Today is the sort of day a melancholy calls a good day. Nothing spectacular happens specifically; the day is simply made of a thousand little instances of good intermingled with rain.

An early morning three hour drive with someone I love to pick up another someone I love.
A late lunch with a friend who's not afraid to confront.
An afternoon cry in a silver honda with a best friend.
A rainy walk into a favorite florist.
A sit in a pizza parlor we used to call home, content to be silent even though the words feel like they haven't flowed enough recently.
A long hot shower.
An incredible second performance by kids I love.
Talking to people I haven't talked to in ages, really interested in their lives.
Being talked to by people who haven't talked to me in ages, really feeling like they're interested in my life.
Sharing a secret joke with a few good friends.
Driving home in the late night fog.
Listening to tree frogs sing, the sink drip, the clock tick while I type this.
Being.

These sort of things are every day happenings in the lives of many. My life is not so exciting, not so normal, not so fortunate, they might say. But I say I wouldn't trade the goodness of God in my life for any of the menial frivolities that this worldly life is made up of. Hot showers are good, and rain dampens the mood, but this I know -- my portion has fallen in pleasant places and my cup is run over with living water.

L.M. Montgomery wrote that to despair is to turn one's back on God. I've often wondered at her etymology when despair is the root word of desperation.

Because I prayed in absolute desperation last December, pulled over on the side of the road, sobbing, frustrated and broken, selfish and unbecoming. God. God. God. Do what you will with me, but please let me look different than how I look right now. Let my heart be broken, let my will be conformed, let my mouth proclaim, whatever you will -- but let it be something other than my present state. I cried, God let me be a testimony of blessing, let me be a testimony of faithfulness, let me be a testimony of anything, just not a testimony of grace. I was, frankly, done with the testimony of grace process.

Because becoming a testimony of grace means having to endure horrible things. There is no easy route to displaying the grace of God on one's life. I was tired of the endurance and ready for the fruit -- and not seeing it come any time soon. A few days after the car incident, once again, in a near state of despair, the Lord answered me again. One year. He said. That's it. One year.

Today, in the car, I remembered those words. And looked at the path my feet seem to be taking. Thought of where they might be in nine months. Thought of how faithful the Lord has been, even when I demanded he remove the blessing of grace that He's given, He answered to stay the course and trust that He would alter the course of my desperation.

Today my prayer was different. Today my desperate prayer was something like this: God, you are faith enough. God you are love enough. God you are grace enough. God you are enough.

Montgomery was wrong, I looked it up. Despair: To lose all hope.

Even if I have lost my hope, I have not lost my God. And He alone is enough.

So what are you doing tonight?

I'm going to see these wonderful young people perform The Gondoliers, a Gilbert and Sullivan musical.

If you're in the area -- and you want to see some talented students in superb costumes and a phenomenal director pull it all together (not to mention a spectacular pianist [See, Nance, I mentioned you!]), come join us.

Christian Fellowship Center, Madrid.
Curtain at 7:30; free admission, but if you can spare five dollars they'd appreciate it. See you there!

Another introduction.

And I'm supposed to say that she is funnier than Jason.

But she didn't have to twist my arm.

Okay, I confess. I can't do a real push-up. Or, I can rather, but I prefer not. But every night before bed I do twenty weakling push-ups. You know the kind: knees on the floor, pectoral muscles tightening, counting silently, bravely until seventeen when you begin saying the numbers out loud as if that makes them come a little more quickly. You know the kind.

You know, working out the weak muscles?

So tonight when a friend pulled me aside to tell me a secret which wasn't a secret at all but an exhortation, when he used the words "working out your salvation" you can imagine the picture it brought to my mind. Working. Out. Isn't. Fun.

And that's what this year has been a lot of. Working out. The kinks, the soreness, the unused but still usable, figuring out which things need more working out than others, pin-pointing the most painful things to work out and steering way clear of those until I feel a little stronger in the other areas.

Feel my biceps, they're strong. Just don't look anywhere else, this girl is weak.

