Following God's lead across countries and across the street
14 May 2013 Leave a Comment
I walked to the beach today.
Up LaSalle, down Oak,
across Michigan.
And these two,
together in the big city,
she held his finger and they walked.
I don’t know them,
and soon I passed them.
But I walked slow, for a moment,
to stay behind them
and watch
their downtown
handholding
walk.
~Natalia
04 May 2013 2 Comments
I realized this afternoon that tomorrow is Sunday. Sitting in the back seat of the car, I watched the city skyline slide past on the other side of the tinted window, the lake rolling gently over the beach, on my left. I sat in that red SUV, brother and mother in the front seat, three empty car seats with me in the back, and Sunday occurred to me.
I didn’t have to think about it long. Soon, we stopped at Starbucks and we talked about school and summer and travel and I called for a change in radio station seventeen times. I was distracted. And then we arrived downtown and the mother pulled over behind a bus and the brother and I hopped out, onto the curb, into the movie theater. Bought tickets, ran to Jimmy John’s, scuttled back to that huge theater complex, found seats, found friends, enjoyed the film.
And then there were four of us and we walked back to school, snaking past the Saturday night rumble of restaurants, bars, clubs. We passed hotels, frozen yogurt shops, the brother dragged us into 7-11 so he could buy a sweet tea, which to our amusement, was sold to him in a paper bag. Skipping through crosswalks because the countdown to red is ticking fast and the light’s turning soon, we wished the brother good night at the Red Line and the three of us continued back to school.
There was a stop to see Mar at work, two stories up, across the plaza from my room, where we ate Goldfish and I listened intently to a conversation about basketball, of which I understood not a word.
But now I’m back on the floor, in my cozy cloths. It’s quiet. I’m thinking about Sunday.
I don’t like to dread Sunday. Don’t like that the weekend sinks heavy with a sigh when I suddenly look up and realize that it’s Sunday soon. Maybe it’s not in the Bible, but it might as well be: Sunday is a day of rejoicing. A day of extra-special God time. A day to meet with individuals of all walks of life and be together, praise Him together, in the unity that only church brings.
I’ve been running from Sundays, these past months, because people go to church on Sundays, of course, and I’m just not sure where to go.
It sounds simple. Just find a church. Go out, ride the bus, take the train, walk, and go to church. There are hundreds of them in this city, or at least, it feels like there are.
So I go. I walked to Moody Church, wet snow slushing into the holes in my boots, the sun shining cold and bright in the February afternoon. Later, I rode the bus and then the train, northwest. The Jen and I went together, dresses, toting Bibles, on an adventure, almost. The next week, we went to another church, again a train and a bus, then a short walk across a park, to a building full of singing, preaching; full of people.
Then we came back to campus, because that’s where home is, that’s where comfortable, safe, feels.
Maybe it shouldn’t be like that. Maybe church should be the highlight of the week. A haven of safe people, familiar faces, a beacon of encouragement and refreshment after a long week. Maybe, probably. I wish it was like that, really. But it’s not, and I don’t know what to do.
~Natalia
30 Apr 2013 Leave a Comment
in Chicago, College, Friends, UP
I said last summer, lying on the rocks while the lake lapped easily at the shore, that I don’t like looking up. Star gazing scares me, a little bit.
Not because it’s so big, not even because it makes me feel so small. It’s because it’s so close.
We went up on the roof tonight, the Jenny girl and I. Of course, there are taller buildings all around- this is downtown Chicago, after all- but ten floors up is pretty high. We brought her computer, for the purpose of watching One Tree Hill, but the rooftop Internet capabilities left something to be desired and then we were just lying there, looking up.
The clouds were fat, white, wispy and the sky it’s natural urban glow; I wondered if looking up would feel the same as last summer on the rocks. We could hardly even see any stars.
But while Netflix fought to load, the computer sat to the side, and I looked up and breathed in the orange Chicago sky. I waved my hand towards the sky, telling Jen something, and a second later saw that she imitated me. She laid there on the pillows we had borrowed from the lounge, one hand stretched up, reaching into the swirling clouds.
Do this with one eye open, she said, they’re so close. She opened and closed her fingers, and I imagined her grabbing the clouds, catching a handful of wet, puffy precipitation and twirling it in her hand.
I reached up, did the same.
And the sky is big, marvelously, shockingly so. It’s brilliantly created and beautifully painted, and when you lie on your back and reach hands high as they’ll go- the sky is vast and grand and stunning. And it’s so very close, too.
