Camp is Love. Love is Camp.

I keep a lot of things in my backpack: folders, notebooks, a calendar for 2013 and one for 2014, a container of homemade granola, a little book in which to write down the sporadic thoughts that invade my head and insist on being remembered, pencils (they live a really fun pencil case I got from Walmart - it has Rex from Toy Story on it), some different colored pens, highlighters, a compass (the geometry kind, not the North/East/South/West kind), my laptop and charger, a jar of peanut butter, a quite dull knife borrowed (stolen) from Harcombe (so I can eat the peanut butter), my iPod (I bought it used in 2006 and it still works just fine so that's pretty great), sunglasses, chapstick, and my heart.

My heart was given to me at Camp this summer by a little Sertoma camper, whose name I cannot share, but just know that she was amazing and adorable and I love her. She called me "Mama" and I let her. It came so naturally. In the midst of busy times, when all ten girls were talking as loudly and as quickly as they could, if she said, "Mama, can you help me tie my shoes?" I would hear her and know that she was talking to me and then help her tie her shoes. She was so slow at tying her shoes so it really sped up our whole group if she had some help. I loved getting to be her pretend mama. 

She had the cutest little freckles on her nose and cheeks. When she was scared at night, I sat on the edge of her bed and rubbed her back like my mama used to do to me when I was scared at night. I loved all of my girls that week, but she and I connected really well. 

On Friday night, when I was packing up her stuff for her, making sure that she was going home with everything she brought with her, I took her coin purse (that actually had knicknacks in it, but no coins) out of her top drawer to pack in the bag she was taking home. She was sitting on the floor watching me pack up her stuff for her and occasionally, when I asked, helping me out. Before I could put the coin purse into her bag, she took it out of my hand and started looking through the knicknacks. She took out a red velvet plush heart that said, "Be mine" on it. It looked pretty tacky.

And then she gave me the heart and then it became my heart. This was during the last week of Camp, and ever since Camp has been over, I've been thinking about it and her, my little blond Sertoma girl, my hypothetical daughter. I call all of my campers, in both Hope and Sertoma "my babies," and I mean it because they are my babies: even for those who have been coming to Camp for thirty years longer than I have been alive. They are all my babies. 

I wanted to be able to look at my heart every day so it now lives in the side pocket in my backpack (the pocket with the peanut butter, not the pocket with the iPod and sunglasses and chapstick just for clarification). I felt like that would be a better place to put it than on my sleeve because having my heart on my sleeve is just a little much. In the side pocket of my backpack it's still visible and I eat a good amount of peanut butter so I look at my heart and think about Camp multiple times per day. 

And guys, I miss Camp so bad. Here in the real world, when my face and hair look awful, I feel obligated to care and make an effort to look better, but at Camp, I feel totally comfortable no matter what I look like or how long it has been since I last showered. I have a bright blue polka-dot bow that I love to wear in my hair and I wore at least once a week during Camp, but every time I wear it here, I feel a little more obnoxious and like it's not okay to wear a bow to class. 

I'm prone to burst into song at any random point in time inside of my head, but at Camp I can burst out into song at any random point out loud and everyone around me will join enthusiastically. And if they don't, I will tickle them until they do. 

At Camp, if I don't get a chance to use the Internet for a very long amount of time or don't answer my phone for a while (or maybe at all), that's okay. People understand because they know I'm at Camp, and they know (or at least I hope they do) that I'm doing my life's calling and trivial things like technological communication and social media are the least of my worries.

I talk about Camp like I should talk about Jesus. I talk about it so much that it that the people around me know my stories before I tell them and are familiar with a good amount of Camp songs (especially the birdie song, my very favorite). I make sure everyone knows about my feelings for Camp and how it has made me into a person with a heart of velvet plush cheesiness. And I love it that way. If I mention something about Camp to a person I'm talking to and they seem confused, I know that I've done a terrible job letting them know what I am about.

The other day I got to have lunch with some people from another camp (I'm not cheating on Hope/Sertoma, I promise! I was guilted into going and then they bought me a McAlister's four cheese griller so what was I supposed to say to that? I said yes and have remained faithful) and hearing them talk about it was really cool. Their camp sounded great. If I didn't have a Camp to which my heart already belonged so wholly, I would consider working there, but I do, so I won't. I am perfectly content where I am. More than simply that, I actively want Camp to always be a major part of my life, even if there comes a time when I can no longer be there every day all summer long and sometimes random days during the year. So yes, I guess you could consider this me defining my relationship with Camp. 

