The Time Turner Necklace

Right before the wedding on Friday the bride called me over. She had her little brother had me a present. It was the same gift she had gotten for all her bridesmaids. It felt good to be included in them and kind of awkward at the same time because I was not a bridesmaid. Inside the little bag that he handed me was a necklace. It was a little working Time turner necklace like Hermione’s from Harry Potter.

Because Harry Potter has not been an interest of mine since the ninth grade, I smiled graciously and put it on my neck. I had more important things to do at that moment then think “Great, a big bulky movie prop from a series I don’t even like”. I kind of had to go inside and marry the two of them. Even when I was playing with it at the reception, the importance of this necklace didn’t hit me.

I wore it all night. I only took it off when one of the groomsmen asked to see it in the receiving line (I got to play with his sunglasses and fedora in trade). It wasn’t until I was laying in my bed when the significance of the necklace, the events of everything and the vision I am trying to cast really hit home.

I took off the necklace I had put on at my home first. I had chosen that necklace so it would help me to stay grounded during the course of the day and the evening. It was to remind me to always keep my vision in mind and to remember that even though I was going to be with those who would tempt me to stray from my vision it was a very important one. I know I could have done better with that. It is a simple necklace. It has a tiny amethyst stone and a tiny silver bar with 2.7.1988 printed on it. Amethyst is the stone to represent February and that is the date of my and Bruce’s baptism. I chose to wear the necklace to remind me of the difference between good and bad choices and to keep me grounded in my faith. There was something about taking off a Time turner next though. A simple little device of powerful magic that could aide us in fixing any mistakes we very well have. If the device was real, I would not need to be wearing the necklace in memory of Bruce because he would still be alive and all those other tiny little things the Time turner could accomplish.

 

No longer acting out of hurt

Today was the set up and the rehearsal for the wedding. Wow. A lot happened today that I did not expect to happen and some I did. First I got lost trying to find the venue. (Okay I totally expected that to happen). When I got there most of the groomsmen and the groom were there setting up. I was nervous being with the groomsmen at first because I had a history with some of them. One I had only met once and seemed nice, another I dated for three years and he was now with another woman who was pregnant with his child, another used to harass me in high school and the best man & I used to fight with each other so often we used to have to be separated because we had been known to curse at and light the other on fire on several occasions. And those were just my problems with them, they of course had similar issues with each other. But we had all promised the groom we would be good. I was amazed with the level of maturity seven years and a mutual love for the groom brought.

There were greetings of friendship and laughter like we were all good friends. There was no mistrust. The best man didn’t flinch when I had a lighter next to him. Just as one groomsman was totally comfortable standing next to the other who had stabbed him while he used a box cutter. After an hour or two there were no hard feelings, everything negative thing we had ever said or done to each other in the past was forgotten by the person who was hurt. By the same time we had finished working today. We all noticed everyone who had been hurt at one point or another be pulled to the side by the person who hurt them.

At one point, the bride was having a bride moment where we weren’t doing things right. Those things happen but we were tired and needed a break. The guy who harassed me and made my life miserable in high school pulled me outside. We went behind a shed on the venue. I had no idea what he could possibly want from me considering today was the first time we had actually said anything civilized to each other in the who time we knew each other. He actually apologized. He told me he didn’t actually remember saying or doing the things to me that everyone else remembers him doing but he said he honestly knows it sounded like the guy he was back then. He said he was really sorry he acted like that back then and that he is not that person anymore.

Why did we act like that in high school? Why did he say and do those things in high school? He tried to look tough by doing those things. I, in turn, was not going to let myself look weak by letting that kid back then see he hurt me so I was mean too. All it did was spread violence, aggression and both of us trying to look meaner and angrier then we really were. Everyone else’s conversations ended very similarly today. I just can’t help but wonder just how many fights start for no reason like that? How many kids decide to do things they don’t want to do just because they are acting out of hurt feelings and aggression?

Making friends and collecting favors

When I was in high school I had friends in lots of different cliques and social groups. My friend, Bruce and I watched people we knew like our class president and the captain of the cheerleading squad have friends everywhere and how people liked to help them and be there for them because they were/are nice people.

