It's been a while.

Whew. It's been a while. Prepare for rambling.

Soooo it's tuesday, first week back after the laziest, most ridiculously chill break in the world. I definitely needed the chill-out, but I feel like it almost set me too far back. I ran only once during break, after being used to running 6 days a week, so you can imagine my workout last night... let's just say that i felt the effects of the gargantuan amounts of honeynut cheerios i ate way past midnight every night and the obscene amount of crepes and whipped cream i consumed on midnight on ash wednesday. It's safe to say that I was sinfully gluttonous during break. whoops.

But break was really great, it was. I went home with my friend [and future roommate] Emily Dober. She lives in Virginia Beach, about 3 miles south of DC. It's a beautiful area, and despite the cold, we did rough the beach one day, just to say we did. Haha, it was SO cold. But totally worth it. I got to see my ocean :)
We went to movies and pierced our ears and ate too much food and didn't sleep enough and facebook creeped and had adventures. It was great, I love Emmyface.

I can't help but be almost tearfully jealous of some of my friends who got to go on mission trips during break. Hearing Valerie talk about Haiti, the people there who hunger for relationships and God and love... I want to be there. All the time. I don't talk about it a lot, but it's on my heart constantly. I want to be surrounded by those people. I want to play soccer in the dirt with 10 year old kids who are way better than me because they've had nothing much else to do with their lives than be outside. I want to have the eye-opening experience of communicating through love and not spoken language. I want to look into the big, beautiful eyes of impoverished and orphaned Haiti babies and love them and take care of them. To be there, to make room in my life for something thats not about me, that's not about my concern for the way I look or how other people think of me or what I'm going to eat or what to put as my facebook status or what the weekend plans are. I want to drop it all for a while and live for other people. I know I don't have to be in Haiti to live that way, but to be face to face with the harsh, sad, terrible reality of the poverty there, to be able to genuinely sympathize because i've SEEN it and I've experienced it... I crave that. I crave to love. My friend Jaime went to Peru for spring break and worked with orphans and rebuilt a church and stayed with a peruvian family and was served peruvian food and got to play with the kids. I wish I could go. I will, someday.

Yesterday, in theology class, we talked about the concept of salvation. We read this piece that used love and salvation analogously. It said that love and salvation entail the same paradox. That in truly loving, you give up a part of your self-seeking self in order to make room for someone or something else, while simultaneously becoming a more whole and true person. Love is a process. It's willful and conscious. You knowingly die to yourself in order to replace it with something you know to be greater and more important. In this sacrifice, you become more whole. Salvation has the same paradox, because [I think it's in the gospel of john that says this] "we have to die with Christ in order to rise with him." That statement struck me. A lot. Because it's an explanation for suffering in love. Empathy is what comes to my mind. I think I empathize a lot. I put myself in other people's situations and FEEL what they feel. In that way, I think I'm good at loving. But it's not all rainbows and butterflies. It's painful and sad and confusing sometimes. But that's just it. We can love because God loved us first, by sending christ into the world and by christ dying for our sins. Loving, then, utilizing the ability we are given by being created, ENTAILS SUFFERING. We must die with Christ in order to rise with him. We love, even when it is miserable, because it's exactly what christ did for us. His love for us was being nailed to a cross. Leaving a place like Haiti or peru and coming back to America where food gets wasted by the truckload and daily showers are normal can make you feel like you're empty. Like there is a void inside your heart where the faces of beautiful, impoverished people that you laid yourself down for used to be. The fact is, there is no void. The process of love is being able to make the transition from being physically present, in front of those people, to going away and making room for them in your heart. That is the pain of love. The beautiful, pure, amazing gift we have. In dying to ourselves to love others, we become more like Christ. wowza.

Back porches produce really awesome heart to hearts.

I'm realizing that I can run on about 3 hours of sleep consistently and not even die all the way.

My jaw was sore when I woke up, and I think it's from chewing gum too much. I might have a problem.

My sister Annie is in town and we're hanging out tonight annnnd it makes me happy, like a little kid on christmas.

Yesterday, it was gorgeous outside. At first, I thought it was gonna be chilly. But you that kind of day when you're so used to it being cold outside that you don't have much hope that it's going to be warm when you step out the door, but then when you do, you're just ahhh. You let the sun hit you for a second and you start to feel all fuzzy and glowy because you've been deprived of warmth for so long, and in that second your mood does a 180 and your whole day gets better? You see the sky more clearly, it looks way more blue than usual, you hear the birdies, you want to smile at everyone even if you realize you look weird? Yeah, it was that kind of day yesterday. It was rad.

I love my mother.

My little eighth grade brother joseph g-chatted me last night, and he was using aim lingo like "g2g" and "ikr" and "lol." WHAT? He was five years old like two seconds ago. And not he's using acronyms. What in the world.

I really miss my friends from home, my Indiana friends. I love them.

I really wanna play hopscotch right now. And jumprope. And play with sidewalk chalk and be barefoot and climb a tree and be a little kid. I'm sick of this whole being an adult business. I'm tired of scheduling advising meetings and building class schedules and taking test after test after test and feeling like I'm not getting anywhere and being so unsure all the time if this is really what I want to be doing. I just want to fly a kite for a while. That would probably fix my worries.

No, you know what sounds abbbbsolutely wonderful? A summer night, cloudless and breezy warm. On the side of a country road, lying back on the hood of my car just looking at the stars. I miss that, so much. It sounds sappy and fake, but I actually do this stuff, people, it's awesome so you should proobably try it. For real, it will change your life.

Alright well this has been a long post and my eyes hurt.
I'm trying not to be discouraged or restless. God knows the plans he has for me, and none of it is bad. That's nice to think about.