A dictionary of garden lessons today:

"I've been planting seeds," she said, "and not just of the garden variety." She pulled weeds from around roots as I sat on the perimeter and let tears rolls down my face, swiping them away with every statement of truth spoken. I am unabashed and free with my tears around her.

"Sometimes the roots go down really deep and you have to dig around, eventually just breaking them off sometimes so they can be transplanted." I nodded, knowing as well as she did that she wasn't talking about Late Blooming Raspberry Bushes.

Her knees are covered in dirt and there's a spot on her face; she swats at gnats intermittently and I continue to cry, and listen.

I ask hard questions like "did you ever resent the call of God on your life? want to settle for less, find yourself settling for less to evade the call?" She gives hard answers like "It's only time to plant the peas and a few other things now, we'll wait a bit to plant the rest." Because we have to do things in order.

I repent for my unfaithfulness and discontentment. She leans back and says that a mother's heart always loves and always forgives, and always knows that the monster lurking on the surface isn't the real person inside. I turn my face and cry more, looking at the flat patch of dark earth beside me, knowing we see the seeds but only because we know they're there. To any other eye, though, it's a dark patch of earth.

We choose an apple tree and a cherry one; get a short lesson in small orchard care and drive toward home, the branches of our new purchases brushing our shoulders in the front seat. "We're not planting this for us, you know," she said. "We don't plant fruit trees so that we get the fruit. You understand that right?" We are at the top of the hill, staring at the small plot we both call home. My eyes are on the small orchard to the left of the house, five fruit trees from a hundred years ago. They are old and gnarled, we love them for their shade and small tart apples in the fall.

She doesn't say it, but we both understand it: the fruit that we bear isn't for us; we're the tree, others are the recipients of our fruit.

She is leaving for an appointment and I sit inside the perimeter of the garden, pulling out a few more weeds, not necessarily of the garden variety, and pushing Early Blooming Raspberry Plants into the soft black earth. I am not so good at this gardening thing, this planting and waiting and knowing that I may never see taste and see, but I know how to tend. I know how to listen. And I know how to learn.

And I know a lesson when I hear one.

I'm trying to not let the weaknesses show. We're human, after all, made of muscle and flesh and all things real. Weakness is real. Equal in value to strength. Without one we are merely phenoms or failures.

The truth is that I am weak in so many areas. And faith is all of them. "Lord I believe! Help my unbelief" seems to me the most trite of confessions and requests. To claim one thing and ask for it in the next breath seems to me that someone had their portion control a little confused.

Did he have it or not? Can you have it and not at the same time?

And so this is what I think about the past few days. Follow my thoughts, if you will:

If I am on a train that seems to be derailing, my first instinct is to jump off of the train, when shouldn't it be to figure out how to just get it back on track?

And why do I feel so often in a state of derailing? Why do I constantly feel as though every step forward means that tomorrow, or the next day if I'm lucky, I feel like I've taken two steps back?

Why do I feel as though this Helper of mine, who I've received through faith and the laying on of hands, is illusive when I need Him most? When I need Help, He stands on the sidelines, arms crossed and cocked eyebrows surveying the scene. I'm derailing, He's observing.

I think about Peter today. Thinking he had it in him to stand on water, to walk on waves. Flailing out of the boat, firmly set on the fluid beneath him, surprised at his faith, his belief. And yet, a second later, in front of an observing Helper, he begins to sink.

But here's what my thoughts are followed with: that observing Helper does more than just see, He says "Come!"

Come! to the sidelines, Come! to the frontlines. Come! be refreshed. Come! get back on track. Come! be rested. Come! be strengthened. Come! and go again. But just come.

Lord, I believe. I do. Today, right now, this second I believe. But every second is followed by another second and, Lord, I need your help to keep on believing. It doesn't come naturally to me, like weaknesses and flesh. It doesn't come easily to me, like grammar and good lemonade. It isn't part of my spiritual make-up and it doesn't make me invincible.

And all this lack makes me aware that trains derail and so we don't put our faith in the train, but in the tracks. They know the way home. They're pointed there, in the direction of the One who says "Come!"

This gift for this day. The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived--not always looked forward to as though the "real" living were around the next corner. It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.

Elisabeth Elliot

I write from my perch on the second floor. A pale, green bedroom I've been glad to call my own again for the past six months, even if our time together is quickly coming to an end. I don't know why I'm writing that, just because it's true and it's a tangible sign of an interior sifting once again.

This earthly tent grows tired of housing herself in a hiking pack, waiting for the next spot to drop stake. I dream of a yard sale this summer, pulling furniture out of storage units and sheds, remnants of a dream-home that never woke up. I mentally categorize all the books that I own, packed away for three years, and check off the ones I will keep, knowing that thousands of books and antique tables and chairs are too heavy to fit in that pack.

Some things are just too heavy to carry around with us.

"Blessed is the man whose heart is in you, whose heart is set on a pilgrimage to Zion"

Those on a pilgrimage pack lightly, they know that here is not their destination, they know that somewhere else is their hope.

Eternity is written on our hearts and we know it, even if we try to forget it sometimes.

Here, in my pale green bedroom, I try to forget it. I try to forget that warning to me several years ago, that I would be tempted to make this world my home and that I must never forget that I am an ambassador and this place is not my home. I have a stack of postcards by my bed, pretty colors that I want so badly to find a place on my wall for, but there's the knowledge that I can't. This room is not my home. It's just one more stop on my pilgrimage.

Where are we journeying to? And where are we journeying from? What is written on our hearts? And what do our mouths confess?

These are the thoughts that rush my head, that clamor for attention above the other pretty things I want to write. I am tired of moving, yes. I am tired of staying places and never really living there. I am tired of my journey, but it never eclipses the destination that is written on my heart.

I am a product of Heaven, from it I came and to it I return, everything else is just a stop along the way.

