Mackenzie Standing

In honor of Saint Patrick's Day, I thought I would tell you all a little bit about the reality of living in Ireland. Most of this is tongue-in-cheek, but it's also a fairly realistic depiction of my day to day life. And so, without further ado, I present you with Mackenzie's List of All Things Irish. 1. I greatly despise having to say my name here.  Generally speaking, I love my name. I love that the "K" is lowercase and that it can create a plethora of nicknames. I love that my middle name is after my grandmother, and that it rhymes with my last. I love all the jokes that can stem from the pronunciation of my last name, whether it be silly future first names for my brothers' children (Anita, anyone?) or clever hashtags (my favorite: #mahoncrushmonday). Despite the fact that I'm no where near marriage, I've already started planning out how to keep my full name while adopting my future husband's as well. I don't think I'll ever be quite r...

In a lot of ways, I feel like I'm failing at Ireland. I try to keep my posts to Facebook and Instagram more upbeat. I know that people don't like to listen to others complain on the Internet, and I like posting pictures but don't like taking my phone out in the rain, so you normally get happy, sunny-ish shots. In addition, I know that this is a great opportunity, and I don't want to waste it. I'm trying to cultivate a sense of gratitude and cling to the good days when they come. So I snap a photo, cut it so it only shows the interesting parts, pop on a hashtag, and I update you all. What this leads to, though, is me feeling like I'm being inauthentic: You all see the pretty photos with the carefully applied filters, but you don't get the full picture. In a lot of ways, this relates back to framing. Parts of this town, and parts of this study abroad experience, are truly valuable and life-giving and beautiful , in the most sincere, God-ordained sense of t...

I walked into church on Sunday and my heart gave a small leap in my chest. On an unassuming table in the front of the room, covered with a simple white napkin, lay small cups of grape juice and pre-torn hunks of bread. My eye, well trained in Christian practices after ten years of bouncing around their circles, knew that could only mean one thing: It was Communion Sunday. Communion has long been my favorite sacrament in the Church. I blame at least part of this love on my upbringing; my church in Wenatchee celebrates communion weekly, so every Sunday from the time I was twelve until I left for college at eighteen, I partook in the most sacred of meals with my Family. By the time I left, I could say the words of institution backwards and forwards and sometimes, just to freak out my friends, I'd mouth along with the person leading (I never said I was a normal kid). Communion was a certainty in those years; a gift of grace I knew I would receive weekly. The communion table at ...

I wear headphones often in Galway. Between my four-mile round trip walk to school, running, and any other errand that might present itself, I generally spend almost two hours a day with buds in my ear. Thanks to Spotify Premium, those are normally happy minutes where the soundtrack to my life sounds like James Vincent McMorrow, Sleeping At Last or Matt Maher. Its easy, though, to get sucked into my own little world and forget to notice what's going on around me. My house might be farther from school than I wanted, but the best part of its location is its proximity to the ocean. I can walk out my door, and exactly half a mile away is the Salthill Promenade, Galway's equivalent of the Wenatchee loop trail. It's beautiful, well-maintained, and, since it's such a popular venue and very well lit, it's the perfect place to run if it's starting to get dark outside. Not pictured: The many, many 70-year-old men that insist on swimming in Speedos, regardless of th...

Dear Pastor, You probably didn't know it as I walked into the small church next to the grocery store last Sunday, but I had had a rough week. I don't handle change well, whether it be new furniture or new classes, so moving myself halfway across the globe was difficult, to say the least. I had spent the four days before Sunday desperately wandering around Galway, attempting to set up phone plans and find grocery stores and adjust to living in a place where nothing ever truly dries and no room is ever comfortably warm. I had spent the four nights before Sunday waiting for it to be late enough to call my mom, aching for a familiar voice. They were hours where my relationship with God experienced whiplash, where in some I found myself clinging to Him like a lifeboat, yet in the others I was frustrated, argumentatively asking why He brought me here in the first place. It was a long four days. I stumbled into church Sunday morning wide-eyed and dripping wet, the result of my...

When I worked in Maine last summer, there were a couple instances when I would have to drive back from Skowhegan (the thriving metropolis of 8,589 people an hour and a half away that held the closest hospital and Wal-Mart) late at night. Let me tell you something about Maine: It gets dark there. Really dark. Because camp was located so far north, the population base was small (again, Skowhegan is a thriving metropolis) and the light pollution was minimal. As I would walk back to my cabin at night, lugging my laundry bag and desperately wishing that I had given up my non-outdoorsy fashion sense and bought a head lamp, it would be so dark that I couldn't see my hands in front of my face. When the stars came out, it was phenomenal. They weren't the only things that came out, though. Easily the most intimidating part of driving in the dark in Maine is the moose. They're huge. Someone once told me that it's just as dangerous to hit a deer as it is to hit a moose, and I c...

Three-and-a-half achingly long and simultaneously unbelievingly quick years ago, I started this blog the day before I left to begin an undergraduate degree at Montana State University. My first post was called "The 'Good' in Goodbye,"  and it was one terrified young woman's attempt to find hope for the future. The goodbyes I said then were mostly bitter, and my post attempted to latch on to some sweet. It seems only fitting, then, to bookend this journey with the second half of the post (the true bookend would be to shut the blog down, now, but I need someplace to continue rambling). Unlike when I left Wenatchee, this goodbye is happily anticipated. I have learned so much in Bozeman, academically and otherwise, but it has also come at a cost. There is no where in the world where I have felt so lonely and out of place, even after months upon years of living here. This goodbye is exciting and terrifying all at the same time. It's mostly sweet, but the bitter i...