Crazy

My campus ministry goes on a mission trip every year during Spring Break.  I've never been able to go, both because of work situations and financial ones.  I was thinking about going this year now that I'm in a much more flexible work situation, however decided not to in light of my trip to Austin, Texas (for which I'm leaving in a week and a few hours!).  This trip is also a pricey one, and I had to take several days off for it.

But then I received a text on my lunch break last week from one of my campus ministers: a financial supporter wanted to pay for me to go to Seattle.

After processing the initial shock and wondering if it was even possible, I went back into the building and stepped into my boss's office: "So, something crazy just happened..."

I had the go-ahead from my boss the very next morning.  That day on my lunch break, I was texting people my date of birth, middle name, etc. so they could add another plane ticket.

And just like that, God has sent me on my very first mission trip!

~  *  ~

It is February 17th, and in the back of my planner I already have a bullet-ed list started of all the things I'll talk about when I write my New Year's blog post at the end of 2015: a birth, two family surgeries, and two trips.  Maybe April will be calm?  Maybe?

But they're good things!  Both surgeries went perfectly, and both of those patients are much better off now.  Baby Corbin already has his Crazy Aunt Kaycee's heart.  And both of the trips are super exciting in and of themselves, and both come with incredible stories of God's provision.  They also both come with their challenges: both trips are going to take me about 5,000 leagues out of my comfort zone.  In different directions.  I'll be rubbing elbows with publishers in Austin and then doing an Urban Plunge in Seattle.  If you need me in April, I plan to be in an introvert coma... like, alone in my closet!

But I know they'll be worth it.  I know that God has so much to teach me in both places, and I'm praying that maybe He can use me in both places, too.

I think I'm quite ready for another adventure!

~  *  ~

God's been teaching me a lot this year about joy in the midst of trials.  He's been showing me that the joy part comes from the way that trials test us, stretch us, equip us with the perseverance that we need to walk the path on which He's placed our feet.  As we grow, we become Christians of stronger character, and (most important of all) we get to know Him better.

And the better we know Christ, the sweeter our meeting with Him will be the day that He comes back for us!  Many will tremble in terror on that day, but I know my Lord, and He knows me.  I'll be allowed to take His hand and walk into the presence of God on that day, and all these silly trials won't mean anything but the way in which I got to know my Savior so intimately.

A nontraditional education, health problems in the family, sorting through trunks of childhood baggage and trying to reconcile it all with my adult life, finding the courage to step into worlds I've never experienced before, just having the faith to take those steps in the first place--none of these things have taken God by surprise.  Each of them is a step closer to my Lord.  Maybe it feels like my life is out of control, maybe it all feels too crazy for me to handle, and maybe those feelings are dead on in some ways.

But God's driving this rig, and I guess this year I'm in for a wild ride!

Adventures in Chicago: a Summary in Pictures

Disclaimer: This blog post contains no material of deep, lasting consequence.

You see, a friend of mine and I took this past weekend to go on an adventure, and I want to tell you all about it!  We decided to road trip to Chicago!  Before we begin, I do recommend taking a mega bus or something to go to Chicago.  I was incredibly blessed that my friend was willing to drive--being a passenger was quite traumatizing enough, thank you!  Had I been the one driving, I probably would've needed several therapy sessions upon my return home, where I am suddenly less likely to complain about the Iowegians!

We stayed in the Acme Hotel, which is apparently relatively new to the area, but it was a pretty cool hotel!  They brought us breakfast for free (a perk of making reservations online), their coffee was delicious, and the hotel itself had a LOT of personality!  Let me show you what I mean:

This was in the corner of the mirror in the bathroom!  And they glowed!

 There was also a ginormous hand above the bed, a chalk board on the door (upon which we wrote Philippians 4:13 :) ), and the shower head was on the ceiling so the water fell straight down!  This detail didn't turn out to be entirely practical for hair washing purposes, but when I changed my mind on the shower, the bath tub was pretty comfy too!

Our first afternoon/evening in Chicago consisted of deep dish pizza (I will never look at Godfathers the same again!) and the Magnificent Mile, being a mile-long stretch of road full of shopping!  Granted, most everything was out of this starving college student's budget, but it was fun anyway!

I also must say, I've never been in buildings that tall!  Our hotel room was on the 15th floor!  I've never even been in a building that had 15 floors!  One of the malls that we went into on the Magnificent Mile had seven levels (and a crazy fast elevator!).  This picture is from the top floor, and I really don't think the picture does it justice!

