“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.” -Edmund Burke

In most ways, I am a light-hearted optimist who loves freely and believes that anyone can accomplish anything. However, I am also a stubborn, rational, and competetive perfectionist who feels that if I can’t be fully and absolutely successful, I should not and will not try. A few final qualities that round me out are a deep-seeded compassion for others and the [frequently overwhelming] desire to help others, if not save everyone in my path from whatever pitfalls, heartaches, brokenness, and suffering they may have endured, or may be headed towards.

This evening, I came across the Burke quote, and it sank it’s teeth into my tender, overwhelmed heart. One thing I began learning this summer is how entirely I am redeemed, wanted, pursued, adored, and desired by my Abba. He wants me, He loves me, and He always has. Tonight, in a swirl of thought and contemplation, it’s occurred to me that He’s wanted me always, before He even made me complete. Now that He’s given me everything I need for life in Him [it's in 1 Peter somewhere], He not only wants me – He wants me to do things. He wants me to grow up a little, and shift away from the selfish, self-preserving, perfectionistic idea that if I can’t win I won’t try.  It’s not about that.

Sometimes, you just can’t believe that it took seeing the fireworks and feeling the explosion to understand an idea so simple that all it took was the touch of a match.

I don’t know if there will be a point to this one really. It’s certainly not going to be anywhere near as lovely, interesting, or poetic as my title suggests. You see, I’m actually quite sleepy, in the way that you get after spending a whole day out in the sun. [Which I did.] It’s the kind that makes your eyes feel kind of dry and your body feel heavy. It’s impossible to describe how satisfying it is to feel sleep, because it seems like I feel it so rarely – or at puzzling intervals, like three in the afternoon or seven PM. Times when you should not sleep. Otherwise, I don’t think I get sleepy too often. Just ready to go to bed, and that doesn’t happen much until around 3AM. I suppose its because I stopped forcing myself to bed at a reasonable hour once school was out. 

I had an epic, EPIC first day of class, that will probably merit a blog of it’s own. For now, I’m going to take advantage of the loveliness of being tired by brushing my teeth and climbing into my loft. I’ll leave you with the obligatory “first day of class” photo that I took this morning.

C’est tout.

Tomorrow, Saturday, I am moving back to school. I am moving back into the dormitories, on a co-ed floor populated almost exclusively by freshmen. I am moving back into a 10-by-14 foot room with no immediate means of cooking or, more to the point, baking.
And I am excited.
My brown-brick building is among the oldest of the standing dormitories on our campus, and has grandiose white columns flanking the giant set of steps leading up the front. In the back, the outdoor stairwell on the first floor has stairs going down either side of it, the only disappointing part of which is the campus-wide ban on smoking. The cement on those steps is old, rough, sandy and worn, having kept the company of decades upon decades of students. I think it would’ve been an entirely romantic place for a cigarette. However, all disappointment in the smoking ban (infringement on civil liberties aside) is far overshadowed by the fact that my bedroom sits directly above and behind two of the three front columns, faces out onto a lovely, miniature field of a courtyard, fringed with trees, where everyone gathers when it’s warm, and is rumored – but only rumored, mind you – to have a small balcony on the outside of it.
It is my firm belief that if such a balcony exists – and oh, rapture! if it does – it is not meant for my use. That does nothing to stop me from imagining the glory that could be taken in, sitting out on it in one of my vintage aluminum lawn chairs, sipping a lemonade and taking in the Eastern view of town. Or, in the fall, making some tea, bundling into one of my oversized, slouching, rumply grandfather-esque cardigans, and sitting out there, watching as the leaves, crumbly and starched, move on the breeze like they are floating down invisible, airborne streams.
Winter may be less of an option, but even so, perhaps just slipping out onto it once, on a rare, clear December night, with a moon, to stare across the courtyard of unblemished virgin snow, gulping cold air and complete stillness into my lungs and imagine that I am the only one who is there. Or, if not, to dream of the spring. 

Whatever other seasons may bring with them, I do think it seems worthwhile to ferry one or both lawn chairs up to the tiny, third-floor room, on the chance that I can make it happen soon – lemonade and all.

It’s 6:16AM local time, and I am sprawled on turquoise cotton sheets, wondering how it is that I’ve yet to sleep. I’ve tossed, I’ve turned. I’ve paced the floor. I’ve even yawned a time or two, but I cannot muster enough drowsiness to drift out of consciousness and give my body the rest it’s going to be begging me for in a few hours. I am frustrated. I am cranky. And I am very, very hungry. I don’t suppose I need to question why I’m not sleeping. Anyone who luxuriates in dreams until 12:15pm can’t expect them to come readily the next evening. But I certainly didn’t mean to sleep that late, and there’s something in me that pipes up about the unfairness of consequences for mistakes we don’t know we’re making.

Then again, it’s more often a case of consequences ignored than ignorance of consequences, so I suppose I’ll take these in stride and enjoy the flirting, purple-grey clouds compete for my attention against the soft, rising peach of the sun. Ah, Beauty.