The Worshipper

It was dark and dank in the room. The miasma of old permeated everything; old food, old air, old god and bodies washed long ago. There was a weird sense of desperation further tainting the air. This was an old shrine, not the old of a well-earned patina, but the old of countless pop cans left on the alter, their rings no longer distinct, but instead a sticky, slightly furry surface that seemed to draw new damage to itself like a suicidal squirrel. But it didn’t matter, none of mattered really, because the god was the important thing. It drew them there, everyday it drew them in.  A moth to a flame is too gentile a comparison, even when the moth explodes into flame, doomed from the moment the flicker caught its eyes, this drawing was something beyond the pathetic flaming death of a bug. This was worship. The god drew them in ever deeper and they willingly gave the demanded offering.

It started the moment the novitiate awoke. They crawled from their filthy nest of whatever bedding was at hand, and came with shaking hands to begin the act of veneration. The breaking of the fast was whatever lay at hand on the alter, the remains of the previous night’s worship. The glow from the god, surely a sign of favor and love, was the only true light allowed. Yes, some wretched strips of daylight may have found a way to creep between the slats of the metal vertical blinds, but it quickly lost its strength in the face of the gods glow. The novitiate remains still the entire day until driven mad by their bodies desperate need to empty themselves of endless cans of pop, then worship is paused momentarily to allow for such mundane tasks. The god is benevolent and does not seem to mind. Its punishments are subtle. It allows you to gain ground in the world it creates for you, then casts you down, causing explosive moments of loathing as the worshiper feels the hopeless sting of betrayal by their god.

When the deep of night comes and the weary apprentice can no longer see enough to continue worshipping, it is time for him to give his offering. The greedy god awaits. It amorphous hands reach out to accept the offering; it has won again. The worshipper stands on unsteady feet, he has somehow lost the ability to walk surefootedly in the gloom. He carefully takes out a knife, a beautiful silver knife that never seems to tarnish or fade even though it is never wiped clean after each offering. Lifting his shirt he carefully cuts out another slice of his life and places the grisly offering before the glowing screen. It is done. Another day, another offering, another lost piece of life. The shaking worshipper crawls to the bed and curls up tight. Tomorrow is another day to worship. 

Revised Title: The Gamer

Margin and the Great Cosmic Fight

“I know you put in a very solid 40 hours and that you do good work, however, some of your colleagues who work more are starting to talk.” This is a paraphrase of what someone heard this week at their review. On their behalf I threw a fit that went something like this:

“So, let me get this straight, you are salaried for 40 hours of work per week, right?”

“Yes” said the beleaguered soul.

“And you do a good, solid job for every one of those 40 hours, correct?”

“Yes” This was all they could fit in between my swift flowing histrionics.

“But you were told that your good work for the 40 hours you are paid for is not enough, now you need to volunteer another 10-15 hours per week, am I understanding this?”

“Pretty much”

“And you are supposed to do this because your colleagues have chosen to work 50-60 hour work weeks for no additional pay or recognition?”

“Yup”

At this point I mustered all my indignation and said the first thing that came to my mind.

“Um…No”

Not very profound I know. You would think that someone who can use histrionics in a sentence could come up with some stunning verbal riposte, but in the face of such blatant abuse all I could come up with was…NO.

No to the loss of personal margins in our lives.

No to the assumption that it is okay to tell your employees to volunteer their time for the “good of the company”.

No to so many meetings that one full work day is spent meeting about the work you are supposed to be actually doing.

What has happened to us?

It used to be that the chief complaint of the societal masses was that husbands came home, grabbed a beer and sat in front of the tube all night.  Now, we are lucky to see each other in passing during the week and maybe catch a glimpse on the weekends between catch up projects.

I want my margins back. 

I want my friends back.  I want to stop being held captive to the tyranny of the urgent. I want to sit down. I want to rest.

There is a scene in the old John Travolta movie Phenomenon, where his mind has gotten so out of control that he can no longer sleep, stop or relax. He is sitting on his front porch when a tree catches his attention.  Really catches his attention. He is absorbed by the breeze rustling through the leaves, the sunlight playing in the branches like little children playing hide and seek, the gentle sway and the seemingly eternal sureness of the craggy monolith.  A breath catches him unaware and his body and mind finally relax. That scene fills me with jealousy every time I see it. When was the last time I had the margin to sit and become absorbed in a tree. So long ago that I think the oak in my front yard was an acorn. 

What does it take to stop this nonsense? Two of my girlfriends are being held hostage at this very moment. One to a never-ending perpetual round of soccer games and the other to the gestapo-like drum steps of marching band. Sigh, I once knew them well... I keep expecting to be hit by a brick coming over the "wall" with a note saying "help me, I am being held captive..." quickly written on a dirty soccer sock or a sweat stained piece of wool. 

Two of my other friends insist that they are only allowed one day off a week. When pushed for a reason why, they can only say it is what is expected in their profession. By whom? Who is this tyrannical beast that decides certain professions are without the basic luxury of a 5 day work week. It certainly isn't in their letters of hire - I know, I wrote them. 

Is it possible that we are holding ourselves prisoner? 

Could we be under some collective borg-like assumption that there is some kind of galactic recompense waiting for us if we sacrifice ourselves on the alter of "too busy hustling to breathe"? 

I feel like I might be unleashing some cosmic unholy terror that will descend upon me like the succubus in a Discovery Channel special and siphon out my marrow, but I am compelled to say it - NO, PEOPLE- THERE IS NO REWARD FOR LETTING LIFE SUCK YOU DRY!

You get nothing for losing touch with your inner life, your children, that guy sleeping beside you and your relationship with God, NOTHING! And worse, you face a vast future of loneliness and isolation. 

Demand your life back! Rise up and say enough! Take back your right to sit and lose yourself in the wonder of a tree for no other reason then the fact that it is there. Come out of the collective stupor and grab as many tired others as you can on your way out the door!

The reward is out there, but it comes in the form of peace. It comes in transcendent moments when you know the lightness of freedom. When you have "chosen wisely" and have gained the power of the almighty NO. 

Wishing you days of utter guilt-free repose and the reward of a quiet and peaceful life.

I know that in the span of eternity, our life is as short as a firefly’s light, but to me each minute is worthy of an eternity.

When we are little we are immortal. We know this. It is what splits the veil between this life and possibility. It is what causes us to leap off the back of the tallest chair in the house, wearing our magic cape and knowing beyond shadow of doubt that we can fly. It is what gives us the strength to launch our bike off the homemade ramp, knowing that we will ride the wind all the way across the stream, landing safely on the other side. It is the solid conviction that we will never die that allows us to leap off the garage clutching the umbrella with the absolute certainty that we will float to the ground.

We think that it is time that robs us of our ability to know these magical things of immortality. It is not time, it is loss. I lost a friend today. Each time this has happened in my lifetime I have felt a little more of that innocent immortality leave me. It is almost as if our lives shed layers of the sempiternal like a flower losing its petals to the wind, one by one.

The first one you truly remember is a shock. It is an unforgettable moment where your heart demands the impossibility of the news because you just saw them. As if your very seeing is somehow a talisman against loss. This is where the stripping begins. One layer of immortal certainty is ripped away. The services of memory do nothing to ease your conviction that it can’t be happening - yet somehow it is. Each one becomes more painful than the last because each one strips off a layer that is closer and closer to the deepest part of our heart, the place where we secretly hold onto that last shred of childhood magic. It is here that the tiny beating kernel of our very essence holds the last guileless giggle of innocence.

