Pure Joy

I sprinted up the driveway, breaths coming hard but steady and even, heart pumping strong with each beat to push life through my body. Heavy black clouds pursued my brother and me as we finished our evening run, and the drizzling rain which came in spurts warned of the downpour to come.

Racing against the storm, we climbed the steps to our porch and, turning around to watch, saw the rain pour out of the sky. As a girl who loves a good thunderstorm, and because I felt the rain needed a consolation prize for losing the chase, I ran out from under my shelter to greet the sheets of water.

I fell down spread-eagle on our driveway, the hard concrete at my back and the grey sky above with the raindrops striking my face like kisses from heaven. Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply and reveled in each sensation, each shred of experience, and the thoughts that came with them. My heart swelled, and I laughed aloud at the thought that life is a gift, and it is so good to be alive. God's power was evident in the wind, his gentleness appeared in the caress of the water on my skin, and I couldn't help but imagine him belly-laughing in heaven along with this child of his who was giggling like a little girl at the fun of getting soaked by the storm. Spirit called out to spirit; his to mine, and we lay in the rain together, as Father and daughter.

I also couldn't help but think that with a different perspective, it might have seemed a miserable and hopeless situation. If you looked at me with a narrow focus, I was there on the ground - wet and cold - with no shelter and no immediate or apparent way of escaping the rain. You would have pitied me and thought it was such a shame I was suffering like that.
But I had a different, broader perspective. I knew my house was right behind me, and I could go in when I was done, the wet and the cold wouldn't last forever. There would be food, a towel, hot tea, and my favorite pair of pajama pants. There was joy ahead, but there was also joy in the moment, made sweet by the knowledge of what was to come.

As a Christian, I should have a different perspective on life, in trials and pain. If I remember what is coming, what is ahead - the reward that Jesus promises and the incredible gift of himself and his unveiled presence when we go home to heaven - what joy that should give me in even the darkest trials and situations of life!
They will become bearable and even sweet in a way when I realize that Jesus is lying next to me on the driveway in the rain, and when it is time to go inside the house, I'll hand him a towel, he'll hand me a cup of tea, and we will rejoice in unhindered fellowship together.

I long for that day when Jesus and I will walk in his back door.

It's a boy!

Except not, because blogs don't have gender.
But I do want to announce that I've started another blog over at aprilether.wordpress.com

Feel free to join me over there if you like - I'll be talking about all sorts of grown-up kinds of things, such as big girl jobs, missions work, and this life of faith in Christ that I am trying to live.

I won't abandon this one. After all, every writer needs a place where he or she can write about platypuses, coffee, and crafting, but it's useful to have two different blogs for two different purposes.

All right then! I'll keep ya posted,

The Barista Confessions, part 2

What's your friendly neighborhood barista to do once she is no longer privileged to work behind the bar?

It's been eleven weeks since I last picked up a portafilter and a tamp or poured my best lopsided rosetta.
Not an extravagantly long period of time - I went without using my barista skills for much longer than that last summer break - but it feels much longer in light of the knowledge that I will not be returning to my favorite coffee-stained tan apron and massive poppa pot fresh brew filters in the fall.

All of the busyness and activity throughout my summer so far has been a distraction from remembering life as it was in McConn, but a few things happened recently that sparked a sudden nostalgia and reflection on my drip brew days.

The first happened about a month ago, when my sister and I ran the Sunburst 5K. If working up enough motivation to run 3.1 miles is difficult enough, it's even harder to do at 6:00 in the morning on a Saturday, and four years of college taught me that coffee is the answer to nearly any question, so I found myself at the closest Starbucks at 5:55 AM. Worried that they might not open in time for me to be caffeinated for this race, I glanced over at the hours of operation.
Open at 6:00 AM.
I stood there awkwardly in the front door, just playing with my phone and keys while I watched the lone employee scramble to get everything ready.
It reminded me of 7:00 AM shifts at McConn. As a happily self-proclaimed morning person, I have worked many opening shifts without complaint. But (and I'm going to be completely honest here, so if you're one of my former customers, please don't take offense) mornings don't often go as planned, and it can be frustrating to have a customer walk up to the register 4 or 5 minutes before the official opening time, pressuring you to be ready when your morning tasks have unexpectedly fallen behind schedule and you're still popping muffins in clamshells rather than putting the last touches on timing the shots.

