Change

It's the end of the school year and in six days, I will be moving back home for the summer, so I guess it makes sense that change would be on the brain.  I am a person who loves being where she is when she is, and I love change. I love a change of scenery - I won't stay in the same building for longer than two hours in a day unless I am sleeping. I love a change of pace - mostly, I like going to places with a slow pace because everything at the university is fast-paced to me.  I love a change of decoration - rearranging my room as often as I can, if I can. And if I can't? Then I throw things out and move the remaining stuff around into a new pattern. I think that part of the reason I love change is because I trust God to keep providing me with the things I need. He is this great conductor who orchestrates everyone around one another keeping perfect time.  But another reason is that up until now, even in change there has been certainty. Leaving high school was a "change" but college was the stable next step.  Likewise, in all other changes, there was a sure next step. As I wrap up the end of my second year of college, I am realizing that I have two years to decide my own next step. I already know a number of things that will change between this year and next, and I have a number of things that I am pretty certain will change, and now I don't know what the next step will be. Perhaps a more logical word word for today would have been "trust" but I am going to stick with "change" and see where it leads me!

Girasole

This is my favorite word currently.  It is Italian, and it means, "sunflower." Literally translated, "gira" means "turn" and "sole" means "sun".  So it is like some beautiful advice to "turn to the sun." This word has been on my heart for a while now, and I have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it.  This past weekend perfectly encompasses the entirety of what this word means to me.  A bad storm hit my city on Good Friday (an EF4 tornado) and left a lot of people without electricity, roofs, and even homes.  Streets were shut down due to live power lines down across lanes of traffic and other entire subdivisions (like my own) were barricaded by the police for safety reasons.  The damages are still being calculated four days later, but the most certain fact is that no one was hurt.  It is being classified as a miracle, and I have no doubt it was. There is story after story of people who were not home due to random happenstances, or who happened to be in the right room in their home at the right time and just missed being hit.  The storms passed that night, but it rained for the rest of Easter weekend.  However, the rain and cold did not deter the community in the slightest from beginning clean-up.  It was an incredible message of hope, and that to me is the epitome of the whole idea about turning to the sun.  To turn our heads towards the sky and like my friend Von says sometimes, "Spend a little more time looking up." We can look up to know that our God is here with us and trust that He is the one who protected every single person from these storms, just like He is the one who will continue providing for everyone.  We can turn to the sun in hopes that all of these storms will pass, which sounds so cliche, but is also completely true. One of my favorite songs is a Casting Crown with a lyric that totally sums it all up: "I will praise you in this storm."  I think all of us just need something like this to hold onto, and for me, that is girasole.

Awake

Good morning! On this absolutely beautiful Monday morning, the only word that is resounding in my  mind is the word "Awake".  I won't say that lately I have felt like I have been walking through life almost asleep, but I have definitely not been awake as I could have been.  I have been physically sleepy but also just pretty apathetic.  It probably has something to do with homesickness and dreary weather, but whatever the reason, that is how I have been acting. The question most often on my mind has been, "Does God really want me to be happy? Am I supposed to just barely make it through this life to get to Him? And why did He put us away from Him on this Earth just to get back up there with Him when we could have just all stayed there in the first place?"  This past weekend, I took a trip for a change of scenery.  I went home to Von's hometown, but on the way, stopped at my own home and saw my family.  The whole weekend was incredible.  Spring is in full swing now, and everything where Von lives is fresh and new.  The trees were fantastically beautiful, the grass was lush and green, there was a storm and the next day the earth was vibrant with flowers. I was thrilled to have seen my family, if only for a bit, and happy to just spend the weekend doing nothing but enjoying the weather and friendship. I felt totally whole all weekend and I prayed a lot. It was like a retreat just for me where I got to step back and say to myself, "God really does want me to be happy." And I am.  I don't know the answers to my other questions, and I am sure that I will have more, but in this moment,  I am so grateful for the sunshine, for the cool breeze, for all of God's wondrous blessings, and finally being woken up to see all of it.

