C'est pas grave

Recently, I've had simultaneous desires to both never speak French again and return to visit Paris. Which is funny, because that would require outing myself as an American once I got there and I always hated being the foreigner.



One time I was riding in a car listening to Fleet Foxes, and I spotted a fox. In Mission Hills.

I have these friends

I found them when I was 17. We all moved away after high school, but we get to see each other every Christmas Eve.

2006

My friendship with Jason was still recovering from an awkward Prom date experience. Notice the hand placement. Trevor was pretty as ever.

2007

Jason's hairvolution begins. I thought heavy makeup was in order.

2008

We picked up Melanie Divirgilio on this one. Jason quickly hopped a flight back to Nashville after Sarasota rejected his scarf, and Trevor decided not to give up on trying to grow a beard.

2009

Jason is a full-on Nashville hippy. I'm loving Kansas City. Trevor (beard 2.0) is doing seminary before med school. Nathan married Michelle. Rachel and Josh got hitched too and have a baby boy. Michelle and I worked on our common foot placement all through college. Obviously.

Christmas in Venice

glad

"I myself am very glad that the divine child was born in a stable, because my soul is very much like a stable, filled with strange unsatisfied longings, with guilt and animal-like impulses, tormented by anxiety, inadequacy and pain. If the holy One could be born in such a place, the One can be born in me also. I am not excluded."
-Morton Kelsey

you wish you were here

I thought that attending my parent's sunday school christmas party would be kind of a drag, but it turns out that these geriatrics really can bring the funny out. The white elephant gift exchange was especially wild, and not just for the fish.

We've established that Dad wound up with Mom's gift

She was laughing so hard she could barely protest

Nancy got some sequined butterflies

and Hank was pleased with his head-lamp camo cap


the Cruz's landed some toilet paper

I got a gun-hiding Beth Moore devotion book

you know... a gun-hiding Beth Moore devotion book

...and Bill scored some jingle balls.

Right. On to the song:

It was great.

It's okay Dad

My mom bought two goldfish to give in a white elephant gift exchange. As irony would orchestrate, she wound up with the fish. When they got home, Dad set a fishbowl in the sink and poured the bag of fishwater into the bowl. It overfilled and sent one of the fishies down the garbage disposal. I ran to the next room to constrict into a ball and squeal for the fish's pain while Dad went fishing for a fish in his garbage disposal. Don't worry, he caught it and returned the little guy to his home. Then checked on him for a couple minutes to make sure he was still kickin' it.

Fishes and humans are funny.

They must live in water but die without air and we must live in air but die without water.

Connor the wonderkid

I thought that I would score some extra space on my flight from Atlanta to Sarasota, but Connor the wonderkid walked into my life. His mom didn't seem to mind dropping him off alone at row 14 on her way to her own seat in the very back of the plane. I helped him take off his Transformers light-up backpack and he settled into the middle seat between me and a less-than-pleasant elderly lady. He told me it was his twentieth time flying and he was going to visit Grandpa. Amongst other things he told me...

“I only had a half day at school. We watched the Polar Express and ate lunch in our classroom.”
“Oh", I said, "eating lunch in class is way better than in the cafeteria."
“How do you know we have a cafeteria?! Do you go to my SCHOOL?!”

I should have said yes. He was 6 years old and beautiful. His bright gray eyes were framed with long black eyelashes above an extremely boogery nose and constant smile showing the littlest baby teeth I’ve ever seen. He was LOUD. And FUNNY. He started out by teaching me about all the superhuman toys he played with:

“This one’s name is Bomination. He steals people’s hearts and rips them out of their bodies and turns it into liquid solids and pours it into a truck to get power and the truck is made out of legos. Maybe I should stick something in my eyeball.”

I discouraged the idea. But he still let me play with his toys.

“Do you play with toys?”
“Yeah.”
“Boy toys?”
“Ha. No.”
(grinning) “Is this your first time?”
“Yeah”
“It’s my hundred millionth time. My sister plays with girl toys. Do you play with girl toys?
“Yeah.”
“Like what?”
“Computers and clothes and makeup and coffee and books.”
“Oh. My sister plays with her girl toys. Babies and stuff.”
“Yeah, those are more fun for girls.”
“Why?! You can’t destroy anything with BABIES!”

