Chasing the Wind

I am sitting here in my Pronghorn gear, drinking Gatorade to hydrate, waiting for my friend to pick me up to take me to our first CIS season game. It's wild to me that I'm playing soccer again, and even wilder that I'm playing at this level. A few years ago I threw out all of my training shirts I never thought I'd wear again and moved my Sask Soccer and Hollandia windsuits downstairs to store for my kids who might find them neat to wear in 30 years. I came to the resolution of never being an athlete again time and time over through many tears and angry words directed toward God. Never did I imagine that I'd be competing again. I guess that's what happens when you follow the wind.
Working at Costco for six weeks this summer was the worst and best thing I decided to do in the past while. It was not a very entertaining or mentally stimulating job, but it gave me so much time to think and pray and give the direction of my life over to God. If I hadn't have worked there I would not be living in Lethbridge right now. It was there that I fully decided to be a teacher, to move to Lethbridge, to give up close friends and comfortability in Calgary; it's where the idea germinated to try out for the university soccer team. Those six weeks of praying and seeking and submitting absolutely changed my life.
Being here is not scary; it's like I'm finally stepping into what I'm meant to do. Almost every day I have confirmation that I'm supposed to be here; it's a thrilling feeling.
It was a flying leap of faith coming here; I moved here and was trying out for the soccer team before I was even officially accepted for school. But it's working out, things have been settling down; I even have a Lethbridge phone number and job.
I followed the wind to one of the windiest cities in Canada. When you are on the ground trying to run or walk or play, believe me, wind is so irritating and frustrating. But when you are flying, hang gliding, following, being led, it's the very thing that keeps you from crashing into the ground.

Silver

There was a time when I would have been disappointed with losing out on the gold and getting awarded the second-place silver. That was when life was severely different.
This last weekend I was in Edmonton for provincials. We didn't come out on top, but I wasn't sad at all; instead, all I had was joy. I made it through a season; I haven't made it through a full soccer season in 5 years without ending up on a waiting list. But here I am, no surgery, no torn ligaments, no swollen knee. A small miracle if I do say so myself.
I've never been so thankful just to be able to play. I don't care if I score, I don't care if my team wins; I am just grateful that God has blessed me enough to put me back on a soccer pitch.
This is my shout out to God. He does care, he does know what we want, and he does love us enough to award us joy even when we lose.

Benjamin Franklin, Money and Me

Benjamin Franklin said that time is money; I'm not sure I agree, but that might be because I don't like money. I do, however, like time. A lot. And I need it. A lot.

I learned a big thing about time last week: it is a gift and it is governed by God. We can use it selfishly or purposelessly and it will feel like we never have enough, or we can use it sparingly, hold is loosely, be willing to give it up and we will have enough time to do all that we need to.

Last week I had a Japanese placement test, two midterms, a research methods project and a group presentation, all scheduled during the same four days. The week before that was Reading Week, but I have no idea where that went. All I know is that I didn't work on really anything that I needed to. (I think all I did was decide my history term paper would be about the Berlin Wall instead of Cuba.) So I had all these projects, and not nearly enough time. That said, I was slightly stressed.

The weekend between Reading Week and the week from hell was a retreat in Canmore with my bible study. I didn't want to go because of all that I needed to do; I needed another week to prepare for school, but I found myself giving up the weekend to idleness and rest instead. Somewhere inside of me I felt that I needed to focus on God and find rest in my soul before I could even attempt to attack life in any sort of productive way. That part of me was right.

I gave time away and time opened up. God's got a weird economy like that. I kept getting random brackets of time I never have which I used to get all my studying and preparing done. I was allowed off work three hours early before one exam so I could study, a class the next day was cancelled, so I had that bit of time to prepare too, I prioritized between going to class Thursday morning or studying for a midterm worth 30%, and the presentation got moved from Wednesday to Friday, Time opened up. And the weird part was I wasn't stressed at all. I think I actually enjoyed fitting everything in like a puzzle.

I gave just a weekend of focused time to God and he made my life fall together. I was talking to another girl from bible study and the exact same thing happened to her. But it's a hard thing to do, to give up time. We hold time so tightly, feel like we have to govern it, control it. But we can't. God holds time; he can make the moon and the stars stand still, he can make the sun travel backwards, and he can open pockets of time we don't expect in order for us to accomplish what He knows we have to. It's hard to believe, but there is joy in life when you base it on surrender.

Maybe old Benjamin Franklin - printshop apprentice, diplomat, patriot, editor, General Postmaster of America, creator of libraries and fire departments, political activist, advocate for unity, writer, scientist, inventor, philosopher and benchmark of American history really was right, Maybe time really is money; it's a currency that we trade for growth in whatever direction we choose. Ben traded his time to many different themes, and see what he has become.

