the end of the semester.

I had a beautiful morning. I stood in a gallery with the three girls I spent the majority of my last three weeks with (five all-nighters, midnight coffee runs to Trappeze, finishing our night at the studio with the sun rising over downtown) and for about an hour and a half we presented our final project to two of the Interior Design faculty. Both of the men taught us in our earliest studio classes as ID majors, and we were finally able to receive feedback on the project we invested the last three months in. We filled all the wall space in the gallery with our project boards. Sixteen total and twelve material boards. 

As I walked out to my car after our presentation I stopped in the parking lot and realized, I think for the first time, how much time and how much of my heart I put into that project this semester. And it wasn't even because I love design or I love my major (although this morning I really did). But being in the studio this semester became a place where I am safe. It is a place where I can do something well. A place I know I should be, at least right now. And there is safety in knowing that work is pleasing to the Lord, and that by doing it I know that at least one thing in my life is in place.

That project was miserable and it was beautiful. And I'm really not sure why because I'm absolutely not passionate about designing fictional 5-star hotels in Tokyo. But when one of the teacher's critiquing our project today looked me in the eyes and told me one of our spaces was beautifully designed and beautifully rendered I almost cried. Really. Which yes, is kind of funny. And yes, it had a lot to do with sleep deprivation (12 hours in the last 4 days). But also - it was proof that it was over. We had finished. And we hadn't wasted our time making something meaningless. Because in that one moment something I spent hundreds of hours creating was beautiful in someone else's eyes.

And also...a couple weeks ago I didn't think I was going to make it. I haven't woken up in the last two months without my joints and muscles aching deeply, and no doctor can figure out why. And honestly, it crushed my spirit. I cannot handle that I'm not the person the Lord wants me to be right now. I wish I could take a deep breathe and believe with all of me that even if this physical pain never goes away, the pain in my heart that it is causing will. I owe it to Him to believe that. But I don't know how. And when I lose any amount of hope I also lose my desire to create, which for me includes designing, painting, drawing, and writing. The last three I have completely cut out of my life in the last two months, but I couldn't cut out designing even though everything inside of me has been screaming that it just doesn't matter. 

I forgot about the beauty.

When people get sick, all their dreams turn to smoke and drift away. And I wonder if they ever come back to how they were before. I wonder if I will ever be the girl I was before I started giving up so easily. I miss her courage. Her bravery. Her stubborn willfulness to believe that despite what we see, there is more to this world. 

I saw hope this morning as I walked out of the ID building for the last time this semester. There were times lately that I have been in so much pain I didn't think I could finish out the semester with anywhere near the amount of work completed that was expected of me. But He helped. He helped. And that means He was there. The whole time. Fighting for me when I had nearly given up.

I wish I was stronger. Like Matt Chandler, I wish I could stand in front of you and say that even though everything is uncertain I am not afraid. But I can't. I don't even know if I ever will. 

But I do know is good. He is here. He is sovereign and He is loving. He is listening. I am his beloved even when I don't deserve it and even when the physical pain I am in doesn't make any sense. But dang...I wish I wasn't so afraid. 

We are so human. I am so glad He is not.

how i spent my vacation

Check it. click here for something totally awesome.

It's time to believe in what we know.

Sorting

I have been trying to publish this post for almost two weeks. My mind has been all over the place I have had trouble sorting out what it is I am actually thinking about, and what it is I need to say.

I wrote my grandmother a letter today. She won't be able to read it, and even if she could read it she would not know who sent it. My grandmother forgot my face when I was in high school. She forgot my name shortly after that. I wish I could remember the last time she looked me in the eyes and knew who I was. I wish a lot of things. I think wishing is okay- it reminds me of how much love there used to be.

My love can't heal people. I didn't realize I was trying to make it heal people until recently. And now I feel so small.

I can't love my friend into believing there is grace. I can't love him out of his depression. I can't love my sister out of the darkness she feels while working with patients who die everyday. I can't love away the fact that many of those patients won't be with her in paradise. I can't love my friend into accepting that her dad's depression is not her own fate. I can't love her into accepting God's forgiveness. I can't love my grandmother into remembering my father's touch when he holds her hand. I can't love her into recalling my face or my name. I can't love her mind out of its deep exhaustion and the pressure of disease. I can't love my friend's broken family into full restoration. My love can't heal. My hopes can't erase deep pain. My advice can't save, no matter how well-rooted in truth it is.

