Landshark

April 2, 2014 Kelly Ruby Leave a comment

Growing up I had an overwhelmingly vivid and overactive imagination, the only time that this became a problem was when I was going to bed…or to a lake…or to the ocean.

We’ll get to the lakes and ocean later, but when it came to bed time, there were a few bedtime rituals that had to be adhered to.

1.) Closet doors completely shut…no cracks allowed.

2.) Everything cleared out from under my bed and a 5 foot radius around my bed.

3.) Night prayers…I couldn’t go to sleep until my mom or dad had come in to hear my night prayers.

The reason for all of these rules, was fairly simple. Monsters. I don’t really know what they were supposed to look like, but I knew that they were up to no good, and they all but relished the thought of my paralyzing fear. I’m not entirely sure where they were coming from, but I also knew that they could get in through the closet, but they couldn’t enter the sanctity of my room if the doors were shut, they just had to stay in the closet all night. (Which now that I think about it, isn’t such a bad deal…I had all sorts of awesome in my closet, those monsters probably had a blast spending every night playing with my Disney Farm, and be-headed Barbies).

The bed thing was different…I just didn’t like the idea of having anything around my bed, that I could step on in the middle of the night…and when I did wake up in the middle of the night I would stand on the end of my bed and then jump as far away from the bed as possible, you know just in case one of those closet monsters was sneakier than I knew. Finally the prayers were just a comfort to know that my parents were there for me, and would be all night, and so would Jesus.

Now when it comes to bodies of water I was afraid of all sorts of things, but especially sharks. I mean seriously have you seen some of the marine life that exists? Terrifying. It didn’t help that my brothers thought it was funny to pull me under the water when we were swimming, or to yell “Shark!” just as I was jumping in. Fear of sharks is fairly rational, they’re scary. What’s irrational about this was I was afraid of sharks in all bodies of water…yes even swimming pools.

My brother use to tell me that when he would yell, “shark!” I would immediately try to get out of the water, and I hadn’t even touched it yet, apparently it was the most cartoonish I’ve ever looked.

Thankfully I’ve outgrown the closet thing, and the bed thing (under the bed is important storage space, especially in a college dorm room). I still have a fear of large bodies of water, I still freak out when someone swims up underneath me and pulls me under, which some of my former summer camp co-workers can attest to first hand. (I am not sorry for the bruised faces and bloody noses).

Talking with my roommate about these childhood fears, I had a realization, how did I ever become afraid of monsters in the closet? It’s not like my parents put me to bed as a child and told me to not open the closet or the monsters would suck me back into their circle of hell. So how is it that seemingly all children have some innate fear of the dark, and the monsters that lurk in the shadows? Is it human nature to fear darkness and the things that can hide there? Is this fear something that is ingrained into our DNA? Can we escape it?

We seem to spend a lot of time fearing things that are inevitable, such as change, we cannot stop change from happening. Sorry team. It’s not possible. But the things we fear as children, like monsters and the dark, we tend to outgrow. Or maybe a better way to say it, is that our fears evolve to suit our maturity.

Fear is a natural part of life. We should have a healthy fear of certain things. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is Fear of the Lord, but not so much in a way that we may fear a spider, or for drastic measure, a serial killer, but more so to be in awe of God’s power. Because the things He can do, should illicit a reaction that is nothing short of jaw-dropping-loss-of-speech awe, and naturally that should also scare us a bit, simply because we cannot begin to wrap our heads around all of His power and mystery. And that is a beautiful thing.

Scripture is filled with different verses about darkness, and Christ being the light of the world (for example check our John 9:5), and most prominently the words “Do not be afraid” appear 365 times in the Bible (that’s basically one for every day of the year-I say basically because we all know that a year is technically 365.25 days) We’re not supposed to fear the monsters that lurk in our closets or in the shadows, because we know that Christ conquers all, but just because we’re not supposed to be afraid, doesn’t mean we aren’t and shouldn’t be wary of what is out there. We know the devil exists, we know he plays on our fears, we know that there is some force of evil in this world that seeks our destruction. AND we as Christians know that evil is fighting a battle that has already been lost. (Hello crucifixion and resurrection)

You might be reading this and thinking, we don’t KNOW any of those things you just stated about evil, but I would ask you to go to the nearest website that shows movie trailers and take a look at the most recent and popular trailers. I bet you see at least 5 trailers for horror movies that deal with the supernatural, and there are at least two of those that talk about some sort of demonic possession. We as a culture are fixated on evil, but that is a conversation for another time. But I do believe society as a whole embraces the idea of evil being present in our world in some way or other.

As long as we face our fears, and do not let them control us, and we always remember the words of Christ. Our fears cannot conquer us, we will conquer them. 365 days a year, wake up and say it in the mirror and mean it, “Do not be afraid.”

But seriously this is a real thing…Who wouldn’t be afraid of this?

