Happy Birthday, Brother of Mine

Last week I was hiking with dear friends, drinking in the autumn air and feasting on the fall colors, when the youngest in our group, Baby Finn, pointed excitedly at the loyal dog at our heels and proudly declared, "Dah!". His small voice shot me back in time 21 years. I thought of you, Aaron.

I remembered when "Dah" was your favorite word, the only word you used for quite some time; the word you relied on as you tried to translate the feelings and thoughts in your small soul into sound waves—your contribution to the wide and promising world you were beginning to understand.

You could carry on entire conversations using only the word "Dah," and we almost always knew what you were talking about. We could tell when "Dah" meant, "I'm going to go ride my tricycle, okay?" And when it meant, "Do you see the jack-o-lantern I'm making with this orange paper? I'm gluing it together very carefully." Your wide grey eyes said so much more than your sweet mouth.

I think your little heart would have liked very much to have a dog of your own.

But instead you had a pet goldfish; one you shared with your younger brother; one whose name I cannot remember because you changed it at least seven times. I do know you never named it "Dah" because your vocabulary grew with your chubby frame, and you could eventually pull from a well of words like Fred, Goldy, Snowball, and Simba (name #5, I believe) when christening your scaly new friend.

You must have had a special knack with fish because Fred/Goldy/Snowball/Simba lived years and years. We sure got our fifty cents worth out of him.

Caring for fish wasn't the only thing you had a special knack for. You were also the King Cultivator of new worlds for your "hard animals". You, Marc, and Anne would spend hours in mom's garden carving out caves, propping up trees, and channeling small streams for your plastic animal kingdom. You'd gather your small herd of rhinos, giraffes, warthogs and mustangs and lead them through dangerous territories on daring exploits. You were a plastic animal shepherd.

You grew up to be a shepherd of people, too, Aaron.

When our family traveled the world, wandering the streets of Spain, Ecuador, Italy, and Croatia, you would hang at the back of the pack, slowing our group's pace so that our curious mother didn't have to walk by herself, and protectively eyeing the men who gawked at your blond teenage sisters.

Years later, when friends on your community college track team were lonely and longed for the companionship of a six-pack of Bud Light, you'd go to their houses, sometimes very late at night. You'd listen and encourage, and even challenge. They listened to you because they knew you cared about their souls, that your soul was full of the love of Another Shepherd.

When you moved to Los Angeles to attend Biola University, you were asked to be a student leader in Biola's Athletic Ministry. You poured your creativity and wisdom into your teaching and leading, and you influenced people, Aaron. They wanted to hear what you had to say, to follow your example. I think this is because you've always known something I'm still trying to learn: that being a shepherd doesn't mean being at the front of the pack or convincing others to buy what you're selling. It means spending much of your time behind the scenes—away from the spotlight, in the bowels of community—so that you can care for the needs of the wanderers, flounderers, outsiders and forgotten. A shepherd is a sacrificer of time, money, and comfort; a giver of dignity, compassion, and kindness. You love and lead people, well, Aaron. You point them to the Good Shepherd.

I know it wasn't your practice caring for fish and corralling plastic animals that made you a shepherd, Aaron. I think, when you were being formed in mom's womb, God must have said, "I have set this soul apart; he will be a shepherd of the nations, a tender to wayward hearts. He will grow into a man who understands that in my Kingdom the first shall be last and the last shall be first, and he will point people to My green pastures and streams of Living Water."

Aaron, you've lived well these 23 years because you have served the Giver of Life, the One who gave you a shepherd's heart. I pray He gives you many many more years of shepherding His beloved sheep. And when this shepherd's work makes you tired, discouraged, and lonely, and your staff begins to feel like a rough and heavy cross, I pray you would know Christ's strength, presence, and approval.

I also pray God allows you to see the seeds you've sown, the souls you've shaped, and the lives you've changed on your journey. And as you merge lives with another seed-sower and soul-shaper this spring, I pray you would find deepest satisfaction in shepherding your family as you journey together toward our heaven-home, where our souls will rest in the greenest of pastures.