We had so many good talks:

“One time I swallowed a flashlight. They put it down my throat.”
“Did they find anything in your stomach?”
“Yeah. Chewed up rice.”
“Oh. They weren’t looking for anything in particular?”
“Yeah.”
“What were they looking for?”
“A ribbon with a staple on it. But the ribbon melted in my stomach. Wanna know what happened to the staple?”
“What?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s gross.”
...
“Yesterday at school I boogeyed DOWN! You know those things with the lights that make the ground different colors and they're covered in sparkles?”
“They’re called disco balls. Did you have a dance at school?”
“Yeah. The president of my school boogeyed down too! You look different than my teacher. She has longer hair than you and a bigger face than you. You know those spots you have all over your face?”
“You mean my freckles?”
“Yeah. Do grown-ups get those?”
“Sometimes.”
“I think that girls get those and boys don’t. How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“How old would you be if I was your age?”
“Well, what’s 16 + 22?”
“Let me do it…35?”
“Close. 38.”
“My math is very close!”

He got a hold of my camera and took some excellent pictures:

"Why does God make it yucky outside?"
"Because we need rain."
"We don’t need this much rain."
"If we didn’t have rain, we wouldn’t have food."
"Go to the grocery store!"
"But where would the grocery store get food from?"
"ANOTHER grocery store!"
"Well, where would we get water from?"
"Buy a SINK!"
"Where would we get the water for the sink?"
"HIRE PEOPLE!"

By now we were just about to take-off. The people around us were irritated by him, and I knew I was perpetuating his loud outbursts by asking him questions, but I didn’t care.
When the plane rose above the dark clouds into a clear blue sky and shining sun, Connor looked out the window and stated: “I think the earth is magical.”

After a while, we built a fort by draping his SpongeBob blanket over our lowered tray-tables, and he hid out in the secret spy hiding place until he had to put his seatbelt back on near the end of the flight. I let him keep two toys out of his backpack for the landing.

“God made me funny. He also made toys fart.”

Then he told me he wished I was his mom. I wanted to squeeze him so bad.

When I had to leave him, I gave him a high-five and told him to have lots of fun at Grandpa’s. As I walked away, he shouted:
“What’s your name again?!”

Megan

My sister and I used to love to dress up in my mom's old bride's maid dresses and perform this little song and dance when we were little.



Which is pretty funny, because Meg used to practically pull my hair out for wearing her clothes.
We thought adulthood would be all dancing and dresses and men adoring us.

huh haha

• If I don't have a humidifier, will setting a bowl of water in front of my space heater work just as well?

• I think it's funny that I don't get internet when I sit indian-style under my laptop, but I do when I straighten my legs out.

*my room is so ghetto

in case of an emergency

I hate the emergency contact list. Whenever I fill out a form to participate in something here in KC, I have to name a person who would come to the hospital for me if something bad happened. I never know who to write. I had a motherly friend here in town who would know what to do in a hospital, but she moved to Korea. Then I have another motherly friend that I could name, but she’s dealing with cancer right now and she’s probably sick of hospitals.

Sometimes when I was little, I would wake up in the middle of the night and my mom would be standing in my doorway. She is a light sleeper, and if anything ever wakes her up at night she takes advantage of the opportunity to walk around the house and check on her kids, make sure we're still safe and peaceful in our beds.
It always made me feel secure, and when I got older I never dared sneak out at night, mostly because it would hurt her and nothing out there felt as good as the love I had at home.

I wonder why it took me 3 years of living 1,100 miles away from my mom to remember these things, and what that means about me as a daughter.
And I think the devil is a real bastard for waking me up at 6:12 am to whisper fear in my ear when I don’t have to participate in this weary world until 7:30.

