Eleven Months

Today's our eleven month anniversary of being married! (My sister Moriah's favorite number, so it must be celebrated with a post!) What more God still has in store for us...

The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing. ~Zephaniah 3:17

the weekend was full of...

...produce

at the Farmer's Market on Saturday, Jamie & I perused the fresh offerings, sampled organic truffles (the chocolate kind), hazlenuts, berries, a pear, good things. I bought rainbow chard & hazelnuts. Then Sunday when Jamie & I went to the orchard/pumpkin patch we bought apples, pumpkins, garlic, and a yam between the two of us.

...pumpkins

Saturday evening Andrew & I went to a pumpkin carving party & had a blast. He did one with Calvin's grimace on it (from Calvin & Hobbes), and I attempted Cinderella's carriage, but it looks more like a face, interestingly enough. We're inspired now & plan to do more carving with Jamie today. She & I perused the huge boxes filled with pumpkins (.25 a pound, just had to mention it)
...pie

We were pie eaters this weekend. We had pie at the pumpkin carving party. We had pie for a Sunday picnic after church. We had pie when we played bingo with the senior citizens at our church on Sunday night. We still want more pie...our craving will be satisfied tonight, when Jamie comes over & we make use of the apples we picked in the orchard Sunday afternoon.

...friends
(Varying from the things beginning with a "P") Friday we supped with Mr. & Mrs. Rick Lewis, enjoying their company, their dog, a walk, and the BBC movie version of Charles Dickens's "Our Mutual Friend" which turned out to be excellent (all of it). The Lewises are dear to Andrew & I, Mr. Rick being a mutual friend :) and teacher of ours & his wife being the former receptionist at our college. We share taste in literary classics & BBC movie marathons. My good friend Jamie & I had quality time on Saturday, enjoying festive fall flinging herself into our awareness. We walked downtown in sprinkling rain & sunshine to the Farmer's Market & you already know what we did there. Then on Sunday, that was the day we went to the orchard, picked apples, found pumpkins to carve, etc. Also on Sunday Andrew & I went to an indoor soccer game & cheered on "Dwight's Army of Champions" (the team name...so clever).

...adults of all ages

We attended a young adults pumpkin carving party. We attended youth group on Sunday night. We played bingo with senior citizens. Andrew won a bingo game the first time in his life. For his prize they gave him four packets of beef flavored ramen. What a happy guy he was! :)

Here's Jamie picking an apple.

At the orchard & near the patch in front of the pumpkin bins.

the girl is here!

My little sister arrived in town last night for a weekend visit! Well, she's my little sister, but she calls me her little sister because I'm shorter. Oh, such a clever girl. Really, she's soo funny. Can't contain the giggles when I'm around her. But really, I can't. :)

There's nothing like having sisters around. Moriah, especially, draws things out in me. Puns for example. Or rhyming. My maturity level in general really plummets when I'm around her. We make dog & cat noises together, we really do. This morning when I woke her up to get ready before we went out to get coffee, she snarled like a cat with her morning voice. Several times. What a silly girl.

We went to coffee, like I said, and I realized during our time together this morning that one reason I love being around Moriah is because she inspires me. It's similar to when I listen to sermons & the Holy Spirit will drop ideas in my mind of things I should do or create, or people I should call...Moriah makes me excited & inspired like that.

Raising her hand for some peculiar reason. There's a story there, I just can't remember what it is.

At the coffee shop, getting her breve.

Us. Silly me, I thought we were taking a cute picture. Nope. I was supposed to be silly!

This afternoon I'm going to read some of Moriah's Creative Writing class creations. Poetry, and an essay about the neighbor's dog, Moses, who was put down this week, a dear-to-our-family-dog who was like Odie in Garfield. One story Moriah wrote is about a girl in an insane asylum, whom Moriah ironically named Rachel. Hmm. I wonder if I should read anything into that? :)

from coast to home

Got back Sunday afternoon from a women's retreat at the coast. It was a good opportunity for me to get to know women in my church, women that in ten months of attending I either haven't met yet, or haven't had sufficient time to get to know them. I was so glad for the chance. And it was at the coast! I've had a craving to see & hear & play at the coast, so this weekend was very timely.

Lately I've had a desperate need to be known, to be known by girls who like me & love me & see the value in me and let me do the same for them. It has been freakishly hard lately. Amongst the different introductions & explanations & chat times at the conference with women from my church, I felt this need grow in me, to be known. There were women from different churches at the conference, too, friends & I was able to have that feeling of being known satisfied. It worked beautifully; those times made me eager to discover the pre-friends & to be more present when I was with women from my church.