I guess this means that today I became an adult.

I don't want to be an adult. I want my friend back.

His name was Bill. We called him our Elder Statesman, our Mr. President (he was our church council president 22 times over his years at the church). I thought of him as a rock. He was unassailable in my view, he spoke with absolute conviction and when he spoke people listened. He was an island of certainty when times were uncertain. He was my friend.

As a Christian I know I am supposed to take great comfort in the fact that my friend is no longer in pain, is standing in the presence of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and is finally, totally, completely happy. Selfishly, all I can think about is that I want him here. I want him and his wonderful wife Jeanette to walk in on Sunday morning and be as I see them, always together. I will not get my wish and I want to stomp my feet and cry like a child, but I can't because I have no childhood left. Now I know the terrible cost of gravity, the brittleness of life, the reality that the wind cannot blow me to safety, and the brevity of the firefly.

Tomorrow I will mourn his passing, but tonight I will stare out the window with my adult eyes and wonder why it has to be this way.

An Ode to Marriage and a Baby Rant

An Ode to Marriage and a Baby Rant

On March 1^st I will have been married for one and a half years. Me, married. Wow. There are days I can hardly believe it and I feel like singing the Barbara Streisand song, “I Finally Found Someone” … the only difference is I know that a random “finding” is not what happened. It is a gift, given to me by the hand of a loving Father.

Now, for the snippy part. For all of you who have cursed my marriage with your own disenchantment, with phrases such as:

“Oh sure, your kissing and cuddling now, but just give it a few years.”

“Its all down hill from here.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t want to sit that close in a few years.”

Or my favorite, “Yeah, well just wait till the love dies and you’re stuck with each other.”

To you I say, “No thank you, you can keep your kind words and I’ll just wait and see how this turns out without your bitter vitriol.”

Now I understand that getting married at 44 is a little different than getting married at 24. Since at 24 you’re basically still a half baked potato with no idea who you really are and what kind of person you should marry, but let me give you a reminder message:

Being single sucked.

Oh I know
,
I can hear the gasps from all of you whose fondest wish is to be single again. Let me give you a refresher course on the vaunted singleness that you miss so much.

Excuse: You get to decide what to do with all your time. No one else has a right to dictate your time.

Reminder: Yes, all your time is yours. Every. Single. Minute. This is especially true on your way home from work while you are talking to one of your girlfriends, you know, the one who is never available to do anything with you because her family takes most of her time. No harm, no foul, her family should take up her time. However, there is nothing more alone feeling than having your friend drive up into her driveway and say “hi there buddy, how was school!” with an aside to you that she has to go now because she is home. So are you, but it’s just you and all your precious free time. Now, lest I sound too pathetic, I enjoyed an enormously busy and full single life, but that didn’t mean that all that free time you so envy did not weigh heavy on my spirit.

Excuse: Nobody gets to tell you what to do with your money.

Reminder: Yup, its all you, all the time. Every single decision is yours, every single financial emergency, and every single financial mistake, every single bill, every single decision, every single worry about being laid off, every single budget or math error - all yours. Yippee! I would have given a kidney to have someone there to help with those decisions. I occasionally had enough money to buy something I wanted. You could have had it back for the price of some sound financial advice I didn’t have to pay for.

Excuse: I never get to do what I want to do.

Reminder: Oh waah! I won’t call you a big baby, but I’ll think it. Try to remember all those times that plans fell through because your married friends had things come up at the last minute. Try to remember all the dinners and movies you had alone because no one was available to join you. Try to remember that financially you were so limited that you couldn’t entertain if you wanted to.

For the ladies. Let me remind you how wholly wicked singleness is during PMS. Never have I felt so alone and pathetic as when I would lie awake at 1am and long for someone to touch.  Sucky, sucky, sucky.

Excuse:  Things are so boring.  It was so much more exciting when I was dating.

Reminder: Oh yeah, because going out and meeting some stranger at Caribou was soooo fun. Spending hours shopping (which I hate anyway), make-up, hair, all for a total stranger. Perking up like a puppy every time the coffee shop door opened, trying to decide whether to buy something before he gets there and then trying to be entertaining to a stranger. When you do decide to date each other, then comes the inevitable conversation about sex. Remember that fun one?

Me: “No I’m not going to sleep with you, I’m waiting until I get married.”

Him: in stunned amazement “What?!”

Me: “No seriously.”

Him: “Well we have to at least sleep in the same bed together, how will we know if we are compatible sleepers?”

Me: “What?!”

This was an actual conversation during my supper fun dating seasons. The next guy couldn’t figure out why I stopped him every time he tried to grope me. “No seriously, my breasts are off limits. (As he reached for me again) Am I stuttering here?”

And remember the will he/won’t he call thing when you finally think maybe? Agony.

Dating is neither for the faint of heart, nor the sane.

Let me tell you what my life is like now:

I have never in my life felt greater love than from my husband. I even understand the love of my Jesus better because my husband loves me so well.

We share in this messy, awful, wonderful, blissful life. The hard stuff is no longer mine alone and the joys are doubled because they are shared.

Sitting together in silence doing our separate things is one of the sweetest ways of being loved. Just being together.

Every single day there is someone waiting for me at the end. That alone is worth any imagined loss of singlehood.

I thought I was busy as a single, but I have never been busier in my whole life, but the difference is that we are together and the busyness is shared. We are also there to say when enough is enough.

When I lie awake at 1am, I put my hand on his arm and magically a place on his shoulder appears for me.

I can no longer walk without his hand in mine. I have lost the ability to open my own doors. I do not miss these capabilities in the slightest.

Our life together is not perfect, there are many challenges, but we look them dead in the eye and we do it together.

We go “fox hunting” often. The little foxes that spoil the vine are not allowed to run rampant through the vineyard of our marriage.

But most importantly:

“I love you” has become the melody of my days and the symphony of my nights.

And really, what more is there to say than that? 

In Response to the Cat's Diary

I have but a moment before one of them comes back. They seem to be everywhere and they know all. The only reason I have this brief moment is because I fed them early and they are deep in the bowels of their bowls. It all began so innocently. It was merely a trip to the Humane Society on a lovely fall day. I blithely looked in the windows of the various rooms never knowing that it would spell my doom.  There were hundreds of them. If I had known what I know now, I would have expired on the spot. But no, my blissful ignorance blinded me to the obvious. Those poor, poor people working at the society thought they were the captors, when really they were merely the pawns of the evil horde.  Alas, I can’t help them. I only have enough strength left for one more attempt. I was a fool that day. What I thought was instant love between me and the fluffy one was instead a diabolical plot to force me to bring her home. We were not in what used to be MY home for more than three minutes before the truth began to slowly seep into my reality.

It began oh so innocently, a mew, a purr and suddenly I was in PetSmart buying a fancy new automatic waterdish. Who needs an automatic waterdish?! The next day was worse. I found myself convinced that moist food was the only way to go. My precious needed soft food, preferably warmed for exactly 15 seconds in the microwave with a soupçon of paprika. Paprika?? What was happening here! I tried to resist this silliness, but I was tormented by a fluffy tail in my face every time I began to fall asleep. After two sleepless nights, I caved. I caved like a wet tissue in a sneezing fit.  It was over for me. I admitted defeat. I was now the captive human of a 2 pound Persian and her toy mouse.

