The "what, huh?" moment of the day

You know this moment. There you are, minding your own business, sort of but not really listening to what is going on around you, and you pick up a random fragment of conversation or radio chatter. The "what, huh?" moment is that instant of thorough disorientation that you experience in these cases.

Today I was pulling together some product samples for a customer when I heard a radio announcer proclaim exuberantly, "God saves you gas money!"

Half of me was ready to become indignant at such a claim, and the other half (I call this "the thinking half") focused intently on the words that followed, because no way could someone have said what I thought I just heard on the radio. That would just be crazy.

Sure enough, in his next sentence the announcer spoke more of this marvelous gas-money-saving entity. And the word he used was not in fact "God," but "Dodge."

Anybody reading this have any funny mishearing stories to share with the class?

Tonight and the week to come

Tonight I was going to come home and sit by myself and play on the computer or watch TV, and instead I went to TerHaars and hung out with friends and watched Dr. Horrible and discussed the works of Joss Whedon with Aaron for so long that everybody else got annoyed and left the room. Which was nice (not the part where people were annoyed, but all the rest of it). I tend to feel lonelier when there are big things going on in my little world, and I tend not to know how much it helps to be around people until I'm actually around them.

I'm not particularly looking forward to this week. Last week I started a two month stint filling in for a coworker while she's on maternity leave, and I spent most of the week feeling chained to my computer as I frantically tried to accomplish in one day what would have taken half the time for Amanda. I felt like I was letting people down for most of the week.

So, yeah. Not really looking forward to doing that again this week. I know it will be getting better and easier as I get used to it. But just now I want to curl up in a corner somewhere.

I'm grateful that I have people waiting on the post-5:00 side to pull me through most of the days this week—book club tomorrow, regularly scheduled hang-out time on Tuesday, visiting with a friend who's been out of town for a while on Wednesday or Thursday, and a weekend with my parents.

If you think of praying for me during the week, I'd appreciate it.

Secret Blog

My idea of a clean house/apartment/office space is one that looks as though nobody actually inhabits that space. No clutter. No trinkets. No papers lying around. No crumbs. No dust. Nothing.

Of course, this being the case, my apartment never looks as clean as I would like it to look. Before I had many friends or much involvement at church, it looked much cleaner. So I blame Lisa and Trudy and Jessica and Jen and Micah and small group and Harvest for the mess in my apartment. No, but seriously, sometimes I have to remind myself that I do in fact see friends and church family as a good trade-off for a weekly Saturday cleaning fest.

One of the things I am enjoying about growing up is learning how to manage myself better. For instance, I have a very hard time getting rid of something once I have it. "What if I need this again?" I think, or "What if this expired medicine and/or food is really still okay?" And then I push the item back into the corner of a closet until the next time I drag it out to ask the same questions about it. As for the nostalgic items, like my Shrek and Chicken Run action figures.... Okay, let's not even go there. Anyway, knowing my packrat habits, and knowing how little I actually need, I just try not to buy things. If I don't bring it into the apartment, I won't be looking at it in a year wondering whether or not I'll need it again.

Another for instance. Lately I have found myself thinking fondly of the idea of an apartment fire, or maybe a tornado. Something that would happen while Apollo and I were gone, that would enable us to start over. I figure this is a serious sign that I need to scale back my possessions. And really, my apartment is about 700 square feet and the first house I lived in (with my parents and my brother) was 900 square feet. Only 200 square feet more. Sure, we had a full basement, but still. I should be able to fit at least one more person in this place.

So what with the above points, and the fact that I just spent a year sorting through and getting rid of things at work, I'm in elimination mode. I'm trying to pretend as though that tornado really is hitting. A tornado named Suzanne. No crying over what she gets rid of...no use in it.

[Disclaimer: I judge other people more on their hospitality than on the condition of their living space. Mostly.]

I'm totally against the Poles

(The last word of the title is how my college buddy Al misheard the word "polls" in a political conversation we were having.)

My poll is proving both unscientific and unsatisfactory, since nobody who is answering "yes, with qualifications" is explaining the qualifications. I just want to know why women who wear jelly roll shirts think that looks good. Or why men like to see jelly roll bulges on not-really fat women. It is a deep mystery to me.

Also, without comments I'm wondering if this issue is falling along the predictable gender lines, as the only commenters so far are both guy friends of mine who felt like I was trying to trick them. Don't worry. It's not a trick. I already have a bad opinion of male standards of attractiveness, beaten into me by years of good church people saying "Men are just very visual." Over. And over. And over. Nobody says "Women are just emotionally hyper-sensitive" like it's an okay thing that can't be dealt with on any level having to do with the women themselves.

