SINGLE LADIES

Family curse? Call it what you will, but there’s got to be some explanation behind the perpetual state of singleness that my sister, my cousin, and myself find ourselves in. Out of the ten cousins on my mom’s side of the family, every last one of the seven boys are taken while we three girls remain as unattached as can be. Did I mention that we ladies are all in our mid-to-late twenties? Or that even our cousin who’s still in high school is in a relationship – and we aren’t? What’s happening here?! The crème de la crème is that other family members have not only taken note of it but have spent time pondering the matter. Recently my oldest male cousin (who’s getting married this April) posted this gem on my sister’s Facebook wall (yes, I just referred to Facebook) entirely out of the blue:

“Don't worry about the whole being single thing. You are dealing with some kind of higher force. I discovered this one cold winter evening when I realized that every male on the Fisher side of the family is in a relationship and every female is single. Fisher Phenomenon at its finest.”

Whatever it is, I hope that this ‘phenomenon’ is nearing an end, partially because I think we girls are pretty darn amazing and deserve to find someone special, but even more so because I don’t want any other people in my family to have to spend a “cold winter evening” mulling over our singledom.

In the meantime, it’s time to enjoy Christmas festivities, and then it’s off to Bavaria. . . I mean, Leavenworth. . .to spend quality time with the Fisher fam., including every single significant other of the male cousins. Of course. If you feel inclined to get me something for Christmas, a nice gentleman for me, or my sister, or cousin, would be more than welcome.


Merry Christmas to you and yours!

REALITY CHECK

No one's stopping you but yourself. That's something I casually mentioned to my sister in response to something trivial the other day. As soon as the words were out of my mouth though I no longer saw them in the context of our conversation, but rather was convicted by the reality that that's exactly what was happening on a larger scale with some matters of my own life. My own words have found me guilty as charged. I don't want to be one of those people who lives by the saying "do as I say, not as I do," even more, I don't want to be responsible for holding myself back. I want to lead by example. When I give advice to others, I want them to have confidence in it, in me, because I veered away from hypocrisy and took my own advice. Most importantly, I want to have faith in myself, in my dreams, and in God's plan for me and to not be the one stopping myself. I know that I've referred to it before, but I think that this quote is relevant and worthy of a re-read, and so I sign off with this, my newly adopted mantra: "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined," (thanks Mr. Thoreau).

HERE COMES THE SUN

I wasn't so fond of my day yesterday. Today though, today I found joy in the simple beauty all around me. I mean, how could you not find joy with things like these?

It was just what the doctor ordered.

HOME

They say that home is where the heart is. I agree, but I also posit that where the heart is is home. I've been lucky enough to call a number of different residences and towns 'home' over the years, whether for only a short time or for the bulk of my life, they all have been worthy of being called a home of mine. They've each provided me with shelter, refuge, memories, opportunities for growth, new experiences, familiarity, friendship, and most importantly, love. As such, a little piece of my heart has been left with all of them. And while they may no longer be the place that I am living at at the moment, they will always be home to me. (Lest they forget it, sometimes it's necessary to go to drastic measures, i.e. carving your initials into the windowsill of your childhood bedroom. . .when you're 20 years old, to leave your mark.)

Being just shy of a quarter-century old, I am aware that I'm probably nowhere near done accruing new places for my heart to fall in love with and to claim as a home. As I look back on the changes that have already happened in my life, and ponder those yet to come, I can't help but wonder, where will my heart and my home wind up being next? I suppose I'll find out soon enough.

GYM RATS

I majored in Sociology. Suffice it to say, people, and their interactions, fascinate me. I’ve come to find that a great place to indulge this interest is none other than the gym. Ah yes, the gym; where one can find those whose lives revolve around working out, those who’re trying to shed those pesky extra pounds, those who view it as a prime date-finding arena, and even those who’re there simply for appearances. Because of the wide variety of reasons that people may be at the gym, gym-goers provide an excellent, and amusing, sampling of social culture as a whole.