It’s okay though, because I have friends who would probably be glad to come for me in an emergency. And now the only Person who watches over me at night doesn’t sleep. He who watches never sleeps. And if the devil wakes me up early to tell me that I am alone, I’ll just sing a song about strong love and he won’t like that very much.

sack blocks

I have these black mary-jane flats that I really like to wear. Kim has them too. It snowed last night, and I wanted to wear those shoes this morning. I would have been fine if I had worn socks, but they would have to be black and I hate wearing black socks. I had to wear black socks every day to work for 5 years. I would get up in the morning, wear whatever I wanted, and be whoever I wanted until I had to go to work. My day changed when I had to take of my own clothes and put on a uniform. Take off my own self and put on my work self.
So now I have a new job where I don’t have to say stock phrases and wear stock smiles, and I can wear whatever kinds of socks I want.
I have a whole drawer full of black socks, and I hate them. So today I wore my flats with no socks in the snow. It was stupid. I got snow all in my shoes and my feet were cold all day, but I didn’t wear black socks. And that part was nice.
I think I might be very stubborn.

Reason #642 why I love being a girl

sunday, 11:07 pm

Morgan: "I know it's really late, but do you want to hang out?"

Me: "I just came in my room to crawl into bed. Want to come over and crawl in my bed?"

Morgan: "Oh! Can I? Really?"




We talked till 1am.
Oh my Morgan.

Sad day at a girl house

Dear Kansas City; please get ready for me

I know I've been less than regularly present with you since I came here three years ago. You've had all these great community events and friend parties I couldn't attend. I'm really sorry. I wanted to be there. I got every e-vite and phone call, and expectantly flipped through my planner to write it in, only to realize I couldn't come. It got tiring, I know. Some of you stopped asking because I always said no. I wasn't making up excuses, I promise. I've improved a little over the last year, but that's just because I switched from working full-time to part-time. Here's the sweet stuff:
I am pleased to announce to you that I will finish college on December 18th, and I worked my last night AND weekend yesterday. It's almost over.
Come January, I won't have class till dark on Mondays and Wednesdays. I won't have to make the most of Friday nights because I won't have to work on Saturdays. I won't have to spend Sundays doing homework. I WILL be at your birthday party.
Want to go to lunch? No no, I'm not working the restaurant anymore, I want to meet you there and sit with you! See, I got a big-girl job! In an office! Nine to five!
Oh, it will be glorious.
I will have a routine. I will be able to afford a gym membership. I will "need" to go shopping. I will redecorate my room for the first time since I was 18. I will have the luxury of not going to work when I'm sick. I will get labor day off. I will sleep in on Saturdays. I will wear jeans to work on Fridays. I will go away for the weekend. I will read books for pleasure. I will not deplete my savings account at the beginning of every semester.
These are my blessings, and I'm counting them.
Weeeeeeee!!!

Thanksgiving Highlights

Baby brother Ben: "No matter what you say, I am still convinced that if Taylor Swift knew that I was alive out there somewhere, she would want to date me."

Cousin Jonathan: (walking into the kitchen) "Ok ladies, I'm here to help. The two things I'm really good at are telling you what needs to be done, and eating."

My mom has a new best friend. Her name is Belinda, and the two are inseparable. It's hysterical. They go shopping together, running together, they giggle about their husbands together, they go to movies together. They accidentally wear the same outfit. They get matching nail polish for their pedicures. They even have inside jokes that I don't understand! They use text messaging to keep a constant conversation throughout the day, complete with abbreviations and emoticons. My 17 year old brother told me that Mom stays out later on the weekends than he does.














I love it.

I do believe

Gena: "What's up with the Big Bird legs on Google today?"

Me: "It's probably an anniversary or something. But I don't know. I grew up in France, I was never a Sesame Street kid."

Gena: "Vhat? Zhey don't hev Sesame rue?"

brotherberger

"Following Jesus isn't straight-forward nor black & white. He is a complex Creator...and we never know exactly where He's asking us to go.
That's just my recent experience, based on life & what I've read of Him in Mark.

But it's worth. Oh is it worth it."

Sean Berger, ladies and gentlemen.

Sweet Lorraines: Fall Edition

Genavieve I believe

I don’t have history friends.

There is no friend who has been around my life for more than four years, except for Genavieve. I move around too much.

Gena is my friend from home who moved here a year ago. I met her the summer before my freshman year of high school. It was the height, I tell you, the epitome of my awkward stage. Gena had just graduated, so she was cooler to me than anyone I had ever met.
We’re neighbors now, and we even work together. I share a deep kinship with her that I didn’t know was possible with people who aren’t family. Her sense of humor puts my stomach in stitches. Our cubicle farm friends walk by and stare at us quizzically because they just don’t understand what’s so funny.

