On Dating

"There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted."

-Miss Manner's Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, via Bon Appétit, Sandra Byrd

Where I Live

The dreaded conversation happened again today.

One of my newer co-workers was just trying to be friendly to me by inquiring as to how classes were going. I responded with the usual "fine, but busy" and thought the conversation was over, until she continued with the question I will never have a real answer to:

"So where do you live?"

"On campus, just down the road," I replied, hoping this would be sufficient.

"No, like where do you live?" She asked again.

Where do I live? Oh please, let me tell you:

I was born in Los Angeles, spent several years in Lancaster, grew up in Ecuador, became a person in Dana Point, and attend university in Azusa. Although my family still lives in Ecuador, next year they're moving to South Orange County, but already they're inhabiting an apartment I've spent less than six months in.

"My parents live in Ecuador," I finally respond.

It takes her a moment to recognize the fact that I just named a foreign country. "Wait, Ecuador?"

"Mmhmm."

"Like you were raised there?"

"Yep."

"Wow," she says, "I never would have guessed."

I think that's a good thing.

"So like what's it like up there?"

Trying to ignore the fact that she just identified my South American country as being somehow "up" from where we are, I respond as nicely as possible that it's really different and fun "up" there.

And she chuckles to herself, makes one more comment about how she never would have guessed, and exits the room.

REJECT

"It's no good. When someone leaves you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you've created together collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and, in the end, the whole sum of parts adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love. How can you not be left with the personal confidence of a passed-over British Rail sandwich?"

-Bridget Jone's Diary, Helen Fielding

Luke 19:28-44

After telling this story, Jesus went on toward Jerusalem, walking ahead of his disciples. As he came to the towns of Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives, he sent two disciples ahead. “Go into that village over there,” he told them. “As you enter it, you will see a young donkey tied there that no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks, ‘Why are you untying that colt?’ just say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”

So they went and found the colt, just as Jesus had said. And sure enough, as they were untying it, the owners asked them, “Why are you untying that colt?"

And the disciples simply replied, “The Lord needs it.” So they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their garments over it for him to ride on.

As he rode along, the crowds spread out their garments on the road ahead of him. When he reached the place where the road started down the Mount of Olives, all of his followers began to shout and sing as they walked along, praising God for all the wonderful miracles they had seen.

“Blessings on the King who comes in the name of the Lord!

Peace in heaven, and glory in highest heaven!”

But some of the Pharisees among the crowd said, “Teacher, rebuke your followers for saying things like that!”

He replied, “If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!”

But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep. “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace. But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes. Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side. They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you. Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not accept your opportunity for salvation.”

Stepping Stones

"I met my wife," said Mr. Hart. "When I did, it all made sense. She reminded me of everyone I'd had a relationship with before. I think I must have fallen in love with bits of her that were in other people. Relationships are like stepping-stones."

"They are?"

"Sure! Every relationship is another stepping-stone on the way to where you're going. You've got to step from one stone to the next because there aren't any shortcuts, but each step you take you're getting closer."

"Closer to what?"

"Finding out what makes you happy."

- A Winter Night's Dream, Andrew Matthews

Gracias por la lluvia

I wrote this one morning on my way to school in high school. In my head, it's also set to music.

I love the rain, especially in So Cal where it never rains. It makes everything seem a fairytale world, with the sky dark and daunting like some foreign prince has taken the sun captive, but at the same time, the sound of raindrops steadily dropping is such a comforting sound. And walking in the rain? Might be the best thing ever:

It's another rainy day

My world is cloudy and grey

I can't stop thinking about all you've done for me

It's the beginning of a new week

Pressure comes with no break

Will I push you out of my mind and forget?

I want to praise you
for the things you've done
that have kept me going on,
going strong.
I want to sing to you
the glories of your Precious Name.

Thank you for the rain

Oh God

It's beautiful, beautiful

Thank you for the rain

Oh God

It's beautiful, beautiful

Thank you

october update

i haven't written without capitalization in ages for anything other than instant messaging and the occassional poem. (i don't know why im'ing makes me not capitalize; it must be some kind of inner urge to make it as "instant" as possible.) i used to write like this before, when i thought i had to be just like everyone else. then i realized that my strength lies in my written word and if my written word isn't uniquely me from every point of view, i may as well be everyone else.

i would like to be a roller derby girl for halloween, but i don't know where to find roller skates, so i'll probably just be a reindeer instead. i came home last night and my roommate was listening to christmas music; this sparked a two-woman rendition of santa baby at the top of our lungs and later, an attempted trip to the hot tub, which was thwarted by a group of praying hot tub-ers (seriously, who prays in the hot tub?) so we played foosball and ping pong instead and my roommates dominated. anyway, we were enlisted by our college group to plan a halloween party, so all of this together resulted in the decision to be "christmas" for halloween.

we had world vision chapel this morning, which basically means that the world vision office leader, choripan (at least that's how it sounds) uses this time to honor the handful of students who went on missions last year by way of international music, personal recollection of experiences, and lots of clapping and whoo'ing. there was also a video that showed images of all the places apu students ministered to. it made me feel homesick.

this is just a note to let you know that i'm still here.

What I'm Looking For

From March 2009:

I don’t want to come out of college with an engagement ring plastered on my finger. I want to fall in love on my own time and have my pick of the world when it comes to finding my future spouse. I don’t want to limit myself to the boys I go to school with because, as nice as they are, they’re still just boys. I want to literally search the earth for a person who, metaphorically speaking, completes me.

And this is the kind of man I want:

• A man who is sensitive, but not to the point of being more sensitive than me.
• A tall man with broad shoulders.
• A man with a sense of humor.
• A creative man.
• A man who knows how to write and use proper grammar/spelling.
• A romantic man (but not too sappy).
• A man who can sing.
• A man with energy and passion.
• A man who loves Jesus in a way that isn’t your cliché American Christian way.
• A man with big hands.
• A man who can play at least one instrument.
• A man who has spent a significant amount of time in a country other than the U.S.
• A man who goes against the grain.
• A tough man.
• A man who is older than me, if not physically, then in emotional and maturity years.

