Somewhere in between wine tasting and sifting through old high school pictures with Amy and Katherine, I realized we're growing up. We've gone from movie dates to martini nights, from drama queens to busy bees. Our lives have all changed -- we've all changed. Some more than others, but it's there.
It's interesting and scary to see what everyone is doing with their lives. I'm lucky. I have a Plan and some goals, both short term and long term... traditional oldest child, I suppose. But the Plan is still laced with uncertainty. I know I still have choices to make.
Those choices -- just sometimes -- scare the hell out of me.
"What Ifs" are the worst. What if I pick the wrong grad school? What if I make poor spiritual decisions? I hate inconsistency, so I make a lot of choices very quickly. It's just how I work, I'm learning.
I'm realizing, though, that my life -- as defined by those choices -- is finally propelled by passion. I've tried and tried to put my finger on what changed... somewhere in between being an insecure sophomore to a secure junior. A lot of changes went down that summer. I was inspired to explore autism through my experiences at camp. I was inspired to love deeper through my budding relationship with Cory. I packed up, moved to a place of unknowns, and fell in love with life again. I got spirit back in my heart, soul back in my step. Looking through my old journals is the best -- so many things changed. And I was terrified... but in a good way.
I started following my parents' footsteps, too. Mom and dad both --when they were younger -- had part time jobs at mental hospitals... which was, unfortunately, where a lot of our campers would have been back in the day. Mom used to work one-on-one with patients (namely trying to get them to stop begging her to sneak them ciggys), while dad drove around the tractor and fixed things. Better yet, he occasionally -- much to the surprise of my grandmother -- would bring patients home for fun. I guess my decisions -- both career and relationally -- suddenly became something my parents could identify with. Our family has grown a lot closer. We're insane.. but we're closer. There's something to be said for that.
So as we're all on the brink of Big Decisions, I'm comforted by how everything worked out in the past. Acting on instinct isn't always a good thing, but I'm remembering that many, many steps lead to the gaps where we have to leap. We come to our Big Decisions through little ones. So far, I'm pretty happy with my little ones.
With the count down until spring term ticking away, I'm constantly reminded of decisions. The night before we left for the Bahamas, I got a call from a professor at one of my top schools inviting me for an interview (poor Hannah. We were walking around Bed Bath & Beyond and I started shaking and jumping up and down...). It's exciting, but it's also strange. I'm discerning where I'm going to live for the next five to seven years of my life. I'm deciding the specific person I want to mentor me through some of the most important academic experiences of my life. I'm deciding what football team I'm going to root for..
ehem. When they're not playing Carolina, of course ;)
Amy, Katherine, and I watched Grey's Anatomy tonight. Lots of it. I don't usually watch the show when it's on TV, because I am no good at cliff hangers. I can do back-to-back DVD episodes, though... and that's what we did.
The last episode centers a lot around the theme, "Be extraordinary." My middle school English teacher centered a lot of his ministry.. ehem, teaching .. around that phrase (he was awesome until he tried to rebaptize me... no fun when you're a practicing Catholic). There's a lot to it, though. Being something beyond ordinary.
Sometimes I get too focused on being an extraordinary student. Or an extraordinary friend. Or an extraordinary counselor. Or an extraordinary pray-er. I pick a role, and I work on it. But rarely do I just sit back and discern being a more extraordinary person, having a more extraordinary spirit. I used to think we were called to be ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And while I still mostly do, I no longer think that everyone is called to settle for ordinary. In comparison to Greater Things, I suppose that's what we are. But compared to lesser things, life its self is pretty extraordinary.
I don't think we're all supposed to be ordinary. I think we are all -- to a great extent -- simply extraordinary. We don't have to try to be... it's not necessarily something we work for. It's just something that -- if we let ourselves -- we are.
My new year's resolution is to take the time -- and the prayer, and the thought, and the patience -- to let the extraordinary in me come out. Instead of trying to be an extraordinary X, Y, and Z... I just want to be. And let my being translate into what I do. I think that's where I got stuck this term -- I focused a lot on my specific roles (especially as a student), and let the "me" that binds those roles together slip apart a bit.
Not that this term was bad -- it wasn't. At all. I was blessed with love, adventure, peace, and opportunity. I just know that I didn't earn those things, they were gifts. In the future, I need to be prepared to not have everything line up perfectly. We all do.
Appreciating the "things" between the "Things."
"Our Lord needs from us neither great deeds nor profound thoughts. Neither intelligence nor talents. He cherishes simplicity." - St. Therese of Lisieux
Extraordinary simplicity. Yeah.
I like it.
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