One of those days

It's just been one of those days. Couple days, actually.

Sunday, I missed a gathering I really wanted to go to because finishing a paper was more pressing and necessary. Four dreary hours later, I finally finished my not-so-fantastic paper.

In chapel (UGH UGH UGH) the next day, I realize that my paper due in an hour, that I skipped study for, is saved on my laptop...which I left at home on purpose to save my back from hawling it around all day. And the only way to get home is on the bus, because I don't have the car with me.

I spend the afternoon chasing my laptop down to turn in the not-so-fantastic, miss-gathering-for paper...late.

Then, I go to Bible Study that night, which I have just become overwhelmed and utterly disillusioned with.

And did I mention I bought a game off Ebay, just so happens it is a fradulent copy, and the seller refuses to give me even a partial refund?

So I go to sleep almost in tears.

 Over the night, I have a grotesque nightmare about a weird pregnancy in which I gave birth to the baby and he barely survived. I wake up at 8 am to the question, "Can we carpool and leave as soon as possible?" I don't have class until 9. Bless your heart, Cody. You are good to me and don't deserve to be in this blog rant :).

So I drag myself out of bed, and drive Cody to work. I have 45 minutes until my first class, and no breakfast in my stomach, so I drive to Bagel Beanery. It takes them a while to make my food, and when I finally do get to my car, I try and fail (and try and fail) to turn left onto College Street. Let's just say it happened that I did not make it to class on time because the corner of College and Michigan was so insane this morning. Seriously, where do all these people have to go that I can't turn out of a single parking lot in twenty minutes time?

I get to school and drink my once-hot bagel beanery coffee. Whew. Class should be simple, right? Right. Except I'm already exhausted from the day and it's 9:17am.

I was also late for a very important banquet for my internship, after leaving 20 minutes early from class to make it on time. Thankfully, my table seat was in the back row. Meijer Gardens is impossible during ArtPrize. SHESH. And so is finding any event location in the midst of it.

So I sit. And I listen. I clap. And I eat a delicious free lunch (THANK YOU!). I chat. I clap.

I drive to Safe Haven and realize that I should have talked to my supervisor before l took off, because I have no idea what to do. So I drive back to Meijer Gardens, where we laugh at my ambition and she says I am free to go for the day.

Seriously?!

So now I am drinking awful coffee and listening to extremely annoying music and wishing this day was over already so I can sleep and start over.

Mostly sleep.

finally, done.

I am a thirteen-year-old Christian. I was born again on July 13, 1995, if a date is truly necessary, kneeled beside my bed at nighttime. Understanding this, I should have been through my 'Jesus' toddler years, jumping off a coffee table with child-like faith that He indeed will catch me. I should be well on my way through grammer school, having passed 3rd grade when I memorized my Christian multiplication tables and learned to write in Christian cursive. I should be going through Christian puberty about now, falling for my Savior more and more with each day that passes. I should be forming into the Christian woman God asks of me.

Is this what I am?

Why do I feel like a Christian 3rd grader sitting in time-out because she just won't cooperate?

I don't want my faith to become a phase I went through, oh, you know, that one time, when it all made sense. Faith is not about believing God when it is easy or self-beneficial or even when it all makes sense. Frankly, sometimes it doesn't.

I have no idea how to pray, because everytime I do, I barely speak a sentence before I see the words hit the ceiling, one by one, and bounce back to me and choke me. For the type of person I am, prayer will always be difficult, because I am a practical person who likes to talk to people as they are, and of course God is how He is, but how He is, is not where I am. I don't like talking to people on the phone, let alone telling God about my day when He not only knows more about it than I do, but He doesn't magically send me air-texts back. I don't 'feel' Him 'speaking'. So I write. But, of course, He doesn't write back. I don't hold it against Him, and I don't expect anything more. Prayer is simply the most awkward part of life on earth as a thirteen-year-old Christian.

So I am a Christian who never keeps her promises to God. I have read my Bible perhaps a handful of times in the past year, because reading the Bible is like going to the gym. Before I go, I feel a familiar sense of dread...the kind that doesn't fade with time, the kind that will remain after I die, even when Jesus wants to rock out to some Tim McGraw and run the treadmill with me. But when I actually hop on the treadmill and start running, it is exhilerating and makes me feel more alive. So all I have to do is open the Bible a crack every day, and know it is exhilerating. Know it will make me more alive. But, I don't.

I am a Christian who feels her prayers are worthless. And I am a thirteen-year-old Christian, held back so many years because I refuse to learn, I refuse to love like He has loved, I refuse to jump off the coffee table and watch Him catch me. I refuse to do anything except to grunt every now and then on my uncomfortable time-out chair, that I convince myself is actually quite comfortable because I have warmed up the seat for all this time.

And I know I will turn from this white screen with black letters and repeat my same patterns, all over again, and I will be a broken thirteen-year-old Christian turned cold and apathetic. And I will hurt God again and again, and be a stubborn child He has to continually discipline and calm and woo. But He knows this too, and He knows that I know.

And the funny thing is, I think, with this realization, I am finally done with my time-out.

betrothed.

I do not feel like telling the story, because between the time he proposed and now, I had to tell the story constantly. In brief, I found the ring in a coffee maker that he bought me. I was amongst my friends. He proposed in the snow, in the beautiful night, December 3, 2007. He knelt on both knees, his eyes glittering in the city streetlight, and wrapped both arms around my fragile legs. He said, unrehearsed, merely, "I love you, Sash. Will you marry me?" It was the best night.