Thank you, Camp, for giving me my heart. I will use it to the best of my ability to be kind and unassuming always and to share with people how great you are, and also how Jesus is the only way I am able to stay alive alert awake enthusiastic, loving, and whole.

I had a plan for my life, and Camp was not in it. Mostly what was in it was sleeping and reading, which are good things, but not as good as Camp. And then I worked at Camp sporadically for half of a summer, and now I am in the process of ditching the plan (it's much harder to do than it is to write) because God has made it evident to me that the things He plans for me are far more superior than the things I plan for me. So the new plan: love Jesus, love Camp, love peanut butter.

Love, 
Lauralicious

The Thing With Feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops - at all
 - Emily Dickinson

When I was in elementary school, I was a Girl Scout. Our quite interesting troop of girls had a lot of adventures together. One time, we, along with our dads, took a camping trip. And by "camping trip," I mean we all spent the night in tents in one girl's grandpa's backyard. I love camping and I love my dad, so I enjoyed it a lot. We played games and told scary stories and roasted marshmallows that night, and in the morning we had a treasure hunt. I like treasure a lot. Notice that the verb "like" is in the present tense because I do still very much like treasure.

So here's what we did: there was a creek in the yard where we were, and we were given shovels, strainers, and buckets and told to go at it...and I did. I dug and dug and didn't care about how dirty my clothes got (they were so dirty when I was finished. I'm pretty sure my mom refused to let me in the house when I got home later that day) or how graceful or smart I looked. I just cared about finding treasure, and I found so much. There were very brightly colored jewels and I knew when I found them that I was a very rich and lucky girl. I felt like a princess. Then I was told that the jewels weren't real and that my ownership of them did not automatically turn me into royalty. That was kind of hard and sad for me, but I got through it. I continued to believe for the next few years (yes, years) that those plastic dollar-store jewels were naturally occurring in the creek bed where we had been digging. One day I asked my dad if he remembered that camping trip we took with the Girl Scouts and how that girl's grandfather's house had gems in the creek, and my dad thought I was really dumb because apparently the jewels had been planted by the dads before we started digging for them, meaning that they were not naturally occurring in this man's backyard. However, I still like to think that I found real-life treasure that day. It would have been fun to say I was in the Girl Scout troop that discovered precious gems in a creek off Lake Keowee.*

What I want to share about is mica. While I was digging that day through the sand with so much dedication to the discovery of something Great, I kept digging up mica. Mica isn't very exciting, especially when you are intent on finding precious gems. But it's persistent. And, especially in a creek bed, mica is shiny and likes to be noticed. It isn't treasure, and you are aware of that when you find it, but it's still something, and mica is there when you realize that you are not going to find real gems...whether you realize this in the moment, or years and years later. The deeper I dug into this creek bed, the fewer jewels I found, but no matter how far down I dug, I could still find mica. It was plentiful, but not in an annoying or exasperating kind of way. Finding something is better than finding nothing, even if the something you find isn't what you were looking for, which is why finding mica wasn't so bad although it wasn't quite as cool as real-live gems.

I've recently realized that I consider hope to be like mica. Hope isn't grand gestures in the form of fireworks or diamonds or daffodils (although I have no oppositions to any of those things, especially daffodils), but it's ordinary, small moments of encouragement. Hope is subtle and you sometimes have to look for it, but I like it that way. 

I work at Camps Hope/Sertoma at the Clemson Outdoor Lab during the summers and I am a big fan of it. I like to consider myself a proponent both of hope as a general concept and of Hope as a Camp. Working at Camp has taught me a lot about how to love people who are not necessarily so happily lovely all of the time, how to be loved by others, how to find hope when I'm lying on the floor with a constipated fifty-six year old woman (by singing "You Are My Sunshine" over and over, because she is my sunshine), and an inexhaustible list of quite a lot of other things. 

Camp has taught me that hope is a choice. 

