Talks with Mr. Martinez

There are people that you come across in life and sometimes you just want to know them more than you do. They share little snippets of their life with you, and as the stories of their lives unfold from their mouths, you start to come to an awareness that they have figured things out about life that some people never will. It is portrayed in their words, their faces, the way they carry themselves, their poetry, their art, their songs, the stories they've written and told.

I have a lot of those people in my life, I am fortunate to say. A lot of people I admire for many different reasons. I know people so full of love that everyone around them is somehow touched by their lives.

I've been working on campus after school everyday as a math tutor. I work a late shift because I have class every day until the afternoon. Sometimes we have people in there, and sometimes we just don't. That's where Mr. Martinez comes in.

One day, one of the first days, that I was working there tutoring, he wasn't aware that I'd been hired and tried to lock me out. We joked about it, and I explained to him that I was there every night now. He did his work as the maintenance man while I was in there working. I told him not to pay any mind to me, but just do whatever it was that he needed to do, and I wouldn't mind.
He is a nice man with kind eyes and white hair. Every night that I am there, he shares a little more about his life.

One night he sat down and talked to me, I mean really talked to me. He told me his philosophies on life and his job. He's been working there for nearly 40 years. He said that every day he gets up, and he looks forward to his life and his job. He takes pride in his job and doing it well. He is proud of our school and how it looks.

He shared his joy in his daughter, and I could tell he was proud of her hard work during pharmacy school. He spoke of the long drives he would take to go get her from her college in Portland, just when she needed to see a friendly face. It didn't matter that he had worked all night long. He would still go and get her to bring her back home for the weekend.

I never want to forget people like Mr. Martinez. I don't know if he knows that his small pieces of advice change my life just a little bit every night, but they do. His words matter.  I see these people everywhere throughout my life, and  I never want to forget their stories.


If you have a Mr. Martinez in your life, share your story! :]

Love,

Amber

Fractures of our hearts

How do you do it?
I'm asking you mothers. The ones who have babies, and children, and husbands, and pets...People you care for. Animals you care about. How do you?

You have dinners to make, clothes to fold, children to soothe at night and sometimes it's in the middle of the night. Nights of disrupted sleep where you can't sleep, or they can't sleep, or someone can't sleep, and you're up doing the things that mothers do. Being present with those strong and capable laps that holds and unfolds every single care in the world and files them in folders marked:

"Times when mom was a superhero."
Or
"Times when mom said the right thing"
Or
"Times when mom listened and didn't talk"
Or
"Times when mom just held me."

 This deep commitment alone should win awards.

There should be awards given to those parents who mend chubby toddler knees, toes from bee stings, damaged feelings from toys not shared, or when friends words come out too honest. Far too many times, these little essential things are over looked, but they shape our lives. They matter deep inside the innermost fractures of our hearts.
Our parents nurture us. They accept us broken and whole at the same time.

I don't know how you do it. How you care so deep and still exist in other forms to other people. How you exist outside of all that you do inside the four walls of a home.
Where does this energy come from?
I thought hard about this recently, and I mean hard. I recall all those times I pined for my life to be a certain way, and now I know.
In my nursing class there are many parents.

Lets be realistic here, I feel as if my time is so limited that I am ready to give parent of the year awards to those people who are in my class (or are in any college atmosphere for that matter) and still are able to be actively present in their families lives.

I'm almost invisible to mine. I have books upon books open every day, papers strewn everywhere, and I'm typing, or reading, or highlighting, or scattering, and organizing messes. There's hellos and goodbyes, and I'm off to study.

I find time when I can to reach out to people I love and care for, but it's few and far between.
The kind of commitment raising children implores would be entirely unimaginable to me in my current circumstances.

I pray to God on the way to school, and on the way home from school, thankful. He knew what he was doing with me when He made me wait for things I previously prayed so much for. I pray for those people who have the same school commitments and families at home too.  I've become thankful for my near 40 minute commute to school everyday, because it gives me time to be thankful and prayerful.

