I imagined that the joy of going home for the weekend would overtake the sick pit in my stomach and numb feeling in my head. I imagined wrongly. But I'll see you tomorrow anyway.

This hurts. I want to be home. I want the sting of death to be abolished completely. I want death to be trampled under Victory's feet. I want to go home and see nothing changed. No two vacant seats on the left side of the auditorium. No two young men taken away from us in the space of three weeks. No grieving families I love. This hurts.

Today I talked to Louissa. Louissa Louissa Louissa. It is my firm belief that everyone should know a princess. And, if they're lucky, maybe their princess could be half the princess mine is.

But I seriously doubt it.

I'm distracted by being distracted. I'm not used to all the glamour, the glitz, the beautiful mess that is the world. I'm a small town girl from upstate New York whose idea of a good time is eating tomatoes and mozzarella while listening to NPR and sitting on the porch swing at home. I'm easily contented until I see the hands of everybody else.

Here I see everyone else's hand.

I'm even distracted in that place I love -- worship. Today in chapel I couldn't focus my head, my mind, my heart. They wandered every direction but the direction I wanted so desperately for them to go. I'm charmed by baubles and beads and faux representations of the great and holy goodness of God. I hate it.

I hate being distracted from His goodness because it means He's not getting the glory. It means my life isn't telling His story. But really, if you want to know the truth, I hate it because it means I've messed up.

I've been mulling over Psalm 89.15 recently: How blessed are the people who know the joyful song! O Lord, they walk in the light of your countenance. And the more I think about what it means to be walking in the light of His countenance instead of my own, the more grateful I am that even being distracted can't distract from the light of Him. His mercies are great, even when my shortcomings are many, and His song is eternal, even when mine is hindered by the cares of this world.

Lo! the incarnate God ascended
Pleads the merit of his blood
Venture on him, venture wholly
Let no other trust intrude

Rejoice with me here a moment:

Perhaps you're one of those perpetual sanguine types, whose plethora of reasons to rejoice number in the thousands [and that's on a bad day], but I'm not. Never have been. When I was little they called me grouchy. When I got a little bigger I was labeled moody. Now there's a better, more sophisticated word for it: Melancholy. I dip. I ebb. I flow. I fall. I fly. I ride a constant rollercoaster. But may I, for a moment, point you to an entry written almost three months ago? Thank you, I will.

Yes, my friends. My family. And my foes. Yes, this girl has never been happier, never been more at peace, never been less everything she's always been, and NEVER for this long running.

I talked with my suitemate last night about how testifying of the goodness of God doesn't just keep all the other monsters at bay, it pulverizes them. Smashes them to smitherines. I never realized this and so mourned as soon as I was disappointed about something -- and my life showed it. But since June I have been determined that my circumstance will not determine my attitude and for the longest running time in my life, I've found joy.

It's good. So good.

Be still my soul the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord.
When disappointment, grief and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still my soul when change and tears are past
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last   

I remember when Drew died and the why's cursed through us accompanied by all the guilt and anger and frustration and sadness. He was the best one of us. The most obedient. The most cheerful. The most helpful. I don't just say that because he's dead and can't prove me wrong; ask anyone who knew him, he really was the best of us. A few weeks after he died it occured to me that God always asks for our best, our most excellent attempts, our meager talents, our cheerful giving -- all the things which define us and set us apart. He'd asked for the best of my family and how could I refuse?

I don't know the theology of death, I just know the reality of it and the reality is that there are no answers to the whys. There is no sense to the how comes. And there is no relief in the emptiness -- but this I do know: Scott was sincere, and helpful, and cheerful, and persistant in his pursuit of the Lord. He made the rest of us busy bees reevaluate our ministry every time he asked the simple questions about loving the Lord. That's what i'll remember about him -- and cease asking the why of it all. God is bigger and the lessons that Drew and Scott and Jake Hamilton and all the rest of the good boys have taught us will be the things we remember in the long run.

Thinking of you all today. Praying that people get saved.

He would have.

SO funny.

Make my life a prayer to You
I want to do what you want me to
No empty words and no white lies
No token prayers, no compromise

When I was nineteen some friends from college made a mix CD of some songs we'd loved together and brought it with them to my brother's funeral. Steve Horst sang Keith Green's Make My Life a Prayer to You. I've whispered the words often to myself, sometimes more than others. I've whispered them a lot this week.

