Nelly

Her name was derived from her provenance. She was a gift when I returned from Peace Corps in honor of my graduation from Washington and Lee University (W&L, or Dub-Yuh-NELL).  As a moderate hippie, I certainly couldn't call her Dubya.

I chose a Golf in large part because a Peace Corps friend spoke glowingly of her old Golf, a small but mighty car that just wouldn't die. Resilience seemed like a good trait in a car and so when I started test-driving options, the Golf was already high on my list.  I loved her immediately, her nifty interior lights, her smooth ride, her heated seats.  She seemed spunky and fun-loving, sassy but solid.  I will admit some hope that maybe I was all those things, too.

We bought her in St. Louis but she spent only a brief time there.  She had some hiccups in the beginning, a warped windshield was replaced, which damaged the windshield wipers.  She was sorted out just in time for a move to Kansas City, a year now affectionately referred to as my "lost year" since I lived in a hovel of an apartment that included a collapsing ceiling over the shower and a Craigslist-acquired roommate that lived off cheese. Only cheese. Nelly was the sole object of worth I could count as mine. I didn't have a computer. I was sleeping on an air mattress. And I was making $10/hour and could barely afford my phone bill. Nelly was a daily reminder that something in my life was just fine, even if everything else seemed tenuously stitched together.

She carried my best friend, Megan, and I safely through the worst ice storm of my life, when a 4 hour drive became 9 hours.  We rode in tank tops so that we could blast the heat against the windshield, the only way to keep the wipers from freezing.  After a few hours, my nerves were shot, and Megan drove Nelly back home to Kansas City, with a stop on the way to aid a driver whose SUV had flipped off the highway.

Once I was accepted to Tulane for law school, Nelly made the thrilling trek to New Orleans, stuffed to miniscule capacity with everything I owned. My furniture in New Orleans was either acquired from the side of the road, if small enough to fit in the trunk, or the assemble-yourself variety you find at Big Lots, because assembly required furniture comes in boxes that fit in a Golf.  You can find (or build) decent furniture with the constraints of a Golf for transport, so don't let her size fool you.

Nelly was my chariot for four evacuations, including Hurricane Katrina. She picked up my dear roommate, Stephanie, and drove south to Jackson and on to to New Orleans to survey the damage a couple of months after the storm.  She sat in the driveway and kept watch along a destroyed street while Stephanie and I cleaned out a rotted fridge, threw a couch over the balcony, and while I tried to rescue the masses of journal entries, poems, and law school notes I'd left sitting next to an open window. Nelly carried us out of the city, too, past homes with red "X"s and numbers, out of the reach of the massive Army vehicles I'd never expected to see patrolling my home.

She returned to New Orleans, too, and embraced a recovery that meant more potholes, two stolen hubcaps, and heat that curdled the milk from a spilled latte within hours. She drove out of New Orleans, bound for Minneapolis, with the trepidation of knowing the winters thus far had not been adequate practice for what lie ahead.

The first large snow at the first Minnesota apartment was tricky given that I didn't own a shovel.  Nelly was dug out of the snowplow-gifted snowbank with a frying pan until a neighbor laughingly came to our aid with a legit tool.  Having read a terrifying article about hypothermia and blizzards, I stocked Nelly's trunk that first winter with granola bars, chef boyardee (logical), candles, and at least 12 boxes of matches. The chef boyardee was eventually discarded but I still find matches back there...

I have cried in her driver seat so many times, most recently after the receipt of devastating news. I've called my mother crying after a breakup, sitting in a Walgreens parking lot.  I've gripped her steering wheel with frozen fingers after snow-caked trail runs.  I've dug her out of 6 winters' worth of snowstorms.  I've coaxed her engine to turn over at -19, knowing that the trick is to turn the key slowly backwards.

Nelly's last rites were read today.  Having driven her into a cement pillar at a decent enough clip to deploy the airbags and smash headlights, bumper, and who knows what else, her life ended keeping me safe and relatively unscathed. I'll take a trip to the body shop to clean her out, take a picture with her last remaining legit hubcap (the rest are knockoffs), and thank her for a decade of devoted service.  In a period of my life that often felt transient and unstable, she was a comfort.  And I will miss her.