I’m not bemoaning my lack of a man at the present. On the contrary, I’m perfectly fine flirting and exchanging coy looks and text messaging five boys at the same time. This is fun and this is what college is all about.

I am bemoaning my lack of life, though, and I’m quickly coming to the understanding that I will not and cannot find that kind of thrilling, transitory, and inspiring life that I desire on your typical American college campus. So I’ll wait and long for a way to seek out this kind of life, rather than a boy who will become my “happily ever after.”

The Time I Was On Steroids And My Family Made Fun Of Me

Picture this: it's the summer of '05 and the Russ Clines have just moved to beautiful Dana Point, CA to partake in a 7-month-long vacation from reality. We're all moved into our new house and celebrating seaside weather by eating most of our meals on the patio and visiting the ocean as often as we want. Because we've just moved, the younger members of the family are virtually without friends (except for the occasional friendly face we see during the youth group our parents make us attend) so we're mostly hanging out with each other, dabbling in the art of makeup (yes, even Riley) and XBox and attempting to learn how to surf.

So it's the middle of summer and time is about to start passing more rapidly as the beginning of school approaches and we're enjoying one of our leisurely-spent breakfasts on our back patio when suddenly the peace is disturbed as one of my hilarious family members cracks a joke and we all partake in showing our amusement at the hilarity.

"Rheanna," Riley interrupts my grumpy morning-time revelry, "what's wrong with your face?"

I look into the window that I'm facing and have no idea what he's talking about.

"No, try smiling," my mom says.

So I smile and realize that there is something amuck with the reflection looking back at me in the window: try as I might, half of my mouth will not turn upward.

My family members laugh. Yes. They laugh. They laugh, they tease, they joke, and all the time my head is racing through all the possibilities of what could possibly be wrong with me. I'm thinking maybe a bug bit me during the night, or maybe I sprained a muscle, or maybe I accidentally took a muscle relaxant with the bite of scrambled eggs that my parents insisted I eat. (I have a natural aversion to scrambled eggs, mostly because the yellow color reminds me what they really are, but my parents think that if I don't get any protein in my breakfast, I will die. Or something.) It was a very traumatizing experience. Myself, living through this internal agony, while my family made fun of me.

Eventually I convince my parents that something is actually wrong with my face and they take me to the pediatrician (pediatrician! at 16 years of age!) who informs me that half of my face is paralyzed because I have Bell's Palsy, I will need to take steroids to try to make it go away, and even if my face does go back to normal, I will always have Bell's Palsy and it could show up any time in my life. So I go on steroids and my family continues to mock me, making comments about my impending manliness due to the steroids.

My face eventually went back to normal, but the trauma because of this experience will always live on inside me.

(I also eventually forgave my family, even though Riley still says that my name means "one who looks like man" in ancient languages.)

Breathing

If you've had any kind of contact with me over the past week or so, you probably have noticed that I have been a tad stressed out, which, you know, isn't that big of a deal. It happens to everyone; I've just been having a hard time dealing with it lately. So this is me dealing with it:

Things About My Life That Make Me Happy

1. My brand new Art Minor. Last week, I decided on the spur of the moment to declare a minor in Art, based on my thorough enjoyment of classes such as Ceramics and Women in Art, and so far haven't reconsidered.

2. The fact that I am not a freshman. Every year, the freshman class gets bigger and bigger (literally) and I become more and more grateful that I am older, wiser, more experienced, and altogether "with it" more than I was as a freshman. I love that I am an upperclassman, I love that I live almost off campus in The Village, and I love that the kind-of-annoying freshmen in my upper division classes just serve the purpose of making me feel smarter. Thank you, semi-annoying freshmen, and next time, don't take upper division classes during your first semester of college!

3. My apartment. Although it is lacking a little in cleanliness these days, my apartment is my favorite place to be in Azusa. Thanks to the lovely organizing and decorating skills of my mother and roommates, the apartment has become a comfortable place pulled together by my favorite colors (or non-colors, considering they are all neutral) and accented with splashes of bright happiness.

4. My roommates. I have incredibly supportive roommates and I like them. It's kind of one of those win-win situations.

5. Having classes that require me to read things I should have read in high school. Yes, I know I complained about Jane Austen to death and Mark Twain almost made me drop American Lit, but as I get deeper into my English classes, I'm realizing how great it is that I get to read American classics and stories about courtship from the Victorian Period as homework. Seriously. It's really great.

6. Independence. I have the freedom to do what I want when I want to do it, regardless of the hour or how much other stuff I need to get done first, without having to tell anyone what I'm doing. I also have the space to figure out who I am and why I do the things I do and it is a wonderful thing.

7. Long, almost normal-colored hair. I cut my hair short about a year and a half ago and it's finally back to the length I like. It also is almost back to my natural color after about three years of wrestling with blacks and reds and too-dark browns.

8. College group(s). At the moment, I am involved in two college groups, full of interesting and new people. I never thought I would say this, but I am beginning to love connecting with new people every week.

9. This exciting time of life. My friends and I are embarking on our 20's and I am loving hearing about semesters abroad and first-time I love you's and even weddings (although these terrify me at the same time). I can't wait to see (and hear about) what happens next.

It's good.

Love me

The window's open and smoke is getting in my eyes, except
not like how they say it does in the song, it's a literal smoke
with literal embers drifting drifting through the screen. "Love
me," they seem to say, and I have to agree with them because
I'm just sitting on this couch with nothing to do except let the
smoke in my eyes. I want something more to do, something
to occupy me while I wait (for the thing I've been waiting for
all my life), but there's nothing to do so I just sit and think all
about the things I wish I could be doing instead while this
whole time circuitous thoughts have been running in and out
my ears and I have this pressure on my chest that makes it
hard to pretend to be normal. I have food in my refrigerator,
but it's nothing I want to eat, not even the cookie dough ice
cream, which used to be my favorite, because there's nothing
inside me that's hungry except a low growl that is misinter-
preted too often. And this is my life right now, this is what
I'm stuck with. If you were here, you would fix me, I know.