This is not an April Fools joke…read about it here

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070124-sharks-photo.html

Scar Tissue

March 19, 2014 Kelly Ruby Leave a comment

*Warning* This story may not be for the squeamish

When I was about 4 years old, I had this toy, I refer to it as the rolling lion toy. Basically it was one of those toys that is supposed to help infants scoot around and then when they’re toddlers they can push it because it has a handle on the back. As a four year old I mainly used it like a shopping cart, but on one particular evening I was running around our house pushing the lion like it was a race car. Our house at the time was really a giant square with hardwood floors, so it was perfect for running laps at maximum speed. At some point my four year brain decided we had had enough of running in circles and would change it up, so as we rounded the corner from the kitchen to the living room I decided that instead of taking the next turn, I would instead go straight through the doorway into my bedroom. As I sped through the doorway, and onto a new race surface (carpet) I stayed the course and careened into the far wall. Upon impact I flipped over the handle bar landing seated on the lion and snapped my head forward, biting my tongue.

I don’t know if this was the same for everyone, but when I was little, the worst pain I could experience was biting my tongue. It was an awful sharp pain, and it was really only happening because I was eating or talking too fast and my tongue just got in the way of my teeth.

I remember immediately bursting into tears and running from the room to find what comfort I could from my mother. As I rushed into the kitchen, I got my mother’s attention by tugging on her shirt and my stifled closed mouth whimpers. I clearly remember my mother looking at me while I pointed frantically at my mouth, she cracked a smile and in a kind, yet mocking tone said to me, “Oh did little Kelly bite her tongue?” I nodded vigorously and then stuck my tongue out going “aaahhhh.” In an instant my mom’s face went from a smiling joke to abject horror! She quickly rushed me to the bathroom and told me to lean over the sink, keep my mouth shut, and not swallow. As I waited for her to return, curiosity got the best of me and opened my mouth while looking in the mirror. Immediately blood poured into the sink, I couldn’t really see much, but pain was telling me that the blood was coming from my tongue. As I was continuing to examine my mouth in the mirror my mom came back in with a glass of warm saltwater and told me to sit on the toilet and put my tongue in the cup. I did as I was told and was then immediately rushed to the car, while my mother yelled at my brother Mark to be good and help dad finish dinner.

Upon arrival at the E.R. we hurried inside, being careful not to spill my now bloody glass of salt water – which, can I just say, tasted awful – The nurse at the front desk immediately ushered us into a room and a doctor was not far behind. –Please note this was the fastest service I have received at the the ER to date – After a lot of cotton balls and gauze the doctor finally stemmed the bleeding enough to take a look and see what the damage was. The good news, my tongue was still intact and connected, the bad news I had bit all the way through. In reality there wasn’t any bad news, in fact I didn’t even need stitches, the doctor decided that he would bind my tongue and if, in a couple of days it wasn’t healing, then he would stitch it up. –I am eternally grateful not to have had stitches and that the tongue is the fastest healing organ in the body- I was charged with no talking, and only eating of soft foods, which in my mind translated to pancakes! This was the best news I’d heard all day…I love pancakes.

My tongue eventually healed and yielded a fairly significant scar that covered most of my tongue when I was younger, over time the scar has gotten much smaller, which makes sense considering how your tongue grows from the time one is four years old to adulthood. Though smaller, the scar remains as a reminder of one of my many childhood ER visits and for all intents and purposes an entertaining story.

When I was a summer camp counselor, we used to use scar stories as a small group discussion ice breaker, and they yielded some of the most interesting stories, not to mention the kids became comfortable with the idea of small group sharing. We just asked the kids to tell the group an interesting story about something that happened to them that gave them a scar or even a broken bone (it is a scar in a way). It may seem bizarre that we were asking kids to tell us about a time when they hurt themselves, but there’s a reason we started things off that way. We all have scars, physical and emotional, it takes time, courage and strength to accept the scar and move past it. Scars can remind us of a time when we were vulnerable, and got hurt. And yet moving past those pains and scars are what make us stronger individuals. We were made to heal, a scar is just a reminder that we did heal. The kids loved telling their harrowing stories to a captive audience who “oohed” and “aahhhed” in all the right places, what they may not have realized at the time was that these kids were taking ownership in their life experiences, their pain, and most importantly, that they came back stronger.

I think scars can be a beautiful thing and I wouldn’t trade mine for the world. I hope you all can see the beauty and strength in your own scars.

Happy Wednesday!

We Live In A Beautiful World

January 30, 2014 Kelly Ruby Leave a comment

Here are a few pictures I quickly snapped of the sunset last Thursday, as I was on an evening drive to clear my head. It really put some perspective on my stress, and that sometimes we need to just be in awe of the world we are blessed to live in. Trying to capture the beauty of the moment through the lens of my iPhone can only do so much justice. We all need to stop spending so much time trying to Instagram a moment and just view it as it’s meant to be viewed through the eyes God gave us. Blessing on your day.

Don’t Put Off Until Tomorrow…

January 28, 2014 Kelly Ruby Leave a comment

“…what you could do today.”

Have you ever heard this quote? I know I have, and yet to be perfectly honest when I originally sat down to type out this age old adage I legitimately couldn’t think of the actual quote…so I Googled it.

In fact that right there is very telling about how I choose to work. I Procrastinate. A lot.

Now comes a story that may seem as if it has no place in this entry and yet I will bring it all back around, and hopefully before you become wise to my plot twist.