It's hard to not compromise when it comes to issues of the heart. I'm as flighty as Peter and faithless as Thomas. I like to dabble in the things which tempt me and I like to dwell on things which capture me. Until one day I find that all my words have been empty and all the rest were white lies.

Make my life a prayer to You. I want to do what You want me to. Even when it's hard, because my eyes are on me, on the world, on stuff, I really do want to do what You want me to do.

I wish I could communicate how much I love the Lord recently. Saying it just doesn't cut it. Amazing Grace, its sound is sweet, but I love Him so much more than I can sing in chapel or raise my hands in church or convey to my best friend. I can't explain the pocket of joy in my throat. C.S. Lewis said this: I doubt whether anyone who has tasted [joy] would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.

I wouldn't trade it.

And yet at home in New York this weekend is marked by suffering, by death. Shouldn't there be more of a sense of mourning? Shouldn't the sick pit in my stomach feel bigger than the joyful lump in my throat? There will be a funeral this week for a boy-man, one who loved the Lord wholly and was never afraid to walk out the Christian life in front of a hostile audience. He didn't have much on his side, just a child-like faith and a happy step, but he had joy on his side. A friend posted this about him on her website this morning:

"Ironically, in the car on the way to Lampsons Falls, Scott shared how he came toknow the Lord as his Savior, how much he enjoyed being a child of God and how much he enjoyed knowing God. He even said, ‘I wish every day was Sunday.’ He said he wished he could be in the presence of God every day. He wished that he could go to church every day and be in fellowship with other believers. He wished he could enjoy the awesome presence of the Lord everyday and not have to worry about an assignment due to next morning. Scott also showed us a hammer and chisel he had just purchased for his geology class. He shared his deep love for geology and his adoration for the world that God had created for us."

And so, when I think to myself that the sting of death ought to be greater than the Joy of the Lord at times like these, I rebuke myself and tears form in my eyes -- The whole reason we celebrate Joy is because the sting of death is abolished!

A tragedy happened this weekend. Sucked into the waters of a river, but never sucked into the waters of the world, Scott knew his Joy was incomplete. And when he next opens his eyes there will be nothing he would trade for the completion of that Joy.

But we'll miss him in the meantime.

A peek over my shoulder:

"Respect and submission to the Lord frees the believer to obey His commands out of a love relationship as principally noted in John 14.15, 'if you love me, you will obey what I command.'" True Disciple by Barry McAlpin -- I've known this principle for a while, but every few months it hits me anew.

"Sodlive pa se haelend gesch pa menigu, he astah on pone munt; and pa he saet, pa genealaehthon his leorningenihta to him" Matthew 5.1 in Old English -- The word leornigenihta literally means The Learning Knights which evolved into the Modern English usage: Disciple.

"Our guilt in the face of Katrina is not that we can’t see the intelligence in God’s design, but that we can’t see arrogance in our own heart. God will always be guilty of high crimes for those who think they’ve never committed any." Was Katrina Intelligent Design? by John Piper -- on the hurricane.

"Sometimes the idea of livng as a hermit appeals to all of us. No demands, no needs, no pain, nodisappointments. But that is because we have been hurt, are worn out. In our heart of hearts, that place where we are most ourselves, we don't want to run away for very long. Our lives were meant to be lived with others. As achoes of the Trinity, we remember something. Made in the image of a perfect relationship, we are relational to the core of our beings and filled with a desire for transcendent purpose. We long to be an irreplaceable part of a shared adventure." Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge -- Loving womanhood once again.

"Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style and how it obstructs what they are trying to saw. If you give me an eight page article and I tell you to cut it to four pages, you'll howl and say it can't be done. Then you'll go home and do it, and it will be much better. After that comes the hard part: cutting it to three." On Writing Well by William Zinsser -- The textbook of choice for my Non-fiction writing class, and one of the few textbooks I'll keep.

Share my headphones:

Grace Like Rain - Todd Agnew
Blessed Be the Name - Matt Redman
Let Us Love and Sing In Wonder - Jars of Clay
Mix - A girl from first floor who I love

A piece of my joy:

My new church.
A few new friends.
Transparency.
A phone call from my best friend.

