the southern side of heaven

i said my goodbyes to unc tonight. after small group on campus, i decided that it was the perfect night for a stroll--refreshing (not stifling) temperature, calm twilight. i ended up at the old well, and at the risk of looking like an out-of-towner, i just stopped there for a few moments. then i saw them--the fireflies. finally! i haven't seen one all summer, and all of sudden there were hundreds, lighting up the quad like so many twinkling stars. and that quad has always been my "gosh, i love carolina" quad. then the bell tower started chiming 9 o'clock. i turned around, my back towards franklin street, and wouldn't you know it? there was a huge full mooning shining between the buildings. this is a carolina moment. and though it was perfectly crafted, like something out of a movie, this is the moment when i realized that no longer will chapel hill be my home, but it will now be a place where i come to i visit. i'm not sure if i'm fully okay with that yet, but at least now i've gotten to say goodbye.


(two posts in one day--can't say i didn't warn you! and all you dookies and other dissenters can stop gagging now ;] )

hemmed in behind, hemmed in before

dearest readers, i hope you are prepared to offer this blog a significant portion of your web browsing time in the coming week. i've let you off easy by not posting recently, but now that i am DONE WITH SCHOOL, i have a lot of time and a lot of thoughts. gird yourselves.

in case you missed that--i did it! i finished school! my time at UNC is over & done! i had a moment this morning as i lazily woke up & enjoyed a slow morning of hot tea, quiet time, and pajamas--a moment where i realized that i will never wake up & go to class again (at least for the foreseeable future). and i was a bit sad. but other than that, it's all excitement!

yesterday, clearly, was a momentous day. it was also a long day, full of ups and downs. after my test i went to the daily grind and hung out with God for awhile. "Come & see what the Lord has done!" psalm 46 declares. Indeed, i thought. Look what he has done with a mess like me, and look what he is doing. the fact that i even graduated with an actual major is impressive, never mind one that i genuinely enjoyed. i am hemmed in behind. and look where he is taking me! on an amazing adventure into his service with a great group of students, a great church community, and a great staff team. quite poignantly, i checked my voice mail as i left the daily grind, and scott (the youth minister at crossroads) had left a message--an encouraging one as he usually does--that wished me a spectacular day & repeated his oft-expressed sentiment that they can't wait until i join them in kentucky. what a joy to know that as i close one chapter, i have a fresh new page open & a new life story raring to go. i am hemmed in before.

i had lunch with the ever-delightful katie smith on the quad, our beautiful quad, in the speckled shady-sunlight. this is what i will miss. then i had to babysit cameron for the afternoon & while he was napping, i came face-to-face with a gripping realization. i like to watch golf. i turned on nbc to catch a rerun of ellen, and instead i sat enthralled watching the us open playoff between tiger woods & rocco mediate. let me slow that down for you--i. watched. golf. all on my own, because i wanted to. and i was sad when cameron's dad came home & i missed the sudden death round at the very end. my realization is this: in most instances, i am very glad to become a reflection of who my parents are, but in some ways i never expected to be like them, and this is one small example. dad, i like to watch golf. because you do. because even though it's slower than baseball (yawn), i like watching it because i've always watched it with you. hmmm, it's funny how we turn out in the end. never a carbon copy, but with distinct streaks of our parents, the good & the bad, shaping who we are.

after getting turned down for a credit card later that afternoon (and moping about it on the phone with mom--thanks), i spent most, in fact all, of my evening at my Hebrew Bible professor's house. he had the class over for pizza at 7 and we ended up staying til midnight! i can't even really tell you what we talked about much, though we did spend a lot of time just watching his adorable child perform for our attention. we did talk about solving all the worlds problems one teacher salary at a time, and the brilliance of the reli. professors at unc (apparently my wildly fascinating death & afterlife professor, z-man, took the GRE before he knew much english--and was accepted into yale...), and world travels. the photo album came out, because obviously as a biblical scholar, our professor had been to quite a few places in the Near East--including, among other things, the sweet buildings filmed for the third indiana jones (the cup one, amanda), where the holy grail was housed. i had to bite my tongue when he got to the israel pictures, not to say, i've been there, ooh i've been there! one thing i must comment on retrospectively. while i do agree with prof. reynold's opinion that the sea of galilee might not fully deserve the designation as a sea, i hardly think that, as he ( jokingly) said, it was small enough that Jesus could have cleared it on foot by getting a good running start from a nearby hilltop. maybe not a sea, definitely more than a "pond"--truly majestic, wouldn't you say?

in the midst of all this, at 11pm to be exact, i got a call from scott and stepped out to answer it. as he had told me on his message earlier that day, the youth were on a rafting trip & they called to say hey! it was delightful--scott said he wanted me to feel included since i am the only team member still MIA, and i really did. i chatted with one of the senior girls i met while visiting in february, and i could hear all the noise in the background. then tim (the other youth pastor) had all the kids shout "congrats on graduating whitney!!" and that was really cool. i do wish i could be there with them right now, but i appreciate the thoughtful ways in which scott is working to make me part of the community before i even arrive (these are the kinds of things that make me trust in the sheer blessing of this experience). and good grief, i only have a few short weeks left and i will be there! yes!!

