I'm dreaming of a whiiiiiite... Halloween?

I plagiarized that from my friend Erin because I think it's hilarious. I mean... really?

When I was little, I remember when the first snow flurry fell, there was only one thing on my mind. SNOW DAY. We would watch the slow-moving ticker on the bottom of the news, praying, hoping, to see our school's name with "CLOSED" next to it. Oh the joy, the glee, as we, bleary eyed from sitting so close to the TV for 3 hours, finally saw "Wichita Collegiate: CLOSED" roll by on the ticker. It was so good. My friends, I am here to tell you - it is just as good when you're a grownup.

The view from my bed:

out the back door:
and in the backyard:

Are you confused? Me too. I woke up yesterday and I thought, "I mean, I know I stayed up until 3:30 writing a paper on the Orthodox Church and that I had WAY too much coffee that I accidentally made WAY too strong because I don't really understand the coffee-->water ratio situation, but did I actually sleep until December? Because it certainly does not look like October 28 outside." What is happening?

So it's STILL snowing. We are on, I believe, 18 inches and it's STILL snowing. I am on snow day #2, so I'm not so much complaining, but still. Really? Everything is cancelled! Internship, Denver Seminary, the world has veritably shut down. At least for those of us who are in school situations. Sorry, real worlders. No such luck.

Yesterday we attended a "snugglefest" at a friend's nearby - watched "When Harry Met Sally" and drank hot chocolate. Today might be slightly harder to get around only because of the sheer volume of the snow... but everything in my life is cancelled, so I may have to leave the house at some point. I'm even wearing my Sigma sweatshirt, which I only do in extreme comfort situations, because even though I love it, the world (my friends) is (are) not so accepting of my sororital roots.

So since I've got nothing but time & Allison is making pumpkin pancakes, here are some other things that have been going on... but first of all: YUM

Went to Wichita and bribed Timmy & Shelbs with SUGAR!! Ice cream sundaes. They were big fans of us (me & Allison). I'm pretty sure Allison and Beckie are in a silent feud to see who can make the kids like them best. What can I say? I got lucky in the nieces & nephews department. Actually, I think I kind of got lucky in the whole family department. (I know I know, dry your eyes... & now, back to the hilarity that is my life.)
I think Shelbie gets cuter by the minute. It's a little bit ridiculous.

Oh, and the other reason we made the pilgrimage to Wichita: to see Becca & Colin get married. I mean, does this picture just not warm your heart? This is pretty much what they looked like the entire night. Their faces MUST have hurt.

A few weeks ago, we went to Traildust Steakhouse to visit our friend Chris (middle) who works there. His stage name is Maverick. When we got there, I told the 16 yr old hostess, "it's really important that we're in Maverick's section." She looked at me, knowingly; "So you think he's really cute, huh?" Yes. Yes we do.

This is Dusty. Dusty, I'm 99% sure, instills nightmares in children. And Christy (left).

This is one of the many reasons it is fun to live in my house (other than that my roommate makes pumpkin pancakes on snow days). We have this sign up in the kitchen when we have small group or people over & we make food... people add to the list... (admittedly, some (most) of it was me...)

Allison just posted on her facebook that she made pumpkin pancakes, and now, 10 minutes later, a bunch of boys (ok, 2) are coming over. This, we have decided, will be our new man-catching tactic. I'll let you know how that works out.

OK, with all this time on my hands, I could do some serious blogging damage, so I will stop myself while I am still at an acceptable length. Enjoy your day. I'm currently trying to convince people to risk their lives to come over to my house so I don't get bored but also don't have to leave. It's a win-win. For me, anyway.

Still snowing, by the by.

ladies and gentlemen -- Bigger Timmy

well, ladies and gents, today is a very special day...

BIGGER TIMMY's BIRTHDAY!

You see, in our family there is big Timmy (little Timmy) and bigger Timmy (this Timmy) because little Timmy (don't tell him I said that or I'll be in biggest trouble) "is not little." Clearly.

here is Tim (Papa,) swimming with Joel...

Here is Tim doing what he does best, busting a move on the dance floor.
And here is the other thing Tim does best. Whatever Mom tells him. Haha I KID I KID... dressing up for Halloween as Woody and Bo Peep.
I am continually thankful to have this Timmy in my life & in my corner! Whether it's because I got a speeding ticket or because I need a partner to sing "Grundy County Auction," he's always there for me.

