Over Thanksgiving, I spent 8 days with the smartest, funniest, prettiest, most determined pre-teen girl I’ve ever met. My baby sister turned 11 a few weeks ago, and she amazes me every day. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of months and I swear she grew up way too much in those months. Even her face seems different. Older, less kid-like and more teenage.

She handles life with an innate sense of ambition and balance that is both impressive and intimidating. And does it all while managing to be sweet and likable and resilient. In all of her burgeoning independence, that kid is beginning one of the most volatile stages of growing up and becoming who she’ll be. What she discovers about the world and how she decides to process it in the next few years will have a huge impact on her identity.

And so I have this really unique relationship with an especially unique little sister and that sometimes scares the snot out of me. I love that she is my biggest fan and loves me with a sincerity that only siblings know. I also know that every word I say and every promise I make and every attitude I cop are being watched by this perceptive young woman…and often emulated.

I hope that I can be as real as possible when she’s watching, because I feel that will give her the best opportunity to become who she wants to be. I have this cool opportunity to be part of her family in a way that is not quite parental and not quite the usual sibling setup. Knowing she’s watching has influenced my decisions since the day she was born, whether I’ve been aware of it or not.

She’ll start junior high next year, and I’ll blink and she’ll be graduating from high school. I hope she grows up to be a little subversive, but not too much. I hope that high school and college teach her the balance of working hard and playing harder. I hope she has her first kiss with a boy she really likes, but only when she’s ready and I hope she gets butterflies and fireworks and sweaty palms. I hope she learns just enough lessons the hard way to be gracious and humble always. I hope so many things for this amazing young lady.

More than anything else, though, I hope that our relationship continues to grow and deepen as her perception of her world grows. I want to be the kind of big sister that asks tough questions that make her think and evaluate what matters to her. I want her to call when something big happens, and more often I want her to call for no reason at all.

I love you, little sister, neverending-infinity-plus-sister-plus-God.

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Aaaaaand my tendency to throw headlong into a new activity strikes again. There has to be a pathology for serial sports addicts like me. There is just something about being fired up and borderline-obsessive about physical activity that makes the rest of my life more fun.

This time it’s roller derby, and I welcome this season with open, elbow-and-wrist-guarded arms (and knee pads, and a helmet, and a mouthguard…). I still love to climb and hike and skydive and slackline and run and ride my bike, and I respect and love whatever place those things have in my life whenever they surge. I love the physical challenge of sports, as each one has taught me something different about myself. I love the way new challenges open my heart and stoke my inner fire.

Technically, this one started back before the climbing gym closed when a couple of the derby girls from one of the local leagues dropped by the gym while I was working desk and left flyers about their upcoming bout. Unfortunately, the next one was the same day as the gym closing party AND I was committed to a weekend of babysitting, so it was not great timing.

It wasn’t until August that I finally made it to a bout. Midway through, I finally understood why people watch football, and how much fun it is to understand enough about what’s going on to have something to cheer about. Bren and I yelled ourselves silly, wondering why we’d never gone to one of these things before. The girls on the track played hard and looked like they were having a blast.

Attempting to exercise self-control and good judgment, I consciously put derby on the back burner, promising myself I’d revisit it in a few months. Around mid-September, I put my climbing gym membership on hold since I hadn’t been using it, and that same week my roommate mentioned that one of our mutual friends was going to a derby practice to check things out. That was all I needed.

Last Friday was my first regular practice. Drills and scrimmages and my head is still reeling with all the rules and techniques. Team tryouts are in January, and until then I plan to be collecting skills and bruises a couple times each week to get ready. Along with finding a decent pair of derby skates, I need to come up with a derby name. I have a couple ideas bouncing around, but I will take suggestions…

So, while the whole derby timeline didn’t exactly work out like I had planned, it balances well with the rest of my life. I love skating faster and getting better and steadier and more confident. And I look forward to learning all that derby has to teach me.

