That Time When Graduation Was A Year Ago

Yesterday was graduation day for the class of 2014 at Gettysburg. Even before my newsfeed was awash with orange and blue and sentimental statuses, I was feeling nostalgic. Today marks exactly one year since I graduated, and it feels like it was only yesterday, just a world away. How could a year possibly have passed? How could it have not?

I confess that my overwhelming feeling upon realizing that it had been a year since graduation was a sense of disappointment. Shouldn't I have accomplished more a year out of college? I can't say "I just graduated in May" anymore, so shouldn't I have done more? Shouldn't I have made a bunch of friends with people where I live? Shouldn't I have completed things? Shouldn't I miss Gettysburg less? But here I am, living at home, mostly hanging out with my family when I'm not working. I don't have a high powered, exciting job where I am changing the world and/or making lots of money. I haven't fallen in love and I am not substantially closer to being a clinical psychologist or a mom.

And that thinking is so easy to fall into, because I have been trained so well. Make goals. Execute them. Do at least as well as your peers, preferably better. Do great work. I loved the Gettysburg atmosphere, and I thrived in that performance driven, high octane setting (if you consider the level of stress I could sustain for weeks at a time thriving). But the dark side of that is that I can instinctinvely think critically without acting compassionately. My mind twists the truth and throws in some half-truths and little lies until I look at the last year and feel like I have failed.

That is probably stupid and definitely inaccurate. My plan was to move home, find a research position to get the experience I need to get into grad school, and pay off student loans as quickly as possible. I did, in fact, find a research position that I can commute to from home... thanks, God! And its not high powered or a high salary, but someone is paying me to do research, which is exactly what I was looking for. I am paying off my student loans while admittedly mooching some groceries, wifi, and below market rent from my mother. But since I am rather fond of my mother, this is kind of a win-win situation. And why should I feel lame about having out with my family? I love them, and I won't always get to spend time with them like this. My baby cousins (read: every cousin who is younger than me, even if they are 6'2'') will grow up and move away one day. When I go to grad school, I will not be able to take my Mam-maw shopping on Sunday afternoons, and will she be around to take shopping when I am finished grad school? Speaking of school, if I were to hypothetically be either a clinical psychologist or a mom before I finished grad school, that would be absolutely terrifying (in the first scenario) or mildly terrifying and poor planning (in the second scenario). Seeing patients before getting the education/licensing to practice or having a baby while attaining said licensing are so not high on my list of things to do, and thus if I were substantially closer to these things one year out of college, it might actually not be a great sign.

Melissa and this kitten were both at
Focus this year... don't you wish you
were there, too? I know I do.

And yes, I do miss Gettysburg. I wish that I still had shenanigans every Wednesday at 10, that I still lived with 5 of my best friends, and that anytime I wanted to hang out with someone we could just get a meal together because we ate at all the same places. I wish that I had just gotten home from Focus, and that I was energized and sleep deprived and so excited about being on mission with the church. I wish the friends I have here (because I do have some, my heart just believes lies sometimes) knew me as deeply, encouraged and challenged me as frequently, and pointed me to Christ as well as my friends from Gettysburg. But this is what its like to have good friends. You miss them when you haven't seen them for a day, and you miss them when you haven't seen them for months and months. It takes a long time to build new friendships that are as strong.

I think it is okay to miss college, even though it makes me feel a bit like I am doing something wrong. I don't want college to be the best years of my life. But it would be okay if college accounted for some of the best years of my life. I think that is the tension I am feeling as I compare this first year out of college to the four years that came before. Its true that this past year was hard in different ways than before and that it was lacking some things that my heart tells me it wants again in future years. But it was another year of life, and I enjoy having those :) It was filled with blessings and things to be thankful for, and it was not a waste of time.

So here are a few highlights from my first year as a post-bacc:
-Seven of my friends got married, and every wedding was a delight. I loved each individual wedding ceremony, and getting to share in their joy, and also all those built-in reunions.
-For months I got as much sleep as my body actually needed (talk about seasons of life... this one is definitely fleeting). It was glorious. And now I might get up earlier every morning than I have in my life, but at least I don't do homework till at least midnight every night.
-I got a job offer totally out of the blue months after I had submitted an application and pursued other institutes and researchers with no success. Yep, it was totally not my fault that I got this job.

