The Latest in Resolutions

I know what you're thinking:
"Abby, where's your yearly evaluation of last year's resolutions, complete with your new list that we all treasure and look forward to so much? We've been on pins and needles. We've sent out an FBI search party to ensure you're still of sound body and mind." 

Well, loyal friends, I'm sorry. But life is crunchy and startling, and I'm overly ambitious and busy and need to be humbled a lot. I've decided my New Year's resolutions are going to look different this year. Instead of a straight list of 10 goals that covers a wide range of categories (or the 16-or-20-item monstrosity I tried to attempt last January), which I methodically select based on what in life I think is most important, I'm going to go simple and just list a few things I want to be better at. Not crazy bucket list items, not even simple daily habits. Because I could go abroad and lose 5 pounds and write a novel in 2016, but if I haven't bettered myself and the lives of others and the kingdom of God in the process, what's the point? So there.

Oh, and about last year's resolutions? I'm not even going to post them. It's not that I failed miserably or anything, but let's just say I was pretty ambitious last January. Had I fulfilled every single one of them, I'm pretty sure it would have transformed me into some immortal perfect being, and turns out I'm a person instead. So let's say we just work on personhood, hm?

1. Ask more questions than I do talk about myself.

2. Challenge the people I care about in healthy ways.

3. Be so uncompromising on the things I believe in that a few people hate me.

4. Let things go that I can't control. Who cares who cares who cares.

5. Pursue learning for its own sake.

That's it. And I'm not sorry that it's the middle of January. You need to feel out the year a little before you decide what you want it to be filled with. You can't plan your 2016 during 2015- don't be absurd.

Wait and see.

On Flying

We stand up to begin the ordered shuffle through the gate. I scroll to my customary airplane boarding playlist (entitled "World Conquering" on Spotify), blast AC/DC through my earbuds and walk through the tunnel towards the plane as if it is one leading to my own personal arena. This is how I remind myself to be fearless when traveling alone. It always works.

There's a silently acknowledged etiquette to be silent, even in the sitting down and removing of jackets and replacing of laptops in overhead compartments. As of this moment, we are between worlds, not in them, and the hustle and bustle of our former and future lives has no place between the rows of oval windows.

For some reason, I always have the urge to cry the moment the front wheels lift and we are pulled into the sky from some invisible force above. Perhaps it is because this is when it hits me that in that moment, I am neither in the place from which I am coming, nor the one toward which I am traveling. I and the hundreds of people around me whose names and stories I do not know are in a world of our own, headed toward our own great mysteries for which none of us are prepared. I think this is always the first moment I realize I am never prepared. But for the next few hours, I am surrounded by people nothing like me and just like me, headed into the huge crisscrossed network of human stories, and for that time I am allowed to be alone and unprepared.

Minutes go by. Hours. Time slows and speeds up and slows again. I might stay curled forever in the cramped, quiet limbo of space between my armrests, my head and knees propped against the wall, songs passing mindlessly through my earbuds, fading in and out of sleep. But eventually, the gentle motion of the plane's descent reminds me how gravity sometimes feels like a mother softly shaking my shoulders, and I rise and fall on a lazy wave. I try to fight it, stay curled in my almost-comfortable position, but gradually the downward movements of the wave become less smooth, mixing with the dull roaring vibrations of the wheels opening and stretching toward our destination.

Our wheels collide with the rushing earth beneath us, bumping, and suddenly I am weightless, the forward inertia of the brakes lengthening my spine and pushing my body back to its upright and locked position. We glide into a gate. My eyes find the window next to me as the people around me begin to rustle back to life. In the distance, framed perfectly and shining against the black night, is the Capitol building.

Welcome home.

Forward

It is a big thing
to look failure in the eyes.
To not shove it away,
not cling to its arm,
just look it up and down
and say to it,
"I have to go now."

It is a hard thing
to raise your chin
and look the world
in the eyes again.
To keep taking the stairs
two at a time,
walk without clenching
your fists,
and to watch the world
come at you and say,
"Bring it.
I'm ready."

Because you have to,
you have to,
you have to,

even if you're not ready
at all.

Things I'm Thankful For

My mom, my dad, my brother, my dog, and my cat.

The people in my phone I can text at any time to ask for prayers or encouragement because I know that they love me unconditionally and are always ready to tell me such.

The fact that I can walk out my door every day without one jot of worry about my own safety.

Cinnamon on top of coffee.

Having not one, but two jobs that I actually enjoy doing.

I get to live in New England.

A red Jeep named O'Malley.

The people in my life who will take care of me when I can't do it for myself.

Improv team.

A kind roommate who lets me borrow her flannels and makes my bed on the days I am too flustered to do it myself.

I was picked to be in a fall short where I am literally the only cast member, and that people in this theater department actually respect my skill as an actor that much.

The fact that there are people at this school who will (and do) speak well of me around campus as someone who is worthy of friendship and respect.

Good shoulder massages.

For the huge blessing that I have not once in my life had to seriously worry about money.

