So I drew up Epiguy who has exacidoptysis (spitting out acid) and anamyomegaly (excessive enlargement of the muscles) and other like conditions. After a week of finding medical descriptions somewhat upsetting, I sat there coloring in a superhero and I thought, “I like crayons. This is fun. Why don’t I do this more often?”

It reminded me of Ana in Stranger Than Fiction who quit law school to save the world with cookies. And as the girl who spent large portions of childhood recreationally reading the Medical Book and the Doctor’s Guide to Home Remedies, I’m now having a bit of identity crisis…

I have three job titles that I use. I describe myself as a full-time aunt, a stay-at-home aunt or, if I’m feeling really snooty, a personal assistant to a mother of six. Okay, I’ve only used that last one in jest, but it sounds really good, doesn’t it? There’s a lot that goes into this job no matter what name it goes by so I wrote up a list of jobs that fall under my title. Some of these are snarky, some are silly, some are completely serious. When I figure out which is which maybe I’ll let you know. So, without further ado, I present my resume.

My Resume

Courier
Chauffeur
Action Figure Surgeon
Water Carrier
Sandwich Technician
Sleuth
Shoelace Technician
Teacher/Instructor of
-Science
-Math
-Reading
-History
-Baby Growth and Development
-Housekeeping Skills
-Storytelling
-Life
Jungle Gym
Spit Rag
Music Critic
Art Critic
Film Critic
Literary Critic
Literary Advisor
Dr. Seuss Specialist
Dietitian
Assistant Piano Instructor
Laundry Specialist
Author
Story Teller
Chef
Baker
Actor
Director
Comedian
Compost Specialist
Investigator/Judge and Jury
Library Guide
Caterer
and last, but not least,
First grown up awake on Sunday mornings and usually in a good mood

So, Tuesday I went out shopping. It’s my official errand day where I run around like a crazy person doing grocery shopping for myself and some for Crystal. It was going well and I was feeling happy. I’d bought some yummy food for this week, I’d gotten ice cream for Isaac’s upcoming birthday, I was out of the house. It was a good day. Then I bumped into a lady from our previous church who I hadn’t seen in forever. She’s a total sweetheart so I actually said hey when I noticed her and was glad I did cause she was thrilled to see me. I asked how she was then I asked about the young women at the church who are a bit younger than I am, one of whom is her daughter. So she told me all about her daughter’s life- how she’s married, how she’s got several home businesses using her creativity and artistic skills, how she’s happy as a clam. Then she told me about the other young woman who is getting married in May and so very happy. She even told me about a young woman who’d come after we left. I have never met this person, but I know that she is attending New St. Andrew’s college in Moscow, Idaho, (you know, Doug Wilson’s college) and that she loves it there. Then, this total sweetheart who would never want to hurt my feelings said, “And how are you? What have you been up to?”

My brain completely froze up. Here she is talking about women who are younger than I am and using their gifts and skills and loving it. I get thrown up on on a regular basis. I get up each day and try to corral children through the day without going insane or letting the house fall down. What’s more, I’ve been doing that for five years now. What do I have to show for it? I asked myself. And then listened to the echoes when no answer came.

I managed to stumble through the rest of the conversation. I told her about writing, I told her about teaching. I tried not to sound like the total loser I am on paper. And then we said goodbye and I walked off into a gray day with a new voice in my head. It whispered to me about how much I am worth and how important my days are. It whispered to me about my days and weeks and years and I listened, God forgive me, I listened.

I didn’t realize how much the conversation bothered me until I got home and started talking to Crystal. She had some very helpful things to say which I tried so hard not to blow off. I was talking about it again last night with the Wednesday Night Dinner crowd and again I was shocked at how bothered I’d been. Especially since I know the right answers. Theresa was pushing me on it and I was laying out for her what I believe about what I’m doing and why. I laid it all out and it looked so good, but still there was the voice. I couldn’t listen to myself explain myself to me because that voice was talking talking talking.

There was no way I could make it stop on my own so I told it to go to Hell and asked to God make it leave. It’s been a better day so far.

One of the helpful things Crystal said was that I should write a resume. I could make it as silly or serious as I wanted, but that it might be helpful just to list everything I do. I’ve been working on it and so far it’s a pretty long list. On the list are several things that are what I love. I’m a writer and a teacher. That’s what I want. I work with children which is the perfect fit for me. So why does it matter that nobody’s hired me for the job, that I didn’t have to go and spend lots of money on getting a piece of paper that says I can do it? What difference does it make that I’m here and not someplace else doing what I love? I’m teaching children how to read and about their world and about the history of their people. I’ve taught them about plants and about their bodies and about animals. I’ve written stories that have been just what someone needed even if sometimes that someone is me. I’m doing what I want, what I love. This is exactly what I want I just do it here at home. Why isn’t that worth anything?