Water Tower Place, from the 7th floor

Of course, most of us have seen pictures of city skylines from places like Chicago or New York City, but being there is entirely different!  It's like when I first saw the ocean, it was crazy because it was so huge, and I knew that it was so deep, and I knew that the point where all I could see of the ocean ran into all I could see of the sky was only the beginning, that there was Europe and the rest of the world and so many different people and cultures beyond that horizon.  My mind was so blown that I took dozens of pictures--and then when I came home, they were just pictures of light blue on top of dark blue, and they totally didn't capture the magic of standing at the edge of land and water, staring at the edge of water and sky, and being so close to the rest of the whole entire world.

The Chicago skyline is kind of the same thing.  There are these massive buildings everywhere that loom up above you.  If you're standing too close, you can't even see the top.  For us, sometimes we couldn't see the top anyway because it was kind of rainy and cloudy, so the buildings just vanished into the clouds.  And as we drove by, the closer buildings passed faster than the further buildings and it made it look like the city was doing one of those royal ball dances with lines of people rotating and switching.  I think the skyline is what kept me from feeling claustrophobic the whole time we were there.  The skyline drew my attention up--that's where all of Chicago's space is!  Most of what we did was within walking distance, and we didn't have to drive much to get to a new radius of walking distance, so where as I used to think that Chicago was big, now I know that it isn't so much "big" as it is "tall"!

Oh yeah, and they don't waste space on trivial things like parking lots.  Instead, they charge your left arm to use their parking garages: one of which in particular that I wondered several times if I shouldn't be demanding someone to be paying me to be there!

The entrance to the Millennium Park parking garage is between two opposing lanes of traffic.  It then takes you down underground, so it feels like you're being eaten alive.  Then, you know how usually there are things like lanes, arrows, directions, things like that to guide you into a normal parking garage?  Nope, this one (after it ate you) left you in this concrete chamber the size of about half a football field with gates to get your ticket and find parking off to your left.  No lanes, options, nothing, just a big concrete space!  The first time we parked here, we parked on level 3.  We had to go on foot DOWN to level (I kid you not) 2.5 (Seriously, even the button in the elevator had it labeled as 2.5!), and then take the elevator UP to level 7.  Aside from the 2.5, makes sense, right?  Well the second time (the fact that we parked here twice is evidence of the scarcity of parking in Chicago), we parked on level 1, went up one flight of stairs, and found daylight.  Somehow.  Not to mention that this vast parking garage was full of disorganized caverns of cars connected by creepy concrete hallways, random doors, and stairs and escalators that we never did figure out where they led to.

But hey, we got PLENTY of laughs out of that parking garage!  And we also learned to never trust maps under ground, only the ones above ground tell the truth!

One of the creepy hallways in the Millennium Park Parking Garage

We also went to the Navy Pier.  The up-side to the weather during our stay was that there weren't very many people at the Pier, so we didn't have to deal with crowds too much.  The down-side was that it was freezing, and thus we didn't spend much time actually on the pier.  We ran out, snapped some cool pics, and then ran back inside.

Me: I can see the top of the building!
My friend: It's too short!

Inside however was a completely free museum of stained glass!  Unfortunately, all of my pictures from this adventure are up-and-down, and I have not yet figured out how to make Blogger rotate them :(  Alas, I am not as social-media-savvy as I pretend to be.  Just rest assured, the works in there were gorgeous!  I doubt the pictures really did them justice anyway.

We also went to the Shedd Aquarium, which involved waiting in line for an hour, about forty five minutes of which was outside in the cold (though they did put up a tent type hallway on the stairs to block the wind, and that helped a lot!), but it was worth it!

They had more than just fishies in the Shedd Aquarium, and this guy was cute!

I meant to get a picture of the frog, the creepy dude on the other side of the display was totally an accident!

Judging from Facebook with my many Iowa City friends and acquaintances who have been to Chicago, going to "the bean" and taking pictures is kind of a must.  So we did!

This is up underneath the middle of the bean.  It was trippy!!!

And last, but a terribly far cry from least, was the Art Institute, which I shall return to some day so that I can spend an ENTIRE day in there!  Kind of like the magic of standing on the ocean or actually looking up at and driving around the tall buildings of Chicago, I was walking around the Art Institute seeing the actual pictures and sculptures of things that I studied while working on my associates degree, and standing there looking at the piece that the artist's hands actually touched was totally different!  I also definitely fell in love with Monet this weekend!

