essence of grandfatherlynessosity

There are tears on my cheeks, and approximately 47% of them are sad tears. The other 53%, I think, are ones of happiness:

I don't want to get into any sticky details at the moment... or ever, really... But this week my hillarious, frugal, spry, Godly, altruistic, 100% Dutch grandpa VerPloeg is going through a messy divorce from a woman who isn't my biological grandmother. My mother, her twin sister and their brother are all major worriers, and so our home for the past five days has been drowning in VerPloegian agitation. It's suffocating me.

But my grandpa walked into the kitchen, where I was hiding, to get away from his fretting children. I patted him on the back and said, "I bet that by now you're really tired of hearing people talk about you..."
"Oh, Gracie, you don't know the half of it."
I gave him a hug.
"Gracie," (he's the only one allowed to call me that besides my nieces, Dallas Bee and Earl Taylor) "I'm not gonna be up and running much longer... But before I go, I think I'd like to see you get married to a nice fella."
"Got anyone in mind? You'll have to find someone for me."
"I'd love to."
"Let me know when he's passed your tests, alright?"
"Sure."
We turn to go our separate ways.
"Oh, and Gracie?"
"Yeah Grandpa?"
"He's gonna have to be Dutch."
"... I think I can live with that."

The classiest wrestler I've ever met.

In light of the state tournament, I suppose it's probably time to share this two-part story.
Part One: A year ago
It was February, and I was at the 2010 CIML wrestling tournament. (I'm a manager) We were waiting for the finals match ahead of us to end; it was really intense, between Dowling and Urbandale, with the score tied up and parents from their respective teams yelling at each other. Chaos. It went into overtime and, after a few somewhat controversial calls from the ref and quuite an impressive battle, the Dowling wrestler won. I was sitting in front of his section; they went wild. After talking to his coaches, the victor came over near the stands (right beside me) to put his sweatpants back on and such-- he was pretty happy and everyone was shouting their congratulations. But my eye was on the guy who had lost; the wrestler from Urbandale was walking towards his opponent. And me. My first thought came purely in the interest of self-preservation: Do I need to get out of the way?
I wasn't trying to be dramatic.. I promise I'm not like the countless cheerleaders who scatter from the edge of the mat when wrestlers get anywhere near them... But I've been kicked by someone who just lost a match. I've had headgear thrown at me, been shoved out of the way, had chairs knocked into me. I'm not trying to receive any sympathy, I'm merely proving that a lot of guys have strong reactions to defeat. Some guys aren't just disappointed in themselves. Some guys make scenes. Some cry. Some have blind, and occasionally violent, rage. And at that moment, a potentially furious 215 pounds of almost entirely muscle was walking in my direction. I'm not gonna lie; I was scurrrred.
But his facial expression wasn't murderous. It wasn't angry or bitter... It wasn't even sad. My poker-face-reading skills failed me: I had no idea what this kid was thinking or planning to do. So, remaining cautious but mildly curious, I stayed where I was. And I sat there, listening timidly, as the wrestler from Urbandale walked up to the guy who had just narrowly beaten him, gave him a hand shake and said something to the effect of, "Hey, man. That was a really great match. You wrestled well-- Nice job."

 ...Bwhhaaatt?

Never. NEVER. In seven years of managing, and a significant portion of my childhood sitting around at wrestling duals and tournaments, never had I witnessed anything even remotely comparable to this interaction. I mean, really. Who does that? I don't even want to look at a team who has beaten us in soccer. And I'm a girl; I don't even care that much. And soccer isn't at all an individualistic sport. I couldn't comprehend what I had just witnessed. It took me a while to find the word for it: classy. I later learned, though, that that wasn't the right word at all... That's where part two comes in.