This is turning into another post, the post about how I despise any gender-based or "that's just how it is" excuses. Sorry. 

*sigh*

The point is, I am curious about the "qualified" in "qualified yes." Actually, there are two points. The other point is that polls are useless.

Poles, however, have made some important contributions to our society and should be welcomed and thanked.

...and speaking of idolatry

Til you put a girl in it
You ain't got nothin'
What's it all worth
Without a little lovin'
Put a girl in it
Some huggin' and some kissin'
If your world's got somethin' missin'
Just put a girl in it

-- Brooks & Dunn

Many (if not most) popular songs express similar sentiments from both male and female perspectives. But hearing it today this blatantly...wow....

God save us from our own twisted vision.

Subtle Idolatry

 I think I confuse people with God. To show you what I mean, here is a brief list of things I've wanted people to do:

• To know what I'm thinking before I have to say it.
  
• 
  
• To be strong enough and brave enough and good enough to sacrifice on my behalf.
  
• 
  
• To see beyond what I am to what I am destined to be, and to urge me to be the latter while encouraging me by noting the good they already see in the former.
• 
  
• To anticipate my needs.
• 
  
• To teach by word and example, and by oblique story more than direct preaching, because they know love reads between the lines in good ways and they want me to work harder at those ways.
• 
  
• To bowl me over with everyday kindness, and the sheer amazing fact of their willingness and eagerness to stay with me.
• 
  
• To love me with a love that never falters, and with a certainty that bolsters my unbelief.

I notice two things from this. 

1.  I am prone to look to people to fill needs only God can completely fill. 

2. I think an awful lot in terms of my needs.

These sorts of idolatry are hard to explain unless you're familiar with them. Worshipping giant statues? Okay. Wanting to have more and more possessions? Okay, we understand that pretty easily. But I'm only just growing into the idea that looking anywhere besides God for anything that comes ultimately from God is in itself idolatry. And it wasn't all that long ago that I thought God could practically be seen in my mirror.

God in the mirror? What am I talking about?

I think it is the most insidiously subtle form of idolatry: making God in our own image. To take the truth that only God knows our heart and to make that into a warm squishy companionable thing, instead of a an admittedly encouraging and comforting but also rather terrifying and humbling thing. To move from trying to fathom the depths of the mind of God to thinking we have thoroughly plumbed those depths. 

I did this when I was afflicted with depression. God became my ultimate advocate, in the way that Job seemed to mean. Not the advocate who would plead the right to sacrifice for the undeserving, but the advocate who has a mountain of evidence to draw from while defending his client. When I finally woke up to what I was doing, it terrified me so much that I'm still afraid to be really as deep-down solidly opinionated about important things as I was before. Because what I was doing was playing the "the God I believe in" card. You've heard it. "The God I believe in would say such and such." "The God I believe in is love, which means He'd never do this thing." "No God I would serve would say/do/be that." 

It's so easy to carve an idol out of your own heart. You don't even need a chisel.

Too Many Curves

This is probably going to sound ridiculously old-fashioned to some people, but you have to remember that I'm almost 30, and thus I made it through college just before these fashion trends hit.

What trends? "Modest" cleavage, mid- to lowriff, and jelly rolls.

I had a roommate in my senior year at college whose shirts just barely met the top of her pants. Sometimes when she would move, you would see bits of skin left exposed between shirt and pants. She told the rest of the roommates once that she couldn't find longer shirts. We sort of laughed at this, since we had never had this problem ourselves. What we failed to remember was that she was from Chicago and the majority of the rest of us were from Michigan. In case you didn't know this yet, Chicago apparently gets the fashion trends before the mitten state.

My college pictures show a lot of girls in high-waisted pants and baggy shirts. (I mean some really baggy shirts.) During my freshman and sophomore years, I lived on a floor with about 39 other girls. My junior and senior years were spent in fairly close living quarters with 4 other girls. In all that time, I don't remember thinking, "Wow, that girl is bending too far over and I can see WAY too much of her" more than a few times. But I've thought it a lot since then. From little kids to adults, I've seen way too much in the lower spinal region for my taste. And these are the modest dressers.

Then there are the really tight shirts that not only show mid- to lowriff, they also show every single curve on the torso. Women who aren't really even fat look like a stack of jelly rolls in these shirts. To me, anyway.

