23 and nowhere close to being a grown-up

it is spring break! woohoo! this means that i am here in baltimore, spending a week with matt, and indulging my wifeness. and my laziness.

we took a walk tonight, and ended up sitting on a bench in the midst of a sculpture garden on the jhu campus. (strange, round animals carved out of smooth stone...i felt like i was in the middle of a chess board or a character in alice in wonderland.) we got talking about the Future. do i continue right on with the hoop-jumping of the ordination process after i graduate pts next year, or do i take time off? what happens if he bows out early of his ph.d program, taking his masters and then getting a job. where are we going to live in the next few years? what about kids? when do we have them? how is that affected by my choice to go right on to ordination or to take time off? it was admittedly disheartening. i'm in such a specialized degree program that it would seem a waste to do something not pastoral or church related. and yet the extra year of school and the hoops i have to jump through to get to that ordained place seem impossible right now. how can i be both yearning for pts graduation and energized for another full year of school and an internship that would complete the ordination requirements?

it's funny. 23 is so young. i have a long life ahead of me. and yet on nights like these, somehow i don't feel like i have enough time in life to do what i want and need to do. not enough time to both get ordained and have kids, or to both work some random job (just to clear my head) and also to get ordained and be a pastor.

it feels like everything important in my life falls in the span of these next five years. it stressed me out a bit.

and then there comes along this website called 43 things, where people can make lists of things that they want to accomplish before they die, and i think they can check them off as they do them. i haven't made a list yet. it seems both daunting and refreshing at a time like this. it is both a reminder of how much life i have left to live and how many things there are in life to experience. no one ever said that you had do do EVERYTHING before you die. but i at least want to do enough.