the preggers kids

I have been subbing a lot lately. I am a new person every day, in a new classroom and school. New rules. New class dynamics. For example, today I spent time at an alternative school, where I have never seen so many teen moms or pregnant teens. This alternative school is distinct from others in that it is supposed to provide such teens with opportunities to finish school when they might not otherwise be able to.

On days when I do stuff like this, it is so emotionally draining that I find myself getting weepy for days (and for random reasons). Today when I got home from work, I got onto hulu to watch Glee as a pick-me-up. (SPOILER ALERT!) The storyline involved a teenager telling her parents she was pregnant and then getting kicked out of her house immediately. So the pick-me-up plan was not so much successful in the way I hoped.

Enough of my pity party, especially when considering the plight of those I taught today.
Why, when I have just been affirmed as a pastor, am I playing this exhausting pedagogical Quantum Leap game every day? This is a question I have posed to God many times lately.

I don't think it has to be complicated. I might be dog tired, but if my new job as a pastor is going to be to assess the needs of our local community and how we can address those as a church community in specific and sustainable ways...then what better way to do it than to place myself quite literally (however temporarily) in the shoes of those who are working with kids in need, whether pregnant teens or highly at-risk kindgergarteners. I am exposed to the needs of families, kids, parents, teachers, etc...There is probably no better way for these needs to register in my heart than by my pretending to be the teachers who care for, educate, and watch over these juvenile members of our society...to literally fill their shoes for a day. I would not be equipped to speak as passionately about the community's needs if I did not experience this temporary job where watching Glee can make me weepy because it reminds of the real teen moms that were talking to me about their babies' sleeping schedule while they filled out Spanish vocabulary worksheets today.

Lord, how can we help? How can we help our neighbors? Help me to serve these students and teachers well now and to keep the purpose always in focus that God can use this to help us serve them well and with more consistency and stability as time moves forward and this experience fades from subbing and grows into serving the Mosaic community.

sin pies en el piso

When I first moved to Austin, I was scared that my exhausted state from finishing 3 hectic (understatement) years of seminary would not help in gathering the strength necessary for a transition to a new state, a new city, a new church, a new house, a new season. God has made Himself quite obvious in comforting me, in making circumstances lighter and the transition full of miracles and fluidity from previous seasons...I could never have imagined. I am so thankful.

It is interesting that now, in the past week or so, I am starting to experience more of what I thought would be the initial aspects of transitioning to Austin. Funny that the expected pangs of initial transition are happening in what might be the more angry phase of culture shock if I were in an entirely unfamiliar environment.

Along with broader, national tragedies like that of Fort Hood, many personal friends have been dealing with heavy circumstances. My childhood friend Jodi, mother of a 4 year-old daughter and wife to my high school friend Justin, died last week due to cancer. Her dying wish was that others' faith would be increased, never diminished, by her relationship to God. She is the main person on which I reflected for All Saints Day, in fact. Her story is indeed inspiring for many believers, including me.

My other friend Nelli's grandmother just passed away, and so she has just flown into Maryland from LA to be with her family. Another friend of mine could use our prayers right now, as she is undergoing medical tests that will reveal whether or not she is at risk of cancer. My nephew has H1N1, and my niece recently recovered from it. Four of my friends have had miscarriages this year.

I'm feeling heavy for these friends, for losses and pain and risk and fear and what these experiences put us through. For how it grips us, deceives us into believing we are isolated, uncared for, unlovable, not provided for, tossed aside, forgotten, even if the heavy quality of the season is itself an indicator that there has at some point been a prevention and/or rescue from this state and that our stories continue to lean into the hope that this dissonance resolves itself in a mysterious timing beyond our stopwatched preferences.

My own pain gets thrown into this mix, and onto its own mistaken stopwatch. I just started substitute teaching and tutoring to make ends meet while I begin to develop ways to raise support for myself to be a pastor at one of the most amazing churches I have ever gotten to be a part of. Part of what has made my transition to Austin so joyful has been the way God has led me to this community of people, to this vocational opportunity to serve a church and a city in the most earnest, thoughtful, and prayerful ways we corporately know how to do. Now, however, is the time where I deal with the scary reality that God provides, not me, especially when I don't know how it'll all come together. Turns out that God is still the one with power and control, not me, since the last time I checked. Who knew?