And finally, I pray that one day you'll have a little boy with big grey eyes—a doggie lover, goldfish re-namer, and plastic animal herder who teaches you the joy of watching a little boy grow into a man who loves and follows the Good Shepherd.

Growing up with you has been one of life's greatest pleasures, Aaron.

I love you mucho grande.

Happy Birthday, Little Brother.

Admiringly,

Sarah

When You Get Slammed with a Late Fee

A few evenings ago I stopped off at the shabby video store down the street from my house to get a movie for the class I was teaching the next day.

As I pulled into the rental store's dark parking lot I muttered to myself about how I needed to run in and out of there fast so I could go home and get my aching body into bed.

I mindlessly put my car in park, eased slowly out of my car, and was startled fully awake by the ferocious snarls of a bulldog who was trying to squeeze his head out the cracked window of the car next to me to, no doubt, kill me.

Now I'm sure the driver didn't think his killer dog could squeeze out of that sliver of an opening to destroy passers by, but I've seen a kid get his head stuck in a smaller gap between two beams on a playground and am well acquainted with the pliable nature of heads. Naturally, I was not happy with the driver's negligence.

My mood grew more foul as I walked into the movie store only to spend who knows how long looking through the unalphabetized dvds for the one I'd come for (what kind of time does this place think I have?!).

I stepped up to the counter, anxious to pay and leave, and was told by the man behind the counter that I had a late fee for my last rental.

"Impossible," I told him . "It was a seven day rental: I checked it out Wednesday and returned it the following Wednesday." I did not smile at him.

"It says you rented it Tuesday and returned it the following Wednesday."

"But I remember checking it out on Wednesday," I said, conveniently forgetting about the memory problems that accompany my health issues. "I picked up the DVD and returned it on my way into work, and I don't go into work on Tuesday." He stuck to his guns.

"It's fine, it doesn't matter," I sighed. I still didn't smile, and this time there was an edge in my voice. A cranky, I'm so over this misunderstanding that is likely not my fault kind of edge.

I paid for the DVD and late fee, and walked around the counter so the clerk could hand it to me. The man shuffled over to me and handed me the DVD.

He couldn't look me in the eyes.

My heart sank and I quickly walked out the door so I could get out of there, like I'd wanted all along.

As I walked to my car and crawled in through the passenger's side to avoid Killer Doggie, I had a vision of Jesus picking an adulteress up out of the dust, looking at her with love when no one else would. I saw him talking to a scorned Samaritan woman—the town ho—and offering her eternal life, and I saw him letting a woman sit at his feet in a culture that only allowed men hang out with rabbis like Jesus.

I saw him rounding up a band of frumpy fishermen from a backwater town and telling them he'd use them to change the world. I saw him joining a reject tax collector for dinner, grabbing the deformed hands of an outcast leper, and pulling small children into his lap when there were important adults waiting to talk to him.

I saw him dignifying humans; making them feel like they were worth pulling up out of the dust; giving them a reason to raise their heads and pull their shoulders back; assuring them he didn't condemn them and it was okay for them to lift their eyes to his steady gaze of compassion.

And oh! when Jesus tells us to follow in his footsteps, he has commissioned us to spend our days dignifying the people around us by convincing the marginalized new kid that he's worth befriending, showing the man with cerebral palsy that he's worth serving, reminding the girl who got pregnant at 15 that she still has lots to offer the world, and assuring the movie store clerk that he can look into our eyes and find compassion there.

I wish I had dignified the man who stood behind the movie counter the other night, that I had remembered the great worth of his soul. I wish I had shown him that he is infinitely more important than a possibly "unfair" late fee.

I wish my focus had been outward, not inward. No—I wish my focus had been upward, that I opened myself up to the power of the Great Dignifier as I struggled to respond to my fellow soul with warmth and patience. I wish I could go back and do that night over again.

I haven't seen the movie store clerk since that night, but I've rubbed shoulders with several people—friends, family and strangers—since then, right when my soul was most laden with anxiety, fatigue, and just plain crabbiness. In his kindness, Jesus has given me lots of other opportunities to try to dignify the people around me, the way he did. And I am learning that when Jesus gives me second chances, he crowns me with dignity.

