Today I found out why God gave us math. From now on, so help me, I will never complain about Algebra! God in His kindness gave us math so that, somewhere in this maelstrom of a world we live in, we could find refuge in a concrete answer. There’s a problem. There’s a formula. You solve it.
The End.
Most of life isn’t like that, and I’m okay with that for now. In fact, I am more okay with it than I’ve ever been. This week I went around in such a silly stupor of joy in what God has done in my life that questions and regrets are still just falling off me like old leaves off an oak tree.
It didn’t start out that way. In fact, two weeks ago, at the beginning of the special prayer week at church, I went into the “Redemption Room” to cry out to God because I was feeling so messed up. As in, months and months of built up messed-up-ness
I empathize with Humpty Dumpty. Before last week, I felt like him. You know the story…sat on a wall, had a great fall, no one could put him back together again. A kind of Jeremiah character. I was getting really tired of being a shattered egg. The whole world is a carton of broken eggs. But if I’m the one with hope in Jesus, why was I still laying there in pieces?
In the Redemption there were piles of rocks, and you could write in Sharpie the thing or person you were asking God to redeem. I could think of a hundred things, a hundred people, but I simply put, “My Joy.”
Throughout the week a series of shakings and quakings happened through various circumstances. I prayed, I made new friends, I called old ones, I went running, trying to remember how people breath when they haven’t been socked in the chest. Then, the sweetness of God’s healing and redemption began washing over me in wave after wave. An old shell was coming off. I felt, well, if you’ll excuse a silly pun, like a newly hatched chic!
The freedom is still unbelievable to me. I didn’t know that the things I thought were so good in my life could be such chains, and I didn’t know how chained I was until the chains were torn off. I didn’t know I would rejoice over something that would have grieved me weeks ago. My time of sorrow is over; He has freed me from my chains. And now, before me, I have a future full of “the One Important Thing,”
Jesus. And when you get Him, you get everything.
Now I walk around with a different view. God gave me compassion where I only wished I had it before. I want to take this outside! This morning I walked out of algebra class with tears in my eyes. It wasn’t because of Algebra, by the grace of God. It was because God gave me the chance to help the student in front of me, a girl from another country, in the simplest way. And I was looking around at the current of students passing by, looking out on them like Jesus looked on Jerusalem, seeing that so many are “sheep without a shepherd, harassed and thrown down…” and suddenly I knew that the joy of my salvation has been restored. My cup, even my cup over flows!
“The Lord is my shepherd
I shall not want
He makes me lie down in green pastures
He leads me beside still waters
He restores my soul
He leads me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake
Even though I walk
Through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil
For though art with me
Thy rod and thy staff,
They comfort me
Thou hast prepared a table before me
In the presence of my enemies
Thou hast anointed my head with oil
My cup overflows
Surely goodness and lovingkindness
Shall follow me all the days of my life
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
Forever.”
Amen.
Psalm 23
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
A Dangerous Business: In Which I Go to the Bistro and Find Nothing With Which to Wipe My Nose
Yesterday my grandmother took the three of us, my brother, sister, and I, out to eat at a pleasant bistro on the other side of town. The cheerful waitress handed out our menus, and it dawned on me what a strange thing it is to eat out. I tend to agree with Tolkien’s words in the mouth of Bilbo Baggins: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, stepping out of your own front door.”
You leave your home, where you might have had homemade spaghetti, and drive thirty minutes to a building primarily designed preparing food and hosting the people who eat the food. After being seated in a room full of strangers, you choose a dish from a menu arrayed with sometimes familiar, sometimes foreign dishes, none of them like your mother makes.
After waiting with usually pleasant conversation, you get your food and try to eat it with some semblance of manners, even though your sandwich is greasier and unreasonably larger than anything you ever attempt to eat in the private confines of your home. If you are paying, and are as mathmatically strained as I am, you might be mentally calculating the tip for the last half of the meal.
