With open hands

Regardless of what lessons I've learned, I continually seek assurance from the illusion of control. Even when I know that offering my life to the Lord with open hands is a beautiful release, I clench my hands tighter and cling to the sense of control that comes through worry and stress. What a ridiculous instinct!

I don't know what I'm doing.
School is moving so fast. Time is flying by - it's time to declare my major, it's time to squeeze in classes and focus my studies, to decide what my goals are, what career to pursue, what steps to take, what connections to make. I'm making choices as quickly as I can lest time pass me by- grabbing the most immediate option, what springs to mind first: ENGLISH! I yell. SOCIOLOGY! Grad school! Teaching maybe. wait.
I don't want to teach. I want to go back to South Africa. Maybe do social work. Maybe do whatever and write. Maybe I'll stay in Seattle and work in the admissions office. Maybe I'll get married some day and raise six kids and give up all the career aspirations i'm so frantically searching for. Maybe. I don't like maybe's.

My chronic wanderlust is kicking in - maybe it's the spring sunshine - but I have this compelling desire to leave school and wander the world. I could just walk and walk, searching for what it is I'm passionate about, knowing that I'll recognize it when I stumble across it. Then I'll be content to sit and rest.
But this isn't practical. I can't simply leave school and backpack for an indefinite amount of time around the world. Well, I suppose I could, but I don't know if it would be the wisest choice. Maybe (there's that word again) the summer will be the time that I need to stand back and look at my life and who I am.

In the midst of a sea of maybe's - I KNOW that I don't have to have it all figured out, it's probably better that way anyway. I KNOW that I'm learning about trust and the importance of seeking God's will. I KNOW that if He is who He says He is, He's got it all under control.I know I'm so incredibly blessed by an endless array of undeserved opportunity.

Praise the Lord my life doesn't pause until I have it all figured out!

It's been an embarrassingly long time since I've last posted - sorry Dad. 

This quarter has been stressful, crazy, and wonderful. My fingernails never stood a chance. So I guess I pretty much failed my new year's resolution, but as CJ always asked me, "In the light of eternity, what does it matter? Diddlysquat."

Andrew was here this weekend, it was so wonderful. We hung out in the sunshine, ran down the queen anne hill, saw a play about Satan and some drunk irishmen. I miss that kid. 

I sometimes regret being so far away from home, it's hard to know that my brothers are growing up and I'm not there to watch them become the amazing men that they are. 

Today I'm working on my final pieces for my creative writing portfolio. It's been so great to HAVE to sit down and write poems and stories this quarter, I really love it. It's hard, and I don't know if I want to ever pursue it professionally, but I love it - so that's good, right?

Monday mornings

I wake early.
Before the sun stirs the city’s inhabitants.
Before the anthill metropolis swarms with
busy busy students, professionals,
rowdy families, and 30 something singles
with their canine children.
Before the morning breath of
stale routine pollutes the mountain air.
Before we glue to-do lists to our foreheads.
Before we drip espressos, and dress the kids
all alike in plaid uniforms and
before we send them marching single-file down the street
into classrooms where they sit in rows and aisles.
Before we follow them, file onto busses which follow
circuits, follow routes, follow each other, and
stop on the o’clock dot,
and open their doors that we might stream out
and disperse into the maze of
skyscrapers and city blocks.
Before we follow our feet to boardrooms, banks, and bars,
and stop at bakeries on the way home,
before we file onto busses, feed our children,
greet our spouses, clean our homes, set our alarms
and crawl into our beds.
On Monday morning I wake early
before the anthill swarms.

It's beautiful outside today! My computer can't get the exact view that i have, but this is from my window sill. I'm sitting at my desk, on top of a pile of laundry soon to be hung, and watching the boats on the canal. 

I woke up around 6:30 this morning and caught the 7:30 bus with Christo. We went to the 8am service at St. Luke's Episcopal church. I really enjoy early mornings, when the world is still and quiet. I also really enjoyed the service. There was probably 20 elderly people at the service; the presence of older people is something I really enjoy and lack in my life. The service itself was slightly more casual and charismatic than a lot of liturgical services I've attended (though not nearly as much so as the later service at this church, which included some wonderful dancing). And while I didn't have words of prophesy to contribute, I felt at home singing familiar hymns, reciting the creeds, and kneeling for communion.

 I also realized how neat it is to be a church in a neighborhood like Ballard, or a city like Seattle. While the priest was reading the gospel from among the congregation, a homeless man named Mark came into the church and was greeting the congregants. I couldn't see him well, but it appeared he was mentally or physically ill. Mark progressed up the isle and shook hands with the acolyte, and then Fr. John. The Fr. paused the service, placed his hands on Mark and prayed with the congregation for healing and blessings upon the man, and then explained (probably for mine and Christo's benefit) that Mark comes like clock work every Sunday. Then Mark left and the service proceeded. Too many church's would resent Mark for disrupting the service, too many priests would expect the greeter to take care of him and would never think of pausing the service to greet and pray for him. Which approach is the better picture of the gospel, the uninterupted presentation of the gospel reading, or living it out?

Since the purpose of this blog is to keep my family up to date on my doings and musings, and the majority of what I do and think is school related, I'm posting a draft of one of my creative writing assignments.