You are the best Timmy Jimmy!! I love you!! Happy Birthday!!!!

Bold in the Broken Places

she held her grief behind her eyes like an ocean & when she leaned forward into the day it spilled onto the floor & she wiped at it quickly with her foot & pretended no one had seen [storypeople]

I like writing a lot, which is why I have a blog, because it's an excuse to write things and use words & exercise my piercing wit & use ampersands (&) to my heart's content & imagine that people care to read it. I haven't written anything in a while. I figured out why. It's because I have nothing positive to say.

me: and I can't even blog! I have nothing positive to say.

smart person: so what you're saying is that life is hard & you can't think of a way to write about it & then tie a nice little bow on it at the end... so you can't write anything at all?

hmm. I'm in a very tricky position, you see, because there are two things I don't want to be, ever: 1, Debbie Downer. 2, inauthentic. It is the ultimate in blogging catch-22's. I don't want to just put all my crap out there without saying something hopeful and seminaryish at the end... but a hopeful, seminarian bow at this time would not be genuine. Herein lies my problem. I get twitchy when I enter DD territory. My internal alarms enter panic mode when I don't offer some inspiring wisdom alongside whatever difficulty I choose to share. I'm going to try, though, to tell it like it is, at least this once. Maybe it will help me, maybe it will help you, or maybe I will press "publish" and immediately have a panic attack. We shall see, we shall see...

Much to my dismay, I find myself kind of really pretty considerably pissed. I keep thinking it will just go away, but there is just horribleness everywhere. I'm mad in a very big way about the state of things, about the utter brokenness of the world; ranging from the basic struggles of my basic life - to the loss of my young & beautiful sister - to the horrific lives of the kids I work with & then send back each night to horrible homes and situations - to the millions of other nightmarish things that are happening in the world. Tragedy is everywhere & it's hard to stomach.

Rationally, I know there are a lot of counter arguments to all of the items I just listed, but as some of you may know, I am not always rational. Let me say once (to ease my own discomfort, mostly) that I am not without hope that at some point I will return to a state of relative peace with all of this, and be able to manage life better. And every moment is not terrible - I laugh, & my laughter is genuine, I enjoy my friends & family & I like what I'm doing with my life. There are good things. But at the end of the day, I'm left with all of this, & I'm overwhelmed.

That said, here it is. I'm angry & sad that Audrie is gone. I'm angry & sad because the holidays are coming and my sister, our sister, won't be there. The loss of her laugh & presence in our family is almost tangible; whether spoken or unspoken, her absence is everywhere. I'm sad because my family, whom I adore, is hurting just like me, feels that absence just like me. I'm hurt & angry because people I care about have let me down, but mostly I'm so sad because I miss them & the way they made me laugh, think, feel, love. I'm so so angry that the kids I'm working with have seen more pain at fifteen than I might ever have to see in my whole life, & I'm sad every day because I can't protect them. I'm mad & frustrated that after years of struggling with the same crap, after countless prayers for God to heal that part of my life, I wake up every morning and that crap is STILL my crap.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't pray very much right now because it's hard. And as odd as it may sound, I miss the certainty of relying fully on God, & I miss the comfort that it brought me to put a bow on the crap even if it was, at times, haphazardly tied. I'm sad & angry & hurt & disappointed & I don't know where to put it all. I'm overwhelmed & when it comes down to it, I just can't understand it. Right now, I need to admit that. I don't understand.

I want to be able to say that because I'm about to graduate from seminary that I'm a pillar of strength & faith & trust, but it would be a lie. Mostly, I don't want to go through my life wiping my accidentally spilled tears away with my foot, just like I don't want that for any of my kids at school or for any member of my family & just like I wouldn't want that for any friend who had an ocean of tears held behind her eyes. Despite my current difficulty, I do feel confident that that is not how our Creator intended us to go through this life. My heart is hurting. Maybe yours is too. I need to be able to share my heart even when it's messy and broken. I need to practice being bold in the broken places.

story of the day [www.storypeople.com]

stable as long as nothing else in the whole world shifts

(so don't get your hopes up)*

*more soon, I promise**

**well, at least at some point in the next 2 weeks before I see my therapist again...

because she told me to and I dare not disobey her.

hadn't thought of it this way

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." - Flannery O'Connor

I kind of wish it did, though.