Ode to a Dying Earth

Today the mountain wears a golden burial shroud, welcoming winter’s death as a crown.

Autumn pine peer solemn and silent at the dying earth through her cathedral windows of deepest amber and caramel, framed by slender branches.

Aspen quake and shiver, death staining their leaves with brilliant orange,

And the meadows stand still and breathless,

Waiting for the mountain that once quivered with life to die

So that she can live again.

And I, I sit at her base and sup on bread and wine,

This once living food now dead, coursing through my dying body so that I might live.

This, a reminder of the only Living Food; the grain and the vine, the Bread and the Wine;

The One who died and then lived.

And in this communion with death surrounded by the dying I know it’s true what they say,

Beauty is the Resplendence of Truth;

For the colors ring and the silence sings of death that gives life,

Of the Living One,

Who makes all things new.

Thursday Things: A Colorado Adventure, Part I

1. I'm in Colorado.

2. I love it here.

3. I could move here.

4. Here's why:

4a. This is what it looks like when you decide to go driving in the Colorado mountains in September.

Saffron and Tangerine

Mustard and Caramel

Amber and honey

4b. The touristy section of Denver has a piano on every city block.

Middle C sounds like F and Chopin's Prelude in C# Minor sounds like pea soup on these inner-city pianos, but there's nothing quite like playing outside in the fresh mountain air.

One of my dreams is to play a grand piano in a mountain meadow surrounded by quaking aspen and towering pine. This is the closest I've gotten to that dream.

4c. This is what impromptu picnics are like in Colorado.

4d. This guy lives in Colorado.

Everyone, this is Dirk.

Everyone: "Hi Dirk."

Dirk's family and my family go way back: as kids we homeschooled together, camped together, communed over $5 "cardboard" pizza together, and explored, created, and got into trouble together.

Dirk is family, and eating Peruvian fare at the base of the Rocky Mountains with him felt like going home.

4e. There is lots of leather in Colorado. Soft, fragrant, turquoise-studded leather.

This is my best cowgirl face.

4f. Small mountain towns like Steamboat Springs, Colorado have drug stores with real live soda fountains and jukeboxes that play Elvis. This is me cuttin' a rug with some mad (i.e. "awkward string bean") moves.

I believe this photo has captured my inimitable "Sprinkler" move.

4g. Colorado is a great place to make new kindred spirit friends.

5. The fresh, clean Rocky Mountain air has been so good for my body, and the fellowship with new friends so good for my soul. The Lord has buoyed and bolstered my health the last few days and this is the first week in months and months that I feel like I've been able to really participate in life. I am loving it.

When I Wake Up Hungry

Last night I went to bed craving a bar of swiss chocolate—the kind that's loaded with so much cream it melts in my mouth before I have a chance to chew it. Today I woke up dying for a steaming, frothy latte and a thick slab of pumpkin bread, hot out of the oven.

When I quickly and hungrily climbed out of bed and almost blacked out from the exhaustion of the week I decided it would be nice to take a vacation to Italy where I'd eat loads of fresh bread and butter, heaps of cheesy pasta, and bucketfuls of gelato.

Then I remembered that I'm not allowed to put gluten, sugar, dairy, or caffeine in my body, and I concluded that heaven can't get here soon enough. Because I'll have a new body in heaven, and I'm pretty sure the lattes and chocolate there will be off. the. hook.

So I started dreaming about heaven, where my desires won't ever go unsatisfied, where my Jesus will fully fill all the empty cracks and hollows in my soul. I'm learning that letting my mind drift "further up and further in" to my heaven-home is the loveliest tour an imagination can take— it fertilizes my hope of future glory and helps me to center my heart on the place I belong.

Won't you join me as I muse?

1. I hope Turkish delight in heaven is as exquisite as Edmund thinks it is in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.