Me: “Do you remember the time in high school that we got back to your house really late and we were supposed to be quiet and I accidentally—“
Gena: “Yes.”

She reminds me of the time I dated a redneck and wore cowboy boots, and I remind her of the time she broke her tailbone and had to carry around a donut pillow everywhere to be able to sit down.

Fast forward through eight years of learning and growing and heart-breaking and laughing and movie nights and beach days and mission trips and car accidents and two separate trips to Kansas City, and you’ll find the two of us laying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, making peace with the past. We talked until midnight about places we don’t go anymore, teachers who taught us good things and people who didn’t know they were teachers who taught us lies that we believed.

And we said it was okay after all, because the love of God is stronger than death.

I need to make more friends into history friends. They’re important.

We leave notes

I live in a house with 5 girls.
We're all in school and working and responsible to ministries, so we are BUSY. We rarely have time to communicate, so we leave notes. Lots of notes.

We leave kitchen notes:

and living-room notes:

We leave shower notes:

and...

It works for us. We just leave notes.

what if?

Me: "...I know that I'm freaking out about the little things, it's just that the little things grow up and gather together and sometimes become big things, which might be fine but if enough big things all decide to turn on me at once then I've seriously got some big things to worry about, you know? Does that make sense?"

Jonathan: "I feel like I just got to run around inside your head for about 3 minutes, and I want out."

the mill

The other day, my friends and I went to the Louisburg Cider Mill to drink cider, pick out pumpkins, jump on hay bales, and soak in the last bits of fall before winter prematurely swept in to settle down for a while.
We decided to make the corn maze a little more interesting by sending Sara and Crystal in early to hide so we'd have something more to look for than...the way out.
As I wandered the maze, aimlessly turning right and left on impulse, I realized that this activity was not fun because it reminded me too much of how normal life really is. Stupid humans. What other species would go to such great lengths to invent a game where the point of it all is to get lost and try to find your way through stalks so high you can't see over them and paths that seem to be noble but lead you in circles and land you back where you started?
The muddy path along rows of un-harvested corn reminded me all too well that I don't know what I'm doing, where I'm going, or how I would get there even if I did.

I'm done with school in December, friends, and I'm starting to freak out about it.

Scenes from this week

Me: "I have the flu."
Doctor: "You don't have the flu."
Me: "Then why do I feel like I've been run over by a Mack truck?"
Doctor: "There's nothing wrong with you. Go home and go to bed. You can take off the flu-mask."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Boss calls a meeting in her office and five of us pile in there. Two minutes into the meeting, boss's cell phone starts ringing an infectious techno beat. My foot immediately starts grooving to the melody and one of those silly unreasonable laughs starts bubbling up in my belly. She picks it up, studies it and says:
"I think I'm just going to let that ring", sets it down, and lets it keep going.
No! You have to turn it off! I can't contain the inner dance party! Don't you know that you only have to press one of those buttons to make it stop?!
Then, while the techno groove is still partying on her desk, she starts PRAYING to open the meeting! WITH HER EYES OPEN!
I can't escape! Don't laugh! Bite the insides of your cheeks! Don't dance and don't laugh!
I bowed my head real low and fought to still my shaking shoulders. I didn't dare look around at the collectively similar expressions around me in the room.
Finally, I regained composure and attempted to appear reasonable...just in time for techno groove beat to lay a dance revolution on our meeting again. I still have mollar marks on the insides of my cheeks.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leaving Wal-Mart, I arrive at my car and find a COMPLETELY flat tire. Pancake flat.
I stood there whimpering in the rain for a minute before deciding to drive it around to the tire center.
I sat in the waiting room and called Dad.
Me: "I don't have money for a flat tire."
Dad: "How'd you get it to the tire place?"
Me: "I was already at Wal-Mart. I just drove it around the back side of the store."
Dad: "Bethy! You can't drive on a flat tire!"
Me: "What was I supposed to do? Change it into the spare to drive 200 yards?"
Dad: "Do you even know how to change a tire?"
Me: "Nope."

