5:01pm
“Seriously? It’s 59 minutes ’til dinner, girl.”
5:16pm
(Deep breath, while doing math) “Molly. It’s…44 minutes ’til dinner.”
5:33pm
“Nope. Not yet. It’s still 27 minutes ’til dinner, pup.”
5:43pm
“Molly! Quit pouting! It’s only 12 minutes ’til dinner.”
6:00pm
“Yes, girl. It’s dinner time. Why aren’t you excited?”
“Are you sticking your tongue out at me??”
1. How do you handle socks and underwear? Do yours live in a shared drawer or do they each have their own? Do you fold or stuff?
I need to know.
Since we move fairly often, I’ve had many opportunities for reassessment in the socks and underwear department. Yet, we’ve been in this home for over four years (light years for a military family), and every single day (or, you know, every day that I bothered to shower), I have opened the sock drawer when I wanted the underwear drawer, and vice versa. Last year I got so fed up with the whole deal that I switched the drawers.
In answer to your question: NO.
2. I asked for this for Christmas. Nobody got it for me, so I ordered it myself.
The categories for any given week are:
Things I have to do but that can wait a day, or two, or three..
Small things I have to do before I can do the big things I have to do
Things I absolutely have to do unless I absolutely don’t want to do them
Things people have been bugging me to do for a really long time
It makes me giggle. It’s pretty much like this Mark Asher person read my mind, and it totally works for me. Which pretty much makes me totally happy.
3. After returning three different pairs of (birthday) boots, this is the pair I finally decided on.
Aren’t they pretty? I really, really, really love them. They are, officially, the highest heel I own…and I might need a wee bit of instruction on how to walk in them.
4. Molly and I were running errands last week.
As we were waiting at the world’s longest stoplight, I looked back and noticed her ears in the rearview window. Seeing her ears made me think of that “God is my co-pilot” bumper sticker, and then of the one that said, “Dog is my co-pilot.” I pretty much cracked myself up thinking about that bumper sticker, so I snapped this picture and posted it on Facebook.
As I am wont to do, I immediately began second-guessed myself, like this: Really, Karen, it’s not like “God is my co-pilot” is scripture. It’s not like I’m twisting the Bible, for Pete’s sake. Besides, it’s funny! Molly is my co-pilot. She is! And seriously, every time I have relegated God to the position of co-pilot, I have crashed and burned. Surely people will get it. Won’t they? Surely they’ll realize how hilarious I am.
And seriously, why can’t Christians just grow themselves a sense of humor??
And then Fran liked the post, and all was well.
5. I have these designations for foods I will and won’t eat. It’s complicated enough to be its own post, er, book. For example: candy bars. A full-sized Snickers bar? I’m on it. A fun-size Snickers bar? Count me in. One of those dumb little Snickers Miniatures? Fuhgeddaboudit. The ratios are all wrong. I’ve pondered this for some time, and I think there are too many peanuts and not enough chocolate. The result is that even though it’s just that little bite, it’s not worth the calories.
Who’s with me on this?
6. Do you have fat underwear? You know, like fat jeans?
I need to know.
7. My BFF posted a recipe for Butternut Squash Risotto yesterday, and the most desperate need came over me.
I had to make it, and the sooner the better. I started prepping the squash (impatient girl style, subbing butcher knife for veg peeler) with plans to bat my eyelashes at the Wonder Hub while asking him to make an Arborio Rice run. When he walked in the door, the squash and onions were all but done. The house smelled divine. I packed him off quickly, after both texting him the ingredient AND making him look at the spelling. He called ten minutes later. He couldn’t find it anywhere. I talked him through it. Still nothing. I signed off, frustrated. Ten minutes later, he called back. The manager had confirmed that the store has discontinued it.
Jerks.
I didn’t have the heart to make him go to another store, so I surveyed the kitchen. I had…squash, and onions. And a smallish temper tantrum.
For dinner we had Red Baron pizza. (And maybe one more tantrum.)
7.5. Tonight, though. Tonight I made sure I had all the ingredients. Tonight we had this:
(And by we, I mean me, because after my first two bowls, I hid the rest in the back of the fridge.)
Amen.
I knew my word instantly. I tried to think, and think hard, because perhaps this wasn’t really my word. Maybe there was another, easier word. This one had been coming on for some time, placed at the forefront of my brain again and again and again as an imperative that must be heeded if I am to survive.
