CoMO Spring Break 2013

I’m a little slow updating, but spring break was last week, and I took advantage of my gracious graduate assistantship supervisor and took the week off to head up to Missouri for the first time since I graduated almost 2 years ago!

Absolutely Mizzou-tiful

It was a really lovely time of seeing old stomping grounds and hanging out with dear friends and mentors. It was hard to balance a week of seeing lots of friends, trying to do all of my favorite CoMO things (didn’t make it to the Ragtag… womp womp), eating my favorite CoMO food, trying to be a little productive with job searching and support raising, while also trying to relax during what was likely my last spring break ever. Although it was a busy week, I love every part of it and am so glad I got to visit the Zou! Here’s a little of what I did:

• Ate delicious Apples & Sausage on a pancake with Samjay at Cafe Berlin, a CoMO brunch MUST.
  

  Cafe Berlin (photo by Samjay)

• Visited with Mariah in Mizzou’s beautifully gothic Memorial Union.
  
  

  Memorial Union

• Dined on Addison’s famous Nachos Bianco with my blog friend, Kate, IRL! It was our first time to meet in person after two years of internet friendship!
  
  

  Kate & Me

• Hung out in Center Hall and Sporcled with the ladies of Dobbs Canvas Group, aka what my undergrad small group became after they closed Mark Twain Hall for renovations.
• Applied for some reslife jobs at Mizzou and in Texas, and ended up with a phone interview!
• Visited the Missourian and caught up with one of my favorite editors, the lovely Liz Brixey.
• Grabbed some delicious cookies from Ellis Library’s Bookmark Cafe and washed it down with some Kaldi’s coffee before catching up with my favorite eccentric and brilliant professor, Dean Ted Tarkow.
  
  

  Bookmark Cafe cookies. Soooo good.

• Walked across campus to see the newly renovated Pershing Commons and chat with my former Freshman Interest Groups colleague and Director of Mizzou’s ResLife, Frankie.
• Resisted buying so many glorious black & gold souvenirs, settling instead on a T-shirt for the boyf. He joked that he now has a shirt to mow the lawn in. Jerk. #Aggie
• Drank some Fitz’s rootbeer in Kaldi’s and worked on support raising.
• Spent the evening snuggling and giggling with my five hosts (Katie, Elaine, Samjay, Allie, and Michelle) in their adorable house, the Loo (which stands for Land of Oz).
  

  The Loo gals and me

• Grabbed gyros at Casablanca with Pastor Garrett and his lovely pregnant wife Brenna. (Can’t wait to meet baby Eben!)
• Walked over to Pastor John aka Drage‘s house and hashed out my summer internship job responsibilities for LT and talked recent and upcoming life events.
• Spooned and took the best nap ever with Samjay.
• Treated myself to way too much food at Flat Branch with Allie. By far my favorite restaurant in CoMO. Had to get the Flat Branch burger smothered in their ‘Chokes & Cheese for old time’s sake, followed by their cookie sundae with black & gold Tiger Striped ice cream. Also finally got around to trying a sample of six of Flat Branch’s own brews. My favorite was definitely the Oil Change Oatmeal Stout. Dark and chocolaty with some coffee flavors; yum.
• Craft nighted it up with Mazvita (Mah-’gee-ta) and made some adorable fabric flower hair clips. Buy one here to support Mazvita and invisible chonic illness awareness!
  

  Craft night! (photo by Mazvita)

• Enjoyed a famous Rollins Dining Hall omelet with Elaine.
• Lunched at the Upper Crust with my Walter Williams mentor, Maggie. Although it was a good lunch, I’ll have to remember in the future brunch is the best there.
• Grabbed some Which Wich with my dear friend Justin who also happened to be in town.
• Took a walk/hike through Clyde Wilson Memorial Park, tucked in the back of the East Campus neighborhood, with Samjay & Michelle
  

  Hiking with Michelle and Samjay

• Crashed Dobbs’ Canvas Group
• Watched a terrible movie on Netflix with Michelle.
• Enjoyed delicious Thai iced tea and peanut phat thai from Bangkok Gardens with my former internship supervisors, Jill & Laura.
• Toured the under-renovations Mark Twain Hall, my home for 3 years while at Mizzou.
• Enjoyed the spring weather, the Columns, and Peace Park with Michelle.
• Crashed a Rollins/Dobbs canvas group video game hangout.
• Went home early for more snuggling, giggling, and worship with the Loo gals on my last night in CoMO.
  

