3 weeks to go

Black dog = LSAT. White dog = me.

3 weeks ‘til it eats me. Hahahaha.

Oh maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe, maybe not. I just thought this picture was really funny.

I gave up facebook 'til then. Should free up some time. Already I see just how much I would check it then get pulled in for 5, 10, 15, 30 minutes at a time. Now's the time to make the most of my time. Ready, go.

I just returned from a night in my dear state of Tennessee. Clint and I met in Knoxville – our exact halfway point – for the night. I feel refreshed and relaxed after getting to spend some time with him and some time driving through the beautiful Smoky Mountains with the windows down, listening to my favorite music on shuffle, praying, singing, reflecting on life. I feel more centered as well, which is a good place to be entering the home stretch – the final 3 weeks before this big test. Clint’s mom said she would commit to praying for me everyday before the LSAT and I can feel it – the feeling of “somebody out there must be praying for me,” as the old Tim McGraw song goes. Did I mention I also feel more centered?

To quote my favorite, Eat Pray Love, on finding our center:

“You want to stay near the core of the thing – right in the hub of the wheel – not out on the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you get all frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness – that’s your heart. That’s where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you’ll always find peace.”

Clint has a way of directing me back to God, the only source of perfect peace. And that’s just one of the reasons I am so thankful to have him in my life. I was starting to feel all frayed and crazy – I was out on the edges and felt on edge. But now I feel nestled in the hub of the wheel once again. I was looking to other things for peace, “we all search for something to fill us up inside, but it’s only an illusion, true love’s hard to find,” I heard the Academy Singers sing today on my car ride. But they implored me, as Christ gently instructed the woman two centuries ago, to “drink from the water, drink from the Living Water, and you’ll never thirst again.”

True love’s hard to find. Hmm. On my car ride I listened to a sermon from Brentwood Baptist where the preacher quoted little kids on love.

One said: “Love is when there are two cupcakes and the man takes the one with not as much frosting.”

One said: “Love is telling your wife she looks beautiful even when she looks like a truck.”

One girl said, “Don’t tell someone you love them then take it back. Love’s not like picking out which movie you’re going to watch.”

I thought the last thought was particularly profound. How conditional and fickle our so-called love can be sometimes.

But as I also heard on my drive today:

This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We'd be held
(Natalie Grant, Held, played at my cousin Matt’s wedding in honor of my cousins Lindsay and Madison and Uncle Alan)

That’s Jesus’ promise to us. Not that life would be easy, but that He would love us unconditionally and hold us in the storm, in the sunshine, no matter what. The promise was we’d always be held.