Why I Need People

Human connections are important. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand the value of community and relationships and everything that goes along with those. As human beings, we need to know that there are other people who are like us, who think the same way and feel the same things, who are passionate about the same areas, who need us just like we need them.

The other day, I was texting my roommate and resolved that she needed something to cheer her up, due to a stressful day at work. So I drove to a Starbucks to pick up our favorite drinks. While I was waiting for the barista to make our Passion Iced Tea Lemonade and Pumpkin Spice Frapp, I had a short conversation with another customer about the merits of Mocha Chip Frappuccinos (Human Connection #1 of my story.)

After receiving the drinks, I surprised Roommate at the church office she works in (Human Connection #2). Roommate was happy to see me and I was happy to make her happy, in the same way that she has made me happy in countless ways during the two years of our friendship.

I didn't have anywhere I needed to be, so I drove with Roommate to pick up one of the students she works with from the train station. There was a church event happening that night and the student just needed a way to get there. I'd never met Student before, but as soon as we picked her up, I introduced myself and immediately felt comfortable in the way that only happens between two like-minded and -souled people (Human Connection #3).

After all of this Human Connection, I decided to stay and help at the church event that Roommate was helping to put on and felt decidedly more connected than I have felt in a very long time.

John Donne said that "no man is an island entire of itself" and he was right. We can try to live like hermits and create shells that swallow us whole, but eventually we realize that we need to feel connected with other humans in the same way that we need to breathe air and drink water and eat food. Without those connections, we become lost inside ourselves, like islands falling into the sea.

Dust to Dust

More from 2007:

you want to know something ridiculous? that's what i'm most afraid of. that i won't make a difference in anybody's life. that i'll just be some girl from some other world.

i don't want to just leave dust all over other people's lives. dust is annoying and you always try to flick it off but it doesn't really go anywhere. it's pointless and useless and leaves dirty marks.

Boundaries; or Why I Would Like To Do Anything For You

May 2, 2007: found in my Bible as Lit notebook.


Maybe this is how I'll always
feel; looking back on the occurrences
that drenched my spirit in
lighter fluid, then tossed me in
the flames (even though it takes a
while for things to catch on fire in
the altitude, it still happens eventually).
Maybe I'll be stuck with my confusion,
frustration, bitter prejudation tinting
all of my memories and convincing me
that nothing worth it happened at all.
(Except for you, that is. You made my
year. Remember?) But there's the
rub: worthwhile things finally made
it into my semi-non-existent
life. Your smile finally lit up my
days. Your encouragement finally
pushed happiness into my walk. Your
chilvarous notions finally made me
believe (that they're not all like
that "other one" out there in the
real world).
Yes. You made my year worth it.

Summer of our Youth

Monday night and life is about to begin:
the hurling, unfurling, fleeting flight of humanity, caught
in their quest to return to their holes, some
rushing outside to linger in the sunlight while the rest
are unwelcome to join the whole. One
moment forgotten by few and it still unrolls along the swift
cliff of the beginning. We are the learners
of knowledge, the students of wisdom, but this is not the
most important to-do point now. We are
a school of fish and we've been oceans away for months
too long and this is the time to misbehave,
disobey, soak in the summer of our youth. We will pay
attention to what we must when the time
comes, but for now, this is our day and we will play.

We will play.

Everything Changes But You

"Finish Last"
Stellar Kart

People change and plans get changed and
Everything changes but you
Everybody moves around and
Everything gets pushed around but you
You always stay the same, stay the same

I want to finish last
Last in the world's eyes
No matter what I do
I will be first in your eyes

I am running in this race and
I am pressing onwards towards the finish line
You have promised me a better life
Far beyond this world, far beyond this place and time


This song has been on my mind lately. The first time I heard this song, I was 16 and I thought I had my whole life planned out. Things changed, as they always do, and a split second later, everything I had planned for had fallen apart.

The problem is that even though we try to pretend like we know what's going on in our lives, we don't. And when everything we thought we had taken care of spins completely out of control, we have to realize that there's only one person who never changes and it's his plans (and his opinion of who we are) that really matters. It's cliché, but so true and so hard to learn.

I am doing a different thing right now than I thought I would be doing a year ago, and that's ok. I'm human and that's just how human plans work. What I need to be thinking about is whether I'm doing what God has planned for me. And as long as I'm doing that, who cares if I'm not exactly where I thought I would be a year ago?

All the time, all the time

This morning, I was driving to work and doing all of the random stuff I do while I drive, including, but not limited to, having full conversations with myself and reminiscing about where I was going and what was going on the last time I was in Betty (the car), when I finally got to the place where I turn in to get to the parking lot of my office building. As I do every morning, I turned on my left blinker, signaling that I was about to turn left. That's when I looked in my rear view mirror and noticed that there was nobody behind me to care about my blinker.

I'm at a point in my life where sometimes I feel like there's nobody behind me to care about the decisions I make. I'm definitely not saying this is true, because I know there are literally dozens of people who would do anything to help me get out of any mess I may find myself in, but sometimes it feels like I'm alone.

It probably has a lot more to do with the being single thing than I would like to admit. I'm the kind of person who likes to feel responsible for someone, and needed, and most of the time I just don't feel that way. The truth is that I'm still struggling to find my place in this thing we call "college" (but feels like a prison sometimes). And while I'm struggling with that, I can't help but reconsider my decision to spend four years in Southern California. This may be my proximity to several large-ish fires and the smoke and ridiculously hot weather that comes along with that speaking, but there are times when I just don't like it in Azusa. Maybe I should have made decisions that would have brought me to a different place. Or maybe not.

All of this is to say that I know I'm not metaphorically sitting in my car with no one driving behind me. I know that. And, most importantly, I know that God is driving in front of me, meaning that he anticipates my moves before I even consider them. But every once in a while, I think it would probably be nice to have someone driving behind me who doesn't have directions to the place we're going.

Falling in love with love

I fall in love easily.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. I've been in love maybe hundreds of times in my lifetime. And I'm not just talking about falling in love with boys, although that does happen pretty often. I'm mostly just referring to people, things, ideas, concepts, books, authors, paintings, lyrics, colors that I randomly encounter in life.

