Bear with me here. Fonts aren't universal, it appears.

Edit: Bear. v. b?r:

...
9. To have a tolerance for; endure: couldn't bear his lying.

Source: Dictionary.com - for all your spelling needs.

I've been rememorizing some verses which have been lost in the stack of index cards; their edges are bent and smudged, reminiscent of times where I loved the Lord better:

Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourself treasures of heaven, where neither moth or rust destroy, and where thieves do not break in and destroy; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6.19-21

It is becoming the silent mantra I've repeated often over the past few days. My heart likes baubles and beads just as much as the next girl, but my heart has never had the real stuff of earth. The treasures which require mining, prying, polishing, and refining have never been mine. I say it's because I'm poor, or I haven't a person to give them to me, but He says that the poor in spirit shall see Him and He's lavished all the good things of the world on my carefully erected armor.

I've refused his pearls of great price in lieu of plastic imitation beads. I've stored up for myself hoards of supplies and forgotten that He is the only provision I need. I've made lists and checked them twice, trying to figure out if I've been naughty or nice enough, and all the time He has been waiting with treasures with hardly a regard to my behavior. It is moments like these that changing my mind comes in handy. I mean, literally, changing my mind and the way it works.

All too often I act like a steward; one who has access to all the great wealth, and moves it around with freedom and ability. But, in my belief that being a good steward is better than being a son, I've forgotten that He's called me son and that I do not simply have access and right and ability, I have the goods already. They're mine. I don't need to build treasures chests of junk when I have the stuff of heaven at my fingertips. He's that good.

I've taken two Tbsps of Nightquil and the not so better side of me has gotten the best of me in such an amazing way that it has literally taken me an average of three attempts to spell each word in this sentence correctly.

order in And.

All sure signs that tonight will not be a night for posting.

I confessed something to her tonight. We were behind shut doors, alone for the first time in who knows how long, giggling friends for a brief moment, and I confessed something. I told her that last night, in the car with three young people I haven't seen in months, I felt such immense love and immense gratification that I began to weep. Small pools of salty tears in the corners of my eyes -- that's it. That's all I confessed.

But it got us thinking and talking of how grateful we are for a family, her natural and my adopted, who loves to be around one another and thrives on the essence of Christ which exudes from one another. It got me to thinking tonight on my way home how grateful I am for a spiritual set of parents who cannot replace my natural parents, but who in part filled in and protected me, encouraged me and rebuked me where my own couldn't because of circumstances and situations. I am so very thankful for my own seven brothers, dear men and boys and a silent grave: males who have forced me to become a woman of femininity through their service of masculinity. But I am equally as grateful for the seven surrogate sisters who force me to be a girl who wears pink and mascara and pretty shoes; the girls who have loved and laughed and became the sisters I never had.

I am so thankful for the head on my shoulder, the hand on the small of my back, a teary eyed glance, and an inside joke. Not because without those things I would be somehow lesser off than I am, but because with those things I am one of the richest in the world.

God knows from whence He works.

So, it's felt a little bit surreal. Like playing dress-up or Indians when you're small; you know you can always go home at dinner-time. But yesterday as my Professor told me he'd see me this fall and I answered that no, he wouldn't, it felt real for the first time. Well, we'll miss you around here he said, and handed me my Flannery O'Connor paper. I offered a smile, but didn't answer. How could I? I won't miss this school at all. But he knew that and said "I'm excited for you, really. You don't belong here, you belong where you can write this stuff and get an honest critique. I'll tell you what I think, but I'm not the audience you want to write for, am I?" I smiled again and answered truthfully, as best as I could. I guess it shows through, huh? Yeah. It shows through, but don't worry, it was still an excellent paper.

I wasn't so thrilled about the paper or the grade as I thought I would be; I was more excited that after a semester with a gnostic teacher, he was able to see a little of Jesus in me. That Jesus showed through.