"story of the day" [www.storypeople.com]

coasting on her reputation today because she's a little fragile, so it's hard to be fierce

blackest-black, professional pants, & autumn

It's been a long time since I blerged (that's how I say it in my head). Naturally, today, since I am in the library trying to write my first paper of the semester, it seemed like the ideal time to get back in the game. Paper due Weds? psssssssh. I don't have to start that till Tuesday at 10pm.

So here is a little list of things that are going on here in Denver... to get you up to speed. Enjoy.

I recently purchased "blackest black" mascara, to replace the "brownish black" that I have been using. I'm told it will make my eyes pop. I'm hoping it will change my life dramatically. I'm pretty sure it will make all the difference in my dating life, too. By my blackest-black calculations, I should be engaged by November or so.

Fall is here - evidenced by the 41 degree temperatures, and apparently, snow? Juxtaposed with yesterday's 80+ degrees and sunny, it's safe to say Fall wanted to make an entrance this year. ok, Fall, easy. You're here. We get it.

There are other things I love about Fall... like Pumpkin Spice Latte's (PSL's). I had my first one - it was delectable, as it is every Autumn. The other thing I love about Fall is TV. Don't judge me, but I really do like it when all the shows come back. Season premieres are so exciting! This year I am jazzed about The Office, Grey's Anatomy (I can't help it), Brothers and Sisters... those are the top 3, I would say. OH, and I love the new show Glee. It's a show about Glee club. Lots of show choiry numbers. Are you surprised that I love it? It's a musical TV show. It's a little bit like when the PSL was invented. I loved pumpkin. I loved latte's. The combination was a little bit like a dream come true.

I also love "sweater weather." I love cold weather clothes. I like needing a jacket. I also like it when it is not 100 degrees in my bedroom, so I am excited about the arrival of cooler weather.

Last month's book club book was "American Wife" by Curtis Sittenfeld, and I loved it. Loved it. Read it.

I'm trying to get involved in stuff. Like supper groups and small groups at church. Approaching the end of school (forever) kind of made me realize that for the first time, you know, ever, I was going to have to make friends like a grownup. Shoot. All else fails, I'll just be the creepy graduate who still hangs around the student center pretending to have a reason to be there. It's an option, anyway.

I'm very professional these days. I wear dress pants and dresses and high heels that click in the hallway. I don't know if you knew this, but that's how you can tell if you're officially professional - if your shoes click in hallways. I hadn't bought heels in a long time... just bought some really cute ones at Target (pronounced tar-jhay, like the French say it) that make me feel like I am, well, really professional. I AM SUCH A BIG DEAL. Very busy and important, as it were. [Here's my secret: my internship scares the poo out of me. So dressing like I know what I'm doing is hopefully tricking everyone (myself included) into believing that I do, in fact, know what I am doing. I think it's working. I think my new shoes with the clicking sound will help, too.]

I got a new room, got new roommates, and our house looks, pretty much, like a new house. It's kind of ridiculous & I'm kind of loving it.

Ingrid Michaelson, my fave, has a new CD! This is excellent news. Even excellenter (deal with it) is that I get to see her in concert on Oct 19 for the third time! That's once per year that I have lived here. Thrilling.

I blogged a while ago about my friend Zac who was battling lymphoma. Maybe some of you checked out his blog - it has been good, for me, to read his thoughts and perspectives on having cancer, dealing with cancer, chemo, etc... and I am so excited to tell you all that he had a PET scan last week and he is clear of cancer! That is awesome.

So hmm. That seems to kind of cover the very important details of my always exciting life here in Colorful Colorado. Hope this finds you enjoying better weather, similarly gleeful about Fall's arrival and all that it entails, and not writing church history papers in a library of any kind.

peace out girl scout.

