christmas and cursive..
...it's
christmas and yes, i'm writing something entirely unrelated to christmas.... no worries though, i just have to process the whole "christmas time" thing and then i'll be sure to update my blog christmas style.
i love when i'm at home and i start looking through boxes of my endless barrage of stuff from 26 years of life. you're always likely to find every birthday card (unless you're the type to throw 'em out..which i find personally difficult to do), stuffed animals that you cannot part with despite the fact that they have one limb hanging on by a thread and you've drawn all over it with pen when you were 4 (when you discovered that you could draw on anything to your mothers horror), old yearbooks you wouldn't be paid to show anyone, pictures, crumpled up giftwrap, etc. i'm sure you've all experienced this, so i won't bother you with the uneccesarry list of "
stuff".....
....but what i love about this is when i happen upon something rather amusing, such as your old piano lesson book that you piano teacher wrote in each week telling you things like "lift your foot off the pedal on 3 so we don't hear anthing on 4 at the end of each line. lift your hand and foot at the same time", or "a lot of wrong notes. look at the book and your hands to make sure you're playing the right notes". you get the picture...yeah, well here is
another picture:
i found this written at the front of my "hilroy" scribbler (for those Canadians out there...i used to think it said "hibroy"...because as you will soon see...i was still growing in my cursive writing skills):
"mrs. oh! you no what i have to things. to tell yow! i had the flew and hope you dont cach it i vometed tirteen times! the second ting i wanted to tell yow was that my names are Amanda1.dawn2.marie3. martens4.!
love ya from amanda your student."
oh to be a kid again... i was laughing, not only at the spelling, but at the fact that i thought it was completley serious buisness to tell her all about how i had the flu and didn't want her to catch it....and also at the randomness of me telling her my names as if there was some correlation to me having the flu.
these things make me laugh and see the humour in growing up. i hope we're always able to laugh at our mistakes to some extent...and of course, learn from them. maybe this is just more specific to my personality, but...i wanted to give you something to grin about this christmas morning.
.musings of a fast paced life.
I hate that the days pass by so quickly. Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough time to even process all the things I'm learning each day. I don't mean to start off on a negative foot, because really what I'm feeling right now isn't negative at all. I'm actually quite happy and content with where I am and what I'm a part of. Come to think of it, the first time I really felt at peace with my life, was when I first came to Seattle in June 05. I don't want to give you the idea that I was never at peace with life, because that couldn't be more false. Before I came out here that summer, I had a really good talk with my Mom where she really encouraged me to staff the summer in Seattle because she knew that I was feeling quite miserable at home. I mean, I really liked working at Second Cup, loved the girls I worked with, my friends, my church, seeing my family a lot, etc, but there was a big part of me that felt completely lifeless. I felt like I was merely inhaling and exhaling, and that was my life. Existing. Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful to God for my existence...but I felt like I had absolutely no purpose at all.
...and all of that seems like it was just a month ago! Since then I've staffed 2 summers of Mission Adventures, an Urban Internship and I'm presently staffing my 2nd DTS. I'm about to go on my 3rd outreach in less than 2 years, and my life feels just the way it sounds - BUSY!
We have been going so hard lately that I think my body is beginning to give me attitude. Yesterday our staff had a meeting that went from 9am-2pm, I was supposed to meet with someone at 4:30pm and then go to a birthday party at 7pm. Now perhaps this seems like just a busy day. Except that this is pretty literally how every day has been for the past month.. at least. At the thought of all the things I needed to get done before next friday (when I fly home to Winnipeg for Christmas); meetings, packing, lecture, one on ones, small group, etc, the thought of the rest of my day made me want to throw myself down on the floor and cry, which I almost did. Instead, I handed my phone to my housemate, shut my door and went to bed. DTS is all consuming. My day usually starts with me getting up at 6:30am and I'm doing something DTS related until 11pm that night. The whole 9-5 thing: yeah, right out the window...
BUT.... I love it! I also recognize that this is valuable, even despite the fact that there is no paycheck. It gives me purpose, it pushes me outside of the box all the time, I've learned a ridiculous amount about myself and God and a lot of other intense issues of the World, and it's pushing young people, like myself into seeing how God and their passions are intermingled and make sense. I get to see them challenged to be responsible with their knowledge. I get to see them get all fired up about social injustice and desperately want to make a change or pioneer something new. And I have the awesome privilege to do it along side of them!
So
THANK YOU for your support ... without you guys backing me in all kinds of ways...there is no way I could be here, which means I wouldn't have met the people here that I've learned so much from, I wouldn't be so passionate about social justice, or working with refugees, I would not have had the crazy amount of opportunity and time to dive in head first like I have. I might just be merely existing and the gifts God has give me, wasted. Thank you for giving me the freedom to put them to use. I hope and pray that you all, as well, find opportunity and freedom in your own lives to live a life of meaning (which by the way, doesn't have to look a thing like what it does for myself). I mean that with all of my heart. Thank You.