Meanwhile they call my name, and I go up to find out the cost.

Tire-man: "That'll be $10."
Me: "What?!"
Tire-man: "You had 2 nails stuck in there. We just patched it up."
Me: "Bless you precious man!"
Tire-man: *looks uncomfortable*

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roommate: "I made something weird."
Me: "Like what?"
Roommate: "Cheese pizza, with sausage. And tuna."
Me, looking disgusted: "Oh, Em...!"
Roommate: "Want to try some?"
Me: "Sure."

on blakecity

Blakely: "Small, measurable goals...that's my life right now"
Me: "Why not just stare a mountain in the face and cry?"
Blakely: "Crying will come. I'm just going to try to hold off for a while."

"This hill, though high, I covet to ascend.

The difficulty will not me offend.

For I perceive the way to life lies here

Come, pluck up, heart, let's neither faint nor fear

Better, though difficult, the right way to go

Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe"

--Christian, The Pilgrim's Progress

this one's for Amy

Scene: Lori's living room.

Lori reached down to pick up 16-month-old Murphy and realized that she had pooped her diaper. Then, while carrying her to the nursery, felt that it had leaked through her cute little dress.

Me to Blakely: "Oh man. The learning curve on being a mom is going to be really steep."

Lori, over her shoulder as she climbed the stairs: "It's BRUTAL"

"God is ALWAYS up to something, looking to bring life out of death."
--Floyd McClung

2 funnies

I went to an Avett Brothers concert with Cari, Jon, Julie, and Scott a few weekends ago. Since I've never heard the brothers, I got onto Pandora.com and listened to some of their stuff before going. Guitar, violin, drums, folksy rock, yelling, got it...not my favorite, but I could definitely appreciate them live.

The concert was supposed to start at 7pm. We all got lost in the rain, waited in line for tickets, and ate pizza for a while before going in to the venue at 8.30. The band went on and everyone cheered. Hippies started dancing and singing the indecipherable words to the songs. The 6 guys on stage all looked alike...they probably were brothers. They were playing guitars, violins, violas, drums...they even had one of their guys play two saxophones at the same time! I loved it.

About three songs into their set, I leaned over and told Jonathan: "This is so much better than their stuff I listened to online!" He looked over and laughed and informed me that we weren't watching the Avett Brothers...the guys onstage were the opening act.

--slap forehead now--

But, hey: check out Railroad Earth.


Today, I trecked across campus under the hot August sun with $212.46 worth of new heavy textbooks and landed at the Roasterie with Blakely. After heaving my load onto the table, I dramatically planted my head on my notebook for a second to cool off. When I sat up, my damp face had made a perfect forehead and nose-print on my notebook. I looked down at it for a second, then looked across the table at Blakely, who kindly responded: "If it's any consolation, it doesn't look that bad from here."

escape

Kim, Amy, Rachel, and I packed overnight bags and ran to the hills for some rest and quiet at Conception Abbey. We found Tom when we got there and decided he was allowed on our women’s retreat too.
It was so good.
We wore our play-clothes to climb trees and practice cartwheels, roll down hills and play with bugs, dance in the street and lay on the ground…and we broke some rules too. We laughed ourselves to the floor of our sparse but comfy rooms and talked about how quickly life was changing. We caught up on our reading and listened to good music. We watched a darn good sunset and we prayed.
It was so good.

florida highlights

Well. It's my last night sleeping in my old room on this trip home. I wish I knew exactly how I felt about it.
I brought Morgan with me this time. Back in the planning stages of this trip I asked Mom to schedule me a bunch of yearly medical visits that I never take the time to get done in Kansas City, so that meant I drug Morgan to 5 different doctors, dentists, opthamologists, phlebotomists, endocrinologists....not joking. She was a terrific sport about it, and then we finally got a good day at the beach.

Michelle's wedding was lovely. I got to meet all the college friends she made in the last four years since we've been every-day friends. Our lives are so different now that it baffles me. When she asked me to sing at her wedding a few months ago, I was terrified at the "yes" I heard myself say...but I actually surprised my parents and myself. It went pretty well and I even got compliments afterward from 6 of the 300 guests. Go me.

Oh yeah. I wore my boots.
But only to the rehearsal :)
It still mortified my mother just a little bit.