The answer is it’s worth a whole lot; I’ve just been listening to a liar this week. When I’m done with the resume I’ll probably post it here, though that’s not really the point. It’s more of the exercise of paying attention and noticing my place here so that I have something to tell the liar when it tries to come back.

Not having any official responsibilities at the Reformation Day Faire, I got to skip the early exit, and leisurely left the house around nine to head to Go Play with just myself, two boys, an entire costume change for the Reformation Day Faire including different shoes and a blanket to use for a shawl in case it was cold, and just in case, a craft project and my medical terminology textbook.

Go Play was its usual fun with a discussion of the ins and outs of playing Battlestar Galactica, a game of Sabetour (in which I tied for first), and two games of Dominion (in both of which, I think, I came in second). Things were just really starting to gear up when it came time for me to head over to Ref Faire. Theresa was there to take over ‘watching boys at Go Play’ shift, and I’d decided that I wanted to get to Ref Faire in time for the outside events starting in the afternoon.

A brief excursus here into the subject of my new haircut: I just got my hair cut very short, for me. It’s a few inches past my shoulders, with swept to the side bangs. I spent the first twenty to thirty minutes at the Reformation Day Faire fielding “I LOVE your new haircut!” comments. Part of me honestly enjoyed the attention I don’t usually get, and part of me started to find it just a bit ridiculous. For those who are wondering, yes, I like my new haircut, no, I didn’t freak out about getting that much cut off, and no, I probably won’t keep it. I got my five minutes of fame for a having a ‘cool’ hair cut, and I’ll enjoy it while it lasts, but (I think) I’ll be ready to head back toward being a person with long hair by time I’d need to get it trimmed.

I spent most of my time chatting with people I haven’t seen in a long time, or with people I mostly know through the internet, punctuated by hanging out with old friends on the security team (or chatting at the registration desk) and getting the inside scoop on what was going on.

I re-discovered something about myself, which is that I really prefer to be working behind the scenes over getting the apparently seamless presentation. I ‘got’ to help out in the kitchen a bit, and serve the salad for the spaghetti dinner the church put on. This involved keeping salad served up in bowls as fast as people could come take it, helping two people with food allergies, and telling multiple people that the salad in the bowls already had dressing on it. At one point I was falling behind and running out of salad, so I needed some help to keep up with the salad consumption, (obviously, involving time pressure and dealing with people, both of which usually just stress me out) and at the end my feet and back hurt, even if that makes me a wimp compared to people who were on there feet for 17 hours straight that day. And I have to say, I loved it. I’m filing this away under ‘trying to figure out what I’m good at it’ and will try to make sense out of it later.

Pretty soon it was time for the dance. The rational part of my brain had decided long before dancing in a long flowing dress in a crowded room wouldn’t even be fun and I really just shouldn’t bother. As the dance got closer it started to get shouted down by the part of of my brain that was jumping up and down saying, “Dancing is fun!”. There was even a contemplative part of my brain positing that I just didn’t want to dance because I was pretty sure I would never find anyone willing to dance with me anyway, so it was safer to just decide not to. I ignored that theory, but still somehow found myself in the corner full of other girls, (opposite the wall lined with guys, as the room had somehow magically segragated itself…) watching the Virginia Reel, and clapping along.

The next two dances, however, found me discovering that having old friends on the security team is not just useful for finding out what’s going on, but excellent for finding dance partners when they’re taking turns actually being security and dancing. Good thing too, because I have a sneaking suspicion I would have gotten (very politely) yelled at if I’d very rationally managed to avoid dancing altogether…

And so the crazy, fun, busy day closed with me turning over a Lee Ann Womack song in my head:

“I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
GOD forbid love ever leave you empty handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance….I hope you dance.”

Life has been rough for me lately, not so much because life has been rough, but because I’ve been emotional and confused and hurting. Well, I can still point to the same reasons that I’m having a difficult time with life, but over the last couple days I got a minor but much needed attitude adjustment. I experienced a few small but striking moments of providence in my life, and I got one beautiful, crazy day.

And at the end I got the choice to dance, and I did.

I realized today that I am an intelligent person. Hey, stop laughing. Yes, you, I know who you are, and you know it’s true that somewhere under my occasionally ditzy exterior I’m pretty smart. This is something I already knew, but it was called to my attention today at class.