  Worship time!

Overall a beautiful week in Missouri!

We have to go back!

I have an announcement! God- (and Drage-) willing, I will be going back to Colorado LT this coming summer as a GCM staff intern! (If you don’t know what LT is, read about it here. But really you should know about it because I think I’ve mentioned it at least every third blog post since I decided to go the first time in the spring of 2010.)

Now I’m sure you have a lot of questions. I did, too, at first.

But wait, aren’t you graduating from your master’s program in May? Shouldn’t you be looking for a real job?
Ha! That’s the first question I asked myself after I felt the Lord telling me I should consider this internship back in July.

Um, God, you’re telling me I should intern at LT? That sounds like a horrible idea. What will people say when I tell them I’m not looking for a job after graduation, I’m just galavanting off to the mountains and ignoring the “real world” for an extra 12 weeks? And I have, like, loans to repay and stuff.
Yeah, good thing it’s a paid internship!
I’m supposed to graduate and get a real job because that’s what grownups do!
Can’t you job search while you’re in Colorado?
Uh, I guess so… yeah. But employers are going to ask me about this gap between grad school job searching.
Um, what gap? You’ll be working.
But does working at LT really count towards my professional career?
Lindsay. Yes. Duh. You’ll be working with college students and coordinating a summer leadership training program.
Oh yeah… It is pretty much all the things I LOVE about my area of study… discipleship, student groups, leadership, teaching & workshops, event planning… That actually would look pretty good on my resume… hmm…
See. I told you it’s gonna be awesome.
But God, what happens when LT ends and I don’t have a job?
Lindsay, how many times have a carefully and perfectly taken care of all your needs? Oh, that’s right, ALL THE TIMES.
Ok, God. I guess I’ll think about it.
Lindsay, you can say that, but we both know what you’re going to decide…
… shut up, God. (Sometimes I don’t want to admit he’s right even when I know in my heart he is…)

So yeah. I’ve been praying about it and talking to people I trust and respect about what spending this summer in Colorado might mean for me. Obviously all the church staff I’ve talked to are pro-me-going. But I was nervous about what my grad school program coordinator would say if I took the path less traveled and put off my job search a little. Turns out she was supportive of me doing what I felt like was right for me. Something about listening to my inner voice or something (insert Baxter Magolda in-joke for SA-people here). Then I talked to my current supervisor, which I think was possibly the most encouraging conversation ever. This obviously isn’t word for word what he said, but it captures the essence of the conversation.

“Lindsay, if you feel called to go, then you need to go. We all have voices insides our selves that tell us stuff that really might not make sense for other people, but it makes sense for us. You need to listen to that voice. Will your job search look different? Yes. Will you potentially miss out on jobs that will be open in the summer? Yes. But that doesn’t mean you won’t find a job. You’re just going to find a different job. Your process is just going to be different from your peers’, and that’s okay as long as you know that and are okay with it. You’re 23 years old. When are you going to have the opportunity to do this stuff for yourself again? You have 30+ years to build up your professional career. You don’t need to start your professional first job the day after graduation.”

Biggest weight off my shoulders.

So yeah. I’m applying to intern, y’all. I’m really excited for what this internship will do for me personally and professionally. Personally, I think a season of semi-rest and refreshment after this crazy year of grad school will be the best thing ever. I need to get out to the mountains and dedicate 12 weeks of my life to serving the Lord and not writing student development theory papers or studying higher education case-law. I need to breathe mountain air and stare at God’s creation for a few months. Professionally, like I mentioned earlier, this internship will give me more experience in a non-conventional-but-still-applicable-student-affairs-y-type job. It will also give me a better understanding of the inner workings of college ministry and what it’s like to work with other GCM staffers. So yeah. Getting pumped for sure.