You can’t finish your fries but think your little brother might enjoy them later. A waiter produces a to-go box, which you fill but inevitably leave on the table among the used napkins and crinkled straw wrappers.
Despite all this, there is a certain appeal to the restaurant experience. As I sat with my siblings and grandmother at our table for four, surveying the menu, I thought about how nice it was to be here, in a new place, to be served food, to have conversation. I admired the mix of tall windows at the front of the long room with high brick walls, and dark wood floors, the light coming in on the tables.
Connor was talking about the character of Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, whom Grammie and I both shared his admiration for, and Mattie will admire as soon as she reads the book this semester for English, I’m sure.
I noted the misfortune of coming to a restaurant nice enough to have cloth napkins, which I could not, with good conscience, wipe my nose with. I could feel the beginnings of a drip. I never have a Kleenex when I most need it. Not even a scrap of paper, and the waitress was approaching us.
Oh Dear Most Venerated Abby, I composed mentally, when one is without a Kleenex in public, which is the most appropriate and acceptable course of action—wipe with the hand or leave it there and hope no one will notice? I chose the former, thinking of the times I was sure I had something the size of a blimp extending from a nostril when in fact it wasn’t even noticeable. Of course there are those other times when a kind relatives enlightens you about the booger dangling precariously from that same place...
“Shreddedsteaksandwich,” I blurted when my turn came, averting my eyes and hoping she wouldn’t look at my face, particularly the middle section of it, which I was positive must be dripping. “Fries or onion rings?” she persisted. “Fries,” I shot back, picking up my purse and excusing myself to the ladies room.
The restroom was painted in warm, comforting red, and made a good place for me to find relief in a large wad of paper towel, with which I duly punished my nose for its untimely behavior.
After that the meal was peaceful. You aren’t paying all that money for food. It’s an hour of atmosphere you’re buying, an opportunity almost to be expansive and creative and inspired by the sights and people around you, and to enjoy the friends you came with. You meet over such a seemingly insignificant thing as food, and sometimes even your souls can connect.
We left happy, having chatted about books and life and the coming semester, my sandwich successfully consumed, with the floor sullied only by one stray slice of mushroom.
You leave your home, where you might have had homemade spaghetti, and drive thirty minutes to a building primarily designed preparing food and hosting the people who eat the food. After being seated in a room full of strangers, you choose a dish from a menu arrayed with sometimes familiar, sometimes foreign dishes, none of them like your mother makes.
After waiting with usually pleasant conversation, you get your food and try to eat it with some semblance of manners, even though your sandwich is greasier and unreasonably larger than anything you ever attempt to eat in the private confines of your home. If you are paying, and are as mathmatically strained as I am, you might be mentally calculating the tip for the last half of the meal.
You can’t finish your fries but think your little brother might enjoy them later. A waiter produces a to-go box, which you fill but inevitably leave on the table among the used napkins and crinkled straw wrappers.
Despite all this, there is a certain appeal to the restaurant experience. As I sat with my siblings and grandmother at our table for four, surveying the menu, I thought about how nice it was to be here, in a new place, to be served food, to have conversation. I admired the mix of tall windows at the front of the long room with high brick walls, and dark wood floors, the light coming in on the tables.
Connor was talking about the character of Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, whom Grammie and I both shared his admiration for, and Mattie will admire as soon as she reads the book this semester for English, I’m sure.
I noted the misfortune of coming to a restaurant nice enough to have cloth napkins, which I could not, with good conscience, wipe my nose with. I could feel the beginnings of a drip. I never have a Kleenex when I most need it. Not even a scrap of paper, and the waitress was approaching us.
Oh Dear Most Venerated Abby, I composed mentally, when one is without a Kleenex in public, which is the most appropriate and acceptable course of action—wipe with the hand or leave it there and hope no one will notice? I chose the former, thinking of the times I was sure I had something the size of a blimp extending from a nostril when in fact it wasn’t even noticeable. Of course there are those other times when a kind relatives enlightens you about the booger dangling precariously from that same place...
