What I Miss

Today's challenge is to write about something or someone that I miss.  There are a lot of things I could discuss here.  Like UNC, great vacations, family members, friends, former coworkers and students, etc etc.  For this post though, even though it's Mother's Day (shout out to my momma!), I'm going to write about some other special women in my life. 

CBSP LADIES OF 2007!

I went on a Summer Project with Campus Crusade for Christ (now called CRU) the summer between my junior and senior year at UNC.  A stateside Summer Project is focused on growing in your own personal relationship with Christ and ministering to your coworkers on your summer job.  I can imagine what some of my supporters must have thought when they read my support letter and found out I was doing a mission trip in Clearwater Beach, FL!!!!  Yes, even people getting a tan need Jesus.  

This was probably the best summer of my life.  I met 30 amazing guys and gals from colleges like UK, EKU, Purdue, Indiana, UNC (new Tarheel friends!), NC State (yes, cool people go to school there too), ASU, Arkansas, UNCG, and on and on.  We became like a family to each other.  Especially the ladies :)  We would stay up late all the time, laughing, loving on each other, praying for each other, sharing stories about our lives away from CBSP...sharing our struggles as we tried to walk out our faith.  It was amazing how God used each of us in all of our lives.  I think we all grew so much that summer, I know I did.  

As time has passed (almost 6 years ago that we all met for the first time), we've moved away from our college towns (some farther away than others - Ashley!), some of us have gotten married (or are about to get married - Becca!), some continued with schooling to be oober smart (Stephanie!), some of us have remained just as close as ever (Laura/Lindsay! and others), while some of us have drifted apart...nevertheless, I know that without a shadow of any doubt...if you were to put all of us back in a room with each other...it would be as if we'd never left Clearwater at all.  I just know it.  

I miss these ladies like crazy.  When I see them again, it's like looking at a slice of Heaven.  Seriously.  I think all of us felt like we were living in Heaven on earth for those 11 weeks that summer.  It was one of the most amazing spiritual experiences I've ever had.  So this post goes out to my girls:)  

You're a waterfall, washing over me...sing it ladies...all that I want is to be...WHERE YOU ARE!

 Back row from L to R: Ashley, Heather, Sara, Me, Laura, Christy, Amity, April, Kristen

Front row from L to R: Lindsay, Kaitlin, Stephanie, Whitney, Becca, Emily

I love you all and miss you ALL the time!

10 or less...

I am an outgoing, compassionate, organized, encouraging daughter of Christ! 

Middle School = Embarrassment

I lived in a constant state of embarrassment my seventh grade year.  My elementary school (Monroeton=best school ever) of only 300 people ended in sixth grade and we all had to go to Bethany for our 7th and 8th grade year (except that we didn't go there for 8th grade because a brand new middle school opened up but I'm getting on a rabbit trail here).  Bethany was a K-8 school and had over 900 students.  All of my friends became cheerleaders...I didn't.  All of my former friends somehow seemed to grow out of Limited Too (now called Justice) clothes over the summer...I didn't.  Apparently all of my friends got to shave their legs over the summer...I didn't.  And it seemed that all of my friends' eyes remained perfectly 20/20...mine didn't, so I got glasses; had fuzzy legs, was really tall and still under 100lbs., with clothes that were no longer "cool" or were high-waters and way too big in the waste aka. nothing fit.  And I was at a new school.  And all of my former friends quit talking to me.  And no matter what I did to try and fit in, nothing worked.  I had one friend that I can claim was a TRUE friend through that year (she knows who she is-thanks girl!).  People never called me on the phone.  No one wanted to sit with me at lunch.  I got laughed at a lot.  I gave Christmas presents to all the girls I hoped to be friends with, and got no gifts in return.  I invited 30 kids to my 13th birthday party, I think only 3 came.  I tried to play as many sports as possible to fit in somewhere.  And this is where one of the more mortifying moments of middle school happened. 

