How things end up.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a boy. This is true. Once, I asked my mom why she had me, a girl, and why she didn't do something different so I'd be a son instead of a daughter. She laughed a little but then realized how serious I was and simply said, "Because God wanted you to be a girl, and He knew I wanted another sweet little princess..." She might have tried to pinch my cheek after that, which made me want to be a boy even more. My cousin was a boy... my friends were boys... why couldn't I be a boy, too? I liked action figures, pocket knives, building things (forts, chairs, traps) and carving things (wooden swords, tooth picks...). I liked exploring and going on crazy adventures (our backyards were HUGE). I liked sports and race cars and pulling barbie's head off. One time my friends and I made a flying fox out of twine and wash cloth... which was a dumb idea, but it was very Indianna Jones, and I bragged about my rope-burned hands for days. My dad used to tell me I was a "tom-boy," and I liked the sound of that... He took me fishing and encouraged my sports skills. Any time he was at his workbench, I was sitting on top, watching him saw and glue and hammer and sand. When he had a local basketball game to play in, both Joy and I would go so we could shoot around afterwards. Dad did always seem to hone in on my dribble and stance and shooting form... I think, in a way, I was like the son he never had...

I'm not upset about this, my dad never said he wished I was a boy or that he didn't want any of the four girls all his children ended up being. After all, I was the one that said I wanted to be a boy... I think he was just happy to accommodate that part of me... and have a "tough" daughter and "little buddy" to share his cool tips with.

... I didn't mind being his little buddy.

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When I was a little girl (but a little older), I had become obsessed with Star Wars and with Tomb Raider. I used to want to be buff and cool and fearless and able to do amazing flips while kicking bad guys' butts like Lara Croft. And I wanted to learn how to wield the Force like Luke Skywalker. About that time, I really started liking the color blue.

... Kicking bad guys' butts and using the Force for good... Yup, that was the kind of stuff I wanted to do as a little older little girl. (Now, I just want to be buff... Don't judge me. You probably want to be buff, too.)

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When I was a teenage girl... I was on the basketball team and wanted to survive high school... yeah that's about it.

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Now, I'm not a little girl anymore. Nor do I want to be a boy anymore (well, there are certain times... VERY certain times...), but I do still like a lot of things I liked when I was younger. I still like sports. I still thoroughly enjoy fishing. And blue is my favorite color. I still watch kick-butt girls in movies and like that they're not "sissies." (If you take the "sissies" thing personally, please don't, I obviously still have issues to work through). But I also do like that God made me a girl... now.



Sometimes I think about my sisters - I think about how beautiful they are - and I think how blessed I am to share that sister-bond with them (something I wouldn't be able to share as a boy). Sometimes, I think about how empathetic I can be - I think about how there are definitely empathic guys, but how there's just something unique about a woman's empathy, and I'm glad I can share that with other women that might be going through what I have gone through. Sometimes I even think about being pursued, being a wife, being pregnant, being a mother... and I think those sound like wonderful things to be. For now, I think about playing guitar and singing as a girl... writing songs from my feminine heart. I think about the workings of my theologically driven mentality... of doing and writing and professing theology slightly different than a man, because I am a woman, and that's no "slight" at all. I think about being a leader in a uniquely female way, and I think about being fiercely dedicated to Jesus' way in this manner of worship and love that I've found myself in... Suddenly, I don't want to be a man at all. Of course I think that men are great, and I want to be led by and married to a great man someday; without men, there wouldn't be women, and vice-versa, and I don't even know how to finish this sentence without filling it with understatements...

But I guess what I'm ultimately saying is that... that I... that there are... hmmm... that I'm glad I liked the boyish things I liked when I was young, because they are a huge part of who I am as a woman now... And I don't mean that girls who liked horses and dresses and flowers and dancing are not appropriately (and also appropriately featured as) brave, strong, great women. I'm just coming to believe more everyday that I'm great as a woman, too. So I'm thankful God made me a girl after all. Because how things end up, my wants for me are more like His wants for me anyway... and I want to be a woman of God.

Life is Beautiful.

