box 03 // wear the hope

Clarissa Toll

We've all seen that article about the very loved and fashion forward stores that only pay many of their workers 4 bucks an hour for the gruling and laborious tasks they perform day in and day out. 

How very many of those lifeless statements I hang in my closet. It kills me to think that I have in some ways encouraged a broken system with my desire for "cute" clothing. 

The terms: Sweat Shop, Child Labor and Fair Wages way heavy on me like an itchy wool sweater I can't shake. 

For about six months, I've been researching ways to be more ethical with my clothing purchases. Brands. Causes. Organizations. I've been searching for a way to give back and empower my closet. 

And I'll be real with you, my bank account cried at just the thought of the prices we'd be paying.  It's not something you can just do. It's a price hike and takes extensive amounts of intentionality. 

I know there is something to be said about cheap prices, (I'm a recent college graduate who works for a non profit. I get it.) but I'm afraid those cheap prices will just add up to a cheaply clothed life cloaked in uncaring and disregard. I refuse to live out a legacy with the lace trim of indifference and nonchalance sewn into its seams. 

But that doesn't mean I don't peruse the Target clothing section or salivate at all the pretty garnet and emerald colored things in H&M. 

A new favorite blogger of mine, Ellie at Selflessly Styled, puts it this way: 

"I'm an ethical fashion blogger, and I still own several things that I know were probably made poorly and in very poor conditions.And I will keep wearing those things until they wear out.
And when they wear out I will have saved up enough to replace them with ethically-made alternatives.
Sometimes the most "ethical" thing to do is keep wearing your sweatshop-made clothes until they've become too tattered to work for you.
If you have a small budget (like I do), it's so freeing to have time to save for responsible replacements instead of the weight of a guilt-driven rush to change everything."
 So, that's how I'm doing it too. Taking it slow, attempting to save, stuffing my pockets full of hope and wearing what I've got."

So, that's what I'm doing. Doing the research, attempting to save, stuffing my pockets full of hope and wearing what I've got. 

One of the great finds in my research was Hope Supply, a subscription box of fashion accessories from a variety of different ethical brands. Each box is curated with four beautiful hand crafted items for your closet as well as your home. 

Hope Supply is the steam engine that continues to empower and bring better to impoverished women in Honduras through Mi Esperanza, an organization that works to educate and provide resources to improve the lives of local artisan women through training and micro-loans.

My favorite part: every item is labeled with the name of the woman who made it. 

Box 03 is simple and sweet. A scarf made from recycled clothing by Reyna. A ring and a necklace crafted by Denia so dainty they're precious. And the loveliest hand-stamped pillow case by Amparo. 

When you wear items with heart and soul behind them, you sense the love and the beauty and the commitment it took for them to be with you. As if these pieces have voices and a story to whisper in your ear.

Clarissa Toll

When I wrap the scarf Reyna made around my neck, it's like a hug from a woman I have never met. A love story is stitched into edges. A sweet blessing of hope covers its fabric. It's an honor to play a small role in ensuring Reyna and girls like her get the beautiful life they deserve.

Clarissa Toll

Hope Supply is such a beautiful representation of how choosing the pieces that have a heart and a story – the ones that make a difference – can do so much more than make a fashion statement. 

Clarissa Toll

You can purchase the same box here and, if you go follow @hopesupply on instagram, you'll get you're self a pretty sweet discount code of TEN DOLLARS off!

This is not an ad. I received no compensation for this post and purchased the box on my own (without the coupon). 

on the other side of 22

Every year, I have written a birthday post. It's been a time to use my words to bid ado to the year previous and prepare/pray/dream/cast vision about the new year ahead. It's something I have always considered a sacred group of words that seek to honor the blessing living this life is, which threaded together create a concrete timeline for reflection later -- a visual of what the Lord will do and has done.

Last year, I felt itchy and restless. I couldn't bring the words to my fingers tips, let alone know what words I wanted to represent my twenty-second year. My world was in more limbo than ever had it been before. This birthday came on the eve of change. In the middle of my final quarter of college, I entered a new chapter altogether. What would follow after that early day in October only created more limbo and more uncertainty.

Goodbyes. Unemployment. Adventures. Urgent care trips. Weddings. Distance. All things I couldn't see coming. 

I wracked my heart and brain at the time for the words and the vision and the prayer, but I felt slightly like someone had turned off my gravity switch and I was just floating around bumping into people, things, moments, and memories. What was I going to do with such a blurry outlook with no words or actions to fill the void? 

