Family Ties

Lately I've become more curious about my family's history.  I think it's something about growing up and entering the "adult world," so to speak...I'm kind of beginning to see my extended family members as people with an entire life history, instead of just MY grandparents, aunt, uncle, etc.

The seeds of this fascination started earlier this year, when my Dad forwarded me a picture that my aunt had found of my grandmother at my age.  In this picture, the family became aware of my striking resemblance to my grandmother - the same curly hair, the same smile, the same nose.  I even have a touch of my grandmother's redness of hair that appears in selectivity in the summer months.  It's kind of remarkable.  If you're friends with me on Facebook you will have seen the picture, since it was my profile picture for most of the last few months.  If not, here it is, juxtaposed with my senior AOII composite photo (making my grandmother 19 and myself 21 in these images):

I'm ashamed to say that, before coming across this picture, I never really thought much about my grandmother as a young adult.  Of course, there had been snippets of family stories here and there, but since my sister and I grew up in Missouri and the extended family mostly remained in my parents' hometown in West Virginia, I wasn't necessarily raised on the family stories.  At least, not my grandparents'.  I could tell you all kinds of things about my parents' high school years.  But that's another story.

Anyway, over the last couple of months my interest in my family history has grown.  Call it the proverbial quest of a young woman to get in touch with her roots, because at its essence that's what it is.  Little by little, without any effort on my part, pieces of my grandparents' past have been slipping into my life...in addition to the portrait of my grandmother I already mentioned, a photo (posted to Facebook by an aunt) of my maternal grandparents standing on a porch in their own young adulthood, smiling at each other, completely unaware of their life as I know it...

Or a letter that my great-grandfather sent to my grandfather while he was serving in World War II that, like many letters to soldiers during that time, never reached its recipient...a letter collected by some WWII buff who recently passed away, and which his daughter, upon going through his things, took the initiative to connect with my family, placing the letter in my grandmother's hands, three years after my grandfather's death and sixty-nine years after it was written...a letter which, decades after its time, reveals a hidden undercurrent of love and pride in a father-son relationship that was generally unspoken of because of its rocky and unfriendly nature...

And, an even more direct way to connect with my family: a published memoir, written by my great aunt, Nina Holland), who after enduring the death of a child and of her husband, left the United States at age 57 to become a missionary to the Philippines.  The book, called "Children, The Creek Runs On," has sat on some shelf or other around my house for the last seven years, and since I'm likely serving as an intern in a Filipino church next year, I asked my mom to search it out for me, and yesterday read through several passages of it.  It's a unique experience to read in published print the life story of a family member.  I only met Nina one time, and I was about 3 years old and probably more interested in getting this unfamiliar woman out of my house than anything else.  But as I flipped idly through the pages, story after story grabbed my attention as I read of this tall, 57-year-old American woman, my grandfather's sister, who left behind everything she knew and traveled halfway around the world because she believed God wanted her to.  That journey would lead her into face-to-face encounters with multiple cobras, but would also allow her to help other people in vital ways, both physically and spiritually.

My Aunt Nina wrote these words in the preface to her book - "If there is anything noteworthy or anything exceptional in my life, it is because of God’s hand that has led me and sustained me through the years."  Even so, in reflecting on her life, she wrote these words, that I found extremely comforting and encouraging as I face my own struggles in a world away from the familiar (albeit closer than the Philippines): "I know what is between the lines of these letters that I wrote home.  Only I can know the times of homesickness, uncertainties, and discouragements.  But, it is also only I who knows of the great experiences, the joys, and the quiet peace of being where I felt God wanted me to be."  To read of such faith in the face of hardship was quite likely the best thing that I could choose to read at this point in my life, where homesickness, loneliness, uncertainty, and doubt threaten to consume me on a daily basis.  To read of such faith in the words of a family member, and to be so inspired by them, was a privilege.

Still, there is much more to be learned about my family.  Take, for example, this conversation which ensued between my mother and myself today:

Me - So I read Aunt Nina's book last night.
Mom - The whole thing?
Me - No, I just skimmed most of it, and read the sections about the Philippines.
Mom - How'd you like it?
Me - (babble about how the book was enjoyable)
Mom - I'm glad.  That's cool how you're going to work with Filipinos next year too.  I think I'll write to Aunt Nina about you.
Me - AUNT NINA'S ALIVE?????


Yes, all that time that I was reading and being inspired by those words, I thought that I was reading the words of a great-aunt who had passed away.  Not so.  Aunt Nina is apparently still alive and well, living in the hills of West Virginia where she grew up before her Filipino adventures and to which she eventually returned.

