Stop This Train

I realized today how fast time is going. We are almost to Thanksgiving break and then after a blink of an eye it'll be Christmas break and then before we know it our first year of college will be over. It is so crazy to think that this time last year I was just getting my acceptance letter to Gordon College. I cannot believe I am sitting in Chester's right now, having gone here for almost three months. It just blows my mind. I just wish I could slow everything down for awhile. Why is it that we sometimes want everything to go so fast? We always look ahead and wish that we were there. When you are running a race you just want to get to the finish line, but what about all the growth that happens while you are running? Why can't we just be happy during the race and realize that we need all of this growth so that when we do finally get to the finish line we will truly be able to enjoy it. If you just skip everything, then getting to the finish line wouldn't mean anything. So I guess I would just say enjoy the race as dumb as that is to say. Ugh...I just wish I could stop everything just for today...

Fall Is Here To Stay

You scream! I scream! We all scream for ice cream!

I love how when you want something, you can just go out and get it! My friends Kaethe and Sara and I really wanted Ben & Jerry's, so last night Kaethe and I made the trek out to Woodland in the rain to go get some. I am too embarrassed to tell you how much we spent. But oh well, you only live once right? And it's not my fault, it's my mom's fault. She was the one who told me to act like a kid and I don't know one kid who wouldn't pay $4.19 for ice cream if they could. OOPS! I guess I just told you how much we paid. And that is for one thing of it! Can you believe that? You know what though? It was SO worth it!

Afternoon in the prayer chapel? I think yes!

So far so good on taking my mom's advice. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I walk a golden retriever named Traycee. When I took her for a walk I played in the leaves and acted as much like a kid as I could! On the way home I decided to roll my windows down, despite the rain and turn up the heat in my jeep. So I drove all the way back to campus with my windows rolled down, Dean Martin blaring and the wind in my hair! :) (I wouldn't normally put a smiley face, but that is how happy it made me.) I always have fun driving, but today I especially enjoyed it. Usually I'm driving everyone else, which isn't a bad thing, I actually love driving people places, but sometimes it is nice to just have some alone time. The sky was gray and the leaves and rain were falling, I mean...it can't really get better than that. Most people find it weird, but I love rainy cloudy days. I actually prefer them over sunny days. There is something just so wonderful about them. Currently I'm sitting in the prayer chapel in the back of Frost with my friend Sara. I may start getting very repetitive when I say, "I have such great friends here, I'm so blessed!" But I mean it every single time I say it. The fact that she even thought to ask me to come with her was so sweet. What a great day to just sit and pray. I guess what I like about rainy days is that it seems to slow everything down. I didn't think I had enough time to just sit and pray but somehow, I do. I'm going to go pray now...thanks rain!

Hair dye smells.

Real Simple

Although I got a lot of things accomplished today, it wasn't the best. I got so overwhelmed so I called my parents and talked to them together for a long long time. My mom challenged me with this: "Alexandra, promise me that for the next few days you will try to keep your heart light. Do silly things, be a kid. Jump in a puddle, go spin around in the quad behind your dorm until you fall down laughing. Try to keep your conversations light. Watch movies that make your heart smile..." and so on. I think that is a challenge that I can definitely take! Well I say that, but having deep conversations with people is something that I love to do and something that my friends and I do quite frequently. But for the sake of my mother and me, I am going to try. So for the next few days I'm going to try and keep things simple. We'll se how it goes, but I pray that God will give me the strength to accept this challenge. Maybe you should challenge yourself to do the same. Sometimes we make things so much more complicated then they need to be.

I dream.

About you and me playing by the sea.

I dream.

About the nights we’ll spend smoking pipes by the rocks.

I dream.

Of making cookies and drinking tea.

Oh how I long to be, like

All those books on the shelf that you know so well.

And the respect is mutual.

Winding staircases to unknown places.

The old bell, hear it ring, ring, ring.

But not until November.

Timing is everything.

I dream.

YATS

It is almost dinner time and the only thing that sounds good is chili cheese etouffee with crawfish. Unfortunately Lane does not offer such foods. I wish I could fly to Indiana, go to Yats, grab it and then come back. How long do you think that would take?