Even in the heavy thick of things, the tragedies, the tiredness of going to the first day of work every day (ah, the Quantum Leap adventures of substitute teaching). Even with the twists and turns of transitional adjustments, as well as from homesickness for faraway friends. There is desire for an easier time. In the stress of acquiring tangible needs, there is misunderstanding (mostly my own misunderstanding of the source from which provision comes, visible or otherwise). There is confusion. There is a desire for something light. An easy yoke. (It's probably at least important to recognize that I have not forgotten the easy yoke of my initial transition here, nor will I as perhaps a harder season sets in for a bit.)

Loss is a heavy experience, whether in one isolated form or spread out like a disease among loved ones and strangers inside strangely small amounts of time. Though we are taught that it is in the weighted portion of our seasons that we meet face to face with the groaning of creation, these labor pains, the adjustments, the transition, even the tragedies. They don't make sense. They hurt so much. And somehow who we are is wrapped up in these seasons, in this groaning that creation does alongside us and within the deepest parts of ourselves. Not in a shiny, boxed up lesson for us to take home or to get report cards on. Not to placate or repress the needs of heavy hearts. But whatever it is, it is part of who we are, to witness and to breathe in and out with the groaning of creation, to be the voice and the vessel of the groans as well as the voice and the vessel of simultaneous and always developing praises.

just a lil' rundown

This is pretty much a description of what I'm up to in Nashville. It's so relaxing and nice that I am compelled to just record it. Maybe it'll be intersting to you, maybe not. Whatever.

So yesterday, I went to a coffee shop and read and journaled in alternating fashion, completely dependent on my whim. It was rainy and sometimes I would start to doze off, but no worries, no pressure, because nothing I was doing had any deadlines.

Took a walk with Chelse and Ray, and we picked on each other and lauuughed and lauughed and laaaughed. We dropped into shops along 12th street on our way to Las Paletas. At Katy K's, Chelse found a perfect-fit dress for her show that night, and Ray found some great new boots. After a quick stop by Corner Music, we were soon walking with our paletas back toward Ray's lovely abode. Up the craziest hill that Chelse was in no mood to walk, though she definitely laughed about it. And somehow in all that, we decided that I had become a universalist and that "all paths are wide and true and right." (joke)

Went by to see Kriese's new place and then on to a backyard music festival in EastNash, where Chelse was one of several stellar music acts. I sat on this lovely night, able to see the moon under the string lights in the backyard, with beautiful music, a cool breeze saundering in and out of the festival, and one of my best friends sitting on the ground next to me. Another dear Belmont bud, Emily, was there, too, and we caught up after 2 years of not seeing each other.

Ran to Las Palmas with Aaron and Chelse and got my Palmas queso and chimichanga fix!

Then today, went to my dear ol' church Redeemer. Met a girl with which I have crazy connections between Nash and Austin. Got two big hugs from Thomas, my mentor and friend of almost ten years now! Met up with Chelse and Ray at Bongo and cut up with them, then suddenly found myself back in EastNash on a lovely front porch. Chelse and I sat on rocking chairs and had a good talk, with the day seemingly as happy to have us for company outside as we were to have it. Then it was sushi with Kriese, Aaron, Jenny, and Sadie, followed by a long walk via several laps around Centennial Park with Kriese while eating some amazing Maggie Moo's. Awesomeness!

journey/destination

So I stayed in Little Rock. Shelly, one of my former housemates from LA and one of my dearest friends, grew up in Little Rock. So soon I found myself being welcomed by her parents in a sweet neighborhood in North Little Rock, visiting with me in their living room and feeding me ice cream. I slept in the Shelly's childhood room, then woke up to find that her parents were making breakfast for me. Her dad kindly checked my tires and put air in them, and I was on my way.

Little Rock is so underrated! Shelly's house backs up to a creek area that is gorgeous. As I turned out of the neighborhood around 7:30am, the view of the city, with all its hills and trees and pretty buildings downtown, it was sooo pretty.

Before this, though, I noticed a Starbucks and thought I'd just slip in real quick. I quickly noticed that I was standing in line behind one of Shelly's best hometown friends, Lora! She had come to visit in LA and stayed at our house before. I leaned toward her and said, "I have a weird question," since I wasn't completely sure it was her. She turned around. "Oh my gosh, what are you doing here?!" It was too too fun. We visited for a few minutes before she headed off to her job as an art teacher, and I onward to Tennessee.

