When we subject ourselves to pain, and I'm not speaking of the physical pain which comes from, say, a splinter or paper cut, but the hurt which makes your heart ache and perhaps keeps your mind captured until something better comes along, that type of pain, I find that it isn't so much that we've fallen in the wrong place or the wrong time, but that we've somehow facilitated someone's frustrations to be firmly imbedded right where they mean for them to be; in us. They don't say things or do things to ventilate their thoughts or opinions, they do so to make a point. And they usually do.

This doesn't remove me from the responsibility of pursuing a Christlike attitude toward them though, no matter how much it seems that I am now owed some sort of retribution. I'm not. I am not owed anything. In fact the only thing I can do to make any good come of a situation is to not allow my heart to ache or my mind to be captured by ensuing bitterness.

Even though it hurts.

Tonight is the New Years celebration at my church. This is, by far, my favorite night of church functions throughout the year. It is the night where vision is imparted, captured and pursued anew and the joy which comes from that is evident through the whole of the following year. We gather and sit on hard metal chairs and everyone waits for the 'slideshow', which aren't slides at all, but a hundred captured moments put once again to life. We will watch Derek in Africa and Josh's animated preaching face. We will see Briana's perfect steps caught on film and grin at the number of babies which somehow find their way in our hearts. There will be groups and singles, perfectly coifed and made up next to bad hair days and tongues sticking out. We will remember the excitement which surrounds the presbytery meetings and we will remember the sadness that surrounds the aftermath of Sept. 11.We will laugh and last year some cried. I don't know what we'll see this year, but it promises to be good. It promises to be good because it is the people we love doing the things they love for the One they love.

A perfect rainbow of symphonies.

Thinking:

on racing trains home
on swearing
on judgment calls
on validation
on lottery tickets and generous friends
on lottery tickets and generous friends and friends who will cash the tickets when you're too timid to
on Andrew
on halleluiah's
on chai
on overrated or underrated opinions on marriage
on good and perfect gifts from the Father Above
on first impressions
on character flaws and virtues


Expounding:

On racing trains home: You'll always win if you drive faster than them [this works in any sort of race, three legged, relay, triathlon, walk-for-life, bathroom rushes; try it sometime.]
On swearing: It's overrated. It's also fun. Except sometimes.
On validation: It's not so much that I want to be good, it's just that I want someone to notice that I'm good.
On Andrew: Joshua leans over to me in church today and whispers in my ear a startling realization, 'Andrew is the dead in Christ. That means he'll rise again, right?' Why does my seven year old brother think about the sting of dead being dead more than I do?
On Chai: Sh. Don't tell. Liz bought me an entire huge box of real Oregon chai for Christmas. [Thank you Michelle for having a hand in that deal.]
On good and perfect gifts: I hate Christmas shopping. Nothing is good and nothing is perfect. The shirt isn't the right color and these socks are too expensive. Wallets become old hat and who wants another calendar? I've finished it all today and am still feeling somewhat let down, shouldn't I be rejoicing? I listen to the words of a song tonight on my drive home bearing witness to the fact that every good gift, every perfect gift comes from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation. No changing. The good gifts he gave 2000 years ago are still good and still perfect and I doubt they had yet another red pin striped tie in their collection back then. His good and perfect gift has somehow been forgotten in my mind, lost in the shuffle of frustrations, reunions, musings and missings. Why?
On character flaws and virtues: This will not be a long exposition as promised to you, sorry, but I don't think it's point would be as well made with more words.
When we see a flaw in our person, in our humanity [which is one big flaw all wrapped up in slimy skin and internal organs], we recognize our need to change. But when we see a flaw which refuses to be changed, it becomes a vice. Guilt is like that for me, the thing which needs constant tweaking, continual maintenence- grace is the thing that I struggle hardest to remember and need constant reminding of. Perhaps yours is identity; finding your persona not in who you are or what you do, but in Whose you are and what He did. Maybe you struggle with pride; laying aside all of your talents and future aspirations for what you shall be in life and just simply being. Perhaps negativity; seeing the positive comes hard and feeling the downs are all personal attacks on your being. I don't know, but it has been my observation that because [once] we have put our finger on that one thing that demands constant attention, focused realization and continual change, we begin to work hard on it. We begin to become a bit obsessive about it and some might even think too consumed with maintaining a certain spirit. But eventually, this one vice, this habitual sin, becomes indiscernible to the world at large [no matter how much you still deal with it internally] and this is the thing that others look at you and say, 'hmmm, she really has a handle on her tongue' or 'wow, he has seen the necessity of his sonship in Christ.' When perhaps you haven't, perhaps you still need to wake up every day and remind yourself that you're forgiven or you still have to count to ten ten times a day, but the fact of the matter is, you've worked at it and it's evident. In fact, you've worked so hard at it, that it has become the thing that people will look at you notice, not as a vice, but as a virtue.
From an email from a dear one:

