My week

This week I got tired of standing in the cold waiting for the bus. So I walked from the parking lot to my office. It was snowing and cold so I shrugged my chin down into my scarf and kept my eyes half closed to avoid the falling flakes. I thought about things, which is good. I didn't think and just hummed, which is better. I prayed.

This week I went to lunch with a friend. We met at the fishtanks in the HUB and planted ourselves in two armchairs on the second floor to listen to the Friday afternoon concert. The band's name was "Pearl and the Beard." They all wore glasses. The two women both wore bright red lipstick. My friend and I decided that we need to institute a bright red lipstick day.

This week I taught. We were working on thesis statements and creating logical arguments. I realized that what I was teaching was not so much writing as a way of thinking. I wondered if that is okay. I started thinking that maybe all anyone ever really teaches is different ways of thinking.

This week I baked bread; watched a movie; I walked up and down the mint-green-walled institutional staircases of the building where I work. I talked with my brother and my sister. I watched the birds outside of my front window. I went to class and listened. I went to class and talked. I drank tea. I took a nap.

New Semester and New Resolutions

I am one week into the new semester and still struggling to get my head and my heart to catch up with my body and circumstances. I am reluctant to work. The work will not wait much longer. It's tiring to think about it.

But, I will persevere, and hopefully I will adjust to my new schedule soon and get into a comfortable and productive groove.

As with all new beginnings, this one leaves me wanting to be more diligent about posting here. I will try, but I make no promises.

Waiting for Christmas

I want to wait for Christmas this year.

I want to celebrate, don't get me wrong. The lights are already up in my front window. The carols are playing right now. I'm not turning into some sort of scrooge here. I want to take the best the season offers, and I intend to. At the same time though, I am sitting here and thinking and feeling the need to cultivate an attitude of expectation in my heart.

I want to want something, to actively, consciously want something this Christmas that no blinky, colored lights or crooning about warm fires and cold snow can satisfy. I want to want, to wait for, the birth of Jesus. Not because it's so cute to imagine the sheep and donkeys looking at the baby in the manger. Not because it makes me feel vaguely hopeful and happy and good-willed. I want to wait. I want to expect, desire, long for, yearn, wish for Christmas because I want to remember how the whole world waited for its creator to come and save them. I want to wait for Jesus' birth.

Click, click, click

That is the sound of the pieces of my life coming together. It has been a good day. A lot of little and not so little things are snapping into place.

I'm two weeks into school. Classes are interesting and challenging. Teaching is rewarding and challenging. Living in a new place is exciting and challenging.

Something I (apparently) wrote

While looking through my old journals the other day, I found this and thought it was still interesting. For your reading pleasure. Hopefully.

"The lamplight bends in the glass and diffuses through the handprints and smudges from hundreds of coffee drinkers and not enough washings in between. The sign across the street, “Latah County Title Co” is likewise bent and framed by the light. Light only travels in straight lines, they tell me, unless there is something in the way to bend it. But when is there not something in the way, I would ask, to bend the light and change it, something to take it and twist it and spread it around and make it less mathematical and more poetic? Specks of dust make the light shimmer, and leaves spread above us turn what is pure and hard into a luminescent glow of green. Even the rising of heat from the earth and from our bodies bends the light so that it wavers like a pool of water. There is always something in the way of light to bend it, to make it something other than what it was, in appearance if not in essence. . . and I am glad.

I am glad that we get to see the light through our own human personalities. I am glad that our eyes bend the light and focus it and make it into something that we can understand. I am grateful that we are not faced day after day with the hard edged reality of light in its purest form. Pure light we can only imagine. That kind of light, I think, would not be gentle with us. I think that it would be like a spear. I think it would fill us and be everywhere at once, glorious and terrifying and inescapable. I think that it is the kind of light we long for in one sense and dread in another."

Reading old journal entries

I saw a facebook post from a friend recently asking the question, "Is there anything more depressing than reading old journal entries?" For him, seeing where he had been was hard. For me, seeing where I have come is amazing.

Last night, after a kind of homesick day, I picked up a bunch of old notebooks and started rifling through them. It was strange to see how much my heart now connected with my heart then. I was the same, but at the same time I was SO different.

A lot of what I wrote in those old journals were prayers. Reading through all of them again, I was struck by the strong theme of all those prayers. I didn't see it at the time, but now it seems so clear. Over and over, in the midst of all kinds of specific circumstances, I was praying the same prayer. "God, I don't want to be afraid."

I prayed that my relationships would not be ruled by fear of rejection and failure.
I prayed that my future decisions would not be made from a place of fear.
I prayed that my faith in Jesus would be one of confidence, not fear.
I prayed that I would be able to face suffering without anxiety or fear.

I can't claim to be without fear. I'm scared. There is a lot in my life that is unknown and unclear and out of my control and that is scary. Underneath that surface fear, though, I feel that something has changed in my soul. I may feel scared about teaching in a new place. I may feel anxious about my ability to handle the workload of the program. I may feel nervous about meeting all these new people. Underneath that fear, though, I have a new basic level of confidence and trust. God has seen me through so much already. I can trust him for this too.

This confidence is SO not my own doing. It's amazing. After all this time, God is still working on me.

Backyard wildlife

This morning, I saw a cottontail rabbit in my backyard. When my parents were here, my dad saw a woodchuck which is apparently living under my shed. Since I got here, I have put up two bird feeders--a hummingbird feeder in the back and a songbird feeder in the front. The hummingbirds have found the feeder, but I am still waiting on the songbirds. Last night I dreamed about my songbird feeder. I really want it to attract cardinals.

When I first found out I was moving here, I planned to get a cat. I don't think I am going to actually do that anymore. It is just too big of a responsibility and hassle if I want to go out of town. Watching the animals in my yard is my consolation prize.