One Down

I just finished my first year of University. One down-three to go.
Everybody says that college flies by quicker than you realize...I never believed them until now. I remember move in day like it was yesterday. It was a blazing 90 degrees, I was breaking out, and my freshly straightened hair was grow larger and wavier by the minute (making for a rather unfortunate and lasting school ID photo).

My dorm was the size of a small closet but I came to love that place. My floor of girls became known around campus for our close knit friendships. I found my best friends on that floor. We all left our doors open and unlocked at all times. Admittedly, not the most secure situation but we trusted each other and we always had access to one another. I always had a friend to talk to, laugh or cry to and procrastinate with on that floor. I will miss those lovely women very much.

                                           The frist week. We bonded ridiculously quickly.

This year was full of discovery, growth, and maturity. I came into school with bright eyes and an open heart. I'm leaving this year with a slightly older heart, a bit tired from my travels, but very grateful for them all. I've certainly made mistakes, and I've undoubtedly met great grace. I've met people who inspire me, challenge me and love me. I've learned more of what it means to live in community and love others--even when it's hard. I'm still learning to love myself. I have known myself this year on a deeper level than before. I took risks (including but not limited to, cutting off all my hair!). I was sometimes honest and sometimes fearful. I found a new and vibrant passion for the theatrical arts and poetry. I was homesick often, and should have called my mom more frequently. I knitted more than I ever have, and I bought my first museum membership (worth every penny).

                                              My hair was even shorter than this in the fall!

I can't justly communicate the ramifications of this entire year, for they have been great in number and significance. But possibly the most important truth that I am beginning to see clearer because of this year, is the truth of God's faithfulness. He was faithful when I first moved into that closet dorm, my roommate and I affectionately named The Knook (pronounced 'nook'). He was faithful through every discovery of self, and He was faithful through every homesick night. He was faithful even when I turned away and even when I made mistakes. He has been faithful in every season of this year, and He is faithful to me now in this new season.

  Maybe I'm naively only remembering the good things about dorm life..but I really will miss this place!

I will miss a lot of things about my freshman year (the knook, my floor of girls, countless hotpot meals), and it really did fly by right before my eyes, but I accept that it's time for a new season. This year was not without it's hardships...in fact it wasn't an easy year at all. But now is a time for resting, and what better place to rest than in the Lord!
God has blessed me, protected me and always been faithful to me.
My heart is full of gratitude, and that's a peaceful place to be.

Blooming on the ground.

There's a small red bud tree growing in the back yard of my childhood home. A few years ago my mom saw this red bud tree on sale at Sam's so she course brought it home. My father willingly planted my mom's impulse buy and the little tree began to take root. A year into the small trees life an unfortunate event occurred.

Our golden retriever Dolly was in the back yard on her lead when she unknowingly wrapped the leash around the delicate truck of the young tree. At that moment she spotted a squirrel in the neighbors yard and took off running. The little red bud's trunk was snapped in half and it fell haphazardly to the ground.
My mom was so sad. She loved red bud trees and the tree had been growing so well...but circumstances cut it's life short.
The little tree lay broken and lonely on the ground as the seasons changed. A year passed. One day as Spring was beginning to awaken the world, my sister looked up from her morning coffee, gazed out the kitchen window and exclaimed,
"Look! The tree is blooming on the ground!"
And sure enough, the tree was ablaze with vibrant red and pink buds.


Blooming on the ground.


My father went out and bound up the small tree's trunk and the tree grew back together-healed with the support of the binds.
I over heard my mom telling the story of the red bud tree to my aunt and I smiled to myself as I realized that I am just like that red bud tree.

It's been a hard month.
A friend took his own life.
I lost a relationship.
A good friend was in a bad accident.
Circumstances have broken me. I've found myself on my face in desperate prayer before the Lord more times than I can count. It's been hard. But still I have hope. The simple flowers on that small tree remind me there is victory and restoration.
I may be on the ground and broken for a while but that doesn't mean I'm not in bloom.

Underwater Living

For those living underwater.

I don't have all the answers. The fine print confuses me, and absolute truths frighten me. 

So I ignored the answers I did know. I submerged myself in my doubt and pride. I needed air. But things weren't always easy above the surface, and at least under the waves it was quiet. But I needed air. I built castles, not in the sky, but in the false security of my underwater foolishness. I needed air. 

