I guess that makes me prime straight-jacket material because I wouldn’t have it any other way. From the inside looking out, life outside of the Church is terrifying. I promised a group of people I would look out for them and they promised me they’d get my back. You don’t get that same sort of solemn vow made before God outside.

So I suppose it’s a good thing our Father doesn’t run on human intelligence. His wisdom and his sense of humor are boundless which is how we ended up with the Church as we know it. A bunch of misfits all lumbering in twenty different directions while our Dad smiles and somehow makes our childish attempts work out. We are the Church, the chosen, the worst of the worst and the beloved. We are a bride being groomed for a husband who proves His love for us every single day. May we ever stand to give Him praise. Amen.

“Arise”

We will make it out alive
There’s a note in the pages of the book
So Sleep tonight,
We’ll sleep dreamlessly this time
When we awake we’ll know that everything’s alright

And sing to me about the end of the world
End of these hammers and needles for you

Hold on to the world we all remember fighting for,
There’s still strength left in us yet
Hold on to the world we all remember dying for,
There’s still hope left in it yet

The snow on your face, and your razor blades
The twilight is bruised and there you lie

And sing to me, about the end of the world
End of these hammers and needles for you
We’ll cry tonight, but in the morning we are new
Stand in the sun, we’ll dry your eyes

Hold on to the world we all remember fighting for,
There’s still strength left in us yet
Hold on to the world we all remember dying for,
There’s still hope left in it yet

And sing
Sing
Arise

Arise and be,
All the you dreamed, all that you dreamed

Arise and be,
All the you dreamed, all that you dreamed

Arise and be,
All the you dreamed, all that you dreamed

Arise and be,
All the you dreamed, all that you dreamed

No problem. He would just spend all of Thursday sick while Crystal and I blitzed around the house trying to get it clean or whatever approximation of clean the children would let us maintain. Crystal and Adiel were on the phone with each other figuring out contagions and plans. They were still planning on coming. They were leaving in the middle of Thursday night and showing up Friday afternoon hopefully with enough time to crash for a bit before the festivities that night. As of Thursday evening they were coming. Then Adiel started feeling sick.

I got a call around 9 o’clock Thursday night. It was Josh. They were going to sleep at their house that night and see how Adiel felt in the morning. We would know if they were coming sometime Friday morning. Okay, not what I’d been planning on, but it was still something. I went to bed.

Friday morning the Gardners got in touch with us and said that they were coming, but now they were going to leave around 11 or 12 o’clock their time. They were going to miss the Night of the Burning Plum, but they were still coming. Groovy. Also, last I’d heard Seth was feeling better so we’d all be at the Lansberry’s that night and we’d be hosting the after-party afterwards. Again, not what I’d planned, but still fine and fun.

Then I find out that Seth is now doing worse. Stuff, stuff, more stuff and I end up going to the Night of the Burning Plum alone with five children. It was a good time, a really good time, then we come home and cancel the after-party. While we were gone Seth coughed up a popcorn kernel. Apparently he’d inhaled it on Sunday and it had spent the entire week in his lungs causing infection. He was feeling better now, but nowhere near well. So I hung out on the couch by myself waiting for Josh and Adiel to show up.

They got here and we had a really good visit over the weekend. It was loud and crazy, exhausting and very difficult to move through the sea of children. It was good; just nowhere near what had been planned. It didn’t even have line of sight on the original plan. I’m not sure it was in the same area code as the original plan. But it was still good.

So today I am thankful for God’s plans. I don’t get how, but nothing goes wrong for God. From His perspective everything is going according to plan. He never gets thrown a curveball, though I wonder if He gets a kick out of throwing them.

See, I don’t really like beer. In fact, the alcoholic drinks I like tend to be really froo-froo girly mixed drinks. This bothers me. I’m not saying it consumes my every waking moment, or anything like that, but when it crosses my mind, it makes me slightly uncomfortable.

Why would that make me uncomfortable? Well, it has to do with my perceptions about the kind of beverages that go with certain personalities. Beer is a casual, hanging out with friends kind of drink, that lacks artifice. I would like to be that sort of person. Though, not enough to fake liking beer to achieve it, despite having heard that if you can fake sincerity you’ve got it made….

Froo-froo girly drinks imply girliness. You know, the kind of girl who has twenty pairs of shoes and loves shopping and is overly emotional about stupid stuff. And this is where we hit the crux of the matter. Because that describes me exactly, and that makes me *really* uncomfortable.