~Natalia
22 Apr 2013 Leave a Comment
in Chicago, College, Feel, God, Quiet
It’s a rare experience, this quiet. School is a loud place, I’m accustomed to it. Doors open and close up and down the dorm floor, voices call out, shout out, laugh out. Classroom buildings hum and bustle, professor and student voices mixing with elevators, janitors, printers. The library is a quiet study place, of course, but people walk, books open and close, keyboard fingers type, type, type.
Even in the dark, when I lie with blankets pulled up around me, staring out at the city-lit sky, I can hear the city. Sirens blare past, cars honk, people yell at each other, at the bus, at passing cabs. It’s never quiet around here.
But it’s 11pm and I’m sitting downstairs, in the second floor lounge. This is a place for those who need refuge, who need quiet, who need free space beyond their own floor. I’ve come down here before, when upstairs wasn’t conducive to focus, and the library was too far away.
I’ve come down here and I sat tucked in the corner, fingers pounding out a paper, while ten girls did an exercise video across from me. Girls come down here to work, and they all sit around- chattering to each other occasionally- moving, working, writing, reading. They sit around on the couches scattered across the big room, and the sirens and the trucks rumble past outside, and conversations sound almost clear from the street outside, and I put my headphones in, turned the music up loud, to tune it all out.
It’s loud around here; the only way to escape is to make your own soundtrack louder.
But I came back tonight, almost by accident, and I’m sitting in a room on the side, tucked into a sinking, fuzzy blue couch, and the noises down here are quiet and few. I’m on the inside of the building, rooms away from busy streets, two floors up from conversations wafting in. The late hour has settled the masses, the girls who sift through this study lounge throughout the day: most of them are gone. They’ve taken their studying and their noise upstairs, outside, somewhere else.
And I’m here in the thick, insulated quiet, and I remember why I like the noise.
I like noise because it’s something to think about. Noise is people, places, voices, actions. Noise is going somewhere, doing something, being something. I like noise because it means I don’t have to think about the other things, the small, quiet things that hum gentle, undetected under all the noise.
It’s hard to escape the quiet thoughts when the noise leaves.
The noise is still there, of course, but it’s a little noise, just about swallowed by the quiet, the noise-less. Some would say quiet is peaceful. And it is, sometimes. But so many times, it’s in the quiet that my fears slide close; worry that can be noised-out is inescapable in the quiet. It’s in the quiet that bittersweet sadness comes; four weeks is a very short time, and this school year will be over in a blink. In the noise, we laugh and exclaim about the way the year flies. In the quiet, it all feels too fast, too soon, and I want to stop the clock and stay just where I am.
It’s in the quiet that God is feels so very close. He’s here all the time; eyes, heart, hands deeply involved in everything I say, everything I do. But His words, His will, grows loud in the quiet. The noise dulls His voice, not so the quiet. His words can’t be missed when it’s just me and the still. I can hear Him and my heart shifts, uneasy with the quiet and the close.
I’m not scared of Him. I’m not scared of the One who made me, saved me. But take away the noise, the busy, the loudness and the action, and the quiet is so still and His voice becomes loud and He’s so very big, and I’m so very small.
~Natalia
13 Apr 2013 2 Comments
in Chicago, College, Fear, Friends
It occurred to me recently that maybe I should spend more time in the library. I should be in the library, with my computer and my notebooks, and my textbooks and pens and pencils. I’d be productive down there in the basement library. There are people who do just that, people whose lives are class and the library, back again and back again. They work hard in that library: it’s a wonderful thing.
I thought about that this week.
Rather soon after this thought occurred to me, my mind argued right back that it’s not the school work that I’ll remember when I look back on my college career in ten, twenty, thirty years; it’s the relationships built. So I decided that a lifestyle at college marked by excessive and reclusive time in the library was a poor decision, and a day like today is just what’s needed to prove such an assertion.
I got up early this morning, when the sun was still working on rising and I was one of four people on the entire train platform. I got off just barely into the Loop and walked amongst the tall black buildings while tiny white snow pellets bounced off my coat and tangled into my hair. I signed into the front desk of one of these buildings, and I took a Praxis Test. Just to make sure I’m smart enough to be a teacher.
I sectioned off five hours of my day for the exam, but I finished ahead of time and after riding the train the rest of the way around the Loop and back to the Chicago Avenue stop, I arrived back at school before noon. All the free time I had! All the time to accomplish tasks! What about the homework- so much could be done!
So I perused Pinterest. Took a brief nap. Worked on my take-home quiz. Spent some time with the Mother and the baby boy she brought along for a visit. Ate a chocolate egg. Ate another chocolate egg. If relaxing was on my checklist, I nailed it. But if it’s homework, papers, reading, and a quiz that I was hoping to accomplish this afternoon, I fell sadly short.
