The Feet of Crows

There is a time coming, and when that time is here, I won't want people to think I'm older than I look, and my jokes about being an old lady won't be funny because they won't be jokes, and when I'm deciding which shoes to buy, I'll care more than I currently do about arch support. It's the time when I'll have crow's feet.

I have a lot of days coming in my life, and one of those will be the day when I'll look in the mirror and discover some new wrinkles around my eyes. I have no doubts that I will have crow's feet; I smile a lot and I squint a lot, so I'm basically asking for it. They'll slowly take their time to settle into my face, and then will come the day where I notice, and maybe do a double take, and then accept it. This is for that day.

I want to always be twenty (I've said that about every age since I was seventeen) and I want to always have the assurance of a forgiving metabolism and friends who will let me talk their ears off or be wordless, but love me in those and in between. I want to always have my own specific coffee shop where I can go to retreat from life when it's being heavy. I want to know that my dad is my financial advisor and he won't let any major disasters happen. I want to know that if I feel like I'm drowning with life, it's only until the semester ends. I want to always have girls over on Monday nights to watch tv and do homework and talk to me while I make my meals for the week.

But change is coming. This school year is wrapping up and winding down, and it has me thinking about how, in the foreseeable-ish future, I'll be on my way out of here, to a place in life where I'm no longer a student, where I don't live within two miles of 95% of my social group, where life is more ongoing than a semester system. I will be in the world of grown-ups, even if I don't feel like I'm worthy of that term.

I've always been young and small and growing, and I'm confused and curious about how I'll be one day when I'm just not anymore. I want to know what I'll be thinking at the moment I find crow's feet on my face. I want to know if I'll ever feel less like a girl and more like a woman.

There are a lot of things to learn between now and when grown-up life hits me. Anne of Green Gables says, "Isn't it splendid to think of all of the things there are to find out?" It is.

And it's splendid to think of all of the things that will happen in life. I'm young, and the thing about being young is that it's all plans and hopes and things. I'm so interested to see which of the things I want to happen in life do actually happen, and which ones become obsolete, and which ones fade into nuggets of memory by the time the feet of crows are found on my face.

Love,
Lauralicious

All You Need Is

Think about the qualities of toilet paper: It can be tough. It can be soft. It can run out at the moment you need it the most, which ruins everything - or it can make a bad day that much less bad. Substitutes for it exist, but they really are just not worth investing in. Sometimes people waste it, which is not cool. Sometimes it runs out and then you're just sitting and feeling abandoned.You always need it, but there are times in life where you need more, or a different kind. And sometimes you have to ask for it, which is humiliating, but there's not really a way of getting around that. At times you have to give it to people when they ask for it or if you just think they might need it. It has been present in some moments that you never ever want repeated. Sometimes it breaks, and that is not great - the emotional consequences for that can be long-term. If you don't need it or use it, that's a problem. Sometimes the way it's packaged makes it look incredibly appealing, but once you have it, it's mediocre. When it's distributed in bulk, its quality is lower. You have to be taught and also learn from life experience how to use it wisely and well. 

The same things are all true of love. Not the kind of love that is of God, but the kind that humans can do. Each has a cost: for toilet paper, it's money, and for love, it's your heart. 

A heart is a lot to give. I'm often conflicted because I know that if I didn't have a heart, things would be easier. I wouldn't be distracted or slowed down by emotions. And it's the same with toilet paper: if it didn't exist, and if the reasons for needing it didn't exist, things would be easier. And maybe grosser. But God is love and love is good, and so is toilet paper. These two thing exist for a reason, which means to use them instead of wish them away.

But even the greatest toilet paper eventually will run out. And that's how we know that God's love is greater than our love or any toilet paper: His love can cast out fear, and nothing else can. Toilet paper cannot cast out fear because eventually it has to run out. Human love cannot cast out fear because humans are sinful and skewed and can't be everything another human needs. Both human love and toilet paper end, break, and disappoint, but God's love never ever will. 