I began to plan my escape. Instead, I found myself back at the Humane Society because her majesty needed a consort. Not that she could do anything with him, as they were both it-ed, but it was a fabulous ploy to bind me to them even further. What one of them couldn’t accomplish, surely the two of them could. And they did. Boy did they. I found myself catering to their every whim. They cried I came running. They wanted to sleep on my pillow, I slept at the bottom of the bed. They wanted a cat tree, I emptied my savings account to give them the world covered in tan carpet and sisal rope.

It is now day number 412 of my captivity, I am now owned by five of them. They see my every move. They haunt my steps. My sleep is only at their will and my days are run by their feeding schedule. I am lost. Send help. Send. The. Dog…

A Tale of Three Church Signs - A very naughty post

A Tale of Three Church Signs

Attend if you will to my tale. In the small humble neighborhood of Blaine, there live three churches of distinct variety. I have not visited any of them, nor do I comment on their denominational affiliation. However, the approach of each church to the Lord and Savior is writ large upon their church signs. It is this part of the tale on which I do make so bold as to comment, yea verily and remark I will.

As to the first church, it might be said that they are of the kind that makes the dew of the lemon seem overly sweet. Written each week on their sign is their loving message to the community at large, its basic portent is thus - you are going to hell. A lovely sentiment; made especially ironic by the fact that the church’s name is Blessed Hope. I’m uncertain which part contains the hope, the assurance of your hellbound state or the fact that you will soon pass this sign at 40 miles per hour which means you will only be able to absorb half your daily allotment of condemnation. To a fellow Christian, it is like one of those horrific car accidents that your brain absolutely compels you to look at. By the end of the week, be assured that you will know the full context of the scorching coals of judgment being heaped upon you. One must be careful not to be sipping a libation when passing said bastion of hope, as one might accidently inhale the contents while gasping at the audacious use of scripture. For example, the warm and caring message to us all for Christmas was not the sweetness of the Virgin Birth, nor the beauty of the heavenly host’s singing a message of love, it was instead a miniature diatribe about how the glorious heavenly Father knows his own. The subtext was obvious. Those of you who aren’t among the chosen known, should sniff the air carefully, for that IS brimstone you are smelling.

The second tale is the one that pains me most. A bright spark has gone from the Christian lexicon. Where once the sign was clothed in clever pithy sayings that would cause even the hardest of atheistic souls to squeak out a laugh; alas, now it has de-evolved into the kind of trite tripe that we Christians are so delightfully known for. This particular sign is just down the road from the Domain of Hope and the juxtaposition of the two never ceases to amaze. All of the aforementioned signs and even the last of them, are of the laborious plastic letter-by-letter affairs that some poor soul has to change and figure out how to make an M into that ever-present extra E. Even after the fall of man, oops, I mean signage, the messages were at least happy…ish.

The favorite epigrammatic offering came late in the summer and was of such an unexpected ilk, that this writer nearly drove off the road. After a delightful season of witticisms and drollery, the sign simply said “Sign Broke…Come In for Message”. Brilliant! Many a time I almost called to tell this church what a light they were. For truly, what can be more liberating, more community building or more loving than the apt application of humor. For one shining, even sparkling moment, we band of merry Christians were not the doltish, lugubrious lot that we are so oft portrayed. Instead we were transcendent and even winsome. Then came the end…sigh. Overnight, like the fading of Brigadoon (obscure musical reference), the wit disappeared. The galaxy lost a shining presence and alas, we Christians became, once again, culturally moronic. The sign the very next week said, “What’s the best vitamin for Christians? B1” I hesitate to tell some of the later offerings, lest some convert to Buddhism out of shame – the Buddhist’s temple being right across the street and easily within reach of the distraught.

After the tales of the first two, one might be hesitant to approach the third, for fear that one might completely loose heart. Fear not faithful one, there is hope. In all of my wanderings, there is one sign that has set itself so completely above the others, that my pen fails to find a reference pristine enough to grace them. Their name is Kingswood Church. Without fail this sign contains nothing but blessing and the sweetest morsels of thanksgiving and praise. So far I have seen every church in the neighborhood graced with the following “God Bless (insert name) Church” and the delightful “Come on in, we know you’re curious.”   Oh I am.

When they are not busy blessing their “competition”, their sign proclaims the frequent meals and groceries that they give out to anyone in need in the community. If you know the church world, wishing God’s best on another church, especially one in the same denomination, is tantamount to the Green Bay Packers praying for the Vikings before the big game. A simple tale, but one that leaves a pleasant taste.

In the vein of Aesop’s, what lessons do we take with us from these three signs? Perhaps just this, even as there are many types of people in this world, there are just as many varieties within each category of people.  There are great doctors, there are terrible doctors, there are noble drive-thru people and there are the ones that can’t be bothered to look at you. Thus it is with Christians. We come in all manner of clothing. There is the Blessed Hope kind who wear undergarments so tight that their righteousness squeals every time they move. There is the second kind whose underwear went from Victoria’s Secret to red flannels. Then there is the third kind at Kingswood who don’t worry if you have holes in your underwear when the ambulance comes. They know that it is really not about underwear at all, but instead is about genuinely loving a Savior with arms wide open, stretched out to receive. It’s more important to them to make sure that you know that your life matters. Your life matters not only to the one who created you, but your life matters to them. They may be rich people, they may be poor people, they may be white, brown, purple or blue, but whatever kind of people they are, they know how to love and surely, that sign, points to God more than any other. Period. End of story. 

The Joys of Insomnia

The joys of insomnia............................... there are none.

Insomnia is like this, there are two sides on a raging river. From the awake side of the bridge, you can see the peaceful land of sleep. The clouds are fluffy is a blue sky, deer and bunnies frolic in the tall grass; that you know is as soft as a down filled bed, the good kind with no feathers, only down. It is a peaceful land with wildflowers and beauty that smells like fresh baked bread and honey. In my world, it IS the promised land! You know that when you get there your night is going to be sweet, satisfying and deliciously refreshing.

The side of the bridge that you currently reside on is bedtime land. It too is a sweet land filled with goodnight kisses from your spouse, a light nighttime snack, a soothing read and peaceful darkness. Ahhhh...

Then you try to cross the bridge into happy sleep land. You are minding your own business as you confidently walk towards the bridge. People do this every night, how hard can it be. You are at peace in your knowledge that soon you will be there, happy and blissfully asleep. You spot the newel posts that frame the lovely entrance to the bridge. Oddly, one of the newels comes off in your hand like the one George struggles with in It's a Wonderful Life. Hmmmm... that's not good... You go to place your foot on the sweet wooden bridge and stop dead. There is no bridge! Your foot dangles over a precipice that is suddenly a seemingly endless drop into a rushing brutal torrent of whitewater crashing between the two sides of your night. You yank your foot back - whew! That was close!