Standing in the Starbucks that Saturday, I encountered for the first time what it is like to be on the other side of the equation. To be the customer awkwardly waiting for a coffee shop to open, rather than the barista frantically trying to set everything in rights behind the bar. To all my customers - I get it now. Too bad this experience didn't come sooner, so I could "get it" when I was still serving you.
I wanted to tell her I understood. I wanted to reassure her that I know what it's like to be in her position, that I didn't mean to cause her stress by being early. But I didn't. Hopefully, she has also experienced the early-morning coffee crunch, and was forgiving of my minor coffee house faux-pas.

Every spring, McConn holds an end-of-the-year party for all the employees. This party happened back in April, but a friend of mine recently finished editing the pictures she took at the party, and she shared them with us a few days ago, which brought on my second wave of nostalgia. As I scrolled through the smiling faces, I felt a strong longing for the community and friendship we shared. It's one of the best things I have ever had the privilege to be a part of.

Picture by Alicia Wines Photography

Finally, I volunteered last week at Camp Geneva, where I worked over the summer in 2012 as a camp nurse. It was an incredible week, full of friends, God, and lessons, but those are stories for another time. For now, I'll simply say that I was catching up with one of the girls at the end of the week when she mentioned her new job as a barista at Biggby Coffee in Holland. Since these are the barista confessions, I will admit that yes, I felt a twinge of envy at her news.
There are days when I have the crazy, hare-brained idea that I can get it all back. In light of my recent frustrations and discouragement with the job market for brand new graduate nurses, I am sorely tempted to ambush the nearest coffee shop and stiff-arm a copy of my resume to the barista behind the bar saying, "I have two years of coffee experience (one as a manager), and I'm desperate to be back where you are currently standing. HIRE ME."
But there are two reasons I refrain from confusing that poor unsuspecting soul. First, no matter how excellent any other coffee shop may be, it will never be McConn - you can't duplicate that place - and I would be bitterly disappointed by the comparison. Secondly, I recognize that part of my life has ended, and God is leading me to other things. It was good for a time, but now is not that time any longer, and he and I will have different adventures as we move on.

I will most likely never work in a coffee shop again, but espresso will forever run through my veins and I will always claim the title of "barista" just as strongly as I claim the title of "nurse". Nurturing the community of my campus, fueling caffeine addictions, and enriching a customer's day through a smile and a laugh brought me feelings of joy that resonate as clearly in my memory as they did in the moment they came, and I will continue to treasure those experiences.

Read from the beginning: The Barista Confessions, part 1

Of Marriages and Maids [part one]

On December 26, 2012 my sister asked me to be her Maid of Honor.

Well, technically it was December 27, 2012 seeing as she called me at 1:00 in the morning after her fiance proposed. I offered something along the lines of a guttural grunt of consent when she asked me the question, but to be completely honest, I don't remember most of the conversation due to my sleep-induced delirium and may very well have agreed to trade myself in for a goat or become a bondservant for the next seven years. 

Regardless of whether my future liberty is in question, the wedding planning is coming along well, and I couldn't be happier to support my sister in all of her bridal preparations. 

Yesterday completed my first major MOH responsibility - the bridal shower. I am quite possibly a tad bit more than an perfectionist and most definitely a lot more than a overachiever, so my mom and I were busying ourselves for weeks to get ready for the party, keeping my sister in the dark about most of our plans all the while. (After all, shouldn't the bridal shower be a surprise?)

It was more than worth it when everything pulled together that afternoon, and I watched Emily enjoying herself with the friends and family who came to celebrate with her in this exciting new change. After the party was over, she tried her veil on for the first time and I could picture her the way she will be on July 20. It just seemed right somehow, like breathing in a sigh after unconsciously holding your breath for a while.

Nearly 40 people squeezed into our living room to fellowship with our family. We ate fruit and cake, listened to Emily tell stories about Chad (always my favorite part), and played two shower games: the Price is Right, Bridal Edition and a memory game where we hid the bride from sight and the guests had to recall details about what she was wearing during the party. 

