East Coast childhood

While my family was here, we visited the childhood home of my mom's friend. The brick mansion sits on a cliff overlooking a river right outside of Baltimore. To get to the river you walk past secret gardens and through pink blossoms to the boat house where kids spend the summer catching crabs off the dock. How East Coast is that?

Sister/Mom weekend

Had so much fun with my sissies and mom (or "oldest sister" as she likes to say) this weekend. Favorite part: playing games while eating candy and listening to a thunder storm. Our apartment feels so lonely without them....

Visitors! Woo hoo!

(My sisters Kandis and Kim with my mom.)

These 3 ladies are coming for the weekend! They must really love me because they are flying in from California, Arizona and North Carolina to spend a rainy weekend in Baltimore. Hopefully the rain takes some breaks and we can escape the tiny apartment, or at least we get some fun thunder and lightning. Yay, family!

Dreaming of Maui (and friends)

Now that I'm in the final weeks of my program, I've been thinking back on how it felt to finish undergrad. I'll just say it: leaving undergrad was the end of an era that I still haven't quite gotten over. You see, I had the best college friends ever. I lived with 4 amazing girls for the last 2 years of college and my heart aches to think about it. The big house on Buchon with the porch swing and fountain, the green kitchen where we would talk for hours, "family dinners" and snuggle sessions, taking over the dance floor wherever we went, and the laughter, oh the laughter.

After graduation, we went to Maui for a week. This trip ranks among the most fun experiences I've ever had. We played in the waves, swam with turtles, had drinks and snacks every day at happy hour, sat in a hot tub under the stars, skinny dipped in the ocean (!), went to a luau, jumped off cliffs into pools, danced and sang to JT in our hotel room, and just loved each other as only best friends can. I miss these girls. Can we go back, please?

Baltimore tulips

All found within a block of my house! Thank you, Spring!

Afternoon tea

Today is rainy and cold, and I'm dreaming of an afternoon of tea, jam, cream and friends.

Yet time continued to pass

Today was rough. Something happened that I haven't been able to get out of my head, and just writing about it makes my heart race.

I was running by the harbor and ahead of me I saw a family walking down the sidewalk. They looked liked tourists with their hats and cameras. The teenage son said something to the mom and she laughed in response. Then, just as I was about to pass, something happened. The mom answered her phone, and within seconds she began to sob hysterically and collapsed to the grass. The dad told the boys to sit down and the mom held the phone to her ear while she let out high pitched, painful sobs. It was the kind of noise you never want to hear. It was the kind that is inside of all of us, just waiting for a time to come out. I wondered what the bad news was. I wondered if the family would be okay. What would they do next? Where would they go?

And then I kept running. I looked back at the family sitting on the grass, knowing they were beginning a time of devastation and grief. But, within minutes they were out of sight. For me, nothing had changed. The sun did not stop shining. Time continued to pass. My legs kept going.

Easter in Annapolis

After church, we spent a lovely Easter day in Annapolis with our friends Lexi and Josh. They showed us around the town and then we had a 4-course Easter dinner with Lexi's family and neighbors. Picture old women sitting around a table saying hilarious and embarrassing things like, "That boy sure knows how to please a lady." It was great.

Good Friday

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our inequities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5

This afternoon I walked down to the Basilica and sat in one of the pews. I watched as people filed in and out of the silent church, taking a few minutes to kneel and pray before returning to the day. Today is Good Friday, the day more than a billion people commemorate the death of Jesus. Today we remember a mystery of the faith, that his punishment brings us peace and his wounds bring healing.

There is something inside of me crying out that suffering and war and hunger are not how things are supposed to be. This world is not as it was supposed to be. But, because of what happened on Good Friday, I have hope. There is more. There will be a day when God wipes away every tear from our eyes and there will be no more death nor sadness. This is the reason that today is called good: it does not end with the death. Easter is coming.