And speaking of which, I did something else to mortify my mother today. Somehow she still likes me, but I talked her into getting her eyebrows threaded with me. Yes, threaded. Heard of it? It's where a sweet little Indian lady lies to you and tells you it's a pain-free way to sculpt the perfect eyebrow shape by cinching your eyebrow hair between two pieces of cotton thread and yanking them one by one out of your head.
"Common Mom! It'll be a great new experiment....I mean experience!"
So I went first. As soon as sweet little lady started going to town on my forehead, I knew I had made a mistake. I squeezed the fire out of Mom's hand with every individual hair that was heartlessly wripped from my unassuming little follicles and thought to myself: "This week I've had three cavities drilled, blood drawn, and minor eye surgery...and this it definitely worse." I know you want to see it:

My advice: skip it. Take a good ole hot waxing any day over this. Sorry, ethnic beauty treatment; I shun you. And sorry Mom. But we totally bonded. And we got an uber-identical picture out of it:

And some sweet eyebrows that will last "at the most, three weeks". Thank you India, thank you terror.

Then Dad acted a fool to make us laugh.

Then my trip home was over.

That's my Opa

The rocket scientist. He changed the world.

guess what

Friends, here it is: my very first guilt-free blog from home.

Last fall when Tiffany moved out I sent the internet with her, among other things. It's been a rough road.

I've learned since then that if I sit in the living room in one very specific spot, with a strong wind and open window, and laptop tilted to a specific degree...I can get internet from a far-off unsecured connection. Sometimes. Mostly not.

THEN came the day that Emily (roommate #5) hung out with our neighbor and acquired the network key for her secured connection. From that day forward, whenever Em left her lappy lying around, I had internet at home. The only problem is that Emily's sweet little Dell has a malfunction we like to call "Blue Screen of Death", which is a tantrum Dell throws when you try to upload too much at once, or type too fast, or breath too hard. Dell shuts down and gives you the Blue Screen of Death for a while till she wakes up in a better mood. So we had internet sometimes...but it was always coated in guilt that we were thieving it from our neighbors without their knowledge.

Then we decided to approach our friendly neighbors and offer to pay half of their internet bill if they would share the key with all of us. The delightful ladies said they wouldn't dream of making us pay for internet that would only work in our kitchen. So now all our computers have the key! Whoopee! And I don't have to feel guilty anymore! Whoopore!

So now I can blog at will.

Tomorrow, I will blog about how I can't donate blood.

from Asresa

To my dear sponsor,
above all I provide you my respectful greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. How are you? How about family and neighbor? I am fine thanks to God. I have received your letter. God bless you. I understand that you are praying for me. I am happy that God gave you to me and you are influential for my life in school and for my future. I am attending my lessons carefully. I am attempting to be a good person, and strong woman in my target achievement, especially school achievement. Thank you for thinking of me from such a far distance. I hope we will meet each other physically. God may do this. Stay with peace.
Yours from Ethiopia,
Asresa.
Bye-bye.

Little honey, you have my heart.

for a visit

I love airports, probably because I have such wonderful memories of them as a child. In my mind, airports are where you go to see people you love very much who have traveled a long way to see you because they love you very much.
There is something incredibly wonderful about standing outside a terminal and knowing that someone you love, someone you haven't seen in a very long time, is about to walk out of that airplane and straight into your arms.

There is also something incredibly wonderful about taking one of your favorite people to one of your favorite places to rest and read and drink coffee and catch up.

I'm having a blast with him.

families

Fun fact about me: when I get really excited about something, I can't sleep. Ever. Dad's plane will touch down in Kansas City in about 14 hours and I have so much happy anticipation over it, I only got 2 hours of shut-eye.

It's ok.

So it's 3:06 am. I've been trying to go back to sleep for 2 hours, and I've given up.

Luckily, though, I have some touching entertainment to bring you. Think of it as a midnight snack. Three am brings facebook lurking to new dimensions. I just found this from April, 2007:

Michelle, bless you for having a senior recital and inviting me. This was the first picture tagged of me by anyone in Kansas City after I moved here. I can still remember sitting at my desk in that 3rd floor apartment on 107th, by the window that collected ice on the INSIDE of the pane, and blinking disbelievingly at my computer screen.