As you are congratulating yourself on your narrow escape from doom, you suddenly realize that you are still on the awake side. The sleep side is beckoning you, everything in you yearns to answer the call. But you are still here. Ah, therein lies the eternal problem. Bridge out. No sleep for you! You don't panic, after all you have done this a million times before, you just need to not panic. Okay, it took my husband 10 full seconds to fall asleep. If he did it, you can. Suddenly you notice that there is a clock ticking. It is a metaphorical clock, but the universe wants you to be certain that you hear the click of every passing second. No problem, You got this.You can overcome the ticking, the blackness, the knowledge that you are alone in the universe and no one is going to keep you company for the next eight hours. No big deal... you relax on your comfy pillow and await bridge repairs...

The second hour your comfy pillow has now become those little sticker thingys that you used to step on barefoot in the summer and they clung to your foot and jeans like a limpet and take you 20 minutes of precious summer time to pull off. The cozy dark now has your neighbors motion activated light being turned on once every five minutes by a rabbit whose trying to break into show business and is practicing its bows by the spot light from the neighbors garage. You are suddenly keenly aware that your husbands breathing sounds like the sleestak in the original Land of the Lost series. And the blankets are hot and heavy... no, too cold and light... wait... no... hot... cold...cold...hot...pretty much whatever you need them to be, they are not.

By the fourth hour you have turned into a mewling babe. You stand on your yucky side of the bridge and gaze longingly at Happy Sleep Side, while whimpering in the dark. You have become pathetic. If you had your childhood blankey and a baby pacifier you stole from a passing baby, you would use them.

At four and a half hours, you have this momentary lapse in your awakeness. You think you might have fallen asleep! You are so excited you wake yourself up to tell your self the wondrous news! Oh Crap!

By hour five you realize it is hopeless and you decide to read a book. Any book that is within reach, because it doesn't really matter what it is, you are only faking reading it. Your brain knows that you are only trying to stave off panic.

As you start dis-associative rocking, you listen to the clock ticking, tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...tick...timing your whimpers to the metaphorical clock almost sounds like music...okay...maybe not...the fetal position isn't so bad really...yup, you are pretty much hosed.

Only two more hours of this torture and you can get up and go to work so everyone can comment on how tired you look and you can spend the day reminding yourself that you liked your co-workers yesterday and yesterday they didn't look like extras from the Orks in Lord of the Rings. You realize your perception may be skewed.

Tonight you get to try for the bridge crossing all over again...yippee...

Written at 4:42am...sigh...

Remodeling the House - A survival guide

How to live through a house remodeling project.

Step one. Flee the house.

If step one is not possible, gird yourself for pain. Not just regular pain, but unrelenting, seemingly unending pain.

You go into it absolutely certain you know what to expect. Sure, you innocently think, they are going to put up some new walls, knock into my old ones and join the two in a new and harmonious space.  Riiiiiight.

The first clue that this might be a bit more than you expected is when they dig a giant pit and it rains. I didn’t make room in my brain for a swimming pool, but I had one. Thankfully all the ground in Blaine is sandy soil and the water drained away. Remind yourself not to think about the dumb guy in the Bible who built his house upon the sand and the rains came tumbling down. Then they pour concrete into the hole and make it pretty. And the rains come tumbling down. Now I have a concrete pool. No really, I don’t want a pool. So we wait out the water, depending on evaporation to rescue us. Days pass. We now have a floor on top of the newly dry concrete hole. And the rains come – we are starting to feel Noah-ish. Our wonderful contractor had come back on his own time to put the world’s biggest tarp over our semi dry new floor to protect it. However, the rain overcame the tarp and made it into a giant plastic funnel that was neatly slanted to run the water into the now covered concrete hole AND our basement. We now have water in our dryer vent and in the cat litter. I gotta say, scoopable cat litter is only a boon when there is not a flood in your house. One possible use for wet scoopable cat litter is to cement the ark we are now trying to convert the house into. Seriously, has the Army Corps of Engineers looked into this stuff?!?!?! It’s like some kind of super-material.

We have the world’s best contractor, so please note that the things that happened were not his fault, but rather the capricious nature of remodeling.

In all our newlywed brilliance, we decided to tackle the porch remodel this year as well. Because we are idiots. Well okay, it actually turned out okay, thanks to the brilliant work of my husband’s brother and  a week’s worth of back-breaking labor. We now have a mostly done porch connected to our mostly done remodeled house. Mostly done.

There were three weeks of brutal temperatures this summer. The first was during the porch remodel.  You know, the one we decided to do ourselves. If you have not read my rant against the ravages of summertime, please do so now. We will wait… now you understand how I feel about that lovely season (bleck). The second wave of disgustingly hot weather was the two weeks we were without air conditioning. Now for most people this is just something you endure and then you move on to the cooler days of autumn. I am not most people. I tried, I really did. I tried not to sweat like a glass of ice tea in the noonday sun, I was not successful. It was the closest I have come to wanting to murder the chipper contractor guys that came to the house every day. They seemed not to understand the nature of the atrocity they were perpetrating on me… I digress. We eventually got our air back and I moved back home from hiding out in cool dark places like Golum in Lord of the Rings.

The next overly dramatic moment comes when you realize that they really meant it when they said they were going to unhook your appliances… All of them.  No running water on the main floor and no stove. We moved all the food and the refrigerator into the office. We have been living in there for three months. At the beginning, it all seems worth it because you know what is coming; a lovely home. Two weeks into microwave cooking and eating the garbage they serve at fast food restaurants, you begin to have strange dreams. I had several that involved me in a gingham apron with a spatula in hand, flipping burgers over a hot stove…and this was NOT a nightmare. I actually WANTED the apron and I would have worn it if I could have had my stove back. Betty Crocker fantasies aside, I never want to eat out again. At least not at any restaurant that is a bargain. 

There was of course one near tragedy, I think these are a prerequisite for remodeling. Our house was created in 1961, apparently it was a good year for house building because our house has “good bones”. One of those bones is a truss that runs lengthwise across the house and because of previous codes, it is a very long truss. My husband and I were sitting in our half done, soon to be kitchen, and we happened to look up at the truss – you know, the one holding the whole house up? And there, beautifully spaced, were 3 perfect holes drilled into our main truss in a vertical line. It was basically a perforation in the truss, so it would know where to collapse the house. Sort of a “tear along the dotted line” kinda thing.

We sent a text photo to our contractor with the picture of the holes and inquired if this was some new pressure relieving technique, or was it possible that giant, junky, mutant woodpeckers had been in the house. After our contractor regained consciousness, he considered the fact that he might need to take apart the entire house (the newly remodeled part) and start over to correct the damage. We were thrilled…it would only add another couple months to the drama, opps, I mean remodel…

At this point I thought it would be fun to describe some of the more…interesting subcontractors that we have met.

Exhibit A is the electrician. For some unknown reason most of the electricians I have met are rather eccentric. Perhaps because they live on the edge of electrocution they have developed some sort of cloak of crazy. Ours was a tall blond guy who periodically popped into the house, and waving a drill around, started putting mysterious holes everywhere. I, of course, had to know. Why is my favorite question. I’m a bit like a two year old that way. Apparently the holes were used to string all the electrical through the various joists. So the next day when he came again, and again started with the holes, I was beginning to wonder if he was an escaped extra from the movie “Holes”. This time it was because the first time wasn’t good enough. Hmmmm… All this leads back to what we like to call the “perforation”. It was not giant, junky, mutant woodpeckers, it was a half- crazed, hole fetish electrician! Fortunately our magical contractor was able to fix the perforation without dismantling the entire addition. This was after several calls to the truss engineers…who knew there were truss engineers?!?