Snapshots

Kali Wagner

The ridges on the back of my eyelids shelve the photo albums of my memory. Sometimes I look through the thick green album, and glance at the photos that narrate my pre-SPU life, to try to piece together who I am from snapshots of where I’ve been.

I open the album and flip through the pages.

Honolulu, HI. I stand next to fair Danielle – my fearless leader. She wears a frilly dress, white gloves with matching shoes. I, my hair boy-short and brown, wear a Laura Ashley floral-patterned sleeveless jumper. No frills. My brown hands and chewed off fingernails are exposed to the tropical air and hold the handle of my blue Easter basket. Black mary jane’s suffocate my calloused soles that mom worries will surprise a centipede like those under the centipede tree or like the giant one that we found in the shower at the pool. 

Flip.

A quadrangle of red brick - home to numerous families stationed in Fort Riley, KS. 40 D Sheridan place. The address I proudly memorize. Inside apartment D, our play room has 3 windowed walls. On the one inside wall is a door to my parents room that remains locked and a windowed door to the boy’s room that Andrew brakes with an oversized plastic yellow baseball bat in a fit of frustration the one time it too is locked. When mom pulls me out of my overcrowded kindergarten it becomes our school room, the birth place of a 12 year homeschooling legacy. It is a room of discovery where I play, learn, and find Christian on the floor with partially chewed cockroach legs dangling from his baby lips. 

     Flip.

Mom, baby Christian, toddler Andrew, and I stand at the gate of the airplane that is taking my waving, camo-clad dad away. Deployed. At Easter, we follow him to Germany, where he is stationed instead of Bosnia. Once there, I lose my first tooth eating spaghetti ice cream and explode in a bloody fit of un-German excitement.  Infected by the magic of Broechen , “Danke,” porcelain dolls, knudels, and kinder eggs, chronic wanderlust seeps into my bones.

    Flip.

 A pencil drawing of 16801 89^th AVE E, Puyallup, WA, that I sent to my grandparents. On the cul-de-sac in front of my 4^th home, blonde Devon and brunette Kylie, my best friends, play vicious games of exclusion and mockery at my expense. Inside 16801, at the top of the stairs, Dad looks into my puffy eyes and says “What does it matter what they think?” I conclude that it didn’t matter, then, or ever again. Later, in the backyard, the green canvas for my mother’s earthy artistry, I watch her hunt under cover of darkness with flashlight and bucket of salt, for the boogery slugs that corrode her leafy sculptures.     

        Flip.

A man in a dress, bearing a cross, walks up the isle of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church. As I experience my first liturgical service, the worship I would later crave, I view with a  skeptical and creeped-out expression. It is suspiciously Catholic, and I’m not sure if Catholics are Christian. Turns out they are, and so are the congregants of St. Christopher’s, I was sold.  When 6^th grade arrives, I enthusiastically transition from child, to young adult, with my long-coveted acceptance into EYC – the Episcopal Youth Community. My parents insist I call adults “miss” or “mister,” but upon special permission I call our youth director “Becky,” like all the teenagers; like Ben and Jane.  Jane is my friend and we both have crushes on Ben. When Dad gets out of the army and relocates us to Jackson TN, Ben asks Jane out. But he tells me that he liked me first. I’m ok with that.

             Flip.

The album opens to a page titled “Tennessee,” the first in the chapter.  There are at least twice as many pages as there were in any of the previous chapters, for there are 7 years worth of photos rather than two or three. n

On the second page, my best friend, Caitlin, and I stand in the parking lot of Madison Academic Magnet High School, matching Hawaiian print backpacks slung over our shoulders – our survival kits for our first day of public school. Madison: socially stimulating, intellectually stagnant, my day-home for one year before I “drop out” and embrace the freedom of homeschooling.

                  Flip.

Our living room on Christmas morning. The tree sparkles, the windowed doors on the back wall glimpse a mottled, brown green acre of woods. I sit on the couch in front of the window in my pajamas, cradling my baby brother Matthew. This is the happiest picture of Matthew, a gift. His body is relaxed, seemingly absent of the pain that plagues him and threatens his genetically diseased body. It is a morning of hope after months of tears and prayer, a memory of peace to cling to in the turbulent year that lies ahead of me following his funeral a few weeks later.

                          Flip.

Reba, the black Toyota Matrix I drive, parked in our three car garage. On her rear window is a sticker that reads “Seattle Pacific University” in maroon and white letters. It is my signal to the world that after months of agonizing debate, I am rejecting Wheaton, my parent’s alma mater, and forging my own path in what my southern priest’s wife dubs “Satan’s Playground”: Seattle, the heathen world beyond the borders of the Bible belt. I might burst with excitement.

I turn the last page,                                                                                                           

     Close the cover,

  and reshelf the album.

            

I've already failed at my blogging resolution. I have however, been successful in the stop-picking-my-nails resolution thus far. Baby steps. 

I'm attempting to write a poem for my Imaginative Writing class about a cup thrown by my mom. It's about the cup, but I really think it's about mom, or even me. The themes in my head are all so beautifully layered and intertwined. My poem open in my word processor, however, is no more beautiful or artistic than crap flung on a wall by monkeys. 

I just caught myself picking at my thumbnail. 

Shoot.