A Road Less Travelled

I had a real Calvin and Hobbes moment this afternoon. I was on my way outside to give lunch to the children when a startling sight met my eyes and time stopped for just a minute. Samuel was on Noah’s bike at the top of the slide, poised to descend. First he looked guilty. Then he tried to look casual. Time started up again and I wandered out to have a little chat with my nephew. I told him he could try it once while I stood there, but it turned out the training wheels didn’t fit. Shame.

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So I mentioned this road trip I am privileged enough to be venturing on. What I didn’t mention is that it has come at possibly the worst possible moment. Our family is in crunch time to publish a role-playing game Seth has written. This means that Crystal has been spending most of most days in front of the computer laying out the book and making it look spiffy. Seth is finishing up writing the book as we speak and I have been keeping the house clean and cooking dinners. Oh, and doing laundry. That’s my contribution to the final push to get this game out the door. And next week I’m leaving for two weeks.

That means this week has been insane. I’ve not only been doing all the housework, but I’ve been making meals to freeze for when I’m not here so Crystal can focus on layout. I’ve not had much experience with Chinese food and suddenly I’m making enough chop suey for two meals and a church luncheon. I’d never made granola before and on Tuesday I turned thirty cups of oatmeal into really tasty granola. And today I turned twenty pounds of raw ground beef into eight meals and a garnish.

All this extra work has made life just a little crazy around here. Today, to aid my sanity, I pulled Please Don’t Eat the Daisies by Jean Kerr off my shelf and read it in my bits of spare time. It was cathartic. And as I was doubling four different recipes I found myself remembering a Steven Curtis Chapman song my mother liked. It feels applicable.

Well the day has just begun and I’m already running late
With too many irons in the fire and too much on my plate
I’d be pulling out my hair if I could just get one hand free
And I’d stop this world if I could find the key

CHORUS
What I see is telling me I’m going crazy, but
What is real says God’s still on His throne
What I need is to remember one thing
That the Lord of the gentle breeze is Lord of the rough and tumble
And He is King of the Jungle Yes he is

People say this world’s a jungle and sometimes I must admit
I’d be scared to death if I did not know who was king of it
But the truth is God created this whole world with His own hand
So everything is under His command

-Steven Curtis Chapman
“Lord of the Jungle”

So there, that’s my deep thought for the day. Do with it what you will, I can’t be bothered to care.

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I think I found my new theme song. I’ve always wanted my own theme song, and while I’ve used, say, Ride of the Valkyrie as a temporary theme song on occasion, I’ve never found one that really fits. This one doesn’t cover all the bases either, but it seems to suit this stage of my life. (Unfortunately it’s a country music song so Gabrielle can’t share my excitement at this discovery, even though it shares it’s name with our blog.)

Here it is, with some of my musings interspersed:

There’s a road a winding road that never ends
Full of curves lessons learned at every bend
Goin’s rough unlike the straight and narrow

This is the only line that doesn’t fit exactly. My association is that the straight and narrow is the road less traveled, but I don’t think that’s the point he’s trying to make. Life goes unexpected places when you’re not following The Plan. Sometimes those unexpected variations are obvious from the outside, and sometimes they’re simply the very painful, necessary lessons that get dropped in your lap when you’re not expecting them.

It’s for those who go against the grain
Have no fear dare to dream of a change live to march to the beat of a
different drummer
And it all might come together
And it all might unraveled
On the road less traveled

I still haven’t figured out why this resonates so much: “It all might come unraveled”. Perhaps it’s just the uncertainty that comes from leaving behind The Plan. What am I supposed to be doing with my life right now? How is this supposed to work exactly? Am I ever really going to get married? Even when I’ve managed to delve out the answers, it doesn’t feel quite as ’safe’ as simply following society’s expectations on the path that thousands of people have already worn smooth.

For the road less traveled ain’t for the faint of heart
For those who choose to play it safe and never stray too far
Me I want to live my life and one day leave my mark

How much is pride I don’t know, but I do know that’s part of what I want: to leave my mark. To say, “Look, there is a trail here. I might not have a slick guidebook like you can get for the main highway, but I can show you my notes and maybe you’ll get some ideas.”

And it all might come together
And it all come unraveled
On the road less traveled

And maybe my life won’t go the ‘right’ way. Maybe I never will get married, and maybe no one will ever look at my life and see anything worth doing. Maybe the weeds will grow up behind me and no one will ever see my path at all. But this is where I am, and I believe I’m doing something worth doing, even if it doesn’t come out the way I thought it was supposed to.

I’ve chosen a pathway I may not endure
One thing’s for certain nothing for sure
And it all might come together
And it all might come unraveled
On the road less traveled

There’s one more difference I didn’t notice in listening to song. I’ve chosen a pathway that I will endure, because the guiding principle is this, that I will follow my King wherever he leads me. So even if I hit a detour, or the road trails off, or horror of horrors, meets up with a major highway, I will keep going because He’s not going to leave me behind.

