I found a water bottle today in the kitchen cabinets, in on my floor. It was the cabinet above the sink, which is almost completely empty except for a few lone cups that have cracks and such, or are ugly beyond what a girl, who is a eating an Easter pancake dinner with her beloved 10west, could possibly stand. I noticed the cup when I was washing a cookie pan. I had, in a moment of love, and a lapse of good judgment, promised a girl (a snarky girl named Deryn who challenges me) on my floor I would bake her cookies. Whenever I bake it is chaotic. I searched almost every room on my floor for the random ingredients I needed in order to craft one of the most basic cookies known to America: the chocolate chip cookie. After forgetting the measurements and attempting numerous times to call various family members in order to obtain recipe specifics, I gave up (like a good soldier) and just guessed. I guessed wrong. On the baking soda, I think I put too little, I think… or perhaps the mistake came when I got distracted talking with an intelligent girl named Sarah about her upcoming summer internship and forgot to add the last of the flour mixture to the wet mixture (and then kicked it over and had to vacuum it up), either way, the cookies look like gumdrops and are currently sitting in the kitchen, behind the door, and out of sight; a failure I am hoping will disappear if I choose to ignore their existence. Back track to the water bottle. It was there and it was alone. And it was pink. It was obviously home by the mere fact that it was on Houghton 10, but it was not with its rightful owner it was in a strange place, yet, it was still at home. I took it, rinsed it (rule #1 when you take a dish from a community kitchen), filled it up with water, and now it is sitting next to me as I write.
Application to the ramblings? I feel like the water bottle. I have a habit of giving inanimate objects names and feelings, and although I did not name the water bottle, I felt an emotion come up within me, one that I felt the water bottle would be feeling had it had the ability: lost, yet at home. That’s how I feel. Lost, yet at home. Waiting, wating for the next event to come and bring me into a new phase of life. Perfectly content to be in the one I am in now, but waiting, with a lost sort of feeling, even though I always feel at home. I think about plans that have fell through and changed and morphed and squished into what only God wanted, not what I felt should happen. This semester has been a waiting semester. Tonight I wait until tomorrow; tomorrow I wait for an email that could change the course of my spiritual, emotional, social, physical, etc. (all the “al”s ) life. But, it IS Easter, and I am no longer waiting for the spiritual heaviness that has been on my soul since Friday night’s church service. He is risen, He is risen indeed. I think about how my life is one that is a bit lost and in transition; but there is a place where I know I will never feel lost, or broken, or alone. And God’s arms are always open. This phase of life, when it comes, will be a good one. But for now, I am a pink water bottle, sitting in a community kitchen cabinet, lost, yet at home.