This is an assignment handed over by the Woman of the House, which as everyone knows, is actually more like a demand. I am quick to my feet and grab the closest Bible. See, there's a little bit of writer's block happening in my head and I've said "I'm going to blog, for real this time" enough times today to be considered a lunatic, or at least fickle.

The assignment: Open the Bible to a random passage and write about it.

"Consider Abraham: He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness."

Assignment commences (doesn't it lessen the power of a post when you know it's forged on the spot?):

Consider Abraham with me for a moment. Consider the man who saw in his lifetime, a name-change, several location changes, a promise made, a promise seemingly broken, and a whole lot of other baggage we like to bury under the cloak of the Patriarch of our Faith: these things are better left to other men of lesser character and potential. But consider Abraham with me for a moment and realize that it wasn't Abraham's righteousness (even in the days of a very demanding bar to uphold) that was credited to him, it was his belief.

You already got that part right?

But that seems curious to me: here, in the days when righteousness was regarded more highly than belief (after all, there was no foretold Messiah in which to believe at this point), that a man who ran away much, lied a few times more, laughed in the face of his Lord, and took a handmaid to fulfill a seemingly empty promise, that he was credited with belief.

Belief is what Peter had and lost there on the sea. Belief is what Thomas lost and then had when he saw the holes in his Savior's hands. Belief is what Elijah knew when the whisper blew through his cave. And belief is what we all feel in that first recognition of salvation. We are strong with belief, we are firm with belief, we are built of belief--even without righteousness.

And that is somehow comforting to me. Today, when I fail and when righteousness seems far from me. When I mess up my life's script, when today's portion doesn't taste good on my palate, and when I laugh at the promises He's spoken, harboring unrighteousness in the form of disbelief. It is comforting to me that being right isn't the end result, but believing is.

It is comforting to me to realize that I might, and will, fail at ever being right--really right--but I only need to lift up my eyes and know that He is my helper, the maker of heaven and earth.

"Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!"

It's easy to think it always rains where only we stand--a constant deluge of rain on my parade of one. I feel soaked in that thought often. Elijah, a man just like us, did too. I take comfort in that--after all, misery loves company. "I alone am left!" he cries from the mouth of the cave, as though he wasn't the one who just left. "I alone am left!" I cry from whatever current state from which I've just run away. Running a race requires other runners around, not running away period.

I run away a lot.

Two days ago someone asked me what verse encapsulates my life. I mull for a minute, allow him to share his verse first, buying time masked as courtesy. And when he finishes and asks again, I scramble quickly grabbing the two verses I first memorized in my Bible memorization journey.

"Do you not know, that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way to Get That Prize!"

"Therefore, since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw aside every sin and the weight that so easily entangles us, and let us run with patience the race that is set out for us, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despised the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the Father."

It's not lost on me that both of these have to do with running: I'm dull, but not stupid. There are a few reasons why these verses mean much to me and victory is most of them. I want to win. I like to win. I need to win. But these passages aren't just about winning, they're about running. And the assumption is, they're about running alongside other runners.

I don't always like other runners. They crowd my space, cramp my style. They're sweaty and they're faster than me. I don't like other runners because they make me feel slow, or they make me want to slow down, pace myself like they do. Or I feel badly for them, lagging behind in last place, so I lag with them. I don't always like other runners because they can sprint and I just can't.

But sometimes I don't like other runners because I think I know the best way to run. And that is to run away. To run from the competition, the work, the fight, the company, and sequester myself safe from the challenge they present. To stand and shout from the mouth of my self-made monastery, "I alone am left!" As though He doesn't know that isn't true anyway.

No one's been left. It rains on the just and the unjust. You're not a special case and neither am I. We're runners and sometimes runners get tired, sometimes we need to pace ourselves, sometimes we need to sprint, sometimes we need to just run. But don't leave. And don't cry that you alone are left. You're not alone, you're just wet or tired. And that's okay, we'll slow down with you.

But we won't lose sight of the Prize.

I sort my Skittles, eating them by color. I class my gmail labels, ROYGBIV down the line. I vacillate in my closet--like shirts together? or like colors? and colors usually win. Food is arranged on my plate, carefully kept from touching. Aesthetic is important in issues like these. I am keenly aware of complimentary colors, pairing shades and hues with their compliments and my favorite colors were chosen for these reasons alone.

Today the horizon is no longer a line of black cowlicks on end, but a fury of red buds waking and stretching, surprised at the warmth and welcoming it. I know how they feel. My soul is stretching too. Surprised at how difficult it is to break out of my winter's cove, to wake and be awake and acutely aware of all the ways that this breaking summer will be different than all the others. I am nostalgic like that.

This morning a few friends and I spent a few hours at The Villiage Diner, an establishment at which I've never had the pleasure of eating (and still haven't for that matter). The purpose: To ingest a foot and a half circumference of Bisquick and Blueberries. The Flapjack challenge was on. Before it was all said and done, five t-shirts donned our winning men and one very disappointed girl surrendered half-way through. It was fun, though I didn't rise to the challenge. Flapjacks aren't my thing.

I do not like to drive. Yes, true. I don't. Perhaps it's for the same reason I don't like to fly--too much time spent doing both has ruined me for a chance at true love. But one of the things I like about driving is that it means plenty of time by myself. To pray. To think. To remind. To stir up. To muse. To linger or to not. My drive time has been a treasure in the past few weeks. More than a respite between commitments, I find myself slowing down, letting others pass me on the highway, taking the scenic route. Where am I off to in such a hurry anyway?

Yesterday I sat on the grass talking on to the phone to my very pregnant friend (have I mentioned that both of my very best friends are expecting? I don't think I have.). While I sat there in capris and sandals, hordes of ants came crawling all over my feet. This is gross. So I moved to the porch, where crowds of flies swarmed around my person. So I moved to the back porch, where for the third time in my life I received a mosquito bite. I went inside--and lost cell-phone signal. Sorry Liz.