It doesn't take much to catch my attention. I like interesting and unusual details that aren't typically found in what I'm experiencing. I like voices that are imperfect, hearts that are broken, flaws and scratches, spelling mistakes (even though they bother me to death), and patterns. I keep an inspiration folder on my computer, full of random items I encounter on the internet, and it's spilling over with beautiful things, maybe things that only I would find beautiful.



Once something has caught my attention, I fall in love in a matter of minutes.

Nightmare

I woke up this morning at 4:22 from the most vivid dream I've had in a long time. After I woke up, I realized that my roommate had turned off our fan and so I was sweltering underneath the piles of covers I insist on sleeping under and this probably had more to do with why I woke up than the dream. But it was still an intense dream and it still had meaning, I think.

When I was younger, I was haunted by my middle school years. Memories of prepubescent cruelty and crushes that never ended well would sneak up behind at the most random of times, forcing me to pull out my dad's old laptop to write story after story of girls who lived perfect lives on beaches and never once forgot who they were. One of the stories that I remember most clearly was called Seven Summer Suns, and it was about a girl named Summer Black who had seven summer romances. I never finished any of the stories because eventually the thing that I really wanted to write about would start leaking out of me and I would abandon my meticulously plotted out charts of which boy Summer liked at which point in time to write semi-autobiographical nonsense.

The thing that I really wanted to write about was a boy named Gun Hi Bae. He was a classmate of mine in 7th grade and a few years preceding that year. He wasn't one of my best friends, but he did sit behind me in my English/History class and sometimes we would make each other laugh. One day in 7th grade, he didn't come to school and our entire class was immediately alarmed because Gun never missed school; he was just one of those kids who either never got sick or never thought it was a good enough excuse to stay home from school. We found out later that his entire family was murdered the previous day because of sketchy business partners of his father, or something like that.

Later that week, we were all invited to his memorial service, and that's where I was in my dream, except it was outdoors and students from my graduating class were there, not my 7th grade class. We were all grown up, too, and I think that's where the nightmare part comes in. We were all grown up and no longer 12 and 13 years old and Gun was still just a 7th grader.

I woke up from this eerie funeral-dream and couldn't stop thinking about a hot tub conversation I had last night regarding the worst thing ever. At 4:22 this morning, I decided on what I think is the worst: Gun's story is the worst and most tragic thing I have ever heard and it's been haunting me for years.

Does my subconscious feel guilty for living through 7th grade? Or is this just my head's way of telling me to start doing something meaningful with my life?

You know what? Who cares? Tragic things happen in the world every day, worse things than what happened to Gun, and I couldn't matter less in that kind of a world. I may have a guilty conscience, but there are people dying out there, right now, and I'm not doing anything to help them.

Proverbs

She calls to me from the streets,

begging me to turn away from

the simpleminded way of the world.

Her cries tug at my lonely life.

She is the wife of my youth, the

sweet lady of wisdom, and her

advice is what I don’t want to

listen to in this moment.

I’m faced with a decision, two paths

to choose from: one leading into

the growing of the light, the

other disappearing into the falling

darkness. She pulls at my arm,

whispering down the back of my

neck the words to convince me to

choose her way, the way of gleaming dawn.

But the immoral woman is smoother

than oil and it is she who

succeeds in pulling me to her

side; we stumble blindly along

the crooked trail, over

stones and bones, unaware

victims of the deadly decisions

we do not know we are making.

stage parade

I was wanted once,

a perky yellow daisy afloat in a sea of bound-to-be-exported

roses,

driveling talent wasted and praised.

I was that girl once,

the girl with the smile and the hair and the style, taking her

place

in the center of the stage parade.

I saw clearly once

in a thousand shades of brown, blended at the edges of a

world

of standard blacks and mighty whites.

I am more than what you pretend to see.

Do yourself a favor and know me for what

I truly am.

I am 20 years old.

I am 20 years old and rapidly growing out
of the things that made me a child. I am 20
years old and no longer a young girl with
puppy fat and knobby knees. I am 20 years
old, but while the world is moving into adult-
hood, I still linger in the waiting phase of
life. I am 20 years old and if you expect me
to be engaged or child-bearing or self-
capitulated into what will be my life-long
career, you will be disappointed. I am 20
years old and I still have 80 years to
fulfill all of the things that are expected of
me. I am 20 years old and different from
others of my age, and the things that I
consider important are different also. I am
20 years old and I'm waiting to fall in love,
I'm waiting to make a complete commitment
to another human being, I'm waiting to
figure out what I want to do with my life.
I'm 20 years old and maybe I'm still a child.

Snapshots

Stuff Christians Like is this great new blog I just started reading. It's written by Jon Acuff, a hilarious and witty guy who really understands the church and the direction that modern Christianity is taking. Anyway, on his blog he writes about things that your typical Christian will relate to doing, liking, thinking, or undergoing.

One of his recent posts is #575. Refusing the gift of the desert road. In this post, he brings up this passage from Exodus:

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, "If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt." So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle. (Exodus 13:17-18)

Acuff's point from this passage was that God loved the Israelites so much that he would not lead them into a situation that he knew they couldn't handle. So even though the Israelites may have believed that they were tough and hardy and ready for battle, God knew what they didn't and he saw that they needed to take the long desert road to prepare themselves.

In my college group last night, we watched a video from Louie Giglio. He was kind of talking about this same concept and he said something I really liked:

"We only see little snapshots, but God is painting on a canvas the size of the universe."

This hugeness is a characteristic of God that I really love. I've begun to think of him more as an eternal being than just a super powerful human because that's who he's showing himself to be.