Remember the brie
f discussion we had about reality and
faith? Sometimes walking by faith feels very much like lying. My
tendency to hate fake people too often keeps me from stepping out of the
boat and onto the water of Greater Truth. Anyway, as I read about how you
are feeling that the questions swirling and upsetting your mind, I also
thought about the way that you appear to the casual observer: Smiling
warmly. Steady. Focused in worship. Supportive to emotionally unstable
friends.

That's not to compliment you on putting on a good show regardless of the
storm that's brewing underneath. But if what comes out under pressure is
the real you -- then I think we're both growing up. Yeah, you cry at
night. But somehow, along with pain and confusion, there is also rock
steady faith being exposed. The "real you" is just as much shown in your
ability to smile as it is your ponderings about
depressions. I absolutely marvel at the fact that even in the midst of
feeling like the great person that people so admire is being yet again
completely eroded, there is, deep within, an absolute sense of security...
and it comes across to people.

Yeah, there's farther to go. We can come higher. Hopefully, when pressure
comes in a few more years, there will be even more serenity.

It is late and I am tired.

Every night I get home at 12:30 and am tired and yet still wide awake. It is my day just beginning, the time when I can come here and do the dishes that have been left since I left early this morning, finish the laundry and start to relax and enjoy being home. This season reminds me of a season in my life two years ago.

The school year I spent, for the first time in my life, an entire ten month period inside a twenty by thirty yellow painted cinderblock classroom. A room full of first through eighth graders learning everything from See Jane Run to teaching me algebra once again. I read the entire Narnia series to them. Pilgrims Progress. Little House On the Prairie. We suffered through fractions and sight words. We persevered through lice, the flu and crushes on boys. We had time-outs and hippie parties. Ate granola bars and drank boxed syrup called juice.

It was the year I taught at the Christian School a mile from my house. Just me and a classroom full of raging hormones and dripping noses. It was the year my brother was born two and a half months premature and my house and six brothers were left to my care for the duration. I woke early every morning, prepped lunches, looked over schoolwork, than left for my own classroom where I prepped lunches and looked over more schoolwork. At three I would get home, look over more schoolwork and prep supper, go to bed and this was my life. I hated it. I hated, hated, hated it.

There are conscious decisions we make with our minds, an affirmative action or a negative response. And there are unconscious decisions we don't make, but think we have. This was the time I made two very conscious decisions which had been previously unspoken. If I ever had children they would not be subjected to a thirty by twenty cinderblock room and two by two desk for 12 years of their life. Regardless of whether their teacher would read them the Chronicles Of Narnia or put lilacs on her desk in the spring, my children would never experience it unless by some stroke of brilliance they wanted to pursue a doctorate, in which case they would be of an age to decide for themselves. And secondly, if I ever had a family of my own, I would never hold a full time job outside the home.

It hasn't been that long, but I've just refreshed my decision.

In the parking lot today, while waiting for Emmy to finish her horseback riding lesson, I began Annie Dillards Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Mm. Good stuff. Her second chapter, entitled Seeing is good. Listen to this,

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I've never been seized by it since. For some reason I always "hid" the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hold left by a chipped off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows:SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrows drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passerby who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight home and not give the matter another thought, until, some months late, I would be gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.
It is still the first week in January , and I've got great plans. I've been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But - and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat kit paddling from it's den, will you count that sight a chip of
copper only, and go on your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.

If the rest of this book is as insightful as the first three chapters have been, I'm going to enjoy this one.