Tomorrow I am teaching a Women's Sunday School class at my church. I chose my Bible Character subject in faith, knowing that she was known for a particular area in which I was struggling. I figured, if I knew I had to teach a lesson on her, I might be able to get my act together. In doing my research, though, I've found that our struggles are not the same, but the antidote is: speaking the promises of God keep us from slipping into many sins. I've been learning to speak some promises lately.

Last night it was quiet for a moment at Hurleys. I'm not sure that's ever happened at Hurleys, especially during a Battle of the Bands, but she has that gift. She played her twenty minute set and laughed and was gracious and I think for a minute the Holy Spirit blew through and rested on the shoulders of people who couldn't know what that strange sensation was. But we did. We were waiting for it and we knew.

We're no fools in these parts. We know what's hitting us square--it's really no surprise and it's a welcome sight. Spring and summer in this area is the closest thing to heaven that I've found here on earth. The lessons are multiplied and the experiences are just beginning. There's enough time to take it all in and enough daylight to make it last. We make it count.

Here in the tundra we don't waste time. At the hint of spring we discard our wraps and don our summer best--there isn't time to mess around with semantics, the first day of summer is really just the last day of winter. It's pretty simple you see. We've got these few months and then lots of winter again.

And so, for me, summer commences with the side porch sitting. We have two rockers and a porch swing here on the side of the house--we're encased by grapevines waiting for life again and a vegetable garden waiting for planting and lots of air. We're serenaded by multitudes of birds and did I mention the air? The air in these here parts is the best parts. I know because I've been a part of a lot of air. And it's not always pretty, or clear, or fresh, or all mine. But here, in St. Lawrence County, with the seaway on one side and the Adirondacks on the other--air is in plenty.

I love that.

This past week, in case you didn't click, which I know for a fact many, many of you did not, was our Annual Prophetic Presbytery Meetings at my church. I capitalize those four words not for grammar's sake, but for my own. Because capitalizing on these four days is absolutely necessary. Unlike the use of redundant adverbs like absolutely. I digress (because that's what you're supposed to say...).

In truth, I capitalize the past four nights because imagine yourself for a moment in the largest, most happening church in the New Testement: Ephesus. Imagine yourself for a moment sitting there in a crowd of churchgoers and hearing the recently delivered posted letter being read aloud from the front. Imagine a word from Paul from the Lord for you. Addressed to you. Citing names and places and situations. Specifics. Imagine that.

Now imagine 2000 years later, a lively happening church in Potsdam, New York. A place where we have a lot of air and not much else--but along with all that air, we have the Spirit. And He's addressing some things to us, citing names and places and situations. Specifics. And we sit there and marvel. And then we capitalize.

Because hearing the Lord speak means nothing, clanging symbols we might say, if we don't take it and do something with it. Make it practical. Bring it to life. Walk it out. Stir up within us. Kindle afresh. Get excited.

Go big, or go home.

Because God isn't concerning Himself with semantics in these parts--we've got this lifetime and that's it. We discard the wraps, the things that hold us back, down, beneath, and we'll step out in faith that if the air feels like God, smells like God, bears the fruit of God, and looks like the Word of God, than it's God.

And, wow, was it God.

Enough. Said.

It's hard to make a clan this large converge. We pile the represented ages, states, cities, towns, schools, jobs, habits and times and the odds are decidedly out of our favor.

But converge we do--once every few years. We drop everything, drive the distance, cancel meetings, pack up homework and see for a brief moment this family to which we belong. It's not all of us, of course, things like death and divorce don't allow for all of us--but it's most of us and most of us is better than anything else.

They quote movies and wear low slung jeans, hat on all of their heads declaring loyalties--BMXing, Disney, Lucky Brand, Potsdam, and other nondescript sort of things . We all have cell phones save the two youngest and even though meetings get canceled, text-messages don't. We let our natural tendencies toward showing love with physical affection run rampant--back-rubs all around!

Our food is served and no really sticks to their own plate--someone else's portion always looks better. We share, because even though we no longer share space, we're still family and family shares. And so, when we are saying goodbye and I am whispering into blond hair "Be good. I love you. I'll miss you." it's really okay, because we're family and we'll share.

It's not the kind of sharing I envisioned for my clan--I'm more of the great large family reunion every week sort than the broken meets broken for dinner at Denny's once a year--but it's the kind of sharing I'm happy, so happy, to do.

So I cry on her shoulder and whisper "I'm so glad" and I think she knows it's not for tonight that I'm so glad--it's for sharing. She has her beloved boys this week and I won't worry about them a bit. She's, after all, the one who taught me to share in the first place.

Open windows help the soul to breath. I think this as I drive on back roads yesterday, patches of snow still lingering in wooded areas, the secret places. Here, in the open, we spread wide windows and throw back heads, welcoming warm breezes and breath on our faces. Winter has left, swinging the door behind her, glimpses of her icy glare still seen in brief, but mostly gone. Mostly gone.

The forties of Isaiah are my muse recently. I read and think and pray their verses, ingesting their lessons and admonitions. Today I learn about secret places:

For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited): I am the Lord, and there is none else. I have not spoken in secret, in some dark land, I did not say to the offspring of Jacob, Seek Me in a Waste Place. I, the Lord, speak righteousness, declaring things that are upright!

I think sometimes I get it backwards, thinking that because the earth was made first, I was created for it. I think sometimes that I was created as an accessory to it, embellishment on an already perfect ensemble. I think sometimes that I, along with the rest of our concerned citizens, abiders of the earth, get so concerned with keeping my outfit clean, that I forget that the outfit was made to be worn by a person.

Made to be worn by me.

And so this year, as I throw back my head and open my windows, welcoming the Spring, I am acutely aware that I was not formed for the earth, the earth was formed for me. That snow left lying in wooded areas teaches me about the secret places of my heart, where winter is really sin. That green pointed shoots of life poking from the moist earth among dead leaves shows me that even though I'm not perfect yet, growth is still happening. That the sound of spring's wind teaches me that sometimes my soul just needs to pause and breathe. That the rushing wild rivers will soon settle into their normal patterns and flows, and so will the things that feel wild in my heart too.