I spent last weekend in my favorite place on earth and even got to attend the church that had so much to do with my personal and spiritual growth when I was 16. I haven't had a chance to visit it in the past three years; well, I haven't had the courage to visit it. But last Sunday, I bundled up all my nervousness and walked right into that church building with my shoulders back and my hair brushed away from my face. And it wasn't nearly as terrifying as I thought it was going to be. In fact, I was even able to hear God in the worship music. And this is what he said to me:

Greater things have yet to come
Greater things are still to be done in this city

I've been focusing a little too much on things that God has done for me in the past. And it's true, he has done some amazing things in my life. He's met me in dozens of cities around the world and provided for me no matter where I've ended up and, countless times, revealed himself to me in the mundane, the ordinary, the average. He's given me gifts and taught me how to use them. He's put me in a family that, I'm convinced, may just take over the world some day and that is just the way I like it. He's done miracles in my life and saved me from so much more than I can understand.

But that's not the best part about God's relationship with me: even with all of these things he's already done for me, he's not done yet.

He's an active and living God and maybe I have been on a desert road for the past couple of years, but that doesn't mean he loves me any less than he did at one point in my life. If anything, it means he loves me more. And because God is so incredibly huge and I am just one tiny little snapshot in the canvas of the universe, I can't see what he's preparing me for or propelling me towards or sending my way.

But I can trust that he knows what he's doing because, based on what he's already done, he has some great things planned for my life. I just need to wait a little while so I can be ready for them.

The United States of America smells weird.

While I was still living in Ecuador, my family usually ended up spending a significant amount of traveling around the States during the summers. One of the best things about these trips was the way the Miami airport felt: the moment I stepped off the plane, everything felt clearer in a sense, and airier. Not only did it feel a certain way, but it also had a distinct scent.

I'm currently sitting at my little desk in the cardiology office where I work and I can smell that scent. I've come to associate it with summer, because of those month-long trips during my missionary life, and heat and romance. It's thicker than the air I'm used to and lighter, too, all at the same time. It smells like shopping malls and Christian camps, the drive on the way to In-N-Out and hours and hours worth of family road trips. It smells like Fourth of July fireworks and relatives I barely know and sometimes what I can remember of the East Coast and churches - dozens, hundreds, THOUSANDS of churches all shaken across the country like rainbow sprinkles on top of a mini cup of old fashioned vanilla frozen yogurt from Golden Spoon. It smells like falling in love too quickly and bad choices and my sister screaming and my brother cuddling and it smells like songs I made up about Tyler Padgett and living out of a suitcase and huge scoops of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

It smells like dreaming about my future and what returning to live in this "foreign" world would look like.

And now I'm moving into my third year of living independently in Southern California and it still only takes three-and-a-half weeks of Ecuadorian life to signal my nose to this epically American scent. But that's ok, because I don't think I ever want to get to the point where Ecuador is the place that smells weird to me.

Possibilities

As an English major, one of the more irritating things that I have to put up with is the tendency of most people to assume that I'm going into teaching once they find out what I'm studying. This is irritating because people don't realize that an English degree is one of the most versatile degrees out there and most undergrad English majors end up doing something completely unrelated to what they studied in college, so assuming that I am going to teach with my English degree frustrates me to death. 

The irony of this is that I want to do probably the most stereotypical thing possible with my English degree: I want to write. And yet nobody initially assumes that this is what I want to do. 

Anyway, another reason why the teaching assumption bothers me so much is that I had the WORST experience with teaching possible when I was in high school. I unwittingly agreed to teach 2nd grade ESL students for a few weeks of summer school and halfway through the first day realized how much I dislike being a disciplinarian. I would hate to be a teacher. It is on the bottom of my list. 

Except that old adage says that "those who can, do, and those who can't, teach", which basically means that if I fail to make it big off my semi-autobiographical nonsense for young adults, I will eventually end up teaching. 

This usually bothers me, but tonight I'm stuck with memories of the teachers who actually meant something to me: Mr. Quiring and his AP English courses, Mrs. Roedding who introduced me to poetry, Ralph Carlson from Creative Writing: Poetry, Mrs. Phillips who taught me how to read, even Ms. Pettijohn from my brief sojourn at Dana Hills. And I realize that if I had the honor to have as much of an impact on students' lives as these teachers had on mine, I would live a very fulfilled life. 

Suddenly I'm not so afraid of my inevitable career choice.

Mr. Bundles

Dear Mr. Jaxson Forest Lindsay (Jay),

It is I, your 6th grade crush. Remember? I'm the one you handed the "I like you" note to outside of our classroom during recess that one day in late Spring. I'm the one you played tag with all over campus and the one you asked, "Are you alright now, Rheanna?" when I had that nasty cold before the performance of our 6th grade play.

You may think it is pitiful that I still remember this, indeed, that I even remember your full name. Maybe it is pitiful, but that's not all I remember.

It was the second semester of 6th grade when you first whistled your way into my life. I had a crush immediately on your red hair and freckles, and on the fact that you came from Cotopaxi, the school where everyone apparently smoked. I thought this made you instantly cooler than all of the boys at my small missionary-bubbled school. You were a brand new transfer student and all I wanted was to chase you around the playground (I was 12, give me a break).

Our teachers chose Annie for our 6th grade play, and while I was Grace Farrell, private secretary to Oliver Warbucks ("Oliver Warbucks the millionaire?"), you were Mr. Bundles, the laundry man. When I found out which part you got, I desperately wanted to be Miss Hannigan because there was a secret romance insinuated between the two characters in the script and even at that young age, I thought art should imitate life.

During our 6th grade graduation, I flirted and flirted with you, Peter Carrera, and Eric Bean, because I couldn't decide which of you I liked best. I contemplated this issue for a whole summer, finally deciding on you when it turned out you sat behind me in our 7th grade homeroom. Later on in the year, I would stick my hands behind me when the teacher was praying and we would hold hands.

You asked me to the hayride and I had to say no because I wasn't allowed to date. This is one of my biggest regrets.

Our relationship culminated in a death, Jay Lindsay. It was the death of our classmate, Gun Hi Bae. He was in our History and English class and sometimes sat at the same table where we sat. This means that we probably accidentally played footsies with him a couple of times. We went to his funeral together, and you held my hand as we watched his body being brought to the building and, later on, in the van on the way back to school. You pointed out your apartment as we drove and I still can't drive through that part of town without thinking about you and how sad you looked that whole day.

(Years later, I wrote a story about Gun's funeral and I referred to you as my "first love". I still am not completely sure why I did.)

