26

In my life I"ve seen a thousand dreams
Through the threshers all torn to pieces
- Ohio - Over the Rhine


While at work, I've been listening to grooveshark (a free online program that lets you create your own musical playlists. When I heard this lyric the other day it reminded me of my re-imagined futures and how sometimes the dreams are hard to give up. To see them torn on the floor tugs at the heart. I thought of my dreams in middle school and high school and even college that are so far from where I am now. Then, when they fell apart, it might have hurt, but now, I can only be thankful that none of them materialized. You would think that based on this kind of track record, I'd have more trust and joy when things start crumbling or shifting. Some days I do better than others.

25

I'll learn to get by
On the little victories


Lately the days don't seem to have enough hours and my body lacks enough energy to finish all the lists I create in my head. Even at work, I go home with a list of where to pick up tomorrow. My holes of free time are filled easily. But I am learning, through a great deal of struggling, that the lists are only lists and the successes of the day matter less and less compared to those moments when I feel connected with something greater than myself, whether it is alone, praying before a meal at the dinner table, reading my devotional before bed, or talking with new and old friends about such things. Connections come in and out and I am overjoyed, sometimes sad, and sometimes frustrated, but never unaware that even in the sadness the gifts of the day are overflowing. No matter how little.

24

This week the Passat went into the shop. It was the first time I've had to personally pay for car repairs. It took a lot out of me to hand my card over and see my savings account drop.

My husband's boss told him that God was trying to humble us. 

This year, I look forward to more opportunities to trust the Lord in new ways. 

23

"Sometimes you have to die to the dream God has given you so God can resurrect the dream in its glorified form. And by glorified from, I simply mean doing it for God's glory."

- Mark Batterson

22

Stumblings

I had lunch with my brother today. He introduced me to StumbleUpon, a completely dangerous way to spend your time. I decided to try it out in between lunch and coffee with a friend. Below are links that I could not keep to myself.

• Amusing Flyers
• Making peeling a potato easier
• This person creates art/words out of book pages
• A way to find new recipes (comes with pictures and everything)

More to come later.

21

I will sing of Your mercy
That leads me through valleys of sorrow
To rivers of joy

- The Valley Song by Jars of Clay

20

I take pictures of license plates. I started taking them when I saw a license plate that said Harry Potter. I can't recall which letters were missing on the license plate. I took the photo so that I would remember, but it was too blurry to be read. Most of the pictures that I've taken are blurry, so below is a list of the ones I remember.

• Harry Potter
• CPNSQUID: I am not really sure what this one means, but I will continue trying to figure it out. 
• FreeGirl
• There was a piece of cardboard taped to the back of the car that said, "Stolen temporary license plate" I saw this over Thanksgiving.

19

"We live in a shadow, a faint image of our selves prior to the Fall. Sin is a curse that diminishes us. Our very best pales when compared to our original design by God."

My church is going through a devotional. If I knew which one of the pastors wrote this, I would cite him. Some may say that this sounds limiting and demotivating, but I find it freeing.

18

My printer is picky. It rejects regular printer paper in a ball, only after yanking the pages from its death grip, sometimes it rips the page to make its point. Only high quality. I bought stationery to write to my husband while he was at basic training. The printer accepts these pages in relief.

17

I have a sick-sweatshirt. Hoodie to be exact. It was a hand-me-down from my older brother that's never fit, unless you count me fitting my entire self inside of it, which is why it remains in my closet most days of the year. It's warmth is perfect for the chills of a high fever, but I mostly keep it for the small joy of crawling inside of something soft that holds me together.

In such a fragile state, the smallest spouts of joy are worth lingering in.  I am trying to linger daily in such  little things because even those are gifts.

16

"Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of community more than the community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Today was yet another reminder that imagined futures can hinder how I take in reality. I did not react the best today. Thank God for forgiveness and redemption.

15

I used to believe watermelon made you pregnant. I remember sitting at the kitchen table as my dad brought my mom a plate of cut-up watermelon, knowing that in her belly a sibling was growing. She blamed the constant craving for watermelon on her pregnancy and my four-year-old mind decided that what she really meant to say was that the watermelon itself made her pregnant.

Today, I tried to make sense of this memory in the context of watermelon being my favorite fruit as a kid. I decided that I must of created some criteria for watermelon's success in creating a baby, like eating it daily or reaching a certain age or even being married (though how watermelon could sense that someone is married is a different question all together). This reason came after my initial thought of, "Maybe, at first at least, I wanted a baby."

I'm sure, though at four my understanding of what a baby meant was extremely different from my understanding now.

-

There is a video of my little brother laying on a baby quilt on the carpet of our living room. Every few minutes, I enter the frame and kiss my little brother on the cheek whispering, "I love you." After five or six kisses, my brother becomes irritated and starts whining and my mother can be heard telling me to stop. I continue.

