The List of Giant Undertakings

We've got less than five weeks until we drive out and and less than four to be out of the apartment. School and work are going to be coming to a close, so there are loose ends to wrap up there.

-get up the guts to take cats to the shelter (I'd like to pretend I have no affection for them, but it's not entirely true).
-make a meal plan and grocery list that will help get rid of remaining food
-start packing
-clean the house
-search for/find jobs
-search for/find apartment
-somehow resolve or ignore family drama
-finish planning CA trip details (this is way more complicated than it seems)
-work on school projects/papers

The fun part
-find some way to enjoy this incredible weather
-possibly plan a friend's wedding shower
-try to get quality time with everyone before we leave

Of course I think of it now.

"Is there really a way to fix this mess?"

That's how I would have finished the metaphoric ocean post with one question.

Familiar Routine

Familiar routine: laugh and love then for no reason at all, shut down; become a cold, calculating statue of a human. Cause pain and frustration in order to assuage your own.

I don't know how to break this cycle and a recent reading of "Perks of Being a Wallflower" reawakened that little piece in me that held so many infinite moments dear. It is as if this soul curls and dries like a faded rose when there is nothing to live for. I want to be deeply poetic and meaningful as I describe how I feel but I've learned to live without words. Sixteen year old me would find this devastating. Somewhere inside, I think twenty year old me does too, but I don't feel much. A writer without words is merely a ghost of who she should be.

But that's how I've been. A moving, breathing phantom because I have forgotten how to do exactly what I was born to. And I might argue that I have even forgotten what exactly I am to do. Sometimes when my heart hurts and I cry, my soul wakes up a little bit. Feeling gives me words. But by the time I make it to keyboard or paper, it has shriveled and I feel more empty than before.

Also, having a C in an English class really makes me feel worthless. I know I should have more intrinsic value for myself than grades by now, but dry seasons really leave a person looking for meaning in anything.

My life as a metaphoric ocean

Looking over recent feelings, posts, scribblings, and memories, I have really come to believe that the last couple of years have been wave after wave of conflict. Sometimes it rolls in steady and bearable like the ocean ought. But there is rain and there are hurricanes; sometimes these last for weeks and sometimes they pass in hours. All the same, my life has greatly resembled this metaphoric ocean in both storms and showers. Conflict carries a corrosive connotation and for good reason. It chisels down past the good hair days and nothing to wear days right to the dissatisfaction of your soul. Giant rocks of insecurity get broken down into bits of sand. Every so often one of those turns into a jagged stone that catches skin and makes you bleed. But you still bleed red. You still feel pain. While the storm cares not, you know that you still feel and sometimes that really is consolation.

So the salty air blows and the wound burns and heals. It forms soft new skin that is easily pierced again. I could really take this metaphor too far, but someone wise once told me that the best use of metaphors is to drop them sooner than later. It would be a nice little wrap-up right now if I could say that "I only have one question and it is..." but I have half a dozen at least. One day, perhaps, there will be resolution. But for now the storm of confusion and frustration rages on and leaves an awkward mess in its wake.

Hope and Fairy Garden Dreams

Six weeks from tonight I will be married. My name will be Rachel Dobler. I will wake up the next morning and every morning after next to my very best friend. Mm, I can hardly believe it!! 

Over the weekend, I had some interesting thoughts about hope and how it's so easy to lose. That's an odd thing for a young bride to say with her whole life before her, but be honest. Doesn't hope feel like an illusive thing sometimes? Even when plans are going smoothly, it's hard not to wonder what might go wrong or even to get complacent in that secure rhythm. And when circumstances are hard, it's difficult to keep one's chin up and remember to breathe. What I felt in my spirit was this awakening to the responsibility to keep hope alive. In relationship and in life, it is vital that we engage in order to grow and to fulfill ourselves and one another. But the price to be paid for hope is creating, wishing, waiting. Really, it's like preparing one's heart and laying a foundation for faith. It is costly to risk, but is it not more costly to sacrifice my joy in the smoke of cynicism and fear? Phrases from Scripture echo like "love, power, and a sound mind" and "do not be anxious" and "faith is the assurance of things unseen." Hold on to hope.