Part Two: A year later (for those of you who are bad at math.... That's this year.)
Since it happened, I think I had told that story a few times, allowing others to share in my surprise. Which they did. My dad told me I should tell the guy from Urbandale, but I couldn't think of anything that would be more awkward... (By the way, I saw his actual name in the tournament brackets, but let's just refer to him as various forms of 'Urbandale Wrestler' or 'Mr.Classy') 
So there I was, once again, at the CIML. I had been under the impression that Mr.C had graduated, but I saw him wrestling again, which threw me off as I tried awkwardly to avoid him at all costs... While hearing my dad's voice in the back of my mind, saying, "As a Christian, wouldn't that be the type of thing you'd want people to notice about you?"
A little while into the tournament, I was standing by a mat, scoring two separate matches and taping a third, when McClassy walked off another mat after winning a match and stopped right next to me to talk to his coaches. T'was agonizing, only for me of course, because I take my dad's crazy advice into such high consideration that it tends to cause me physical pain. There were two major things I didn't want to accomplish.
1. Unnecessarily fabricating the week's most awkward moment out of thin air, and
2. Sounding creepy, and somehow giving the false impression that I was at all interested in this person....
So awkward. So, so awkward. But the matches I was responsible for drew to a close, as all matches must, and I was forced to the realization that my dear father was right. So, tossing any sort of dignity into the wind and embracing my blindly encouraging self, I turned to Wrestler-From-Urbandale, whose coaches had wandered off, (I can only assume that other wrestlers were in need of coaching of some sort) and I proceeded to tell him the story as I told it in Part One. Perhaps with slightly less eloquence, but I feel I was quite articulate. I acknowledged, with humor, the potential awkwardness and explained my reasons for sharing what I had witnessed: We always pay attention to the wrestler who screams at the reff and runs out of the gym crying, and it's like fueling a toddler's tantrums. In doing that, we make it okay, even expected, for athletes to behave like that. Nobody (supposedly) sees when those that lose are gracious and humble; if it's not a loud, dramatic display of angsty teenage emotions, it seems that no one cares. I wanted to tell him that I noticed, because I think that kind of behavior is what deserves to be recognized. If we pay attention to the people who show humility and respect in defeat, couldn't that become the standard we hold high school athletes to? How much better would the entire institution be if that were the case?
As I pretty much expected, Mr.Wrestler received all this with gratitude and humility. We had a surprisingly comfortable conversation when I was done explaining myself. He remembered which match I was talking about and was surprised, making a comment that a year is a long time to remember something like that, and I responded that it had just kind of made an impression on me. He thanked me numerous times, but when he explained why he did it-- that was the thing that caught me. 'That kid from Dowling,' he said, 'he's my brother.' I gave him sort of a questioning look and he explained, 'Well, no, not actually-- He's my brother in Christ.'
The only thing I was capable of saying at that moment was, 'That's awesome.'
I realized then, that it wasn't my tactful humor or diction that was preventing awkwardness from entering this conversation. It was pure, choreographed edification; straight from our savior, giving me goosebumps. Scripture was flying through my mind. "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another," and "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen," and "Do all things without grumbling or questioning so that you may be blameless and pure children of God, without fault in a crooked and twisted generation in which you shine like stars in the universe."

So no, not classy. I mean, yes, I maintain that it was very classy behavior. But that doesn't cover the magnitude of it. That, my friends, is shining like a star in the broken and depraved universe that is our generation. Well done, Mr.Urbandale. Your actions reflected Jesus. Thank you.

Sometimes I feel like the guy from Fiddler on the Roof...

What in the world could I mean?

Remember that dad from Fiddler on the Roof? Tevye, that Jewish man with five daughters who all get married in rapid succession to men he doesn't really know or approve of. Yeah... I'm him. But don't take the metaphor too far. Not jewish, certainly not a father of five... Also, not really many marriages, and this is important, the disapproval thing doesn't apply to me either. So in all honesty it's a pretty crappy allusion on my part. Shut up.

I have four older brothers. Brother no.1 met his wife in high school, when I was 5. I don't remember not knowing her-- she's always been around and is definitely like a sister to me. They got married in 2004 and have had two daughters since then (and there's another one on the way.) Brother no.3 brought a girl home to meet us roughly three years ago and she's been hanging around ever since. They go pretty nicely together if you ask me. Which you should, cause I'm the sister. Then there was a drought of new non-Stephenson girls in our lives... My mom started fretting about when her remaining sons were going to find nice girlfriends. She tried match-making-- that didn't work out too well. But then, this year, within a span of a few months, Brother no.2 and 4 both have special lady friends.... Also, in both cases, I'm pretty sure I was inadvertently the first person to know about them.

It's odd watching your older siblings grow up and press onward into their adults lives, only to realize that, most likely, you're headed in the same general direction. I'm not announcing that I'm dating anyone, not even close.. hah.. But the general shape of our lives is shifting in a significant way. It changed when Andrew got married, and  took a much bigger turn when he had kids. We went into baby mode. All the old toys came back out and our home was filled with barbies and princess clothes and all things pink. It was a shock to the system, but we had a clear, new, (usually)predictable direction in which to run. Now, I'm not really sure where we're going.

