Seasons

I've had a wonderful break here at home. Friends and family quality time. A fantastic short term nanny job that dropped into my lap. Opportunities to regroup physically, emotionally, mentally, and all those others -allys from the past year.

In short, I've had a lot of time and space and I've spent it caught up in two places: dwelling in past seasons of my life and anticipating future ones.

Physical settings are often strongly associated with a specific time in my life. Hewitt/Woodway (the Waco burbs for those non-Central Texans) has my mind lost in decade-old high school memories. Waco and Baylor absorb me back into that magical undergrad experience. Traveling two hours north to DFW has me caught up in the first true support net I made for myself - that dear time and place where I had to become an adult of sorts.

I love revisiting all of these places and times. Through the grace of God and really good parents, I was able to navigate all three of these seasons fairly well. Each gave me cherished memories, relationships, and learning experiences. (In fact, I'm still learning from my time as a 17 year old.)

However, spending months amongst these places comes with strings attached in the form of heavy nostalgia. For me this leads to a kind of sweet melancholy. You can only engage so closely with former successful versions of your life for so long before a little bit of mourning comes into play. There are a few "what ifs" and some "if onlys" that will always be there, but there's also a lot of "I wish I still" and "I had no idea how good I had it."

See, the whole concept of seasons is not one of the things they warn you about when it comes to being an adult.

Of course there'll always be hundreds of people shouting out the normal words of advice:
"Use sunscreen now, unless you want skin cancer and crows' feet at 40."
"Whatever you do, stay out of credit card debt."
"Change that box of baking soda in your fridge."

In those three years out of college, I became really good at adjusting to typical adult things: budgeting, paying bills on time, getting my car's oil changed frequently, making it to work a few minutes early, eating green leafy foods, not letting my cat die (even though he tried kinda hard once).

But I was so unprepared for seasons. And I still am.

How do you mourn an era of your life? Is it ok to do that?

Why can't things be the same? Why can't you ever truly go back?

What if you don't want to move on yet?

No matter how perfect my current season looks to be, I'll always have an ache in the parts of my heart devoted to past versions of that current season.

I'll never have the metabolism or dance ability of senior year of high school again.
I'll never have the excitement of living with my best friend in the middle of Baylor campus again.
I'll never have the exact meeting of circumstances that made working at GFAA such pure joy again.

I don't want to go back and completely relive these times, but I miss the gifts they gave me that only existed for that certain period of time. The freedom of college, the naivety of high school, the dreams of a young graduate - these things all have expiration dates. Sometimes it seems simpler to go back before they became the spoiled milk in the fridge (that you didn't notice because of you always remember to change your baking soda box).

No matter how this writing is coming off, it's not a depressing thing. It's definitely bittersweet and a bit sobering maybe, but rediscovering old seasons for me has mainly been a roadmap of God's blessings throughout the last ten years of life. Seeing how much I've been provided for, how much grace has been extended my way - it's easy to get a little lost in it. But it's a beautiful kind of lost.

Dr. Seuss (as always) hits the nail on the head.

On top of all this sentimentality, my summer is a holding pattern of sorts in waiting for my final year of grad school to begin. I'm in the middle of my "London season"...but I'm not in London! It's strange to be missing this grad school season while I'm still in the midst of it.

I also can't stop my brain from imagining its aftermath. There are so many open ended questions for my next season and that bothers me. I get overwhelmed at the too-many options my roadmap shows for a year from now. What if I pick wrong? Move to the wrong city? Bet on the wrong opportunity? What if there are no opportunities?

Just like George RR Martin's readers, I desperately want to be assured that my fan theories are correct and that things are headed the way I want them to go. Or in the very least that my next book will be greater than its predecessors (but hopefully with a lot less violent deaths than George is like to put in).

Also, none of this tool.

Ultimately though, worry is eclipsed by excitement. My anxiousness over the possibilities doesn't match my glee over having them.

And I'm sure a few years down the road, a part of me will long for that lazy, Texas summer I got to spend not caught up in the problems of my present, but instead dreaming about the memories of my past and the secrets of my future.

