Looking Forward to 8/21/12

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not sure if I wrote this yet, but my travel date to Morocco has been tentatively set for August 21st. It's funny how, once there was a concrete date for my departure, the whole thing finally became real. I began work at 7am today, and survived only by slurping dangerous amounts of coffee through a straw each hour. I swear, Bozeman Lodge runs on Seattle's Best. In one day, I would guess the staff and residents drink about 10 gallons of coffee, if not more. By the time the lunch rush has ended, I'm shaking just a little bit, and reaching for the coffee pot just one more time. Now that I have a day set for travel, I am in the midst of the big game hunt for the cheapest airline. It's not going so well. I'm not willing to spend more than $1,500 on airfare, but as I scramble to earn enough money for the ticket, prices are slowly climbing, as they usually will when you least want them to. It is so difficult to trust that God will give me what I need, even though he's never failed me before. For me, if I'm not holding it in my hand right this very second, and can't calculate a reasonable way to get it by myself, I decide that it is impossible, and that I might as well just panic and die, since there is no hope. It's silly though, because I can never in all my life remember a time when I trusted God for what I needed and was left without it. I just need to let earth be earth and let heaven be heaven. Money is nothing. It will be alright. Please pray for me, and pray that I would continue to be blessed with what I need for this big adventure. I just wanted to let you all know when I will be taking off, so it doesn't come as a massive surprise later in the summer. I know this was pretty short and not super interesting, but thanks for reading!    -mads

Missing A Place

When you are forced to be far away from a place that your heart has claimed, you experience the purest form of "missing." When you must leave that place, your heart becomes so distraught that it breaks, and a piece of it falls down on the place that you fell in love with. Whether you visited that place for half your life of half a day, it doesn't matter, a piece of you is there, and the deal is done. When you try to tell people about that place and your overflowing love for it, they might not understand. They might tell you not to be dramatic, not to miss it anymore, not to feel like you belong anywhere other than the place society carved out for you. As time passes, your enthusiasm to go back to that place turns into a restless longing, like staring out at the ocean and straining your eyes for the opposite shore. You know it's there; Somewhere it is waiting. But you don't ever stop missing it, and the longing is still burning white-hot inside you, and no one can see it or feel the pain of it. These are my thoughts of Ethiopia. My dear, dear, Ethiopia. Two weeks is not a long time to get to know place. It was more like a long handshake with that place, and the invitation to come back and become friends another time. Yet, though it was a short time that passed far too quickly, it was enough. That two weeks was just the amount of time my heart needed to make itself at home in Ethiopia, and make a request permanent residence. When I was forced to deny this request, and go back to the United States, I could feel the pain as my heart bent and warped and cried out for the place I was leaving. I could feel it until it was too much, and then my heart blew up and smashed and fractured and splashed and bled out across every place I had seen and every hand I had held and every face I had looked into. The deal was done. I missed it before I was gone. It was only two weeks, but not a day goes by that I don't miss it. In the next few years I hope to go back, and let God spill even more of my heart out over that country. Until then, I pray every night that God will bring me back and use my life in a beautiful and selfless way. I know he hears me, because he whispers "be patient." And so for now, I practice patience, hope, and love, pursuing every experience God entrusts to this restless soul.

