An Open Letter to My Brother...

...On the Occasion of His Graduation from College and Starting His Career.



Cam and I after his Rose-Hulman Graduation

Dear Cameron,

There is always so much I want to say and so much advice I want to give you. But, I also know how smart you are and how confident you are and you will succeed at whatever you do. Still, this is my chance to impart all my big sister advice - sometimes being 12 years older has its advantages!

Be Kinder than Necessary
You are such a good person. You are kind and considerate to people always. I am proud of who you have become and who you are. As you start your new job, you will have abundant opportunities to meet new people, and you won't always know their stories. Be kind to everyone you meet. They are all fighting hard battles going through who knows what in life. When someone has a bad day, remember it's not about you. The best thing you can do is repay them with kindness and compassion.

Trust Yourself
You've gone through a lot o classes and learned a lot in the past four years. Now is the time to trust that schooling and your education. You know more than you even realize. You will be a huge success at whatever you do, and now is the time to trust all the hours of studying and work that have led to this moment.

Stay Humble
You still have a lot to learn. Knowing that is the first step in succeeding in the workplace and with friends! Admitting you don't know the answers is hard, but it's good for you (and for the people around you).

Risk More
We're not risk-takers by nature. Please, please take some risks. Try new foods, meet new people, say yes to invitations you might otherwise have said no to. Meet people. Be adventurous. I know - you're just like me. After a long day at work, going home and hanging out on the couch sounds like the perfect evening. And that's fine, but don't get so comfortable there you never do anything else!

Laugh A Lot
Life is serious...seriously funny. There is always time for laughter and joy. Find the things that make you happy and do them. A lot. Be the first person to laugh at yourself.

Give Back
Find an organization or charity that you love and give back. Volunteer your time, talents and money to serve the hungry, the homeless, the endangered, the scared...whatever fulfills that passion in your heart. You'll never regret the hours or dollars you spend helping others, I can guarantee it.

Plan for the Future
Time goes fast. Too fast. Take time now to think about where you want to go and who you want to be. Then do what you need to do to get there. Don't wait until you think you have life figured out to do this. Don't wait until you meet the perfect girl - start making plans now!

Don't Compromise Yourself
You know who you are, what you are willing to do, and the lines you just won't cross. Don't compromise yourself to be popular or get ahead at work. Your integrity matters long after immediate success; remember to be who you are.

Call Your Mom
She loves you. And she's going to be your biggest supporter and your biggest advocate your entire life. Drop her a text, a phone call, an email, a message via carrier pigeon - just drop her a line. It will mean the world to her.

Love,

Five Minute Friday: View

Go.

The view reminded me that there is just one me in a very big, very complicated, very detailed world. Still, I am not insignificant. I am important. I matter. I have value.

The view from here as I look to the future is a little blurry. The paths I laid so carefully in my teen years and college years is so far gone that it's laughable. This is not where I thought I would be, not what I thought I would be doing, not how I thought my life would look. The view is a little more complicated now. It seemed so simple when I was young - go from point A to point B to point C, neatly checking things off my list and moving on to the next thing.

Now, the view is more like a tree branching off in a million directions. Point A leads to point B, but also to point C, Q and V. Point B will lead you forward to C, N, O or backward to A. It's not clear these days, but the view is a lot more beautiful. As much as I am a planner and an organizer, I feel like the disorder of a life that is unfolding in strange and new ways reminds me that I am just one piece of a giant puzzle. I am one piece and I only have one view of how the future looks.

I can't see the whole picture.
I don't know all the moving pieces.
I don't know where I am (am I an edge piece or somwhere in the middle? What do I hold together?)

I only know that the blurrier my view of the future becomes, the more I have to rest quietly and trust completely that the only view that really matters is the one He has; the one where all the joys and sadness make sense and that, at the end of it all, the view will be perfect.

Stop.

Whatif...

I loved shel silverstein growing up. Funny, smart and sassy, his books of poetry are still some of my favorite things to read through. While I laughed through many poems as a child, they are starting to affect me differently as an adult. Especially this one:

Whatif by Shel Silverstein

Last night, while I lay thinking here,
some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
and pranced and partied all night long
and sang their same old Whatif song:
Whatif I'm dumb in school?
Whatif they've closed the swimming pool?
Whatif I get beat up?
Whatif there's poison in my cup?
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don't grow taller?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?
Whatif the fish won't bite?
Whatif the wind tears up my kite?
Whatif they start a war?
Whatif my parents get divorced?
Whatif the bus is late?
Whatif my teeth don't grow in straight?
Whatif I tear my pants?
Whatif I never learn to dance?
Everything seems well, and then
the nighttime Whatifs strike again!