Being an adult seems so much foggier. You decide everything for yourself, except all the things you can't control... which tend to be vast. The future is so much more unsure when your every move isn't dictated by the fact that you're a student, a child, a sibling, too young to make big decisions or do anything on your own. In reflection, being a kid seems easier because you are constantly told your place. Sure, you fight it, but ultimately you know what you are and aren't supposed to do. They do that to you for almost 18 years--- teach you your place. And then suddenly you realize that the thing you've been fighting for is here; independence. You're an adult and you get to make your own decisions. But the catch is that the past 18 years haven't been preparing you for that...  Not really, not in it's entirety. I mean, my parents and family and people in my church and my teachers have taught me life skills that will definitely be valuable when I graduate to real-life-hood, there is no question about that. I've been tested by increasingly frequent glimpses of adult-sized issues and challenges and I'm being molded by my creator-- I'm sure he's preparing me for whatever is out there... But my new role hasn't been clearly defined by 18 years of practice, and I'm not quite sure I feel ready for it.

What's my place in this shifting reality? I'm scared about my future, about the future of my brothers. It's hard to let God control my life when it's still me making the decisions and I don't know what direction He want's me to go. What's my new role when our lives make cataclysmic jumps into the unknown? When Andrew introduced us to Amy, I'm pretty sure I broke a twig off a tree and started hitting her with it. (Or so the story goes....It's possible that Amy has changed that story over time... But maybe not.) That was my reaction to a new girl in our family. Apparently, I didn't care for it. I didn't have quite as abrasive a reaction to Kristin when Matt introduced us... I don't actually remember-- I'm sure I wasn't at all barbaric. But I don't know, now I'm starting to feel deep down that everything is changing. We aren't kids anymore, and that seems quite obvious, but it has taken me a while to fully grasp that idea. We have responsibilities and challenges and full-scale problems. We don't wake up on Saturday mornings and dump out all the Legos and stay there till mom makes us get up and do our chores. There are more girls in our family than boys. I had never even thought that was plausible.. It was a 5:2 ratio all my life, and now with May baby coming, the girls will have a one-up on the boys. I could potentially have four sisters later in my life. FOUR. Actually, I could have more than that. What if I just marry some guy with like 5 sisters? That's 9.Utterly inconceivable. I don't know how to have sisters, at least not in the way other people do. Amy and I kept tried to have a girl movie night, and we first ended up getting the Kite Runner. The next time, we got Beautiful Mind. And then I'm pretty sure we watched The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. All really, really good movies. Chick flicks? Absolutely not. I'm not saying all sisters must love girly movies, I'm just saying that some do. And if my potential sisters do... I will have to somehow accommodate that. What if I get a 'sister' whose sense of humor is cryptic to me? Or can't carry on a conversation with the Stephenson mob? We're a tough bunch to keep up with, or so I've been told.

I'm not sure anymore what I'm getting at, other than the fact that life is scary. I don't think anyone could deny that.. It's hard to know what direction to take. It's hard to know who you're supposed to be or what you're supposed to do, especially when stuff doesn't play out the way you thought it might. I think that's true in the Fiddler on the Roof, too. His life took drastic shifts in unexpected ways and he didn't know how to respond. It's tough when you are plunged into a new chapter of life and forgot the instruction manual, ya know? Tough choices come and we don't know which way we're supposed to turn. Thank goodness I'm not in charge of writing my own story..

Have you heard the song Faust, Midas and Myself? No? Some lyrics just popped into my head.

You got one life, one life

One life left to lead 

What direction? Death or action?
Life begins at the intersection

a class journal

We sometimes take a few minutes at the beginning of class to write in response to a prompt.. When I wrote this I was sort of directing it to my teacher who I've gotten to know pretty well throughout high school. He's a christian and one of the few teachers whose opinion has really mattered to me.

Prompt: A time that you felt invisible

>>> I, for whatever reason, can't get a quote from Zmolek's sociology class out of my head. "I am not who I think I am; I am who I think YOU think I am." Convoluted, no? Here's what I'm getting out of that: I perceive others to view me as a really outgoing, confident person. That being said, shouldn't the general consensus be, "How could I ever feel invisible?" You and I talked about this yesterday, about what people think of me when they first meet me. I'm sarcastic and loud. I am, but that's not me, at least not in my entirety. Parts of me sit quietly and play gently with small children, did you know that? Parts of me go on walks late at night with my dad and talk about the nature of the universe; parts of me read analytical essays on T.S. Eliot until the sun comes back around. Parts of me play my guitar for hours, alone, until my fingers bleed; nothing but worship songs, singing my heart out. And that part goes hand in hand with the part of me that's scared to death to let anyone listen to me, or let anyone see a painting I've done, or read anything I've written...

