Plus, my roommate's been gone visiting her now-boyfriend in Idaho. She comes back tonight.
I've also been jerked around by Microsoft, which offered me a position in its newest retail store at Fashion Valley, but then never called me with a start date. I'm still holding out hope, because they offer amazing benefits.
That said, I've had a lot of time to think. To think about things that are important to me. About faith, and politics (grr!), and romance, and travel, and school, and life.
One frequent feature of the past 2 weeks has been the ringing phone which, upon inspection, inevitably shows the number of the collections agency of my student loans, asking me to make a payment, which I can't. Because I don't have a job.
I asked my Facebook friends to help me out with rent this month, which several did! This marks a new type of boldness that I've not seen in myself before. In the past couple of months, I've done things that are totally out of character... I'll give you a few examples:
1. At the movies with Dee, I asked a man and his wife to move over one seat so that Dee and I could sit together.
2. I walked across the street from my parents' house to give my photography business card to a young mother that I saw playing with her kids.
3. On the way to Cabo, I noticed a young woman crying on the airplane and went to talk to her. I prayed with her!
4. I asked for money. From my friends. On Facebook.
While these things may seem little to you, they're not to me. I'm extremely shy, and I don't normally talk to people, call people, make myself noticeable in any way.
I also reached another milestone: as of yesterday, I have been single for as long as we were (officially) together. So many people say that getting over a relationship takes half the time of the relationship. This isn't true. This breakup, which will stain my 25th Birthday forever, shook me to my core and made me reassess everything I know about love.
So, as you can tell, I've been thinking a lot. Here are a few conclusions I've come to:
1. Travel is one of the most important things in my life. I need to see something new every year, or I feel like my time's been wasted.
2. Being in debt is really not that worthwhile to me. After a full month of harassment 4 times a day by ringing phones and demanding collections agents, I'm tired.
3. Our parents' generation lied to us. Getting a degree will NOT get you a better job... considering that everyone has a degree. Welcome to McDonald's. And now they're criticizing us for seeming to have a sense of entitlement.
4. I won't be going back to finish my graduate degree until I pay off my student loans. I'll work my tail off and move back in with my parents, but these loans are getting paid off.
5. Getting married because you're in love is really inexplicable. And a very American concept. The rest of the world doesn't associate love with successful marriage, nor did the Bible. My theory is that if you're really committed to the institution of marriage, AND if your faith is strong enough to withstand the trauma of marriage, you could marry pretty much anyone like-minded and make a happy life together. Of course, being in love makes it easier to tolerate each other for the first couple of years. But it doesn't make building a lifetime partnership any simpler.
6. Political conservatism and The Bible are really not all that compatible when you really look into it. How can you be so attached to your right to bear arms when God insists that vengeance belongs to Him?
7. On the other hand, the government has no business telling me whom I can marry, what kind of car I can drive, how I educate my children, or what I can build on my own land. All these laws were put in place to generate taxes. Government-approved marriage licenses, car registrations, public education, and building permits are all ways that the government is doing what was prophesied in 1 Samuel 7:
Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the LORD will not answer you in that day."
8. I've decided that I love San Diego, and I want to live here for the rest of my life. But I have a few cities where I want to live "for a while", just for the sake of the experience. New York. Paris.
9. Slowly, étape par étape, I am learning French.
10. God is good. All the time. And that's His nature. (and that deserves a hi-five!)
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