Three wishes:

A minute of home.
A more proactive personality.
A hug.

After spending almost two straight weeks on Beowulf, picking apart every aspect of it and chewing on it almost constantly, I have begun to think in Epic Old English poetics. Today as I began writing my response paper on it I started it like this: "In an age where the pagan traditions of men were the norm, where savagery and decadence were praised, from out of the mire a manuscript came, and a poet who praised Another." Not only was I writing it with stresses in the right places, but alliterations [characteristic of Old English poetry] were coming out accidentally [there I go again. . .]. So, I decided to be brave and write the whole paper like that. I don't know if I'll get a good grade, but it's only worth five percent. I'm on page three. Four more to go. Cross my fingers and crack a smile.

These classes are so tiringly easy sometimes.

I was fifteen when my mom first told me. I’ve never forgotten. It’s one of those things that you just don’t forget. I told her it wasn’t on purpose, and she agreed with me. I told her I tried to be friendlier, and she encouraged me. I told her a lot of things, but she didn’t take it back: I come across as a little snobbish.

I finally get it though, almost ten years later. Up north everyone is a little snobbish, unintentionally of course, but just a tad’ll do ya. Enough arms-length away to make sure you don’t come across as too eager. Enough nice to make sure they know you aren’t adverse to being friendly, just not leaping at the every opportunity to expand your social circle. Not everyone, mind you, I’m told, but northern snobbery is well known in other parts of the country. And if the lack of ‘ya’ll’ in my vernacular didn’t give away, perhaps the limited use of syllables in words like hill, and door, and three could be a hint: this girl is from above the Dixie line. I’ve never blessed anyone’s heart and I’ve never pushed a grocery buggy; I’ve never tasted grits and I can’t contain myself when the top forty Christian hits play in the friendly neighborhood Save-A-Lot. And the bank. And the café down the street. And . . . the gas station?

The south is as foreign to me as any other country I’ve been to and I’ve been told that if I don’t say howdy to every person I meet than I’m a little bit snobbish. Quiet doesn’t cut here in the land of Everybody Has an Opinion, Who Can Be the Loudest? And ducking my head isn’t an option, especially when I’m this short; everybody wants to see my eyes. I’ve tried to remember everyone’s names, but sometimes I even forget my own. I go to bed a little early; okay, a lot. I am trying, honest I am. But I’m afraid my northern snobbery coupled with my natural inclination to keep to myself makes for a very poor representation of who I want to be.

I’ve never forgotten that my personality has a tendency, and I even have a few more excuses besides, but I’ve determined to make a few friends this week. A few at least.

A sign you know you done been taught good:

When your floormates talk about the weekend with longing because it means they can sleep in, and your response is to think to yourself, "Oh, that's right. I've been so excited about church on Sunday that I forgot I could sleep past six twenty. Bonus."

I know I brag on my home church often, maybe too often, but I'm of the firm belief that the local church is the foundation and the benchmark for our relationship to Christ. Submission to the elders, loving the fellowship, appreciating the teaching, hungering for the safety -- all things which gauge Christian living for us. I've felt so disconnected over the past several months, unplugged, belonging and yet distant -- not far from God, but apart from the thing I know helps me see my relationship with Him more clearly: local church. I was there every Sunday, but so busy with other things during the week that I just didn't have time to be a part of what was going on. I miss that. I'm so excited to be able to plug into a church here.

And sleeping in an extra hour? Yeah, my internal clock is too set in its ways for that I'm afraid; I was wide awake this morning at 6:45.

Cool. NPR published an essay I submitted to their This I Believe submission request. I had to write in liberal code, but nonetheless. . .

I often wonder what it is like to be small again; to see the world from no higher than my waist, or my knees. I look at the shoes people wear, as if that might give me a glimpse into what every toddler views as a person. Yet while a toddler may identify a person by the color or size of the shoes, I imagine those shoes as the people who wear them. Black Steve Maddens: an assertive graphic designer who runs around all day and needs never worry about a run in her stockings because she doesn’t bother with anything that might be a hassle. Vera Wang inch-high sparkling white heels: the sorority sister who thinks the bit of added height is an asset to her life. Brown and scuffed Doc Martens: the computer hack who thinks that shoes are only a necessity and, therefore, ought to be purchased as minimally as possible. Black Mary-Janes: the frustrated parochial school urchin who wears a perpetual frown; but can you blame her?

