sometimes I feel like we get stuck in this.

There in the dark, her memory was refreshed, and she succumbed to her earlier dreams. Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring for. She regarded love as possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way.

She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty...

--Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye 

(btw, why won't Blogger let you underline? It's a book.)

I think that the world is slightly unfair to people who don't get married immediately after college (or during college).

I signed the lease on my new apartment yesterday and I'll be beginning to move in in mid-July. This one has no furniture in it so I just kind of realized that I need to be working on picking out things now because if I don't I'll end up there at the beginning of August sleeping on a bed with no sheets, in a shower with no curtain, and with my desktop computer on the floor beside me. Now, my kitchen's pretty well set because I enjoy cooking and have had my own kitchen where I've lived for the past few years, but I need almost everything else new. It's amazing how what you pick out when you're 18 and going to college looks really juvenile when you're 22 (and how much four years of college use ruins things in general).

It seems that the kinds of things I'm buying are the things that girls getting married put on their gift registry: serving spoons, a new comforter, some nice towels, new drinking glasses because most of mine are broken, some wall art, bath mats, a shower curtain. Not that I want to be getting married right now, but I'm just saying, other people could be buying this for me, haha. When I do get married, I don't even know what I'll ask for. Wedding china, I suppose.  I'm sure I'll find other things to ask for by then.

I'm pretty happy with where I'll be living. I'm very happy to at least have it settled and not have to think about it any more. We leave for Alaska on Monday, return the following Tuesday, and then a week later I can begin moving in if I want. Things are going to be fairly busy between now and the beginning of August, even though it seems like forever away. 

Enough for now. Might write more later.

There is no attribute more comforting to His children than that of God's Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe trials, they believe that Sovereignty has ordained their afflictions, that Sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all. There is nothing for which the children ought more earnestly to contend than the doctrine of their Master over all creation--the Kingship of God over all the works of his own hands--the Throne of God and his right to sit upon that Throne.

C.H. Spurgeon in his sermon on Matthew 20:15 (via my church bulletin this morning)

Over a month into summer and I haven't accomplished much, but that's okay. It's not like there are impending deadlines right now, which is nice, for the first time in four years or so.

Mostly I just sit around and do nothing at home. I go to the Y almost every day and work out. I've been playing some in Second Life, learning Linden Script and how it works in general, since I'll have to figure all that out in the fall anyhow. I was kind of ambitious and downloaded about 10 scientific papers that I was going to read and make notes on, hoping to prepare for the fall too, but so far I've gotten halfway through one, hit the term "emotional octopus", and not started reading again. Typically over the summer I devour books, but this summer a stack sits at my bed and I mostly just stare at them apathetically, occasionally flipping through a few pages and then deciding shortly after that it's probably not worth the effort.

I just feel apathetic. It's not really that I don't care about things, but that it seems like there's not a point in caring. This summer feels like waiting for something to happen while completely lacking the power to actually make anything happen. Waiting for an apartment to work out for next semester, waiting to figure out all the things I need to buy to live there, waiting for school to begin so that they'll pay me the money that I need to buy these things. Waiting until my family vacations to Alaska. Waiting to see if distance is going to work out between Patrick and me. Waiting for friends to call back, or for opportunity to do anything, really. Most of the time I would tell myself to get over it and do something about all this myself, but I think this past academic year kind of wore me out and I don't feel like making the effort for anything at the moment.

At least I have the Y. Though I'm a little lazy and it's a battle to get there some days, I do enjoy what I do there because I can measure myself making progress--reps and sets complete, calories burned, weight lifted, miles run. It's nice to see numerical progress. Maybe I can trick myself into doing something progressive by counting pages read, books completed, or lines of code written. I don't know; we'll see. I'm just saying, I can't sit here and do nothing from now until August.

Besides the apathy, though, things are good. I am enjoying the time off and am glad that I can spend my time catching up with friends and family and overall just taking care of myself. Lots of heavy decisions and transitions are coming, but for now it's mostly smooth sailing.

All right, enough writing. Maybe I'll straighten up my room and finally delve into one of these books for real.

finals week

I've always felt like finals week is a terrible idea. There's just way too much going on at once. You're constantly stressed out because you're studying for all those final exams, and then on top of that, you're trying to pack all your things into boxes to go home, to say goodbyes to the people that you're not going to see for a while, and to enjoy the beautiful weather outside and the little bit of free time that a spaced-out exam schedule brings. Everyone's throwing parties and playing outside.

This year, I have gained a new hatred for finals week. I am admittedly apathetic about my finals--well, except for piano juries, because it's just embarrassing to play poorly in front of people--but there's plenty enough to keep me busy. I'm graduating, and that means saying forever goodbyes to a lot of people, and long-time goodbyes to more people, and it's just difficult. There's all this work to be done and all these boxes to be packed but instead I end up spending time with people. I don't think it's a choice I'll regret, but it's stressful.

Today was my last seminar at UNCC, and although I plan on coming up to say goodbye before I leave for Clemson in the fall, I already miss this place. I've worked here for two years, lived here for two summers, and have felt more at home here than at Winthrop many times. My lab coworkers were like family to me. I was convinced I was going to grad school here for nearly two years, and I had dreams and plans about living in this place, the things I would do, and the people I would spend time with. I miss how things used to be. I have so many memories here, and I miss the people that belong with them, because this entire year has been a slow drifting away from each of them for various reasons (too busy with schoolwork to spend much time here, no research mentor or project, people moving away, general group dynamics changing). I mean, very good things have happened, and I've made new friends, but I deeply miss how things were.

I know I will miss Winthrop. I will miss my professors, who have worked so hard to give me every opportunity they could to flourish during these four years. I will miss my friends; there are so many people here who I am very close to. I'm going to miss my roommate, Bethany--I couldn't ask for a better friend. I will miss Jason and Andrew (Chad's going to grad school with me), who have been in most of my undergrad classes. I'll miss all the people that I randomly run into on the sidewalk after not seeing them for a really long time, and the people I've kept up with for all four years, and the people I grew up with that I'll soon say goodbye to. And of course, I'll miss Patrick. I don't know how distance will affect our relationship.

I miss home. I want to go home and to let things be simple again. I'm afraid of moving away and being alone because I need people to take care of me and just be there to listen sometimes. Moving to a new place means starting over again, which is fun in many ways, but also tiring. There's no one there who automatically cares about me like my family does; I have to earn it. There's no one who knows my stories and looks out for my best interests like they do. I know it's not that far away and it's not that different than living on campus at Winthrop, but still, I feel very alone.

I wonder, is life always like this, a constant state of missing things? Is it always a looking back and remembering, wishing for things to stay the same, while being forced through quickly-moving time into whatever's next? I hope not. I don't think it will be. I think that transitions are difficult, and that this next year will not be fun, but that eventually I will get settled and be okay with things. I'll find a place to live and people to live with, I'll get some research established, I'll find a new church family, things will be okay. There's just a lot of questions right now and not a lot of easy answers. I'm still working on seeing this as an exciting opportunity and not only as something completely terrifying. 

Whatever comes, it is a comfort to know that God will always take care of me, no matter what. He always has and he always will. If I didn't have strong theology and tested faith I don't know how I would get through all this. I am so thankful for God's sovereignty and for his proven faithfulness.

All right, enough of that. Now, to dinner with my Bible study group!

a spontaneous haiku

leftover Chinese
now finger food--no clean forks.
this is college life.

sunday morning thought

from http://trevinwax.com/2009/03/21/how-scholarship-shields-us-from-the-bible/

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly.

“Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship.

“Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.

“Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

- Soren Kierkegaard