This isn't really an entry on the power of prayer. It could be... because, yeah, that's the point. But the other point is that its not me. Because if my love could heal those people, it still wouldn't be me. My love isn't that strong. But sometimes, more than anything in the world, I wish my love could change something. Because if it could, my grandmother wouldn't be sick. And the Lord's love doesn't seem to be doing the job.

I am small but prayer feels big. And I owe it to God, for all He has done to save me, to trust that I can't heal for a reason. That things are broken for a reason. And that he has come and will continue coming down into time and space to put all the broken things back together. (yeaaah Christ Church)

I wish I could talk to her right now. I want to know what she'd think of my summer. Of my roommates. Of the fact that I stopped running like my dad, that I didn't go to Auburn, that I don't know what to do next year.

My grandmother prayed for me every morning for the majority of my life. She woke up at 4am to do exercises, prepare breakfast, and cover our family in prayer. It's funny to me that I am just now understanding how necessary prayer is, years after one of the most God-fearing women I will ever know has forgotten my name. She taught me about prayer from the beginning, but I am just now getting it.

I should pray because it is the best way to love. Encouragement is helpful. Gifts are comforting. Compliments, hugs, all those things - the five love languages - they are all good. But praying for someone is the best I can do for them.

The only thing that really matters is sitting at the feet of Jesus.

I will pray huge things for my friends and won't doubt that they can be done.

On the shoulders of giants

These are quotes that made me think this summer. They are in order of awesome, and yet....not. Because words hit everyone differently.


Eustace- "In our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."
Ramadu- "Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of."
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis

“We must look at reality – look at it hard – ‘til at last we realize that there is no way out; ‘til we realize that we are children, that we are fools, that we are at heart conceited, stiff-necked rebels, who will get everything wrong, unless we are prepared to give up telling God what he should be like and what he should do; ‘til we realize that we can know only what God is pleased to tell us. We must listen and try to understand.”
The Goodness of God, John Wenham

"Not solidarity but fragmentation is the most visible quality of the way people relate to each other."
In the House of the Lord, Henri Nouwen

“When I see myself as a creature and a sinner in the presence of my incarnate creator crucified, I know that I can neither understand nor doubt."
ohh shoot, I forgot to write it down.

“In society and church alike we are heirs of the liberal over-emphasis on individualism.”
The Goodness of God, John Wenham

“When God endowed us with freedom of choice it involved the possibility of sin in all its horror – but even so, no converted man would wish to change his status to that of either an animal or a machine.”
The Goodness of God, John Wenham

"To participate in the real is to engage in something which inspires poetic awe."
Andrew Fellows

"Perfectionism is the hatred of the reality of being a limited person in an uncertain world."
lecture by Richard Winter

“To question is not to be unfaithful.”
T. S. Eliot

“Discipline is the gradual process of coming home to where we belong and listening there to the voice which desires our attention.”
In the House of the Lord, Henri Nouwen

Home is the place you left

I'm home.

As I boarded my plane two days ago, climbing the steps off of the runway with the sun rising behind me in a pink sky - I said goodbye to Venice and remembered a quote from my favorite play, Our Town, when the main character asks the narrator if "human beings ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?" He answers, "No. Saints and poets, maybe. They do some." And I stepped onto the plane thinking that for the first time that I can remember, I was realizing life while living it. And now there is no other way worth living.

On the airplane home I watched the movie American Beauty. I am not recommending it. But there is quote at the very end that perfectly described my last three months. Here it is.
"I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me. But it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain, and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life."

There is so much beauty in the world. I wish I had seen it sooner.

