Owww...it's beautiful....

I know I'm not the only person who feels like this, that beauty hurts at the same time as it invites you. It always has to, doesn't it, down here post-Fall? But in my head most people who ache at the beautiful are watching sunsets or spotting rainbows or running across hilly meadows in full song.

It's not that I don't feel the pain of beauty at the sight of nature. It's just that sometimes I wonder how many people would laugh at me for saying I used to spend a fair bit of time wandering my backyard under the full moon (singing to myself) versus the number of people who would laugh because I was so filled with the beautiful aching by someone else's creativity that I felt I had to be creative myself or risk bursting. Or the number of people who would laugh because the specific inspiration was an episode of Lost.

But then, to paraphrase the poet: Is there in laughter no beauty?

I’m so old…unless it’s just that I’m a bit of a snob. Which it probably is.

For a while there after college, I felt young and small and scared. Then I joined Harvest and started hanging out with people in the pre-college age range like Abby and Brittany, partly because the people my age were all married, sometimes even with children, and I was atrocious at relating in a natural manner to people who had significant others, let alone significant family units. (I’m improving on this, which is good because so many important people in my life have gotten married or engaged within the years that I’ve been at Harvest.)

Anyway, when I first started spending time with people about two-thirds of my age, I felt very old, albeit still small and scared. And now I don’t.

Maybe it’s because I’m good friends with Trudy, with whom I can spend a lot of time and never think about the fact that technically she’s old enough to be my mom…that is, until she starts talking about some nice young man or other. ;)

Maybe it’s because my “young” friends are embarking on their post-college careers and it’s sort of leveling us out.

Maybe it’s because one time I said I was too old to be a college student now and Micah said, “You’re not too old, you just feel too superior,” and that suddenly sounded like a more accurate description.

And/or maybe it’s because I’m finally owning my age. Next year I’ll be thirty. It seems as though I’ve been old enough to be thirty for some time now, and I’m ready for it. I’ve already started thinking of my age as twenty-nine, and when people ask my age lately I’ve had to stop and remind myself that my twenty-ninth birthday isn’t until June.

I’m not as mature as I’m going to be, and I’m younger than a lot of people. But, yeah. I’m older than a lot of people, too.

I have a feeling that being the crazy adult is going to be a lot of fun.

Conversations with Myself

Because I live alone, and because I am my father and my mother combined and beyond, and because I have had bad experiences with talking to other people and I have pulled an illegitimate "lesson" from them, and because of (doubtless) an array of other reasons, I talk to myself.

Who else is there? Besides God, and sometimes He doesn't seem so quick to answer.

This is a good illustration of what I mean. Because as I typed that last sentence, this popped into my head: "What if you really already know what His answer is?"

Recently I've been talking to myself more frequently. I talk out loud, because, as a friend said tonight, something that sounds great in your head can sound suddenly stupid when you say it out loud. I know I've had a lot of stupid thoughts turn into even stupider thoughts and spiral down into self-destructive patterns before too long, and if I can stop them by verbalizing them, I would like to try that for a change. (Also, I'd rather sound suddenly stupid when only I'm around to hear it.)

The whiny or confused voice usually leads off these conversations, to be fended off by the decisive and rational voice that reminds me of who I am, and Whose I am, and how common these fears and failings are, and how faithful my Father is. I hope the latter voice keeps gaining ground. I like it better, and I think it is more dangerous on an ultimate level. Sometimes, it even sounds like a quick answer from God.

Funny how often it tells me I can't really live this life effectively inside a series of self-referential conversations.

"I was born for this."

I hear a lot of people are upset about the weather in Michigan these days. They say it's cold and snowy and gloomy.

Yes, it's cold. That is what happens in the winter. Snow happens, too. And although if given a choice between snowy and dry roads I would choose dry roads, I don't find driving in the snow all that challenging, at least not since the time I drove across the state in the Thanksgiving blizzard...I just can't see any future winter driving experience topping that. So I'm not afraid of snowy roads. I don't like the delays, since I don't like driving all that much and would rather just be at my destination. But it's only weather.

As for gloomy...well, gloomy is a state of mind, not a weather forecast. I expect it to be cloudy all winter long. It's Michigan. I've lived here my whole life. Cloudiness is to be expected as much as snow and cold. And since my eyes tend to be quite light-sensitive sometimes, I actually don't mind not living in direct sunlight. Cloudy days don't make me sneeze.

It's not that I don't like the sun, or blue sky, or warm weather. In fact, part of what I like about winter in Michigan is that it makes the arrival of spring such a euphoria-inducing event. It's forty degrees out! Take off your coats!

Someday, we won't have times when we prefer the darkness. Someday, the winter of this often discontented life will be over and the spring of heaven will be upon us, all the more glorious and beautiful because we've been cold and gloomy and snowed-in so often in the past.

"Weeping may last for the night,
But a shout of joy comes in the morning."
~~ Psalm 30:5b

Weeping may last for the winter...but joy is certain, certain, certain as if it has already come.

Hasn't He?

Are all African-Americans famous, or just Jessica Simpson?

Every available Tuesday during the school year, I go to an elementary school near my office and read with a young child. I've been doing this for five years and have worked with four girls: Jephri, who was all attitude and closeness and too sassy for her own good; Daijah, who spelled my name "Suqanne" and who hugged me after the last of two years' worth of mentoring sessions; Marshelle, who was a little bit shy but smiled a lot; and Consuelo, with whom I'm working this year, and who is the first girl I've worked with under third grade (she's in second).

It's amazing to me how much children learn in short spaces of time. It's also a good exercise to remember that I didn't always know everything I know now.

Concepts, for example.

Last Tuesday, the kids had a little project to work on in the room to celebrate Black History Month. I told Consuelo that she was supposed to write down the name of a famous living African-American. She stared at me, clearly wondering what I was talking about. Famous like somebody on TV or in movies, we told her.

She shifted around in her chair. Nobody likes being wrong, and she seemed unwilling to hazard a guess without understanding what we were asking her.

"Do you like the Cheetah Girls?" I asked, familiar with the band from the past several years of working with third-graders and thinking of the equally popular Raven-Symone.

Her eyes lit up. "Yes!"

After more prompting, she came up with a name, Sabrina. She said Sabrina was a singer. None of the rest of us in the room had heard of this person, so we let it go. We wrote it on the main list and on the little piece of construction paper that Consuelo decorated.

As it turns out, Sabrina is in the Cheetah Girls. But she is as white as one of the other people whose name appeared before hers on the list: Jessica Simpson.

The other girl in the room looked confused about the assignment, too. Her mentor stood up and came over to the room coordinator.

"See how Miss Nancy's hand is darker than mine?" the mentor asked. "But they're still hands. We're really the same."

"Not all the same," I interjected. "That would be boring."

Consuelo stuck out her hand. "My hand is darker than yours..." she said.

So I think I spent most of the half hour last Tuesday helping to impart the impression that African-American is a synonym for famous and/or that anybody with skin darker than mine could be called African-American.

But then, it's good that those girls didn't seem to know why we were making such a fuss over skin color, anyway.