Exhibit B is the Concrete Guy. I’m not sure what it is about concrete that automatically makes these guys into curmudgeons, but if you look up the definition of curmudgeon, one of the Concrete Guys is going to be there.

First, they talk as if there is an invisible cigar poking out of one side of their mouths at all times. A toothpick is too small to be worthy of the visual. Second, for some reason they appear to have stock in Carhartt - in endless varieties. Thirdly, even if they just won the lottery, they talk to you as if someone just stole their wife, shot their dog and ate their deer limit, in other words they are crabby! This is not your ordinary crabby, this is stewed over, slow cooked, masticated, crabby.

Our particular curmudgeon wanted to know what we wanted to do with the dirt. Now this is not a question I get asked everyday, so I, of course replied, “what dirt” – did you feel the earth tremble at the thought of my gaff?  Apparently any idjit knows that there is a vast quantity of dirt that has to be done away with when the Concrete Guy gets there. Who knows where dirt goes? I certainly don’t. When I innocently and smartly said “dirt heaven?” I felt a chill go down my spine. The look he gave me made me hear that song from Redemption - the one from Appalachia. By the way, your life really does flash before your eyes when someone is going to bury you UNDER the concrete.

Exhibit C is my favorite. He is our contractor’s co-laborer. One morning I awoke to the entire house swaying as a titanic boom was repeated over and over. Naturally curious as to why our house was moving, I went downstairs and peeked around the forbidden plastic barrier. One note about this barrier. There were large swaths of plastic sheeting hanging from our ceiling at various places. It was rather fun-house-ish. There was something magical about those barriers, mystical stuff was going on back there and mysterious noises were issuing forth. Anyway, I peeked in and saw one of the young guys with a sledgehammer joyfully pounding away on some piece of the house. When I say joyfully, I mean grinning, whole body dancing, all out glee! When he paused for a moment I said “you really like your job don’t you?” He responded with “I LOVE MY JOB!” and cheerfully went back to pounding away. He was like that the whole time. Ebullient.

Our remodel just finished yesterday. The guys have all gone and I felt like I was losing part of my family as they drove away. We have lived with them for months and somehow they became part of the landscape, almost as though they built themselves into the addition and now we were less without them. I confess I’m okay that the concrete guy is not sitting on my mantel, but some of the others I would have kept.

The contractor was amazing and I highly recommend him for any project you have. Our house is Shangri-La, and the artistry put into the simplest things is incredible. Even when the project got “interesting” our guy was willing to go all the way back to square one if necessary to make it right. Integrity, It is a rare quality.

My new husband and I survived a porch remodel (ours) and a house remodel, all in the first year of marriage. Hmmmm…maybe we are idjits…

Summertime

Off the beaten path this time. I have a need to talk about summer and the sun. This is not just a need like “I need a diet coke” this is a need like “I need oxygen”. I am afraid that if I do not give in to this compulsion, I will go splat against the wall as my brain explodes like a june-bug when you step on them because something that freaky looking ought not be.

First let me begin by saying that my husband and I have an agreement. I get to whine all summer and he gets to whine all winter. Seems fair…on the surface. You see I am convinced that my seasonal hatred is much more arduous than his. These are the things I compare. In winter I do not have to be afraid to cuddle up to my hubby. It is, in fact, a pleasurable experience because he has a little furnace in his body called a working metabolism, I do not. So cuddling up is wonderful and cozy. In summer there is a distinct possibility that our skin will actually meld together from the insane heat and the parting of our two bodies may do lasting and irreparable damage. Plus, the added heat from his internal furnace may just be enough to cause my eyeballs to melt. Only in summer do I have to risk my life to snuggle up to him.  

Then there is this little factoid. In winter, one can always put on another layer of clothing. In fact, I can keep going until I look like the long lost daughter of the stay-puft man. In summer you can only take off just so much before becoming illegal (in public). Although if the shorts on these little girls get any shorter, we may have to arrest them all.  So if your internal temperature is as delicate as Scarlet O’Hara in the early years, then you are just out of luck. You are going to melt just by putting on your eyeglasses.

Then there is the evil orb. Most people call it the sun. I prefer to refer to it as the scorching, moisture sucking, eye-blinding, temperature pushing, evil round thing in the sky. In winter, this orb is much more reasonable. It gilds the snow with diamonds, sparkles on the frost covered limbs of the trees, changes ordinary landscapes into a pristine fairyland. In summer a horror-fest is unleashed upon hapless mankind. Suddenly the sun is right on top of you. You walk out the door and it pounces on you like a stalking cat. It seeps into your pores instantly heating your skin, until you feel like you’ve been spitted and are slowly roasting over the universe’s fire. Your eye’s automatically close as they are assaulted by light so bright one expects to hear a voice demanding to know where you were last Tuesday night. Forget breathing, that ain’t gonna happen. In fact there is the very real threat of charring your lungs into some sort of carbon simply by taking too deep a breath. Then there is the actual burning. Because it is not content to simply make your skin FEEL like it is burning, oh no, it is going to ACTUALLY try to burn the skin right off your body. Those of us with pale, delicate skin attempt to foil this evil design by wearing spf that could protect a suitless astronaut standing directly on the surface of said orb, however, even this is not enough to spare us the spread of unwanted freckles and painful redness. Not nice.

Let’s talk about sweat. Some of us are blessed with the ability to daintily perspire, a gentle glow, a sweet flushing…and some of us are not. I am not. I sweat like a farmhand. Now that is just what you want your new husband to think of when he sees you. Instead of standing there in a gentle glowing aura channeling Scarlet in that pretty white dress, my beloved sees a hairy knuckle, shirtless, overall wearing, chaw-chewing, sweat-stained, sticky, farmhand with sweat pouring down like a waterfall…charming.

You may now have the idea that I hate summer and pretty much everything about it. You are incorrect. I loathe it, I abhor it with every fiber of my being. There is only one thing I like about it and that is between 70 and 75 degrees and the song made famous by Ella. Everything else is icky.

Whew, there I feel better! Now I have officially declared war on the icky sticky of summer!

Happy air conditioning!

Sincerely,

Your mildly opinionated host. 

Marriage the First Year - The Lawn

The Lawn – I have spent my adulthood living in Townhouses. As a single girl, I saw no reason why I should mow and shovel. I do not have the putter with the lawn gene, so purchasing a single family home seemed counter-intuitive. Because of this decision, I have missed one very important fact.

You people are crazy about your lawns! Seriously!

There is an old movie called the Stepford Wives, it is about this community where the women are programmed to be perfect wives. I have further stretched this concept to include those freaky-deaky little neighborhoods where a builder came in and spit up 18 identical homes, including identical landscaping. My situation is a little more subtle. As you drive through the neighborhood, a trend appears out of the mist. Each and every lawn is perfect. Now I’m not talking a rough approximation of a golf-course, I am talking weirdly, utterly, perfect. I keep expecting to see Willy Wonka walking towards me, telling me that each blade of grass has been manufactured and lovingly tended to by its very own Ommpaloompa. This scares me. The only variation in these sparkling emerald lawns is the shade of emerald. It is as if each homeowner had a personal consultation with a color specialist at the Home Depot. “No I don’t like the Emerald Isles, I’ll take the Pea Puree Green.”