But this evening? This evening was when I remembered what’s important; when I remembered exactly what it is that I’ll look back on in the years to come.
Sometime in the late afternoon, after the Mother and the toddler boy left, I swung my door open, shoving the clear doorstop under it with my toes. People walked back and forth, the hallway’s always moving, but an open door means come on in, and 5pm found Jen, Di, and I perched on my bed, while Mar leaned leisurely against The Roommate’s raised bedframe. I could have written then- a blog post, I was thinking. But those three in the room are the three I’ll remember anyway, not the blog post, so I didn’t.
And there was dinner downstairs, stacking bruschetta next to chicken breast, settling into that long SDR table, Mar’s on a cucumber kick, too. And upstairs again, more time for homework, but there’s voices coming from a bedroom down the hall, and I want to do what I’ll remember.
Mar and Jen share a room, we watched a movie, all lined up on Jen’s bed last night. And Ellie Rose kept her room open this weekend, white light from the window, shining square on the hallway carpet. Late in the evening, Nelle is gone but her room’s open and there were five of us in there, sitting on the bed, the couch, the floor. Talking, laughing, being together.
I could have sat in the room, computer on desk, type, type, typing away, but that didn’t feel right today. So I left homework on the side and I followed relationships that are growing, and I had a wonderful Saturday and these things? These are the times I’ll remember about college.
~Natalia
10 Apr 2013 Leave a Comment
I returned to the floor just a bit ago, after nine hours away. Yesterday evening, I came back to my school home to find eight neighbors and hallmates sitting huddled on the flat brown hallway carpet. Just because, they said. We’re having hallway time.
But no one was in the hallway when I came upstairs two hours ago, and I’m just alright with that. I went into my room, to leave book bag and shoes and find sweatpants and hoodie, and then I left again. Looking for some place quiet. There was a room, two doors down: door propped open, lighting soft, empty, quiet. So I went back, just a little bit up that hallway and borrowed the book to do the reading for tomorrow, because, of course, I lent mine to someone else, and I don’t have his number.
So I borrowed a book and I sat on someone else’s bed- laid, really, because today was a tired day- and I read in the quiet.
This floor is not loud, really. We’re not screamers, for the most part. We did scream when Madie got engaged, though, even though she didn’t get back, we didn’t scream, until 70 minutes past quiet hours, and there was a scolding involved, somewhere.
Not really loud, but loud or quiet, life makes noise, of course.
I couldn’t decide what to tell you just now and I sat on my bed (I’m in my own room now) and I breathed slow and silent and I listened to the floor. Sounds I hear, sounds that shift in and out of my ears without my own attention, sounds that go all day long.
It’s never silent in the city. Never silent anywhere.
I hear these sounds all the time, but I sat and looked quiet around the room, and listened hard. I wanted to hear; the floor, life, the city, movement. Anything.
And I did.
Cars roll past downstairs in the street. Someone’s always going somewhere. Next door, The Neighbor opened her sink faucet and the water whistled all the way up into the pipes. Then something fell into the sink, scratching and bouncing hard and metallic against the ceramic sink. Doors make such odd sounds when the open, and again when they close, but the bathroom door is different than the rest, somehow.
Voices sound quiet from down the hall, even from the room that touches mine, and I don’t mind because I’m not hoping to hear what they say. Except sometimes Mar and The Neighbor talk loud and they know I’m listening and they make jokes and tease while we live on opposite sides of the little dorm wall, and I bang on the wall to show them I’m heard; their joke worked.
I heard the elevator ding down the hall, around the corner, and I guess it worked like an alarm clock, because everyone should be up here on the floor, everyone should be asleep now. Including me.
So I’ll do that, and maybe in the interim, you’ll listen, listen quiet; to hear sounds you’ve never heard before, and sounds that fling in and out of your ears every day, every moment. Whatever you hear, well, those sounds are what makes it life, makes it home, makes it real, no?
~Natalia
07 Apr 2013 Leave a Comment
in Chicago, College, Friends, Train, Writing
After church and after lunch, this afternoon, these four ladies, we went to Starbucks. There was a lull in the moments between elevator dinging up, up, up from lunch, and clicking that elevator button again: down to street, down to train, down to the city. There was a lull and I’m not the only one whose eyes sank heavy; Sunday afternoon just feels right to be sleepy. But it was a small break, and soon, soon, we filled backpacks with computers, Upasses, books, and we rode that elevator down, right into that city lobby.