Chasing Caroline

I'm the eldest of three kids, five and a half years older than my brother, twelve years older than my sister.  The years between us yielded specific relationships when we were younger.  I thought my brother was annoying for the first 10 or so years of his life, but I was also fiercely protective of him, as big sisters tend to be. We pestered each other mercilessly and somewhere in his early teen years, in my first years away at college, we realized we genuinely liked each other's company.

My relationship with Caroline was very different.  She was the baby and idolized each of us, my brother and I, as the babies tend to do. And since I was so much older, babysat her so often, sang her to sleep so frequently, there was a maternal element there, too. I worried about her more than I worried about my brother, probably spoiled her more.  Little girls are easier for a teenage/college/young 20s woman to spoil. ice cream, painting nails, going shopping...infinitely easier than spoiling that smelly, football-playing brother.  But I do remember taking Rob out for many orders of Denny's seasoned fries, so I did my best by him, I think.

I don't know what it's like to be a younger sibling. I don't know what it's like to be the second or third kid to embark upon something.  The first kid who goes to college gets the benefit/anxiety of parental ignorance.  The second and third kid are beholden to wiser parents, for good or ill. As we've grown up, built lives, the "first" of things has shifted, as it should.  Age doesn't determine "first" anymore.  My brother beat me to the altar and I'm lucky to be in a family that doesn't see that as a failure on my part, or an expectation that I'll be next. Adult lives fall into their own frame, influenced by choices made, people met, a wing and a prayer.

And just as the timeline of our lives has begun to take shape without strict adherence to who was born first, so has my perspective on who looks up to whom. I imagine Caroline and Rob will always look up to me in some way, and I will always want to guide them, offer them advice, open my life to them in a way that lets them see what errors I could have avoided, what regrets I might have that they could be careful to not repeat. This guiding sentiment is more acute in my relationship with Caroline. I know what it's like to be a young woman in college far from home.  I know nothing of what it's like to be a spouse, own a home, etc.

Last summer Caroline and I ran the Afton Trail Run 25K together, where we took the picture above. Caroline smoked me by 17 minutes. She finished in 3 hours, 38 minutes, and I clocked in at 3 hours, 55 minutes. It's a brutal course, the hilliest available in this neck of the woods, with steep climbs making running a joke.  Caroline wasn't able to join me this year due to an ankle injury and her pending trip back to Texas for summer school. But I chased her the whole way.  I chased her 3 hours, 38 minutes. And when I was scrambling up a particularly rough incline, tempted to stop, I'd ask myself, "did Caroline stop here last year?"

I finished in 3 hours, 45 minutes this year, still seven minutes shy of Caroline's time, but ten minutes faster than what I accomplished last year, which is no small feat. And as I chased Caroline, or the thought of her, through the woods, I thought of how often she must have chased me, how often she may feel the inclination to still do so. I don't make it clear enough, frequently enough, how much I look up to both of my siblings, how much I respect Rob's humor, intelligence, and his loyal devotion to my sister-in-law. He's a good man, and a wonderful example to Caroline and I of what a good man looks like, should we find ourselves questioning what "good" might encompass. And I'm awed by Caroline's ability to push herself physically and mentally, to get excited about the beauty God placed in the world. I try to mold a bit more of my world into a world Caroline would like to inhabit. Because that's the world I want for myself, too, and her inspirations make me remember to get inspired myself.

I do not know what it is about me that my siblings might look up to, aside from the generic older sibling first-to-do-a-lot stuff.  I don't mean that to be self-deprecating, only that I don't understand what it might be that a younger sibling most latches onto, most strives toward. And I imagine their perspective has changed greatly over the last 27 and 20 years, respectively. I imagine they still chase me, still allow certain decisions to be influenced by things I've done, said, experienced. But they should know that I chase them, too. I watch and marvel at them, at their courage and their curiosities.  And just as I'll continue to chase Caroline in the woods at Afton, I hope we'll all continue to chase the best in each other.  Aside from love and loyalty, blessings that feel so much like luck sometimes, I think that chase, that recognition that those you love are capable of great things and that perhaps you should be, too...I think that's the most beautiful thing.