Like I said...still a lot to learn about the family :)

The Ends Justify the Means

Today I went to a Schnucks grocery store that had solar-powered sink faucets, a mezzanine seating area/cooking school, a walk-in wine and cheese cooler with complimentary outerwear, and light sensors in their freezer displays that made pizza rolls seem as refined and elegant as any objet d'art deemed worthy of museum display.  It was intense.  Unfortunately I was sans-camera, otherwise this could have been an equally dramatic blog post.  You'll just have to take my word for it.  (For you St. Louis-ans, it's the Schnucks in Des Peres, by West County Center.  Take a field trip).

I have a new life motto for my grad school years: the ends justify the means.  Negative Machiavellian connotations aside, I think this is a good way to look at grad school as far as individual courses are concerned.  Let's face it: being a CMM in a sea of MDiv's kind of screws you over as far as courses are concerned (for non-seminary folk, CMM = my Christian Education degree program, and MDiv = practically everyone else's degree program and the one required for ordination in the United Methodist church).  Courses that intrigued me when I applied aren't being offered, and most of the courses seem completely irrelevant.  Case and point: over the summer, I intend to take two three-week intensive courses, Greek 1 and Greek 2.  Why?  Because I have to take 2 courses over the summer to finish my degree before my scholarship runs out....and because the scheduling office is all whacked out, that's practically my only option.

I've come to peace with the Greek thing because 1) I'm a language person and 2) It will be a nice change from abstract theology and church history.  For the fall, I'm aiming for the required Old Testament course and Systematic Theology course, and a Children's Ministry course for my required age-level Christian Ed class, along with my internship (which, fingers crossed, will be at that Filipino church I interviewed with a few weeks ago).  Add a January Term course, 3 Spring courses, and 1 leftover summer course, and I will be DONE my degree and OUT of seminary by July of 2012.  That leaves me with just 15 and a half months until I have a masters degree in hand.

And, when I stop and think about things logically, the Masters degree is what matters.  It doesn't matter if the courses aren't the most relevant or interesting things along the way...with this degree I'll easily be able to get a job as a children's pastor or something similar, which will be a decent enough salary to begin paying off student loans, even if it's not what I want to do forever.  To be honest, I've thought long and hard about dropping out, calling the grad school thing quits and finding a job doing something entirely different from ministry.  But, in the end, I can't get a decent salaried job with just a French bachelors degree.  And, as painful as it may be along the way, I'll have a masters next year.

So it seems like I'm in this thing until July 2012.  Eyes on the prize.

Visualizing Peace

Another hard day.  More tears.  More uncertainty.  More frustration.  More stress.  More doubt.

I was thinking about stained glass tonight...how the colorful beams of light continue to dance across the stone floors of cathedrals even when no one shows up for church.  How you can't appreciate their beauty unless you're in some sort of darkness with which to contrast it.  When it's dark inside, the light illuminates the interior...when it's dark outside and the light shines from within, it stands as a testament of beauty, order, peace to the rest of the world.

I think God's work in my life is like the light through stained glass windows.

When God's light is shining through me, when my actions are aligned with His will and when I'm focusing on living a life for Him, the beauty of God's magnificence is made manifest through my life, and other people can benefit from the light that God is revealing through me.  I am a vessel for God's light to bring comfort to those who are surrounded by darkness.

But when my own soul is darkened, depressed, downtrodden, and desperate, when the darkness lies within rather than without, that is when God's love still shines through.  And, like dawn's rays cast colorful spots of light across stone and marble floors even when the church doors are shut and no one has entered in to worship God in that space, the effects of the light remain.  Just like God continues to work in my life even when I refuse to pay him any attention.

God illuminates my soul - empty, abandoned, forgotten, and neglected as it is.  Beauty remains, and beauty will return.

Blogger's Writer's Block

I'm having serious trouble coming up with interesting blog topics lately.  Lame.

I'm starting to question whether or not I want to be in ministry again.  Depressing.  Frustrating.

But, then I don't have a strong inclination to go do anything else...so I might as well stick around for another year to finish my degree.  And this is my continual circle of thought.  It would be nice to know if other people have similar circles.

Also, it's odd how being at home can make you miss home more than when you're away from home, just knowing that the minutes are ticking by until you'll have to leave it again.

I have this tendency to go and go and go and go and go and go.  And now I'm starting to wonder why I don't just stay instead of always going.