Real weak. So I'm confessing something to you, this little home on the web has been a page full of the inward workings of a weakling, the intricacies of one who hasn't yet found all her strengths or her area of expertise, the one who keeps working out the things which haunt her the most and ignores the areas which hurt her the most. Yeah. This is a page full of a girl who's been working out her salvation in front of you. Instead of a page where salvation itself is offered.

I don't want to be the one who stumbles and picks myself back up, I want to be the one who has stumbled but who has seen that there is peace in the midst of pain. Like Christ on the cross, who forgave those who wounded Him even while they gambled for their piece of the prince of peace. I want to be the one who knows Christ and makes Him known.

Working out your salvation never promised a soapbox of sermon illustrations, but we get to proclaim the goodness of Him even without the anecdotes -- He's that good. He can take even the foolish things and make them beyond our understanding.

And, it's okay that I can't do real push-ups, because, see, His strength is perfected in my weakness.

The dainty golden teacups are only a glimpse of what's to come. Their bulbs are the victorious ones, pressing their need for a tea party out of the hard frozen earth, surprising the passerby's with a second of glee. But it is their bold scarlet counterparts which appear a few short weeks later that solidify the presence of the season we here in the north hold our nearly frozen breath for.

And today, those wine dipped and velvet leaved tulips have pressed their sturdy lots from beneath the now soft earth standing tall and proudly as if to say "we're not going anywhere, are you?"

I smile and walk past them, wanting to touch them but not daring to disturb their placid presence.
Yeah. I'm going somewhere and I double dog dare you to stop me.

She wrote about my little brothers the other day. Things like that make a girl happy. It's one thing to be loved in your own right, but to know that the people around you love your family in their own right as well, is, well. . . super.

It was a rainy morning.
Mid-April, chilly, daffodils peeking through the damp terra,
their bulbs shedding the winter frost.
I put a load of laundry in the washer
and went upstairs listening
for the little boys in the other room.
Two of our eight left, leaving the downstairs quiet for once
-- briefly.
Then doors were slamming and
people were yelling and
then sudden quiet.
I processed what I heard
and felt my heart still in my chest.
No.
Other people get in accidents.
Other people's lives change, not ours.
[But ours did.]
I ran to the end of the driveway and a woman stopped
and asked me if those were my brothers.
They're going to be okay, she said.
My brothers? What is she talking about?
Get in. I'll take you there.
I got in.
It smelled like hot suede and silly putty.
I wanted to vomit.
They'll be okay, she kept saying.
What will be okay, my head was screaming?

And then I saw my brother.
My little brother. Lying on the road, in the middle of the road,
to the left of the yellow lines on the highway.
His purple sweatshirt torn and his head in an extraordinary position.

Heads don't do that, I told myself to tell him. Put your head back, Andrew. PUT YOUR HEAD BACK.

Danny is wearing black. He used to wear black t-shirts.
He is pushing mom back. Sean is doing CPR. There are cars everywhere.
Why are there cars everywhere,
doesn't anybody know that my brother is lying in the middle of the road,
[and that brothers don't lay in the middle of roads]
can't they take a different route?
They don't know though and they slow down and wait and look
at my brother's distorted head;
at my mom doubled over;
at my older brother doing CPR;
at my little brother with his hands covering my mom's face;
at me standing there over my misshapen brother in stunned silence.

They look and then they go to work, to school, to church, to the bank.

There are lights and sirens everywhere.
It is the morning.
Things like this happen at night,
in the middle of the night,
when lights and sirens are exciting and exhilarating.
Not at 9am on a rainy April day.

There are people and their hands are on me,
pushing and pulling me in every direction but the direction I want to go
-- only I don't know which direction I want to go.
People say that the drive to the hospital is the longest, but it wasn't.
Not for me.
It was the moment I called my dad.
The moment between when I asked his co-worker to give him the phone and
when I heard his voice on the other end. There was an accident I tell him.
I can't finish,
the doctor is standing in the doorway, and somebody picks up the phone from my hands.

