The Normal

upon coming home from church, i found this scribbled on scrap paper. i laughed and thought sarah was decidedly brilliant. all the credit goes to her...and she even might write a sequel, where i get to cool once more. B-)

~the normal~

My sister is normal in many ways because she takes normal showers, does normal school, and plays normal sports like tennis (if you can consider that a sport). I always thought she was normal sister too because she borrows my clothes, forgets to make her bed, and gets mad at me at least once a week.

It took me years, however, to discover that my sister is really not normal at all; she was just pretending. I also used to think Hannah Montana and Nancy Drew were cool until i found out that's who my sister was, except she is all put together and three times as amazing. Yeah, she's not normal at all.

I didn't ever think twice about her obsession with checking the mail every Wednesday or the fact that she worked as an "environmental engineer" and took frequent trips to the post office "for work reasons". Okay, you can call me dumb for not seeing the signs earlier, but you have to give me a break; I'm actually normal.

The material point is that I have a strangely unharmed sister using the postal service to do definitely abnormal things...and no one knows...except me. And I'm normal...

My sister is Nancy Drew

Air Mail

There is something intriguing about letters. Nothing can beat the feeling of opening up the mailbox to find (beneath the bills and junk mail) a hand written, hand addressed letter with a unique stamp in the corner. But not only do I absolutely love getting letters, I love sitting down and writing one. Writing a letter, for me, is therapeutic on a rough day; it must have something to do with being able to write down my thoughts and feelings, lick the envelope and then mail it away.

The other day, I was talking with a dear friend who commented, "You are such a great letter writer." Since it had been months since I had sent her a letter, that comment stuck with me. I began to think about how letters last; I thought about the whole stack I have in a box under my bed. Whole books containing letters have been published such as the missionary Paul's letters to the Corinth church, the church in Ephesus, as well as Paul's encouragement letters to the Apostle Timothy. While I have not written thoughts any where near as profound as Paul's, it makes me want to write letters that was turn yellow in age, ones that future generations will find and be changed by.

Friends, Love and Happiness

Lately, I have started asking my friends questions in order to get to know them deeper. I realized that many of my friends, people that I had grown up beside, were strangers to me. Relationships are like my body fuel, I live on it. It was scary in a sense to realize that besides a "how are you today?, I didn't know who my friends were, what drove them to succeed, or not to. So I have begun asking questions; "What person has influenced you the most? What is your end goal in life?" and so on.

So my goal in relationships is to stop talking about myself and discover who my friends are at their core. Its an exciting goal; I can't wait to start asking all my "20 questions."