Why, you may ask? I’ve wondered the same thing. And last night (or maybe it was very early this morning), I finally figured it out. In my head that kind of girliness is a package deal that comes with certain other implications. That kind of girliness (in my head at least) only exists in brainless, high maintenence girls who have no common sense, and are completely useless. You know, that kind of girl who can’t do anything because she might chip her nail polish, and can’t hold a serious conversation about anything interesting.

And that’s why I was so upset to find out that I’m more emotional that rational. (An irony that does not escape me–in a couple more years I might even be able to see the funny side…) That’s why I’m so quick to grab onto my interest in weapons, or my high grade in medical terminology, because it’s something I can wave around and say, “Look, I’m not really one of them. I’m not useless. Really I’m not.”

Because I’m terrified of being written off as useless when I’m not. But I’m even more terrified of being written off as useless because it’s true.

But I don’t want to. I hope that doesn’t sound horrible, I really do. I have nothing against veterans and I do feel they should be honored as those who put their bodies on the line. But to honor the soldier is to call to mind the war. And I am so tired of fighting. Of physical fighting that leaves families and bodies broken. Of our spiritual war that sucks the joy from our bones and leaves us on our knees in the night begging, simply begging for relief. So, no, I am not going to devote this post to our veterans, though they should be thanked.

I am thankful today for the promise our King has given us of peace. He promised that one day there will be no more wars in the land and that we will find peace for our souls. We will lay down our arms and be able to put down our shields we’ve had to hold around our hearts. All tears will be wiped from our cheeks and we will dance. All of the stories of death and fear will lose their power to hurt. They will point to our King and Savior while He sits on the throne and rules us in perfect peace. For that promise I am thankful today.

And then I realized I actually had an answer. Because God did not just ditch His people and leave them wondering which parts of His Word they could trust and which ones they couldn’t. If any point in history the Bible was tampered with so as to no longer be completely trustworthy, then God is not the loving and completely sovereign father He says is.

And if that were true then everything would be pointless because ‘life sucks and then you die’.

I recently wrote my very first short story. According to standards I read on the Internet (insert snarky Internet comment here) what I’ve written previously would be called flash fiction or short shorts according to word count. I wanted to shoot for something longer so I aimed for 7000 words which is the most liberal requirement for a short story. I wrote it, I posted it, I danced around, I was very excited. Working towards a bigger goal made me slow down and give the story more space to grow and breathe. It gave me more space to get you, the reader, to understand my character and his situation. It gave me more time to yell at him because he wasn’t doing what I wanted him to.

He’s my character, right? I made him, I named him, I figured out what he looked like and how he talked. He’s my creation; I should be able to tell him what to do. I should be able to steer him onto the path I want. For crying out loud, the words that described his sorry life came out of my head. I should have had a big say in his life. But after I made him and figured him out he just went his own way.

He decided his reactions to the obstacles I put in his way. He, Adam, decided what to shoot for and what to settle for. He decided when to give up and what that looked like. I was so mad at him because he was being so stupid about everything. He was sulking and pouting and hating his life and there was nothing I could do about it.

I had something good planned for him, too. Not necessarily what he’d been working for, but something really, really good. At the end of the story he would be happy. He could have been happy in the beginning and middle, too, if he hadn’t been being such a moron. I had a great plan all lined up for him if I could only get him to do what I wanted.

There was one thing I could do about it. I could completely rewrite him and force him to do what I wanted him to, but then he wouldn’t be Adam anymore. I would have broken him to get him to stop being stupid which is kinda what I did to him through the stuff that happens in the story. But he had to work through his struggles as Adam in order to arrive at a good place and still be Adam. To tell the story I wanted I had to let him be himself, stupidity and all, while I guided him through to the end. I wonder if that frustration is a bit like what it feels like for God.

(Here’s where the possibility of heresy comes in. Just hear me out, okay?)

God makes us. He decides what we look like and what our situations will be. And then He watches while we totally screw up our lives. We wallow in our mistakes and get up only to make new mistakes. Our decisions hurt everyone around us and ruin the story. There’s something good waiting for us at the end, or the middle or the beginning, but we’re so bull-headed we have to slog all the way to the end to get it.

God made us, right? We’re His creations, His characters in His story and He really should be able to make us bend to His will. He should be able to dictate our every move. Which isn’t to say that He is unable; it’s just to say that I kinda understand why He doesn’t sometimes. There are times that bending us will actually break us. We are too stiff and too stubborn to just bend. So sometimes He leaves us like that for a while. He lets us wallow in our self-pity when our story doesn’t go how we’re wanting it to. But sometimes He decides that we are going to bend. So He breaks us a little to makes us more bendable in the end. Who we are gets changed a bit so that who we are will bend to the will of our Author.