Something In The Air

Today, I am not at school. I was so exhausted mentally and physically after a non-stop week that I decided to rest. My departure for Morocco seems like it is years away, but really, four months is not a long time. I have two jobs, three if you count a weekly lawn-mowing for the neighbor, and the pickle jar on my dresser is slowly accumulating wealth. I can't believe how everything regarding this trip has fallen into place. Two weeks ago I was practically crippled with anxiety over how in the world I would earn a couple thousand dollars before August. Finally, the stress was so overwhelming that I did what I should have done initially: I gave up. This is not my plan, I thought, I cannot continue to pretend I am in charge. I let God take over, and the very next day, I was hired at Bozeman Lodge. As my favorite season in Bozeman approaches, I realize how much I will miss this place. Bozeman really is an incredible place, and I was never leaving because I didn't like it. In fact, I love it here. Something about the way the summer days last and last, or the way that anything seems possible on a bright, sunny day. There's something about the air, too, that I may miss most of all once I've left. The air in Montana is special. It's cleaner and brighter than the air anywhere else I've been. A visiting aunt from New York once joked to me that the air was so clean she couldn't breath. If you are observant, you will notice that the air is different wherever you go. In upstate New York, the air is wet, full, and almost always smells like rain and plants. The air in Minnesota is heavy, lazy, a bit dirty, and smells like cars, lakes, and suburbs. The air in my dear Ethiopia is smoky, mysterious, and the smells of foreign food, city smog, and thousands of people mingle together in a most enchanting way. But Bozeman is different. The air is purely translucent, crisp, combed through by mountains and trees and pooled into valleys. Maybe none of you feel this way, and maybe you think I'm silly for being so sentimental, and to you, air is just air. And that's alright, I am silly and sentimental, but when I go outside and take a deep breath, it's okay to be sentimental about air, because I think that if you can be sentimental about something as simple as air, there is no doubt that you will have life full of happy memories.     -mads

Worth It

My feet hurt so badly that I almost cannot walk. My fingers have blisters, and my eyes have dark crescents underneath them. I started my new job today at 7:45am, after having stayed up until one last night. I have plantar fasciitis in my feet, which, if you don't know what that is, is very similar to tendonitis, only on the bottoms of your feet. It's pretty annoying most of the time, but when I have to stand for long periods of time, it gets downright miserable to deal with. So, since my new job had me on my feet from 7:45am until 3pm, I'm not feeling too chipper. However, I'm so thankful to have a job, and as far as first days go, it went very well. When I got home, I changed out of my work clothes and into dirty jeans and a baggy T-shirt, and left to go mow my neighbors lawn with an old school push-mower that we found in a ditch several years ago. my neighbor hadn't mowed her lawn yet this year, and in places the grass was close to a foot tall. But I did it. I probably looked like and idiot, leaning my entire body weight into the mower just to make a foot of headway, but I live in a mobile home park, I'm not the only idiot out there. My fingers are a little blistered, and there will be no more walking or standing tonight, and that's okay, because it's almost time for bed. It's not very pleasant now, but I like earning what I want, and it will all be worth it when I'm handing my passport over to some lady with long acrylic nails on the other side of the airport counter, on my way to Africa. I love my life right now. Maybe I say that a lot, but I don't think that's a bad thing.     -mads

This Big, Funny, Weird Life

Hello! I have good news, and that good news is that I have two jobs! I got one job, working as a chiropractic assistant at Advanced Spine and Wellness, the chiropractic office run by my parents, and while I was thrilled to get this job, I knew that I would not earn enough money for next years adventure with only one job. I applied for what seemed like hundreds of places, but never got a reply. I became so discouraged, and when I thought of money, I would start to worry to the extent of hyperventilating. I prayed about it, and remembered that worrying gets me no further than I would be anyway, and decided to let it all fall into place the way it was supposed to. Friends, God is good. I got a call last night, letting me know that I had landed a near-perfect job in the dining room of Bozeman Lodge retirement home. I will be waking up at 6am every Saturday and Sunday, and my entire summer will be spent waiting on the elderly, mowing trailer-park lawns, and cleaning a chiropractic office, but hey, Africa is waiting. I used the calculator on my cheap cell phone to estimate how much money I would earn, and if it would be enough. Not only will it be enough, it will be more than twice enough. This surplus of funds is an enormous blessing, because Morocco isn't the only plan that I have in my future. In other news, I am going to the prom. My dear friend Will didn't feel that I should miss the high school glory that is prom, and so we are going; suit, gown, and everything. Except one thing: we, both being fashion forward, are wearing Birkenstocks to prom. I cannot attend after-prom because the next day I start work at 8am. There is really no way to label my life right now; I am a pre-high school dropout, wondering how I will do my hair for prom, when I can schedule in my GED test, and working two jobs to buy a plane ticket to the other side of the world. It's weird, but it's fun, too. I love this big, funny, weird life, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I will let you know all about my prom experience, and about the first day of work at my awesome new job. Keep me in your prayers, I need them! -mads