-

There is also a picture of me holding my baby brother, beaming with pride, now I jump just looking at the photograph. My little brother's head is sharply angled downward.

14

Today, I told my husband that there were still things that we didn't know about each other. He looked at me in surprise. I proved my point by telling the story of my first kiss, age 4 in a Kindercare classroom, smooched on the lips by a boy that was moving away, a parting gift of sorts. It started a conversation about our younger-selves. We searched facebook for friends from childhood, showing them all grown up as we told stories of growing up with them.

13

Very Vanilla Soymilk

I bought Very Vanilla Soymilk to use as creamer a few weeks ago. This was when I decided to drink coffee [I've abandoned that idea now]. A few days later my husband told me that he had to confess something. Each night after dinner, he had a glass of Very Vanilla Soymilk for dessert. I only used the soymilk for coffee once, but it has become a staple in our apartment.

12

Since December 26, we have had one car. It has been an interesting couple of weeks, not only adjusting to married life, but continually switching around schedules and making compromises. The plus side is that there is nothing like picking someone up to take them home. There's an underlying excitement at the end of the day when we both arrive home at the same time and start cooking dinner together. It has made us more of a tag team than single people. We were forced to depend on one another and work with one another and communicate instead of assuming.

11

I was married one month ago, today. Because of the snow/ice today, we ended up spending the whole day together. His classes were cancelled and I mainly avoided work except for the three hours I put in later today.

We went to subway for lunch, where I slipped on the ice on the sidewalk, I think I nearly gave the cashier a heart attack. Then we went to his parents' house and boxes of his things. I guess you could say he is officially moved out. But I've found that there is something about going to my parents house and opening the closet to find clothes that I had missed or sometimes never even worn to bring back memories.

I fell asleep on the futon while he packed boxes and organized little things. We went to the mall and wandered. Then the lights got to my eyes, so we headed home. I shut myself in the bedroom to do my work and my husband played the newest video game he rented. 

We went to a glorified southern restaurant downtown for dinner. They actually cook a pig overnight for barbecue. It was the nicest restaurant I've been to and had baked beans, bbq, and hushpuppies. Perfect. 

10

"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm, but the harm does not interest them...or they do not see it, or they justify it...because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."

- T.S. Eliot

9

I have used up more than
20,000 days waiting to see
what the next would bring.

Last year, I bought a book of poetry, a conversation between Ted Kooser and his friend Jim Harrison. The book is a correspondence in poetry between the two authors. I started talking about Kooser and then I got all sentimental and pulled a book down. It is full of vignettes of wisdom, sparks of thought. The quote above is one.

I wonder how many days I have wasted waiting for tomorrow. I remember spending hours in my room staring out the window, listening to music in my youth, imagining a life that was different. These days, especially when it snows, I can't wait to leave work because somehow I feel that that is when life begins. I need to be reminded that sometimes when I am waiting for later or the next day, I miss what is happening around me. I don't see what I should see.

8

Last month, I sat in Barnes and Noble, a bit early for a meeting with the friend who helped us plan our wedding.  I wandered to the second floor and found my way to what was the poetry section. The poetry section had moved, to my dismay. Ted Kooser is one of my favorite poets and one of his poems has always made the art of reading a book of poetry in the book store quite a romantic experience. Yet, I did not find the books I was looking for, but instead books on design. Amazing that one section was replaced with another that sparked such an interest in me. I eyed the choices for a while and settled on a book. I even settled on taking it back downstairs with me to read in the coffee shop as I waited for my friend and my now husband to arrive.

I find reading a book in a bookstore that you know that you are not going to buy quite interesting.

Thus I direct you to read Selecting a Reader.

7

Last night was I was late getting home, thus jumped into bed early and missed my post.

But I will summarize yesterday in a paragraph and then support a BBC TV show that is, amazing.

Work=raise. Mother=dinner. Friends=homemade waffle cones, fresh ice cream, Sherlock Holmes, Munchkin.

BBC started a mini-series that aired in the US on PBS called Sherlock. It is a modern day Sherlock Holmes. The episodes are 1.5 hours without commercials. I have only seen one and thus cannot give it the raving review that I would like until I see it in its entirety. But the first episode was witty, funny, and interesting until the end. All I can say is I am on a search for a way to watch the other episodes and I am thankful that they are recording a second series (the first is only 3 episodes).

6

Today after work, my husband picked me up. Instead of heading straight home for dinner, we went to Target for jeans and other necessary household items that you don't realize that you're missing until you need them. The dollar spot won us over with coloring books. We spent much of the evening following dinner coloring (with colored pencils, which will always be superior to crayons) in our Star Wars and Megamind coloring books (guess which one was mine).

Now a proud picture is displayed on the side of our refrigerator.

5

Random Thoughts and Facts:

I only have two today but I want this kind of post to make a semi-regular appearance.