But mostly, that creation cries out His Name, His Fingerprints, His Artistry , and His Intention, so that we, the best creation He saved for last, might know just how much He loves us.

We feel the earth breaking through, even if it's just that the snow has melted. We see the trees clap their hands, even if it's only the wind. We know the rocks cry out, we hear them crunch and crackle when we walk on them free of ice. And this is how we know: we know because He inhabits the praises of His people, His creation shouts His name and we who have laid low in the valley lift up our eyes to the hills.

Because He's our helper.

I am struck by this truth today, as I watch spring burst forth in the wild Vs of Canadian Geese flying homeward, as the water from the hills rushes and flows and channels and rises, as children wear their light jackets and as I roll down my car windows letting air permeate my lungs--I am struck by how He helps us. He helps us strategize and organize and breathe and let the burdens fall behind, He lightens our load.

Because, I'll be honest, in the wake of winter it is hard to remember those promises from last summer. It is harder to remember the promises from two thousand years ago. It's sometimes hardest to remember yesterday's promise. But, we who are looking, know that we don't necessarily have to see to believe.

We need only to remember what we once saw, what we once tasted, what mountain we climbed before our descent into the valley. We who are looking need only to believe that He is our helper and that He brings spring to our lifelessness and forgetfulness. That he calls to remembrance the things which fill pages and not always our hearts. That it is Him who bursts forth in every pore of the earth, every rock of the mountains, and every stream channeling down!

That He, who condescends to help his creation wake up and remember, is our Helper too.

I went for a long walk today, slipping into a coat from the hooks by the door, feeling inside the pocket, finding an unexpected gift, if one can call a forgotten wad of money in one's own coat a gift. I do though. The gift continued: a long phone call with a good friend who asks how I am, then how I really am, and after I finish, he asks again, just to make sure. I return the favor. It's a joke between us, but it's one for which I am grateful. The gift continued: walking along a back road, my shoes marking in the moist earth on the sides, spotting a herd of deer watering by a noisy brook.

All the water around here is noisy right now, it falls from the high peaks around us, melting faster than it can recede from the banks; rushing wildly, falling madly, white and furious. I think about my Saturday and I think I will take a hike to a nearby haunt and I will sit above the crashing water and listen to its silent roar.

The gifting continues: for the first time we tie in a scrabble game. Impressive scores of 314 points each.

"Are you happy" He asked. And I knew the right answer is "Yes. Yes I'm happy." But it doesn't really matter, does it? Whether I am happy or not. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that He asks, on occasion, because my goal isn't only to know His heart--it's to let Him know mine too. And so He asks and I try to be honest. It's hard to be honest with Him though, because I long so much for Him to not know that sometimes the answer is no. No, I'm not happy. I want to cover over all the weakness, hurt, and insufficiency, and call myself happy because I know that's what He wants.

Or I think that's what he wants.

But today, and lately, I think that what He really wants is for me to know that He's gifting me. Giving to, not expecting from.

So today, I receive.

And yes. Yes, I am happy.

I practice my Spanish grammar, rolling words over my tongue, la nieve se fundirá, la nieve se funde, la nieve se has fundido: the snow will melt, the snow is melting, the snow has melted because I wish for it to be so.

It still sprawls over hills and low slung valleys, but we who are looking see last Summer's leftovers ringing around tree bottoms and lining the roads. We see cupfuls of salt left in the streets, brought to the floor by its melting adversary. We see it because we are looking for it, and because we are discontent with leftovers of last year, because we are looking for the real thing. We don't want to get caught calling our Lord a mere gardener.

"Why are you weeping and Whom do you seek?"

Mary is me and I am she. Both of us looking desperately for some sign of life, some evidence of a promise spoken, both blinded by our expectations and what we do see. It's hard to see past the sprawling snow and the weak blades of brown grass right now. It's hard to feel Spring in the air and to not check the status of frozen, regressing river water. It's hard to see past the ratted clothes of a grounds-keeper and see the One we're looking for.

Because sometimes promises feel void, because three days feel like an eternity, and because stone tombs and winter blues feel like impossibilities.

But it doesn't change the promise--and that is what we cling to. We wait, like Mary, to hear our names with exclamation points at the end. We wait, like Mary, to hear His words and not just His voice. Because His voice feels crowded sometimes, pedestrian and plain. His voice sounds hollow sometimes, rhetorical and placating. But His words, speaking our names, this is how we know.

"Mary!"
"Rabboni!"

And we answer, in spite of it all. Because we who are looking see past.

Tonight we gathered around a piano and one another, and fumbled our way through mismatched copies of Methodist hymnals, stumbling over verses and harmonies. The piano sung and we all did too, He is Risen, Alleluia! The Wonderful Cross! Low In The Grave He Lay...on and on, anthems of our gospel, lyrics of our life and hope. The hymnals soon closed, or lay ignored in our laps in favor of words we all knew by heart, with heart. And from the piano a song I haven't heard in many years, but which, in my mind epitomizes this day:

Jesus Christ, I think upon Your sacrifice
You became nothing
Poured out to death
Many times, I've wondered at your gift of life
I'm in that place once again
I'm in that place once again

And once again I look upon the cross where You died
I'm humbled by Your mercy and I'm broken inside
Once again I thank You,
Once again I pour out my life

Once before, I sung this song in another living room, surrounded by different family, family of the blood sort. It was four days after my brother was killed and we opted out of attending church to stay home surrounded by those who knew to mourn with those who mourned. These people knew Jesus, though, and as chairs were pulled from every corner of our home, children sat on staircases and laps, and guitars were tuned, this first Easter of my heart--I knew it would be unforgettable.

