adjustments

waking up this morning, i half-stumbled through our darkened dorm apartment and flipped on the light of the bathroom. my vision was blurry before the wonderful invention of contact lenses slipped into my eyes, but even they didn't help that much. my head was still swimming a little bit. trying to sort out if i felt ill or what was even going on, i felt my hand grasped by a familiar but unwelcome friend: fatigue.

she's my morning companion more often than not here at school, and the beginning of this semester is not that different. i have to push by her to clamber into the shower and fight her with cold water and coffee in order to start my day. she disappears for awhile but not before sucker-punching me and leaving behind dark circles under my eyes. she'll be back, she says, in the afternoon.

early mornings heading out to clinical placements are a common thread of my college experience. if you polled the nursing students here at bc at least, i think you would find that the overwhelming majority, if not all, of the soon-to-be nurses would tell you that the hardest part is the early mornings. and the late nights studying.

now, i wasn't studying last night, as school only began yesterday. in fact i was watching bc lose terribly to wake forest in basketball. still it was a blast to sit and yell and cling to that desperate hope that in the last minute and a half of the game we would surge forward fourteen points! (it obviously didn't happen). so i have no complaints if i'm a little groggy today.

but it's harder this morning. i spent the week before school being engaged in a five-day silent retreat out in a beautiful rural property out west of here. the forest reserve dipped down to the charles river, all blanketed in a thick carpet of pristine snow. i haven't seen so much natural beauty in a long time. the silence itself, while at times intimidating and overwhelming, became another friend. one like those dear to me at a distance, reaching out, a mutual longing to be together again, curbed by a tacit acknowledgment that things just can't be like that right now.

it's unfortunate that i have to adjust my expectations of things like sleep or time with god when the semester begins. but in many ways it is like a long-distance relationship. god is still present, we just touch base for a few moments everyday instead of lounging in each other's presence for hours on end, sharing whispered secrets and inside jokes.

i struggle to not be disappointed as i let that vision of god go for a time. i feel the freedom from god to be present here, to seek god in the dear friends in my life and the classes i take. but part of me protests against the separation. isn't there another way, my soul cries. but then the rejoinder simply comes: why so downcast, o my soul? the lord is marvelous indeed.

there's a little pen-and-ink drawing that sits by my computer on my desk, nestled between clay cups reminding me of the oppressed dalit in india, framed photographs of family and friends, and little wooden animals from west africa. it's such a simple thing, taking up only half of a quarter sheet of paper (which, i suppose would technically be an eighth of a sheet for those who might be counting).

amidst the clutter of pits of paper, books, nursing manuals, and yellow sticky notes, it catches the light of the lamp and reflects it back with the shining white brightness of industrially produced office paper. it's not much, but then i suppose it would never claim to be - the casual doodling of a dear friend. and yet even in its infinite simplicity, it holds so much. the memory of my friend linked to the memories of countless adventures galavanting in a country halfway around the world.

i wonder if god sometimes looks at us that way: look at that simple little thing, so small and individual in the clutter of the world, and yet such a profound reminder. a reminder of the infinite love which motivated the life, death, and resurrection of my son. a reminder of a time when we walked together in the garden such a very long time ago.

i'd like to think so...

an ever-present struggle

in this post-modern time, i look at the countless women who have gone before me and who have risked it all so that i could enjoy the rights and privileges that i do now. today is election tuesday, and women all over this country have the right to vote because lucretia mott and susan b. anthony laid aside all facets of social respectability to make the cause for gender equality one which could no longer be ignored.

and as i look around, increasingly frustrated by the blatant inequalities which still lurk in the dark corners of corporate america and the shadows of the public mentality, i feel driven to espouse an extremism which often leads to my own separation and isolation from the mainstream. feminism - just the very word evokes images of staunch (and really quite ugly) women, unsmiling in sepia-toned photographs; bra-burners whose long hair hangs severely parted and held away from their faces by thin leather cords; and extremists who nit-pick over word choice and scan media images with a fine-toothed comb.

