A hot and sunny day at Eastern Glades. During my first year of high school, I aspired to be on our school’s drill team. I spent years taking ballet and jazz classes, so when I got to high school, I figured I was a shoe in to make the squad. My mom also was on her school's drill team. Growing up, a photo of her wearing a white skirt and orange vest sat in our living room. Her smile wide. She still talked about her memories being on the team - the high kicks, the football games, and the friends she made.
During that first semester of freshman year, I thought about her as I suffered through a Saturday drill team prep class. As I forced my legs to stretch into an almost split. As I adjusted to a new life outside of middle school, away from all my friends who had split off to different high schools. I thought making the team would live up to all the hype she described. If I made drill team, then I would be set for high school.
On a cold Friday before Christmas break, the drill team directors posted a sign listing the numbers of all the girls who made the team. As my friend and I walked over to read the list, my heart pounded inside my body. I had spent the whole Friday obsessing over the list with a twisted feeling in my stomach that made it hard to eat. The friend and I had become very close that semester. Not only did we suffer through prepping for drill team try-outs together, but we belted out notes in our 4th period choir class. She quizzed me before our Biology tests because she was way smarter in our science and Math classes. I helped her with our English homework because reading and writing were the only subjects that came naturally to me.
When we got to the board, we quickly realized our numbers weren’t there. My eyes searched and searched for mine. But I kept coming up short. I looked over at my friend. Her eyes reflected that same look of dread. She stared at me. And I knew it. I didn’t make it. We both didn’t make it. We both weren’t chosen. We walked back to the parking lot where our parents were waiting in seperate cars. I didn’t cry until I made it to my parents. The tears fell so fast that my eyes ached. However, I was hungry again. And I wanted a pizza, stat.
That same night we were supposed to go to a friend’s birthday party to watch a movie. I didn’t want to go. I almost had my parents drive me back home to Katy, so I could cry in my bedroom and eat pizza in private. Instead, my parents drove me and my friend who didn’t make the team to the movie theater. I had popcorn and we watched Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, and Jack Black all fall in love during The Holiday. At the start of the movie, Kate Winslet is bawling her eyes out because the man she thinks she wants to marry is actually in love and engaged to another woman. As I watched her sob pathetically inside her quaint cottage, I felt my whole body exhale for the first time that day.
Since that cold Friday, life has handed me much harder cards than not making drill team. There’s been break-ups, loss of loved ones, unemployment, sick relatives, a pandemic. Each year, new challenges make not making the drill team look like a walk in the park. But looking back at that moment of not seeing my number on the board, I realize it’s one of the first moments that made me ask the question:
What good can come from this?
When I moved back to Houston after grad school, it took me six months to land my first big girl reporting job. During those months, I was processing the end of a relationship and the dream of what I thought my life would be after grad school. I certainly didn’t think it would include me delivering food for others all across Houston. I didn’t think it would look like freelancing or becoming an intern. I also didn’t think I would be back in my hometown. I was determined to get out of Houston.
During those listless months, I spent a lot of time with that same friend who I didn’t make drill team with all those years before. Turns out, my friend wasn’t just good at prepping me for Biology quizzes and singing alongside me in choir, but instead God knew that I would need her for much more. She became my closest friend in high school and is still one of my best friends almost 15 years later. We both signed up for a dance class that spring, where we laughed and moved our bodies to music every weekend. When I looked at her dancing freely across the room, I flashed back to that moment in the high school parking lot. We weren’t those same girls. And we never would be again.
I still watch The Holiday every Christmas. I still feel my body exhale when the opening credits start to role. I can still relate to Kate Winslet sobbing pathetically at home. When Cameron Diaz cries for the first time since she was a teenager at the end of the movie, I still wipe away tears from my eyes. I didn’t know that I would find one of my favorite movies on one of my worst days of high school. I didn’t know that I would meet one of my best friends. I didn’t know that those listless months delivering food in Houston, would actually lead me to rediscovering my hometown and falling in love with it again and wanting to stay.
There’s a verse in Isaiah that says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways.”
I’m very good at putting God in a nice, tidy little box and telling Him, “This is the way I think it should go.” I can also stomp my foot like a toddler and pout as if I’m not 31. However, God comes right back every time and blows my expectations out of the water. He closes doors that are not meant for me. He opens doors wides and tells me to run through them like a little kid on a Sunday afternoon. He gently reminds me to wait and not rush something before it’s my time.
There are many days that don’t feel like a Sunday afternoon or dancing next to your best friend. However, with each year, I see the story that God has been weaving all along. The bad moments are etched into the story, but there’s also something much bigger he’s weaving too. Everything may not get tied up in a nice little tidy box. There may be some explosive messes. When there is bad, I know there will be someone God has sent for me to lean on. There wil be a strength handed over from God that’s bigger than me, that could only come from somebody greater. When there is good, I’ll cherish it all the more because of the days where I felt the wind knocked beneath me. And I’ll always be stretching my heart open for more Sunday afternoons and moments to dance with my best friend.
Isaiah 55: 8 -11 MSG: “I don’t think the way you think.
The way you work isn’t the way I work.
For as the sky soars high above earth,
so the way I work surpasses the way you work,
and the way I think is beyond the way you think.
