on patience.

We, as a generation, as a world, have a difficult time practicing patience. With the ability to change a song as soon as we tire of listening to it, text constantly, check instagram and facebook for instant life updates from our friends and family, bring our emails up on our phone whenever we please, or to binge-watch television series on netflix, we've trained ourselves out of the ability to sit and wait. We expect quick results or an instantaneous response to a text, and we lose hope when we don't get them. Often, the best responses are well-thought out and take time. Because we rush through life, we tend to settle for less than anyone's best, including our own. As Christians, we are supposed to do our best to bring Heaven to earth here and now. How are we supposed to accomplish that task each day if we aren't doing everything we can to strive for the perfection of God Himself? This week, I encourage you to rest; to take some time to sit and be and to do nothing else. And pray. Find quiet time to talk with God. I, too, am guilty of moving through life too quickly, but I am always amazed at how God speaks to me when I actually take the time to just be with Him. Try it this week.

change.

Change surrounds me.

Tomorrow, I return to school for meetings to prepare for another year of shaping young minds.
This morning, I began to sort through my belongings to prepare to move.
Last week, I made a payment towards another graduate class.


With the end of each season comes this strange melancholy that finds me lying on my living floor for hours, illuminated by only candles, with the sounds of some record (such as Bon Iver or The National) softly humming through the speakers. I just lie there on the soft white shag rug my parents gave to me for Christmas last year. I stare at the ceiling thinking of all the people in my life and the events and activities we have participated in together over the course of the last few months and of the times that are to come in the next few months.

This summer has felt long, but it comes to an abrupt halt as I face my return to work tomorrow.
This summer, I celebrated my friend Sarah's birthday on a rooftop in Chicago.
This summer, I visited Seattle, where I saw my friends Maria and Laura, hiked up Rattlesnake Ledge in the Cascade Mountains, swam in the Puget Sound and Lake Washington, and explored the city.
This summer, Maria and I ran a half marathon with our friend Mallory on Sauvie Island just north of Portland, Oregon. We hobbled away, stiff and sore, but we felt accomplished, and I smiled all day long. We saw my friend Alyssa, walked around the Rose Gardens, searched for brunch daily, and ate the best ice cream of the summer-- sea salt ice cream w. caramel ribbon and almond brittle w. salted ganache from Salt & Straw.
This summer, I visited home, where I played a lot of Settlers of Catan until late hours of the night, explored Detroit with Dad and saw his childhood home and elementary school, and relaxed with family at home (where we ate a lot of ice cream to celebrate summer).
This summer, I danced for three days straight at Lollapalooza in Chicago, and that left me filled with the kind of joy that forces me to smile from deep within.
This summer, I read many books and drank a lot of good coffee.
This summer, I camped with co-workers and tubed down the Muskegon River.
This summer, I baked cupcakes with kids and took them to the library weekly.
This summer, I got a new tattoo of the Great Lakes to celebrate the place where I live and the water I love.

And now, I face the fall, which is filled with opportunities both exciting and nervewracking.
This fall, I return to school to teach English to the students I love with the co-workers I love.
This fall, I will take my second graduate class: Race, Class, and Language.
This fall, I may be buying a house and moving to the southeast side of GR (God willing it all works out!)
With the purchase of a house comes a lot of mixed feelings. I am so excited about the idea of feeling settled in a place and investing money in a place of my own (rather than paying rent for years to come). I am excited about the possibility of living even closer to school and being able to really invest in that community. I am excited about having a front porch and a backyard (which means more space to host friends and family)! With the purchase of a house, I am also nervous about having less money to travel more, and I am nervous that my friends will move away from Grand Rapids while I grow roots here. Growing roots means investing in a community, but it also means I'm stuck here for a while, and I hope that I can stay okay with that. I have to constantly remind myself that I am still young, and that I can do good and have adventures here in Grand Rapids for a few more years, and if the opportunity to move elsewhere comes up in the future, I can go out into the world then. For now, I have my breaks and summers to explore the world. For now, I will do my best to enjoy the changes coming my way and embrace them.

i have been changed for good.

