Mountainous

Let me tell you a story-

Last weekend, my dad came to drop off my puppies with their foster family. On Saturday night, we ate dinner with this family and then decided to have some quality father-daughter time. So, like the average father-daughter duo, we snuck into the campus chapel after hours, taking advantage of its incredible acoustics. We sat in the dark, failing to find the light switch. We sang worship tunes. We sang Adele. John Mayer. The Eagles. I added a sometimes cool, sometimes funky harmony to "Love Will Keep Us Alive". Then, we sat and cried. My dad broke the silence with, "So, why are you crying?" 

I'm sure you are all familiar with the classic spiritual analogies of mountains and valleys. If not, valleys are dry times when God feels distant. Mountain are high points, when God is tangible and present. In a Bible study tonight, we talked about valleys as fertile land while mountains are rocky and tough to cultivate. So, tonight I'm going to explain how God can be tangible and life can be crazy tough simultaneously. You know convention and I have a complicated relationship, so this should be amusing.

I'm in a valley. Literally. It's called the Annapolis Valley. It has wonderfully gooey mud, so I"m content. It's beautiful, but my campus is on a hill. So you go downhill to get to class, then uphill to get back. Or uphill to Mealhall and then stumble down the hill, stuffed. Or, you walk down to the local Save Easy and lug your milk cartons and baby carrots back up the hill. Okay, maybe that's just me. I am obsessed with baby carrots.

So that's the literal, but where is my heart geographically? The position of things in literature is used to powerful effect in defining power structures and relationships. If I were a poet, writing a poem about the state of my soul, my heart would be a seal on top of a mountain. Out of place. Making loud, weird noises. Enjoying the beautiful view. Feeling the breeze on my weird, seal skin. Okay, this metaphor is getting out of hand but hopefully you're starting to get where I'm going with this. I'm having one of those tck-in-the-West, seal-on-top-of-Mount-Kenya experiences of university.

Don't get me wrong! I love it! I love every mind-twisting calculus problem, every proof of set theorems, every passage of poetry I mark up with pretty colours, every collapse into laughter, every crazy, hyperactivity fueled shenanigans, every giggle for that really cute boy you can't quite make eye contact with. Don't doubt that my 14 year old self still makes regular appearances. Dignity? That's a foreign concept. 

But, the struggle is not that I don't love it. It's that I don't have a kindred soul to share that love with. A friend who understands my struggles with a foreign but not culture and sees the excitement of my heart for all the new. Wait a minute… Let me go back to the mountain. It's tough… Sometimes, the missing of home leaves me panting for oxygen. Sometimes, I get so frustrated with blending in. But even when the cold, harsh wind pierces through my clothes on the mountain's peak, there is warmth and comfort in another Friend. A Friend who has walked with me for much longer than even my best friends. Who knows me better than even my parents. He comes in the moments I least expect him. When I pause to breathe as I begin to lose control over my tear ducts. When my math teacher begins to talk about optimizing 200 variable equations. When we sing familiar hymns in church. When I join church choir and use every sight reading skill in the crevices of my brain. When I walk home alone after dark on a balmy Indian summer night. 

Let me interrupt the narrative voice and interject here. If this is your first time here, let me just point out that although this takes the form of a blog, it often turns into a expose of my soul. I realize that such frank sharing should perhaps not be placed on the Intraweb but I think sincerity and honesty are two things this world needs more of. Also, if you haven't figured it out, my faith/spirituality is a passion that I've been cultivating for many years. If any of this makes you upset, I would suggest you stick to 9gag. Otherwise, feel free to love/hate it. This is just an outlet for the thoughts that pour out on paper when they've been sitting in my head too long. 

Okay, interlude's over. I'm happy on my mountain. It's cold and sometimes lonely and difficult, but I'd rather be in a place where the Spirit of the Living God is tangible than lost somewhere in the valley where the wind can't reach me. 

"Hold me fast, hold me fast, because I'm a hopeless wanderer. I will learn, I will learn to love the skies I'm under."