I put my hands over my ears because I know what he is going to tell me.
That he's sorry, that they did everything they could.
Because they don't understand,
this is my brother.
My 14 year old brother who smiles all the time and has bright blue eyes and a silly grin.
My brother who loves Phase Ten and Nerd candies.
My brother who has not one, not two, not three,
but four best friends who reciprocate the feeling even more than he originates it.
My brother whose idea of fun was practical jokes and worthless pricesless treasures.
This doctor, this young intern, doesn't realize that he can't say those words to us.

With my hands over my ears I look up and realize we are in a small room with no windows and only one door. There is only a phone and a couch. Hospitals only have one reason for rooms like this, and there was only one reason we had been sent here instead of in the waiting room. I took my hands off my ears and the room spun, I heard yelling and crying, and someone was on their face in front of me commanding the Lord to give him back his life.

I laughed, like Sarah did, when the Lord promised her something she thought impossible.

Someone put a cloth under my nose and the smell forced my senses back into use. Can't faint. Can't faint. Danny needs x-rays. Lore can you go with him, he needs someone with him. Are you pregnant? Pregnant? My brother just died and you want to know if I'm pregnant? No. Okay. Sit here. No here. Can you see me? Can you hear me? Of course I can see you and hear you, you're yelling in my face. But she can't hear me.
Brothers don't just die.

But they do. And he did. Andrew David Ferguson did.

Feb. 28 1986 -April 19 2000

Sometimes I catch myself:
Putting in a load of laundry.
Passing the white cross on Route 11.
Calculating how old he might have been.
Staring at Joshua who looks so much like him.
Passing anniversarys no one remembers anymore.
Wishing I had more photos, more memories.

Sometimes I catch myself,
with words caught in my throat to tell him.

I miss you.

In case you don't frequent louissa.com [and you should, by the way], here's my own link to two of the people I love most in my world.

I somehow imagined that this journey would be more arduous. I imagined there would be daily opportunities to show Christ my loyalty and now I find I am learning two things: Christ does not need my loyalty, only my humanity, broken, prideful, arrogant and weak; and opportunities to die for Christ are smaller than I ever thought before. Bite. Chew. Swallow the wretched soup. Sit. Sit. Sit. Wait patiently for the slowest movements to be made. Keep my heart focused on the job at hand: looking for the smallest opportunities to let Jesus see that I am not a great child or an able martyr, only a servant when no one is looking but Him.

I wrote those words in April of 2004, a season I spent focusing all of my energy not on giving joyfully, but simply giving, and simply tiring of giving. The Lord has been faithful, you won't hear me say otherwise (unless you're one of the chosen two, and you're probably not); He has been faithful even when my loyalty to Him was akin to Gomer's to Hosea. The secret things have been whispering recently, though, and His faithfulness is suddenly bigger than a victorious death, a interceded-for family, and a steady hand on my life. Proclaiming His faithfulness is less a desperate plea from a helpless child who tries to convince herself that she will be saved. His faithfulness looks less like a master who delights in my service and loves more my proclamation of his faithfulness.

Enough of the hidden joys you find in Me, He says. Enough of the secret prayers. Enough of the sacrifice burgeoning within you, pitiful and pious penitence for all the futileness of your ways. Enough of the desperate lifting up of your head in an effort to find peace, to find my voice, to find me.

He says this: I delight in your loyalty, more than your sacrifice. And in the knowledge of God, rather than your burnt offerings.

He says, pick up your head, you sorry bruised reed, you dull candle. You think putting your pitifulness next to my glory makes me look better? Pick up your head and say I am faithful. Be faithful with that -- and you just wait and see just how faithful I can be.

And He's only just begun.

Have I mentioned a few of the things I really, really, really like recently?

Mozilla Firefox: I jumped on the bandwagon a little late perhaps, but never has my computer been happier than it is now, with less of everything bad and loads of everything good.

Class Schedules: Autumn is my favorite time of the year and nothing makes Autumn better than the fall semester of school. I love picking out which classes I want to take.