Bruce and I did something similar. When I was getting harassed by one of his idiot friends and I was more than ready to flatten his friend like a pancake he asked me to wait a bit. By the next day, his friend had stopped. Turned out, it helped to have that particular connection. We started to use these connections of people we knew in different social groups to our advantages. If we knew someone was getting picked on we tried to put a stop to it. (If the person bullying was a friend of ours, then it was easy, sometimes we had to go through our friends to get it to stop). This system became very effective and we met a lot of new people that way and collected a lot of favors from people.

After a few years and my working really hard to mellow out my temper, I decided (privately of course) to just forget about most of the favors I was owed. But with the upcoming wedding of two of my closest friends there have been some last minute glitches. I’ve been fighting myself really hard not to go wheeling and dealing quite like I did in high school. Most of the things I am working on now are last minute things that the couple forgot in the state they currently live in or was not able to find yet. For the most part I am offering some payment in return for whatever I am asking for helping me to get or find. It is just really fun to get to use my Corp. Klinger skills again, I missed them. I like using my powers of persuasion to make people happy. I just have to make sure to keep it in check and only get what people really need and to make the deal that is as close to fair for everyone every time as I can get.

From Loyalty to Untrusting

Today I went out with the bride and groom. We went and did a food tasting for the wedding. We also went and had ice cream and played mini golf like we used to. We had a great time. I had voiced my concerns to the groom before but I voiced them again. I’m scared to see our friends. We ended on such bad blood. I am actually afraid to see people I used to spend all my time with. (Honestly, I hate the fact I am afraid of them because I still love them).

He promised me that everyone made the same deal with him that I had made. All axes would be buried for the day. How sad is it that a group of people who used to feel a fierce feeling of loyalty for each other have to do that. There was a time when a simple argument would never have torn us apart like they because outsiders of our group would never have torn us apart like that. I remember when I would have fought tooth and nail for those boys. Heck, I remember some times when I tried, and other times when I grabbed some of those boys out of harm’s way before things got to dangerous.

What happened? What got in the way of that? I want those feelings of love towards them still without the constant need to fight to prove it like I had back then, I wonder if that is possible? For years in that group, no one ever questioned anyone’s loyalty because friendship ruled. When did that go south? How can I translate those feelings of dedication and companionship into the friendships I see in the children’s in my classrooms today and how can I use the loyalties I showed then as a symbol to these children that I can be trusted.

What I learned from the laugh

Why is all that important? Why does that story of Ward saying that and Dave letting that laugh out matter to me? Because when Dave let that little laugh out, it showed that he believed all those ridiculous stories I had told for the last four years. That was cool. I admit some of those stories, I would not believe if I was not there myself. No matter who I play with or who is looking at the cards, every single time, there is a handful of cards that get picked out every time that everyone asks about unless that were actually present for that event.

Again why does this matter? Because have you ever noticed that after a while you remember things but even your memories of the events seem to mellow out. My friend, TJ, has told people the story of how I crashed his prom so many times it’s lost its outrageousness. Don’t get me wrong T, I’m not saying stop. I’m just as proud of it today as I was then and I still love having been at your prom very much. I love the story every time you tell it. It also makes me smile that it meant enough to you that you tell it to people. It’s just my mom found an old pack of pictures from when we always carried a disposable camera with us everywhere we went and they surprised me.

We used to go through disposable cameras like water. It was before every teen had a cellphone, let alone a cell that could take pictures! We always had the camera and my video camera.

For those of you who were there it was the day TJ borrowed Matt’s baseball hat, and my beloved trench coat and walked around impersonating Silent Bob. (And we used someone’s eye liner for the beard.) For those of you who were not there I am sure you are figuring it out. I remembered this day. I knew this story pretty well. It was the other things going on in the pictures. The subplot of the pictures that I truly found amazing. I knew we were trouble makers but really! There was just pure ridiculousness going on behind this masquerade in December.

My mom and dad were both still sitting in the room with me as I looked at these pictures. I found myself pulling the pictures close. (Like there isn’t a statute of limitations on this stuff!) As I looked at these pictures the first time in most likely a decade, which were 99% of me and TJ, I realized I didn’t know the two kids in the pictures anymore.

At least that’s how I felt the first time I looked through them anyway. The first time I looked at them I thought I didn’t recognize either of us. I didn’t recognize the kids who were loitering in a Mickey D’s for the past few hours. The real life stoner was smoking a cigarette and impersonating one of the most famous stoners after Cheetch and Chong. The girl in pictures had short hair. She had lost her hair after she had cut it off in a fit of rage which she was prone to having at the time because that girl had a nasty temper. At first glance those are the things I noticed about them. I saw their faults at first.