And so, with that, I felt like it would be appropriate if I had one of these bracelets, to remind me to make that choice often, as in every day. All the time. 

So I bought one. And I wear it all the time. I love it. It makes me think of Camp, which makes my heart warm and happy.

However, this Monday, I was grumpy. I try to not be grumpy in front of people generally, because that does not encourage anyone or build them up, but Monday I was straight-up crabby. It was to the point that I went to the ice cream store on campus and leaned on their counter and begged them in a whiny voice for ice cream. I just really felt like I needed some sugar to help me survive the remainder of the day, and it really did help. 

But before the ice cream, because I was so grumpy, I was walking around just glaring at people who tried to smile at me from across hallways and in classrooms, etc. People were trying to be nice to me and I just wouldn't have it. I was angry at my body for needing sleep. I was mad that I couldn't go sit in All In and write all the time instead of sitting in the library and studying all the time. And then I had a thought: When I am grumpy like this, how am I representing hope? Not well, I can say that much. The people I glared at could see the bracelet on my wrist, and I was not being a good proponent of hope to them at all. I was being a hypocrite.

So this is how I would like to represent hope in the future:

1) as something that is living - "According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3) - without Jesus we would be so dead, and He, our literal living hope, gives us life. And we know that Jesus is eternal, so this hope is never-ending and that is so comforting to my heart. There is nothing that can happen to me anytime in my life that Jesus will not be there for.

Emily Dickinson in her poem says that "hope...sings the tune without the words/and never stops - at all." You know what's cool about that? Jesus. Jesus is cool. Because He "never stops - at all," either. I like Emily Dickinson so much. I don't know if she felt the same way I do about Jesus, but I think she accessed that feeling of hope that He provides. She shows this in her use of the hyphen on the last line of her poem. She says hope "sings the tune without the words/and never stops" and she could have stopped there and gotten her point across. Anyone reading her poem would have been able to tell that hope is a long-term situation. But by adding this hyphen on the end of the line: "- at all," she is showing that she had to add something else on to the end of the line so that it would be communicated to anyone who read her words that she doesn't just mean that hope lasts a long time, but she means that it is a permanent state of mind. It doesn't stop - at all. Hope lasts forever, because Jesus is our hope, and Jesus doesn't die. My God's not dead; He's alive! He's alive! 

2) as something to find great joy in - "Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." (Romans 12:11-12) - That's a lot of things to do. But if you work backwards through those things Paul says to do, it's a little less daunting. Being constant in prayer draws me close to God, and it is only through prayer and a very intimate relationship with Him am I able to be patient in tribulation (also being patient in general isn't quite my strongest suit ever). When I am close with the Lord, I rejoice in hope because it gets me through dark times...actually, it gets me through all times. I serve the Lord through and because of the patience and joy that He gives me, and thus am (trying to be) fervent in spirit and not slothful in zeal. I have a fire for Jesus. It's a small fire, and He's the one who lights it and stirs it and keeps it going. The biggest thing, however, is hope, because Jesus is the hope that I find joy in. He is the hope that gives me patience in tribulation and He is the hope I pray to in the morning when my alarm goes off and I get very sad because I would rather be asleep. Jesus is what gets me through all things.

3) as a component of faith - "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1) - You know what's interesting? That hope and music are similar. You cannot see either of them. You can see evidence of them existing, like you can see musical instruments being played and you can see sheet music and you can hear music all around your ears and heart, but you cannot see actual music. And hope is the same. You can see the things that bring hope to people, and you can see people rejoicing and being inspired in and by hope, but you cannot visually see actual hope. 

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, but it doesn't mean that I always get what I hoped for - it means that I trust in Jesus to bring to fruition the things that glorify His kingdom, and if I can be a helpful (albeit quite broken) vessel in doing that, then I will, as much as I can. It's easier said than done. But what I'm saying is that hope isn't easy, and neither is life. Jesus is both of those things and he makes them possible. 

If I focus my mind on these things: having and believing in a living hope that does not disappoint, finding joy in the hope that Jesus is, and following that hope through so that I have a stronger faith as a result of it, then I am wearing my bracelet well. But if I am not, then I should just take off the bracelet because it is misleading to all of the people around me (even the people who know already what hope is). As a follower of Jesus, I get to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. And I want to glorify God by being an example of hope to those around me: the straight-up, stripped of fanciful things, honest and vulnerable hope.

