First Thirty Seconds of Becoming An Adult

     For Christmas my roommate got be a huge book composed of 642 writing prompts. It's a book I had been wanting forever. Every single time we went to Target I would grab it and flip through and look at all of the prompts. I would always pick one and verbally flesh it out into a story or give my answer. I would spend the majority of the car ride home thinking about whatever prompt I had picked out. Since Christmas it's safe to say I've spent hours sitting over that book writing and imagining. Despite all of the time I've spent with that book I'm not even close to having 1/4 of the prompts answered.
     There's one writing prompt that I've attempted to start several times but I haven't been able to. The moment you realized you were an adult? I've sat at the table staring at it trying to come up with an answer. Surely I've had this moment. I'll be 22 in a few short months. I've been out of the house, heck out of the state, for almost 4 years. I've failed miserably at college, failed at relationships, paid bills...oh so many bills, had jobs, been laid off, gotten a tattoo, had speeding tickets, I have my own place, I've had surgery, heck I'm a youth leader at my church...that should all equal being an adult. Yet through all of it I have never had a moment where I've been like, aha so this is it, the moment where I'm no longer a child. I've just continued to see myself as growing up. Today I think I had the first thirty seconds of that moment.
     Today was Operation Bucket List...okay so that's what I named today because I like naming things. My cousin, Caleb, is leaving for the marines in just over a week. Today was the last opportunity we would have to hang out and spend time with each other before he leaves. Caleb and I have been best friends practically since birth. Just check out this adorable, yet extremely blurry picture, just to see how far back we go. That's me trying to carry him, even though we're the exact

same size. We spent the afternoon together just hanging out. We went and got ice cream, spent a few hours wandering around Vintage Stock, watched shows about ghosts, talked about anything and everything, debated about ridiculous things, played the piano, watched youtube; we did practically everything we could manage to cram into a few hours. A lot of the things we've done since we were little kids (barring any outside activities because it's freezing). We just spent the day being us.
     Caleb and I didn't grow up down the street together by any means. In fact the closest we've lived to each other is an hour. But, that didn't stop us from growing up together and always being there when it counted. The conversations on the phone that lasted until 3 am because life was hard. I met his most of his girlfriends, and he always new which guys I liked. We knew everything about each other. I used to joke around that he knew me better than myself. When Caleb was going through a hard time; through family stuff, the loss of friends, etc I was there and I mourned with him. When he was the most kick butt percussionist in the state, when he got a scholarship, and got award I was there to celebrate. I can't think of a single time when I needed him that he wasn't there. When my grandfather on the other side of the family passed away Caleb came and sat with me through the funeral. This last September my appendix ruptured and my fantastic roommate took me to the hospital. She called my parents, and no one else, but they would take a while to get there because they lived in the next state over. Who showed up unexpectedly until my mom could get there? Caleb did, and he came back every day that I was in the hospital (until he got strep throat because that would have been a bad deal). We have always been there to support each other and carry each other (literally before my surgery when the pain was so bad I couldn't walk on my own) through life. To quote my favorite Anne Shirley we are in every sense of the word, "kindred spirits."  There has never been a point in life where I thought I would have to do life without him. Until today.
     After the day was over we hugged, said goodbye, and he left. As I watched my best friend of 21 years drive off I realized this was our last day together. Our last day as friends and it hurt like crazy. Don't get me wrong I am extremely proud of him for joining the military, and I am ecstatic to begin my Thailand adventure but that didn't make it any easier. I know, you're thinking, he'll be back. Yeah he will, he'll come back in May for 10 days exactly and then he'll leave again for 3 weeks. Then he gets his station, maybe here, maybe somewhere else. It doesn't matter because then I leave. I'm moving to Thailand this fall and who knows if or when I'm coming back. As I stood outside in the snow, waving goodbye to the other side of my coin all I could think was, "so this is what becoming an adult feels like." I'm not saying that I feel like a total adult or that I'm there yet. However, for me realizing that I won't always have my best friend by my side was officially the first 30 seconds of the, The moment you realized you were an adult writing prompt. Today I officially left part of my childhood behind.

Life Is An Earthquake

     Sometimes in life we feel empty. Things get messy and confusing. Life hurts; mostly it hurts because it changes. Things shift and you have no control over it. It's in the little things like who sits next to who at Christmas dinners. You notice it when suddenly conversations become about what's in theaters instead of your dreams and naming stars. Growing up is one big tectonic plate shifting and shaking your world and just when you think things are going back to normal, you think things are slowing down, everything comes to a screeching halt. What no one tells you about sudden stops is that there's still momentum that crashes everything that's left into the ground. It hurts and it's painful.

     You pick yourself up off of the ground and brush the dust off. Scrambling around trying to gather everything you hold dear. It looks different for everyone; gluing the pieces together that is. Sometimes it's sharing with someone you don't even know. It's sacrifice and giving of yourself. It's letting old dreams die and trying desperately to find a new one. It's fighting with everything you have. It's climbing until you fall down exhausted and then forcing yourself to go one step more. 