After that, we didn't talk so much. You stuck around for our 8th grade year and then your mom moved you away. During one of our middle school summers, we went to church camp together and you became a Christian. I remember because you threw away all of your shirts with the dragons and "bad stuff" on them and I thought it was really honorable of you to do that.

And then you moved away and for the longest time my ears would perk up when I heard anyone mention your name. Once, I heard you had been put in jail and I prayed for you.

The thing is, Jay Lindsay, you started all this nonsense with me feeling like I have to save people. It's because of you and your problems and my unquenchable desire to fix them for you that I still find myself drawn to broken people who need me. But they don't really need me, Jay Lindsay. There isn't anything I can do to actually save them. They have to figure it out on their own and that's what I never got the chance to learn from you.

Anyway, Jay Lindsay, we recently became friends on myspace, so maybe it's about time that I resolve all these issues that I have as a result of you. Maybe we can have a nice long conversation about how much I wrote about you in my journal back then and prayed that God would let me know if he wanted me to like like you or just like you.

Or maybe we can catch up through a few short and stilted emails and then move on.

But no matter what happens, I'm still glad I chose you to have a crush on in 6th grade. You were nice to me and I had a lot of fun playing tag with you. So thank you for that. And also I'm sorry I couldn't help you with the things you needed to figure out. Hopefully you've figured them out by now.

Hope your life is good.

Lots of love,

Rheanna Lea Cline

Ants in the pants of faith

“I’m spiritual. I live off the faith that has been instilled in me, that has never left. I’ve never let a stumbling block actually make me fall…. We all go through trials, but not one thing has ever made me question God. I have a great relationship with God. I can talk to him, get mad at him, frustrated with him. But, ultimately, my faith is what defines me.”

Yeah, ok, this is a quote from Jessica Simpson. I realize that. But. I think this quote basically sums up what American Christianity is trying to convince us of. 

We always say that God will never give us anything that we can't handle. Pretty much, we tell ourselves that God has our best interests in mind. And I'm not refuting that belief at all; on the contrary, I completely agree. But the thing is that maybe what God thinks is best for us is the opposite of what we think is best for us. 

Did you ever think that maybe God doesn't care about our happiness? Maybe he knows that there is a lot that is more important than how happy we're feeling at any one moment. Maybe he values things like joy and a vividly-lived life more than a temporary and inconstant thing like happiness.

I don't know. Our culture tells us that if we believe in God, we'll get the desires of our hearts. But maybe we're so out of touch with our spirituality that we don't even know what the desires of our hearts are.

Anyway, Jessica Simpson says that she has never questioned God. Frederick Buechner says that "doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving." 

If that's true, then is a faith without doubts, a faith that is asleep and stagnant, worth anything?

If we live in a world that teaches us to look for the easy and happy way of life, then how are we ever supposed to encounter the kind of "stumbling blocks" that might make us doubt God? And without that doubt, how are we supposed to come to know God more?

I don't know. I'm realizing that there's a lot about this culture that I frankly do not agree with. And I need to change that. I need to make a difference.

I need to save the world?

One of the more awkward results of attending a relatively small Christian university and living on campus

SCENE: Number K5 in the Shire Modulars, approx. 12:30am

RHEANNA sits on the comfy couch (the one that always eats her pens) in shorts, glasses, and a ponytail, minding her own business while also attempting to hold a phone conversation with a long-lost friend who has the coolest name she has ever heard. She hears voices and sees a mysterious figure pass by her half-open window, but reacts with a mere shrug as she is used to mysterious figures walking behind her house (like the time that Humans vs. Zombies thing was taking over campus and crazy freshmen kept lurking around the mods).

She hears a knock on the door and hesitantly stands to look through the peephole. With an obviously confused look on her face, she opens the door.

RHEANNA: Hello?

BOY SHE FLIRTED WITH IN THE COFFEE SHOP LAST WEEK: Oh. Hey. Is there a guy without a shirt on in here?

SEMI EX-BOYFRIEND RHEANNA IS ON THE PHONE WITH: (from the phone) I don't have a shirt on.

RHEANNA: Umm. No.

BOY: ...are you sure?

RHEANNA: Pretty sure.

BOY: You're not just hiding him somewhere?

RHEANNA: I don't think so.

BOY: Oh. I thought I saw someone through the window.

After a few more seconds of reallyyyy awkward conversation, BOY apologizes then leaves. RHEANNA is left with the startling realization that this kid was looking in her window and she resolves to never leave her windows half open again. SEMI EX-BOYFRIEND resolves to never ever attend a relatively small Christian university.

END SCENE.

"The way God intended it to be"

Who are you to claim to know the mind of God?

He's not like us. 

Isaiah 55:8-9

 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
      “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
      so my ways are higher than your ways
      and my thoughts higher than your thoughts."

Like we meant it

I've had a little too much Ecuador today.

For my adolescent lit class, I wrote an original story for young adults based on my experiences as a missionary kid and then had to present it this morning. 

For public comm, I gave a speech on the reality of missionary kids.

Am I exploiting my background? Where is the line between using your experiences to fuel your creativity and taking advantage of your unique youth to make your life seem more interesting?

Added to all of this is a homesickness that is becoming more and more acute as the days go by. I need my home, my bed, my cuisine, my country? Yes. I need my country, and whatever memories may go along with that.

We find strength to face the day

Disappointment is a part of life, especially when you're made of hope down to your very core. 

Disappointment is people not living up to your expectations of who you want them to be, who you need them to be. Disappointment is never getting to fulfill your lifelong desires. Disappointment is losing. Disappointment is not being good enough. Disappointment is drowning.

Since it's Easter, I feel like I should tie in Jesus somehow, but you know what? Even good Christians feel disappointed sometimes.