But for some reason I couldn’t put those pictures down. I just kept looking at them and looking at them. When I looked at the pictures the other friends in the photos I saw seeing the same things, I was seeing the negative aspects of them.

I showed them to my boyfriend. I don’t know why, he wasn’t a member of the group. Since our group was together for years he asked how I knew these pictures were ten years old. And was even about to pin point them to the exact month. I showed him little things like garland in the background at the mall and my hair length. But when I realized they were taken in December of 2004, I looked at the photo that had the guy who is getting married on the 27^th in it. This picture was taken six months before he met the women who was going to be his wife.

He wasn’t going to meet her for another six months. Then they would spend nine years together and continue on after that in marriage. I still had the picture, but more importantly, I still had the friendship.

My best work as an artist

When I was a senior in college I had to have a senior review where all the art professors came looked at all my most recent work, what I was currently working on and what I was planning to do for my senior exhibition at the end of my senior year. I remember being so nervous. I had my hoodie rolled up in a ball because it was too hot to wear but I made sure that out of all the marvel characters on it, Nightcrawler was on top so he could give me support. I was proposing to do something new and experimental that had never been done at Keystone College before and I was terrified of being ripped apart.

One thing my friends and I used to do all the time was play board games. I was posing designing and making model board games. All I had for my senior review was an extremely rough prototype of what would be the keynote game of my exhibition. At the time of the review, it didn’t even have a title.

The bases of the game was set though. It centered on cards and dice. Each turn you got a card. On the card was a one or two sentence story. Some were illegal, some were funny, and almost all of them resorted in a good time. You rolled the dice to see if one of three things happened to your playing piece. You could get completely away with whatever the card said and move a large number of spaces, you could just barely get away and only move one space or you could get busted and have to move backwards.

I had many of these cards written out and spread out on tabled during my review. At that about sixty cards at that time. I remember two young female professors that I had had several times just pouring over the cards and having a lot of fun looking at everything on each card. I remember the former head of my department suggesting that I should see about the new 3D printer the department had just gotten but no one had used for any projects yet. I had been a student in the class of every one of the professors in the room (at least once) except for the current department head. Since I knew the other’s tastes and had presented work to the others before I was still nervous but less of them because I knew them at least a little. I knew very little about the department head and that scared me.

The best memory of that review was when he was looking at the cards. When he was scanning everything that was on the cards he complimented me. He commended me on being about to think of ideas and situations that where fitting to teens and young adults today. My graphic design professor had been standing behind me and I almost lose my composure when I heard him lose his under his breathe. That’s right, Dave! I hear that little laugh under your breath. ;-)

Wedding Ceremony Finished

Well tonight I am happy.
Today with less then 10 days to spare I have finished. writing the wedding ceremony for the wedding I am officiating at the end of the month. I had everything all written for quite a long time except for the opening remarks in the beginning. You know, that part where I am supposed to talk about love, marriage and all that jazz. I've had what I wanted to say for weeks but I was having trouble getting it down on paper the way I wanted it. Now I have it and I couldn't be happier. I actually have two versions to chose from. I have one version that only goes on for about four minutes and another that goes on for adds another two minutes in the middle. I don't know which I like better yet but it will most likely be the short one. I would post them on this blog but I don't was to spoil it for the bride and groom.

Strengthening the vision?

Okay so the vision is supposed to be: ~somewhat~ Working with children. In working with children they find a strong happy place inside themselves and in those around them. As they grow, they grow up strong and confident. If they get lost or scared they feel a connection to the Lord because in those times is where they learned this strength.

I do not want them to remember who taught them this lesson. Remembering me is not something I want. What I want them to remember is feeling safe and confident inside the walls of the church. This way when something inevitably bad happens in their lives that throws them off their balance they will remember where to find safety and confidence instead of going down a path of self destruction.

In the vision casting books, I am currently reading; they tell me that sometimes things come up in life that look like they are stepping stones to our visions but they are actually things that help us put them off. That is not what I want to do. I have been at jobs before, like the day care that zapped all the self esteem out of me. I was broken, beaten and literally bleeding everyday when I left that place. I had very little self worth. What kept me going then were two things: the first was that I know if I did not come in there were certain times of the day where I was the only standing in the way from some of those children and the other children that would physically harm them and second was that I was going to Youth Connection in Bloom. Even with everything that was happening at the day care, all the things my boss said and accused me of, I never full on cried.