But still. I scrolled through the One Word resolutions of others, and tried on each one like a garment. I was looking for a fleecy, comfortable thing. Like a jacket I could slip on, one arm at a time. A word I could snuggle up with effortlessly. A word I could call on much like a small child nurses her pacifier; an amenity for the inevitable trials of life.
The word, my One Word, is more of a weapon than an amenity. Rather than snuggling up in its fleeciness, it will call me to hit the cold, hard floor. Early, no doubt, and repeatedly. On my knees, even.
Get it? My One Word is:
Pray.
Will you join me?
What’s your One Word?
Several times over the weekend, I thought back to the hopeful, idyllic words I had written in number five of the Random Thursday: Happy New Year Edition post. When I wrote them, I was very sure of myself. I was a prophet, foretelling the events of a perfect Christmas weekend with a calm confidence born not of hearing from the Most High God, but rather from the delusion brought on by a woman who imagines she has any sort of control over her people or her own ridiculous heart.
It was mid-morning on Saturday when I realized my calling is not to paint you perfect word pictures of an ideal life unmarred by free will and hormone surges. Rather, my calling is wrapped up in this:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)
My calling is to tell you the truth. To show you the cracks in my armor and confess to you my magnificent failings. I am called to open the door of my heart to display for you the muck residing in that black and crusty self-serving place.
My calling is to show you that we all fall down.
The fact that I tend to do it so spectacularly is meant, I assume, to highlight God’s grace in the mercy He shows by patiently, continually, ever-so-sweetly picking me back up.
Because He wants to pick you back up, too.
And on that note, dear friends, here it goes:
Christmas Eve. My house. I had gathered all the boys unto my bosom (okay, so not really, because they would freak out and then immediately text their friends about how weird I am). The house was cozy, the Christmas tree lit. The Wonder Hub walked in and the picture was complete. It was time to start preparing our traditional Christmas Eve Mexican Fiesta. I turned, heart full of love and head full of plans, to find…
they had all retreated to the basement to play video games.
On Christmas Eve. For the love.
Nearly two hours later, the food was ready and they were still shooting aliens (or whatever). The Wonder Hub’s internal I’m In Trouble alarm must have gone off, because he appeared suddenly and was overly-anxious to be of assistance.
It was too late: I was in full-on martyr mode.
Fast-forward to bedtime (late) and a heart full of regret (so full). I went to bed mad. The evening was a waste. There was no quality time spent, no memories made. We didn’t read the Christmas Story or hold hands and sing Kumbaya (because that would have been weird, but still). We did open Christmas Jammies, but we always open Christmas Jammies so it was a hastily executed exercise in eye-rolling and ingratitude, and even one, “Oh great, Christmas Jammies.”
Grrr.
So I went to bed mad. Deep down, I was mad at me. At us. We, the grownups who are tasked with steering this gangly barge, had totally and completely jumped ship. I had given in to that sly and self-serving enemy: offense. Once I gave in to offense, I had hurt feelings to nurse (Didn’t they know all the wonderful plans I had? Uh, no. Actually, no. They didn’t. They had no idea that I had planned the perfect Christmas.) From that point on, I was too busy nursing those hurt feelings to do much else.
So God woke me up at 2:30, as He is wont to do. He coaxed me out of bed, and dealt with my ridiculous and whiny heart. Then He restored my hope. The weekend wasn’t over. The Christmas Story could still be read. Memories were still waiting to be made.
We could choose to guide the ship instead of letting it drift aimlessly.
When the Wonder Hub woke, I shared my heart and my hopes. We talked strategy, and teamwork. We could totally do this thing. After a lame attempt at recreating this picture,
we opened stockings. Then we opened presents while wearing mustaches from our new Emergency Mustache Kits. Before breakfast, the Wonder Hub read the Christmas Story. After we ate, we sat around the table and shared with each other one big thing God had shown/done/taught us in 2012.
Don’t kid yourselves, friends. That part was like pulling teeth. But we did it.
(Yay, us!)
After an hour or so of shower/play with new electronics/ingest your body weight in candy time, we regrouped for the Family Christmas Olympics 2012.
-The winner of the push-up contest won a gift card to Tropical Smoothie*.
-The winner of the three-point shoot-out got to choose where we would eat Christmas dinner.
-The winner of the slam-dunk contest won a crisp twenty dollar bill**.
-The winner of the ultimate frisbee toss (which went on, and on, and on, because nobody would admit defeat) got to choose which movie we would see.
