It is twelve days. Twelve days until I graduate from college. Twelve days until I get a degree and am able to earn a higher wage.
Twelve days until summer.
I'm going home for a month. My boyfriend is coming wih me to paint my house (an excuse my mother came up with to get him out there). And then, at the end of the month I will be coming back and will start the next chapter in my life: Grad school. *cue the scary music*
I feel like I have no right to start getting my Masters in something. I feel like it was only yesterday I was seventeen and starting college. Yes, I am a youngin.
But that doesn't mean I have excitement bubbling out of me. Seriously, as it gets closer to that fateful day when my future will start, I get more and more hyped for it to start.
Can you tell there is a *huge* smile on my face?
Evertime this part of the year rolls around, two things are remembered.
One is the Easter Basket string that was connected to my bedpost or doorhandle as a kid. We would follow it around the house, balling it up as we went behind pictures, over fans, under tables, outside and back in again to reach the other end connected to our Easter basket.
The second is Sader, the Jewish Passover. When I close my eyes, I can still see my family and friends surrounding a huge table (with one open spot for Elijah, the prophet and forrunner of the Messiah's coming). If you ever have a chance, I would highly suggest taking a part in a Christian Sader because it is all about remembering how God saved the Israelites from Egypt and delivered them from their oppressors. It is a scripted dinner that explores the reasons for traditions behind the Passover and it is amazing.
The entire Exodus is a beautiful picture of what Christ is going to do when He comes again. And it is through the Sader that I am reminded how amazing our God is. For me the Sader, and not the Easter Service, is the perfect reminder of what Christ has done to save us.
For instance, one of the traditions, or important symbols, is a plate with a with white napkin on it. There are three pieces of unleaven bread in the folds. This unleaven bread is made especially for this meal. It is flat, with no yeast, symbolizing the sinlessness needed to have fellowship with God. It has rows and holes in it symbolizing Isaiah 53 which says Christ "will be pierced for our transgressions" and that "with His stripes we are healed." During the first part of the meal, the Father breaks the middle piece into two and hides one part of the afikomen (Jewish word that I don't think I spelled right). After the dinner section of the meal is over, the children of the house search for it and ransom it back from the Father who then holds it up and says it is a picture of what Messiah will go through. He will be sinless, with piercings and stripes, and will be hidden away from our eyes for a while.
The entire meal is one huge picture of God. If you have never studied the Jewish religion, and all its traditions, let me recommend the study of it to you. God structured the laws and religion to point to Christ, one of the reasons Jesus could tell the two men on the road after His resurrection how everything in Scripture pointed to the Messiah.
Anyway, Easter is the Sader for me. Christ is not done yet. He is alive and working for our deliverance. And like the Jews say at the end of the Sader, may we see each other next year in the New Jerusalem.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am almost deathly allergic to Spring. I love it, don't get me wrong. I look forward to flowers starting to bloom, seeing the petals drift off like so many fairy clouds, and watching the tree shadows thicken.
But I hate the air! My lungs start burning when I laugh, my nose starts tickling every time I step out the door, and my eyes start watering whenever a cool breeze brushes my face.
All right, I am done now with my vent. I saw a doctor a few days ago (something I was trying to prevent, but didn't succeed because somehow I always end up at the doctors right around this time of the season) and she gave me some drugs that fixed me right as rain. Rain is also a good thing, so this past weekend with intermittent showers was, I do believe, heaven sent.
I'm in my fairy skirt (this green gauzy thing that makes me proud I am a clothing design major) and even though it is at the end of a long Monday, I could almost promise you it felt like Friday. (I think it was because of the skirt)
Anyway, this really weird mood, and this vent, is from my adrenaline high I'm coming off of from being at a friend's audition for his musical. And I was talking to one of my muses (no, seriously. if you ever saw her on stage, or just watched her....just live...it is amazing because she does it with such passion and...........oooo, i can't find the word. something like energy with a deep velvet purple feel to it. you just have to watch her and you are inspired to live as deeply and as in love with God as she does). As I was saying, I was talking to her about the audition just after the fact when people were still mingling around. She said something along the lines of why sing a hymn to show off your voice when you could, with a little help from God to forget your surroundings, praise Him with the hymn and just happen to be on center stage in front of every body. I know she said it better.
And I replied with a, yeah, that's why God hasn't let me study the thing I now know I love most until this next semester because before I wanted to prove I could do it, whereas now I want to share my passion, my love for theater.
There are no words in my vocabulary to express this feeling I want to share with everyone around about what I think about theater. For me it is so much more than just going to a preformance and seeing your friends do something you know they are good at. It is another experience to see people's lives played out on stage and their joys and fears and triumphs and heartaches all in one place. Theater is so much more than lights and setting and costumes and stage. It is about the people God has placed on this earth (or in people's imagination) and how He is moving in and among them without them even knowing it.
And my joy is when I find those moments of absolute truth where no one but God could move and help people to move. Stage is just an opportunity to see another aspect of people and how God shapes them.
I love theater. And I am beyond happy that I may now study it formally. And even if I am not accepted into the Masters program because of some of my human faults that God has not burnished off yet, I will still study it, because in studying theater, I must study people, and in studying people, I am studying other multiple and wonderful facets of my King and Creater who made us, everyone of us, in His image.