It was the first time in my life that I had experienced Jesus. Others talked about the power of the Holy Spirit, others talked about the presence of God. I didn't know Him like that. I knew about Jesus. I knew about creation. I knew about Eden and the fall. I even knew about the tomb and had heard words about Pentecost and tongues of fire and the Holy Spirit, but I didn't know. I didn't know it could be like this.

I didn't know that the cross had the power to save. That this cross we were being asked to bear would point me to Jesus. That this cross would drive me to despair and hope. I didn't know that looking upon this cross would break me inside. I didn't know that pouring out my life wouldn't be just for today. That singing Once Again would give me the hope that Christianity is about sanctification and forgiveness and every single day doing it all over again.

I didn't know it until that day, in that living room.

But today, eight years later, surrounded again, singing again, I feel my eyes well up and my heart breathe fullness. Because no matter the cost, no matter the subsequent crosses, no matter the falls or the failures, or the great heaviness that we're asked to bear on His behalf--no matter---His cross brings us Life Abundant!

And once again, and over and over again, this is the anthem of my soul.

He is risen!
He is risen indeed!

I talked about something with her this morning, described the feeling, the moment, and the hope. Her response was textbook, it always is with these sort of things: Write! But you can't blog it this time, she said. I can, I replied. I can write about things--I just consider the ramifications more heavily than I ought to.

See once someone told me that a weblog is a pulpit. I may not being teaching or preaching or presenting hell-fire and damnation, but I'm telling you what my life looks like. And for those of you who know me before I've had my coffee or after I come home from work, my real life isn't pretty wonderings about spring and shaping sentences with ease and pretension--I'm not like that.

I'm moody and don't talk much. I'm fiercely competitive at card games and fiercely opinionated about colors. I'm reading the Bible through this year, but honestly, it's the first time all the way through. I drive five miles over the speed limit almost always and I got my first ticket a few weeks ago for talking on my cell phone. I get jealous of other people's homes and things and families and lives. I mutilated a cat in my car engine this past month and half cried, half laughed in the parking lot. I struggle with biting my tongue, especially with regard to things I'm passionate about and things I don't know anything about. I idolize peace; so much so that it eludes me most of the time.

That's what I'm like in real life.

This page isn't a very accurate representation of who I am. It is, however, a very accurate representation of who I think I would like to be and, therefore, am becoming.

Yesterday was Good Friday, and while other people were laying out Easter clothes, pulling tapers out of the freezer, or stuffing brightly colored baskets full of Cadbury and plastic grass, I was thinking about how exciting it is to celebrate a day that has no feeling of completion. In twenty-four hours we'll be shouting "He is Risen!" but yesterday and today we are left with a half-finished sort of feeling.

Uncomfortably aware that the story isn't over yet.

We call the gospel our peace, the resurrection our hope, and the cross our power, but to most of us the tomb is only the thing out of which He walked--not the place where he inhabited while taking all of our humanity and sinfulness to a more suitable place. But that's where the wonder is! He died on the cross, but He's God, He could handle that. He walked out of the tomb, but He's God, He does things like that. He gave gifts to men and ascended to heaven, but He's God, that's His prerogative.

On the day we call Good Friday, he took all of our Bad, wrapped it in grave clothes around his death, swaddled all of us in with all of Him, and disposed of death completely.

This is our pulpit--that we are becoming. That we, in so many ways, walk through life in the tomb. A half-life of sorts. The story isn't finished, Good Friday has just happened and we're waiting for the full Resurrection. We're waiting for full Life. We're waiting for the moment we shed all of the habits and things that hinder, for the day we walk out too.

That's what we're like in real life.

The grass hasn't shown itself and the trees are still waving their branches like wet cowlicks on end, bare and black. Other people talk about daffodils and he said it's warm there, like sixty-five degrees. I squeeze my eyes and try to imagine that the color in my cheeks, from last week's break, is real tangible evidence that summer is coming on and its way.

But the truth is that this evening, as I left work after six, the sun was still high behind my car and the sky was still blue and clear.

And, even though my bed is still covered in layers of quilts, and my feet are currently cold, and there's a fire in the woodstove, and the wind is whirling around the house in wintery songs, it still felt like the first day of Spring.

The half-open oven is in front of me with a cheesecake within. I opted out of the first batch of walkers to stay home and finish the baking process. I don't mind--there is sunlight through the window behind me and the smell of a west coast spring coming through the open door. One of my favorite people is sleeping on the couch in the other room. We've been looking forward to this week for a long time.

When pressure and duties and deadlines and the unceasing gamut of needs walks through our office door and then out again, we look at each other and simultaneously think "California."

We're not live for tomorrow sort of people, she and I. We're both definitely take it as it comes sort of girls. We like today and we like it best, or at least better than anything else within our limited eyesight. So longing for this week as much as we both have been has been out of character for both of us. But now that we're here, and things are green and quiet and slow, at least at 937 Middle Ave, we're very happy to be take it as it comes sort of people again.

Today is her birthday, hence the cheesecake in the oven, and I'm so glad to be here with her. Today as I drove circles around the grocery store parking lot, keeping the beautiful boy in the backseat asleep, we talked about how very hard some things are--being here, and realizing that in a bigger way, keeps me remembering how hard it is to be a place where even though you know people, people don't know you. It's hard to not be known.

Today, as a gift for visiting a new church, we three were given Starbucks gift cards! I slip this piece of information in my back pocket and begin to think of other ways we can bless the new folks who walk through the door at the place I call home.

The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that what really keeps us coming back isn't the free doughnuts in the hospitality room, or the Starbucks coffee served downstairs. It isn't the great worship team or the amazing preaching. It can't be the meet and greet time where the marathon goal of half the church body is to meet a new person.

What keeps us coming back is that through those doors, and thank the Lord even outside those doors, there is this very real sense of belonging and being. There is this deep seeded knowledge that these people know me, they sit behind me on Sunday and watch me worship, or not worship. They tap my shoulder and give me a word of encouragement. They beckon from the front row and tell me to sit with them. They lean down and grab my hand and say that I belong.