Peace out, Girl Scouts!

Love,
Lauralicious

*Disclaimer: the Girl Scout story is more for entertainment purposes than it is actually informative/relevant

Now Go Put on Some Socks

Once upon a time, it was January 16, 2013, a Wednesday morning.

It was during that week that it was raining and raining and it wouldn't stop. I have a hard enough time maintaining joy when it's cold outside, so the rain in addition to the cold was treacherous for me. I had been in the library doing some homework and accidentally drinking black coffee and I was headed across library bridge to print out some stuff in Holmes and then go have lunch in Harcombe. 

When I walked outside I got so sad because it was raining again and I had French-braided my hair that morning and the rain meant I had to put my hood on my head which would mess up my carefully done hair, which I know is pretty trivial, but I'm just saying. I like my hair. I put my hood on and started walking. I was wearing Chacos instead of rain boots which was just a bad decision for my toes. It was cold and raining, and that can put an end to any good mood for me. I was exhausted and didn't care about anything anymore. I put my hood on my head out of anger at the sky for its insistence to spew cold liquid on me but I didn't zip up my jacket or fix my hood when it fell off. I was really mad.

I saw a guy a few steps in front of me holding an unopened umbrella and in my head I fussed at him: "Are you crazy, man? It's raining and you haven't opened your umbrella? What good is that doing for anyone at all?" But of course I said nothing out loud.

And then suddenly he was next to me with his umbrella opened and over my head. I laughed kind of nervously and said, "Thank you," because I'm polite, but then I didn't know what to do or say after that. We walked together in peace and silence.

He asked me where I was going, to which I replied, "Holmes. Do you know where that is?" And he did, which was nice. I asked him where he was going, and he said, "I didn't start out the day with a plan, so I don't see why I should have one now." I found this surprising, because this is college, and you have to plan out your time, because if you don't, you'll just do fun stuff all the time, which is fun, but not productive. I always have a plan. I am a planner. But he was not, which I respected and appreciated.

Being under the umbrella with him allowed me to see him a little more closely: he was African-American and he was wearing dark, baggy clothes and he had a piercing in his right ear, but only his right ear. 

We were walking but not talking. What do you say to a random guy you've never met who holds a black umbrella over your grumpy head? I didn't know the protocol for this situation. It didn't bother me at all that we weren't talking but I felt like I should say something to be polite, so I introduced myself. I said, "I'm Laura." He said it was nice to meet me but he didn't say his name, so I had to ask him, and he said, "My friends call me Truth." 

1. It was weird that he said his friends called him Truth, but never actually said what his name was. 2. What kind of name is Truth? I decided that maybe I misheard him.

We kept walking and not talking. I didn't try to initiate any more conversation. And then he asked me if I liked nature. What kind of question is that?

I had to discern whether or not I actually liked nature, because nature is really big. I know that all of my friends really really like nature, but I've always been more of an inside-reading-a-book kind of girl, but then I realized that I absolutely like nature. A lot. I decided that my most favorite thing about it is the sky. I really am a big fan of the sky, and I like it the most when it is not heartlessly ejecting cold liquid on me. 

So I told him that, and he seemed relieved to hear that, which I thought was kind of peculiar, but this was already an odd conversation so it didn't bother me too much. We were about halfway to Holmes at this point.

He told me I smelled good, which is definitely weird. In high school, one of my friends used to tease me and tell me I smelled bad all the time, which legitimately hurt my feelings and made me feel insecure about how I smelled, so I was quite surprised and encouraged by this very specific compliment from this guy who didn't know that about me. I noticed that he smelled gently of cigarettes.

We were passing people on our walk who had umbrellas or rain jackets with them, and they all looked depressed and mission-minded and unhappy, which he pointed out. He sounded sad about it. I mentioned that it's difficult to be cheerful in weather like this, and he agreed with me but still remained affected and saddened by the sight of these people. It was as if they weren't thinking about anything more important than getting where they were going, staying as dry as possible, and avoiding thinking about deeper things, like how they felt about nature or how the person next to them smelled. It was as if they had no joy. 