And you know what? Some of it was lame. Some of it was fun. Some of it made going to the dentist look like a tropical vacation, and all of it was hard work. But we stayed the course. We did not give in to the whining or eye-rolling, the subversive attempts to sneak a text. Oh no we did not.
And then. Then we watched as the pictures from Christmases past flashed upon the tv screen. I’m pretty sure all the children were sneak-texting at this point, but they were also watching, and remembering, and making fun of each other’s hair, and faces, and muscles.
It was good.
And you know what? Next year when we watch the pictures from Christmases past, we will see the mustaches, and the slam-dunks (with Molly keeping score from a sunny patch on the front lawn). They will make fun of each other’s push-ups, and the recreation of the 2008 picture will no longer be the lame old lady holding up the gift-opening, but the hair, the faces, the muscles of last year. And, as is true of so many family events, the edges will have blurred just enough to sweeten our memories and make us glad, so glad, that we belong to one another.
*the children who did not win the push-up contest were secretly slipped a Tropical Smoothie gift card.
**the children who did not win the slam-dunk contest were secretly slipped a twenty dollar bill.
1. For two solid years, I daily hounded the Monkey to practice his saxophone. I threatened, I yelled. I employed other (insane and unproductive), non-Love & Logic-approved parenting tactics. This saxophone, the one he begged us to play, certain that girls would swoon every time he picked it up, became my nemesis. It was a rented saxophone, which in the end, I returned to the music store and paid some outrageous extortionist’s fee for them to take off my hands early. In the end, I think he learned to play all of three notes on that stupid thing.
Even thinking about that saxophone increases my heart rate.
So on the 30th of December, some 1.5 years after the end of Sax Era, out of the wild, random blue, the child in question says this:
“You know why I didn’t ever practice my saxophone? You know that thing, that thing that goes in your mouth? That wooden thing? Every time I put that thing in my mouth, I felt like I was hearing fingernails screech down a chalkboard.” And after a considerable, thoughtful pause, “I don’t know why I never told you that.”
2. Despite my rebellion in regard to New Year postings, I can’t stop thinking about the whole resolution thing. For years, I resolved not to make any. For some time after that, I just cut-and-pasted the same ones. They looked like this:
1) Be nicer (especially to my long-suffering husband).
2) Give my time, I think it’s the greatest gift.
3) Love more. Especially my family and friends. We’re all desperate for it, so why not do my part to fill up those around me?
4) WRITE.
5) Figure out how to get to know God. I have this sense that I’m forever on the edge of something really BIG with Him, but that I hold out because I’m scared or lazy or stuck in my spiritual inertia. He is so huge, so endless, so fascinating, and yet here I sit, content with taking Him in my teeny-tiny comfortable doses.
3. This year, I’ve been wavering between two possible approaches to the whole resolution dilemma. Bobbi’s pastor encouraged her to make a three-pronged resolution, like this:
1) What are you going to keep?
2) What are you going to let go?
3) What are you going to take on?
4. The other idea came from a post over at SheLoves/Magazine. In it, the author talks about what led her to ditch the New Year’s Resolution and grasp just one word that,
“..sums up who I want to be, or a character trait I want to develop, or an attribute I want to intentionally add to my life.”
I just now quit wavering. I’m going to do both these things. As they are very much not random, we will have to revisit them again in a different post. In the meantime, think about whether either (or both) of these hold any value for your life. If so, perhaps you’ll join me.
5. This morning, a friend tweeted a picture of her dog looking out the window. The caption was Looking for Squirrels.
“That’s a great title for a blog post,” I thought. “I wonder if I looked for them (the squirrels, the distractions) if they would be less likely to come into my peripheral vision out of nowhere and set my brain off on a wild squirrel chase?”
Which made me remember what I heard at a writer’s conference once. This author suggested writing down everything, ever-y-thing I needed to do, or think about, or tend to, before sitting down to write. She didn’t recommend actually doing them, but rather transferring them from my brain to a sheet of paper as a way of clearing my mind before beginning to write.
Or maybe it was a He, and it was in a sermon. Maybe it was something to do before I pray, as a way to clear my mind of everything that so (so) easily distracts me from the important business of spending quality time with my God.
Look at that. That, my friends, is what I call two-for-one advice. Either way you look at it, it works!
Don’t say I never taught you anything on a Thursday.
5. Yes, I know it is now Friday. For those of you new to this deal, let me reiterate. Random Thursday does not necessarily happen on Thursday. (See: note on squirrels)
It’s Friday! It’s Friday, and at my house it is Christmas Eve! I can’t wait! Tonight, we will gather together. We will eat our traditional Mexican Fiesta. We will read the Christmas Story. We will open our Christmas Jammies. We will do other things worthy of Capital Letters. We will shake boxes and squeeze packages. We will laugh, and tease, and soak up the moments. The together moments. The, “For God so loved the world” moments.
