newness.

I started a new blog. I'm still figuring it out. But here it is: http://thiseason.blogspot.com/ I hope you like it. :) K bye!

how grateful

God, this discontentment has got to go.

It is debilitating and defeating.

God placed the sun, moon, and stars in the sky to light the earth - so intentionally, so purposefully. Why don't I pay closer attention to the blessings He places in my life - so intentionally, so purposefully - to light my way and point me to Him?
 
How bright red the strawberries were as Katie dipped them in dark chocolate.

How the little neighbor girls looked at me, smiling, with their frizzy black hair piled identically on top of their heads; how the best way to get them to giggle was to dance with them in the yellow square of grass between apartment buildings.

How every night I go to sleep I pull over me the green and yellow flowers crocheted together by my grandmother's hands, which are now still.

How cool the evening air was beneath the glowing orange sunset, and how smoothly Nat King Cole flowed out my open car windows like oil being painted on canvas.

How much my mother loves me and gives me the strength to be an independent, confident, Godly woman.

How Mondays are Sabbath to me now; how rest honors God.

How it smells to open the office door every morning - like coffee, carpet, and warm paper.

How running made me realize that endurance means pushing past the point of wanting to give up; how saying that out loud came on the same day I asked God whether He wanted me to give up.

How good it feels to close my eyes.

"It starts to unfold, light in the dark, a door opening up, how all these years it's been utterly pointless to try to wrench out the spikes of discontent. Because that habit of discontentment can only be driven out by hammering in one iron sharper. The sleek pin of gratitude." - Ann Voskamp

Award-Winning Day of Weirdom

Today was weird. I felt listless. I don't usually feel listless; I usually feel like I've eaten lots of lollipops. Today I felt like I'd just had dental work done.

Somehow things aligned so that only 3 of us were in the office for hours. It was like the day after a tornado when I was a kid, when everyone in the neighborhood came out into the street and looked up at the sky in the eerie silence wondering if that had just happened.

Then we discovered we'd been hoodwinked. Through some sleuthing we found out the person who called in last week claiming to be Person A & was stranded in City B & needed C amount of money turned out to be, in fact, not Person A at all. Hoodwinked! I first started suspecting when I talked to Person A at church on Sunday about whether everything had worked out and she looked at me like I was a crazy person trying to steal her child. Woops? We're still working on getting to the bottom of it. But if you've ever been hoodwinked, you know it is a very surreal experience.

Then some very large man in foreboding sunglasses like a hit-man came in and told us he's starting a Pentecostal church and asked if he could hold services in our sanctuary. He was fishy because he said he was from Louisville, but he pronounced it "Louie-ville," and who from Louisville does that? Also, when we told him it wasn't possible to hold services in our sanctuary, he sat in his SUV in the parking lot for a long time and just stared at the church.

Weirded out.

The bug lady came in to spray for bugs and told me she always feels peaceful walking into our church. I wanted to tell her it's because something weird is happening today, and there's probably an episode of The Twilight Zone about this where everyone's hands turn to jelly or something. But I just smiled instead. Which is probably what the jelly-handed lady in The Twilight Zone would've done, too, right when the "doo doo doo doo" music started playing.

Attack of the jelly hands. Episode 1.

1 Timothy 6:6

"It's not what isn't, it's what you wish was that makes unhappiness." - Janis Joplin

Do you ever wonder what your life would look like as a story in a book? This quote made me wonder if, were I to read my own story in a novel, I would think, "Wow, I wish I was her. She has so much. She seems so cool. Her life is great. She has great teeth."

Do we take inventory enough of what we have? I don't think I live very consciously. It's pretty easy just to live life. Like how when you use a certain shampoo long enough eventually you stop smelling it in your own hair. And sometimes I get scared that something in my life is going to change and, even if it's a good change, I'll have missed something this stage of life had to offer me. My friend Abe Parker sings, "The grass is greener on the other side of the wall only because you didn't water your lawn at all."

I don't want to wish any part of my life away because I'm looking at something I don't have and wanting it.

And I like this song:

Dear anonymous gift-giver (or givers),

I don't know who you are, but I know you read this blog. (At least, I think you do.)

I am at an absolute loss for words.

Your gift has come at a time when I have never needed God's grace and the love of friends more in my life.

So I am so, so deeply grateful...and just stunned. You have blessed me more than you even know.

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my mushy little heart. (Because that's the best way to describe it right now: Mush.)