We reached Holmes. He walked me right up to the front door, and I made sure to be genuine when I thanked him, because I genuinely appreciated his kindness to me. I asked him his name again, and, again, he said, "My friends call me Truth." 

I said it was nice to meet him, and a girl from my hall was holding the door to the lobby open for me, so I had to go. As I was about to turn away, Truth said, "If I don't see you again, never forget this conversation." I said, "Okay," and went inside. 

That was one of the most unusual interactions I've ever had with another human. I think that either he was quite a melodramatic creepy guy who tells self-conscious girls that they smell good, or Jesus sent him to me to say, "Hey Laura, the world isn't about you so quit feeling sorry for yourself, but here's a nice guy to share his umbrella with you. Now go put on some socks." I prefer the latter.

It has been ten months and I have not seen Truth since, so I'm telling this story to remember the conversation like he told me to. So that's what happened. The end.  

Love, Lauralicious

I Love to Laugh

Y'all, I get really weird when I'm off sleep. Like really weird. I have emotional breakdowns and I yell at people and I can't eat and for the past few days my face has been oddly pulsing/spazzing in an effort to make me go to sleep. And all I can think about is swings. Not mood swings, but the kind of swings at the park.

Do you remember how much fun swings were? They were always my favorite thing to do at the park because you could feel the wind on your face and you were moving and playing but you could think at the same time. You could sing while swinging. I sometimes used to read books while swinging low to the ground. You could do it alone or with friends. Swinging was the best. I still do it whenever possible. 

I loved swinging. I could go so high and it was so terrifying and exhilarating and I couldn't stop. One of my friends fell off of a swing and broke his arm, but that didn't bother me at all. I kept on swinging because of the joy it brought to my heart. 

And do you remember learning to pump? One of the reasons I decided I wanted to be a teacher when I grow up is because I loved teaching other kids how to pump. I felt like I had this lump of helpful knowledge that needed to be shared, so I imparted my wisdom onto little kids and taught them how to do it. 

Guys, I just want to be a kid again. I miss feeling revelationally inspired at the end of a good and powerful movie and then running around with my arms out wanting to change the world but not knowing how.  I miss playing pretend every day with my best friend. I miss the privileged feeling of being allowed to stay up until nine to finish a book. I miss tree houses and invincibility. I miss having baby sisters, because now they're both old and not babies anymore. I was the last kid on my street to learn how to ride a two-wheeler, but once I did we all had so much fun riding up and down the street together. I miss that. I miss rollerblading in the rain at night singing songs. I miss reading the American Girl magazine and taking all of their quizzes and wearing exorbitant amounts of purple lip gloss. I miss falling asleep in the car and my daddy carrying me to my bed. I miss having feet fights with my little brother and playing Barbies in the basement all by myself. I miss Arthur, my favorite show. I miss not being allowed to drink caffeine after 4PM. I don’t miss riding the bus home from school, but I do miss making clover chains at recess and I miss my mom buying me a Lunchable on the last day of school every year (the only day a year I was allowed to have a Lunchable). I miss dancing in my room with my CD player to Hilary Duff and Jump5. I miss eating honeysuckles in the backyard. I miss playing in our woods that weren't really woods but felt like a huge forest. I read a book every day when I was little, and I miss having time to do that and I miss stories.

Grown-ups and teenagers and people older than me always told me to enjoy my time being little. They told me it only gets harder from there. And they were right. But I couldn't have enjoyed childhood more than I did. 

I enjoyed it the most when I wasn't actually trying to. When I was in those moments, running around, playing in leaf piles and pretending I was an Egyptian and trying to make mud bricks and wearing clothes that I thought were stylish (but weren't at all and made my mom roll her eyes at me a lot) and tap dancing on the bathroom floor every Sunday morning while I got ready for church and eating cookie dough without worrying about how it would affect the volume of my stomach, when I wasn't thinking about how I was going to have to learn decimals soon in math or how sad I was going to be when my best friend moved to Europe in a few months or how one day I was going to have to do all my homework on a computer and not have time to read books is when I loved being a kid. I felt full of joy - so full that I could spill over and not have lost any joy at all. 