For the road less traveled ain’t for the faint of heart
For those who choose to play it safe and never stray too far
Me I want to live my life and one day leave my mark
And it all might come together
And it all come unraveled
On the road less traveled

So I keep going. I don’t know for sure where my path is leading. But by God’s grace I will follow it no matter how much it hurts, or how dumb I look along the way, or how often I just plain fail. And in the end, the path leads to heaven, but if the path means following my King and living for Him, it doesn’t really end there either…

There’s a road winding road that never ends

–The Road Less Traveled by George Strait

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  So I (Raquel) ran across this draft of Gabrielle’s in the backstage area of the blog. Thinking she probably wouldn’t mind, I read it. Then I sent her an instant message to warn her that I was about to post it, because I enjoyed it and I thought she should post it. Over her vociferous complaints that it was unfinished (which is to say she suggested that I post it for her as I’m doing so she wouldn’t get blamed for the lack of completion) I insisted and ran to post it before she could stop me. More or less. I hope you enjoy this post I have unearthed for you under such hazardous circumstances.

I like names. There is great depth of meaning in names and what they mean to people. This past Sunday I was talking to a woman named Katherine. When her parents named her they decided that they didn’t want anyone to shorten her name to any of the nicknames for Katherine so they called her by her initials. K.E.M. Kem. Not Kim. Kem. When Kem got married her husband asked her to go by Katherine because her initials were changing and she wouldn’t be K.E.M. anymore. So Kem changed her name to Katherine.

Bob and Katherine have since adopted several children. Eleven to be exact. As each child entered the family Bob and Katherine gave them a new name. Sometimes the name had been their middle name, but in most cases the children were given a new name entirely. They joined a new family, started a new life, and so got a new name. Katherine is able to point back to her name change as being the same sort of thing. She had joined a new family and so she had gotten a new name just like they did.

I used to call myself Gaby (gabby). This is partly because I grew up in Erie which is just spitting distance away from Buffalo and its heavy, nasally accent. My name is pronounced Gabrielle as in ‘armadillo’. Most people would pronounce it Gabrielle as in ‘antelope’. This really bothered me so I just changed my name. But more than that I identified myself as Gaby, I thought of myself as Gaby. Gaby was a shy, self-centered, self-righteous, immature child who desperately wanted to be cool. When I moved out here to Peoria I moved away from the Buffalo accent and found that most people can pronounce my name properly. I also found that I didn’t want to be Gaby anymore. I changed my name back to Gabrielle and I also changed who I wanted to be.

Excursus- It’s odd. When I was all hung up on trying to be liked and interesting I tended to hide from people and had very few friends. When I gave up on that and tried to be who everyone thought God wanted me to be I discovered I was interesting and found several friends. These friends usually laugh when I tell them I used to be a shy, wanna-be Goth. When I was talking to Katherine I noticed that my father has always called me Gabrielle. It’s like he was giving me something to strive for, something to become. I don’t think he did that on purpose or with any deep motives. He just likes the name Gabrielle, which is why it’s my name.

I love the power of names. When you name something or someone aptly it has power. I call Crystal my sister-in-law so as not to confuse people, but really I want to call her my sister; I have named her my sister. It is the proper title for the relationship. It communicates to people how we view and interact with each other and communicating is really just a form of magic. Often I wish I could invent new words to name a relationship. There are various degrees of friendship, but they are all called friendship. It’s can be hard to aptly communicate to people what a particular relationship is because we simply don’t have the right word for it. I find that to be very frustrating.

I feel as though here is when I express some profound truth. I don’t have a profound truth to reveal. I just had words banging on the inside of my head and they needed to come out.

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It’s an odd life when:

Bloomington is a lifetime away but places like Arizona, California, and Washington D.C. are starting to feel like old hat.

My idea of a healthy and yummy dessert is whole wheat doughnuts fried in lard (glazed, of course, and even better when they’re hot out of the lard… mmm…).

College holds little interest for me anymore, but I’d fight tooth and nail to keep reading and learning (and writing) for the rest of my life.

My Sunday outfit, which looks like an Oriental robe and got several compliments, was purchased off the bathrobe rack at the thrift store.

Our blog is the sole result on google when searching for ‘deshambalize’.

My social events this week range from cleaning out someone else’s game closet to watching a play by Shakespeare.

Yep, that settles it. I really am as strange as I thought I was.

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Yep, this time I actually get to go somewhere. The Lansberrys are heading out on a two week trip to points east and they invited me to come too. So starting a week from Wednesday my life will consist of hot cars, hot sun beating down on my head as I walk from hither to thither and then proceed on to yon, tired children and tired grownups. I am very excited!

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This time last year my life was, how shall I say it? It felt like a mess. I felt like I kept losing bits of my life that I would never get back. This time last year was also right after our family reunion back in Erie. This reunion is set in my memory not only because it was a lovely time with family I haven’t seen in a while, but because it marks a turning point. When we left for Erie I felt full with things I never knew I could lose. When we got back I felt empty.

This time last year the S. Ben-Ezras, the Lansberrys, and another family prayerfully and painfully made the decision to leave the church we were members of and to find another church. The church we left was the second church I’ve been a member of in my entire life. I’d never left a church before and I had no idea what to think, what to feel. The leaving didn’t go well and I felt sad, lost and confused. We made the decision Sunday night and we left for Erie on Wednesday. When we got back we had no church family anymore.