Tangible Evidence

Don't act so surprised, please, when
I know you've been waiting for this
day to come. The difference is that
I'm not 15 anymore, and the things
that marked my uniqueness back
then might be useless today. I'm not
the same innocent, wide-brown-eyed
girl I was, but I still can't look at
pictures without memorizing the
features on your face because it's only
the first time I've had tangible evidence
that you were a part of my life, a
touchable part of my life, at some point.
I'm still stuck with confusion eking out
of my every pore and I still want to know
what your face looks like [in person]
today. If it's the last thing I do, I'll take
my own picture of you, with face maybe
drifting closer to mine and fingertips
back where they belong from the times
of bustrips and cardgames and youth.

Magic

An older homeless woman came into the optometry office where I work today. She was holding a pair of very expensive-looking sunglasses and I found out later she bought them from my office after she had made an appointment last year. The most unusual thing about this scenario is that she actually had pretty good insurance. 

Anyway, when she came in today, I asked her a few times if she was looking for glasses. She either couldn't hear me or couldn't understand, but she finally stated that she was just looking and brusquely brushed me aside as she roamed around the store.

You know those stories about people who help the lost or lonely and then find out they actually helped an angel or even Jesus himself? My old homeless woman is exactly who I would expect Jesus to be disguising himself as.

It's either that, or she's magic and I've just gained a hundred years of long life for my firstborn child. You know. Either/or.

All you wanted was to be wanted

Fifteen, Taylor Swift

Cause when you’re fifteen and somebody tells you they love you
You’re gonna believe them
And when you’re
Fifteen feeling like there's nothing to figure out
Well count to ten, take it in
This is life before who you’re gonna be
Fifteen

You sit in class next to a redhead named Abigail
And soon enough you’re best friends
Laughing at the other girls who think they’re so cool
We'll be out of here as soon as we can
And then you’re on your very first date and he's got a car
And you're feeling like flying
And your momma's waiting up and you think he's the one
And you're dancing round your room when the night end
When the night ends

Cause when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you
You’re gonna believe them
When you’re fifteen and your first kiss makes your head spin round
But in your life you’ll do greater than dating the boy on the football team
But I didn’t know it at fifteen

When all you wanted was to be wanted
Wish you could go back and tell yourself what you know now

Back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday
But I realized some bigger dreams of mine
And Abigail gave everything she had to a boy
Who changed his mind
And we both cried

Cause when you're fifteen and somebody tells you they love you
You’re gonna believe them
And when you’re fifteen, don’t forget to look before you fall
I’ve found that time can heal most anything
And you just might find who you’re supposed to be
I didn’t know who I was supposed to be

---------------

Taylor Swift may be mainstream, but she does know what she's talking about.

When you're fifteen, you don't know the difference between love and affection, and it's easy to say, "I love you." When you're fifteen, you think anything is possible. When you're fifteen, you make promises to yourself to never forget.

And five years later, you still can't forget.

it is night

merrily tying the knot: fingers drift
slip lick the way across your [sighs],
obscene, yes yes yes they go with
error preceding them
12:36 here but you're just a phonecall
away if the ring ring ring can call
you awake. it may be time for sleep
but all i want is to call
you now now now before you
realize i am destructive [shameful]
hurt. same situation, you should
know, only i was the one to break
the knot, yes the same you tried
to tie
me up stuck here where you left me.

there are more questions where these came from.

Letter to Myself, written March 25, 2007

Dear FutureMe,

I hope you got over your ridiculousness that mostly had to do with boys. You had a lot of problems a year ago, and it got pretty annoying.

Also, you better have figured out what you want to do with your life by now. Time passes by pretty quickly, and you're 19 already. So figure it out, dude.

If you're dating RPC, have a good reason. Please? I don't want to go through all those issues again.

If you weigh more than 130 pounds, start running.

If you've lost touch with [the hobbit], call him.

If you haven't talked to your parents in a while, call them too.

I hope you're still writing at every chance you get. And I hope you haven't changed too much. 18-year-old Rheanna is pretty rad. You don't need to change.

Jesus loves you. I hope you haven't forgotten that.



Peace out, and please take a shower some time soon.




Love,

Me.

Overtime

I tip and I tap,
I type and I tope,
I sit as I speak
and I sip from a cup.
I polish and demolish
and admonish all this cottage
cheese, beans, please, seize
my work from my quirky
Dr. D,
for these words, oh they churn,
they are
eating
me
alive.

Dear World

Dear World,

I miss you.

It's been a while since we've hung out, and frankly, I'm lonely for the way you make me feel. See, I started this new relationship with this society called America and I am just having the hardest time adjusting to how different this new relationship is. Every once in a while, America will bring up something that reminds me of you and it makes my heart feel happy for one moment and then guilty the next. You don't think I deserted you, do you, World? Because that's how it feels to me sometimes. Like I gave up on this great relationship you and I had going.

I'd really like to try and work something out between us again. I've never felt as alive or purposed as I did when we were together. I really think you are my destiny.

Maybe in a couple of years we could give our relationship another chance? I promise I'm more mature than last time and I'm working on being more thoughtful and sensitive to your needs, just like you asked.

Well, America is starting to give me suspicious glances. I have a feeling that she wouldn't want me to be talking to you if she knew about how much I was in love with you or how long our relationship lasted. I wish we could all just be friends, but I'm not so sure that America would be ok with me being involved with both of you. She kind of gets jealous sometimes.

This was just a quick note to let you know that I'm thinking about you. I think I'll have some time off in about a month or two, so maybe I'll come to visit? Hopefully, you won't be mad at me.

I love you, World. I hope you haven't forgotten that.

Hugs and kisses,

Rheanna Lea Cline

Lifechanging/Euphoric

i fall in love with you easily,

quickly,

without questions,

as if this is what i always wanted,

even though i gave up on this

so long ago. i begin to dream about

your fingertips on my chin, tilting

my face

closer to yours and it's like

these dreams never ended.

it only takes a spark, and i'm

lifechanging

again.

while of course you, in your perfect euphoria, are

still stuck.

On College

I'm at a point in my life where I discover new things about myself, and about how I feel about the world in general, almost every day. It makes me a little too opinionated, but I think this is what college is about. My CLFM professor said that you should leave college with more questions than you came here with. This is a very good point, especially since the new things I discover usually just lead to all sorts of confusion and reluctancy regarding what to do with what I find out. 

