Dear Freshman,

This is not an open letter. I find myself irritated when people write 'open letters' that aren't really to the person they addressed it to, but are actually to the rest of the world about the person they addressed it to. To be fair, I frequently write letters to inanimate objects that serve the same purpose as open letters, but the following is not a letter to springtime or my laptop. This is a draft of a letter to my little cousin (he's a foot taller than me, but whatever) that I am giving him when he leaves for college this week. Most of my readers don't need this advice, but I figured I would submit it to you all (1) for revising in case I missed anything glaringly important or (2) if you have freshmen in your life. Of course I have omitted things, but that is because there is a big gap between the length of advice I could give to freshmen and the length I can expect my particular freshman to read :) These are just the things I realized that I wanted him to know while I was attempting to sleep one night... 

Dear [Freshman],

Congrats on going to school… I’ll admit it, college has been some of the best years of my life (although I expect there will be more fun to come after this) so I know you are in for an adventure. I figured since I was basically just there, I should tell you some things I learned along the way or had kind upperclassmen tell me when I first got to campus. 

1.     College is a time to do stupid, fun things (I have done many of those). It is not, however, a time to do stupid, dangerous things or stupid, illegal things. Don’t forget the difference.

…On a related note, freshman in a herd tend to do lots of stupid, dangerous, illegal things at the very beginning of school… the upperclassmen and staff at Gettysburg used to call the first few weeks that freshman were on campus 'the red zone' because freshmen were being dumb either to impress everyone else or because their parents weren't there and they had more freedom than they knew what to do with. Just keep your head.

…On another related note, I think I have already talked to you about the alcoholism that runs in our family? It’s worth mentioning again. I won’t bore you with all of the genetics and psychology (I could!), but I will tell you that alcohol affects me differently than most of my friends. Just watch out for that.

2.     Your honor is something that is both valuable and difficult to keep. Its worth it be an honorable guy.

…Watch out for the people around you, both the guys and the girls. Fun fact: 67% of men in college DON’T rape anyone! It goes without saying that you better be in that 67%. But a ton of rapes and sexual assaults happen on college campuses, and I know way too many girls this has happened to (you do too, although you probably don’t realize it). This means that people around you—or at least physically near you on campus—are going to be assaulted. If every college guy who didn’t rape anyone also prevented sexual assault when it was in danger of happening near them, you and I would know less people who have been assaulted. As much as our society likes to focus on how equal guys and girls are, there are some instances in which guys, in general, have more power than girls. Frankly, you have a greater ability to prevent rape than I do. With power comes responsibility, and all that. Be honorable regardless of how the people around you are behaving.

3.     Make friends with the kind of people you actually want to be friends with. I promise that those people are there, but it might take awhile to find them.

…I met some of my best friends in college in the first week or so of school. But that’s not the case with most of my friends, and I am not friends with most of the people I met in the first few weeks of school. In fact, I didn’t really begin to be friends with one girl until the end of my sophomore year, and I am going to be in her wedding in December. I didn’t meet some good friends until I was a senior. So don’t worry about finding the people who will become your closest friends... you will eventually. Just when you do find them, become friends :) 

…On a related note, get involved in a Christian fellowship on campus! I’m not going to pester you about this one because you are a big boy and your faith is up to you, but getting involved with the fellowship at Gettysburg literally changed my life. And my relationship with God. And who I became friends with. It was the best decision ever, and I had no idea when I got to campus that I should even look for a Christian fellowship.

4.     There will always be one or two huge things that mark you as a freshman. At my school, it was people actually using the lanyard and ID card holder the college gives at move-in for their keys and ID card. I would recommend not doing whatever that particular thing at your school is. Honestly though, don’t work too hard not to look like a freshman, because you are going to clearly look like a freshman to everyone else for the first month or two anyway. Just chill out about it and don’t use the lanyard they give you for your key :)

You are going to be totally fine. I have faith in you. College is awesome. If you ever need anything, you have my number. I love you!

-Christiana

Have I forgotten anything? Made any terrible errors? Let me know :)

Of course cats don't get to go to college. But the policy on pets visiting for a weekend was a littleeeee unclear my sophomore year, and this picture mayyyy have been taken in Tudor House. Possibly. (And the fire alarm might possibly have gone off while Lady M was visiting, causing my roommate to run around our room trying to find my cat in a building that she feared was on fire. Luckily my roommate liked cats... and the building did not, in fact, burn down) 

Real Talk: Homesickness

Last Sunday was the first day that I have felt homesick. Confusing, I know, since I live at home. What I mean is, I really missed my church family at Gettysburg… both my fellowship on campus and the church I attended while at school. I have been “church shopping” for over a month now, and I have been missing the community in Gettysburg for awhile before that, but last Sunday was the first time that I visited a new church and felt homesick for my church in Gettysburg. Perhaps it was because the other churches that I had visited in the past few weeks were so different from my experience at Gettysburg that they didn’t remind me of it while I was visiting. I couldn't tell you what it was exactly, but something about the church Sunday—the size, the way people sang, the way people interacted—made me miss Gettysburg.

