The Importance of Detours

Hey everyone,

I am rejoining this bit of cyberspace to give you an update on my life. Hopefully lots of updates, as I plan on blogging a lot more in the future (although I know I've said that before, and we all know the last post is from September).

So, since Stewart and I moved to St. Louis, I have been having my own adventures and doing quite a bit of soul-searching. I am basically the worst decision-maker I know, and so I vacillate between wanting to work and wanting to get a Master's degree and wanting to be an artist with an Etsy shop and wanting to be a professional blogger on a daily basis.

Don't be deceived. For safety reasons, I run indoors.

Finally hung up this gallery wall!

The highlights of my stumbling around trying to figure out what to do with my life have included (but are not limited to): trying to be artsy and crafty, setting a personal running record of 5.2 miles in 45 minutes; brushing up on some much-needed and very-neglected cooking and general wifely skills; applying to jobs at the mall and being rejected by said jobs; perusing Craigslist regularly for jobs and miraculously low-priced furniture that our apartment doesn't need; being told I was beautiful by a couple of do-rag wearing, grill-sporting, saggy pant-wearing gentleman on a sketchy street downtown; and, my personal favorite, spending 2 hours every Monday and Wednesday morning for 1 month sitting next to a violent criminal/throat slasher.  (You heard me. THROAT. SLASHER.) Read on if you would like to know how this happened.

Got my hair cut. Pretty exciting.

What I mean by "general wifely skills."

Last October, I started taking classes for interior design, wanting to see if I'd like the school and if I felt it was a worthwhile pursuit. At the time, this seemed like a great option as I knew we'd only be in St. Louis two years, and that we might not be here for the summer between those two years. Full-time jobs seemed un-ideal knowing these things, and that we wanted to go home for more than a week for Christmas. The school had a policy that if I decided the program wasn't a good fit, I could withdraw after 30 days and receive a refund. 30 days in, I decided this was not the place for me. (This was about the time I went to my public speaking class and my teacher was trying to convince students why they should not use the word finna if they ever wanted to be taken seriously as a professional. As in, I'm finna go get some food. As in, I'm fixin to go get some food. As in, I'm going to go get some food.)

There he is. Good ole Sean.

So I cut my losses, and that was that. Then I got a text from Stewart in the middle of January saying he was watching the news and heard there was a shooting downtown at none other than SIBA, the school I had been attending downtown (before I quit). A disgruntled student brought an assault weapon to school and shot the financial aid advisor, then himself. (Both survived.) I followed up on the story a week later, wondering if I knew who the shooter was, because I knew who the man he'd shot and the school only has 180 students. Well, imagine my shock when I found out the shooter was none other than my fellow classmate from that very same public speaking class, Sean Johnson, who, might I add, I sat right next to on a regular basis. Like, it was Sean Johnson and me in the back right corner, and that was our established seating arrangement. And he was apparently already known to be a violent criminal. He slashed a taxi drivers throat in 2009.

It is currently February of 2013. I have applied to non-paid internships because I am just that desperate to get out of the house. And I've applied to freelance jobs that I thought I was offered, then followed up on days later only to discover that this person is never going to get back to me. So, after months of feeling frustrated like I've been making all the wrong decisions that lead to dead ends, I've realized a few things:

1. Maybe the reason I can't get a job is because God just wants me to stay home and live. Haha. But seriously?

2. I have no idea why, when we believe we are following the spirit, we end up taking roads that, in retrospect, seem at best a colossal waste of time, and at worst, life-threatening. When I heard about this design school it had seemed like an answer to my prayers, so I followed up and pursued it, trying not to make any judgments whatsoever when my classmates couldn't stop talking about how they luuhhed to do they hurr (maybe this is a racist imitation, but it's accurate) and my teacher told an hour long story of why you should never buy electronics from Walmart. At the end of that month, though, it was clear to me that this was not the best use of my time. So did I misread the Spirit, or was I supposed to take a detour? I guess God works in mysterious ways, and it's important to remember that we may never understand the true measure of our influence, or that there may be an important lesson to be learned from the time-wasting, life-threatening detours. I'm just not quite sure what that lesson is yet.

On second thought, isn't life one big detour? Things are rarely falling into place exactly as we imagine them to. I guess the difference is, I am still waiting for things to fall into place. Once they do, I'm sure I will be able to look back at this with a lot more perspective.

3. God is aware of me and is ultimately looking out for me and keeping me safe. I can't tell you how relieved I am to have quit going to a school just 2 months before a shooting was about to take place. Even if I misread the Spirit by going there, I did make one right decision: to leave. SIBA was a small school; I would've been there, huddled under a desk or hiding in a closet while we waited for the SWAT team to come get the shooter out of the main stairwell that is really not far from any classroom. I thank my lucky stars (but really my Heavenly Father) that I was kept safe for those brief 30 days I spent going by myself into the heart of downtown.

4. Anyone have any other pearls of wisdom for me? To me, it's always interesting to think of the things that don't make sense, and how they factor into God's plan for us.

Snowmobiling at the ranch.

This girl is going to be a Russian-speaking missionary in the Baltic!

Wow, this post is kind of depressing and that picture of Sean Johnson makes me a little sick inside. On the plus side, we had a wonderful Christmas! Here's the proof:

No caption needed, right? I'm just aweeesome.

There is a bit of an update on my life. I will be posting a lot more not-so-shocking-and-alarming things, so stay posted.