This time last year the S. Ben-Ezra household was in the process of moving its headquarters. We were going to move into the neighborhood we’d looked at for the past two years or so. We were going to be down the street from the Lansberrys in a house that would fit us better. I’d only moved twice in my life; once when I was six months old and then I moved to Illinois when I was eighteen. we had started packing before we left for Erie, but when we got back was when we made a concerted effort to remove all traces of our family’s culture and personality from the house. When we left I had a room and a home. When we got back I just had a place I slept and worked and packed. We didn’t really have a home until six months later.

Before we left for Erie I was full. I had a family, a church family and a home. When we got back I still had a family, but the other two were gone. And it felt like I would never get them back.

It’s a year later now. And I am full again. We have a house that is a gift. Even when the windows won’t open or are missing screens and the fence is crooked this house suits us. It has a big front porch, plenty of rooms so that we don’t all have to be in same place all the time and, most importantly to me, my bedroom has a door. It is just down the street from the Lansberrys and we live in an actual neighborhood. The house feels like home and I pray that I will never take that for granted again.

It’s a year later and we have a church family again. A motley group of people who are all struggling with our sin and have decided to love each other no matter what. It is a gift. It’s certainly not our fault. When Seth and Crystal had to go back to Erie to be with her father the church was there for us. Just this past week I had a chance to return the favor and it was such a joy. This church is a gift and I pray that I will never take it for granted again.

This time last year I went out full and came back empty. It’s a year later and God has more than returned everything he took away.

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 One would think that one very large bookshelf would be enough for any young single female. That is, of course, unless that female happens to be of the Mutton line. Take, for example, my bookshelf. (No, don’t actually take it–I need it rather badly.) Not only are all six four-foot shelves jammed with books, but the top of the bookshelf has books most of the way across (saving room only for my stack of hats), and there are piles of of books stacked in the space between the top of the books and next shelf up. I purposely arrange my books (within genre and author guidelines, of course) so as to have the maximum number of paperbacks in row, to leave a nice flat surface for stacking.

Now, having already been informed that this is the bookshelf of one in the Mutton line, one would of course not assume that this comprises the extent of my book collection. No, after the maximum number of books have been crammed into my bookshelf the overflow takes up my closet shelf, a shelf above my desk and half of the desktop itself, and the back of my dresser. This is not counting the small (three shelf) bookshelf jammed full of children’s books which resides under my loft bed, the row of picture books taking up two-thirds of the wall along the floor under my bed, the crate full of craft books in my closet, or the Janette Oke books packed away in my closet. (Don’t mock me–I know they’re not great literature, but they were fun back when I read them.)

Having filled every available nook and cranny with books, there’s just one problem: I haven’t stopped buying books. With twenty-five and fifty cent books in the library book sale room, I’m not even spending all of my book budget, but I’m still about to start drowning in books.  I’ve taken half of my cookbook collection and stacked it on the floor to make something resembling an end table. Yesterday I made another next it with my Star Trek books. This cleared a little stacking space on the shelf, but the shelves themselves are still full.

If I go missing for a few weeks, someone should check under the sea of books in my room. I’ll probably be buried somewhere in there desperately trying to reach my laptop so I can order just one more book. Sigh. I supposed something really does have to give. I just hope it’s not the floor of my room collapsing under the weight of all my books…

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Thursday night we discovered the outside lock on our van’s side door was missing. No problem, we thought, We’ll just reached around the side from the front and unlock it that way. But then Sunday when we arrived at church I discovered I was locked into the back. The door was locked and jammed. The kids and I crawled out the front door and went in to church. Seth said we would deal with it later.

Well, God revealed Himself yet again to be cooler and weirder than I would ever think because He provided a solution to the problem that I would never have thought of. A family from New Zealand, the Stuarts, just happened to be spending three months touring the U.S. in a RV and just happened to be worshiping with us that day and Mr. Stuart just happens to be a locksmith. Seth went up to him during lunch and asked if he would mind breaking into our van for us. He very kindly did and fixed the problem and everything. And he, his wife and their seven children (six girls, one boy) came to our house for the evening.

It felt like how my father keeps talking about Heaven. You’re going about your business, you bump into another person you have Christ in common with and then you sit down, have a cup of coffee and talk. About life, about God, about your families and about where you’ve been and where you’re going. We didn’t even have the same accent or live on the same side of the Equator and we found we had so much in common. Living in less than desirable houses and what you found you take for granted was one conversation. They won that exchange, by the way. I started off talking about my bedroom door and they told us about the time they were without outside walls. We decided they won hands down.

We ate together, we laughed together and we talked together about anything that came up. The children had a blast playing in the pool and sitting on top of the Stuarts RV. Towards the end of the evening Seth found their house on Google Earth and they showed us around their town. Isaac wanted to know how far it was to their house and Google Earth reports it is 8000 miles, 13,000 kilometers and 7.6 million smoots.

When it was time for them to go Mrs. Stuart said, “Maybe we’ll see you all again sometime. And if not here then we’ll see you in Heaven.” See you in Heaven. It was the perfect goodbye.

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