I have the memory of an elephant. I'm not sure what kind of memory that is though. If it's bad, than I have one: I've forgotten every embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me, so don't even ask. If, on the other hand, an elephant has a good memory, I also have one: in it is catalogued ever bout of flu, fever, chills, vomiting, toothache, and stubbed toe I have ever experienced since age two.

I'm the queen of drama whenever my temperature rises a tenth above 98.6. I will cry for as long as necessary on the bathroom floor after throwing up (necessary may be sooner rather than later, but probably not). I am very able to sleep away the headache. I very much do not hold to the mantra 'feed a fever and starve a cold' -- I'll eat or not eat when or if I feel like it, thank-you-very-much. I bask in the down comforter and smooth sheets for as long as I can, which is usually not very long since the truth of the matter is,

I really don't like being sick all that much.

So I have a low grade fever. A mere 99.4. But as soon as my last final was finalized, my last tutee had left the room, and my last hug given to friends I won't see ever again, I went home and crashed - all day. So, if you were one of the six missed calls on my cell phone, the ten or so unanswered emails in my inbox, or one of the hundred people visiting this site today looking for some sign of the living, too bad.

Bo Bice was the sole receiver of any of my attention tonight.
And there'll be time to be unsick tomorrow.

Joshua

When we first moved to New York I was eighteen and precocious. I don't mean that I was unusually wise or intelligent, just that the beginning stages of being elderly had already set in. I wanted to learn how to knit more then than I do now and I was perfectly content to can tomatoes and hoe my strawberry patch. But even though my tendency toward old womanliness had set in with arthritic glee, nothing compared to the precociousness of my little brother Joshua.

Joshua turned ten this past February. He was born the day after my best friend turned 13 and we were watching Ernest Goes To Camp during the naming ceremony (it was down to Caleb Joshua or Joshua Brady). He was always a little more quiet than the rest of us -- we tended to be a rowdy bunch back then. Resembling indians, painting our faces with the bloodroot from our forest one moment and stealthily crawling on our bellies in covert before dinner-time missions the next. Joshua watched quietly from the sun-porch, sitting on Jimmy the WonderHorse whose springs needed the grease we spread on our faces more than we did.

He had allergies the first few years of his life; his face so inflamed and bruised looking that we feared social services paying a friendly neighborhood visit. It wasn't until he was eight years old that he could eat strawberries without the 'dotties' making their presence known. Aaron was born when Joshua was two, and no two of us are more different than they. All of the photographs show the two of them, cross-eyed and tongue displaying Aaron and solemn Joshua staring through his peripheral at his odd younger brother.

When Joshua was four we moved to New York and one night, during our first two months here, a friend and I climbed to the top of the hill across the street to watch the sun set. Joshua came with us, his quilted spring jacket too big for him and his small feet running far ahead of us. At the top we two sat on the grass which would be hay and Joshua sat in front of us.

Just as the sun was setting, painting the sky in an array of blues and oranges, reds and blacks, Joshua stood up and put his hands in his pants pockets. He thrust his small tummy out and took a deep breath.

"I love God." He said. "Let's sing to him."

And we did. He led us in one praise song after another and then, when we were quiet, he said, "I'm going to be a pastor when I grow up."

And I believed him. I still do. I've never forgotten that four year old's bold declaration. So last Saturday, as I sat on the stone steps of that farmhouse we all once lived in and loved and left. I held that weeping little boy in my arms as he voiced all his frustrations and disappointments and hurts and feelings of betrayal. And I reminded him not of his second declaration, that he would be a pastor someday, but of his first "I love God."

And I wept. Not because of hurts and disappointments. But because God's faithfulness is so good, sometimes we have to hurt before we see it so fully. So my prayer for my little boy is that he would know that God's love is sufficient, even if those childhood dreams seem far off.

I've been learning how not to worry this year.

