Roadtrip to Idabel

Summer in Oklahoma City post graduation has been a strange feeling. However, despite the plethora of sad changes, the absence of educational pursuit has given one small benefit: the opportunity for new adventures. I've been able to participate is very few church or college activities during my time at Heartland, thanks to the heavy work hours I had to maintain in order to pay off my sizable monthly college bills. So when I heard about the trip to Idabel, Oklahoma, to run a VBS for a small church plant in the rural community, my first instinct was to decline. But then I realized that although I would be missing work and have to survive in close quarters with many people strange to me, I actually had the option available for once. And it was the definite voice of God coming through the soft darkness of my lonely lodging in Edmond at night as I prayed about His will, telling me that I should go. So I did. The experience was nothing like I anticipated... and so much better. The best parts of the trip were not documented with my camera, they were memories lived. I hold them in my heart. But in the quiet, free moments I did take a few snapshots of my time in Idabel, and here they are.

Top: Noah Vaughn (green) and Lucas Binswanger (blue)
Bottom left to right: Jenni Couser and Brad Couser and three boys Clay, Cason, & Creed, Johnathan Scruggs (red), Cody Pirkle (plaid), Jocelyn Dick (green), Megan Sprague (center), Sarah Estep (blue), Julie Hinton (black), Lindsey St. Hilaire (purple), Elizabeth Lyhn (striptes) and Noelle O'Brien (far right).
John and Grace Lande are hiding behind me with their two boys Uriah (right) and Luke (left)

Better Business Bureau

Well I know I'm a girl, and small, and blonde. I suppose that to many people, I look pretty vulnerable and gullible. Maybe I am. I think the next educational direction I pursue should be automotive mechanics 101. My car broke down last week and I've been waiting on Pep Boys at the corner of N Penn and W Memorial to run diagnostics and give me a quote. Supposedly, not only did I blow a belt and idler puller, but also my water pump and pulley. Well I had the 200$ to fix the belt but not the additional 600$ for a water pump, so I was fixing to just put it up for sale on the side of the street or something. Providentially, a friend got me in touch with a mechanic at the church (PTL!) who offered to fix the water pump for half price. The trouble started when I got the car towed to his shop, and he called me to say he couldn't fix it, because the pump wasn't broken! Wasn't even leaking! I guess if it came down to trying to decide if my water pump is bad or not, I'd be forced to trust a mechanic because at the moment I don't even know where it's located under the hood. The crooks at Pep Boys would have charged me all that money for a part I don't need and labor they weren't going to spend, and I would have been none the wiser. Definitely signing up for Mechanics 101 this fall!!! But in all seriousness, isn't God good?! I got to drive my car home yesterday without a penny more than what I'd spent to get the belt fixed. And Jonathan Steele, on behalf of Shepherd Automotive on the Broadways Extension Highway, didn't charge me at all! Wouldn't take anything except a gift car to lunch at Panera Bread, the least I could do for them. God is so good to have my back. Now I'm trying to file a complaint with OKC Consumer Fraud Agency and the Better Business Bureau. It's a tribute to the fact I'm working on my temper that I don't march back into Pep Boys and show them how much trouble a little blonde girl can give them! A big thanks to everyone who is praying for me while I'm on my own in Oklahoma City. God is so good to me, and this world is pretty crazy. I mean really, a water pump? At least they didn't try to tell me my headlights were out of hallogen fluid. I'm not that blonde!

Tornados

It's been a pretty crazy year. Beyond everything falling apart in my own life, mother nature seems to have thrown in the towel as well. In the blistering fast days of this year Oklahoma City has experienced earthquakes, record hail, ice storms, and now tornados. Two F4's on Sunday, and of course the massive F5 on Monday that destroyed half of Moore and displaced over 15,000 people. Latest I checked, death toll was up at 91 and climbing. It feels like half my city is gone. The other half is limping in a surreal state of disbelief. Haven't met a person yet who hasn't been affected. The highway is pretty much on lockdown into Moore thanks to the flood of refugees and volunteers. As soon as I figure out my car situation (water pump and belt blew out), I'm hitting the road to Moore myself to help dig through debris. Moore is where I taught all semester at Community Christian School. I'm so relieved to be here in for my high schoolers and go help them out. A lot of them have lost their homes but God has been good enough to spare their lives, and my own. All I can say is, what a year.