I have seen things this summer that are great proof of God's goodness, and things that instill great doubt within me. Silly prayers have been answered and heavy prayers have been left untouched.
This summer was a rough battle. A wrestling match. Me face down in the dirt calling out in anger, feeling unheard. Seeing everyone around me hear the Lord's voice and feel his direction. Doubting whether I actually believed anything good about the Lord. Asking questions buried so deep inside of me that I didn't even know they were there until Edith and Chris told me so. Learning to pray when I felt like I was surrounded by stone walls that only echoed back the sound of my own cries.

And at the same time, it was a summer of praises escaping from my heart more often than they ever have before because my body can't contain the beauty of England, Cortona, or Cinque Terre without throwing the praise back at the Creator. Thankful for the black-on-white contrast between the depths of last summer and the heights of this one.

There are a million moments I could share. Stories I could tell. But the point is this - I think we all need to realize how much beauty there is in the world. And if we can't see it where we are, we need to move. Because it is a waste of everybody's time to live blind to it all

adding to the conversation

Living in a community of artists is far more demanding than I expected. It puts a pressure on me to achieve something, to "add to the conversation" as my jewelry teacher says. To not just learn the craft of interior design or jewelry making but to create something that matters. I think I have had that pressure on myself for awhile now, but Italy makes it tangible.

All that to say, this summer makes me think I shouldn't be an Interior Design major. It doesn't seem to have any lasting meaning. This is probably my attitude because we are designing a high fashion boutique in the heart of Italy. Ehhh. But I am aching to make something that matters. I don't know exactly what I mean by "matters." I don't think it needs to be something that adds to the conversation on a national or global scale, or even just in the art world. It is the idea of creating something meaningful that can make a stranger feel something within himself. It is about saying something that isn't necessarily about God, and being able to express for a stranger a feeling that he or she has had but hasn't known how to externalize.

So the final exhibition went up this weekend. The school rented out this sweet old bulding in Cortona and every student chose one work from the summer to display in the show. The faculty did the same. The show went up Friday and came down this morning. A short run. I was so impressed by the work we had all did. This was my favorite weekend in Cortona by far.

Instead of showing my final interior design project, I entered my jewelery piece into the show. I felt like I needed to but honestly it was mildly terrifying. I haven't created a work of art...maybe...ever. I have completed some paintings and drawings during college that I am proud of, but none of them had a concept behind them. I wasn't saying anything- I wasn't adding to the conversation. But I did with my jewelry piece.

I cast the lids to my seven-day pill box in sterling silver. I kept the plastic base the way it was. And in each of the seven containers I placed objects that have been an escape from taking pills. From being sick. From being scared. There is a tiny camera that I made out of wax and cast in bronze. It represents photography and also the decision to continue creating even when it feels insignificant. There are stones that represent my need to keep everything simple. To not worry or be anxious. There is the silhouette of a tennis shoe cut from the rubber of my own running shoes that represents... running...my most tangible form of therapy. There is a magnifying glass that represents my need to continuing thinking, learning, researching, and figuring everything out. To not stop caring. There is a tiny book, within which I have pasted a couple sentences from a letter that Paige wrote me this summer. Words assuring me that "PSC won't win," and that she is there to fight for me when I can't fight for myself. I cried when I read this part of note, realizing how much I had already let it win, and knowing for the first time that I am not going to have to fight alone. There are two tiny ceramic bowls that Britney made for me which represent communion with people. The community of friendship and the importance of not pulling away from people. And the seventh item is a silver ring, molded out of wax only to fit my finger, which represents the promises of God, that he is good, that he is loving. Promises I easily forget and doubt but the the main truth that gets me though.

I made the piece because I wanted to follow through with what I said I would do - to share. And even if I am the only one that benefits from it, I think I needed to be open. My friend Chris from L'abri is the most transparent person I have ever met. And Heather is a close second. And I don't think I will ever be that way. But I can be honest.

Creating that piece was hard, but I loved it. Britney and I had more than a few brainstorming sessions. The title alone took a whole morning. But...I wish it was possible to care about everything I make as much as I care about that piece. Studio artists are living the dream.

Maybe I'm just ready to be out of college and working with people instead of with my computer screen.

A good friend of mine told me once that he thinks every artist should create a masterpiece. I thought that was interesting, but I didn't know that I agreed. I do though. I don't know if I will ever make one but I understand the longing now.