     More often than we'd like to admit there is no putting it back together. It's changed and it will never be the same again. We get angry and lash out. We feel abandoned. We become depressed. We curl up inside of ourselves and mourn all that we've lost. We scream, kick, cry, and hit. We try to make sense of everything. We close our tear filled eyes and pray that when we wake up we realize that it will all just be a bad dream. It's not. This is life. It changes us and knocks us flat and it sucks. It hurts and sometimes it leaves us feeling empty and defeated and confused. We want to give up. Stop trying. Just lay down and never give up. That's just how it is.

     I get it, I understand. Here's what I have to say it sucks. It will and you don't have to pretend like everything is okay. Kick, scream, and cry if that's what you need to do. It's okay to be upset. What's not okay is to give up on yourself. Never...ever give up on yourself. You can keep going. You can and you will.

Saying Goodbye Sucks

     I've had tons of experience saying goodbye in my short lifetime. Saying goodbye to town, schools, houses, friends, family, favorite places, memories, and seasons of life. I've been told it gets easier as time goes on, but I don't think that's true. I think it's something we tell ourselves to try and make ourselves feel better every time a goodbye is coming up. This week I had another goodbye. I had to say goodbye to a lot of things. I said goodbye to some emotional investments I had made, I had to say goodbye to my sister after she spent the weekend at my house, after a year of not being an intern this class' graduation brought another wave of saying goodbye to my internship experience and Texas, and I had to say goodbye to Megan.
     Three interns, Holli, Ben, and Megan, all graduated from their undergrads year a few days ago and I consider all of them to be great friends. Holli and Ben are sticking around...Megan is moving back to Wisconsin. It sucks.
     Every time I say goodbye to my sister I get a little teary but I also know she's my sister and she'll always be around. I'll see her again and we'll talk on the phone and the distance may ache but we're still with each other. Saying goodbye to friends isn't that way. In all honesty we don't if or when we'll see each other again. We don't know for how long or how consistently we'll stay in contact. Maybe we made a friendship that will last a lifetime and span the distance, like I've been blessed enough to have with Kate, or maybe we'll cry and miss each other and try for a while and then wake up one day and realize we haven't talked in months. At the moment I can't fathom that happening and I'm still crying over what I feel I've lost, but that could very likely be the reality that's facing me.
     Anyway, so we gathered in Hurts Donuts for our last hoorah and shortly after getting some deliciousness my sister and Holli's family left (we're from the same town so they took my sister home), we went outside and told them goodbye, teared up, and had to go back inside. The real blow came when we get back inside and Megan's mom is standing up and saying it was time to leave at which point I lost it and started bawling. The flood gates had opened in the middle of a donuts shop and there was no stopping it. We ended up in a loft away from everyone in a very strange group hug, Holli, Megan, and I, and cried. There was no way I was letting Megan leave me. Who else was I supposed to fangirl over The Jonas Brothers with? Or watch High School Musical? Who's clothes was I going to steal? Who would be able to be Megan and Kaitlin with me if I have no Megan? No one.
     Eventually we went back down took pictures in which I'm sure we were all red and blotchy and Megan left and I was left with the ache of another goodbye and the hole that takes away your breath when you feel like you're losing someone that means the world to you. It sucks and that feeling hasn't gone away yet and I don't know when it will. I haven't really stopped crying and I don't know when that will happen either. All I know is through goodbyes and separations life will go on. It has to. There is no grand life lesson or revelation in this post other than this bit of encouragement. We all go through goodbyes and loss and we all survive. So, when you're facing a goodbye that you think might kill you remember this, it will not kill you, your will survive, and you're not alone.

God Told Me To Go, Jesse Told Me To Write About It

     I'm writing this honestly because Jesse told me I should. We were sitting outside Starbuck, Carmel Brule latte in hand, gazing at the Christmas lights our town had already put up when I started telling her this story. Before I was done something along the lines of, "Why haven't you blogged about this, you need to blog about this now." Came out of her mouth. That was Monday....it's Thursday and I'm finally getting around to starting this post. At first I wanted to be selfish and keep it for me, I wanted my little story and experience to belong to me. God gave it to me. Then I started thinking about how ridiculous I was being, what if someone else needed to hear this? That's why God reveals things to us isn't it? So we can pour it into other people? Well, here's my little story and my little experience that made a big impact for me personally.
    
     Little bit of back story....I work a part time job at a local non-profit. As you can imagine this pays basically nothing and I literally have no idea how I manage to pay rent and buy groceries every month. I had been praying and felt God telling me to stay at my job a little while longer, this is frustrating. I also developed the overwhelming desire and need to start college in January, I prayed about it and felt like I should start applying but I can't afford even one class without financial aid so it felt like a big joke and fruitless endeavor. This is extremely frustrating. My life has basically been stress and penny pinching and become depressed and anxious about my future and worrying about every little thing. A couple weeks ago my sister came to stay with me for the weekend, after church on Sunday I met my parents half way and dropped her off.