To the beautiful bittersweetness of seasons,

p.s. - I made a little something about some of the many activities I actually have been up to this summer. I love you so much, Wacotown.

Dear Jenny

This past week, I wrapped up my last week of normally-scheduled classes for my first year of grad school. I would insert a huge, all-caps "WOOHOO/AHH IT'S ALL GOING TOO FAST" here, but I'm not anywhere near finished yet. We begin two priority weeks tomorrow where I'll be in rehearsals for Two Gentlemen of Verona from 10-6 everyday and on July 11th, we open at the Cockpit Theatre! Go here to order all the tickets your heart desires.

For our last context class, our professor had us read a letter written by Stephen Fry to his 16-year-old self. (If you're interested, you can find it here.) We were then tasked with writing our own letter, but this time to ourself at age 65. 

I would call the process of penning this letter overwhelming, emotional, fun, scary, depressing, hilarious, hopeful, and a range of other things. Very similar to the process of just being a girl.

Here are some excerpts from my final product:

Jenny –

            I wonder what’s most important to you now? I know that most of the things I cared so deeply about when I was 16 seem almost silly to me now, only 10 years later. I hope looking back at me won’t make you roll your eyes in scorn or facepalm out of embarrassment. I’d like to think I’m doing a pretty good job of being a general 26-year-old female human.

            It does feel hilariously prideful however, to be giving advice to a (hopefully) wiser person than me. Sometimes though with wisdom comes jadedness. Are you a cynic? I hope not. I hope you never stopped watching Disney movies and enjoying them for what they are. I hope you still wear the occasional ribbon in your hair. I hope when you meet a person, that you see them as a fully-realized, sentient creation with dreams and emotions just as important as your own. 

I used to see becoming an adult as a very small and very rigid box. But it doesn’t have to be that, does it? Maturity doesn’t have to be boring. Sure, be financially responsible, be emotionally available, be accountable in your relationships, but every now and then stay up all night with friends. Take everything in your fridge and try to make one meal out of it. Give yourself a day off to do something stupid. Or do nothing at all. I can already hear you sighing in exasperation, by the way. (I'm already famous for my exasperated sighs.) “That's all easier said than done.” I believe you. The trend for life so far has been to get harder, not easier. I can only imagine how difficult – how heavy – things might be at times for you.

            What gets you through that heaviness? Through the brokenness that you see everyday in the world and in your heart? My go-to’s are Philippians 4:13 and Jeremiah 29:11. I know - super cliché Christian, right? But they're overused for a reason, I think. Maybe my greatest wish for you lies in the fact that you still meditate on those promises and stand in their truth more fully than I can comprehend right now. Because if there’s one thing I could change about myself at the moment, it would be a complete realignment of my heart to the Gospel. I ache for my worth and my joy to be found wholly in God. It’s so hard pinning down your value on any other option. Achievements are fleeting. People are unreliable. Money is a sucky deity. Placing the meaning of my life is any of these ultimately leads to failure. Hopefully you're better at recognizing this than me.

Ok, some quicker, closing thoughts:

Stay active – doesn’t matter how, just keep moving.
Don’t be friends with people who are rude to the waiter.
All good mornings start this way: snooze once, roll out of bed, stretch for five minutes, pray.
Don’t curse so much. It makes it more effective when you do.
To quote Pappaw: spend a little, save a lot.
Keep writing anything and everything.
Sunscreen and vitamin D supplements.
     (On a related note: go to the dermatologist. Even if you went last month, go get all your funny freckles looked at again.)
Remember the legacy of Matthew 25:23.

Floss.
Always have a needle and thread handy.

On stage and in life – earn your pauses.

And as always - sic 'em bears.

P.S. - on a slightly lighter note, as another part of wrapping up our skills classes, we had a musical theatre night where each one of my talented classmates performed. I had the pleasure of singing (in my opinion) one of the more underrated modern-era Disney songs. Feel free to take a peek -