Basketball.  First of all let me be quite clear.  I said I joined a lot of sports teams.  I never said I was good at any of the sports I played.  I remained third string on each team.  When I did play, I was clumsy, slower than others, and a stick...I couldn't muscle my way around a flag pole if I'd wanted to.  Shockingly enough, my coach put me in for a game in the middle of January...a month before my 13th birthday. 

Why is that significant?

Because the weekend right before this game, I'd convinced my mom to let me shave my legs a month before my birthday (as you might have figured out by now, she was making me wait until I was 13).  This was going to be my legs first exposure to the world (since birth) with no hair!  I was so excited :)

Until coach put me in.  And I was walking up to half court to wait my turn to enter the game, I heard the whispers.  About my legs.  And when I started playing the game, while I'm trying to play a little defense, one of the players on my team, who is on the bench, yells out in a really loud sarcastic tone, "Shanda, did you SHAVE your LEGS??!!!"  I swear the whole team heard it.  Mortification alert. 

I still remember the girl that said that to me.  She probably has no idea how that one moment affected me. 

This was not the only moment of complete embarrassment, there was another that I refuse to blog about because of it's content. 

Not many people know this, but my seventh grade year, I contemplated suicide...a lot.  It was a really challenging time for me.  I remember coming home from school and hiding under my bed and crying until I had to come out because someone was looking for me.  I remember my younger sister's social life taking off and how she got phone calls every day from girlfriends and had sleepovers all the time.  It took a long time for my self esteem to recover from this one year. 

Middle school sucks y'all.  I know I'm not the only one with a crappy memory of it.  I KNOW I'm not.  And it's no better now than when I was there.  In fact, it's probably worse. 

Now, enough with all the drama.  I recovered.  I got contacts.  I eventually gained weight and my friends stopped teasing me about being anorexic.  (No joke, a friend in high school asked me if I was.  I never was anorexic, and it's a very serious matter to never joke about and I was very angry she'd even asked me.) I got newer clothes (from thrift stores - but new to me!), and I eventually made some good friends. 

I'm glad it was only 180 days of my life, that stinkin' seventh grade year.  And I'm glad I made it out alive and live to tell about it.  I'm glad for a lot of things that came after that year...like how I grew to love myself for who I really am.  :)

 

A Moment From Today

That moment when you pass a dump truck leaking disgusting liquid while it's driving down the road and realize that is how you feel right now...overwhelmed, overflowing, overbooked, just over.




I need a vacation. 

Fear and Advice...Days 7 & 8

So Mondays and Tuesdays are my busiest days...sorry for my lack of posting yesterday. 

What I'm Most Afraid of is Day 7:

I thought about this during my drive to school this morning.  I couldn't think of anything really "legit".  I mean sure, I thought of things like ants, spiders, snakes, the dark, heights, scary movies, thunder...but I had a hard time substantiating anything into a "huge fear" of mine.  Until right now, when I remembered the root or deeper issue to why I fear those things in the first place. 

I am most afraid of not being in control.  Now, the irony is, that as a Christ-follower, I know I never had any sense of control in the first place.  Only God is control.  But as a sinner, I crave control.  That was the very first sin ever committed.  If you read back in Genesis 2 you'll read a story of a perfect place called Eden, where God dwelt with Adam and Eve and all of His Creation.  Everything was good.  One day, Satan, in the form of a serpent has a game-changing conversation with Eve.  He talks to her about the Tree of Good and Evil.  Read their conversation here from Genesis 3:1-6:

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
There are probably a million things going through Eve's mind during this conversation but I can about guarantee you that one of this is something like this..."You mean God is holding out on me?  He knows more than I do?  I want to know as much as God does!  It's not fair that He gets to know everything!"  Ladies and gentlemen, this is a cry for control.  "I want to be in control and know it all.  I want to be in control of what I know and what I don't know, secrets are not okay with me!  God doesn't have the right to keep stuff from Adam and me!"  Control.  The need to be in control.  The desire to have control.  The, "I'll do whatever it takes to gain more control" kind of mentality.  We've all felt it at some point.  We hate feeling out of control.  Who ever has told you when asked, How's your day going? replied, "It's spinning out of control and I'm loving every second of it!"  Who says that?  Not I.  And not Eve either.

