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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

His good, pleasing, and perfect will

 

We talked about God's will in my Romans and Galatians class today, about how God's will isn't "footsteps in the snow" that we need to somehow need to find and follow, but a corridor with boundaries and lots of flexibility in terms of what exactly God wants us to do. This is ironic because I fell asleep last night while I was debating over this issue in my head, and I came to the same conclusion my professor presented to us today.

All of this brings me back to something my high school Apologetics teacher, Mr. Roedding said: "As long as you are striving to do God's will, you will not make a wrong decision." God doesn't have a set system of choices and options for us to make; He offers us free will. He gives us the space to make our own decisions, because just like a loving father, God trusts us to make good ones.

In our class today, we also talked about a verse I memorized years ago, probably for AWANA: "then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will." My professor argued that it isn't God's will that is "good, pleasing, and perfect"; God's will involves all that is "good, pleasing, and perfect". God is all about good decisions and He provides us with the resources we need to make those good decisions.

So what it comes down to is this: as long as we are striving to do what is "good, pleasing, and perfect", we will be doing exactly what God wants us to do, and so we will not be able to be "out of God's will". And this can be applied to jobs or picking the right college. It can even be used in deciding who to marry. (Yes, there is more than just one person that you are able to marry. God doesn't set us loose in a maze, blindfolded, and tell us to somehow find the person whose fingerprints match our own. He gives us some leeway in this case.)

God created us with the ability to make good decisions, and we should exercise this ability, rather than allow ourselves to be paralyzed by the fear of doing something that God does not approve of. 

How sweet it is

Easeful – relaxed.

Exquisite – great beauty and delicacy.
Is not she an exquisite creature? p. 70.

Maul – 1. to wound by scratching or tearing.
2. to handle or treat savagely or roughly.
He mauled the edges of the paper with his reddened and blackened hands.

Flicker – 1. to shine or burn unsteadily or intermittently.
2. (of a feeling), to be briefly perceptible.
3. to make small, quick movements.

Spectral – of or like a spectra.
Spectrum: ‘image, apparition’ a band of colors produced by separation of the components of light by their different degrees of refraction, e.g. in a rainbow.

Dusk – the darker stages of twilight.
The fire light flickered on the wall and beyond the window a spectral dusk was gathering on the river.



This is what I'm doing for "work" now. I say "work" because it's not really. It's fun for an over-obsessive, perfectionist, wordprocessing freak like me.


I like words.

Mirrors and Books

'"It's not that easy. They just like somebody that can give them a purpose."

"A purpose?"

"Right. You know? Girls like guys to be a challenge. It gives them some mold to fit in how they act. Like a mom. What would a mom do if she couldn't fuss over you and make you clean your room? And what would you do without her fussing and making you do it? Everyone needs a mom. And a mom knows this. And it gives her a sense of purpose. You get it?"

"Yeah," I said even though I didn't. But I got it enough to say "Yeah" and not be lying, though.

"The thing is some girls think they can actually change guys. And what's funny is that if they actually did change them, they'd get bored. They'd have no challenge left. You just have to give girls some time to think of a new way of doing things, that's all. Some of them will figure it out here. Some later. Some never. I wouldn't worry about it."'

'I never once thought that it would mean Sam might start liking me. All I cared about was the fact that Sam really got hurt. And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn't matter.'

'"Charlie, don't you get it? I can't feel that. It's sweet and everything, but it's like you're not even there sometimes. It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things."

"Like what?" I asked. My mouth was dry.

"I don't know. Like take their hands when the slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks someone for a date. Or tell people what you need. Or what you want."'

Quotes all taken from The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, my current favorite book.

growing in Grace

So I was thinking...


My vocab is so huge cause I read so much.

My imagination is so crazy cause I think so much.

My eyes are so wide cause I look so much.


My heart is so full cause I love so much.

Yep, it doesn't help anything to just "feel bad". But it does move the heart to action. And that's where feelings and sympathy and empathy and all that good stuff comes in.