Hope

Yesterday at mass, I had this really neat moment listening to the readings, which I will admit that I was barely listening to anyway, but the part that I caught said, "Hope will not disappoint."  I have been feeling hopeless lately.   Not hopeless in the way that you may think.  I have not given up, but I feel hopeless in a sense of understanding and accepting that things will happen as they happen, and what I hope for will not likely change what God already has in store.  Hoping is so uncertain and the possibility of getting let down is so strong that this feeling of having hope is so much more daunting that people give it credit for.  This has been a really recent development in my heart, taking root in and branching forth from my vice of envy.  I do not want to hope for the same thing that someone else is hoping for, because only one of us can "win" in the end, and if it is not me, I will be upset with myself and probably with God for a while.  So to nip the problem in the bud, I just stopped hoping and told myself that I was trusting God's Plan.  His response was in this reading, saying, "Hope will not disappoint" and that is something that I really will trust. I suppose the most logical answer to this at this point is to hope for happiness, or to hope for assurance. To hope for things that God will always provide.  God would never deny us love, even if He denied us the answer to one of our daily prayers, because love is something we all need all the time.  Meaning, if we hope for the things that we need, we will truly not be disappointed.

Relax

Usually, the weekend is the perfect time to play catch-up on all of the things we did not have time to do during the week. I do not think I can name one person I know that does not use the weekend for that.  In the past month, a challenge has been issued to me, and now I am issuing it to anyone that wants to think about taking it.  Get everything you need to get finished on Saturday.  Don't stress out, just stay focused. Then take Sunday off.  If God rested on Sunday after creating the entire universe, who are we to say our work is more important and we can't take a break! We know we earned it.  If we spend all day on Sunday resting and spending time with ourselves and our families or friends, we can recharge for the next week.  I read a book last summer that said that Americans don't know how to relax, which struck me as pretty comical.  It said something to the effect of turning the TV on and laying down in front of it to zone out does not count as relaxing, but that we must sit and enjoy just sitting, or do whatever we want and just enjoy it.  Or something like that. Spend your whole Sunday gathering up peace and serenity so that you can use it for the remainder of the week to calm down when necessary.  I have only tried this for two Sundays and it has worked pretty well thus far, so I am going to try it again today and see how it works out! Happy Weekend!

Music

Tonight I am watching the movie Music and Lyrics which is one of my favorite romantic comedies.  One of the best lines talks about the melody and the lyrics of a song and how they are each good individual parts, but together is what makes the music and the magic.  There is no deep revelation about this beyond how amazing music is.  It is just nice to sit and think about it sometimes.  Music is an expression of the human heart and soul beyond what we can say with just words.  We are all tied to music in some way; memories, emotions, or the need to dance.  Even babies that cannot even articulate thoughts dance to music! It can exceed the barriers of language, culture, age.  When I think of blessings, I tend to think about clean water or a warm bed to sleep in at night, but I somehow forget simple things like music.  God gave us this amazing gift to be able to express the inexpressible in at least some way.  It sort of makes me think of God's unconditional love in that way.  We can be overwhelmed by it on a daily basis without being able to explain what exactly it is or what it is about it that makes us feel such a deep connection to it.  It is just such an incredible form of personal communication. Song of the day: "Bedside Manner" by Jeremy Larson. Just beautiful!

Faith

I have always prided myself on having a very simple and strong faith.  I trust God to take care of everything for me, from little things to big things, to the point where I almost don't worry about anything.  But today, God proved me wrong. This week, I thought that I had failed a final exam and therefore a class, and I pronounced myself a failure.  I went to the chapel truly wondering how God could possibly fix this mess I had made.  I emailed my professor and asked for a conference so he could tell me how I could possibly have been so mistaken in thinking I understood the course material.  His reply was that he had misplaced my exam, and not graded it which resulted in failing grade for the course.  When he went to find my paper to discuss it with me, he saw that it was  not graded and when he corrected the problem, I fixed the class.  It was an incredible relief, as well as a reminder to not doubt all of the ways God can and does work daily.