my experience abroad in morocco opened my eyes to the subtle shades of grey encompassed within that word, "feminist." having previously considered myself part of the complacent middle-ground - caught somewhere between the far left and right, i suddenly found myself on the outskirts of social thought. my basic assumption that a woman can do and should be able to do anything that a man traditionally has done, my fundamental inheritance from all those staunch women and bra-burners, placed me in the camp of feminist extremism.

coming back to my own culture, my eyes are even more sensitive to those inequalities present here, and i have begun to feel more and more comfortable carrying that title: feminist. i believe in women. i believe in their rights. i believe in their beauty. and i affirm the divine and splendid within women, just as i affirm the divine and splendid in any human being.

but here's the struggle for me: how do i reconcile this burgeoning affiliation to the feminist movement with my deep desire for the "traditional" domesticity. how can i deny the pleasure that rose within me as i fixed the dress of one roommate, did the hair of another before they went out this evening, and then turned to set bread to rise for the dinner i am cooking tomorrow?

perhaps more pertinent is this question: why do i feel like the two are mutually exclusive...

cycling through

it almost seems as thougth "so long sweet life" would have been the more appropriate blog title, or at the very least, "so long sweet blog." i was, to be perfectly honest, a little shocked and awed to see that my last post was the 17th of august. now, as we round up to the end of october - with the leaves in shocking shades of reds and yellows and several bare branches reminding us of what is to come, august seems so very far away.

i'm halfway finished with the first semester of my senior year, and my feelings/perspective/outlook seems to flow through a repetitive progression which is quickly becoming a sort of weekly, or sometimes daily, routine. first there is the feeling of being overwhelmed - swamped with the sheer volume of work which much be accomplished in a single day, knowing that there are so many people with whom i have yet to connect but for whom i do care a great deal. then comes the feelings of being so "done" with college and with bc. ready to be a full-fledged member of the world, not trapped within the bc bubble where a false sense of maturity threatens to take hold of you at every turn. finished with the parties where people who really don't actually know each other get drunk so as to feel comfortable bumping into each other in a vague attempt to fulfill a deep need for human contact and interaction. but, low and behold, the last stage settles in - deep appreciation gilded with a tinge of nostalgia.

boston and boston college have been my home for that last four years almost - longer than any other stable place. i will miss my haunts - the coffee shops, the bookstores, the quirky independent theatres. i will miss the proximity to others that college affords, particularly when they are others who have won places in your heart by challenging you to something greater than anything you thought you could be.

biking back from the grocery store yesterday, i had an amelie moment. (amelie is a wonderful french film which follows the life of a whimsical girl who sees the beauty in small things and decides to lead her life motivated by the goal of helping others only to end up helping herself - it's one of my favorites. if you haven't seen it, watch it.) i was turning past the reservoir where there is a walking circuit, and i noticed a little elderly woman walking and suddenly raise her hand in greeting, a broad smile brightening her face. when i looked to where she was looking, i saw an equally little and equally elderly old man. dressed in a black overcoat and a scully cap, wating patiently at the end of the path.

i sped forward from where she was, feeling the weight of garbanzo beans, eggplant, cucumbers, and tomatoes pulling on my shoulders through the straps of my backpack. as i reached him, he turned to watch me pass. we made eye contact, and i smiled at him.

it was only a moment, and while my head raced on with the imaginations of who those individuals were - what their life has been and is now, my heart sang with the singular power of love. and while i know these experiences aren't limited to boston or chestnut hill, there is something uniquely boston about them, and that is what i'll miss.

so long, sweet summer

i feel like the "end of summer" cliche has been so overdone in many ways. just the words themselves conjure images of john travolta and olivia newton john crooning on the beach of some hollywood set and the melodies of countless pop songs float through my brain like an oddly composed summer medley.

but the end of my summer is approaching, and as ends of things are natural places for reflection, i have found myself thinking more and more this past week about the journey of my past year, much less the summer. i've been to africa and back. twice. i have learned to read and write a new language, smoked hookah for the first time, trekked through the atlas mountains, wandered the streets of paris, and spent the night in the middle of the mojave desert with a handful of friends and a myriad of stars as my companions. i have gotten a solid look at my future life as a full-time nurse (and i'm excited for it) as well as the beauty of living, just living and working - without papers or deadlines or exams to stress you out of your mind.

