Schnooks

I've been fortunate enough to spend a few day with the fam at the new pad. The church is nice; people are very welcoming and friendly. The boys are doing okay with it all - a little disoriented and trying to feel things out. We found a good gym and got that taken care of... now we'll try to find the guys some friends (gotta have the priorities straight, yaknow). The beach is super close. This is really full of travelogue and I'm actually boring myself.
So. Yeah. Eloquent, really.

unravel

Even what we trust the most
Like the definitely-there road
Or sky or something even less impermeable
Like the abstract realities
Of love... or life...
I mean the very knowledge of existence
Proves the reality of being, right?
But Descartes' self-determinance
And Nietzsche' self-centered universe
Speak nothing into the reality that is
So untrustworthy that the slightest
Misapprehension causes it to unravel
Entirely, until it is some pathetic illusion
Or former belief that I'm too ashamed
To even reference in the vaguest of terms
Because what may be is too terrible
And what is is too unsure
So I come in
And fall down
One step
Then slip
And surety is no more
Certainty is unveiled as the
Mythical abstraction it really is
Really is.
It really is.
This all really is...
Happening.
And today, maybe only today,
But today nevertheless,
It unraveled me.

Done at last

My darling beautiful younger sister... D+ you PASSED! I wish we'd known each other, this is a little awkward... At last my love has come along... I really am very proud!!! You're done. You're grown up. You're not a kid anymore at all even kind of. And if you ever read my blog you will see these lovely words typed solely for your benefit.
But since you won't... I'll cut it short.
Love ya, Fatz.

Happy happy

I'm in childcare bliss. I literally have the best job(s) on the planet... maybe for no other reason then that my jobs make me happy! Today I got a 2 yo along with my 4 mo which was so fun! I love that work for me is learning new techniques for stimulating a baby brain with shapes, colors, movement, balance, and new ideas. I feel very spoiled to get to do what I do.

And next week my baby Brooker will be visiting me from CA!!! I can't wait to see her - little choocher. I am dying to love on her a little bit and see what a big girl she's growing up to be. All of these amazing packets of potential... it's so unreal to think that everyday they are growing, learning new concepts and words and skills, that will shape them into little adults. They know so much more then we realize... they notice everything... and they have an incredibly simple view of life and love, that I'm sure I can learn a good deal from.

The Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

So I think I want four.

Even me

Life doesn't explode with a bang that leaves me holding the shambles... often, anyway. Life doesn't wow me with its amazing properties on a daily basis so much as it just, well, passes. It doesn't pass by completely uneventful or unsatisfying; but it could be more. I could be more. So much more. At least that is what I've based my passion and hunger on all these years. And what I've come to realize is that, no matter what philosophy asserts plausible alternatives to this idea (that I can be so much more), I can no more separate myself from that belief than I can lose myself.

Life is not incidental or coincidental. It is not meaningless and random. This I know.

But here's what I hate: I am not yet what I want to be. And at times, that reality is so thoroughly disconcerting and so intensely upsetting that I want to abandon the pursuit of meaning. To keep pressing on toward a goal that seems to elusive... to reject sin that seems so benign... to consistently fly in the face of my own better judgment with a lifestyle of self-renunciation and "faith"... these are the things that hold me back, urge me on, and leave me in an unsolvable conundrum of duplicity and confusion.

But this I know.

I want to be so much more than an average everyday. I want to be so much more than a churchgoing "christian". I want to be so much more than a good person. I want to be so much more than nice and pleasant... I want to be vehement, I want to be emphatic, I want to be passionate... I want to be peaceful, I want to be confident and I want to be saved.

I know who will save me.
But it is he who horrifies me...
And offers me this life that,
Well, seems impossible.

"With God all things are possible."

Even me.

Yo Mo

My lovely mom. What would I do without you?
Hope you had a great Mother's Day.
You're the best.

am (as in vs. pm)

It's morning. I have that weird heat on my body from rushing around, grooming, as I inevitably must since my hair takes on a life of its own in the night, arranging itself in all types of weird peaks and spikes. I can't see outside so I don't know if the day is nice. I've blasted the praise music today, trying to get myself into some kind of serious-mindedness. These days, I wonder what God thinks of me. I wonder if He still likes me or if He's kind of fed up. Sure He loves me but I wonder if He digs me anymore. It makes me feel kind of sick in my stomach to think that He doesn't. It also makes me feel kind of helpless... a veritable Alice, tumbling downward, only able to observe with infantile expressions of delight or disgust the objects rushing past her. Sometimes that's how I feel: life is rushing past, moments are lost all too soon, opportunities are swallowed up in the unalterable waves of time... I will see this shore no more; this horizon will never discover itself to me again. That doesn't always make me despair: surely it alone is the reason that we feel the need to savor life. Carpe diem.

"What man has written man may read; But God fills every root and seed/With cryptic words too strangely set;For mortals to decipher yet." -Charles Dalmon

Squares in a round world

This morning Mom told me about a word that a lady in the church had for me. It was something to the effect of: Joy is a square in a round world; she is misunderstood and different, she needs to be freed, released. Perhaps not coincidentally, Leah and I discussed this as we visited all weekend. I've missed her more than I can say.
I've often said that the relationships I've collected are with people who are similarly unassimilated. I don't pretend to be run of the mill. Neither do I claim to be fabulously unique. I know I'm genuinely different. A lot of times people talk, and honestly, I can't identify. I can't relate.
It's not a good feeling... it is a feeling of being displaced, alone, outside.
I keep saying, 'I wish I could be a good Christian girl.' And part of me is... but part of me feels least connected to the masses of Christian people.
I'm not a rebellious 14 year old who has chosen a life of rebellion. I'm an adult woman who is self-confident and asserts my God-given freedom to live a certain life. Is this a gift? It feels like a curse. I don't feel privileged, I don't feel included, I don't feel accepted. I just feel shut out of my remaining social niche...

Do I stay or do I go?

At least I have my fellow squares.

Quote of the day

I can't vouch for this guy's credentials (dang it, I just broke the binding on my book) but Tozer quoted him:

"God does not communicate to us so much as He just is Himself in us. We are the vessels, the containers, so that the first work after the new birth is to cultivate the habit of receptivity."
Norman Grubb

It is a spiritual receptivity, Tozer argues, that is the distinguishing mark between those who "find" God (in His manifest presence) in a way others do not. The onus is on us: do we have a habit of spiritual response?

"My heart says of you, 'Seek his face.' Your face, oh Lord, I will seek." (Ps. 27:8)

Crazies

Trying to get this crazy lot together, dressed up, and all smiling in the same picture... impossible? Priceless.
(There were too many embarassing and mirthful anecdotes to choose just one. Call me and you'll get in on the fun)