The Ritual

This poor, neglected blog.  I was so steadfast in my writings for so long, but I've lapsed of late.  I assume blogging is like anything, peaks and valleys, and my focus has been elsewhere.

As has been the case for a few of my last several summers, I'm filling a lot of my summertime with running.  I've signed up for the Twin Cities Marathon again and though I have yet to commit to a legit running schedule, I'm still putting in miles.  Still lining up at race starts.

Tomorrow I'm running the Afton Trail Race (15.5 miles) for the second time.  And as the pizza bakes in the oven, I'm contentedly reorganizing my ipod and putzing around with various other rituals as I tend to do the night before a race.  I love (and loathe) many aspects of running, but the element of ritual is one that I never expected to enjoy.  I don't think of myself as a person that thrives on ritual.  I prefer more spontaneous experiences, if I'm speaking generally, and don't like doing the same thing over and over.  But I suppose everyone is ritualistic in some regard.  I may prefer spontaneity but if I head to church too often without hearing some solid hymns, without mouthing the doxology, there's a part of me that feels empty.  And so it must be with running...

The night before a race I do the following, almost without fail:
1. Eat pizza (Pizza Luce is a favorite but tonight it's a frozen Amy's pizza with some sausage thrown on top).
2. Try on race outfits in response to borderline OCD checking of weather. Shorts? Running skirt? Tank? Tshirt?
3. Lay socks on top of shoes to avoid last minute sock mate searching.
4. Depending on race length, tuck 1-3 GU Orange flavored gels into water belt or pocket.
5. Google map route from home to race, obsess over when I should leave the house.
6. Make sure I have breakfast supplies, buy if necessary (bagel, preferably blueberry, peanut butter, banana, coffee)
7. Find both of my favorite hats: St. Louis Cardinals spring training hat, Tulane Law hat...I never know until race morning which one I'm going to want to wear
8. Charge Garmin.
9. Download a few new songs, load ipod.
10. Drink 2 glasses of water before bed.
11. Fill water bottle and put in fridge.
12. Put spare contacts in outfit pockets based on one experience where I lost BOTH contacts on a long run.

The morning of the race I do the following, almost without fail:
1. Wake up one hour before I need to leave the apartment.
2. Shower (I know! I shower before I get all sweaty, but it wakes me up)
3. Drink coffee, 1-2 cups.
4. Eat half a bagel with peanut butter and half a banana.
5. Throw other half of bagel or banana in purse for closer to race time.
6. Drink 1 glass of water (2 if it's especially warm/humid).
7. Put on outfit #1.
8. Reject outfit, put on outfit #2 because I worry about being too hot/cold.
9. Reject #2 and return to #1.
10. Choose between Tulane and Cardinals hat. 70% of the time, go with the Cardinals.
11. Drive to race with various doodahs (ipod, garmin, water bottle, hat, extra contacts, sunscreen), usually with some type of country or Southern rock on the radio. When in doubt, blast Johnny Cash CD.
12. Once I'm parked, attach race bib.
13. Find a curb for calf stretches.
14. Find a section of soft grass, sit, wait.

During a race:
1. Eat a GU every 6 miles.
2. Find at least one song on playlist that needs to be killed. Proceed to replay it 10-15 times so that I hate it for the rest of my life.
3. Play "Oklahoma" (yes, from the musical) at least 5 times, because that song never gets old.

The afternoon/evening after a race:
1. I procure a friend/loved one to accompany me to a restaurant that serves ketchup. We can eat hashbrowns, we can eat fries, I don't care.  But there needs to be a vehicle for ketchup consumption.

And now you know, without a lot of deviation, what my hours looks like before, during, and after a race, because I know you were dying of curiosity.  If you're game to cheer me on, cheerleaders get prime spots for helping me find ketchup.

Going Home

I struggle with the "where are you from?" question. It's not an emotional struggle, just a pause before I offer an answer, especially up here where it seems that everyone is from some nook or cranny of Minnesota/Wisconsin/North Dakota. Sometimes I say I'm originally from Arkansas.  Usually, if I feel I have time for a more robust reply, I answer that I grew up in fairly equal measure in Arkansas and St. Louis. But moved here from New Orleans.  And before that Kansas City.  And before that Morocco.  And before that Virginia...