“Shreddedsteaksandwich,” I blurted when my turn came, averting my eyes and hoping she wouldn’t look at my face, particularly the middle section of it, which I was positive must be dripping. “Fries or onion rings?” she persisted. “Fries,” I shot back, picking up my purse and excusing myself to the ladies room.
The restroom was painted in warm, comforting red, and made a good place for me to find relief in a large wad of paper towel, with which I duly punished my nose for its untimely behavior.
After that the meal was peaceful. You aren’t paying all that money for food. It’s an hour of atmosphere you’re buying, an opportunity almost to be expansive and creative and inspired by the sights and people around you, and to enjoy the friends you came with. You meet over such a seemingly insignificant thing as food, and sometimes even your souls can connect.
We left happy, having chatted about books and life and the coming semester, my sandwich successfully consumed, with the floor sullied only by one stray slice of mushroom.
Monday, January 11, 2010
A Winter Roadtrip Comes to a Satisfactory End
After inaugurating the new year with ten days away from home, it's especially nice to be back, back in our still-chilled house with the minor toilet leak from the icy elements outside.
We spent two nights in Arkansas at Queen Wilhelmina lodge with a passel of relatives comprised of maternal grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins. From there we drove to Tennessee to stay at Dad's mom's house and also see an aunt and cousins. During that time we took a one-night trip to Berea, Kentucky for a college tour that, in my elated opinion, was excellent.
Now I am beset by strange homey feelings and urges to do impulsive homey things, such as plant a bulb garden, or sew a tunic, or putter around the kitchen, or buy a goldfish. Things one cannot do in a hotel or in one's grandmother's house. Not that I would normally plant a garden at home- and I've never bought a goldfish by my own initiative- but I feel oddly like doing so. I think it's the wrong time to plant bulbs. There is no room in my room for a fish. Maybe tomorrow, I'll start sewing before the impulse deserts me.
I did a fair amount of reading on the trip. Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, plus parts of a book on the life of Mohammed and another one by a man who bought a dilapidated zoo on a whim. Oh, and Donald Miller's newest book which is either called A Thousand Miles in a Million Years or A Million Miles in a Thousand years, I can't remember which.
I would have enjoyed that book more if I hadn't grown momentarily discontented with my life and spent an evening sprawled disconsolately on the perfect white hotel room bedspread grasping at scraps of emotional comfort from my mother. It ended when massaged her back and my little sister's and Mattie Kate massaged me back and we all felt better, and my hands still smelled like peppermint lotion in the morning.
Connor and I left this morning in one car and the rest of the family followed an hour or two afterwards in the other car. Sometimes I mourn the days of the minivan, but being in the car with Connor was fun too. I read three chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird aloud before he put on his new cd and we listened to music and talked here and there for the next five hours. By then I was over the I-Can't-Hike-Machu-Picchu-like-Donald-Miller-did fuss and was in high spirits. I even fell into the backseat while trying to retrieve a water bottle.
The afternoon shadows fell over the interstate through the wooded Mississippi area, icy gray shadows on yellow grass, on gray-blue asphalt. Yellow lines on asphalt. Sometimes ridges rose on either side of the road like the ones that line old stagecoach roads, and despite the interstate, the place felt old, 1800's old, like the Civil War could still be going on. And I thought about how glad I was that it wasn't, and about the sad and senseless loss of life.
Four hours from home we stopped in Vicksburg, at a welcome center on the Mississippi side of that great river, and from the hilltop watched the roiling brown waters sliding forcefully under the bridge. We admired the giant cannon from the siege that happened there during the civil war, and I was thinking about the siege on the Dneiper during WWII at Baliko Shechenko, and looking around the war monuments last year.