To be honest, here we are a year later, on the other side of 22, and I still haven't a solid conglomeration of words or a complete understanding of the past year. Or the new one -- 23 feels just as foggy.

Yet, I'm pretty sure I'm okay with the fog and the confusion. Don't get me wrong it's still strange and uncomfortable at times, but I'm grateful to not understand everything. I believe in a Creator who does know it all, therefore surrendering complete knowledge comes with the territory.

This I know: last year was sacred and this coming year will be just as sacred, regardless of what comes my way. Life is one heck of a gift and it kills me to doubt any bit of it.

For 23, I'm jumping on the roller coaster and lowering the bar tight against me. There will be whoops and dips and loops.

"Hope can be a mighty powerful thing when you decide to tangle it into a journey. Hope can shake things up a bit. It'll convince you that even if you don't know which direction you're headed in, something will meet you at the end." - Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter 

I'm going to write this year a love letter drenched in hope. It'll be beautiful and broken -- just the way it's meant to be. 

don't step on my blue suede shoes

Once in high school, I and a few others from my ASB traveled to the state capitol to develop and speak on our suggestions for the Board of Education. We found ourselves shotgunned into groups of students from all over the state to learn how to debate and create legislation together. It was a long weekend of late nights and groups built like patchwork quilts -- stitched together with our passion to change the world. 

In my group, there was this boy. He had charm and height and an air about him which exuded confidence that was a border town to cockiness. We shared a few laughs and a package of care-packed Redvines on the couch at a downtown hotel. He made fun of my pink energy drink, which to this day I can't find a reason as to why I was even drinking it. That drink was like death -- pink death. 

This boy was the kind to have it all already figured out. He was a card carrying MENSA member and was going to be a lawyer. There was no plan, only certainty. When he talked it wasn't the sort of passion filled determination of a hopeful high school student, but a robust certainty that only those with their own law firm would/could know. As a fifteen year-old with a ramshackle sack of unknown and sort of kind of desires and dreams, I stared at him in awe and bewilderment.

How did he become one of those people who knew what he wanted to be -- was it knit between the strands of his DNA? Was it a dream he found tucked into his kindergarten knapsack or on the play ground during recess? Did his grandfather's grandfather start the family line of lawyers-who-always-knew? 

Even now, I sit back and want to peel back the layers to see what makes these kinds of people know. Sometimes I wish I could gather all these sorts of people up on to a big old couch in the middle of a big city, break apart a package of licorice like we're breaking bread, and have them each tell me one by one how they exactly know.

In July, I started my first job post-college in the PR world. I, a lot of the time, still feel like the fifteen year old girl I once was with her bag full of undecided dreams. Except now, I'm wearing electric blue suede kitten heels and have a cubical and a work phone. Transition is so strange and sometimes it feels like you've been uninvited to your own story. Like, life is just a whirl-wind that blows past you on its way to more.

I have been blessed with a position that houses a ton of learning opportunities and ways to garner experience. It's a depiction of what I always spoke about wanting: a nonprofit who works to make the world better for those who have been wronged, but it doesn't quite yet feel like home. And that in it of it self feels strange, because I convinced myself it already should.

Like when as a kid your sweet momma bought you new jeans or thrifted a worn, strong pair always with a hem that flapped around your heel at the beginning of every school year. She'd remind you that you wouldn't forever be the scrawny, half-lanky kid, but one who would stretch a handful of inches by the end of the year -- you'd grow into them, they wouldn't grow around you.

Transition is the too long in the legs and a little bit loose in the waist part of life. The here and the now of change feels like the never ending yanking up on the hips and the cuffing of the too much, but in the end the button gets tight and the ankles of life look as if they're preparing for a flood. Growing into the new takes time. Wearing in that denim is an art form.

I guess I'll still look up from my desk some days and stare at the grey-blue walls of my cubical wondering if the world and my place in it still exists outside of the office, but I know that I know that cubical won't hold me forever.

I pray the lawyer-boy felt the ramification of change despite his "knowing." I hope he takes the time to wear in a few pairs of jeans. As for me, I want to wear in my jeans until they are good and hole-ly, tight and lived in.

Besides, a good pair of jeans and pair of blue suede kitten heels make for one hell of an outfit.

the first date chronicles: part 2 - jared-dylan-adam

PC: Clarissa Toll

If you missed part one or need a refresher because the blogger took too dang long to get part two up (because that's totally understandable), read here.