When I tasted Turkish Delight for the first time I felt certain someone was playing a joke on me. To think this supposedly smooth, creamy, and divinely sweet Turkish Delight is really just chunky jelly coated in powdered sugar. Heaven will certainly rectify this egregious culinary blunder.

2. Boy but laughter is divine, and I cannot wait to have a deep belly laugh with God. If all of the truest, wholesomest, and rip-roarin' funniest humour is just a shadow of the kind of humor that flows from God's holy character, then we are in for some right good laughs, folks. Especially when you consider that our current belly laughs are facilitated by bellies in fallen bodies. What capacity must a resurrected and perfect body (belly) have for laughing?!

3. Have you ever hiked Half Dome in Yosemite in autumn? It's spectacular. The crisp air is perfumed with traces of summer pine. The mountains rise jagged and majestic on every side, a banner of deepest blue stretched wide behind them. The trail is dotted with fragrant wildflowers, and everywhere there are deciduous trees turning vibrant shades of saffron, amber, crimson, and caramel. Around some bends in the trail there are silvery looking-glass lakes; around others are undulating waterfalls, chortling as they tumble from heights to depths.
If an orchestral symphony could be translated into visual artwork it would look like Yosemite.

Each time I survey this staggering beauty I can't help but remember this land is cursed. This is an imitation of the real thing; it's but a shadow of our heaven-home. Can you imagine what it looked like before the fall of man? I think we will know in heaven. And I hope to find autumn in some corner of heaven. I think its colors and smells are too strong and alive for my senses now, but I sure can't wait

4. Oh how I yearn for the day that I feel really, truly known. In heaven all of my dingy facades and tarnished masks will melt away with sin's soul scars and stains and I will know what it is to stand before my Creator naked, known and loved. And the best part is I will know him fully, even as I am fully known.

What must it be like to hear the voice that spoke the stars into the sky, calls dead men to life, and courses with love say my name....

5. In that same vein, I am so excited to see and really know my dear friends and family in their truest form, uninhibited by fear and unfettered by insecurity; radiant in purity and splendor as they rule and reign with Christ, more themselves they've ever been before. I think I will stand in awe at their beauty.

6. A friend recently shared this by Charles Spurgeon with me: "You may look, and study, and weigh, but Jesus is a greater Savior than you think Him to be when your thoughts are at the greatest."

Now close your eyes and picture his eyes burning love into the darkest corners of your soul, speaking compassion to your withered heart, resurrecting your deepest dreams and desires and then satisfying every yearning you've ever known.

Let your imagination plumb the depths of his goodness and love, and then remember that the Savior is much, much greater than even this. It doesn't matter how far and wide you stretch that imagination of yours, you will never approach his great compassion and loving kindness.

This is the one who fights for you, walks with you, and lives in you. Blessed be his good and holy name.

7. Okay, now it's your turn: what do you hope for in heaven?!

© by scj

Ramona

Today, if I didn't have papers to grade, a presentation to prepare, and lessons to plan, I would curl up with this:

I miss Ramona Geraldine Quimby, her annoying big sister, Beezus, and their adventures on Klickitat Street. Work and bills and deadlines will do that to a gal. ;)

Thursday Things: Another Year Behind Me

1. Several days I ago absentmindedly opened my front door and almost walked face first into this:

If I were brave enough to hold the golf ball that I keep in my purse next to the spider for the picture, you would see that the spider. is. bigger. She is the BIG Bertha of Big Berthas; the mother of all spiders, getting cozy above MY front door.

Bertha was entirely too big for me to kill (I wasn't about to attempt a skirmish with her), and so I used a rake to carry her to the opposite side of my patio where I threw her over the patio wall. She landed with a very loud thud. I still shudder when I remember it.

The next morning I awoke to find this a few feet to the right of my french doors:

She's back folks, and I can't help but wonder if it's with a vengeance. Now, every time a wayward hair tickles my skin I do the spider dance (you know what I'm talking about).

Someone call the exterminator.