In real life, too.

This past month I've realized that facebook makes no big difference in my life. It hasn't been in my life at all this past month, and the only thing I've missed about it is all my witty jokes finding their way into the cyber world via another person's wall or the tagged photo they're attached to. Cause sometimes I feel like I'm that much funnier on the internet... (But then I make a joke in the office, and Dan Lance laughs at it, and that reminds me I'm funny in real life, too. And I no longer need facebook.)

So we broke our fast from noise yesterday as a church (which I was ironically and quietly at home sick for). Mid-Friends episode, it hit me that I could get back on facebook again! The first time in a month! All that pent up... SOCIAL TENSION. And, I mean, what if the world is imploding and I totally missed the invitation to the group "We have a space shuttle that will transport you off earth on this date at this time, et cetera, et cetera (Hurry- limited seating!)"??? I thought about how I would come to Yaks today and get back on facebook, and about how getting back on facebook again would just blow my mind... I thought about how much of a difference facebook probably makes in my life and I don't even realize it...


This how much of NOT a difference it makes in my life-

Messages waiting in inbox: 2
Photo tags: a few times in 1 new picture album
Wallposts: about 5 (and two of them were because of prompts to "reconnect" with me)
Notifications: about 37 ...surprisingly low, considering the amount of flower pots and farmville corn I am usually "gift"ed in a day.
Invites to that group with the space shuttle: 0


Anybody who's anybody on facebook knows what lame numbers those are.

Anybody who's anybody on facebook knows that the underlying force of facebook is "tag and be tagged back"... if you don't thrive and live and flourish under the blue and white url f logo of this post-and-comment-now-comment-on-the-post world, you might as well not expect big numbers during one month's time of absence. This is what I knew going into the fast. This is what, I am slightly embarrassed to say, I had to pray to Jesus about. "But Lord- If I do not comment, I will not get a comment back!"

Cause anybody who's anybody on facebook knows that if your status is old, you're old news my friend...


Luckily, anybody who's status or pictures or dire re-connecting needs make a big difference in my life, also has my phone number. Or email address. Or I see their ACTUAL face as life affords. I'm definitely not being a facebook downer... I just think it's a relief every now and then to realize that you DO have bonds thicker than clear wire...



Thank you, Jesus... I can trust you with my social life. (And my real life... the world is not imploding...)

Good fasting lesson.

Mudhouse Sabbath

I'm currently reading a book called Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner. It's a slender little book that I picked up yesterday in Barnes and Noble and decided to use my Christmas gift card on (Thanks, Mom). Reading it now, I wish I had picked it up the day before yesterday, just so I could have had it in my possession sooner. I'm pretty sure I've only stopped reading it to shower, pee, and drive... and to write this.

The point of the book is ingeniously described by a phrase found directly underneath its title: "An Invitation to a Life of Spiritual Discipline." The phrase is printed in pink lettering and means what it suggests (as most phrases by Winner do). The fact that it's in pink means nothing, but I thought it was pretty and worth the mention.

When I'm done reading this book - which will probably be around the same time I'm done drinking this latte - I'm going to seriously reconsider the intentionality I give to certain "ordinary" things in my life... things like sabbath and food and candle-lighting... and doorposts. (I haven't actually gotten to the "doorposts" chapter yet... but I bet I'll reconsider the attention I give to those.)

It's a book about the link between spiritual practices of Judaism and the formation of our responses to God in Christianity. It is about "the rhythms and routines" that, as Winner puts it, "drew the sacred down into the everyday." It's a book that shows you you are practicing things everyday, but, how are the things you're practicing forming you to respond to God? Are they at all? Mostly, it's one of those books that asks if you'd like to pay a little more attention...

I'd like to pay a little more attention.


Mudhouse Sabbath... Let me know if you want to borrow it. Maybe we'll read it for lifegroup.