This isn’t a new feeling for me. When I was studying abroad, I missed my campus fellowship almost every time I went to church. In fact, there was only one time there that I worshiped at my church in South Africa without missing them… it was so unusual that I can still remember it clearly. It seems almost normal for me when where I worship reminds me of another place I love to worship, or people I love to worship with. 

My homesickness didn't tell me that the church I went to last Sunday is ‘the one’ or that it isn't. What it did do was give God an opportunity to instruct me. The person who spoke before communion read from Philippians 3, where Paul talks about pressing onward toward the goal (of knowing and becoming like Christ). In verse 13-14, it says “But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Now obviously, when Paul talks about forgetting what is behind, he does not mean his super awesome college fellowship. But God still used this verse to convict me that I can’t hold on so tightly to the huge blessing that was my church community over the past four years that I let it distract me from the blessings of where he has me now, and where he wants me to be in the future. In the same way that God did not want missing my church in the States to distract from or impede my relationship with him while I was in South Africa, he doesn't want my church for the past four years to distract or impede my relationship with him now. So how do I learn from the past and do things better this time?

I can't say for sure, but I think that part of it is finding the root of the problem. See, whenever I have a really good thing in my life, I struggle with believing the lie that this is the best life is ever going to get, or this is the happiest I will ever be. Part of this comes from not trusting that God is good and his plan is good, and part of this comes from desiring the gift more than the giver. Both lead to feeling dissatisfied and anxious rather than loving life (whether gifts or struggles seem to be abundant). So I am trying to refute these lies with the truth.*

I don’t know where I will end up going to church, or when I will find one here. I don’t know how long it will take until I feel connected and not just like a visitor. I do know that God has a plan, and I won’t be disappointed (he is wiser than me, so his plan is better than anything I could come up with). I might settle into a new church only to move again… and that might happen over and over in my life. But I know that my desire for permanency and the feeling of being at home will one day be completely met. And when I am there, I will get to worship with my church family in Gettysburg, and my church family in South Africa, and my church family from childhood, and the church families I don’t know yet. So I think it is okay for me to be homesick… as long as I am homesick for my true home.

I could never figure out exactly where this cat came from, as she was allowed to roam wherever she wanted. But she must have lived near where I went to church in South Africa, so she is tangentially relevant ;)

*My go-to verses when I am struggling with this are:
1 Peter 5:6-7 "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you."
Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." 

7 Things You Should Learn From My Mistakes Last Week

We all make mistakes. Apparently, when this happens, you are supposed to laugh at yourself when you can, apologize when appropriate, and learn from them. But today, you are in for a treat, because you get to skip all of the discomfort that accompanies actually making mistakes, and just learn from some of my mistakes from the past week.

1.      Back up your laptop more frequently than you think you should. It will always work perfectly fine until the day it doesn’t. When that day comes, your hard drive will have crashed and you will wish that you had backed it up recently. I promise. 

2.      Call people more often. I am not super fond of talking on the phone, and I am not much better about initiating skype dates with friends who don’t live nearby. However, it is unlikely that I will look back and think, “Man, I wish that I hadn’t talked to my college roommate a second time that one week. That was overkill. And skyping with that friend that I am going to visit in two weeks? Wow, that  was too much.” I won’t regret calling, but I probably will regret not calling. Just call.

3.      Given the opportunity, go swimming. I don’t care if you have been unconsciously avoiding swimming because your hands react to chlorine, you are always on the verge of losing your contacts underwater, or you just don’t like the way your hips look in a swimsuit (I obviously can’t relate to any of these things). Swimming is fun, and you should do it.

4.      Be more considerate to your mother, but remember that you can’t make her happy all the time. This is actually true of everyone you know. There are definitely times when I lean towards selfishness and laziness, at which times I need to man up (or perhaps woman up? or person up?) and be helpful when I don’t feel like it. There are other times when I need to stick to my convictions, and doing so makes her unhappy and/or causes conflict. When this happens, I am tempted to think that I am not being considerate enough when it’s actually a different matter entirely. Try to find that line.