this year has also brought me face to face with the extreme hardships of poverty, and the tenuous place of receiving hospitality when you know that your host cannot possibly afford it. i have held an infant as it passed away, and held his mother when all was said and done. i have laughed until i couldn't breathe, and i have cried until i thought no more tears could possibly come. i have felt achingly lonely, and i have experienced the joy of being completely, deeply, and fully surrounded by human love. i have had my heart shattered, and i have learned how to live and love through it.

i have been taught a few basics of moroccan cooking, and some of the complexities of global development, environmental protection, and food justice. i have come to realize that there are freedoms present within this country of america for women and minorities that do not come so easily in other places, and i am still learning how to appreciate this state which issues my passport and this ambiguous thing we call "citizenship."

i have experienced boston fall, morocco winter, paris spring, and california summer.

needless to say, as i sit here and let these memories bubble up within my consciousness, i am bowed over by the diversity, and humbled by overwhelming gratitude. in so many ways, i am different from the lauren elizabeth fadely who, this time last year, was sitting at a coffee shop in east texas, only just beginning to fully process a summer spent in freetown, sierra leone.

and then, when i think about where i might be this time next year and all the settling and firming up of these subtle changes combined with new ones, i can't even see yet...well, i get a little overwhelmed - one of those mixtures of antsy excitement with a dash of deep dread, if you know what i mean.

all this to say - the point finally - is that while it's easy to get caught up in the varied myriad of memories, i seek to simply hold them, draw them into me, and look forward - with eyes clear and calm - toward the future.

camp reflections

its a cloudy, chilly night in san diego, and i'm back in the little blue house on oliphant street after a roller-coaster week out of the blue.

within the first week or so of being here, the chance to work as a counselor at a church camp in northern california. time went by, and with no response from the coordinator, the whole prospect got conveniently shelved somewhere behind putting in a garden, biking to the grocery store, and all the other random tidbits of life.

two wednesdays ago, however, the phone rang, plans were laid, and suddenly saturday morning at 6 am, heidi and i found ourselves waiting around on the point loma campus ready to load up and move out. the destination: eureka, ca and the blue slide mid-high teen church camp. fifteen hours of driving later, which included an hour and a half of circling sacramento thanks to an unexpected highway closure and an overnight stay in yuba city at the home of one of the most hospitable older couples i've ever met, we found ourselves at the edge of the pacific northwest - the palms replaced by pines, the cliffs and waves replaced by mountains and rivers, and the cloudless skies filled with the low, grey clouds that make greens that much greener and the blues that much bluer.

monday morning came, staff met, campers arrived, and camp ensued. stories upon stories could be told about the girls in my cabin (hailey, elizabeth, mariah, sarah, haley, and laura) or the awesome kids on my red team (sam, natalie, thomas, jordan, allison, kendra, and kaitlin) or the staff who, daily, exemplified god's unfailing love. days filled with dodgeball, arts and crafts, archery, swimming in the river, chapel times, and campfires.

but what i wanted to write about tonight, as i catch up on emails and stream the results from "so you think you can dance" on heidi's computer, was how incredibly touched i was by the reality of the lives of my campers. smack in the middle of humboldt county - a center of alcoholism, methamphetamine abuse, and marijuana use - the kids represented at camp were riddled with the after effects of these destructive habits, torn to pieces by abandonment, divorce, and the painful wounds they cause. out of the six girls in my cabin, not one of them did not carry the scars of the hate, anger, and despair embodied within parental fighting, divorce, peer rejection and the even more powerfully impactful abandonment and the foster system.

in reaching out to these little ones, proclaiming god's unconditional love and his everlasting faithfulness, the conventional words of comfort turned to ash in my mouth, and the tears shed in private were bitter, indeed. but in living through that challenge, i discovered buried somewhere deep within, a steel-like fiber of strength that i didn't even really know existed.