My dad thinks I'm nuts, but I STILL love Jackson Pollock!!!

So there you have a very brief rundown of a few highlights of my trip to Chicago!  I have now been in a 15 story building, eaten Chicago deep-dish pizza, and been eaten by a parking garage.  I have been the most hard-core window shopping of my entire life, and I have seen Monet's "Water Lilies" in person.  I have also experienced being in a big city rather than the suburbs of Nebraska and Iowa.  I've learned that I like the elbow-room of the Midwest, and I don't think I could ever live in Chicago (beyond the simple fact that I'm a sheltered Blondie who could probably easily take a wrong turn and end up getting kidnapped by the mafia or something!), but I will be going again some day!

God is SOOOOOO good!

 I'm trying to come up with some witty and entertaining way to start this off, but alas, I've got nothin'! I was going to post this story on Facebook, but decided that it was too long to fit in a status! For any of my readers who aren't on Facebook, I was coming home for the weekend last night and got into a car wreck. Gracie Lynn and I walked away... The car didn't.

God loves Him some Pancakes!!!

Traffic in the right lane of I-80 in Council Bluffs was backed up.  I got stopped... That Ryder truck in the top picture didn't.  He hit me, it looks like I spun and caught the back of his truck with my passenger door, and slammed into the gaurd rail, which pushed my trunk into my back seat.  The first woman (I think) who came to my car helped me get Gracie out, we had a tough time though because the passenger door was folded in over her kennel.  The kennel as well as the cat in it, miraculously, were totally fine.  A couple of guys at the scene had to pull me out of the passenger window.  When the police showed up, one of them asked me if my registration and such was in my glove box.  My answer: "Yes... Wherever the glove box is."  It was on the floor in the passenger compartment.  I had glass in my teeth.

My new friends at the scene called my Dad (for a while I couldn't find my phone... or my glasses, which were on my face at impact.  Still don't know where that police officer found them, but they're in one piece!), and he pretty much broke the sound barrier getting to me.  Hi, Daddy!  I haven't seen you in over a month, and now you get to come and get me 'cuz my car is a tin can.  I love my Daddy!

I whacked my head on something or other, still not sure what, so an EMT checked me out and gave me the choice on whether or not I wanted to go to the hospital.  This was before Dad got there and long before I was certain of which way was up, but I figured I was good, just uber shaky.  I may have been slightly concussed, but my brain still seems to be in one functional piece!  Well, it's no worse than it was before the accident anyway!

I've got lots of bruises on my legs that I'm not totally sure what exactly from, and a lump on my shin that I'm still waiting for it to turn lots of fascinating colors.  I've got some cuts on my right hand, after some thought I finally realized that they're probably because I threw out my arm to catch Gracie and keep her safe in the seat when the truck hit me.  And I've got a purple lip.  And I'm pretty sore pretty much everywhere.  But God is SOOOOO good!  God is so powerfully, lovingly, mercifully good!  It was crazy looking at the car after I started to chill out, it's still crazy seeing the pictures.  And I walked away from that in one piece!  And just because He could: even my guitar walked away in one piece!  It was painfully out of tune, but totally unscathed!

Impact was around 9:30, we got home around 11:30.  I calmed down enough to start hurting around 12:30, and finally got comfortable enough to fall asleep around 2.  And my darned internal clock woke me up at 6:45.  I am forseeing a nap in today's future!  Today also holds a visit to my mom's doctor/chiropracter friend and then a trip to the impound lot so they can cut my car open and get the rest of my stuff out... like my month's worth of laundry trapped in the trunk.  After that, we have to figure out what in the world I'm gonna drive back to Iowa City.  And do some hard-core talking-up of the Blondie because I don't particularly want to drive ANYWHERE right now!  (Of course that'll be fine, I probably just need to hurry up and get behind the wheel at some point today and I'll be okay there.)

All of this to say, thank you to everybody for your concerns and especially your prayers!  I am alive and in tact and okay and praising God!  Please keep praying, I'm still really sore and a little shook up.  Pray for our sudden car-hunt as we scramble for transportation back to Iowa City on Sunday (unless I'm still this sore, then I might go ahead and call into work sick and go back Monday).  Gracie was pretty scared too, but she spent some quality time with my dad while I was in the jet bath last night and appears to be just fine :) .  Everyone else walked away from the accident too... a couple of younger guys were cut up a little and I never saw the truck driver, but I'm told that he walked away too.  So please pray that God is glorified in what happened last night for as many people involved as possible.

God is SOOOOOOOO good!