On Friday at the post office, I sunk into a corner and I cried. I broke down. That to me feels like it will hurt my vision more then what I want to do. How am I to help children, teach the to feel safe and secure in situations when suddenly I am in a corner baling my eyes out? (I cried at the church a few months ago when something happened there too). If I am not feeling safe in these places how can I lie, and teach these kids to be?

Currently, it's the off season for children's ministry at church so I am at a bit of a stand still with that anyway. I think as I pray, reflect and plan on the children part of my plan I need to do something else too. I have to make a new active effort to get a new job outside of the postal service (hopefully in my field). If I don't feel safe and confident, I can't teach others to be right? God doesn't want us to stay in places that cause us harm right? Is this putting off my vision or is this going to strength it? If I have more confidence in one area of my life, like my job, that would translate into other areas as well, like my ministry, right?

Can't Be Treated This Way

A Continuation...

By the time I had a break in the angry customers at 2:30 I was furious! Why not? Not only did my office lose a whole day’s revenue, the main office was going to see the computer data as so late and I had just had customers screaming at me for a little over two hours. I had lost a few very important accounts because I was no longer reliable enough to be open on days I should be.

So I call the postmaster of my APO. I ask her if there was anything she wanted to tell me about my office yesterday. She says no. I get angrier very quickly. I ask her if she is sure. She tells me that there was no one there until 3 and that I can’t just do that. At this point already I am pretty sure I am yelling. I tell her I was promised coverage. She said she never promised me coverage and asks where I got that idea from. I tell her which of her underlings promised me it. She tells me I should be cross at that women instead of her. I said fine then give me to her but she didn’t. [Now this woman is the postmaster of this facility that means she is in charge of everyone else there. Someone else gave me the promise of coverage okay I get that but look how quickly she passed the blame instead of admitting there must have been a problem in communication between her and her underlings.] She did not pass me off to anyone instead she started to yell at me. Now of course I’m upset and angry. I told her that since I’ve opened today all that has happened is people have yelled because I was closed so yeah, I’m cross.

Instead she yells at me for taking off. She’s trying to make me the villain because I took a day. My last day off for something nonmedical was April 26^th for First Communion (She was not even here yet) and before that was the end of December. Other than that I take one day of every three months for my medical treatment which is medical and I can prove documentation which I state on the form and that was yesterday. She kept yelling at me until I cried. How dare she? It was medical. She doesn’t have the right to do that and I won’t stand for that. I don’t deserve to be treated poorly for that. Normally I strive not to be treated or act and differently even though I have this disability, that why no matter how bad a migraine I have I still go to work. I might be barely there and have taken my most powerful medication but I still try my best. She cannot make me feel guilty for that. Bitch.

If today is a day that the Lord has mad; Sometimes he can be mean

Worst Day at the Post Office EVER!! Before today I loved my job. Before today I was really hedging on looking for a new job even though I knew I would have to start looking for one eventually. Today. After I finish this post, I am going to start sending out applications.

I requested off yesterday. Now when I say that, I mean I requested 3 mos. ago to be off work for migraine treatments yesterday. I ending up having to request the day 3 times!! My Administrative Post Office (APO) kept “losing” my form. Last week I sent emails to the postmaster and all the supervisors of my APO asking if they had coverage for yesterday. I didn’t hear anything for 2 days. Everyday our USPS emails are full of postmasters saying they have ppl looking for work or it is some sort of emergency and they need a sub quick. So I did that. I sent a mass email just like everyone else, this is the second time in three years I have ever done anything like this. I made a point in the email to write that it was not the current APO postmaster’s fault I did not have coverage that it was the pm who had just left. That same day I got a phone call from one of the supervisors at the APO. She yelled at me but I saw that coming. She just kept telling me how the postmaster was upset, the postmaster was offended and how hard the postmaster worked. She was telling me how I should have approached them first. [Obviously these people do not check their inboxes unless it is something big because I informed her how I did that. I also reminded her that the supervisor I was talking to was the very one who less than a month before was pissed off that the new postmaster wasn’t helping her and told me if I could resolve my own staffing issues to do it]. The only really important thing that happened out of that phone call was that she assured me I would be covered for yesterday.

