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Today i am taking a ‘music bath’, which means that I’ve pulled out some favorites and immersed myself in some loud tunes that I enjoy in order to relax. Jason’s out at his hockey tournament (yep, I’m cheering from home) with Andrew, and Matthew and Tamara are out for the day so I have the whole house to myself, which rarely happens around here. So I’ve made cupcakes, danced around, sang pretty loud and bad, and got some odds and ends done. An “oldie but a goodie” came on and it made me stop and listen more closely. You know when you hear a song that totally expresses where you are at the moment? Somehow it is able to express what’s in your heart better than you ever could with words. Music is so powerful like that; it can say things more clearly and with the emotion the words need more than you could ever express if you were to just say them. I feel like this song (classic dc talk) talks about my life and desires this past week:
I keep trying to find a life
On my own, apart from You
I am the queen of excuses
I’ve got one for every selfish thing I do
What’s going on inside of me?
I despise my own behavior
This only serves to confirm my suspicions
That I’m still a girl in need of a Savior
I wanna be in the Light
As You are in the Light
I wanna shine like the stars in the heavens
Oh, Lord be my Light and be my salvation
Cause all I want is to be in the Light
All I want is to be in the Light
The disease of self runs through my blood
It’s a cancer fatal to my soul
Every attempt on my behalf has failed
To bring this sickness under control
Tell me, what’s going on inside of me?
I despise my own behavior
This only serves to confirm my suspicions
That I’m still a girl in need of a Savior
Honesty becomes me
[There's nothing left to lose]
The secrets that did run me
[In Your presence are defused]
Pride has no position
[And riches have no worth]
The fame that once did cover me
[Has been sentenced to this Earth]
Has been sentenced to this Earth
Tell me, what’s going on inside of me?
I despise my own behavior
This only serves to confirm my suspicions
That I’m still a girl in need of a Savior
[There's no other place that I want to be]
[No other place that I can see]
[A place to be that's just right]
[Someday I'm gonna be in the Light]
[You are in the Light]
[That's where I need to be]
[That's right where I need to be]
What a perfect picture to represent this concept of closeness with Jesus. Yeah, I gotta get back there. It’s so easy to talk about it, blog about it, read books about it, but why are we so so bad at doing it? (I won’t say I’m the only bad one, I know I’m not alone on this one, but at the moment I really suck at it) Is it laziness, lack of faith, my priorities, what? Now I’m just rambling. No need to figure out why, only need to turn it around. I’ll stop on this for now…
I had a lovely St. Paddy’s Day because Mom and Dad were up again and I got to spend it with them. Dad had an eye appointment yesterday so they spent the night yesterday and we had some time together. Since I had nothing green, green (I’m more of a blue girl) to wear, my proudly Irish mother lent me her bright green beads to wear and a HUGE shamrock keychain which I had to wear for the day. Yeah, thanks Mom. We did have a nice day together shopping and meandering about downtown…and I did get a nice green shirt out of the deal. Now I’ll be prepared for March 17, 2008, thanks to my great Irish mama.
Matthew and I also repotted some shamrock plants (green and purple!) for the occasion and they are beautiful…one of the best St. Paddy’s Days I’ve ever had I think.
Jason and I joined the Regina Ballroom Dance Club last fall… I have watched too many fun movies (starting in the 80’s with Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Dirty Dancing, Shall We Dance, and many others) and I wanted to give it a try. It looked like way too much fun on the big screen. I never went to any school dances and I grew up in pretty conservative ’sit on your hands and don’t make any noise’ church, so at the beginning of class we were both pretty out of our comfort zones to say the least! But luckily we’re not the only ones in that boat.
We’re been learning a few of the most basic dances since the fall, and 6 weeks ago an older gentleman with the dance club convinced us to sign up for an extra class to do a performance in April for the whole club (500 people) at the last dance of the year. Knowing us, you might ask us what he did to convince us to do such a thing. I still don’t know why on earth we signed up for this…it’s laughable even when I think of going through with it, but we’ve been having fun at our practices! So we’ll look like this by the end of it all…
Just kidding…maybe something more like this…
We’re doing a swing routine- not latin quite yet. Less than a month to practice, but it’s pretty fun to know the steps well enough to have fun just dancing. Our group that we’ll be performing with is with 5 other couples and we have less than a month before showtime.
More practicing to do and shoe shopping are on this week’s list of to do’s. If anyone can give me tips on how to walk in high heels that’d be a great pre-requisite for learning how to dance in them. What a silly idea. AIYAH! If I don’t fall on my face it will be something!
And you should see Jason’s moves…move over Ricky Martin!