My Father mercifully pulled me out of the water. As my head broke the surface I realized how deep my need for air was. Head reeling, I gasped and struggled for breath. My lungs burned as they fought to push and pull life into my body. I needed air-but it hurt. Everything was heavy and wet-not like the weightlessness of the silent underwater world I had created for myself. But that muted existence wasn't sustainable. I needed air. Suddenly my ears were opened and the sounds around me were overwhelming. Finally I could hear distinct voices instead of the distant, slow sounds I had grown accustom too. Maybe what they had to say wasn't easy or simple, but at least I understood again. Black spots burst in front of my eyes as my pupils adjusted to the sunlight. Everything was clear. Not warped and broken like in my water kingdom. 

Coughing violently I expelled water from my lungs, ridding myself of my former life. 

I needed air. 

I needed Jesus. 

I need Jesus. 

a former self.

I woke up this morning to the sound of Teddy (my soon to be brother-in-law) playing the guitar in the room next to mine. I realized that my subconscious had incorporated his music into my dreams--but that didn't ease the transition from sleep to awake. My throat was swollen, my nose was stuffy and the injury on my thumb was throbbing (the result of my poor cooking skills).
"Em, you probably want to get up. It's one." My sister Becca said softly.
"Actually, I'd like to stay asleep." I thought to myself and rolled over.
"There's coffee! Want me to bring you some?"
My head lifted from my pillow for the first time; aroused by the promise of caffeine. She knows me well enough to recognize that this slight movement in response was actually an enthusiastic affirmative.
I'm more of a silent communicator in the morning.
As I waited for Bec to bring me coffee I threw back the covers, welcoming the invigorating winter cold and the unforgiving light of the afternoon. I needed some help waking up today. The night before I had laid in bed for hours restlessly wrestling with countless distractions. Mostly relationships. My relationship with my new boyfriend which was going oddly well, yet was swiftly snow balling out of my control. My relationship with my sister which was about to change in two weeks when she marries the love of her life. My relationships with my old high school friends--how do I maintain friendships with people who knew me when I was a completely different person? The most unsettling of all were my thoughts and lack of feelings toward my relationship with God. All these other relational distractions had not only been disrupting my sleeping habits, but I had allowed them to keep me from focusing on the most important, most elusive and mysterious relationship of all--my relationship with Jesus.
For months my feelings and thoughts toward Jesus had been routine, lifeless and nearly painful. I hadn't heard from him and honestly I hadn't told him much either. I was busy. I was busy having new college experiences.
"Here you go sis." Becca's kind words interrupted the dark clouds of reflection that were gathering over my mind. The hot cup of coffee in my hands cleared my head and gave me the drive to leave my bed. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror hanging on my wall--extreme bed head.
"A bath it is." I mumbled to myself, secretly thankful for any excuse to escape to the private, warm confines of a bubble bath. I gathered my towel and with coffee in hand I headed for the bath tub.
I'm not sure what made me do it, but as I was passing the book shelf in the hallway I grabbing one of my old prayer journals and took it with me. Reading in the bath is not unusual for me at all but reading any of my old journals is very unusual. It's a painful experience for me to relieve the past and I try to avoid it with all my might. And here I was seeking the past. I was having a very off morning.
With the hot water swirling and rising around me, my mind grew sharper as the final remnants of sleep washed away. With coffee in hand I opened my old journal, fully expecting waves of regret, angst and past trauma to come spilling out, ripping open old wounds, but that is not what I found. Instead I found page after page filled with praises, gratitude and beautiful emotion written out by my own hand. I had filled that journal a year ago. I had filled that journal when I was a young rebellious, immature high schooler...and yet...
And yet the words of my high school self were full of passion, life and gusto. As a college student searching for life, living for passion and experience I hadn't felt as much gratitude, joy or simple peace as this journal revealed I used to feel.
Panic rose in my throat as stark realization slapped me in the face--I wasn't necessarily moving forward just because I was growing up. I had assumed one equaled the other, but I saw this wasn't always true. The spiritual health of my younger, dependent high school self was healthier and more rewarding than the spiritual health of my seemingly mature and independent self. Who was I fooling? Did I think that because I set my alarm early on a couple of Sundays without provocation that I would be rewarded with spiritual growth? Was I really thick enough to assume my heart was in the right place because I chose to grace a campus Bible study with my presence once a week?
Not only was my heart not in the right place...my heart was completely missing from my life. I had been living a life my high school self wouldn't be proud of. I had cracked open my chest, ripped the beating bloody life source from its home and placed it on ice; saving it for later. I didn't need it's pesky interference right now because I was having 'experiences'. I was exploring and searching and I knew my heart would only make it harder to enjoy myself; so I cut it out of the equation.
With this humbling awakening I hung my head and cried. Praying for forgiveness I asked God to thaw my heart out again. I knew it would be a painful process but I wanted to feel genuinely again. I invited conviction and rebuke and it did hurt. As I continued to read my old journal the tears continued to fall, mixing with the now lukewarm bath water. I came across an entry from the fall of my senior year that contained this line: Why should sweet Mrs. Smith have to hold her new born baby in her arms and watch it's precious life slip away? Why should millions of women feel so unloved and alone that they give themselves away to countless men? Why should thousands of children in my city live in slavery while I live comfortably?
I let my head slip under the water to muffle the cry that escaped from my lips. The words of my 18 year old self broke my heart, but I needed to be broken in order to feel again. These injustices that used to keep me up at night had been cut out of my consciousness when I had put my heart on the back burner. The words I had written over a year ago reminded me of the things that once moved me.
For months I have been so selfishly consumed with myself-my goals, my relationships, my needs, that I nearly lost who I was.
I laid in the bath till the water was cold, and I sobbed. Tears of repentance streaked my checks and were chased by tears of gratitude. Over whelmed and humbled by words written by a younger me.
I never saw the value in reliving the past. I never felt it was important to share my history with new friends because I was ashamed of the past, assuming that my present was far superior. I presumed that the past didn't exist outside my memory so it wasn't truly a part of me. But there I was, broken and brought back toward Christ by a memory. A shadow of a former self reminded me of my true self.
My fear and shame had blinded me from seeing the merit in my memories. Swallowing my pride I see how much there is to be gleaned from remembering. I'm grateful for the comforting and convicting words of the past me.