I knew a boy who wore the same pair of black imitation Converse sneakers all through middle school and high school. I thought at the time it was because they were cool, we all wore Converse, but now I know he wore them because his parents didn't have as much money as my own did; because the cruelties of the economy had chosen his family to be the unlucky recipients and cheap imitations were the best they could do. He was my friend. He was my first lesson in knowing someone as an adult.

We were nine when we met. He still lived in the beautiful stone farmhouse and he taught me to dive in the pool across the street. I lived in an underdeveloped development so underdeveloped that there were still forests all around my house. I taught him to climb a birch tree and we carved our initials in the tender bark of its youth. I went back to that house a few years ago and, fifteen years later, our initials are still there, the flesh of the tree bulging out around the marks, somehow making the first letters of our names more deeply ingrained in the tree than we could ever be on one another’s lives. For now, though, we were nine, and inseparable.

Being inseparable in grade school was fine for us, and everyone else. He had ferrets, which I thought were gross, and I rode horses, of which he was jealous. We made a fine pair. A few things happened, though, the year we turned thirteen.

The first thing that happened was that he moved. His family moved to a much smaller, much less pretty house. The second was that he needed new sneakers; they looked the same as all the rest of ours, but they weren’t. The third is that we played the game Sardines with the kids in my neighborhood and, stuffed behind a barrel in my father’s cellar, he held my hand. Very tightly. The most significant thing that happened to us that year was that, for the first time, we were an us.

When you imagine yourself in love everything else takes a peripheral position in your life; that’s how it was with us. We were faintly aware that all around us things were changing at a rapid and somewhat uncomfortable pace, but the only thing we knew was each other. We stayed that way, blissfully unaware, until his family decided to go on the mission field, which I later learned through experience was evangelical code to explain a lot of things people do.

The last time I saw him we were twenty and he was wearing brown leather Birkenstocks. I heard he got married this past winter. I wonder if he ever thinks about birch trees and swimming underwater and imitation converse sneakers and being young again. I do.

I often wonder what it is like to be small again; where character judgments are simple and quickly executed; where disliking someone or not fitting in is merely a part of growing up and not an exercise in being grown up; where shoes can define a person because that's all we're big enough to see.

An extreme dislike of anything chatty has driven me to download the new Google Talk and give myself an internet identity that I swear by my favorite apple green bedspread I will use.

I swear by my favorite apple green bedspread that I will use Google Talk.

Mostly because my inbox is flooded with comments and emails from people all day long, and my phone rings off the hook, and my mailbox [#33, in case you were wondering] is stuffed full of mail, and people, people, people just waiting in line to talk to me. ME!

Or maybe just because I miss you.
So, yeah, download it and talk to me: loreferguson

I work myself up, thoughts of what to do, what not to do, what to say, what never to say, get my panties in a twist, as they like to say, and when finally I am where I feared to be, I find I've forgotten my brilliant thoughts of the hour before. And so thus, I find myself.

Teaching. A class of 21 students.

I hate teaching; really, I do. People have always told me I've got a natural inclination toward it, nonetheless, I hate it. I hate the preparation. I hate the feeling of inadequecy. I hate the fact that people will be looking at me, listening to me, and expecting me to know something they don't. I hate the expectations most of all. But when I get in the classroom, shake off the initial jitters and laugh with the first sleepy student who walks in the door, I find that teaching isn't really all it's cracked up to be.

Teaching is just living. Of course it's living in front of a classroom of idealistic freshmen, but still just living. Being willing to mess up, make mistakes, share those mistakes, tell about my struggle with active and passive verbs, and my dislike of all things MLA; tell them I really did write my senior paper the day before it was due, but insist that it's better not to do it that way. All those things that make us human, make us real, touchable--those are the things that make me love teaching.

No, I'm not changing my major back to English Education, I'm just being challenged about the things which scare me most. They often turn out to be nothing more than another monster in my closest, who, like my parents always said, is usually more scared of me than I am of him.