I think that's the thing about the body of Christ that keeps us coming back. It's easy to fit in anywhere, it's easy to succeed anywhere, it's easy to make an impression anywhere--it is, really, try it. Really try it, you'll do it. But it isn't easy to know that no matter what I belong here. That even if I don't fit in anywhere else, even if I fail at everything I put my hand to, and even if no one anywhere is impressed with me--I can still come home. And belong.

The cheesecake is done. And so am I. This post isn't anything really, just a little update on today's brief thoughts.

We test the air with our forearms and lungs and, finding it fair, we open the windows letting the Spring come in. Beds are stripped and chairs are set upside down atop tables, the house smells like pine and lemon scented cleaners and we dive in recklessly.

Spring Cleaning. It's my favorite time of the year, really. More than Christmas with its cheery ambiance and family togetherness or the dead of summer when we sit on the side porch until too late listening to crickets and silence. Spring cleaning, that first warm, free day when with abandon we are singularly focused on clearing every space of stuff so the air can permeate into the drifts that winter left behind.

I stare out the window at the six inches of snow still encircling our tree trunks, leveling our porches, lining our streets and think that even on March 1st, Spring Cleaning still feels a long way off.

This isn't about sweeping dust and winter salt, making piles of laundry and airing out down-comforters. This is about the Spring Cleaning of our Souls.

My Soul has grown accustomed to the heavy covers of winter, blanketed in down and snow, bedded and hidden from even my sight. It's been so long since I've opened the windows and breathed, taking inventory of the ugliness and the dank and ridding my heart of both.

My Soul affects my Mood and my Mood, dear friends, has been riding waves of the tumultuous sort. James wrote about the sort of person who is like those waves, the kind of person who doubts. And while my mood may seem like the aftereffects of a long winter or misshapen plan, the truth is that my mood is the direct effect of "not believing and thus doubting."

So this morning, while our tears mingled and I acknowledged the winter of my Soul, while I said I was sorry for my Mood, and I really was, all I could think about was the need for some Spring Cleaning. To reach into the deepest parts, or maybe start with the surfaces, or maybe the order doesn't matter at all, but to reach in and begin sorting out. To inflict character and righteousness and humility and belief on all those winter-worn areas.

To fling wide the windows, air out the smell of sleep, scrub deeply the recesses, and let the sun shine in.

From recent writings:

"And if contentment is all I need, and is all He's doing, than I hope He answers my daily prayer soon. I wonder how one can want contentment as badly as I do and still find it ever illusive. As I was driving home tonight I list the things that make me feel content: a daily, normal schedule, daily exercise, rising early, lots of writing, lots of color and indoor plants, gardening, my own house--or space bigger and more permanent than my current lot--and I think that these things can't be the catalysts for my contentment. They can't be! They're far too selfish, far too worldly, far too here.

But then I remember Richard Wilbur's poem, Love Calls Us to the Things of This World--and I think of laundry and housekeeping and bread-winning and daily schedules and gardens, and I realize that though we're not to love the things of this world, we're called to love and Love put us here on earth with a Garden to tend--the least I can do is tend my plot well. Even if it is just dirt."

This is my lesson daily. To tend my plot, to live by that punctual rape of every blessed day. To watch the hour hand rise and fall and rise again, its only hope a paycheck and a kept-to schedule. I'm learning about sweeping sawdust and waiting for 30, for release and a sense of what is to come.

Right now it's to be faithful with the little things, to weed that plot and keep dirt beneath my fingernails--proof that this life isn't clean and orderly and understood, but it is real and created and that I am a part of it.

Right now Love calls me to not know the end of the story, but to hang my heart, like laundry on lines, on the hope that certainty is the hour hand and the end. And that punctual rise and fall and rise again will yield another sort of hope that doesn't disappoint or be crowded out by weeds and failed seeds.

Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks

From all that is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
And cries,
"Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.''

I whispered a silent prayer and then one more while he stood a few feet from the machine. Already he'd slipped two dollar bills into the slot and maneuvered that miniature crane for the allotted 20 seconds per half-dollar, and already the illusive blue teddy bear had slipped through his grasp four times.

We were on the last dollar now and the last 20 seconds. His eyes followed the motion of the mechanic luck-of-the-draw and I shut my mine--and prayed. Perhaps it was silly, but blue teddy bears mean a lot to just turned seven year old little boys and blessing him was worth a silly prayer.

She slipped then, head over heels, down the chute and from our sight. His eyes opened wide and his face suddenly buried in my coat, small arms around my waist.

"We got it!" he said.
"I know." I replied.
"This is the best birthday ever." he said.

It's funny how the best we've ever experienced is the best ever, but I didn't say that.

All I said was "Thank you, Jesus." Not because the bear was so important, but because the prayer was. It wasn't silly, no matter what you think. I needed that bear. He wanted that bear, but I needed it.

I needed to know again that prayer works for the small things. That He hears me, that He listens to me, that He answers me, that I matter, and that small boys and blue bears matter.

Her name is Blueberry, "Do you like that name? Cause she's yours too, yours and mine." I like that name fine.

Happy Seventh Birthday, Benjamin. It was the best birthday ever for me too.

After tears wet my pillow last night I decided some things have to change.

They just do.

It's like the wicked stepmother, the one who stared into a mirror asking about the fairest of them all and seeing only herself, purple lips and black widows-peak, squinted eyes and wickedness. How could she look at that day after day after day and still believe it when the mirror said she was the fairest of them all?

Ugliness is not becoming no matter how you look at it. Its nature is to be unbecoming.

It's not that I've been convinced that I'm the fairest of them all, it's that I loathe what I see when I hold that mirror to my face. It shows me my heart, my nature, my deep disappointment in God and others, it shows me all the ugliness that I pretend isn't there when I walk away from that mirror.