I always wanted to become an escape artist. Seriously I was in awe of Houdini and all those illusionists who could seemingly never be tied down. When I was younger I went through a phase where every chance I got I would beg my older brother Mark to tie me up and then time me to see how long it would take for me to escape. He gladly obliged if only to keep me out of his hair for a little while longer. I would do this over and over until either my brother locked me out of his room, or I decided I wanted to do something else. But over time, I got really good. So good that I cocky. I started bragging to my brother’s friends that I could escape any knot in under 5 minutes (hey, that was a long time to 7 year old).

One summer’s evening my brother and his friend Travis decided to put me to the test. So they tied me up to a chair in our basement and walked away. Piece of cake. I was out and bothering them within minutes. So they upped the ante, two different ropes. Again I escaped within minutes. Then came the final test: three different ropes duct taped to the chair. This was outrageous! How was I supposed to slip my wrists free of their bonds when all the rope around them was duct taped? So I did what any 7 year old would do in this predicament. I started to complain, loudly. Calling my captors back to taunt me, however they quickly grew weary of my whining and so instead of releasing me from my bonds, they added insult to injury. My brother upon scouring the basement for rope, had come across a used diaper from my Baby Alive doll. To silence my annoying complaints they promptly taped the diaper across my mouth.

I swear this was a real toy, and I am pretty sure they still make them. Google it.

This effectively shut me up, I wasn’t about to get fake baby poop in my mouth! Travis and Mark exited upstairs where they continued to enjoy their summer evening. About ten minutes later there was a knock on the door and my brother greeted my friend Sydni and told her I was downstairs. To my embarrassment Sydni walked into the room and all she saw was me tied to a chair, with a diaper over my mouth. She gaped at me then said, “I guess you’re busy, talk to you tomorrow.” And then she walked away leaving me gagged and humiliated. What felt like hours later but perhaps was only about 5 minutes. My brother and Travis, after realizing that Sydni had abandoned me, came down stairs and let me go. I never asked to be tied up again.

Over the years I’ve come to learn something about myself. I enjoy a good rush of adrenaline. It doesn’t need to be overwhelming, I don’t put myself in dangerous situations just to feel the blood pumping in my veins, but one thing that will always give me a jolt, without fail, is the pressure of working under a clock. I like to put things off, because I have convinced myself over the years, and trial and error, that I work better under the pressure of having to get something done in a short amount of time. Which means that most of the time I tend to put things off. However, I have grown and learned that there are some things that you just can’t put off because they take time. So I try to live a balance of longterm planning and work, and the short term. My seven year old self wanted to be an escape artist because for me that was the height of an adrenaline rush that I could get on fairly regular basis and in a somewhat safe manner. I put myself on a clock and the pressure was to make my escape in a timely fashion.

I know that there are times that I would be happier and less stressed if I didn’t put something off, and yet its a habit I cannot seem to break completely. Sometimes being ahead of schedule feels good, and other times I just find it incredibly boring. There is no moral to this story (with the exception that a diaper is the worst possible way to be gagged ever), no lesson learned, mainly because I haven’t learned it yet, and I fear that I may learn it the hard way. Yet that fear of failure gives me just enough pressure to make sure that I continue to push myself to succeed.

It’s a vicious cycle.

Now I know you may be wondering where my parents were that they were seemingly okay with me being tied, ducted taped and gagged. This particular evening they happened to be out and our babysitter (Travis’ older brother). Was in my dad’s office 15 feet away from me, with the door shut working homework he was doing for a summer course at the community college.

See it does exist and they are still being made and there are more of them…just check out hasbro.com.

I Wanted To Do It All…An Unrealistic Expectation

January 20, 2014 Kelly Ruby Leave a comment

So it’s been awhile. I mean a long while, since I’ve posted anything to this blog…I had such good intentions of posting weekly, and I have all these great ideas of things to write about, but like all well meaning New Year’s Resolutions, I failed…I posted regularly for about a month, and now here I am 3 months later, asking you all to tune back in. Sorry. I could give you all the excuses, I was busy, work was crazy, and just life. But really that’s all they are, excuses and the only person that they are really working on is me. Because let’s be honest, I just stopped dedicating time to sitting down and hashing something out.

Eventually I’ll finish all those half written blogs I’ve started since October. Alright who am I kidding, no I won’t.

When I was a kid, I wanted to do everything. No seriously, if you asked me what I was going to be when I grew up, I was going to be an actress, a singer, an astronaut, cure the common cold, and become the first female president. On top of that I wanted to do everything my friends did. I wanted to be in dance, take piano lessons, ski school, and girl scouts, and do all the things my brothers did, play soccer, basketball, baseball, and hunt. Then there were the things that I wanted to do simply because I thought they would be great like gymnastics and figure skating. Overall I wanted to not have a life, because activities would be my life.

Thankfully my parents were very good at managing my expectations and grand ambitions. Most of the time I would bring something up and my parents would respond, “Mmmhmm, yeah, we’ll see.” After that I would hold out hope for these activities but would quickly lose interest and my parents were never bothered again. However, on the rare occasion that I remained persistent, they would either make me a deal, or say no.