It’s pretty tough to be down in the dumps for too long when you have weather like this to remind you of all the good there is in life. This weekend I have been grateful for the warmth of sunshine, the songbirds in the morning, for the brown grass that’s peeking through the melting snow, and the cheeriness of many who are affected positively by the same. I’m thankful for people who show that they care about me when I don’t feel loveable (through emails and prayers, comments left on this thing, or visits), and I’m thankful for good books that can take me into another world and give me something else to think about besides myself and my own perspective. I just finished reading “Morrie: In His Own Words”. This is the book of wisdom and words of a man who is 77 and whose body is slowly degenerating from ALS. ALS is a progressive neuromuscular disease that weakens and eventually destroys motor neurons, which connects the brain to the skeletal muscle tissue. So this short little book is about a man who has been given a death sentence and how he lives in the midst of that knowledge, reaching out to family and friends, how he grieves his losses and helps his friends deal with the one they will face, and how to develop an inner space for meditaion and spiritual connection in the midst of having little privacy with his caregivers ever-present. He shares his experience of fully living while dying and shows that it’s never too late to be the person you’d like to be.
This book was a timely one for me to read…last weekend I attended my cousin’s funeral. Chris Tucker, just a year older than me, died in a car accident this month, so the thoughts occupying my mind most recently have been questions of life’s purpose, why there has to be suffering, why our world is so messed up that parents have to lose children at all, and the finality of death (in a nutshell). There’s simply no way for me to articulate the things that have been running through my mind since I learned of Chris’s passing, but more recently since reading Morrie’s book, I have been giving more thought to living. How does one live well? What does it mean to live well? We’re all in the same boat, as Morrie puts it, and it’s going to sink sooner or later. One hundred and ten years from now no one who is here now will be alive. And I really like what he says next:
The best preparation for living fully and well is to be prepared to die at any time, because impending death inspires clarity of purpose, a honing in on what really matters to you. When you feel that the end is near, you are more likely to pay close attention to whatever you treasure…
So that leads me to consider what it is that my life is worth. What do I treasure and if I’m not in the place I’d like to be, what do I need to do to get there? Not many conclusions have been reached, but Chris’s death and Morrie’s life/death have reminded me that life is a gift and time here should not be wasted. I have been also reminded this week, with all the good around me, that God is good and He has always given me what I need in the past, when I need it. Why do I doubt His presence and ability to work in my life and why do I remain sad when I have nothing really to be sad about? I woke up yesterday and decided that I am tired of being sad. I’m sort of tired of trying to do life by myself. It doesn’t work, and I know this because I’ve walked with God in the past; I have known sweet companionship with Him, and to walk without Him for any length of time after you’ve experienced His closeness is just stupidity. Don’t know why anyone would choose it…don’t know why I did. But I want to be done. Seems so much easier to let Him take the control, let Him fill me up with His love, his peace, and his joy, because I certainly can’t seem to muster any of it on my own, or at least any that lasts.
So that’s what I know today…if you made it through those ramblings, well congratulations you were really bored. And thanks for caring enough to do it. I’ve been really bad about reading the blogs of others in recent days…you know, that self-centered thing. I fully admit to that. More of Him, less of me. I’ll try to do better this week.
I’m so bad at this blogging thing. It’s not that I don’t think about things to write about during my days, it’s just that I’m too much like my mother and I don’t sit down enough to write them down. Too many distractions, too many things around the house to keep my hands occupied and too many urgent things taking the place of truly important things. So as I sit to write tonight there are about a thousand things I could write about from the past month, but what would be most meaningful? I guess since this blog is mostly for me I guess it’s time to do some real relfecting on my life and where I’m at (ooh, but that sounds painful…but it’s so necessary). I’m having more and more moments where it feels like I’m close to falling off the edge of something. I feel like I’m not the person I thought I was when I was in China just a year ago. Some images that have come to mind to describe myself are these…
a piece of toast- dry and crumbling
a pig in mud- content to be in a mess and not do much to get out
a train skidding off the tracks- making all kinds of screeching sounds and awful noises as it tries to plug along as best as it knows how
I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this for so long! Boy this year being at home has been hard so far. If I didn’t have my brothers and Carly and Tamara around for at least some social interactions and some unconditional acceptance I think I might have been a complete basket case by now. Feelings of instability are so frequent (when I take the time to stop and think about it). In fact when I think about my overall health and well being, there are moments when I can say that the only part of me that is really healthy is my physical aspect. In that way I’m healthier than I’ve ever been and feeling physically better than ever (thanks to Body for Life), but my spiritual life is in the pits and it affects everything else. EVERYTHING else. My perspective, attitude, mental capacity, ability to handle stress, and socially I’m just not a nice person anymore. At least it feels like I have no fruits of the Spirit at the moment, and I suppose it’s not hard to figure out why that would be. The worst part about my distance from God is the apathy that I sometimes feel about it. I just feel too tired to do much about it (this is where the pig in mud image comes in). I must not have a clear understanding of His love and grace at the moment, and maybe if I were a parent myself I would understand better how He feels about me and that would motivate me to moving closer than I am now. It’s hard to know the reason for my depressed state right now..is it because my faith is weak now that it is affecting everything else, or is it reverse culture shock that is having an effect on every part of my life and making things so tough. I don’t know why and I don’t know if it matters that I figure it out. I guess I knew this year would be tough in some ways, but I just didn’t realize how it would play itself out. I’m not meaning to complain, just saying where I’m at…so I can keep moving.
I guess I’ll end with a famous quote (but I forget who said it) that I’ll keep in mind for now:
”If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
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