Week in Winnipeg

There's something that feels so right about being surrounded by mounds of snow at Christmas time. We are virtually buried here and it is cozy and cold and comforting. The temperature has been quite mild, all things considered, and although that is probably the fault of global warming, I'm enjoying it.

Richard and I have carelessly spent the last six days in no rush to do anything more strenuous than watch Battlestar Gallactica, breaking up our days with short walks or card games or visits to friends' homes. Two things have marked our time here: food and family. Both available in abundance, both more than I feel I can handle at times, both I've been tremendously grateful for. There is love and joy here, and much laughter. There is history. We are blessed.

In an hour or so we will go to church, the same church in which Richard grew up. But first, of course, a meal...

Five Degrees

That's the temperature outside. Five degrees. Farenheit. Welcome to Winnipeg.

I am a bad blogger, I know. It's been ages since my last post. I realize that my posting style, like my style of communicating generally, is to only post things that I've thought through somewhat. Or to post about things that I don't ever expect to figure out. I don't really enjoy writing about things that I am wavering about, going back and forth on, changing my mind about every other day but ultimately feel like I eventually have to know the answer. Or eventually I at least have to choose something. And right now, with my life, as I ponder the future, I seem to be stuck in the position: I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. And yes, of course I know there's probably not one right answer, not one path to take, no one decision that will make my life either a Success or a Dismal Failure. But my black-and-white mind categorizes things in this way. So my silence online is matched by the opposite in my head -- endless chatter, noise, thinking, playing out different scenarios. Something is coming, a change is coming, but What Exactly?

Maybe the cold air will clear my head of the noise...

Prayer for the day

Note: This post is more for me than for you. Feel free not to read it. I won't be offended.

Is it wrong to title a post "prayer for the day" when it's Sunday and I'm skipping church? I have a headache but what else is new? I should be on my way to church in 10 minutes. But I am staying home. Nevertheless, I will trust that God will hear my prayer.

I have a list of things to do over the next few days, and my pragmatic prayer is that I would actually do them rather than sit around doing worthless and/or self-destructive things. I pray that I would choose life this day rather than a shadow of life. I pray for God's peace and pacing. I pray for God to hold me up so I do not fall into self-pity or talk myself into believing it is all futile. I pray for the Holy Spirit to breathe energy and hope and joy into my day so that I can go to sleep tonight and not wake up with a headache because I've been grinding my teeth. I pray that Jesus would walk with me and help me to put one foot in front of the other as I seek out the path of life and God's will.

So, back to the pragmatic...On my list:

• Laundry (already on load #2!)
• Study for the GRE (I decided this weekend I'd take it just in case -- picked up a study aid and realized yesterday how much fun it is to study for a test again!)
• Attend church meeting this afternoon regarding possibility of planting a church campus in the city
• Email directors of a couple of graduate programs I'm interested in to get their input on some specific questions I have
• Pick up dry cleaning
• Go grocery shopping
• Outline objectives and broad strategy for research project I wish to undertake at work
• Email former grad school professor to see if he'd be willing to talk to me about above project
• Clean bathroom and vacuum

If you're still reading, don't say I didn't warn you. That's it. That's the end of the post.

What's Going On

Richard and I exchanged Christmas presents early this year. He bought me Bose headphones and I bought him an I-Pod. Now we both want what the other has (in addition to what we already have). Give a mouse a cookie...

We finished up our time in Texas on Sunday. It really was wonderful, the whole trip. I don't think I'd change a thing about it even if I could. I enjoyed the conversations I was able to have with my mom. I should say a few words about my mom and me and how we communicate. It tends to take us a day or two to get into a groove; it's funny, I feel like I have nothing to say and no energy to say it for our first day together, and I get the sense that she isn't sure who I am or who she should be to me either. But then we warm up to each other and we're able to find each other and talk and enjoy it. It's so odd. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'm also learning a bit more about my step-dad, David. He is such a kind man, full of love, uniquely gifted at seeing things about people that most others wouldn't see. He has his blind spots, of course, and idiosyncracies just as we all do, but his heart is so huge that the blind spots matter less and you can only love him. Richard is definitely the more social person of the two of us and I know both mom and David appreciate him as part of the family -- Richard has this gift of being able to engage almost anyone in a conversation. He has this gift of caring what other people think and letting them know he really cares. I love him, again I am reminded of that.

Our few days in Dallas were also very good and laid back. One day after lunch we took a tour of Suzanne's laboratory and office -- pretty extraordinary, what goes on in there! So many vials and blood samples and computers and unidentifiable machines and people working hard. I was impressed. I told Richard it was more exciting than the tour we took of his brother's paper factory (hopefully I didn't offend him). And it was WAY better than the tour of the iron mine in Minnesota (don't get me started).

The most productive thing I did in Dallas was help my dad work on a paper he had to write for one his classes (to do with communication, for his mediation certificate). It was quite stimulating, actually, to read academic journals and learn new concepts. I really liked the ideas of one researcher in particular and looked him up -- turns out, he's on faculty at a distance (or "distributed") learning graduate school. The more I research this school, the more I like it...I feel change in the air...Wouldn't it be amazing to start working on my PhD in Clinical Psychology but integrate into it courses from the human and organizational development field? I'm dreaming...The problem with distance learning is that you can't have distance RAs or TAs or tuition waivers...so it will come down to a question of money.

But all that to say, I'm definitely exploring some school options, just to see what's out there. Ideally, I'll be able to start something and keep working. I'm talking to my boss about spending more of my time at work researching some things and helping to develop recommendations for program directions -- that would be the perfect way to get back into the feeling of graduate school. It just came up in a conversation and I think it might actually happen...Thank you, God, for being much better than I am at putting all the pieces together.

I love my little sister. She is such an amazing person. Did I mention that last time? Nicole, you have to come visit me!!! I love you.

Thanksgiving in Texas

It's been a while since I posted. For some reason, I haven't felt very motivated to write...To my three readers, please don't take it personally. It has nothing to do with you. It's me.

I'm on vacation this week -- Richard and I left for San Antonio on Saturday, then yesterday we drove up to Dallas. We spent the weekend eating, reading, and shopping with my mom and step-dad; a lazy, lovely weekend. On our drive up to Dallas, we stopped in Austin to visit my little sister, one of my very favorite people in the world. She's eleven years younger than I am and the way I feel about her is the closest I can come to imagining the love a parent has for her child. When I'm around her, I just want to make sure she knows she is beautiful and valuable and wonderful and that she blesses everyone who knows her. I want her to be happy. I want her to experience all the best things and none of the hard things in life, and it makes my heart ache to confront the reality that she lives in the same world I do -- one that inevitably presents you with difficulties, pain and loss. I pray she has strength, endurance and joy throughout her life. I pray she knows peace more often than sorrow.

We arrived at my dad and stepmom's home early yesterday evening. We went out for "Tex-Mex" last night; the most authentic thing about the restuarant was the fact that our waiter hardly spoke any English. So far this morning, we've eaten breakfast, I've played with the dogs, and my father, husband and I just took a brief walk around the small neighborhood. It mostly comprises cul-de-sacs, big fancy houses, well-watered but still browning lawns, newly-planted flowers (in November?), and emptiness. The only other person I saw was a guy jogging -- it's kind of pathetic to jog in this neighborhood, you virtually run in circles.

We'll be in Dallas until early Thursday morning, when Richard and I will drive back to San Antonio to rejoin my mom, step-dad and little sister.

So far, it's been a lovely vacation. I actually feel almost relaxed, it's so nice. I think I could get used to this...

Briefly

This morning, the following was read aloud to me: "God does not want you to destroy yourself. Exhaustion, burn-out and depression are not signs that you are doing God's will." (Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love.)

It's good to be reminded of this...

Post-EVENT post

To all of you who prayed for THE EVENT, I want to say thank you. Your prayers saved us from disaster. Parts of the conference were very good and only a few things were outright bad. Overall, I would term it a success...So how do I feel now that it's two days behind me? Relieved? Joyful? Unburdened? Perhaps a bit of all of those things, but more prominent is this: I am depressed. I had no idea it would feel this way -- the let down, the stillness, the exhaustion, the remembrance of all things that were less than perfect, the meetings that never materialized, the friends who are gone.

My sister-in-law told my husband that post-event depression can rival postpartum depression in its intensity...I don't know if there's any truth in that or if she just made it up in an attempt to make Richard and me feel better, but I'm going to cling to it as medical fact.

Of course, the depression will surely not last long. There is very little time for stillness. Today I have meetings from 9 to 5, tomorrow I go to Chicago to meet with a potential partner, Friday it's off to Grand Rapids to facilitate a workshop for a current partner, etc. etc. etc. Perhaps the question I ought to ask myself is whether or not busy-ness is an adequate antidote to depression or merely a covering-up of what is and always will be there until I deal with that which lies deeper than the surface-level anxiety. Maybe next week I'll have time to think about it.

Ramblings the Sunday before THE EVENT

I made a brilliant decision to have a bunch of out-of-towners to my house for dinner tomorrow night. Sarcasm, you ask? Yes, in part, but it WAS brilliant because it forced me to clean my house. I washed floors, scrubbed bathrooms, rearranged furniture...Haven't quite dusted yet, or cleaned all the mirrors, or changed my sheets. But its good enough for dinner guests. I also sang at church this weekend, meaning I was at church Saturday from 4:30 to 7pm and today from 7am to noon. And all this the weekend before THE EVENT. I'm grateful to have had a busy weekend so I didn't have to sit around feeling guilty for not getting more work done.

I have issues. I think I've mentioned that before.

Mom, I know I need to call you. I'm sorry, I'm going through one of my phone-phobic or anti-talking or "damn the man" phases.