     As I was starting the drive back to Missouri I realized that I would have 2 1/2 hours in the car alone so I started to pray, and sing, I turned on worship music, and I spent that time with God. When I got about 45 minutes away from home I had this overwhelming urge of, I need to go to church tonight. The thing is my church doesn't normally have Sunday night services and even if we did I wouldn't have made it back in time. Then God dropped a church I had driven past on my way out in my head. It was about 20 minutes up the road and I knew that I could make it as long as I didn't stop, I didn't even know the denomination of the church, I just knew that, that was where I needed to be that night. I pull into the parking lot at 5:59, the sign says church starts at 6:00....there are only 2 cars in the parking lot. Anyway so I go inside and the Pastor is there with a couple people from the church and low and behold on the last Sunday of the month they don't have an evening service they have an afternoon fellowship and afternoon service instead. Basically, I showed up for church and there was no church. So, I end up going into his office to speak with him. Throughout our conversation I mentioned that my dad is a Pastor.
      "Oh, where is you dad a Pastor?"
      "Kansas," I told him.
      Turns out he was from Kansas too. He had been born there, raised there, graduated high school, met his wife, and got married there. Naturally I asked him where in Kansas he was from expecting Topeka or Salina but no...he looked at me and said, "Arkansas City." I stopped....because that's where I'm from and once you leave Ark City you never run into anyone from Ark City ever again until you go back for a visit. It's just one of those towns that no one leaves...so I knew right then and there that was a total God thing, and God had my absolute undivided attention. When I told him I was from Ark City I saw the look on his face, he knew, he knew I was here for a very specific reason.

      The details of our conversation aren't too important and honestly I won't lie, this is getting to be a long post and I've probably lost most of you at this point and I'm too lazy to write the whole thing anyway. Basically, after that all I told him was that I was currently working and trying to go to school. I didn't tell him anything about my financial situation or how hard it is for me to go to school or anything.

     Out of the blue, and what seemed rather off topic, he told me that the story of how he met his wife is incredible. Of course I thought he would then tell me the story of how he met his wife. Instead he said, "Let me tell you what I learned from our story. I learned to trust God. To completely let go of my life and let him take control. I learned that when I let go he works it out. He brings us amazing and better things, he brings us to new places. We have to stop trying to figure out and make it work because that's not our job, it's his. God figures out. The desires of our hearts, the things we want, our plans, and the things that God has called and asked us to do that seem impossible...we can't stress over them. We can't crunch the numbers and lay awake at night and worry about it. We can't make the move on our own and try to make it fit together and work. If God called us to do it, if he placed the desire in our heart then he'll make it work. He'll come in and bring all together but not until we set it down and let him completely have it."

     Talk about hearing exactly what I needed to hear. I didn't say much I just nodded and smiled and soaked it all in. Then before I left he asked if he could pray for me and I said yes. We started praying and it was a pretty typical, thank you for bringing her here, type of prayer. Then in the middle of praying he pauses and starts again with, "Lord, just take this time to remind Kaitlin that you are her security. Financially, physically, spiritually, emotionally...you are her security. You're her provider and her protector and she doesn't need to worry because you care for her."

     Again....right what I needed to hear. Even as I type it, I need to hear it again. Man...I really don't know how to wrap up this blog only to say maybe you needed this too. Trust God, and yeah. I leave you with a promise to work on my conclusions.

~Carrots

    

Anything

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" At 23 years old I still get asked that question. It is usually rephrased a little, "what are you doing with your life?" Until recently I couldn't answer that question. I wouldn't admit to not being able to answer it. I made up a lot of things, and there were really some things that I did want to do but no for myself. I wanted to do them because I had great asperations for advancing the kingdom of God. Don't get me wrong I am and will continue to advance the kingdom, but those plans were not for me. I wanted to be a nurse so I could go and help people in other countries. While nursing is great for some I do not do well with needles or blood and wouldn't make the best nurse. 

In the last few years I realized what I have really wanted to so since I was a child. Open a coffee shop. Well when I was a child it is more or less a shop of any kind I sold anything and everything as a child. I just couldn't accept if as my calling because I wanted to be on the front lines advancing the kingdom. Now looking back I feel foolish, of course I can do both. If I am honoring God with my skill set and desires of course he is going to use me to advance his kingdom. No I won't be in another country preaching to an unreached people group. That doesn't mean that I can't use my profit to help support them. I also have a great opportunity to help support and grow domestic ministries.

By finally accepting where God wants me and my skill set means I am exactly where God wants me even if it isn't in the 5 fold ministry.  I am not saying that there aren't people who aren't called to be pastors and missionaries. I just am not one of them. I think a lot of us who go to Bible school in one form or another fall into the trap of thinking that if we aren't going into the 5 fold ministry we aren't doing what God wants us to do. I personally think that in our current age we can reach a lot more people by working along side them in whatever area of work you feel called to, rather than knocking on doors and inviting strangers to church events. People are so much more likely to accept Christ if they see him in your life not just see him in a packet you drop off at their door. 

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4 ESV)