Life Examined

Theatre is life examined. A reality intentionally crafted—the great paradox. Theatre, like all other forms of art, reflects the human experience. Telling stories that need to be told, have never been told, or are worthy to tell again is what preforming arts is about. Our stories are what compose the very fabric of our beings, and by telling stories we remember and we grow. Through telling stories life can be shared across boundaries of gender, race, age, and life experience. Theatre unites people by forming common experiences and modeling memories. Those that are crafting the story transform into pieces of a greater story, all interacting, shifting and changing and all vitally important. Those that sit in the audience are not just merely spectating and being entertained, but they are being shaped in some small way, and together as an audience they share that experience. The imagination that creating a show requires forms a unity that is genuine and quite nearly tangible.

Theatre is all of the things above, and for me it is also a home. In the artistic process of creating a show I learn more about myself, relationships, life and the world around me, than I do in any other art form.  The community that builds on a stage is where I feel safe to be vulnerable, and only in a place of vulnerability is there true honesty. There's a freedom in becoming something other than myself-not something false, not a lie, but just something other. I share moments, emotions and histories with my character. It’s ironic, but by creating a character and a story I come more into my own character and I live more presently in my own story. Theatre is my own life examined.

This fall I was in the production Hideous Progeny by Emily Dendinger. I grew quite close with these wonderful and silly people as we worked hard to do Dendinger's witty script justice!

These two beautiful ladies swiftly became two of my best friends. I was very blessed by them and we learned so much during our work on Hideous Progeny.

To The Beyond

Nearly five months ago I let my simple grey dress fall over my shoulders, zipped up a royal blue gown over it and pinned a funny card board hat on my head. My name was called out amongst hundreds of others and an auditorium of people hid my loved ones faces as I walked across a platform and received a fancy, official-looking piece of paper. There was lots of laughing and a few tears. People I had known for 12 years hugged me in a surreal flurry of flowers and hand shakes. I graduated.

I'm not sure what I expected to happen when I walked across the stage and accepted that piece of paper, but it felt a bit anticlimactic. I mean that was the culminating moment of my entire high school career! I spent four years of my life at Worthington Kilbourne High School, and it ended in an hour half long ceremony. Graduating marked the last day of my grey dress experiment. It marked the end of my WKHS days-the end of an era I suppose.
After the ceremony, I took a few pictures with my closest friends, and a few more awkward pictures with kids I grew up with but wouldn't consider friends. We all knew that this was the last time we would see most of these people, so we humored each other and posed in front of weepy moms with digital cameras. After the last photos had been taken, and the crowd started to thin out there was an awkward feeling of solemnity amidst the celebration. I waved my last goodbyes, hugged a few final friends and piled into the back of my family's mini van. And that was that.