So does this mean you’re going on staff?!
Ha, no.

Oh, ‘cuz you don’t want to support raise, right?
Well, that is technically true. I don’t really want to support raise my salary, but that is not the reason I’m not going on staff. I’m not going on staff because I don’t feel called to go on staff. I feel called to get a job at a university and volunteer my resources and outside time to campus ministry through GCM. I feel like the Lord has equipped me to serve in this way, and I am super pumped about it.

Oh, so do you have to raise support for this internship?
Yes, so… be on the lookout for a letter asking you for support through prayer or finances in early 2013! I’ll admit I don’t really look forward to support raising again, especially since I will have to raise more than I had to for Italy last year, but I know the Lord will provide. If he’s calling me to Colorado, he will make a way for me to go.

So what happens now?
My application to intern is due December 1, and then if I’m accepted to intern, I’ll go to GCM ministry team development training in January. Then in May, I will graduate, pack out my room at the Den (woah, too soon… too soon…), and head to the mountains. I don’t know for sure what happens after that. I’ll be doing some preliminary job searching in the spring just in case my dream job shows up, but I imagine I’ll be doing the bulk of the work of looking for a real job out in Colorado. As of today, I plan on looking primarily at GCM campuses (Texas A&M, Texas State, UNT, Mizzou, and Pitt), though I will also be looking at the Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas areas. If I leave Colorado without a job, chances are I’ll move back in with the ‘rents until God tells me where to go next. Not gonna lie, that freaks me out. I haven’t been unemployed since high school, but I trust that the Lord knows what he’s doing!

So yeah! I’ll definitely try to update the blog as more happens, but, um, you may have noticed that I have sucked at blogging this semester, so… no guarantees for regular updates… Regardless, be praying for me, please! Excited to share what the Lord does with me and this opportunity over the next 10 months.

Why I care about the SEC

Truman the Tiger and Reveille chilling at the “Welcome to the SEC” weekend for Mizzou and A&M.

As some of you may know, this Sunday marked Texas A&M and Mizzou’s entrance into the NCAA Southeastern Conference. This is big deal in many ways, from more prestige for both schools, to a more equitable sharing of varsity sports profits, to all sorts of sports/higher education-related politics I don’t even fully understand. But that’s not really why I care about this move.

If you know me, you might know I’m not the biggest sports fan in the world. Yes, I enjoy a good Mavs game, will take you up on a night at the Rangers Stadium (though I would never take time out to watch a baseball game on TV; blech), and will deck myself out in black & gold or maroon & white every Saturday all fall. But in general, I’m not a sports fanatic. I’ll go to sporting events or watch them as a social activity with friends, but I don’t really have a stake in who wins. I don’t follow any professional teams*, and I only really care if the Aggies or Tigers win. Don’t ask me anything about other teams; chances are I don’t know. And honestly, at this point, I’m doing good even to remember the main football players for A&M and Mizzou. I’ve lost all sense of who plays on their basketball teams. National Championship? If it’s not Tigers or Aggies, it’s really not of interest to me. Super Bowl? I’m there for the food, the commercials, the halftime show, and to watch the Brynsvold Twins watch the game. (They’re the real entertainment.) I don’t even care about the BCS vs. a playoff system. Unless A&M/Mizzou gets screwed. Don’t mess with my two teams. Top 25 ranking? No Tigers, no Aggies? I’m not checking it.

So then you might be wondering why Saturday at midnight my Twitter feed exploded with SEC insanity. Well, it’s because this means more to me than sports. This is two of my favorite places in the entire world united together. I love it.

My tweets from June 30/July 1, 2012.

Mizzou and A&M are my homes. I met my best friends there. I grew up there. They are the last 5 years of my life, and those have been some formative years, let me tell you. So the fact that they’re both here together, newbies in the SEC, warms my heart.

It’s like Colorado LT. Colorado has brought so many different groups of my friends and mixed them all up. My sister and a friend from high school met my Mizzou friends. My Mizzou friends made Aggie friends, and then I met them in Texas. And now my Aggie friends are back in Colorado meeting more Mizzou friends. ALL MY WORLDS ARE COLLIDING, AND IT’S AWESOME.