Her Name is Bailey

Sometimes friendships begin in the most unlikely places. Like my friendship with Bailey Starkey, former freshman roommate who drove me insane. Not really insane, but certainly we had our differences and the relationship never grew past general cordiality. We had a fun semester last spring, and then summer came and our lives took different paths and almost a year passed without us even stopping to say hello. To me, Bailey was one of those sweet little Heartland girls who was just a little too different from me.

Different how? When Bailey came up to me this spring with a serious look on her face, with all the fervor of the spirit of the Lord, and announced, "We need to be friends again!" she invited me to have green tea and crochet. I couldn't have been more appealed if I had been invited to watch cows swish their tails all day. A tea party?! Who even drinks tea in coffee-and-energy-drinks-driven college?! Who has time to sit around and crochet?! And if I were to sit around, I wouldn't want to be plucking at yarn like an old spinster and having to talk, that is, socialize, my free time away. I'd rather read, write, run, or sleep. I was appalled at the idea but unable to turn her down.

So this semester I've spent an absurd amount of time watching Bailey sew, knit, crochet, or hem while sipping on honey-sweetened green tea on the floor of her dorm room. Why? Because she's incredibly talented and it's fascinating to watch her create amazing designs with little effort; and because green tea is actually pretty healthy; but mostly, because there was just a spirit of the Lord about her that was undeniable. It was the kind of friendship that I'd always wanted, the kind that was bedrocked on prayer and the Bible. Of all the friendships I've had, I've never had one where the other person just incessantly pesters me with encouragement, prayer, and Bible verses. In a time when I'm trying to draw as astronomically possible close to the Lord, Bailey's spirit and friendship has been like an electric charge. Strengthening, convicting, and very inspiring.

Today she called me all the way from Mt. Vernon, Washington, to tell me she safely arrived home. So far away! I was lamenting a while back that I wouldn't ever be able to chat with her during the summer when she kindly reminded me that phones still work in Washington. I felt so blonde =) And she left me her beta fish, Zibbia, to watch for the summer. A girl fish! So now my crowntail Patrick has a girlfriend!!! He is pretty crazy about her, but I am nervous that they both survive the hot summer without me forgetting to feed them.
When I think about praying with Bailey this past semester, I think about all the cares and heartaches in our soul and how God answered. For eight years she has been praying for her dad's salvation, and as we joined in prayer, it was just a few weeks before she came running down the sidewalk aglow to exclaim the wonder of answered prayer: Her dad had unexpectedly gone to church at gotten saved!

In that sweet embrace as we rejoiced of the Lord's goodness to hear our prayers and change hearts and lives, I knew why Bailey meant so much to me. She was giving me hope. Hope for me, and hope for the future, and hope in God's goodness.
Thank you, Bailey.

His Name is Duke

Tomorrow is my last day student teaching. Today I put my name up on the blackboard along with the address of this blog so that my students could keep in touch with me in the future. The future... such a huge, scary word. I don't know if I'll ever get to see them again. So many of them, going to grow up and go so many different ways. It makes me very sad on the inside. Our paths crossed for so short a time.

They all wanted to know if I had written about them. I explained how I tried to keep my blog a little bit impersonal lately, because I was going through some deep things in my life. Plus, I didn't want them to feel like they were being talked about behind their backs. But I told Montrell and Duke that I had written about them, and when I went to check my blog, I couldn't find Duke's post. Then I realized, I had put it on my personal blog because it had been so deep to me that I didn't even want to share it here.

But I went and found it and dragged it over here to publish, so that he can see how the Lord used him in my life on some very hard days these semester. There are two posts I wrote about him, back to back.

Post One:
Teaching had a major bump: Duke.
Handsome, sweet Duke. Sitting in the back row with his arms crossed, annoyed and disgusted. The first student to openly complain about my teaching. Not my teaching really, but my subject matter. Not that he didn't like writing either - he feels mad at his peers. His tastes differ from theirs and he seems mad because he has to write and read it aloud. He'd rather not write at all.
I see myself mirrored in his rebellious face. Mad at the school, at my peers, willing myself to not even graduate if I could just get away from it all.
I tried to reach out to him. I gave a 20-minute lecture about minority opinion and the power of the underdog finding a voice. His expression and crossed-arm stance never changed, but I tried.
I feel I failed.
Duke, I'm so sorry.
I want to quit, too.

Post Two:
Duke. I got to focus on him a little during seatwork time. He plays guitar, bass, piano. Not any band  instruments. Here are some of his poems, because I'm sure you're sick of reading my own words by now. This is an acrostic poem.


