Well, it's midterm time at school, and I'm not even going to bother making excuses for my now-normal lapse between posts. Things are CRAZY here.
Allow me to paint a mental picture:
- I'm taking five classes at school, all of them graded. Out of context this doesn't seem like that much, but the usual course load is apparently four, and classes at Luther are automatically pass/fail unless you request grades, which of course, being the nutty overachiever I am, I did. I'm loving the classes, though! Pentateuch and Hebrew are still my overall favorites, my Children Youth and Family Ministry class is proving to be the most helpful and applicable, History is by far my least favorite, but it's still informational, and two weeks ago I had my seminar on Human Sexuality and Faith, which was FASCINATING and I'm so glad I took it, but it was also pretty mentally and emotionally draining, and I have a big research paper to write for it that's due in December.
- My job working for Salem English Lutheran Church is going well, and I'm really enjoying it! (Take a look, I'm officially on the website!) I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing most of the time, but I'm learning how to create lesson plans, lead activities, and generally facilitate a LOT of stuff. Technically I work for all three churches that live in what we call the SpringHouse Ministry Center, so between three different small congregations there are special activities going on just about every weekend, plus I have meetings with the two of the three pastors every other week to keep everybody briefed on the program! Uffda!
- I'm still working about 12 hours a week with dad's company, and as of the beginning of October, Maddie and her boyfriend Charley have also joined the team, and we spent most of the month trying to get everybody on the same page with a lot of daily protocol. It's going much better now that they don't need me to be there every single day for training, and I'm really glad to have the income because without it I couldn't afford things like rent and groceries, but it's still a little bit stressful.
So outside of those things, I don't have very much time! I've made a bunch of friends at school, though, and we hang out over lunch periods and usually for an hour or two on Monday afternoons, and they're really fun to be around. And I still get to spend time talking to Ari on Skype most nights, which has basically been preserving my sanity. Thank goodness for a free way to spend time sort-of-together! We've gotten a system down where we occasionally just leave the video on while we do homework, and she tells me about the history of the French revolution, and I talk to her about connections between Jesus' sermons and the law codes in the Torah, and we're generally happy most of the time :-)
Lately I've been feeling like I'm dropping things, though. With all these responsibilities up in the air at the same time, I feel like the ones I've been dropping are my health and my relationships. Because I'm constantly rushing from one thing to the next, I don't have time to do anything with the attention and commitment that I'd like to, and I feel like it looks like I'm doing everything half-assed. Because I'm so fixated on doing a good job at church and getting good grades and making sure things get done with dad's company, I can't ever seem to find time to sleep, or to calm myself down after being around people and dealing with things that make me anxious. So all this has kind of resulted in waking up with headaches, sudden crashing, being sharp with people, and crying a lot. I'm trying to think myself out of this problem, but I can't seem to find anything that I can pay less attention to. For now I'm talking with people, like my mom, my academic adviser, my pastor at Salem, and others, and trying to just explain things as well as I can and see where there could be some wiggle room. I'm being forced to deal with the fact that I CAN'T deal with everything, and facing my own limitations isn't something I'm very good at. But, as one of my Sem friends says, when you want to get better at something, you practice it, and when you ask God for help with something, that doesn't mean it's going to get fixed; it means you're going to get some help practicing.
So, I'm concentrating on the moments when I DO get to settle down and appreciate the good things in my life. Like finding an awesome fall coat in a thrift store for $15 dollars. (Good segue, huh??)