Allie, who I discipled at Mizzou, and Kristina, who I will be living with at A&M in the fall, sharing a milkshake. WORLDS COLLIDE.

My sister and a bunch of my Mizzou friends hiking Eagle Cliff last summer.

So the SEC just seems to be a continuation. My favorite places on earth continuing to exist together and collide. Plus it doesn’t hurt that I don’t have to keep up with two conferences to watch my two favorite teams. And it guarantees a yearly “WHAT COLOR DO I WEAR MY TEAMS ARE PLAYING EACH OTHER AND I’M TORN” moment. And an excuse for my Mizzou friends to come watch a game in Texas or me to follow the Aggies up to Missouri.

My maroon Mizzou T-shirt so I can support both my teams.

So I guess it does kind of have to do with sports. Whatever.

*This is not to say I’m a bandwagonner. If I have to pledge allegiance to sports teams, I’ve picked them: Dallas Mavericks for basketball (leftover from the days when I did actually follow them. I miss Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzski’s bromance.), Texas Rangers for baseball, Dallas Stars for hockey? (I’ve never watched hockey in my life), Team USA for the Olympics (duh), and Italy for other international sports-related endeavors. Because, you know, it’s the only country outside the US I’ve been to. That’s legit, right?

It could be worse

I got a little story secret for you, Ags friends. (Haha! Secret! Get it?!)

There was a time during my junior year of college where I was probably more stressed out than I’ve ever been in my life. I say “probably” only because I think I repressed a lot of the memories in order to cope with the insanity that was my life, and I can’t be sure it was the absolute most stressed out I’ve ever been.

At the time, I was taking only 12 hours of class, but that included Magazine Editing (fun but super time consuming), Infographics (fun but ALSO super time consuming with an 8-hour newspaper shift each week), an honors humanities class (not fun and super time consuming), and an honors-by-contract 20th Century American history class (a sad attempt to get rid of an upper-division social science requirement). On top of this I was working four jobs: I was a peer advisor in Mark Twain Hall (10-20 hours a week depending), the front desk supervisor (10 hours a week), a marketing intern for ResLife (10 hours a week), and a journalism school tour guide (4-6 hours a month, thank goodness).

Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much, and you can bet I didn’t get around to all my reading. (This resulted in my first ever C’s. Two glaring C+’s next to two gleaming A’s. I cared about journalism; I did not care about Beowulf or the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.)

During this time, my life was sometimes pretty darn pathetic. There was the time my friend Katie and I stayed up into the wee hours of the night studying literature and art of Early Modern World (think Augustine, Beowulf, and Canterbury Tales) when Katie dumped an entire bowl of ramen on my dorm room floor because I tripped on stray papers. There was the fact that I frequently went to 1:1 meetings with my boss in my pajamas (perks of having a resLife). And then there was the time I did my entire Infographics final project in one night, moving into the basement computer lab of Twain at 6 p.m. and coming out at 6 a.m, bleary-eyed from staring at a giant Mac screen all night. And then there were the deodorant tissues. But we’ll get back to those.

Katie and the ramen

As this semester starts careening toward the end, the stress has risen to new levels. I don’t even want to list off the number of presentations and papers I have. Not to mention stresses unrelated to school, i.e. friends, prepping for the summer, work, roommates, the fact that my room flooded last week, the fact that I still don’t know what’s been making me itchy for the past 3 months, the fact that I haven’t signed my lease for the fall, the fact that I have to transition out of my current work position and prep it for someone else to take over in two months, etc. It’s starting to take a toll on my sanity.

Ah, but I bet you are thinking, “Tell me about the deoderant tissues! What are deoderant tissues?!” We’re getting there. Deoderant tissues are the benchmark on the scale of Pathetic that says, “THIS IS ROCK BOTTOM.”