Don't fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don't act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like. But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God - the free life! - even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.

I calculate the times when the reflection has mattered less to me, when widow's peaks and pallid skin are not so noticeable, when the thing that draws me even to myself is the Imago Dei: the image of God. I am His and He is mine. I was created in His image and He is perfection without me. I am only a reflection of Him and imperfect even with Him. I think about the times when I feel that truth, not just know it.

And the truth is that the delight doesn't come from the reflection, the knowledge that the Fairest One of All is staring back at me. The delight comes from the action, the not forgetting, the constant reminder that I am regardless of how I feel. That He made me in His image, but with imperfections. That He made me to long for Him, but always be found empty. That He made me to hope, but to be familiar with disappointment. That He made me to see, really see, but sometimes forget.

But that He made me His.

I have them stashed in a dresser drawer, sitting on my backseat, slipped into a visor organizer, cataloged on my ipod. My world is wrought with albums not of the shrink-wrapped, shiny artworked, and $16.99 kind.

Mix cds, or, as we called them when I was but a wee lass, mix tapes.

For every season of our lives we hold a soundtrack, perhaps Radiohead on repeat or No Doubt on loud. Dixie Chicks with our favorite chicks and Our Song for our first date. The strains are heard and we are tumbled back into fun and tumultuous and difficult and fear and oh sweet memories.

I have a stack of mix albums, "Music for Chicas in Guatemala," "Good Songs," "My Favs for My Fav," "Road-Tripping I, II," "TN Mix," "Remember, Remember Too, Remember Again,"and more--mementos of times and friends and relationships. Some tell stories with the music, some make it up as they move along, some walk me through my life like a wax museum--strange likenesses of a life that really was and now just isn't.

Each one breaks off a piece of the artist, the real artist--the one who coupled these songs together, Latin near Jazz, followed by Folk and Instrumental, finished with Worship and Soul--gives himself when he makes a mix album. It's not just favorite tunes, it's a part of us, pieced together in our apartness by music.

So when I leave one stage of my life and head to another, and a friend slips a CD into my pocket, my luggage, my hand, I hold to it tightly. It is the soundtrack, sometimes the only way I know that I lived, really lived and laughed and loved and then left a place I called home.

They are a timeline of my life.

Sorry about the lack of writing around here--I could just make up an excuse, but this time I really have one.

I broke my finger and typing is, at best, inconvenient and at worst, painful. There. You see. I'm not totally full of baloney.

I have stuff brewing in my head though, so if I can work out the kinks and rid what I get down of annoying typos due to typing without the use of a principle finger, I'll have something for you to read.

Excuse me for not taking you seriously--I thought you were a joke. Really. When my friend first suggested you to me, I laughed in her face, perhaps it was your initials, as laughable as my own, though opposite in nature. I'm not sure.

But sitting here, next to the woodstove, a wrapped scarf around my neck and a cup of coffee in my hands, a horrible case of the sniffles and scratchy throats, and the inability to think through much of anything clearly--I begin to take you seriously. I Wikipedia you, stopping for long moments to stare outside at whiteness everywhere. White sky, white ground, white ice-tipped trees. I continue reading, stopping only to sip my coffee and blow my nose.

Suddenly realizing that while you may always be a joke in my book, you feel very real. Secretly I will rest knowing that you only attack in the winter--though up here winter is the majority--secretly I will rest knowing that this monochromatic atmosphere will melt, fade, and sink deep into the earth.

I know light and green and life and growth will come again. I've got that on you.

Like a child poised for surprises only whispered about in hallways and behind closed doors, I wait. There's nothing but the whispers and quickly hushed conversations at my presence to let me know that the surprise is for me. I don't know what it is and I haven't even a clue. My only action is to wait.

Feeling strongly like inaction.

When I moved home from Tennessee I won't deny the feeling of expectation brimming about my edges. My toes, it felt like, were inching over the start line waiting for the pistol shot reckoning go! I was a caged pigeon with a message for the world, or at least Potsdam. I was something waiting to happen.

This week marks the six month anniversary of graduation into the real world. I only know that because my loan repayments start in two days--a looming bill that feels like the ribbon holding me back from crossing that starting line. I have celebrated the six month anniversary of many things, but this is not one of them.

In this town it's hard to not be surrounded by college students, they're everywhere. In every direction I see students studying, meeting, greeting, thriving, scheduling, pursuing--and all I wish for is to be back there.

Back there it felt safe and sure. A certain goal was worked toward and certain parameters were laid and met. Here it feels like decisions have to be ascertained and solidified and felt every single day. Every single day I have to re-question whether I am doing what it right and good and true for today. Here there is no solid goal being worked toward, there is only great space in front of me.

I don't like that feeling.

Because it feels very unsafe and I don't like unsafe. It feels very precarious and I don't like precarious. It feels very aimless and I hate aimless.

I'm struggling to find footing here, to be honest. I do my job, I do it well, I enjoy my work, I enjoy my church, I enjoy my family, I enjoy my plot of soil to till, but I want to see fruit--I want to know what I'm working for. I want to know that my labor isn't in vain, it isn't just bulletin boards and hours on the phone with customer service and teaching grammar and paying bills. I want to know that there's an end to this. That there's settling down and still running the race.

I want to really know that between 12 and 30 we don't see Jesus because he was sweeping sawdust and getting splinters. I want to know that 30 is coming soon.

Tonight, over a romaine and cranberry salad and conversations about daydreaming and the status of sickness in our household, I read a National Geographic article on Francis Collins. I know--a light dinner reading material.

Francis Collins is the head of the Human Genome project, an ongoing project dedicated to helices and DNA and, his personal interest, the ethics of it all. He's the author of a book called The Language of God. He also is a hero of mine recently.

I'm not sure why, we all know science isn't my strong-point.

