The Case of the Missing Mailbox

 Who on earth would want to steal a mailbox?

This is what hubby and I have been wondering, ever since our mailbox disappeared almost six weeks ago.

And we’re not talking about a little hump-backed classic with a red flag and a wooden post. Oh, no. This honker is a huge metal contraption with a honeycomb of mailboxes that serves nearly 20 families on our street.

It all started one night in October when I came home from the gym to find a police car flashing blue and red in front of our house. The policeman was inspecting a huge dent in our poor mailbox, which was lying flat on its back.

“Looks like y’all had a hit-n’run” he said. “No witnesses, so I really don’t have anything to write up.”

Two days later, it disappeared. We assumed the post office had collected its damaged property, but when the hubs went to pick up our mail, a postal worker informed us that some scalawag had stolen it!

The vacant spot where our mailbox once stood

Again, who would steal a mailbox, especially one so huge? Isn't that a federal offense? Is this some new level of thrill-theft, like stealing street signs?

Until they decide to lug another one out to our street and install it, we are braving the Christmas lines once a week to pick up our mail.

This whole saga is making me appreciate postal workers so much more than I ever have before!

Sock Monkey in a Shoebox

Some things come full circle and smack you surprised.

Our homegroups have a tradition that plops Christmas into our consciousness a full week before Thanksgiving: the annual Operation Christmas Child shoebox-filling-party.

Picture if you can, a swarm of college students dashing around Target and Wally World collecting slinkys, teddy bears, coloring books, t-shirts and other school supplies and hygiene items. Each one is trying hard to think like a kid. Now, what did I like at age nine again?

Then it’s back to the rendezvous. Bulk items are parceled out, Christmas paper flies, and someone’s Pandora station is set loud on A Charlie Brown Christmas as the boxes are lovingly filled.

Even before becoming involved in homegroups, I remember filling shoeboxes with my family. Each box had a note from me, including my address, just in case.

One year it happened! A Venezuelan girl received my box and actually replied. Her letter sparked a pen-pal-ship that lasted several years. To this day, we are friends via social media.

I was telling this story in homegroup the week before the box-filling party when one of our new freshman girls piped up.

"I got one of those boxes when I was little."

Every head swiveled to her, and eyes got big.

She told us that when she was eight or nine, her church in Central America distributed the boxes. It was a complete suprise. "I got a sock monkey," she said. "He was so cute!"

She told us she felt so loved knowing that someone she'd never met had given her a gift. 

If you'd like to get involved in Operation Christmas Child, click here for information and fun videos of kids opening their shoeboxes!

To: My Mommy on Her Birthday

Today is your birthday, but I am over 100 miles away. 

If I could, I would wake you up with herbal tea and a walk in the sparkling dawn because we both love mornings. I would clean your house, rub your back, and then let you nap while I made dinner. 

But I can’t, so here—these are a few of the thankful thoughts I’ve had all day about you.

Thank you for being a mommy who snuggled and kissed and hugged freely.

Thank you for putting up with math-induced pouting and door-slamming.

Thank you for singing about birdies and cherry trees and barrel-and-a-heap while the ball bearings squeaked beneath us.

I am so thankful that you taught us for an entire year about China.

And that you made dollies and their tiny fashions with us.

Thank you for reading aloud.You dedicated hundreds of hours to this, enthralling our hearts forever with the beauty of words and stories.

For making us apologize to each other. 

For apologizing to us.

For nature hikes, sketchbooks in hand.

For encouraging dress-up and pretend (even if it meant the whole living room disappeared under boxes and sheets).

For Hershey-bar pie and Swedish tea rings at Christmas.

For all the times you packed and unpacked for camping trips.

For trimming our bangs in your bathroom, swishing the hair bits away with that funny brush.

For thrift shopping,
                bra shopping,
                                and shopping to fill shoeboxes meant for kids in Belize or Bhutan or Belarus,  making Christmas expand beyond my own wish list.

For letting our little fingers into your sewing, your paints, your charcoal pencils and teaching us that art isn’t about the product, but the process.

For loving Daddy and for kissing him in front of us.

For long talks in the bathroom, in the car, and during walks through our suburban streets with our tennis shoes crunching in tandem--talks anywhere about everything.

For treating me like an adult, but letting me be a little girl whenever I need it.

And finally, thank you for not hiding your flaws. This most of all. Because of it, I have hope that perfectionism is not permanent. I know that there is strength in humility, and beauty in admitting need. 