Speaking of horseback riding lessons, and I was you know, being in the barn today, feeling the soft velvet of a horse tongue wipe across the back of my hand and being butted on my chest by his huge head brought back such memories. I miss it. I do. I stood in the arena and watched them trot over the cavaletties, caught them a few times on the wrong lead. Mentally corrected their two point position and whispered in my head to put their heels down. I watched Emmy trot her little pony around, loving him, and perhaps too much, and just missed it all suddenly. I keep thinking that two years and then three year away from it all will make me forget it, but it doesn't. I don't miss it very much unless I'm around it, but I do miss it. I do. I miss watching excited little girls jiggle on a horse for the first time, the thrill of teaching my first student to jump. The pride of hearing ones name on the loudspeaker and my teary eyes following her to accept her ribbons. I miss the hours spent in the barn, at four in the morning, tediously braiding a mane and tail which refuse to be braided. I even miss all the tears I cried as I was taught time after time that one never falls off and doesn't get back on. You do it. You just do. I miss racing through the peach orchard, our shirts stuffed with the drops that the pickers missed.

I suppose there are things that we all do. Hobbies, areas of expertise, interests, perhaps eventually occupations, if you're fortunate enough, things that we pour our hearts into with everything we have, even if only for a while. But during that while, it is our life. Nothing comes in front of it, nothing gets in the way of it. Horses were that for me, and than one day, they weren't.

And they still aren't.

Most people are counting down the days til Christmas [at least most of the people I'm around, seeing as I spend seven hours a day with a four, seven and nine year old.]. I am counting down the days until my family gets home. Five more to go.

Ansel Adams move over, Imogen Cunningham take a bow, Bean Bergey now has the floor. The portraits she did of each of us are unbelievable. Black and white never looked so fine. Kudos. And more.

And, just as an addendum to yesterdays sibling post, why is it that all my brothers are so darn good looking?

What is so intriguing to me about sibling groups is how vastly different they/we all are. We've all been raised by the same parents, in the same home, the same genes, the same values, with the same upbringing. Why is it that I feel the need to be so individual from them in their musical preferences, why I will listen to the blues and greys and Joey listens to Creed and Lifehouse? Why is it that every item in Danny's closet comes from A&F, Old Navy or Gap, yet I will still wear the same pair of army green pants I've had for four years, while Sean thinks that if his plaid shirt and striped socks have the same color schemes - they match? Why is it that Joshua breaks out in hives when he eats strawberries, but I can eat them faster than I can pick them? Why will Sean drive around in his fifty-dollar-still-going-strong-built-ford-tough-truck and Danny cruises in his shiny-black-still-owes-10,000-dollars-to-the-bank-jimmy? Why will I spend a fortune on books but refuse to pay for food? Why will Danny pay for a feast and never look twice at a classic? Why am I short and they're not? Why am I the only one who likes split pea soup and why does Sean hate plums? Why was Drew the one that died while the rest of us live on? Why do Aaron and I have dimples and no one else? Why do two have green eyes and the rest various shades of blue? Why does Sean's hair grow faster than ours? Why is Benji the latest talker? Why do we stand on such different values and preferences when it comes to everything from alcohol to Calvinism, Harry Potter to holidays, government to gardening, local church to music, right hands to left, gas stations to favorite colors? Why can't we just agree on a few things?

Because than life would be a lot less interesting.

I am leaving for the rest of the day. I have to pick up kids at six o'clock, but the next four hours are just me tackling the mall. Well, perhaps tackling is too strong of a word, I'll at least take a look though. Hopefully I'll find the final things that need to be bought. Does anyone know what to get my mum for Christmas?

I have been skimming through The Good Life, by Helen and Scott Nearing again. It's always a good read for me and I enjoy reading their account of life off the grid, but just today I read, for the first time, the back flyleaf...

'As close to Walden for our times as we're likely to see.' Yankee. 'A prophetic account of the creation of a self sufficient little walden... that has been an underground bible for the city weary.' Newsweek.

And more. And while it has always seemed so rugged, so enticing, so romantic to live a life parted from all the chaotic streams of nothing that surrounds me, the thought of becoming a self sufficient little Walden unto myself is more than repelling. I hate the thought of being in a place where my needs are satisfied by only me and where I need not care for anyone else's desires or wants. The appeal loses it's flavor once I recognize the utter aloneness that this type of life could represent. Could. Now, I'm not saying it does for all, and certainly it doesn't and shouldn't have to. It seems though that when you make a decision, however merited, to remove yourself from your culture and the things which make us grow and persevere for the sake of others, there is a danger in living the life of the ultimate self-centric human. I don't want this. I do not want this.

'It looks like a planetarium, only better'. And it did. Standing outside the locked door of my church tonight, looking up at the millions of illuminated snowflakes, catching them on my hands and marveling at the beauty. It can't get much better.

