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“I can’t do this without You.”

After communion, I shut my eyes and knelt.

I breathed in, and sought a silent respite from the to-do list I haven’t yet learned to push away from the forefront.
“I can’t do this without You.”
My own tone caught me off guard. This wasn’t “I can’t do this without You” as in “I need You. Thanks for being there.” This was “I can’t do this without You” as in “…where the heck have You been?”
I laughed a little.
As if He ever left.
As if when I am on Twitter first thing in the morning instead of in prayer, it’s because God didn’t show up.
He has been where He always has been.
All we have to do is go there.
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Five reasons my mom is awesome.

The babies are me, except for bottom right.
That’s my mom, and – obvs – I am her clone.
As I write in a mildly crowded Starbucks, conversations buzz above Michael Buble and the whir of whatever baristas do behind that counter. It’s Mother’s Day, and while I spent most of it with my mom, I people watch and gather thoughts and have come to the following conclusion:
My mom is awesome.
The reasons for this are infinite. Here are five favorites:
1. My mom holds the bar high. She isn’t a tiger mom, but she always has had an implied set of standards she challenges us to meet. This is not because she likes to see us stretch to reach high bars. This is because she trusts that she and my dad raised us able to reach them, able to endure the discomfort associated with growth. She expects the best out of us, because she wants the best for us, and believes we are capable of growing into the best versions of ourselves.
2. She trusts me. At 18, I would have begged to differ (but at 18, some concepts are harder to grasp than others). As a 27-year-old woman, there are few moments more valuable to me and none better examples of her trust than the ones in which my mom asks for my opinion.
3. She got on the school bus once. Among the worst things that could happen to a kid is to cross paths with a bully on the bus. Among the worst things that could happen to a bully on the bus is to encounter my mom. One morning, the day after I told my mom a fellow student had been bullying me en route to my elementary school, she stood with me at the stop. When the bus arrived, she followed me onto it. I pointed the bully out, and she approached the bully. …Let’s just say the bully never bothered me again.
4. She pays attention. She listens when I talk, and she listens when I don’t. My mom has a knack, made in part of fine tuned intuition and in part of a master’s degree in rehabilitation and mental health counseling (Yes, she has one, too!), for knowing what’s on my mind, even when I can’t find the words to express it. She puts pieces of information together like a puzzle, and solves it even when pieces are missing. This is a fabulous trait for a therapist, and a fabulous trait for a mom.
5. She gives and doesn’t count the cost. I am, however – in my opinion – forever indebted. I could make a list of what she’s given, but it would take up the entire internet (and it would take the rest of my life). I am certain I don’t express as much as I should what I could sum up in two simple words: thank you.
Happy Mother’s Day!
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Arleen Spenceley, M.A.

Yesterday, I graduated with my master of arts in Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling from the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences at the University of south Florida.

I’ve written a lot on the blog about grad school already. This time, words aren’t necessary. 

730+ recipients of doctoral and master’s degrees.
I’ll buy dinner for the person who finds me.

USF’s President Judy Genshaft and me on the Jumbotron.
Photo courtesy of my dad.

The academic hood is obviously designed to keep a graduate’s ego in check.
Yes, you have a master’s degree, but you don’t know how to put clothes on.
Big thanks to the girl who helped me put it on, and to the girl who bobby
pinned my cap to my head. Two thumbs up, ladies, two thumbs up.

Not ready to let go, I wore the cap to dinner.
Possibly also because nobody likes cap hair.

Arleen Spenceley, MA #boom
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Thoughts on graduating.

And so I sit in a silent house, beside a dog whose slumber is disrupted by the nearby sound of somebody’s lawnmower.

I am graduating tomorrow.
I’ve already reflected a lot, out loud and in my head about what I’ll miss and for what I’m grateful. About how far from me this day felt when, in August in 2009, I sat in the second row in a classroom in jeans and a racerback tank, quiet but smiling on my first day of grad school. Graduation, then, was a figment of my imagination.
But today I reflect on tomorrow.
On “no more pencils, no more books…”
On knowing that because I know what I know, I am gratefully obligated to modify my behavior accordingly.
On putting my world (and my closet, and my car) back together. Reorganizing. Praying more, sleeping more, drinking more water. Exercising. Socializing. Dating? Writing.
On fulfilling responsibilities.
Growing up more.
Growing.
Graduating!
How many times I said “let’s do this!”
How great it feels finally to say “we did.”
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Goodbye is a hard word.

I listened to a sad song on repeat on the parkway earlier.

It worked.

It worked because it dawned on me during class tonight that I have class only two more times. What has monopolized my time since 2009 in easy ways and hard is ending.

It’s ending in the best ways.

Tests from now on don’t have grades. All of them are open book. The books are cheaper. I can commit where I wouldn’t. I can sleep when I couldn’t. I am shifting from unable (to socialize, to read, to write) to able.

It’s ending in the worst ways.

I cried here. I laughed here. I grew (up) here. I am a little bit attached to here. There is comfort in the couch outside my adviser’s office. In the creased counseling magazines on coffee tables. In the classrooms where I learned everything I know (later to learn I kind of still feel like I sort of don’t know what I’m doing).

I am ready but not ready.

Happy but sad.

Goodbye is a hard word.