Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Shoes. OMG. Shoes

Although the title of this blog is somewhat misleading (partially due to the high-rated marketing value placed on the word Shoes when relating to women), I hope that you will continue to read my blog and realize the true fit of the "shoe".

WHAT A DAY!

I find myself at the end of most days thinking back to the beginning of that particular day and thinking....did that really ALL happen today? It's amazing sometimes the amount that one person can accomplish in one day or simply the displacement one body can make in 24 hours.

My day was originally supposed to begin at 4:30 a.m. I am an Orientation Leader at my university and we are meant to be there promptly at 7:00 a.m. You might ask " well then why in the world would you be getting up at 4:30?" And then of course I would be obliged to answer: As I have mentioned in my earlier two blogs, I am doing research this summer. Although normally I arrive to work on my research project at 9:00 am, because there was an orientation today, my research colleague (who is also an orientation leader) and myself had to arrive at 5:30 a.m to get everything done for the research that day before having to be at the orientation session at 7:00 am.

O.k. So...I woke up at 5:53. This time was much later than my original 4:30 a.m wake up call, and considering I was already 23 minutes late to meet my colleague, I became somewhat of a basket case. I called my colleague and said that I would be on my way soon. I hopped in the shower for a quick scrub-a-dub, dried my hair, and was out the door by 6:05 a.m...impressive if I do say so myself. As I was on my way to the University however, my colleague called me and said "All of the milkweed is dead". I'll explain. Milkweed plant is what we use to feed the caterpillars that I am raising to butterflies to do my research. Caterpillars eat a lot (more than probably a teenage boy), and without a constant supply of milkweed the caterpillars will die. On any other day this would not have been a problem, but considering I had 55 minutes to go get milkweed (which includes a 1/4 mile walk through a cow pasture), arrive back at the university, feed the caterpillars and check in by 7:00 am, I was quite nervous.

When I got to the field, I was running through the grass. Since it was 6:00 am, the grass still had a lot of dew and my pants were soaked from mid thigh down (luckily I decided to not wear the pants I needed for orientation). I had never gone to get milkweed by myself and much less at 6:00 am in the morning, so worse case scenarios were flying through my head. I kept thinking about the 5 foot wide creek I had to cross to get to the milkweed. I was praying that there were no snakes and trying to remember if I ever remembered my zoology teacher saying that they were more active in the morning time.

When I arrived back at my car, I looked down at myself. First, admiring my soaked pants and then next my shoes. Shoes I was planning on wearing during orientation that day were completely soaked and had grass all over them. What was I going to do? It was not 6:35, and I definately wasn't going to have time to go back to my house to get new shoes. I called my mom, and by this time the water works had begun. I cried to her saying "It was the worst morning ever". She said that she wouldnt be in town for another two hours. Once, I had calmed down I decided to call my roommate. Since it was 6:40 in the morning I knew that she would be asleep and felt awful waking her up at this time. I asked her to bring me my shoes, and after a little while of drowsy conversation she said she would.

I will save much of the detail of the next 30 minutes since it consists mostly of me driving too fast, thanking my roomate profusely, feeding caterpillars and then finally appologizing to the orientation leader director for being 11 minutes late.
The rest of my day has gone pretty much as planned. Orientation went off without a hitch, I recruited at the Greek orientation mixer following orientation, I went and ate dinner with my roomie, and now I am blogging to you fine people.

I began writing this blog with no title, and concurrently added one after writing the story of my day. As I was writing, I kept thinking to myself there are so many lessons to be learned from my day that I couldn't even define one in particular.

Because shoes were the defining apex in my problematic morning, I decided that the best lesson could be learned from my very own closet.

We wake up every morning, and the shoes we decide to wear very much defines our day. When wearing flip flops, we might assume that it's summer and perhaps we will be visiting a pool or beach later. When we wear tennis shoes, we might be going to work out or planning along day of shopping. There are so many pairs of shoes that define our life as women.
We might put on a pair of shoes in the morning thinking it looked great with our outfit, and then midday we have a blister the size of Arkansas. Lessons hurt sometimes, and sometimes you have to continually wear it out before it ever gets worn in.
We may put on a pair of shoes in the morning and after running through miles of wet grass, realize that perhaps more than one pair of shoes will be needed for that day. My life is full of concurrent lessons, and no one ever said growing up would be easy or simple.

Lessons can be old or new, dirty, stinky, clean, muddy, borrowed, worn-out, favs, tall or flat, pointy, classic or modern. They can come is all shapes, styles and colors.

One thing I know for sure though is that lessons, unlike shoes, will never be too big or too small.

God works in our lives in mysterious ways. We may come across lessons in our life that we think nothing about, but later on they are grandiose and we realize their true power. Other lessons we have learned, we may think that we will never be strong enough or big enough to handle, but God is always their leading us through it all, and he will never give us a burden to great for us to handle.

So lace up your converse or strap up your stilletos, because its time to take on the world. We are women chosen to make a difference in this world, and their is no "heal" that we can't handle.

And one more thing to note, us arkansan girls never go barefoot.

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