Monday, May 28, 2012

Reasons to Rejoice

The last couple of days have brought reasons to rejoice and they have almost been forgotten in the busyness of everyday life on the farm.  So now, before I let sleep overtake me, I'll share.

Sunday, for the first time ever, I took full communion in my home church. Previously I had only taken the juice and let the bread pass me by due to my severe allergies.  Sunday we did communion differently, and after working with the pastors, we got something worked out so that I, and others with wheat/gluten/allergy issues, could participate. It was wonderful.  What made me feel even better about it was that there were guests in our congregation who required gluten free communion and we were able to offer it to them. That made me happy.

Also, depending on how you count months, Sunday was the "short" (180 days) 6 month mark of seizure free-ness. Today is the "long" (the 28th of May) 6 month mark of seizure free-ness.  Either way, it's been 6 wonderful months without seizures.  Praise the Lord.
That's a solid 6 months, no matter how you count it.

I get married in 80 days. That's another reason to rejoice.  Now if I could just get everything planned in time...80 days.  That doesn't seem like very long anymore.  It feels like even shorter when I put it into weeks (11ish weeks) or months (2.5ish). But it will be wonderful.

Now, sleeping time, which is another reason to rejoice in and of itself!

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Adult


I stood in front of the kitchen window in my apartment, looking out over the sunny courtyard and squishing cheese cracker dough between my hands and laying it out on the cookie sheets, watching the time, making sure the crackers would all be through the oven in time for my 2pm meeting, and that’s when it hit me square between the eyes.  I am an adult.
I don’t know when it happened.  I don’t know how it happened.  But I do know that it happened.  Sure as the sun was shining in the sky, sure as the robins were walking through the grass, I was an adult.
It hadn’t happened when I hit that magical number of 18 and was allowed to take my Girl Scouts places by myself (as long as I didn’t drive!). It hadn’t happened when I graduated high school and took a group of preteens overseas, though I was often expected to act like an adult and make adult decisions.  It didn’t happen at any point during college, no matter what life through at me, and it certainly didn’t happen on the day I walked across the stage and received my college diploma.  Yet somehow it still happened.
Here I am, an adult.

As I reflected on that I wondered what it meant. What does it mean to be an adult?  I looked it up in my dictionary (ie: I typed it into an online dictionary…same thing really...just don't type the word "Adult" into your search engine by itself...) and found these three definitions for the noun form:
1: a person who is fully grown or developed or of age.
2.a full-grown animal or plant.
3.a person who has attained the age of maturity as specified by law.
None of them really seemed to fit what was happening in me at that moment.  I had been full-grown for some time.  I had reached my full height in the 7th grade, much to my disgust. I did develop a little more after that as my body went through changes, but for sure by the end of high school I was fully grown...but yet I wasn't an adult then. Definition 2 simply didn't apply, as I am neither plant nor animal.  And the 3rd definition...well, I had reached that age a long time ago.  So what was it?

I think for me, the realization that I am now an adult, is a combination of the fact that major life changes are headed my way. I'm leaving school before finishing it because I want to switch to another school.  No one is forcing me, no one is saying no.  I'm also getting married.  Yeah.  Married.  Kids don't get married. But that still doesn't seem like all of it.  But it's for sure a part of it.
I'm changing schools, I'm getting married, I pay bills, I buy groceries, I go to meetings, I sometimes clean my house…I guess all these things make me an adult.

But there is part of me that doesn't want to be an adult yet, and a part that I hope never becomes an adult.  It's the part of me that keeps dreaming, keeps hoping, keeps creating.  It's the part of me that for a time can put aside the worries and cares of this world and dance.  That can stop and smell the flowers just because, that is free to be me.

Children are free like that.  Did you ever stop to watch children play on a playground?  The don't look around, always watching their backs to see who is following them, worrying about what comes next, the play with pure abandon, making friends with whoever seems to be there, living into the moment.  That's the part of me, the part that I want to keep as a child forever.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Back in Canada


Did you miss me?  Between exams (both school exams and classis exams), my cousin getting married, moving back to Canada, planning a wedding, and battling a nasty tongue and ear infection that has led to mild dehydration and malnutrition, I have been notably absent from my blog.  I cringed today when I realized it had been almost a month since I posted anything and my last posts were just photos! I have nothing profound to offer today, except that I am alive, I am back on the farm and will be until the wedding. I'll be working with Mom at the Mill for a few hours a day and other than that I'll be preparing for the wedding and working around the house.  Maybe I'll even get a chance once in awhile to post here.  I'm still needing a lot more sleep than I'd like to need, but hopefully as I overcome these infections, that will get better.
That's about it for today.  Hopefully a more profound post comes soon.