The Kaleidoscope

Wow, what a weekend. I can't seem to summon the ambition to do anything besides sit in my wonderful bed and browse the internet in an ADD-type fashion. I think my short attention span is a symptom of utter exhaustion.

The Quick and Dirty Breakdown:

• Up early, skipped lecture on Thursday, eventually made my way out of the house to head back home (Oh, how I love driving back to Milwaukee after a long time away...)
• Hit up the mall and visited Tracy at Starbucks - and found out Grandma Frega isn't doing too well at all
• Sat through a cut / highlight appointment (So worth it because I Love my new hairstyle!)
• Visited an old, tired, and frail looking Grandma and tired visitors at her nursing home. So difficult.
• Up early the next day for a dentist appt. - nothing is acutally wrong with my tooth, but yet it still hurts. Grr.
• Got a pedicure ($25 that I never regret spending)
• Went out to lunch with Tracy (I'm no longer a Sushi Virgin! Yummy!) and spent the day shopping with her for wedding-ish type stuff. We bought her and Doug's wedding bands. I realized I desperately want someone to buy me a ring and take me away and marry me (there's probably a white horse involved somehow, too). Ha, that's wishful thinking if I ever heard it!
• Laid around the rest of the night, too pooped to move or do anything worthwhile. Did get to talk to Grandpa though, which I was happy about.
• Left Saturday morning for Madison again - Camp friends were in town!! HUGELY fun.
• Saw Madison at its finest - gorgeous day to wander State St., eat ice cream at the Terrace, and lay on Bascom. Crowds everywhere, fans excited. It's an experience like none other, and I'm so happy I got to share it with people I love so much.
• BADGER GAME. NIGHT GAME. SO FUN. It was looking scary for the first half, but we pulled through in the end. Omigoodness, I love my school.
• At least 25 people in our house after the game. WOW. Food galore, games of Warewolves, 6 people spooning on my bed ... it was mad chaos. And so fun.

And now I'm here. Exhausted. My room is a mess (if you can imagine). My brain is mush, and my body is rejecting the massive amounts of empty calories that were forced into it over the past four days. None of these things really facilitate reflection.

This weekend had its dark moments, and it had it moments of glorious, life-giving color.

There's no denying it: There's a lot of darkness in the world. There is the black sting of death and sickness, the grey tiredness that comes from deep emotions, the ugly hughes of stress that we feel when we are faced with the pressures of life and worry about how quickly time is moving past us.

But, there's also color. God didn't have to make the leaves turn into their kalidescope of reds and yellows and greens - but He did. He didn't have to make the skies and the waters deep, brilliant blues - but He did. He doesn't have to warm our faces with the golden rays of sunlight - but He does.

God doesn't have to give us the sensations of joy that we get when we are surrounded by those we love, but he does.

He doesn't have to love us, provide for us, desire us ... but He DOES. More than we will ever understand.

God casts away the dark shadows, replacing even the darkest things with the light and color of His presence.

Yeah, He's pretty cool.

The Sunday Scramble

Mmm ... Sunday. Nothing quite like coming back from church, bustin' out the sweatpants, and engaging in what I like to call the "catch up day" routine. Somehow, even though there's always a lot to do on Sundays, to me, they always seem a little bit more lazy than most days.

After a busy, back-to-business-as-usual week, and a jam-packed, people-filled weekend, it'll be good to have a few hours to regroup and get my game-face on for the days to come. There'll be classes and homework, meetings and stuff to do around the house. ... But, I'm happy to be heading home on Thursday and Friday, and looking forward to a whole house filled with Camp vistors next weekend. It'll pretty much be a mini-reunion, and I could not be more excited!

This weekend was a precursor to next: Karen took a break from wedding planning and came with Amber from WLC to hang out with us Madison folk. It was like a mini mini-reunion, and we girls had a good time hanging out in my bed, trying to figure out which members of the Baby-Sitters Club we are most like. Yeah, we're pretty cool. : )

Prior to their arrival, I also got to take some time to enjoy the beautiful weather and go on a bike ride after class on Thursday, and hang out with YoungLife and Campus Crusade people on Friday. (Photo Scavenger Hunt on State St. and dance parties!) I also had some time to get some stuff done around the house, which was nice - especially after not doing laundry for over a month.