These are vague thoughts, I know, and I would develop them further if I weren't so tired.  I'll leave that for another day.

Home Sweet Home

So here I am back again, laying on my twin-sized bed in my multi-colored adolescent bedroom, back home in St. Louis once more.  It's good to be back with the family :)

This is going to be the world's shortest blog post, because 1) I'm sleepy, 2) I forgot about the time change until 10 minutes ago, and 3) I'm going to the 8:00 church service tomorrow morning and therefore have to get up early.

Nothing too substantial to report on today: drove 234 miles across Missouri, passed billboards for the World's Largest Rocking Chair, the Precious Moments Chapel, the Vacuum Cleaner Museum, and the World's Largest Gift Shop, among other things.  I-44 runs both through the Branson area and along the historic Route 66, so you get a lot of random sights along the way.  I almost turned off the road to see the giant rocking chair, but decided that I'd rather just get home to my family.  Maybe I'll take advantage of that rare delight on the return trip.  Once home, I relaxed with the family, mocked Degrassi episodes with my sister (our favorite pastime), and went for frozen custard.  And then I emailed people for 2 hours for my job...because even though SMU is on spring break, this is actually the busiest time of the year for the CCFOF.

But anyway, I'm going to sleep.  Glad to be home :)

Postscript: I've recently become a fan of country music via The Band Perry (of which my friend's friend is the fiddle player - yeah, I'm famous by extension), and spent much of the 10-hour drive from Dallas to St. Louis listening to their CD.  There's something about country music and road trips across the southern midwest that just seems to go together nicely.  Anyway, check their music, yo:

Where the Wind Comes Sweepin' Down the Plain

The bright side of driving miles and miles through Oklahoma is that it has lots of random stuff to look at along the way.  Stuff like this random tee-pee

And this gigantic casino that Austin and Santino stayed in:

And this really shiny Denny's:

And other weird stuff that I couldn't take a picture of because I was driving at 75mph and that is too obscure to find a picture of on Google.  All in all, it was a good drive.  After maneuvering your way out of Dallas traffic, there's really no traffic worth complaining about...except for a 20 mile stretch through Muskogee, OK, where one of the two lanes was closed for no apparent reason and traffic bopped along at a roaring 10mph in a stop-and-go fashion.  That just gave me more time to contemplate that tee pee I told you about.  

About 6 hours exactly after I set out on my journey, I arrived at my hotel in Joplin where I have since been laying around - did some working, did some facebooking - and eventually ventured out to Moe's, got a burrito to-go, and ate it while watching Roman Holiday on my laptop.  I'm wrapping up the evening now with the abundance of Molly Ringwald movies that always seems to be on Vh1 late at night.  This time it's Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles.  I've never seen Sixteen Candles all the way through before, and I kind of find it annoying...but now I feel committed to watching the whole thing just to have seen it.

Well, that's all I have to report.  Excited to see the family tomorrow :)

Urgh...

So despite the massive studying of yesterweek, the midterm kicked my butt.  I nearly began crying mid-test....that's how bad it was.  After it was over, I was so upset that I decided to skip my next class...and made it across the street to the parking garage before pulling myself together and going back to class.  Not that I paid attention much...but, in talking to friends, I discovered that everyone else in the class also felt like they did absolutely horrible.  The study guide, which is usually very good preparation for the test, didn't end up being as effective as it did in the past.  Whatever, it's over now.  I don't particularly wish to discuss it further.

After class my friend Miranda and I went and gorged ourselves on barbecue until we were physically incapacitated.  I'm still feeling the effects of this decision now...but, the social aspect was good.  I may never eat again, but that will make my food bill much cheaper.

After dinner, I did the following: laid on the couch, watched the end of Titanic on TV, laid on the couch, facebooked, laid on the couch, talked to my mom, laid on the couch, talked to my friend Brandi....and then I eventually got up off my butt and packed and cleaned and cleaned and packed and cleaned.  And now I'm all tired and stuff, so I'm going to make a morning to-do list to wrap things up, before hitting the road for St. Louis tomorrow.  Because, in case I didn't mention it, my spring break began as of 6:00...not that it's off to that great of a start, but I could definitely use a week of home time.  I'm driving halfway home tomorrow (about 6 hours, including scenic north Texas and Oklahoma), staying in a hotel on the Missouri border, and picking up the last 4 hours to St. Louis on Saturday.  I'm looking forward to the long drive...I'm going to throw my bags in the trunk, turn some music up, drive forever, and let my frustrations and stress fade away like the stretches of road behind me.

See you in Joplin.