February 2022 was a wild month. And yet was the most ordinary of moments—walking to class, going to work, eating food. February moments – Seek Jessica Navin’s spiritual warfare, passport appointment, watching the Duke game, having lunches with coworkers/bosses, interviews for fellows programs I’ve applied for.
Last year in December, I put together a list of prayer prompts for 2022. Just to focus my prayer life and keep myself accountable to something as the year progressed. Als0, to help me keep track if something has been answered. February was the month of vocation and clarity. (And while in some sense, clarity wasn’t answered in the way I thought it would be, it still showed up).
Related Post: Life Update of January 2022
Noticings of February:
- Feb 1, 2022: a job offer from where I currently work now!
- Potentially my first international trip since 2018
- Worked through being an idiot to my friend Karen
- Change in my thesis project – someone could no longer be interviewed
- Thought a lot about V-Day this year
- And kind of got a 2nd job offer, lowkey
- Got obsessed with Wordle (but who didn’t)
- Went away to Goshen, VA for the last time 🙁
- Realized that timing is key in relationships
- Seeing old friends in the same place :))
- Felt seen during the last worship set at the Goshen retreat
- Set up voicemail, because I’ve been feeling sentimental
- What if the journey is short but the memory is long?
- Busted my water bottle, laptop, and boots within 48 hours – coincidence, I think not
- Got into a fellowship program!!!!
- Struggled with expectations in faith (and kind of life in general) A LOT
- Picked up my cap and gown
- Thanked St. Joseph for friendship with Cata (and no, I’m not Catholic, just confused)
- Had fellowship interviews
- Romans 8 has been popping up all over
Related Post: simple rituals and rhythms | quiet winter series
Okay, so that was a lot of noticings for February.
The notable noticings I’ll just dissect.
Feb 1, 2022 started off with a bang! A job offer. And though, as of writing this post, I’ll probably not accept this job offer (love these people and this work, but circumstances not under my control have led to this decision), I’m grateful. I love the people I work with. They have been so kind to build me up, listen to my questions and ramblings, and have been so willing to work with me through my time in the undergrad years. So to say that I’m grateful is a deep understatement.
Just want to note the international trip. I have no words yet, but boy oh boy, if it happens, the blog will be full of it!
I wrote a lot about V-Day this year and singlehood in my journal, and I’m not sure what’s different about this year. Maybe it’s being 21, maybe it’s the first speck of potential light of the end of COVID (this most likely isn’t true), but I don’t know, I just thought about it a lot and I needed to notice that. Even if I can’t quite make sense of it.
Went on my last retreat which I wrote about HERE and while retreats can be hard for me, I really did like this one, even if I did feel distracted for a good chunk of it.
Timing in relationships. For both friendships and romantic relationships, timing matters. Some people love to chalk everything up to the idea that if it’s the right person, it’ll work out but I think the right person goes along with the right time. And timing for me has been weird. At least friendship wise. I’ve made some of my closest friends later on in college and those friendships are only solidlifying now. Which some people would classify as out of the norm for the college experience. But that’s just putting life in boxes it doesn’t need to be in. Anyway, timing matters, it just doesn’t always matter in the way we think it should.
What if the journey is short and the memory is long? This note I wrote to myself has been on my brain as of late. I think I wrote it down on V-Day (which given my thoughts, makes a lot of sense). But how do we reconcile the reality that our lived moments are so short but our reflections on them can last forever? I’ve traced memories in my mind longer than I’ve lived those same moments. And this doesn’t even account for the way that our brain remembers events differently over time. The way we remember changes our memory. Wild! But a different discussion for another day.
Thoughts on coincidences—I don’t think all of those things breaking was just random. It could have been my pure stupidity, which I am totally willing to concede to, but it was definitely more than just a series of events that just happened to go together. Coincidences are such an interesting concept. It really depends on what you believe is connected.
Struggling with faith. Yeah, I don’t have much to say except faith is a struggle sometimes. And it’s okay to struggle. It’s normal to struggle.
Picking up my cap and gown was underwhelming but I’m glad I did it with friends!
So yeah, this has been a mini-recap of my month.
March’s prayer point is decision making, so we’ll see what ends up happening. SO MUCH happened in February that I felt bad if I didn’t at least attempt to write this post.
To end off this post, I give you my quotes of the month for February:
“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.”
“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”
Both from David Foster Wallace.
Friends, I hope you’re noticing the life you’re living. Take note and stay healthy!
Signing off,
Gigi
