breathe

It's been a long time... too long. Today is the first day in the last 6 weeks (no joke!) that I have felt like I can safely breathe again. I don't have a recital to worry about, nor do I have massive amounts of research to complete to show off my abilities as an academic who can wave her magic wand and pull beautiful and thought-provoking historical analyses out of mid-air. Done and done. I am officially graduated. I am officially a Mizzou alum. Man that feels good to write. And somehow by the grace of God, I managed to do it all with flying colors. A quick check of grades online reveals straight A's... solid A's too, meaning I graduated with a 3.84 GPA... magna cum laude. And not only that, I managed to somehow be invited to join the nation's oldest and most prestigious honors fraternity as well, Phi Beta Kappa. I could just cry right now... yes I worked hard. But I was also extremely blessed in my efforts. Thank God.

This morning, I slept in, got up, and had quiet time with the Lord for the first time in months... kind of sick that I had neglected that for so long. Kind of sick that I had started relying on Sunday mornings and counseling sessions as my time to hear from God. This summer will be a time of renewal... I'm promising that to myself. I can't tell you how THANKFUL I am for my dad's foresight and wisdom: "Katie, if you're going to graduate school, I don't want you doing anything this summer." He was so right. I need this. I need to breathe. I need to take care of myself for a couple of months. Today I walked down the street and saw beauty again and I very nearly had a minor breakdown right there in public. You don't realize how hard you're running until you stop...

And of course amidst all the craziness, a boy came waltzing into my life. It is the strangest thing. It actually kind of pissed me off at first... like, who does this guy think he is?? I'm Katie Smith, for crying out loud! I was finally at a point where I was completely happy and fulfilled in my singleness. So processing this whole thing has been a challenge. But he's really sweet and willing to take things as slowly as I need to and quite honestly, I like him a little too much to not head towards something positive. I guess you could say he hasn't done anything to earn himself the boot yet ;) In reality, I totally see this as God's way of giving me an attitude adjustment to keep me from being completely self-absorbed in my own goals and thinking. And there are days when it really makes me squirm and rebel within my own selfish heart, since I really was quite wonderful and ok on my own finally. But Matt is really patient and affirming and extremely cognizant of where I'm at. I'll say one thing for him: the man knows how to tame the mare to some extent. And the entire situation is working to my advantage. That is to say, I have the whole summer to decide whether this will go somewhere long-term or not after I move to St. Louis. So we'll see where it goes... life is so strange sometimes.

Anyway now that I'm breathing again, I hope to post more often as part of my summer therapy in taking refuge from academia. Stay tuned...