I was looking over my test scores so far in Medical Terminology, and figured up that with extra credit work, my average so far is slightly over 100%. At break time I walked out feeling pretty good about this. I was really happy with this whole ‘extra credit’ concept, because it meant that I had a decent shot at a 100% average for the whole class, even with one early test score of 92% when I was still getting the hang of things.

Suddenly I found myself in a discussion with classmates who were pretty sure they were flunking, and I realized that some of them were desperately hanging on to the hope of extra credit work to just give them a passing score.

Now, these are people who are undoubtedly taking a full class load, and in some cases had extenuating circumstances that cause them to miss class. I’m *NOT* saying that I’m more intelligent than they are, because I really don’t know that, or honestly, care.

And I’m not extraordinarily intelligent. Thankfully, I have a circle of friends who are generally even more intelligent than I am, so I don’t forget this.

But if I can maintain a 100% grade average on one college course, while maintaining an actual life outside the classroom, then I need to make sure I do something with this ability. Whether I go for X-Ray Technician after this or not, I need to make sure I’m using my brain for something productive on a regular basis, and that really needs to go beyond ‘What did this gray mush in the back of the fridge used to be?’ when at all possible.

I don’t regret having stayed out of the college classroom for this long. Generally, life, which is say, God, has thrown plenty into my path to occupy my brainspace and have to deal with. But it’s too easy get lazy and stop challenging my brain, and when that happens my brainspace tends to fill with lots of unhelpful daydreams and worries as my brain tries to occupy itself.

So, note to self: Whatever I plan to do next needs to include some kind of mental challenge. We’ll see if that turns out to be X-Ray Technician studies or not.

I’ve talked about Buffy the Vampire Slayer in posts past. In one post in particular I mentioned Xander, the normal guy. The completely normal, almost painfully average guy who fights side by side with the Slayer. He’s my favorite character. And I’ve realized that I am the Xander of our little group here on Orange St.

At first I wasn’t going to write this post. It seemed self-absorbed and, oddly enough, a little arrogant because I keep talking about how important Xander is to the group. But if I can’t be self-absorbed on my own blog where can I be?

The core group of Buffy characters are Buffy, Willow, and Xander. Buffy is, as I’ve said, the Slayer, a mystical position of great responsibility and lots of physical perks. Willow starts the show as the really geeky, but super useful computer hacker and then takes up magic in season 3. As the show progresses she and Buffy grow in their powers until they’re both scary strong. And Xander remains normal guy. There’s a part in season 7 when he’s talking to one of the other characters who used to be something important and is now very normal with him. He says

“Seven years, Dawn. Working with the Slayer. Seeing my friends get more and more powerful… a witch. A demon… Powerful, all of them. And I’m the guy who fixes the windows…
They’ll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn’t Chosen, to live so near the spotlight and never step in it. But I know.”

Seems like lately the people in my immediate circle are all dealing with something or other that’s big or hurts a lot. Medical issues, governmental policies, spiritual battles for peace and contentment. They’re all intense people who care about big things or a lot about small things. They need lots of care and people are concerned for them because, wow, life hurts a lot. And I’m the one who fixes the windows.

I am Xander. (I took a personality test a while back that said I was so it must be true) I’m not intense about issues, all of my strengths are quiet, background support things, I tend to be practical when I’m not chasing butterflies and most days I find flowers far more interesting than crime. I’m not a dreamer, I’m not a fighter, I’m not really a thinker though I have a bit part in each of these things. I’m a bridge strut. I support the bridge so that people can be helped and blessed and taken care of. And because of that I don’t often get noticed and I get driven over a lot.

In the show Buffy and Willow have to deal with really big issues. Buffy struggles constantly with being special, always living near a normal life, but never touching it. Willow becomes so powerful she gets addicted to magic and gets someone else hurt. Because of their strengths and their power the burdens they carry are big, often too big for them. So the rest of the group rallies round to support them. It’s really a beautiful show sometimes just watching the friendships.

Xander doesn’t have those problems. He struggles with being a grownup, holding down a job and committing to his girlfriend. When compared to the rest his issues look very small. And he rarely gets any help with them until he screws up royally and botches his life up good. He doesn’t get the spotlight, he doesn’t get the rallying round. He’s just normal guy with normal issues.

Most of the people I’m around are prone to depression. They struggle with problems and burdens and frequently it can result in emotions that sink to the bottom of the ocean and bury themselves in the sand. Then it’s time for the rallying round and the emotional support. It’s time to steal the children and kick the married couple out of the house to have some time with each other or to get some decaf coffee and drive nowhere listening to loud music. It’s time to take care of them and help them up out of the pit they’re in.