One of the best occurrences at the gym is what I like to refer to as "vulturing." You know, when someone is eyeing a piece of equipment that's in use, staying close by, and then pouncing on it once the person's done with it so that no one else can swoop in to use it before them? Especially when the gym's busy, vulturing can be a very useful tool. Without fully developed vulturing skills though, one may wander just a wee bit too far and then find that suddenly it's anybodies' game. I've been there. There's nothing worse than seeing the object of your desire become available but as you work your way through the maze of sweaty people and oddly shaped workout machines your eyes settle on someone else who's moving in the same direction with their eyes on the same prize. Uh oh. Inevitably this leads to more than one person reaching the coveted equipment piece at the same time, at which point the proverbial "Oh, were you about to use this?" "That's okay, you can go for it" "Are you sure?" "Um, yeah, definitely" interaction ensues before the defeated person sulks away, vowing to A. run like the wind to beat the other person next time, B. tell the next person that "As I a matter of fact I am going to be using this right now, you'll have to wait your turn", or C. stand right next to the desired workout machine while it's in use next time, even if it's incredibly awkward for both people involved. . . which it most likely would be. I’m not exactly a fan of being on the receiving end of these events, but to witness others endure them while slaving away pumping iron myself? Wonderfully entertaining.

Some other favorites while at the gym include: the person who talks on their cellphone, loudly, the whole 30 minutes they’re on the elliptical (thank you for sharing your conversation with us – and I’m all for multi-tasking, but, really?!); the cute old men who attempt to make small-talk with anyone working out within a 10 ft. radius of them; the guys who never venture out of the free-weight area, are the exact same guys in there on any given day of the week, and as a result, are all good buddies with each other; and the people (yes, myself included a lot of the time) who have headphones in from the instant they walk in the door all the way up until they’re walking out the door, regardless of what they’re doing while in the gym.

Thank you gym and fellow gym-goers for indulging my people-watching tendencies, you make working out a bit more enjoyable.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I've been dwelling on some quotes that I scribbled down while attending the Willow Creek Association's Leadership Summit this past summer. These are particular ones that, as of late, have been floating around in my head and are wiggling their way into my (ongoing) life-planning. If you feel so inclined, feel free to entertain these thoughts in your own life as well:

~ Sometimes the comfortable thing to do is the wrong thing to do.

~ You've got to be prepared to adjust.

~ If you are of religious faith, it'd be odd if it didn't have an impact on your job/on what you do.

~ Leadership is your duty to do if you can do it.

~ The joy of achieving something makes the pain all worthwhile.

~ Make the decision to say "yes" to God every time He asks something of you. You don't have to understand the implications of it, you just have to say "yes" -- sometimes the best paths one has gone down were ones where they had no idea where they were going.

~ This isn't the pre-game, this is the game. You have one life to live full on for God, one life to develop your leadership to the fullest potential.

~What're you going to live for? What will you lay it down for?

TRICK OR TREAT?

I may have reached the age (okay, I reached the age a good while ago) when it's no longer admissible to dress up and go trick or treating, but this item that I stumbled across today provides quite the novel alternative when it comes to celebrating the holiday:

“I grew up in a college town, and one Halloween our doorbell rang and we opened the door expecting to see trickortreaters—but what was in front of our open door—was another door! Like, a full-on wooden door, that had a sign that said ‘Please knock.’ So we did, and the door swung open to reveal a bunch of college dudes dressed as really old grandmothers, curlers in their hair, etc, who proceeded to coo over our ‘costumes’ and tell us we were ‘such cute trick or treaters!’ One even pinched my cheek. Then THEY gave US candy, closed their door, picked it up and walked to the next house.”*

Not only do I love this, but I'm determined to do it at some point in my life. . .even if it entails my being a real-life old grandmother by the time it happens.





*story courtesy of mylifeisaverage.com -- knowledge of said website courtesy of the good 'ol teenagers in my life who seem to know every nook and cranny of the internet

I'M NOT DONE WITH YOU YET. . .HOPEFULLY

Dear East Coast,

I'm not going to lie, this break up has been hard on me. I've been able to enjoy a lot of this past month when I've been around my family and friends, but in the still moments where it's just me and my thoughts, the fact that we're not together right now hits me hard. Remembering our time together, sometimes it feels as though it was all just a dream and never happened in the first place, other times, a grieving feeling rises up from the pit of my stomach and makes me acknowledge that I lost something I truly loved. I know this was my own doing, and I apologize for ending things rather unexpectedly and abruptly, but I had to do what I had to do at the time. I'm still trying to figure out where you fit in my life, but I'm pretty sure that the saying 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' rings true here. I don't know what the future holds, but I hope that you haven't written me off just yet. Give me time, and hopefully we can work through this. Until then. . .