(For example, I have discovered that I do not get theological discussions. It makes no sense to me to have all these arguments about whether Jesus' blood and body are actually in the Eucharist or whether God predestined each of us to either Heaven or Hell before the Earth was created. I can understand why some people would hold these arguments as the most important part of their religion, but I'm finding out that my concept of Christianity is made up of a lot of parts of mystery and usually doesn't have any answers. Read Frederick Buechner and Madeleine L'Engle for more on this idea of Christianity.)

College is for extroverts; that's what I've been trying to cope with lately. The process of meeting new people every single semester and having to create brand new relationships with them is something that I just cannot get used to. I think I need a break from an American college campus; it's definitely time to study abroad. So what do you think: Greece, Lithuania, or France?

I really need a vacation.

In a sweater poorly knit

This happens to be who I am.

New Heavens for Old

Amy Powell

I am useless. 

What I do is nothing.

What I think has no savour.

There is an almanac between the windows:

It is of the year when I was born.

My fellows call to me to join them,

They shout for me, 

passing the house in a great wind of vermillion banners.

They are fresh and fulminant,

They are indecent and strut with the thought of it,

They laugh, and curse, and brawl,

And cheer a holocaust of "Who comes firsts!" at the iron fronts of the houses at the two edges of the street.

Young men with naked hearts jeering between iron house=fronts,

Young men with naked bodies beneath their clothes

Passionately conscious of them,

Ready to strip off their clothes,

Ready to strip off their customs, their usual routine,

Clamouring for the rawness of life,

In love with appetite,

Proclaiming it as a creed,

Worshipping youth,

Worshipping themselves.

They call for women and the women come,

They bare the whiteness of their lusts to the dead gaze of the old house-fronts,

They roar down the street like flame,

They explode upon the dead houses like new, sharp fire.

But I--

I arrange three roses in a Chinese vase:

A pink one,

A red one,

A yellow one.

A fuss over their arrangement.

Then I sit in a South window

And sip pale wine with a touch of hemlock in it,

And think of Winter nights,

And field-mice crossing and re-crossing

The spot which will be my grave.

Personal Relationship

These are the things that have been rolling around my head:


It's the cliche Christian American thing to say, "It's not a religion, it's a relationship." I'm not going to argue that statement. I actually do agree with it.

I do think that often we forget who our relationship is supposed to be with, though.

Yes, Jesus is our homeboy. He's the one we talk to about all our issues and he's the one we "fall in love" with during those mountaintop experiences.

But the whole point of Jesus is that he's human. We love the humanity in him. And he charged us to love the world.

So maybe the relationship we're supposed to be in shouldn't be just between ourselves and Jesus. Maybe it should be between the entire world and Jesus.

Maybe the key to improving our relationship with Jesus is improving our relationship with our neighbors. Maybe loving the world is just as important as loving God. Maybe the way we love God is entirely demonstrative.

These are just the things I'm thinking about right now.

Pistachio

If you were an item of food, what would you be?

I would be a pistachio. Here's why:

1) Pistachios take time and are hard to get into.

2) Not everyone likes pistachios.

3) Sometimes, you really really want some pistachios, and other times, you just feel sick of them.

4) They're brown.

5) If you try to open them with your teeth, it hurts.

6) They have a unique and hard-to-spell name.

Rheanna Explains It All

I'm at work and I sneeze. All I can think about is this episode of Clarissa Explains It All that I saw years and years ago. In this episode, the flu is going around and the title character is terrified of getting sick. So when she sneezes once, she explains that it's just a natural, uncaused thing. Then she sneezes again and she credits it to an undusted room. She sneezes a third time and decides that she must be sick.

I didn't just sneeze once. I sneezed FOUR TIMES. IN A ROW. Someone had better get me to a hospital STAT because Clarissa never explained what four sneezes mean and frankly, I'm worried.

In other news, "sneeze" is a funny word.

I'm Not Lying

It wasn't fair, not to me, but least of all

to you. It became a game between three

players, one player who didn't even know

he was playing.

You may have had no chance of winning,

but here's my truth: I would have given

it up, all of it, just to have the assurance

that everything would be ok.

I would have saved you if I could have.

I'm Not Lying

Ellen Wittlinger

I am lying in a clapboard shack

the wind blows through. It has followed me

all the way from Boston to this sheltered

harbor where I am less protected than I've ever

been. Invisible as a fish in the ocean

I've tried to listen, to understand the

mystery of two people who could almost

touch, except they have in common trusting

no one. I'm not lying when I say I tried.

I'm not lying next to you

and I never will. There was a night

we needed more than affection

though neither would admit it.

To tell the truth it couldn't matter less

who wears the pants or the dress, but only

who becomes visible to whom.

You saw me truly, and I saw all you let me;

I'm not lying now, and I hope I never will.

Typical

This week is the first week of classes. I don't know if this is a normal thing to feel, but this week always gets me anxious. There's all these new people to meet, and unknown classrooms to find and then have to choose who looks the nicest to sit next to, and waking up at earlier hours. It just generally sucks. The worst part, though, is when I have to introduce myself.

I don't know why college professors do this. For every course, during the first session, the professor always makes the students give their names, usually something interesting about themselves, and where they're from. I thought maybe my Church History professor would be different. He spent half of the class yesterday talking about the syllabus and why you have to be selective in teaching this subject and the connection between studying Theology and History. But even he finally got to the part that I hate.

"Ah, so far we're all from California. Who's next... Rheahhhna Cline?" He reads from the roll.

"Actually, it's RheAnna."

He jots down a note on the list. "And where are you from?"

"Quito, Ecuador."

At this point, the room erupts in a burst of "That's so cool!"s and "Wow, how exotic!"s. In most classes, at least one person mentions how their friend is from Ecuador and I say, "Sarah Miller?" or "Paige Larrea?" or "Maia Froehlich?" or any of the other Alliance classmates who ended up at APU and we have a brief connection over the impossibility that we would both know the same person from a foreign country. Except it's not that impossible.

And that is how it always is during the first week of class. I'm considering changing my hometown to Azusa.