Today or Tomorrow

          Today, I came to the end of another season of my life. High school - or as close as I ever got to high school. I wrote my last exam at the community college, spent my last half hour out in the sun in the middle of campus, and took my last regular bus ride - here, anyway. There will be plenty of exams in university, plenty of hours spent sitting in the sun, plenty of time spent on the public bus. Unless the system changes drastically in the next three months, which I don't expect it will.
          My strange high school/running start/grade status combined with my distance from the school has meant that I hold almost no loyalty to the school that I've now attended for 6 quarters. I'm normally pretty ready to be loyal, so it was strange not caring about sports or campus life at all. I certainly did not expect to miss it at all (okay, I still don't). But I walked out of building 7 today and headed for the grass and was hit with a feeling of nostalgia. As much as it has been merely a stepping stone to my next stage of life, I have lived here. I have many good memories and met people who have influenced my life significantly. It's because of Char and CeCe that I have developed a love for biology and am choosing to minor in it so as to provide some interest amidst my chemistry major. I met Blake in my first quarter and have attended school and walked through life with him since then; he is a part of many of my sunlit memories spent out on the grass. I made new friends: Sofia, Kellan, Chloe, Alyssa, Dung, and many others. I fought with microbiology, laughed over calculus, and debated which 8 out of 40 people should survive the alien invasion (thanks to MFC-J, an inspiring English teacher). I have learned and grown and laughed and fought and loved and lived in the last two years. I won't miss the bus smell, the noise of the commons, or inadequate "microbiology" lab, but I will miss the sunrises over the mountain, the study room in building 15, the web cafe, the random pieces of art, and our building 13.
          I know that countless memories are yet to be made. I have a host of new experiences waiting for me: big city, dorm life, AFROTC, lots of chemistry classes, some biology and art classes, new friends, new opportunities. Right now, I'm working through financial paperwork, placement tests, possible class schedules. I should hear back about my dorm and roommate assignment in a couple of months. The realization that I'll be moving out soon is always at the back of my mind. I'm ready for it. I know where God's leading me - for now.
          It's really easy to give an answer when people ask what I'm doing next year. "I'm going here to study chemistry and then into the Air Force." Those are my plans and I tell them so. But it's been on my mind that the Bible pretty specifically say NOT to do that.

"13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” 14 Yet you do not know [b]what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” " James 4:13-15, NASB

 I have plans and I have been seeking the Lord's guidance the whole way, and He has directed my steps. All the same, I am still a vapor, or a mist as the ESV says (it's mentally challenging to put a verse in a version other than I've memorized). I don't know what tomorrow will bring. I have plans, but God may yet direct my steps another direction. Wherever He leads me, I am excited to follow. And If the Lord wills, I will go here to study chemistry and then into the Air Force, and I will live and make memories along the way.

Anne & Joe

          These last few weeks, I have been interviewing residents at the retirement home where I work, seeking to know their stories. It has been a privilege to hear each story, and a few residents have given me written permission to share their stories with all of you. This is an exercise in writing for me - if you have any questions, comments, or critiques, please let me know!

            1930. Life was difficult in Brooklyn, New York in the depth of the depression, but his mother made ends meet. She worked hard to support her young son after his father left her for other women. They never experienced the hardest parts of the depression, certainly not to the extent that the folks in Oklahoma and other places did, but they knew hardship all the same.

            As Joe got older, opportunities opened up for him. He attended a military school in West Virginia for a few years in the late 30s-early 40s. Joe’s mother remarried, and she, Warren, and Joe moved to Montreal before Joe graduated high school. While they were living there, WWII broke out. Joe returned to the states, to Burlington, Vermont, to complete school before enlisting in the Army. He went through basic training in Florida in 1944 and then was shipped overseas where he served in Europe for 6 months, in the 10^th Armored Division right after the Battle of the Bulge. “Boy, was I lucky to miss that,” he says, looking back.

            Soon after he finished his service in the military, Joe’s mother died. He returned for her funeral and then sought an education. Although he had been considering becoming a doctor or dentist, he instead began college in Vermont, studying agriculture and economics, and ended up in the insurance business, a job that took him around the country. He met a girl and got married, had two boys and one girl. 25 years later, he and his wife divorced, and he subsequently began night school at Fort Steilacoom Community College. It was at night school that he met Anne.

            1936. She was grateful for the bed and food the nuns offered her. Goodness knows she was better off here in the convent than she had been at her aunt’s house where she was just another mouth to feed.  She remembers with a grimace the clothing lines and the fact that they could never afford new shoes, although the soles were loose on her old ones, and all that just a year ago. At the age of 12, one year prior, she had run away to her 6^th grade teacher at the Chicago, Illinois convent, where she would be taken care of for the remainder of the depression era. Although her cousins, who also attended school at the convent, told her that her aunt wanted her to return, her aunt held no legal authority over her, so she remained at the convent.

            Anne’s parents had immigrated to the US from Croatia in the early-mid 1900s, just before the depression struck. When Anne was 6, her mother passed away. Although she was young, Anne holds on to memories of her loving mother, especially her beautiful blue dress with the gold fleur-de-lis design, which she wore to church ever morning. Her father, unable to care for her, gave Anne to his sister in Chicago, Illinois. Anne attended school at the local convent, where she lived in her later schooling years. When she started high school, she decided she wanted to become a nun and was sent to the motherhouse in Colorado for two years. During her sophomore year, she changed her mind and came back to Chicago. In high school, she met her future husband. She wasn’t everything he hoped she would be, so she changed for him and compromised herself, something she regrets to this day.  He didn’t believe in the education of women, so she finished high school and stopped attending school. She had dreamed of a man of high ideals, with a love of his faith, and a positive outlook, but settled for what she had instead. Anne helped put him through med school and moved to Tacoma for his internship. During their marriage, he had affairs, and, after 8 children, they were divorced.

            After the divorce, she went back to school at Fort Steilacoom Community College to pursue her dream of becoming educated and here she met Joe.

      It was in a Human Potential Class that Anne and Joe met. This was a class that impacted both of them deeply, focusing on Personal Responsibility and Emotional Development, a phrase they both still remember 40 years later. Outside of Human Potential, however, it was their shared loved for the Lord that brought and kept them together. The Lord has never abandoned them, and, in Anne’s words, the last 39 years have been a fairytale. They traveled together, to Europe twice and to other places. Anne went to Europe twice more on her own, to discover her family’s roots in Croatia. She was searching for herself and she found it in the town where she was immediately recognized as her mother’s daughter. Walking along a street in Kaštela, a woman called out “You’re Maria’s daughter!” and Anne knew she had found something special. Her self-esteem had been knocked down to zero after her divorce, and between Human Potential, Joe, Kaštela, and the Lord’s grace, she began to be built back up. Joe and Anne continued their education, Anne continuing on to Evergreen Community College. Anne focused on the three children she still had at home, co-owned a bookstore, and then got into real estate. Joe can be described as a poet, painter, and romantic.

      Now, they sit across from me, both in their rocking chairs, both smiling brightly. For the last several months, they have never failed to inform me that they are praying for me. They ask after my schooling and my plans for the future, and I am honored that they have taken such an interest in me.

      Joe’s words to me: “You’re doing okay. You have your life figured out and the smarts to pursue it. Not many have that.”

      Anne’s words to me: “Don’t ever compromise yourself; remain true to you. Retain your individuality.”