A collision of the South and the Northwest
“Hey look, it’s our sub!” One student shouted back to the class from the open door. She held the door open for me.
It was surprisingly comforting to find the class in complete pandemonium. It took me a second to confirm that there wasn’t a teacher in sight to hand over the baton. I was on.
Which personality would the day require? Strict disciplinarian — or witty intellectual — or compassionate adult role model? Or all of the above, perhaps?
I — like you — remember September 11th, 2001. I was a senior in college at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. I was walking across campus from an early class back to my dorm and I overheard something about a plane hitting a building in New York and thought it sounded weird at the time.
It wasn’t until I got back to the suite that I shared with five other girls that I realized the enormity of it all. There was no denying the heaviness.
A month before, I had flown back from Europe to Nashville after a six-week study abroad program in London. That would be the last time I skipped over customs when entering Germany. (But that’s another story for another day.) Continue reading “I remember September 11”
Disclaimer: I have no body image wisdom. I want to say that I’ve learned to see myself the way the Lord sees me and think of myself as beautifully and wonderfully made, but alas, it can sometimes be a daily struggle not to hate my body. I was a late bloomer to my awareness of body image issues, but I’m right there with the rest of us.
Somehow I missed the day in school when they talk about how you’re going to start gaining weight and feel sloppy after some time if you don’t do something about it — even if you start your life and make it through high school and college without your body changing too much.
Well, I guess maybe I heard older women complain about the dreaded “metabolism,” but they were older. I was younger. So, I figured that was the difference.
Oh, wait. I’m 32 now. Hmmm. Continue reading “Learning to run”