tis so sweet

i can't get this phrase out of my head: o, for grace to trust him more.
this is very applicable to my life right now.
i don't really have anything to blog about today. except for maybe my co-workers. i am always in for a nice dose of reality after working with non-bible college-y people for 8 hours straight.
jonathan is my gay co-worker. i have always had an affinity for gay co-workers. jonathan is no exception. he is 23, and from medford (also commonly known as "methford") oregon. up until yesterday morning he lived in an apartment with his boyfriend.
i guess his boyfriend spent the night with another guy. i was sitting in the back room calmly eating my chonga bagel when johnny started to spill it all out.
i also seem to have an affinity with people who need to vent. or maybe just people who need professional help. this comes with being a librarian. but that is a whole other blog in of itself. back to business:
jonathan (or "johnny boy", as i like to call him) told me of his heartbreak, and that he was over jeff (the said boyfriend). he was genuinly sad, as only a person can be after they have decided to break up with their signifigant other. jonathan looked at me, sighed morosely, and then said:
"man, i have to find somebody to sleep with today."
this is what they don't prepare you for in bible college. but honestly, i gave him advice like i would give anyone advice. i cautioned him to look at the long-term consequences of his actions (i feel like i have said this exact same thing to 11 people in this last week alone).
i know i write about loneliness alot, but bear with me.
there is a sickness going around. it is rooted in isolation from god, but it shows up in our minds and hearts as the seemingly mundane ache of loneliness. don't buy into it.
jesus, jesus, precious jesus. o for grace to trust you more.

if i had a soapbox, i would climb onto it and scream at the top of my lungs:
can we all just hold out?
can we turn back to the one for whom we are all so lonesome for?

well, to wrap up this here story, me and melissa went to college group with jonathan tonight. he was scared out of his mind.
christ was, and is, and will continue to be talking to him. i feel it in my bones.
i am priveleged to see god in action in this boy's life.

thank you, postsecret.

i don't ever think it is going to happen.

missions.

i should be doing so many other things right now but i think i need to type for awhile. the room will organize itself, and that c.s. lewis biography was terribly written anyway.
this weekend something very strange happened. i was lonely, which is the new norm. i discovered that there was a conference called the "northwest missions fest" going on right by my house. i went by myself. there were maybe three thousand people there.
i wandered around the shoddily made booths and talked to people who had already talked to hundreds of people like myself. i met up with my mom. i saw the usual missions crowd:
1.awkward teenagers who are beautiful and frightening in their furor,
2.old missionary couples who never look too pleased at the state of american christendom,
3.people from the dregs of society who don't fit in anywhere but who are so isolated and lonely that they will corner anyone who happens to be nearby to explain their latest idea to advance the great commission.
i tell you what, kids. i belong with these people. there is something about it all that thrills my heart. if i had to put my finger on the reasoning, i think it might have to do with how very unglamorous it all is. missions is simply people being obedient to god, in ways that involve long distances. i very badly want to be obedient to god, because god is the one who gave me (well, actually everyone) christ. christ is by far the best thing i've got going for me.

a quick story:
i went to a seminar at the conference about working with refugees. they had real live refugees stand up in front of us and tell their life stories. they were very fragmented when they spoke. i had a hard time following, but i loved their faces. one of them was a preacher named achmed, and he said he was from somalia. i just about died. i went to talk to him after the seminar was over, and i couldn't stop shaking his hand. very culturally inappropriate of me, but i don't think he cared. i asked him how i could best share christ with the somali bantu refugees. i told him all about it. i told him that i wanted to see them come to christ. what should i do, i asked. he smiled at me, and his teeth stuck out very prominently. one tooth was very yellow. he told me to stop worrying about it. just be there, he said, smiling his prominent smile. i was frustrated at his african answer, and somewhat hysterically started explaining that majuma's husband was in the hospital and that i thought he was going to die without ever hearing about christ and i couldn't speak somali and i couldn't find a bible and--
and then he stopped me. oh, hassan? he asked. i just about died again. yeah, i said. do you know him? oh, i visited him yesterday in the hospital, said achmed. and you know majuma, i aksed? of course, he said. i visit with them all the time. i work for irco, and we work on english together.
my look of shock was so great that achmed laughed at me.
you see, he said
god cares for the somali's more than you do.

christ is by far the best thing i have going for me.