But it does. And so I'm thankful for a friend who can appreciate it just as much.

I'm not quite sure why exactly my feelings and emotions are so prone to disaster. Perhaps it's the melancholy streak - the one which flies through the hearts of all people, but brands only some as it's own. It is accompanied by a want for solitude and silence and feels coward under a cloak of guilty desire for loneliness. Can one desire loneliness? I sometimes do. Even the greatness that shadows popularity, however unwanted or unmerited, gets overwhelming and soon overbearing -to the point where quiet and introverted thoughts are my only desired companion. An entrance into selfish living. Is it the solitude, the silence that I desire? Or am I simply still selfish and wanting time for me, myself and my interests?

Loneliness doesn't scare me. Solitude doesn't frighten me. Quiet doesn't unnerve me and alone doesn't equal lonely. Selfishness is what scares me. The moment I become so drawn to my own person, my own desire to satisfy me is what scares me. It is what makes me want to run in the other direction, as far away from any hint of my past character flaws. Character Flaws. When it scares me to say a kind hello to another, or offer a smile in return for a caught glance, to ask you if you'd care for a drink or be only known as one who wears a 'Hello, my name is...' tag because I'm too weak in the knees enough to introduce myself to you. THIS is what frightens me.

A little less than a year ago I remember a conversation I had with Jax. I worried that I was too cold, too rude, too shy and with no apparent reason - simply because I hadn't a clue what to say. She said 'You don't even try to be anything different.' My fear of man rose in it's ugliness and shouted in my face, in the face of every conversation I would begin to have. Silence would be my only comfort, until one day I realize that this sort of silence was no comfort at all. Comfort in itself is a good feeling. How could I be covered with such guilt for my actions if it was a good silence? It wasn't at all. It was selfish humanity trying desperately to remain unsanctified. And I didn't even try.

I guess I've been finding myself falling back into these harmful patterns. The time where loneliness becomes appealing and introverted analytical musings of daily life take over my mind is the first sign that I've ceased trying and began the complacent route to stagnancy.

Loneliness isn't altogether bad, it is simply our humanity telling us we have a lack. Sheldon Van Auken, in one of my favorite books A Severe Mercy says of a conversation he had with C.S. Lewis,
"One night at Magdelen we talked. . . about that something we're longing for, whether it be an island in the west or the other side of a mountain or perhaps a schooner yacht, long for it in the belief that it will mean joy, which it never fully does, because what we're really longing for is God."

What I'm really longing for is God. It's not to have my personality be validated, not to have my gifts to be noticed, or my future be secure. Whether I live long and prosper or die young a pauper matters little. As long as I realize that my insufficiencies are opportunities for His glory to be manifested and His power to be shown at work in my life, my longings are complete.

You are familiar, perhaps, with the small refrigerator magnets which are white and have a conglomeration of words on them? I love them. I think that I would like to have a refrigerator just so that I can have one with words all over it.

I have been working on a poem each time I stop in to Jax's for a few moments and though I thought it was completed last Sunday when I was there for five minutes, I think tonight marks the real completion. And so I give you, my poem:

Could Be Over
Our Other Time
Bring From Age
In Bright Sublime
When Winter Break
Spring Should Unite
Afternoon's Kind Rain
Until Summer White
Her Kindred Heaven
Grace Thy Birth
Together We Are
Each By Earth

I realize it makes no sense, and any good poet would simply smile and shrug, thinking himself above the thoughts of meager men, and derive some superfluous meaning just so he could be validated, if only in his own mind. But, I am not a good poet, therefore I have found no meaning, nor will I. I did have fun though. As any good poet should.

Sometimes I wish that we could all dig into the brains of those who surround us and make up the society of people which encompass us. If I knew exactly what you were thinking, when you said that, when you wrote that, when you went there, I think I could somehow understand mans need for validation so much more. I you knew exactly why I wrote this, why I said that or why I like pears and why I don't like peanut butter, I think we could understand the nature of man more succinctly. It makes no sense to you why I simply don't like peanut butter, or why I have a list of things I haven't done and won't, or why I have a list of things that I will do someday after a possible wedding, but I know. I can tell you why exactly I don't like peanut butter, it sticks to the roof of my mouth. It never spreads on what it should spread on evenly. It smells strange. I just don't like it. That is why we are different, you and I. Because we know things about ourselves that no one else knows, or if they do, they can't know exactly how we do ourselves.