Have I mentioned that I can’t wait?
I can’t!
7. One of the things I will do this weekend is try to talk the teenagers (and the newly minted young adult, sigh) into recreating this photo from Christmas morning, 2008.
(Don’t tell me you find it surprising that the date was set incorrectly on my camera.)
Do you think they’ll do it? Let’s take bets. I bet I can get them to do it. Withholding food may be necessary, but I’m not above it.
I would like very much to recreate this photo (circa March, 2009), too.
(Do you notice anything similar in the two photos?)
Unfortunately, there is zero percent chance of snow (or any precip) over the next several days.
Merry Christmas, my friends!
For several weeks, I’ve been thinking about thinking about composing this first post of the new year for you. The standard format is to talk about resolutions, either those profound changes I have determined to make happen in my own life, or some brilliant words of advice for helping you achieve yours.
Unfortunately, I have a slight and ongoing problem with doing the things I should do. Especially when those things are the things which everyone else is doing. Perhaps it goes back to the Alabama roadies and my unrequited need for wild adventures, but doing the thing that everyone else is doing (that thing I should do) kind of bores me into a catatonic state.
So I’m not writing that post.
I don’t want to talk about what everyone else is talking about.
If you’ll hang out for a minute or two, over here where I am Queen of the Universe, we’re going to talk about……
The bonds of family, and my beloved cousin, who went out of his way to make me this:
..and also this:
And the thing that occurs to me is this: It would appear that my beloved cousin and I suffer from the same rebellious streak.
Yes?
Happy New Year, friends!
Watched
-a single episode of any of the Real Housewives shows.
-any show with “Jersey” in its title.
-reality shows about truckers, or fishermen, or loggers, or any other ridiculously dangerous occupation.
-reality shows (and yes, I am using the term loosely) about child models, or child dancers, or child actresses and their wacko mothers.
-any of the scary movie franchises (Halloween, Friday the 13th, Saw, Scary Movie), with the exception of one or two of the Freddy Krueger movies, which scarred me for life. For life!
-Psycho, Jaws, Deliverance, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Shining, Hellraiser, Cujo.
I just can’t take it. I can think of three times in my childhood (one as late as junior high (that’s middle school to you youngsters)) that I had to fake stomachaches and beg the resident mom call my mom to come get me from sleepovers where scary movies were being watched. The junior high incident involved the Drew Barrymore movie Firestarter, which isn’t even technically a scary movie.
Did I mention that I just can’t take it?
-Dallas, either the original or the current show. I wasn’t allowed to watch it as a child, but I don’t remember minding. I had no idea who J.R. was, and therefore no sorrow over his having been shot. I do remember that hearing about it on the playground became tedious. As in, C’mon! Shut up and shoot some marbles, people! Check out my new cat’s eye! As a result, years later I was the only of my (underaged, ahem) friends at the Boot Hill Saloon who was not too starstruck to go chat it up with Larry Hagman, who was in town for the Sturgis Bike Rally. He was a really nice guy. He bought me a Miller Lite and autographed my coaster. It’s true! It’s up in the garage rafters in a box, along with my college-era scrapbooks (which the children must never, ever see. Seriously, promise to come destroy them if something happens to the WH and me), and the snapshots of me with Colin Powell and Garth Brooks and the touring crew for Alabama.
They wanted me to run away with them, that touring crew. It’s true. I was serving Guinness (chilled to the recommended 37-42 degrees) to a variety of locals and tourists sitting at small, wrought-iron tables under the red awning on the 6th Street sidewalk outside Paddy O’Neill’s Irish Pub at the Hotel Alex Johnson when the tour bus, ALABAMA emblazoned on its side, rolled up.
I had met the guys the previous night at the fairgrounds, using a backstage pass which was my sole compensation for a summer deejaying internship at the local (AM!) country radio station. I never did get to meet the actual band, but the roadies were fun! (And gentlemen, mom. They were total gentlemen.)
(Aside: I was a terrible deejay. We’re talking phenomenally bad. I wanted to do this thing, I was all about it–I had declared myself to be a Communications Major at the university–but the moment the record (and I do mean record, as in vinyl) stopped playing, I completely clammed up and was rendered unable to spit out a single word that was any kind of deejay cool.
