Love the Cat

This blog is probably not the place to vent my grievances concerning small felines, but I may just do it anyway. Really just one small feline. Really not venting. Really just realizing that I don't want a cat of my own. Any time soon. I would much rather have a kid (I mean, eventually, and several.) At least you can clean them and they don't (usually) flaunt their hind ends in your face.

But cats. Especially this cat. Her name is Love, which is ironic, because although hate is much too strong a word, love isn't exactly the word I would use to describe my thoughts toward her, except in more tried moments in the context of quoting 1 Corinthians 13.

Love bears the sorrow of being separated from her adopted mother, Kaylee, with a tenacious loyalty I would, under more favorable circumstances, admire...but not at 5 in the morning.

Love believes with the faith of a saint that I will share my spaghetti with her, even when I've warned her countless times to the contrary.

Love hopes desperately that I will tolerate her noisy, nosy presence all night in the bedroom (she's dead wrong).

Love endures the unfortunate, reoccurring difficulty of getting stuck behind the door flap of her litterbox, and makes wise use of her detainment by leaving fragrant offerings for us.

LOVE NEVER FAILS.

Prophecy will be done away, tongues will be done away, even knowledge will cease, but I'm afraid Love will always be with us. Even after she gets another worm shot I'm not sure I will be all open arms.

However, I try not to insult Love to her face. Kaylee loves her like a mother loves her suckling babe, and who am I to douse that kind of loyal affection with the icy deluge of my misgivings? In fact, Kaylee's adoration of the four footed gray and white creature reminds me so much of my love and dependence on my own gray and white kitty at one time, that I am forced into a reluctant understanding.

When I was eleven, Emily was my baby, doll, companion, entertainer, and possibly mentor, and I'm not sure I would have survived the next few years of my turbulent inner life without her furry companionship.

So, where Love the Cat is concerned, I practice a policy of tolerance. While I am babysitting, Love roams the living room with the exception of meal times, when she is contained in the bedroom. During Bible time, she follows her exploratory nocturnal impulses at will until 10:00, when lights go out and Love goes out- to the living room/bathroom.

Kaylee shows her plenty of affection. All the love Love needs from me is letting Kaylee love her. After all, we don't always have to like the people we love, right? Or cats, I might add?

I Never Thought I'd Say This, But...

"Well, it's happening," I announced to the general populace this morning. The populace was my family members. They were eating breakfast, while I was elbow-deep in algebra homework. As usual, my folders, pens, pencils both blunted and sharpened, calculator, various napkins and a yogurt encrusted bowl occupied about half the table. I was plotting the points of an exponential function. "I'm officially becoming a math nerd."

My Dad gave a chuckle. "Now that's one thing you'll never be, Cass." "What if I told you I graphed an exponential function in my journal last night to illustrate my feelings about life?" I asked. "Ok, well that's...ok. Maybe you are." I grinned. I'll never be a math whiz, but suddenly I see meaning in math I've never seen before.

Here we are at the end of the semester. Only one test stands between me and the final. And I don't really feel like I'm going to war anymore. It's more like coming admire the enemy.

Here's something I never thought I'd hear myself say: When we've exhausted words, we still have numbers. I can't say I've entirely exhausted words, because here I am still blogging, but I must say I was shocked to find a new medium in which to express myself. A new language, if you will. Another code that represents a picture of what is in my mind. Because really, that's all that letters and words are too.

Eliza (Whom I Met in the Library)

Brown and chubby baby feet stretch before her on the

Seat; raven hair slips gracefully around the archway of her face

Fully focused on me. Now she’s firmly pointing, with her deep swamp eyes

Anointing me like I am set apart for her

And her alone

She babbles and she gabbles

On and on and on

Flipping pages as she gages

Our reading marathon.

She turns around and runs for another book and

Comes; my smile has made her bolder, and I feel her smooth brown rounded

Shoulder touching mine. Saucy and demanding, she is forcefully

Commanding me to read her book and put my own

Good book away

2007

The Wheel Keeps Turning!

I am a baffled child learning heaven's cycle of Hope, Waiting, Surrender, and then Hope again.

I was on the way to the mailbox three days ago, talking with God along the surrender and direction thread. "I know I never have to worry, but help me..." I told Him. The flowers bursting from everywhere with no want for beauty and provision remind me of this every day, that golden evening being no exception.

I opened the box with a faint throb of curiosity, and pulled out an envelope with the circular blue logo I'd been hoping to see for weeks now. Tearing it open like a long-awaited Christmas present, I scanned the top line, which read:

"Congratulations! It is my pleasure to inform you that you have been selected for admission to Berea College for Fall 2010..."

I went home trembling with good news. I told my family. I called my grandparents. A renewed sense of God's customized love for me and gentleness flooded my heart. Yes, it felt warm and fuzzy!

It's not that all my hopes have been set on going to Berea. In fact, college is a goal I've been learning how to deal with in the surrender department. It seems that just when you excavate your heart deep enough to find the treasure of desire, you're called to go and sell it.

I'll try to make this long story short.

Last year I figured out I really wanted to go to college, not just because everyone else is, but because I love to learn.