So when I see death as an opportunity for growth and Disneyland as an opportunity for a headache, excuse me for being rude please. I'm not purposely being so, it's just the way I see it. For now. I guess.

My family, mum and four of my brothers, are leaving for two weeks in Pennsylvania on Saturday. They will not return until the 22nd of December, which means this Christmas season will be lonely without them. I plan on buying a tree next week, maybe Sean will come with me. Jax will. We will put it in the front windows and decorate it while listening to Bing and Ella. Maybe I will make some wassail. Some gingerbread men? I will light candles and sort through lights and bulbs. We will laugh and maybe we'll just be together. But something will still be missing. Who will put the star on the top of the tree?

I will miss them.

Today a package. Containing the following:

A cardboard cutout of a cup of tea and a magazine cutout reading "get caught reading."
A piece of purple paper with the words 'Lettuce fore Lor" and sixty dollars inside [it took me a few minutes to understand that lettuce is a synonym for 'green stuff.']
Jennifer Knapp The Way I Am, which I left down there in August and have been missing since.
A birthday card from my beloved Bean.
Anne Of Green Gables book one [which I am so thankful for, since I have the rest of the series and not this one!].
And, a card. From Rachel. I think it must be my most favorite birthday card ever.

Let me tell you why.

She is Janine's younger sister. Sometimes I am tempted to call her, or introduce her as Beans little sister whether from habit or to remind myself that once she was littler and younger and so it should still be. But isn't any longer.She will be eighteen in a few months. She has grown from a skinny 11 year old who pranced around her room listening to contemporary Christian music and singing loudly into a graceful, godly beautiful young woman. It was around the time that she turned 16 that I realized this and began to notice, with surprise, the fact that she was no longer my best friends little sister, but she was a valuable girl who had much to offer this world. Her thoughts, deep and passionate, touch peoples hearts. She tends to be quiet, and somewhat soft-spoken, [somewhat being the key word], so when she speaks she has much to say. Her laugh, like Bean's, is contagious and comforting. I love to listen to her laugh. And I wanted her to be my friend too. Her handmade card, which made me cry tears from the knowledge that inadvertently, the person who knows me best also has a younger sister who has known me just as well and perhaps even more objectively, said this:

Lor,
Times like these are welcome for the wonderful chance they bring to let you know how special you are to me. I love you. How can I count the ways?
you don't just treat me like your best friends little sister, but as a friend
i love you
you spend time with just me
i love you
you give me hugs
i love you
you build me up with words of encouragement
i love you
you love me even when i'm a pest
thanks for all the love you give me

And so I am just overcome with how much she loves me. If you had asked me before to count how many people I know and trust with my life, the number would be one short of what it is now. I love you Rachel. I love you as a person, a woman, a sister and a friend. Thanks for loving me.

The moon, God's thumbnail, is orange tonight. I like that.

I like the mutual feelings that arise in two people who love one another. I'm not speaking of the shared love of lovers, a sensual love for one another, an attraction, but the love which bonds two together in such a way that they know, and it is enough just to know if nothing else. I have few friends. Few people that regardless of the selfishness which inhabits my heart and my humanity which screams in their faces as I fail them time after time, they will still love me and still know me. I know many people. I know more good and loving and wonderful people than one person ought to be allotted to know, but only a few who love me like this. It humbles me in a way that I cannot think possible and reminds me of a love that is bigger than even theirs.

Not simply a sacrifice, but the ultimate sacrifice and me, a human inhabited with pride and lust and greed and filth. He still loved me enough. He still loves me enough.

The wonder of it.

The quietness that encompasses this house is somewhat lonely. Not that I'd like there to be noise, or even company beside me, but the silence is so unfamiliar surrounded by the greens and burgundy's, the strains of Emmanuel and the Trans Siberian Orchestra, the smell of cinnamon simmering and orange slices atop the woodstove, the presence of a tree and no little fingers this year to keep from touching it. I miss all that. [Someone else I know is missing it all too.]

They are in Cape May right now. The little boys went sea shell hunting on the beach and found four conch shells. Sea diamonds apparently are also in their possession. It was Ben's first time at the beach. I hope he remembers it. Do 22 month olds have memory skills enough to remember things like that? Everytime mum goes back home to where she grew up, she adopts the accent once again [not that she's ever completely lost it, but things like salt become sought, and no sounds like knew.] My aunt and I are much alike, I'm told. I haven't seen her for about six years, it was Christmas of 1996, but I remember the last time I spent the summer with her.