Pleasant Street Tea Company

I am tired of all these things

That stress me out.

All I want to do is go away.

Away to the Pleasant Street Tea Company.

I want to drink tea all night by

Softly lit light.

I want to talk to friends

about God and forget about everything else.

Responsibility, what's that?

Today was probably one of the most unproductive days I've had in awhile, yet one of the best days I've had. I didn't go to sleep until 5:30 a.m. and then I woke up for church at 9 a.m. A group of us went to my roommate Alex's church. Like always we got in the jeep and made our way to church. The drive was beautiful. Every where you looked there were trees. The leaves were so many different colors, it was amazing! I blame my maybe not so great driving on how distracting the beauty of Massachusetts is at this time of year.

After church we decided that we would go out to lunch despite the fact that we all had tons of homework and exams to study for. We began to leave for The Pleasant Street Tea Company in Gloucester, Massachusetts, when we realized my phone was about to die so we needed to turn around to grab Kaethe's GPS because we had no idea where we were going. Jordan, Sara and I waited outside for Kaethe, then we were greeted by a beauty in blue, Kristin! She was on her way back from lunch and asked where we were going. When we told her she immediately hopped in the car and came along! Once everyone was in the car, we set off for yet another adventure.

Once we got to Gloucester we made our way to The Pleasant Street Tea Company. We had the best paninis, hummus and tea for lunch! There is nothing like talking with friends amongst tea and yummy deliciousness. We sat around and talked for awhile and then decided to go thrifting. The first store we went into we found these vintage dresses and petticoats that looked like they came right out of Sense and Sensibility. Then we went into this antique mall where we all found our own little treasures. How Kristin ended up getting free stuff I still have no idea. I came out of it with this old tin with random patches of cloth that I'm going to sew and turn into a blanket! It's amazing, I sat there staring at all these different scraps of fabric and looking through it I wondered, who owned this, what was she going to do with it, was she from around here, what is her story? It may seem crazy to you, but what is crazy to me is that some random person a long time ago started a project, what it was I do not know, but she did not finish it. Now I have her tin full of whatever it was she was doing, I almost feel some sort of obligation to finish it for her.

Anyway, moving right along. We realized that it was getting late and we should probably be heading back. We got back to campus and most everyone went to do work, but nope! Not me! Sara and I decided to go on a search for some teal hair dye. There was a group of us that wanted to dye our hair so we went out to find some. We ended up going to seven different places until we found what we were looking for.

After that, she and I went to Gro's house (Young Life area director for the North Shore) to have dinner and interview him for our enormous youth ministry paper due on Thursday. Their house can be described in one word, cozy. It is probably one of my favorite houses now. We had lasagna, salad and bread. It was delicious! Afterwards we got to sit around and talk about this week's Young Life club and pray. After everyone else left and just Sara and I remained we did our interview.

This is why I love God so much, He turned something that we did not want to do (interview Gro) into something amazing. Gro's wife Londie was there and I had mentioned earlier this place called L'Abri to her, and we all ended up talking about it. It is formally called L'Abri Fellowship International. They have them all over and basically they are these houses where there is Christian community and fellowship there when you need it. People can go and stay there for months at a time if they'd like. We talked about how that is what I want to do, God willing. I would love to just find a huge house somewhere out in the country maybe, and open it up to hurting people. I want hurting people to be able to come and just be around people who will love them and genuinely invest in their lives with no questions asked. I want to cook and bake for them and take care of them. I could go on forever.

I swear there is a point to all this madness, well maybe not. But I realized today that in the midst of a storm, you have to find a calm. I had locked myself away this weekend studying and doing homework. I knew that on Sunday I needed to work just as hard as I had Friday and Saturday, but God had other plans. On our way to Gloucester we were all talking about how much work we had to do and I believe it was Jordan who said something like, "Guys, just try to be here now and enjoy this now." It was true, we were all complaining about all the work we had to do that we weren't letting ourselves fully enjoy the beautiful day that God had given us.

What a blessing to have friends that can see the peace amongst all the stress. Without those kinds of friends well...I guess we would all be stressed.

So even though we all had so many responsibilities, I think it was okay that for just a while we all could say, "Responsiblity, what's that?"