well, that was yesterday, but if you can stand to read on, this weekend was quite eventful as well. my little brother, the baby of the family, graduated from high school. this is kind of silly, but i remember thinking to myself when i was younger, maybe about 10 or so (or whenever you start realizing that little kids have to grow up and won't stay small forever), that here i have this small, white-blond headed, ball of energy little brother, and one day, he's going to be grown up. that's going to be weird to witness, i thought to myself then. well, now it's happened. he's taller than me now (though not by too much ;) and a fellow south meck graduate (a proud moment indeed--ok, just kidding). it was really good to be there with the family and watch him graduate, especially after having missed jordan's high school graduation because i was in mexico. then at church on sunday, father's day, our worship minister brought his little girl up on stage to sing to her (this relates, i promise). during the offering, he sang the steven curtis chapman song, "cinderella", which is one of those dumb songs i love to hate because if you really listen to the words, cheesy as they are, it makes you all sad and nostalgic and leaves you wanting to cry and hold onto your mommy, blah blah blah. this one is a much better option that "butterfly kisses" though, if you ask me. (our other favorite is that song that says "let my love give you roots and help you find your wings." blubber-sniff). anyway, the chorus of the song, which is about a dad watching his little girl grow up, goes like this:

so i will dance with cinderella, i don't want to miss even one song. because all too soon the clock will strike midnight, and she'll be gone.

after this weekend, our family has had a big bell toll, counting down the hours til midnight when us kids will be gone. will graduated high school, and will leave home for college in the fall. mom will be left with an empty nest, because despite the insistence of her friends with live-in daughters one year older than me, i'm not coming back home after this summer. i think my clock is at about 11:58 right now. i'm truly on the brink of wrapping up childhood--the independence-testing period of college is done and i'm entering full-fledged adulthood. i still have one more week in chapel hill to see friends one last time, one week to pack things up at home, a weekend of wedding festivities, then 12 chimes and i'm gone.

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when i sit and when i rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. (psalm 139: 1-5)

please expect more of these ridiculously elaborate metaphors. like i said at the beginning of this ridiculously long post, i am newly graduated with a college degree. so i have time on my hands and thoughts that need channeling. blame it on donald miller. i'm starting to read "searching for God knows what" and i'm sure his quirkiness will influence me. thanks for sticking around. hope the pictures helped :) much love.

you aren't home, but you are here now

i saw the above phrase written on the sidewalk outside an apartment complex when i went running last night. a profound twist on those signs that places put up that say "if you lived here, you'd be home now." ok, i'm about to expose how much of a true dork i am, but the first thing i thought when i read that was "denn wir haben hie keine bleiben de statt", which is the opening line of my favorite movement of brahms requiem. in english, the section quotes hebrews 13:14--

"for here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come"

on the deepest level (and ironically the first one that came to mind--am i too introspective??), this bit of graffiti reminded me that in the REALLY big picture of this life, i'm not home, but i am here. and i believe i am here to fulfill a God-given purpose, to make a difference in some way for Christ and His people in this world (alot of thinking for an afternoon run, huh?). with a little more thought later, i decided that this little phrase can also apply to my time in chapel hill this summer (which i'm sure my faithful readers will recognize as something i'm working hard to define :] )--this place isn't technically my home anymore, or at least not for much longer. i can't pretend that i'm still a carolina student or that i'll be living in this house any longer than another month at most. but i am here now.

on that note, CTOPs started today--aww, so sweet to see all the incoming first-years who are so excited and eager...and lost :] but (of course) it made me quite sad, too. in essence, these are the kids who are replacing me & my class. '08 is out, '12 is in. the rest of the student body will be essentially the same--but these newbies will join the ranks, and the graduates will be gone. ugh. no fair :P the quad will still be there, all the professors & classrooms, franklin street; basketball games & IV meetings will still go on, and all my beloveds who still have more school will come back in august--but i'll be gone. so to any & all incoming first-years everywhere, this is cliche, but enjoy every freakin' second of it.

random side-note: mariah carey can hit notes that should not be reachable by the human voice. fun to try & sing along with your roommate, though :]

changing subjects...the worship band at church yesterday did something REALLY awesome. i walked in after the music had already started, but no one was on stage. i spotted them soon after--nat on his guitar, annie on her violin, and several other singers were in a circle on the floor, center aisle. nat later explained by way of a great analogy that i think is useful for anyone who is a leader of worship, not just musically. he said, a lot of times we see worship as a football game: God is the coach, the band members are the players, and the congregation is the audience/spectators. but instead, we should worship in this way: the band is the coach, the congregation are the players, and God is the audience! this is especially awesome in light of a book i recently finished called Jim and Casper Go to Church. It's about a Christian minister and an atheist who traveled around the country attending several different kinds of churches, and the atheist would give his impressions, which were very useful since he is outside the subculture bubble. And more than once when asked about the worship music, he would rank the churches lowly, not because the talent level was down, but because it felt too much like a performance for the congregation instead of worship directed solely to God. The bulletin at church yesterday also mentioned that the service would be conducted in the spirit of the early church (no service order was given)--and that really added something special for me, too. Somehow, moving the band down among the people and taking on the attitude of the early believers made me feel connected more closely to the people around me & to the larger body of Christ spanning back to those first Christians--all coming together to sing one message of praise to our one God.

one final note for the evening--i'm getting REALLY excited about kentucky :] i don't know if it's because the last full month before i head out there is now upon us, or whether the youth group's video yearbook from this past year that i watched yesterday got me pumped, or whether God put a spirit of excitement & anticipation within in me--but i am filled with eager expectation to the brim! kind of a weird mix with all these sad, mushy 'i love carolina & don't want to leave yet' feelings--the very definition of bittersweet i suppose, is the story of my life right now. a good place to be.