I don’t have those emotional pitfalls. I used to, but something in me leveled out and now I’m generally a cheerful, up person. This past summer was really hard and I was in a serious funk, but everyone around me was so much worse it didn’t really count. I’ll get… low sometimes. Not depressed, not bottom of the ocean, not really all that bad comparatively. Just kinda low. But I’ll come out of it sooner or later so there’s really no need for the rallying, the decaf coffee or long drives. Sure, I’ve come apart from time to time and there’s usually been a shoulder to cry on. But that’s usually it. I have my cry, I dry my eyes and I go back to life. No big. No need for anything extra special.

It’s cause I’m normal girl. I wash the dishes, I set the table, I help enforce policies and decisions I had no part in deciding, I roll with the punches. I fix the windows. When something’s up with me there’s someone who’s dealing with worse so I just get up and deal with whatever. It’s what I do. I’m normal girl.

Which makes me the heart of the group. If we map our group to the Buffy group that makes me normal girl, the beating heart of our funky little community. Integral and important, but often overlooked. It’s not a bad place to be if you’re built for it and I’ve realizing that I am. I really am. I’m the cheerful, dish-washing, diaper-changing, normal girl bridge strut. Nice to meet you.

I am a storyteller. I collect stories like a crow does shinies and I either keep them to retell or I mix them together into something new. I also like people. When I was younger I was introduced to role playing which is storytelling done by a group. It was a perfect match. I keep in my head a collection of tales that various segments of us have told together. Many of these stories have become almost our folk tales, the stories we tell that helped us figure ourselves and each other out or find answers when were contemplating issues and ideas. There are moments from one game or the other that have become such a part of our group’s culture that we’ve almost forgotten where that phrase came from or why we laugh at that quote.

Many of these moments have come about as a combination of the group’s collective awesome and some pretty intense randomness. Many role playing games will use some sort of randomness to decide what happens in case of disputes. I say, “I kick down that wall and find you cowering on the other side.” But you don’t want that to happen. You say, “No, no, I’m so totally not cowering on the other side. I’m forty yards away and still running fast.” Okay, who’s right? What happens? There are lots of ways to decide and one is with some sort of randomness, usually dice.

So, there are these awesome moments in gaming (that look nothing like the example above) that are determined largely by rolling some dice. That thought broke from its anchor in my head and floated off towards a dock somewhere down the way.

Proverbs 16 says “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” Sometimes Israelites cast lots to make decisions like who got what land, or who was responsible for what crime. In essence they would roll dice and see what happened. It looks weird, but the Bible is clear that God’s totally in charge of things like dice. This wasn’t some bizarre act of randomness; this was one of God’s ways of communicating with His people.

Fast forward a bit from ancient Israel to, I dunno, last Friday. We’re playing a game called Mouse Guard which has to be my all time favorite game about mice. You, or more accurately we, are members of the Mouse Guard, those who are responsible for protecting the mice from the dangers that lurk in the wilderness. Life is very scary for mice. There are predators to think about, any kind of bad weather is harsh for a mouse and then there’s the distances between the towns. It’s the Mouse Guard that keeps the paths blazed and the roads open. It’s the Mouse Guard who guard the borders, watching for weasels, stoats, snakes, owls, hawks and pretty much anything else that’s bigger than they are. Think of Tolkien’s Rangers and then shrink them down to mice. The game is based on a graphic novel which is thrilling and moving and deeply affecting. Seriously, follow the link and check out some of the artwork.

A couple Fridays ago we’d made characters and last Friday we played for the first time. Our patrol is made of one veteran who’s only still out on the trails because someone’s got to do it, a scout who’s kinda shady, a healer who must be made of steel to deal with what’s waiting for her out on the trail and, the youngest of the group, a big, strapping Viking of a mouse. Our assignment was mail delivery which is a lot more difficult than it sounds like. They were close to their last stop when they got horribly lost and ended up bumping into a raven. Now, there’s not much to fear from ravens; they’re scavengers not hunters. But they are still a lot bigger than we are. And this particular raven happened to spot the mail bag which it decided it simply must have. This, of course, was unacceptable. So, fight!

The fight went okay for a little while. Our mice were working together to blah, blah, rules stuff no one cares about, I had a huge handful of dice to put lots of hurting on the bird. I take the elven dice into my hands. I’m already smiling cause I have an awesome move in mind. I shake the dice a bit and then I roll! I’m looking for fours or better. I rolled one 5, one 6 and a bunch of 1s and 2s. I rolled eleven dice and got two successes. That is really pathetic.

