Soft Ground.

  

There are only three ways to pack to go home from college:

1. The "I had to make a list of my lists so I remembered everything" packing job:

- Prep time: 6 hours (and that one time when you wake up in the middle of the night and remember to put "face wash" on your "bathroom items" list).

- Ingredients: Every pair of socks you own (just in case, and gosh you can't have too many), five pairs of shoes, your phone charger, the printer, the bed, and the squirrel sitting outside your window.

- Yields: A suitcase that one cannot close, and an overwhelming amount of things to repack.

- Bonus: You lost the list.

2. The ever-popular "Quickly throw everything into the bag and assume everything is accounted for"

- Prep time: Approx. 4 minutes 

- Ingredients: "I need...socks..yes socks..." and "Oh, right...deodorant would be pleasant wouldn't it?"

- Yield: Arriving to destination with only socks and deodorant. 

and of course:

3. The PERFECT pack. 

- Prep time: 30 minutes or less.

- Ingredients: The perfect combinations of clothing, toiletries, and God's blessing.

- Yield: The PERFECT pack. Nothing missing, nothing superfluous. 

   I have personally experienced of all of these styles. I take a full trunk to camp, carefully checking off each thing--only to end up with way too many things and I ALWAYS lose the list. I tried to pack for a week in New York the summer before my senior year, and I suppose seventeen-year-old Ellen decided jeans were not necessary. I have never been more cold in my life than riding a ferry in shorts. 

     "Are you cold Ellen?"  

     "No." 

     "You sure...because its cold enough that we can see our breath."

     "Can we? Wow." 

     "Ellen... you are obviously cold, your legs are purple." 

     You can only play it cool for so long when you have purple legs. 

      But, this Thanksgiving break, I have achieved what I thought was impossible:

      I have achieved the PERFECT pack. Not a single thing out of place. Nothing extra, and I am already close to having it packed up.

      Now, there is a lot more to carry home than just luggage. More than a back pack. More than the pile of dirty laundry you are hoping to clean at home so it does not carry the distinct smell of dorm washers. The second time home, a typical college student is carrying home expectations. It has been discussed several times among my friends and I that have returned home. "Which is my home, here or school?" we ask. Our expectations of what home will be like, or what our friends will be like, or how it will compare to school are tested over the holiday. 

     In my fantasy world, I think I hoped that college would be a perfect situation where you get to have your cake and eat it too. At school, I would yearn for home. At home, I would yearn for school. I wanted Flower Mound to fulfill me in the same way it had when I lived there full time. Students carry the anxiety and guilt that feeling "at home" at college is dishonoring their original home, leaving it behind, or forgetting it altogether. At the same time, we feel okay about it, because it is natural to want to move on to the bigger world. 

     As someone I trust told me recently, "At home everything is chosen for you, by your parents, your community, but it's not your choices that determine your life most of the time. Going to college means that for the first time, you are making decisions that build a life that is completely own. If you miss college and want to go back, that probably means you made some good decisions."

    I have been struggling to reconcile my feelings between feeling "at home" at Hendrix, and realizing Flower Mound does not play the same role in my life that it used to. I have found that it takes recognizing that Flower Mound gave me gifts and people that at one time, built me up and loved me in the exact way I needed. Even if it does not feel the same now, Flower Mound served the exact thing I needed in my life--the way Hendrix serves me now. Flower Mound serves a new role, but it is not the main setting for my latest average adventure. I am thankful to God for every single moment when Flower Mound was used to shape me into the person I am. I am thankful for each day when living there was a new and exciting adventure. I am thankful for friendships that taught me how to love other people and put them before myself, even if they are distant now. Most of all, I am thankful that Hendrix is carrying me forward into a new chapter that includes Flower Mound as a place where I can reconnect to my roots, even if it means it plays a different role in my life. Which relieves the anxiety that I am dishonoring my time spent in my hometown. I can fearlessly embrace my new experiences at Hendrix without worrying that they are taking up more space in my heart. 

    God's greatest blessings carry over between chapters and seasons though. No matter where I live I am thankful for my family, my best friend, and FMUMC for being the sustained blessings that keep me going while I am all the way at Hendrix.

     Texas weather is easy to pack for. But, I know that upon my return, the upcoming week will be rainy, and I will miss the beautiful deep southern sunshine. 

     I love Arkansas rain for one reason alone: rain boots.

     

     Rain boots make a girl fearless. Want to walk to the library? Go through the grass. Giant puddle? Walk through, or better, stomp through! Regular shoes can only go so far, and even once they have drowned in several puddles, your toes are soaked cold. On a campus which often turns dormitories into water front property, I put on my rain boots the minute there are more than four clouds playing chicken in the sky. 

    There is a great moment when after a day of carrying a heavy backpack, and my back is sore, that I step in the mud on campus. For a brief moment, the ground absorbs the shock of the weight instead of my ankle, and I feel like God has used the Earth to relieve me of my weight I carry. 

