it is cold out. the first sink in your bones, make you draw sharp crisp breaths as you walk, cold. and i love it. soon i'll hate it but today i love it. i've not slept well the past five days and have listened to Motorcycle Drive By by Third Eye Blind probably over a hundred times. this morning i drove to work while the sky was black and the stars were bright and i screamed along with the lyrics and breathed deep belly breaths because jan tells me i have to.

yesterday i went to church and i did not want to. i had a hard conversation in the car before i walked through the doors and i clenched my fists and made myself walk in. i was supposed to hang with the best little 4 year old buddy Benjamin but he didn't come. they asked if i wanted to hold the babies and i said yes because i needed to hold life and be hopeful about things and babies have that power. then they had too many people so i couldn't hold the babies. then i went to the service with clenched fists and i grabbed the chair in front of me and gripped it till my knuckles turned white. the old lady next to me asked me if i was okay. i said no but it was okay thank you.

cold weather reminds me of colorado. never have i ever felt more alone or more alive. i remember standing on my porch at 7,500 feet when it was zero degrees out at midnight staring at the stars and moon and wondering what the hell i was doing and why i was so alone and where in the world was God. i doubted God in Brazil in the sunshine too, but i think it's easier to doubt God in the cold than in the sun. in colorado i had mountains to climb and a river running through my backyard to throw rocks in on the daily. now i sit in my closet and hold patrick henry (despite his lack of wanting to be held) and use excellent time management skills to write papers the day before they are due. i drive and yell and go to the grocery store in my pjs, because i am tired and burdens are heavy to bear right now.

so i'm mad at God. for other people mostly. and the world. i know he is big and i know i have hope but i am mad. i feel like swinging some fists and getting some answers because we need some.

this semester has kicked my ass. not having a fall break and working typically 70 hour work weeks with no days off makes a girl tired.

(i get that all my blogs are the same. get over it)

i still believe gratitude changes everything. all the time not just when turkeys are slaughtered.

friends who greet you at the door with apple cider spiked with whiskey are good.
oversized sweaters are good.
motorcycle drive by by third eye blind is good.
laughing around a dining room table with homemade food is good.
finding things to laugh at about at 6 am at old navy is good.
falling flat on your face in front of a new employer is good.
one eyed turtles named blinky are good.
getting A's on statistics exams is good.
laying on the floor with my favorite roommates on a Saturday night is good.
being known and loved is good.

i think i forgot how to blog. it's been seven months. seven hard months. this summer i sat in my closet, car, carillon, caroline's bedroom, porches, and coffee shops and cried probably once a week. then school started and i thought life would instantly get better and i'd feel like i had a purpose again. turns out my purpose still doesn't rely in the things i do or how i fill my time. shocking.

then 18 hours of classes, 21 hours of internship, and 20-30 hours of work at old navy hit me like a freight train. and i had a little crisis and laid in bed face down while brian rubbed my back and reminded me until my tears dried (and every day since then) that this too is a season. a season of building a future and investing in the rest of my life and that it is going to be really really hard.

britt always reminds me to trust the process because the process is the hardest part but always yields results. i hate the process. not because it involves work, or in my case studying and writing papers and doing statistics and folding 200000 t-shirts at old navy every day. i hate the process because it often brings out the worst in me. i get self centered and do terrible things like hang up on the man i love because i have to pay $13 to park because he didn't want me walking downtown at night time. i complain a lot. i act selfishly and i hate it. then i get mad that i did those things and its just an ugly cycle. when i was transitioning to real food off ensure britt told me every day to trust the process. even when i was going through withdraw from sugar and was REALLY really mean to everyone. (hey, it turns out i was accidentally starving myself too so let's blame some of the mean-ness on lack of food in my little body).

i am grateful for people who walk through the processes of life with me. i am grateful for past experiences with people who have held my hands well in the past and remind me again this time that they are here to do the same. i am grateful that i can text chelsea any time any day and amazingly enough she is always there to meet me with grace. i am grateful for patient family members who let me do me and who are always there to meet me on the couch to watch tv when i have a second.

today in class i took a lot of notes. rarely do i do this. i actually was just doing it because i was trying not to fall asleep. in my 2 pages of note taking i wrote the word hope in the margins and drew three little mountains. and i think that's all i got right now. tiny margins of hope. i know this isn't forever. there are things in life that are forever and i probably won't ever stop wrestling with them. i've been thinking a lot about grief and walking through grief with people i love and it will never make sense to me. i've got to have a tiny margin of hope there too. that the people we love the most who we lose senselessly made an impact. changed our worlds and others worlds. i've got to grab onto any tiny margins of hope i can get these days to carry on.

so find your margins. 5 minutes to sit outside before your 14 hour work day continues, 5 minute dance parties over FaceTime with your best friend, staying up a little later to see the people you love and lay in front of the fireplace together, taking tours of your favorite museums because you can breathe easily in those spaces, whatever. we've all got room for tiny margins of hope if we look. i have hope in that.