My five year old leather flip-flops: Alas, five years is a few too many, though, and I fear that this year may be their last.

Our campus Bible study: I confess, this one was hard for me; but it's been so good recently. I love these girls; I love meeting with them and I love delving headfirst into all the things which make Christian living difficult, exciting, radical, and painstakingly daily.

The fact that there are only three [Count 'em: April 29th, May 6th, & May 13th] exams left for my philosophy class: I vote that Sophie's World be the text for any further classes -- it's much more palatable than the sixty five pages of notes I've taken and memorized this semester.

The Lord: Perhaps this ought to have been first on the list, but it isn't. I like lists which count backward, but who's counting anyway? I love the Lord.

There are seasons where questions seem to be my mantras of choice and answers appear to be the lot of everyone else but me: Like Jonah. There are times when I'm on my face for hours, days, weeks, months begging for a word from the Lord and the words I hear repeated over and over again are simply not the words I want to hear: Like Elijah. There are things I want so desperately that I'm afraid I wouldn't be willing to give them back should the Lord decide to grace me with them: Like Hannah.

And then there are seasons where I trust that the Lord is good and that alone covers my inadequacies and insufficiencies; where He condescends to hear my anxious cry and my still speaking voice and He says, Hey, who's your God?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

You would think. . .

or you might not.

Next to a 3.6 on my Auden/Plath essay, this is what it says:

Very nicely done: a fine coupling choice of poems. You do well to situate them in their context and to relate them to their creators. Your essay is at its best when you discuss how the poem's capture the poet's stuggles with society's expectations of them. You say little, however, about the poems' form: you must get in the habit of analyzing these poems as poetry.

And it's true. There are vices, to be sure; always vices. There are always habits of mine which are difficult, nay-- seemingly impossible, to break. Passive sentences, verb tenses, parallelism, pronoun usage, and reading the words as those they are words and not as though they are intentionally placed in a certain form for certain reasons, all my vices concerning the written word. Editors do not help, raised eyebrows do not help, red marks on my papers do not help, even less than a 4.0 doesn't seem to help. But I want them to. I honestly do.

Rebuke humbly heard Dr. Ivic. Now a reminder of why I am inclined to so love writing would be apropos.

I have to make good on my promise, if only for the reason that he made good on his.

So the man who needs no introduction, but to whom we'll give one anyway -- second to none in wit and unexpected humor from the guy who wears easter colors and golf berets, who can freestyle drinking coke sounds, convincingly call a lobster his baby, religiously tout his Jewishness around like the tallit he's never worn religiously, poke fun at his professors, his friends, himself and do so with hilarity and respect, I give you the man who has so many names in his name than he's not sure how to spell one of them: Jason Allen Churchill Thorburne Morris.

It may be a problem when people hit your site through this search.

I think.

There are things to be done, to be sure; things to be said, things to be written, and things to wish for (like being outside in the sunshine instead upstairs in Crumb Library looking at an almost blank laptop screen and pop art). Monday's paper is on language and form. Pope's An Essay On Criticism is my main text and I've been more than tempted to write my paper in the same form as his criticism. Por Ejemplo:

Of All the causes which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with stronges bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

You can perhaps see my predicament when I give you a glimpse of my thus far paper and then compare the two for interests sake:

"While originality is nearly always a common thread in literary classics, it may also be a recipe for failure. The readers may either appreciate the irony and the invention or they will balk at the unconventional approach and dismiss the wildly improbable content. A fine line must be walked, but let it be walked without dignity, for a writer who keeps his dignity, loses his opportunity for fantastic invention. "

Need I say more?
Oh yes, that's right, I need say three pages more. . . Let's see if I resurface from this one. . .

A friend asked what those halves were the other day. One is an oft confessed half, everyone knows it's my weakness of all weaknesses. I am most convicted about it and most reticent to change it in my life, and I'm coming to the realization recently that it has less to do with who I am and who I want to be.

