a few of my favorite things

This is my favorite time of the year. It's fall, which of course is most people's favorite time of the year (or perhaps I have a distorted perspective!). However, it's also my favorite time of fall. Ever since I started at Hope, the changing seasons have brought on new transitions. As a post-college student now, the changing seasons seem to still bring on new transitions. This is my favorite time of season because I've been here long enough to be comfortable and feel established and to know what I love about being here.

So I thought I would share some of those things with you:

I love drinking coffee on the weekends. Actually, I'm in JP's right now, enjoying pumpkin spice coffee and a muffin. A few weeks ago I decided to start drinking only black tea during the week and coffee only on the weekends. Slurping down some coffee in the five minutes I have before I have to walk out the door in the morning might enable me to not have a headache later in the day, but it is not the enjoyable experience that made me love coffee in the first place. Why waste it like that? Drinking coffee is an all-around much more enjoyable experience now that it is restricted to the times when I actually have time to enjoy it!

Another thing that I love is our writing/art group. Many of my close friends also enjoy writing and the arts. Most of us are writers, but most of also have another creative outlet. Jeannette, Noah, and Steven, for instance, are musicians. Joanna is a dancer. Anna draws. We have been getting together weekly to talk about, share, and practice art together. Our central reason for the group is to use the arts to know each other better and worship God together. I feel like it has given me a whole new reason for writing, and I am loving it!

Three or four days a week I spend an hour and a half at middle school lunches. This time with kids is certainly one of the highlights of my week every week. There are two middle schools in Zeeland: Creekside and Cityside. I think I like it so much because it's a place where I feel wanted and needed. Ironic, isn't it? My memories of actually being a middle schooler are certainly not quite that positive! I suppose everything is different when you come into it with a new perspective.

I've also been enjoying studying in the library from time to time. It seems that now that I'm not a student, I can't get enough of the freedom to study whatever I want whenever I want it. Lately I've been reading a lot in a social psychology textbook. It's fascinating stuff.

Of course, there are many other things that I love and that I do. This is just a little sampling of my life. :)

the marathon

So, a couple of weeks ago I ran a marathon.
I didn't plan on running a marathon.

The night I got back, I went over to Noah and Kristen's apartment for a short while. Kristen made me eggs (with onion and potato and cheese!) and toast, and they both sort of goggled at me for most of the time I was there. Later, Noah told me that he was writing a piece about my running the marathon. I suppose it was something that had continued to sit in their minds since I told them I had gone twice as far as I had intended.

He said that it reminds him of the body of Christ. Obviously, I was physically capable of doing it. But I never would have run 26.2 miles if I had not been surrounded by 45,000 other runners and millions of onlookers. Imagine what we're capable of doing for Christ, but can only do with the support of the rest of the Body. Interesting, isn't it?

Anyway, this is my favorite photo from the marathon, lifted with gratitude from my mother's blog: