It's twelve:thirty am and I can't sleep. Perhaps it's the sudden change. We have bundled for so long, now our windows are open, my chocolate brown curtains blowing humidity across the room. I've always written best late at night. Don't expect much now though.

I've been listening to this all day. Not for real, just in my head. A repetitive reel of what really matters.

I've been crying a lot recently. Not the sort of sobs that isolate and suffocate. The sort that come at inopportune moments and others that aren't. I'm laying here awake not because I'm not tired, but because all I can do is think.

I'm thinking about how this earthly tent is housing a body of death and not much else. I'm lazy and inconsistent. Irritable and fond of substitutes. I'm selfish and entitled to it. I burned my hand on the oven the other night and I scratched my finger along the blistering skin an hour ago. It hurts. We hiked seven miles yesterday, a bit of it in the rain; I slipped down a hill and my knee hurts. Badly. I shake myself out of the slump I've fallen into at work, frustrated by how little I accomplish and how much is left to do. I look at my bank account and I shrug. It's just living, right? It's supposed to hurt a little.

That might not all seem to link, but it does. Believe me.

He sings, Deliver me courage to guide me, Deliver me Your strength inside me.

And I'm singing it too.

Because we're all slowly dying, slowly fading. We're all fainting away and getting old. We need a Deliverer. I need a Deliverer. Because, honestly, I'm a take it as it comes sort of girl. I wait, peruse my options and if I don't like them, I turn up my nose. Or, I wait, don't get any options and shake my fist at God for not making good on all His promises.

What I mean is that I'm fearful and suspect. And ungrateful.

What I mean is that I need Him. And that I'm aware, in an ever increasing way, that I'm a person prone to wandering, failing, and dying. I need a Deliverer. I need a rescuer. I need Him.

We talked long last night. Wet and sore and spent. Him and him and her and me. And a sleeping other.

Why do we love God? she asked. And we all had our answers, because He first loved us, because without Him we're nothing, because we should, because there isn't anything better, because...

I had confessed to her earlier, though, on some trail in the foothills, that I love God but sometimes I don't trust Him. And that's the truth. So when I answered later, "Because there isn't anything better than Him." I meant that. I did. I'm not one of those Count Your Blessings Name Them One by One sort of Christians whose love is hinged on good things versus bad. I've tried the scale method. It doesn't work. It doesn't.

Because regardless of the weight of good things on one side, something heavier will fall, death, divorce, being left, disappointment, on the other side. And the scales will crumble. But He doesn't. Things do, but not Him.

And there are things weighing heavily on the scales, it doesn't take a conversation or ten to realize that. We are shaken from every side, tossed around and given opportunity to be glad or grumble. But we are confident of this one thing:

He out-weighs them all.

A meager attempt at beating the Block Monster:

It's summer in Potsdam. I know. Surprising huh? We're all walking around in a winter stupor one day and then the next people are barbecuing and walking around in tshirts and shorts. Potsdam is a college town. Some towns have colleges in them, but aren't college towns. But not here. The median age is low to mid-twenties and the ride of choice is two feet. I love living here.

I'm sitting on a robin's egg blue chair. When the Mother of the House painted a kitchen cabinet this color last spring we all respectively guffawed and threw in our respective opinions. It was painted quickly back to its original red. But when the Mother of the House offered to repaint my childhood desk chair the same color, I had to contain my excitement. But I didn't.

I'm truly excited every time I look at it and especially when I sit on it. You would be too.

Today several of my dear friends are in an eight-hour long exam, the passing of which is required in order for them to graduate. I vacillate in my prayers. At 7am, when they were just emptying their pockets of cell phones and other contraband, I prayed for them to relax. At 9am, when they were an hour into the test, I prayed for clear heads. At 12 noon, I prayed that they would keep their minds off their stomachs and on the impossible equations in front of them. It's now 1pm and I just realized that if I changed my prayers a little bit, like say, pray for them to do horribly, then they wouldn't graduate, would have to stay, and all my selfish prayers would be answered.

But a few other friends and I are making them dinner tonight, so I think that makes up for one silly selfish prayer.

I did say I liked living in a college town, right? I do. I do. But last night when said friends, plus a few more give or take, and I were wandering around Ives Park, I stopped for one second or ten and looked at them. I know that they're all happy to graduate in a few weeks, and I'm proud of them, I am. But sometimes being kept has its low-points, and every May is mine.

They're all packing up, moving on, moving out, getting jobs, or not, moving home or making a new one. I am here still, though, and this is my home. And I'm glad. Really and truly. I'm glad I love where I live. But it's hard to love so many people who don't live here too.

The other night on the phone one of the Makeshift Family admonished me. We'd been playing phone tag for so many weeks, you see (being very vigilant at it, though, none of this calling once a week and pretending that our duty was done. It really was fairly daily.). He said, "We can't let this happen, Lor." And I knew he didn't mean phone-tag or months of not talking followed by a rush to fit the stuff of life into a half-hour. He meant, we can't let time and distance be the undoing of good things. We can savor and reunite and laugh best with those people, but we can't let the middling and meantiming fall.

On Tuesday a good man walked into our office and filled it with good things, namely smiles and compliments and a big sigh. "I wish I had enough time to spend time really visiting with you lovely ladies," he said. "It's okay," I said back, "life is a vapor. We understand that."

That's why I like it here. In Potsdam. At home. It may not look like much to the naked eye. But it is. Meantiming and middling is the stuff of life and I'm not on my way anywhere except heaven. Eternity is written on my heart and I'm, somehow, touching it from this small place.

Somehow.

There is a pile of green by my window that just keeps growing. I think they love the sunshine and warmth of late, I know I do. They've been stretching their tendrils up the window and across the sill. I should separate them, maybe being so close together isn't good for them, but I like the different shades and textures. And I like piles of green.