For example, piano lessons, I think my parents would have gladly signed me up the first time I pushed the issue if we’d actually owned a piano. However, we didn’t, and therefore how would I practice? But I was oh so persistent, because all my friends were taking piano, and so my parents struck a bargain, they signed me up for a six-week course on the keyboard. A family friend, lent us her keyboard and I began my training to become the next piano virtuoso. That dream lasted about a week and half. I was expected to practice, what is this madness?! On top of homework after school I was supposed to spend 45 minutes a day practicing on the keyboard and then twice a week I gave up 90 minutes of my evening to go to class. It was eating into my Batman and Star Trek watching and it was awful. Looking back, I’m not sure how that keyboarding course was really going to help me with piano, because on a piano you don’t have different programable sounds that you use to achieve the desired tone for the melody you’re playing. I mean come on, have you ever heard of a piano piece called the Galaxian March? (Seriously, I’m not making that up, that was one of the songs we played, I can recall it from memory. Do, So, Fa, Mi, Re, Mi, Do, Do, Mi, So, Do, So, Fa, Mi, Re, Mi, Do, Do, Do, Do). Needless to say, I wanted to quit, and my parents told me if I wanted to quit before the end of the course I would have to pay for it. So I stuck it out grudgingly and never wanted to play piano again.

Then there was soccer, I had wanted to play soccer from the time I could walk, and this is one of those activities that I wanted to play, mainly because I was a daddy’s girl and this was his sport of choice. This activity also had the added benefit of social interaction with my friends, my parents were happy I was doing it, my brother played, and it was something I wanted to do so it hit all of my criteria. Every fall from the time I was 4, I was playing Fall Recreational Soccer. Honestly I wasn’t that good as a kid, in fact early in my career I use to sit in the back field and pick dandelions while the kids all played horde ball. You know when they all just run around the field in a pack following the ball. Then my dad bribed me to play, by telling me that he would give me a quarter for every time I kicked the ball. Let’s just say after that game it went from a quarter to a nickel to nothing, very quickly. Once we all got older and started playing more cohesive soccer I really did love it. And couldn’t wait for 5th grade when I could officially try-out to be on the spring traveling soccer team. Fifth grade and try-outs finally came, I was on the team and it was going to be wonderful, but let’s not kid ourselves, it was really hard. We started practicing indoors in February three days a week. Then outdoor practices four days a week in March with games starting at the end of the month. Practice wasn’t the worst thing, honestly it was the games. Every weekend we were on the road, we’d drive 300+ miles to play two games, and then do it all over again the next week for about three months straight. The hardest part wasn’t even the traveling and playing. I knew what I was committing to, because my older brother had been doing it for years and I traveled with his team, the difference was that we almost never played in the same place. Which meant I was spending all my weekends split from my family, my mom and I would go one way, and my dad and my brothers would go the other. My dad was the assistant coach for my brother’s team, which meant he never got to watch me play. For me personally, that was the biggest reason I only played one year of spring soccer. My dad had been my coach, and even though I didn’t always appreciate his commentary on my playing, he always wanted me to get better, because he knew that if I was playing better than I would have more fun. Don’t get me wrong the mother daughter bonding that happened that year was wonderful, but sometimes moms can be too supportive.

The other reason for quitting was that I wasn’t enjoying myself, the team had a lot to do with it, we were on the brink of middle school and my 17 other teammates were not always the kindest bunch, in fact I was told fairly consistently that the only reason I was on the team was because there was only one team and all the girls that tried out had made the team. Now mind you this never happened in a public forum, but was whispered to me during meals on weekends or in the backs of minivans as we traveled with another family. Along with that I was constantly being played as a left fullback. In my11 year old mind, that is the equivalent of being put in center field during tee ball, it’s like I was being told that I wasn’t really useful on the field, they just needed a place to put me where I couldn’t do much damage. I was never to cross mid-field, unless I was, by some miracle playing a mid field or even a forward position.

Of course these were not the reasons that I revealed to my parents when I told them that I wasn’t going to do another spring season, in fact I just told them, that I would prefer to play rec soccer in the fall and rec volleyball in the spring. They shrugged their shoulders, said okay and honestly were just happy that I had played the whole season without begging to quit halfway through.

I will admit though, that during my last three weeks of play that season, our regular sweeper was moved to mid-field after one of our players was taken out due to a spread of Hepatitis A (it was a thing that year), and I was put in as sweeper. That was where I really learned to love playing defense. There’s more pressure, and your team and fans are depending on you to do your job. That was probably one of the best things that came out of the season, that and realizing that for the sake of my self-esteem, I was never going to play soccer competitively, I couldn’t deal with the constant gossip, and false friendships.

For all the things that I wanted to do and be when I was kid, I can tell you that as I grew and with some help from my parents I realized that dreams and wants change and some even drop off the map (I never want to be the President, seriously politics is not a game I’m interested in playing). However, the things that you want to pursue won’t come easily and sometimes you’ll just have to stick it out, but they will be worth it. Commitment is important. I won’t promise that I’ll post on this blog every week. But I will commit myself to more time in my life to be more diligent in writing and editing my thoughts to share with those of you who are still interesting in reading about what I have to say. So thanks for sticking with me, there will be more humorous anecdotes soon.

If Only…

October 31, 2013 Kelly Ruby Leave a comment

Game 6 of the World Series was last night. Now I know I just posted about baseball, but this is the last one for a while.

I would say, “I promise,” but I can’t and won’t promise that, baseball is never far from my mind.