1. S's do not make the lines go up on an audio frequency bar in an audio editing program.

I was editing audio for a presentation using illustrations that is supposed to flow like a movie scene, meaning audio ends for one character, quick switch to the next. At first I was using the end of the frequency bar to trim the clips, until I realized that if the last word ended in an "s" it didn't show up. Needless to say. I had to redo a bit.

2. I have decided after editing e-courses on multiple different health conditions that "infarction" is probably the most amusing medical term I've come across.

It could be the similarity to the word "fart" or it's own odd combination of sounds. If only the word was a happy thing, like naturally excreting a perfume that made you smell like lilacs. Nope. According to wikipedia it is related to tissue death.

4

"Dear brethren, our real trouble is not doubt about the way upon which we have set out, but our failure to be patient, to keep quiet. We still cannot imagine that today God really doesn't want anything new for us, but simply to prove us in the old way. That is too petty, too monotonous, too undemanding for us. And we simply cannot be constant with the fact that God's cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be "unsuccessful": and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I have never read the writing of someone so certain of failure and yet so sure that the direction he was going in was correct. Over and over again, I read these letters where Bonhoeffer writes to friends honest, yet inspiring words of the hope within failure. It reminds me of the song "Background" by Lecrae where it says, "'Cause if I do this by myself, I'm scared that I'll succeed/ And no longer trust in You, 'cause I only trust in me."

Success is an idol in my life. Even little successes. For example, yesterday I had decided to drive to pickup my husband from work without looking up directions. It's easy, take an exit off of 440, turn right, then turn left at the correct road. I kept reading street signs and never found the road I was supposed to turn on. I drove until the road ended. I was furious when I looked it up on my phone and found out that the road I was supposed to turn on actually changed names just before the intersection. Why? Because I sought out a small success and it couldn't even be mine. I turned around and realized the idiocy behind my frustration. I couldn't have possibly known the road changed names without research.

But life successes are also something I yearn for. Lecrae's song lyrics point out the negatives of success and honestly, I don't think I'm ready for anything close to big life successes or failures, especially if I can't handle loss of a small victory.

"We still cannot imagine that today God really doesn't want anything new for us, but simply to prove us in the old way."

3

"Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words. They should remain open."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A group of my friends creates CDs of our year. At the end of each year, we come together with our playlists and go one song at a time around the circle until we've gone through them all. We explain events that caused the songs to be included. Some are happy and uplifting, and others are sad.

This line made me think of our circle last week. We told sad, hard stories about frustrations and struggles. Some of which we've overcome and others that are still weights. We'd listen and then we'd move on. I realized that moving on did not discount the events at all, but let them stand as they were. I know that day is not the end of conversations, but the beginning of them. I think that we've learned somehow that some struggles and wounds do not have words that cover them and bind them up. In fact, sometimes the attempted words only seem to cut deeper.

2

Queen Elizabeth: [Using the name "Mrs. Johnson"] My husband's work involves a great deal of public speaking.
Lionel Logue: Then he should change jobs.
Queen Elizabeth: He can't.
Lionel Logue: What is he, an indentured servant?
Queen Elizabeth: Something like that.

These days I've been interested in WWII, from reading Bonhoeffer (a biography of a pastor in Germany during WWII) to Sarah's Key (a fictional piece about the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations). Tonight I saw The King's Speech with my husband. It is about King George VI and a doctor who helps him overcome his stutter, very necessary for all of the speeches he read during during WWII. I found out about it from a blog I read. The above quote is from the film.

I find myself drawn to this war that forced people into roles beyond their comprehension. But the circumstances forced betterment of character and growth. Extreme persistence. Hope in the face of darkness.

1

We used to think that one of the inalienable rights of man was that he should be able to plan both his professional and his private life. That is a thing of the past. The force of circumstances has brought us into a situation where we have to give up being "anxious about tomorrow" (Matt. 6:34). But it makes all the difference whether we accept this willingly and in faith (as the sermon on the Mount intends), or under continual constraint. For most people, the compulsory abandonment of planning for the future means that they are forced back into living just for the moment, irresponsibly, frivolously, or resignedly; some few dream longingly of better times to come, and try to forget the present. We find both courses equally impossible, and there remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as if it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future....Thinking and acting for the sake of the coming generation, but being ready to go any day without fear or anxiety--that, in practice, is the spirit in which we are forced to live. It is not easy to be brave and keep that spirit alive, but it is imperative.

"After Ten Years"- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Life is a struggle to find the middle ground. I've learned the last few years to let go of my imagined futures with a lighter heart and to hold the newly imagined ones with an open hand, willing to let them go at a moment's notice. I can't say that I've always done this and maybe I'll still discover patches of bitterness in my heart for their loss. But here is to a year of re-imagined futures and struggling to find that middle ground.