The tasks keep piling up:

Papers:
One paper to write on Operation Christmas Child and my part played in it.
One paper to write on the corrolation between the godesses and the virgin Mary.
One paper to write on the feminization of men in our modern culture.
One paper to write on media law.
One paper to write on Advertising.

Realizations:
Realize that driver's licenses expire on birthdays--so not everything good can happen on birthdays.
Realize that I will be driving home two days AFTER my birthday, with an expired license.
Realize I must make a decision about my residency today: Tennessee or New York?
Realize that means I must make a decision about where to take summer classes: Tennesse or New York?
Realize that means I may have to stay here through the summer.
Realize that driving home 1300 miles for a two and half week stay over winter break seems a little ridiculous.

Conscious Thoughts:
Contemplating whether to take advantage of the cheap flights.
Ignoring my cell phone. A lot. It's not that I don't like you, or don't want to talk to you, it's just that there are too many people to like and too many people to talk to.
And too much homework to do.

Other Homework:
Finish Milton's Paradise Lost for the second time this year -- it's a good thing we're friends.
Finish Don Quixote--or rent the video (Dr. Coulter, I hope you're not reading this).
Design logo for school competition.
Make a storyboard for presentation.
Finish Wild at Heart.
Figure out how to get eight extra credit points for Mass Media.
Cry hard if I can't.

Tasks:
Pick up paycheck.
Get interviewed for RA position.
Bake bread for Monday.
Wash my sheets.
Sort and send photos in for developing (sorry Melville's).

Call, in no particular order:
Emily.
Danica.
Moultons.
Selena.
Ashley.
Joey.
Leonard Center.

Email, in no particular order:
Dr. Effler.
Ms. Battle.
Mama.
Nancy.
Renee, did I email you back already?
Rachel.

Pay:
Pay cell phone bill.
Pay credit card bill.
Pay transfer bill.
Pay driver's license transfer bill.
Pay duck's bill.
Get rid of duck because he's too expensive.

Today I sat on a brick ledge and waited for a friend. My open bible lay on my lap, turned to the Psalms. I was hardly reading, don't think me pious please. It's just comforting to know He speaks. He does.

Last night, in the middle of getting lost at midnight, putting phones on speakerphone, making trail mix, and being squished, we had a little conversation about prophecy and hearing the voice of the Lord. I think we all agreed that there's nothing like knowing the Lord speaks to us, especially when it's confirmed by others.

We are a tangible people, we humans. All of us. We'd like to touch the sky so we send astronauts into space who merely walk on the moon. We'd like to see wind so we invent technology to show us a rainbow of colors representing something without any color at all. We'd like to hear Jesus speak so we read books and go to church and beg for someone, anyone, to notice and say they have the word of the Lord for us. We are a tangible people, we humans.

But sometimes His word doesn't come in a form we can touch or see. Sometimes it's not even delivered in a whisper. Sometimes He doesn't say anything at all. But when we look at the blueness of the sky, the effects of the wind, the smiling friend pulling up in her car, the open bible on our laps, and the pocket of joy in that knotch below our throats, we know He speaks. We know He speaks to us.

And that's somehow so comforting.

How blessed are the people who know the joyful sound!
Oh Lord, they walk in the light of your countenance!
Psalm 89.15

A no-show, a free hour with no laptop and/or biographical information to digest, a horse, and me. We circled the ring a few times, jumped a few jumps, and got a little restless pretty soon. Open fields and forest trails--here we come! We galloped up a hill, the wind biting my nose and cheeks, and leaving me speechless.

It feels so good to do something I love and get paid for it. Even more, it feels good to do something I love that I thought I'd closed the door on. Even more, it feels good to know that the Lord knows the desires of our hearts.

So I've been thinking about a few of the desires of my heart. Really, honestly, if you want the truth, and I offer nothing less, the real desire of my heart is to honor the Lord. But unfortunately that has to be walked out with tangible purpose. I can't honor the Lord and not prioritize my time. I can't honor the Lord and speak with flighty or gossipy words. I have to somehow walk out the honoring part in a day-to-day way. So I've been learning about obedience recently. About how when I obey with my heart, the Lord honors my desire to be obedient and, more often than not, grants me the desire of my heart-- which really, is just to be given opportunities to honor Him more.

This job, manna from heaven, opportunity to exercise daily, pay my cell phone bill, and excuse to do laundry more often, is just one example of the Lord's blessing on me. He knows how much I love riding and teaching. He knows how much I missed kids the first few months here. He knows how much I wanted some adults in my life--and He's blessed me with them all. And the best part was that I didn't even ask!

And that's what I'm kind of learning recently. I've spent a lot of years having not because I asked not, but I've spent more years asking not because I had not and had no reason to think I would ever have. But this year I began loving the Lord and trusting that He knew my needs AND my desires, even when I didn't know them. And He's meeting them. One by one by one. I watch the unspoken, unknown, whispered, and secreted desires being met.

I think it wasn't just the wind that left me speechless this morning. I think it was the wonder of a great God.