Unless you are a cat, in which case you don't need a
bedtime because you sleep all the time anyway...

5.      Give yourself a bedtime. Otherwise, all you workaholics will just work forever, and all you night owls will stay up late because the chemicals in your brain are telling you that you are wide awake. Interesting confluence of these two issues… staring at a computer screen right before bed can actually keep you from sleeping, because most computer screens produce a blue wavelength of light that is normally present in the morning. The photopigment melanopsin reacts to this blue light in the morning to wake you up, while the absence of blue light in the evening causes increased production of melatonin (which makes you sleepy). So turn off all those screens you keep staring at and go to bed at a reasonable time… scientists believe that not going to sleep at night makes you not want to get up in the morning.<< that’s real science right there ;)

6.      Certain kinds of fruit are not in season for very long. If you want to make cherry pies, make room in your schedule when they come in season. Don’t wait until it fits into your schedule, because that might be 10 days later and by then they might not be in season. And then you might have to wait for an entire year before you can make more of your favorite pies. Obviously, these are all just vague things that might happen. But if it does happen, I assure you that you will be sad.

7.      Give up the illusion that you are self-sufficient and competent at all the things you would like to be. I hate feeling stupid, and I would rather everyone think that I am competent and can handle myself than realize that I don’t understand or know how to do something. I think this is compounded by the fact that I am mostlykindofprobably an adult and often feel like people expect me to be able to do x, y, or z by this point in my life. However, despite being a Martin *cough*know-it-all*cough* there are plenty of things that I am not an expert at (computers, handguns, plenty of science concepts), and there are times when I have to get someone to help me, explain something, or fix something. Realizing this ahead of time will probably make it easier to ask, and clearly stating that you know nothing and that they need to start at the beginning or dumb it down will increase the amount that you learn. It turns out that going in with humility is more helpful in these cases than faking confidence (although that is certainly helpful at other times). 

      So there you go! Also, in case you were wondering, the cute tuxedo kitty is Proverb. He belongs to some friends of mine, and since my hard drive was KIA, my pictures of Lady M and Elizabeth may or may not be lost. We'll see. Luckily, Proverb is adorable and also extremely photogenic, so I'm sure he'll be making guest appearances now and again :) 

Reclaiming the 4th of July

No, this post isn't late. In my family, Independence Day is celebrated on the weekend closet to the forth. It just barely begins on the actual 4th of July...

Growing up, the 4th of July was my absolute favorite holiday... I liked it better than Christmas, Easter, and my birthday. For a closet pyromaniac who loves her big family, it was the best. We have a picnic "up on the hill" (my grandparents house, my Aunt & Uncle's house, and my house are adjoining) where around 125 family members, extended family, unofficially adopted family, and friends gather to party Martin-style: lots of food, drinks, huge fireworks (which are legal to buy somewhere outside of Maryland), swimming all day, bonfire once it’s dark, every outdoor game you can think of, singing around the piano, and best of all… family from out of town who stay all weekend. The other holidays just couldn’t compare.

Unfortunately, there are some pretty painful memories from a 4^th of July half a dozen years ago that put a damper on thing for me. I went through a period of disliking all the holidays for awhile, and although I am pleased to say that they aren’t as insufferable anymore, I can’t claim any as a favorite. Tarnished as it is, I can’t let any other holiday surpass the 4^th of July and take the position of favorite.

So I am reclaiming it.

Even though it might not be the most fun this year (or last year or the year before…), I will be at the picnic. I have already painted my

nails red white and blue (as I have with my Grandma since I was little) and I will be wearing an appropriately patriotic outfit tomorrow. And things will not be like they were before*, but I am going to enjoy myself.

In many ways, it feels like I am fighting a one-woman battle. Many in my family have taken the “pretend everything is fine until everyone is over it” route. Others take the “its too painful and I don’t enjoy it, so I’m not going”** route. I have a different approach… it is painful and it won’t be entirely enjoyable, but I am going to keep going until it is. It certainly won’t be this year, but ask me again a couple more years down the road. My hope is that by the time I am starting a family of my own, I will be able to enjoy the 4^th with them, and we can love it together for all the reasons I did... and for new reasons found along the way.

I love that we celebrate Independence Day not on the day that we won our independence, but on the day we declared it. We don’t wait to celebrate when the battle is over, but on the day we pledged to fight. Thus, I am fighting to reclaim my love of the 4^th of July… and tomorrow, I will be celebrating.