Blessed are the poor in spirit, because their daughters see God through their brokenness.

Happy birthday, Mommy. I love you.

Keeping up with the Castilles: Novembering!

I have a tendency to overestimate how much I actually share about the day-to-day life around here. Even though I've told you about my new conversation partner, last month's awesome retreat, and the crazy flood at my office, there's a lot that has gone un-blogged. So here: catch up on us!

Back to School:
One of the biggest recent changes for us is the fact that hubby is back in school! Four weeks ago, he began an online Masters program in Pastoral Counseling. It's a role reversal: when we were married 2 years ago, I was the one studying until the wee hours. Now he burns the midnight oil in our front bedroom while I go to bed.

He has a pile of impressive books...

Being his in-residence editor has its perks: it lets me learn a bit about such topics as the Intertestamental Period, the Maccabean Revolution, and the Herodian dynasty. This unashamed geek is planning to pounce on those books when he's done.

You can call me "Tink"
I finally did it--I got a pixie cut!

I was so afraid I wouldn't feel girly without my hair, but it actually feels extremely feminine and bold. My only regret is that my hair is growing so fast! I don't think I was counting on this level of maintenance.

40's Fun
My new workplace is big on social events--and food. Apparently, they also are really big into costumes, which is just fine by this recovering dress-up-aholic! The theme in our office for Halloween this year was "dress as your favorite decade."
I picked the 1940's, mainly because a) I had clothes that would work, b)someone else had already picked the 50's, and c) it's vintage--what's not to love?  

Some people said I looked like a flight attendant, but others swore I looked like this lady in Captain America (minus the hat):

Ok, I'm not in military gear, but maybe? I can dream.

(Side note: my pixie cut was postponed three days so I could pull off a 40's-ish hairstyle.)

Five Minute Friday :: Fly

Once again, I'm squashing my inner perfectionist. I'm linking up with a group of brave bloggers who were all handed a single-word prompt, a five minute timer, and told to simply let the words flow. No backtracking, no second guessing. Just writing for the joy of words, for the exploration of our own funny minds, and for the reminder that writing is fun.

Thank you, Lisa-Jo Baker, for making your blog a safe place for this much-needed reminder. :)

So here I go!

Prompt: "fly"

____________________________________________________

I was twelve. I was sure the other passengers knew it, but they were smiling at me like I was only three.

We were certainly all acting like three year olds--all of us squealing and crowding the tiny window and enjoying the rumble of the engines beneath us. It was our first flight. To see us, you would have thought it was the first flight in human history.

Grandma's car had to be brought from Houston. Daddy could have done it alone, but he knew that a thirty-minute flight would be like Christmas to his girls. So he invited us along.

I can close my eyes and still see the moment of liftoff. My braces are exposed in a permanent grin, the asphalt running by faster and faster until--

a sudden tilt!

The ground and cars and landscape became toy-like beneath us. It was so novel: tiny buildings and roads and points of insincere blue that we knew were backyard swimming pools, all beneath a truer blue of sky than we had ever seen.

My new Chinese friend

Have you ever lived overseas?

I'm not talking about a vacation packed with non-stop pictures and travel and fun. I'm talking about a time long enough for laundry to be done, long enough for grocery shopping routines to form, long enough for lonliness to set in.

  Someone once told me that the number of calories an immersed language student burns daily from sheer mental effort to understand and be understood is equivalent to what a bricklayer would burn if he worked eight hours in the sun. I believe them.

I had the chance to spend half a year overseas after high school. The mental exhaustion was intense. The new language was an extra layer of difficulty that had to be peeled back from the most ordinary of tasks. I remember searching for words, lining them up in my mind, rehearsing them over and over as I stepped to a desk or cashier and hoped that the other person would be kind.

Now I am the person behind the desk. In my new office, every other visitor speaks with an accent. Their syllables halt in strange places and their faulty intonations make commonplace words sound like music.

For a long time, I have enjoyed tiny slivers of interaction with internationals--a few minutes on the bus, visits with a Chinese friend who now lives 3 hours away, or a Turkish friend who is very busy with her baby. Because our ministry focus is on a student homegroup that has mostly American students (by accident, not design), there just hasn't been the opportunity to interact very much.

