Thirty Before Thirty

So you know how I love lists.

Recently I've started thinking about my 25th Birthday... mainly because this is a big one and it's going to take me three months to prepare myself for being half way through my twenties. One of the things that people have been doing are making 30 Before 30 lists. Seems like a good idea.

What kind of things would I put on my list though? I want a list that is well rounded, with everything from financial to spiritual goals and everything in between. I like the idea of a 30 Before 30 because some of my goals are long term; the type you can't really make on New Year's Eve.

Have you ever made a list like this? What kinds of things are on it?

St. Anne, pray for us.

Inexhaustible

It's no secret that I hate don't particularly enjoy summer. For one, I am a head sweater. On the hottest summer days, even when I was show jumping in breeches and a wool coat, you would be hard pressed to find a pit stain anywhere. But my head? After ten minutes outside you would have thought I just got out of the shower. Especially when I was at horse shows. Underneath that black helmet? We're talking dripping. Sick. 

In high school, when I wasn't riding, and especially my first summer home from college, you could find my best friend Lindsay and me at the pool, in the pool, in the lake, at a water park, or at Sonic or the snow cone stand. Literally those are the only places we would go. They were great summers, the best really. But I can't spend my summers that way anymore, now that I'm here in the "real world." 

I think I first started hating summer in 2011. I spent six weeks in the beautiful Champaign Illinois at New Staff Training with FOCUS, which had beautiful weather. Then I came back to Texas to fundraise (which, although I understand why FOCUS Missionaries fundraise, is one of my least favorite activities on the planet and is still probably the hardest thing I've ever done.) That summer we had 70 (nearly consecutive) days of triple digit heat. It.was.miserable. 

Between fundraising for a few summers and now wearing business clothes everyday, my days of summer fun are long gone. (Maybe my sense of child-like joy in the summers will return once I have children of my own.)

I'm happy to announce that this, the summer of 2014, will be my last in Texas. I'm not sure what's next, but barring any radical change in plans, I'll be breezing through 3 month summers elsewhere, instead of enduring six month summers here in big Tex. (Please, Jesus.)

I say all of this to say that summers are exhausting. I never have energy or want to do anything until the sun goes down. As for right now, this is relatively conducive to my nocturnal lifestyle. However, I have a job interview on Tuesday which, if I get the promotion, will return me to the land of the living and give me a social life back! (Pray for me!) 

Today in Mass I was praying about all of these things that are exhausting. I go to Mass week after week and make the same resolutions which I fail at, week after week. Then I come back and say the words again "Lord, I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof." It's easy to understand the protestant heresy that we are all just pieces of shit and Jesus chooses to cover us with his love, but deep down, we're just loved and polished pieces of shit. Of course I know that my baptism breaks me free from the chains of sin and despair, and I am a new creation. I am SO joyful that the Lord is inexhaustible in extending his hand to me when I screw up. The Lord is like Autumn, giving me reprieve from Texas summers. (Maybe some people feel this way about spring as a reprieve from winter?) His love endures forever and He never gives up on me. Every time I return to Him he is there waiting, for me, His prodigal son, with arms wide open. 

My mom has pretty bad back issues (spinal disc displacement, and other nerve issues too) and sometimes when she's having a rough day she says, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired." That's how I feel with the Lord sometimes. So often I get tired of asking for forgiveness. But His mercy is unfathomable and eternal, and He's never sick and tired of loving me. Thanks be to God for that! 

Holy Trinity, have mercy on us!