It only took a couple of phone calls with good friends and one gas stop;before I knew it, I was in Nashville. It was so sudden, since with the cloudiness of the very consistent rain of the past few days, I didn't see the Batman building when I arrived (this is always the inaugural and official notification that you have arrived in NashVegas). I was just suddenly in the neighborhood of Aaron and Jenny, who I am staying with this week. Before I knew it, Kriese had come over and we were all joking around and I knew my Nashville family was exactly who I needed right now.

Sadie, Aaron and Jenny's 5 year-old daughter, was singing songs and counting to 101 with me! She was out like a light before all of us were done with our visit, though. Jenny and I had instantly commenced good kitchen table conversation immediately upon my arrival earlier. Aaron and I effortlessly kept our tradition of talking later than we should, and then I hit the bed and slept like a mac truck had hit me.

Now sitting with my favorite Fido drink - the Dalmation - which the nice people at Bongo Java (same owners) made for me. Getting ready to journal and read and catch up with Chelse. Toying with google maps to see if I want to stay put for a while, go see some Smokies, or mayhaps take a very slight detour on the way home to hang out at the most peaceful place on earth for me in my life: the very tucked away lake cabin where I grew up going on the weekends.

i just want this...little rock

Okay, so I am sitting in a Starbucks somewhere in Little Rock, Arkansas.

This morning, I woke up in Mesquite, Texas, and set out on the open road toward Nashville. Four hours later, I was by myself with a blown out tire. It was raining non-stop on I-30, and I was nowhere near a mile marker or anything that would tell me where I was. For the first 15 minutes or so, I was fairly calm. But when I started having trouble finding help, and started thinking about all the places and situations your mom warns you never to get into, I will admit that the scary factor seems to increase as time went by.

Verizon Wireless roadside service was very helpful and stayed on the line with me for a while, but ultimately them getting me help was going to be very complicated since I was totally sure where I was and their coverage only extends so far into podunk-ish areas. They told me to call 911 and explain my situation so a police person could come sit with me until I figured it all out. I tried, but after the woman I was transferred to listened to me explain my situation, she said, "We'll see if we can get someone to come see you" and then hung up before I could ask anymore questions. I waited and waited, but nobody came. Finally, a highway patrolman found me and walked up to my car with its blinking hazards, on the shoulder, in the rain. With a kind concerned look and disapproving comments made in his Arkansas accent regarding the outrage that nobody had stopped to help me, he sat with me and helped me contact someone local to come and change my blown tire...and put air in my spare -- which was in my trunk but was flat as can be.

A few hours later, I pulled away and got to Arkadelphia just in time to not run out of gas. An hour or so down the road in Little Rock, I figured out that Mopie's borrowed GPS that was not at all charged had a car charger I was previously unaware of....ha. I typed in "Starbucks" and it took me to a Starbucks alright -- in a hospital's medical tower. So I tried again, and now I am typing this cute little but nevertheless very standardized piece of Seattle while sitting in Arkansas.

Shelly, a former housemate and dear friend, has 'rents who live here and who have graciously extended a welcome to their house for the night, should I decide forging onto Nashville is too much energy to mess with. Or I can (it's 6:36pm) take the road for 5-6 more hours and arrive late at my destination and second home of NashVegas.

So between the dental visit from hades, the afternoon changing my battery at AutoZone, and spending a rainy afternoon stranded, I am beginning to wonder what this month of "rest" will hold next. How will I afford the disasters that are happening? How will I reflect, read, and rest with all of these "obstacles?"

But ya know, it occurs to me that I have a sense of entitlement to this month of rest that needs to stop right this second. The dentist and all the employees there were more gracious than I could've asked for. The guy who changed my complicated corroded/welded-to-the-car battery did so for no charge. And while nobody helped me at first today, eventually a very nice policeman sat with me until I was safe. The guy who changed my tire was textbook backwoods, and that's exactly what made me feel secure. Forgive the generalization, but as a Texan girl fresh out of LA, I figure the more backwoods the person, the more friendly, generous and hospitable they are probably going to be with someone who's in trouble.

So on one hand, I find myself being very flustered and thinking that this is not what I hoped my sabbatical would look like. On the other hand, I realize that these stressful situations have been cushioned with kind faces and gentle remarks from strangers succeeding in their efforts to encourage and help me, whether in the dentist's chair about to get 5 shots or on the side of a rainy Arkansas interstate.
Is it too much to ask to just want to read some books for pleasure, see some old friends, have some time to myself in nature, journal and reflect and pray much more than I have had the unstructured, unscheduled opportunity to do, drive endlessly down a highway into the season of fall that this area of the country offers more than the Texas climate (as much as I love me some central Texas climate)? Maybe it's not too much to ask, but it IS too much to assume, or to pretend I own the rights to.