GUITAR
Gently hand crafted
Uses you
In
The
Art of playing and
Reading music

These are ABC poems.
An American
Boy
Cowardly
Dances to the
Extravagant song in the key of
F

I told him a little about my pitiful piano skills, about my violin teacher quitting on me because she said I was a waste of her time. At the end of class, Duke raised his hand and said he wanted to read a poem he'd been working on while zoning out on my lecture on connotation/denotation. 


It was another ABC.

Amazingly, she
Blossoms, she
Certainly loves
Dogs, she
Encourages your
Feelings
Greatly with
Happiness and
Intimate 
Joy, 
Kindly
Loves,
Miss 
Noelle 
O'Brien is the best
Person.

I about bawled in class, in front of 35 kids. I had to make it not a big deal. It was our secret, 
his and mine. I've got your back, Duke. Sandy Chambers, my teacher, told me that Duke is restless because  he lives so far away that he can never socialize with his classmates, have them over, etc. His parents are pulling him at the end of the year and putting him in a public school closer so that he can start having friendships. I felt this huge sadness, this despair, that I will never see him again and have no way to ever contact him. I wish I could know him longer. I don't want him to walk out of my life. I shouldn't have gotten  attached. 

Her Name is Joyce

Her name was Joyce. An older woman, with crow's feet around her eyes and a penchant for floral print, whom I met this year. My drive thru customers at Brixton Square are highly unstable. Most of them are predictable, frustratingly so, but every day is a new adventure. No two cars in line are ever alike. From high-pitched whiny teenager girls who screech over the speaker and hurt my ears to gruff old men barking their orders in demanding sound bites, every time my radio beeps and I get a signal for a new car I have to take a breath in preparation. Oh, and then there are the fun clients who ask intelligent questions and say "thank you!" before zooming off. The car who waits twenty minutes in line for a simple iced tea. The affluent business lady who orders seventeen meals and taps her French nails impatiently on the window sill of her big white Cadillac while I count back change. Oh, the drive thru.
But then there was Joyce. One of those customers who never deviate in their order. Five days a week, every week, they don't care to try to anything from the extensive menu except for their habitual, familiar little zone. Half sierra turkey sandwhich, add on a pickle spear, and half a classic salad with extra dressing. Large ice tea, extra extra ice. Maybe a peanut butter cookie. No one orders pickle spears with half sandwhiches, and why the boring little classic salad had any interest compared to the Mediteranean salmon with almonds and tangerine organes, or the Thai chili salad with edemame and peanut drizzle, I couldn't fathom. After three days in a row, I had her order down as soon as I heard the first phrase. Half sierra with a pickle? Yupp. Gotcha.
We use loyalty cards at Panera to help establish customer connections. We swipe them along with the credit cards and dole out discounts and free treats. In exchange, we learn their first name and can track purchasing trends. But Joyce didn't have a card, didn't want one, and after a few days I was in my "make friends with the drive thru clients!" mode and asked her for her name. Joyce, she divulged hesitantly. I just smiled and pointed to my nametag. Noelle, trainer. It was a pleasure, and she was surprised when I told her that no one ordered what she did (and especially not every single day!)
When I take an order from a car at the screen outside, I am flying blind. They interrupt me, I try not to interrupt me, and we bump along until the car gets to the window and we can talk face-to-face in more natural conversations. I never know whether it's going to be whiny girl or grumpy old man or snappy business lady when I begin the order, "Hello, thank you for choosing Panera Bread at Brixton Square. This is Noelle, what can I get for you today?" But I have trained my voice to stay even and calm and not change regardless of the previous conversation with the car before. Our speakers are lame and I wouldn't recognize my own sister's voice ordering at the screen, so the only clue I have to regular customers is their order. And as soon as I hear "sierra turkey, pickle spear..." I can drop my calm, monotone, almost computer-generated smoothness for some real life.
"Joyce!" I interrupt. "How are you?!"
She laughs. "How did you know it was me?"
"Because you want a classic salad along with that, extra dressing, same as yesterday?" with a smile.
She laughs again. "That's right."
"Just pull on up, I've got the whole thing going for you already."
Forget about explaining which window, their total, and please come again. Informality is a nice change from formality.
Joyce finally opened up to chatting with me, and I deactivate the automatic window sensor so I can talk as I cash out her credit card. The other day, I asked her where she was going dressed so fine. Joyce just shook her head and said, "The hospital..."
I found out that day that she has a daughter in severe need of a kidney transplant, in the hospital due to a bad infection. That is how she spends her mornings. Then she comes by Panera Brixton Square, gets her usual order, and goes to another hospital where her twelve-year-old granddaughter is contained after suffering a stroke two weeks ago that left her completely paralyzed.
"This is my moment to breathe in between hospitals. It's tough to be strong for them all day." And Joyce took her ice tea with extra extra ice closed her eyes as she sipped it slowly, waiting for the food to be made.
I was speechless. Where would I get my solace between hospitals if that was my case? I would like to think I would find a friend at a drive thru of a cafe offering nutritious, comforting food. But my real solace would come from the peace of God that is being developed in mine own life at this difficult time. Was she a Christian? I didn't know.
But when I bagged her order and prepared to "send it out," I snatched up my pen and scribbled a note on the back of her receipt. Hopefully she would see it during the long day with her granddaughter. All it said what that I was praying for her, to keep her chin up, and my name.
She didn't check her bag as she drove away, confident that her order was correct. I didn't mind. I didn't expect much from it.
But she came back the very next day, and this time her husband was with her. I'd never seen him come with her before. I was taking orders at the other screen, and my colleague was operating the window, but Joyce requested me by name and so the other girl switched me spots so I could cash out Joyce and say hi.
"This is my husband!" she told me, smiling from the passenger seat. "He never comes here but I told him he had to come meet you in person. Your note meant so much to be yesterday, it changed my whole day! I've never seen anything like that. Thank you for caring."
And I felt tears in my eyes, and I shook his hand, and I got Joyce her order and made sure she had another note on the back of her receipt when I handed out the brown Panera bag. She peeked this time, and saw it, and beamed up at me as her husband put the truck in gear and drove off to the hospital. I smiled back, and my prayers went with them.
Because being at Panera has taught me to care for my customers as people, and that's the exact kind of lifestyle I think that God wants from Christians, to care about each other, and about the world, and people's needs, and to demonstrate a little bit of his love.
Please pray for me as I see Joyce from day to day and try to be an encouragement to her and a representation of God's goodness. I really love this dear lady and her family I've never met. Her name is Joyce, and it is my honor to be a part of her life for those five minutes at the Brixton Square drive thru.