We talked last week at small group about prophecies and what it looks like when God fulfills His prophecies. This week at church, the sermon was about God's promise to Abraham. I've been thinking about this off and on for a while -- the question of what God really has promised to us, and whether I believe in it, and whether I understand (can anyone understand?) what God really means by the promises we like to claim from the Bible. He doesn't promise we won't fail or hurt or royally screw up or make people mad at us or get lost or sink into depression. Does He? Do You, Lord? And so I'm struggling to know exactly what I should trust God for, or expect from Him. It's one of those things that I don't necessarily have to know, that maybe I'll never know. And yet I want to.

So the connection to THE EVENT, of course, is that a big part of me expects failure and is ready to be disappointed -- or to not be overwhelmed with God's power and goodness. My therapist advised me last week to be "open to the possibility of success," to not so expect to fail that I can't even recognize success. God, I really and truly do not care about succeeding personally with this event -- I want it to be glorifying to You. Make it good, Lord, for Your sake. I give it to You now and (without fully knowing what I mean by this) trust You with the outcomes, whatever they are. I trust they'll be to Your glory, and that will be success. Amen.

T-8 (or is it T-9?)

Time is flying and THE EVENT is rapidly approaching. I swing from moments of panic to utter indifference to giddy excitement to fatalistic despair. And that's just today. Really, though, the preparations are coming along. The major prayer request at this point would be for the organization overall to come to some sort of understanding and agreement about what is good and allowable right now, what is worth exploring for the future, and what is definitely of value and to be pursued moving forward. Clear as mud? How about these:

• Pray for me to be patient and filled with grace for my staff. I want them to deliver everything perfectly and yesterday. They think they should be able to go on with the rest of their lives. I say their lives will be waiting for them Oct. 21.
• Pray for Richard to be patient and loving, to not resent how busy I am, to not take it personally that I am away from home so much these next couple of weeks. Pray that the time we have together would be sweet and rich and meaningful.
• Pray for the speakers, musicians, workshop leaders, and all the other staff and guests who have various responsibilities at the event. Pray for them to be carried by God's spirit, to move gracefully through the event space, to be radiant with joy and assurance, to love one another.

Thank you, friends. I really do value your prayers. I desperately need them. We all do.

Confession and more prayer for THE EVENT

First, the confession. Richard left Thursday for Indonesia. I tend to get pretty lazy when he's gone (he might say the same is true when he's not gone). So the past three nights, I have eaten frozen pizza for dinner. The same exact pizza, three nights in a row. I feel so dirty.

Now, some prayer needs for THE EVENT that starts in just two-and-a-half weeks:

• Pray that more people register. This is apparently a busy time of year for lots of churches and an especially popular time of year for missions conferences. Who knew.
• Pray that, regardless of numbers, all those who are there are impacted by the conference. That we all learn new things, are encouraged and challenged, and that we leave confident that it was well worth our time and investment.
• That God would move in our presence. That He would let us know if we are hearing Him or if we're getting off track. That He would forgive me for worrying and controlling and that He would set me free to enjoy and listen to Him.
• That the logistics of flights, sound systems, agendas, meals, hotel rooms, materials, videos and everything else would be smooth.
• That God would protect us from cynicism, hardness of heart, distraction, discouragement, illness, impatience...Lord, be merciful, be mighty, be near.

THE EVENT

Okay, weeks ago I said I'd post some prayer requests for a big conference we're planning at work. I've been preparing for it for months but somehow the time is almost here (just 3 weeks!) and I feel woefully inadequate to pull it off. And so it's a good time to remind myself that it's not about ME and I'm never in control anyway and the point of the whole thing is to glorify GOD even though it would be nice to receive a little praise myself at the end of the day or at the very least to avoid looking like a complete idiot. (I'm just kidding, Lord. If you want me to look like a complete idiot, I'll do it for you. Though I can't imagine why you'd want me to look like a complete idiot, doesn't seem very compassionate. But really, I'm okay with whatever you decide.)

Here's an email I sent out to people on our list to invite:

Dear friends,

It’s hard to believe October is just a few days away! I am counting down the days to our first global church partnership event which will be held in Baltimore, October 18-20. Many of you have registered for this event already. For those of you who haven’t, I want to let you know that we’ve extended the registration deadline (as the attached email explains). If you’re still not sure whether it's for you, let me share a few of the things I’m most looking forward to about it:

1) Vinay Samuel and Oscar Muriu speaking about transformation, poverty and God’s call to the global Church.
2) International program staff and ministers from across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, sharing lessons and leading discussions about missional development and partnership.
3) Pastors, lay leaders and other members of partner churches from all across the USA, coming together to demonstrate that the Church is one body, and that when we come together to glorify God, we are changed. And in being changed, we can change our world.

I anticipate with joy (and not a little fear and trembling!) what God has in store for us -- in the formal meetings; in the unexpected conversations; in the worship and prayer; in the workshops on microfinance, cross-cultural relationships, responding to HIV/AIDS, and everything in between – and I pray you will join us. To register, please see the attached email.

Thank you for being ministers of the Gospel wherever you are. May you be blessed.

So there you go, that's the image of joyful anticipation I'm trying to get across and trying to embody, but let's face it, more often than not it's sheer terror. And again, I remember the reason for this post: prayer.

Please pray for...

• The event to be a time of celebration, excitement, and real relationship building.
• The international staff, that they would be prepared and comfortable, ready to present and engage in meetings.
• The partners and potential partners who will be in attendance, that they would be filled with grace, wisdom and openness to learning new things.
• All of us who are pulling together all the details, from food to hotel rooms to music to agendas to workshops. Pray that our heads don't explode.

More to come...Thank you for praying. Truly.

My Summer Vacation (or is it Fall already?)

Okay, so I didn't manage to get in a post about the vacation. We've been back almost a week and it's like a distant memory after a crazy week back in the office. A few highlights I don't want to forget:

1) The breathtakingly blue water of South Lake Tahoe. Who knew it was even safe to drink and more than 99% pure at the surface? Someone should Google that.
2) The first morning, waking up at 6am to my dad ready to engage in a discussion about a couple of books we'd agreed to read about family dynamics, the conversation diverging (devolving?) into "What's with all the religion?"
3) The trees of Yosemite. Amazing.
4) Walking 2.5 miles at Yosemite. In a moon boot. And Richard and I completed the walk well ahead of everyone else on the bus tour.
5) The bus tour to Yosemite. Our guide (who referred to himself at times as Walker, then as Joe, then Dan, and who didn't stop talking the entire time) said, and I quote, "If you think about it, a drop of water is almost more powerful than a waterful, in actuality." I don't know what he meant but it sounded profound. I kid.
6) An incident between my father and a valet guy at the hotel which ended an hour or two later with my father bringing a beer to Richard and me at the pool as a peace offering. The valet guy still had a complaint filed against him. Sorry, valet guy.

Mostly it was wonderful to be away from reality, to have nothing that I had to do, to be free to take naps and be lazy and let my skin tan. And it was really good to be with Richard and for us to spend a week with my dad and step-mom. No family is perfect. Mine is nuts. But I love them.

Now I'm back at work and the countdown to THE EVENT begins...Less than 5 weeks until my department tries to pull off the biggest church-focused conference we've held as long as I've been there. I'll post some prayer requests in the next posts -- prayer is the only thing that will keep my head from exploding and THE EVENT from turning into a comedy of errors (or, worse, a COMPLETE DISASTER).

Broken

Where do I start after so long? My last blog left me in Maputo. I finished that leg of the trip and flew (via Nampula, Pembe and Nairobi) to Mombasa, a town in southeast Kenya on the coast of the Indian Ocean. My last memorable Mozambique moment was being picked up from the apartment at 4am, when it was still pitch black, and the driver telling me it was very dangerous to be driving at this time because of highjackers. He ran most of the red lights to avoid stopping at deserted corners. I was not too sad to leave, but I was sad for the people who live in a place that has become increasingly violent as the country strives to develop.

Kenya was wonderful and difficult. The Kenya office's staff retreat was the reason we were in Mombasa. The hotel (really a cluster of freestanding cottages) was in some ways exactly what you'd expect from a beach-side resort -- a beautiful pool overlooking the ocean, a large dining area with never-ending buffet, palm trees heavy with coconuts. But some of it was out of the ordinary, like the dozens of skinny black and white cats decorating the grounds, playing in the giant planters, following you to your room, waiting for something to drop from your dinner table and ready to finish off scraps of food after you've walked away; like the swarms of monkeys swinging from balcony to balcony, jumping from palm tree to thatch roof, avoiding the sling-shot of the man whose responsibility it was to keep the monkeys away from guests enjoying their meals; like the 20-year-old hotel employee eager to practice his English, asking me to explain salvation to him and how I could believe in something as illogical as the Trinity.

There is too much to say. The people working for our organization in Kenya are gifted, well-educated, articulate, passionate and funny. I am blessed to have spent a little time with them. The retreat provided was just what I needed: space for personal reflection, time to get into God's word, a reminder of the brokenness of this world and the healing that is in our reach.

I was picked up at 3am from the hotel in Mombasa to catch a flight to Kigali, Rwanda, where I spent the remainder of my time. I should do a post on the people I met with -- there were days of 10- and even 14-hour marathon meetings, but it was worth it just for the opportunity to be touched by their wisdom, for it to somehow ooze onto me. I felt richer when I was around people like Kayijuka and Sophonie, Ngoga and Marcel, Rita and Joie-Claire, who have known genocide and war and suffering beyond any scale I could fathom, but who have been given the strength and grace to speak words of peace, healing and wholeness.

