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| My mother and sister have long called me a drama queen: not because I create drama, but because I seem to collect it, like my favorite black pants attract such copious quantities of lint.
The last few weeks are no exception. And sadly, most of them are related to my forays into domesticity. Honestly, I'm a reasonably good cook. David attests to the fact. And I'm ably decorating and cleaning a house I won't even be living in for another month yet.
But all of this comes at a price. Namely:
1. A cracked tooth. Right side of my left front tooth, nice big gap front and center, just in time for wedding photos. That incident had to do with baking pineapple upside down cake and my general klutziness. Don't ask. (Thankfully, I was able to get it repaired, but the dentist was full of dire warnings of the new piece popping off at any moment. No more corn on the cob or unsliced apples for me...)
2. Second-degree burns. Several nice bubbly spots on my right hand where I knocked it against the oven door which checking the relative doneness of a zucchini-chicken-rice casserole. The casserole turned out well. My hand still looks a little scary.
3. Additional hand trauma. From my attempts to use plastic bags as gloves while wiping done a vintage bureau with bleach. Won't be doing that again.
4. Various inexplicable bruises. I think these have to do with moving boxes and furniture. But who knows?
Oh, and the mice. With the cooler weather, we've discovered an infestation. The foundation appears to have swiss-cheese holes, so the critters are making it into the basement and working their way up. I'm not a fan of the beasts, but David has put out a veritable hit on every mouse among them. It's war.
I hope the hostilities are over and the graves dug before I get back from North Carolina next weekend.
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| I'm reading through the full Bible this year, and a certain amount of beauty and oddness lies in the fact I'm using a new Bible and a new version (ESV) -- a gift from my sister and brother-in-law last Christmas. Each day, the new passages don't have any of my underlines or notes. The book doesn't, yet, fall open to the favorite, oft-read passages. It's a voyage of discovery into words I thought I knew fairly well, and find that I don't really.
All of which to say, it was a surprise to stumble across a few lines from Paul in II Corinthians that I recall latching onto a few years ago...and then promptly forgot.
The hazards of being human.
"You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." ~ II Corinthians 3:2-3
That floors me.
I'm a letter. I am a message to this world from Christ.
Apparently, it's an epistle in which the ink is generally blurred, words misspelled, and the whole thing plagued by grammatical errors and downright inaccuracies.
Not only do I reflect, ultimately, on Christ...but I am a veritable letter of recommendation for those people who have delivered this "me" of a letter. The Spirit, through each of them, has written sentences, lines, bits of poetry and prose and wisdom that cling with varying levels of success to my being.
My parents and grandparents. A whole host of godly ancestors. Mentors. Friends.
I reflect on them, too. Who I am says a little of who they are and how Christ is at work in and through them.
The whole thing is an awesome -- and slightly terrifying -- weight of glory.
I want to be more legible.
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| I stand on the dock and stare up at the lake house. The lower level
windows are peppered with florescent squares: green, pink, purple,
blue, yellow. Blots of bright color against the red brick and white
trim and stretch of smooth green lawn.
Clear evidence that an Art Within retreat is in progress.
I've scribbled large portions of my life -- especially as it relates to
story and film -- onto post-it notes over the last ten months. My
goals, what moves me, what makes me angry, what characters and stories
shape me and weave their way into my life, how I relate to the
characters I write and what they're becoming and how it meshes with my
own process of becoming.
The retreat was two weeks ago. Now I've just finished up the rewrite on my script, stemming from the feedback and workshops. The story is not done just yet, but it's creeping toward completion. My characters are nearing the point of stepping out on their own, into the world.
And so, even though there is plenty else for me to grapple with at the moment...weddings and curriculum and house furnishing, and such...I find myself starting to look--
Wonder...
...Who the next set of characters will be. What story I'll living next.
And how do I go about finding them?
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| As of 11:05 this evening, I turn 30.
A fitting reason to resurrect the blog, no?
Even if I live a long life, it's likely 1/3 over, or more. I can't pretend I'm just starting out. No--I'm in the thick of living, and grateful as I am for all I've been given, I'm even more thankful that this isn't all there is, that there will be a time when I'm not caught up in the constant fight against my besetting sins. When getting out of bed in the morning--no matter how much I may be looking forward to the day--isn't a wrench. When I'm not struggling to get my critical thoughts and sharp tongue under control.
This isn't doom and gloom. I'm happier with who I am and who God is shaping me to be in the process than I ever have been.
But the reality of how temporal this all is...is, well, real.
(Much of my mulling over life and death and big picture questions at the moment is a result of having just finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. There's a unique feeling in reaching the end of an epic fantasy series--a well-written one. It's akin to completing Lord of the Rings or the Narnia Chronicles, and leaves everything emotionally raw and close to the surface. Which is exactly what good storytelling should do.)
From a more concrete standpoint, David and I have found a house! It's a little two-bedroom, two-story house with a bit of lawn and lots of trees. It was built in the early 1900s, which adds a lot of charm, but also means that there's very little in the way of closets and cabinets.
Anyone got a few spare armoires?
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| A friend of mine working overtime on her dissertation sent me a "help!" email recently. She needed data on how people who make a major move (whether internationally, or just to a different location domestically) use technology to maintain a network of relationships.
Everything was set up in a handy, online survey. And as I have this fetish for filling in blank forms (sick, I know) and considerable personal interest in the subject matter, I hopped to it.
'Twas interesting to see just how drastically being wired has affected the trajectory of my life. A few of my ponderings, lifted from the survey:
1. Internet usage. I recall doing my first internet search (for marshmallow peeps!) in 1996 when my sister came out to college to visit during my freshman year. I now rely heavily on the internet, both for convenience (paying bills, booking travel, all major purchases) and research for my writing projects. (I can't imagine having to go to a library to look up all the random things I now google or wikie in seconds!)
2. Email usage. I first used email in the science research lab at my high school...probably 1994. I was a member of the first class to be able to request a test email address at college in the fall of my freshman year (1995) and immediately began using it to keep in touch with my folks (especially with long distance so expensive prior to the advent of cell phones). Again, I use it constantly now...probably verging on addiction at times!
3. Cell phone usage. I got my first cell phone in 1998 when my dad made me purchase a plan along with my first car. It was a huge, bulky thing that I think I only ever made one test call from. I didn't get a really usable cell until 2002, at which point I completely ditched my landline and haven't had one since. Incidentally, I've kept the same cell number for five years through living in multiple states. Also - I'm engaged to a man with whom I reconnected over the internet (he found me again through a google search that turned up my blog!) - and I truly doubt our long distance relationship would have developed as it did without email and cell phones, on which we've had to rely almost exclusively without a lot of face-to-face time.
4. Handheld/wireless usage. I don't use a hand held, but my work laptop is wireless, and I tend to take it everywhere I go, whether inside my workplace, on trips, etc.
5. Blogging. I have a xanga blog, which I created to disseminate what was going on in my life while I lived in L.A. for three months last year. Ironically, I think my grandmothers are my biggest readers! I kept it up faithfully for a year, but haven't posted much of late. I also have a MySpace presence, but only check in every few days and don't update the page often.
--I'm not a technoid (yes, I just made that up). I don't have a yen for the latest gadget or the fastest connection speed. But even so, I'd be bereft without my cell phone and internet connection.
I wonder what strange and, as yet, mythical things my grandchildren will wonder how I survived without?
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