(Lady Margaret and Elizabeth have mixed feelings about the 4th of July as well.
Wearing decorations does not exactly please them. Chasing/eating decorations, on the other hand...)

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* Things will never be the same as they are in the nostalgia of our memories. I just read a really good post about the 4th by a friend that I found very relatable. Its a great read if you want to check it out!

**That is really an oversimplification of my family’s responses, and I don’t mean to do them the injustice of making their actions into a caricature. They don’t all just ignore the past or avoid the picnic, but many who have been affected seem to… withdrawal. Sometimes that is physical, other years it’s emotional. Either way, I miss them. 

True Confessions: Why I Don’t Like Watching Sportsball

It may not come as a surprise to most people who know me that I am not an avid sportsball* fan. As I am also not very good at playing sportsball, you might think that I don’t like sports at all… but that is actually not true. Given the right environment—typically coercion/persuasion by friends along with teammates who will not get too frustrated by me messing up, striking out, or shying away from the ball I am supposed to be moving toward—I actually enjoy playing sportsball. And yet, I can describe most of the time I spend watching sportsball (like the baseball game I went to with my family last night) as excruciatingly boring.

As I was at the baseball game last night (Why is there so much time in between the players doing anything?? Don’t they already get a break every time they switch which team is batting?)

As much as I love them, I prefer to snuggle
kittens when it is warm...

I realized that I viewed the ballgame much like some game night at my house—we all got together, and I visited with everybody in between occasional breaks when something would happen—except that at a game night I would actually be doing something interesting in between the visiting/quality time. And yet, my Pap loves sports. He actually paid attention to the game the whole time, and he will sit in Ravens stadium in the middle of December to watch a game that literally goes on for hours, which is more time than I would spend in the cold even if I was snuggling multiple kittens.

So what’s my problem? I think it’s mostly that…I just don’t care. In order to enjoy watching sportball, I have to be emotionally invested in the game, and most of the time I am just not emotionally invested. Here is my reasoning:

1)  I love football movies (shocker, I know). But in football movies, you always get to know the players and get caught up in the epic struggle they face and you want them to WIN. Same with pretty much any sports movie I can think of.

2) I like watching rugby… but my exposure to rugby began with Invictus (epic sportball movie for sure) and then continued by watching the world cup in South Africa pretty much only in bars with avid springbok fans, and it seemed that half the time, our team was playing. I wanted them to WIN.

3) I totally like watching games if my friends are playing. I want my friends to win, so I care what happens. Simple.

4) The closest I can get to caring about professional sportsball is when the Ravens are playing. I am a ravens fan because my family are Ravens fans, and when the Ravens win, many people I love are happy (It doesn’t hurt that there is an epic sportsball movie about Michael Ohr, who still plays on the team).

To me, it seems perfectly reasonable to only care about a sportsball game when I am emotionally invested in the players (even if most fans seems to derive motivation elsewhere). But it does beg the question: what areas of life should I care about that I just don’t because I am not emotionally invested... because it doesn’t affect me or the people close to me?

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* Not familiar with sportsball? If it is a team sport and involves something similar to a ball (football, baseball, soccer, etc), it probably falls under the category of sportsball. 

A User’s Guide to Rejoicing With Those Who Rejoice

1: Stop thinking about yourself for a hot second.

2: Think about life from the perspective of some other person.

3: Rejoice with them.

This might seem overly simplistic. It’s not. Rejoicing with others is very simple, even though it might not be very easy. An exciting job. The perfect grad program. A wonderful relationship. When the people around you are getting things that you want but don’t have, it may seem difficult to truly rejoice with them, but I want to encourage you that deep down, its not really that complicated. Mostly, you and I just need empathy.

For me, one of the biggest barriers to rejoicing with others is my own selfishness. Luckily, there is good news*. For one thing, you don’t have to cease thinking about yourself FOREVER and suddenly become some superhuman in order to rejoice with others. If you can manage it for even a little bit, you are well on your way! My problem is that I usually make it to step three and am in the middle of rejoicing when all of a sudden thoughts of myself come crashing back in, and I remember all the reasons why whatever I am rejoicing over in someone else's life makes my life seem sad or negatively affects me. At this point, you can choose to remain focused on yourself, or you can choose to focus on the other person. I’m not suggesting that you choose emotions (if you can control how you feel, please teach me how!) but it is much more doable to choose where you continue to focus. More good news… your emotions come naturally depending on where you are focusing.