I was nine years old and still wearing Hawaiian shorts with oversized t-shirts which touched my knees. My bangs, which were being grown out at my mum's request, hung in my face usually covering my eyes. It was the best summer, that summer on Romney Street; filled with wave jumping and sandy tennis shoes, nights on the front porch and walks to the candy store. I see pictures of those three months and I am as dark as any wild beach comber should be and just as scruffy. Cape May is such a tourist trap in the summers, all of the stockbrokers and business owners from Philadelphia and New York, rich enough to have a huge summer home on the beach but not wading in funds enough to own one in Marthas Vineyard, come and spend their weekends there. So I pass all these houses on my way to the beach every day, each one bigger than the last. My cousin, Tim, had his first steady girlfriend that year. All I remember is loud giggling from the sun porch and him yelling at me to scram. Scram I did. Gross. My aunt, a photo-journalist, shot snap after snap of me that year. Black and Whites. Color. Sepia. Me on the beach. Me with my cousin Vicky playing dress up with the curtains. Me with Becky from across the street stringing seashells on yarn. Me at the zoo next to a peacock. Me next to a thermometer reading 105 degrees. Just me. She put them all together and sent them to me later. I probably still have them somewhere. I don't know.

It was fun.

I suddenly miss so many people this week. Why doesn't everyone live here? Why do we all have to be friends three, four, five and six hours away? Why? My circle of friends grows smaller the older I get and I wonder whether that is because I have learned that a wise man keeps good company [and so in my quest for wisdom, less friends seems more apropos?], or whether it is because I have learned that the circle that I am included in finds that we are all content with just one another, no need for more or many. Just you is enough. Sounds pleasant, but not very Kingdom minded.

Mrs. Kinnen and PB were talking about shyness and selfishness today. One quoted Elisabeth Elliot telling a story, "Shyness is the height of selfish living." I know she's right, it was the realization of that a year ago that began the shedding of my reclusive and inclusive behavior. I also think that once the shyness has worn off though, once you and I are friends, the tendency to remain just two is so strong. Now while two heads are certainly better than one, I hardly think that Solomon's wisdom was directive to that as an end. Two heads are better than one, but sometimes when we've come to the place where one is so comfortable and two are acceptable, but any more is simply unabidable. Ugh. It makes me sick to think of the selfishness of my heart. I wish so much to not place blame on my personality or my nature. I am redeemed, why do I still have to be an introvert? How can being non-confrontational build relationships instead of walling them off? How can intense dislike of small talk be a positive route to godly honesty? When I find that talking about things like the weather and the newspaper and asking if you'd like to go to lunch becomes a burden, and it is fairly often, I must reconsider my passion for relational discipleship.

Grow me up.

I crumble, and it doesn't take much. Jax and I drove to Potsdam today to buy a White Pine from the firehouse, but on our way stopped to drop off some things at the library. First mistake. There, right inside the door, is a three foot by three foot whiteboard advertising a Book Sale today at Peyton Hall. Few minutes of the final daylight and finding the perfect tree aside, I immediately conjure up all of my choleric marbles and demand we stop at the book sale first. She suggests we eat. I haven't any money to eat. I haven't any money to eat, but I have money to buy books? Yes. I buy:

Letters From An American Farmer - J. Hector St. John de Creveceur
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander - Thomas Merton
Pilgrim At Tinker Creek - Annie Dillard
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Crooked Little Heart - Anne Lamott
and three quarterlies called Story

All for a whopping five dollars, which, I might add, I couldn't have eaten anything good for anyway.

So Jax bought me chai and a pumpkin muffin. I like the poppy seed ones better, but they were all out. Darn.

Oh yes. The tree. Don't ask me when we'll set it up. We planned on doing it tonight, but I insisted on dependency and so we waited for Sean to come home. He didn't get home until 1am, which is too late to put up a tree. So maybe tomorrow. Probably not. Too much to do, so little time.

Ah. Clichés. Why is everything I say always already patented?

So I am surrounded by boxes of Christmas decorations which have yet to be hung, strung, lit or set, and no desire whatsoever to do anything with them. I sat and poked a thousand cranberries into toothpicks and poked them through the holes in a cone shaped screen. It will be a cranberry tree when it is finished, but this could be a while. I put it back in the freezer for now. I decided since decorating will be on me this year, that we'll go with a more traditional look. Cranberries, oranges and gingerbread works for me.