I got home Thursday evening. Richard took me to an urgent-care clinic to have my foot x-rayed. Just a couple of days before I left for Africa, it had started hurting; I'd been walking with a limp for 3 weeks now. The x-ray showed a stress fracture of one of the metatarsals (the long bones in your foot). It's official: I've broken myself. Too much walking, too much speed, too little rest. The doctor ordered me to wear a moon boot, which Richard and I picked up from a medical supply store the next day. I am now walking around in a great big black Star Wars-looking contraption that goes all the way up to my knee.

On Saturday we got on an airplane headed for South Lake Tahoe, where we'll be this week for a long-awaited vacation. Next post: the importance of having appropriate expectations (or Why Didn't Someone Tell Me My Vacation Would Be More Disneyland Than Rustic Getaway).

Still in Maputo

I spent the weekend in Maputo -- it wasn't my original plan. I'd intended to go to the northern part of the country for a few days and visit our programs, but the flights were $500 and it just didn't seem justifiable. So I enjoyed a weekend with nothing in particular to do. I'm staying with a wonderful woman who is in the country for 3 years, volunteering with our organization. Sunday, she and I took a long walk along the beach and decided to return towards the apartment by cutting through town rather than doubling back.

Before I say anything more, I should emphasize that I have lived in Baltimore City for eight years and I have traveled to roughly ten countries in Africa, some of them just coming out of civil war. I have never in all that time been threatened with bodily harm or had anything stollen from my person. But there's a first time for everything...

My friend and I were making our way up a dusty road just a block from the ocean and I was telling her the story of my life (we had a lot of time together) and how I became a Christian. I was just approaching the tumultous teenage years as a man walked directly towards us, pulled out a large kitchen knife and said to me, “Your bag, your bag, your BAG!” and I said “Okay” (he was so impatient). I quickly pulled the purse strap over my head and transferred the purse to his hands. It was over in 4 seconds. He was gone.

Luckily, all I had in the bag was a pack of gum and my wallet with a few credit cards, much less cash than he was probably hoping for, my drivers’ license, a few gift cards (damnit I should have used those by now -- but good luck to him finding a Pottery Barn in Mozambique) and assorted membership cards. Thank God my passport and the bulk of my cash wasn’t with me. We walked the rest of the way home and I called Richard to get his help cancelling my credit cards. And that was that.

Richard said to me on the phone, "I'll pray for you, and for him." He was grateful I hadn't tried to use my Jujitsu (this man didn't look like his principles would keep him from using the knife). But Richard's words made me wonder about the man who took my purse. I wonder how he'll spend (or has spent) the $30 he got from me. Maybe he has a baby he's trying to feed, or ailing parents. More likely, he just wanted it for himself. I don't mind that he took it, to be honest, and the whole thing could have been a lot worse.

I'm thankful that my life circumstances are not so desperate that taking someone's possessions at knife-point seems like a viable response.

Maputo

I've been in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, for five days now. Like so many major cities in impoverished nations, Maputo is a study in contrasts. There are cars all over the place--most of much cleaner than I ever keep my car at home--but drawn to the cars like magnets are beggars at every corner, and every mile or so the driver has to disengage an alarm that is meant to discourage carjacking. This morning, I walked along the road that runs behind the guesthouse where I'm staying, the road that overlooks the Indian ocean. I watched the sun rise over the serene water, trying to keep my gaze away from the heaps of garbage filling the ditch beside the sidewalk. Along the road, American-style townhouses rose three-stories high and enjoyed manicured lawns and outdoor seating areas fenced in by concrete walls. Along the tops of the walls, curled barbed wire sternly warned trespassers to stay away; cheerful vines wrapped around the wire to add splashes of color and camouflage the spikes. The view of the ocean was punctuated by boys and men dressed in torn clothing, lying on the sidewalks or sitting solemnly or begging with hand outstretched or tending to fishing nets.

It is difficult to know what an appropriate response to these contradictions is. Cynicism seems like the lazy way out. Blind trust that God is in control and protects His own seems shallow and narcissistic. Sadness, wonder, a longing to understand, a passion to bridge the gap -- are these things that are honoring to God? Are they honoring to the people who spend their days begging along the side of the road? Can consciousness and conscientousness and compassion change what appears to be an impossible situation?

Week in review...

After a rough weekend, the work week didn’t look it was going to be much better. I fear a new war may be developing at work. I’m constantly asking myself how much more I can take, what I should do next, where I should focus my energy, how I’m supposed to know what is good and right.

But some good things came out of the week:

Ø My boss’s boss reversed a decision he had made last week that would have thrown even more of my job into chaos. At least now I feel like I have a little breathing space.
Ø Richard and I bought a new tree last weekend to put in the front sidewalk (to replace the very sad Charlie Brown tree that was there before). It’s a weeping cherry tree. It’s only about 6 feet tall right now so it looks a little pathetic and the neighbors’ kids ask us if this one is dead too, but I’m so happy with it. Something about weeping trees makes me happy.
Ø Richard has been working on painting the front door (which we replaced in December but hadn’t gotten around to painting). It’s a beautiful blue, a deep slate blue that is restful and confident and disarming. I love it. He’s also painting the frame around the door and windows and putting up new numbers to identify the house. We’re going to have a beautiful front-of-the-house.
Ø We had a contractor to the house on Thursday to give us an estimate for removing the concrete from the back area, laying paving stones and erecting a trellis and pergola. I think we’re going to move forward with it. it will give us a little shade, a lot more character and a flower bed with enough dirt that we won’t kill our plants in three months. Hopefully. We’re going to have a lovely outdoor area out back.
Ø I survived. I’m now in the Johannesburg airport getting ready to fly to Maputo, Mozambique, shockingly peaceful with the knowledge that I have four weeks away from the office. And in just three weeks, Richard and I will be on a week-long vacation in Lake Tahoe…

I usually hate it when people say, “God is good,” probably because it seems like people only say it when things are going well and so it seems phony and not well thought through. But being in this faraway airport, completely conscious of the fact that life is hard right now and the future is a big fat unknown and I’m not in the healthiest emotional state of my life, I can’t help but acknowledge: God is good. With all the crap and the chaos and confusion, there is beauty and mystery and hope. Always hope. Odd how the question of life so often leaves me wanting to curl up in a ball and tell God, “I give up, I don’t know the F*&%ing answer!!” Perhaps the fact that the question remains even when life is truly stupid and illogical is a miracle in itself.

Sunday Night

I've been angry at my husband this weekend. There's no apparent reason for it. I'm mad that he wants to talk to me, that he asks what I want to eat for lunch or dinner. I'm mad that we have to make decisions together, that my decision to be in a bad mood matters to him. I'm mad that he doesn't understand what I'm thinking or feeling, that he doesn't know how to make me feel better, that he doesn't know what I need and when. I'm mad that I would have to tell him all these things in order for him to know them, and I'm mad that I would have to figure out what I know before I could communicate that to Richard. I don't feel like taking the time, investing the effort, to be still with myself long enough to analyze the make-up of irritability, anxiety and discontent that grows over my being like mold.

Crazy

Last night I returned from two days in Ohio where I was visiting a couple of church partners. I have one week left in the office with my boss who is moving on, then I get on an airplane headed for Africa where I'll be for close to three weeks. Then 36 hours after arriving in Baltimore, Richard and I will go on a week's vacation in Lake Tahoe. I'll be outside of the chaos of HQ for four straight weeks.

Crazy.

I've been struggling with the question of how to live generously in this world where hand-outs create as many problems as they address, well-meaning organizations are run by prideful people who care more about their status than the state of the world, and I want more of whatever I have and fear we won't be able to pay our mortgage. How does one balance the call to give sacrificially with the realities of ever-increasing bills and ever-limited time? Something is wrong with this place in which we live.

My boss's boss forwarded me an email written by my boss's previous boss and current nemesis, who apparently doesn't think terribly highly of me either. Her words that questioned by abilities and capacity stung like a hornet, pierced my sense of self with an arrow, confirmed my deeply-held suspicions about myself. This woman--whose abilities and capacity are similarly questioned by many in the organization and who is viewed as a crazy cat lady by many others--somehow managed to throw my inner world into turmoil and led me to question whether I have any value or should just quit and let someone more capable take over. Whatever the truth may be, it's amazing to me that one person whom I don't even respect a great deal has the power to unsettle my soul. When will I learn to rise above such disturbances?

Last weekend, I had another encounter with the extraordinary woman I referenced in the last post. I'll call her LD. She asked me to take her to church Saturday evening, so Richard and I picked her up and sat with her and two of her friends. Two songs that had been in my mind for no apparent reason were sung that evening, which was astounding to me and beautiful and a little bit tragic. It again took us an hour to get LD out of the building after the service, she was so so intent on trying to talk her other friend into driving her an hour north the next week to go to a baseball game. As we dropped her off at her parents' condo, she asked if I'd take her to Sunday's service as well. I said I didn't plan to go but she could call me if she was unable to find another ride. Note to self: don't say things like that to a manic woman with no boundaries. She called a couple hours later to say she needed a ride; I agreed to pick her up.

So Sunday we were again sitting in the front of the large auditorium, but this time LD had nobody else to share her exuberance with, so I took it all. She held my hand and laughed with me and told me to raise my arms as we sang. Throughout the sermon, she frantically wrote notes to me on a pad of paper, trying to convince me that it was God's plan for me to work for her (as a personal assistant / co-singer in her nonexistent worship band) and asking me if I had suffered a great deal in childhood. It was, in a word, surreal. But after the service as we talked to a mutual friend who insisted I was a saint and a good person, LD demanded that I listen to this man because he was a truth-teller. If for no other reason, I could believe that God wanted me to be with LD at that moment so I would be forced to listen to two people tell me I was good, I was loved, I was God's.