I was more upset than I wanted to be, but life goes on. We were getting badly hammered by the bird who was barely scratched. Then Finn, the veteran, stepped into the fight. He’d been mostly giving support up to this point, but now he stepped up. With his old, battered shield he gave that bird such a whoopin it flew off leaving the mail behind and also one of its toes. It was brilliant.

If we’d been making a movie I would have written it that way. This was the patrol’s first battle together and it should have gone like that, exactly like that. And the reason it went so perfectly is because I completely blew my roll.

Or did I? I was casting lots to figure out what was going to happen in the story we were telling together. We were creating, we were having fun. I believe God cares about that sort of thing. And I threw my dice on the table, but the decision came from God. He still controls that sort of thing. So He wrote us the perfect battle sequence cause He thought it’d be cool.

That’s why it’s doubly fun being a Christian gamer. I not only get to grouse about how the dice hate me, but I still carry the understanding of where the dice results come from. There was a collision between those two thoughts a while back and I’ve never forgotten. So our perfect gaming moments are rarely completely our fault. They come from our Father Who controls everything. Even the roll of the dice.

So, today I’m reading the book and it’s as good as I’d thought. The cartoons are biting and witty and there are glimpses of where the look and feel of his future books came from. The commentary on the cartoons is very informative both in what Dr. Seuss was thinking and the historical events and trends he was reacting to. The only issue is that I’m finding I disagree with his politics.

It is so weird. I didn’t even really know I had any opinions about the US policies around World War II. But I’m reading the cartoons and I’m reading the commentary and I think Dr. Seuss was wrong. This has me spun because I’m the butterflies and flowers person; I don’t have opinions about politics, right?

Also, I am disagreeing with Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss! The man who brought us those Sneetches nobody thought could learn, but who end their story with Star-Bellied and non hand in hand on the beaches. The man who took us all the way to Solla Sollew (On the banks of the river Wahoo where they never have troubles at least very few), back again and then out beyond Zebra where the Sneedles and the Yekkos live. Who stood with the Lorax and who asked questions about the Butter Battle. The man who gave us that faithful elephant Horton who was so stalwart and so brave. Whether he’s standing by a promise (”I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent.”) or safeguarding lives only he knows or cares about (”A person’s a person no matter how small.”) Horton is high up on my list of favorite characters. I can’t disagree with Dr. Seuss!

Well, I guess that’s just part of growing up. Finding out where you differ from your heroes and still admiring them and appreciating their genius. Theodor Seuss Geisel, I still like you. Your books still rock and I still plan on enjoying them fully.

I was thinking about being married. (Excursus: Whenever I contemplate a life apart from singleness I imagine being married. Not getting married. Important something there.) I was contemplating the fact that when I am married I will have promised my husband that I will follow him wherever God calls him and therefore us. And for some reason I was assuming that because I’d promised to follow wherever I would have to leave Peoria and follow wherever. Like, because I’d promised God was going to make it happen. And then I realized that I was getting upset.

I don’t want to leave Peoria. More than that I don’t want to leave Orange Street. I feel very strongly that I have important work to do here. Okay, currently the work I can point to is teaching Noah and Justice to read and being in charge of set up and clean up of our Tuesday Night on Orange Street dinners. It’s not glamorous, but I feel in my soul such a deep steadiness about my place here that I cannot argue. It’s the same steadiness that convinced me to move here five years ago. And I realized that if getting married meant leaving the place where I was sure of my calling I would rather not. I would rather be here and single with that steadiness than married without it.

Times past I wouldn’t have been able to say that. Not too long ago I was so hung up on getting married I wasn’t even thinking about what I was meant to be doing. I was longing for a place, a heart home, a man who’d call me his. I was craving a man with a mission so I could be married and be sure what to be about. But that Spirit of His snuck up on me and put in me such a surety I feel like a fortress.

Yes, I still want to get married and yes, loneliness still hurts. I haven’t all of a sudden changed into a heartless goon for God and I still am convinced I do not have this supposed ‘gift of singleness’ people are so hot about. But I am grounded. I am convinced of what I should be doing and, shockingly, I’m actually doing it. I have my niche to fill and by God’s might I’m filling it. And I’ll keep on until He whispers it’s time to move on. Cause I’d rather be here, lonely and single, laboring under the smile of God than someplace else, even married, and drifting.