Here's something I wonder: is it really even attractive? I mean, do guys look at these girls and think...well, first of all, do they think with their brains when they see that, and secondly, do they think "Oh, that girl is nice to look at, in a non-sexual sort of way. How nicely that color complements her eyes"?

Some people say women don't dress to impress men, they dress to impress other women. Personally, I'm not impressed. But I may be in the minority on this. I haven't taken any polls or anything. UNTIL NOW (see poll at right).

My Evening with Trudy: A Casual Post

Tonight as I was finishing dinner in preparation for biking to Trudy's, she called and said she was home and didn't need me to come check on the cat after all. This was initially disappointing because it threw me off my evening plan, which had been biking for a while after visiting the cat. Why couldn't I go biking anyway, you might ask? Because I have a hard time exercising for the sake of exercising. I'm very destination-oriented, and always have been.

I sat around trying to convince myself to exercise aimlessly, and then I made up a place to go and a reason to go there and took off, and on the way back from there I decided I would swing by Trudy's and drop off the key to her house.

She was talking on the phone when I came in, and I was very thirsty, so instead of going out on the porch to say hello I went and got myself a glass of water. (Good friends don't need to bother offering you a glass of water when you come in, because you've already gotten it yourself without asking them. Because THAT'S how comfortable you feel with them and their house.)

Then I sat on the porch with Trudy while she finished her conversation and I finished my water, and we talked for a bit, and tried to figure out what kind of bird of prey lives by them, and watched the cat sitting happily outdoors. We have a very relaxed friendship, Trudy and I. And I do think the best kind of friends are the ones you do nothing with, in the Christopher Robin sense ("it's when a grown-up asks you what you're doing, and you say, 'Nothing,' and then you go and do it"). Yes, despite all my crazy planning tendencies, my best friends have always been the ones I can just sit in a room doing nothing with for hours. "How wonderful to just be," as Trudy herself put it once. 

I rode home as the trail was beginning to sparkle with fireflies.

So much better than spending the whole evening online.

False Expectations

Today Pastor Dale said one of the obstacles to faith is a reliance on false expectations, things God never really promised but that we sort of imagined were promised. "God," Pastor Dale said, "seems to delight in obstacles," because so often He uses them in His plans. And I was laughing/crying over this (poor Rosemary...I don't think she quite knew what to do with me this morning), because I was hearing my own story.

I am by nature a very decisive and opinionated person who makes snap judgments untempered with mercy and who feels strongly about just about everything I care about at all. I like plans and structure and control and knowing what's coming next, and often I've found myself thinking that being a really good Christian would mean not needing to lean on God so much because you were actually learning the lessons. (I like lessons, too. And grades. Oh, do I like grades.)

But I've noticed a pattern forming....

• Freshman year of college, soon after telling people I couldn't imagine rooming with anybody but my current roommate, said roommate announced she would be living with someone else next year. But through a mutual crush on a deskie neither of us has kept in contact with, I met my sophomore and junior year roommate Rachel, who remains a friend to this day. (I also found out just how many people were watching my back that year...many of them went and talked to the resident director of the dorm to ensure that I would be able to stay on a floor I'd grown to love.)
• 
  
• I swore I wouldn't stay in Grand Rapids. Why on earth wouldn't I just move home? Hadn't that been what I'd wanted from the beginning? And I would especially not stay alone. But then it came down to March of senior year, and I decided I was going to live with four other girls. And then three dropped out. And then Kerri got a job in Denver, after I had already gotten a job in Grand Rapids. Well-played, God....
• 
  
• I used to think that people with duct tape on their headlights were annoyingly cheap. How could they drive around looking so white trashy? Because (as I discovered when I knocked my own headlight loose) fixing one of those lights costs about $600. Oh. That's why. Good reason. I drove around with duct tape on my car for quite a while.
  
• 
  
• I have a list (long enough to be embarrassing if grace hadn't made it humorous) of friends whom I initially did not like. So now I rather expect that, when I meet someone I strongly dislike, we could probably end up being good friends.
• 
  
• I was going to be one of those girls who get married right out of college, but I didn't even date in college.
• 
  
• If either my brother or myself were ever going to get married at all, it would certainly be in chronological order. Because that's How Things Work.
• 
  
• Oh, and there was depression, and dealing with other friends in dark places, when my earlier impression had been that real Christians didn't get depressed.
• 
  
• In retrospect, I think my favorite day of my European trip last summer was the day everything went wrong. We had an over-booked schedule already, and then I hadn't set my alarm and woke up over half an hour later than expected (seriously, we were so tightly booked that we couldn't spare half an hour...this is something I learned from, too, believe me). There was a terrific traffic jam that slowed us up for another hour or so. A fellow traveler had difficulty with her Metro pass. The plan had been to see The Merchant of Venice at 7:30, but as we were (finally) sitting on the train to London I realized this was clearly not going to happen. And I was okay. And not stressed out. And it was so blatantly obviously the peace of God that it became that moment on the train I treasure most of all from that trip.