Whoever you are, thank you. And I promise this gift will take me someplace I've always dreamed, just like you specified.

Adventurers Are We

My friend Lauren and I are adventurers. For example, she wants to be a professional mermaid. And I parked a really big truck perfectly on my first try. See? Adventurers are we.

This summer, we're keeping track of all the awesome things we do as adventurers. (I say "this summer," as though it isn't still spring. It sure doesn't feel like spring, as "bed time" now means lying on top of my covers and listening to raccoons dig through the dumpster out my open window.)

Fun Things We Do, #1: Riding the Legacy Trail.

The whole trail is something like 10 miles one way, but we only rode half of it - which is still 10 miles there and back. We felt pretty good until we were done and sitting in the truck on our way back, and then we were pretty sleepy. BUT NOT TOO SLEEPY TO DRIVE! Because we are responsible with big trucks that aren't ours. (Did I mention how well I parked it, on my first try?)

If you're a Lexontonian, I highly recommend the Legacy Trail. I'm already planning when we can go again. Look how happy my Schwinn is in that picture up there. He had a hard time stopping to pose for a picture, he was so street-greedy. Gimmee, gimmee, gimmee, he said. In so many words.

Fun Things We Do, #2: Ultimate Frisbee.

We take fun very seriously.

And I love Ultimate Frisbee. It fills me with joy and delight and pleasure and other generally positive feelings. There is something deeply fulfilling about leaping into the air and snatching a flying disk out of the sky which otherwise would have sailed away on the currents of oblivion (or at least would've just fallen down on the grass). Today was Sunday #1 of many Sundays to come playing Ultimate Frisbee in Vineyard's front yard. Hopefully by the end of the summer we all won't be as winded as we were today. Happy first day of non-stop running and jumping and sweating profusely. (HOW DOES THAT NOT SOUND LIKE THE BEST ACTIVITY EVER!)

Jesus said, "Where 8 or more are gathered with a Frisbee, there I am in the midst of them." Roughly paraphrased.

I'm glad I have Lauren to go on adventures with me. Stay tuned for more adventures from we adventurers. :)

the way to my heart

I know. I've already posted about daffodils once. But then I drove past some mini daffodils...and I love mini daffodils. So I have to post about them again.

When I was in high school, my friend Sarah had a pot of mini daffodils delivered to me in my algebra II class. It was probably the most delightful and unexpected surprise I'd ever received.

So I had to pull over and take a picture of some mini daffodils.

The minis.

But then I realized that we're past the "Oh look! Daffodils are blooming!" stage of spring, and now they're everywhere, and if I pulled over to take a picture every time I passed pretty daffodils, I would be in a constant state of hazard lights.

While riding by bike the other day (side note: He's so happy to see the sky and feel the air on his cylindrical metal frame), I passed several yards with an abundance of daffodils. Forests of them. Gobs. Heaps. Piles! Of little yellow faces nodding in the breeze. And I thought, "If a few of them were missing, no one would ever notice." If I came out at night, no one would catch me. I'd done it before. Successfully, I might add.

And then if I had them in my possession, smiling at me like sunlight in my vase, I wouldn't feel the need to take so many pictures of them.

"We have those flowers in our yard," my boss told me this morning. (I, of course, interpreted "those flowers" to mean daffodils.) I told him about my plan to steal some from one of the neighborhoods near me, at night, wearing a ski mask and rolling around on the ground like stealthy criminals do (hopefully remembering to have removed the scissors from my pocket prior to said stealthy rolling). He told me I could pick theirs.

Come on. Of course I could never do that. I can't steal warmth from people I never want to feel the cold.

He said they had all-yellow ones, and, his favorite, white and yellow ones. I asked if he'd ever seen the orange ones, because they look angry. Every time I pass a cluster of them I feel like they're yelling at me. "My favorite," I said, "are the ones that are all frilly. They look like bunches of lace."

This afternoon my boss walked in with scissors in one hand and a clump of frilly yellow daffodils in the other.

The frillies.

It was like my heart turned to liquid joy and ran through my veins and oozed out my pores with sparks of delight. (It's not as messy as it sounds.)

I think it's that they make me feel so loved, and that's a pretty priceless gift.

They're sitting on my desk in a water pitcher, smelling sweetly of earthy syrup and making me feel like life is simple and good. Crazy how a flower can make me so happy. But these do, and have, and will continue to, forever, and ever, amen.

I just love daffodils, and the people who surprise me with them. :)