m.l.k. day blog

i have been feeling very depressed, and this is not me being dramatic. when i say depressed, i don't mean that i feel a little blue. i mean that i feel like everything i do is a mistake and that it would be for the best if i never got out of bed. i never want to do anything.
but, i went to the oregon coast this weekend and nobody can be depressed long when there are waves and sunshine (!) and rainbows about. on the way to the beach, me and tiffany and linda had some random adventures at the spirit mountain casino. we got stopped by a security card who checked our i.d.'s, but i'm pretty sure he was just checking us out becuase we were the only people under the age of 50.
the next morning, we went exploring on the beach. i love scrambing up rocks and out running waves and letting the wind spray on my face as i pretend that i am kate from lost. it was pretty surreal. at one point we found this section of beach that was entirely covered in foam. weird, yellow, quivering mounds of foam. it looked like a japanese art project. i took a stick and poked at the foam for a very long time.
i have to go back to school tomorrow and i think i will make it. hopefully.
i just read through some really old e-mails, and i am reminded again of how i can't keep friends for the life of me.
if i didn't have family, i don't know what i would do.

the man.

i work for the man. the starbucks man.
there are a lot of things that bug me about working for the man.
usually, though, the thing that bugs me the most are the people that i serve coffee to.
i live in clackamas, and serve coffee to 40 year old men.
i am not very cute, and so i don't get hit on very much. that's the good news.
the bad news is that these men treat me in two very different ways.
way number one: they ignore me. (i rather like this one).
way number two: they talk about themselves. (this one makes my heart curdle and immediately strengthens my resolve to live and work in africa. because, and i'm just spitballing here, but i think that people in africa probably don't spend 4 dollars on a drink and wear expensive suits and then still feel the need to impress the uneducated barista who served them the said drink)
a disturbing trend that i have noticed this christmas break is the need for these men to talk to me about their wives. sometimes, they get their wives a drink. if it's a complicated drink, they always mess it up when they are ordering and get embarrassed when i say it back to them in the "correct" starbucks order. or they ask for a straw for the venti extra hot nonfat whatever that i just made. or they take the wrong drink that i just place on the bar with a clear explanation of what was inside.
these men never apologize.
they just shrug their shoulders, roll their eyes slightly and smile at me. some shake their head in soft besument, and every single one says this:
"i don't know, it's for the wife."
and then i swear that each and every one winks at me.

what did it for me was this businessman who came in two days ago. he ordered a venti nonfat peppermint mocha ("i don't know, it's for the wife!") and then i dutifully asked if he wanted whip cream on it. he looked extremely puzzled for 2 seconds, and then said: "oh, what the hell. put a little whip cream on it. she's already got a lot of junk in her trunk!"
and then he winked.

my only defense against these kind of interactions is that i have taken up the habit of never looking people in the eye.

trying too hard

first part of blog: how i feel (physically)
i never get sick but here i am now and there is nothing to do about it. i woke up this morning and there was snot in the back of my hair. i was pretty grossed out. also, it feels like there are a couple of cars parked behind my eyes. it hurts very much.

second part of blog: how i feel (emotionally)
something i don't understand is this:
just because i tell people that i am i the intercultural studies program and want to be a missionary, they assume that i can't like anybody who doesn't have those same career/life goals in mind. who else thinks like this? if i wanted to be a dentist, people wouldn't limit me in my relationships to only those people who wanted to work in the oral care business. right? i mean, am i right?
sometimes i feel like telling everybody that i really don't know what i want to do with my life. isn't that the point of being 21? today, i want to live in ukraine for a good fifteen years and become a widly popular university professor. yesterday, i was all set to work with african refugees in portland the rest of my life and wear old fuzzy brown sweaters and socks with sandals. tomorrow, (i can already tell), i am going to want to be living in serbia, working with house churches and writing the next great coming of age novel.

third part of blog: the meat of the story

i fall in love everyday.
sometimes i worry that it is never going to happen for reals.

things i got for new year's eve:

1. quality time with quality people (chris, catherine, laura, kevin, and candyce).
2. a mug of wassail (a spiced apple drink that hails from the czech republic).
3. three text messages (generic).
4. two phone calls from far away friends.
5. three phone calls from friends "pretending" to be drunk.
bonus! one apology call from one of the aforementioned friends
for calling me a "motherfucker".
6. a burnt thumb (after one of the sparklers that i was playing with spewed a chunk of fire onto my pants and i tried to put it out with my bare hand).

7. a sense of relief that a new year was starting.