My dad always told me to wear a brick on my head so that I would stop growing. But I didn't want to stop growing. I wanted to be a big girl and I wanted to go to middle school and I wanted to have a cell phone and I wanted to live in an apartment and I wanted to do all of these big-kid things. But my dad was right. He knew he would be. And for that reason, he gave me a brick a few years ago - just something to look at when I'm sad about not being a kid anymore. It's in my closet at home (I'm planning on getting it and bringing it back to my apartment next time I go home) and now that I'm old I do wish I had worn it on my head when I was little enough for it to be effective. 

I keep on doing all of these things like paying my own rent and making my friends take medicine when they're sick and washing my own dishes and cleaning up after myself and then saying, "It's kind of like I'm a grown-up!" And then I realized that I kind of am. I'm definitely getting close. I turned nineteen and a half on Monday, guys. That's a milestone. As my dear friend JC (who turned nineteen and a half the day after I did) pointed out to me, now that we've passed nineteen and a half, we're closer to twenty-one than we are to eighteen. And that is scary. When he pointed this out to me I yelled at him (over text) and said, "I won't grow up! You can't make me! They'll never catch me alive!" 

So Proverbs 31:25 says, "She laughs at the time to come." Another version says, "She laughs without fear of the future." And since I can't go back to childhood (which I would prefer to do), that is what I'm going to do. It doesn't mean not planning ahead or laughing at the future in an effort to mock it, but it means enjoying the moment you're in. If you worry enough about the future, your laughter and happiness chords will shrivel up and die (probably). 

I like to personify non-human objects, and apparently so did Matthew, the guy who wrote the book of Matthew, so we probably would have gotten along well. He says, "Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself." He gives tomorrow a human trait: worrying, and at the same time, relieves us from having to do our own worrying. I appreciate that greatly because I am a world-class type-A worrier. 

So what I am saying is yes, sometimes you might have to skip hanging out with fun friends so that you can do homework, and yes, sometimes worrying happens. And sometimes bad/sad things happen. But when you laugh, do so without fear of the future. Enjoy happiness. Squeeze the juice out of the good times and praise God for them and for the joy He allows you to feel as a result of them. But don't forget to be responsible. Also, you are never too old to swing. Swinging can seriously take me from a bad mood to a good one (because of adrenaline and endorphins and other science words I learned as a result of growing up, so maybe there are benefits?) and it lightens my heart. And light hearts are better than heavy hearts any day.

Love,
Lauralicious

Everything I Know I Learned from Anne

Everything I know I learned from Anne of Green Gables. 

I don't really have one favorite book. I have about thirty four favorite books. But Anne of Green Gables (and the other seven books in the Anne series) is definitely one of them. Also I like the accompanying movie almost as much as I like the book. The movie is different from the book for sure. And the second and third movies completely change the story of Anne, but they're still great, because they are Anne. Anne with an E. Whenever I watch Anne of Green Gables, I swoon excessively because of Gilbert. Just look at him. Sometimes if I spend too much time alone, I get really sad that he's not real and that I can't marry him next week. Or the week after. Or ever because he's not a real person.

"He was a tall boy, with curly brown hair, roguish hazel eyes and a mouth twisted into a teasing smile"

Here are the best things I've learned from dear old Anne - 

1) Bosom friends is a real thing.

Neither Anne nor Diana had any idea that the other existed or that they were about to be in each other's lives, but then suddenly they were and they solemnly swore to be bosom friends forever. And they kept that promise really well. Bosom friends are the people with whom your heart connects so well and that is a thing to be celebrated and embraced heartily. It's like your hearts are magnetically attracted to each other. And once you meet, nothing can tear you apart. Not New Zealand or boys or lactose intolerance. You don't have to be the same age. You just have to have the same heart and then your hearts are connected forever and ever amen. BONUS: you can have multiple bosom friends (I definitely do).

2) And, similarly, romance doesn't have to mean boys.

Anne and Gilbert don't really get together until the second book (although it is obvious that they need to from their first meeting onward). I sometimes get it into my head that love means boys but it doesn't. It means love. Anne looks at flowers and sees affection in the way that they are made and the way that they interact with the sun. She does not need a dumb boy to experience romance. Before she and Gilbert were together, "Boys were, when she thought about them at all, merely possible good comrades."

3) Imagination is a wonderful fabulous thing. 