This week is prophetic presbytery at my church. I say to my friend on the way home last night that it's stirring my faith and it really is. Then she put her hand on me and prayed for me and I cried, sobs that should my shoulders. Then my faith really felt stirred. I love presbytery, I do, but what I love more is unity among people.

The other day another friend asked me what my plan is. I wonder if people who have real jobs and real families ever get asked that. I get asked all the time. Sometimes I make things up, sometimes I tell the truth, sometimes I say, I don't know but I think about..., most of the time I just say, "You know, I'm really excited to be a part of what God is doing here. My immediate plan is to continue fostering excitement."

Why are we a people so obsessed with A Plan? Life is just a vapor and then it's over. Plan on eternity instead, it's a better investment.

If I must make a plan, though, here's mine:

Figure out what's wrong with my car and find a boy who will take it to the mechanic: I have Cheat Me written on my various extremities.
Give more generously of my finances.
Go food shopping and buy spinach for sure.
Call ATT and pull the loyal customer for five years card: I have 3000 rollover minutes, I'm on the lowest plan possible and I still pay 70.00 a month. What?
Clean our apartment and do laundry.
Take my vitamins.
Be a better friend, not just better company.
Exercise gratefulness.
Stop getting into messes by accident and fumbling my way out of them.

That's it for today.

Oh, and try to climb out of a bad case of writer's block.

We wait, in collective mourning, for the rumbling of an earthquake or some great disaster or last hurrah. We wait, huddled in a room, for the wrath of a Father for the loss of His only Son. We are waiting for the slap on the wrist, the furrowed brow in our general direction, a stony silence.

We denied Him; now we are afraid that He will deny us.

I am not sure what we thought would happen. Miracles are believable when they are in first person. But we are second persons now, we are the observers; no longer participants in the greatest act of God since creation.

Peter is swallowing the guilt of denial, his words echoing off the corners of his heart. Matthew is distraught, still, over Judas's mathematics: 30 gold pieces are chump change to him and he would have given thrice or more in exchange for one more day. The women are weeping in the corner. Mary throws her wrap over her head and leaves the room by herself, holding scents and spices and a plan. Thomas is saying he told us so, and so he did. So he did.

We have forgotten quickly. It is two days since then and we have grown accustomed to the gnawing disappointment. For moments during His agony we expected and waited, then when the sky turned dark, we thought Surely Then. The veil is torn in the temple, we're told, this is the sign perhaps?

We will finish our Sabbath, though nothing about mourning is restful. We will leave the room and enter life before Jesus. Next year, perhaps? The Messiah will come? Next year?

This is our wait. We hover over seventy-two hours and a promise we didn't understand and didn't think to ask.

The clouds roll like tumbleweed over the Saint Lawrence, gathering their supply before heading back over the mountains to our right. It is grey everywhere recently, not like Summer or Autumn around here, where everything is lit with color. We grow accustomed to the sameness of Winter and Spring; even the daffodils and small violets are a minute shock to our existence. Which of these things doesn't belong?

I have made a Caricature God. What's yours?

Mine is a God of sameness. When I was small the parishioners would sing in four-part harmony "Great is Thy faithfulness, there is no shadow of turning with Thee, Thou changest not.." and you know the rest. I envisioned a God who had a lethargy any five year old would disdane. I did. Mine is a God of deceptive bordem, a continual plod toward a New Heaven and New Earth. This is no journeyman with a wunderlust for life, this is no rigid taskmaster with a end goal in sight, this is a God who marks tallies on a cave wall: Day 263. Day 8754. Day 24,788.

Mine is a God who has been seated on a throne for more days than I understand and whose beard has grown past his knees and who has grown accustomed to my mistakes and missteps. He nods from that great throne and glances at the calendar to see if it's almost time to just bring us all home where we belong.

I wake every morning to deceptive sameness. This week is full of grey spring rain, enough to make the grass turn a brilliant green and to break the icy winter dams that have held back the rushing and wild water. And maybe it's the rain that makes me think that every day changest not, but more perhaps it's the daily grind of life. The same coffee maker churning out the same cup of coffee keeping me awake through the same morning to do the same things to go the same places. Ad nauseum.

And I wonder today, how He does it? This Caricature God of mine. How does he remain faithful? How does his changelessness and faithfulness defy the impressions of a five year-old and this twenty-something year old? He says Faithful, I say Boring. He says Unchangeable, I say New Toy Please. The book of Hebrews says:

In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath,so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.

Right about now I need some strong encouragement. Not that I'm faltering or failing or hopelessly flailing around, but just because His unchangeableness seems a little grey right now, a little too constant, a little too familiar. I'm asking for something that doesn't belong to jolt me wide awake and put some color into my world. I'm asking for a fresh impression of God.

I play the waiting game. Waiting for the light to change. Waiting for my phone to ring. Waiting for my coffee to brew and waiting to wake up one day found perfect. I'm waiting for righteousness to clothe me, to be credited to me, and to be the legacy behind me.

Today I am reading in Micah, chapter 7:

He will bring me out to the light, and I will see His righteousness.

The funny thing is, even when I'm dwelling in darkness I can still see what is bathed in light. A small light goes a long way. Yet when I'm brought out into the light it's not my righteousness that becomes evident, it's His.

See, I'm still here, twiddling my thumbs and kneading my knots out of my flesh. I'm still here practicing good character and stepping up to the plate. I'm here just waiting, waiting because it's good to wait you see. It's good to not pluck that fruit before its time. And it's good to not rush the game, good guys finish last we know from middle school and marriage proposals. But on the other end of waiting, on the other end of coming out, it's not us who gets completed. It's Him.

And something about that makes this, all of this, much more doable. It's not my righteousness I'm waiting for, it's His I'm walking in.