I finally dropped her off two hours after the service ended. That evening she left a frantic message on my phone saying she needed a place to stay for the night because there had been an emergency and she was locked out of her parents' home. I called her back and, to Richard's great dismay, I allowed myself to be talked into picking her up so she could stay with us "just overnight," as I explained several times that we had other company coming the next day. Richard was, to put it mildly, concerned. Just as i was preparing to get in the car, our phone rang and a staff person from the church informed me that LD's parents were sitting in a courtroom at that moment awaiting an emergency court order for LD to be taken to the hospital for treatment of severe mania. The police had been to the condo twice already that day and she refused to check herself in. The staff person asked if I would please not come to LD's rescue, for her sake and for my own safety.

I don't doubt that LD is an extraordinary woman, but like so much else in this world, she was dancing on the line of sanity. I left her to dance alone. I hope she will forgive me.

Monday, on my walk to work, I finally introduced myself to the homeless man I pass every day. He seemed surprised that I would care what his name was, that I would take the time to ask. It was James. I'm grateful to know him.

An Extraordinary Woman

I've been meaning to write every day for the past two weeks (or however long it's been since my last post). There is so much to write about: my boss is leaving, throwing life at work into yet another tailspin of transition and uncertainty (but what's new about that?); concurrently, I'm trying to figure out what God wants me to do with my life; we gave our cat away; Richard and I had an amazing conversation the night before he left for Asia and somehow he is home already and I haven't even fully processed that night; I read a deeply moving book on vacation that continues to haunt me with its insights about women and voice and dissociation of self...

But here's where I'll start: Last night, I met an extraordinary woman. It began with an email from a woman at my church, asking if I could drive a person undergoing cancer treatment to the Saturday evening service. This person, Lorraine, apparently lived just a few minutes from me. I was scheduled to sing at church all weekend so I said I'd be happy to take her if she didn't mind arriving more than an hour early. I left my cell phone number in an email and didn't hear anything. Then just moments before I needed to leave my house for the service yesterday, I checked the voice messages on my home phone and found that Lorraine had called and really hoped I would call her back because she really wanted to go to church. I called her and, 10 minutes later, was picking her up in front of a condominium high-rise. She had told me on the phone: "I'll be the one with the chemo haircut, waving my arms." She had also told me that she was back from the dead.

I had a sense when I received the first email about her that there was something ordained in our meeting. Not a spooky, overwhelming sense, just a quiet understanding: this request was not one I would or could ignore.

Lorraine got in the car. A heavy-set woman in her early 40's (though it's hard to say), she had blonde stubble on her head hidden by a white Orioles baseball cap. "I know you, I've seen you," she said to me. Presumably, she had seen me sing at church. She complimented my perfume, then smelled her shirt and said she hadn't put enough deoderant on. I told her not to worry, my perfume was enough to cover both of us; she asked if I had any more with me; I didn't.

I wanted to know Lorraine's story: how she came to Baltimore, what kind of cancer she had, why she had been through a living hell for the past 7 months ("Have you read the story of Job? That's my story. Literally.") and how just two weeks ago emerged from it with a new passion for life. She was like Lazarus, she said, and she was as disoriented as she imagined Lazarus must have been when Jesus brought him back from the dead. "Just wait, you'll notice how people at church see the difference in me; they'll be shocked. 'You're back!' they'll say." But she told me the story was too long. She would tell me someday if I wanted to hear it, but it would take longer than our 20-minute drive.

So I attempted small-talk with Lorraine, a woman who has come back to life and has not talked much in the past 7 months so she has a lot to say. Some of the people in her life thought she was manic, but she didn't agree and even if it was true she didn't care; her psychiatrist and counselor and doctors told her to enjoy it while it lasted. She was happy to be alive. She said she couldn't drive herself because she loved listening to worship music at full volume and driving really fast, so she was a danger to others on the road. Lorraine is a physician. She asked me if I knew what the gift of knowledge was -- it seemed like a trick question so I said no. She said it had to do with medical intuition and, for her, it meant she knew which of her patients had cancer and was able to help them detect it early enough to have positive outcomes. Somehow, this related to her oncologist, I think because he also has this gift (though it was hard to follow everything she said); I asked Lorraine the name of her oncologist and it turns out she sees the same doctor Richard has been seeing since being treated for colon cancer five or six years ago. What a strange coincidence, I thought.

The drive went pretty quickly. We hugged inside the church before I went into the auditorium for rehearsal; we agreed to meet by the information desk after the service. I entered the green room feeling slightly disoriented and trying to make sense of the stream-of-consciousness conversation I'd just engaged in.

When the service started an hour later and the worship team took the stage, I saw Lorraine standing in the second row, talking to people around her. I smiled at her but couldn't see her eyes because of the lights on stage. The worship was rich (although the producer later told us backstage that the sound was "horrendous" because the "balance" was off; something to do with the bass driving the set, the drumming being too tentative, and the lead instrument not taking an assertive enough lead. I didn't really care.).

The service ended after the sermon and I stood by the information desk as we'd agreed. Fifteen minutes passed, then 30. The flow of people exiting the auditorium slowed to a trickle. I entered the auditorium and looked towards the front -- Lorraine was there, sitting with another woman and a teenage boy. Lorraine was talking almost non-stop. I sat down next to her, trying to be patient, knowing that Richard was probably arriving at home right about now and waiting for me; we'd not seen each other for almost two weeks. My subtle attempts to end the conversation and move us in the direction of the door were unsuccessful, so after another 15 minutes I said we should go. Just 15 minutes after that, we were back in the car.

Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows I'm not the most patient of people, so the whole experience was truly testing me. Strangely, I didn't feel very anxious or rushed, and I truly was eager to learn more about Lorraine and, perhaps, to learn more about myself through Lorraine. It was true that she seemed quite manic, not all there, a little disjointed, but I firmly believe there's only a very fine line between madness and prophecy and perhaps it is not up to us to judge which is which. Something inside of me wanted to break out in tears and confess every sin I could think of to this woman who had known me for just 2 hours. She asked me if I knew what a micvah was (sometimes she said "mitzvah" -- I think she meant mitzvah, though perhaps not), and I said I thought I knew but (again it felt like a trick question) she could tell me. She said, "Are you a good person? Are you generous with your gifts?" I said probably not, I probably wasn't a very good person and I probably wasn't as generous as I could be. I mean, if she has the gift of knowledge, surely she could have figured this out for herself. So she didn't tell me what mitzvah/micvah meant until later in the car-ride (had she forgotten she was being told not to tell me?). In basic terms, it's a blessing that you are blessed to give someone else. Something you pass along, recognizing all things come from God and are given to us to be given away. (Caveat: this is cheap theology and I'm writing it after two beers and I'm not terribly concerned about the accuracy of my statements anymore, just trying to get through the story.) Lorraine told me I was blessed just to be able to know this, just to have met her -- this alone was a blessing. And she was right. She said she was sure I would become the person God made me to be. I could weep. But for now, I should be as generous as I could be, especially with homeless people. I thought immediately of the man I pass each morning on my walk to work. What am I to do for him?

There is so much more to say -- and so much more I want to learn from Lorraine, whether she turns out to be a prophet or sage or just a very wacky woman with a lot of hard-to-string-together-thoughts. I look forward to the journey. God, please let our paths cross again.

Summer Weddings and What I Think of the Golden Gate Bridge

We’ve spent the last week-and-a-half trying to create a vacation out of to two weddings -- one in Minnesota and one in southern California...So we were provided two occasions to witness the exchanging of vows, the expression of faithfulness and commitment, the hope and joy of beginning a new life together. Unfortunately, on the whole, Richard and I agree that the past 10 days have not been our finest. I experienced much of the trip as a stark reminder of the seemingly inevitable distance that exists between people, even people who have been made one through marriage. It can feel as though we are worlds apart even when we’re right next to each other. The irony is that tomorrow, Richard will get on an airplane headed for the Philippines. I wonder if the physical distance will be easier for us to take than the emotional.

The weekend before last, we were in the thriving metropolis of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, birthplace of Bob Dylan and home to tourist magnets like a paper factory and iron mine. We were there to attend the wedding of Richard’s niece, a delicate 22-year-old with a sensitive heart and a flare for the dramatic. It was fascinating and at times painful to watch this beautiful girl as she prepared to leave home and move into the half-completed house being rehabbed by her now-husband. So much uncertainty, so much disorder, so much to try to get under control. She threw herself between extremes of effusiveness and emotional shutdown. I felt a strong protective urging towards her but knew I was not (and am not) going to be the one to save her or bring her balance, should she need either. I do hope we continue to see her regularly and grow closer to her and her husband.

After the weekend in MN, we flew to California to spend a few days vacationing in San Francisco, visit my sister and nephew in San Diego, and attend a wedding in Pasadena. For the first leg, I had reserved a room at a bed-and-breakfast at the top of a hill just 10 minutes from downtown San Francisco. At least, it was referred to as a “bed-and-breakfast” online; in actuality, it was the home of a practicing progressive Jewish couple who rented out the spare bedroom to unsuspecting tourists in search of a romantic but not-too-pricey getaway. The house was beautiful and the couple very kind, but private this B&B was not. It was more like staying at your uncle’s house. We found ourselves tiptoeing from our room to the bathroom down the hall to avoid the embarrassment of being seen in our sleep-wear.

Our time in San Francisco was brief. The first day, I woke up very early with a nasty headache that only vacated my body four or five hours later when I finally gave in and took my migraine injection (which Richard likens to nuclear war). So by 10:30 we were on our way to a café. By 11:30 we were exploring downtown. By 1:30pm we agreed we had seen enough of Chinatown, Union Square and the nearby neighborhoods and were ready for bigger and better things. So we made our way down winding streets and up steep hills to the Golden Gate Bridge. Granted, I’d seen this bridge before, but I wasn’t all that impressed.