Here's the weekly glimpse into my life:

Love,

Amber

Love-letters

Dear God,

I have shortcomings. I am vulnerable. I am weak.
I know you've allowed me to start this journey for a reason. It's a roller coaster ride.
I know you have a plan to get me through this, somehow, someway, that I cannot see at this current moment of desperation.

I don't know if I am making this harder than it has to be, or if I am being melodramatic. I am a girl after all. I have emotions that know no end. They fool me into believing things that aren't the truth.
And all I can hope is that I recover from train wrecks, and focus on what is true, what is good, and what is real.

Right now I know I feel overwhelmed like I'm getting paid to feel overwhelmed.

I am thankful that I am not alone in this.
When people warn you about things being tough, you don't realize it until you are walking in their shoes.

In a sense I want to remember every single difficult, intense, moment of this. I want to know I lived it with every fiber and made it through. I don't want to wish it away like I am wishing moments of my life away.

I just know that I won't make it through alone.

Love,

Amber

Finding home

School
Phew.
Week two is over.
My brain feels somewhere between a balloon full of water about to burst and a dendrite on its last leg.

There is no wasting time, and I feel like I am wasting time sometimes, or that I could have been more productive with this or that. I am a perfectionist, but I am definitely having to realize my shortcomings in this!

I'm feeling like my brain isn't smart right now. I hope I am not the only one that feels this way. I have been studying like it's nobodies business, and I am curious what the study habits are of my fellow classmates.
If any of you are reading this, care to enlighten me? :]
There are so many rabbit holes of information that it's hard to keep things straight.
I know that if it weren't for my fellow classmates, and their reminders of deadlines, I would feel like I was drowning slightly more than I am, haha!
All I know is that I am always praying about something.

Life in general
I've had a full week this week!

We got a baby grand piano on craigslist for an amazing deal. It's in amazing shape! I haven't had a piano for a long time, and I used to play everyday. I missed it, and I didn't realize how much until I started playing again.
Playing the piano is free therapy.
The minute my fingers strike the keys, I feel at home.
I'm lost in those keys.
Sometimes you can find home in the simplest of places. When your life is in transition constantly, which I feel like I have been over the last year or so, you long to feel some normalcy.
Normalcy in the sense that you are grounded in a routine. My routine is-- I don't have a routine. School starts on different times every day for the most part, and I'm having to place my life around my studying. I mean really who wants to be normal completely, I guess this is my new life and I have to grow accustomed to it.
You grow to find solace in the simple things in life like playing the piano for five minutes, the laughter of your nieces and nephews, praying, sipping coffee, attending weddings of people you care for, just taking part in life in small ways that you can.


I miss my friends and family I don't have as much time for as I did before
My best friends, you know who you are, I miss you so much.

Here's a glimpse into my life this week:

Love,

Amber

It's starting...

The business of the nursing program has kicked into full gear as you can tell by my lack luster posts the last two nights adding up to a big, old ZERO!

Things are really busy around here too. It's hard to want to study with the laughter leaking through the walls. It sucks me in. I want nothing more than to throw all my books down and just be irresponsible, stick it to the man....But the man I'd be sticking it to is myself *long dramatic sigh*, and I don't want to sabotage myself. It's tempting.

Then there's the part of me that hears my mother's voice, her words tucked safely in my bones: School is important, study hard. (She almost always tells me this between conversations on the phone, thanks mom. No, really, Thank you.) I didn't listen to her studying advice until college, and I've come to know through the years that you don't want to live out a path of not following sage advice. Yes, we mostly have to learn on our own. But if we can save ourselves the trouble of not learning on our own, the big things at least, then it would be better for
So I avoid leaving the confines of my room that has become where I work, sleep, think, dream, hope, imagine what two years down the road will look like, and study, study hard.

I haven't bought all the books I need yet, only the two so far. I am feeling a little nervous about that, but am really trying to trust God for all those pretty pennies I need to collect to buy those books.

Does anyone else have a problem finding iphone chargers that actually charge your phone well?
I am having a terrible time with finding ones that don't short out, including the ones from apple.

If anyone has some good advice about where to get a longer lasting iphone cord, please share!

Love,

Amber