Also, I got in big trouble there. I once played John Denver’s “Grandma’s Feather Bed,” a song I had loved as a child, only to have the cranky station manager come flying through the door of my little glass-walled booth, screeech the needle off the record, slam the button that sent the station to commercial break, and YELL AT ME about the fines the station would incur for playing un-released singles.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
The incident did nothing to make me more comfortable behind the microphone.
When I went back to school in the fall, I changed my major.)
The roadies. I so wanted to run off with them. I wanted to be the kind of girl who would throw caution to the wind and do something wild. I wanted to quit serving pints in exchange for measly tips; quit ingesting second-hand smoke; quit listening to the same people sing the same gosh-awful songs on Karaoke Wednesdays, and “Buffalo Soldiers” playing endlessly on the jukebox all other nights; quit making endless batches of orange-colored, overly-salted popcorn using a 10-gallon bucket of solid-at-room-temperature orange popcorn oil, and just go.
The open road was calling. I was twenty-one, and I longed for a life of adventure. I wanted to do something unprecedented, something wild. Only one thing stopped me: I was pretty certain I wasn’t allowed to take off in a tour bus with strange men, even if they did pull up–Pretty Woman-style–at my place of employment hoping to carry me off to a life of adventure.
Read
-Harry Potter
-Shades of Grey
-Twilight, save parts of the first book, which (I am ashamed to say) I skimmed in order to write an online newspaper article bashing it. That was almost five years ago, and that stupid article is still receiving hateful, nasty comments.
Life lesson? DON’T write a review bashing a book you have not thoroughly read. It’s bad, bad form. ALSO, watch out for Twilight Moms. Yikes.
-To Kill a Mockingbird, until this week. How on earth did I earn a B.A. in English without reading this book? I love this book. I adore it. It is going on my Favorite Books bookshelf, right next to A Moveable Feast.
Done/Been
-to any concert of any kind at the Sturgis Bike Rally. I was not allowed. My mom is in Heaven, and I am certain that I’m still not allowed. Come to think of it, I have never been at the Sturgis Bike Rally after dark. I was, you know, not allowed. Even the year I worked in a food booth up there, at the Hog Heaven campground, I don’t remember being around after dark. What I do remember is this: the vast majority of the scruffy, unshaven, hungover bikers at the Hog Heaven campground were doctors, and lawyers, and accountants. And also that they chose, hands down, fried foods for breakfast. At the time (which was pre-college) I could not, for the life of me, understand why.
Do you know why I couldn’t figure it out? I couldn’t figure it out because my mom never allowed me to be at the Sturgis Bike Rally after dark. I was clueless, in the best possible way.
-Bungee jumping. I have a cervical fusion, people. No way am I going to be snapped in half while dangling off the end of a stretchy rope over a bridge, or a canyon, or anything. I am not going out that way.
-Sky diving. I have promised Bubba that I’ll do it with him for either his 18th birthday or his high school graduation. I made this promise knowing full-well that beginner skydivers must jump tandem with experienced skydivers, and knowing full-well that while I can talk a good game, when push comes to shove, someone will have to shove my behind out of that plane.
So there you have it. A short list of things I have never watched, read, or done. Now it’s your turn. G0!
1. On the first day of December, I couldn’t zip up my favorite jeans. On that day, I lamented having been born in the Eating Month. What I realize now, on this 27th day of December, in the year of our Lord 2012, even as I am struggling to take a full breath while wedged into my largest-sized jeans, is that I was born in the month that is the warm-up to the Eating Month.
It’s been really, really fun. And it’s not even over yet.
2. We are celebrating Christmas (the present-giving/opening part) on the first weekend of January. In a blended family, these things happen. I remember back, waaay back, when we started this whole blended gig, how hard it was to give up the boys–for the weekend, for the summer, for a holiday. I felt cheated. I felt like my life was on hold, my family was torn asunder. I was stingy, and selfish, and ridiculously Karen-centric.
I see things differently now. I see the blessing of their presence in my life. I see, and understand, and acknowledge that they have been given to me for a time, as a gift. I want to soak up the minutes, the hours, the days with them. I want to make them count. Above all, I know (while still requiring the occasional reminder) that it is not about me. Okay, so perhaps a small part of it is about me, but it is largely, overwhelmingly (unfortunately) NOT.
3. The Wonder Hub just called me Karen Sue. He does that when I’m in trouble. Karen Sue is my name, so it’s okay. We call Molly, Molly Sue when she’s in trouble, too. Molly Sue is her name. The Wonder Hub is fond of saying that all the girls in our family are named after the original Sue.