I'm not the type to stick around for the rolling credits, and staying in Columbus for the summer seemed silly to me. I was headed off to school in the fall, so why prolong the goodbye? So two days after graduation, I packed up my little honda with a missing muffler and drove south. All three of my older sisters were going to be in Nashville for the summer so I figured I would join them and the four of us could have one last summer together before we scattered in the wind again. Much of my summer in Nashville was spent reading, watching movies, playing with my niece and nephew and working. I had a job working as customer service for a company that recycles cell phones. I made my own hours, and worked as many hours as I wanted all from home in my pjs on the couch. It was a sweet job.

I had no one really to answer to, but truthfully no one really to talk to either. My sisters and brothers all worked full time jobs, so most of the day I was home alone with all the time in the world to think. I thought a lot about high school, and the days behind me. I thought about the friends I left in Ohio, and wondered wether we would stay in touch. I thought about the grey dress I had left hanging in my closet (I figured a summer apart would be good for our relationship.)
The second half of my senior year I learned a lot about freedom. I educated myself on the lack of freedom in our world. I now recognize the clever facade of freedom our nation wears to hide the thousands in slavery within our borders. I taught others what I knew about the crisis and I prayed countless prayers to God for freedom. My grey dress project had consumed much of me the last four months of my senior year, and it all came screeching to a halt in one short ceremony. I had talked and written a lot about freedom, and now that I had graduated and moved out of my parents house I was experiencing it first hand, and quite frankly, I was bored. The shift from final papers, class presentations, graduation parties and 'Thank You' cards, to sitting around my sisters house in my pjs watching movies and occasionally going to the pool, was so dramatic I think I got whiplash. I was a kid fresh out of high school, living without parental supervision, all the freedom in the world, yet I spent a majority of my time alone and inside.
Don't get me wrong, it was still a summer well spent. My sisters and I lived in the same city again for the first time in 10 years. I got to know my brother-in-law's much better than before, and can whole heartedly call them my good friends. I read lots of books, and filled two journals with my personal musings. I wouldn't trade that summer for anything-but it certainly wasn't what I had expected when I drove noisily away from my childhood home toward the unknown. I wrote a lot that summer about how different this freedom was and how different I could feel myself becoming. The taste of this freedom was less sweet, and surprisingly more weighty than I would have guessed. I learned less facts about freedom and the lack of it in the US, but I learned just as much by tasting a different kind of independence.

Through all of my musing about my new freedom, I have realized that just because I'm no longer wearing a grey dress everyday doesn't mean my exploration of freedom ends. My experience with the One Dress Campaign has permanently opened my eyes to freedom. My own freedom, others freedom, and the consequences of if all. I will continue to ponder and write about freedom as I learn more. I am keenly aware that freedom changes everything.
This post wasn't the most articulate piece of work, but I think it fits. More will follow soon with some recent updates on my exploration of freedom, but for now I think enough has been said about my transition from high school to the beyond.

Freedom

As I sit in the pale midmorning light and sip my coffee swirled with sugar, I read and ponder. A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken is a tale of love, beauty and wholeness; a tale of lives well lived. As I take theses moments to breathe and consider those all important abstract nouns I compare them to the intangible concepts that drive my own life—success, progress, acceptance. I have worried and rushed through this year, failing to enjoy the fullness of my last year living at home. There's a certain freedom that accompanies being nearly an adult but still living in the care of others. I've taken that freedom for granted.

But that's not the only freedom I've taken for granted. I've continually forgotten or abused the wholesome freedom that I am blessed with. Becoming aware of the enslavement around me has drawn my own freedom into sharper contrast. I am free. I am free from physical enslavement. I am free from the captivity of mental illness. I have been set free in the fullest sense of the word by Jesus. Yet I continually enslave myself to these terrestrial ideals that are here one minute and gone the next. As the author of Ecclesiastes writes it is all a "chasing after the wind." With steel nets and open jars I run right past Life in pursuit of the winds of this world.

This morning I'm shifting my abstract noun focus. As gusts of passing storms arouse the trees and birds outside my window—I quietly—without procession or parade, celebrate my freedom. I wonder why we save the celebration of something as monumental as freedom for one hot day in July. Personally, I aim to constantly become more conscious and consequently more grateful, for the freedom I am blessed with

I am free.