this is how the story goes.

She had a thin frame, coarse wiry hair, and yellowed teeth.  She wore a dress most days, and helped me learn how to spell the word ambiguous; her name was Mrs. Dunlap.  Mrs. Dunlap was a high school cheerleader back her heyday, and she not only taught me how to spell but she also showed me and Faryn Dewar how to do a perfect cartwheel and round off in the hallway of my elementary school.  Mrs. Dunlap even held my hair back one day when I had consumed too many grapes...and my stomach was thrusting them out of my body at an unmanageable speed.  She was the perfect fifth grade teacher.  

I love going to church.  I am not sure what it is about church but I love going.  I have been to so many churches in my life that I can't even recall, and while most of them have been Nazarene, each church has taught me a little something about "church".  Sunday mornings roll around in Nashville and I wake up and get ready for church, but church here is a different kind of church, there are a lot of "bless your hearts" and "sweet spirits" but to be frank I was growing exceptionally weary of encountering sweet spirits, and not "the spirit".  I wandered from church to church in Nashville looking for more than an old man greeter telling me good morning, I was starving for more than just another sermon and a benediction, I needed to find a place where worship wasn't about performing but reverence for an awesome God...and while I may not be at the best fitting church last week I found a sprit that was more than simply sweet, and for a moment I found a place that reminded me a little bit of home.  I'm positive that the fact that they sang "Believe" by Natalie Grant was a contributing factor.

Mr. Dunlap is a greeter, and his wife, Nancy, has an exceptional memory for any Nazarene that she has ever encountered.  From all appearances Mr. Dunlap was the typical old man greeter that hands you your bulletin, and ushers you to your seat, has a friendly smile...but is guiding you to your seat quickly so that he can get back to the door and repeat the process all over again.  He wears pleated khakis, a polo, and a sports coat, and while it is not a suit...it is the "contemporary" take on church clothes these days, and for him it's "hip".  His name tag was positioned just so, and when I came walked into to church he was there ready to shake my hand, I shook his hand and slipped into a seat in the back of the church where I was sure that I wouldn't be approached.  

I have been to church four times now and I have yet to be approached by anyone other than the greeter, and I am not sure if that counts...because after all it is their "job".  So there I sat, in between the aisle and a couple that couldn't keep their hands off of each other.  I tried not to look at the love birds, but it was like when you see someone has a huge facial birthmark, you know that you shouldn't look, but it's nearly impossible not to.  So there I sat between an aisle and an awkward place, which is similar to a rock and a hard place only much much worse.  I suppose I never really understood why people said it was hard to find a church home, but on Sunday I knew why...for the first time I couldn't hide behind the lines "oh, my dad's the senior pastor", "that's my mom on the piano", or "my dad basically raised the youth pastor"....So there I sat in a Nazarene church with nothing that made it feel like home.  

As soon as service ended I put my coat on walked out of the sanctuary...I made a pit stop, and when I walked out of the bathroom there were so many people in the foyer of the church, they were trying to hustle out the doors to get to the restaurants...heaven forbid that they have to wait fifteen minutes for a table.  I made my way through the traffic filled room and to the doors, and it was there that I was stopped by none other than Mr. Dunlap. He asked me a few questions about myself, told me about his claim to fame...which happens to be that he is a grandpa, and then he introduced me to Nancy.  After a few minutes of conversation he asked me what I was doing for lunch.  In all honesty, I was so embarrassed that I didn't have lunch plans (I don't think that you can be a Nazarene and not have Sunday lunch plans) that I thought about making something up...I don't know why I was so concerned about looking "cool" to a old man (it was probably because of his super suave sports coat, and pleated khakis) but I was...but being that I was in church I opted for telling the truth...I conceded that I did not have lunch plans.  They offered to take me to lunch, at a restaurant of my choice.  I agreed to meet them at a taco place not too far from either one of our homes, and I got in my car and prepared myself for what I was sure would be a very uncomfortable afternoon. 

Lunch wasn't awkward at all.  For the first time in a long time I felt as though I was apart of a church, I didn't have to check the visitor box on the attendance card anymore, and when the pastor said "y'all" I could finally feel as though I was included in that...I had become part of the "y'all" (clearly that means you have arrived).  I never thought that I would be a fan of southern lingo, but I must confess that to feel apart of the "y'all" is comforting.

I'm pretty sure that the Dunlaps did not think that taking an aloof, homesick graduate student to a taco joint on a Sunday afternoon would prove to be such a big deal, but as for this graduate student I am grateful for their generosity...they became the spirit, the "sweet spirit" of Jesus to a distant twenty-two year old college girl...and on that Sunday Nashville became semi-permanent to me.  

My fifth grade teacher and Mr. Dunlap are not related, and thank goodness I didn't gorge myself on tacos...but I have a feeling that Mrs. Nancy Dunlap would have loving held my hair back while I purged the fragments of taco from my overfilled stomach.  It is because of people like Mr. and Mrs. Dunlap that it is easy for me to "believe in a cross".

past the infatuation phase.

I have never been a big fan of Christian music, however the first "real" concert that I ever attended was Steven Curtis Chapman...and I am not ashamed at all to admit that I sang "Saddle Up Them Horses" at the top of my lungs, and the boom from my very bass voice echoed all over "The Palace of Auburn Hills".  I didn't listen to Shine when I attended Olivet, I didn't know what AIR fm was until a couple of years ago, and I know more hymns than "christian pop'' songs.  My junior year of college I made a christian music mixed CD, and I recently found it and transferred the songs on to my I-Pod.  I am not sure what came over me today, but on my way to the dentist I decided to listen to Jesus Jams.  I flipped through the album list until I had reached the J's and clicked shuffle, the first song that came on was "I will Rest in You" by Jaci Velasquez.  Velasquez is like the Michelle Branch/Vanessa Carlton of the Christian genre.  