I don't know. It just felt right.

put on your creative hats

It's ALMOST Halloween time again. I mean, more than a month away. But definitely time to be thinking of costumes. Definitely. Remember how good my costume was last year? Remember how epic our party was? Well, this year, our party has a reputation... which I believe will make it even better, bigger, epicer, than last year's. No joke. People have been talking to me about the Halloween party since July. It's a main contributing factor to the reasons I stayed in the house even when my roomies disbanded. It's a big deal.

That said...

What should I be this year??!?!!!!???!

Discuss.

well hello there, change.

there is something about clean sheets that makes everything feel new.

new room

new roomies

new [and last] semester of school... ever

clean sheets

new perspectives

clean [like new] house

new developments

new internship

new new new new new new new

terrifying? a little.

the times they are a changin'...

no words for the cuteness

So I'm technically a day late - but really I'm only a half hour late, so I'm counting it.

happy 2nd birthday Shelbie!!

here are some of the things I ADORE (and I do mean a-dore) about Shelbs:

- her fantastic taste in accessories and desire to have them on all the time - I love that about her

- the sweet way she puts her head on my shoulder when she's sleepy - I always offer to put her down/get her up from bed/naps... because I love that time with her

- the way she says my name - aunt meggie = a very clear "ahh miggie"

- her preshy presh little blondie curls and big blue eyes

- that when I say "smile" - that's the face she makes (above)

- her tendency to be naked

- that she is sweet and sassy all rolled into one - a constant source of entertainment - an all around cutie.

Do you not just want to eat her up?????

I feel SO LUCKY that I get to be that little girl's auntie!

let's get to work.

Tomorrow will be my first day helping at The Well, a homeless ministry/food pantry at my friend Kenneth's church, Wellspring. We're going to be spending the morning and afternoon cooking and serving spaghetti and getting to love some homeless people. I even spent some of this evening baking multiple batches of brownies. Then, I went to the movies with a friend.

We went a little early and bought our tickets, walked down to a delightful little ice cream place called Sweet Action and did some seriously excellent people-watching. We were hit up for change a few times from some people on the street, not atypical for that part of town, but we were having an enjoyable time, overall. It was a perfect night, and there's nothing like an ice cream cone and a good movie, if you ask me. There was one guy, I dubbed him the Mumbler, because when he asked us for money I couldn't hardly decipher what he said. The Mumbler asked us once on the way to Sweet Action, and we walked right by - did the pretty typical if-we-just-keep-talking-maybe-he'll-think-we-magically-don't-see-or-hear-him routine. He walked down in front of Sweet Action while we sat there, and I watched him mumble at a few more people. On our way back to the theater, the Mumbler was, yet again, in our direct path.

I don't know if it was that we ignored him twice, or that I had watched countless other people ignore him too, or what it was about the Mumbler that hit me so hard as we walked into the theater to see our movie. I don't know if it was the sadness in his voice as he asked us for our help. I don't know if it was the fact that he wasn't much older than me, or that he looked like someone I could have met at church or school or in a Starbucks. I don't know what it was, exactly.

And I don't quite know what the feeling was - a combination, I think, of guilt, definitely, and sadness and grief and shame and sorrow. No sooner had we passed him without looking or acknowledging did I feel an unbearable sadness at what I had just done. I had walked by a person, desperately in need (though, I admit, I don't know of what) and I pretended like he didn't exist. Not only did I not help, but I didn't speak to him, smile at him, look at him, acknowledge his presence, acknowledge his need. I was, perhaps, a little shocked at how easily I had dismissed another human being. For the next 20 minutes before the lights dimmed and the previews began, I obsessed at my friend over what we could have done. I didn't honestly know. I didn't know what I could have said or done to help or make it better. I still don't, really. But I knew in the very core of myself that what I had done was wrong. It was kind of callous and sort of unbelievable, if you think about it.

I can't imagine what life would be like if people quite literally walked past me as though I did not exist. I can't begin to put myself in his shoes, I'll be the first to admit that. I'm not trying to make some ridiculous connection between the two of us and our situations. But I can't imagine, no matter how hard I try, if I stood on the street, asking, begging for help (again, whatever that looked like, no matter how right or wrong I was) and I was ignored. Not yelled at, told I was bad or the scum of the earth or whatever, but ignored. As though I didn't exist.