Christ has called us to what the world would call pauperhood; He has demanded a heart of servitude of us, holding before us the "Well done" prize; He has asked for flexibility of spirit and attitude, a dropping of nets and immediately following, and yet there is a constant reticence in us to cling to those things which form our worldly identity.

I am not unwilling to give up my love for constancy and consistency -- I am unwilling to give up my identity in such. I would rather cling to the rags of the American Dream, and the seeming safety it affords, than to relinquish my spirit to flexibility of circumstances. The knowledge that it means I would begin to live a lifestyle unhindered by fears of whether the Lord's hand is on my life or not is not even enough to propel me forward. So I sit, in a trough of swine food and unchangeableness, unmotivated to run home and give up the thing I think is my inheritance, or my lot, and clinging to a Father who would give up his finest to ensure that I was properly cared for.

A Father who has given up His Finest to ensure that I have been, and will continue to be, properly cared for.

Decisions:

• Go to Lee and graduate in a year and a half or stay here and graduate in three?
• Teach English as a second language or just raise merino wool sheep and knit merino wool sweaters and wear merino wool sweaters? Or just teach in New Zealand or Ireland and do both at the same time? [Shame they already know English there. . . ]
  
• Do final paper on Flannery O'Connor's short story Everything That Rises Must Converge, or Phillis Wheatley's poem On Being Brought From Africa to America?
  
• Get one set of contact lenses for this year, or stick the the monthly wear I have now?
• Send my bookbag to Jansport to get the strap replaced, hope that it's covered under their ambiguous warranty claim, but chance that it's not, or buy a whole new one on sale?
• Make tonight the night I force my body to adjust to the time change? [Which wouldn't be such a problem if there wasn't a morning after the night.]

They don't seem so intimidating once they're all written out, except the top one of course. There's a doosie for sure. Thoughts are welcome; don't cry over spilt milk, though, if I don't pick yours.

"When are you going to write about this weekend?" He asked. I shrugged and said I would -- but only half meant it. I meant for him to believe that I would write about it, but not about the stories and anecdotes he thought I would. Cat's out of the bag now though. This won't be a list of the humor that is to be found in two people I love finding love with one another, but instead an account of the soul of a person and the delight there is in the fellowship of the brethern.

"I can tell by my soul that I spent three days--three days!--with you." She wrote. I smiled and tears smarted in the corners of my eyes, and then agreed. I replied that "I didn't realize it until this weekend that my soul has grown weary over the past few months in lack of a best friend to remind it to florish. The good news is I've been learning to own my relationship with the Lord in a new way in lack of close friends to confide in and run to; the bad news is that I wonder if I'll ever have what we have again. Friendships like ours don't come along every day and I'll learn to be content without them unless I'm blessed this much twice in a lifetime."

So I will write about this weekend, but I'll start with this: This weekend I learned that the Lord is in the mundane, the difficult, the glorious, and the hope. That the Lord is faithful to make what once seems to be the only source of life and hope look like the detour to death that it is. And I am reminded of what a friend said to me almost two years ago, "You're going to learn that the Lord is your source, not the things He has given and will give you -- they are only a pale imitation and cheap carbon of Himself." I learned to see Jesus this weekend. Don't ask when it happened, I'm not sure of the timing, but happen it did.

And they were right, He is better than any weekend with two best friends, a Maine coastline, and a refreshed soul can ever be -- because He's the source.

Bean and I
Originally uploaded by loreferguson.

Have you ever had a friend, just one, with whom it was impossible to not be yourself?

