Diet, Caffeine Free Coke (the kind in the gold cans that I only ever like in Georgia)

“Get up, kid!” My grandpa burst through the guest room door. We had planned to be on the water by 5:30; it was now 6:03. My adolescent lethargy was almost enough to make me slide back under the sheets, but a glance through the window told me that this was a day for fishing.

It was early June in Newnan, Georgia. From noon until dusk, standing outside was like standing in a furnace. But there was a small, magical window of time in which the temperatures were mild and the large mouth bass rose from the grass. Yes, they were hungry and we were ready to throw everything but the kitchen sink at them.

This is what we did when I visited my grandparents every summer. We fished. Now, since I was not a year-round fisherwoman at this point in my life, my grandpa always stocked up on a few dozen jumbo minnows before I arrived. This is not cheating, but, under the blazing summer sun, the odds were in my favor.

My grandfather saw my contemplation and walked out of the room. “Two minutes and I’m leaving without you!” He shouted back. I knew he wouldn’t but that didn’t stop me from jumping out of bed and dashing out after him like a fresh, young springbok. I was barefoot and t-shirted, the promise of the catch stealing all the sleep from limbs.

I darted down the stairs to the basement where my grandparents stayed. In two leaping bounds, I’d past years of memorabilia hanging along the wall. “Oh, Anna, sit down,” sang my grandmother in that special tone only a grandmother possesses.

“Sorry, Gram, gotta go, gotta go, big fish, today, big fish!” I repeated myself out of excitement. In these golden days, I was a regular zealot with nothing to do but do.

Every day, we played this charade: both knowing my exuberance would not allow me to sit and eat in these fleeting morning hours. So, every morning, my grandmother handed me a container of macaroons and a diet, caffeine free coke (the special ones in the gold cans that I only ever liked in Newnan).

Never stopping for a moment, I grabbed two rods and the old, tackle box and took off down the stone path. I always regretted not wearing any shoes on account of the jagged rocks in the soles of my feet but it was always forgotten as soon as I jumped up the three stairs up to the red, wooden dock. My grandpa followed behind with that agonizingly slow pace that adults always seem to have. I surveyed the lake. Touches of sun peaked behind the westward pines. This was a day for fishing.

"Festival"-Sigur Ros

"Weighty Ghost" -Winter Sleep

"Agape" -Bear's Den

"Here's To Now" -Ugly Casanova

"Cosmic Tim" -The Great Bear Trio (outro to an epic 90s alt film of self-discovery + a fiddle. tell me the world doesn't make sense after the initial confusion subsides.)

"Beast of Burden" -The Rolling Stones (didn't realize how much i'd miss my dad. here's to you, pops!)

"As a deer pants for flowing streams so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God... Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life... Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God." Pslam 42

Whose

Wow. It is more overwhelming to sit down and write about this past month than I had anticipated. I have so much to say, so much that I’ve learned. Some good, some bad, but all right because of my Teacher.

What seems like ages ago, I departed sweet, sweet Chesapeake. I said goodbye to my spiritual home and the brothers and sisters that walked with me through laughter and tears, joy and pain, with Jesus, always. I left the place that taught me so much about what a community of love and fellowship can look like through the earnest pursuit of He who has already sought.  The place that I cannot describe because What has moved through it is not of this world. Chesapeake still holds a special part of my heart but three weeks ago I was made to leave by the will of my Creator… and the beginning of classes. So, to the mountains I went, with Jesus still at my side.

I will not pretend to be able to write all that I have been taught in my three short weeks here. It utterly astounds me that each night I cannot even finish recording the movement I saw that day before I pass out on my bed. Since I now eat, sleep, play, and learn in the same place, twenty-four seven, Jesus has been on my mind, twenty-four seven, almost obsessively. I sometimes begin to think I’m going mad but am happy to be a fool to the world for my very best Friend.

He has shared much encouragement and peace with me as I transitioned into the big, bad world of university life. I am enveloped by His presence. He is visible, tangible in every river I swim and wood I walk. He exists within the love of believers, here, evident and true, and I am never without joy as I wait to see what He will show me next. However, I also see an abyssal voidance of Him, rather the recognition of Him. It is very real, in my heart and the hearts of all who surround me. That is where things became difficult.

While I have found much joy in experiencing being pushed far, far out of my comfort zone for Him, it has been hard. I sat under a tree on the Drillfield and cried on my third day here because I had already walked farther than I had all summer and just could not physically handle it. I cried because I missed having a community that knew and was known to me. I cried in class when one of my older friends gently reminded me of my iniquities. I cried because I had overcompensated the strength of my own heart. I just recovered from one of the rarest surgeries performed today faster than any surgeon in Portsmouth Naval predicted. I got through that; this college thing should be no sweat. Wrong. I have been incredibly humbled in the time I’ve been at school. What? Why was this happening? Why had my strength fled as quickly as it came? Why were things moving and shaking around me more quickly than my heart could understand?

I was looking up sermons by Judah Smith when I was stumbled on to one entitled “Jesus Is With You Always.” Click. Okay, his recounting of Paul and Silas’s time in prison did nothing to quell my pleading heart until he said of the worshipping disciple, “…and what’s real to Paul is Whose he is.” I clicked off the video. I remembered writing that in a blog before my surgery. The reason why I have been breaking down is because, again, I had forgotten-as humans always do-the one fundamental Truth of life. IT DOES NOT WORK WITHOUT JESUS. It does not function properly or beautifully without its one and only Author. Even in my attempts to pursue Him here, I forgot this. I, again, was trying to show people Jesus of my own accord. I was making it all about the big, ol’ M-E, me. Just as I did in the pre-op room, just as I have repeatedly my entire life.  But, the beauty of this is, He never fails to remind us of His presence and graciously bring us back home, again.

While I have cried many tears, here, in humility of myself and mournfulness of my sins, I have been reminded of Joy through the sweet tears of Grace. I will never, ever be enough, for college, for a new community, for this world. But Jesus loves me enough to redeem me in all of it. I cried and shook as I went up to take communion at church. I am reminded Whose I am each moment I realize the enormity of the Cross. That Jesus’ body was broken for me. For us all. In these mixed up times of laughter and tears, of growth and transition, I can do nothing but sing praises to a God Most High.

What I am listening to:

“O.N.E.” -Yeasayer

“Haller Lake” –The Cave Singers

“I Need a Dollar” –Aloe Blacc

“Arms” –Seabear

“Virginia May” –Gregory Alan Isakov

“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened.” Acts 16:25-26

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:1-2..14