Two escapes to the coast by myself also restored me & drew worship out of me.

And when I saw my husband again! How wonderful it was to be hugged & held & kissed & too much information-ed by him! What a thankful wife I am with a husband who treated me to an Irish cream soy latte (one he made), time to read on my own, & cuddle time on the couch as we watched The Bourne Ultimatum! We've been foolishly smiling like giddy children ever since we've been back in each other's company.

It was good to go away so that I could come home again.

getting Beauty straight

Here are some notes I took at the 24-7 Prayer Gathering in Minneapolis in May. The talk was by an artist, Linea Spransy, and I rediscovered these notes in my journal on Sunday. They're worth sharing:
We are people who should be blazing with hope!
We can turn around and bless God with a unique language that we have.
Beuty-outside of God's will takes the form of seduction.
The downfall of many artists is egoism. Lucifer was the most beutiful. Beauty is not always good.
Beauty: the love language of God.
Our little plans get lost in the spaciousness of God's creation.
Crime goes down when there's beauty around-think of city sections.
People, when they wear beautiful things, their behavior changes.
Beauty pulls beauty out, light attracts light.
Egoism ends in a withdrawal from the spiritual community. The antidote to that: we belong to a family, seeing value in other people.
Egoism has become a virtue, a very false virtue.
Imagination is inexorably linked to compassion.
Selfishness reomoves us from reality.
Our culture has cut us off from reality-can't you see it everywhere?
We see ourselves as a whole, not a part of a whole.
Our culture is connected to comfort insted of heroicism.
Laying down the art itself...take your life, your lifestyle & live it the way God says to live it, creatively, deeply creatively, and with virtue. Virtue is a really exciting idea and it's hard.
Oh! For a church that is virtuous!
Oh! For artists who are virtuous and not self indulgent!
Constantly check our ego at the door, constantly check our desire to do what's easiest at the door.
The bass note of gravity of this is the sacrifice it requires.
So we lay our lives down as living sacrifices.

wilder

finished reading Laura Ingalls Wilder
my thoughts linger in the simplicity of life
back then

of chores, of "good mornings", of warm quilts,
long walks, hard work, hearty food,
winter evenings, simple Christmases
and shy love

the men then were wilder
(not only Almanzo)
the curse of Adam burdening
forcing sweat, work, toil
limping too

but joy comes, and singing,
and the playing of the fiddle,
beautiful horses,
big dreams

Big Dreams
Beautiful Dreams

shattered

Here is the scene that awaited us as we arrived to open the church this morning (minus the orange things we added after discovering the scene):

Yup. Someone threw a rock through the glass door. Shards were strewn all over the floor. It was a really impressive sight, with the shiny glass catching the light, like jewels. It was beautiful. What had happened was serious, though. Someone didn't like the door the way it was and decided a gaping jagged hole would suffice better than your average glass door. Did it have to do with the fact that the door opened into a church? Hmm. Maybe.

Something our pastor said about the event during our service hit me in a right way, too. He led us in prayer for the person who did the damage & said it's not okay for someone to feel like they have that on their record, that the bad guy (yes, the devil, and he is bad) wants people to feel burdened by things like that, to make them feel unworthy or guilty, and THAT'S NOT OKAY.

Got me thinking that I'm glad I go to a church where there's a disturbance like this. The shattered glass door reminds me that the faith I hold to is a threat to some people, like I wrote in my journal, the gospel & Jesus are not the fragrance of life to everyone; to some it's the smell of death (I stole that from brother Paul). Perhaps it's because the church is making a difference & people are being set free from addictions, from bad relationships, from mediocre, and our church was due for some sort of disturbance. However that works, anyway, after discovering the shards & brokenness, my morning was so GOOD. Worshipping with a bit of the tension of the morning's discovery hanging in the air was the missing ingredient for an offering for a King who often gets mediocre praises from me. I was so inspired during the sermon & afterwards & had to write ideas down so I wouldn't forget them.

And then it struck. Like a Rock breaking into the church. Who's our Rock? The Lord is our Rock & our Salvation. And when that thought dropped into my head, I saw that morning's events as a prophetic statement that God (our Rock) is bringing breakthrough into the Church.

Yes! Take it, take it! Not just for the congregation I attend, see it for yours too! We're family! A gift for you!

May we be shattered, our protective doors be shattered, into a beautiful mess to welcome in the risky King who has life and wind and breath and grace in Him.

And an end to guilt, for sinners. Like the taxcollector in Luke 18, praying, "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner."