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| In honor of the twentieth day of march (and, truth be told, because i'm pretty tired of school), twenty things i believe in*:
1. GOD. and that his grace is bigger and wider and deeper than i'll ever understand.
2. Consideration. This should be carefully distinguished from "thoughtfulness" which implies overtly sweet, generous acts. And while that's quite nice, awareness and sensitivity to others is nicer, I think. Put yourself in the other person's shoes. Simple as that.
3. Gratitude. If you appreciate it, say it. show it. write it. it doesn't take much. Rewarding someone's kindness with appreciative acknowledgment isn't hard, and sometimes, it's all they need. Find gratitude for the big and small things every.single.day. I guarantee your outlook on life improves.
4. The Details. These are the things that make life rich. They make relationships personal to two people. They lend life and clarity and fondness to the mundane and cliche. Cherish them.
5. French fries with honey and ketchup. unbelievable. try it and tell me i'm wrong.
6. Sacrifice. Everything worth anything takes a little - or a whole lot - of it. Be willing to put others before yourself, to live your life for Him.
7. Asymmetry. It's more fun. And frankly, too much symmetry freaks me out.
8. Reading "for fun". Quotations because it's not really for the sake of "fun," per se, but because you can learn much about the beauty of life and love and friendships and families and tragedy and glorious joys from well written works. Again, it's all in the details.
9. Never going to bed upset. I can't do it.
10. SPF. It's all about prevention, baby.
11. Diction. Using the right word. For example: "Over" is when a plane flies over a barren field in Madison. It is not having over 20,000 pages to read per night. That would be "more than." It's a pet peeve. Forgive me?
12. There, Their, They're, Your, and You're. Like nails dragged across a chalkboard. Guess what my major was.
13. Investing. Mostly in people. But I suppose I believe in investing money wisely, too, though I really must work on that one.
14. Seeing as much of the world as I possibly can. I can't wait to learn and explore and photograph and write and inhale all of the incredible beauty and sadness.
15. That every child should be exposed to music. Simply because I feel like lack of appreciation for music takes a sizable chunk out of a full life experience.
16. Give, give, give. And give some more. If you've been blessed, reallocate those resources.
17. That the greatest fears are unfounded. Because if they were founded, I'd like to believe that one could pinpoint the source, address it, and mitigate, if not completely extinguish that fear.
18. And that the greatest beauty is unassuming.
19. In smelling good. I'm a very scent-oriented person. On the other hand, this could also be a subpoint of "consideration."
20. Love. You knew it was coming! In giving more of it than you receive, if possible, and loving hard. Diluted love is not for me. Strive for the fullest, most forgiving and unconditional kind. Beware the myriad scrapes and disclosures along the way, but keep going. When it starts to have the potential to hurt a whole lot, it's just starting to get good. :)
* i really do believe, i swear! and if i could just follow through, i'd be all set.
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| only in wisconsin, would a case include the following line:
"...at the time of the crash [defendant] was going home from a wedding reception so that he could milk the cows."
yeah. get me back to a city.
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| life is a series of decisions.
mine lately have been about investment. or perhaps any and every decision is one of who, what, how to invest? or to put the who over the what? or the where over the who? or to give up in utter frustration because you can't for the life of you figure out the how?
why are we so eager to grow up, to shake free from our parents' guidance, only to face ourselves, our uncertainties, our lack of meaningful experiences, our lack of wisdom ripe with age and love poured so generously, our inability to make these decisions with a certainty, a faith, a self-confidence? i suppose this is where the learning takes place, where the growing begins.
i think that law school has changed me considerably, but not in the ways i thought it might, or in the ways others warned me it would. i think i am less competitive and more skeptical, less trusting and more guarded, less logical and more emotional, and my life has less balance and more stress, although this, i must admit, was expected. and, when stressed, my body has taken upon itself to shut down, somehow. to reject the idea of food, to want sleep more than a feeling of productivity and accomplishment, to want to cry more than finish the mounds of work in front of me. in short, law school has made me lose a lot of valuable perspective, made me more selfish and self-absorbed, more willing to cry over one bad grade than two short articles about the genocide in darfur. i don't like it, and if you feel me moving in this direction, pull me back...please.
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| on saturday morning, i spent some time reading short stories of love and loss and life to an elderly woman with a young soul. ruth. she is completely blind and partially deaf, and would continue to read avidly if not for her sight.
there was a story about a woman who lost her fiancee in an all too quick bout with cancer. devastated by the loss, the woman stopped responding to the outside world. she only wore his clothes, stopped talking. when asked by a psychiatrist to draw a picture of how she felt, she drew a snake eating itself, tail first. the picture and the story suggested that sometimes when faced with tragedy so sudden and traumatic, the body's first response is to turn in on itself, exclude the rest of the world, so that it can conserve all energy possible to sustain itself through such a terrible loss. the body becomes self-indulgent, forgetful of who it was, functional only in survival mode.
she had no choice but to bear this loss. she, however, did not want to bear it, so instead she tried to stop the world from spinning on into a new phase of her life: life without him.
when something is broken, it is rarely, if ever, the same again. sometimes mended, but perhaps shaped differently, a little weaker or perhaps somewhat stronger. and when it comes to the heart, it is hard to imagine the heart ever forgetting.
perhaps the lesson is that you cannot let uncontrollable loss hold you back from living life. if you allow yourself to continually look back, lamenting on your loss, your fate may be similar to that of lot's wife, who perished.
accept. learn. grow. learn. embrace.
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have
set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life.
- Deut 30:19
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| yesterday, my property law professor brought her 9 year old son into class with her. he sat at the front and asked the occasional question, including ones about the property rights involved in stem cell research. but it was only at the moment when he made the following statement that i was convinced of his genius:
"...but why would they want to let the lawyers in? i mean, i can see the doctors - they need the doctors, but i don't get why the lawyers are a necessity."
son, you are nine and i am twenty two and we are asking ourselves the same questions.
so, i tend to compulsively listen to songs i like. over and over and over, until all the words are memorized, every little pause, every little skipped beat. until, of course, i can stand them not once more...at least for a few days. :]
there have been two on repeat lately.
what kind of world do you want?
think anything.
let's start at the start
build a masterpiece
...
lose the earthquakes,
keep the faults,
fill the oceans
lose the salt
let every man
own his own land,
can you dig it baby?
...
tomorrow's calling.
["world," five for fighting]
and, in tandem with it, an oldie, but forever a favorite:
over the mountains and the sea
your river runs with love for me
and i will open up my heart and let the healer set me free
i'm happy to be in the truth
and i will daily lift up my hands
for i will always sing of when your love came down
i could sing of your love forever.
ten, maybe twelve times a day, i wonder if maybe law school was a mistake. if perhaps i rushed into it, should've waited a year before heading to grad school, because really, in the scheme of my life, how much difference would one year have made? at 21, i suppose a year feels substantial. at 22 while struggling to find God's purpose for your life, a year doesn't feel like so long to contemplate your life plan.
i applied to law school knowing i never wanted to practice law. i'm a semester into law school knowing with much greater certainty that i never, ever want to practice law.
my thought was that my heart lay in effecting change. social justice stuff, you know, the usual? perhaps not so much in the states, but overseas. what, exactly, i would do, and how, i had no idea. work at the aclu and CUP led me to believe that working on a close level with people is amazing. but then, you only help that handful. how do you reach the community? the city? the society? so then it seemed that, if you were going to have to play the game, face the political machine, you needed to know the rules. and law school teaches you the rules.
but even after one semester, you become so innundated with rule-learning, it gets harder to see, to remember, to have faith that learning the rules is a valuable step in this whole process.
law school is nowhere as difficult or demanding as med school. but perhaps the hardest part of it is the environment, the people. law school attracts a certain type of person. these people look at job postings, sit through classes, and join law school clubs with fervor, because something about the law excites them. it interests them, it motivates them through their 12 hour days and endless pages of reading and briefing. me? it's a struggle. i look at job postings and club listings and nothing, nothing, nothing excites me. i write memos and think that even if i could make $120,000 + a year to just write memos, it would not be worth it. i read materials for classes and think, hmm, this would make interesting dinner conversation. and that's about it. it is far from something i could see motivating the rest of my life.
so where does this leave me? i think it leaves me wanting to quit. and that scares me. because i have never truly wanted to quit something so substantial before, and because to stop now and leave would take more courage than i think i have in me. so maybe some time off? to refocus? my heart says yes, go on missions for a year. six months. three, even. and then it will be either easier to come back or easier to walk away.
it is not hard work i am afraid of. it is losing my heart that once broke for the things of God's heart that i fear.
i'm a planner. but this isn't mine to plan.
...
edit: sorry, i'm incompetent. if anyone wants to look at my source code & tell me where that line is coming from...greatly appreciated :)
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