I could probably go on, but those are just the highlights that came to me just now. I'm certainly not saying that it's always easy for me to remember now to lean on God because He knows what He's doing even when I don't, and that I don't have to be in on the plan in order to trust that I will benefit from it. But it's certainly easier to remind myself of that when I have such a stockpile of examples to look back on.

"Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is." (I John 3:2)

And that is something I can expect with 100% certainty.

Math is not my friend, but it might be stalking me

I tried balancing my checkbook again today. This is almost always a brain-wrenching activity for me. My math is...not linear enough for checkbook balancing. If you happened to be a fly on the wall, you would see a lot of forehead wrinkling and temple-grasping, and you would hear a lot of whining, from muttery noises to aggravated "What? How is that even..." half-finished exclamations.

This is my persistent dilemma: when it doesn't balance, my checkbook almost always doesn't balance by an amount in my favor. That's right. Currently the bank website says I have more money than my checkbook says I have. I have a lurking fear that someday the bank will send the police after me for extortion, that all the times I've just given up and written down the numbers the website told me should be in the checkbook I've actually been getting money siphoned off from somewhere. 

This is why today I decided that the website (and, by extension, math) might be stalking me, trying to win me over with extra cash. Poor math. That might work on somebody who actually trusted you and could figure out your game plan...but I'm not your girl.

Stealth Prayers

I pray for a lot of people. If I've met you, I've probably prayed for you at some point. And I don't restrict myself to people I've met, either. (One of the great things about God is that if you know Him, you only have one degree of separation from anybody.) 

I'm not saying this to pat myself on the back, because I'm not what I would call an incredible prayer warrior. Most of my prayers go something like, "God, be with so-and-so because such-and-such," as in "God, be with Lisa and Tim and Nate as they're kayaking to keep them safe and help them to enjoy your world" or "God, be with Jeremiah and Dorothy as they make plans for the future, and especially Jeremiah as he has school stuff to consider." Things like that.

The reason I am saying this is that I don't usually feel all that comfortable telling somebody I'm praying for them, unless they've specifically asked me to do so. It comes out kind of awkward when I do say it, like I'm trying to show how pious I am or how good of a friend I am or something, and I don't always know what I'm intending to accomplish by telling them.

So I usually don't even tell Christians I'm offering unsolicited prayers on their behalf. As for my non-Christian friends and acquaintances, well...it's problematic.

Let's say somebody I know has surgery and I tell them "I'll be praying that your recovery goes well." Here are some things that could happen: 1) their recovery goes well, they believe in the power of prayer, and they are shallow-earth converted to get in on the ground floor of the health and wealth gospel that works; 2) their recovery goes well and they attribute it to the good wishes flying up to any being that will hear from dozens of people they know; 3) their recovery goes horribly and they are more firmly convinced that prayer is useless.

Here's the stumbling block part of talking to a God who is real and beyond your control: He can do whatever He chooses to do. And if He doesn't choose to heal you, He won't. And the people who talk to Him believe that's okay, because what He chooses is best for all concerned. They might not be happy about it. They might yell at Him about it for a while. But in the end, they know they are dealing with a God who has bigger plans than they could ever comprehend. "Thy will be done" is a prayer that flies in the face of all natural human instinct, a prayer that can only be uttered honestly when the Holy Spirit is present in your life.

And because I don't know how to explain that, I mostly keep my praying intentions quiet.

What have you been up to?

I've been re-connecting with a lot of college friends recently (thank you, Facebook...and yes, I do remember how much I ridiculed it back in the early days when it was just for the whippersnappers). It's been a lot of fun. What's not always so fun is providing an answer to the major re-connecting question: "What have you been up to?"

I tend to think of myself as pretty entertaining in person and in writing, but pretty boring as far as actual life details go, especially when about seven years of life details are being condensed into a few sentences to fit on somebody's Facebook wall. I drudge up last summer's Europe trip a lot. Because Europe is cool, right? (Kerri, back me up on this.) And otherwise, what do I have?