This would be a good time to confess that I am a bad tourist. I get antsy on tours, I hate being bombarded with information I’ll never retain, I feel like a failure when bored after 45 minutes at a museum, and I can’t read a map. I’ve been meaning to start writing a travel-book series called “The Half-Ass Tourist.” I don’t say this proudly, just in the spirit of self-revelation.

More on the trip and other exciting revelations later…This post has become too long.

The Walk to Work: Summertime...

Summer in Baltimore is an experience. Temperatures rise into the 90s and higher, which is only painful when you take into consideration the 95% humidity. From the volume of people hanging out on the sidewalks and playing softball or tennis in the park, you'd think it was pleasant outside. It is not. Of course, un-air-conditioned rowhomes are even more miserable.

Needless to say (given the title of this post), I continue to walk to and from work. I have to bring a shirt to change into in the morning, and at the end of the day I notice a strange reluctance to leave the office and make the trek home. It's like walking in soup. Immediately upon entering the house, avoiding eye contact with Richard if he's home, I go straight upstairs and strip down and hose off in the shower. Once in the safety of my porcelain haven, I feel like a human being again.

Truth be told, the element of my walk that most affects me these days is not the heat but rather a particular person I pass nearly every morning. He sits on a stoop across the street from a shelter and a block down from the Helping-Up Mission, surrounded by what I presume are all his belongings (a backpack, a couple of plastic bags filled with I don't know what). He is a black man, maybe 45, maybe older (or younger?). He always makes eye contact with me, always returns my "good morning" with a greeting or at the very least a head-nod, even if I interrupt him as he's searching through one of his bags or talking to himself, which he does from time to time. Usually he is just sitting. He has a remarkably kind face, a gentle spirit about him. He never leers, never begs, never looks at me with bitterness or contempt or anything but the simplest acknowledgement that I am a person and he is a person and we exist in each other's universes. I look forward to seeing him, for his smile exudes peace. When his smile is absent and replaced by just a slight nod of the head or wave of the hand, what becomes visible is the pain in his eyes, loss, a knowing of what the day will bring or fail to bring or what days past have brought. Whatever is on his face, every time I see him, I feel as though I witness grace personified, grace wrapped up in old clothes and scruffy face, grace that hasn't bathed in days, grace that is not self-conscious or ashamed or proud. Does he know of this grace that fills him, surrounds him, transcends him? Is it merely a product of my romantic imagination?

My heart longs to reach out to him, to know him, to ask his name, to hear his story. I am tempted to invite Richard on my walk so we can meet him together...The risk of course is dispelling my interpretation of who this man is. Do I really want to know, or is it enough to believe? I feel a sense of obligation to find out.

Saturday Review

I've gotten pretty lazy with blogging. Seems like all I have (make?) time for are short and not very thoughtful entries, and I feel like what's the point? But perhaps the point is just to make regular contact with the four people who read this thing, to let them know I'm still alive and still exerting a significant level of brain and emotional energy on insignificant things.

Today, Saturday, was actually a fairly good day. After a few weekends of winding up depressed because my unreasonably high expectations for "getting a lot done" were dashed as I sat around and did virtually nothing due to my inability to do everything, this morning R and I knew we needed a better plan. So we started the day by going to one of our favorite cafes, sitting outside drinking coffee and reading the paper. The cafe is in a yuppy-ish part of the city, just a block away from the harbor, which means it provides ample opportunities for dog-watching and making fun of perky well-made-up women. Sure, I feel a little guilty about this tendency of mine to automatically dislike women who wear make-up early on a Saturday and who smile excessively, but I don't feel guilty enough to repent yet.

R and I went to the grocery store on our way home and then decided to go for a jog. Today was an absolutely beautiful day -- not too hot, plenty of sun but not a perfectly clear sky, a nice breeze. Thank God we were able to be outdoors this morning. I spent much of the afternoon/early evening working on a proposal to be presented to a church partner on Monday in Michigan. It's a big proposal and I was relying heavily on a friend and co-worker who is part of the economic development team. He is currently in Rwanda so our communication was limited to email and skype chats, which would be less irritating if my computer's keyboard were not missing the "i" and "j" keys. I lost the "j" key in an unfortunate incident with a fork, and the more essential "i" was sacrificed when I tried to save the "j".

We ate a frozen pizza for dinner (we heated it up first) and watched a couple episodes of The Office, which I've grown to love. At the grocery store, R and I bought ant traps (like houses of poison) so we put those out and after dinner I observed a long and impatient line of ants bump into but ultimately avoid the traps. I didn't think ants were intelligent creatures, but they do seem to have outsmarted us for now. So kitty will have to tolerate a diet of mixed dry cat food plus small presumably harmless insects until we devise Plan B.

So that is the story of my day. Not a terribly exciting Saturday, I know. And tomorrow R will drive to Canada to renew his visa and I will fly to Michigan for a couple of days of meetings. Life in the fast lane, that's what we live.

Brake Failure

Today at church the sermon was about the importance of having a day of rest. We were, the pastor said, designed to work hard and creatively for six days and then to rest on the seventh day (not in a legalistic way, but you know what I mean). The sermon was titled, "STOP: Brake Failure." Sermons at my church are always organized into series with clever themes and catchy names. I might have enjoyed the message more had they started on time and not kept us 15 minutes later than normal -- sure it's Sunday, but I've got work to do.

The irony is that this is the same church pushing us to "read the Bible in 90 days" this summer. Start your engines...

R is making his way through the Old Testament. He announced this morning that he found the first instance of sarcasm in the Bible -- it's in Exodus. The people are complaining to Moses and they say something like, "Were there no graves in Egypt? You had to take us to the wilderness to die?!" We decided we should write a book called "The Dry Humor Guide to the Bible."

This evening, R peered over his laptop to ask me a question as I was working on my laptop: "We really should hold each other accountable to keeping Sunday as a day of rest. Don't you think?" Yes, I do. Maybe next Sunday.

Too much

I have so much to do at work and there's no light at the end of the tunnel. There's just more tunnel. It's like the best I can hope for is to not get hit by a truck. Or maybe the best I can hope for is to get hit by a truck, just to put me out of my misery. I joke.

My brain feels like mush, like mush in the center of a great big ball of static, of pointless noise that prohibits clarity and makes rest impossible. Last night, I was working until 10:30 and I woke up this morning with plans to work for most of the day. Instead, I wound up working for maybe two hours and spent at least twice as much time thinking about working, dreading work, reading the BBC news web site, flipping through The Economist, and melting in the sun to escape my computer.

Late this afternoon we went to a bowling party for a friend who's preparing to return to Iran for the summer...He is my dear friend's boyfriend. She is struggling with the reality that in one week, she'll live (as she did last year) in fear that something terrible will happen to him, that something terrible will happen between the US and Iran, that he'll never come back, that he'll stop loving her. All unlikely (with the exception of perhaps the second item), but all out of her control. This world is so strange.

Battles

Another weekend ending, a new week about to begin. Somebody asked me today if I was ready for it, and I said I felt like I was going into battle. Not that I've ever fought in a battle and know what that would actually feel like. I would hate to be a soldier, to have to rely on my strength and speed and my ability to make decisions under extreme pressure. Fortunately, my battle is only metaphorical.

We had a relatively quiet weekend, both of us in Baltimore with no plans to leave the country for a while. I wasn't very easy to get along with this weekend. I was hermit-like on Saturday and had become depressed by mid-afternoon. Today was a little better, started out with a jog and was non-stop activity until we came home with dinner. But we were both in bad moods by that point -- we had disagreed about what to eat and I think R had just had enough of me. He gave into my desires, as he's prone to do, but he wasn't happy about it. Then he got into a minor yelling match with a guy in a white Lincoln who accused R of cutting him off. Fortunately, nobody got out of their cars and no guns were pulled and I managed to keep my eyes on the copy of Citypaper I was flipping through.

So I am reminded that Richard's patience is not without end. He gives and gives, but it does wear him down. I do wear him down.

This weekend I confessed to R that my eating issues have been problematic of late, which he of course figured but it was nice to come clean. I also confessed that I've been utilizing the anti-anxiety medication pretty regularly, that perhaps I don't trust myself to have it. It wouldn't be a problem except that I think it's helping the depression to creep back into my life and it makes me quite tired most days, even the days I don't take it. I've glimpsed too much hope to slide back into depression now. So R will hold onto those meds for me; I'd like not to rely on it anymore. It's too easy to numb the discomfort and fear.

So I'm praying that I'll be giving R something more than a half-empty bottle of pills; hopefully, I'll give him back myself. Hopefully, I'll continue the battle for true life.

Monday

It's another Monday, another day of feeling distracted and preoccupied and unable to concentrate. When I was in the fourth grade, I woke up with a headache every Monday morning (and thus began my love affair with migraines...but I'll save that for another post). I hated Mondays. Mostly because I was involved in community theatre; we'd have 3 performances a weekend for 6-8 weeks, and I absolutely loved being at the theatre. I loved being on stage and backstage and putting on costumes and being with fascinating people in the dressing rooms and hearing grown-up (sometimes quite risque) conversations. I would plummet into depression after each Sunday matinee performance, knowing the weekend was about to be swallowed up and I'd have to survive 5 long torturous days before I'd return to the theatre. Five days of school with all its pressures to perform in a different way, five days of insecurity about not being one of the pretty ones or the popular ones or the rich ones; sure, I was one of the smart ones, but I lived in terror that I wasn't the smartest, and that was what mattered in my mind: the superlative.