and now, as night has fallen a state's length away from my little dears and the episode currently streaming comes to an end, with the idea of catching up on some much-needed sleep looms to the forefront of my mind, all i can do is to surrender those lives to the creator which breathed them into being and remind my ownself of the words i offered them so often: god is faithful.

true living, thai, and tree-hugging

it's funny how much life can change in any given amount of time.

i arrived in san diego a little over a week ago now, and my whole world has revolved and evolved into the amazing existence i'm living now, centered around the little blue house at 3033 oliphant st, and the six lovely ladies that live here. reuniting with heidi, one of my oldest and dearest friends, has - of course - been richly rewarding, but i have unexpectedly entered into a deep and beautiful community which has, in so many ways, opened its arms to me in a way i never could have imagined.

the doors to the house are always open, and the cool ocean breeze sweeps through, carrying the ethno-indie music which always seems to be on throughout the entire house. the kitchen is open and wide, inviting excited conversation around bubbling pots of vegetarian goodness. motivated by social justice, solidarity, and sustainability, the lifestyles of the mighty little women of this new home have been hugely inspiring as i take time to dig down deep and reexamine my own choices and the power i have to create within myself a living witness to the values i have long proclaimed by mouth.

days previously filled with either the frustrating meaninglessness of lounging in the sun and hours of food network and discovery channel or the long hours of hospital shifts are now consumed by simple activities which leave me every day feeling more and more alive: painting; reading; cycling down to the pier, the coffee shop, or the beach; hiking through the glories that sounthern california's nature has to offer; and hopefully soon volunteering with the homeless women's ministry in downtown.

i can't remember a time in my past when i had this much freedom with my time and lived it with this degree of intentionality, and as i look forward to the future, which i have also been doing a lot of, i wonder if i'll ever have this luxury of unbelievably open summer days. but even as the foreshadows of anxiety regarding the overly dramatized "loss of youth and joy" that comes with graduation and my first real job or the year of difficult schooling that i first must overcome to even get to that place, i brush the dark tendrils away and realize that joy is not localized to a certain place or a certain group of people, but to a perspective and a life that is lived openly - something which translates to all situations although the trappings may change from place to place.

in the meantime - when i'm not philosophizing about life, because it really isn't the only thing i do despite the tendency of my blogging to be bent upon it - i'm content to enjoy the random moments that make life, life. like my impromptu thai lesson in the car today, when i changed the language on my friend's garmin, a gps direction-giver and way-finder. here is what i learned:

liang tsai = turn left
liang wa = turn right

or like the discussion that marte (one of the housemates) and i shared about the complexities of the label "organic" and the importance of "locally produced" in the quest for community sustainability as well as the general social justice implications of food and nutrition, courtesy of the book, animal, vegetable, miracle.

one can only hope that my amazing college roommates will be able to forgive me for returning to boston after a semester abroad and a summer in california as a "crazy hippie," but in the meantime, i'm loving san diego.

san diego here i come...

i'm sitting in a little coffee shop near my apartment once again - for the last time as far as i can see. but the feeling is bittersweet, unsurprsingly, as most transitions are.

in the past few weeks, i have fallen in love again with nursing. working full-time, one-on-one with great nurses in what will most likely soon rise to be the best hospital in the country (currently ranked 3rd), i awoke to that first passion that motivated me to choose nursing in the first place. the same one that had been stifled and squished almost into non-being by hours upon hours of oppressive lectures and a whole forest's worth of papers carefully explaining my nursing diagnoses and care plans, which i recently discovered, much my chagrin, you never really use in hospital nursing. i connected with countless patients, learned more than i can even describe, and most importantly discovered that i have something to contribute, bridging the gap between new-grad and seasoned nurse and charge nurse and doctors.

i interviewed and was accepted for a position and suddenly the reality of my impending independence and true adulthood has come crashing into my view. but i'm tacitly side-stepping these thoughts of total life overhaul and turning to san diego, displacing the swarming horde of what-ifs that for now at least are politely knocking at the edge of my mind.