As I face this final week of the school year, I'm left feeling magnificently relieved and also deeply saddened that the end is near. I have never worked with children that have such high needs both academically and behaviorally, but I have also never loved a group of kids as much as I do these. I have taught these kids important English skills, but the lessons they taught me this year are far more important than any book I had them read or story I had them write. Between taking kids to Friday night movies at school, driving them to school in the morning, teaching them how to cook after school, co-coaching running club, and taking kids out for ice cream on Sunday afternoons, these kids inadvertently taught me that this life is not about me. This life is completely about glorifying God and serving His people each and every day here on this earth. I am busy, and I often feel stressed about all that I must accomplish. It is in the moments when I see children laughing and just being kids that I am reminded to slow down and stop worrying. In these moments, I often think, "So what if I'm tired now? These interactions with these kids are far more important to God's kingdom than the time I might instead spend sitting on my couch. So what if I'm tired now? My time here on earth is pretty short, and I will rest in God's glory when I meet him in eternity." Although this past year I felt stressed far more often than I felt relaxed, I also felt far more fulfilled than I have at any other time in my life. This is not to say that I am without very selfish moments (or days or weeks). My point here is that God is great at reminding me that He is in control, and no matter how tired I may be, as long as I ask, He will always give me the strength and motivation to carry out His good works.

I challenge all of you to sit back and think, "Am I living out a life that pleases God? Am I asking God for the opportunities and strength to carry on His mission?" Trust Him. He will fill you with all things good to the point of overflow when you begin to live out each day in a way that pleases Him.

on love.

Throughout the past few weeks, I have finally been taking the time to sit down and write my senior seminar paper. I know the paper is two years late, but I truly do not think that, if I had written the paper any sooner, I could have written an honest paper reflecting on my experience in India and processing how my time there is affecting my worldview.

My junior and senior years at Hope were the worst two years of my life. By the time graduation came, I couldn't wait to escape. Throwing myself into a world completely different than anything I knew in Michigan didn't erase my issues, but it did help me look at my own problems in a new light. I learned that most of the horrible things that happened to me happened because I allowed them to. I immersed myself in situations that were life-sucking and not life-giving. I twisted how I thought about the relationships I had in order to believe that love was actually present, in some form, in all of them.

While the actions and words of the people around me were in fact void of love, the thoughts I had were so twisted and so full of lies that I spiraled into a deep depression. The strange thing about depression is that I could say anything I wanted to make others believe I was okay. I was also a gold medalist in placing blame on others. I held onto pain that I felt for years. I knew I had people around me that loved me, but I tried so hard to fix the issues I had with the people hurting me, when I really should have just let it all go and erased the people out of my life that I was allowing to hurt me.

India taught me to look for beauty in everything and everyone. I spent a lot of time with the girls I traveled with. I got annoyed with them, and I am sure they were annoyed with me. We were all traveling in a foreign country not at all like our own. Of course we were all going to be annoying at times. I held in my frustrations, though, and I didn't even write out my frustrations in my journal. I am glad I can look back through my journal and remember all of those girls as beautiful women with good and pure intentions. I even look back on the beggars and street children with love, even though they pinched the backs of my arms and tugged at the legs of my clothing, wiping their dirty hands on my back as they begged for money. That's all they know, and I can't judge them for that. They are just people trying to survive. "The best I can do is show love to them, even if that means just giving them a smile," is something I wrote in my journal a number of times throughout my trip.

India taught me to not judge or twist relationships. I have to be confident that God will work things out in His own way and at His own time. I have to remember that I am loved, even when I am single. There are all kinds of relationships and all kinds of love to be shared in this world. I feel more full than ever! This has come only with deep reflection, a growing sense of self-awareness, a community of faithful believers, forgiveness (both towards myself and towards others, even when I don't receive it in return), and constant prayer (especially when said out loud).

I have come to realize how important it is to tell the people in our lives how much we love and appreciate them. We need to show acts of love to the people we care about each and every day. I believe this because I have experienced a lot of loss lately, but also because I have experienced great gains, and I think the people who are life-giving to me deserve to know.

Tell someone today: "I love you, and I appreciate you!"

blindsided.