As for the wedding, it's taking form, becoming less idea and more reality with every day of option-exchange and planning and decisions. Two weeks ago we officially set the venue for Lockheart Gables. The week after that, we picked up the invitations from the printers. And hopefully soon, one may show up in a mailbox near you. Lockheart Gables is really going to be ideal. When Mom first showed me the website I thought, "B&B? Does it GET cornier than that?" I went and saw it having already written it off but praying that it would be the right one just so we could stop searching. Sure enough, they let us tour two days before our appointment, we talked to the owner David (my dad's name) and heard about his wife Marilyn (my Grandma's real non-Grandma name) and how she collects teacups (like my Nana did). I really liked the place immensely despite the house's very frilly contrast to my earthy vision and let my eye imagine what could be. Once I saw the outside area under the harboring shade of full, leafy trees, I knew we'd found it. With a waterfall as a backdrop and green grass for my to-be bare feet, my earthy garden fairy-like dreams could come true.

Now, I'm scheming up decorations to accent the natural beauty and centerpieces to coordinate with the very influential help of friends. It's the minute details that I have such a hard time with... how to get it all done by that day and on that day is the real challenge. Mom remembers everything I forget and if she doesn't, someone else does. So the chaos of the unknown is giving away to deposits, deadlines, and dress alterations.

Peace, love, and centerpieces.

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works within us."

--Ephesians 4:13-20

Listen Up.

There once was time in my life to just sit down and write. Write thoughts, write poetry, write stories, papers, even single lines that could develop into anything. And the words must not have stopped; it was most certainly me. The passion still lies there within, dormant, but there. It flares up every now and again when I write a letter or even in the occasional blog, but I feel like it is all shadows of those inner staircases that lead to libraries of things I should be writing.

Tonight I realized that much of that is because I have nothing to write for... no homework, no audience, no critique, no assignment. I'm too critical to be my own audience so I shut myself down before I can finish. I've deleted this entry three times already, exited the browser, and come back simply to have something to say.

And that something is this: I have nothing to say but wish I did.

Exeunt.

And The Plans Are Rolling

I put this on my wedding blog and figured I might as well spread it out around my silly little blogging world. I need to make a note that I am going to switch blogs whenever Joshua and I get married in order to make that fun transition, plus I've been wanting to change my email address (I'm getting too much spam 'cause it's an old one) and it's a good time to do that as well. I'll spread the info sufficiently around whenever it happens.

**

Let me preface this paragraph with a minor disclaimer: I am absolutely thrilled to be getting married! I never realized what a difficult season engagement was going to be. Of course it is not due to the engagement itself but all that comes with it. Essentially, we are starting life over together and all of our expectations our coming up, being verbalized, having plans put to them, and making compromises here and there. The hand of God is so obvious when we have these vision-based conversations about our life, our family, our hopes and our hearts resound together and just as much so when there are variances in opinion but we work through with grace and communication.

Everything from apartment hunting to phone plans to car insurance has been a decision factor lately and I've been on the job hunt here all the while knowing I'll be doing this again in 6 months or so in California. Wedding plans have been reinstated post-holidays and I'm looking at another location this week to find out if I want to seal the deal at the gardens or move on. We are more than ready to get an official date set and hoping against hope to bump it up to May. I'm working on designing a monogram to potentially be used on invitations and definitely on the program (that I've already finished).

We've been updating the Bed, Bath, and Beyond registry, going over our picks, making adjustments where needed. Last night Joshua did his "man registry" at Lowe's and was the most fired up I've seen him about any plans so far. My favorite thing though is our cash registry we're supposed to modify soon at OurWishingWell.com. It is really going to help us considering that we will be moving across the country and will not want to carry more with us than necessary.

In other news, it will be absolute heaven to roll over and say "good night" instead of grabbing my keys and saying "goodbye." One of my friends once described her first year of marriage as "one big slumber party." I laughed (both of us knowing it's more challenging than that) but as much fun as Joshua and I have, I believe it.

Peace and 81 degree January days.