Eve's desire to take control out of the hands of God and into her hands was the first sin.  And ever since then, as children of Adam and Eve, (women in particiular) strive to have control over things and people. 

Fighting against that is a battle of the heart and mind and soul.  A battle against my sinful nature, ingrained in me since birth; and a battle against the fear of not having control.

A Piece of Advice for Others is Day 8:

Don't eat yellow snow.

No, seriously. 



Okay, but on a much more serious note...this is the best advice I've ever received, thanks Erin Coomer for speaking this Truth into my life that one afternoon at Panera, my junior year at UNC.  I'll never forget it.  I'll never stop thanking you for it either.

Cease striving.  He IS God.

(Psalm 46:10 - paraphrase mine)

I'm happy to elaborate further on the meaning of this verse if you'd like.  Please feel free to ask.  But honestly...it is most impactful standing on its own.

What I "Do"...

I seek to glorify The Lord through loving my husband, serving others in my community, and playing with special needs preschoolers. And by being a friend who is present, a neighbor who is cheerful, a sister who cares, and a daughter that shares. No that wasn't supposed to rhyme.

Day 5: Write About a Friend

Since I'm pretty new to the whole blogging thing, I don't exactly have many (if any) "blogger friends".  I have friends and family who might read it every now and then but that might be about as far as I'm reaching right now.  I'm okay with that.  So instead, I'm going to talk about some real people friends :)  Again, just as with yesterday's post, picking only one friend to talk about would be way too hard.  But alas...I took this challenge and I'm committed to sticking with it.  Ergo, please don't let this hurt your feelings if you weren't selected...I'm just following the rules people.

Lauren

Lauren and I became friends our freshman year of college at UNC.  We were in the same Bible Study in our freshman dorm - Craige.  There were probably 20 or more girls in that Bible Study that year.  Needless to say, we didn't get to know each other super well...until next year.  We were living in the same dorm again, this time Ehaus, and had attended the same service at The Summit on Sunday morning.  Lauren had ridden with some other friends to church and I had driven myself...and for some reason that I can't remember, her ride wasn't returning to campus right away and I was asked to drive her back.  Or something sort of along those lines.  The details of this part of the story don't really matter.  What does matter is that I took a wrong turn onto the highway to get back to campus and we ended up stuck in a MAJOR traffic jam, going east instead of west, on the part of I-40 where there are no exits for about 10+ miles...and we didn't know each other super well, except for attending the same Bible Study.  If I remember correctly, it took over 45 minutes to an hour before we were even able to exit and get back on 40 going west towards campus.  That's some bonding time right there people.  I'm so thankful her ride couldn't take her home that day.  She and I became VERY close after that, spending a lot of time together.  Even now, 5 years after college graduation, she and I talk AT LEAST once a week on the phone.  We are each others accountability partners, prayer warriors, and confidants.  I love her like crazy.  It's been well over a year since we've seen each other, maybe even two years...and I still feel as close to her now as I did when she was living 3 floors above me in Ehaus. 

 Our friendship has had its fair share of ups and downs, distance, silent seasons, estranged moments, etc.  We've seen each other through some pretty hard stuff, spiritually, emotionally, mentally...but despite all of that, I can still count on her and she can count on me.  We've also shared laughs, wonderful memories, good food, and so much more.  I never had the privilege of living with her (though God may have known what He was doing there - sparing us from pending doom) but we always knew the shortest and fastest way to get to each other in a moment's notice.  I cherish her, admire her, and love her like crazy.  One of the most awesome things about our friendship is knowing that we'll be spending eternity rejoicing over our Savior together.  That my friends, is the most beautiful thing of all.

Cheers!