With love,

HAVING FAITH WHEN IT'S MOST TOUGH TO HAVE IT

"Again and again, Ordinary lost his way. Again and again, he cried out for the Dream Giver to show him the way. But no answer came. Why had he ever trusted the Dream Giver to guide him in the first place?"

How often do we find ourselves floundering in the midst of our attempts to find our way in life? How often do we cry out for help, direction, guidance, only to be met with silence? It's so easy, at least for me, to get frustrated and upset at those times. To wonder why I can't ever seem to stay on track. Or to wonder why God is not making His way known to me in spite of my crying out and my so-called 'trust' in Him. But to allow those times to have a foothold on our lives, to wallow in what we perceive our reality to be, we miss out on the opportunity to extract meaning from those instances. Looking back on particular instances in my life, there were times where something beyond my control happened and set my life heading in a different direction than I had planned, than I had prayed for, and to be honest, in the heat of the moment my reaction at those times consisted of being distraught, feeling lost and even betrayed. Given time, and with the clarity of hindsight, though I was able to see that it was those same instances that procured opportunities for my life that would not have happened otherwise, that turned out to be better things than what I had been planning for myself. Those seasons of life allowed me to learn more about myself, to grow in new ways, and to readjust the way in which I trusted God -- no longer trusting that He'll provide what it is that I think that I want, but trusting that He'll provide what He knows that I need. They may not be easy times of life but in persevering and having faith they may provide even greater things for us yet.

"Later that same day, Ordinary was eating some fruit beside a trickle of water, when he saw his journey through the WasteLand in a whole new way. Food enough for the day. Water, when he needed to drink. A path to follow that led to Faith. How could he have been so blind? Even when the Dream Giver had been nowhere in sight, he had always been near." - The Dream Giver

LIFE'S UNFOLDING JOURNEY

Boomerang. A flying apparatus that, when thrown properly, returns to where it was thrown from. As applied to humans, a person who spreads their wings to fly and yet returns right back to where they started from. This is my second time boomeranging. I’m chagrined to admit it, but it’s the truth and therefore is inescapable – believe me, I’ve tried to escape it and you just can’t outrun the truth, dang. On one hand, I suppose the current state of my life could be perceived as a good thing in that A. having a quarter-life crisis may eliminate having a mid-life crisis later on, or, at least, B. it will make a mid-life crisis seem like a walk in the park – I’m pulling for A. At any rate, here I am, wondering just what it is that I’m doing here and attempting to figure out what’s next to come in this journey of life. I find myself floating somewhere between uneasiness and optimism, fearful of getting stuck in a rut, of settling, but hoping to overcome such things and make my future into whatever I want it to be. Just today I dove back in to one of my favorite books, Bruce Wilkinson’s The Dream Giver, and have been eating up every word of it, finding insight and encouragement that I've unconsciously been in need of. In particular, this snippet was among many which stuck with me today: “He wouldn’t waste another day waiting for his Dream to seem possible. He would find a way to pursue it.” Fabulous. And so, in this season of adventures, and misadventures, and with a new sense of gumption inspired by Mr. Wilkinson’s work, my intention is to move beyond the possibilities of my dreams into the probability of them. Making use of this time in my life to enjoy the freedom of where I'm currently at all while whole-heartedly pursuing my dreams until they are a reality, until they are what's next in my life's journey. Here we go. . .

-

-

“Isn’t it time to begin? You’ve waited long enough.
Your dream is beating in your chest.
Do you feel it?
Tell your friends the news.
Pack your bags.
It’s time to follow the Dream Giver on the journey to your Dream.” – The Dream Giver

RANDOMNESS IN ALL ITS GLORY

If you've spent enough time with me you're probably well aware of my love for the word random. *Ahem, note the title of the blog.* I tend to use the word a little too often, quite typically to describe things that may not really be random in all actuality. According to Merriam-Webster though the definition of random is as such: "lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern." Interesting. No wonder I love random so much, that definition is pretty much an accurate summation of my life. I would like to argue that most of life, not just my own, is in fact random when you think about it though. After all how many things in life truly are definite anyway? We may intend for them to be definite but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will be, there are almost always circumstances, matters, experiences, etc. beyond our control that can effect what happens. One of my favorite quotes reads: "Make your plans. But write them on paper, not in concrete. God and life have a way of intruding and leading you on a journey that you might not have anticipated in your wildest dreams." God knows His plans for us but to us life is often random, and people are random too, and so sometimes the best thing we can do is to trust in God, hold on tight, and enjoy the ride. Besides, randomness adds a little spice to life. Don't you think?