Busy-ness

So much to do, so little time! So much to write, and so few words that come to mind.
There are a mere twenty-three days left before my graduation. To my lowerclassmen colleagues, that is a very long time remaining. But to me, the pressure of the inevitable's approach is overwhelming. It seems like my mind could just snap at any moment! Tomorrow is the last student teaching seminar with the Heartland education department. I have three days left to student teach (Monday through Wednesday) and then we have Yearbook Chapel, which leads into finals week. Then the graduation. So fast, like that. Simultaneously, I have to pack up five years accumulation and say goodbye to this lifestyle. No more dormitories, class notes, textbooks? I can barely imagine it.

At the same time, I am transitioning into management at Panera Bread and beginning my formal hands-on training. Yesterday I landed my interview with the Director of Operations, Christine, and am awaiting the arrival of my background check clearance and training plan. While I prepare to say goodbye to my high school students, I also face goodbyes with my Heartland classmen and professors. And the long-term future remains yet uncertain, forcing me off this cliff onto one small precipice of a step. If my life were a movie, this moment would be the part where it flashes from scene to scene to scene driving the viewers crazy. Not even transitions from day to day, but multiple scenes from within each day, each hour! Oh, headache.

Yesterday was my brother's birthday, next week my sister's. My final bill is still looming out there, and relatives and guests are coming into town from all direction! Last luncheons with former roommates, last shifts at work with my Heartland/Panera girls before they all leave, too. From home to work to school to church, everything is in the middle of dynamic volcanic change! Through it all, I have the unmoving presence of God in my life and His peace in my heart and mind. It is invaluable. I don't think I've ever needed his immediate presence with my every step as much as I do now. What an amazing thing that he is there to provide it!

Continuing the randomness, my sweet friend and little sister in Zhitomyr started up her own blog! Check it out! http://stylefromcarrie.blogspot.com She is a lovely young lady with wonderful diction and creativity. I am so proud of her!

I don't really know how to feel about everything that is happening around me and to me, except to feel nothing but God's eternal grace. I would really appreciate prayers because I don't want Satan to get any kind of victory during these last few days I have in this story's chapter, and he has many many opportunities to me.
As always I thank you for following my blog and hope to see feedback =)