You see, my junior year I was so busy and stressed out, I couldn’t even find the time to go buy basic necessities I had run out of, like deodorant and toothpaste. At one point during the middle of the spring semester, I remember lamenting with my co-peer advisor Amy that neither of us had been to the grocery store in weeks and that we were staring to run out of essentials. At one point, I was working my way through several travel-sized tubes of toothpaste because that’s all I had. And the only deodorant I had access to was the remnants of a semi-exploded gel stick. The gel wasn’t even in the stick of the deodorant anymore. It was all in the lid. And you better believe I used a tissue to wipe some of that gel deodorant from the lid to my armpits.

Like I said: rock bottom.

Thankfully, once my mom heard of my pathetic state she sent my a care package with toothpaste and deodorant. My boss and hall director also was horrified at my sad existence and offered to pick whatever I needed up on her next grocery run. I probably wouldn’t have survived that spring without both those marvelous ladies.

Thankfully Spring 2012 hasn’t quite hit the level of Spring 2010. It’s vying for that spot, but I’m managing for now. And I have extra toothpaste and deodorant in my bathroom cabinet, don’t you worry.

Spring has sprung

I never thought I would like highways so much until last week.

You see, it’s been five years since I’ve been in Texas during the spring. (Well, for more than a week at a time…) And I kinda forgot what Texas spring is like.

TURNS OUT IT’S BEAUTIFUL.
I’ve missed bluebonnets for years, but I forgot about the rainbows of other wildflowers the blanket the roadsides in Texas. It’s breathtaking.

I’m a loser and didn’t take any photos over spring break even though drove from College Station to Arlington to Austin and back to College station, and I saw hundreds of awesome fields full or red clover blossoms, orange Indian paintbrushes, purple winecups, yellow black-eyed susans and, of course, bluebonnets, so you’ll have to take it at my word and at Google Image Search’s results.

I have been a huge fan of Missouri springs and proclaiming their superiority over the past four years, but I have to say, Texas highways are giving the Mizzou campus a run for its money this March. Especially since it never seemed to really hit true spring temperatures last year…

(Sam Fiek, you would love it here.)

Lazy Saturday

Today I really should be spending all my time reading and writing about color-blind racism for my Multicultural Issues in Student Affairs class. But I’m not. Instead I’m…

1. Recovering from an awesome lock-in retreat for my fabulous AOLP students. I love them, but sleeping for approximately 3 hours on a love seat while listening to them go on about A&M debut in the SEC next year left me tuckered out! When I got home this morning, I slept from 7:30 until 1…

2011-2012 AOLP Execs

Execs and OLMs from the Blue Toad team skitting it up last night

2. Catching up on my John & Hank Green videos. These YouTube celebs make vlogs about random observations, but have also recently branched off into a few other YouTube channels about trivia, world history & biology, and general science. Watching them reminds me of my childhood days of Bill Nye on PBS. I just always feel smarter after a marathon of Green Brothers’ videos!

Plus these guys have awesome taste and lead you to great new internet discoveries, such as this mini-documentary about the Salton Sea in Califonia.

3. Watching some MU/ku hoops. It’s the final scheduled match-up between Mizzou and our rivals, Kansas. Go Tigers! (It was 44-32 at half time. Largest half-time deficit in 5 years at Kansas!)

4. Getting mentally prepared to cover myself in blue paint and get some free Blue Baker for dinner! Looking forward to tonight’s homegroup hangout.

Racism can wait until tomorrow.

Texas is jealous of my love for Missouri

So remember that time I moved away from Mizzou back to Texas and how excited I was about that? Remember how I craved Texas? Remember how I obsessed about Texas A&M? WELL THE HONEYMOON PERIOD IS OVER, Y’ALL.

I mean, not really. I honestly do love Texas and wouldn’t trade being here for the world, but seriously, Texas is getting a little jealous and territorial, and I’m feeling a little smothered. IT WON’T LET ME CONNECT WITH MISSOURI. Some examples:

1. Homecoming
This year was Mizzou’s 100th Homecoming, and it was a big, freaking deal. I was trying to make every plan to go back to Missouri for the occasion, but it never came through, and the cherry on top was the fact that I had to work New Family Welcome that weekend. The fates did not want me to return to CoMO.