I miss the original Sue.
A LOT.
4. I just realized that the original Sue would get a kick out of me realizing that it’s not all about me. She used to tell me that often when I was a teenager.
Mom: Karen, the world does not revolve around you!
Me: Well if it doesn’t, it should!
Carey attempted to share this little story with Moose one time, but I cut her down with my Evil Death Stare. Like he needs to run around wielding that little bit of information. Sheesh.
5. So I just had this picture of God pulling my mom aside and sharing the big news. “Sue! Get this! Karen has finally realized that the world doesn’t revolve around her!” They’re standing there, shoulder to shoulder, thick as thieves and chuckling to beat the band.
So glad I can provide the entertainment for you two!
6. We went to New York City for a few days over Christmas. The weather was very nice, with the exception of Christmas Eve. We walked to the restaurant in what the Monkey and I dubbed “smush,” a kind of snowy-slushy rain, but while we were waiting for the main course, we were treated to a few short minutes of a beautiful snowfall. I handed the Wonder Hub my phone to snap a pic. He did a nice job, don’t you think?
7. It all went downhill from there.
And now in reverse..
Merry Christmas, y’all!
I’m sitting in one of two comfy chairs in a Starbucks in Fredericksburg, Virginia, wrapped in solitude. My heart is a boulder in my chest, and I’m prone to weeping. I feel small, so small. I am taking up just this little space in the world. Though the whole world mourns, I am mourning alone.
I am scanning through the news while trying to hold back tears.
I can’t seem to stop the tears.
An influx of loud students. Loud voices, loud pajama pants, bright t-shirts proclaiming brand-affiliations, too-short shorts on goosebumpy legs. A well-dressed older woman weaves her way through the noise and moves to claim the chair next to me with her newspaper. She makes eye contact, I nod. She takes her place at the end of the loud, long line.
I am wondering, fingers hovering over keys, what on earth I might have to add to the outpouring of emotions, what words of comfort and hope, what possible wisdom. I seem to have nothing to give.
I relinquish my solitude as she returns to the chair. She needs to talk. I am empty. I close the laptop and rest my hands on its lid; I wait.
As soon as she begins, we are lifelong friends picking up mid-conversation.
“I went to church last night. I don’t go often, you know. It’s such work for me, faith. I believe in science, but there is no comfort there…” she trails off and we sit silently, our eyes shiny and full.
As I wait for her to find her way back to me, my own mind wanders. I’m in the woods with Molly Sue. She is on high alert, sniffing the air for signs of deer, turning questioningly as I blurt out, “Oh Jesus…please help!”
It is the only prayer I can manage.
The woman drifts back to me. “I need to go more often. To church.”
I blink.
“It is the only place I feel peace.”
I smile.
“You’re a Christian, aren’t you?”
I nod, and smile. I test out my vocal chords, not entirely sure they will work.
“I can find no other hope..but the hope I have in God.”
She nods, an abrupt affirmation. She stands suddenly, as if we have just made a decision together.
Maybe we have.
Photo credit: Alex Brandon/AP photo
So…it’s been nearly a month since I dropped off the face of blog-land.
I’ve given thought as to exactly how I might reappear here. As I see it, there are several options at my disposal:
1. Pretend like nothing happened.
2. Give you veiled, half-arsed reasons for my disappearance, likely in a long and emotionally fraught monologue that would cause your brain to glaze over in self-defense, even as your eyes roll back into your skull and drool escapes the corner of your open mouth.
3. Blame it on my ADD, my superb procrastination skills, my lack of organization, the holiday season, the price of tea in China, or a Post-Birthday Funk (which is a very real phenomenon, one which can only be remedied by Carey hauling her hiney to the post office and getting my gift here before the new year).
While there is a certain appeal to each of these strategies, what I’ve decided on is this:
Reminding you that there are things worthy of a person’s singular focus, and that I have found myself smack in the middle of one of those things. That life is sometimes hard, but that:
-when we cannot fathom what God is doing (or seemingly not doing), we can always trust in the goodness of His heart.
-we are encouraged to go boldly to the throne of grace (Heb.4:16), where we will receive mercy and find grace in our time of need.
-in this life we will have trouble (John 16:33), but that we have every reason to take heart, for He who loves us has overcome the world,
and finally, that my hope is in this:
He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. (2 Corinthians 1:4, MSG)
And on that note,
I’M BACK!