Tonight I sat at the end of our table and strung three bags of cranberries onto white awning string. Soon I was joined by my mum, who completed a string of 13 feet. And a few minutes later my dad, who had stopped in to say goodbye to my brothers before they leave tomorrow morning, also joined us. Danny, at the other end of the table, laughed at me, saying I was foolish to be spending time that way. But by the time we were all finished we had about 40 feet of strung cranberries, one hour lapsed, and barely five words between the three of us. I suddenly wished I had waited until I was with Jax or Danica, or at least by myself, so than the silence wouldn't be so thick and uncomfortable.

Today at the Den there were two ladies, friends I assume, as one bought the others lunch, and they talked for a few moments but then just sat and read or worked on paperwork. Every few minutes I would glance over at them. It was so peaceful, you knew there was no awkwardness between the two, they simply enjoyed the knowledge that the other could sit beside them and say nothing. I like that feeling.

There is a drawing in one of the upstairs bathrooms which my mum bought at an auction a few years ago. It is fairly amateur, and looks like the frame and mat and picture don't really go together, which is why i like them together so much. The frame is made from old barn wood it looks like and haphazardly stapled together, each side is about six inches wide and the whole thing is only about 20 or so inches tall. It is painted black. The mat is a parchment like simple thing, and the picture, well, I can't even remember what the drawing is of. I think a pasture, but I'm not sure. There is no glass in it and it is probably hung by a piece of wire twisted on the back. It is set off to one side. She never centers framed pictures, because she says it throws things off balance. I don't know, but it looks nice that way. I like it a lot. Mostly I like it because it's different and feels old.

Danny needed to pay someone back five hundred dollars. He went to the bank and asked for five hundred one dollar bills, and sat at the other end of the table tonight initialing every single one of them; DQF.

Now, I ask, why is initialing five hundred one dollar bills somehow more productive than stringing cranberries?

I sold my two horses today. To a sweet girl, perhaps 15 or so, who will take good care of them and love them and I'm very happy. I think I'll miss them, as one misses a pastime they're not prone to doing anymore, but I never really got very attached to these two. I guess when you always compare what you have to what you used to have, there is never any room to learn to love the new and forget the old. I'll always love riding, mostly because I'll always remember Sam. I don't have fond memories of Midnight or Magnum. Punky was short lived and I've tried hard to forget him. Doolittle did little. But Sam. Sam, he was the best. He gave me six great years and now rests in his daisy covered grave at the bottom of the old hill where he has been since I was 15. The tack I so tenderly cared for, the grooming tools which taught me to braid and trim, the ribbons and statues we won, the britches and boots, coats and hard hats, all packed away. Waiting. Until someday I find a horse which maybe won't make me forget Sam, but will create new memories for someone else I love.

I hope.

In the meantime, Donna, I hope you learn to love Tarragon and Justin in that way. I hope they teach you about patience and endurance, bridling the tongue and direction. Determination and love.

I'm making progress. I didn't think it would ever happen, but it is. And I am. Different measures then perhaps I thought in the first. But like a friend says, make plans, but hope in God. I made plans, but nothing changes my will so quickly as a realization of His will, whether I like it or not.

I guess that when put together, all the things I thought were measured and quartered in perfect sections, dolled out in specific increments and, when completed, equaled my life in a nutshell, were only opaque drops of nothingness. Only my thoughts. Nothing important. Nothing coherent. Nothing special. Just things rolling around in the head of a human.

Simplicity and silence is what calls me, the light at the end of a nonexistent tunnel, but the tunnel is filled with things which must be accomplished before I can even see the gap closing between me and those things. I always think that the next real part of my life must begin somewhere, perhaps next week. Each new day says glumly by my side, 'maybe today, but probably not'. I remind myself of my two favorite fiction characters, Puddleglum and Eyore. [Shouldn't I begin to wonder when those are my two hero's?] But then something happens, maybe a sunny day or a recovered twenty dollar bill left in my last years jacket and I think, 'NOW, I am on my way to something. NOW I am going somewhere. Now. I. Am.'

And those fateful words I Am, uttered by Someone Else means that I am going somewhere, but from my mouth only means that I have, once again, come to the end of myself. Once again, stubbornness and plagiarized authority remain my stead. Pride and prejudices are my weapons. Fortitude and favor are my lots. And once again, I end. I'm done. I finish. I lose. I stop. Finding that nothing can keep me going. Nothing can make me go on. Nothing can make the beginning begin. Nothing can make the end shorter. Nothing. Because my hope hasn't been in Him. My hope has rested on a false sense of security and a cheap imitation of unlimited grace.