Real life example: my best friend recently got engaged! I am so happy for her! Really, it’s super exciting. Now, does her exciting relationship make me feel more single? I don’t understand how it is possible for one to be more single… but yes. ;) Realistically, does her upcoming marriage mean that I won’t be able to spend as much time with her, and that our relationship will change as she makes a promise to be someone else’s best friend? Yeah, and that’s sad, because I love her a lot and it will be hard to share her. So if I only ever look at circumstances from my perspective—how things make me feel, how they affect my life—it might be hard to rejoice sometimes. But I love my friend! And if I choose to look at things from her perspective, I know that this is super awesome, amazing, exciting, and worth rejoicing over!

The trick is to choose whether you WANT to rejoice with someone else in the moment or not. You don't have to be a captive to your emotions. I am not saying that you can’t feel your own emotions… you totally can! The great thing about rejoicing with others even if it’s hard is that you don’t have to do it continuously. In the moment, when you are with that other person, you can rejoice with them in love. There will be another time and place for you to reflect and feel and process, and it will be valuable to work out your own feelings then. But at the moment when you are at step three and your own feelings start to creep in, you can decide that now is not that time, and continue to…

Step 4: repeat steps 1-3**.

P.S. In case you should need proposal ideas...

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* Yes, I completely intended to make that double entendre. There is some good news in the fact that it is not impossible to overcome the barrier of your own selfishness and love those around you. There is better news that in a greater sense, it is impossible for you by yourself to overcome your selfishness... But God sent his son to live the sinless life that you couldn’t and die so that your sins are forgiven, which frees us love like him. And that, my friends, is the gospel, which literally means “good news.”

** To be completely honest, once I have veered off of step three, I usually need to take a stop back at the cross and remind myself that Christ died for my sins (including the selfishness that just got me off track) so that I might be righteous instead of condemned for my failures. And he does that because he loves me, which motivates me to love others, which takes me back to step one condemnation-free and with extra motivation. It’s a more complete cycle :) 

Why Fear Is (Mostly) Not Adaptive But Comes So Naturally

Things that scare my cats:

Things that slightly scare me:

-Since I have gotten home, I have had an inexplicable desire to listen to country music in my car. I can’t explain it, and I can’t resist it.

-The other day my Mom left me a note in which she said she was going to “have chats” with someone. She is picking up my weird language quirks. What will be next?

-I have transitioned from calling the girl I lived with for the past four years “my roommate” to “my college roommate.” It is slightly devastating that I will (presumably) never live with her again.

-I don’t have a job, or know when I’m going to have a job. I’m in this weird in-between phase in my life and I don’t know when it’s going to end.

-I miss my church family at Gettysburg, and I have no idea how long it will be before I feel like I am ‘in community’ again. I know it’s time to find a new church but the thought of actually going out and finding one? Ahhh.  

I can’t actually say that fear isn’t adaptive, because every evolutionary psychologist in the world will freak out. Also, my cats’ tendency to run away from dogs (and some of my cousins) could potentially increase their lifespans. We fear things that we think might hurt us—whether that fear is realistic or not—and our fear makes us recoil from those things. However, after studying child anxiety for a year, living life, and reading the bible, its clear that fear is more harmful than helpful. Being cautious and not stepping out in front of a bus will keep you alive; being fearful of buses is just going to make it difficult to use public transportation.

Why is fear unhelpful? Because so often, fear is a false message that the worst is going to happen, combined with a desire to keep that from happening even though it is out of your control. Being afraid that I am going to be jobless forever and have no future does not help me enjoy the gifts and talents I have—it doesn’t make biology or psychology any more fun—nor does it help me to find a job. Oh, it might motivate me slightly more to look for a job, but it’s more of a pressure than a motivation, and it leaves me tired and discouraged at the end of each day. Fear makes me wants to control things that I can’t. Ultimately, God is the one who is sovereign, not me. He will provide; he always has in my past, and he says in his word that he knows what is good for us and will give us good things. This doesn’t mean I get to be lazy and take no responsibility for my life, but it means that God will bring what I need—whether that is a job, a grad program, or a bible-believing, vibrant church—into my life at the right time, either through me or despite me.

You and I will fear things… fear is a natural cue when we are in danger of missing something that is important to us, or when we are in danger of having something we have been trying to avoid. These fears can be totally rational, or maybe not. Sometimes we are afraid of fire. Sometimes we are afraid of the smoke detector. In either case, if we hold on to fear, we live a life of debilitating anxiety, constant vigilance, and overwhelming pressure. And that doesn’t sound much like living to me.

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?”   -Matthew 6: 25 & 27