Death has a way of sneaking up on us, and no matter how many times you experience it, it never becomes easier to deal with. In actuality, I think it only becomes harder. My grandma, my sweet sweet grandma, passed away yesterday. She was found on her living room floor, in the dark, on Monday night, with a bad brain hemorrhage. By 3:30 am, she was brain dead. After receiving an early morning phone call from my dad, I drove home to Detroit, tears leaving spots on the inside of my glasses the entire drive home. I sat in the ICU at the hospital with my family, my grandma's pastor, and her best friend of 62 years for hours, sharing stories of the love she had for all people and for her Lord and Savior. Anytime anything came up in her life, she said, "I need to have a talk with God about this one." Every time I spoke with her, she told me that she had her church praying for me and my friends and my school. She had a memory like no one I have ever met before. I could sit in my grandma's living room for hours while she told me stories about her childhood: going to kindergarten in Grand Rapids, spending summers at the Lake House, riding the Greyhound bus with her dad. She even wrote a book that retells almost every memory of her life. I want to be remembered as a woman just like my grammy-- one who asks questions and truly listens to your answers, one whose God is number one all the time, and one who loves and loves and loves all people.

There is no way to describe what it is like to watch someone die, other than to flat out say what happened. While I know my grandma's soul was already with her Maker when I arrived at the hospital, her body was still being kept alive with machines, and we sat, holding her hands and kissing her cold forehead, all morning and afternoon. My sister, Natalie, sat in a chair, held grandma's hand and stared at her. My dad held her other hand, whispered, "You were a great mom. Thanks for everything." My mom stood beside my dad, rubbed his back, laid her head on his shoulder. I sat on the edge of the bed, laid my head across her lap. The doctor came in and unplugged the machines, and we sat and looked at my grandma and watched the screen next to her bed; watched her heart rate fall: 55, 54, 53, 46, 29, 23, 0...
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At the beginning of October, I lost my friend Sarah to a tragic accident in Grand Rapids. She was in town to do something she was passionate about: she was invited to show her photography as part of an ArtPrize exhibit. She had invited me to go see, since I live in the city, but I wasn't able to make it since my parents were in town the same day, and I was visiting with them.

I was able to see my grandma on Thanksgiving. As I dropped her off at home she said, "I hope I get to see you again since you're here for a while." I never made it back over to her apartment.

It is so easy to get lost in the guilt of not seeing the people we love one last time when we so easily could have had the chance. And it's so easy to get caught up in holding onto the bodies that people leave behind. Throughout these last two months, and due to the loss of two people I love, I have truly realized that we have something SO MUCH GREATER to look forward to. At death, we step into a life bigger and better than anything we could even imagine in this life. While we are here, though, we have the chance to bring a little bit of Heaven to earth, just like Sarah and my grandma did.

lasting impression.

I love returning home. It's nice to feel well-loved and to receive hugs endlessly. My friends back home have so much love to give, and I return with open arms, excitedly and selfishly receiving it. I get picked up and twirled around in long embraces, and I sit on living room floors laughing for hours as my friends make bad jokes and dumb faces and poke fun at each other. I stay up way too late wreaking havoc and going on adventures. My Detroit friends love concerts and will attend them at any cost, and they aren't afraid to be in the center of the crowd. I thrive on their energy.

Back home, I have a family whom I can play Scrabble with every night, a mom I can watch House Hunters with and never get bored, a sister who is hard-working and big-loving, her boyfriend who loves her even more than she loves me, and a dad who can answer any question I could ever think to ask him. I have grandmas who do nothing but serve and share stories of growing up.

It is nice to go home.

On the other hand, the life that has fallen into place for me in Grand Rapids is better and bigger than anything I could ever hope for. My friends here love the outdoors even more than I do. We camp and visit cabins up north and sit outside on nice days. We make a point to see each other on most days, whether that's playing trivia or watching 'How I Met Your Mother' or drinking local beer at one of our favorite bars or going to church or having fall fun or just sitting at a coffee shop doing work like we are now, in this moment. Every one of them is determined and driven and has a huge heart for people. They are doctors and engineers and social workers and nurses and teachers.

Furthermore, I have friends and family all over the world whom I love. How blessed I am to have loved ones I can visit in Chicago, Boston, Portland, Seattle, Florida, India, England, Colorado, Indiana, New York, etc. etc.?

The love I have in my life is the kind that makes my head swell; like that feeling you get when you sit on a back porch with friends on a cold night and inhale the smoke from a cigarette.
This is the kind of love that I want to brag about to everyone I know, and I can't say I'm sorry for being so proud of all the people I have in my life that I love so much.