But this guy directs a program that meets heat every day from those more concerned with genetic dispersion than with genetic originality, or more succinctly, more concerned with defacing the image of God than valuing it.

Which isn't surprising--since most of them deny the existence of God at all.

What I love about this article is that Dr. Collin's interviewer, a professed agnostic, continually tries to tangent with his questioning and Dr. Collin's continually brings it back to one thing: it isn't about how much we know, how much science can prove or disprove, attain or lose. Every statement is filled with this unknowing certainty--unknowing because he's a scientist, certainty because he's a Christian. Unknowing because he's a Christian, certainty because he's a scientist.

It's this beautiful marriage of truth and, well, truth, co-existing and complementing.

I hate to use my blog as a platform for politic reform. And I hate to use your tithe dollars up on writing a few sentences on my blog. And I hate that somehow our voter-registration forms got lost on the bottom of a pile of paperwork here at church and so we, two of his loyal supporters, can't even vote in today's primary.

But vote Ron Paul.

Who is Ron Paul? What, is your head in the sand?

Or do you just listen to all the media hype they don't give to him anyway?

Broken systems don't have to break me. This is the thought that puts me to bed, wakes me in the morning, trickles down my face in the shower, and catches up with me all day long.

The wind has been knocked out of so many of my sails: dreams of missionary life, family life, marriage, motherhood, sisterhood--all of these great callings thwarted by circumstances and systems that don't work like the manual said they would. I think of nights heaving on a cement floor and a subsequent plane ride back from Central America nursing my Gatorade and my pride. I think of nights weeping on various apartment floors, wanting an intact family. I think of evenings on a front porch swing, talking, deciding, breaking, hurting, leaving, and finally healing. I think of crashed disappointments and fallen hopes; methodical plans that ended in chaos.

And I think, in the end, it is better to have seen the system break, than to see a person break.

Systems can be remade. Remodeled. Redone.

People have to have the wind knocked out of them, crumble to the floor, confess that their hope isn't in the sail at all, but in the Wind--and that never stops blowing.

Want to hear a secret?

I don't have this figured out--I'm figuring some things out this week. That's my plan. I want to explore Purple Hearts and walking wounded. I want to understand why the Israelites still don't eat the hipbone. I want to think about how very badly I don't want to be a victim, but I always want to remember the grace that pulled me through it all.

So over the next week I'm assigning myself this topic: suffering.

Don't have grand illusions, I'm weak in this area and I promise no great illuminations. I promise that I'll read and pray and think and then write.

(Also, last night there were 100+ people at my house witnessing what was possibly the greatest catastrophe that my team has ever experienced. This is why there was no writing. Not because I was avoiding it, but because there wasn't a square inch of our house that wasn't taken up by all the sweaty college students I love. I promise.)

"Write for your own time, if not for your own generation exclusively. You can't write for 'posterity"--it doesn't exist. You can't write for a departed world. You may be addressing, unconsciously, an audience that doesn't exist; you may be trying to please someone who won't be pleased, and who isn't worth pleasing."

Joyce Carol Oates

Write your heart out. Wring it out and leave it to dry, hanging over the railing like underclothes, delicate and washed by hand. My heart doesn't wring out so well, I find that more often recently. Conversations are hard and feel forced, opening up another's heart is just as difficult--it's hard to be transparent with someone who's not. A lesson I should know.

The truth is that there is so much to say, to write about, but I don't even know where to start. The things that used to pulse through me at the speed of children on bicycles, slowly, methodically, suddenly, haphazardly, now pulse through me barely.

My blood pressure is low, my heart-rate is low, they always have been. Finding a radial pulse is met with frustration--I should be dead, more than one nurse has told me. But it's there, if you press hard enough and in the right places, it's there. If you feel and wait, you'll find that evidence that I am alive and that lifeblood curses through me.

I am alive.

With a weak pulse.

That is how I feel. Honestly. I spent a few hours on the road today, running errands, picking up, dropping off, getting pulled out of a snowy field by a good Samaritan in a blue fuel truck, I had plenty of time to think, reflect, to write in my head what I would write tonight--but I didn't. I just set my thoughts over that weak pulse and reminded myself that it is there, whether I feel it or not. The first attempt or the third. I am alive inside.

So writing my heart out will seem cold in the next few days, lifeless, but we warm our toes by the fire before feeling comes back, so suddenly hot that we jump back, afraid that we've burned ourselves. But really, it's just that startling realization that there is feeling. That our toes weren't dead, only very, very cold.

I am here. Yes. I know that today is February 1st. And yes I know that I promised a full thirty days of writing. But here's the deal--30 days wasn't a completely random number, it's just the average amount of days in a month--and how could I help it that the upcoming month happened to be the shortest of the year?

I couldn't. Honestly. So it's 29 days of writing.

I'll admit, I'm a bit wary of telling you that. See, my flaws are already evident enough, without exemplifying them on the internet. Where even those of you who don't see those flaws every single day in person will see them the moment I forget decide not to write.

But accountability is thought to be the way to habit changes.
That and 30 continuous days of new habit forming.

Which means I'm already behind.

But here we go. Today's writing exercise is behind me; let's hope for more tomorrow.

I grinned inwardly when I realized that this catching disease was only spread through the comments on one's weblog--I am guaranteed immunity then, I thought, as the ability to leave a comment on my blog has been thwarted.

I was wrong, though, and now I've been tagged too many times to continue ignoring it, because that's rude you see. They find ways, they just do. The only hope for me is to not spread the virus--so read on, and don't worry about being tagged, I'll spare you:

1. My plan was to enable comments this month anyway. This is a good a post as any to let the little beggar back in.

B. After increasing requests from, well, namely one person, but other people too: Beginning as soon as I get the nerve, I will commence 30 days of writing every day on this blog. I know. Thank you very much, you may all close your gaping mouths now. Really.

mi. I own over 1000 books and I haven't seen them in two years. They're packed in storage for a better day, and a place of my own.

IV.