And next, of course, came the presents! With 40 people to give gifts, there were so many bags and boxes packed around our feet that we couldn't move, but each one was admired and appreciated with time to spare. 

Frozen lemons in the ice cubes for the lemonade, and mint leaves in the ice cubes for the iced tea

Chocolate Cinnamon fruit dip
(makes approximately 1/2 cup)

1/2 cup vanilla Greek yogurt
2 tbsp. Nutella
1/4 tsp. cinnamon

Mix ingredients together well. Serve immediately or refrigerate until needed.

Honey Vanilla fruit dip

1 cup vanilla Greek yogurt
1/4 cup honey
cinnamon to taste

Mix ingredients together well. Serve immediately or refrigerate until needed.

Bridal shower favors

Friends for 22 years, and favorite sisters for just as long

All of the girls from both families - Mother of the groom, bride, Mother of the bride, and sister of the bride!

Next up on the list: Bachelorette party. 

The 'rette party and my NCLEX exam are in the same week. Here's to hoping I come out the other end alive.

 

Welcome back

Here it is.

My first blog post as a college graduate.
An IWU alumna.
The holder of a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree.

But not a nurse quite yet. One more monumental obstacle remains.

The NCLEX-RN 2013.
The mother of all nursing exams. The test for which my graduating class has been preparing since we arrived on campus sophomore year, with bright eyes and brighter hopes because we were now NURSING STUDENTS. No other test has even come close. Not Sloan's Crit Care cardio test. Not Reed's Adult Health II final. Not even Wolgemuth's Pharmacology exams, aided by cheat sheets crammed so full of minuscule handwriting they were nearly illegible.

Notice how I've said "remains." Which means I haven't taken it yet. Which is why I haven't written anything in five weeks. When I first arrived home after graduation, I used lots of excuses to avoid cracking books for this test. Once I realized that this was probably not the study method that would lead to the most satisfactory results, I wised up and began reviewing information.

and information.

and information.

All of the information. From the past THREE YEARS.

Needless to say, everything else kind of lost its significance. Studying for a test that has the power to dictate whether or not you can practice where your passion lies really messes with your emotional stability.
On good days, I feel like Supernurse:

"Step aside, people. I can start IVs in one attempt on dehydrated veins with only my non-dominant hand and STILL maintain sterile technique. (Oh, and calculate titrated drip rates in my head at the same time.)"

But on bad days, you'll find me curled up in the fetal position on the floor as I slowly dissolve into a puddle of inefficacy, eyes fixated on that one point in space which will keep me from flying into a thousand useless pieces.

All that to say, I've been pretty preoccupied. Hopefully I will take the NCLEX before the end of the month, and this will all be behind me.

After the end of the semester, I was home for less than 24 hours when I told my father, 

     "Dad. I want to re-paint my room." 

And he said, 

     "Okay."

And I said,

    "But I'll do it all myself and...wait, what? Really?"

So for seven days, twelve hours a day, I completely immersed myself in Project Pinterestify April's Bedroom. It was fun at times, ridiculously hard work at others, and I pulled some life lessons out of it, which I can tell you about some other time if you're interested. Anyway, voila! The (almost) final result.

Eventually, the various paraphernalia on the floor will be on the walls. Eventually. 

Currently, my life consists of just four things: NCLEX prep, job applications, pursuing time with God, and helping my sister. I have one sister. One's all you need when you've got the best one.

She's getting married this summer (to a ginger by the way), and asked me to be her maid of honor. I've never been a maid of honor before, never even been a bridesmaid before, but goshdarnit I am going to be the best maid of honor there ever was for the best sister I've ever had.

We ran a 5K together this morning (um, yeah we're that cool), and I am so proud of her. So. much. fun.

More races in the future, yes?

That toe-tapping time [in be]tween

The Bible is a lot like Facebook.

Perhaps that statement requires a bit of explanation, lest you think I believe Moses had a timeline and posted daily selfies with captions like "Struck a rock today and a fountain came pouring out. #waterbender".

Let me rephrase. The stories I read throughout the old and new testaments can evoke the same emotions I feel when scrolling through my Newsfeed on Facebook.