And I think those pieces of my soul feel invisible more often than not. My dad said he never wanted to teach me to not talk to strangers, because he didn't want to give my subconscious any reason to go against natural instinct. That always seemed jumbled and filled with meaningless rhetoric. What he meant is this: he didn't want to give me anything to hide behind, I think because he saw potential in me to open up those vulnerable bits of my soul to people I hardly knew. Sometimes that's the way it is; sometimes I meet someone new and those parts, the giftedness and empathy and intellect God has given me, they are right out in the open. And it's a natural, beautiful thing. I feel most alive when I've sharing myself with others without forcing it, I think. Someone once told me that I was a breath of fresh air. They told me that and I cried. They said I was Audrey Hepburn coming home from France in the movie Sabrina. I love that movie. I wish I was Audrey Hepburn. But I'm not; I'm me. And a lot of the time, I don't even know what that means. 'Me', by it's variable definitions, isn't the person you know. I feel like the pieces about me that I actually like have been bogged down by all the shit that high school entails. Or maybe it isn't just the past four years, maybe it's my entire public school career. Or broader than that. 18 years of a little girl's enthusiastic creativity being repressed by culture. Or the wear and tear of life. Or Satan. Or a combination of everything..

I fully recognize that I sound like an angsty teenager right now, but that's only because I am one. Or maybe I'm not, I don't really know. All I know is that beneath this initial cloak of terror at the thought of other people seeing those vulnerable bits of me, there was a little girl who wandered away from her dad at Saylorville lake when she was four years old. He found her an hour later, surrounded by an entire college football team on the beach. They were all listening quietly, captivated by the story about a princess, a magical umbrella and a lonely elephant named Albert that she was making up as she went along. That girl played make-believe with the kids her age and made sure that everyone had an important role to play, always making herself the slave or orphan. She could learn new instruments with astonishing ease and adored performing for anyone who would listen, though she deeply resented the idea that one must take lessons from a teacher if one is to learn to play anything well. She thought she was a sufficient enough teacher on her own.. She sang shamelessly, painting pictures to give away as presents and loved, more than anything, to sit in her brothers' rooms at bedtime, listening to their dad read the Chronicles of Narnia or the Lord of the Rings.

I am drowning in an ocean of nostalgia and tears. There's a song by some girl, I think it's called 2 A.M., and I'm pretty sure it was her only claim to (mild) fame, but there's a line in that song that's like, 2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song. If I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to. And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd, cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud, and I know that you'll use them however you want to. I don't know if you're collecting this journal entry, I don't know if you're ever going to read this, and I don't think it would make a difference. Putting this into words was for me. I mean, I'm writing to you, but I don't think the value comes from me just gushing out this personal stuff. Vulnerability doesn't counteract invisibility, it just makes those hidden parts more prone to injury. It's okay, though, cause it's a personal journey, me and my tattered heart and God. And maybe it's good for me to share it with another christian. He's going to have to break me eventually if He ever wants to use me; I'm completely useless as long as I'm hiding His treasures, this precious stewardship he's entrusted me with. I'm a selfish, cowardly sinner. It makes me sick sometimes, really anytime I think about it. I don't want to let the better pieces of me hide anymore. Hold me to that, will you? Make me read a poem in front of the whole school or something.

But don't actually, I'd kill you.<<<

no-facebook-february

is that even a real thing? I guess it is now...

This month I am abstaining from said website. Someone asked me if I had had a friend change my password for me, or if I blocked facebook from my computer or deactivated my account... I had to laugh.

Apparently, there is no presupposition of self-discipline applied to our generation.

Bummer.

On a different note, I made the assumption that February will have more blog posts as a result of not sharing little blurbs about what I'm thinking on facebook. (Sorry Melissa Brockway, you'll have to find another source of entertainment for the month. OR you can subscribe to my lame blog!)

My one sadness about no-facebooking is that I won't be able do so an absurdly long countdown to my trip to France. No worries, this will suffice. I haven't done anything on here for a while. There have been quite a few things I've wanted to write about, a handful of ideas and strange thoughts I've wanted to expand on and haven't had the time. Maybe I'll find the time this month? If you want to make any sense of the list below, hold me accountable to posting regularly:

1. My name is inappropriate on several levels.

2. Why can't the world just function like four-year-olds?

3. The classiest wrestler I've ever met.

4. Sometimes I feel like I'm the guy from fiddler on the roof...

5. There is a needy beast living in my chest.

I enjoy that by looking at these post titles, you would have no idea just how substantial the concept behind each of them is.

So... This was a nice, let's do it again sometime? Have a nice February,  everybody.