We took the train, four? Five stops? Into the circle, wrapping around the heart of downtown Chicago; the train said “Loop” on the side. We rode right into the Loop and we got off at Adams and Wabash, where the Art Institute of Chicago stands strong at the end of the street, and there’s a Starbucks right there facing.
The same Starbucks that The Jen and I found on Friday. Friday when we sat in the front window with our headphones in and typed, typed, typed those papers and watched the people of the city and the tourists stream back and forth on that Chicago street. We went back to the same Starbucks, and we brought Mar and Ellie Rose along, too.
We found a table in the middle; I sat on one side, three chairs in a row for those three on the other side, and we worked there in the Starbucks. I had a paper, the same paper that caused my back to stiffen tight from sitting, working, stressing on Saturday night. I had a paper to work on, but I was up late on Saturday and I made much progress, I’ve not so very much work to do now. So I listened to music and I worked on that paper, and when I couldn’t resist, I looked up, out the window, and gazed at Chicago happening there.
But we’re not there so long, there was an issue with the heater, or maybe the air conditioning, and they’ve got to check everything, verify it’s all just fine: they asked us all to leave.
So we bundled up notebooks, and slid computers into backpacks, grabbed drinks, and we left. Ellie Rose knew a place, the Chicago Cultural Center, so we walked up that wide, windy sidewalk, Jen and I in dresses that blew like feathers over cold feet in flip-flops; it really was warmer this morning, we tell the other two.
But the walk wasn’t far and we got there soon; it was warm and dim, and the wide marble staircase winds up, up, up, but we walked right under it to the big room with dark red carpet and all those work tables. Mar and Ellie are in front, because Ellie’s been here before, and with Mar, the two of them are conversing quiet in this place like a museum. Jen and I are behind, far, and we stop and look at art on the wall, and I found a water fountain; the first two’ve selected our table by the time we arrive.
It’s a long table, with plush benches that I slide right off of because my dress is slippery, and they sit on one side, Jen and I on the other side. And I put in just one headphone, because it’s quiet here and I want to drink in the still, even as I’ve turned the music up loud in the other ear. I listen and I write, working on that paper again.
But I’ve made real progress and my despair, that sick, sinking feeling I get so very much when it comes to these rather intense papers, that feeling is shrinking, and I feel light and hopeful, and it’s making me want to write more.
Jen on my left, Mar across, Ellie Rose next to Mar, I realize then that it’s these three who I’d write about. I can’t, don’t, because I’ve got that paper, and I wasted too much time fiddling with my music, but I wanted to write about them.
I’d write about Ellie Rose with those soft, pale fingers, and Spanish worksheet pages spread wide in front of her. I’d write about Mar, she’s reading C.S. Lewis, taking notes in a little journal, and she looks C.S. Lewis-type, too. She’s got a black dress and black tights, and her hair’s auburn straight. She looks gentle, professional. And I’d write about Jen, next to me. She curled her hair this morning, and that brown hair falls soft on her white cardigan shoulders. She has a green dress and shiny sandals: she’s wearing hope for spring.
I’d write about those girls until all the details I know, all the details that I think and see and breathe and live everyday were recorded, because there sitting in the Chicago Cultural Center, I want to take these three and write, write, write, until I’ve saved them perfect, and they’d never leave, because I have them there, in pages.
~Natalia
24 Mar 2013 2 Comments
in Beach, Chicago, Family, Parental, Photos, Travel
My father and I flew from California to Chicago this afternoon, and I’m back at my little desk in the middle of the big city. I had a wonderful, wonderful two-week break and you’ll probably be hearing much more about the past 14 days in the weeks to come. But for now, the floor is asleep, classes start again tomorrow, and I have for you a picture of my two phenomenal parents at Monterey Bay, taken yesterday.
We’ll catch up tomorrow, friends.
~Natalia
05 Mar 2013 Leave a Comment
in Blogging, Chicago, College, Family, Moody Bible Institute
There’s a contingent of individuals who came across this blog via the Moody Bible Institute website. There’s a page for Admissions and a tab for Connect with Us and a section of Moody students who are in the habit of blogging their days, and my picture is on there. There are five or six thumbnail pictures stacked one on top of the other, with links to blogs next to names and mini bios. Five or six and I’m one of them, and some of those who click here come because of that page.
They come because of Moody.
I’ve thought about what I’d want to read, if I was three years ago, thinking and wondering and planning four years in the Windy City, four years studying at the Moody Bible Institute. If I was a senior in high school once again, what would I want to read about this school?
Sometimes my writing is a little scattered, a little random. If you’ve been around a while, you probably already know that about me. But I work at the pool, that’s an off-campus job, and I work in Admissions, on campus, and the application deadline for Fall 2013 is coming very soon, and the file cabinet in the office is full of heart stories. God’s leading them here. To Moody.
