25 things

Seems like I never update...it's hit and miss...like so much of life. But today, let me again borrow my friend's model for a list of things I'm grateful for corresponding to the date of the month:

1. My grandma's 90 amazing years of life
2. Her fried chicken
3. The weepies "Somebody Loved" song
4. Mary's photo-shoot of our family - all four gens present
5. My kid sister that's taller than me...her nearly 19 years of life post heart-transplant
6. Dana. his unconditional love of me in my unaltered and imperfect state.
7. His constancy
8. Trails' vanilla cokes (always makes the list)
9. Seeing old friends during the holidays (and all their new kids!)
10. Knowing I'm His despite vastness of the chasm that sometimes seems to separate us
11. Patty Griffin's "Heavenly Day"
12. My mom's special Christmas garments
13. Clothes shopping with my sis
14. Crina's perfect man
15. Mara's Cabbage Rolls
16. Playing Spite & Malice with my Gram (card game)
17. RIP to Ruthie - our other card player who died this year (who constantly called me a cheater when I was winning)
18. The furry friends in my life that always listen, love and never judge (Josh, Casey & Capt)
19. Family
20. Snowball fights & Snowmen in the desert
21. Grandpa's stories
22. Home
23. Hanging with Holly
24. Adventures with Maria
25. Stacey & Liz -without which my work life would be a dreary windowless experience

Mr. P.

Today I went to a funeral for childhood friend's father that passed away at the unfortunate and early age of 48. On the way to my seat, I talked to the father of yet another childhood friend. The last time I saw him was at his son's funeral. Everyone is so grown up now. I remember when the wife of the deceased was pregnant with her youngest. She looked to be about 14 now. I thought about all the kids I used to babysit in this town. Went to one of their funerals as well, a few years back.

As I sat in the tiny, crowded chapel in the middle of our small desert town, I wondered about all these funerals. How many more would I attend before someone would attend my own? Does living in a small town mean that more people you've encountered, loved, or known along the way died or simply that you attend more of their funerals? Maybe the same amount of people that you intersect with die, but you just aren't as aware of it if you live in a big city or move around a lot. I'm not sure, it just seems like a lot of people in my world have been dying lately.

Yesterday was my birthday. The party is this evening. Today we mourned a death. Tonight we celebrate a life. I guess that why they call life a cycle based on the ebbs and flows; the ups and downs; and all that falls in between. The awareness of death tempers the joy of life. And, I suppose, conversely, that those moments of beauty, fun, and mystery give us something to cling to when we're sombered and scared by death.

All I know right now is that the death part sucks.

So, to my friend that lost her father and to my friend that lost her husband today:

I'm so sorry...

Image Credit: http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc179/abigail47/cross.jpg

23 Things...

Thankful.

Inspired by a friend, I sat down to list 23 things I was grateful for. Here's what I came up with...Note that the order is not a ranking system... :)

1. My Mom's smile
2. My Dad's hugs
3. My sister's innocent, whole-hearted loyalty as my sister; her unconditional love
4. Sleeping with Casey (family's golden retriever) by the wall heater downstairs when I'm home for Christmas
5. Vanilla cokes at Trails
6. Dana's eyes and the way they smile and hug all at once
7. Cherry blossoms raining their precious white petals in the park in DC
8. Climbing trees
9. The feeling when I'm on console and sequence three rocket events with 15 second intervals - and it works
10. The feeling when I get off console and am excited, elated and exhausted
11. Foy Vance's "Gabriel and the Vagabond"
12. My ipod and the life soundtrack it provides
13. Girlfriends
13. Dreyer's lemon sorbet and marshmallow cream
14. Toiletpapering with Kate in college (or you know, whenever)
15. Hippie time and the beautiful way it interrupts my best laid plans and forces me to lie on the ground and watch the stars under the windmills
16. Magic
17. Pedicures
18. Fountain Coca-Cola in a pint glass with ice
19. Fall colors in New Hampshire
20. Portsmouth, N.H.
21. Roadtrips
22. Forgiveness
23. Hope

Image credit: http://www.janbrett.com/2007_calendar/2007_october_grid.htm (w. slight editing)

Come Thou Font of Every Blessing

That title sounds like a mouthful, huh? Yup. It's true. It's an old hymn whose lyrics and even title are a bit outside the normal modern conversational style for the way we like to put words together now-a-days...But we sang this song tonight and one line just wouldn't let me go...

"Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee."

I don't want to love Jesus b/c it's the "right thing to do" or b/c "I'm supposed to" or b/c of some sort of a begrudging obligation. That's just dumb and, btw, not a whole lot of fun. No, I want to somehow get to point where I actually love Him, where the beautiful demonstration of His goodness overwhelms all the other flashly lights that vie for my attention and so often succeed in appearing to be the next best thing that I run chasing after. I want to love Him b/c He outshines all the other options, not as a sacrifice, not bitterly muttering under my breath about all I'm missing out on, but happily skipping along, simply overjoyed at the beauty of my Jesus...overwhelmed by His goodness that overpowers my desire to wander, wonder, and wriggle away...so much so that I simply want to be nowhere else...

Image Credit: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~toby/alan/gallery/liquid/fount.jpg

Define: Love

I asked the universe (aka Google) to define "being in love" for me and to my semi-shock, it failed. Google couldn't answer that question. So I asked Wikipedia and they did a little better, offering:

"Love is described as a deep, ineffable feeling shared in passionate or intimate interpersonal relationships."

Still, wanting something more scientific, I scanned further to read about the chemical reactions most commonly associated with love, but lost interest quickly after the title and moved on. I wanted a hard answer. A cold fact. A scientific certainty, but it doesn't really work like that with the big L-O-V-E, does it? So I caved and turned to poetry. Wikiquote delivered some points to ponder in this relativistic quest for definition, wrapped up in warm fuzzies -- in this seemingly fruitless pursuit of the non-existent answer that I seek...

Chew on these...

For those doing the long-distance dance...
"Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones. As the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire." ~ Anonymous

"You can break love, but it won't die." ~ Anonymous
I would add you can't buy it either. The "you break it, you bought it" cliche doesn't work here...

For the noble...
"A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave". ~ Mohandas Gandhi

For the nerdy among us...
"Amoris vulnus idem sanat, qui facit.Translation: The wounds of love can only be healed by the one who made them". ~ Syrus Publilius

For the cheesy!
"Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while". ~ The Princess Bride

For those of us who know, those of us who question, those of us who wonder, and certainly for those of us who hurt...
"It's better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all." ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Or so they say...

Hmmm...
"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more". ~ Erica Jong Yikes!

I'm not here, right now, but I understand this. It's raw, real, it grabbed me...
"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love". ~ Neil Gaiman

The soul of compassion is empowered by love...
"I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love". ~ Mother Teresa
My goal is to love like this...

For those of us who freak out, for those of us with phobias and commitment problems, who make big deals out of nothing...perhaps this is what our loved ones would say to us...
"I love you. It's not a weight you must carry around. I love you. It's not a box that holds you in. I love you. It's not a standard you have to bear. I love you. It's not a sacrifice I make. I love you. It's not a pedestal you are frozen upon. I love you. It's not an expectation of perfection. I love you. It's not my life's whole purpose (or your's). I love you. It's not to make you change. I love you. It's not even to make you love me. I love you. It's as pure and simple as that." ~ Anonymous

So, will I ever get the perfect little answer to my question, all tied up with flashy foil gift wrap? I hope not...Here's why...last one...

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity". ~ Gilda Radner

Here's to the delicious ambiguity of life, love, and other mysteries!

Image Credit: http://www.wixel.be/presspix/heart.jpg

The Familiarity of the Foreign

So today, I spent about 7 hours on an airplane 'bound for Mexico. Sounds like the first line to some Country song I suppose, but's it'd really not so much that as my traveling down to Guadalajara for Thanksgiving with my aunt. See, I worked out a deal, well more of an arrangement, well actually more like an announcement, to/with my mom that I'm often going to travel on Thanksgiving, but always be home for Christmas, so here I am, south of the border thinking I'm going to escape cell phones (my phone still receives texts and voicemails) and email (I have DSL in my room) and yet again, my scattered state of existence has me digressing from my main point which is this...