We crossed the interstate into Louisiana, and I felt glad to be even a little acquainted with a part of history, however sad. I always thought it was best to forget about the Civil War, a confusing morass of motives and passions and unreasonable attitudes about human life. But after learning a bit more history this past year, I think it might be good to remember more, and to understand the thoughts and actions that could lead to such a tragedy. Both the slavery practiced back in the 1600's and the natural consequences of slavery were tragic.
Suddenly, there was an outbreak of pine trees, and I knew we were close to home without looking at roadsigns. From Louisiana, to Texas, though a car wash, and then home we went, to our cold little house, a frantic cat, and a warm pork loin sent from our grandmother up the hill. Ah, to be home again.
We spent two nights in Arkansas at Queen Wilhelmina lodge with a passel of relatives comprised of maternal grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins. From there we drove to Tennessee to stay at Dad's mom's house and also see an aunt and cousins. During that time we took a one-night trip to Berea, Kentucky for a college tour that, in my elated opinion, was excellent.
Now I am beset by strange homey feelings and urges to do impulsive homey things, such as plant a bulb garden, or sew a tunic, or putter around the kitchen, or buy a goldfish. Things one cannot do in a hotel or in one's grandmother's house. Not that I would normally plant a garden at home- and I've never bought a goldfish by my own initiative- but I feel oddly like doing so. I think it's the wrong time to plant bulbs. There is no room in my room for a fish. Maybe tomorrow, I'll start sewing before the impulse deserts me.
I did a fair amount of reading on the trip. Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, plus parts of a book on the life of Mohammed and another one by a man who bought a dilapidated zoo on a whim. Oh, and Donald Miller's newest book which is either called A Thousand Miles in a Million Years or A Million Miles in a Thousand years, I can't remember which.
I would have enjoyed that book more if I hadn't grown momentarily discontented with my life and spent an evening sprawled disconsolately on the perfect white hotel room bedspread grasping at scraps of emotional comfort from my mother. It ended when massaged her back and my little sister's and Mattie Kate massaged me back and we all felt better, and my hands still smelled like peppermint lotion in the morning.
Connor and I left this morning in one car and the rest of the family followed an hour or two afterwards in the other car. Sometimes I mourn the days of the minivan, but being in the car with Connor was fun too. I read three chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird aloud before he put on his new cd and we listened to music and talked here and there for the next five hours. By then I was over the I-Can't-Hike-Machu-Picchu-like-Donald-Miller-did fuss and was in high spirits. I even fell into the backseat while trying to retrieve a water bottle.
The afternoon shadows fell over the interstate through the wooded Mississippi area, icy gray shadows on yellow grass, on gray-blue asphalt. Yellow lines on asphalt. Sometimes ridges rose on either side of the road like the ones that line old stagecoach roads, and despite the interstate, the place felt old, 1800's old, like the Civil War could still be going on. And I thought about how glad I was that it wasn't, and about the sad and senseless loss of life.
Four hours from home we stopped in Vicksburg, at a welcome center on the Mississippi side of that great river, and from the hilltop watched the roiling brown waters sliding forcefully under the bridge. We admired the giant cannon from the siege that happened there during the civil war, and I was thinking about the siege on the Dneiper during WWII at Baliko Shechenko, and looking around the war monuments last year.
We crossed the interstate into Louisiana, and I felt glad to be even a little acquainted with a part of history, however sad. I always thought it was best to forget about the Civil War, a confusing morass of motives and passions and unreasonable attitudes about human life. But after learning a bit more history this past year, I think it might be good to remember more, and to understand the thoughts and actions that could lead to such a tragedy. Both the slavery practiced back in the 1600's and the natural consequences of slavery were tragic.
Suddenly, there was an outbreak of pine trees, and I knew we were close to home without looking at roadsigns. From Louisiana, to Texas, though a car wash, and then home we went, to our cold little house, a frantic cat, and a warm pork loin sent from our grandmother up the hill. Ah, to be home again.
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