    Gratitude does something similar I think. While our lives are being renewed like the Earth under the rain, gratitude makes us more fearless. Each obstacle becomes a new path to get where we are going. Perhaps even when we carry too many expectations in our back pack, God's Earth will absorb the weight and the shock. And hopefully we will remember, once again, that we have been--and will be--blessed all along our journey. 

LET GOd,

Ellen

Chameleon In a Snow Storm

There's some beautiful irony in the fact that college is for smart people, but when you get there you feel like an idiot.

After 43 days at college life, there is no greater feeling than remembering where you were at the beginning and saying: Oh my gravy! Look at how much I've grown as a human being since then!
When everybody gets here they know what their greatest weaknesses will be. You leave home and you have that list in your head of the things you will miss most. At first you have to ignore them and push forward, but after a while they start breaking you down.
If you are not a "crier" before college, you will be within a week and a half after moving in.

Now, luckily my parents were just here for parent weekend, which was a blessing. I had missed them so much, and there was a lot of relief in having them here to see all the things I have accomplished in the short time I've been at Hendrix. They also thankfully helped me build a bookshelf and brought me a second spoon so I don't have to stir my coffee and then dip into my raisin bran with the same spoon each morning (my entire breakfast experience has been drastically enhanced). On the other hand though, It has been 44 days since I have seen my church babies, 45 days since I've seen my best friend, and it's really easy to get torn apart by feeling the absence of those who are vitally important to you.

One of my most influential role models told me though, "College is about celebrating the little victories."

The greatest victory comes from fearlessly being yourself. Even people that have a good head on their shoulders reflect on their saturday where they did laundry or homework and consider whether partying would make them cooler or more normal. The truth is that the more you embrace who God needs you to be the better off you are. I've done my fair share of going and seeing what a party is like, some are fun. More often than not, I found that I wasn't being true to myself when I went out though. I'd rather be watching a movie with friends, or going out to late night ihop than trying to make conversation at a big party.

My greatest achievement thus far in coming to college was reaching out to my chaplains. After spending a few weeks asking why I didn't fit in quite right, I became a UMYF scholar, and met my closest friends. There is a lot of power in digging into faith as a college student. There are a thousand reasons to drop faith when you're scrapped for time, but as I prepare to do internships in the coming summers, I find that enriching my college life with faith is helping me grow into the adult I need to be. I love being a UMY (You-me) because I have a great mixture of people around me that are from all sorts of backgrounds and social circles.

Its interesting to move from a very homogeneous town to a liberal arts college. I have been exposed to diversity here that encourages the "weird" or "strange" things in myself. For most people here, it has been a blessing to meet people that are so genuinely themselves. When you figure out how to be genuinely yourself and stick to it, that's when you become brave enough to be in college. I was terrified to live so far away from my best friend, my home, my church, but the truth is that all those things are still a part of all that I am. When I work with the middle school youth at my local church here in Conway, I remember mine back home. I remember the amount of grace and compassion they are capable of, and I am able to step up and be an adult because the youth counselors at FMUMC showed me how. My time in theatre showed me how to find the best in people, which has been invaluable to me here.

Another influential role model once told me "Blessings are not temporary, because you take them with you." College is the place where God takes every blessing you've ever received and uses it to bless you again. Every experience (good and bad), every great success, every failure, every person…if it taught you something even just once; they become blessings all over again.

I attend a freshman girls bible study on Tuesday mornings. One morning my chaplain asked if we were feeling overwhelmed. As always, I attempted to find a metaphor to explain how I felt about something. (This only works sometimes…most times it just gets played off as humor…) Out of my mouth though, came "Being a freshman in college is like being a chameleon in a snow storm." We laughed together, and shared a wonderful moment of fellowship as we compared what animals we felt like, but I feel accurate, as silly as the idea is. You can imagine the chameleon in the snow… this new environment is so overwhelming, its like nothing you've ever seen before. Its not bad, its just something you've never encountered. Snow? What is this cold thing that makes you uncomfortable and not yourself? You miss the temperate climate you came from, and you desperately try to blend in. Here's the secret though: there are so many other chameleons in the snow.
There are so many blessings to be found, and if you focus on how cold you are and how hard it is to fade to snow-white, you'll never see them. Its when you let yourself be green and fully what you were intended to be that other people can find you. That is truly the blessing of being created in the image of God.

So, how am I doing so far? I'm learning how to be brave, I'm learning how to study…and I'm learning how to creatively make lunchables into real food… but I tell you what, even when it's a hard day, I am trying to see myself as blessed. I now have the friends and resources on campus that I know I can reach out to. When all else fails though, I know I can call my family, my best friend, or my church family and they will give me good perspective.

LET GOd

-Ellen