The Monday migraines have fortunately not persisted. The insecurities have twisted themselves into new costumes, they've grown new layers and convinced themselves they are more complicated than they used to be. But really, are they any different? Isn't it still about being good enough (the best), about people approving of (loving) me, about proving my (great) worth? The performing never ends.

There's a verse or two in scripture about "dying to self" -- I am keenly aware that I am very much living for myself, although I like to fool myself into thinking I am not; I am front-and-center, I am the star of the show. I'd like for someone to kick me off the stage, but perhaps it's my responsiblity to bow out gracefully or to let someone else have the solo.

I'm ending this post before the theatre metaphor gets any more out of hand. It's Monday, I can't be expected to demonstrate coherence so early in the week.

For my husband: first movement

I've been seeing a psychotherapist for the past year or so. (Let's be honest: I've been seeing this psychotherapist for a year...there were others before her.) One of her favorite "tools" is affirmations -- she believes that if we recite affirmations to ourselves, things that we want to be true about ourselves but that we do not believe are true, we will become capable of growing into those truths. The affirmation she instructed me to speak as of Wednesday: "I used to be a self-destructive person. I'm not like that anymore." Self-destruction is a strange thing. Why would anyone want to destroy herself? Why so much pent-up self-hatred? I don't know if it's even self-hatred or just a fear of being ordinary, a powerful attraction to dysfunction to escape the frightening reality that I am nothing special, just like everyone else, nothing worth concerning yourself over. Any way you look at it, it's a little pathetic. But any way you look at it, the self-destructive tendencies exist and they are strong.

Over the years, they have presented themselves in different ways: drug and alcohol misuse, eating disorders, damaging relationships. And the toll it takes is frequent bouts with depression and frequent seeking out of new or recycled self-destructive habits. As I said, it's a little pathetic.

The difference now is that I'm married. My husband, understandably, is not convinced that self-destruction is the right path to take (and of course, on a conscious level, I am not convinced either, but we're not talking about conscious thought processes at the moment). Richard wants to see me happy and healthy. He wants me to be free to live. He doesn't ever worry about me being ordinary or normal -- he knows who I am and he still loves me. Why? Why would God make us all to be so small, so insignificant, so fleeting, and yet love us and give us significance? And how could I not doubt this beautiful truth?

Richard, I love you. I thank you for caring so deeply about me, although I don't understand why. I pray you will have patience and perseverence and continue to believe that I am worth concerning yourself over. I don't expect it's an easy thing to do. I'm trying to live and I find it difficult and confusing and more than a little pointless sometimes, but I'm trying. And I do love you.

Notes on a Weekend Visit from Dad and S

This post is a little delayed, but last weekend, my father and stepmother were visiting R and me from Dallas. They came in late Wednesday night and stayed until Sunday morning. A quick chronicle of our time together:

Wed: Dad and S arrive at 11:30pm. I emerge from the bedroom just long enough to watch dad drink a beer and S a cup of tea. And so begins a visit of much consumption.

Thurs a.m.: R wakes up and goes downstairs to talk to Dad. R brings me coffee as I do email, informs me we're going to breakfast in 45 minutes. We go to Kiss Cafe, one of my favorite places; we walk there, which Dad and S are not too excited about but they try to be good sports for the 1-mile hike. We return home for a conference call (mine) and then decide to venture downtown to the aquarium.

Thurs p.m.: We pile into Dad's rental car, park, and enter the Land of Children on Field Trips. Quote of the day: They sure got a lot o' fish. I was awed and excited for the first half-hour, intently watching the sting rays, sharks and other creatures gliding through the water. After that half-hour, the thrill wore off and I suddenly felt a little queazy and weirded out rather than awed by all the bizarre beings on display in four stories of glass boxes. And there were a LOT of kids - inconsiderate kids, loud kids, whiny kids, snotty kids, clumbsy kids, kids of all kinds, everywhere. It was overwhelming, the whole thing.

Thurs late lunch: PF Chang's. Good stuff. Bad waiter. Lectured by Dad and S about how if I'm losing weight, I'm losing muscle-mass and I need more protein. Why not cottage cheese with strawberries and almonds in the morning?? And Richard, the conspirator...Then it was off to a little shopping in the harbor and browsing at the bookstore. Dad bought me a coffee from the cafe -- it was horrible, burned, but I took a few sips as I was reading a train-wreck of a memoir that was utterly disturbing but I couldn't stop reading until I almost passed out. Truly. I thought I was going to vomit. Why do I read things that are so disturbing? I couldn't look away. I pull R and Dad away from their inane conversation about Bush and Cheney and the war, and we walk to the parking garage.

Thurs incident in the parking garage: Dad gets mildly cut off by a car, Dad flicks off driver and makes other rude gestures, guy gets out of his BMW, Dad refuses to roll down the window, guy returns to BMW and we go home. Good family fun.

Thurs evening: After a bit of a rest, we decide to rent a movie and order pizza (because by this time we'd only consumed two large late meals, so why not a third?). We eat pizza, watch The Prestige, a fascinating movie that I would recommend to anyone who likes magic or mysteries or good acting or a little (not too much) gore; then we go to bed.

Fri a.m.: R has to go to the office so he leaves at 6:30am. I stay in bed til 8, Dad's ready for breakfast, I stall for an hour and then we drive up to Mt. Vernon for yet another oversized meal. We return home for a conference call (S's) and then take a drive out to Home Depot, Land of Plants that will Die in a Week. We were on a mission to resucitate the "tree" in front of our house, to buy a hanging plant and a couple other potted plants to cover some concrete (there's so much!), and to find a tall-ish indoor plant for the hallway upstairs beneath the skylight. We made our purchases and returned to a fun afternoon of potting, digging, fertilizing and arranging. R came home, we all rested, then decided it was time for lunch (after 4pm can't we just call it dinner?).

Fri p.m.: We drive to Fell's Point and enjoy a meal on the water. We don't have long at home before we have to head up north to meet some friends for duckpin bowling (if you don't know what this is, you are missing out. Not really.). I have come to learn in the past few weeks that I am a positively horrible, miserable, hopeless duckpin bowler. But we met four friends there and it was lovely to be with them, and the parents. After bowling, of course we needed a third meal, so we stopped for burritos on the way home. Can you feel the bloating?

Sat a.m.: Richard and I went jogging. Then of course it was time for breakfast -- back to Kiss Cafe. Then we went back to Home Depot to get a couple more plants and some edging for the tree. Worked in the "yard" a bit and then I had to get ready to go to church.

Sat p.m.: I was singing at church all weekend (one service Saturday evening, 3 on Sunday morning). Dad, R and S came for the music and we left before the sermon to go out for Indian food (what do you know -- only two large meals on Saturday!). R and I almost got into a fight about samosas. Dad and I almost got into a fight about something else, I think I must have been feeling punchy. Last night together. We went home and watched another movie, this one quite odd and not something I'd recommend watching with your parents unless you enjoy feeling uncomfortable. It was called Notes on a Scandal. Great acting, bizarre story. Then, to bed.

Sunday: Richard saw Dad and S off while I was at church.

Overall, a good trip.

Manic Monday

Head is spinning, eyes are drooping, staring, glazing over. It's Monday night. I hate Mondays. I'm thankful it at least isn't Sunday night, when I'm just waiting for the horrible next day to arrive, wondering what irritations await me. Now the day has passed and I'm sitting on my couch, obsessing over a letter Richard and I just received from the IRS saying we owe them a LOT of money from 2005. They're wrong, but the fact that they'd eve THINK it, let alone send us a letter demanding THOUSANDS of our hard-earned dollars, is preposterous. It's disturbing. It's ludicrous. And I don't know which set of parents would be most willing and able to loan us money if for some crazy reason we couldn't get out of paying it (I have no pride...but R does).

In other news...I moved offices today. Moved from a closet-sized office on the third floor with no windows in sight to a decent-sized office on the sixth (top) floor with windows and thus sky visible just across the hall. My team of 3 managers also moved with me. It's lovely. Except I don't particularly feel like anyone on the 6th floor wants us up there. We're outsiders, intruders, squatters. But we're friendly enough and sometimes funny and we bring candy so they can't dislike us for long. No, they can. Some of them can. But I'm going to be my nicest me or I'll just hide in my very end-of-the-hall office and never be seen except darting out to get water or go to the bathroom. I have easy access to a staircase.

I think I might be an introvert. I am. I like people I just don't want them to be able to see me and talk to me whenever they want. People tell me I could be a spy. I'm not sure that's a positive thing to tell a woman.

Thank God tomorrow is Tuesday.

Scatter-brained

I am finding it ridiculously hard to concentrate today. The past couple of weeks have been this way, truth be told. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever be able to focus again. What if I'm like this for the rest of my life, sitting at my desk in nonproductivity, responding to random emails while ignoring the important ones, failing to see what I am able to do and only seeing what I cannot do, checking the BBC web site every ten minutes to read about the Virginia Tech shootings (terrible!) and updates from Darfur (terrible!) and Madonna's second visit to Malawi (who cares?), checking the weather, seeing who's on Skype, listening to uninteresting conversations outside my office, drinking too much coffee, chewing too much gum, wasting time, wasting away, wasting energy, wasting space, wasting electricity. I think my brain used to function better than it does now. I could share my story as a warning to teenagers: "This is your brain 10 years after illegal drugs." Or "This is your brain on prozac." Or "This is what happens when you lack a clear purpose, plan and vision in your job." But teenagers don't care about that.

Oh Lord, won't You give me clarity, patience to get through this, wisdom and perseverence to do something worthwhile even when things feel vague and uncertain? I feel stuck.