Every night I lay down to rest, but I have yet to sleep through one night and wake up feeling well rested since I moved to Nashville.  I nap, and when I awake I wish that the sleep never ended.  And some how through disturbed sleep, and naps that never seem long enough, my slumber leaves me very unrested.    

I have found myself in a place of tranquil melancholy stage in life.  I am going and coming all at the same time.  I am coming to Nashville to study and be, but only to leave and become.  I am uncertain where I will go to become what it is that I am being led to be, but I have decided that I will rest in the Lord.  I will not lean on my own understanding, but his.  I will not make my own plans, but know that he has plans to prosper me.  To pretend that it is easy to follow path that is not clear would be a lie.  It is exceptionally difficult.

I have lived in Nashville for almost three months now and I don't have curtains, candles, or a kitchen table.  To be honest, I have no desire to have any of those things because I know that one year from January I will be leaving.  Nashville is not really home but more of an extended vacation.  My parents house is exactly that...their home and not mine.  Watervliet was always temporary.  Detroit was home until my family left and then it was a house, but not my home.  I tried to make my apartment homey, but I think that I failed.  I think that I wanted to fail, deep down inside, I didn't really ever want Nashville to be home.  

I am not sure what it is but I have the gypsy gene I am afraid.  I will continue to travel through this purgatory like stage of life until a find a home.  I suppose that is what we all do to some extent travel on the journey until we can settle, I don't know that I will ever settle.  

I recently told my mom that I didn't want to wake up at thirty with a mortgage, three kids, and find myself sitting behind a desk from nine to five.  My mom looked at me rather perturbed, because she had sacrificed her youth for my siblings and I...and then in a very humble voice said, but you don't want to wake up at forty and realized that you lived adventurous but had no one to share it with...I think that my mom is right.  I want to see action, passion, and the raw heart of people and for some reason I don't think that I can find that in the suburbs of life.  However, I have come to realize that the city doesn't have much more to offer than the 'burbs that I am so afraid of getting acclimated with.  

Cities are like boyfriends.  They are all fun at first, but after the infatuation wears off there is really nothing left but a lot of vacant lots and some entertaining coffee shops that after a while seem boring as well.  The place, much like the person, that you used to find rest in becomes one more thing to check off of your to do list, the conversations fade to predictable, and nothing is novel anymore...slowly but surely you detach and then just like a relationship gone sour, you move out and on with life.

I am not sure what it is about the nomadic lifestyle that is so appealing to me, but there is also something so entrancing about the unchanging.  I find a warm, quiet peace in the unchanging...I suppose that is because our God is unchanging.  It is my prayer that God will take me back, constantly his eyes will watch over me.  I want to be in the place that I once knew falling into the bed of faith prepared for me, and there I will find rest.

Jaci Velasquez may not be able to play a piano while sliding through the streets of the big city, but she sure can make me feel at home in a place that is so transitional.

killing me softy.

When I was sixteen I created a livejournal, within the pseudo pages of my internet journal I documented the events of my very colorful sophomore year of high school.  After about six months of documents the ins and outs of my life, while trying to sound poetically unique I realized that I, like every other sixteen year old, was just like all of my friends who listened to Dashboard Confessional and Simple Plan and despised my parents for instilling morals in me.  My livejournal page is still in existence, however I have not been "active" since 2002.  When livejournal became too popular, and "everyone and their mom" had one...I once again wante to establish myself as the girl who was ever so popular, yet outside the cliche...so I quit blogging on livejournal to create a deadjournal.  A deadjournal and a live journal were basically interchangeable...there was just one distinct difference:  livejournal was white and deadjournal was black.  Deadjournal seemed to provide a place of solace for very over dramatic teenagers who wore black nail polish, dark eye liner, and very purposefully messed up their hair to look like they had just rolled out of be.  I was proud to know that while I curled my hair and wore American Eagle that I had somehow fashioned together a deadjournal that had a small following.  Granted that following consisted of my very very dramatic sixteen-year-old friends who had had also switched from live to deadjournal for the sake of establishing their originality.

I think that at twenty-two I am still attempting to establish some sort of originality.  I would like to broadcast my thoughts to you while consuming a classy panini, and sipping on an Italian soda; but I must admit to you that I am a sucker for a good Whopper, a king size fry pod, and a very cosmopolitan diet coke.  The BK lounge is nothing to call original, and that is where I would rather dine.  So in this stage of life I find myself looking for the same thing that I searched for at sixteen, and I discovered that even at twenty-two I have found some sort of awkward peace in spilling it all over the internet.

As I once again record the story of my life, the ins and outs of the hum drum, and my overly theatrical take on my lustful relationships I hope that my contemporary livejournal will provide the relief of a good back scratch from a mom who now lives four hundred miles away, or the feeling you have when your best friend greets you at the door, or the comfort you had when you opened your high school locker and found a encouraging note on game day from the team captain...my expectations for my new therapeutic endeavor may be set too high, and maybe I should find a friend in Nashville instead of another internet page to have affection for...but that would not be nearly as entertaining to tell old friends.  I made a friend, or I started a blog?  Weigh the options...definitely a better conversation starter to say that you started a blog.  So if I meet you in a coffee shop that is home to modern day philosophers, or a Burger King that is contributing to our fast food nation I hope that you will not be able to recognize that the internet is killing me softly.