2. This is what we call a culinary success [finally]:

Admittedly they are a leetle brown, but these gluten-free, refined sugar-free, dairy-free apple spice muffins were totally edible. Welcome to Los Angeles, Autumn. (She's not really here yet, I'm just hoping that a warm welcome and the smell of cinnamon apple in the air will entice her to visit for a few months).

3. I turned 27 over the weekend.

My wonderful cousin made me these cupcakes. They were delicious!

This is the first birthday that's made me gulp big and wish fervently that time would slow down a bit. I figure 40 is just around the corner (because, my how the last eight years have flown), and although I hear the 40's are marvelous, there's so much I'd like to do before I get there (and so little time). This is a problem I will gladly embrace. I love that life has so much to offer.

To celebrate my big day, I enjoyed the L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl with some dear friends and family,

and went paddle boarding in Dana Point with my cousins.

Are there any paddle boarders in the house? If not, you must try it soon! There's nothing quite like being surrounded by the still, quiet ocean, the water lapping against your board, the sun warming your skin and the breeze at your back. It's pretty much impossible to do it without singing the Pocohantas theme song, that's for sure. It was the one time all week that my bodily aches and fatigue faded into nothingness. Glorious.

4. I love love love having a a vegetable garden.

5. Would you be horrified if I told I kill at least one cricket every week? I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how they keep getting into my bathroom.

I wish I had a more effective means of capturing and releasing them so I didn't have to squash them. There's something about their wagging antennae and chipper hopping that makes them kind of endearing.

On that note, a happiest of happy Thursdays to you, my friends!

When God is the One Writing

I've missed you this last week, Friends. It's been a hard health week for me which always makes it difficult for me to write. But today when God pulled the sun up over the horizon there was healing in its warm light, and I have a bit more energy to share something I discovered this last week and have tucked into the folds of my heart to carry with me through each challenging day.

I found it in the book of John, soon after Jesus rubbed spit and mud in the eyes of a blind man and in two strokes of his hand painted the man's world with light, color, and texture. A couple of chapters later this God-Man, whose fingertips bore unmatchable power, received word from his friends Mary and Martha that their brother Lazarus had fallen desperately sick.

The Gospel writer sets the scene for us: Lazarus's sisters know Jesus of Nazareth loves their failing brother (and won't he do something for him?), and Jesus knows that this story will end well—just you wait and see, he tells his disciples: God will be glorified in all this.

Then, just before the story really picks up, the Gospel writer pauses to tell us something very important:

"Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus."

Yes, yes he did. I nod as I read. This is the first thing I learned about Jesus when I was little tyke in Mrs. Doerschuck's Sunday School class, with her sweet smile, softly curling white hair and singsong voice: "Jesus loves us this we know..."

I go back and read it again.

"Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus."

"So when he heard Lazarus was sick," the Gospel writer continued.

My heart quickens. The English teacher in me knows that the word "So" means "to the great extent that," or, "for this reason." So I know the next words on the tissue-thin page will reveal the sort of thing God does when he loves people a lot—people like us, who need to be reminded of the ways Jesus shows us his love.

I lift my eyes and gaze for a moment at the pink geraniums smiling through my window. The muscles around my spine ache as I sit turning the first few verses of Lazarus's story over and over in my mind, thinking about all of the things that could follow that "So".

 My thoughts move slowly through my foggy mind (has it grown into a forest of cotton?), and I am aware that my limbs have fallen limp and exhausted at my side from the sensation of lead sitting thick and still in them.

My emotions are slumped with my body—a body that almost daily reminds me that it is dying, slowly and quietly.

 I remember realizing as an adolescent that we're all dying; that our bodies consistently deteriorate after childhood and that this is the effect of the Fall of Man. It's just that now it's hard for me to forget about this steady return to dust when my body so often aches and trembles with fatigue.

 And so I daily cry out to God, asking him to sustain and heal me, to keep my body from falling into even more severe illness; and I think, in a very small way, I may understand how Mary and Martha felt and hoped when they asked Jesus to come to Lazarus.

"So when he heard Lazarus was sick he stayed where he was two more days."

Two long days with seconds that passed so slowly the minutes felt like hours, and hours that crawled by slower than lifetimes. Just long enough for Lazarus' body to break and die.