I limit myself by thinking I can do it myself;

When He says, 'let Me do it for you.

On Humily; I don't prove to be an expert on this subject, just one who casually observes those around me and wishes for more myself.

Last night we received back our 2002 prayer/vision lists we had made last new years eve. It was with excitement that I read mine and reflected on what has come to pass and what is still in progress. As we made our 2003 lists as a body I finished mine and glanced up to see the father in front of me set his on his lap. His little daughter looked up at her daddy and down at the paper, up at her daddy, down at the paper, until she picked it up and began reading it to herself, the words forming on her lips her heart unknowingly bound, once again, to her beloved daddy. I realized I was seeing, in motion, the heart of a father who longs for his children to see his lacks and insufficiencies; not so they can belittle him, but so that they realize the importance of humanity. I was humbled.

I may be letting the cat out of the bag, but last night one of the songs on the soundtrack to the slideshow was a They Might Be Giants song. I giggled inwardly.

The show was fantastic. Great and I mean.

I, along with Liz and Danica, am off for Kentucky. We are attending the New Attitude conference down there. Have I mentioned how I love Kentucky?

It occured to me, after typing up that last entry, that it could come across rather self-righteous and judgemental. I didn't mean for it to be at all, so I considered the possibility of deleting it until I decided it may be better to just add an addendum.

No one hurt me. Not intentionally or inadvertantly. I was just thinking about it hypothetically and those were my random jotted-down-on-the-green-sticky-pad-that-stays-in-my-car-all-the-time thoughts.

I guess that there is a wonderment that surrounds childhood, something that anyone past the age of 12 cannot understand unless they try really, really hard, and even then, it's pretty hard to grasp.

Three little people. One bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough. Four teaspoons and a white bunny rabbit in a bath tub. The makings of a very interesting few hours this evening. Enough said.

I have learned that my choice of music varies according to my present company. It's not that I'm trying to please them, I don't think. It's that I'm simply not in the mood for They Might Be Giants or Dean Martin when others are around. Give me Duncan Sheik or Ben Harper or the Beatles and a person or two in the car and I'll be okay. Phantom Of the Opera or Les Miserables? Decidedly by myself. I learned this tonight. On the way home. Singing You're Older Than You've Ever Been [and now you're even older...] and laughing to myself, knowing no one else could appreciate anything about this moment except me.

That's the thing about melancholic tendencies though. We always think we're the only ones in the world with such a malady. I mean, if it were a malady at all. Because, of course it isn't. And I'm just fine. Right?

Yesterday found me embarrassed and somewhat uncomfortable with a situation beyond my control. I drove in the driveway to see five or so vehicles that don't normally belong there. Hmmmm. It turns out that they were all there to celebrate my birthday. Now, I'm not at all fond of surprises and particularly surprise parties for myself, but it turns out that this is the whole reason, so says Danica, that I am the receiver of such things so seemingly often. Which causes me to wonder why it is that the things which we dislike, or even just try to avoid, are the things which inevitably bite us eventually. [Eventually I will either love to be tickled on my feetor no longer be ticklish at all.] So I'm easy to surprise I guess.

Well the real reason I was easy to surprise, guys, is because you gave me a party last year, in case you forgot.

In any case. I had a lovely day with the people I love most in the world. Thank You.

I read something tonight which made my heart ache. Heartaches aren't always bad, but most of the time they're unpleasant. And so I feel a bit unpleasant. Sick to my stomach, but knowing that it's only a temporary feeling, as most unpleasant feelings are. I read it and reread it. Perhaps I ought to read it once more. I think my tendency to overanalyze comes off as a bit extreme. Yes. I do think that.

I had an extra hour in-between jobs this afternoon so I went to see Jackie and Lael. This was nice.

I am reading the book Rosie by Anne Lamott. Continually amazed by good, clear writing. Whenever I pick up something written by someone who considers writing to be an art form, instead of simply media, I am spurred on to greater and deeper thought. It makes me wish that I knew more and could use the written word to clearly communicate, artfully and simply the depth of the things that I think about. Just saying things isn't creative. After all, everything I've said has already been said and probably better than I can say it.

I guess there's more to be had.

There usually is.