Picture this: as I sit in front of my computer, chewing my nails to stubs while trying to fill out one more job application or figure out one more contingency plan in case something else falls through, my fingers somehow find their way to that gargantuan behemoth of a website in the obscure hope that the elusive words or thoughts I am looking for will be mysteriously hidden among the instagrammed pictures of food and overabundance of updates from Spotify. Scrolling through the posts reveals many words and thoughts, but not necessarily the ones I want to see.

This friend just accepted a position at a prestigious hospital!
This friend is going backpacking across Europe for four months!
This friend is going to graduate school!

I am truly happy for them, and yet discouraged at the same time. Why aren't these great, awesome things happening for me, too? Compared to the news from my friends and family, my life is so static, slow, and ineffective.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. There is a huge red flag right there. "Compared to the news..."
Compared to what news? What kinds of things do people post on the internet? Well I can tell you what they don't post. They don't talk about the two hours they spent cleaning. Or the half an hour they spent on hold with the insurance company. Or the grounds they spilled on the counter this morning while trying to start the coffee pot in the dark. Basically, the boring, monotonous things that happen to everybody all the time.
I wind up comparing my everyday, minute-by-minute, behind the scenes life with the glowing highlights of everyone else's.

Bad news bears.

So how is this like the Bible again? Right, I'm supposed to be making a point.
Consider the stories that we learn in Sunday School.
God promised Abraham he would become the father of a great nation, a multitude of people. And he did! He and Sarah had Isaac, who had Jacob, who had twelve sons, who then started the tribes of Israel.
Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, but he became second in command of all of Egypt and saved his family from a famine.
Moses became the leader of the Israelites,  following God's call to take them out of Egypt, and he performed many miracles through God's power.
Jesus had an incredible ministry, demonstrating God's love to us and showing us, through words and actions, how to live as a part of God's kingdom on earth. Then he conquered death in a final, resounding strike that echoed across every age and nation!

YEAH, GOD. I'm PUMPED. I'm READY. Let's go!

....Ready, go.

... ...Go?

...now?

And nothing happens. For a while. So I become discouraged when I'm not parting Red seas or raising people from the dead between raising my dead-weight body from the mattress and parting my bagel for the toaster oven. Am I missing something here?
Yeah, yeah you are, April. Let's go back and revisit some of those stories.

God promised Abraham he would become the father of a great nation.
God did this. And Abraham became the father of the Israelites.
And when did the nation of Israel begin?
Well, after Abraham was dead. The twelve tribes of Israel came from the twelve sons of Jacob who didn't even consider procreating until old Abe was long gone. Oh, yeah. What about Isaac, his promised son? Surely that had to have happened in his lifetime. In fact, God promised Abraham that he would give him a son and Isaac was born.... 25 years later. Abraham waited for God to fulfill his promise for a period of time that was longer than my entire life.

Joseph became second in command and saved his family from a famine.
Joseph did awesome things. He saved entire countries from starvation, became a powerful and wise leader, and displayed an upright and gracious spirit toward his family, forgiving them for the wrongs they committed against him. But before all of that happened, he was a slave. He spent years in prison.
We can see the story in its entirety. We can look back on the event's of Joseph's life and connect all the pieces, seeing the hand of God in everything that happened. But when Joseph was right in the middle of it all, he couldn't see the end! He didn't know what was coming! For 13 years, he faithfully trusted God in suffering and waited on God to reveal the plan and the purpose.

I could talk more about how Moses hid in the desert for 40 freaking years before he even started leading the Israelites or how Jesus spent the first 30 years of his life waiting for his Father to give the okay to start his ministry, but I think you get the point.
The accomplishments these men achieved with the power and help of God shine out brightly from the pages of my Bible, and the brilliance of their high points often distract me from the years they spent waiting or the hardships they suffered. The Bible is so concise, that sometimes it is hard to feel the full impact of what it means to spend 25 YEARS waiting on God to fulfill a promise. What was it like for Abraham to wake up in the early morning hours, walk out of his tent, and wonder in anticipation if this was the day that Sarah would announce, "I'm pregnant, love!" What frustrated thoughts ran through his mind as he smeared goat cheese on his falafel when it was not that day yet again?

This morning, as I sit on my couch with my cup of coffee, listening to my refrigerator hum and my roommate get ready for the day in the bathroom, I am waiting.