I come into work today and there is a very angry man waiting for me. He’s yelling at me because No one was here at 1pm yesterday and again at 3pm. I spent the next 2 hours getting angry complaints from customers with similar stories. I had two days’ worth of mail waiting for me and all my data that has timestamps and the caller id on the phone proved their story. My post office box holders come in like clockwork and they confirmed the story. If my office was open at all it was open from 3:30 to 4:15! That’s it.

To Be Continued...

Not so scared

The best thing happened this morning! My fears about seeing old friends at the wedding have begun to completely melt away. I stopped at Michael’s to get new woodless graphite. [Last week like an idiot who’s never used it before I wasn’t being careful getting out of my car and I dropped the whole container of my graphite and the lid was off, they shattered.] I walked into the pencil aisle and there were two people stocking it. I did a double take when I saw the guy because I didn’t realize at first that I knew him. He recognized me too. He smiled really big and pulled me in for a hug. We talked for a few minutes and he helped me find my graphite. The fact that we were both smiling and excited to see each other made me feel better. He brought up the wedding first and I’m so happy he is going to be there too. My fears have melted away now. I know the groom had been being really supportive before and telling me not to worry but somehow seeing I had nothing to worry about made me feel better.

Not Always A Downer

I was rereading the blog posts I have written so far and I noticed something. My entire blog is a horrible depressing downer!! That's sad because that is not who I am. I am serious when I have to be but the vision God set for me is to work with children. Working with children means being optimistic and enthusiastic is a requite for the job. I just really wanted to explain what really pushed me towards the vision at hand.

Death has been an old friend in my live for as long as I can remember and I have never been scared of him. I may not fear him taking me but I don't take it to kindly when he takes someone I care about. He's also the easiest way to explain how I feel about these things because I have felt his presence so many times.

Most of the time when people die, especially young people, we who are left behind feel helpless and lost. [I remember once when a friend's car was hit by an oncoming vehicle and it was the other driver fault. She was a recent graduate from high school with her whole life going for her.] We feel so out of control and lost. We tend to zone out a lot and drift off into space which essentially is just wondering around our minds and heart without purpose. [When she died people where shocked. Teens didn't know how to handle what they were feeling. It was mid August but they all found themselves flocking to the same place, a place of safety predictability. This place was giving them a sort of familial comfort. They flocked to the Catholic high school they had attended with her.]

These teens were emotionally lost and scared. One of their own had died. They did now understand the why, all they knew was that they were being pulled to the school. Do you understand the why? They were hurting, they were in an intense amount of spiritual and emotional pain. It was a Catholic school so they had theology everyday inside those walls. Everyday they were taught of Jesus's love for them and for Laura [their fallen friend]. Whether they realized it or not something had happened and instead of taking a destructive approach and abusing themselves or choosing to turn their backs on the world they had a need to be closer to the God who created them. They didn't want to be alone then, they wanted to be as close to God as they could, since they went to school 5 days a week and church only 1 day a week that made school the place to reach him.

That is my vision. That is what I hope to achieve. I don't care if people remember exaclty why they feel this drawing feeling to Christ and the church but I want them to have that feeling, especially in times where they are lost and wondering. All I am hoping for is that when they feel that way they begin to feel this feeling, this desire for God pulling them there to help them seek refuge in those times. I believe if we start by teaching the children of God's unending love and compassion for them at an early age its possible to make a significant impact in theier lifes. They then have a better chance of not turning to a desturtive path and if they do they know that God will except they back with open arms.

Laura and her brother William circa 2002

Something Missing

Continuation from last time...

His death was different. I never want to be one of those people who get all weeping and upset when someone they didn't knew or barley knew. Usually I am good at not being one of those people. This time though, it cut deeper then I expected.
   Suddenly I felt horrified when I received the news. It was like a large chunk of my heart was ripped out. I didn't understand, I would have classified him as a casual acquaints. I was so confused as to why this was so deeply upsetting to me.
   I asked God why his death was hitting me so hard. God gave me an answer. I was baptized with him! I entered into my spiritual journey, my relationship with God with him by my side. We continued on that relationship together all our lives. We were bonded together as brother and sister in Christ on February 7 1988 but we were bonded even closer spiritually because we started the journey together. Now my spiritual partner was gone from this life where I was.
   It was and sometimes still is hard to have lost the person I started and shared my relationship with God with but over time I realized some other things. I know he is not gone, He lives in those who carry on his memory but also he is with God now. Now my spiritual partner in Christ is actually up there with Christ! Instead of having a deep hole of mourning for his loss; I should think of how since he is actually with God it can only make our spiritual connection with God that we received at baptism stronger.

