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fashion modeling.

8 Mar
There are days when I feel completely overwhelmed with ideas and stories to tell you, with pictures to paint with words.  
Today is one of these days.  
In such a good way.
But I try and pace myself.  As much as I feel overwhelmed with words, I don’t want to overwhelm you.  We’ll start slowly.  Here.
I want to tell you how I suddenly feel such a great part of this community at seminary.  I’ve honestly never really felt like I’ve belonged here … I’ve treaded water trying to find my place.  People use a lot of big words I don’t understand.  Sometimes, I don’t get the religious jokes and I feel too … not church nerdy? … to belong.  Most of the time, I seem to worry more about how other people are perceiving me than simply being myself.
I’ve reached a place where I feel like I belong.  I feel wonderful being a part of this community and I feel like I’m a part of this community while being myself and not someone else.  [Just as I’m about to graduate and leave, she yells and stomps her foot.]
Tonight was the Luther Seminary Variety Show.  [As a professor noted in an email to a friend, you’ll notice it’s called a ‘variety show.’  Not ‘talent show.’]  Always held on Fat Tuesday and preceded by a community meal and silent auction, it’s one night when students and professors alike turn out to laugh and celebrate our community.  I love seeing the professors and seminary staff members present with their spouses and kids.
Of the three variety shows I have been present for in my years here, this was the first one in which I was involved.  
As a fashion model.  
Come again, you say.
My pal, Cassie, is the talent behind this fashion show, writing the script that pushes and teases at seminary student types, and gathering the models and needed costumes.  My role?  I played the ‘fFU.’  The fresh from undergrad seminary student.  This typical student is one who wears the sweatshirt of their college and flipflops, carrying a backpack and acting a bit aloof.  [Video of this event does exist and I will share once the link is posted so you can watch me in my runway debut.]
The variety show pokes polite fun at students, professors, and the systems we go through.  Norwegian sweaters also had their fair share of mention tonight.  There are many-a-professor here at Luther who wear a Norwegian sweater daily.  It’s. awesome.  Equally – or even more – awesome?  My pal, Kevin [whose real name is Joel], wrote and rapped a song about the sweater tonight.  He continues to amaze me.
There is some awesome talent at seminary, beyond the preaching and teaching confirmation.  Erm, I mean variety.  There is some awesome variety at seminary.  And I’m glad to be a part of it all.
An aside story: I donated two dozen cakepops to the silent auction.  The rule was that I bring a display of cakepops and then take a special order from the winning party.  Since the cakepops were near the “Wine tasting for 12 with Karoline Lewis” auction item – which my friends and I bid on, watched like hawks, and then won – I was able to watch the bidding.  I watched Professor Schifferdecker’s kids eye up the cakepops, her youngest grabbing and wanting one.  Once the bidding was over [the winning cakepops to be made and delivered to Karoline for her boys who have tasted their goodness and wanted them badly – this might make cousin, Hannah, jealous], I took the display.  I passed Professor Schifferdecker on the way with her three kids and offered each of them one.  They were super excited, so much so that her eldest daughter threw her arms around me and said, “You’re the best!”  
Hugs from kids are great.  It was the best.

Grandpa.

8 Mar
I love my Grandpa Sid for so many reasons.  I remember Grandpa putting my cousin and I in a metal bushel basket at the top of the corn shed hill, spinning and pushing us down the ice-covered gravel road.  [Dangerous?  Heck yes.  Fun?  Heck yes.]  I remember him getting just as anxiously excited as my dad during tobacco harvest.  He lives just down the hill from the farm and sends me awesome vintage [not the word he would use but they’re super cute and old] valentines and birthday postcards.
When I was home a few weekends ago, I wanted to stop down to say hello and tell him about my assignment to region three, but he wasn’t home.  I called and left him a message, letting him know I had stopped and that I would call when I had further assignment news.  In response to that message, I received a letter in the mail yesterday, in his awesome tight script.  

He told me about his wishes for my further assignment, told me what he’d been up to, and then told me where to get the best lutefisk.  Now I’m telling you – Iola, WI.  To quote Grandpa, “If you like lutefisk, that’s the place to go.”
You take care.

video post.

6 Mar

All your questions will be answered by clicking play.

[Further posts regarding my weekend of visitors and pictures of the polar plunge will follow.  For now, this is all you get.  Make as much sense of it as you can …]

I got better.