Last year I also started attending community college here when I returned from Ukraine. It wasn't Harvard, but it was a start!

I began searching for a 4-year school to transfer to, but the cost of tuition, room, and board was frightening. In conviction, faith, and a considerable amount of naivety, I determined that I didn't want to wade into a slough of debt in order to go to college. Especially when I didn't have a desire to make money in the first place.

I wanted to purpose to be as financially free as possible so I'd be free to go where ever God might take me. I might not have a penny to my name, but I wouldn't have to spend years saving pennies for Sallie Mae, either. I prayed that God would make a way for me, all the while wondering if this was stupidity, pride, or just part of Cassie-dream-land!

In the fall, while searching online, I discovered Berea College, in Berea, Kentucky. The school is a private college that provides free tuition (worth $25,000 per year) to their students!

I trembled and choked my way through the website as I saw the character and personality of the college. Too good to be true! Study abroad opportunities, a small school with huge diversity, Christian foundations from a man of intense faith and love for Jesus and people (John G. Fee), emphasis on art, the tranquility of a small Appalachian town...what more could I ask?

So I started applying, and after a snow-graced visit to Berea in January, I was even more hungry for the chance to go. I was also a little daunted by the news that Berea only accepts 30 of every 300 transfer students that apply. The heart of the school is to provide quality education for those who don't have the money, and I certainly qualified in that department, but that still didn't guarantee anything in a crowd of 300.

What to do next? My only other option seemed to be attending a state college in great state of Texas, though that idea really didn't quicken my pulse. I was a little lethargic about looking into other colleges, hoping so hard for Berea.

At first, the challenge was, "Will you hope for it?" But when I had practiced that assignment for a while, God gave me another. "Will you surrender it?"

The days and weeks passed, and the mailbox remained forlorn and empty. As my roots deepened here, I wondered, is it right for me to go away? Does God have different plans for me to deepen in prayer at my church, where good seeds seem to be coming up? Am I betraying His gospel when time is so short, when lost souls are right outside the door?

The letter kept delaying and delaying, and well-meaning friends and relatives were always asking about it. But there was no way they could see the earth-moving equipment rumbling around in my heart as God created a landscape where my desires to go to college were open and bare before Him.

And now, the letter has come. And I take this as confirmation from the Lord that I'm to go to this beautiful place where I can learn and grow and expand. I hold it very loosely. With Mary, I'm saying, "Let it be to me as you have said!"

I've been skimming though John Eldredge's book lately, thanks to Brett and Pam (when two friends encourage you from the same book, it's time to pick it up), and found a quote that describes this loosened grasp:

"Desire is still present, felt, welcomed even. But the will to secure is made subject to the divine will in an act of abandoned trust." pg. 193

And this sums up my story. As the my "will to secure" goes down to the dust, the wheel of God's will is turning to lift my hopes up toward the sun. And who can tell the joy that awaits when this cart gets Where It's Going?

in a thousand years

a thousand years in Thy sight
are like yesterday
when it passes
so is it really
too much to hope
that the small,
shriveled seed
i planted yesterday
might break open
tomorrow morning?

Symmetry and Sleeplessness

"Tiger, Tiger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"

The sidewalk of Kilgore campus between math and history classes at 9:57 a.m. is, perhaps, a strange place for William Blake's words to be running through my mind, but then, I have had stranger thoughts coming out of math class.

This image at least didn't feature my instructor with a lasso. Instead, I was still dwelling on that beautiful little graph on the board that nearly moved me to tears. It was an inverse reciprocal function, just two gently curving pieces opposite each other and a few points away, an identical set. And a straight slant ran through them, slicing them cleanly in half diagonally.

When I saw it sitting there, complete, a little bit of peace diffused into my brain. It was a gentle whisper, a quiet reminder that in one small corner of one small classroom in one small town in the not-as-big-as-they-think-it-is-state of Texas, "all is right with the world." Ahh.

As for tears, perhaps they are a bit much. They didn't actually fall out of my eyes. I was still in shock over making a 99 on that math test, which is, as you may already realize, a miracle worth crying about. And, more than anything, I was tired.

Although I never planned it this way, the sun had arrived just in time that morning to rouse me from a two hour nap-- not a normal occurrence! There were a lot of factors to my sleeplessness. Possibly a certain feline who shall remain nameless, or a certain sore hip, or a certain delectable cup of coffee. But in the end, it worked out for the best.

It's a mysterious truth, but one that is becoming more and more evident to me, that God sometimes goes to unreasonable lengths to keep us up at night because he likes to be with exhausted, slightly cranky people who are helpless to change their vulnerable state.

And as for me, I find that the more wide awake hours I spend, the more wide eyed I become to God, and the more thankful I am for the small beauties and privileges in life; asymptotes, for instance. Or naps.

Garden

My wakeful heart
Is a Garden of Desires
Budding, bursting, blooming
I crave Your tender hands
The taming and the tending
The binding of bending tendrils
To the trellis of Your love
I hunger for Your quick keen blade
To prune the places found unfruitful
And for Your jealous watching
To wait and win the fruit.