Waiting by the phone . . . again

I'm sitting at my practicum office, just waiting. Waiting for the phone to ring. Again. I have things to do but nowhere to be for another hour and a half, so it's not a total waste of time to just browse webcomics and write on my blog and sit and wait. And it's a good time reflect on where I am.

I'm waiting for another internship site to call me back. I applied to 16 different sites, have interviews with 9 of them, was rejected by 2 of them, and am still waiting to hear from 5 of them - which will happen by the end of this week. It's that crazy time when if I sleep past 8am on a weekday, the first thing I do is check my email because there could be an invitation for an interview in my inbox (and last week one morning there was). I answer my phone at unknown numbers now because it's usually an internship site (though on Saturday it was actually a wrong number). I've been playing phone tag with this one site since Friday, and that's the call that I'm waiting for. The receptionist said that she was just finishing with a client and would call me soon so that I can schedule an interview with this site, and that's what I'm waiting on.

It's a nervewracking and exciting time for me, but mostly exciting. It's kinda stressful looking for low-cost plane tickets and figuring out all the scheduling and travel arrangements, but mostly it's exciting. In January, I will be traveling to at least 5 different states, 2 of which I've never been to before. And one of them could be my new home for a year. Having never lived outside of Texas, this is all kinda crazy for me, but also exciting. I want to move away, at least for a year. I want to experience life somewhere else, with people who think and act different from me, surrounded by a landscape and maybe a climate that is nothing like what I'm used to. I crave this change.

Fortunately, right now this excitement is overshadowing my sadness of leaving, but the sadness peeks out sometimes too. Like last night when I placed my left hand on her shoulder at church, my dear friend of 2 and 1/2 years who is graduating and moving. We spoke a long, beautiful blessing over her and tears filled my eyes. Mostly it was sadness to be saying good-bye to my friend, but it was also sadness for myself as I realized that in five months people who love me will be speaking this same blessing over me as I leave.

Even crazier is this relationship that I'm in with a man that I'm starting to fall for. I told myself that I didn't care if I dated or not this year because I'm moving next year, and maybe I'll meet someone when I move away to a new place, a bigger city maybe, with new faces and other fish. And I really believed that, but I was still open to romance, I'm not going to close any doors because of my impending move. I'm happy and feel such peace that if this relationship is "meant to be", that it won't matter if I move across the country. Yet the timing of it is weird. It's kind of weird of God to put two anxious personalities together in a relationship right when one of those personalities is about to move. But maybe that's the point.

Even crazier about this relationship is that if things do pan out, if we do decide to spend our lives together, my life is going to change drastically. How I imagined my future, my career and the life that I envisioned, will be completely different. I don't know if I'll be able to make that choice and make that change, but now is not the time to decide. Long before meeting him, I've continued to surrender my desires and plans recognize that God could have something different in store for me than what I could dream up, and that is good and exciting and great. But now that I'm faced with this possibility, I'd be a liar if I don't admit that it freaks me out sometimes.

Ok, no call yet. It's time for me to pack up and go. The phone will ring when it will ring, and all of this will work out somehow.

waiting for the storm

As soon as I stepped outside, books in hand, I knew that the storm would arrive any minute. As I sat down on the patio table, the powerful wind pushed against my back. I decided to ignore the imminent weather and carry on as I planned, beginning with journaling. As I began writing, the weather soon became hard to ignore. The wind continued, building speed. A small branch broke off of the tree and hit the roof, tumbling down to the ground. Instead of ignoring the storm, I embraced it, using it to fuel my writing. I wrote my thoughts and prayers. The wind picked up. I wrote my desires and hopes. The trees shook. I wrote of my trust and surrender. The hairs on my arm bristled as the temperature dropped. I continued writing, covering pages with emotions and truth. Another branch landed on the ground. The wind picked up and blew a magazine off of the table. The bush behind me leaned forward, tickling my back. The clouds grew darker, then strangely lighter.

I looked up from my pages. Dark clouds raced past the lighter ones. I looked down again. The glossy cover of the book next to the journal was dotted with moisture. I continued writing and determined to stay outside until the storm began. My hopes that the storm would come before I finished writing weren't realized. I opened my book, found my place marked with a receipt, and hadn't read two paragraphs before I started noticing one, two water drops on the pages. I read a little further, and the drops increased. I closed my book, left the table, and stood on patio. Drops of rain began to land on my hair, my arms, my clothes. The cold wind soared past me. Thunder began to crack. I kept waiting, waiting for the rain to come in full.

I expected it to come on suddenly, drenching me without warning, but this storm crept in softly. The raindrops increased. I felt them on my cold skin. I put my books under the porch to protect them from what was surely about to come. And it came.

I stood on the patio, I stretched my neck back, letting the rain hit my face. I spread out my arms, and began to pray.

Lord, forgive me. Wash me, make me clean. Baptize me, wash my sins away. Wash away all my sorrows, my disappointments, my insecurities, my fears, my pride. Wash it all away, clean me, free me! Make me new!

I began to move as I prayed and as I received my answers. I spun around, slowly at first, but soon faster. I smiled. I laughed. I threw my arms above my head. I threw my head back again and again, smiling upwards at the clouds above me.

A fat raindrop plopped into my eye, and I decided this was my cue to return inside. I walked back under the shelter of the porch, but realized that I hadn't had enough. I went back out onto the patio, and spun, and danced, and laughed some more. More satisfied, I walked inside and wiped the rain off my face with my hands and arms and listened as the storm raged outside.

expectancy

She called to tell me that she was about 20 minutes away. My dear friend, whom I hadn't seen in nearly four months, was now only 20 minutes away from my door, my home, my arms. My parents and I set the table and filled the glasses with ice. I munched on some okra. By the time the dinner preparations were done, I checked my cell phone and saw that about 10 minutes had passed since she had called. She was 10 minutes away. I grabbed a few more pieces of okra. My excitement grew, as I knew that in just a few more minutes, she would arrive. I wished I could snap my fingers and let those minutes turn into seconds, so that she could be here - NOW! I didn't want to wait any longer, I just wanted her here. My longing for her intensified, as she was so close to my home. I recognized this feeling as the feeling of expectancy, and as the minutes passed, the feeling intensified. Any minute now, that doorbell would ring. I paced a little, trying to find something else to do in the kitchen. I looked at my cell phone again. Ate some more okra. I raced to the door when I thought I heard a car door slam, but no one was visible outside.

I finally gave up my pacing, grabbed a few more okra pieces, and headed back upstairs to my computer. Within minutes, the doorbell rang, and I heard my stepdad call out, "Someone's here!" I raced downstairs to find that my mom had just opened the door, and my sweet angle of a friend had just entered my home! I ran forward, in between her and my mom, and grabbed her for a hug. As I held her tight, I heard my mom laughingly say, "Ok, you can have the first hug!" That was indeed my intention, and maybe it was slightly possessive, but I was so excited to hug her, to be with her again, that I didn't want anyone else to hug her first.

As I waited for her to arrive and recognized this feeling of expectancy, I wondered if I could compare this experience to Advent, to waiting for the Messiah, to waiting for the coming of the kingdom and the time when Christ will reign and all will be set right. Could it be, that in these moments of waiting for a friend, there was a pale, earthly reminder of something holy and sacred?

Oh, and that okra was half gone by the time she arrived :/