I went back to two former homes recently.  Brief stints in both Kansas City and St. Louis reminded me of how often I was "from" those places, how often they were my answer to inquiries as to where I lived, where I was from. Kansas City was brief, referred to as my "lost year" by my Dad on occasion, not with any hint of cruelty, but more so in recognition that the year I spent in Kansas City was a miserable one, a year in unexpected limbo. It was a city I was happy to leave but now am happy to revisit as my dearest friend has built a life there. The time I spend there now is joyful, relaxing, a break from a career I hadn't envisioned when I lived there nearly a decade ago.

The trip to St. Louis has been less frequent, though with my brother and sister-in-law settling there I expect the frequency to increase. Aside from his first 5 years in Arkansas and the 4 years away at college, my brother's life is rooted in that city, those roots now strengthened by a wife who also claims it as her and her family's hometown.  I envy that in some ways, which is odd.  Odd to have an experience so different from my nearest sibling, only 5 years my junior. Driving around the city where so much has changed and so much remains the same (cliches never hurt anybody), I remember how desperate I was to leave at 17, how constricting that big city felt.  And now to return feels equal parts comforting and disorienting. Comforting in the embrace of loved ones and the memories scattered around those western suburbs, and disorienting in how little I know of the city today.

I've lived in Minnesota for almost 6 years.  I lived in Arkansas for 10. St. Louis for 7 (with the added summers in college tacking on an additional year). Arkansas still feels like the strongest definition of home to me, not so much for the 10 years I spent there, but because its presence has been strong throughout my life, from birth to childhood to visits over holidays to evacuations from hurricanes. But St. Louis has a strong call, too, as high school angst, friendships, and heartbreaks tend to burn a place into your gut. And New Orleans, too.  It may have only taken up 3 years of my life, but there were huge chunks of life shoved into those years, and more so than any other place I've lived, I miss it.

I used to feel funny about answering the question, about defining where I came from. I used to hate saying I was from Minnesota when visiting elsewhere.  I felt the need to qualify it. "I live in Minnesota but I'm not originally from there."  This wasn't meant as a slight, but rather as a continual reminder to myself that I would leave. Just passing through, another state to accumulate along my way. But I don't think I'd hesitate now.  It's just another stop, perhaps, and maybe a longer one, but no less of a home. I was happy to walk the streets I stomped in the past, remember the girl and the woman I was in the years since I left.  But I was equally happy to land in Minneapolis afterwards, lace my shoes for a run around these lakes, watch a summer-is-coming sunset kiss the rooftops before bed.

Epilepsy Lessons

A couple of days ago I noted the ten year anniversary of my evacuation from Morocco.  That evacuation is notable not only for how acutely it impacted my life at that time, but as a reminder of a different sort.  My last seizure occurred around the same time, shortly before the war began.  The anxiety of waiting for the war in Iraq to begin, knowing that such an event would likely require my evacuation from Youssoufia, got to me in the end.  I didn't sleep for roughly 3 days. My seizure medication is no match for that level of exhaustion.

In some ways, the seizure was a blessing.  The physical exhaustion following the seizure robbed me of the anxiety that had kept me sleepless. I slept well for those next two days and by the time I was on a plane home I'd resolved to keep the seizure to myself.  I knew it was 100% tied to my exhaustion and sleeplessness. Lack of sleep is my strongest trigger for seizures and I'd really done a number on my body with those last few days of worry. I went home, I slept, the anxiety dissipated, and my life began its march down a path I hadn't expected, as is typical of life.

That was 10 years ago.  I'm on the same drugs today that I was on in that Moroccan apartment, though my dosage these days is smaller, and I'm intensely aware of how much sleep I'm getting.  Aside from this rabid attention to sleep details, my external life is no different from those who do not have this condition.  I'm blessed that my drugs allow me to lead a very normal life. But  having lived  18 years of my life with this threat, I wonder today how it has changed me.  What aspects of my nature are tied to this condition? What parts of my personality have been strengthened or dampened by it, if any? I've read about people with epilepsy also being more prone to anxiety disorders, and having dealt with my share of anxiety, I wonder how closely these conditions are tied.  Or perhaps I'm just another Type A Nervous Nelly and would be regardless of epilepsy.