Drama factor in this post = potentially a little high. But sometimes life calls for drama. Tomorrow I will go and I will put on my most compassionate face and I will serve food and I will love those people. I will, and I will mean it, too. But what does it matter if I don't offer those I meet in my every day life with the same regard? What does it matter that I spent Sunday serving food to people if on Saturday I pretended like those same people were practically lepers? I know that a great deal of my reaction was fear-based, which is occasionally fair, but in this particular situation there wasn't anything to fear, per say. Are we supposed to put on our Christian volunteering face once a week or whatever and then turn it back off when we walk down Broadway? I don't recall there being a part of the Bible that said to love people - but only if it was safe. Contained. There was nothing safe or contained about Jesus. And if the Mumbler showed up at the Well tomorrow, and he caught me in that hypocrisy, I can't put into words how ashamed I'd be.

I know there is need for a certain degree of caution (Mom... I know you're about to have a panic attack) and I'm not going to go crazy and sleep on the streets or anything. I'm definitely not going to start handing out money, because I think at the core of "can you help" is not, in fact, a request for funds. There are things that I can do differently. What if I had asked the Mumbler his name? What if I had stopped to hear his story? What if I had invited him to eat spaghetti and brownies the very next day?

A guy I met at Seminary my first semester, Zac, has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Read his blog: you will be blessed. He posted a video on there the other day of a letter that he had written to his 17-yr-old self, from his current perspective - which involves the tragic (from my perspective) reality that he may not have much longer to live. His words came to mind as I got home tonight. (Admittedly, this quote is a little choppy, but it's all his words.)

"Start right now. You must break your heart for the people around you. You must love them. You must be passionate about them. 1 John 4 says, 'Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.' You claim to love God. A very real, tangible way to love God is to show that love to other people. You're going to meet many, many people. Love them, and show them the way to Jesus. Desperately try to leave each and every person you meet better off than when you first met them. Desperately pursue God. Desperately pursue the people around you, and love them. Our time is short, my friend. Let's get to work."

why hiding doesn't work

When we were waiting for my mom to arrive at her surprise party, we got the call just ever so slightly sooner than we anticipated, and had to rush to change our clothes and put the finishing touches on our dishes and drinks, etc. I finished making my guacamole, ran upstairs, and quickly started to change in the same room my almost 5 yr-old nephew, Timmy, happened to be in at that moment.

Timmy, who is quite literally the funniest child I have ever met, said, “You’re changing?! I don’t want to see your booty!”

I laughed, and replied, “You won’t see my booty, silly, I’m all covered up!”

Then, with this look on his little face that screamed, “Even though you are a grownup I am maybe a little bit smarter than you,” he said this:

“Doesn’t matter Megs. I can still see how you are."

Out of the mouths of babes. Now, this was horrifying for a plethora of reasons, but the very first thought that entered my mind was this: I’m not as good at hiding as I think I am.

I haven't been able to shake those words from my slightly obsessive brain. It reminded me of my favorite part of Psalm 139:

Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become dark around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Even though I was changing very modestly, trying to keep Timmy from seeing my booty, as it were, he was right – I couldn’t hide “how I am.” I go to great lengths to keep my booty from being seen, figuratively speaking, to keep from being vulnerable, to keep anyone from seeing how I truly am. I think we all try to keep from being caught in the buff, at the peak of vulnerability. We don't want to be found out. My friend Kristin and I used to talk about new relationships and how we had to be sure and "hide the crazy" for a while. We were laughing at the time... but were we joking? I pretty much go through life trying to hide the crazy. Timmy’s words freaked me out. I laughed, but I was also shockingly anxious in that moment. I have to wonder if God doesn't look at us, hiding, and say to us the very same thing. I think all the time, "Surely, the darkness (or whatever else) will hide me!" But even the darkness is as light to Him. This is why hiding doesn't work.

I just finished reading a novel with a teenage girl in it who was desperately broken. She was making herself throw up several times per day, she was stealing, and had started regularly cutting her arms with razor blades. Towards the end of the book, she gets caught by her father, and I think its a beautiful picture of this whole thing:

The more my father yelled, the more tightly he held on to me. And here's the weirdest thing of all: now that the worst had happened—now that I'd been found out—it wasn't disastrous. It felt, well, inevitable. My father was furious, but me, I couldn't stop smiling. "You see me," I thought, my eyes closing. "You see me."

