Making Reservations

Typing this entry I sit on a curb watching my three boys play basketball on a neighborhood hoop in Alabama. I am not sure where most people write their first blog entry but I am humbled by my location. I have wanted to write a blog for a while. When I was younger I attended a Revolve conference in California where a speaker referenced women’s brains as spaghetti, interwoven and anything but organized. That day forward, I picked up 54 different journals, trying to organize my noodles. I find them now when I am cleaning, with only a page or two filled out.

            A few years ago, I began to get involved with a Christian ministry on my college campus called CRU, where I met Kiley. When I began to share my life with her she encouraged me to write. It was not until Christmas of 2013 that I began to jot my thoughts down in a $2 notepad on a rooftop of an orphanage in Thozen, Haiti. Now I have filled many of those notepads. I continuously buy the same notepad in superstition that it was the notepad itself that kept me consistent in journaling.

            No one, yet, has gotten the privilege to read through my entries. It made me sick to my stomach, when I talked my sister through the pages so she could find the speech I wrote for her wedding. I insisted to “just take a picture, do not take the journal, and I will kill you if you rip a page out”. As people see it grasped tightly in my right hand or spread across my lap they encourage me to to blog. They want to see what is running through my mind, which is so urgent to transcribe.

            I thrive in community. People often comment on how quickly I make friends. Friends joke about how I refuse to skip a “hello”. Acquaintances question why I reference everyone as “babe”. Truthfully, I cannot remember their name. This is where the title of my blog comes from. I hold no hesitation in talking to the person in front of me in line, or sharing dessert with my waiter, or asking my flight attendant how much she gets paid and if she feels lonely. Many days I am overwhelmed, in a good way, by the opportunities I have been given and the relationships I have built. The popular quote is, “life is all about connections”.

            My life is a hot mess, so I am not quite sure if a connection has helped me get anywhere, for I feel as if I have gotten no where. I feel like I am a wanderer who is terribly lost. Nonetheless, I am grateful for the people who have walked through my life. I find reassurance in this today… I sent a response email to a woman who is in residency at a hospital in Sudan, at lunch I missed the friendship of a felon who led an international drug cartel, I started my morning off brushing my teeth next to a nationally ranked power lifter who just had her 19^th birthday, and at night I cried in joy with a mother from Uganda, Africa. My posts to follow will be filled with people and their stories, so I can share with you what they shared with me. 

Please join me, at a table for two.