As I’m sure you know the Boston Red Sox won the Fall Classic last night in a 6-1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals. This hurt. A lot. No one wants to lose; in fact it hurt less when we lost to the Giants in the NLCS last season than last night.

I am now using ‘we’ in the sense that I am apart of the team…it’s just something that fans do. Don’t judge.

I had to work last night so I didn’t get to the bar to watch the game until the middle of the 6^th inning. As I got out of my car and was walking in a gentleman coming out of the bar said to me,

“You might not want to go in there if you’re a Cardinals fan.” (It was pretty obvious as I was wearing my Freese jersey). I responded, “I know the score, but I have to watch my team, win or lose.” The gent smiled and responded in turn, “Good for you.”

I had to see it end, good or bad. You never know I might have missed a biggest comeback in World Series history and I just couldn’t take that chance.

Here’s the thing for some unknown and baffling reason, I am the most superstitious person when it comes to baseball. Seriously I’m not kidding. The rules I place on my superstitions change from season to season. For example: during the postseason this year I wore my Cardinals sweatshirt twice on game days during the NLCS against the Dodgers. We lost both times. So obviously, my brain tells me that I can no longer wear my sweatshirt on game days. And two years ago during our incredible and unbelievable postseason run (along with World Series victory) I refused to post anything baseball related on social media. Seriously, nothing, there were no “go Cards #postseason #wildcard” tweets or “David Freese is my boy, I knew we could do it at home!” Facebook status updates after that legendary Game 6. I posted a few things after we won the series, but even those were tempered. With the exception of one series of tweets to a friend of mine, and even that was all in good fun.

There is one superstition that I adhere to no matter what and that is no trash talk. I absolutely refuse to engage in trash talking. A passionate and intelligent debate, sure. Bashing the other team simply because they are competing against my team? Not a chance. The superstition lies in the idea that if I do engage in trash talking the competition that some sort of karmic comeuppance will cause my team to suffer.

I don’t believe in Karma, in fact the rational and faithful Catholic that I am knows that none of my superstitious beliefs actually affect the outcome of a sporting event that I’m not personally participating in, but there’s always that “what if?” And for some illogical reason that “what if,” outweighs all other logic. So I choose not to trash talk.

And yes you could insert the theological argument here that sin affects us all and that it is a ripple effect and that sin isn’t strictly personal. I know, I’ve stated that case many times to young minds. However I’m on my soapbox about sports, and I’m not talking the type of superstition that would travel down the road of sin.

In the end I just find it easier to be gracious, in winning AND in losing. I find that at the end of the day, those people who try and trash talk me will be left speechless and maybe respect me more, when I reply with a “congrats” and “great game.” (Though let’s be honest last night’s game…not so great, not because they lost, but mostly because they weren’t playing up to their potential). Being gracious and humble will take you far in life, and I’m not talking false humility or being under-handedly gracious. It’s not about taking the high road to shame others. I really am happy for the fans of the Red Sox, it’s nice to have a winning team. I know. That doesn’t mean that I like the Red Sox I don’t, I’m still bitter from 2004, but more over, I’m not a huge fan of the organization. But hey, I accept that people feel the same way about the Cardinals, it is the nature of competitive sports and their fan bases.

I understand that what I wear on a game day and what I tweet about won’t affect the outcome of the game, but I do think in life, graciousness and humility will always affect the outcome of how people treat you and how you treat people. Be good to each other.

Also, this new twitter format made it really difficult to be a Cardinals fan last night.

9 Innings of Bliss

October 29, 2013 Kelly Ruby Leave a comment

It’s the end of October and Postseason Baseball is in full swing, as an avid St. Louis Cardinals Fan and a lover of baseball since I was a kid, October is like the Superbowl to me.

Growing up and watching baseball in the 90s I saw some amazing things, I saw the Braves rise and fall, the Yankees dominate, Randy Johnson and the Diamondbacks come out of nowhere, and even the year without baseball. All that time I loved to watch the game, but would become easily bored, leaving the living room if we were watching at home, and even wandering the stadium with my cousins when we were lucky enough to be at a game.

The 90s were also a tough time to be a Redbirds fan, I don’t know if you know this, but the team isn’t really listed much in the history of that decade, with the exception of Mark McGwire in ’98 and I don’t know if you follow baseball, but that didn’t end well. However the mid to late 2000s and now the 2010s have been very good to my team.

Seriously…have you been watching baseball the last three years.

The problem with my team’s sudden surge in popularity and wins, however means I am constantly having to defend myself against a large number of people who will classify me as a bandwagon fan. This irks me. While I may not be a numbers person, and I don’t memorize batting averages, ERAs, or RISP, I do know what’s going on with my team…all the time, I follow the trades in the off season, the recruits and draftees and their ascent through the farm and triple A system. I know what’s going on, on the field and if anyone were to sit down and actually talk with me about baseball they would know that I didn’t just “hop on the bandwagon.”

However, engaging people in that conversation can be difficult. Why? Because baseball is a slow sport, there is no time clock on a baseball game; it will go on as long as it takes for a team to win. While some people find this tedious and boring to watch, I revel in it. Over the years of watching and learning about the game I have found that baseball is a finesse sport, a unique chess match that happens on the field, and one that will be different every time.