As you progress through a 3 block stretch, you will notice that ALL the lawns look like this. Until…(insert ominous movie music here) all this sylvan splendor comes to a screeching halt, not a mild stand on your brakes halt, but a roadrunner and Wylie Coyote kind of cliff halt. Now in front of you is a lawn that looks like it has been tended to by a demented flock of sheep. While there looks to be some form of mowing done, one would posit that either the sheep or a scythe was used. As you may have guessed, this verdant mass is my lawn.

Now to be fair, there are reasons. Yes, they are mostly lame excuses, but here they are none-the-less. 1. There is a patch of totally untended, unmowed weeds by our patio. We call this the game preserve. There is a fearless baby bunny living there who loves to sit under the screened patio windows and look my cats dead in the eye while enjoying dandelion leaves. Now honestly, if you had the cutest baby bunny living in your weed patch and thoroughly enjoying the wild salad that has been spared the blade, would you cut it down? I think not…I hope not…maybe?  2. My youngest son has inherited the mowing duties this year. Our lawn is large, so we do one side of the house each week. Since my boy is a genius, he has figured out how to s-t-r-e-t-c-h that week into almost two. This means that the lawn fights back when he mows it. Now is it fair to fault him for the weird tufts that get missed between each row? He precisely lines up the lawnmower, not the blades of the lawnmower, just the lawnmower. We are correcting the difficulty, but that means the lawn has a trendy multiple mohawk look at the moment. Then there is the need to not hit the tree roots at the base of the trees, so they all sport a foot high skirt of what passes for lawn at my house. Strangely, the root circumference seems to grow each week. In only a few more weeks, he won’t need to mow at all.

Then there is the slight problem of not really having a lawn at all. While my neighbors could all passably be in a great lawn spread of Better Homes and Gardens, ours is not really grass, it is a lovely viney substance called creeping Charlie. Believe me when I say that Charlie is a creep. Then there is the clover, the violets, the stalky stemmy things that look like prairie grass. Basically, we are the botanical garden of weeds. Unfortunately, I have a hard time summoning up the desire to care that our lawn should be condemned, or possibly torched, or perhaps the earth should be salted and not grow anything for the next 100 years. Instead I have this weird fatalism about it. I drive through the pristine neighborhood and pull into my driveway and survey the land before me. Then I snort. Not a ladylike titter, no a rip roaring snort while saying “Wow, that’s a really bad lawn!” Is it wrong to take pride in being the best of the worst? I feel so deliciously anti-establishment…hmmm…perhaps I should have stayed in the townhouse.

My biggest problem is that I have a reoccurring nightmare that the neighbors will rise up, gather their pitchforks and torches and come after us for lawn abuse…it could happen…after all, it is the suburbs…

The ART of Mommy Hood

When I was a little girl I would proudly bring home my art projects to be displayed on the refrigerator until they were mysteriously eaten by the cat and disappeared, now why the cat wanted to eat my artwork I never did quite understand. To be fair, my mom still has my attempt at an elephant from 2^nd or 3^rd grade. The elephant’s nose never quite worked out, so it became a squashy-legged dog instead. When I reached high school my most creative endeavors were neatly stored in a folio.

Now I know that times change and things progress, but I must protest some of the progress! As a newly minted mother of three boys, (my new sons, by my new marriage) I must ask you, what has possessed our school system? Really! I have about 8 vase thingies of varying sizes, shapes and colors. I’m not sure if you can actually put water in them, or even if they are really vases. Perhaps they are the mysterious vessels for some sort of teenage ritual I know nothing about. How would I know, I’m new at this. Then there are the short pottery thingies … what on earth is a pinch bowl?!? And what is it for!?!

Today, I became the proud recipient of a life-size plate of a paper mache rueben, complete with potato wedges. No, seriously! The plate is better than my own dishware and the reuben could feed a small third world nation. What am I supposed to do with this? Am I now required, under some mommy oath that I never got to hear about until it was too late, to keep said paper mache sandwich until….oh my gosh, how long am I required to keep this?!  I’m now looking at a ceramic life-sized piece of strawberry cake that I know was made by one of the older boys and it’s still here! Is there a statute of limitations somewhere? Is this stuff written down? Why didn’t I know about this?!

Okay, I’m back - short break for breathing into a paper bag.

A short word about the incredible creativity of my boys. I am enthralled by their ability to make these amazing projects. Shoot, when I was in school we considered ourselves near genius if we could draw a life-like tree! The scope of their creativity is astounding. Any project they are asked to do is done with excellence, and I am proud of them! 

The problem is that this whole situation kicks in my conspiracy theory gene. Is this the art teacher’s way of sticking it to the world on behalf of teachers everywhere? I voted for the referendum for gosh sakes, I know you are underpaid and overworked. Really, I know! Please don’t send home anymore ceramic heads that would do a witchdoctor in Bora-Bora proud. I now have to stare at those unblinking eyes FOREVER! I’m sorry! Whatever I did, I’ll make it up to you! Please, I’m begging you, let me take you out to lunch, let me pay for your next pair of shoes, I’ll do anything if you’ll just stop sending home wire jellyfish!

The worst part is that I know there is more coming. There is a mysterious Cardboard Project that has yet to make an appearance. I’m afraid. Really. Seriously. Afraid. And next year is Ceramics 3! Am I a bad mommy if the cats eat a few of these projects…OH, THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED TO MY ARTWORK! Bless you mommy, I now understand! 

The First Year of Marriage - Part 3

Blankets – I have always been someone who did not want to share her bed. Ever. With anything. No stuffed animals, no cats, no dogs, no sisters, no friends on a road trip trying to save money on a cheap hotel – no one. My path in life was a much harder one to trod. To date I have shared my bed with a squashy tootsie roll pillow, 3 cats, a 125 pound Great Dane, my sister and various friends at various times. I have not enjoyed it. I did not find it comforting to have another being beside me. I did not want to be touched while sleeping; leave me blissfully and unconsciously alone. The closest I came to having a husband in bed was the Great Dane. It went something like this. “Okay Katie, bedtime, get in your kennel” to which my dog obediently plopped in her kennel, gave me a soulful look as though I were torturing her and sighed as only a Great Dane can sigh. Around 2 hours later, when I was at my most vulnerable and droozy with sleep there would suddenly be this full force compression on my chest as my clumsy Dane puppy plopped her 125 pounds on me. It was like a nightly practice for CPR, only I was the test dummy. I really was the dummy, because we repeated this pattern every night for months; yet somehow I was always surprised. Slooooooow learner. Trying to move a Great Dane when they have decided to stay is akin to trying to move the Great Pyramid of Giza with those furniture slider thingys  – not going to happen… The next morning I would awake clinging to the vertical side of my bed by my fingernails and sheer cussed stubbornness, while the Great Dane was ecstatically, fully stretched out with her head on my pillow. Sigh…

These experiences gave me little hope for peaceful slumber in my married life. I fully expected to give up sleeping as the price for marital bliss. Imagine my surprise to find that not only do I like sleeping in the same bed as my husband, but I actually can’t go to sleep without being in my “spot” curled on up his shoulder. Shocking! That spot is like finding out the mirage shimmering in the distance really is water in the middle of an oasis. In my opinion, every night, of every year spent without that spot was a thirsty desert experience.