And ironically enough, isn't his face on every single $100 bill in the United States?

i am now scared for what saturday might bring

I have had a string of Saturdays that are really, really abnormal. Last Saturday I was awakened by a phone call from the mechanic telling me that I need to spend another $400 to replace the brakes on the car that it is my possession. Then I fought off a bad mood as the rest of the day imploded in impatience and frustration from various things.

The Saturday before I went snowboarding at Nakiska; on the way home the car in my possession overheated and we had to get towed....but not after waiting an hour and a half in a frozen car with cars whizzing past on the very busy highway a mere foot away. No heat. The car completely died. I have a black toe... but it's actually from soccer a few days before, not from the cold. Unfortunately. It would make my story better. A story with a $768 price tag. It is not funny to me yet.

The Saturday before that was Floyd.

I was at work for nine and a half hours that day. Floyd sat passed out in a chair for one and a half of those. The security guard stared at him for 10 minutes of those. Anna and I wondered what to do for all of those.
The cops came. The ambulance came. They didn't do anything; they just kicked him out into the -30 degree winter night with nothing but a windbreaker and a ball cap and watched him walk away.
Floyd. The drunk man with black pants, a pink and yellow florescent/black jacket, glasses, a black cap with red on it, First Nations, 40 or 50 year old man. That was the description I gave to the police before they arrived. That is the description I saw while I was standing on the train platform ready to go home, watching my train come from across downtown.
I had a decision to make: miss my train and give him the muffin and scone I had in my backpack with my $1400 laptop, or pretend I didn't see him and go to my warm home and eat supper. I chose Floyd; I couldn't choose anything else. I had watched the city's authority figures walk away from this helpless man; I could not. I would not walk away.
I ran and caught up with him as he was stumbling across the road on a red light. Safe across I handed him the Good Earth bag of baking; all he said was "I'm cold. I want to go somewhere warm." My heart broke. His face was scabby from the cold, his bare hands were so frozen and fingers so stiff he could barely grab the bag I gave him.
I asked him if I could phone someone to help him. He wouldn't let me call the ambulance: "they're prejudiced," he said. And they are. I saw it earlier that day; I felt the weight of his words.
So I called a friend to come take Floyd somewhere where he could get help. Once we ungracefully got his drunk, stiff and cold body into the car we drove him to the drop-in center. "I'm a nobody," he slurred during a moment of silence. A nobody. What a sad state of the soul to actually believe you are nobody. I should have said more, besides that he is somebody, he has children, he is Floyd, he is somebody. I hope he remembers that. I hope he remembers the help he received.
Normally I don't do that kind of thing. But I felt absolutely no fear, just a deep compulsion to help this man, to feed him, to get him somewhere warm. I am not a good person; social justice just needed to be done. I was a doer, if only just for that day.

There are a lot of people society tries not to see. It's amazing how many people either drove or walked by Floyd and I, averted their eyes and completely avoided us altogether; nobody passing by even gave the slightest inclination that they perceived us in any way. I wonder what would have happened if I was actually in danger; I wonder if anybody would have even tried to help.

Why are we a society that refuses to see? Why is it that so many people refuse to help? Why is it that the justice system isn't in place to help those who really need it but to insulate from any intrusion those whose life is completely comfortable? Where will we be if we refuse to accept the Floyds, to help them in their broken place? What will be become if we continue to disown as people those who Christ died to save?

Busy Day...Ooftah (Yes I AM Norwegian)

I'm finding it hard to go to sleep. I am dead tired but I can't find the will to call it a day. Maybe because my days and nights have been so patchy; the last 48 hours have been a continual day with various nap times.

Yesterday I woke up early to do some reading before class at 9:30, I was at school until 4, went grocery shopping on my way home, made supper, had an hour and a half nap, got up, did some more homework, then made it to the opposite quadrant of Calgary for my 11pm soccer game. After running around for an hour (we won), I took my sweaty body home for a shower.

By 1am I was in bed... but only for a brief time. Just before 6 that same morning (I let myself sleep in because of the prior late night) I woke up to get to work for 7. I made lattes for 5 hours (reading my required reading for the day at break) and took the train straight to school for class at 1. I had half an hour when I was supposed to get my Japanese friend to correct my speech that I had to do for a class at 3... but I had forgotten the notebook containing that speech at home. So I called my roommate who luckily also had class at 3 to bring it to me (I was grateful I wouldn't have to wing my speech...).

In leu of correcting my speech before 1, I went and bought the course pack containing the reading I have to do for tomorrow. I sat down for 10 minutes and started to read it while I shoveled down some banana bread (made the night before while reading about the Cold War, waiting for the late late hour I was to leave for soccer). Then I went to class... where I wrote my notes in the wrong notebook because I had failed to bring that class's book as well.

