boot lyfe

events from thanksgiving break:
tuesday: i came home from the doctor. i had a giant boot on my left foot. my sisters reaction?
"now you definitely are the beth of the family."
sunday: i attended my parents church. sat next to cailtin as per uje. the closing song we sang was "for the beauty of the earth". the exact one sang during meg and john brook's wedding. i felt myself swirling in a circle around them as they stood there beneath the hupa (that thing that luke gave to lorelai in season 2 episode 2 of gilmore girls. duh). i looked at cait. i gave her the frowny lips that teddy gives to jo and in return she sang the closing refrain "this our hymn of grateful praise" in the quakey tone of aunt march.

little women. i cant escape it. and i don't want to.

ptl for thanksgiving

thanksgiving, like many other things in the keegan household, is no joke. we are not allowed to even mention christmas ("the other holiday") until after thanksgiving, we are emailed a detailed hour-by-hour schedule a couple weeks out, and my dad insists on ordering the 21-24 pound turkey himself as it is "just something you don't want to mess around with". and i love it. everything about our traditions are ridiculous and awesome. ridiculously awesome. the part i delight in the most (besides the thanksgiving service which is absolutely my favorite church service of the entire year)? it happens after we all watch santa magically ride in on his white-clad sleigh and murmur to each other about how he is the most perfect depiction of santa we ever did see. when the tv transitions into the national dog show. as a family, we are certainly not known for a love of dogs. observe pippy for a fraction of a second and i think you have a pretty good idea of the overall dog situation in our household. but we watch that dog show religiously every year. we laugh at the owners as they stride next to their polished beauties. we mock the "overly groomed" hairstyles. we love it. absolutely. but this only lasts until papa jack emerges from wherever he was hiding, bellowing "are you ready for some football?", wherein we transfer the energy formerly dedicated to mocking onto eating a thanksgiving meal -sized amount of appetizers. whattup traditions that will never die.

i hate haircuts.

i hate haircuts. i got one today. i asked for a trim. chontelle cut 4 inches off.

plus i'm dramatic.

falling on my knees

on sunday kier and i had to run 20 miles. t.w.e.n.t.y. miles. the task honestly just seemed insurmountable. so after stuffing our faces with subway (not the best idea), and getting lost on the way, we finally made it to the american tobacco trail. we plotted our run and began. we turned right onto the trail, instead of the desired left, and quickly found ourselves in the middle of the wilderness; yes, durham has a wilderness. about a mile into the run i felt ursula reach up from the ground below and latch on to my foot. okay, maybe it was just a little underground (or not-so-underground) wire. it's grip was too tight and i knew i had no hope. at this point i was running with two water bottles and on my way down the only thing i did was throw those water bottles against the ground, my body following soon after. needless to say, kier and i were laughing uproariously for approx 7 minutes, in which we both might've peed our pants a little. but for the rest of the nineteen miles i could not get the image of me throwing down my water bottles out of my head.
last night at tuesday night worship we sang the song rescue. a of all, get dat song in muh belly. so obsessed. but as i was singing,

 "falling on my knees in worship, giving all i am to seek your face. Lord, all i am is yours",

 the image of the water bottles quickly returned. and i realized, the lord was trying to teach me something. yes, it did take me days and days to realize, but i finally got it. in order to fall on my knees in complete surrender to god, it means i have to get ready of everything i am currently clinging to. i needed to not just let go of the wat botts but throw them down, in order for me to catch myself in enough time before i hit the ground. the lord asks this of us.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." hebrews 12:1.

not trying to take the running analogy too far but i just love that the lord is using my marathon training to train me in him! i pray that he shows me just what sin and idolatry i am having difficulty throwing off so that i can fall on my knees in worship.

philippians 4:19

i have been feeling a little of sorts these past couple days. and by that i mean that i have been experiencing feelings that don't make sense to me. i have been getting 8 hours of sleep every night, which is on average 3 hours more than i got every night this summer, and yet i feel exhausted by the end of each day. also, i have found it incredibly difficult/tiresome to motivate myself to do my homework. that is foreign to me. i am usually very good at knowing what i have to do and doing it. usually it is at the very last minute, but i do it. however lately i have been feeling lazy, which is a feeling i absolutely loath. this morning, as i was reading my bible, i came across philippians 4:19, which says, "and my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus." i loved this verse immediately because it gave me some hope in my weird feelings. as long as i am relying on God, he is going to help me sort this out and he will provide me with all that i need to conquer them. i decided that i wanted to pray this over me all day long, but every time that i tried to remember it i could barely even remember the gist of what it was getting at. as a result, i began reading the verse over and over to try and commit it to memory. it was not until the seventh or eighth time that i realized i was only contemplating the first half of the verse. "and my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus." according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. Paul is referring to Christ's redemptive work on the cross on our behalf. God has already met my needs through sending his son to die for me. I don't need to worry or wonder if God is ever going to show up. He has already fulfilled my one and only need. the Lord was already solving my greatest problem, before i was even born. praise the Lord that he has already taken care of my one and only need.