There have always been unearthed fears in my life, which, ironically, stay buried until I'm in a place where those fears can't manifest. When I'm in a place of complete protection and un-worry, then the Lord begins taking out the things which taunt me when I'm at my lowest. He picks each one up and begins asking me how desperately I think I need whatever I'm afraid to be without; I introspect and find that I don't need it at all. Then He puts it down, hides it from my view, and asks me if I'm sure; that now that it's out of my sight, am I okay? Yes, I think I'm okay. Then He steps on it. Smashes it. There is no hope for that fear to be resurrected. Still okay? He asks. I feebly nod, though there is the little shred of fear which remains, what if I'm not really okay? Then He digs around in His pile of unearthed treasures and finds the antidote for my trash.

It's always the same thing. It's grace draped on a cross. And it works.

So I've been discovering all these unearthed fears recently. Authority. Compatibility. Humility. Money. Provision. Vision. Depravity. Honesty. Abandonment. Stufflessness. And each one has met their demise in the same fashion -- crashed into a million unidentifiable pieces. Sometimes I step on a shard of one and I am painfully reminded of my old fear, but then I remember the word says that He'll not break a bruised reed. I remember that processes are part of becoming like Christ.

And finally I remember that He was wounded and bruised and broken and stripped of all his dignity so that my mere shard could be removed and healed.

Isn't He good?

What's funny:

Someone hit my site with this search. Sad indeed.

A friend said it well -- the week before finals is many things, the least of which is hectic. I have several papers to be written, even more to be proofed, sentences to be properly structured and syntax to be perfected, grammar to be fine tuned and a fresh idea would be nice. It gets to this point in the semester where I wonder every day what unseen force it is that pushed me to become an English major. (Until I remember that the sources are not unseen, in fact I live with them, and they still believe in me. For some reason. )

But it seems like Flannery O'Connor and her understanding of the human nature are even more frail than I first theorized. And William B Hays and his code for cinematic productions were more right than my liberal literary criticism professor likes to give them credit for. And how do you make a short fiction project worth anything at all? Is my ending too abrupt? My dialogue too robotic? My understanding of the civil rights movement too imagined? And what about Cinderella? Why is it that her princess tale of pauperhood has lasted the past several centuries?

But really, the honest and good question is, why are all of these things important?
I want to be a critical reader and thinker, and perhaps the green is grassier on the other side, but I cannot help but think of all the wonder there will be when this fall I can write with full abandon. It's not that I worry about being disagreed with -- they do that often enough when I speak up in class, it's that final grade on my transcripts that matters so much to me.

A big fat glaring . that makes a 4 depreciate in value. I hate that.

Ohmygoodness, I know! Two posts in a span of twenty minutes. I must be wasting quite a bit of much needed time reading online journals. But you'll understand why when you peruse this bit of wit.

I have this amazing ability, which my husband admires, and that is that I can peg people pretty accurately. (I’m a pessimist, so that helps a little.) If your theology leans a little toward a charismatic view of Scripture, you might say that I have the gift of discernment. For all you cessationists, let’s just say that I’ve got your number.

I followed a link to her and I think I'll make her a favorite. It's rare to find a truly good writer touting their drama on the world wide web who testifies the Lord as well. She's a keeper. Yessiree.

Isn't the Lord good? Isn't He so faithful? I don't ask those questions to be intentionally rhetorical, I know you know He's good and faithful. I mean to ask them in this way: Isn't the Lord good to us and faithful to us when we are in the fire, and out of the fire, and on our way into the fire, and shedding burnt skin from the fire, and considering coal walking, and being refined in the fire, and polishing that which is firmed in the fire? I mean, isn't the Lord faithful when in the midst of situations and circumstances which appear to be hopeless, He not only provides hope, but He provides grace for the time being.

Last weekend I shared about a difficult time in my life. When I finished, my counterpart said "Lore, I never knew that about you. You should share these testimonies with people. The Lord has been so faithful to you." She was right. Situations where hopelessness appeared my lot, grace was provided and the faithfulness of the Lord was proved.

He says that our weaknesses are opportunities for his strength to be displayed. That means, quite literally, that His glory is greatest when we are most humbled by it.

Isn't the Lord good?