on tap for my time near the border: decorating heidi's new space on less than a dime; volunteering with catholic charities; odd jobs around town; climbs and hikes in the nearby hills and parks; and hours upon hours of deep, soul-searching conversations. with all of the tumble of events that have blown my little life from here to there, i'm looking forward whole-heartedly to a few weeks of centered contemplation with a dear friend whose life journey has been inextricably woven into mine.

change is good...

transitioning, etc.

so i'm rounding up on three weeks being here in sunny los angeles - although to be perfectly honest, i've pretty much stuck to the west side of the city (westwood, santa monica, venice...), and i've just finished up my neonatal intensive care unit rotation. next week i start in pediatrics.

sometimes, when i think about just how much my life has changed in the last month, i almost have to laugh. a month ago, i had just left morocco - it's beautifully complicated culture that challenged me to step up every single day and embrace the differences in life that make humanity the beautiful conglomeration that it is. i was in paris with my roommate lauren sharing gorgeous days wandering the city of light and love, experiencing it from the ground level - walking everywhere, people watching, and just living without really a care in the world. and now i'm here, smack in the middle of westwood - that ucla bubble right next to beverly hills and the sunset strip - how did that happen?

my apartment is insanely nice completely furnished including a large kitchenette, a super comfy bed, and a leather couch. upstairs, on the roof, one can easily find the little pool and deck chairs for relatively private sunning any time of the day surrounded by high rises and the constant honking and beeping of traffic.

the hospital is only a five minute walk away making the morning commute ideal, and i wonder if i'm being spoiled for anything else after graduation...

work itself has been amazing. the ucla staff definitely deserve their ranking as the third best in the nation, and as a student, i have felt almost instantly welcomed on to the healthcare team - a sensation relatively lacking in my east-coast hospital experiences on clinical days. i've shared tender and intimate moments with my patients and their families. i've cried - at the birth of one infant and the tragic death of another. i've jumped into this experience with both feet, and i don't regret it for one moment.

but that same longing for something, somewhere else is still there. as i sit in the middle of this concrete jungle, surrounded by all of the cute little coffee shops and restaurants i could ever ask for, i long for something...something else.

it's hard to put it into words. part of it is the community from which i have been separated for quite some time. the last time i really felt this kind of loneliness (the kind when you're surrounded by heaps of people, but just not really known by anyone) was my freshman year at university. part of it is just a chafing at my environment. in a neighborhood that exists mainly to serve the ucla student population, the streets are full of people single-mindedly going about their days. i don't really know how to explain it, and at the risk of sounding like a huge hippie, i miss the earth. after spending the semester in rural morocco, whiling away spare time hiking across the countryside, overwhelmed by the grandeur of rugged mountains and stony desert plains and expansive fields of tender, green wheat, i feel constrained by the man-made structures around me. the few green spaces i have found seem all too engineered, carefully plotted and planned to be both economical and aesthetically pleasing.

in a place which prides itself on a freedom of mind and spirit, a liberality that extends to all areas of life, i feel oddly boxed-in - as if that freedom really looks like this and acts like that and everything else just doesn't quite fit in.

in the end, all of this essentially leaves with this odd sense of yearning, but for what, i haven't quite figured out. for friends? family? freedom? faith? i'm not exactly sure. but i'm looking forward, in some ways, to the journey i'm on to figure it out.

something i've been learning...

here's a brief synopsis of what i've been learning about these past few days - hopefully will find time for more of a concrete update sometime in here soon...

open your squeezed-shut eyes and see
just who i have called you to be

the one inside you
waiting to wake,
and be freed from these fears
and dream

the one whose thoughts i know,
whose heartstrings play my song
with echoes
of a soul-wrenching beauty

open your squeezed-shut eyes and see
just the one i've created you to be

your highest dreams
birds soaring 'cross the seas
your darkest fears
buried sheol deep
are known
you're mine and me

open your squeezed-shut eyes and see
just the love i know you to be

then you shall be radiant
at what you see;
your heart shall throb and overflow -
come, rest in me