Finally...

I finally contributed to the other blog that I was invited to contribute to like six years ago. Go read it.

Yay Baby Luke!

My very best childhood friend has just given birth to a beautiful pink baby boy. This, I find to be very exciting.

God is so good.

I often pass a mentally retarded woman waiting for the bus at the stop at the end of our street. She stands near the middle of the street, her face eagerly fixed in anticipation of the bus to come careening down the hill (narrowly avoiding disaster with parked cars and pedestrians) and pick her up. I always smile and wave. She smiles up innocently....and gives me the finger. True story. Never fails.

Under that Log are Nightcrawlers of Truth

I read something this week—actually, I read it several times—that has been digging into my mind for days. I have to stop and examine this and try to determine why I can’t stop rolling it over like a fallen log to see what kind of squiggling truths will emerge from underneath.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

I believe that I’ve apprehended my calling in life based upon the situations in which God has placed me. The three primary spheres of my life—family, church, and
“career” for lack of a better term (artreer maybe?)—are the arenas in which I’m called to function according to my personal bent. I know this for sure because, in the immortal words of Buckaroo Bonzai, “Wherever you go, there you are, Man.” But to understand not only that you have been called but to what even before it happens is an extraordinary act of faith and I am stirred up and excited by it. I believe this is the Holy Spirit telling me that there is an opportunity to see him working if I’ll pray and pay attention. A vision is soon to be born. I feel it. And I find it somewhat thrilling.

There’s also no lack of conviction that comes to me as I read these words, either, but it is the kind of conviction that comes with hope. To me, this is the distinctive of conviction brought by the Holy Spirit as opposed to guilt brought by Evil. If we can be convicted and hopeful at the same time, we’re on to something true. I’m convicted that I don’t regard my life as a calling more. I’m convicted that I don’t participate as a supervised craftsman to bring my own vision into being and I’m going to work on understanding exactly how to engage with that task.

Something about this whole thing, both the original work and my musings about it, shout that I’m on to something here. And I’m excited.

(But to be honest, I am somewhat concerned that this post has taken on the tenor of some kind of radical homeschooling housewife And I'm not really excited about that. Cause I'm not. Really. Not a pair of Keds or a denim jumper to be found.)

just a few randoms

I'm tired.

I want to eat a watermelon. Like right now. And I'm gonna.

David wore the empathy belly last night at class and I realized that he already had a lot of empathy. He didn't pretend it was easy to roll out of bed, unlike all the other dads who were jumping around squeezing the boobies and saying "why are you always complaining then?" You should never put a redneck in a suit with big boobies. This is a good lesson for everyone. They have some kind of reflex that makes them incapable of humane interaction with others when faced with such over-stimulation. But they are funny nonetheless.

I miss school and I'm ready to get back.

I'm already tired of elastic pants. (I never ever thought I could tire of elastic pants! Who woulda thunk it?)

It's cheaper to go to the hospital and get cut open than it is to take a Golden Retriever to the vet. By quite a lot, actually.

And I realize that this is the most I've written about my adventure to date. Don't expect much more.

A Girl's Best Friends

Your son Rip is on Line Toot (as in my own horn)

Finished this semester with a 4.0. God is faithful. Me, not so much.

It's in the little things

The weathermen are frantic. On every channel it’s the same. Middle aged and balding, they flick back and forth between satellite images like moths banging against lightbulbs. We can’t even have the pleasure of a good storm anymore. They ruin everything. I am fortunate that the rabbit ears on the television don’t function well in a storm and I am thus provided with a good excuse for being ignorant. Should I blow away and end up dazed and naked in a field somewhere in Georgia, it won’t be my fault.

I remember the second summer I lived at Camp Greystone. We, being the lowest-ranking staff members, shared a cabin that usually had running water and electricity, but often behaved like the 90-year-old man it was when the worst summer storms rolled over Grandfather Mountain and into camp. Fortunately, when the storm was bad enough to shut down the well pump, it was most often raining and we could stand on the porch under the drain-spout deluge and brush our teeth and wash our hair and get some water for the teapot. The rainwater was undoubtedly as clean as the water coming up from the well. It wasn’t unusual to have to run the tap for a few moments to flush out the peaty leavings in the pipe before filling the kettle or the tub. The water smelled like Lake Summit, that is to say, ancient and earthy like water probably would smell if we didn’t chlorinate and fluoridate it to kill wee beasties and cavity creeps. We lived like this in 12-week stretches for $125 a week.

We need so very little to be happy.

Another post I don't have time for.

Yesterday, I waddled into the strawberry patch and picked three buckets of strawberries for jamming and eating. I like to pick them myself because I know which berries are ripe enough for my jam. The key is to get them fully ripened and jam them soon. I hope to get to that Sunday afternoon sometime. I had a hard time picking berries this spring! 

From the patch, I could see several acres of farmland spread out underneath the blue sky. Two turkey buzzards patrolled a far pasture. A tractor lumbered across a mud road. The berries hung small and red underneath their green leaves. A honey bee with pollen-swollen back legs worked between amid the white blossoms. (I am thankful that the Alabama department of Agriculture functions better than the rest of the state agencies assuring that we still have honeybees here!) The green berries emerged like little fairy hats from underneath the spent blossoms. 

This is Alabama.  I love the fruit and the vegetables that grow here. I love the pickup trucks and farmers. I love the weirdness of this state, the smell of foundry in the city, the beach, the mountain. I want to take Alabama and make it part of me. I internalize it and save it for later in case it succumbs to the Atlanta influence and become another faceless city-state like all the others surrounded in highway cloverleaves built to facilitate ego trips. There's something to this that makes me realize that loving Alabama despite its faults is something akin to loving myself. I'm learning that you can't run from what you are. It follows.