Use it. Dream it. Love it. Anne and I do. Anne names all the scenes in her life, like the Barry's pond: "Lake of Shining Waters," etc. Her life is so enriched by imagination and it is how she coped with her life before she came to Green Gables, because her pre-Green Gables life was not so hot. She gets herself into so many unfortunate situations as a result of her imagination, and her life is so funny and never boring and therefore exuberant all the time as a result.  

4) Growing up doesn't mean you're not fun anymore.

When Anne goes off to college, Marilla is so sad because the little girl she adopted not on purpose and accidentally fell in love with is leaving and no longer needs her, but Anne says, "I'm not a bit changed - not really. I'm only just pruned down and branched out. The real me - back here - is just the same. It won't make a bit of difference where I go or how much I change outwardly; at heart I shall always be your little Anne, who will always love you and Matthew and dear Green Gables more and better every day of her life." And that is exactly how I feel about growing up as well. Growing up means that sometimes life is just no fun and it's awful and you don't sleep so your eyes unfortunately and not purposely look like a stoner's and people want you to do stuff for them all the time and it is no longer required for your development that you play so you never get to play and then you are miserable. But play anyway! In addition to fulfilling your grown-up responsibilities. At Camp we like to say, "be childlike, but not childish" and that's how I want my grown-up self to be. Responsible and joyful. Mostly joyful. However, keep in mind that "one can't get over the habit of being a little girl all at once." 

Little girl Anne and (almost) grown-up Anne

5) There doesn't have to be similar blood between you for you to be a family.

Matthew and Marilla were brother and sister, and then Anne came and the three of them made a little family. There wasn't exactly a mom or a dad and it wasn't any kind of normal family, but they were absolutely a family. And I love that. 

7) Apologizing is necessary (especially if you break a chalkboard over someone's head).

When Anne blew up at Rachel Lynde for calling her hair ugly, Marilla didn't allow Anne to do anything fun until she apologized. She also had to apologize to Gil after she broke a chalkboard over his head. And I respect that she did that. I love Anne's passion and how real she is, and I'm so glad that she apologizes after she does foolish things. Apologizing is (very) important. Even though everyone in the world would love Anne if she hadn't apologized (because who doesn't love Anne?), it's necessary to do so because it shows that she cares and she admits when she's wrong (which is really hard for her). 

8) On a related note, it's never "just hair."

Hair matters, especially if you're Anne. It's not a bad thing to care about your hair. Just don't obssess or injure anyone's skull over it. 

9) Be present. 

I love the way Anne is so present (but not always so present that she puts the right ingredients in her puddings unfortunately). She's very present socially. She cares so deeply for people and for things (and for her hair), which is sometimes unfortunate because it tends to leads her to do foolish things like breaking chalkboards over people's heads or walking along rooftops and spraining her ankle, which is probably not ideal, but that's just who Anne is. I love her for it. When you are present and there for your life, you love it and enjoy it so much more.

10) Be yourself because you're beautiful and wonderful and I love you.

Guys, Anne is my hero. And I like to think that I am her. She is sometimes discouraged by herself, but not so much that she tries to subdue herself. She knows that this is just how she is. She embraces her boldness and her tendency to get in the most interesting of situations. She's a huge mess, but she knows it. And me too! Or so I like to think. Anne is just so much herself and she taught me to embrace my own self.

11) Love in real life is different (and better!) than love in movies. 

This is actually from Anne of Avonlea, the second book in the series, but I'm still using it because it's great: “Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps...perhaps...love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath. ”

12) Be adventurous.

Adventures are SO FUN, guys, like accidentally floating down a river pretending to be the Lady of the Lake and then almost drowning only to be saved by Gilbert. That is an adventure. "Having adventures just comes natural to some people." And even if adventures don't come naturally to you, have them anyways. Adventures are the best. One of my (many) life mottos is: "Adventure is out there!"

I could keep writing about Anne, but I might be the only one who loves her (and Gilbert) this much. So this is where I will conclude.

Anne doesn't love Jesus like I do (but I'm willing to forgive her because she's fictional), so she doesn't tell us to love Him, but I want to tell you to. Because Jesus is the reason characters like Anne can exist. And He is the reason that we can exist. And He is our joy. 

Love,
Lauralicious