My Whatifs now are different; older and more introspective. I don't worry about my teeth growing in straight (they didn't) or if I don't grow taller (I won't). Instead my whatifs are along the lines of whatif we miss a tick, whatif the cancer comes back, whatif something at work changes, whatif I don't like my internship, whatif this...whatif that...whatif, what if, WHAT IF.

I'm learning, though, that my whatifs only have as much power as I let them take. I can either be controlled by my whatifs or learn to control them. I can either live in fear of the unknown or try to be okay with not having all the answers. I can choose to worry about the things I can control and let go of the billion and a half unknowns that I can't.

Knowing all this doesn't always makes the whatifs easier, though. Learning to be okay with the fact that there are whatifs that won't have answers has been a good, though long, lesson. Every time I find another whatif that could take over my mind, I have to remember that these little things only affect me if I let them. Now, the secret is to not let them. Easier said than done, but I'm learning. Slowly. Too bad it's a lesson I have to reteach myself every single time something new stresses me out... :)

 

Five Minute Friday: Brave

Go.

Sometimes He calms the storm. Sometimes He calms me. I have to remember that. I have to remember that no matter how much red is on my radar, He has control. I have to remember that as scary as the storm is, I am not asked to calm it, just trust through it. For me, that is what being brave looks like.

Brave is going through the storm when you'd rather turn the other way.
Brave is admitting you can't control the winds that blow.
Brave is watching the storm move in and staying rooted where you are.
Brave is trusting that you will make it through, no matter how scary and uncertain it feels right now. Brave is being still when the world says run.
Brave is standing up for the right, when the world says it's wrong.
Brave is trusting.
Brave is loving.
Brave is smart, but not calculated.
Brave is honest.
Brave is forthright.
Brave is believing.

There comes a moment in every single day when God asks me to be brave. Sometimes He asks me to be brave in little things - sending emails, answering questions, talking to people I don't know well. Sometimes He asks me to be brave in big things - trusting that He has the answers, even when they're hard and trusting that His plan is better than anything I can ever imagine.

I have lived a truly blessed life. There have been down moments, to be sure. There has been heartache and sadness, but there has been way more joy and happiness. There have been tears, but there have always been more laughs. There has been uncertainty, and there has been a clear path. There has been the call to be Brave in the big and the little: in trusting and hoping and wishing and dreaming; in loving and laughing and wondering and smiling; in tears and heartache and sadness and loneliness. There has been the call, above all, to be His. And being His means being Brave.

Stop.

Where I Went

So, it turns out April is a really bad month for me to try and consistently blog. Add Easter the last day of March and April started crazy and went right on being crazy. I had meetings, appointments, vacation, Race for the Cure weekend, hanging out, small group, work, work, work, birthdays, house stuff, life...it was just a crazy month. Add getting sick to that mix and I'm sorry, I failed at the A to Z challenge. I liked my little story, though, and do plan to finish it. I think it's important to finish the things that you start, even if it takes forever to actually get them done.

May is shaping up to being equally crazy, followed by my summer - working full time and doing my internship to finish up my library science degree. It's going to be fun, but exhausting. As much as i'm not one to wish time away, I'm hoping to survive these next few months in style and come mid-August, I'm already looking forward to my Women of Faith weekend with Beth!

I will try to blog - if I find anything worth writing about and that isn't too introspective (since that makes people think I'm sad when really I'm just lost in my thoughts!)

Don't give up on me, blogging friends. Life is busy, but good. It will continue to be good, but better!

G is for Good Grief

Good grief. I thought I was just not getting enough sleep. I thought that my imagination was just getting the best of me, but it's been weeks now and every night is the same dream. The fire station burning. People screaming. Sadness everywhere. I've gotten used to the dreams by now. They don't scare me anymore. But, goodness, I would love to know what they mean.

Remember that trip I told you about at the beginning of all this? We leave tomorrow. Me, Colton, Michal, the twins, some randoms from our class and a few chaperones. I want to be excited, but right now all I think about is the dreams. What do they mean? What are they trying to tell me? Am I completely losing my mind? Maybe the stress of being a teenager is just too much and now I've gone and broken my fragile brain.

Or maybe someone - or something - is trying to tell me their story. Today, during my study hall, I plopped myself down in front of the history section and looked up the story of Brookstone and the fire station. There wasn't a lot there, sadly. The fire station was built to look like it does because the architect in charge refused to make any changes to what he said "came to him in a dream." He paid for it with his own money, so there was really no way to tell him no. For years, the town considered it an eyesore, but then it just became part of the town, a little bit of crazy in an otherwise perfectly ordered world.

Good grief. I'm tired. I need to close my eyes, but I know if I do the dreams will come again. And, even though they don't scare me anymore, they do leave me wanting to know more and worried that there is nothing that will make them stop.