And so true rest is found only in Christ (and not in the bathroom). In Him we can take the deepest of deep breaths. There is no hygiene product to which to compare Him. He is greater than the finest two-ply.  

Love,

Lauralicious

Hope and the Holy Spirit

There's a certain depression that comes on beautiful days, because I know I can't keep them. Springtime is so lovely, big, blue, warm. When it's like this outside, there's one minute where I forget all of my responsibilities and worries and stressors and I'm just happy. And then I remember that I have things to do, and then I resent all of those things because I want nothing but the thing I can't have: spring bliss, forever. 

Once, and just once, I had the perfect spring day: I plopped myself down on Bowman late in the afternoon on a Wednesday, ate the most delicious apple that's ever been in my mouth, and I watched people run around in the glory that is the sun. For the rest of that day, I felt like Cinderella: waltzing instead of walking, singing instead of talking, and blissfully ignorant to bad or sad things, because my contentment was bigger than those things. That day became my standard for spring days, and now I live in pursuit of that same exact day again. 

This is what goes through my mind on spring days: joy joy joy joy and then: pressure pressure pressure pressure. 

I feel joy because dogwoods are here and I can smell them. They don't smell sweet or especially appealing, but they smell like nostalgia and they smell like it's not winter anymore, and that gives me a huge deep breath and some peace. 

I feel joy because I think maybe I am Anne of Green Gables. Maybe all of the mistakes I make are charming and endearing and everybody is enamored with my constant charisma. Maybe my sins are really just logistical issues and cute idiosyncrasies.

I feel joy because my skin can feel warmth now, and that warmth is a vessel straight to my heart. I want everyone to be my best friend, and I want every meal to be a picnic, and I want to be a human embodiment of springtime.

I feel joy because life isn't stagnant after all. Things I thought were perpetually brown or dead are suddenly daffodils! And everything around me is pretty, and full, and important - flowers, grass, weeds are all beaming. And then life events that I thought were doomed are suddenly less so. Everything looks like it's on the up and up. 

I feel pressure because I have things to do. I have assignments to complete, sleep to sleep, an education to somehow get, food to make, friends with whom to talk about things: sometimes good and sometimes hard and sad. I want so badly to put a pause on my whole life and be outside until I'm filled up to the brim, but I never will be. There is not enough spring for me to ever not want it anymore. I feel mocked by each of the choices I made previously to right now, because they are the reason I have to say no to what I want to do so that I can be inside and be "productive." 

I feel pressure because I'm the one who was whining and begging for spring. And now it's here but I still find reasons to complain. I tell myself that nice days are an opportunity for extrinsic joy, and if I can't take them up on that, then I'm being wasteful and ungrateful. 

I feel pressure because what if I'm never as happy as I was on that one Wednesday? What if I've already received the maximum capacity of happiness that was allotted for my life and now all I'll ever know of joy are affectionate, reflective memories?

I feel pressure because I'm really not Anne of Green Gables. I knew it the whole time; I was just hoping that spring had erased my imperfections. But Anne is fiction and I'm nonfiction. I'm a real person, which means my sins are actually sins, and they are innately depraved moral issues and bad decisions I make daily, not just logistical mishaps. It's disheartening.

I motivated myself through winter by saying that spring would be here and that it would be everything, and that's why I'm so internally conflicted now: I expect it to be perfect (hence the pressures), and it's not, but it's still better than winter (hence the joys). I'm overwhelmed by joys and pressures and every emotion feels urgent.

I spent winter holding my breath, hoping that when it was gone, I'd be warm constantly and always, and I'd be able to breathe. And I can breathe, but being able to breathe doesn't mean life is cured. 

When spring came and the world was still broken, I was so confused and sad. But the thing I forgot about all winter when motivating myself through it was that spring isn't the same thing as Heaven. Spring is on the earth, and the earth is a broken place. Heaven is still far away from this place. 

This is all I know to do: have hope. Hope is a belief, not a wish. Hope and the Holy Spirit perch in the soul. Hope knows that a perfect place exists, and when I get to be there, this won't be an issue.

Love, 

Lauralicious