Moody ramblings

I haven't experienced a lot of significant suffering in my life. I haven't had to go through losing someone very close to me, I haven't lived through a war in my own neighborhood, I've never wondered where my next meal will come from. Strange that I feel like I have suffered so much, just being alive. I have felt so much pain and loss and grief and frustration, most of it self-inflicted or seemingly so. As though I could have avoided it all had I been smarter, more obedient, less willfull, more reasonable. I wonder, though, what suffering I would have felt had I been all those things.

In the past couple of weeks, I've been tracking the blog of a young woman whose husband suffered from pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed just after they got married less than two years ago. Between then and now, they had twins. He died Wednesday night. I can only imagine what that must feel like -- somehow, my heart aches and my eyes well with tears, imagining what she is going through. I suppose that's what compassion is. I wonder at the fact that God gave us this capacity for compassion.

Last night, Richard and I watched the movie, "Blood Diamond." This is a movie about the role the diamond trade played in fuelling civil war in Sierra Leone (among other places) less than a decade ago. I've been to Sierra Leone twice as part of my job (it was actually the first country in Africa I spent any time in); Richard lived there for a time and visits regularly. I love the country -- it is astonishingly beautiful and harsh and inviting and intimidating and maddening all at the same time. The movie, as intended, cut deep into my heart. It captured the senseless killing and unspeakable violence, the tearing apart of families, the loss of innocence of thousands of boys forced to be soldiers and made into instruments of terror. It captured the desperation of a man trapped in chaos, driven to find and protect his child. It captured the power that money and wealth command when hearts are hardened by violence, evil, and the almost complete absence of hope for anything better. It captured the stunning reality of the endless possibility for redemption.

I was sobbing before I went to bed last night and found myself in tears again this morning. A part of me longs to enter into a warzone -- there are so many, they are all around us -- just to suffer with those who are suffering, to give suffering a name or an explanation that is bigger than I am, to be with those who seem to be without hope but are living just a stone's throw from redemption. Another part of me thinks this is ridiculous and insulting and unfairly glamourizing the life of the suffering. A part of me thinks we can enter into suffering wherever we are, or we can choose to turn away from it -- from our own, from another's. We can be a part of the redemption or we can join in the evil, be complacent and self-obsessed and hard-hearted. I fear that without even thinking about it I make the wrong choice more often than not, and I wonder if it would be any different if I lived in another country or another time. I don't know.



(Photo from my last trip to Sierra Leone, taken by Michael J. Fiedler.)

The Walk to Work

I walk to work most days. It's sort of a compulsion. It could be raining or snowing or 101 degrees and I'd still feel inclined to walk to work. It's a fascinating, two-and-a-half mile journey across Patterson Park and about 30 blocks down Baltimore Street into the center of the city. Charm City. The Greatest City in America, according to the bus-stop benches.

Just about two-thirds of the way to work, there is a strip of semi-abandoned buildings across from a sign shop and a homeless men's shelter/drug treatment center. Next to a building that looks like it used to be a small bank or a strange temple is an open grassy area. Each morning, a man is standing on the edge of the field feeding bread to birds. I should say, he is dumping torn-up pieces of loaves of sliced white bread. He has a whole black garbage bag that he reaches into to pull out a new loaf after he's dumped mauled shreds and chunks of white bread to the ground. There are plenty of gulls and pigeons circling around but they are never able to eat as quickly as he tosses the starch to the ground. It covers the grass. It is amazing. This morning, swarms of birds circled overhead, seemingly uncertain which way to go or where to land to find a spot not already claimed by other birds. It felt like an Alfred Hitchcock film without the blonde lady.

I wonder about the man who feeds the birds. He seems to care less about feeding the birds than he seems frantic to get rid of the wealth of bread. And yet, a part of me thinks he must be extraordinarily lonely to give away such a feast every morning, just for the temporary, parasitic company of dirty feathered creatures. These are not majestic or pretty birds. These are city birds. And this man who does not appear to have much in the way of belongings or money is intent upon lavishing the refined carbohydrates upon them, inviting them near. I wonder about this man, what he's thinking, why he does what he does, where he goes when the feeding is over, how he feels. I don't know that I'll ever get up the nerve to ask him, but some day perhaps. For now, I like the mystery.

Lonely

Isn't it a funny thing to feel lonely? Is that the dominant feeling, or is it more like fear, or dread, or sadness, or emptiness, or disbelief, or grief. I find it so strange that I can go through a week surrounded by people, conversation, strangers, friendly faces, silly jokes, come home to warmth and dreams and surreality, someone else's life almost. And then I wind up here, sitting on my couch, weeping, wanting the day to be over, fearing the next day, wanting so much for something but wanting the exact opposite at the exact same time. I do not know what I want. Is that a true statement? I want to want nothing, to mourn for nothing, to long for nothing, to miss nothing, to regret nothing. God the feelings are so strong, like they could shoot out of my stomach or just beneath my heart, like I could project them loudly with my vocal chords, and they would be rich and mournful sounds, wailing, beautiful.

I wonder how they would sound to Richard's ears. Would he fall in love with them or would he find them too disturbing? I think he would like them, he would see beauty in them, he would tell me to record them. At first he'd find them too dark, too melancholy, but he would come around.

I don't know what to do with myself when I get like this. Other than go to sleep and pray for release for tomorrow.

Sunny California

I arrived in San Diego last night. I'm spending the weekend at my sister's. She had a baby two months ago, so now not only do I get to enjoy her golden retriever, but I get to hold a baby whenever I want! What could be better?? We've had a marvelous day: I woke up, held the baby, ran 3 miles, talked to Richard, went for a walk with sis, baby and dog, went to Starbucks, ate breakfast, did some work, watched TV, took a catnap, did a little more work, talked to my parents on the phone, and held the baby some more. And it's only 3pm! Truly, I feel blessed.

I wonder if I'll ever read this post and consider myself pathetic.

It's funny how just watching a baby smile and yawn and stretch is like witnessing a miracle. (Picture of me with baby. Photo credit: my dad.)



................................

Now it's 8:30pm and we've just watched a movie called "The Holiday." I really hate romantic comedies. They almost always make me angry, or anxious, or depressed, or all of those things combined. I feel dirty somehow. Maybe it's the three slices of pizza I ate, or the fact that my hands smell like dog. Something about sitting around all afternoon -- it starts out feeling like a lovely idea, relaxing, indulgent, and it ends up with me in a bad mood wanting to go to sleep early.

The good news is, I still have issues.

I've not posted in a while. The past couple of weeks have been interesting. Work is extremely busy and I feel distracted quite a bit. There is change in the wind -- the organization is shifting and I'm not exactly sure where I'll land but it seems like it's a good thing that things are moving. I hope and pray that when things are settled, I will be more productive, more focused, more capable of leading and making decisions. I pray I have not become complacent amidst uncertainty. I pray for a healthier work environment. God, I need you now. Always, but I know it now. Please be near.

odds and ends and in the dog-house

Lucky and I had company this week -- a couple (from a partner church in Oregon) that is preparing to move to Burundi to serve as partnership coordinators/communications people. They were great; we really connected with them. It was refreshing to be with another couple that shares a lot in common with us -- the husband was cynical and a little dark like me, but also a dreamer and a bit scatter-brained like Lucky. The wife was more detail-oriented, liked her space, and was eager to walk fast with me to work -- we bonded instantly.

Okay, I officially have to stop referring to my husband as Lucky. It's just not working for me. I am going to have to reveal his real name. Richard. There.

Richard arrived home from Egypt last Sunday night. Our visitors arrived the night before, so we didn't have any time to ourselves. Then Richard came down with a bug of some sort (cold/flu) and was down for the count starting Wednesday. I tend to be less-than-full-of-mercy when Richard gets sick. I always think to myself, "He had cancer, for goodness' sake. Why is he complaining so much about a cold? It'll be gone tomorrow." I'm getting better at letting him be sick and at having sympathy for him, but it's still not a great strength for me. Richard was hurt this week by my lack of attention and care -- I didn't call him a lot, I didn't bring him dinner Thursday night when he asked me to, I went to happy hour after work yesterday instead of coming straight home. It's true: I'm a terrible wife. I cannot deny it.

The unfortunate (or maybe it's fortunate?) reality is that I am largely motivated by guilt. Richard pointed this out to me when we first got married. The other reality is that Richard can be passive-aggressive. He doesn't tell me he's upset until it's too late for a simple apology and I feel like I should flog myself. I know he doesn't do this on purpose, and I also know that I should be more attuned to his feelings. Good thing we have our whole lives to figure out this marriage thing.

I just received an email from my boss's boss saying I should have introduced her to our visitors and let her spend some time with them. So glad she decided to tell me after they were long gone and there was nothing I could do about it.

It's interesting how fragile we all are. How disappointed we make each other. How hard it can be to express our needs and see how the other person responds. I think I deny that I have any needs, like it's easier to come across as self-sufficient and strong even if it makes me bitter and repressed. Richard knows me too well to believe that I am self-sufficient, but I still like to pretend I am at times. He gives and gives and I take without thinking about it, and then he gets upset that I don't give nearly so much back when he needs me to. I take him for granted. May God change me to love him better...

Another Day

It is hard when you don't really know where you're going. It's hard not to get complacent with where you are. You might completely and utterly hate where you are, but it's the only place you know with certainty and everything else is just could be, probably not, unlikely, might happen, pray about it. I'm not the sort of person who likes to brainstorm or dream about lots of different scenarios. I like to determine the best or most likely scenario and go with it. I must have some sort of deficiency in my brain, or my heart.

