I always want to ask if they are really that ignorant. I decide not to ask that, because of course they'll say they aren't, which actually means they are.

(Foul play, I know. I just made a generalization about people who make generalizations. Pardon my ignorance while I pardon theirs. Remember, ignorance isn't bliss; it's ignorance.)

I normally just say something along the lines of "Well, you'd be surprised..." I feel like that covers any conversation where you aren't sure exactly what to say or if you want to move on with a conversation. You don't even have to finish the thought. It just gets your mind off of any obnoxious comment they may have just said. If I want to go with the more honest approach, I tell them my California Love story (it's how I fell in love with California, hence the name), and they begin to understand. (Except not really. They still ask why I want to leave Texas.)

I like to think of myself as the person they wish they were. It's like they are living vicariously through me, and they'll never ever admit it. It's our little secret.

Maybe that's a little vain. Okay. I take it back.

It's just funny to me how many people I know that would like to travel all over the world, wanting to visit Paris or London or some African country they heard about from a missionary that visited their church, but they will probably never cross the border to other states. (Granted, I'm the person that wants to visit every state, but has never been out of the country. I'm not a nationalist, I swear.)

I just don't want to be that person. I don't want all I know about a place to be based solely on what I've heard growing up in the armpit of the Bible Belt.

I have this conversation with Soren every now and then. Mind you, he grew up in Washington, then lived in California for two years. The Conservative Jesus mindset isn't exactly what he grew up around.

I don't think I realized there were people that didn't know the story of Jesus until I visited California a year and a half ago. And it wasn't so much as they didn't know who he was, as much as they have their own ideas of what life is meant for. I met a man on a train, and he asked me what I was reading, which was Crazy Love at the time. (Fun fact: It was my first time to ride a train. Super exciting. I felt like Harry Potter.) I roughly explained to him what it was about, though I wasn't completely sure because I wasn't too far in it. He asked me what I thought about God, and I returned the question as I discussed my beliefs and my faith. He didn't believe in God, necessarily, but he believed there is something bigger than us. He was hoping he was doing the right thing in believing that, because he didn't want to come back as something like a bug or a cat in his next life. He was a hardcore environmentalist, which I liked discussing with him. We talked about being stewards of creation. I wish the conversation would have lasted longer, but he got kicked off the train because he didn't have a ticket.

I remember that night was some sort of huge realization for me. It was like my world had been shaken and I had been lied to my whole life. It was this lie of "Everyone knows Jesus is..."

Except not everyone knows. People may have heard of him. But that's it.

Weird. I know. But that's the Bible Belt Culture. It's believing that everyone believes the same as me. For real. And I know that is really egocentric, but the South doesn't think of it that way. The South thinks of it as life.

Did I realize this? .Well, of course not. ..not until I got out of Texas. Once I visited somewhere with a completely different worldview, I understood that there were people different than me. It wasn't that I didn't 'know' it, necessarily, but I just wasn't able to comprehend it, because I had never faced it before.

I want clarify that I did know people who were athiest or agnostic while I was growing up. (That's pretty much it, though. Not much diversity. Maybe that's just what I get for growing up in Little Lumberton.) But the difference between these people that I knew and the people all around the world that completely blew up my little Conservative Christian mindset is the fact that they, the people I knew, grew up with me in church. They knew most of the same things as I knew, but responded differently to life's circumstances.

I'm not sure if any of this is making any sense, but I hope it is. Please, ask questions. I'd love to hear what you think.

So, what are your thoughts? What comparisons have you observed between the different cultures you have experienced? Has your culture or worldview led to ignorance on your part?

Be kind.

I was just thinking, "Man, 'So-n-so' really needs to post a new blog!" Then I realized it's been awhile since I've updated.

This is a quick one. (I normally say that... then it turns out to be long. But really. I have to be at work in 15 minutes.)

It's been a long, hard week. I've wanted to cry a lot and for no particular reason.

But it boils down to this:

I'm having trouble loving people.

I ask that you bear with me as I learn patience. ...and it may be a long lesson.



That's it. I told you I'd be quick.