Play-By-Play

When I explain my internship to people, I usually get the question, "So what do you do before the kids get there?" I have no real answer because it varies so much every day.
Sometimes I cook and clean. Sometimes I send out mailings. Sometimes I set up activities for the afternoon. Sometimes I prepare extra homework sheets and answer keys. Sometimes I run errands. Really it's not anything interesting but I still have fun with it all.

Here is an example of a day in my life.

Movie Moments

These past three weeks of living in a new city and working with 70 hilarious children has been nothing short of a sitcom. My life could easily be turned into this spring's most popular comedy movie. These would be the clips I would want playing in the trailer:



Walking down the street with Patrick,  I said, "Patrick, if you put your backpack on correctly, you'll be able to walk faster without it hitting your legs." He turns his mohawked head to look at me, smirks, pulls out of his backpack a dirty sock, wipes it on my arm, and without words puts the sock back away.

Clowning around in the gym with Nevaeh, she looks at my shoes and says, "I have the same shoes, but in pink." I responded, "We should wear them on the same day so we can be twins!" She replied, "Well, yours are gray so it will look like something pooped on you."

Shuffling across the sidewalk with a sweet doll named Sikaya, she tapped my elbow and said, "Miss Kirby, your name sounds like... um, Miss Kirby, can I call you Miss Turkey?"

Playing a vicious round air hockey with Jaden, the score was 9-9, and I finally beat him with a 10th point. "Miss Kirby, you think that you won, but we are going to keep playing until Halloween."

Teaching Mad Scientist class, we began experimenting with electricity and our students quickly learned to fear for their lives. Using an extension cord and a piece of aluminum foil, we tripped the circuit breaker. Montrell picked up Camren and held him up like a shield. To protect him from... darkness. 

On Being a Stranger

"I melt into the air with a voluptuousness so delicate that I am content to be alone." - Keats

It's been one week since I've seen a familiar face, but I'm surprisingly not lonely. Not bored. Not scared. Living with strangers, working with strangers, and churching with strangers has been a more enjoyable adventure than I anticipated.

A few semesters ago, I took a creative writing class. Our class discussions often steered off-topic, and one fine day our professor began to make fun of people who are afraid to go anywhere alone. He was a young, charming, surfer-dude-poet type character: "Like, why do you have to take a friend to the movies? You just sit there. And you don't have to know the person next to you on the 6 Flags ride. Like, what if you had a friend and all you did together was go to heavy metal concerts? You would know nothing about them. You might as well stand by a total stranger!" The class giggled and agreed with his remarks, but with a few shy glances around the room I could tell everyone was thinking: Oh rats! I never go anywhere alone and he's totally judging me. And yep, I'd never really been anywhere alone. Embarrassed, I decided that I'd like to be the person who can go places alone and not care.

So here we are over a year later and only recently have I adventured to do anything on my own. But seriously, this has been the ultimate crash course. I've been to the grocery store three times, all alone. Two coffee shops, all alone. The Nashville Public Library, all alone. Shelby Park, all alone. I moved into a house in which I knew no one. I started an internship at which I knew no one. I went to three church services at which I knew no one.

But doing things alone has been far from lonely. I like the new people I live with (including the dog and two cats!). I like the new people I work with (we went bowling together!). I like the people at those church services (made two new friends!). Being a continuous stranger, people treat me really well- like I'm a guest. Not that I deserve it, but I'm trying to appreciate it.

First Day

Yesterday I started my internship at Cottage Cove. It wasn't a "normal day," since regular programming doesn't occur on school holidays. Instead, we took some kids on a field trip to a Belmont basketball game. Belmont won. The kids I met were infinitely fun and sassy. 
Today should be a more typical day, so I'm excited to meet more kids and jump into this program!

Is this real life?

I've never lived more than an hour away from my parents. I've never lived more than an hour from Atlanta (save for a few years of elementary school in New Orleans).  But now I'm moving to Nashville, Tennessee!

I'm a semester ahead in my schooling, so Agnes Scott is allowing me to take this spring away from classes and pursue an internship instead! January through May, I'll be interning with Cottage Cove. I'm super psyched.

I've had this whole "internship in lieu of school" idea swirling around in my head for over a year, and it's unreal that I'm only a few days from it becoming a reality. I'm moving up there on Sunday.  Sunday? Sunday. Everything fell into place seamlessly: finding this internship, finding a place to live, convincing authority figures to give me permission, and convincing authority figures to help me get a certain grant that I'll be living off of.

It's been eerily smooth sailing, which makes it so clear that this is where I'm sent to be. It seems like for once my plan lined up with God's plan. Or maybe it was never my own plan to begin with.

Time

There was a time in my life when I only bought clothing from American Eagle.