Some things are game changers

I was born and raised in the Roman Catholic Church. My parents rushed my baptism so my grandfather could see it before he went into the hospital for experimental surgery to remove cancer in his throat and vocal cords the next day. My grandfather's desire to see me become a member of God's family before he underwent a procedure he might not have survived always meant a lot to me. I've always seen that day as one that was very special to my life.
  But I was not the only baby baptized in that ceremony that day. A little boy who was just over a month old was being baptized with me. We ended up going to the same elementary school and being in the grade. He was the most popular boy in the whole school. He was not one of those popular boys who was popular but they was not very nice to unpopular kids. No, he lived the Christian ideals. When I say he was popular I mean that everybody was his friends and everyone liked him because he was genuinely nice to them. We also had faith formation together. We ended up having all our sacraments together.
  I remember a few days after we received the sacrament of confirmation (it's where we are considered adults in the church because the Holy Spirit comes down upon us and we are to go out and evangelize the Word) him pulling me aside to talk to me. He asked me if I felt any different since confirmation.
  Honestly, at first I thought he was just fooling around but then I realized he was serious. He told me how he had felt different since that night, how he felt the Holy Spirit inside of him. I was happy for him. Then he shared a secret with me. He told me if he continued to feel like this then maybe he should become a priest.
  He never became a priest. In gave into all the fun and temptation that comes along with high school. Maybe he was mistaken about his calling or maybe he felt that he had sinned and strayed to far to be able to come back, no one will ever know. His thinking about becoming a priest was a secret I kept to his grave. Yes, his grave. He died less then a month after turning 25 years old and you guessed it, another drug overdose.

To Be Continued...

Shaping a Vision

I used to complain that my world was small. I complained about this when my high school sweetheart’s new fiancée started college at the same school I was attending. I complained about this when the boy in college I had a crush on was friends with a guy from his last school that I had a restraining order against. Small words just happen sometimes.

I had a good friend named Nikki growing up. We drifted a bit apart in middle school but we had the same freshman lunch in high school. I remember her introducing me to a cute boy in that lunch who was on her afternoon bus. He became one of my best friends for the next few years.

Nikki died two years ago this month. She was only two days older than me so she would only be 26 years old and her son is three years old now. She died of a drug overdose. I remember Nikki doing drugs for years before that. I was friends with her partner too. He and another friend of ours, shared a locker in high school.

Nikki’s wake was hard because of him. Sure it was hard to see her like that. And her mom and her little brother who was taller than me now that we were “grown up” but it was her partner. He didn’t hug me, he collapsed on me. Suddenly I was holding TJ up. I could hear him crying and through the tears he was trying to tell me how he had tried so hard to help here and keep her clean and away from those people. He told me how much he loved her. I had never had a doubt that he loved her and I still don’t doubt it. He was blaming himself for her actions and that was so sad. He was suffering and just in so much pain. It was obvious that he had cleaned up his act since high school and had been trying to be the best partner and father he could. It felt like he was hanging on to me for an eternity. Her family, TJ and their baby did not deserve this pain.

What went wrong? What happened? Maybe there was nothing TJ could do. Maybe by the time she and TJ found each other it was already too late for her. Maybe in Nikki’s case it was a matter of something needing to reach her at more fundamental of an age. We can’t really be certain. But we can know we can try again with a new generation, right?

The Casting of My Vision

My last post was about friends. Friends that I had what felt like a lifetime ago but were very vital in shaping who I am today. These guys were my brothers. I still hold them in my heart as my brothers. But there was a darkness attached to it as well.

As much as we loved each other and showed a fierce loyalty to each other there was also loyalty based on the things we did. We had a tendency (a decade ago) to break rules. The rules we broke were for the most, part small rules. They were rules like no photography or videotaping on mall property. We did a lot of things on mall property that we were not supposed to. In fact there is a list of roughly thirty things that cannot be done on our mall’s property and we have broken every rule at least once.

But we did other things too. These guys are only part of three deciding moments that made me chose to follow God in the way I have. Most of the years I was with them I let the smoking and the drinking just happen around me and I did nothing to stop it. I was scared. I liked my friends and I didn’t want to lose them by being a “goody two shoes” besides, I wasn’t perfect either.