Now, not only do I get to see and talk to foreign students every day at my job, I have a new friend from China! Lynn* is a first-semester graduate student from Shanghai, and she is my new conversation partner. Several months ago, she jotted down her name on a sheet of paper at an international student welcome event to ask for an American friend. We got connected, and I'm so excited to get to know her!

I'm sure I'll have plenty more to tell as we get to know each other, but for now, please pray for our friendship, and for Lynn as she adjusts to American life and our (very!) strange language.

*Not her real name

Close to the Brokenhearted

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." -Psalm 34:18

This is one of those verses that gets highlighted in almost every Bible. We write it in sympathy cards, and it's a favorite in Christian bookstores. When we are brokenhearted, this promise of God's nearness is pure comfort-food for the heart.

But today when I read it, God brought the faces of these brokenhearted ones to mind instead.

Ever since last Friday, when Typhoon Haiyan ripped through the Philippines, images like this have been flooding the news.

Bodies lie buried under the rubble of their homes or out in the open, rotting. On Wednesday morning, the death toll stood at 2,275, and the Phillippine government estimates that over 582,000 are now homeless.*

As staggering as these numbers are, the real danger is the health crisis that now looms with medicines, food, and clean water dwindling. Relief has been arriving, but with roads impassable, most of it is bottlenecking at the airports. If doctors, shelter, food, water, and medicines don't arrive soon, the death toll from hunger and dysentery will quickly dwarf the original casualties from the storm.

And even if all relief arrives in time, how does one simply move on after finding your 4-year old under a tarp at a makeshift morgue? 

And the Lord is close to the brokenhearted.

A beautiful truth, but how will they know it? If this statement remains only sentiment, thousands will die. 

The closeness of Jesus is meant to be tangible, just as he came himself in a literal, touchable body. Emmanuel--God with us--meant a baby who teethed, a boy who skinned his knees, and a man who touched the untouchables with very literal hands. 

Today, the Church--God in us--means that we who profess to follow Jesus must show his closeness to the broken with our practical help, our literal bank accounts, and even our physical presence. 

Why does God comfort us?  So that "we can comfort those in any trouble with the same comfort we ourselves receive from God." (2 Corinthians 1:4)

In other words, we are part of a Divine pay-it-forward, not for warm fuzzies or so that we can look good on facebook, but so that those crushed in spirit will be saved. 

If you sense God asking you to take action for the typhoon survivors, please pray about giving to one of the organizations below within the next 12 hours. At this point, hours matter. 

The Philippine Red Cross has teams on the ground to help with rescue and relief.

UNICEF is providing food, medicine and clean water to children affected by the typhoon. 

Doctors Without Borders is sending teams of doctors, surgeons, water and sanitation experts.

If you are looking for a list of other organizations that are helping with this tragedy, click here. 

*The stats in this post were taken from this CNN news article.

Five Minute Friday:: Together

Today I am linking up with Five Minute Friday, a writing exercise where you set a timer for five minutes and write on a specific topic until it chimes at you to lift your fingers from the keyboard. You can join in here!

This week's prompt: TOGETHER
_________________________________________________________________


Alone is clean.

 

Alone is well-ordered.

Alone is never impinged-upon, infringed upon, or barged-in upon.

Alone is me, myself and I and my dreams and get out of my way because I’m the star of this show.

But alone is lonely. And God Himself said that a single person alone—even in paradise—was not a good deal.
The perfectly unified, triune community decided to replicate this one last aspect of Himself in man. He made a marriage, which made a family, which made a populace of others.

And these were not meant to be loners, these others. They must inter-marry and inter-depend and inter-weave their lives and stories. They must bow and submit to each other, honor each other, forgive each other, and a thousand other “each other” verbs that Jesus said and lived.

Broken as we are, together is hard.

Together is messy.

Together is toothpaste in the sink again and forgotten birthdays and hurt feelings and awkward Christmases and forgiveness again and again while we struggle against the urge to live as a hermit.

 

But together is what He asked for that night on His knees. And then he endured the alone to purchase community.

It was messy. It hurt. But He considered it worth it.

Stop

Global Week

Last week our church tried something new.

We have always been a “missional” church. We are dedicated to evangelism and discipleship both here in our college town and overseas. For years, we have had special partnerships with churches overseas in countries like Nigeria, Italy, and Mexico, and we send teams each year to those partners. (Shameless plug for the Italy mission trip! It will change your life!)

We usually talk about the trips in spaced-out spurts: Mexico one week, Nigeria another week.