15 Feb
(on the phone with me mum)
Mom: How are you?
L : Alright.
Mom: That’s not what your blog says.
Oh.  Right.  The blog posting I wrote in crankiness and frustration last night, and then hit “Publish” with some sort of ‘stick-it-to-the-man’ attitude.
Thanks for reading, friends, and thanks to the many of you who commented, sent messages, and asked me how things were going.  You are all so wonderfully supportive and the way in which you support me is proof of the community that is built and grows through such a silly thing as a blog.  Blog.  The word is just funny to begin with … but in all seriousness and slightly as an aside, this blog has helped me form and maintain relationships in a weird but really cool way.  [As one who often struggles to let people into her life, it’s this crazy thing where you can learn about me and my life virtually; that somehow puts me at ease when face-to-face.  But enough about that for now.  Perhaps more in another blog post in the future.]  
As for today, what comes to mind is a favorite quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail – said with a choppy British accent – “I got bet-tah.”  [See video clip at the end of the post to bring light to this quote if you’re unfamiliar.  Also, you should watch the clip if you would like to learn what else floats in water.  Spoiler alert: Churches and very small rocks.]
Today was a better day.  I won’t say that my confidence has completely been restored or my feet entirely steadied, but I think I might wear the yellow shoes tomorrow, Sabrina [see comment on previous post], to assert the unique feet that are my own/unique person that I am.
That is the truth – that each person is unique.  Even better – that’s the way God intends it.  [A lesson I love exploring with kids.  I should practice what I teach.]  I so easily get caught up in comparing myself to others that I forget to be myself and be content with who I am.  [Okay.  I can’t help it.  Another video clip that comes to mind.  Dawson peeps: Are you really surprised?  Hello, Joyce?]
I am a seminary student but I don’t consider myself an academic.  I’ll never teach at the college level, nor do I have any desire to work towards a doctorate.  That’s not me.  It’s not where my gifts are.  I love [nearly] all aspects of congregational ministry and despite the lack of confidence and momentary freak-outs [which I guess will only be more frequent as graduation grows near – I apologize in advance], this is what I’m called to do.  I learned that last year more than ever, but this year – returning to an academic environment which I feel is not my strength – it’s a struggle to remember that.  
It’s no joke when I say that I have Kendall’s [my internship supervisor] and my internship committee’s final evaluation paragraphs of my year propped upon my study table.  I think I need to be reminded – when I seem to lack the confidence and strength – that other people believe in these gifts I’ve been given and have witnessed my joy in ministry.  Perhaps when I’m called upon to explain my CYF thesis to a class of highly academic classmates, I need to forget the comparisons, and simply “do my best and forget the rest.”  [That’s what Tony Horton says.  Who knew P90x and seminary classes had anything in common?]  
In conclusion: Today was bet-tah.  And thanks, blog friends.
Enough rambling from me.  Now enjoy this:

be thankful on paper (4).

29 Nov
Okay.  I cheated.
I didn’t use paper.  I didn’t send out a thank you note this past Wednesday as I had promised to do.  
Want to hear my excuses?
You’re right.  They’re just excuses.  They don’t change the fact that I failed at my assignment.  *hangs head pathetically*
While I wasn’t thankful on paper as instructed, I coordinated some thankfulness on chalkboard instead.   (Does that make up for it at all?  Please?)  Chalkboard word bubbles to be exact – word bubbles which I made after finding this blog post.  So incredibly fun with so many ridiculous uses!
Ready? 

I don’t have a word bubble to say it but I felt so incredibly thankful for my family and friends at home this past week.  They’re good, great, and grand.  Marvelous.  Hilarious.  Loving.

They. are. awesome.

be thankful on paper (3).

18 Nov
Week three of being thankful on paper and I wrote to my sister.  My sister is nine years younger than I. She was born when I was in fourth grade and boy, was I excited to have a baby sister in the house.  I was the ‘second mother’ – changing diapers, feeding, babysitting as I could at that age.  
As she has grown older, she’s had a different childhood than my brothers and I – not living on the farm,  or forced to do tobacco labor, and being the younger spoiled child (joke, Mom, joke) –  but Emma has become quite the wonderful and grounded 18 year old.  We share a mutual love of cardigan sweaters and scarves, not to mention a similar obscure sense of humor.  We’ve bonded through Gilmore Girls and Twilight.  We look alike; the identification of our baby pictures sometimes relies on the background or clothing to determine which is which.  But even now – I still remember one woman asking us a few years ago, “Which one of you is older?”  For real, woman?  
She’s pretty cool and more popular than I ever was or ever will be.  (cough prom queen cough) One complaint — she refuses my suggestion of Luther for undergrad next year.  Wherever she goes, she’ll do great work, make loads of new friends, and change the world.  I’m pretty confident about that.