Same job for seven years.

Same church for seven years.

Same apartment for seven years.

Same roommate situation for seven years (just me and the bird).

My life is pretty stagnant, if you look at the broad-strokes version. Especially when so many of my college friends have Facebook profile pictures that feature themselves with their significant other and/or their children. Because before I actually went to college, I would have said that that would be me. Wait, I DID say that, in some college interview...I was going to be married with kids in ten years, and it's been eleven or twelve now. So much for my advance planning skills.

But there are other things that have happened in the past seven years. Things I don't think to talk about as quickly because they seem either only marginally connected to me or all too connected.

A divorce in the family, with painfully far-reaching effects.

The death of a beloved grandfather from a long illness.

The death of a beloved cousin from a sudden car crash.

The weddings of several family members and multiple friends (some that overlapped, as when a church friend married into my family...weird).

A struggle with depression.

And then there are the little things, the things that sift down and fill the cracks between the rocks and pebbles in the jar of the past seven years (belabor email-forwarded metaphors much? me, neither).

The birth of a friendship out of the ashes of a battle-scarred relationship. Actually, several of these, but especially the first one, which provided evidence that all the healing that followed was indeed possible.

The growth of patience to the point where people can see it...not always the patience, but the growth.

The friends who were there even in my darkest hours when they didn't know what to say to me.

My church family, including a grandma and little siblings and a whole string of cousins-in-law.

The small voice that I listen for more often now than I did seven years ago, and with a far greater interest in hearing what it says instead of only what I want it to say.

They've not always been fun, these past seven years. But they've been good, because God is good, and because I'm more sure of that every year.

What have I been up to? 

Living, mostly.

Today these lyrics made me cry

He ain't the leavin' kind
He'd never walk away
Even from those who don't believe
And wanna leave him behind
He ain't the leavin' kind

No matter what you do
No matter where you go he's
Always right there
With you

~~ Rascal Flatts

That's the sort of thing I need to be reminded of a lot. Especially in the times I feel like the kind who deserves to be left (as I think everybody does from time to time if they catch a glimpse of themselves in the metaphorical mirror). And even on the days I think I'm running from Him, He's really still in front of me, fiercely defending me from anyone and anything that would seek to take me away.

"How can I give you up, Ephraim? 
       How can I hand you over, Israel?"

~~ Hosea 11:8a

Ten Things to Do Before I Die

Here are some things I would like to do (or do again) before I die, in approximate order of difficulty (10 being the highest level):

10.   Have a few books published

9.     Sit in a limo, or maybe actually ride in one

8.    Figure out how to use GarageBand properly

7.  Sing karaoke in public

6.   Write/record/post a fictional dramatic podcast with Brittany & Friends

5. Start a writers club meeting at least once monthly 

4. Go tandem biking

3.     Finish my fanfics 

2. Chase fireflies

1.     Run through sprinklers / run around outside in a rainstorm

The thing about most items on this list is that I either need help to accomplish them or that they wouldn't be so much fun alone. (This is the part where living by yourself is sad: the times you want to be all spontaneous and do something like run around outside in the rain with somebody and there is nobody to run around with. These are the times I really miss Delta 11.)

I could make a companion list of People to Do Things with Before I Die. Let me know if you want to be on it. I have room for you.

Trench warfare

I spent most of today praying against various personal demons and besetting sins that are besetting something fierce this week—things like discontentment, and irritation, and selfishness, and cowardice. And then...well....

Sometimes it seems I live my life on such a small level. For instance, I got my hair cut tonight and am unpleased with the result, and do not want to go back to have more taken off, and regret soliciting opinions and listening to them instead of going with what I wanted, and regret backing down so easily, and...and it's a HAIRCUT. And I'm going a little nuts about it.

So often the big things show up in how I deal with the small things. And even the big things, like the personal demons and besetting sins, seem bigger than they used to. Really? A haircut I don't like? I'm THAT vain? THAT insecure? THAT clueless about my actual place in God's world?

I'm tired of fighting off who I am and striving for what's ahead. Not that I want to stop striving, but it's disheartening to think of how much longer I'll have to do this. On the one hand, I can't wait until I'm not so confused and so disoriented on such a regular basis. On the other hand, there's nothing I can do but wait.

All of this digging in for the long haul is wearing on me. As is the sense that I'm having such a rough time, and I'm not even doing anything important.