I think the other problem is that I don't really know where I want to go. And when you don't know where you want to go, it sure as hell isn't fun to brainstorm about it. Makes me want to crawl up into a ball and disappear. Makes me think of the musical, Stop the World, I Want to Get Off. Seriously. Stop.

Reflections on a Day in the Life of...

My husband has been out of town for a week now. I've been living on popcorn and oatmeal -- except for tonight, I splurged on sushi. I feel a little gross. Not because of the sushi, more because of the overwhelming build-up of carbs in my system. Is it possible they've built up?

My friend Beaner and I used to talk about writing a book that would be called "The Anti-Atkins Diet: White and Refined," to honor our love for bread and other carbohydrates. We used to be involved in a ministry that would serve dinner each week, and the woman in charge would bake the most amazing bread -- it was dense as a rock, a very soft, rich, buttery rock, and it would sit warmly in the bottom of your stomach for hours, reminding you how important it would be to engage in physical activity the next day when you were able to move about normally again.

Beaner and I took a long walk today. It was an astonishingly beautiful morning that turned into a windy but still lovely afternoon. We went to a store in Fell's Point that makes us wish we had more money so we could buy useless but strangely appealing things like $38 scented candles and soap carved into different breeds of dogs. Actually, we discovered we're just as happy mocking such things and our culture that markets them so successfully. Beaner told me she went to the farmers' market this morning and offered a homeless man an apple. He responded that he had no teeth. She was at a loss for words.

After our walk, I felt compelled to go jogging because it had been my plan to go jogging today and darn it I had to follow my plan. So I put on my spandex pants and my jacket and jogged through Patterson Park, running past couples walking their dogs, groups of boys playing football, mothers yelling at their kids to stop doing whatever they were doing. There was a man sleeping on the bench -- he didn't look homeless, just like he'd gotten bored of whatever he started out doing and decided to take a nap in the sun. I couldn't blame him. I ran past a pair of couples and I wondered if they were all happy. I ran as fast as I could at the end -- Lucky always encourages me to "sprint" at the end to get my heart-rate up. I went until I thought my heart might push through my chest and I wanted to throw up. It was a good run.

I have to lead Chapel on Monday at work -- we have Chapel every Monday morning and each department takes turns leading. I somehow got assigned to this one. I'm unsure what to talk about. My life is about running for no apparent reason, about shopping for nothing, about looking at beautiful things, about being constantly behind on emails and phone calls and meetings, about desperately wanting a plan but never having all the information I'd like to have to make it. My life is about feeling incompetent in the workplace, in my marriage, in my pursuit of Christ. My life is about messing up in the same things, going around in circles, being ungrateful for the life I've been given. I think about the people suffering in Mozambique due to floods, people suffering in Burundi due to famine, people suffering in Darfur due to ethnic conflict and inexplicable evil, people suffering in Congo due to a host of disasters. The suffering doesn't ever stop. And today I went jogging. I feel like the only thing I could talk about in Chapel would be the mystery of life, an utterly incomprehensible mystery. What is an appropriate response, when the best we might be able to do is offer a toothless man an apple? What is an appropriate response when we don't have any answers, any insight, any clarity?

I don't know.

No Comfort Zone

This weekend, I attended my first women's retreat. There are reasons I avoided them in the past: I don't like crowds, I can't stand forced interaction, I hate the way the focus is inevitably on women as housewives and moms, and I don't like a lot of women. But my dear friend Beaner and I agreed to go together, so on Friday I had no choice but to get in the car with her and drive to Lancaster, PA. I should have realized that Beaner would know far more women there than I would, that she's been to 6 or 7 of these retreats, and that she's far better than I am at pretending to be an extrovert. I used to feel very uncomfortable as an introvert, but I have mostly embraced it now and will only try to be extroverted in special situations or when I'm inebriated.

That being said, this weekend was way outside my comfort zone. I don't mind that -- I tend not to feel uncomfortable so much as I feel numb and wait for it to end.

Some highlights: getting to know 3 or 4 women whom I only knew in passing before, and finding I would love to spend more time with them; attending a seminar on healing prayer that is leading me to seriously consider pursuing healing prayer at my church (or at least to start writing out the things I think I may need healing from); watching Beaner and a group of women do "praise hula" to the song "Amazing Love/I'm Forgiven" -- it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

This weekend came at a good time for me. I've been feeling particularly tempted in one area of life and it was beginning to erode my faith. I pray this weekend will be the start of God giving me the strength I need to be wise, to resist temptation, to continue following Him rather than turning away as I'm so prone to do. Remarkably prone. It is what I know how to do better than anything -- obedience and perseverence are much more difficult, much more foreign.

We drove home today as heavy snow (for the mid-Atlantic) fell. It was beautiful, it made me glad to be alive, which I don't often feel. Something about snow-covered trees and white-topped rowhouses makes me happy.

I hope and pray for God's protection and healing -- Richard is away this week, in Egypt, and already I feel lonely and bored and ready to do something destructive to keep the feelings away. Strange. I do not really understand myself. One of the teachings this weekend was about being fully known by God, and that when we get to heaven we will finally know who we were truly created to be. God reveals that to us in this life as well, but we only learn it in bits and pieces, as we are faithful to ask and listen. I want to do more of that -- asking and listening to God about who He has created me to be, and who He really is.

This post is a little scattered, I apologize. I feel scattered.

He Knows My Name

I go to a church in the suburbs that's pretty much your typical "mega-church" -- at least mega by Maryland's standards (in California or Texas, it would probably be more akin to a housechurch). The worship music is modern, the pastor is energetic and the messages stay fairly simple. The thing I notice about the music is that we tend to go through phases with songs. Like a modern radio station, we're unlikely to sing a song that was really popular five years ago, even if it's a great song. Of course we'll always throw in an old hymn or two every now and then, but certain songs are simply passe. I find this very sad, but not that surprising.

I don't know if it was this morning or last night, but I was thinking to myself about the song, "He Knows My Name." It's a pretty old-school song, not the most profound of lyrics, not the most haunting melody. I don't recall ever hearing it at my church, but I've heard it a couple of times at other churches and, most memorably, at a dinner celebration one of my organization's church partners held to conclude a Cambodia conference. The song touched me deeply that night in September -- I think because it struck me how God knew (and knows) the names of all the Cambodians who died in the genocide in the late 1970s, how he knows the names of all those who suffer in that country today, how he cares about them and is present to them. The song came back to me this weekend (as it does from time to time).

It often happens that I'll think of a song or be singing a song during the week and then we wind up singing it that weekend in church. I feel like it's a whisper from God, a personal touch of His hand. This morning I went to church and some members of Sandtown's New Song Community Church -- an "inner-city" church -- were leading worship. The third and final song they led was "He Knows My Name." It was so beautiful, so personal, so confirming and sweet. I am so thankful just for that song.

He knows my name
He knows my every thought
He sees each tear that falls
And He hears me when I call

I wonder when I'll become a faithful blogger

It has been so long since the last post, I almost feel tempted to quit and someday start over. Who wants to read a blog that's so inconsistent, so unreliable? And who wants to write it?

My temptation to quit makes me think of how it is when a friend calls and I don't call him/her back immediately, and then it gets to be one week and then two weeks, and pretty soon it's been a month or longer and I am afraid to call at this point, feeling like it has been too long, the waiting period has been too ridiculous, I no longer deserve to call. A good friend who moved to California this fall called me some weeks ago and I've not called her back. I mourn her absence, I miss her dearly, and yet I can't pick up the fricking phone. It is pathological.

So I resist the temptation to give up blogging already. I trust that nobody is reading this yet anyway...

The past month has been...interesting, hard to characterize, a bit up-and-down, a bit nonstop. Again, it makes me feel like a very unsteady, unreliable person. Who knows what mood I'll be in from day to day? Who knows if I'll feel like talking to my husband (let alone anything more intimate)? Who knows if I'll pray and be obedient or fall into bad habits and be consumed by whatever it is in my life that offers to consume me? Since returning home from Christmas break, it has been work that has taken over my life -- this is nothing new. It's my default addiction. Along with it are the ever-present Need for Approval, the Desire for Attention, the Fear of Failure, the Feelings of Incompetence. I'm like the bad case study at the beginning of a self-help book. The good news is I seem to have "gotten over" the miscarriage and am not nearly as devastated as I was 6 weeks ago. The bad news is I probably just replaced one fixation for another and I'm not sure if burying myself in work or whatever else is the same thing as completing the grieving process.

I have this constant, nagging idea that God is disappointed with me, that he's tired of me, irritated, done with me. Like he can't believe how ridiculously ungrateful I am, how repetitive my sins, how slow to learn, how quick to turn away. Does he grieve for me? Is he angry? Does he feel anything about me? I hope he feels something more than frustration. I hope his Word is true, that he does forgive and transform me. I join the man in Mark who says "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief."

I should call my friend.

Canadian Christmas

So Lucky and I have been in Winnipeg for the past week, celebrating Christmas with his family. Celebrating Christmas, eating food that makes me want to throw something (like the food) at someone's head, taking long cold walks through a foot of snow, playing cards with the in-laws, having anxiety attacks about returning to work, feeling guilty about how little desire I have to talk to anyone, allowing myself to indulge on anti-anxiety medication, and other assorted activities. Not quite the ideal week away from home. Why can't I be one of those people who relaxes, relishes every moment of vacation, reads a lot and bakes cookies and enjoys spending time with family we rarely see?

Lucky asked me if I had any New Year's resolutions. I don't really believe in them, but if I did, my resolution for the year would be to change. Even just a little. To be even just a little bit better of a person than I am now. Surely that is possible. And to worry a little bit less, to obsess less about my job and my house and my self. I'm tired of even writing about it.