A week. A week had gone by since their encounter in the library. No sighting, no call, no text, no Facebook friend request, no sky writing -- nothing had come of the boy who seemed interested in her book and her phone number.

As the girl ranted rather loudly to her carpool mates on their daily trek back to the car about the stupidity of the turned-nothingness of the encounter, her phone vibrated. 

Her dear friend had just got through telling her that maybe she didn't know everything and that maybe, just maybe, this story wasn't quite over yet when the phone signaled a new text message. 

It was from a number not listed in her contacts and it held the shortest phrase of shock/reaction about a piece of the book that only one who was reading it would know. 

The girl stopped dead in her tracks, turned around, and looked into the bushes all while scanning the foreseeable grounds for that tall, lanky boy whom she had met in the library. He and his peacoat were nowhere to be seen.

"How did he know?" she thought.  It was like he was Go-Go Gadget and could hear her rant and hope dwindling out loud. 

With the text and lack of possible spy, those wanna-be hopeless romantic girls instilled new belief in this possibility and began giving him all the typical excuses He's Just Not that into You warns women about. 

Feeling determined to not let boy in on her pervious rant and frustrations with his absence, she held off responding right away and then casually commented about his reaction to the story. 

His response: "This is Jared, by the way. The guy you gave your number to in the library." 

Now, how exactly did "Dyla the Microphone Killa" become Just Jared? No accidental autocorrect could be THAT bad, she thought. She couldn't have created that memory in her mind alone, either. Her memory couldn't be THAT bad.

"Jared?" She texted back, "You said your name was Dylan." 

Again, there was radio silence. With no response to her text, she was left with only her own frustration towards his tomfoolery for comfort.

Who did this fool think he was? Was he playing a game and forgot which name he had used to introduce himself by? How many girls had he met in the library so smoothly? Was he preying on young book nerds just for kicks?

Her carpool mates had also lost their romanticized ideas of him and were no longer so kind to his disappearance. 

They said things like: "What's next? Adam? We'll just have to start calling him Jared-Dylan-Adam." and "If he can't keep his name straight, he must be an ax murderer."

Clearly, they were on to something. 

The girl planned to chalk this event up to one of those "party trick" stories with a few awesome plot twists and just move on with her life.

And then, just like that, the boy reappeared in her spot by the window in the library once again. He was obviously ignoring the unspoken rule about separation of assets, i.e. the cozy spot by the window to the right of the elevators on the third floor, which he forwent by ignoring her text and changing his names like a chameleon changes colors. The nerve of him.

As she casually combed the stacks past him, gathering intel to report back to the carpool mates, she noticed that he was reading the book. HER book. His stature was relaxed as he thumbed through it's pages, as if he was waiting to be noticed. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction, so she begrudgingly trudged her way to the other side of the floor away from her beloved window seat and her coveted sling-back salmon pink chair, all the while muttering under her breath just exactly what she thought of that boy -- whatever his name was.

Three days later, her phone buzzed with a text message from the person previously known as "Dyla the Microphone Killa." He had finished the book. How nice.

As a hail mary, for the sake of the story alone, she texted back: "Is this Jared or Dylan?" At the very least, she was going to nail down his name and take back her spot in the library before she put this encounter to rest.

Nancy Drew had taught her never to allow a mystery to go unsolved. So grab the magnifying glass, because this girl was going to beat the boy at his own game. 

back to the drawing board

PC: Michelle Bongirno

At work, there is a floor to ceiling chalkboard and every day from 8 in the morning till about 8 at night children take chalk to its surface.

Layers upon layers of chalk, white-orange-pink-blue, dusts its surface until the layers of doodles and scribbles become pancaked on top of each other so much so it's hard to decipher the black of the board itself. Chalk dust that didn't quite stick has piled up onto the floor and on the hands and clothes of its artists.

And then we close, the children go home and maintenance comes to wipe it clean. All the labor and dreams spilled out on to its surface are scrubbed clean in one foul swoop, so that the next day another 12 hours of artistry can grace its plains.

In a half joking manner, I told my friend that I'm going to call this season of my post-college life the "back to the drawing board" phase, because, if anything, nothing has gone the way I planned or would have seen fit.