Not this year.

This year, our leaders decided to streamline, focus, and intensify by creating Global Week: a seven day period of teachings, prayer, worship and information about Jesus' Great Commission. We had a free missions conference by The Traveling Team, a half-night of prayer, info lunches about each mission trip—the works.

To be honest, I was nervous about last week. I was afraid that all this talk of missions would rip the band-aid off the old, unmet desire to go to the ends of the earth. That it would poke the wound raw, stir up the discontent I had almost ignored.

Here is my old pattern:
1) I see a need.
2) It’s huge.
3) My heart breaks.
4) I jump to the rescue.

And just to clarify,“Rescue” usually involves prayer, tears, and an intense desire to sell my car and hop on a plane. In the end, I feel frustrated because I’m here, not there.

Like I said, this is the old pattern.

 On that Sunday as the last session by The Traveling Team ended and we folded our chairs to leave, I realized that something was missing. The heart-wrenching, hopeless, urgent feeling was gone. In its place was a quiet, growing excitement to be so stratigically placed.

I remembered with a jolt that almost every hero of the Traveling Team’s stories was a man or woman whose most meaningful work was the mobilization of students. They were willing to go themselves, but humble enough to realize that God’s glory is often more magnified through community than through a single man or woman's zeal. It made me feel honored—not displaced—to be living here among college students.

After all, what could be more strategic?

He has placed me here. Until he reassigns me, I will be faithful in this place, with these students, with these kids and the kids on our street. At this moment, I simply feel content to pray, trusting that God will tell me the next step.

If you’d like to read more, check out this post, in which I realized that staying and sending can sometimes be radical obedience.

Getting Crafty: Wreath Edition

I got crafty last weekend! Having my mom and sister here always wakes the sleeping artist in me.

I used this tutorial as my inspiration.

After thanksgiving, I may add some red berries or simply remove the camel-colored rosettes to help it transition to the Christmas season.

Ok, more realistically, I'll probably just leave it until July next year. (Those are flowers, right? They could pass for spring...right?)

Five Minute Friday :: "Laundry"

Today I am linking up with Five Minute Friday, a writing exercise where you set a timer for five minutes and write on a specific topic until it chimes at you to lift your fingers from the keyboard. No edits, no back-tracking, just writing for the fun of it. You can join in here!

Today's prompt: "Laundry".

___________________________________________________________


Hi. I’m a sock.

My friends call me Houdini.

I’m fuzzy on the edges and worn at the toe and I’m an escape artist. My mate and I aren’t really tight these days, so it’s a miracle if you find us clean in the same load.

My cousins are nubbley sweaters and your favorite t-shirts and those jeans that you bought back in college that now look outdated but you love them because nothing else is as comfortable on a Saturday.

We’re a motley crew and we haunt your closet floor, the corner in the bathroom behind the door, and the hidden pockets of your suitcases that you always forget to check after a trip.

Like I said, I’m an escape artist, so I’m the one who missed the basket.

 Again.

 STOP

Soggy

Only three weeks on the job, and already I’m part of an office-wide adventure. In my head, it’s called Operation Soggy.

 

 

If you live near us, you probably woke in the middle of the night this past weekend to torrential rain and an electric light show that shook your house. It was fantastic. When I peeked out the window, the street was a single writhing river of silver and the shadowy trees were bending double under the wind. I grabbed some earplugs, covered my eyes against the lightening, and went back to sleep.

 

 

The next day, I learned that the awesome storm had caused some not-so-awesome flooding in our basement office. 

All the rubber baseboards were removed and thrown in a pile.

They brought in an ARMY of green industrial fans.

Check out the water line outside!

  For now, several of us are temporarily working from the sixth floor of the campus library as the sheet rock is replaced, soggy documents are rescued, and the army of green fans blow round the clock.

SCW: Aware of Cellulite and Grace

She was standing there, young, athletic and ridiculously beautiful, the mascara wand forgotten in her hand as she appraised me. She turned back to our shared mirror.

"It seems like there sure are a lot of married people in this group. Lots of y'all are older."

It was such a tiny comment, dropped like an afterthought into a whole conversation, but it stung.

I think I responded with a laugh and a fumbled something about people who choose to stay and help other lives change after they have been impacted themslelves and yadda yadda. (Which, by the way, I totally believe!) Suddenly, I was very aware of my cellulite and the new little lines around my eyes. I hoped she didn't think I was creepy or weird or that she had stumbled into a group of old people.