I'm waiting on God.

Yesterday, at 8:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time on April 24, 2013, I turned in my very last college final exam, which marked the end of my undergraduate career. The end to a 4 year era of nursing school.
What is supposed to come next is very vague and undefined. God has clearly called me to pursue a certain path after graduation, but he didn't exactly give me an itinerary or a how-to instruction manual. So I'm stuck in my breath by breath, minute-to-minute real time life, unable to see the end result and trusting in God that he knows what is going on.

I think that God is an optimizer, though. He uses the time we spend waiting to make us ready for what is coming in the future. Abraham and Joseph and Moses and Jesus didn't wallow in their waiting! They didn't sit idly by and say, "Well, God's got big things planned for me in the future, so I'm just going to hang out until it comes." No! They passionately and purposefully sought after God, allowing him to transform them into people who were prepared and equipped to do the things that He had for them to do.

They were faithful in their waiting, and God was faithful in his promises.

So I'm taking encouragement from them this morning, and making a commitment to not waste the waiting. I'll let God use me, shape me, and mold me while I anticipate what he has set in place for the years ahead. I'll be fully present in each moment to grow into the right person for the job.

And when the time comes, I won't hesitate, but will step forward in courage and excitement, cause I've been looking forward to this for a long time.

"For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Ephesians 2:10

April Problems

Sometimes, I can be a pretty oblivious person.

Even though I’ve been posting words on the interwebs for public consumption ever since I started this blog, it never quite clicked in my mind that people were actually reading what I wrote. Occasionally, I would receive a comment on a post, or a friend would tell me in person, “Hey, I read your blog last night,” but I would simply think “Oh, that’s nice” and move on with my life.

However, the massive response to my last post caught me completely by surprise. Within a day, my page view counter shot into the thousands and people I had never met before at my school were approaching me to say how much they loved my blog.

Oh! Ummm….thank you! I mean…yeah.

Wait, what is this? People are reading what I write? And they like it?

While it was nice for a while, the inevitable happened. As I sit here this morning, the view counter on my blog homepage displays an indelible mark, a spike that vaguely resembles the Eiffel tower or the Washington monument. The more I stare at it, the bigger it gets. This spike has taunted me every time I’ve sat down to write for the past two and a half weeks, and my mind was paralyzed by this pressure to measure up to my previous standard.

There is this awareness that people are actually interested in what I have to say, and I feel compelled to meet their expectations.

Be funny. Do it, April. People want you to be funny.

YOU HAVE TO BE FUNNY RIGHT NOW.

But…but…but…

And so, you have gotten no words from me for the past two weeks.

However, today I am choosing to get over myself and remember that, contrary to what I may think, the world will not end if some random stranger reads my blog and says, “Well, that was stupid.”

I know, right? Life-changing revelation right there. They should just induct me into the World Changers Hall of Fame already. I’d love to have my bronzed, eerily detached and floating head enshrined on a pedestal next to John, oops, David Green and the two-headed Gaither monster.

I thought I learned this lesson once before, but I guess it didn’t stick.

So. Moving on.

This is the fourth month of the year. A very special thirty day period in which I feel like a schizophrenic because my name gets tossed around everywhere. The month of April. It is all my own, my precious.

Contrary to popular opinion, no I was not born in April and therefore my parents did not name me such because of my birth month. Honestly, if my parents had been so dull and uncreative, I would be a little miffed at them. Also, you are not the first person to think that. Sorry to break it to you.

I’m curious as to why people find it so interesting, though. Yes, my name is a month of the year. But think about it. Other people are named after birds. Or plants. Or Biblical ideals.

I’m not complaining. It is a rather unique name, and I’ve never really had to share it with anyone else.

I am a tall person. I tend to tower over my classmates on a normal day.

However, I am also a woman, and I love high heels.

This can be an unfortunate combination.

Here is a diagram to illustrate:

Normal Day

High Heels!!

3 out of the past 4 days, I have worn 4 inch heels. This results in a grand total of approximately 6 feet 2 inches. One of the most entertaining things in the world is watching people’s facial expressions when they turn around and crane their necks to stare up at me, blocking the sun with my head.

It’s the simple joys in life.