today, i dropped my first class.

actually it was friday. but today sounds more dramatic. here are the pros and cons of dropping that weighed heavily in my mind for approx 28 seconds:

pros:
1. the class is phil 112: making sense of ourselves. i'm no shelley morgan. i'm no hippy.
2. the recitation for the class meets at 8 am on friday morning. last thursday night i stayed up entirely way too late chilling at the d's end of summer dance party. i ended up getting about 4 hours of sleep. i need at least 11. either the dance party's gotta go or the 8 am recitation. i'm a really good dancer.
3. if i miss one lecture i automatically fail. sometimes a girl's gotta skip. this girl especially.
4. being present at each lecture includes not being on facebook. one of the lamest things about me, besides the fact that i recently had a friend understand my lizzie mcquire reference, is that i love facebook. and if the class is not inspiring me, i have no choice but to resort to learning unhealthy amounts about my friends and their friends. and their friends' friends.  if caught on facebook once, i would fail the class. i cannot, with a clear conscience, promise that i won't get on facebook.
5. another requirement is that i have to submit my notes electronically at the end of each week. my notes are consistently embarrassing.
6. 10-15 people out of 200 will get an a. does it look like i am in the top 5-7.5% percent at carolina? (don't be fooled by that awesome percentile math).

cons:
1. the prof wears harry potter glasses and is bald.
2. i wish i was shelley morgan.

the weirdest intro to a blog.

I’ve always been a Beth. 

We sat in the den, six petite brunettes piled on the couch that spilled its cotton candy stuffing, the oldest french-braiding the littlest' hair. 

“Ouch, Sage. Stop pulling so hard!”

“If you’d just sit still, it wouldn’t hurt, and I’d already be done.”

“Seriously guys, I’m trying to watch the movie,” Rebecca projected from her spot three people away. Her eyes had never even left the screen, but everyone knew not to speak another word. Instead they listened as Rebecca spoke the words along with Jo March, “We're both stupidly stubborn, especially you. We'd only quarrel!”, with a sincerity which made me wonder if she truly believed she was turning down Laurie’s marriage proposal. 

It is quite impossible that six sisters would grow up adoring anything but the wonder that is Little Women. Yes, Narnia was enrapturing. But there wasn’t anything like watching your very life acted out in front of you in a timeless classic. I knew each and every emotion they experienced, not just because I watched the movie weekly, but because I had lived it. Unfortunately, my mind was a bit skewed in which part I actually lived.

I recall watching Jo suck the juice out of her clementine slice as her right hand wrote brilliant words in her candlelit bedroom. The image haunted me incessantly. I truly believed that Jo was the future version of me. I pictured myself as I watched her tie up her manuscript, tuck a carnation into the string, and slide it under the professor’s door. I idolized her as she took the pear from the mailbox, and held it to her lips. She was wild, exciting, and fearless. Everything I was. Or so I thought. 

One day, upon watching the final scene where Professor Bhear proposes to Jo under his shielding umbrella, we decided to do it. It was time. We matched characters to ourselves. We began with Amy, the youngest and notoriously most rambunctious. Everyone agreed that she was somewhere between Kiersten and Caitlin, depending on the day. Next, we deliberated over Meg, the oldest. Meg was a wise character, put together, with a little bit of spark. Clearly, Sarah Jane. We moved onto Beth, purposefully saving Jo, my Jo, for last. I began to pick at the cotton candy and tried to wait patiently to be crowned Jo when I heard my name and realized that I was in fact Beth, the sickly but content sister. I should have known. There were plenty of clues. 

I should have known ever since I was christened Anna. Because I was born after Kiersten, my parents wanted something “simple” and “easy to spell”. Translation: they wanted something boring. And something boring they found in “Anna”. 

If the name thing should happen to escape me, I was surrounded time and time again with obvious displays of my very Beth-ness. Whether it was through my mom force feeding me nutritional drinks to rid me of my frail appearance or my insatiable tendency to cry, I should have known. I was born a Beth and ever since I have lived and breathed everything Beth. I’ve learned, with the turning of time, to embrace it. Jo is simply a shadow of a dream I once had. The dream to be a world-renown writer, men pursuing me incessantly, and me having the ability to turn down their handsome proposals. Nay, that dream is dead. And this is the story of my life, as Beth.

okay so this isn't really just a spur of the moment blog post that i whipped up. it's the intro to my autobiography. it's all i have so far. yes, i am aware that i am weird and maybe a little self-centered. sue me.