There is only one teensy, tiny, itsy, bitsy, little problem. I hardly think it worth mentioning, but without it, there would be nothing to blog about [grin]. Blankets. My husband steals them. Actually, I think steals might be too strong a word, perhaps cocoons into them would be better. My husband has no body fat. Like none. I work very hard not to break that "Thou shalt not covet" commandment over that one, but it’s really hard. It makes me feel like I’m living in a Jack Sprat poem. Because of this one terrible flaw of his, he seeks warmth like a missile. Usually this means I wake up shivering and having to go to the bathroom. Now, one does not necessarily lead to the other, but the bathroom trip is inevitable.

I need to note, that there are few things in life more miserable than waking up in the middle of the night freezing cold AND having to go to the bathroom.

After the necessary trip to the necessary, I am faced with a dilemma. What once was my long, lean, stretched out husband has become this tight, squished up ball of Beloved and blankets. The first time this scenario played itself out, I did what any loving wife would do and I unrolled the bundle and took my side of the blankets back. Then the most horrifying thing happened! My husband, in his sleep emitted the saddest sounding  whispered  “Brrrrrrrrrrr” and lay  there unconsciously shivering until the cold half of the blankets warmed up. I felt like I kicked a puppy and pulled the cat's tail all in the same night. Nobody warned me about this! I thought all these blanket stealers were hardened criminals, capable of the most heinous criminal acts like leaving one’s new bride out in the cold. But no, I find that they, or at least mine, are simply skinny popsicles in need of a defrost cycle. So now, I lie there thinking, should I or shouldn’t I unroll the husband burrito? Warmth or love, now there’s a real dilemma! Perhaps I should just wriggle my way into that burrito!

First Year of Marriage - Part 2

Doilies - I have a passionate fear of doilies. I am convinced that were I to put one doily under one object, that I would not be able to stop. Then I would be THAT house. You know the one that looks like a permanent blizzard of lace has iced every available surface?  However, this also plays a part in my most heinously evil newly married fantasy. We have this room in the basement. Its unfortunate nomenclature is The Man Cave. I’ll give you a moment to picture it. Are you frightened yet? Cowering in terror and clutching your loved one who secretly wants his own Man Cave? Okay, my fantasy is to sneak down there in the middle of the night and put doilies everywhere. I mean everywhere. The arms and backs of the furniture, under every forsaken dish, cup and plate, sandwiched between every xbox game and wrapped around every remote and joystick thingy. Then, as the final piece of skullduggery, I will run through the room every 20 minutes or so waving doilies and singing I Enjoy Being A Girl at the top of my lungs!

Really I am completely unaffected by the testosterone gas in my male filled house…really…

Towels – I worked in the medical field for 10 years as a medical assistant/lab tech in various facilities and on various projects. This is part of how they train you to be a lab tech. They have you swab (swab should be said swwwwaaaabbb, to get the full effect) things... I mean everything... There are some things the human mind holds onto like a vacuum cleaner with the edge of your fringed rug. I now know with indelible certainty what grows on things.

“I know what you are covered with doorknob, and you, you foul telephone, I KNOW…”

And yet somehow you are supposed to go out into the world after graduation as if you are not permanently scarred by this knowledge. I was not so fortunate. I secretly struggle not to become the world’s biggest germaphobe. You see, most germaphobes SUSPECT what’s out there… I KNOW! Yet I valiantly walk around pretending not too. However, there is one area I simply cannot bring myself to forget. Skin cells, moisture and towels. This frothy stew is beyond my ability to endure.

When I moved into the house and found that the guys follow the common practice of using a towel more than once, I applauded their economy, until I realized that they were a bit caaaasual about which towel was the repeat. After I regained consciousness, I quickly forsook THAT idea. And now I live comfortably with my new towel. One leeetle problem. I forgot about the laundry. There have been times that I am convinced that one of my men is playing a trick on me and buying new towels at Target everyday on the way home. It is not possible for there to be this many dirty towels. Who even OWNS this many towels? Since showering is by no means a favorite activity, what are they doing to generate this many towels? Perhaps one for each toe? One for the upper half and one for the lower? One daintily wrapped about the hair and each arm? I am at a loss. I will, however, gladly bear the endless Sorcerer's Apprentice type loads of towels for the sheer joy of knowing that mine is clean, sweet and unused.

I am not insane.

Holding hands - It is amazing how quickly we as human beings adapt. I went for 45 years without holding onto anything while I navigated the world. I did not need the balancing metric of another arm to hold me up. Now, however, I find it difficult to walk across the kitchen without my beloved’s hand in mine. In fact, I have become so accustomed to having it that I actually reach for the hand of whomever I happen to be near. Fair warning, people.

 There is something amazing about that connection. Knowing that when you reach across the void, there is a hand waiting to catch yours. Compelling. Comforting. Connected. My gratitude for this simple act is boundless. The warmth of this contact, flesh meeting flesh, is beyond a simple grasp. It is a symbol of everything that is wrapped up in loving someone. It is “I am here for you,” it is “I have chosen you,” it is “I will catch you when you fall.”   

There is so much I have learned about God from that handclasp. When I reach across the void of time, space and life, He is there. Always. And now I understand more of what that means. While there are some funny things to navigate this first year of marriage, I am profoundly changed and deeply grateful.

 I may be drowning in an endless load of towels, but I treasure each nasty, damp, balled up lump, because of what comes with it - an endless stream of love. 

Marriage the First Year - Part One

I am in the 7^th month of my first year of marriage. These are some of the unexpected things that I have experienced in this first year.

Black socks. I have a theory. I fully believe that if I wash the same 20 black socks over and over again, enough times, that they will eventually find their mates. Please note I said 20 black socks, NOT 10 pairs. Where do all these black socks come from!! How do I make them go away? I will occasionally find a match for one of them and you would think I was celebrating the winning of the elusive Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. I dance around the room waving them in a gleeful paean of praise to the sock-matching-god.

As for the rest of them, as a newly married, late in life bride, I can’t help throwing the rest of them back in the wash in the faint hope their one true love match is floating around in the dryer. So far a love match is as rare as a summer day in Minnesota this year.

Boys and housekeeping. Keep in mind that I am coming from living by myself in my pristine townhome to a house full of men. It is not quite a 7 Brides for 7 Brothers moment, but there are days... You know that scene in a movie where the guy is sitting on the couch and lifts his feet so that they can be vacuumed under? It happened to me. No, really! I gave the offending man-child the stare of death; he remained either unmoved or oblivious. I fear it is oblivious. Because this I now know. Oblivious is an honest state of being…and they live there. The landscape of Oblivious is littered with invisible things, such as half eaten chip bags, miscellaneous cups, used paper plates and socks, lots and lots of socks. These socks are of the used to be white variety, so alas, no match for the black ones. Strangely, they only emerge from Oblivious when a necessity to the welfare of the town is breached. Such as the half eaten bag of chips mysteriously becomes a wholly eaten bag. Then they emerge blinking, wide-eyed and perplexed, holding the previously invisible bag up for your inspection and wondering when the empty state is going to be reconciled.

The bathroom. I was going to do a chapter on the bathroom, but I started to black-out at the mere thought, so I’ll just skip that part…for now…

The joys. Lest I leave you with the thought that there is only trauma in the first year, let me regale you with some of the wonderful things. I used to joke that I would get married just to have my back scratched at night. Now, I no longer joke about such a sacred subject. I am fairly certain that eternity somehow resonates with the feeling of having your back scratched when it’s itchy. Honestly, every time I feel cheated that I can’t purr like my cats. That is the only proper response.

