Even Convicts Get One

Today was a good day. Not in a "i did this amazing atypical task and rocked the world's socks!" sort of way, but in the normal people doing normal things way. I bought my first piece of real furniture that I intend to keep for years, and it was on sale. (i love ikea. love it love it love it. and also my bestie, Sarah, who helps me make large purchases by offering her minivan, her husband and her companionship on her _anniversary_. she is dedication, and I adore her.) After saying goodnight to my assembly team, I checked the mail and found a piece of junk mail. And a letter from the Virginia Board of Nursing informing me that my application for licensure as an RN is complete; pending receipt of my transcripts from college.

Life is actually moving in a positive direction. I can even almost get the feeling of "something's gotta go wrong cuz I'm feeling too damn good" out of my mind. Almost.

The feeling I can't shake is the one that wants to make a phone call. Just one. To say "life is amazing! I'm going to be a nurse, can you believe it?? Warren's wife is beautiful, you'd love her. Laura's really a go-getter on fire for Jesus. Annie's just incredible.-but I wish you coulda given her driving lessons. ............i love you, daddy."

It's one day shy of being 5 years since I hugged my father. Convicts get phone calls....and I just want one.

show me your war face

Nursing school has been three years of trying. Three years of bending over backwards to comply with regulations and a methodology of thinking that turns my brain into knots. It's maddedning. It makes me cry when I'm not the sort of girl who cries. It frustrates me unlike anything else. I just want to graduate and be done. But before I can get that little piece of paper that declares me capable of taking a test I need to finish 3 more months of this junk. Which is why, tomorrow, I will be meeting with the associate dean regarding my preceptorship. Preceptorship is supposed to carry some amount of prestige with it. It's an opportunity above and beyond the typical nursing school experience. And while my precepting nurse is fantastic, I am really starting to wish I hadn't signed up for it. Additional clinical hours and requirements with my full time work/full time student lifestyle are just running me ragged. Add the seemingly arbitrary and baseless grades given on weekly homework assignments and, well, it's fast becoming more of a headache than it's worth. So, tomorrow, I will take my overly exhausted self to see this instructor and tell her just what I think. I am paying for this torture and have been paying for it for years. It's time they actually pay attention to what's going on and acknowledge the reality above the theory.

just a whisper

today, well, yesterday, i was faced with two friends going through similar situations. neither of them live close enough for me to chat over a cup of coffee or something else warm and comforting, and that makes me sad. the other thing making me sad (aside from the fact that my smart phone apparently doesn't allow for capitalization of letters while blogging...) was the fact that i couldn't get myself to verbalize what i *really* thought. i said what i should have said, at least to one of them, but i couldn't say what i've wanted to say for a long time. why? why is it so hard for me to tell somebody the whispers of the quietest sort in my heart?

i'd like to think that it's because they're just silly thoughts i have complimentary of my commitaphobe tendencies, but i'm pretty sure it's more due to the fact that, while i'm doing well with my busy life, i am not yet fully alive.

but i want to be. and when i am, i want the courage to whisper out loud.

Epic

Can we live epic consciously? Or is it something that just happens around us and sucks us in without warning?

That's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. The men and women who fought in World War II must have had some idea of the magnitude they were living. But at the same time, all of those battles and heroic gestures were simply the result of regular choices. The eyes of history see the epic decisions, but did the eyes of the present?

I want to live an epic life. But I seem to get bogged down in the presentness of it all sometimes. I know what the good decisions are most of the time, but it's so much easier to choose something else. I should get up earlier, work out more, eat better, have a training schedule set for all of the skills I want to hone: shooting, running, rescue, nursing. I should be a machine. A machine with empathy and gentleness and wisdom and all of these other things that I do not possess enough of. Unfortunately, I'm human. And my humanness makes me tired. Machines don't get tired. The machine schedule I feel pressured to enact gets confounded by my humanity and this thing called life that keeps happening around me. But at the same time, I know that machines don't live epics. Humans do. Humans who make choices. Every. Single. Day.

And I'll take you for who you are

Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that God just loves you as you, where you are for who you are? Not for who you could be, or who you will be, or what you do, or might do, or any of that. Right here, right now. He loves you. All of you.

I think I forgot.

Just singing the lyrics to get them out of my head
This melodic sad story of things left unsaid
If I knew what it meant I would tell you myself

So buy us a song on acoustic guitar
Make me believe that it’s really not far
To get to the dreams I thought were only my own

Could you tell me the truth about the distance between
All that we want and all it could mean
If the reality were only so easy to see

just tired.

Something's gotta give.

That something always ends up being my immune system.

I didn't run a single shift of rescue throughout all of September.

I made great grades in September.

I didn't get sick in September.

I went to church more often in September.

I could kinda feel hope starting to grow again in September.

Now we're a week away from the end of October, I've picked up rescue again and loved it, made ok grades (though we'll see on Thursday if that's truly the case), gotten sick for a full week, missed church every Sunday and feel as though I'm just faking life, let alone hoping for anything other than a pillow and maybe a spontaneous show of generosity from my bosses in the form of a massive raise.

Yeah. Something's gotta give.

And I don't mean my immune system.