"Someone...someone tagged a picture of me...in Kansas City? Does this mean I have...FRIENDS?"

Oh, how clearly I remember my schedule during that time.

Class 8 till 9 am. Work 10 till 5 pm. Class 6 till 9 pm. Collapse. I ran off fumes and fell asleep on the couch every night, trying to stay awake to have some chill time with Tiffany but failing each time.

This was a Wednesday, and I skipped Economics II because community was more vital to my life than a case-study of America's GDP in 1981. I arrived late because I got lost and sat in the back of the dark auditorium, quickly spotting the group of people I vaguely knew from church. I had been going faithfully for three months and had made a few casual acquaintances, but no real friends yet. I knew I wouldn't survive much longer in this snowy city without a pack to run with, and I was willing to work for it.

At intermission I fearfully walked over to their happy chattering group and inwardly begged someone to know me and invite me to sit down. Susannah did, and we started talking. Bless her too. She asked me if I knew the other people there.

"Not really..."

"Anna, Jason, Dan, Alissa, Julie, Rachel, Shibu, Sean, Jessica, Molly, Matt, Jon, Kathy, Stu, Amy, Stephanie, Beth..."

Some names registered, some didn't. I asked Suz if Jon and Alissa were brother and sister or husband and wife. They had the same last name but he was older and they looked alike...I couldn't tell. Suz smiled and didn't make a big deal about what a stupid question that was. "They're husband and wife."

What a difference two years makes. These people are my best friends now. This place is home. I am carried by my community. I am known. I know the streets of my town. I run into people I know all the time. As I was cleaning my room today I found the stack of encouragement letters my friends wrote to me before Ethiopia, there were TWELVE letters from friends who know my heart well enough to speak life-giving encouragement into it.

I remember Isaac giving a talk at the Gathering sometime that Spring and quoting Proverbs on how beautifully our God works: "He puts the lonely in families."

Praise Him for putting the lonely in families.

I would like the world to know that this is the kind of dad I have

me: "I need you to come to Kansas City."
Dad: "Ok honey. I can be there on Thursday."

saturday morning.

I've started to realize that people take their bodies much more seriously than their souls. We spend much more time and money trying on clothes and food than studying influences like books and music and ideas that we feed our to hearts.

The other day my pastor said we are like babies looking to put anything into our mouths. Pacifiers, cereal, dirt, hairclips, electric plugs....
Pictures, songs, articles, friends, gossip...

I've been going down to Cherith Brook to hang out with some friends who hang out with more friends, and I can see now that everyone is most beautiful when no one is pretending.

"Certainty is the mark of the common sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should rather be said with a sigh of breathless expecation...God packs our life with surprises all the time. When we subscribe to a creed, something dies. We do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him."

Ozzy Chambers. the april 29th one.

Did you have a good evening?

I had a delightful evening.

fancy

Genavieve: "Oh Lord."

Me: "I know. I think we need to worship over this."

So we broke out in singing the doxology in my kitchen...over milk and honey and berries.

Coherent

calamine on sheets.
friends tend wounds.
Jen moved away.
prednisone with breakfast.
blisters in the prayer room.
this is what your heart looks like.
p.s. nothing.
stop looking at it.
put a smile on.

"And I became in His eyes as one who found peace."

song of solomon 8:10

Don't even look at this

I peeled off the band-aid to see what 24 hours under wraps had done to my itchy blisters.

Natalie and I simultaneously "Eww gross!!"-ed. She ran into the kitchen, started rifling through the medicine basket, and supplied my quote of the evening:

"That's doesn't look like poison ivy. That looks like hell."

home.

"When they try to convince you that earth is your home, notice how they set about it. They begin by trying to persuade you that earth can be made into heaven, thus giving a sop to your sense of exile in earth as it is. Next, they tell you that this fortunate event is still a good way off in the future, thus giving a sop to your knowledge that the fatherland is not here and now. Finally, lest your longing for the transtemporal should awake and spoil the whole affair, they use any rhetoric that comes to hand to keep out of your mind the recollection that even if all the happiness they promised could come to man on earth, yet still each generation would lose it by death...and the whole story would be nothing, not even a story, for ever and ever."