If this sounds like a familiar refrain, you're probably remembering an earlier post about my mid-twenties crisis. Yeah. That.

But there is a reason that this post's title isn't "Crisis #2"--because it wasn't. It stung in the moment, but I was able to take a deep breath and keep talking, keep listening, keep loving.

I think this means healing.

One of the best parts that weekend was the sweet camaraderie between us four.

We sat together in the dark on the cooling ground, watching constellations turn imperceptibly overhead. We slept with our heads close together on air mattresses. We talked over cocoa and coffee.

There was silliness.

There were ant bites.

There were marshmallow smears on my jeans from fireside s’more making.

There were heartfelt prayers for students by students at the back of the worship hall.

And even though my insecurities are still there, there is healing happening in my heart and I feel so glad for the chance to be an auxiliary part of this thing we call college ministry.

Five Minute Friday: "Write"

I follow a blog by a mommy from South Africa. She writes real and deep and often, and I get courage from her going into the mothering world ahead of me.

Every Friday, she hosts a kind of free-write flash mob on her blog. This is how she explains it:

 

"On Fridays around these parts we like to write.

Not for comments or traffic or anyone else’s agenda. But for fun, for practice, for joy at the sound of syllables, sentences and paragraphs all strung together by the voice of the speaker. We love to just write without worrying if it’s just right or not. For five minutes flat. All on the same topic. Not sure how to participate – the step-by-step directions are over here: Here’s how we do it:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat with no editing, tweaking or self critiquing.

2. Link back here and invite others to join in .

3. Go and tell the person who linked up before you what their words meant to you. Every writer longs to feel heard. OK, are you ready? Give us your best five minutes for the prompt: - See more at: http://lisajobaker.com/2013/07/five-minute-friday-beautiful/#sthash.ub47n92a.dpuf"

 

 

SO...here is my unedited, five-minute contribution to the fun! The prompt: "WRITE"

 

__________________________________________________________________

 

A word spoken is a magical thing. Released into the space between speaker and hearer, it has the power either to create or destroy. Its meaning can be lost in tone or word choice, misconstrued by insecurities or word choice, forgotten or remembered for years. But it can never be unsaid.

 

All this power for a spoken word, that lasts only a moment in the vibrating air.

 

But a written word—or a string of them? Well, that has power with permanence.

 

Last night I began reading “1985”. Somehow I managed to skip reading this high school literature staple. I’m only three chapters in, and already I feel sick on behalf of Winston. He is caught in a world without tragedy or love, where truth is lie and he is not even sure of the date.

 

Knowing he commits the ultimate crime, he begins a journal. He writes. It is a physical extension of the few cubic inches between his ears that, until now, has been his only private domain. He writes in fear, but with reckless courage, because words on a page have the power of permenance to condemn him and make his thoughts real. He writes for a future that may never acknowledge or know him.

 

I feel thankful for a world without Big Brother, without a telescreen watching my every move. I can think without crime, write without fear.

 

But Winston has reminded me of my power.

 

A few taps, and words exist in a cyberspace that never forgets. A few careless keystrokes can have the power to build up or destroy in a far more permanent way than simply talking.

Back on campus

Somewhere above me, the sun is warm. The desk curves spacious to my left and a new sticky pad perches next to my complicated phone. It rings. I catch myself because the old greeting no longer fits.

"Office of Graduate and Professional Studies, how can I help you?"

There. I said it without stuttering. 

If you haven't heard the news yet, here it is: I GOT A NEW JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After thirteen months in banking, I am back on our beautiful, bustling, homey campus. A shiny new parking pass swings from my rearview mirror like an old friend and I work in the basement heart of a dorm lounge, which is a strange place to process paperwork, but renovations will be beautiful she says. Her glance swings over the boxes and cramped filing cabinets that line the walls of our underground office, and I'm thankful I wasn't hired yet when they moved here.

Two weeks ago I was greeting customers; now I greet students. They come with varying degrees of anxiety of their faces, handing in wrinkled papers that have passed through five different hands as they collected signatures. Even though I have very few answers to offer, my favorite moments have come when kindness, costing me nothing, earns me a look of sheer relief and gratitude.

I feel a lot of gratitude these days!

