So let me tell you about one of the worst days of my life. Intermingled into this post will be pictures of some very handsome creatures to make myself feel better. I hope they keep the overall vibe of this post uplifting instead of negative, even though I am sad.

This is a freakin pangolin and I would like one please!

This past Thursday, which ended up as you know being horrible weather, I woke up and felt no excitement or joy for anything that was upcoming in my life. Even the things that I do for fun, like martial arts or learning guitar. Much less work or school. Tonight I was even supposed to go on the very first date of my life, and did not feel any giddiness or excitement. Only a lack or hole of happiness for things I know I should be happy for. And it wasn’t just Thursday-Ive been feeling like this for a while. So this is the mindset I have been in to frame the rest of this day for you. 

I have been (sometimes happily, other times frustratedly) single since my junior year of high school, so I was uber expectant for what this date was going to bring. Our plan was to go out for a drink at a soda/regular bar in Portland and then go to the Eastpoint worship night. Alas, it all started to fall apart when my snail picture fell off the wall. 

I don’t, as a rule, believe in signs or mysticism or anything like that. However, I do believe in omens and that God warns us of things ahead of time. I have really good instincts (not that I follow them a lot) and am always preparing myself for the “worst case scenario”. I woke up super early that morning to take a shower and my roommate was going to do my makeup for the day. Out of nowhere, while both of us were in the room early in the morning just waking up, my beautiful snail picture taken by the lovely Jen Sawtelle (hi Jen) falls off the wall. My roommate and I like to joke that we have a ghost in our room that eats our cheese and knocks our stuff over. Now, I don’t believe in ghosts either, but someone or something at one point definitely depleted both my roommates and I’s bags of mozzarella cheese.

This is a dumbo octopus.

Taken right before school started this past summer

Taken on Thursday!

So as I am in my car about to leave, I get another feeling. So right before I pull out of USM, I checked the page and sure enough, the worship night gets cancelled too. After swearing loudly in my car, I called my roommate, and she swung back and picked me up to now carpool. So now you are probably at the point where you’re thinking, “this can’t possible get worse…”

This is the Fischer Cat-an american mustelid. Pretty cool!

Well, you’re wrong. On our way out of Gorham, I got an email from the journal I had submitted a paper to for publication. I spent SO many hours of my own time (because this was not for any one class) last semester writing a literature review about Maine state parks in hopes that once I submitted it, it would get published in this undergrad journal. My professor endorsed this project and thought I had a good chance. I was so proud of what I had written and wanted everybody I knew to read it. I did not, in fact, get published and the paper was rejected. So at this point, I start crying, and then my roommate gets pulled over by the cops for “going too fast”. She, thank God, only got a warning, and now I start crying even more because my bad ju-ju has now started to rub off on her. We get to Plato’s all excited to shop, and of course, because why not, they are closed because of the weather.

So instead, we went to TJ Max where my luck turned around a little bit and I found this awesome jumpsuit (coming to a semi-formal event near you), and we went home where I fell into bed after one of the worst days of my life. However…

I’m still alive and I have that to be grateful for. All throughout the day, I said to myself, “It can’t possibly get worse.” And I was wrong, ’cause it did. But now, a couple of days out from it, I’m sure it can only go up from here. Sometimes you have a terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day, as one of my favorite childhood books would put it. And I will get over it eventually.

Rawr!

So at the end of that sad story I am left here and now just…tired. I don’t even want to show people my paper anymore or present it at the undergrad presentations in April because I’m so embarrassed. I’m feeling hopeless about my love life (I guess there are worse things to feel hopeless about), especially moving into a season of EDGE.

…

Something I have been wrestling with recently is the verse “count others more important than yourself” has been haunting me for years. I am so tired of being a busybody, of being too encumbered to enjoy what I am working so hard for. But I don’t know how to STOP! I think its getting pretty bad-I had a friend pray for me while over at her apartment, and I felt myself and my body just flat out reject it. That happened because I didn’t feel worthy of her prayers, or worth hers but mostly God’s time. I had this thought, and found it incredibly funny-It’s not that I have low self-esteem, its that I have absolutely NO self esteem! Which, in turn, reminded me of one of my favorite statements that I believe with my whole heart which I would encourage you to mull on-

“All anybody ever wants out of life is to be treated with respect. But in order to be treated with respect, you have to be able to give it. In order to give it, you have to have it for yourself first and foremost. Otherwise you don’t have the gift to share.” -Kathy Buckley

I’m making my best effort to work on it. The first step is making the time to work through my shit, just me and God, which is harder than it sounds when all I’ve ever thought is that it is selfish to pray for and work on yourself when you could be using that time to help others.

I should know better by now, after being a christian for so many years, but I’m learning the difference between just knowing something and believing it with no doubt.

~J

Majestic creatures