The past couple of summers I have spent a lot of time watching baseball, mostly on TV, and when I watch I become very still and calm, you never know when someone will make an amazing catch or hit a grand slam. Patience is the name of the game, even when you get nervous and the team is losing. Patience and a cool head is what keeps pitchers’ in the game, what keeps the batters cool at the plate, and what keeps the fielders from making mistakes. Even in the most stressful situations patience and calm will keep things from getting out of hand. Long gone are the days of my fidgeting and leaving the couch, and when I’m lucky enough to get to see a game in person, there’s no aimless wandering around the stadium. That’s why you show up early.

Watching baseball, has given me a better prayer life. Seriously, it has taught me to be present in the moment but to keep a calm mind and heart. It use to take me a long time to sit down and calm my mind when it came to my personal prayer, and even then within 20 minutes I was fidgeting and putting myself on the clock. (You know like just 10 more minutes and you’ll be good). The problem with this is that I was never fully putting myself in the presence of God. I would spend 10 minutes calming my thoughts, 10 minutes whining to God and asking for advice, and then another 20 minutes thinking about how much longer I needed to sit and “listen” before my prayer time would be considered adequate.

This is not how you pray.

Prayer is a conversation with God, which means that it needs to be a two way street, if prayer was meant to be one way, it would simply be called a monologue, of the internal variety. There is no time constraint on prayer no minimums or maximums, prayer is about being open, calm, and peaceful, to communicate and converse with God.

Listening is the hard part, to do that we have to learn how to calm our thoughts, to be okay with sitting in silence and waiting to receive him.

Baseball taught me how to wait, something we struggle with in our NOW society, people find baseball boring and outdated, I think this is because we’ve forgotten what it means to be patient, how to wait, and to be okay with waiting and not having the answer come right away.

They say the best baseball happens in October, and that may be, it certainly seems more exciting. However, astonishing and beautiful plays happen in baseball all season long, you just have to be willing to wait and see. The Fall Classic may only come around once a year, but your relationship with Christ is there everyday, if only you choose to participate.

On that note…

Go Cards!

Miss Montana Had It Wrong…

October 14, 2013 Kelly Ruby Leave a comment

A couple of years ago I found myself watching the Miss America pageant. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea. It was on and I was intrigued. At the very beginning of the televised part, all the girls are introduced and they get to have a clever little sentence they say about which state they are from. I have never watched a Miss America pageant, so I became instantly curious about what Miss Montana would say about our beautiful Big Sky State. Perhaps something about the speed limit, or the fact that even the democrats own guns, but no, Miss Montana made a comment about our wonderful state only having two seasons, winter and pre-winter. What?! There are so many better things to say that would be funny and highlight where you come from…all she really did was repeat a poorly constructed joke and belittle the place she was supposed to be representing, after that I changed the channel.

Now some of you might be asking why I was so offended by a joke about the weather, yes Montana does have a long winter, and we never know when it will start or end, but we really do experience the other seasons, I promise. However short and fleeting our spring, summer, and autumn are. They sure do come with pizazz, and it is best to take advantage while you have the chance. This is why as soon as it hits 45 degrees in March (or April) we’re all wearing shorts and t-shirts, come visit us during the summer and the lakes are full of boaters and swimmers, the mountains full of hikers and the parks full of picnic baskets. And when the leaves of fall start to appear in September and October the sidewalks are full of people walking and kicking up the fallen leaves, enjoying the new crisp chill in the air and apple cider.

I know it is standard for us as a people and culture to see winter as the end of the year, however, I have always seen winter as the renewal and beginning. Maybe it’s my Catholic beliefs, and the fact that Advent is the beginning of the new liturgical year, or maybe it’s just that when everything is covered with a beautiful layer of cold snow. A snow that deadens all sound and yet reflects all light, and brightens even the darkest of nights. It’s clean, and when I look out at the streets, trees, houses, and mountains. I see a fresh start, a new beginning. Its calm and its peaceful, a deep breath before everything picks back up again.

Spring is that renewal realized, everything is cleaned up and nature is prepared to make way for all the coming regrowth. We as humans do that too, after winter we seem to have more energy, hello spring-cleaning! Spring gives us hope. Again, this might have something to do with the fact that in the liturgical year Spring is a new beginning with Lent and Easter…I know it doesn’t seem that way, but as a Christian Catholic there is a beauty in the waiting of Lent, just like we wait and hold our breaths for new flowers and the leaves to appear green on the trees. Then with the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Easter there is new life and we can rejoice in that, just as we do when we can play outside again, and yes, even mow the lawn. Spring is rejuvenating.

With summer we are at our peak, we’ve settled into the re-creation of nature and life, as we know it continues on. This really won’t settle in until after the school thing, when you’re working full time. Because hey, when you’re an adult, you don’t get 3 months off for a summer vacation, for most people they maybe get a week or two. Unless you’re a teacher, or a youth minister…I still work, it’s just more fun during the summer, hence the reason I took the job, duh. Just kidding. Summer really is easy going because we’re all settle into our routine of work and recreation.

Then comes autumn, which is one of my favorite seasons, don’t get me wrong I love them all, but there’s just something about the color change and the temperature drop, and postseason baseball. Okay, a lot of that has to do with postseason baseball, but more on that later.

