1:40 to 3:40

So much for catching up on sleep this weekend. There's poetry in my head, and I can't sleep. Especially when I've been praying for some poetry for so long. And now there are words all over the place.

I could blame this sleeplessnes on the chocolate fondue, but I'd rather say it's everything. Everything. Like when the boy in The Black Stallion answers the question, "What happened to you?" with "Everything." Sometimes that's how I feel, except not so dismal.

But not everything has happened to me yet. Sort of like how I still don't know everything. But I want to learn as much as I can. I guess I'm in a good place.

This is a good place. I like my room because there is enough room to dance, and there are no mice. My laptop has a desk for the first time in eight months, but right now I type between two dressers in the walk-in closet. My black dress is strewn across my stack of plastic tubs. I've changed a lot since the last time I lived on this campus, but I'm still not the cleanest… dish in the cupboard? q-tip in the little blue bowl that Mom made in ceramics class?

Lori said it's kind of like she has to get to know me all over again. She graciously allows me to have changed. Bryna says she feels different. More confident. More grown up. Me too. Spain was good for us.

Was Sol Duc good for me?

Right now
I want to go back into room number seven
and work on that song we were writing.
As I write now,
I want to change all that hell into heaven.
I think of the wrong God is righting.

God, my Only Hope,
can you give me one hope more–
that this season somehow
showed them Who I'm living for.

My roommates could see my love for Ryan. "You two really love each other, don't you?" Indeed. Was my love for God that obvious? God, I can't hug you in the hallway! What am I supposed to do? You tell me to trust you. I'll trust that you will work in soil I can't break. I want to be weak-kneed with love for my Savior, because your strength is made perfect in my weakness.

There's a hundred things I would change if I did this summer over again, which is a sign that I am now different than when the summer started. Not yet wise, but wiser. And now I am in another circumstance, but it is not just what's around me that has changed. I'm glad I've changed.

What would happen if I left the country again, this time for longer, this time to somewhere differenter? Would it be ethical to experiment along this question, flying myself all over the world, thrusting myself into culture after culture? Would that get me closer to who God wants me to be? Or would it just get me confused?

And what would happen if I stayed in one place? Would I get lop-sided like a potted plant that is never rotated? Would I stop growing all together? When I was in Camarma, I asked a single teacher who had been with the school for fifteen years how she kept her spiritual walk moving. Because I seem to grow most when I move.

She said that becoming established was the only way that Spaniards would give her the time of day. Completely true. Maybe that's why I don't imagine myself living in Europe. Well, not long enough to get established.

Is there a place I could send myself that would change me so that I can see all the good connotations in the word 'established'?

Maybe I could learn something about that here. I told Bryna the other day, "You know what I just realized? It's just going to be the four of us. They aren't going to add any roommates. There will be no surprises. We won't have to rearrange. I can let down my guard. This is the way it's going to be, for four whole months!"

"Rebecca," she replied. "Eight months. We're going to live here for eight months."

Woah. When she said that is when I began to make escape plans. But if I have to stay somewhere for eight months, this is a good place.

It's a good place to splash in the rain
and giggle 'til passers-by think we're insane
and wade in big puddles that come past our knees,
then run to the dorm before we all freeze.

It's a good place to talk on the couch
about all the things that make our hearts ouch
and all the heart-wishes that push us to heal
and all we will do to make them come real.

It's a good place to spend Friday night.
Our feet tap to jazz 'neath our best black and white.
We win best-dressed four in the store's spinning door.
Watch a flick and fondue 'til we can't anymore.

It's a good place to sit on a chair,
lean over a textbook and prove that we care
enough to still study although we want sleep.
There's a reason we're here. We've a promise to keep.

It's a good place to crawl into bed,
to rest in the quiet and quiet my head,
to know that I'm loved and to pray for the grace
to love in a way that adds good to this place.

There's still more poetry (or is it chocolate?) surging inside, but it's time to try that last verse out for myself. And for the sake of all those who live in this place. It's kind of hard for me to show love when I don't sleep.

Goodnight.