2. Mizzou vs. A&M (football)
The Tigers came to town at the end of October to play the Aggies. Along with the team came some of my good friends from Mizzou. Did I get to go to that game? Was I even in town that weekend? NO. Again for work, though this time it was for an all-expenses-paid trip to New Orleans, so I can only complain so much.

3. Mizzou vs. A&M (basketball)
The #3 ranked Missouri Tigers are coming to town to face off  against A&M this weekend. And I had the opportunity to go for free because I signed up for The Big Event. I, however, will be in Oklahoma City. For work. CRUEL WORLD.

4. Mizzou vs. A&M (baseball)
Our homegroup could possibly be going to Austin that weekend. This is just getting ridiculous.

5. Spring Break
I have the time off, but because Columbia is 2 hours from an airport and I don’t want to pay for a shuttle/spend my entire week there, I’m not going to visit. Besides, all my friends would be in school because we have different spring breaks. Womp womp.

But we haven’t even gotten to the pièce de résistance yet. Oh no. That’s what went down tonight. It’s a little different because it isn’t necessarily Texas keeping me away from Missouri… I mean in a way it is, but it’s almost like Missouri is trying to entice me and Texas is rubbing it in my face that I can’t make it work. Rude.

6. The Rocket Summer
I love The Rocket Summer. Everyone knows Bryce Avery is my favorite artist ever. I count him among the influential people in my life. I’m a little obsessed. Despite this fact, I have never seen a honest-to-goodness TRS headlining show. I’ve seen Bryce twice: once when he opened for One Republic at Harding University and once when he played a solo show in Dallas. I can’t count the number of times I have missed Dallas headlining shows because I lived in Missouri at the time.

WELL NOW THE TABLES HAVE TURNED. SORT OF.
I found out tonight that The Rocket Summer and Switchfoot (another one of my faves) are touring together in April & May. Guess where they’re playing on April 26. COLUMBIA FREAKING MISSOURI. Whyyyyy, Bryce and Jon, whyyyyyy? I waited patiently for four years for you to come, and you never did. I literally talked to Bryce about The Blue Note when I met him in Arkansas. This is just cruel. I mean, it’s still not a headlining show, but seeing two awesome bands within walking distance of where I lived in MO would have been so awesome. Thankfully they’re stopping in Frisco. And even though that’s kind of far away I WILL be at that show, dangit.

So Texas, honey, I promise to stay faithful to you. I am not going anywhere. If you let me see Missouri or some Tigers, I won’t run back to Mizzou with them. Seriously. I’m here for the long haul. Can you just lighten up a little?

 

The tangled web I weave

The idea of connection is a huge theme in my life. In my mind, everything in my life is connected. My life is a continuous chain of events, each part connected to the next. I am unable to see parts of my life without the context of what brought me to a specific point and what that specific point did to alter my life. For example:

1. My family is weirdly close to my dentist. This is partly because there are six people in my family who go to the same dentist, but also partly because my dentist is also my orthodontist, and after putting three kids through braces, we were at the dentist office a lot. Also my dentist’s receptionist is his wife, so we know her well, too. In short, my dentist is a family friend.
2. The summer after my freshman year of college, I needed a place to live in Columbia. I ended up rooming with my dentist’s daughter because, “coincidentally,” (I don’t really believe in coincidences anymore) she was also at Mizzou, 700 miles away from home.
3. While I lived with Dentist’s Daughter, I met a lot of her friends from Sigma Phi Lambda, the Christian sorority at Mizzou. They convinced me to join in the fall.
4. Once I joined Phi Lamb, I came across the problem of conflicting sorority meetings and church small group meetings. Because of this and a few other reasons, I decided to find a different campus ministry for the last half of my time at Mizzou.
5. Enter my friend John, who invited to me to The Rock.
6. After 6 months with The Rock, I decided to go to Colorado LT during the summer of 2010.
7. At LT I met all my Aggie friends and fell in love with A&M.
8. I applied and got into A&M.
9. I moved to College Station and will start class here in just more than a week.

So the moral of the story is I’m at Texas A&M because my family is freakishly close to my dentist.

