a post of scattered thoughts

Life is not like linear algebra: that’s a known fact, but as I was talking to a friend this morning, I was realizing how very true that is – especially in this season of life where I came back from an intense experience abroad and am preparing for my final year of college and then …?? Where am I going? What am I supposed to DO with these new perspectives I’m trying to process? Where is it taking me? I want to figure it out: now. Unfortunately, I’m learning that you can’t figure it out all at once.

Last semester I walked into my professor’s office on a Friday afternoon and proceeded to talk to him for an hour about life after graduation and grad school. He is one of the reasons I miss Gordon so much right now – I miss those conversations with professors who not only teach me, but also listen to me and care about me as a student and person. They provide advice that continues to be helpful, even hours, days, and months after the conversation ends. After giving some practical advice about grad school, he said: “Alyssa, God has plans for your life. Vocation is real” and he told me how as he looks back on his life, he sees how God has led him to where he is today, even though it didn’t necessarily make sense as he was taking those steps.

I walked away from that conversation encouraged and hopeful. Yet I think that the implications of what he said are much bigger. Life isn’t necessarily a straight path and sometimes I really wish it were. I wish that my semester would lead me immediately to point B and from there I would continue on to point C and then D. But it isn’t like that. While I was in Costa Rica a friend of mine emailed me and encouraged me to be patient with myself and said that you don’t know how these experiences are going to influence you in the months and years to come. That was a freeing statement for me – freedom for me to let God do the work in my life, for him to use the experiences and conversations to change and shape the way I think and see the world. Yet for me, this requires a lot of patience and a lot of waiting and confusion because that process often doesn’t make sense. But I hope to be a person where at the end of my life, I can look back and see how God used and placed people, relationships, conversations, and experiences to lead me to wherever he wants me to be and however I think and react to situations around me.

“God has plans for your life.” I am honestly not sure how to respond to this. A few months ago that statement excited me, but now it makes me a little fearful and I am trying to understand what my commitment is to a God who will lead me in and through the uncertainties and confusions of life. He might lead me to the right and left, up and down, east and west, and while I know that these plans are good, I feel the tug in another direction because of my own fear and a desire to follow an easy path of doing what I believe makes sense as is "part of the equation" (you know – y=mx +b).

So where is my semester and my experiences taking me and changing me? I don’t know yet. I know it’s caused me to question a lot of things and to really seek understanding of who Jesus is and what his message means to me and to people around the world. It’s given me new family and friends and a host of conversation topics. But I also need to wait. I need to listen and learn and explore and jump into life and wait expectantly for God to use and teach me things …and to let him use Nicaragua and Cuba and Costa Rica as part of the picture and lessons that are continuing to unfold. There is still so much to be learned from my time in Latin America and the years before it and weeks so far after it, and I can’t do it all at once. It will probably be a lot of zig-zaggy lessons leading me here and then there…but I need to be patient, willing, and ready for wherever they take me.

new england: me hace falta

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,

Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,

Join with all nature in manifold witness

To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love

[summer]

[winter]

[springtime]

[harvest]

tribute to the tanz

[beach beaut]

i'm not much of a cat person - partly because of allergies, but they're also not particularly nice to me (if you would like to hear a funny story about me cat-sitting, you should ask...this might explain my problems with cats). anyways, enough about cats: i love dogs -- the ones that are sweet and fun and sort of dumb, but they're so cute they make up for it. that description describes our dog tanya pretty darn well and i know she was the perfect addition to our family 11 years ago. so to pay tribute to my dearest tanya vanbaker, here are 10 things that you may or may not know about her:

1. tanya's original name was taffy. i think we called her taffy for about a week before we decided we didn't like it and decided to re-name her. thankfully this time her name stuck

2. tanya is an expert gopher hunter. currently, the gopher count in our yard is at 9 gophers. my mom takes tanya outside to wherever the gopher hole is and tanya sniffs out where to set the trap and...9 counts later, we have a successful gopher hunter team! she also loves gardening and gets this cute smile on her face with perked ears and dirt on her nose & paws.

3. tanya loves chasing birds - and this has been a problem. one afternoon i decided to go rollerblading with her and we went by a neighbor's house who had a pet chicken-like bird in their front yard. since i was on wheels (never doing that again!) i couldn't hold on to the leash and tanya took off and got the bird literally in her mouth. somehow i got the bird OUT of her mouth and it ran off. it was a very embarrassing conversation to have with the neighbor later that afternoon

"Hi, my name's Alyssa and I was rollerblading down the street and my dog got your bird in her mouth...I'mreallyreallyreallyreallysorryisthereanythingicando??!"

Thankfully the neighbor happened to be a bird doctor and was able to help the bird recover

5. she likes apple cores and orange slices and sniffs them out from wherever she is in the couch to find you in the kitchen eating your afternoon snack

4. tanya LOVES the beach. maybe going along with the bird theme, she loves chasing the birds along the sea shore (yep, got one of those in her mouth too which was taken to animal rescue!). she loves the waves, and the sand, and then laying in the sun

[annual christmas present]

6. puppy training was a complete disaster: we spent the majority of the time trying to find her mingling with the other puppies and she didn't listen to any of our commands (rather embarrassing when you are the only family whose dog doesn't "come" when called but is instead sniffing the trash cans). somehow she "passed" the class...

7. we have never had a successful tomato crop because she always finds some creative way of attacking the garden (believe me, my mom has tried every trick possible to keep her out, but to no avail)

8. she once ate a plate full of brownies and had to get her stomach pumped and they found all kinds of weird things in their like a bouncy ball and a peach pit

9. she is quite sneaky and seems very well-behaved outside without her leash and then BOOM, she is off, running down the street. one time we had her leash tied to a big bounce ball which we thought would keep her in, but instead she took off with it trailing behind her and ran into the neighbor's house and the ball knocked down their new lamp.

10. she sleeps about 22 hours of the day

love ya tanz!