There are tears in my eyes at this point, because this story is not turning out the way it did with the blind man, and I think Jesus shows us his love in ways I wouldn't have chosen.

I keep reading: Jesus makes his way to Martha and Mary's house where he knows Lazarus lies dead, and reminds his disciples along the way of what he'd said when he first heard about Lazarus's illness: "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory....that you may believe."

I know the rest of the story well. Martha runs to meet Jesus as he nears their house, lamenting his late arrival. He promises her Lazarus will rise, and this Jewish woman remembers aloud another promise: the promise of resurrection at the last day.

 I think Jesus must have tipped her downcast, tear-stained face up toward his when he replied, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die."

I think Martha's heart must have quaked and soared.

Together, Jesus walks with Martha into the village where they find Mary grieving among friends and family. Jesus looks at their heaving shoulders and contorted faces, hears their gutteral wails, and is deeply moved.

Even in the face of his transcendent plan to use Lazarus' sickness and death for God's glory, he enters their pain and weeps with them over their dead friend, Lazarus.

 Then he walks to the tomb and calls for Lazarus, telling him to come out into the arms of his sisters and friends. And Lazarus emerges from the tomb's darkened doorway, tearing off his grave cloths as his blinking eyes adjust to the piercing light.

And the resplendence of God's glory fills that brilliant light, and many of the people around Lazarus believed.  

My soul swells and sighs as I look up from my Bible and I know that I want God's glory to radiate from my weakness so that I and others might believe in his power, goodness, and unmatchable love in order that we might have life.

I also know that this is what God will give me. He is writing more of his glory and goodness into my story than I could ever write myself, and although the story he pens may look very different from the story I'd pen, he writes it this way because he loves me.

And so I try to see my story through his eyes, remembering that he is the God of Resurrection who douses our pain with his life-giving glory.

I thoughtfully close my Bible, set it on my cluttered kitchen table, and walk over to the sink where I begin to slowly wash my dishes, murmuring as I lather,

"Now Jesus loved Sarah Christine. So he allowed her a long season of illness...."

And I ask him to make sure that the story ends in his glory, even if it ends in sickness, because his glory is our greatest good.

How might your story change if you told it this way?

Thursday Things: Sometimes Even Corvettes Have Engine Trouble

Well folks, it's that time of the week again, and I'm sorry to say I'm still lugging around my station wagon computer and its impossibly long and bulky power cord, because of course station wagon computers have a battery life of about 3 minutes.

I did get my honda-turned-corvette back on Tuesday, and boy was she fast. That little baby blazed many a smokin' trail through my piles of work all evening, and then her engine starting acting up. So now she's back in the shop in the hands of an amazing tech guy named Jim Bob. Well, his name is James Robert, but at this point the IT guys and I are on a nickname basis, and Jim Bob is so much more fun to say. It makes me want to get on a pogo stick and start wildly bouncing. Try it. Say Jim Bob five times fast and see if you don't want to get your hop on.

Anyway, the absence of my trusty Mac means you're in for some real spacing/layout treats today. So, without further ado, I give you this Thursday's Things, the Thursday edition:

1. I was just trying to revive my wilting petunias (we've had a real scorcher of a week here SmogVille) and my heart started aching for this:

My family stayed in an old renovated castle in Austria during the summer of 2004 so my dad could utilize the castle's library while he worked on his dissertation. One of the highlights that summer was hiking down into the village where we'd walk along the river and admire the blossom bedecked balconies and windowsills. Ever since then my gardening skills have seemed a little...lacking.

2. Thinking about those walks along the river gave me a hankerin' for some fresh Austrian mountain air, and maybe a yodeling session or two.

I don't know if my brother and I are doing any yodeling in the picture below, but we are definitely bellowing, "The hills are aliiiiive with the sound of muuuuuusiiiiic!"
#36 on my bucket list: cheeeck.

