nebraska, my favorite vacationland

Well I quit my job at my Mexican restaurant. I think the boss got confused (or possibly mad) when I gave my two-week notice and just didn't put me on the scedual for the next two weeks. This, in my eyes was a pretty awesome thing to do. I have been in some seirous need of a little vacation. So I've come to my grandparents' house in Nebraska. It's a really great place for me to calm-down, take a breather, and spend some time with God before I jump in with the school of missions I'm going to be a part of in about a week (is it really that soon?). My grandparents are pretty awesome.

rocks & trust

I took rock climbing this week with Scott, the same teacher who taught me to ice climb. He's a pretty good teacher. Last time I took his class I was the only girl. This time people joked that the class had more girls than any of them had ever seen together in one place in Summit County. Sad, but true. It's been awhile since I've gotten to hang with that many girls.

So last time, in Ice Climbing class, this big guy dropped me while I was climbing. It was on one of the first climbs of the second day. I didn't get hurt, but I was lucky that one of my ice picks held long enough for him to start paying attention and take up the slack in the rope or I might've been. This scared me a lot. I already didn't trust the rope or the belayer. After being dropped I climbed as if I didn't have a rope at all. I got so burned-out climbing that way and never got very far off the ground after this.

I realized my mistake and tried to correct it coming into this rock climbing class. Funny, I was only dropped once - every other time the person belaying me had done a wonderful job. Despite all my good experiences it was the one bad experience that has stuck with me over the past year and a half. (I haven't done any sort of climbing since then.) It was a lot harder to trust this time around. Did I mention I am also afraid of heights? Not terribly afraid. Just enough that see-through bridges and any kind of grill or screen that has to be walked over is a cheep thrill. (I fell through one of those once which makes them quite scary, but that's another story.) Those bad experiences just stick with us despite whatever good we've known.

One girl in my class had a much higher than average fear of heights. She also has a fear of ropes because her uncle hung himself a year ago. We started the day off with rappelling and she ended up crying and rocking back and forth with her face in her knees. I tried to encourage her but it didn't look good. Amazingly though, after Scott worked with her one-on-one she did end up climbing a couple of the faces we ended up climbing. She was never quite able to rappel or allow herself to be lowered in anyway opting instead to walk off the tops of what she climbed. I've got say I was pretty impressed. I think I'm going to remember her for the rest of my life. There are things that get me scared enough that I feel like curling in a ball and crying. I frequently back down. God's been speaking to me a lot about growing a backbone lately. There's a lot of areas in my life where I've been seeing I need more courage.

Her example actually proved helpful for me. I think after her I was definitely the most afraid of heights, and afraid that my belayer wouldn't catch me. Grrrrr.... Rappelling was cool and fun, though very, very hard - especially those first few steps. My real problems arose after I'd climbed whatever it was I needed to climb. At this point I had to let go of the rock, lean back into the rappelling position (For those of you who don't know when you rappel you lean back till you are nearly parallel to the ground, from this position it's impossible to make a mad grab for the safety of the rock if you get dropped.), and trust the person belaying me to lower me back to the ground. This not only scares me, it completely freaks me out. I'm not one who easily trusts the people around me to begin with. Embarrassingly, the teacher had to climb up beside me and gently talk me through this step.

This is very parallel to real life for me. You could say I've been dropped. I've been dropped a lot. I have a very hard time really trusting people. Often I have a very hard time trusting God. I'm always waiting to be let down, abandoned, dropped. I've tried very hard to be one of those people who is completely independent, or as independent as is possible. Even when I am open usually it's because I've been gossiped about enough that I really could care less. Last year in ice climbing class I noticed that those who made it to the top of the hard stuff did so because the trusted that if they fell they would be caught.