"I am not afraid.
I was born to do this."
-Jeanne d'Arc

-I found a church that I absolutely love. I get to live in a place with a bible-preaching church that loves to worship God with a gospel-centered community who want to grow and become more like Jesus? Is this real life?
-When my brain isn't consumed with exams, papers, and research reports, there is room for creativity to come out and play. I've been playing the piano again and making artwork and creating things. And none of them are masterpieces (although I am quite proud of the sweater and the quilt), but it feels good to create just because I can.
-God has used this time to soften my heart to the idea of adoption, to help me see the value of intervention at every stage for every person, and to understand how attachment (you know, that field of psychology I would be happy spending my whole life in) relates to God's character and redemptive plan. It was so good (and wise, probably) of him to do this when I am exactly where I am now. If He had done this later in life when I wasn't young, broke, and single, I probably would have freaked out about life and thought that He was telling me to do something I didn't want to do. Instead I see little hints of changing desires and and awareness of how much more growing I have to do. And how much more I need Jesus than I realized.
-I've been growing. Slowly. Sometimes it feels agonizingly slow, and I am not content with the pace. But the lessons I am being taught seem to take a lot of time. Perhaps it is the nature of these lessons, perhaps I'm a slow learner. But God is at work in my life, and I am grateful for it.

Springtime And The Feels

There are people in my life who I would describe as “intense feelers.” While my typical feelings range on a scale between 30 to 70 (assuming that 0 is the most negative and 100 is the most positive you can feel), they tend to live much of life in the 0-30 and 70-100 zones where I only venture on occasion. And while I love these people, I struggle to connect with them sometimes because I don’t understand them[i]. I believe it’s difficult for me to empathize with them because it’s not only my reactions to a situation that are different, but my overall experience of the situation.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a feeler. At least, according to the Myers-Briggs, (which I have decidedly mixed feelings about that I won’t rant about expound upon right now[ii]) I fall substantially on the feeling side. I have to assume, though, that the thinking and feeling parts of my brain get along decently well, because I seem to do both of them concurrently most of the time. So in circumstances that cause elation or great distress in my intensely feeling friends, I can’t always relate to how they got there emotionally. If I was in their situation and started feeling that way, the rational side of my brain would give me a good mental shake and say, “You are being unreasonable. Stop now.”

"I just want to looooove you..."

It would obviously not be loving to actually say that to people when they are experiencing the strongest of feels. Even in cases where I may need to gently rebuke a friend for how they are responding to a situation, I don’t think an emotional response is the same as a behavioral response. What you do with the fear, anger, elation, etc is what is right or wrong, not how strongly you feel those emotions. (I am reminded of Psalm 4:4, where it says, “In your anger, do not sin.”) So I am right back where I started: my friends who are more emotional than I am are not doing anything wrong—the same goes for people who are less emotional that I am—but I have difficulty relating and caring for them sometimes because life affects me differently.

I don’t have the answers for how to care for them better, so if you were looking for some insight there, sorry to disappoint. I'm guessing that growing in love and humility would help, and if you have any practical tips, be sure to let me know. However, I feel as if the advent of springtime has given me an opportunity to empathize in a new way with all the intense feelers out there.

Spring is finally here. And it may not come as a surprise, but I am unreasonably happy about it. It seems perfectly reasonable to be happy after the long winter we have had, but maybe not quite as happy as I am. I am happy basically anytime I go outside, look out the window, feel warm, or see any plant anywhere. Combined, that is a large chunk of the day. And we're talking unusually happy... like, when a smile breaks out, unbidden, across your face so wide that all your teeth are showing because the weeds in the field are blooming and the yellow flowers scattered through the green just make you happy. That has been happening pretty much every day for a month and a half. I'm happy when it's pouring down rain. I'm even happy in the midst of the worst seasonal allergies I've ever experienced (there's some irony mixed in there there somewhere...).

The rational part of me wants to get all introspective over this discrepancy between valence of emotional response and emotional stimulus, but most of me says, "It's spring, just go with it. Be happy." I can't explain why I feel this strongly and I don't care. Is this what it feels like?!?! Even if its totally not and I still can't empathize with all you intense feelers, I still love you. And the springtime.

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[i] Speaking of not understanding things, this cat doesn't understand the rules of ping pong, which is just relevant enough to link you to this adorable video. 

[ii] Unless you want to Myers-Briggs type your cats, which I should theoretically have the same qualms with but mysteriously don’t.