picture

my niece turned six months old this month. :)

March 24

The sun has come out today!  Even better, it's supposed to be close to 60 degrees, AND I don't work until four.  I'm looking forward to some good time replenishing some much needed vitamin D.  First, though, I get to skype with a friend who is back in Kentucky.  Really looking forward to that.

March 21, blah

I constantly think about writing on my blog.  I have even started a number of posts only to stop with the intention of getting back to them, but in the end, they are left abandoned.  My life is in a lot of flux, but nothing of meaning to me is happening.  I spent five years learning and working toward something I was passionate for, but while those five years gave me a lot of academic experience, I finished without the on-the-ground, real-world experience to actually get me the kind of job I would enjoy.  Instead, I ended up back on the other side of the country camping out at my parents' house indefinitely.  These days I'm living in the netherworld.  I don't know how long I'll be here.  I don't know what it will take to get out.  It's foggy and I can't really see what's going on or what's ahead. I'm working a job my heart is not in and that is really hard for me.  I want so badly to do something I love.

Today, I feel utterly miserable.  Just being honest.  While I would chalk part of that up to my current walk through a wilderness I can't figure out how to navigate, I think I can chalk a lot more of it up to the absolutely miserable weather we are having!  In some parts of western Oregon it snowed quite a bit ("quite a bit" being relative) today; in other parts, it dusted.  But here in Portland it was just freezing cold and raining the entire day.  It has been dreary for the last week and a half straight with only a few days of sun preceding that, before which was another long stretch of cold misery, and it's killing my spirit .  If we don't get some good sunshine soon, I'm going to waste away to a listless, soulless nothing.  This kind of weather didn't used to bother me so much.  These days, though, it makes me tired of simply existing.

March 6

The other day, I was watching Adele's Live at Royal Albert Hall.  It is brilliantly entertaining, and near the end, she sings a cover of "To Make You Feel My Love."

Life for me and for some of my communities is in a long and unknown process of flux and transition and a line from that song (a Bob Dylan original, I might add) is a perfect description of life these days.

"The winds of change are blowing wild and free."

I may expound on that later, but I'll leave it here for now.

February 18, friendship

Sitting next to me on my desk is a dark grey stone that has written on it in black marker, "beloved beauty grace sb 2008." My friend, Sarah, gave this to me the morning I left for Kentucky. This stone travelled 2,500 miles with me to Wilmore. It was with me in my car accident and miraculously not thrown through a broken window and lost somewhere between the westbound and eastbound sides of I-64.  It sat on my desk with me during my three emotional, difficult, beautiful, and very definitive years in seminary at Asbury (I think I even brought it with me for my three-month internship in Toronto), and then travelled the 2,500 miles back to Portland with me last summer. I cleaned off my desk today and there it was. It made me smile and made me ever so grateful for Sarah's gracious and beautiful friendship with me.  I love my friends.  They have profoundly changed my life.

February 10

I’ve had a very up and down week.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll actually get to it.  For now, though, I must sleep.  I have to work at 4am.  But I do get to wear new shoes to work. That makes 4am ever so slightly appealing.  And a little video from when my niece was here earlier this week.

February 7, a commissioning

I was sitting on the bus today waiting for it to leave when a text came through my phone.  A friend of mine was sending me a picture, and to my surprise, it worked.  They usually don’t.  When I opened it, I saw my dear friend and mentor, whom I love more than words can say, kneeling at the altar in Estes at Asbury being commissioned and prayed over in all her academic regalia (her penguin outfit, as she calls it) and blessed on her new journey as Vice President of Community Formation.  The picture made me so happy that it made me cry.  

So Marilyn, a little prayer from me, too.  May God bless you and keep you, and I pray that God gives you strength and a growing heart and the vision to see and discern the Spirit and beauty in your life and work.  

And thank you, Leigh, for being a little rebellious during prayer and sending me that picture. :)  I have really good friends.