forbearance

I am learning a lot about patience, and grace, and bearing up under something, or rather I need to be learning these things. I got to work today and I wanted to cry again, on top of the impossibile and growing workload expected of us, I have a cold, I am tired, and patience is the last thing I want to practice.

It would be easy for me to shut down, tune out and just bide my time until I can get out of here. But i don't want to do that. I want to be able to treat those around me with respect and kindness, to remember the hope to which I am called and the One I am to be working for.

But I am human, and fallible, and rather selfish. If only I truly realized how great a loving Father I have, how much power is at His children's disposal.

Forbearance is not what we percieve to be "just." It is patience under wrongdoing, the delaying of what is right. I deserve to be treated much better at work. But I am not called to happiness, I am called to holiness. It's not that the two never meet, but that sometimes the latter is realized in the absence of the former.

I do believe! Lord, help my unbelief!

life stories

It's kind of hard to believe that this time last year I was getting ready to graduate, no clue as to what I was doing with my life beyond the brief walk across a stage and some quality time with a backpack and the UK. It's a terrifying and exhilarating feeling. Amazingly enough I have not only survived my first year in the "real world" but have actually made some sort of a life here.

There are still many things I abhor about adulthood, the most predominate of these is the nearly inevitability of being sucked into Corporate America. If you want to eat and pay bills, you pretty much have to work for The Man. Even the tiny newspapers for which I work are being slowly eaten away by the black death of corporate gluttony. When going through the hellish experience of looking to purchase a car, I even considered forgetting the car, quitting my job and working at a coffee shop that I could bike to every day. I may get there eventually, but for now I pay off my loans and build my portfolio, and wait for my escape. It is coming.

I actually can't wait for grad school. It'll be another year yet, but I'm excited about being in an academic environment again. I feel at home there.

One thing that I've been continually reminded of during this diverse and evolving year is that life is always changing, moving, growing. There are no constants except my Creator, and that is a beautiful and comforting thing. The world is broken and disastrous, but God is redeeming it, and redeeming it through me. People are depraved and fallen, but God enables us to live in community that rivals even the best of college camaraderie. The life is messed up and hard but it is also creative and beautiful and breathtaking. Relationships change, but they are still good.

In the past year I graduated from college, traveled the world, set up life in a new city, got a job as a journalist, was blessed with a community of believers, found a beloved, lost a beloved grandfather, sold a car, bought a car, and generally established myself as a genuine adult in my community. And I have always, always been taken care of. Life is nearly as up in the air as it was a year ago, but it is not nearly so scary any more.

I named my blog thestoryofwe, because I am constantly reminded that life is a series of stories, and that they are all more interconnected than we could ever dream. Life is narrative, and art, tradgedy and comedy. It is a story I want to tell.