Or maybe that's the Enemy talking...and maybe it's the Enemy trying to trick me into thinking I'm fighting off who I am. Because maybe who I am now, through grace, is just the person who's doing the fighting off. And maybe the reason these "little" sins seem so much bigger is not that they're looming larger in my life, but that my eyesight (and my aim) is getting that much better.

Constant vigilance (1 Peter 5:8). Even in these deep-down, day-in-and-day-out trenches.

Hovering

Today I have that annoying sense that there is another, better way to do things than the way I am doing them now. I've had that at work (has to be a way to catalogue these tasks coherently), and I had it at church tonight on two levels (has to be a way for teachers to focus on Jesus and Scripture over points and stickers; has to be a way to encourage young boys to calm and stillness without forcing them to look just like young girls).

I'm very much a "right answer" sort of person, but the answers aren't in a key at the back of some book. I have to puzzle them out myself, reason from Word and Spirit, live them until I fall naturally into the answers.

Which notion was never as strangely exciting as it is tonight. And I do mean "strangely." I didn't even feel it until I started writing this. But I realized that I know something about the way God works. And that tonight the following verses resonate in a way they never have before:

"The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness." (Genesis 1:2-4)

Maybe that hovering at the edge of my consciousness is something more vital than I thought it was.

Okay, here's what I want:

• I want to clarify and communicate in my business writing, not create more confusion or tension. Wait, why settle? Let's make that ALL my writing.
• I want to speak of Christ to and with children, not just check things off a to-do list.
• I want to encourage brothers (and I do mean males specifically) of all ages out of love for them and faith in what God is doing in them, not harangue them out of frustration that they aren't what I think they should be yet.

And now I can sleep in peace. God will work out the details.

Laughter

They called him laughter

for he came after

the Father had made an 

impossible promise come true

~~ Michael Card

Tonight I am grateful:

• for a year and a half of depression, of anxious not-knowing, of mortally wounded self-certainty.
• for the countless times I have clung to the past and He has pulled me unwillingly into the future.
• for the relationships I sabotaged repeatedly and He preserved over and beyond my expectations.
• for that day in England last year when just about every one of my plans went wrong.
• for a work environment that's still up in the air, over a month after we've moved.
• for a brother who is getting married this November, and for his as-yet-mostly-unknown fiancee.
• for so much more that I wouldn't be fully grateful for if left to myself.
• for not being left to myself.

Tonight I am laughing at the impossible absolute truths of love, grace, and a God who is nearer and more essential than my next breath.

Grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me...wherever it will. 

I rest in and because of thee, Beloved.

Forget Rats and Dragons.

For me, this year is the Year of the Wedding.

For the past several months, I have been thinking about and planning for my friend Abby’s wedding. She and her fiancé (now husband) Ryan were married Saturday in a fairly simple and very warm ceremony in a beautiful yet non-air-conditioned church, and I was blessed with the honor of being one of her bridesmaids.

Later that afternoon, in the surreal blur that comes after a long-anticipated event has come to pass: "Do weddings still make you want to get married, or are you immune to that now?"

For the next several months, I will be thinking about and planning for my brother Jeremiah's wedding. He and his fiancée, Dorothy, will be getting married at the end of November. I will be standing up for them, too. It will be cooler then. 

Today, at work, from the woman who sits next to me: "Your brother's getting married? He beat you?"

Tonight, at dinner, from my slightly older and still unmarried cousin: "Have you been getting set up on blind dates yet?"

God's coming in under my guard something fierce this year. I don't know why I bother keeping it up.

And now for something completely different....

You're Short Round!

Hey, Shorty! You're Indy's street-smart little buddy. You're always watching out for your friends, and if necessary, you'll put yourself in danger to keep them safe. You treat the people you care about with a tremendous amount of respect, but you also have a silly, casual way of speaking, like "Hold on to your potato!" As sidekicks go, you're a really cute, helpful one to have around... and if anyone gets brainwashed, you'll find a way to snap them back to reality. 

When I vowed

practiced denial of fear

openness to whatever came

He sent change

several orders of magnitude greater

than I had imagined

 

When I wondered

if I would really be willing to give

sacrificially

He sent added financial obligations

 

When I confessed

unwillingness to serve unacknowledged

and desire to serve as Christ

He sent more needs, more requests

 

When I asked

for grace to love

those I wouldn’t on my own

He sent people

 

When I prayed

Thy will be done

my plans began to shift

 

I am feeling the danger

of a God who takes me seriously