F is for Fire Station

I don't know what is happening. First the strange visions while I was driving by the fire station. And then, last night, that same vision invaded my dreams. I was standing in front of the station, watching it burn. Except, it wasn't really the fire station. The building looked the same, but everything about it was different. The landscape wasn't dotted with cars and houses, silos and farms, for one thing. Instead, there were sheep - a lot of sheep - and, well, nothing else. No roads, no cars, no electrical wires...nothing.

If I didn't recognize the building, I would have thought it was just a crazy dream. But there was something about the fire station that afternoon that felt different. And the dream didn't just feel like a dream. Instead, it felt like a memory. A memory of a night that was dark and scary and changed the world.

I woke up drenched in sweat, crying and feeling warm, like I had just stood in front of that fire for hours, watching the place I loved disappear.

But it was just the old fire station. Wasn't it?

E is for Eerie

Remember when I said I didn't believe in ghosts?

Well, what happened last night may make me change my mind. I was driving by the fire station after detention. It was a cold and kind of dreary night. As I was driving by, I could have sworn there was a light on in the station. Like usual, I just shook it off and kept on driving. But then, something caught me off guard. Looking in my rearview mirror, the fire station didn't look like it did just moments before. It was lit up like daylight, beautiful and seemed like something out of a fairy tale.

I turned around and looked. Nothing. Just the same old abandoned building. I looked in the rearview mirror. Bright, shining castle. I did the same looking cycle twice. Nothing changed. It made no sense, but it kept happening.

I drove home, quickly, ignoring any and every speed limit sign and traffic rule out there. I didn't know what was going on, but I kind of felt like I was losing my mind. Surely I was just tired, drained from a long day and letting my over-active imagination run away with me. There was no way I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.

And, what was even more eerie was the girl I saw in the window of the castle last time I looked. She looked exactly like me. And she looked scared.

D is for Detention

So, apparently detention is what you get when you frantically try and catch up on your journal instead of paying attention in Spanish. And then admit it when the teacher asks you what you were doing, because you didn't really listen to the question.

So here, I am, along with 3 other detention-worthy souls. There is Michal, who is stoned and tired and probably doesn't even realize that he's still in detention. Then, there are Cati and Cali, the cute twins who love attention so much they don't care if it means they have to spend a precious hour after school sitting in this room doing nothing.

Oh well. I almost made it through school without having to sit through a detention period. I guess it's a right of passage. In fact, my dad will probably be proud of me. He thinks I'm too much of a rule follower and never take any risks. Then again, is it really a risk to accidentally tell your Spanish teacher to suck an egg?

C is for Colton. And catching up.

Oh, life, why do you get so complicated sometimes? C could be for any number of things, but today it was supposed to be about Colton. And then I lost my journal for a few days, so I'm also trying to catch up on everything that has happened since I last wrote.

Colton was my first friend. My first love. My first enemy. He was everything a boy is supposed to be; charming, cute, calm, quiet, popular. I was...not. I am awkward, with crazy curly brown hair I've given up trying to tame, non-discriminate blue eyes, fair skin. I was not the most unpopular person in school, but I am not the most popular, either. I am just, unremarkable. Average.

Colton came into my life when I was an 8th grader. He was smart and for some reason wanted to be my friend. We had a lot of fun and I will admit I wanted him to be my first everything. But, that summer something changed. High school started and the things he used to find cute about me he made fun of me for. My laugh was too loud, my smile was too fake, my name was to different. In one lunch period, he went from the stuff of dreams to the stuff of nightmares.

Oh, did I mention that he is one of the 17 people going on this trip? Oh, goody.

B is for Brookstone

Ah, Brookstone. I've lived here my entire life, but I really don't know anything about my hometown. It's small. It smells a little like copper and farmland. It's a place where nothing exciting ever happens. It's just where I live. And, it's also where I cannot wait to get away from once I graduate. That's really the best reason for taking this crazy trip. I get to leave Brookstone. Without the parental units. Well, at least without my parental units. There will still be grown ups on the trip, I suppose.

Brookstone is home to a few unique things, though. I love the old fire station just down the road from my house. It's been abandoned for years, left to rot once the city built the fancy new station downtown, but it looks like something straight out of a medieval city. Gothic spires and gargoyles line the entrances to the firetruck bays. I remember being told it used to be a hospital before it was converted to a fire station. It looks like a hospital, so I totally believe it. At night, it's kind of spooky to drive by - sometimes I feel like there are lights in the windows, even though I know it's not possible. And, before you ask, no, I don't believe in ghosts. I just have an over-active imagination. Or so I've been told by, well, by everyone.

Brookstone is also home to a couple state fair winning swine, the 1999 Miss USA, and Carlton Michaels. Carlton, now there's a story.