I was reading a very good book this morning, and I realized that if I ever wanted to write a good book, I would need to figure out what, exactly, I am writing about. And I would need to have a lot of things to say about whatever I am writing about. Then I would just need to write about it. It sounded like a simple enough formula: 1) Figure out what you are writing about, 2) Have a lot to say about it, 3) Say it in writing (I would add in, "with humor," for sales strategy). Then I realized something else: I don't think I could ever stay focused enough to write a good book about something. Unless, of course, it was a book about realizations... I might be able to write a good book about realizations... but whoever wants to read a book about that...

Get up and walk...

Bethany Dillon has an awesome new cd out. Danae Allen bought it for me for my birthday. Thank you, Danae...

This is my favorite song right now:

GET UP AND WALK

I have got no one to blame
Except if that someone’s me
I washed my hands, but just the same
My eyes confess for me
I come in filthy rags
You know I’m guilty

I wake up almost every night
Saying Your name
What I would give to walk in the light
But what I hide has made me lame
My face down on the ground
I wait to hear the healing sound

You break through my deafness
Swing open the curtain
And I find the courage to get up and walk
I forget my weakness
For You’ve answered my loneliness
And through the mud on my eyes
I can see my Hope has come

You’ll have to show me where to go
It’s been so long since I’ve used my feet
I got up today a cripple
And now I’m dancing
So let the power of Your move
Not stop with what I can see

[back to chorus]

I couldn’t walk
I couldn’t sing
I couldn’t love until You found me

"...that everywhere I am in Thy presence."

About a month ago, I was invited to teach an FYE class on the Streams of Faith. In preparing for it, I realized that there are many crevices and pockets of these streams into which I have not stopped to dip my own bucket. So I typed up outlines for the Contemplative, Holiness, Charismatic, Social Justice, Evangelical, and Incarnational Streams, and decided that I would need to keep one for myself...

At about 9:12 this morning, the prayer of Susanna Annesley (mother of John Wesley) was one of the last things I added to the Incarnational outline. Then I decided to add it to my day... Then, event-upon-event, a good breakfast with good friends, a somewhat disheveled but peaceful arrival to the class, and a slow reading of Psalm 139 to open... and I am convinced that He is with me.

Pray this with me as I pray it about 14 more times today. And remember that He is with you too.


“Help me, Lord, to remember...that everywhere I am in Thy presence. So my every word and action have a moral content...May all the happenings of my life prove useful and beneficial to me. May all things instruct me and afford me an opportunity of exercising some virtue and daily learning and growing toward Thy likeness...Amen.”

My New Little House

I moved into my new little house on Tuesday. It's not actually "new"... But it is little. And I love it already. Megan and I discovered that the bathroom door doesn't stay shut... which is fine, cause maybe we'll get a latch. We're grown up like that... we can get latches if we need to...

But I've never rented a house before--big or small. So the fact that I'm typing this at our breakfast nook table on our "borrowed" wireless internet, while listening to the three sprinklers squirt around outside our kitchen window, is kind of surreal. Not the "I'm going to be on Wheel of Fortune tomorrow" kind of surreal... just... kind of surreal. The real part comes with the simple fact that I'm in a new stage of life again. Paying rent and electric bills, planning dinner parties and grocery shopping for the next couple of weeks (rather than a few hours of late-night-homework-cramming)... going to bed at a normal time of night, when I'm tired, because I have office hours the next day and not a final exam at 8 am... and knowing that I'm here in Redding to reside year round because of these wonderful office hours, but also because of so much more... much much more.

And then it hit me when Meg's mom yelled from the kitchen, "Where do you girls want the toaster!?" that I've never thought about where a good place for the toaster would be... or a good place to put band aids... or where a good place to buy a paper towel rack from is...
I never really considered that I could have a garden if I wanted.

Guess it's the little things that make you feel like you're getting older... It's the little things that change when you're growing up... It's the little things you start thinking about suddenly because your responsibilities are shifting and you are suddenly the one making the decisions about the little things. Not that the decisions about the little things make you more mature necessarily, but they're all accumulating to the bigger changes... Bigger changes that eventually find you in a new house you are responsible for... and where you begin to realize, "I think I know where the toaster should go now..."


...and then you walk outside to get the electric bill from your new little mail box.