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Please know that I am aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others. -Amelia Earhart

I’m a together kind of gal. I get good grades, I generally stay out of trouble, I’m a nice person…but none of those things render me immune to having days or weeks of feeling grossly inadequate and inexperienced. I’m not saying these things to garner sympathy or affirmations…I’m just throwing them out into the void because writing helps me think.

Impending graduation from my master’s program seems to elicit these inadequacies as a way of coping with what I don’t know, which is life outside of the academic calendar. I don’t know what I want to do next, exactly, and the not knowing makes me feel like I’ve failed at something. I’m nearly 25 years old…and yet all of the growth and progress and reality of “yeah, I’m in a good place and I have nothing to feel inadequate about”…gets quiet sometimes.

And what makes it an even less productive frame of mind is my tendency to believe anyone who feeds it. Anyone who makes me doubt my abilities and experiences automatically becomes louder than every encouraging word. To me, pressing through that is what dreaming is about. We laud this idea that it takes something special to be a dreamer…finding inspirational quotes and losing ourselves in stories.

The real truth of it, though, is that the dreaming happens when you can tell those voices to shut up. When you can hear them and acknowledge them, but still have hope and a sense that you’re made for more and bigger things that aren’t based on success or failure. That you don’t have to give up. And I think that’s something we’re all capable of. We’re not special in that capability…instead it threads us together in this tapestry that I love to look at and think about. Sometimes I have to just to keep the cynicism at bay.

Getting rejected from multiple jobs this summer didn’t make me feel good. But it did make me confront my doubts and decide what I was and wasn’t going to let define me from what other people perceive me to be, from my parents to my peers to potential employers. I’ve got nothing to prove to anyone but myself. If that was the purpose of enduring rejection, I’m glad I encountered it.

For the record, I plan to be a kickass counselor someday. :)

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Be smart, be strong, be proud, live honorably and with dignity, and just hold on. -page 195

Finished “A Million Little Pieces” yesterday…er, very early this morning. I’m reluctant to admit how connected to James I felt at times while reading the book. And how connected to everyone else on the planet who struggles to make sense of impulse and desire and to learn what it is to take responsibility for beliefs and actions.

“Addiction is a disease” or maybe it is not…I don’t know what I think yet and that does not bother me so much. If there is something that I have learned in my faith journey it is that some things will be mysteries, perhaps for a season or perhaps until glory and so right now I merely aim to seek truth and to make peace with uncertainty. I find addiction to be a thing entirely captivating and entirely relevant to faith.

It seems to me that in recovery or otherwise, one must confront matters directly related to faith…matters of rebellion and responsibility, matters of pain and fear and pride and self-loathing and trust and pleasure. And so then how am I not different, if those are things with which I struggle and sometimes often screw up? One is not required to be acquainted with the depths of addiction to understand or experience those things. To me they are a product of humanity, and so in theory it is not hard to imagine loving the unlovable. In practice, my greatest obstacle is merely my Self…my fears and insecurities and selfishness.

I have been shown great mercy, both in ways I understand and in deep parts of my soul and experiences that I have yet to plumb. By people and by my God. Therefore I want to savor and extend that mercy, and with it learn to embrace righteous justice…not condemning judgment, but to be the kind of person who can honestly and vulnerably ask tough questions because I am not afraid of the answer…my own or that of another.

I have been told perhaps that I am too idealistic. I don’t know any other way to be. I don’t see it that way. I see it as being willing to live with an open heart and I will do all I can to hold onto it because my knowledge of my self is that the alternative within me is not what I want to be. I am young, yes. I have many lessons to learn, yes. I believe myself to be an insightful and relatively self-aware creature…one who is no stranger to the matters mentioned above, despite my meager stores of “life experience”.

I go into this next season with tentative confidence and a healthy amount of stubborn determination. I am not fearful of messing up or being wrong, just of failing to recognize the significance of those moments. I hope that 20 years from now I can still be described by many of the same words that describe me today.

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