I realize this is a somewhat weird way to look at life, but I just can’t help it. That’s how it makes sense in my head. So much so that one of my top five StrengthsQuest strengths is Connectedness. EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED.

And God has been faithful to show me just how connected my life is recently.

Exhibit A: LT
LT 2011 was possibly one of the biggest webs of connections for me ever. Although I wasn’t there, the majority of my Mizzou canvas group was. And so was my sister. And our friend from high school. Plus random acquaintances from A&M. And returners from LT 2010. And they all mixed and met and connected. My Mizzou friend Michelle led a project group with my A&M/LT 2010 friend Brett. My Mizzou friend Sam befriended the daughter of my new A&M pastor. And then there’s the life group of Ethan, Jason and Cody.

I went to high school with Ethan, I went to Mizzou with Jason, and now I go to school with Cody, though I don’t know him hardly at all. All these people from various places in my life meshed together and met one another. They connected.

Exhibit B: East Asia
One of my roommates here in College Station just recently got back from a mission trip to East Asia with a group from our church. As she was talking about the trip, she mentioned the name of the missionary they worked with there. When she said his name, I instantly recognized it, though I wasn’t sure if it was the same person I was thinking about

“Wait… was he from Texas?”
“Yeah, he was from the Dallas area.”
“I think he was my friends’ youth minister.”
“Uhhhh… what?!”

I texted a few friends from high school and discovered that yes, it was in fact their youth minister. In summary, my roommates from grad school spent four weeks in East Asia with my friends from high school’s ex-youth minister.
Yeah. In the words of my friend Allen, “And people say there isn’t a God.”

Exhibit C: My Ship
If you’ve followed my blog, you know about my blog friend Kate. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read this.) The story of how we “met” is a weird connection in itself. But today, I got a phone call from my friend Katie at Mizzou.

“You’ll never guess who we just met.”
“Uhhhh… yeah, you’re right. Who did you meet?”
“THE SHIP! WE MET THE SHIP!”

Kate met my Mizzou friends at Which Wich. In line. Just chatting. WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF THAT, PEOPLE?! So now my blog friend has met my Mizzou friends and my pastor.

Text from Ed: “Just met Kate at the [outreach] table. She’s a J-School grad student. She said you guys connected after she stalked your blog.”

Yes, Ed, we did connect. And now she’s connected with my Mizzou family!

I feel like God is using me as some sort of weird connector, a strange link between unrelated people. This has happened in the past, too. I’ve introduced a couple of roommates to each other and things like that. I’m not sure exactly what good it does, or why it keeps happening, but for some reason, it makes me very happy to have my worlds constantly colliding.

First friend-dates

If I’m being completely objective, I’d have to say my move to College Station has been one of the easiest transitions I could have imagined. That’s not to say parts of it haven’t been hard or challenging, or that I don’t miss my Mizzou folks more than words can express. It just means that when you take in everything that could have gone wrong or how hard it could have been, this transition has been relatively easy.

It was a huge blessing from God to come here with a few close friends and at least a bunch of other friend-ish acquaintances . It was a great base for me to start rebuilding my support system and a great resource for meeting new friends. But the thing about moving somewhere and starting over is that you have to start over.

Not many people here really know me. I’d say maybe three people do, so far. (Which isn’t half bad, considering I’ve been here a month.)

In order to combat this, I’ve taken it upon myself to ask several friends and acquaintances out on first friend-dates. I just this term because it’s the best metaphor I can think of to represent what I’m doing. Essentially I find people I’d like to get to know better (as friends) and asked them to get lunch/dinner/coffee/ice cream/froyo/snow cones with me. And then we basically have a first date, if we’re being honest.

How many siblings do you have? Where are you from? What’s your major? How’d you get to A&M? How’d you find Fellowship Church? What’s God been doing in your life lately? Share your testimony. How’d you get involved in student affairs? What was your undergrad experience like? What do you like to do for fun?