We'll never know the difference between right and wrong, happy and sad, fixable and leaveable if we can't feel those differences. 

Feeling bad is where it all starts. Don't make it seem like it's the wrong thing to do.

Proverbs 15:1

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but harsh words stir up anger.

Get Naked

Nothing will come between me and my Naked Juice.

Californians Must Be Crazy

A few hours ago, I was sitting in my car, patiently counting down the minutes to the end of my lunch break. That's when a drop of water hit my windshield. Another one followed. Then another, and another, and suddenly it was drizzling. The only thoughts running through my head at this point had to do with dreading the idea of moving all my stuff from one house to another in the rain, which is what I have to do today, come 5 o'clock. I also inexplicably had a craving for blueberries and ice cream, a craving that California rain almost always brings out in me.

My lunch break ended, and I briskly walked through the rain into the office where I work. This is where the pandemonium began.


Minutes after I approached my bosses' desk:

My boss (L), after tilting her head to one side and hearing the sounds of rain drops on the windows and roof: Is it raining?

Me: Yeah, it was kind of drizzling-

L: It's RAINING?!?!?

Woman who works next door (M): It IS! It IS raining!! Come look, come look!!

After this command, five of the women who work in the office huddled in front of a nearby window, where they proceeded to exclaim in high pitched voices over the (ridiculously small) amount of rain drops falling from the sky.

And then the unimaginable happened:

L: IS THAT HAIL?!?!?!?

M: No, it couldn't be hailing!!!!

L: It IS!! Look at the GRASS!! It's HAIL!!!

And then they all ran outside - outside - to watch it rain. And they weren't the only ones standing outside. Most of the people who work in this building were also standing outside. Watching. The. Rain.

Later, we had another episode where L realized that other boss, C's car window was rolled down, so L had to race around the office in search of an umbrella - M burst out with a chorus of "Under my umbrella, ella, ella" here - so C could run outside and close her windows.

Since then, the lights have flickered a couple of times and have completely gone out twice. It's also turned into a full-on thunderstorm, with loud noises and even lightning!

The most annoying thing about this rain is that two days ago, the temperature was in the hundreds. And I thought rainy season in Ecuador was bipolar.






I'm just praying that rain will never make me as psychotic as it makes most people who live here.

So let's make it rock

Well I'm sitting in an empty dorm room, surrounded by the scent of Clorox. That's what us college students use to clean our desks at the end of the year when it's covered in layers of dust and eye sleepies.

The end of the year. Really? Already?

It's amazing how quickly something that you've looked forward to for so long can pass. During my last year of high school, I couldn't wait for May 13th so that I could finally graduate and start my life in the real world.

And then you realize that what makes life real is how much you put into it.

I took Philosophy this semester, and we studied all sorts of ontological and rational and empiricistical stuff. We talked about Plato's cave example and what happens when you die and if there really is a God.

But none of that really matters. All philosophical theories are just ideas that men have had over the past hundred (thousands, even) of years. It's just speculation. It never comes to any conclusions, which actually drove me crazy during the process of learning about it, but thinking about it now, it's not so bad. It feels like a metaphor for life; we all live without conclusions, without finishing our thoughts or determining exactly who we are.

Life is about what you make of it. If you don't put that effort into making your life exciting, interesting, adventurous, and in the end, liveable, it won't be any of those things. It will be boring. It will be dull. It will be monotonous, beating to the rhythm of a drum that lost its prime long ago.

Life's what you make it.

It happens

Only during finals week can 12:00 midnight feel more like 12:00 noon.

I took a lovely walk over to Crestview a few hours ago for a study party (more like a "complain about this horrible horrible week" party) and it was ridiculously hot outside, due to this crazy thing called summer. I'm still completely not used to actually seeing seasons change. This spring has been the first spring I've experienced in a very very long time.

So anyway, on my way back from my study party, I walked by Trinity tables. There were dozens of people out there and even some guy playing a very pretty tune on his guitar. I was impressed. Also freaked out by the fact that it was midnight and I was hours away from sleep.

And then these words floated into my head: "I am such a college student."