Cell phones are security blankets for the lonely. When being surrounded by friends isn’t my portion for whatever the reason, the slim grey box on my desk is a comforting window to the familiar. When it rings it sounds a little like home. When I see your number on the screen it feels a little like an embrace. And when I hear your voice I close my eyes and think we’re not really that far apart at all.

My email is not working, so instead of not emailing me, you should all email me like crazy for the next few days so when i open my inbox it will be so stuffed full of messages that I will be like an Operation Christmas Child opening his shoebox.

Speaking of Operation Christmas Child, you should do it. Why aren't you?

I'm sure there should be more interesting things about which to write, but interesting hasn't been my lot recently.

I've been writing about Dante's Divine Comedy and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Dorset, Vermont, and my philosophy of Residential Life.
I've been cutting my index cards into quarters because it saves on index cards and makes flipping through them less conspicuous in classes where I'm not supposed to be memorizing the levels of Purgatorio and the seven deadly sins.
I've been proofreading papers galore. And more.
I've been studying for British Literature exams and World Literature exams.
I've been choosing my classes for next semester and realizing that if I can get the rest of my Timothy Center credits transferred I really will have only one and a half years left here. Glee!
I've been finding nooks and crannies where I can study uninterrupted.
I've been giving horsebackriding lessons three days a week.
I've been loving one of my students too much for words.
I've been loving my new church and my new friends and trying to figure out the dynamics of newness.
I've been meditating on scriptures about joy, and rejoicing, and life, and faith.
I've been meeting with girls I'm loving more and more every day.
I've been trying not to meet with some people I wish would like me a little less.
I've been applying for a job, a house, a trip, and unapplying for a school loan.
I've been checking my mailbox and finding cards from three people I love [Did you hear that? I love you!!!].
I've been hugging my roommates and other people too.
I've been thinking about freedom, and humor, and why in the world The Color Green has never been my favorite song, since it's always been my favorite color.
I've been trying to drown out the constant tv in the next room and longing for the day that I won't have one.
I've been putting together a budget and realizing that I need to pay some people back for some things.
I've been staring at a list of tasks that have been waiting to get done since this summer and waiting for three straight hours in which to do them.
I've been getting phone calls at one am in the morning and invitations for Thanksgiving dinner. I've been getting emails at one am in the morning and requests to proofread more papers.
I've been looking at the clock and thinking that it is one am and I've never stayed up til one am until this season of my life.
I've been hanging up the phone.
Closing down the email.
Finishing up this post.

Now wasn't all of that interesting?

The constellations are the same, the big dipper dips and the little one smiles back, but I can hardly see them. It is night, not too late, not too early. I am wearing a t-shirt and jeans and a really big borrowed sweatshirt to ward off the chilly night dew. We are sitting on blankets still a little sticky from last weeks roasted marshmellows and there are eight of us. There is a television sitting on the back of a pickup truck, facing us, and a 1990's remake of a 1950's favorite is playing. We watch it, but hardly. Well, maybe a little bit. We're distracted by the chill after such a warm day. We're distracted by the neighbor's dog who like sweet southern tea as much as we do. We're distracted by a lost earring. We're distracted by the world. The world distracts us.

I loook up and try to find all my favorite constellations, but here isn't home. At home I can see them all, here I can only find four or five. I am distracted by the lack as much as I am by the surplus.

I’ve been fairly effective at putting it out of my mind, distracting myself with other things that are more present to me, more tangible, more here. But today, on the way home from work, in the car, listening to a song, the tears caught in my throat and wouldn’t budge. I cried out the questions and heard the answers all in the same breath, but it didn’t make the questions, or the tears, any easier to swallow. I shook my fist at the enemy and felt the gentle chastening of the Lord; the dichotomy making it that much more difficult to understand life in all its inconsistencies and inadequacies and questions and wonderings. How can we love the Lord and His plans for us and then hate the plans so much when we watch them unfold? How can we be so strong and so fragile all at the same time?

In those moments of doubt and concern for whether He hears us, whether He concerns Himself with our cries, with the pain that accompanies death, our question becomes ‘Who am I? What are you doing with me? Are you concerned for me, with me?’ But His rebuke this morning came not in the form of a statement, but another question—“Who am I?” I don’t know Lord, not in times like these. “Then be content in the knowledge that I AM.”


Who am I?
That the Lord of all the earth,
Would care to know my name,
Would care to feel my hurt,
Who am I?
That the Bright and Morning Star,
Would choose to light the way,
For my ever wandering heart,

Not because of who I am,
But because of what You've done,
Not because of what I've done,
But because of who You are,

I am a flower quickly fading,
Here today and gone tomorrow,
A wave tossed in the ocean,
A vapor in the wind
Still You hear me when I'm calling,Lord,
You catch me when I'm falling,
And You've told me who I am.
I am Yours.

Who am I?
That the eyes that see my sin,
Would look on me with love,
and watch me rise again,
Who am I?
That the voice that calmed the sea,
Would call out through the rain,
And calm the storm in me