What if all this happened this week, PLUS I was working? Or what if it happened during finals? And more importantly, what if I wasn't reminded this month that God is never off duty, and that He continues to be in control of my ALWAYS unpredictable days, whether they are ridden with work from school or jobs, or set apart for sabbatical...whether they are unpredictably adventurous, scheduled, scary, or joy-inducing. I can take joy in all of these experiences if I just remember that even my days off belong to Him. I'm ok with it. More than ok, even, if I think about it long enough. ;)

I am relying on Him, relying on Him to remind me that I am not ultimately the boss of me or anyone else. Relying on Him to take care of me, to open his hands for me to curl up in while I take time off the usual pace of life, while I trust that He will help me rest, and remember that what I think is best for my rest does not constitute reason for resentment when lo and behold, Sept 19 -October 19 of 2009 turns out to belong to God and not Carrie Graham. I suppose it is a much more restful realization to hold onto that.

Okay - enough for now. Yay for safety! And kind highway police people and mechanics! And Little Rock! And books on tape! And lots of chai!

Carrie ;)

tada!

So my month off has begun.
The first few days have involved sleeping in, getting 5 shots in my mouth at the dentist, needing to get a new car battery that turned out to have so much corrosion that the Autozone employee helping me change it actually spent more than an hour trying to figure out how to solve the problem of so much corrosion on the battery that the screws connecting the battery to the car had welded themselves to the battery, which made for a tricky process of getting the new battery in. It has been adventurous, no doubt, and a good start to the month. However, I am not sure if I would use "restful" as the operative term. And there are LOTS of fun and tiring adventures I have thought about pursuing this month, but decided not to plan for, because the operative term indeed is one that might be THE most challenging for me to pursue: r-e-s-t-f-u-l

I realized I needed to skip town to really get to the "rest" portion of this month. I keep itching to make to-do lists (and have made a few already). I am noticing that those to-do lists do not embody the spirit of what this time is about. Hmmm....

I think I could easily spend this whole month stressing about how I don't know when I'll ever have time off like this again, and should thus embrace it, which makes me put pressure on myself about how to spend each day "restfully," which is ironically not a restful posture whatsoever.

So I got in the car tonight and drove to a hotel out of town. This hotel is in the direction of one of the only places on earth that perpetually feels like home, and welcomes me in like home as well.

I will, in a mosey-like fashion, make my way to this restful place sometime tomorrow.

And it is there, in Nashville, where I will see friends who I adore and who treat me like family, friends who go way back and with which I did lots of growing up. Where I can get a Dalmation at Fido's, go to Centennial and do some reflecting, reading ( I brought an absurd amount of books with me, just so I could pick up the ones I feel like looking at in the very moments I feel like picking them up.), writing, and then meet a friend at Calypso. And hopefully forget about this pressure to have a pressure-less time. Maybe time will escape me. It should, as I have been looking forward to this time for so long! A time where the last 3 years of living at a sprint's pace can start to sink in, a time where grieving the end of my chapter in LA, a time where I can reflect generally and on pursuing full-time ministry, on the triumphs and losses lived together through the last few years by my family and friends that I love dearly, on the new life in Austin that God has helped me transition so smoothly into that I hardly know how to deal with my ongoing sense of gratitude and simultaneous joyful exhaustion from finishing my last finals last week.

Don't know how long I'll be gone. But the idea is that when this month is over, my "return" will yield a more present me, a person who is a little bit more equipped to love and serve others, to participate in community with dear peeps near and far. To be me, the non-freaking out all the time version. Heh.

So here's to not knowing what will "get done," what time or day it is, how long it's taken to get to a certain page of a book, to what God's grace will do to form me further when it's got some serious center stage time.

Huge thanks to Nelli D and other LA friends who have held me to this.

Carrie ;)

cual es llena de la gracia

I am worried that I am going to have trouble writing songs for a while. There is a joke that a break up, a tragedy, a depressing phase of life, is great for good song writing. And there's some degree of truth to that. As it is generally friends who read this blog, you will know that I am generally a pretty content person anyway, and that I like to crank out songs because music is fun and magical, not only in cases where I find myself flat out depressed about something. But admittedly, compelling emotional questions do help with songwriting. And I am so content right now, in the midst of a transitional time where I would otherwise assume lots of songs would emerge, that I don't know what questions I would be asking other than "how did everything go from so hard to so good so fast?"