After my diagnosis at 14, I remember being incredibly anxious that my brain would eat itself, that this was the beginning of some slow mental decline.  I was so proud of my straight As, my self-worth so wrapped up in being a smart and generally impressive student, that the terror of seizures erasing some of that aptitude plagued me. If I forgot the answer to a question on a test, I'd worry that it was information the seizures must have deleted.  Even today, my dad will tell a story of my childhood and if my memory is hazy of the event I'll wonder if it was a chunk of life a seizure stole. While it's no longer a true fear, that itch of worry still pesters me on my weaker days.

While I wonder about epilepsy's influence on my anxious tendencies, overall, I am simply grateful. I've done enough volunteer work with the Epilepsy Foundation to know what could have been my experience. Who am I to deserve drugs that work well? How am I any more deserving than another patient whose seizures require brain surgery or triple cocktails of medications or any number of therapies? And even surgery and medication are no promise of a seizure-free life for many. To have such a well-controlled condition makes complaining of it feel truly ungrateful.  It has never altered my dreams or caused me to rethink a goal, and for that, I am thankful.

More than anything though, I think epilepsy has been key in shaping my empathy. There is something about a sudden diagnosis that makes life seem particularly delicate and precious.  And even though presently well-controlled, I'm aware of how little doctors know about the "short circuit" in my brain. I know that changes to my body, hormones, stress, accidents, exhaustion, can wreak havoc in new ways at any moment. I know that at any given time, my well-controlled brain could change.  That tenuousness does not halt my steps, but I do think it makes me more sensitive to others' difficulties. Welcoming the surprises of life, leaving what cannot be controlled in the hands of God, is a skill I've acquired out of necessity, as is always the case. Recognizing what can be changed, and what must be left to faith, is a gift I credit to my epilepsy experience. And it's a gift that translates to every pocket of my life. So I will not thank God for epilepsy, but I can thank Him for his provision of excellent health in the wake of that diagnosis, the love of God-fearing parents, and the personal gifts of serenity and empathy in the spirit of a continually-anxious woman.

Ten Years

Ten years ago the war in Iraq started.  I received a text message shortly thereafter in my Peace Corps site in Morocco telling me to travel to Marrakech to join my fellow volunteers in a hotel I've since forgotten.  I'd spent the 48 hours prior to this message writing letters in phonetic Arabic and French to various students and friends in my city.  I'd said a clumsy, ineffective goodbye to my classes, never really believing that I'd not return. Surely there wouldn't be a war. Surely, even if my country did go to war, it wouldn't reach its fingers to my dusty, ugly street in Central Morocco.  What use did I have for thinking about a war? There were lessons to plan. Maps to paint. Languages to learn.

I received the text and somehow word spread. Somehow my Moroccan friends ventured over, knocked on my door, asked if I needed help. Some of my students said they would stand by my door, just to be safe. Safe from what? All of the sudden I felt threatened by something larger, something full of shadows.

I walked to my adoptive family and told Leila the news.  She was brushing her teeth and her gums were bleeding.  She kissed me a dozen times, eyes full of tears.  I kept telling her I was sure I'd be back.  I told her not to worry.  And I told her that everything in my apartment was divided between her family and two others. Even now, I wonder how I had enough Arabic to communicate so many instructions, so much grief. Passion makes the brain move faster, I suppose. I left her my clothes, my jewelry, my scarves, my kitchen wares, just in case I was unable to come back for a long while.

And a long while has been ten years...

Again

I signed up for the Twin Cities Marathon.  This will be my third trek up Summit (while the race is 26.2 miles long, it's those last 6 in St. Paul that are burned into my psyche, as if all 26 happen on that last grinding hill) and as I paid my fee and picked my tshirt size, all the malaise of the last two months started to fall away. After last year's half-marathon-every-month (plus one road marathon and one trail marathon), I've struggled to find any joy in running.  And I didn't push it.  After December's half-marathon I just told myself running was no longer necessary.  I still went to the gym but rarely looked at, much less climbed on, the treadmill.