We call them prospectives. What would you like to know about this place, dear prospective?
Would you know about the game room? We have one. Second floor, ASC. You don’t know those abbreviations, but you will, and you can add them to the other jargon we accidentally throw around. Like CPO and SDR and Commons and pretrib and SLAC and systheo. But there is a game room, and I walked by with Mar today, and we stopped outside to talk with someone else, and we all stood in that upstairs hallway while a guy in the game room pretended to hit another with the pool cue and a ping-pong ball escaped the table and rolled away.
Do you want to know about the library? Because I spent the day there. Tall tables, short tables, group tables, single tables; they’ve laced book space with work space and I hunted up and down for an outlet because I want just this desk, but my computer battery lasts about a minute for every year that my dad has lived, and he’s not a very old man. I found an outlet.
Do you want to know about the SDR, that basement dining room? I ate there three times today, then hauled my backpack on and walked all the way down that sloping tunnel, the long window above me receding with every step down.
I could tell you about the laundry room, the floor where I live, the athletic facility, the classroom buildings. This school has become my story these past two years and there is much that I could tell you about.
But I sat in the back of Chapel today. President’s Chapel means Dr. Nyquist spoke, and my highly biased opinion ranks him second behind D.L. himself for best MBI president. I got there early, quite, and I sat right there in the middle, where we always sit. But that wasn’t working and the phone was buzzing, so I did that slow meander walk up the carpet aisle, to the back. I stood and I waited, just a moment or two, to let others fill that red-seat Chapel, to wait for… something. Then I poked my head back through those swinging wooden doors and Mar had appeared in the back rows. So I sat with her. And The Neighbor came, too, and Olivia, as well.
Sitting back here, I can see everything. Not the balcony, of course, I’m too far back for that, but all those heads, backs, jackets, hairstyles in front: I see them. And I sat in the back and I listened to the president with the white hair and the black suit, and I looked over all those people, and I realized that I can’t tell you this. I can’t tell you what it is to settle into that Chapel seat, knees pulled up, and to know a place of family. A place where we have Jesus Christ in common and we all know that we’re bought at a price, and we all live in that God moment.
I can’t tell you what that’s like, prospective. You just gotta come here.
~Natalia
26 Feb 2013 1 Comment
I’m in the process of writing a research paper. I say “in the process” because when I think about writing said paper, I experience an actual physical sensation that is very similar to pain in my chest. This has led me to conclude (which conclusion I had already basically arrived at, thanks to research papers written in previous semesters) that I feel strongly about research papers. Strongly negative.
That being said, I’m writing a research paper.
I watched the snow fall today. Really, really watched it. I sat on my bed and focused hard on a flake as it swirled past the window. I’ve watched it snow before, hundreds of time, but I don’t remember a time that I peeled my eyes open and watched individual flakes fall from the sky. So I did that. But then my head started feeling a little odd, and I suppose I was rather straining my eyes, so I blinked hard a couple of times and decided to do something else.
But I watched the snow fall today.
We went, the girls on my floor and I, to the guys’ dorm on Sunday. Our once-monthly shot at spending time in the guys’ dorm. This event, known as Open House, is a rather interesting experience of which little more can be said than that it is what you make of it. Last month, I instigated a twenty-person game of Signs in their lounge, and what I made of it ended up being a highly entertaining evening. This month, The Neighbor determined to make it into a Tangled movie night. So we watched this film, and The Roommate, she began the evening claiming that she’s going to do Greek homework, but she was so thoroughly sucked into the movie plot (and, doubtless, by The Neighbor and I’s boisterous accompaniment of every song and most of the lines, too), that Greek study soon became a thing of the past. She was into that movie, I tell you. Towards the end of the film, just as the storyline was coming to a climactic point, I pulled out my phone and took The Roommate’s picture. Five clicks, and that picture made its way onto Facebook, despite The Roommate’s vague requests to the contrary.
Thirty people “Liked” that picture within 24 hours.
I told The Roommate that I’m going to photograph her more, seeing as her picture on my Facebook page so evidently enhanced my own image. She rolled her eyes in my general direction.
She’s on the phone with her mother right now, sitting at her desk next to the window, but the conversation is going to end soon. I’m toying with the idea of gritting my teeth and finishing my research paper tonight. Except that I am not sure if I will be able to physically handle such strenuous, unpleasant labor.
And someone is shoveling snow downstairs in the street, scraping snow and ice across the wet sidewalk, while fat flakes still fall in a flurry down past the window.
~Natalia