There's a lot to process from seminary. Such a fantastic and crazy difficult time. So rigorous. So intense. Life has to be a blur or you're not moving fast enough to get it all done. There's an adjustment to that pace, but it feels like even your body parts are warning you somewhere inside that what you're doing - the setting to the new pace of seminary- will change your life for the better overall, but to be felt for the worse temporarily. I know much of that has more to do with the way I chose to pursue seminary (full-time, working, in LA culture, and with my overachieving/busybody self that sacrifices sleep too consistently and cheerfully than what is for my own good), but it is not entirely me. There is a nature to the seminary bubble that throws you into this craziness. It's both a deconstruction and reconstruction zone. Watch for falling rocks on the San Gabriel mountains; watch for failing intellectual understandings of Jesus - lying dead in the courtyard of campus. And yet there were/are always those sitting beside those corpses, sure of resurrection of some sort on its way, worshiping all the while. There exists the breath of seminary. The reconstruction that pairs intellect with faith and makes theology less of an isolated, abstract pursuit and more of one that God uses to put us in awe, in awe of our own misunderstanding, our own confusion, our own tiny-ness -- and God's opposing status on all these counts that reaches out to us.

I don't totally get what I just went through back in LA. And on some level, I am starting to miss it. I definitely miss friends - as I have made clear by now, ha. I am reading about the fires happening near my old house and praying. I can see the ashes on our cars from the fires as far as Malibu. Hopefully Sean's asthma is taking this ok. Hopefully's Nelli and the Klein's are out of harm's way in their whimsical neighborhood where finals become possible to complete and where there always seemed to be an oasis of peace in the midst of insane stress. I know TGU must be getting prepared for the next class to come in, thinking through what it is that students will be benefited by in acclimating to such a unique sort of environment. This is a fun but tough aspect of the TGU job, as once one gets acclimated to the environment, it's hard to remember how one ever functioned in a different way. But let me assure you, so shiny and new from Austin, Texas, LOTS of people function in a different way.

But God has even provided people coming in and out of town, or who go to my new church, who have been through this, who get it. So a few months ago, I was accustomed to life being a series of storms, lined up by the quarter, exciting and scary and frustrating and hard all at once and without reprieve, and with an ironically consistent sun outside that I enjoyed with Stacey on the swing in the midst of it. And flash forward from a few months ago to now, I am sitting in a local coffee shop with a local grocery story across the street from me. I walked here from my house, which is in one of my all-time favorite Austin neighborhoods. When I jog, I run from my house to where Bev used to live, where I used to stay when I came to visit, and I wave an imaginary hello to our timelines that have just missed each other (I remember thankfully that our friendship only needed us to cross paths geographically once for us to share each other's lives from wherever we may be). The street where I live offers walkers and bicyclists and joggers plenty of room, as they offer the pavement traffic with their feet and wheels almost as much as tires do. Once inside my house with Stacey's swing outside - and an orange porch light left (for me, I'm convinced) by the previous tenants, one finds an old house with lots of windows, an openness, lightwood floors, a washer and dryer with no demand for quarters to work. A person with only bedroom furniture before moving in, the previous tenants offered me a living room complete with its own hiv couch (shout out to meekamo!), and my birthday allowed me the funding necessary to fill out the rest of the home-y residence. My neighbors are all friendly and I have actually MET them and talked with them and made brookies for them (all of LA native land is squinching their faces at this notion)! My landlords are Jewish and my newest friends are Mormon. My new church community is Fuller-gone-hipster. Full of people who are so welcoming that you would think they would've received a vision saying to act like we'd all been friends for years by the time I got here. My family is 30 minutes away, and I have already stopped by to have lunch with Mopie one day because I just happened to be "in the area" that afternoon. Ashlyn and Jacob have been over for a slumber party, and came over to my house as a surprise the other day to present me with artwork for my new house! I will be able to go see my new baby cousin soon, and will be able to see Alyssa and Caro when their firstborns arrive in a month or two. I am teaching my mom Spanish.

And I sit at my keyboard wondering when it will be time for a new song. So much has happened that it seems like the whirlwind would amount to new songs escaping from me like prisoners from a recently unlocked Azkaban. But instead, I play through a few old songs and wonder at the thought that this only problem I seem to be encountering right now in Austin is an inability to interrupt a seemingly sturdy sense of contentedness.