More often than not, the biggest stresses in my life stem from the fact that people care about me rather than them not caring about me.

Grace.
Grace.
Grace.

"There Is No Why"

It's a terrible thing to be trusted
to be handed something that
doesn't belong
to you.

Because here's the thing about weakness
it doesn't care
that your heart is too big
for your hands
or how just how precious
is that thing
that person
you just shattered
on the tile.

The lioness of loneliness
will pounce regardless
and the fears you use
to prop open
your bedroom door at night
will tumble into the room,
snarling, as your willpower and secrets
fall from your arms
while you scramble to put them
back in their place.

Does there ever come a moment
where it is okay to let go?
Because honestly,
my shoulders are killing me
and I can't figure out
if I'm allowed to drop anything,
or whose fault it will be
when I do anyway.

So I will bite the whip,
sing through gritted teeth
and roar back at the thunder
that I do not fear the storm,
because I am already the storm.

Chapter Two

It's been a while. Too long. So much has happened in such a short time since being back at Gordon, and I don't even know where to begin. Adventures! Friendships! Theater classes! Improv! Sophomore year hit the ground running.

Let's talk about the woods.

I've been spending a lot more time out here lately, thanks to my slightly lighter class schedule and awesome weather. There are so many more trails behind campus than I realized! Often, I'll go out in the morning only intending to find quiet nook to read in for an hour, only to stumble out mid-afternoon with pine needles and flowers in my hair, exhausted and happy, having discovered 3 new favorite spots. I'll explore, read, listen to music, and sometimes picnic. Occasionally I'll venture out with one or two adventure companions, but mostly I just explore on my own. It's awesome. 

Speaking of friends, I gained a whole new group when I made it onto Gordon's improv troupe, the Sweaty-Toothed Madmen! Seriously, these 8 people are the coolest; it's a privilege to be counted as one of them. Aside from the fact that they all have awe-inspiring talent and our rehearsals consist of dancing around onstage and pretending to be chicken farmers or dentists or royalty, they've all become like family to me immediately. We go on McDonald's runs at 1am and have photoshoots and a group text and movie nights. It's no big deal. 

Other than that, life is a lot of things. It's rehearsing in practice rooms for Musical Theater and sprinkling cinnamon on customer's drinks at Chester's. It's Monday night hot chocolates with Austin and Friday afternoon tea-and-reading-time on the beach with Josh and Merisa. It's making Cate and I's third-floor room in Wilson (affectionately dubbed The Birdhouse) look as adorable as humanly possible with coordinating comforters and fluffy pillows and yes, a tiny birdhouse that we are going to paint and hang on the door. It's letters from Madison at New Tribes and phone calls from Mom after class and new friends and old friends. It's the great exhilaration of starting new things and comfortable warmth from picking up old ones. 

In conclusion, sophomore year is the best and I can't wait for it to be cold. 

Oh, and here's the most recent awesome song I've found:

I love this feeling,

but I hate this part...

The Privilege of Sorrow

The way certain physical places have deeply rooted stakes on our hearts will never fail to leave me wonderstruck. I can talk your ear off about how strolling around Gordon's campus this past week has lifted my spirits and refreshed my heart. Even this morning, I traipsed through the woods, smiling and humming and thrilled to be alive. Telling my friends how "happy" and "emotional" it's been to return. Forgetting, once again, what it truly feels like to have a place who's memory rocks you to your core.

Forgetting, that is, until I saw a video of Kubasaki High School on Facebook tonight. 

May I never, ever claim Colonial Forge as my true high school. Having been reminded, I will shout it from the rooftops once more: Kubasaki is my school. Okinawa is my home. It changed me and affected me in a way that no other place will likely ever do. Just the other day, I remembered something I'd written a few weeks before I left, and sorrow stopped me in my tracks because my heartbreaking prophecy had finally come true: 

In time, this place, that I can feel under my feet and touch and smell and listen to, will become nothing more than a hazy picture, a dim memory, just like all the other ones, with no life or feeling behind it. There's no escaping that. It just happens over time. It was the hardest blow. I curled up in a ball right there on the sidewalk and cried. 

And it's true. Gone are the days when I can feel the heat of the Plaza pavement under my bare feet. Gone are the sounds of morning cicadas and the Japanese national anthem floating over the jungle. Gone is the memory of the stair railings to the second floor of the 200's building at school. The smell of the auditorium. All of it. It's disappeared. 

Until I saw this. I turned off the sound and stared at the screen, and all of it (and more) came flooding back in full force, and I sat in my lousy dorm in lousy America and wept silently and uncontrollably at the shock of the sorrow. 

11929445_1180308018651226_1924932764_n.mp4

(I know that this will mean nothing to so many of you, and yet to some, as it does me, it will mean everything. So I'm putting it here.) 

All I can say is that I hope all of you one day experiences a place that has the same profoundly severe impact that this place had, and has, for me. No matter how much it tears you apart. I think that until one has the experience of being changed by a place, there is a part of the soul that will never have the privilege of being cracked open.