I’ve had these first friend-dates with about 5-7 girls so far. (I’ve really only done it with girls so far, but I definitely want to get to know my homegroup brothers, too, so they’re next!) A lot of my conversations have been really blessed by encouragement and testimonies and being able to see God working in other people’s lives. It’s also been a blessing to get to know my coworkers and understand their background and education. But I’ve also gotten to share a lot about myself, where I came from and who I am during these conversations. People are picking up on my quirks already! (i.e. love of proper English, my Mizzou pride, my height, my ginger citizenship, my love of Gilmore Girls, how I got to A&M, bits of my testimony, my journalistic background, what student affairs is, etc.)

It’s been a cool opportunity to lay the groundwork for some really awesome friendships I can see forming in my future, and I’m excited for more first dates and more follow-up dates!

I’m not at Colorado LT

It’s one of the thoughts that has been plaguing my mind for the past week or so.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I went to LT last summer, and it was a huge blessing in my life. You also know I was 99% sure I was going back this summer. But then you also know that I was offered a spot at my dream grad school with my dream grad assistantship, which required me to move to College Station this summer and not go to LT.

And if you’ve followed my tweets at all, you know I kinda wish I were at #LT2011.

Moving to College Station has been exciting (and deserving of a whole other blog post), but there’s a part of me that really wishes I were in Colorado.

I wish I were there for myself.
Last summer was an awesome time of growth for me. LT makes is easy. Ok, not easy in the sense of “That was a really easy summer!” but in the sense of “I’m surrounded by Christians and opportunities to reach out and learn and grow!” The whole purpose of LT is to grow. That’s not the whole purpose of College Station. Plus, I wanted to go back and do things differently. I wanted to meet more people, go to Boulder to outreach more, share the gospel more and lead a project group. I wanted to all those things, and now I will probably never have the chance to do those things specifically.
But I will still get to do those things here.
It just won’t be laid out perfectly for me. But that’s what I need. To be challenged, to make new friends in my new home, and to figure out how to serve and lead and share here, in College Station.

I wish I were there for my “freshies.”
I use the term freshies loosely because those girls are now sophomores (but they’ll always be “the freshmen” in my heart), and also because I have my sister there and the twins and other Twain girls I love who weren’t “the freshmen,” and I wish I was there for them. If you know me, you know my motherly personality (the freshmen call me Mama…). Part of me wishes I were at LT to be there for them and to be able to continue to equip and train those younger people in my life.
But they don’t need me like that anymore, and I can take a reduced role of support here.
Those guys are ready to step up and lead. Mama Bear needs to step back. I can still support them through prayer, encouraging letters and occasional Skype chats. I can answer some of their questions, but let them figure things out on their own, too.

I wish I were there with my friends.
All those people I mentioned in the previous paragraph are my friends, as well. I’m comfortable with them. Being around them is easy and familiar. Being in College Station has been a little hard. I only know 3 or 4 people really well. I know several others on the surface level, but I am craving that deeper friendship. I was sort of looking forward to transitioning from Mizzou to A&M out at LT, when I could be with both groups of people. But God had something else in mind.
But I can make new friends here.
I can build on the basic friendships I already have a go deeper with these new people. It’s hard, and I have to be proactive, but it’s good. As much as a slow, regulated transition would have been nice, severing all personal, face-to-face contact with Mizzou people forces me to really reach out to the A&M people. I’m not going to sit here alone in my apartment, so I’m going to start building my support system for the next two years.

So, in summary, part of me is bummed I’m not at LT.
I feel like I’m missing out on opportunities for “easy growth,” I miss my friends and I’m having to let go of my “babies.”
But it’s good to be here.
I know God is going to use this summer to stretch me and prepare me for the next two years here. I’ll make new friends and adapt to my new environment, and it’s going to be great. God knows what I need, and this, here, is what I need.

In the mean time, I’m going to be praying like a mad person for my Mizzou family out in Colorado. And if you’re looking for something to pray about, Katie, Samjay, Michelle, Jason, Kyle, Blair, Ethan, Cindy, Rachel, Mariah, Sam and Makenzie could use your prayers as well.

Plus I get to visit all them in 55 days and 18 hours! I will survive on Twitter hashtags (#LT2011), Facebook updates and albums, and blog posts until then!