This is my second long post this week. My apologies. Almost done. Anyway I was determined to learn to trust the rope this weekend. At first I was pitiful. Then I learned a trick that eventually made me take great strides towards accomplishing my goal. Stupid as it sounds the only thing that made it tolerable for me to be lowered was to ask the person belaying me to just hold me for a minute while I leaned back, let go of the rope, let my arms fall back, and forced myself to relax for a moment. For some reason after this I was completely fine. After making people do this for me on every climb I did pretty well. I even managed to climb something people much better than me struggled with and not everyone could do it. Learning to trust the rope and belayer when I had no control allowed me to take the kind of risky moves that were necessary to take me to the top. It was one of those climbs that just didn't have safe, easy hand and foot holds. Sometimes it hardly had anything at all. Without trust I never could have taken the risks or jumped for hard-to-reach holds.

I've been praying a lot this summer for God to teach me a deeper trust. I hope somehow what I learned in rock class this weekend will get applied to the rest of my life. We'll see...

oh dear

I do believe it's been awhile since I last blogged. Four months actually. I know, it's a bit excessive. I however, am under the impression that I have a very good excuse.

I have spent the summer house-sitting. In a basement. Without internet. The fish decided to become anorexic and died. Not cool. I tried everything, I sweet talked it, cleaned it's water, dropped food near it, and I do believe there was more than one desperate prayer sent to Heaven on that stupid fish's account. Nothing worked and now it's dead. I flushed it down the toilet. At least the dogs are still alive and the plants mostly are. Ben moved back in today so if the plants finish dying before his mom gets back well.....

My bestfriend/roommate got married. Eloped actually. That was a lot of craziness when the news hit the presses. No more will be said of this. But her husband is quite nice and I like him lots. Anyone else and I would've had to drug her and take her to a faraway country or something equally drastic. I am 23 so it's not like Marie is the first friend to get married, but it's excessively different and weirder when it's your best friend and she's three years younger than you.

I have also managed to fix a lot of relationships this summer that I had thought were unfixable. In the process I've been very humbled and learned (once again) how bankrupt I am when it comes to relationships. However, this time around I think possibly I'm seeing myself grow so this is encouraging. God taught me a lot about having mercy on myself last winter and about grace. This summer I learned to apply the same to other people. Possibly grace is not complete until a person is able to apply it both to themselves and to those around them? And those who behave with the least mercy towards others are those plagued with a harshness towards their own faults deep inside?

None of us are perfect. Friends, parents, leaders, or ourselves. I'm glad I'm beginning to learn this now, despite my easy-going exterior I can be quite critical and unforgiving when hurt. This tendency generally screws up everything. Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of the character flaw.

I worked as a waitress at a Mexican restaurant over the summer. That was a trip; I'll never be the same. I highly recommend being a server to everyone. Aside from learning a lot of Spanish curse words, I have learned to fake confidence. Now before all you advocates of genuineness freak out, I should tell you that I've also learned a huge amount of real confidence. I also learned to care a little less of what people think of me. What they say is unfortunately very true: "You can't please them all." Some people just want to be angry about everything. I think these people should have to pay a higher tax for their bad attitudes and all the trouble they put other people through. Also people who don't tip need to all be forced to work for tips for at least a year or however long it takes for them to get it. Remember, not tipping is very bad.

I should've tried harder to blog, now that I'm back at it I have a lot to say, to much to torture anyone with in one long rambling post. So I will limit myself to one very important thing. I have completely changed my plans for the next year.

Rather than go to CU this fall I am joining a school of missions that my church is doing this year. It starts in October. The first three and a half months will be here in the States studying missions, the life of Jesus, and the Bible in general. The last three and a half months will be spent helping a church that fizzled out get going again in Mexico City. After the school ends I will probably spend the summer with my grandparents in Nebraska and then go on to CU next fall. I'm both excited and afraid. I don't exactly feel ready for the challenge that this school will bring yet I feel very confident that this is what God wanted me to do with this year. More confident than I've felt about anything for a long time.

Well that's my summer in a nutshell. It was actually much more insane than it sounds here. This whole year has been so insane that I can't keep track of time in my head. (Did that happen two weeks or two months ago?) The crazy life of me. Hey I also went from having like two people I hung out with to nearly having too many friends. I almost feel popular which is extremely weird. I've always felt like the one that nobody noticed or the one who could easily be forgotten or left behind. I'm not sure how to handle this. Very strange.