Kobby

Creative Ramblings Processing Life

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Two Interactions

God is amazing. Just thought that I would throw that out there because I am continually in awe of what he does for me and through me. This past week I have had two interactions with people that have made me stop and say, "God, thank you, but what was that?"

Sunday afternoon I had some extra time between lunch with my family and watermark, so I went with my bible and journal to Lake Ella. Started an informal word study on "majesty", and was having some really neat God Time. A lady sat down next to me, and I could tell that she was lonely and wanted to talk. I thought about being annoyed, and then decided against it. We chatted, and as she was getting ready to leave she told me that she had been blessed by me, and that I had been her angel for the day. She gave me a hug, and promised to keep me in her prayers. I don't think that I’ll see her again, but I was humbled that God would use me to encourage someone.

Wednesday I was sitting at a park, eating lunch, and reading a book I have been striving to get through for about two months now, when a lady drives up, gets out and comes up to me. She asked me if we knew each other, which we did not. She then said that as she had been driving by the park she felt God tell her to turn around and come talk to me. And she told me that God said that it would all be all right. That he was in control. And that he loved me. She then got in her car and drove away. I was somewhat stunned. My life is bordering on chaotic, which always puts me on edge, and as she said that God was in control, I felt peace.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Being Ridiculous

There are few things worse for me than to be ridiculous, and not being able to do anything about it. I am being ridiculous right now. My Mom's side of the family is enormous, and historically not very close. In the past few years there has been great effort to remedy this, and thus this summer we will have the first family reunion in roughly 8 or so years. And I can't decide how I feel about it. Part of me is excited to meet cousins I haven't met, see cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents that I haven't seen in years. Part of me has a completely unholy "Screw them, why bother?" attitude. But mostly, I have the ridiculous feeling of inadequacy and inferiority. I am roughly in the middle of the cousin spectrum of 25(? I have to think about that) and I feel like everything that I've done with my life has been done before, and better. All my older cousins are at elite schools (damn my pride), or doing awesome things with their lives, and the younger ones are all proving their giftedness and being cute and adorable and incorrigible.

I think the part that hurts is that I am not certain of their love. My dad's side of the family loves me, accepts me, and I don't feel a need to perform or to justify myself. My ridiculousness is a symptom of the brokenness in the family, as much as I would like to deny it. It doesn't make it right on my part-- I am just as broken as my family, and it is too easy to blame my stuff on my family. And that is not fair to them or to me. I can't assume that my family is judging me-- I'm the one judging them without any justification for it. I think I just have to get over it, go, and allow myself to be surprised by how cool my family really is.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Good Sister Days

Yesterday was a good sister day. There are four stipulations to measure a good sister day: 1) We laugh. A lot. 2) We have fun. 3) Someone looks at us like we are crazy. 4) We don't care.

Elizabeth and I most certainly met all the criteria. It all started with apartment hunting, that event of universal delight. We were discussing different options, and wanted to see where they were in Tallahassee. Mapquest is amazing. I signed onto my AIM, and then forgot that I had iniated a conversation. Elizabeth sat down a few minutes later and decided to continue the conversation wit the friend who had then responded. The word "snugglemuffin" was mentioned, to my great embarrassment, though it made me laugh. I decided that Emma (my iBook) was necessary, and I kicked Elizabeth off my account by getting on it through iChat. We were both laughing by this point. And things went downhill, and we began to duel-chat with her boyfriend, with each other, and everything was immensely funny.

Our roommate walked into our room, with a sleepy, quizzical look on her face. (She had been trying to nap.) She asked what was so funny, because she had never heard of a joke that made people laugh for so long or so loud.

Fast forward a few hours:
We had just attended Angela's spring concert, and she was in her very hot black chorus dress that Meagan told her makes her look like Death. (Think Ophelia in Hamlet) We all decide to go to TCBY with my mom, and we laugh. As always. And we met up with some friends. And we laughed at and with them. Again, as always. The other patrons of the before mentioned establishment would shoot covert looks at us. I can imagining them wondering what we were high one. (Nothing!) I was wearing a skirt that makes a full circle, and is very fun to twirl in. Yes, I am still a little girl sometimes. The skirt inspired the end to the evening: impresions of figure skaters as we waltzed out the door. Highly satisfactory.

Friday, May 05, 2006

Time is a tricky thing

I have the unhealthy tendency to do too much of too little, in that I will let the two or three most urgent, but not necessarily the most important, things overshadow all the rest of my life. Take last semester. I worked full time. I went to school full time. I slept. (I am not a nice person when tired. My roommates have learned to send me to bed when I begin to chatter, a sure sign that I am tired.) And in between these important things I attempted to squeeze family, friends, and church, more or less unsuccessfully. And I was tired, emotionally, physically, and at times spiritually. It wasn't until I began to care more about hanging out with people than an extra hour of study that my study time was more effective, and life in general was more enjoyable.

This past week I have been reveling in the freedom that has come with the end of the semester by spending a lot of time with friends. I have loved being spontaneous and doing all sorts of things that I had previously to decline. And I have discovered a very strange fact of life: there are only 24 hours in a day, whether or not school is in session. It has saddened my heart considerably that I have to remember to go to bed at a decent time, work comes whether or not I have stayed out late. And by late I mean 11. I have become an old person before hitting 20.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Jesus is a bluebird

From my earliest memories, Jesus has always been a part of my life. I remember my Dad reading me bedtime stories from this great children's bible that dumbed-down the language, but not the content. David was not merely the sheperd boy who killed Goliath, but also the murderer and adulterer and the man with God's heart. Bible stories mixed with fairy tales which mixed with real life stories that mixed with my overactive imagination which created a whole other world that was just as real, if not more so, than reality.

In this reality Jesus was a constant character, a steadfast imaginary friend who had tea with fairies, danced with dryads, and ran away from the Nazis with me. I would talk to Jesus all the time, even if he wasn't omniscent I don't think he could have know more about me. In my sylvan wanderings, I had a few favorite spots. One of them was in a little glen in the woods that you could only get to if you were small enough to scramble underneath the rasberry bushes that grew along the creek in my backyard. I would go there and sit, knowing that no one but Jesus could get in there with me. (I was Queen of the Forest most days, and the little glen was a place that I could escape from the frenetic demands of my imaginary world.)

One day a bluebird flew into the glen while I was there, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was that bluebird. I thought it very nice that Jesus decided to be a bluebird for a while, so I talked to him. And almost every time I went to that glen, Jesus the bluebird would show up. After a while I started imagining Jesus as a bluebird in Sunday School and during bedtime bible stories. My Sunday School teacher thought I was mixing up Angels and Jesus, because I kept talking about how he could fly.

That year during Holy Week my mom thought that I had taken the message of Jesus' death a little too morbidly when I came home in tears crying "Jesus is dead! Jesus is dead!" Mom went through great pains to explain to her hysterical child that Jesus died, but that wasn't the end of the story-- that he rose from the dead. Mom didn't know that I had seen a bluebird dead on the side of the road. And I never did see a bluebird in that glen again. Maybe Jesus the bluebird is in heaven.