I’ve linked my blog here – jump on over to read more notes about being thankful!

be thankful on paper [a thank you].

15 Nov
Check out PC’s thank you for my thank you :
(Now I want to thank PC for his sweet blogged thank you for my thank you … but I fear that would just begin a never-ending circle of thanks … which is not a bad thing … but a thing to which you do not need to be subjected on this blog.)

be thankful on paper (2).

11 Nov
This week’s thank you went out to the pastor of my home congregation, Pastor Clint.  I remember my dad telling me on the phone while I was at college about PC when he first came to visit, interview and was called to the congregation.  Then I remember, weeks later, in PC’s first week as pastor there, the message he left on our answering machine with his condolences regarding the death of my dad.
This is now PC’s last week as a pastor at EKLC.  He has accepted a call in Arkansas; a new adventure.  Though I have been away for much of the time PC has served at my congregation because I haven’t lived at home for more than six months of that time, I am thankful for his energy and his leadership in the church.  He’s brought new and inventive ideas to a small rural church and, in many areas, has fed new life.  
Yet, the big motivation for writing to PC is that he is one of the main reasons I am in my senior year of seminary, six months short of graduation and hopefully just shy of my first call and ordination.  I’m still uncertain what exactly he saw in me that made him think I was fit to be a pastor but, boy, did he push the subject.  I still remember receiving an email from him that year I graduated from college; the email read: “I nominated you for this.”  Scroll down in the email and find it to be a scholarship to Luther Seminary.  But I’m not going! I thought.
Well, I eventually did go.  And here I am, fairly certain that it’s true – I’m called to be a pastor.  It’s where I feel my gifts are used to the fullest and it’s a vocation where I feel my passion completely take over.  So thank you to PC for being one of the first (and most forceful) persons in helping me discern my call to ministry.

Jump on over here to read more notes of thankfulness on paper!

be thankful on paper (1).

4 Nov
Way back when, I signed up to be thankful on paper this month.  Together with many other bloggers, including the creator at No. 17 Cherry Tree Lane and my friend, Jenni, at After the Chapel, I agreed to send a written thank you note every Wednesday in November and then to write about that person on Thursday.  Installment one is here. [Hop on over to No. 17 to read other thankful on paper blogs!]

I sent out six thank you notes yesterday.  One went to Illinois, another to Texas, still another to Indiana, and three to Wisconsin.  I couldn’t thank just one so I thank all six of my Dancing Banana friends.  My high school gals.  I love them to bits, eight years out of school and separated in five states.  This is what I sent to each of them with a personal note – 

(click on the note to make it bigger and easier to read)
That youtube video I mentioned?  You’ll hate me later … though actually, no.  Don’t hate me.  Hate my friend, Kim.  She’s the one who finds these things and shares them … but I secretly love it.  And love Kim.  “CHICKEN!”

be thankful on paper.

21 Oct
Take Joey from Friends for example.  After asked what he is thankful for, he said, “I am thankful for this beautiful fall weather we’ve been having.  The other day, I was at the bus stop and a fall wind blew this one chick’s skirt right up.  [pause]  Which reminds me – I’m also thankful for thongs.”  (I sat down to write this post and by happenstance it was that episode of Friends that was on my television.  It begged for inclusion.)

Sometimes we focus more on the negative than we do on the blessings and people for which we should be thankful.  (Guilty as charged.)  Rachel, over on No. 17 Cherry Tree Lane, is proposing a snail mail campaign in the month of November – hand-written notes of thankfulness.  Not only is the being thankful a bit counter-cultural, but let’s write a pretty note, address the envelope, and put the stamped thank you in the mail.  Not an email.  Not a facebook message.  A thank you that arrives in the mailbox.

Here’s what will happen: Each Wednesday of November, I’ll send a hand-written note to someone in my life for whom I am thankful, telling that someone why I consider them a blessing in my life.  That next day, I’ll write a simple blog post about that note of thanks and the person to whom I wrote.
Along with other bloggers I know only through text and not by face, my Dancing Banana (translation: high school) friend, Jenni, is joining in on the thankfulness.  Read about the people she thanks for being in her life here beginning in November.  Have a blog and want to join in?  Visit Rachel’s blog linked above for further direction.  Don’t have a blog?  You can send snail mail thank you notes too.   Be thankful on paper this Thanksgiving!
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