There was a time in my life when I didn't understand negative numbers.

There was a time in my life when I was afraid of vacuum cleaners.

Thank goodness time passes slowly enough to let me grow up.

Thank goodness 2012 has arrived.

I've heard it said that the New Year doesn't really mean anything. You know, 2011 and 2012 are just labels we put on our days, but there's really no difference between December 31st and January 1st. It's no "new beginning." But really, just the label itself is what makes it so special. And so important.

Until recently, I had a certain watch that I literally loved to pieces. This watch attached itself to my wrist the first month I started school at Agnes Scott and never came off. (I even wore it to formal events and in family photos. Sorry I'm not sorry.) It had yellow paint on it from my first Black Cat week, a melted spot from cooking barbeque at camp, and scratches galore from who knows what.

I loved it so much that it stayed on my desk in its broken state for over a month before I took this picture and tossed it out.

Its replacement is the most similar one I could find. Of course it was disappointing that I could not find an identical one, but as a consolation I set it two minutes fast, just like I had set my old one. I wasn't really loving the idea of my new watch until I discovered that my best friend Anna also bought that same watch, and we miraculously set them only two seconds apart from each other. Such a far-fetched coincidence makes me feel closer to Anna. She and I are living our lives on the same timeline, with the same thing strapped to our wrists.

Seriously a cool coincidence. Two seconds apart!

So, y'know what?  Time is pretty cool. New Year's is pretty cool. People whom I've never met were cheering at the same moment I was. Your favorite movie star was celebrating at the same exact moment you were (give or take a few time zones). Even if the moment itself isn't much worth celebrating, the celebration itself is the kind of thing I'll cheer for. If an instant is called a new beginning, then by golly I'm all for beginning new.

Sometimes this same idea gives me a huge reality check. I'll think to myself, "Say, I wonder if Miley Cyrus is eating breakfast right now." And then I'll realize my thoughts should be, "Wow, a small child just died of malnutrition just now, while I just finished a bowl of Cheerios." It's all on one timeline. The world just got a little bit smaller.

And that one timeline was created, designed, engineered, by God. There was an existence before time and before space. God existed and he thought of time and space. Seriously, who thinks of that?! Time didn't exist, space didn't exist, and then He made it exist, and he gave me a time and a place and sometimes it matches up with other people's times and spaces. And I'm thankful for it. I'm thankful for the time and space I've been through. I'm thankful for the time and space I'll be. I'm thankful for 2012. 

Happy new year.

Maybe she's born with it...

I've never worn makeup. It's something I really like about myself, but sometimes is confusing and surprising to others. Let me explain. Ages 0-13, I was too young. Ages 14-16, I had no interest. Ages 17-present, I developed actual reasons to go bare-faced.

You've heard Proverbs 31:30,  Song of Solomon 4:7, and Isaiah 43:4. Each of these declares the immeasurable beauty and value in each of us. I've spent enough time (as a camp counselor & math tutor) with insecure 6th grade girls to know that many of us find these verses hard to believe. It's hard to believe because our culture has bombarded us with only one image of beauty. And literally not a single person on this planet is naturally fully qualified to fulfill the checklist of "American femininity."

I wholeheartedly believe that God sculpted me the way I am. He placed every pigment on my face, planted each hair on my brow, and painted every color on my irises. He is proud of this creation. He made no mistakes. This is not a remark on how special I am, but instead a remark on how powerfully detailed our God is. It is my job to respect this temple He's given me. It's my job to keep my lips unchapped and my hair clean. It is not my job to cover up what He's created. To be in awe of His work is to worship Him. 

Who am I to tell God that instead of looking like His creation, I'd rather look like the photoshopped pictures in magazines?

Because I fear God, I'm called to be counter-cultural. "Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect." Romans 12:2. I will not copy what is "supposed" to be more attractive. Instead, I strive to value the way God created me to look. Covering up my face would be disguising what the Lord created as beauty. God's will for me is to look the way I look. I will be content and I will be confident.

Since I so fervently oppose makeup, I banned it amongst my campers. (It's only a six-day camp, so they can survive my one strict rule.) To the ones who opposed, I recited over and over: "Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." 1 Peter 3:3-4. For each girl who threw a tantrum, there were three others who were relieved by the rule. My girls didn't have to compare themselves, didn't try to impress the boys with their eyeliner, and by the end of the week they didn't worry about not wearing makeup.  For at least six days, they were forced to see themselves in the mirror- what they were born to look like- and by day six, they were usually pretty happy with it.

The moment a woman puts on makeup, plucks her eyebrows, dyes her hair, etc., her appearance is then her own doing. If she receives praise, it adds to her own vanity. But a woman who goes "au naturale" knows that her appearance is not her own to toy with. Her natural appearance is a gift to be respected.