Top Seven Tips for Surviving Your First Semester as a PhD Student

My first semester as PhD student has officially come to a close. The last ten days have been one for the books. When I left my house earlier today, I realized it was the first time I had been outside since Monday. It took a long time for my eyes to adjust to a light source that wasn't from Christmas trees or computer screens. 

But now that I have survived, I thought I would pass along my top seven tips for surviving your first semester as PhD student.

 1) Get yourself one of these things

Because if you're going to have read approximately a billion pages a week, you should at least be able be comfortable and preferably up to your neck in bubbles. 

2) Hot Tea

More accurately, this is one of my tips for surviving life in general, because tea might be one of the best things God created on this earth. Bonus points if you drink tea while taking a bubble bath while reading a biblical scholar who's been dead for a least a century. 

This is also one of the most true things I've ever read. 

2b) Find someone who can make you tea

Because frankly, when you're surrounded by books and trying to churn out 3000 more words before bed, you're not going to have time (or skill required to dig yourself out those books) to make some yourself. Thankfully, Guy makes the best tea in the world (I married up, you guys.) 

3) Sara Stephens (Pushcart nominated poet) 

I feel like this one goes with out saying. It's for a million reasons, but also because she copy-edited my papers like a champion. (and seriously. they were really long and scary). Also, because sometimes she volunteers with my youth when I need extra help and once she dressed up like flower and only teased me a little when I dressed up like a pig and had pies thrown at my face.

4) Make your bed. 

I don't know why this one works, but it does. I've made my bed every day since we moved into our new house (except for this week, when I turned it into my office after I get tired of the futon). 

5) Be grateful for your cohort. Because they are brilliant. Because they are making you into a better student.

Because they sum what you're feeling with insightful sayings like this: "When full days of studying Greek are the light at the end of the tunnel, you know your finals week is a crazy time." 

And because they remind you that you are not alone and that they are at least a few other crazy people out there who decided spending five more years in school was a good life decision. 

6) Get a fire pit. 

And use it. Invite your best friends over (one at time, of course, because you only have three chairs) and make s'mores and drink tea. Sit with your husband by it and discuss the pros and cons of a constructivism or about that show with the banana stand. 

7) Be kind to yourself

During our first official advising session, the brilliant New Testament scholar, Luke Timothy Johnson, looked at us and said: "be kind to yourselves." 

Now, he might have been only referring to what ancient texts we picked for our translation exam, but this became my unofficial slogan for the semester

Because there was always more reading that could be done. Always more translating that needed attention. Always more planning to do for church.

Always more of something.

But this semester, I tried to give myself a break every now and then. I took weekends off on occasion. Sometimes, I just went to bed with more pages to read. I tried not to compare myself with others, tried not to beat myself over the things I hadn't done or things I didn't know. I tried to give myself a little bit of grace. 

It worked most of the time and it helped take some of the pressure off, 

And when I was being kind to myself, it reminded me that I really love what I do.

One down, friends, nine more to go. 

Tom the Turkey (My Short Thanksgiving Post)

Seriously, if you have 15 minutes today, you should listen to this hilarious true story about Tom the Turkey and his demise. (It starts at 14 minute mark) 

"He lived like a bird, but he died like a gangster." 

Layla Marie (A Baptism)

Little Layla,

You won't remember the day you got baptized. You won't remember how so many of the people who love you gathered with your mom and dad in the back of your church. You won't remember the white christening gown you wore, the same gown your sister wore less than two years earlier. You won't remember how the room was cold or how your cousins weaved in and out of the pews, as they waited to go to your house for cake. 

You won't remember the priest or the water or the oils or the prayers we prayed over you and for you.

But we will.

I will.

So if you ever need reminding of the day you officially were brought into the family of God, I'm your girl. 

Thanks for letting us be a part of your beautiful day.

Love you, little girl.

(thanks to Aunt Carol for taking these photos at the baptism) 

The Bible is not a love letter written directly to you

"The Bible is God's Love Letter written just for me!"

Seriously, guys. Stop saying that. Stop thinking it. Stop pinning things about it.

Because when you say stuff like that, the internet produce scary pictures like this one.

I blame you for this image. 

Traumatizing images aside, stop saying it because it makes you look like you haven't actually read the Bible.

Because if the Bible was actually was God's love letter written to me personally, I might think that somebody needs to explain to God what exactly love letters are supposed to look like...

Because this "love letter" has genocide in it. Floods. Destruction. And a whole bunch of gore, blood and death. (Don't believe me, flip open to the book of Judges...seriously, that book is crazy town)

And that's just the violent stuff. This love letter also has page after page of rules, genealogies, measurements, clothing patterns, debates about food laws, and the like.

Nothing says love like all that, right?

Even Jesus, the hero of our story, gets a bit snarky at times. Seriously, read what he actually says in there sometimes. Sometimes its all love and all inspiring, but sometimes he talks about cutting off your hands and throwing them into fire or throwing mill stones around people necks.

Oh and then there's Paul and all I'm going to say is that I'm pretty sure he would roll over in his grave if someone called him a romance author.

When you try to make the Bible become a love story written just for you, you are not getting the whole story of who God is and what the Bible can do. You end up ignoring its complexity, the multiplicity of its voices. You lose out on the stories, the tragedies, the victories.

You lose out on the anger. You lose out on the despair. Which makes the hope you find its pages lose some of its strength.

And no, I'm not saying that God's love isn't in the Bible. No, with every ounce of me I believe that Bible contains the words that lead to Life. God is love, friends and by reading its pages, I hope you begin to realize that God loves you and your neighbor and your enemy and all of creation.  And there are days when I know that the Spirit will use 3,000 year old words to speak directly to the deepest places of your heart.

But that doesn't mean the sole purpose of the Bible is to be love letter written by God directly to you.

It's a collection of stories and letters that span centuries, written for different reasons in different places. Different voices shouting through history to teach us a little bit more about who God is and about who we are and who we could be.

Barbara Brown Taylor describes the Bible like this:

[Because of the Bible] I am not an orphan. I have a community, a history, a future, a God. The Bible is my birth certificate and my family tree, but it is more: it is the living vein that connects me to my Maker, pumping me the stories I need to know about who we have been to one another from the beginning of time, and who we are now, and who we shall be when time is no more.” -   from This Preaching Life 

So call it your birth certificate. Call it your family tree. Call it your connection to the past and to the future.

Call it crazy and lovely and scary and life-giving and encouraging and difficult.

But please, stop calling it a love letter.

It is so much more.

#Homeowner?

Why are every single one of my towels hanging outside to dry, you ask?

Because our water heater broke (burst, more accurately) early in the morning sending water pouring all over my guest bathroom and sending me crawling underneath our house to turn off the water.

I was completely convinced I was going to get ax-murdered. Or that I was going to find a dead body under there. (I have been watching too much Criminal Minds lately, I guess)

As I was crawling under the house, this thought struck me: "This is growing up. These are the things that happen which slowly but surely turn into you a grown up."

And then, of course, I went back to freaking out.

Thankfully, Guy would arrive home shortly to crawl and climb with me. The water would get cleaned up. We would get a new water heater. My towels survived.

And so did I.

Here's to growing up, friends.