Moments With You II

It's been a long week of studying and working and here we are, spending our Saturday afternoon the same way. You're getting antsy and I'm getting cranky and so you suggest a walk. I'm so glad you did, because I start to feel better as we stroll hand in hand through the neighborhood nearby, peppered with cute houses and colorful leaves. It is a busy, beautiful season in our lives. I'm thinking to myself what a blessing it is to have you by my side. We get back to the house, settle onto the couch, and you look at me in thought. "What?" I say, and you say "thanks for spending so much time with me." And I smile and I laugh because I love spending time with you. You make everything better.

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As I trudge back to the student room it's like my body knows I've made it through the last requirement for today, and I can feel the wave of exhaustion swelling up to overtake me. When I walk in the room I see a sparkling gift bag on my shelf... I'm excited, then a voice in my head says it can't be for me, maybe someone ran out of room on their shelf, but I pull the bag down and I see, there on the top, a note for me from you all. With hearts drawn in ink and words written in love, as I read your support the tears well and my heart buoys. I have the best friends. She did, too. Oh how I wish she could have believed in how many more wonderful moments there were to come, that she could have felt in her soul the truth that we are never, ever walking through our hardest days alone.

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You seem so excited as you talk about your new dance class and the start to your cross country career. I love seeing your eyes light up as you grow in confidence in your abilities. You tell the funniest stories about your teachers and classmates and I again admire your story-telling skills. I wish I saw you more often during this stage of your life while you are quickly becoming an adolescent. Every time I see you you're taller and more mature and I know that these stages take forever when you're in them but go by in a blink of an eye for the rest of us. Your texts make me smile and I'm so thankful to see you doing so well.

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As we crunch through the leaves reining in the dogs with each passing squirrel, I can't help but picture our future, Taylor-Swift-style imagining the minute details of our happily ever after. We've talked about the dogs we might adopt someday, the home we might have someday, the life we might create someday. It's hard to believe it's only been months since I started calling you mine because it feels like we have fallen into love so naturally and effortlessly. But it does take effort, building this partnership with you, and every day we choose each other and it's everything I've ever wanted. You make me dinner and I pack your lunch and together we navigate the insanity of our schedules like it's easier than it is, because everything is easier when we do it together. 

Here and There

It's hard to believe how quickly two years of my life have flown by, and harder still to believe all the life that's happened in them. In a few shorts days I'll be packing everything I own into a truck and moving (back) to Pennsylvania, to State College. Thankfully, due to some inspirational Pinterest posts, my helpful roommate Ashley, and a more well-developed ability to let go of stuff, everything I own is about 6 bags of trash and 6 bags of donations less than it was just a few weeks ago!

Leaving NOVA will be bittersweet, because so much life has happened here. Most of all I'll miss seeing my roomie Ashley all the time, and the friends I've made from work and bible study.
It was here that I worked my first grown-up, full-time job, which taught me more about managing both spreadsheets and people, both of which I enjoyed more than I had anticipated (though the people were much more fun than the data, as expected!). It was here that I got the call about Maggie's death, and here that I've processed the immediate and very worst of my grief over missing her. (Though I miss her still, and always will.) While living here I volunteered with a humane society for the first time and loved it. It was while living here that I tried online dating, fell in love, and then we together ended that relationship. It was here that I decided to get my first tattoo-- a simple design that represents my forever love for my family-- that thankfully turned out exactly as I had hoped. Here I observed, up close and personal, what it's like to be in a clinical psychology PhD program. Here I researched graduate programs and decided against clinical psych and for school psych, wrote my application materials, and prepared for interviews. It was here that I got the emails about my acceptance to Penn State! Here I helped, from a distance, to plan and prepare for some of my dearest friends' weddings. Here I bonded more deeply with Katie during several sister weekends, packed with quality time over Netflix and cupcakes and snuggles. Here I questioned, explored, and clung to my belief in a loving God. It was while living here that I learned more about renter's insurance, auto insurance, finding new doctors, roasting vegetables, and all those adult life things. Within my last few months of living here, I took a chance and answered a message from a kind, clever, handsome redhead, who I'm so thrilled to be moving towards later this week. :D

There is so much I'm looking forward to in State College: getting to know my new roommates (and their cute cat!), bonding with my cohort, starting my program, becoming reacquainted with my favorite college town, and being geographically closer to everyone in my immediate family and my boyfriend (lucky, right?!). :) Arguably the most important life lesson I've learned during my time here is that I am surrounded by an overwhelmingly faithful, caring, generous, global "community" of people. I know that no matter what the next chapter of my life entails, no matter what difficult and wonderful things will happen there, I will not ever face any of it alone.