Nevermind the two-year-old that kicked the back of my seat for five hours
Nevermind the one-year-old that kicked my elbow for two hours, or worse yet her loud mother's attempts to keep the kid quiet (honestly, I'd have taken my chances with the kid)
Nevermind all the noisy chatter in the lines and on the plane

The beauty of it was I couldn't understand a thing! So while the teenage girls could've been arguing over who was cuter Justin or Usher or the Mamas could've been delving into their latest weight loss one-pill-wonders or the Papas were chatting about the latest scores on the latest games... I wasn't annoyed. I couldn't have cared less because I simply couldn't understand it. It was just this sort of melodic Latin-sounding background noise that was more or less just a soundtrack for my next adventure. Ya know, kinda put me in the mood to realize that I was leaving on a Central Mexican journey!

I had forgotten how beautiful it is to be traveling internationally...
How fun it is to try new and wierd snacks on the airplanes...
Or see words written in different languages...
Or that beautiful part-euphoric, part-panicked, part-adreniline rush feeling that comes from being in a place outside your normal operating environment...

There was a sweet familiarity in the midst of all these foreign surroundings and it all whispered at some of my favorite memories traveling in different countries. In a wierd way, I felt like I was coming home...

Image Credit: http://www.publichealthidaho.com/Images/passport.jpg

God of my Grey...

Seems like we like to chop life into little bite size pieces...pretty little boxes that we can throw people and ideas into, slap a quick label on and move on... Seems like we're pretty dumb and shallow. Life is so much more complicated than the four letters that comprise the word or the action of the lungs to pull air in and push it out combined with the pump action of the heart to get blood to the right places to keep our physical bodies "living." Life is not a math problem, that, when divided by 2 yields "black" and "white." There are absolutes, to be sure, but most of the time, it's just not that simple, no matter our efforts to argue the contrary.

I especially find that I try to disect my relationship with God into these little boxes. "Black" boxes are the sins, the yucks, the admitable errors that I'll confess to saying shouldn't be in my life and when they are, I'm wrong and need to fix something. When I'm in the black, I'm out of line, have missed the mark, and KNOW it. "White" boxes are the obvious good things that I believe in - charity, love, praying, kindness, etc. The good absolutes upon which I build my foundation - belief in Jesus, caring for others, the Bible, etc. When I'm operating in this realm, it's ok, good things are happening.

But it's not so clear cut, is it? Nope, there's this other crafty, devious little sucker of a color in between my two label-able boxes and its name is "Grey." "Grey" represents all the "I don't knows," the questions, the uncertainties, the fears, the insecurities, the experiments, the unknowns. In the Grey are areas of life that I don't quite understand, that I'm not sure how I feel about them, that I'm not certain of what I believe, that I just don't know if it's wrong or right or relative. In the Grey, I've got to rely on hunches on and deductive reasoning to make my labeling decisions as to whether the items get pushed to the dark or light side of the spectrum. The problem with the Grey is that it's this vague no man's land...this relativistic realm wherein wrong and right are not clearly laid out and what's wrong with that? Well, it's like the old adage that you can't throw a frog in boiling (Black) water b/c it'll immediately jump out, BUT you can put it in lukewarm (Grey) water and slowly bring the heat up until boiling b/c you get comfortable in the lukewarm and the scalding hot sneaks up on ya!

Why am I rambling? Good question. Here's what I'm getting at. I think I put God in boxes. I say, "Ok, Lord, here are my Black items. I recognize these are wrong and I'm cool with you calling me out on it if I start messing with this box. I get it. It's not cool to mess with this box, would you please remove these elements from my life?" and then I say, "God, I've got this White box and in it are all the things I want to be and do for You in my life. It's all the character attributes that I want to emulate, it's the compassion I want to demonstrate; it's the beautiful concepts I want to contemplate...Will you help me become these things?" And I bring Him my two boxes, but then there's all this left over stuff on the floor - all the grey spill over and splashes - and I just leave that alone. I just let that stuff sit b/c I don't really know what to do with it, I don't really want to know what to do with it (it might cramp my style if I have to give up some of those things)...so I conveniently leave it out.

No.

I want Jesus to be Lord of my White and my Black boxes, but if He's to be sovereign in my life, then I need Him to be the God of my Grey too...