Friday, November 21, 2008

Questions

How do you know that someone is telling you the truth? Can you tell if they aren't? Obviously I don't know everything about everyone, but what if I'm missing something big? I'm not talking about everyone I know, but just someone in particular.

I really want to go home for Thanksgiving. I was in my room tonight after being gone all day, and I was listening to Christmas music. I know, it's early. But I only have a month to listen to it, and there is something so comforting about those songs I have sung all my life. I was listening to Christmas music, and suddenly I was so homesick that I had tears in my eyes. And I wasn't homesick for just the city I'm from. I was homesick for how it used to be when I lived close to my grandparents and my cousins. We always had huge family Thanksgivings and tag games and I miss that. Now we live 2000 miles away, and I am a little sad. I want to sit at my grandmother's worn out oak table and have her set one of her home cooked meals on the place mat in front of me. I want to hold my cousin's little girl. I want to sit on the old porch swing and look out over the pastures of the family farm. Most of all, I want to see my grandfather again. He passed away one year ago at this time, and all I want is to hug him again. To smell his tobacco and khaki scent and to feel his scratchy flannel shirt as he kisses me on the cheek. To see him smile at all of us grandchildren. I can't really describe how close my family feels at those gatherings, because there is nothing in the world like it, and no one else would fully understand. And now he's missing from those, and it is weird.

Wow, how depressing. But I'm just in that homesick state of mind. So I'm going to listen to more Bing Crosby and go to sleep. Tomorrow's Friday!

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Thanks giving

What a surprisingly wonderful Wednesday I had. It started off as not so great, with me sleeping through my alarm, thus missing my observation at the high school and running late to my appointment with one of my professors. I felt exhausted through most of the day, like I hadn't slept all week or something. Then I had American Literature. And we are reading about Emily Dickinson and her Civil War poems and it was fascinating. And for the first time in a long time, I can't get enough of one of my classes. But that wasn't why my day was great.
I had a talk with a friend, and she confided in me some things that she had been wanting to for a long time. It was nice to be trusted and at the same time be a comforter. Now I have the challenge of helping her through this, and it is something I am so grateful for.
I also had passion tonight, and only me and one other girl showed up. This was a blessing in disguise, for it made the meeting so intimate and beneficial. Not that it wouldn't have been if there were more people, but it really was so great. We talked about giving thanks and things we are thankful for and we wrote thank you cards to people we normally wouldn't have thought to write them to. It was amazing, because when you are giving thanks to God you realize just how much you have and how blessed you are, and suddenly that paper or one bad grade seems so insignificant to everything good in your life. Suddenly my life takes on meaning that I had lost sight of in the midst of the stress and the muck of the final weeks of school. God is with me, God has blessed me beyond measure, and I am so grateful.
I am thankful for my friends. We have grown closer this semester as we all have faced challenges and worked through them. We have been irritated, frustrated, stressed, angry, sometimes confused. And we are still there for one another. We have reached that place where we are comfortable enough to have a fight with one another. And that experience brought us closer. I am thankful for this school. I cannot say how challenging this semester has been. I have never had harder school work than now. Yet I'm thinking and learning and growing, and that is exciting. I am thankful for my family. I am thankful that I have sisters and wonderful parents. I am so appreciative of the way they raised me, the lessons they taught me. I am so unbelievably thankful.

If this post sounds over-optimistic, it is. Because it would suck to look back on my life and see that I missed all the wonderful things that were right in front of me, things that were a part of me all along.