Best Thoughts Of Spring

Even if you're not wildly observant, you probably noticed that I changed the title of this little blog. I decided it was time for some blog revamping and refreshment. I chose this name first and foremost because I like the meaning of the word sage. According to the dictionary, a sage is a profoundly wise person, someone who is respected for their wealth of knowledge and experience. I know I am not wise, I am far from it and you don't need to remind me, but it's what I want to be, and it's what I strive for. I made it to say "sagebrush," because while the desire to acquire wisdom speaks to where I am going in life, I wanted something in the name to tie me to where I am from. I love the smell of sagebrush so much that when I was younger, and we would go on family hikes to anywhere where it grew, I would pick it by the handful and cram it into my pockets, so that I could still smell it after we went home. To me, it smells like Montana, and I like that very much. I like the new name, and I hope you do too. Anyway, yesterday was my birthday, and it was absolutely grand. My parents gave me a pair of Birkenstocks, and I don't care how ugly you think Birkenstocks might be, they are some darn comfortable shoes. My brother gave me books, which I am absolutely sure I will enjoy. We hiked up a mountain (or a very large hill), cooked a Mediterranean feast, ate far too much, and at the end of a blissful day, I was a whole new age. Fantastic. April has been a month of joy for me. The arrival of spring always makes my heart ecstatic, never mind that it snowed today and will snow many more times before summer. It's springtime, and that means hope, and joy, and the knowledge that in just over a month and a half, I will be done with high school. There are many other things on my mind that are making life joyous, such as the fact that I leave the United States for Morocco in around five months. I've also been thinking about what I want to do with myself after this year, and tentative wisps of possibility and plans are beginning to take shape. However, it's top-secret for awhile. Spring is here, and my enormous adventure is getting slowly closer, and I am finding new friends in unlikely places. I am peaceful, and happy, and now, I'm also seventeen.

Somebady Has To

Who loves Shel Silverstein? I do. He is a incredibly wise soul, and if you've read his volumes of children's poetry, you may agree that there is usually at least one deep thought that can be extracted and put to practical use. A few days ago I was sitting in Junior English, and as happens more often than it should, I was ignoring the project in front of me. The moment I had set foot in the classroom, my eyes glued themselves to A Light In The Attic, one of Silverstein's most well known collections of poetry. I spent the class period perusing his genius that had been stuck to paper, and thoroughly enjoying myself along the way. Many poems held my thoughts for a good many minutes, but one in particular stood out; it's a wonderful little poem that you too can enjoy, because here it is right below this sentence:

Somebody Has To

By Shel Silverstein

Somebody has to go polish the stars,
They're looking a little bit dull.
Somebody has to go polish the stars,
For the eagles and starlings and gulls
Have all been complaining they're tarnished and worn,
They say they want new ones we cannot afford.
So please get your rags
And your polishing jars,
Somebody has to go polish the stars.

How excellent is that poem?! When I read this, I loved it, because to me, it carries a deeper meaning than stars or a kick-butt rhyme scheme. I dislike poetry analyses as much as the next teenager, but in my opinion, this poem is a reminder to work towards a bright life, and illustrated in simple phrases a thought I have been thinking for awhile. Lately, I've noticed a lot of discontent in the people that surround me, and it saddens me. They are unhappy with their current lives, but, for lack of knowledge of motivation or something unknown, they sit in their discontent, hoping that the greatest of times will simply "come along." Forgive me if I'm being too frank, but the greatest of times and adventures and relationships have rarely come to the passive. My personal belief is that if you want a full life, you must be the one to fill it. You must work your tail end off for what makes your heart thrive. I am sharing this because I am trying to live my life this way, and it is hard. I have failures almost daily, and I am weak. But, I know without a doubt that it will be worth it when I can look back at my life and know that I made something beautiful out of these planet days. So, as Silverstein so wisely put it, "Please get your rags and you polishing jars, somebody has to go polish the stars."

-mads