This job with the giant chalk board and the little Picassos, the one that was supposed to be a place holder until I landed my career job, is ending out of the blue. I'm being laid off at the end of the month. With a list of denials only growing longer by the day and being no closer to a job that requires my degree, I am left soon-to-be jobless without an option or a place to go.

When we heard the news, one of my coworkers looked at me with fear in her eyes and with terror-choked words she said, "What am I going to do?" There wasn't an answer. I had no advice, no understanding and no clue. All I could do was stare hard at her and see the reflection of myself in her eyes.

Being 20-something is very similar to having redeemed an E-ticket for the Hot Mess Express. You got onboard without fully comprehending the whole thing, but you were sold on the idea of going west in hopes for gold and your dreams.

Halfheartedly, I want to say I hate this part of my story. I want to raise that banner high and camp myself on one of those cramped benches on that train and write letters back home about all the horrible-rocky-uncertain-frustrating-confusing-daunting things about this season.

But, then I read quotes like this and I feel like these words are what my banner should actually read:

“Transition is a terribly uncomfortable place for you to be in your life. You will start hurting and not even understand where; you’ll think, I’ve never hurt like this before. I’ve never dealt with these kinds of problems. I’ve never been at this point in my life before.”

I'll be honest with you, I was afraid to call these feelings "hurt." It seems silly at first, doesn't it?

Hurt is a word we more often use to describe the bigger, bloodier, bolder problems -- not the bruises we attain by growing up. It makes me feel weak and unprepared to use it as a descriptor in this chapter of my story.

But, this is how I feel. And it isn't wrong or weird just because the world and all its fake-it-till-you-make-it bs says so. Or even because most adultier adults think you should be more joyful and less frazzled by the whole thing.

There is hurt while walking in this season and there is good too. It all goes hand in hand. To ignore the hurt would be silly and create an incomplete picture of what this season really looks like.

My letters home will continue to be filled with the hard and the confusing, but they'll also be the love letters of the now.

Sure, my chalk board has been scrubbed clean and my chalk is a little more crumbly and broken up than it was when I started. It's just the facts of my life right now.

Yet as I live in and through this season, I want to learn to be more like the little artists at work.

They have unrelenting and unashamed desires to still color when the board's been cleared and the chalk has run out. They don't rely on the chalk's permanence, because they know the lines they draw are easily undone. And even after days and weeks of asking, they continue to hold out hope for more chalk when the big box of colors has been all used up.

One day, I'll be lucky to be half as brave as them.

part 1: the first date chronicles - dylan

Photo c/o Clarissa Toll

Preface: This is an actual event that took place my junior year of college. I decided to write it as a third person narrative to challenge my story telling abilities and to make an awkward/hilarious encounter more relatable. Life is funny and it's worth telling the stories it hands you. So, without further ado...

She sat on the third floor of the library killing time during her three hour break between classes. She had cozied herself into an original to the building, salmon pink faded lounge chair by the window. Homework was well avoided during these breaks, and she quietly chuckled often while her nose was stuck in a favorite book and her fingers thumbed through its pages.

"Excuse me?" She looked up. A tall and lanky, pea-coat wearing boy around her age was motioning to the chair across from her. "Is anyone sitting here?" he asked. 

She smiled, uttered a quick "No, go ahead." and went back to her book as he sat down and pulled out his laptop. 

Her chuckling continued and she shared many a "i'm-sorry-if-this-is-distracting-but-you-chose-to-sit-here" smiling glances in his direction. With knowing eyes, his smirks told her it was fine and that his seat choice pleased him.

They went on like this for some time. Her chucking into her book and him smirking at the keys of his laptop. Finally, he broke the silence.

"What book are you reading?" he asked. She told him what it was, who wrote it and how it masterfully combined the heart wrenching with the comical facets of life. Interested, he wrote down it's title and author. Seemingly, he was fascinated with the idea of this book and the girl who had described it to him.

"I thought it was something you were reading for school with the way you were highlighting," he said as his eyes darted to the almost bone-dry yellow highlighter in her hand. She then had to explain her quirk of highlighting other's words; she loved them and those written in books weren't meant to be forgotten. Her explanation seemed to please him, he smiled and said "Your laughter told me otherwise, though."

They chatted a little while longer. What's your major, what year are you, do you often have a break this long, do you sit in the library often -- they rambled through the list of questions acquainted college strangers converse with and then it was time for the boy to stop avoiding life and head back to class.