Just as rain and snow descend from the skies
and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth,
Doing their work of making things grow and blossom,
producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry,
So will the words that come out of my mouth
not come back empty-handed.
They’ll do the work I sent them to do,
they’ll complete the assignment I gave them."
During that first semester of freshman year, I thought about her as I suffered through a Saturday drill team prep class. As I forced my legs to stretch into an almost split. As I adjusted to a new life outside of middle school, away from all my friends who had split off to different high schools. I thought making the team would live up to all the hype she described. If I made drill team, then I would be set for high school.
On a cold Friday before Christmas break, the drill team directors posted a sign listing the numbers of all the girls who made the team. As my friend and I walked over to read the list, my heart pounded inside my body. I had spent the whole Friday obsessing over the list with a twisted feeling in my stomach that made it hard to eat. The friend and I had become very close that semester. Not only did we suffer through prepping for drill team try-outs together, but we belted out notes in our 4th period choir class. She quizzed me before our Biology tests because she was way smarter in our science and Math classes. I helped her with our English homework because reading and writing were the only subjects that came naturally to me.
When we got to the board, we quickly realized our numbers weren’t there. My eyes searched and searched for mine. But I kept coming up short. I looked over at my friend. Her eyes reflected that same look of dread. She stared at me. And I knew it. I didn’t make it. We both didn’t make it. We both weren’t chosen. We walked back to the parking lot where our parents were waiting in seperate cars. I didn’t cry until I made it to my parents. The tears fell so fast that my eyes ached. However, I was hungry again. And I wanted a pizza, stat.
That same night we were supposed to go to a friend’s birthday party to watch a movie. I didn’t want to go. I almost had my parents drive me back home to Katy, so I could cry in my bedroom and eat pizza in private. Instead, my parents drove me and my friend who didn’t make the team to the movie theater. I had popcorn and we watched Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, and Jack Black all fall in love during The Holiday. At the start of the movie, Kate Winslet is bawling her eyes out because the man she thinks she wants to marry is actually in love and engaged to another woman. As I watched her sob pathetically inside her quaint cottage, I felt my whole body exhale for the first time that day.
Since that cold Friday, life has handed me much harder cards than not making drill team. There’s been break-ups, loss of loved ones, unemployment, sick relatives, a pandemic. Each year, new challenges make not making the drill team look like a walk in the park. But looking back at that moment of not seeing my number on the board, I realize it’s one of the first moments that made me ask the question:
What good can come from this?
When I moved back to Houston after grad school, it took me six months to land my first big girl reporting job. During those months, I was processing the end of a relationship and the dream of what I thought my life would be after grad school. I certainly didn’t think it would include me delivering food for others all across Houston. I didn’t think it would look like freelancing or becoming an intern. I also didn’t think I would be back in my hometown. I was determined to get out of Houston.
During those listless months, I spent a lot of time with that same friend who I didn’t make drill team with all those years before. Turns out, my friend wasn’t just good at prepping me for Biology quizzes and singing alongside me in choir, but instead God knew that I would need her for much more. She became my closest friend in high school and is still one of my best friends almost 15 years later. We both signed up for a dance class that spring, where we laughed and moved our bodies to music every weekend. When I looked at her dancing freely across the room, I flashed back to that moment in the high school parking lot. We weren’t those same girls. And we never would be again.
I still watch The Holiday every Christmas. I still feel my body exhale when the opening credits start to role. I can still relate to Kate Winslet sobbing pathetically at home. When Cameron Diaz cries for the first time since she was a teenager at the end of the movie, I still wipe away tears from my eyes. I didn’t know that I would find one of my favorite movies on one of my worst days of high school. I didn’t know that I would meet one of my best friends. I didn’t know that those listless months delivering food in Houston, would actually lead me to rediscovering my hometown and falling in love with it again and wanting to stay.
There’s a verse in Isaiah that says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways.”
I’m very good at putting God in a nice, tidy little box and telling Him, “This is the way I think it should go.” I can also stomp my foot like a toddler and pout as if I’m not 31. However, God comes right back every time and blows my expectations out of the water. He closes doors that are not meant for me. He opens doors wides and tells me to run through them like a little kid on a Sunday afternoon. He gently reminds me to wait and not rush something before it’s my time.
There are many days that don’t feel like a Sunday afternoon or dancing next to your best friend. However, with each year, I see the story that God has been weaving all along. The bad moments are etched into the story, but there’s also something much bigger he’s weaving too. Everything may not get tied up in a nice little tidy box. There may be some explosive messes. When there is bad, I know there will be someone God has sent for me to lean on. There wil be a strength handed over from God that’s bigger than me, that could only come from somebody greater. When there is good, I’ll cherish it all the more because of the days where I felt the wind knocked beneath me. And I’ll always be stretching my heart open for more Sunday afternoons and moments to dance with my best friend.
Isaiah 55: 8 -11 MSG: “I don’t think the way you think.
The way you work isn’t the way I work.
For as the sky soars high above earth,
so the way I work surpasses the way you work,
and the way I think is beyond the way you think.
Just as rain and snow descend from the skies
and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth,
Doing their work of making things grow and blossom,
producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry,
So will the words that come out of my mouth
not come back empty-handed.
They’ll do the work I sent them to do,
they’ll complete the assignment I gave them."
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