Unfortunately, there was also some sad news this weekend. On Saturday morning, I got a message from my mom saying that Grandpa Johnson had had a massive heart attack. Luckily, he was able to get into surgery in the nick of time and is stable at this point. Of course, it was a scare that no family wants to have. If you could include him and my grandma and our family in your prayers, we would appreciate it very much. It is my prayer that the Lord would work in us through this and that His Name would be glorified in all circumstances.

Blessings to you all in the week ahead!

Pictures!

PS. Check out pictures from my summer on Picasa! http://picasaweb.google.com/nicole.carow/TheAdventuresOfSummer2007

Make sure you check out the "Map" feature; you can see sattelite images of where I've been!

Oh Google. You never cease to amaze me.

Annnnd ... Scene.

When the clock flips to A.M. at midnight tonight, a new season of life will begin. It's a change, for sure.

I go from exams. To Camp. To Madison. And now ... to real, bona fide, school. Lectures. Readings. Discussions. The papers, oh goodness, the papers. And it almost feels like I never left.

Just when you get used to one thing, it drifts right into the next.

I feel like I hardly got a handle on my summer. So many things went unsaid, so many letters went unwritten, so many opportunities just ... missed. I almost left Wautoma with a lot of regret. As incredible as my summer was, as jam-packed, adventurous, hilarious, spontaneous, fulfilling as it was, I still spent most of my summer brooding with a heavy, doubting heart. And that made it so, SO hard to leave. How could I leave, when things were just getting started? When I was finally ready to dive in headfirst?

I'm not sure what changed. All I know is that from the last Tuesday night to the last Thursday morning of the summer, I didn't do much sleeping, but I did do a lot of crying, and a lot of praying. Somewhere out on the middle of the lake, the morning I was to leave, things started to make sense. I'm not sure how, I'm not sure why, but I do know that God speaks to us in ways that we can't even begin to comprehend. He comforts us when nobody else has a clue, He points us in directions we wouldn't have gone on our own, and leads us to places of assurance that we never would have reached without Him.

It took a whole summer, but in those last hours, I was able to breath a sigh of relief, and know that it hadn't been for naught. The moments of despair and the moments of elation were blended together to create an experience that was entirely human. We're full of contradictions, us humans, but God (whatta Guy) is working through those experiences, working through those ups and downs, to draw us nearer to Him (even if we don't realize it) and bring His kingdom into fruition.

Whew. So that was my summer. It was a lot to learn.

Then I left there ... and life became BUSY.

I was in Canada ... (this picture was actually taken on the way back from Canada, at Pictured Rocks National Park in the Upper Penninsula)

And I was in Madison, cleaning the House of Horrors, complete with moldy walls, paint-stained floors, and the "Closet O' Piss." Even opposums. It's been hectic, to say the least. But, this crazy old house has brought a lot of fun opportunities to get to know my roommates better and learn some new skills and become just a wee bit more independent.

I was thinking about the concept of moving recently. I seem to do it quite a bit. I went from the dorms, to an apartment, to a house, with a few sandy cabins to fill the months in between. Each time, with the execption of Camp, I bring a little bit more STUFF with me. It's becoming quite annoying, to say the least. (Whenever I move, I always feel like I should become a minimalist, selling all my worldly possessions to the poor and living in a box, or something.) Each time, though, my place of residence becomes a little bit more like home, and it makes me all the more anxious to have a home of my own one day. Complete with cute dish sets and more Ikea furniture, naturally. On second thought, maybe minimalism isn't the way of life for me ...

I guess it reminds me of the road to heaven. We're here on this earth, gaining more and more "baggage," if you will. Not baggage like the bad kind that people talk about when they talk about relationships, but like, life experiences. We carry these around with us, day by day acquiring more, and we're supposed to be collecting the things that will make our earthly tents, our earthly bodies, a little bit more like our ultimate heavenly mansion and our glorified bodies. We're supposed to be acquiring more kindness, more compassion, more humility, and each day, we're supposed to be feeling a little bit closer to our heavenly residence, where we can finally snuggle up in front of the eternal fire on that Swedish-made couch with that classy heavenly throw-pillow.

It's a sloppy analogy, but when you spend a few hours a day caulking and painting in an unventilated basement, you have a lot of time to think.

Oh, you're not supposed to paint and caulk in an unventilated basement?

Oh. That explains a lot.

Grace and peace to you all in this new season of life!