He packed up his laptop and stood to leave, but hesitated slightly. It was like bravery rocked him back on his feet and said "If i'm going to read this book, I'm going to need some one to talk to about it. Can I have your number?"

She chuckled the nervous laughter that seems to come over all women who realize they are, in fact, being hit on and its no longer just a part of their imagination that they can down play. Thinking the boy clever with his tactics, it was hard not to give him a fair chance.

As she rattled off the digits, she realized neither of them knew the other's name. College students have this horrible talent of skipping over the basics and jumping right to the details. "My name is Clarissa, by the way."

"And what's your's?" she continued. "I'm Dylan Robert Higgins. My mom named me after Bob Dylan." he chuckled. Deadpan he followed up with, "But my customers all know me as 'Dyla The Microphone Killa.'"

Sensing her utter confusion, he then launched into a five minute explanation as to why he as an Apple Bee's server gets very bored and offers to rap for his tables. After the short anecdote he reflected "many of them don't seem to like it much..."

He had an unconventional sense of character and she liked it. She could use a dose of silly in her serious, well organized life.

As they said their goodbyes, she hoped he'd call. Well text, at least, because college students typically avoid phone calls like the plague (in effect, to a college student, a phone call is equal to committing to meet your family and the possibility of marriage all at the touch of the green button).

Or even better, perhaps they'd make a habit of running into each other in the library.

As he headed off towards the elevators, her carpool mates came off the lift.

"Do I have a story for you!" she said as they came close. Adrenalin was the sole reason her blood pumped in those moments as she recanted the encounter.

They'd squeal and giggle about the chance meeting all the way home. And as girls do, they'd dream about how "perfect" this was and would be. 

you are here

Photo c/o Michelle Bongirno 

They say:

"After further consideration, we have decided to pursue other candidates for this opportunity."

"Your qualifications were reviewed and while impressive, were not  a suitable match for this position."

Or, my personal favorite (heavy sarcasm, here), nothing. 

The list of noes has grown quite long on my end of things. Basically, I'm at the corner of Never Getting Another Interview Again and Job Applications Are The Worst. 

For the sake of transparency and at the risk of sounding dramatic, I write this. For myself mostly, but for the possibility of someone else too. I made a promise early on in my career-hunt that I would be honest about this process for those who are following after -- those soon-to-be career-hunters. The world has told a lot of fake-it-till-you-make-it stories and has neglected to get real about how mucky and rough this season can be. The trenches of in-between college and a career can feel lonely and beyond frustrating. I don't want to be another rose-colored, everything was fine type story. I want the it's-dark-here-but-I'm-holding-out-for-hope type stories, because really, if we get strikingly honest, that's all the stories of every chapter of our honest-to-goodness lives. No filters to hide the uncomfortable or squares to crop out the less-lovely; just the reality and truth remain. 

Last week, I was scrolling through social media. I saw that a friend of mine, same age and recent college graduate, was a speaker at a conference. My first thought: "and I'm just here." Just at a regular job that doesn't require my degree or special skills. Just getting denied applications. Just bored out of my mind. Just wanting more. 

After I pitched my tent for a short while in pity-ville and had a small pity-party of one, I got real honest about my "just." Well the Lord did, actually. 

I was looking at my life as the kind of just -- barely, by a little -- and desiring more of what the world would define as success. My idea of more had gotten quite empty. 

As I clung to this idea of just (the little kind), I was basically saying F-you to all the opportunities I have currently. In other words, I was claiming they weren't enough for me. 

How stupid, right? Who was I to claim they weren't enough? 

I have always had a hard time being in the moment. My goals and minute by minute living (at times) can be consumed with what's coming -- the what's next portion. As a child, my favorite questions were "What are we doing?" "Where are we going?" and "Because why?" They haven't much changed, if I'm being honest. I like being in the know, I like preparing and knowing whats coming. And I really, really like knowing the why to everything. In this season, especially, I have been struggling to be content in the right here and right now with most my questions still hanging in the unanswered category. 

I have to make a conscious effort to set my heart and my mind in the moment, every moment. To set it any where else, I become discontent. Which is only selfishness, because I have NO reason to be discontent -- whether or not I have a plan or the answers to my questions. 

I am blessed to have the opportunity to hold a job for the moment in a place in which I get paid to read books to children and hear them say "wead anotha book! wead anotha book!" a million times over. Where else would I get to add voices to the bears, lions, horses, and elephants and be silly for the sake of growing souls? My degree certainly doesn't house many of these opportunities, if any at all. 