Perhaps because they've known you long enough to know what you look like with blue framed glasses and leggings and an eighth grade graduation diploma and Rich Mullins CD's. Perhaps it's because you shared the lead roles in a play that wouldn't change your life, but the hours spent practicing would. Perhaps it's because you lived down the road from each other and felt okay with digging around in the other's refrigerator. Perhaps it's because you filled a time capsule in 1995 and planned to open it in 2000, planning things to look a lot differently than they did, but opening it just the same. Perhaps it's because they held your sobbing shoulders and never said a word the night your brother was killed, or the night you found out your parents really were getting a divorce, or the night you clutched the phone to your ear and sobbed, wishing they were holding your shoulders. Perhaps you're yourself with them because they've watched you vomit every night for weeks and cried along with you on the cold green cinder block floor of a Guatemalan bathroom. Perhaps it's because they let you fly home when enough was enough. Perhaps you're friends with them because you can always depend on them to shake you out of your moods and give you a well needed kick on the backside. Perhaps you're friends with them because they've climbed all the Adirondack high peaks, biked the coastline of Maine, and explored the caves of West Virginia and its cool to know people like that. Perhaps it's just because you can share clothes with them, or ideas with them, or life with them.

Whatever it is, let it be said that I know someone with whom I can be completely myself, knowing that in that fullness [whatever it looks like] I am loved. And so I love in return.

Send some love her way -- April in Guatemala can get lonely and hot and her 23rd birthday is in three days: maxajawer@juno.com

tres

dice que, Dios?

1. Never completely sure of what I hear, I second guess myself in the wee hours of this morning; awaking with a start and needing the sleep I've been lacking this week.

But needing the Lord more. I've been working out my salvation in a bigger way recently. Admitting things to myself and to God that I thought weren't things to be admitted. (As if were there any question in my mind, God knew anyway, so why must I whisper the secret things aloud?) But He never asks for a half and so a whole I must give. Here is the thing which I've been learning though, elemental it may be, collossal it is to me:

He takes the halves I offer and puts them together into the whole I wish to give Him. He has the five thousand piece puzzle box with a picture on the front in his hands, and I humbly hand him the corner pieces, the side pieces, and the expansive blue sky pieces -- and He fits them all together. Interlocking, though not interchangable. He makes them work accordingly.

2. Joseph Eliot, and I cannot quote it exactly, said something like this: I am always content with what God permits me to have, and never feel the lack of that which He has not given me. It proceeded to become a mantra of sorts to me after I first read it -- a reminder that God in His sovereignty gave me what I needed until this moment and kept from me everything I had no need for until this moment -- and so He will continue.

Family reconciled? Gotcha.
Deciding about Lee University? No problem.
Teaching English in a foreign country? Don't sweat it.
Starting a little store with homemade cards and knitted fisherman's sweaters and pretty tote bags? In my dreams, but those are allowed too.

The point is to feel the lack of none of it, but to walk as though they were already mine. He's good, but He's better than that too.

3. We've just finished Milton's Paradise Lost in my Literary Criticism class -- it's taken a few weeks and I'm sad to see it go. It was nice to have a breath of fresh Spirit in at least one classroom. We're on to Oscar Wilde next -- a phenomenal author and an impoverished soul. Between him, Auden, and Cather I should be qualified to speak at the next GLAAD Literature conference. Which, I suppose, is what these professors want; whole graduating classes of gay and lesbian activists.

feasting

My mind is a whirlpool recently: sucking everything down to the lowest degree and making it hard to keep my head above water. In an effort to gain some footing and remember the gospel the past few days I've been reading the book of Job and Elisabeth Elliot's Keep A Quiet Heart.

Job is good, he always reminds me that I can take nothing away from this world and so holding onto it is fruitless. But it was the quote by Elliot which I read this afternoon in Lehman Park by the river that brought me to repentance: Response is what matters. Remember that our forefathers were all guided by the pillar of cloud, all passed through the sea, all ate and drank the same spiritual food and drink, but God was not pleased with most of them. Their response was all wrong. Bitter about the portions allotted they indulged in idolatry, gluttony, and sexual sin. . . The same almighty God apportioned their experience. All events serve His will. Some responded in faith. Most did not.

I underlined it, re-read it, and then underlined the underlines. And then re-read it again. Oh, God, forgive my response. I walk through life hoping and wishing for a lot different than my own present one, and He is standing there saying, be faithful with what I've given you. Take the manna, drink the water, make a feast of them, and just wait to see what I have in store for you.