Next hour.

I sat in the library entrance by the vending machines and tried to remember my Japanese speech, writing out what I could recall, just in case my roommate didn't come in time. But she did. And I was able to call Sachiko to get the right Japanese for it. So 15 minutes before my 3 o'clock Japanese class started I had finished my speech. Lucky.

This is where I collapse.

No, not yet.

I came home and started to unwind, pay some bills, check email, that sort of home stuff. But 10 minutes into that my roommate called from Safeway and said she had bought too much to carry home herself. I figured I owed her one for earlier this afternoon and went out to fetch her and her food.

We made it home and I made yakisoba for supper... it was the first time I had made it in over a year and it was a little too salty...

I tried to buckle down and read some for school... tried 'Origins of the Cold War' and got about 5 pages in. I switched to Harriet Martineau's excerpt of 'Society in America'. No luck. I just can't concentrate.

And that's where I am now, at ten minutes to ten, with my roommate feeding me fresh-made cookies.

Today I also found out I got accepted to a group study program for May at Senshu University in Japan and my brain is trying to figure out the logistics of that right now...while all I want to do is sleep...

If only I could get up out of this chair....

Anomie

Something that has always amazed me about humans is their adaptability. I'm not going Darwinistic and saying our necks (over generations) can turn giraffe-like if all our food randomly (over time) becomes only available at top-of-tree height; I am saying that our environment and situations constantly change, and we have been made so that we can change with it and find a new 'normal'.
I don't think there is such a thing as normal. Because life and relationships are so fluid there can't be a normal. There is only what we know of the past, our history, and what we think should be the future, our ideals. History and ideals, not normality.
One of the founding fathers of sociology, Emile Durkheim, labeled normlessness as 'anomie', referring to an eroding lack of societal structure which eventually becomes anarchical. But I think anomie is a constant state of life; it's how well you adapt to the change that prevents your life from erupting into chaos. A friend moves away, a family member dies, your job description changes, the semester ends and classes change, it snows. But it doesn't have to be the end of your happiness and stability.
I've always loved winter for many many reasons. Besides it being absolutely beautiful when it snows and the whiteness clings to the trees and blankets everything you see, I love how city life changes. In any other season you can drive as fast as you want to until you hit your fear threshold of being caught, you know which lanes will be the fastest, and you can predict the time within seconds it will take to get where you want to go. But in winter that all changes. A drive that used to take 10 minutes now takes 45, and you have no idea what bus, icy patch or accident you will run into on your way home.
Besides that, the lanes change. When snow is covering the ground you cannot see the lanes, the painted lines you are supposed to drive between. So you make it up. You adapt. You drive where you think you should. And when the friction from enough people's tracks melts the snow back down to the concrete, you can see how off you all have been. You discover you've been driving in the shoulder, you see that you are halfway in between lanes, either the white or the yellow, you see you've all been wrong. But it works. You adapt. You see the need for change and it gets changed.
Humans are so adaptable. We can live in plus 15 or minus 30 (even in the span of a week), we can live in the woods or on the prairie, on a mountain or in a valley, near a flowing river or in the middle of a desert. Our way of living and thinking can change.
Our lives certainly do. It may not look like our past, and it may not resemble what we had pictured in our heads but we are still in the middle of it, trying to make due with what we've got, trying to find joy and some semblance of prosperity.
Whatever happens, it's okay. We can learn to live anywhere, under any circumstances, in our constant state of anomie. God has made us that way so we can learn to depend on him for our stability, not any job, paycheck or friend. He wants us to thrive in diversity, not just hum along in comfortability.
Snowstorms will come but we will drive different.
And one day our food may relocate to the tops of cedar trees, but we will learn to climb them.

despite what they tell you, school is not easy

Today while I was studying my midterm I overheard a girl talking. I overhear a lot of things when I'm pseudo-studying; I just don't tend to let on. Occasionally I wish I didn't have ears (at least ones I can't turn off at will). But in this case the girl wasn't talking about anything I really didn't want to hear, just about her work load this semester. So I decided to count mine.

- 4 smaller (up to 6 page) writing assignments
- 1 ten-page research paper (due Tuesday)
- 12 midterms (11 down, 1 to go...)
- 4 finals (yet to be completed)
- two other random bio assignments
- and the copious amounts of reading required to stay on top of it all (1-4 books per class)

And now I understand why my mind is so pooped; I feel completely justified with why I am bridging mental exhaustion.

After I counted my stress in the form of tests and papers, I continued studying for my midterm the next two hours, went to a different class, studied for another 45 minutes, and then wrote the test. I think I did okay. Yay.