3. Of course those hankerins gave me more hankerins:

For a jubilant Lithuanian polka around a dancing fire in the alps (there were quite a few Lithuanians staying at the castle):

And a hayride on a MidSummer's Eve:

According to Lithuanian tradition, we made flower crowns to wear in our hair for the longest eve of the year, and then rode through the Austrain alps before sunset. (My sister and my backs are facing the camera. She's in red and I'm to her right in denim, with my hair wrapped around my head like a fraulein).

4. Ahhh, such glorious travel memories. I even began to wish for another opportunity to travel like this:

(Because there's nothing quite like driving through the Alps, your face smashed against the window, not because you are eager to drink in the scenery (although you are) but because there are 12 suitcases bearing down on your gravity-compliant little body.)

And this:
This was at a truck stop in France (we took week-long trips to nearby countries that summer). It was a much, much better alternative to getting some shut eye in our stuffed little Puegeot van.

5. And of course thinking about France made me wish I could eat a strawberry tart at a picnic table surrounded by this:

6. But instead, I'm going to go watch this in preparation for the class I teach in two weeks:

I am hoping the foreign scenery and occasionally convincing French accent satisfy my travel craving.

It's amazing what wilted petunias can do to a person's Thursday, isn't it?

Salut mes amis!

Just Around the River Bend

This evening I huffed and puffed up the big hill in my neighborhood toward a horizon drenched in honeyed light. I stepped over scuttling baby lizards, past tall gates covered in climbing jasmine, and smiled at the lady watering flowers under the giant wooden cross that stands erect in her front yard.

As I walked through this peaceful quiet I noticed my deep thoughts were punctuated by even deeper sighs; my shoulders were rigidly tense and the muscles around my chest were slowly tightening around my steadily beating heart, and I realized I was waiting for something.

With this realization came a flood of realizations—that I'd been sighing deep yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and I've been living as if I am waiting for something.

It doesn't take long for me to identify the things I'm waiting for. I'm waiting for spring semester when I'll hopefully be healthy enough to resume my philosophy classes after taking this semester off; I'm waiting to finish my degree so I can get a Ph.D. so I have more teaching prospects; I'm waiting for the floor to get mopped so I can put my feet up, the papers to get graded so I can read a book, the weekend to end so I can resume teaching, and the work week to end so I can resume resting; I'm waiting for the day my body is healthy enough to go hiking at sunrise and running at sunset; and, if I'm honest, I'm waiting for the day I meet a man who makes my heart quicken and my soul stand in awe of a God who gives good husbandly gifts. And I know that what I'm really waiting for is a life that looks the way I think it should.

I didn't do this when I was a kid. When I was a kid I had a settled contentedness, and although I sometimes burst into a heartfelt rendition of Pocahontas' "Just Around the River Bend," I wasn't thinking about the bend in life's road—or river—that brings surprising, and sometimes jarring and undesirable changes. I was living in the here and now, soaking up the gifts of the present.

Sometime before I joined the ranks of the double digit folk I had a few adults tell me I'd grow into an adult and wish I were a kid again, and so I determined to live it up in my youth. I climbed the highest trees, ate the stickiest candy, explored the wildest corners of the neighborhood, and rollerbladed down the steepest hills. I enjoyed years of this childhood reverie, and then I stepped quietly into adulthood, my soul popping with over-the-top ambition and swollen with starry-eyed dreams, and I started to sigh deep heavy sighs.

The thing about ambition is it's elusive—our imaginations whisper of greater victories and more satisfying conquests; and the thing about dreams is they're not bound by time they way we are. And these grand imaginations and eternal dreams of ours, they're shadows of Another World that beckons our sighing souls; they are the signposts that declare "You're not made for here!...you are not made for here!...you are not made for here."

These heavenly shadows remind me that my life was supposed to look different than it does. My soul was created to delight in God's unveiled glory in a Paradise untarnished by human narcissism and rebellion. My imaginative mind was created to drink deep from the Fount of all Wisdom and Knowledge, and my heart was created to commune with the Creator God's in a state of deepest, eternal satisfaction. And so I know, when I sigh deep and restless, I am really longing for the home I haven't seen, for the place God is preparing for those who love him.