Coming home has new meaning to me. I used to be greeted at the door by the cats inquiring when their next visit to the food bowl was scheduled. Now I come home to someone whose eyes light up at the sight of me. I have new understanding of the word awe. I did not know that one person could have that powerful an effect on another. I am humbled. 

Cooking together. I love the old standards. Those of you who were at my wedding know my love of Always by Frank, At Last by Etta, Unforgettable by Nat, Summertime, Fever and all the other wonderful songs of bygone eras. My new husband and I cook our dinners while listening to them. Is it really our fault if dinner burns as we dance around the kitchen making googly eyes at each other? I mean really…

To Be Continued...

Devotional

Psalm 42 is a psalm of longing. It says As the deer panteth for the water so my soul longeth after thee, and many other beautiful words of longing.

One thing to note is that the longing is not something that needs to be worked up or sought after, it simply is. So it is with our longing after God. Our souls yearn for him, even when we are not in tune with that yearning.

Our lives are incredibly busy. My husband and I talk almost every day about when our lives will be simpler. After Christmas we said, well no, but after our first big Valentines day it will get simpler, or maybe not, but surely after Holy Week things will slow down. Well not really, maybe after Josh’s graduation, no, but really after Jubilee it will all be better…except then there’s…fill in the blank for yourself…

Our lives are not simple and frankly I don’t think they are going to be simple. Ever…

I say this not to discourage you, but to say that sometimes life has to be lived in the “in betweens” I think we have to stop looking to the horizon for a return to the idyllic. Our lives are not days of labor that end neatly at five o’clock and evenings spent on the porch watching the sun set, feeling the wafting breeze and talking with passing neighbors after a leisurely dinner. Instead, our lives are seemingly endless rounds of surrender to the tyranny of the urgent.

There is however, a respite. The moments in the “in between.”  For my devotional, we are going to live in one of those moments.

I am going to lead you in a meditation. Funny word meditation, it has so many negative connotations, but can really be quite powerful if you get beyond the stereotype. So take this as a moment of rest and peace.

So, first we will start with some music. Something instrumental so your thoughts are not drawn away. Get comfortable. Lay your head back and close your eyes. Take a deep breath, hold it for a second and let it out all the way down to your toes. Feel all of that breath leave you. Good. Now breath deeply, but normally. 

Start with this picture. Think back to a time you spent by a lake. Its early morning and it doesn’t even hurt that you are up at the crack of dawn. You put on your favorite hoodie sweatshirt, grab a warm cup of your favorite beverage and head out to the dock. You sneak out the door so that you don’t disturb the family. You are completely alone in the silence. The morning fog chases your feet as you walk. The loons cry somehow adds to the stillness instead of taking it away. Your steps on the old dock creek as only old, worn wood can.  Your fingers are warming around your cup. The sip warms your insides and you feel it all the way down, warmth spreads through you. You sit at the end of dock and your tennies nearly brush the surface of the water. The new sun shines on your face, it is so real in the stillness, you feel it like a caress on your cheek. As you sit there, stillness fills your whole being…and you hear these words.

I have loved you with an everlasting love.

I have called you by name and you are mine.

The deepest places in me, call out to the deepest places in you.

I am with you

I will be your light, when all around you is darkness

Put your hope in me when despair plagues your steps

I am loving

I am faithful

I am your strength when your own strength fails

I will comfort you when life betrays you

I will be your shelter when you are alone

I knit you together and put myself in the very fabric of your being. You are made like me… You are made by me… and you are made for me… and I love you.

Your eyes open to the light of the full dawn. You don’t even know when they closed. You sigh and listen to the last lingering notes of the music you didn’t know you were hearing.

Your soul is filled. The longing is stilled.

You have lived in the moment “in between” and God has met you there.

One of the things that inspired this devotional was a quick conversation I heard between Jon and Pastor Carl. They were talking about how hard it is to still your mind enough to “Be still and know that he is God.” And I wanted to share with you one of the ways that I use to find that stillness in the brief moments that life allows us. I hope you found a moment. 

Stop...Breathe...Relax

I was at a fascinating restaurant the other day, it was called Brasa.
It was as simple as it gets; metal tables in a semi-sweltering room,
open to the outside at every available crevice, a beautiful but teeny
patio with umbrellas and a cool breeze, and an hour long wait. The food
was reported to be delicious and worth the wait.

The hostess was a little girl, well, she looked like a little girl to me, but I’m
fairly certain I have lost all sense of age. She was probably in her
very late teens or early twenties. She had hot pink canvas tennies with
one tongue cut out over a new tattoo and reddish curly hair bunched up
in a band on the top of her head. She was that scary skinny that most
teens seem to be these days. As a table opened, she bussed and wiped
each one while watching the door for new customers. Then she would run
around to each person on her extensive waiting list and ask if they
wanted a table indoors or if they were going to wait for the patio. She
continued the process until she found someone who was willing to sit
inside. She repeated this pattern as the occupants of each table
finished their dinner.

During the long wait and into our leisurely dinner, she became increasingly stressed. 
She had several tables to bus and one demanding, waiting, patron who was doing the
restaurant equivalent of “are we there yet” and repeatedly asking her
how soon until they were seated. She still treated everyone with
respect, but you could see the tension ratcheting up with each passing
moment. We were commenting on how huge her job was and how exhausted
she must be at the end of the night, when my brother (in-law) called
her over. Her thoughts showed on her face and you could tell she
thought John was going to give her grief about something. He looked her
in the eyes and said, “You are doing a great job, but you need to
stop…take a deep breath…and relax for one second. Then you can go back
to work.” As he spoke and she paused to breathe, you could see the
tension roll off her shoulders and a peace steal over her. She went
right back at it, but was more serene and not so driven.

I wonder how often God wants to say the same to us as we run around in
our crazy busy lives, forgetting to breathe, forgetting to love,
forgetting to live. Imagine the Father saying to you, “you are doing a
great job, but you need to stop…take a deep breath…and relax for one
second.” Something in us immediately jumps to the “but I’m not doing a
great job, look at me, I’m so busy I can’t even keep my days straight,
much less work on a vibrant, growing relationship with God!”

Stop. Breathe. Relax.

The Bible talks about our “well done,” it comes from somewhere else. Romans
3:22-24 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ
to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace
through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. You are doing a great
job.

The pace of our lives seems to grow on a daily basis. Once
upon a time, you got up, ate breakfast together, went to work or school
and came home to dinner together. Now it seems we can barely remember
the names of the people we live with and love. We are ships passing in
the night, and that is only our private lives. In the world, we have a
very fast moving government, a slow moving economy and uncertainty
every time we hear the news. Stop. Breathe. Relax. The Bible says it
this way. John 16:33 (BBE) I have said all these things to you so that
in me you may have peace. In the world you have trouble: but take
heart! I have overcome the world.

Just like that young girl at the restaurant, take a moment to hear. 
“You are doing a great job, but you need to stop…take a deep breath…
and relax for one second.” Take a moment to just breathe for a second 
and then go on about your day and
the many things you do in life, with His peace and His rest on your
shoulders. Remember, Jesus is here, and he asks you to
stop…breathe…relax.

By the way, the food really WAS worth the wait!
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