But I still signed up for races.  I signed up for the Get Lucky, a half-marathon in less than a month.  And I signed up for two trail 15 milers, one in April and one in May.  While my body was still rejecting any push to run, my brain had already decided that running would resume, whether my body liked it or not.  Some part of me, the part of me that has done 3 marathons, 1 trail marathon, 2 trail half-marathons, 3 trail 15 milers, and about 30 road half-marathons, knew that the running would come back.  I've been burned out before.  I've reached points before where the thought of running filled me with dread and I just couldn't love it anymore. But those are always relatively short seasons.  They always follow the completion of a goal (a marathon, a year of half-marathons).  And sometimes they coincide with other life events, work, relationships, particular stresses, whathaveyou.  It's as if my running self goes into hibernation, tucked into some corner preparing for a knee-pounding spring.

I signed up for the marathon last Friday and last weekend I started running.  Again. I slipped on the ice, bit a chunk out of my tongue, and spit blood back to my apartment.  I'll be treadmill-bound for another month, I imagine. But walking back to my apartment with blood pooling in my mouth, a bit banged up on the knees and elbows, I made my way with the bounce I've come to recognize.  Within a mile I'd managed to injure myself, but it was enough to remember what running feels like. Not the painful part, or the exhausting part, or the part that makes me hungry. Not the time-consuming part or the part that requires a lot of laundry trips. The part of running that makes everything else a little less daunting, a little less scary.  The part that reminds me that today is a gift and I will make my heart beat faster so as to enjoy it properly.  The part that holds discomfort like a specimen, turns it around, says, "that isn't so bad, you can push harder."  My body finally woke up, stretched, emerged from hibernation, and listened to the voice in my head that began planning said reemergence weeks ago. A little blood in the mouth, a little bruise on the elbow, the pavement has been christened, it's time to roll.

Oct 6th, here I come.

Lenten Days

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and thus begins the Lenten season. Raised Baptist, I didn't really hear about the "give up something for Lent" concept as a kid.  I'm sure the word "Lent" was used in my childhood churches but I didn't really grasp the idea of Christ's last days until I was much older. And while I would sometimes half-heartedly (and, more often than not, belatedly) give up a certain activity or food for a couple weeks, I'd usually mistakenly fall back into it at some point. Out to dinner with friends, I'd remember I'd given up dairy midway through cheese pizza slice number two.

I think I struggled with the sacrificial concept in the past because it just seemed like such a ridiculous comparison. Giving up cheese to mimic my Savior's pain on the cross?  Am I really comparing these two things? Or, I'd commit to doing a particularly grueling workout everyday for Lent, telling myself it was all for the glory of God, enduring something arduous, just like Jesus. Please. Jesus had zero to do with that. I wanted to lose 10 lbs before prom. I'd last maybe a week, chide myself for being a poor, ineffective Christian, and then console myself with the knowledge that Baptists don't really care if you give anything up anyway. Leave the sacrificing to the Catholics, I'll take my sola gratia, please.

I'll admit, it's a sloppy relationship with a legitimate concept.

But what makes it a legitimate idea, a potentially encouraging spiritual exercise, has nothing to do with comparisons. The beauty of "by Grace alone" rests on this idea that we have nothing to offer capable of echoing Christ's sacrifice.  What we do have, what we are capable of, is obedience. Not perfect obedience, hence the need for Grace, but we can look to Christ and do our best to emulate Him, do our best to follow his teachings, and do our best to remember Him in every moment.