I think there is something so beautiful and sad about fall. In my mind it really is the end of the year, a time for me to reflect on the past 10 months, and to make a change, if there is something that has been bothering me that whole time, I either choose to actively change it immediately, or I let it go. I do a lot of letting go. I think that’s really what fall is all about. Prepping you for the new things to come, to make room for renewal.

Just like you have to make room on your hard drive for more music, photos, videos, etc. It’s so easy to hold onto things, and to let them define us for the next however many days, months, or years, but just like the trees have to shed their leaves for the winter, to prepare for the new buds in the spring, we humans need to shed all that hold us back. And what better time than fall? It’s almost as if God devised the seasons as a guide for us to follow, a cycle for us to use to our advantage.

If you’ve ever listened to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, this makes perfect sense. Seriously it’s beautiful listen to it.

I have visited New York in the fall, Washington and Oregon in the spring and have spent a fair share of my summer weeks in the hot and humid mid-West and Southern U.S. I have even been to a few of those places during the winter, and as beautiful as all those seasons are in their own right, given the choice I will always choose my long Montana winters and my wonderful, albeit short, spring, summer, and autumn days.

Remember that as the leaves change and fall, it might be worth your time to take a look back and re-evaluated what’s important to hold on to, and what is worth letting go.

…and to answer that question you’ve been asking in your head. No I did not know Miss Montana in the pageant. Though last year’s Miss Montana and I went to high school and did theatre together and the new Miss Montana grew up down the street from me…so yeah, maybe Montana is just one big, small town.

That Unholy Little Light

October 11, 2013 Kelly Ruby Leave a comment

When I first started driving my dad was very firm in the fact that if you take care of your car, your car will take care of you. This is so true; in the last 11 years I have driven four cars, and all were/are very good to me.

In November of 2011 I started the process of buying my first new vehicle. So with my father’s guidance and a lot of research I decided upon a Subaru, they are affordable, continually perform well past 200,000 miles, have all wheel drive, which would be important during the winter months, and their Kelley Blue Book and Consumer Report ratings were off the charts. So I worked out a loan and what I would pay out of pocket, filled out the paper work, shook the dealer’s hand and walked away feeling pretty good, minus the intense feeling that I needed to wash my hand.

A month later, just in time for Christmas I picked up my brand new 2012 Subaru Impreza. It had 8 miles on it. I had never had a car with less than 100,000 miles before. Needless to say everything was perfect. The one thing that took some getting use to however, was not jumping to conclusions every time I heard something a smidge out of the ordinary. I was so conditioned from my previous “rides,” that everything was going to cost me days in the shop and a couple hundred dollars. With my new car this was not the case as I was assured by my father…and the service department at the dealership…I trust my dad, I was just leaning towards being cautious.

Everything with the Subie has been great, I just had my 25,000 mile check up and all was well.

Then last week happened. It got really, really, cold, and I mean it went from mid 60s to about 35 overnight. Even I have to admit that, that’s cold. I get in my car and this little orange light pops up on my dash. So I immediately pull out the owner’s manual and begin my search as to what the problem is, and I discover that this light’s purpose is to tell me that my tire pressure has dropped to an un-pleasurable level. I grab my pressure gauge and check the tires. They’re a little low, but not by much, maybe my car is just having one of those extra sensitive days. So I head to the gas station and put a little love into my tires. But that unholy orange light would not go off, I drove and drove and drove, and nothing. Normally I would schedule an appointment at the dealership to have this sorted out immediately, but last week was exceptionally busy. After about 5 days and 200 some miles that little light went off. Without warning. I don’t even know if I noticed it right away. This freaked me out more. I called the dealership immediately to find out if this meant that my car was going to explode and if I should bring it in. They told me it was nothing to worry about that sometimes when we have extreme weather change it can cause the sensor to trip, but I would only need to get the sensor changed if it became a continual issue. I hung up the phone relieved.

Though if the car were going to explode I would tell the driver to stay away too.

After this roller-coaster of worry about my car, I remembered something my mom had told me about becoming a first time mom. She said that the first time my brother had gotten sick with a fever, she flipped out, she read all the books she had on hand (this was pre-WebMD, which is probably a good thing), called my grandmother, everything and everyone told her it would be okay, to just give him some baby Tylenol and wait. However, she went to the doctor anyway, he told her the same thing. This and only this assuaged her fears. Dr. Gould, a wonderful man, told her that it was okay for her to come in, she’s a first time mother, everything is a little more high alert, you care so much that you need to make absolutely sure that everything is fine, he then told her to wait until her second kid, she’d be an expert then. He sent her home and didn’t charge her for the visit.

Now it’s not to say that I’m comparing my car to a baby. But there are a few similarities.

1.) When you invest in something, be it your time, your life, your money, your body, your emotions, or a combination therein, you take special care of those things and you want to make sure that nothing is wrong. When it’s your first time around the block, you take extra special care of it.

2.) The second time around will always be easier, but only in a certain respect. When it comes to children, you will be an old pro, it will become easier to judge when to take the child to the doctor, when to potty train them, or how to deal with tooth pain, but the person will always be different, you’re not creating exact little replicas (man that’s a terrifying thought).