And now, simply for your viewing pleasure, I leave you with some of my favorite random (by my own definition) pictures. Enjoy:

A Jesus nightlight

A drive-in liquor store

"Pin the Baby in the Manger"

Mr. No-Sleeve Sweatshirt riding a horse bareback


An unfortunate Native American by the name of Young Man Afraid of His Horses

ODE TO FRESHMAN YEAR

To all you wide-eyed college freshmen out there, as someone (among millions) who's been where you are now, here are a few words of wisdom as you embark on your first year of college:

- regardless of if your living situation was your first choice or not, try and make the most of it

- make your dorm room as 'homey' as possible, even if it means nauseatingly bright colors everywhere

- get involved in campus activities (i.e. intramurals), not only is it a great way to meet new people but it will help you keep your sanity in the midst of all of your schoolwork

- take advantage of 'inclimate weather' days to ditch the books for awhile and enjoy whatever the weather brought with it

- be sure to get off of campus and explore your surroundings (besides, it's a great opportunity to pose for pictures)

- surround yourself with people whose company you enjoy

You'll come to find, learning while in college doesn't take place only within the classroom, it happens wherever you go and in whatever you do -- it takes place in your interactions with your peers, it happens in the midst of attending sporting events, and it even manifests itself when you're doing your own laundry for, perhaps, the first time in your life. Take this time to learn and grow in whatever capacity possible, drink it all in, and let it be a stepping stone to even greater things for you.

LESSONS FROM AMERICA

"You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here, I believe that much unseen is also here." - Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

It can be so easy to get swept up in the pressures and dredges of the world, to get lost within our own lives, that we often lose sight of all that is around us, especially the good, simplicity that surrounds us. One sure way to reconnect to the heart of things is to spend some time in what is deemed "the heartland of America." While it may not be a place I myself am inclined to call home, it certainly holds a place in my heart for its ability to hold on to the basic important matters of life. Traveling the open road from Virginia right through the middle of America to Washington I encountered Southern hospitality, small town pride, countless homages to history, moral and family values, strong work ethics, and my own love of varying landscapes. From the refreshing sight of a closed up downtown on a Sunday in Paducah, Kentucky, to the kindness of strangers asking to take a picture of my mom and me in front of the St. Louis Arch so that we could both be in the picture; from the unsolicited yet welcomed car advice from a fellow traveler at a rest area in Kansas, to the home-style cooking at the small diners in Limon, Colorado and Snowville, Utah; the simplest of things have swelled my heart and reopened my eyes to all that is good and right in this country, and in this life. In this season of transition, while I still battle with all that it entails, I'm very grateful for what the open road brought into my life and mind. It didn't hurt any that to top the trip off I was able to partake in one of America's favorite past-times as well.

The heart of America has reminded me that it is the simple things in life that can create the most joy and happiness and I am going to cling to that as I head into this next chapter of life, whatever it turns out to become.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Living the life of a vagabond, my last few days have looked a little something like this:

More to come. . .

TRULY RANDOM RUMINATIONS

Recent Frustration - How am I supposed to verify that I am not a spambot if I can't even read the letters that I'm being asked to type because they're all squished together or curve in abnormal ways? And no, I don't appreciate having to attempt 5 times to authorize my identity because of it. I promise I'm a real person. . . and literate.

Interesting Tidbit -
I hung out in a landfill the other day. Okay, so it used to be a landfill and is now a park, but still. Mt. Trashmore is pretty neat because something that was once, literally, full of crap has now become a beautiful gathering place. I, for one, am appreciative of its transformation since it provides for a great place to go for a scenic jog, not to mention, most recently, it also gave me a chance to play with my new camera.

Truth -
Exactly a week from today I am moving out of my apartment. . . at which point I will be a couch-hopper for two days before taking kids to camp for five days. . .after that, only time will tell where I'll be.

Pertinent -
These lyrics (courtesy of Fernando Ortega):
"Take heart, my friend, we'll go together,
This uncertain road that lies ahead,
Our faithful God has always gone before,
And He will lead the way once again."