And that's how Lenten changes began to work for me, began to make sense.  Not when they had anything to do with sacrifice, but when their purpose was  to remind me of Grace, remind me of how big Grace is and yet how specific it is in its embrace of me. And so I try to make changes that I must revisit and remember multiple times a day. The easiest way to do this for me is with food.  One of my most effective changes was when I made a rule that I would never read and/or watch TV and/or play on my computer while eating.  This seems like it would be easy.  But I live alone, and with nobody to talk to across the table for many meals, I found myself reading the paper, emailing, or watching TV during almost all meals.  At work, I ate at my desk, typing away between bites.  Forcing myself to just sit and eat was excruciating for the first couple of weeks. I broke down a couple times and "cheated" by allowing myself to call a friend and talk while I sipped my soup. But for the most part, I held fast. And every time I sat down, I remembered why I'd turned all that extra noise off, why the action was important. That change actually became a fairly solid habit so it's no longer something I'd consider for Lent. But food changes work for me so I'm sticking to that genre.

I've been a vegetarian before, for several years actually.  And I can easily go a week without eating meat, although fish is almost always in the equation.  But I'm giving up meat (red and white) and fish this Lent because removing it as a possibility will require thought. I will have to think about it when I make my lunch each night.  I will have to see the meats in my freezer and remember that they are not an option.  When I try out new restaurants, something I love to do, I will have to review menus with an eye as to what my meatless self can eat.  This will rarely feel like sacrifice to me, but it will always require planning. And it's the planning and the thinking that I desperately need where God is concerned.

Because the sacrifice I can take for granted.  The Cross, the Grace, all of it.  If I do not force myself to remember what has been done for me, I will ignore that sacrifice because it is so easy to do so. I will go to work, I will see my friends, I will date, I will write, I will explore the world God gave me and I will never think of Him. This is how I am programmed, my easiest temptation, to wander away not because I'm angry or disappointed in God, but because I stopped caring enough to remember Him. And Lent is the season I try to reel my wandering self back in and remember several times a day, that God is in my life, in my heart, and on the Cross for me.

Happy Distraction

I've clearly been away from this blog for awhile.  I blame my enthusiasm over one of my other blogs, The Minneapolite, and how much time my dedication to its growth entails.  What began as a somewhat organizational inspiration (keep the recipes to the food blog, the cultural stuff to The Minneapolite, and let my oldest blog continue its use as a catch-all for anything else I want to say) has morphed into a genuine curiosity in social media, marketing, communications, and how all these things wrapped together influence public opinion. It's all quite magical to me.

I tweet now. Which is odd.  I try to keep my tweets limited to things that interest me in the area, restaurants, shows, museums, etc. I'm not tempted to expand my tweets into more personal territory.  I link to my blog when appropriate and watch my number of blog visits ratchet up little by little.  I follow people on Twitter who have crafted careers out of their blogs, developed a personal brand (so to speak), and rely on that brand to impress upon others the worth of their opinion.  I find that fascinating.  It isn't anything I'm trying to do, as I do have a wholly-unrelated career I enjoy.  But I am curious. I find it amazing when a restaurant I review references me as a "local blogger," and links to my not-fancy posting on their website. When did I get a title? Who is this "local blogger" and what else does she want to explore?

I'm an unabashed extrovert. We recently took the Meyers-Briggs test in a group at work and I remain a steadfast ENFJ, with little to no deviation on most indicators. And I think this new blog and my foray into Twitter reinforces those traits (strengths in some ways, faults in others) and feeds that flagrant people-person personality that other areas of my life lack. I've met new people thanks to my blogging, which is pretty much the equivalent of Christmas to someone like me who is constantly in need of new people to know, learn from, connect with, and cherish.

And it is not lost on me that this happy distraction also provides an opportunity for growth, developing skills in social media that may or may not be important in my career down the line. I think this must be the happiest of ways to develop new capacities, to simply fuss around with a new curiosity and watch it bloom, enjoying the frustrations as growth pains and the minor wins as unexpected triumphs.  So often "development" seems like the result of some trial, a forced change in the face of undesired circumstances. To be playing around with a new medium, learning from vastly more experienced bloggers, and pondering where it goes next...it's too fun to feel like development.

It's a good reminder for me, this adventure, not to ignore my own curiosity. I think wonderment is a beautiful, God-given thing, meant for some purpose. Which isn't to say that I think God cares a great deal about who has the best cheeseburger in town or whether or not I get a kick out of my first opera. But the curiosity is a result of the personality He built, and while only God knows what doors may open as a result of embracing a new endeavor, I trust that there is good in it.