For work at eight, instead of seven.
For the chocolate cupcakes that my boss brought to my last day at the bank.
For the eight luxurious days I'll have off at Christmas--stuff bankers can only dream of.
For jeans on Fridays and free coffee.
For access to thousands of books and online journals through the University library.
And best of all, I'm on campus.

Ever since graduation, I have missed the easy accessibility to the student world that made conversations with them between classes over coffee or luches a more-often thing. I was working only two miles away, but it may as well have been fifty. Now I am literally working fifteen feet below some of my friends' dorm rooms!

Let the lunches commence!

"He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me." (Ps. 18:19)

Our final wedding photo shoot! (no, I'm serious)

Guess what we did this summer? We took our final wedding photo shoot! Ta da!

Umm...yeah. Our wedding happened two years ago. We know. A little ridiculous.

We were touched that our photographer was willing to honor our package deal after such a wide time lapse. Yes, we have been finishing degrees, traipsing to Colorado for a summer, flying to Italy for mission trips, and other random things that make life busy, but two years? After this experience, I wouldn't be surprised if she put a new clause in her photography contracts. If you lovebirds are too busy (lazy) to schedule all included photo-ops within a reasonable six-month span of time, you will forfeit the unscheduled services.
I wouldn't blame her one iota.

I believe the "day after" photo shoot idea originated from the desire to have a good collection of romantic photos without making guests wait at the reception for hours. Couples usually don the wedding clothes again for a complete wedding day simulation.

As you'll see, we opted for comfortable jeans and t-shirts. This was due to the unbearable, sickly stickiness of Texas July heat...and the fact that all essential undergarments for my wedding dress were borrowed. But it gave me a chance to sport this fun t-shirt given to me by my sis at a bridal shower way back before the wedding! It says "I *heart* my hubby".

I was surprised by how little she had to coach us on natural-looking cuddliness! I guess we've learned a few things in the past two years. :)

If you want to see more, head on over to this album on my facebook page. And if you like her style, check out her other photos on Southern Charm Photography.

The Point of Bridesmaids

Seven times.

I counted this weekend, and was amazed to realize that I have been a bridesmaid for seven beautiful friends. How can I have been so blessed? These girls considered me close and wanted me there on their special day. They wanted me as a witness to sacred vows, to their new beginnings.

This weekend I stood as a man and woman made a forever promise to love, honor and cherish each other. (Isn't she stunning?)

As I looked at the list of women, I felt a growing resolve to continue to stand with them. Because we don't need friends only for pretty faces in the wedding album, or to help us bustle the dress. After the cake is eaten, after we're no longer newlyweds, after student loans and stretch marks and burned crock pot meals and PTA and decades of living life, we will need them more than ever. I will never outgrow the need for women beside me, for sisters' prayers, for witnesses that will hold me to my vows when they no longer make sense.

In the ceremony, my friend spoke of waiting eleven years for this day. I had only been her friend through half of that waiting season, but I had seen the tenacity and love and endurance of her heart.

A hope fulfilled is so beautiful. But even more beautiful was the beauty produced in her heart because of hope long deferred.

Switching gears...I have to share the funniest moment of the ceremony. (Because remembering these stories is another reason bridesmaids exist.)

Get the scene in your head: the bride and groom are on stage, each taking a turn kneeling and washing the other's feet in a ceramic bowl, symbolizing their commitment to serve each other in the manner of Christ. Her feet are washed, shoes replaced; no problem. Then the groom sat, and the entire room began to realize that his well-heeled, well-socked feet might be more difficult than her simple slippers.

 Looking back, a lot of it could have been avoided if foot-washing practice had actually happened at the rehearsal. That's what a practice is for, right?

The socks came off inside out...and then utterly refused to go back on damp feet. We in the bridal party started to giggle. The band started the refrain again, to buy time. As both bride and groom tugged on the stubborn dress socks, the giggles rippled out and engulfed the entire chapel. The photographer was laughing so hard she could barely hold her camera steady, but if she was able to take pictures of the hilarity, I'm sure they will be awesome. 

My Mid-Twenties Crisis

Yesterday as we prepped for our homegroup's pizza night, I had a moment of crisis. Why? Because my 26th birthday is next week. 

I know--I'm still young...but I panicked, wondering if passing that milestone would suddenly make me un-relatable to the eighteen year olds we are welcoming to our group. I mean, that's an eight-year gap!

