Without fail-
My last official year living with my parents and sibs will always be one I remember and however busy we were or all over the place or stressed we somehow someway always seemed to pull through for each other and however different our living situation was I wouldnt have wanted it to be any other way, I would never give up the early morning drives and the jam sessions and the cereal for dinner sometimes and no matter what was going on I always had the most fun with those people
Without fail-
Juju would come whining to me at 10:30 at night to please help her with her algebra homework because 8th grade was hard and she waited all day to do it and I would have to explain for the one hundredth time that algebra for me was five years ago and I didn’t remember how to do anything and eventually we would figure out enough from google to put some numbers on her page and then we would call it a day
Without fail-
On those slow Carolinian mornings with nothing to do the old wooden walls would creak and groan and whisper loud enough to wake me up and I would look out my second story window and spot my friends and the first thing I would do is I would walk downstairs and out the back door to the welcome of wind chimes and the birds and then down the mosaic rock path and up to the crabapple trees where I would pick apples and smash them on the rocks and I would hop the fence and into the field and into the smell of sweet summer grass and I would spin around and call for the animals and feed them the broken pieces and stroke their dusty coats and man I miss the smell of horses
Without fail-
I walked up those excessively steep stairs five days a week and down the same halls and sat in the same classrooms to learn new things and annotate second hand copies of classical books and write articles that were usually mundane and I would learn to categorize soil types and track hurricanes then to conjugate latin verbs and then nap through stat and see the same people everyday, some of whom I loved and somehow I don’t know I graduated and made it into this thing people told me to go to called college
Without fail-
Afternoon practice and seeing my people and then running our brains out together and complaining during workouts and frolicking around our mountains on long runs and then racing those courses was somehow always the most hilarious and enjoyable part of my days
Without fail-
Every Thursday morning Mrs Becky would have set up three booths at the long shoals waffle house before charlotte and I would even get there 6:45 am with cars full of ninth grade girls and we would sit together and eat chocolate chip waffles and watch the morning traffic get busier and busier as we did our gospel bible studies and talked about Jesus with our yl campaigner kids then we would all pull into the senior lot with just enough time to get inside and happy hearts
Without fail-
I would find myself in that lifeguard chair or in the shop more than I would’ve liked to be and I spent days working for food and gas and this big adventure im on right now
Without fail-
I would walk into rei multiple times a week to search for gear and things for the race and also because I really just love rei and I would change my mind very often on what size pack I needed because 65 liter is too small but somehow 80 is too big and one way or another I ended up with a plane ticket to china and yall know the story from there
Without fail-
Eggs and baggutes would be on the table every Cambodian morning because someone would have woken up extra early to put it there and we would all stagger into the main room and sit at out tables and enjoy the company of living with 40 of our friends with our breakfast of some kind of fruit that weve never seen and prepare ourselves for another warm day in asia
Without fail-
Every night the moon would float to the peak of the heavens and look down on our little honduran mountain for a while and we were so high up that I felt like I could touch it if I tried hard enough and the valleys of Teguc were lit with tiny little house lights then after a while the sun started to slowly move up the sky and I would wake up and walk outside and stand against the cinderblock wall to brush my teeth and say hello to the shadows flitting through the blades of grass and the delicate light that reluctantly reached our corner in the brisk hours of morning , fancy seeing yall here and – yall- that isn’t even a coherent word in this language, and wait does honduran grass speak Spanish or…
Without fail-
the mornings come, as rude as they may be some days and the nights slip by and the weeks cross themselves off the calendars we live according to and the months go by just as fast and suddenly were reminded by memes or our responsible friends who track things or just eventual realization that wow this ancient planet has made yet another journey around the sun and a whole ! other ! year ! has passed
well I am officially an adult as of 2017 which still doesn’t make much sense to me.
I look back on what has happened over these 12 months and it was for sure one of my favorite years of high school. The lord blessed me and my fam in so many different ways, walked us through some things and sent me off on the race. He was so present in my life and He told me to take a step of faith and to do something I would’ve never though I could do and without fail he has shown up in me and my life, thrown challenging and frustrating things at me but always proved to walk me through the muck, He has taught me things as simple as how to hear his voice and has shown me how deeply he wants to be in my life and He has shown me what an actual faith and relationship looks like ! He has blessed us time and time again and proved to me that he keeps his promises, that he calls me and all of his children by name, and that he is merciful !
2017, you were a good one. Wishing all of you the best for 2018 !!
God bless and i love you all,
~ i