3.) Observation is everything, it is this amazing gift that we all have, to observe and take in what we are seeing, and all of our senses lend themselves to this skill.

It is worth your while to observe and make notes, especially when it comes to something that you are invested in. It’s how we grow. How we make things and ourselves better.

It’s okay to be overly cautious and a little nervous about something you care about, as long as you take the time to learn and grow from that experience. Otherwise you will just continue to exhaust yourself for no reason. It will never go the same way twice, but being prepared is never a bad thing.

Here’s to continued hope that my car won’t explode.

A Joke Only I Could Get Away With…

October 4, 2013 Kelly Ruby Leave a comment

This isn’t my first take at writing a blog. When I was a junior in college I was a student blogger for our small liberal arts college, it was a pilot program and was supposed to show both parents and prospective freshman that we had normal lives. Apparently we were successful, because they have kept the student bloggers as a part of their online presence ever since. Score! However, we need to rewind all the way back to the beginning.

My junior year of college was actually quite unique, I had just transferred into a small college of about 1300 students from a state university of about 14,000 students…needless to say it was a bit of an adjustment. Let’s just say there is a reason we referred to Carroll College as Carroll High School.

As I was new to the school, I was really just trying to find my footing and was truly trying to keep my head down. In a school that small if you sneeze, give it a minute, and the entire campus knows you have a cold. Get my drift. About mid-September Carroll started to advertise that it was looking for student bloggers. To apply you just had to submit a blog and email it to the admissions office. Suffice it to say, my roommate and I thought this was the funniest thing and continually joked about submitting a blog. However in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about how unique to the school my perspective was, and perhaps it could be useful to someone who was thinking about transferring. *Damn me and my need to serve other people!*

One evening, after finishing my homework and messing around on Facebook, I found myself writing a blog submission and before I knew it I had emailed it to the admissions office. It was at that moment after I hit send that my roommate walked in. She looked at me sitting at my desk, took in the look of shock and disbelief on my face and said, “What did you do?” Turning towards her with wide eyes, and moth ajar I responded, “I think I just applied to be a student blogger.”

Within two days I was meeting with the admissions staff and 3 other student bloggers and was set up and ready to go. And within two hours of that meeting the entire student body knew that I was a student blogger for Carroll. Happy Thursday!

The next day my parents were in town, for my younger brother’s soccer game. After the game they took my roommate and I to dinner. It was at dinner that I decided I should tell them that I was the new internet celebrity at school.

As we sat enjoying our appetizer I looked across the table at my parents and said, in a serious tone, “Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you.” They immediately looked up from their chips and salsa and I continued, “I’m pregnant.”

Let me digress for just a moment, this was not what I intended to say. I was simply going to tell them that I was a blogger, but in that brief moment my brain decided that this would be the perfect time for a joke.

I only let that settle in for maybe 2 seconds before I followed up with, “just kidding.” But those two seconds were all it took, my roommate, having no idea that I was going to say that, just burst out laughing, while my parents stuttered into recovery. My mom shook her head, a slow smile beginning to spread, while my father muttered, “two years at a public university and nothing, then a month at a Catholic college and you’re joking about being pregnant.” Then as if it was planned, my parents both looked at each other and said simultaneously, “She’s your daughter!” Then burst into loud raucous laughter. I told them about being a blogger and we continued dinner without any more surprises.

After that, I wanted nothing more than to write a blog about that moment. However, I realized that people would have to know my parents and understand our family dynamic for that to resonate, and perhaps, since I still wanted to keep a low profile, that this was something that I didn’t need to share with the whole world.

Sometimes there are moments that we experience and we cannot wait to share them with our social world. And in the days of Facebook, Twitter, and smart phones, it is easy to immediately share them. However, sometimes it would be in our best interest to hold back, to keep those things in the personal moment file for a while before making a world-wide announcement. Remember that moment when Jesus took Peter, John, and James onto the mountaintop and you know, was transfigured in front of them? Yeah kind of a big deal, and the disciples were excited and wanted to stay there and set up tents, but then they were scolded (gently) about trying to keep Christ from the rest of the world. But in a twist, Jesus asked them to keep this particular happening to themselves for a while, to not rush right back to the masses and tell them all about this amazing thing. Remember that moment? Do you know why he did that? I mean it does seem a smidge hypocritical, doesn’t it? In reality Christ was protecting his disciples as well as the timeline of how things were going to happen. If Peter, James, and John, had run into town screaming about Jesus, Elijah, and Moses, people would have thought they were crazy, which would have been to the detriment of all they had accomplished already, and also it would have led to a very angry Jewish community, and then Jesus never would have gotten back to Jerusalem…you see what I’m saying?

In our culture of over-sharing, it takes a wise and patient person to keep things under their hat. It also takes some contemplation, something that I think we could use more of in our status updates. I cannot imagine what the next two years would have been like at Carroll if I had told everyone about my “pregnant” joke. People were still getting to know me and I could have hindered that, by simply choosing to act without thinking (which is exactly what lead to me blurting out the pregnant thing to begin with). We could all use a little more contemplation and discernment in our lives, because who knows if you don’t, you might just write a blog connecting an inappropriate joke to the Transfiguration. Happy Thursday.

Adventures With My Yellow Sunglasses