Rushmore & Write-ups

I’m sitting here wearing a dress because I'm too hot to wear anything else. And I made extra sure that this dress was long enough and didn’t show any of my cleavage.

Because apparently even secretaries can get in trouble for skirts that dare to be shorter than three inches above the knee. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. I was written up. Handed the pink slip in choir and told that girls look up to me and that dresses four inches above the knee put me embarrassingly below reproach.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it a whole year without a secretarial scandal, though I have to admit I was hoping it’d be a bit juicier than this dry piece of paper that is now pinned to my wall by my mirror, haunting my daily wardrobe choices with its condescendingly pink tint.

Here it is.

On a brighter note, the writer-upper told me she loves me on the violation report, mmm. Thank God she still loves me, I was worried about that.

But then I was rushed off to Mount Rushmore with flamboyant boys and touchy-feely girls and forced to wear dresses that flitted around my ankles and choir sweaters that could make Amish people look slutty. I considered this my write-up punishment, sent to exile in the middle of nowhere with host families that stuff my face with food, offended if I were to dare say I was full. Waking up at ungodly hours of the morning and spending countless hours with cantankerous choir kids…Have mercy, God…I’ll never wear a dress again, I promise.

But I made it there and back without a roommate that scraped her long toenails across my leg while we slept, and I made it back without getting sick. And I made close friends, wrote raps, ate a mountain of dark chocolate that would have reached Roosevelt’s nose, and got to take naps whenever I wanted.

Sometimes God lets us flourish even in our exiles of punishment.

I’ve been wearily prancing around this campus like an exploited circus elephant  trying to get everything done that I haven’t been doing over choir tour.

Sometimes I feel like a loser even saying the phrase “Choir Tour.”

Hand over the Star Trek episodes and the choir dresses, I think I’ll wear mine to formal.

And last night as I spent the last few hours of my day in that practice room that has seen way too much skin of mine (If those walls could give write-ups, I could have a whole airport of pink paper airplanes zooming around our room), I brought my Bible and crawled behind the piano, anxious to hide and be alone and to just breathe.

And I remembered reading in Jeremiah about the Israelites in their own exiles, possibly even worse than my recent one to the place of black hills and blacker dresses. The Israelites, trapped in a foreign country that was not their own, were caught just waiting it out. Not living their lives, not planting gardens for food, not marrying their sons and daughters.

Just waiting it out.

But this is what God had to say to them:

“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage…seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.”                                Jeremiah 29:5-7

We all have our mini exiles. Maybe not to Babylon for idolatry and unfaithfulness, maybe not to the Black Hills for appalling short skirt skankiness. But maybe to valleys of unfulfilled desire or periods of waiting. Maybe to deserts of sickness with no healing in sight or maybe to foreign lands where the everything is different from what we are used to and we have no idea what we are doing or how to live in that place. But God commands us to live there. Eat and benefit from the fruit of the soil we wish we weren’t on. Live in community with people we wish weren’t our neighbors. Support rulers and seek prosperity of the nation we are forced to live in, because He says so.

He wants us to live and cultivate the soil we hate. To dig our hands into the mud of circumstances we would rather spit on and not daydream of the soil we once had, or the soil we could have.

But to live. To have celebrations and weddings. To plant gardens. To build houses and paint them pretty colors. To write raps while on a crowded bus. To plan formal when I just want the school year to end. To turn mounds of homework into bonding time with my roommate via an all-nighter homework bonanza. Having an eye to see beauty in the midst of murky and messy misunderstandings and choose to cultivate beauty from the dry bones of life.

I think that proactive thriving even in the midst of inexplicable and indescribably unwanted conditions is where He really moves and stirs. Where we really see His hand.

And where we really grow.

And by that point, we may even forget we’re not where we wish we could be.

And just maybe, we’ll forget about our write-ups.