Shoutouts to: my friends here for the cards, presents, and epic farewell parties!, and the awesome folks planning to help me move all my belongings this weekend! Happy Valley, I'm coming back! :)

Thoughts on International Women's Day 2017

Today I pause to consider the women who have gone before me to pave the way for me to be able to achieve my goals. If it were not for women and men of incredible strength and perseverance, I would not have been able to attend college, to work in the field of psychological research, to soon train and study towards a graduate degree, etc. I am pursuing a career in which I will make scientific discoveries as well as educate, train, and empower children, their families, their teachers, and their communities. It is my intention to continue to gain the knowledge and skills to make a lasting, positive impact for the lives of the people I interact with both personally and professionally. I am grateful for the women who have gone before me to create precedents for female engagement in my field and others related to it.

I also pause to reflect on the blessing of my wonderful parents, who every day provide an example of a loving partnership within marriage between two equally compassionate and strong individuals. To have been raised and be continually supported by a mother who is both nurturing and assertive, who is an essential presence in her children's lives and in the work force, who is passionately well-read and educated, who is a comfort to me in hard times and a catalyst for my success in all parts of life, and more, as well as a father who is both courageous and sensitive, who actively prioritizes time with family over time at work, who has used his position of authority to advocate for patient access to care, who expresses affection consistently and frequently, and more, is a privilege for which I am so grateful.

When I think about the character of God, I find it inspiring that both man and woman were, together and collectively, deemed a more full human representation of deity. The Bible is filled with stories of women and men radically defying their culturally prescribed gendered roles in order to together better advance the gospel and share the news of God's love. We are at our most successful, most loving, most godlike when we intentionally and actively consider one another as equal partners in the human experience.

Moments with You

//Here you'll find a new creative exercise for me, an attempt to put into words some snapshots of moments with important people in my life. Each "you" will not be named, though some may be easier to identify than others. This may be the first of more like this, I really enjoyed putting these memories into words.//

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I look over at you as we drive with the windows down, the wind blowing through my hair and a smile playing on your lips. You reach over with your right hand and place it gently on my knee and I grin at you and you grin back. We are loving this unseasonably warm weather and I'm purposefully picking songs from my phone with that "chill vibe" that you like. I'm also purposefully choosing ones about love and happiness. You ask me if we should turn right or left, and I say you should pick, I really don't care, because we have nowhere we need to be today, and my isn't that a glorious thing. I focus only on the music, the sunshine, the wind, my hand on top of your hand, your smile matching my smile. 

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You smell like hard-won self-care. The scent of your aromatherapy lotion grounds me as the three of us lay here together, reeling, trying to breathe and make sense of it all. You hold us both close as we mostly cry, talking here and there when we can. Eventually you get up, we move on to the rest of the daunting day ahead of us. Months later I track down the lotion you were wearing and I buy some for myself. It makes me think of you, which brings me comfort.

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As we sit down at the picnic table, you start unpacking the lunches that you made for us. You're such a planner, and generous and thoughtful, too. You dole out the sandwiches and snacks you packed and the four of us settle into a pattern of light chatter between bites. I still can't believe we've convinced the littler ones to come along, but somehow your enthusiasm must have spilled over into them because everyone seems to be in a good mood. We take our time eating, then pack up and set off for the hike. Just before we reach the clearing with the tower we encounter tons of butterflies, or maybe they're moths, it's hard to tell but it doesn't really matter because the visual effect is the same- it's beautiful. 

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The airport noises dim as I turn around to see you, unexpectedly, here in my dream. You've been missing from them lately, or when you do appear you're fleeting, something is always off. But not this time, this time you seem as real as ever. You ask me if I have any questions, and I can sense the urgency of the moment, like in a second you'll be gone again, and so I say no, maybe later, maybe next time. For now I just want to tell you that I love you. And you tell me you love me too. When I turn to the others, maybe to alert them that you're here, you disappear again. But you felt so real, I think the moment was real. 

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Your text response makes me smile- something so simple yet so thoughtful, conveying that you listen when I speak and you care about what I say. I've volunteered to bring home some cheese for us, to pair with the wine and crackers you already have. I've asked which kind of cheese you'd like, and you say I should get whichever kind doesn't make me sick, because you know that for some reason my digestive system plays nicer with certain types of cheese than others. You know this because we talk about pretty much everything, mundane and important alike, and you have a knack for knowing when something is important and you tune in and make a mental note, and you remember.

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The weather is just starting to turn chilly, still in between winter and full-on spring, and we're both wearing sweaters but no coats. You hold my hand as we talk here on this bench we happened upon down the trail in the woods and you sense that what I'm saying will be hard to hear. At least, it seems you do, because from the pained expression on your face you are recognizing the place of pain I'm speaking from. The tears come on a bit unexpectedly, and soon I am crying more than you've seen yet and more than I would like, this being a date and all. But you wrap both arms around me and you start to tear up, too. We sit like this, not saying much, as I catch my breath. You wait for me, you don't hurry the moment. You're okay to sit with me in this not-okay state. And a few minutes later, when I'm ready, I bring up a new topic and you gracefully move right along with me. As we walk back to the car, I think we decide to go bowling. You crack a joke, I laugh, I check my make-up in the passenger side mirror and I realize that I'm falling in love with you.