-C.S.L.
The Weight of Glory

chewing on this

Yesterday God told me that it's okay if I don't do everything the hard way all the time.

home?

I've been thinking much about the word 'home' and what it means lately, just like my friend Becca.
I sat down with an old sweet mentor from high school while I was in Florida, and he asked me if Kansas City was home. For the first time in a long time, I faltered. I actually stuttered, I think, because I suddenly didn't know if it was or not. It used to be, for sure, but I feel at home in so many places, it sets my head spinning.
I feel at home when I walk into the Gathering. I feel at home behind the counter at work with my little ones. Most of the time, I feel at home in my house in KC. I really feel at home in the arms of my mom and dad. I felt strangely at home in Zeway, Ethiopia. I feel most at home when I spend time with my Savior.
Corrie and I were driving around yesterday when I turned to her and said: "Do you have a home?".
"Oh...heaven. The other day at work, someone asked me: 'where are you from? where's home?', and I just looked at them and felt so dumb because I didn't have an answer, until finally I said that my parents lived in Texas. But I belong with the Lord. He is my home."

When I meet someone new they usually ask me where I'm from. I never give the real long answer at first.
When I was 13 years old, I had moved eleven times. I never thought this was weird, until college when I became keenly aware that I was missing this deep tie to one specific place that most of my friends had. I just don't need it. Instead of making a crazy person out of me, all those moves made me highly adaptable. I feel confident that I can live happily anywhere in the world.
I should really stop thinking about where to tag 'home' and whether or not I have one. If I've decided that the Lord is my shelter and my hope is in Him and all my delight is in Him, and He is a good shepherd who gives good gifts...then I really don't need a home on this earth.

back

After 3 and a half days of surprising my mother, laughing with my sister, watching my brother play football, asking advice from my father, watching Kathryn get married, going to the beach with Colleen, catching up with Michelle, dancing like a fool, sleeping in my old room, sitting with my dog, and receiving so many family hugs...


I'm homesick.

i made it

airport-runner

I just became an airport-runner. The baggage-clutching, 'excuse me please', brush-by-you, airport-runner who barrels by the calm general public walking peacefully to their gate.

I know.

I never understood airport runners until now. I would always see them sprinting through terminals with children and bags in tow, skipping ahead of all of us at the security line, and wonder why they didn't leave the house earlier, check in earlier...was it their first time flying or something?

Here's the breakdown of how to become an airport runner:

• learn that your flight to connecting city is 45 minutes late
• you only had an hour layover to begin with
• you ask the nicely frazzled lady at the ticket counter what she suggests you do
• she says there's a different flight she can get you on, a direct one straight home, and it's leaving now, so RUN!

And that's how you become an airport runner.

And by the way, I didn't get there in time. So I'm sitting in KCI, waiting for the originally planned two flights that may or may not get me home tonight.

Oh well.

the tuesday lifelist

• haven't showered
• my car needs one too
• the afternoon rain smelled perfectly good
• at least something got a shower
• afternoon at the Wootens
• evening at Scooter's
• double shot of espresso
• writing a paper compulsively checking cari's flickr for new Ethiopia pictures
• my stomach might be growling loud enough to be heard above the 80's rock blaring in this coffeehouse.
• I get to see my little ones tomorrow at work, and that will be lovely

just here.

I'm back.

Walking in this old shoe.

It's comfy.

oofta

Friends, all the words I have are nice and sad and lovely and heavy. I don't think I can let them out here and now. Meet with me for tea and I'll let you in. Or come to my house and I'll roast you some of my fresh coffee beans and pop some kettle corn to practice my hospitality skillz. They need some work.

Sometimes when you decide to let Jesus break your heart, he does shatter it to oblivion and distant lands, but he doesn't hurt. He just lets you carry some of his sadness over this world and it makes the two of you better friends.

You, you, you. I mean me.

pronounced: fai-yay

Me (referring to the cramped third row seat he always chose first): "Feye, let me sit in the back next time. My legs are shorter."

Feye: "This is my seat. The leader's seat is always in the back."

Feye Tola: director of the Child Developement Program, Food for the Hungry, Ethiopia

a little broken