To consider these moments "just" anything is ignorance at best. Sure roaring like a lion, picking up legos or wiping boogers were not what I expected to be doing after college, but gracious. I swear, glory exudes when a child laughs. Its a laugh that brings me back, back to contentment -- back to not seeing the "just." 

I know, in a way, I've said this all before in previous blog posts or in Instagram captions. But, these feelings and this season remind me how easily we, as human beings, forget to remember what we know. 

When I landed my current job, I wrote this: Four years ago I never thought that this is where I would be, but you know what? I'm so damn grateful for it. I'm going to glean from this time and I'll be a better praiser of my creator because of it... Where ever you are, lay down those lies you've accepted as truth from the world and find ownership and glory in the space you find yourself in. It's all so very worth it.

In the day in and day out it is so easy to lose sight of the importance of a current moment. If we really were to break it down, the compilation of all these right-now moments are what develop a life. We (I) get so lost in the loftiness of the future that we (I) neglect to glean from what's happening in the now. The future matters, it does, but I don't want mine to consume these days.

I want to be here right now. 

Some days its a harder struggle than others. But, it's a wrestling match worth my participation and the best fight I can muster. 

The applications and the noes are rough. The unknown and the unanswered nature of this season can be frustrating.

But. The yeses are there and the grace still abounds. 

This testament -- these words -- I write are for me (maybe for you, too) on the days when the right now feels heavy and not enough all at the same time, because those days will still come. And though that fact be true, I still push for hope. 

Because I know that I know that I know, I'm supposed to be here -- right now. 

stop acting like you know

Graduating college is very similar, I would assume, to getting married or having a baby, in the sense that you have a good indicator what all these large milestones in life will supposedly entail. Yet, you never truly know or understand what they are until you are in the thick of them.

I left college knowing it would be change, difference, and newness. I knew that my rhythm of life would adjust to a new normal. And I knew how this season looked from my head's perspective.

It's striking how big milestones and changes can reflect our humanness, like very few others can. We think we know, and then the change actually happens. 

A month post-graduation, I know that what I knew was very little like what I know now. 

The application process is both life-sucking and depressing. Its hard to keep laying yourself out on the track, each time hoping that the train will slow down and not crush you and a little part of your soul as it runs full steam ahead. Motivation runs dry very quickly and its much easier to clean out the years of stuff you've stored under your bed, than write cover letters that you know will return a "thanks, but no thanks" response. Or even worse, no response. 

I've noticed people asking me the "are you busy" question a lot more often. Not necessarily because its being asked of me more, but because I'd actually LIKE to be busy. No job, no school, and a cleaned out bed make for a boring set of 24 hours. It isn't a problem that they ask, it just makes a neon sign in my head of this slow-paced season and its turtle-like qualities. 

But the biggest thing I've realized in the beginning parts of this season:

This is the first time in my life that I don't truly have a plan. When I graduated from high school, I knew I was headed to college. Sure I didn't know what the heck I had gotten myself into, but I knew the general gist of things. When uncertainty started to crowd in, I could at least rely on an acceptance letter and what it implicated. 

This time around, the idea of a "career" isn't enough to call a plan. The variables are large and sometimes can cast big shadows onto the future. 

The other night my dear friend said, five years ago we thought you'd be married and settled, but "You have the world at your feet. Its so exciting." 

And it SO is. But having the world at your feet can be deeply unnerving. The world implicates many options with wide parameters. So many possible choices. 

I often half-heartedly joke that i'll take the first job that will pay me, but I also want to truly know that I have made the right choice. I don't want to pry open or slip through cracked doors. I know to the depths of my soul that the Lord opens doors, and I only want to run through those swung wide open. But this season makes for a lot of uncertainty when it comes to knocking on what seems like an endless slew of doors (kind of like Hilbert's Infinite Hotel). 

I thought I knew what this season and change would hold, but daily as I sift through more applications and stare out the window; I am reminded that I know nothing. 

One day, I'm sure I'll read this post as a girl who's too busy once again with a career she's living and say "Silly girl, you had no idea." But here's the paradox, that same girl will be uncertain of other things and she'll be waiting on a different unknown. 

So that's all to say, I should stop acting like I know and soak up what the Lord has to teach me in this season. Easier said than done, of course, but worth it just the same. 

Because life is built of seasons unknown, and by grace we survive.