That last year I hung out with them I joined in full force. I was a freshman in college and my sister kept jokingly telling me that college was the place to do those things. If I was going to do them in college I wanted to do them with the friends I trusted more than anyone.

One friend got out of the group and found God 2 yrs. before I left. He was big into drugs before he found God. His vision became helping teens out of the drug life he had and keeping others from ever getting there. I liked his vision a lot and I really wanted to support him. I still do. I feel my vision connects with that but that is not my vision. His vision is abortive, I want mine to be more preventative.

The Past Dies Hard

Do you ever get scared when you have to go back in time a little bit? I don’t mean literally go back in time, I’m not mad. I am just not the same person I was a decade ago. At the end of the month I am officiating a wedding. I’m super excited about that. I’ve known the groom for about eleven years and I met the bride nine years last month. They are just two of the coolest people anyone would ever want to meet so I’m so honored and stoked they asked me.


It’s everybody else I’m scared off. I know every groomsman in the wedding party. They are all part of the group we used to hang out in when I was in high school. I loved these boys like my brothers, they meant the world to me.
When my high school sweetheart, Matt and I broke up we both started to make some dumb choses. Both he and I turned kind of slutty for a while. Somehow I got caught up dating a guy who was really verbally and emotionally abusive to me years before and was being kind of terrible this time too. I actually broke it off with him every day for a week but he just kept pretending it didn’t happen. So I started going on with my life while he had not. This was a bad choice. My friends were mad at me and instead of repairing the problem I ran away.


I didn’t try to make contact with them again for a long time. It was really hard too. There was even a rumor going around that I got some of them fired from their jobs. I would never have done that. I loved them. And the ones who were fired, they were the ones who helped me through my break up with Matt. As far as I am still concerned, they saved my life, I would have failed out of college. Three years with the same person being such a core in my life, I was spiraling out. I didn’t really know what parts of my life were me and what parts were Matt, but they helped me.
So the part about this wedding that I’m most scared of is seeing these people who have not spoken to me since 2007. I know a lot of lies and drama was spread around after I left. I’m scared of being completely ignored by people I once used to see as my brothers.


Besides the bride and groom there is only one other person from that old group who talks to me and even though I was holding a secret for him as the time, I know they already are excited to get to see him. I’m afraid of being all alone at this wedding reception. It was so hard for me to adjust to life without them 7 years ago. I’m afraid of repeating that pain. Does that make sense?

 

Why JazzCrawler?

I know the first blog post is going to be the hardest so I figured I’d answer a question I get a lot even from some of my closest friends. What is with the screen name JazzCrawler? To most it is strange and unprofessional especially to those who I am trying to reach spiritually. Actually for me the name holds great spiritual value. In my world: Jazz is my God-given name and so much more while Crawler is represents someone whose strength of character and faith I would like to me emulate in my own life.

Jazz: My parents gave me the name Jocelyn. When I was a senior in high school I met a very important person in my life. His name was Gir and we had trouble pronouncing each other’s names. Instead of calling me by my real name, he called me Jazz. He was a musician and he that the “joce” sounded similar to “jazz”. He was very important in my life and even though he is no longer here he left a deep mark. I found that I seem to refer to myself as Jazz when I am having an internal dialogue. This leads me to believe this is the name I was meant to have, like maybe when it’s said that God calls you by name, this is what he calls me.


Crawler: I love comic books. I have trouble remembering the time before I loved them. My favorite character is the XMen Nightcrawler. Yes I know he is fictional. But he represents something great. Nightcrawler is blue, fuzzy, and has a tail. He is not normal looking – he has been like this his entire life. He does not let this get him down. On more than one occasion he was hunted to be killed as a witch and a demon. He has the power of teleportation and when he does this he leaves a smell of brimstone which adds to people’s ideas that he is demonic. His father claims to be a demon and does horrible things to people. Despite all of this Nightcrawler is a devoted Catholic and even studied to become a priest. I have read comics where Nightcrawler was seriously injured and his words before he passes out are prayers to God, usually for the person he was trying to protect. In 2010, Marvel comics killed Nightcrawler (he just came back, four years later) and his last words were a prayer. He was the second comic book character to announce he was a particular religion, first to announce he was a Christian and first to be an avid partisan of a religion. Even though he is fictional he shows that it is not necessary to give up on yourself and you are not hopeless. His devotion to God through all he has seen is also admirable. I love that about him. One of his nicknames is “Crawler” and that’s why I took it.