Even though being seen as we are is a concept that borders on terrifying, I really believe it’s what we all desperately desire: to be seen and loved anyway, maybe even more because of it. When Timmy said, "I can still see how you are," I realize that I was anxious because in hearing those words, I immediately felt shame. It was my biggest fear come true. I was waiting for the rest of the sentence, for the other shoe to drop. What I expect, what I think I deserve, is, "I can see how you are, and it's bad. I can see how you are, and it's wrong. Stupid. Not good enough. Ugly." But in Timmy’s little words there was no judgment or condemnation, he was simply stating fact. Timmy loves me. I saw, in him, a perfect picture of Christ's love for us. I think the sentence does have a second part, but I think it goes like this:

“You're trying to hide, but I can still see how you are. And I love you anyway."

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [Romans 5:6-8]

I don’t have to hide, because Jesus sees how I am, which is less than perfect. And he died for me even though I don't deserve it. He loves me anyway.

the MOTHER of all birthdays

Dear World,

As you may or may not have heard, today, my lovely and talented mother, Tracy Lynn Lyday Farrell... is FIFTY!!!!!!!!

thats right. Book 'em Danno, she's five-0!

She dances (and looks, clearly), however, like she's not a day over 25. See?

We celebrated with a SURPRISE party in KC this weekend, which was way fun and took the birthday queen totally by surprise!

5 things you may not have known about my mother:

1. She takes tap dance with her friends and is, "the best in her class" (according to her)

2. She loves rap music and also hip hop and also has an affinity for Disco

3. She thinks I am hilarious, which I clearly love about her. Except when she asks me, quite literally, to perform for crowds of people.

4. I think she knows everything about everything. I feel like I could call with any random question and she would know exactly how to do it/who to call/what the answer is. She's kind of brilliant.

5. Her faith is amazing - she loves Jesus with her whole self... I have been so blessed to have such a great model for what authentic faith looks like.

So here's to you, Mommy Dearest, the queen of hip hop and censored rap music, the cutest Mom I know, on this, the first day of your 50th year! I love you so much!

celebrations, belated and otherwise

In my brief hiatus from all things blog, I have missed a LOT of really fun things to celebrate. So in order to properly acknowledge the celebrations of you, my faithful readers, here are some things we have celebrated in recent months, in no particular order (aside from the order that Blogger decided to upload them):

my sweet nephew Joel turned 12 in June!! getting dangerously close to the teens... here we are at the lake:

Emily, Joel's sister (which would make her my niece) turned FIFTEEN on July 14. Which is ridiculous. I feel like she should still be 5!! This was taken when we were at camp in Colorado, on the top of Mt. Chrysolite! Beautiful view, beautiful girl!

my sister, Amie's birthday was June 29! We spent it at the lake which was WAY fun... cake for breakfast, our whole family together, dance parties on the boat... it was a much needed mini-vacation. Here, Amie is singing her heart out on the boat. And Shelbs is plugging her ears.

We celebrated Ben's 21st in June.... the 28th, to be exact. Clearly, we had fun:
Kelly "Misdemeanor" Marhaver turned 24 on July 18! Not the 17th, which is when I called her, thinking it was the 18th. Fail. This picture is an oldie but a goodie. Look how young and cute we were! This was taken right before we went on a sweet double date to the Outback Steakhouse. Classy.
Lori Ingersoll (2006 Homecoming Queen of Trinity University: see picture) had a birthday on April 30... AND, ladies and gentlemen, as of a couple weeks ago is now betrothed to be MRS. Bobby Zabor!!! YAY weddings!!!!
My dear friend and lovely former youth grouper from FPC San Antonio, Wilson, has been kicking cancer's @$$ for the past year or so... and he just finished his last treatment!! Happy Remission, Wils!!!!!
Heeeeey Brother: Thomas turned the big 2-1 in May... much to my dismay! Here he is in his younger retainer days. FYI: this picture, when I stumbled upon it, made me laugh out loud.
Audrie's birthday was June 12. This was hard for all of us, but it is a wonderful reminder of the life of the sister, daughter, and mommy we loved and continue to love dearly. I found this picture in an old shoebox of pictures in my closet at home... I hadn't seen it in years. I always feel relief and comfort when I stumble on or remember something like this, a little reminder that even though Audrie isn't here, she will always be alive in our hearts and in our memories.