I think perhaps Pocahontas gives us an apt reminder as we journey toward our heaven-home (!). This home, whose earthly echoes awaken aching desires, is waiting unseen around a distant bend on the Way of Jesus. It is the culmination of this journey; the last and greatest destination on a thrilling and tiring pilgrimage. Heaven—seeing Jesus face to face—is not something we just sit around and wait for, and it's not something totally disconnected from and unrelated to the terrain we traverse today, and tomorrow, and the day after. It is something we move toward now, in this fleeting present.

Today we make it our greatest ambition to drink deep from the Fount of Wisdom so that we one day recognize his voice that roars like raging waters....

...We remember that the Object of our greatest and truest desire lives in us, walks with us, and fights for us; and He is the only one who can satisfy....

...We fix our eyes on the glorious truth that Immanuel, God with us, is preparing for us a home that is a Divine Kingdom, and this Divine Kingdom is being established among us, here on earth: Now, in this moment....

...Today we, the Saints, get to build this eternally victorious Kingdom in the power of the Spirit and the presence of Jesus. And when our bodies grow tired and our minds grow weak, when our days seem dull and understated and we're tempted to heave deep and heavy sighs, we let the Father teach our lungs to inhale grace and exhale gratitude, because these are the air of heaven.

Thursday Things: A Really Good Thursday

I woke up yesterday feeling good. Really good—like, normal good. My limbs didn't feel weighed down by lead, the deep fatigue had crept out of my body, I didn't ache all over, and all I wanted to do was whoop and twirl. Instead, I basked in the glorious feeling of renewed health all morning and I got. things. done. Really exciting things like investigating insurance claims, washing dishes, and taking my computer into the shop where it is currently undergoing some sort of rehabilitative surgery. I have high hopes that I will be blogging from the equivalent of a honda-turned-corvette come Tuesday.

In the meantime, I'm writing from a computer that reminds me of the clunky station wagon my mom drove for ten years--a car that was practically longer than our house, and had a gigantic rust spot on the side, back seats that faced backward (the most coveted seats in the cul-de-sac), and an engine that died at every other stop sign. It definitely took longer to get places in that thing. A lot longer.

Needless to say, I'm blaming this painfully slow computer for another Friday edition of Thursday things. (But it could just be that Thursday was so full of feel-good productivity and busyness that my Thursday burst of energy is to blame. Now that is my kind of excuse!)

And now, the Friday Edition of Thursday Things (My apologies for the weird spacing. Station wagon computers are not able to space things correctly):

1. I finally bit the bullet and bought one of these for work:

I'd written off the idea of a computer-carrying roller bag after my experience with this:

My principal gave one of these to me the week he hired me to teach third grade, and it would have worked out just fine if I were about ten inches shorter and enjoyed snapping together its flimsy plastic sides each time I used it. But I'm 5 '8 and I never had an affinity for K'NEX.

Anyway, after a year of walking across campus in 100 degree weather, sweaty high heels, and a pencil skirt that reduced my long stride to a timid waddle, with my arms full textbooks, my computer, the 40-60 papers I'd just graded and the 40-60 packets I was about to hand out, I'm just thrilled to have this handy dandy computer/book/paper carrier on wheels.

My juggling days are over.

2. Thanks to this new roller bag that is actually a carry on, I'm really looking forward to the next time I fly. Which, just happens to be this September.

Destination: Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

I'm going on a five-day "conversation retreat" with eleven other people from around the country. I can't wait to tell you about it.

3. My clinical nutritionist advised me to go organic on the following list of fruits and veggies. Apparently this produce is particularly drenched in pesticides, and, I'm learning, pesticides contribute to high levels of toxicity in our systems that make us tired and more susceptible to illness.

I give you the Dirty Dozen:

1. Apples



2. Celery



3. Strawberries



4. Peaches



5. Spinach



6. Nectarines



7. Grapes



8. Sweet bell peppers



9. Potatoes



10. Blueberries



11. Lettuce



12. Kale/collard greens
    

Happy organic shopping everyone!

And over and out.