My thoughts went something like this: I'm married. That instantly puts me a world away from them. Then they'll figure out my class year was 2010...the same year most of them were just starting high school. When I was babysitter age, they would have been the age to babysit! I can't even stay up late to hang out with them...I'm so lame...

I was feeling this even though my husband is over thirty and still totally relevant! Even though I could point to a generous crowd of young mommies who are encouragement powerhouses to the dozens of college girls who flock around them, I was still feeling like my expiration date was about to start flashing red. 

Because it's true; I am no longer the student who frequents coffee shops, has five sets of flip flops, and carries a backpack in lieu of a purse. 

But there is another truth: I'm also no longer the college student who crammed six discipleship meetings into every week, who strove to perform so well as "mentor" that she missed the chance to be "friend", and who carried a lump of lonliness and its consequential resentment. 

So much healing has happened since then. So much humbling, and still I need more. 

Today Jesus showed me that my desire to be relevant should take a back seat to a better goal: to love them well. 

I'm starting to realize that the thing a student needs may not be another friend who has the same struggles, insecurities, boy troubles, and lives at the same stage of life. What they really need is Jesus. And Jesus can use me--at any age--to listen, to encourage, to talk about the serious and the silly, to share rides and meals and life, and to bring them back to the relentless love of the Savior that I myself need desperately and say, "I've been there. And Jesus is still good."

Because there are some things that transcend generations X, Y, Z, and beyond, until He returns. 

Summer photo album

How has the summer been for you?

Yes, OK, technically the dog days of heat are still blazing outside, but here in our college town, the familiar sights and sounds of a new fall semester abound. Wal-Mart is overflowing with chaotic bins of school supplies, the streets are clogged with halting freshmen (and their parents!), and a sign at the local Starbucks declares what everyone already knows: that pumpkin spice lattes are only a few months away! 

Tomorrow classes begin again, and I can't help but feel the nostalgic pull to books and backpacks and the crisp smoothness of new spiral notebooks. *Sigh* I will forever be a student on the inside. 

Looking behind, this third summer of married life has had a completely different flavor from the first two. 

Last year was a summer of mountains, car trouble adventures, friendship insecurities, and wide-flung travel. The summer before was even crazier, with our wedding, honeymoon, head-lice (ooooooh, now there's a story...), and the foreignness of navigating my new role as wife. 

Despite another trip to Italy, some deep soul-searching, a long and ongoing job search, and a few road trips in-state, this summer has had a comfortable rhythm of rest, work, and the homey pleasures that come from having frequent guests. We painted my former study room-turned-guest room, transforming it from this color...

to this. (Correct color, but not an actual picture of the room. I wish!)

And you're probably thinking, "Uhhh, yeah.  A VERY needed change, especially if people plan to SLEEP there." Yep. I agree. 

Even though our new guest room was in progress for most of the summer, several dear friends and family members blessed us by breaking it in and keeping us company. I enjoyed them so much that I barely missed the mountains! 

So here is a short picture update of our summer shenanigans, to be followed by some more thoughtful posts soon. Right now, however, I simply wanted to let my bloggy friends know we hadn't died or anything, given my looooonnng absence from this site. :)

This dear friend spent a whole weekend with us early in the summer! She tried the local frozen yogurt, went with us to the George H. Bush presidential library, introduced us to this fascinating documentary. 

The Berlin Wall came down during Bush Sr.'s presidency, and his presidential library displays a colorful, graffiti-covered chunk of the demolished barrier. 

Then came my sister and her husband! We spent an entire day in the city for a conference, and then sis and I squeezed in a quick walk before they left. The flower we found on the walk made me catch my breath. I mean, just LOOK at it! Can you believe something like this was simply growing wild, unnoticed, on a walking trail in a city park?

And then the other sister came with her boyfriend! I had to work, but the hubs took them to the famed Blue Bell factory an hour away for a tour. If you live in Texas, you must, I repeat MUST visit this place! 

The night before they left, we all went to a local coffee shop for some Harry Potter-inspired "butter beer" (actually cream soda, butterscotch syrup and heavy cream) and a card version of Monopoly. 

And of course, we painted ourselves blue for free food with the summer homegroup! (I had work the next morning, so I was excused from full blue coverage.)

We had more visitors, there were several beautiful weddings, and there were countless silly, serious, tearful moments in between, but life is not always recorded as it's lived. Sometimes the spontaneity of a moment is half its joy. The record-keeping would spoil it, rather than preserve it. So there you go: a little snapshot of our summer!