So there you have it. If I were to make a list of things I love, among them would most definitely be birthdays, engagements, and remission. More to come in the near future, never you fear...

a note on acclimating

ee cummings', "(finding and losing and laughing and crying)" has never felt more appropriate.

As some of you may already know, I like words a lot... so much so that I have a list of favorite words which I like to bust into conversation every now and then and knock the veritable socks off of all the people listening to me drop big words like they're hot. Definitely on that list, up high in fact, is the word "discombobulated," and I couldn't feel more so at this current moment.

I am back in Denver, trying to acclimate (another favorite) to regular life again. It is an oddly disconcerting (another) thing to be gone from a place for months at a time - even though lots of things are the same, lots of things are different, too. Like, for example, there are new people who hang around with my old people, there are things like my roomie Susan moving out today and my roomie Becca and friend Colin getting engaged, there are things like having to find a new place to live looming in the not-distant-enough future. The surfacey part of me is adjusting just fine, learning the new things, meeting the new people, saying goodbye to other people and things... and then there is a perhaps bigger part of me that wants to scream (or stay in bed all day, as the case may be) in protest of how different life is than it was in May. How different I am, too.

Just today I was thinking about if I might want to make it back to Wichita before school started and everything, just for a weekend, and I caught myself thinking about how I could do that, because it would be a good chance to see my fam, see Amie and the kids, see Emily and Joel, visit Audrie. It is things like this that make it impossibly hard not to want to rebel against life going on. I want to visit Audrie. And I can't. Acclimating sucks.

So while I am busy trying desperately to resist being Debbie Downer constantly and am trying to resist answering "TERRIBLE" every time someone asks simply how I am, I read about this thing called the gift of the desert road. I am 100% plagiarizing from Stuff Christians Like, which I unabashedly and shamelessly promote at any chance and/or opportunity.

While I protest and rage against God for all of the things in my life that, in my opinion, suck at this current moment, when I wonder why my week at Frontier was so very trying and hard, when I wonder WHY I am not this, that, and the other, when I am confused as to why I am not already a mature, problem-free Christian and also awesome counselor, friend, family member, and general human being, when I wonder why I am not engaged or married or on my way there, at least, essentially when I am just downright unsatisfied with everything, I read this question: "Why do you keep refusing the gift of the desert road?" (a big thank you, Jon Acuff, for asking).

Here's what he writes:

"That's kind of a weird question, but it comes out of some verses I've written about before. In Exodus 13: 17-18, as the Israelites are leaving Egypt, the Bible says:

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, "If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt." So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of Egypt armed for battle.

I love the simplicity of that. God knew that if the Israelites took the short way, if they took what probably seemed like the logical route, they'd face a war they weren't ready for and would probably willingly return to slavery. So out of love, out of a deep, big love for His people, he took them on the desert road."

Hmm. The thing is, I have no idea what the plan is. Based on what I believe about God, I am not the planner. I don't get to choose the timing, I don't get to pick the circumstances, I don't get to always have my way. But also, based on what I believe about God, I believe there are plans. That God's timing is perfect and I don't have to question that. Which is not to say I don't, because I do, but the point is, maybe I am not ready for war just yet. Maybe (probably) I have more to learn before I go through Philistine country because if I don't learn those things, I might duck and run before I get through. Who knows.

"What if God loves you too much to send you to war? What if He loves you too much to throw you into situations you're not ready for? What if that desert road is a gift?"

What if it is, after all, a gift? What if the long way around is the best way, for me? This is life, now. Getting to know the new people, loving the old people, finding a new house, finding (fingers crossed) a JOB for December, waiting for the day when I get to be the one on the receiving end of a perfect proposal, learning to live without my sister, and figuring out how to adequately honor her life with my own. I can stay in bed as long as I want, or I can dive headfirst into what God seems to be trying to teach me. I guess that's my choice.

So even though the desert road seems a little long and a lot sucky, I think I'll try to accept it. Better than changing my name to Debbie (last name Downer) and adding "WAH-WAH" to the end of every sentence, which I'm pretty sure is the only logical alternative.