I didn’t do that to Adam because I’m just writing a piece of fiction and Adam’s stupidity made it that much more interesting. God is writing history. Sometimes our stupidity makes His story more interesting, but other times the next act of His story involves us learning to bend.

It must be so frustrating. I had a something good ready for Adam when he would just pull it together enough to want it. I was practically yelling at my computer screen, trying to get Adam to stop wallowing and enjoy what I had ready for him. Imagine being God. He has the best, the finest, the most perfect waiting for us. It’s beyond my powers of description to write about what our Author has in the works. If we would just stop being morons long enough to want it, to accept it. It makes me even more impressed with His patience. The Author is writing a story that will take all of time to finish and He’s chosen us poor fools as His characters. We’re what He has to work with to make a masterpiece. He picked us special and is going to write a classic with us.

I’ve got no fears that He’ll end up with the story He wanted all along. He’s the Master, the Great Storyteller. He’s got all the time in the world and all the words He needs to write up one great wonder of a story.

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.

But then there are the gems. Those books that made just a bit of sense when you first read them. Those books that require too much experience of the reader to make any sense to the thirteen-year-old trying to figure them out. Read now it’s like a light coming on in a closet. You always knew there was something there, but just could never find any of it. Now the motives make more sense and the long, dragged out descriptions with no purpose fly by and suddenly become the foundation for half the story.

I am rereading C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy (yes, Seth, trilogy) and it is making so much more sense to me this time through. Last time I read it I was around fourteen years old. I got the basic premise of a man travels to Mars and then Venus. I understood that the third book is a modern fairy tale and thought that concept was very cool. But just about everything else went right over my head. All the symbolism, the internal conversations, the wonder, depth and splendor of Lewis’s worlds and stories blew right by me. I was expecting this time around to be better, but was completely unprepared for how much better it would be.

Book one of the trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, introduces our main character, a philologist named Ransom. He in kidnapped and taken to Mars where stuff happens and then he gets back home. It’s way more interesting than that, but that book isn’t what I want to talk about. In the second book, Perelandra, Ransom goes to Venus, know in Old Solar as Perelandra, on a mission for Maleldil, the Jesus figure of the story. He lands on the planet and finds himself in paradise.

Lewis’s descriptions are vivid. This is Venus, the planet of pleasure. But on Venus is pleasure without sin. There is nothing to pervert the enjoyment of the planet. There is food right at hand that nearly requires a new word to describe it. It is better than our food like a chocolate cake is better than mud. All is soft and easy and pleasant. It is a world of sensuality without lust or perversion. The colors can only be called blue, green or red because that’s the closest we who walk the silent planet have ever known. But they are brighter, more vibrant than our colors like the sun is brighter than a mine shaft. All is good on Perelandra, though ‘good’ is too simple of a word to describe what is depicted in the book.

Ransom meets a woman, the Green Lady, who is the Eve of Venus. She has been separated from the King, the Adam of story, though this only brings her joy as now she can look forward to being reunited with him. She and Ransom have many conversations about the world and about God. She is a very young woman with very simple thoughts and Ransom unconsciously goes about helping her to be wise. It is very pleasant for them both to sit among the animals and talk of great matters in the very presence of God. But then the Tempter comes.

It’s Eden all over again. There is a new Eve is all her splendor listening to the almost-lies of the Devil. He is patient and cunning and she has become used to contemplating what an outsider says about the world and doesn’t have any words in her language or world for ‘evil’, ‘lie’, ‘bad’. She hopes to be wise. All that stands in the way of Perelandra falling is Elwin Ransom, a middle-aged philologist from Cambridge.

It was like watching a horror movie in slow motion. In my mind I’m screaming at Ransom to do something as the Enemy twists the truth around and around until it is unrecognizable. Ransom is doing his all, he is holding the line as best he can, but he is only a man. He needs to eat and sleep, he needs to rest. The Enemy doesn’t. Everything hangs on Ransom and even he knows he will lose eventually.

From a writer’s perspective it was skillfully done. Lewis spent enough time on Perelandra before the Evil showed up that I’d come to love it. Actually, I’d come to long for it. It woke a hurting in me like being homesick for a place I’d never even visited. To walk along the floating islands in the warm ocean with the golden sky above. To ride on the mighty fish as they race through the waves. To sit with the Lady as she was delighted with everything around her. A delight that had never known anything else. Her joy was nothing like mine. My happiness is when something is good instead of bad. There is a bitterness in each smile because always there lurks the knowledge that it could have gone otherwise. And there is a fear behind each surprise joy because next time it will not go the same. Next time there will be sorrow instead of delight. So much of our happiness is based on the pain we have known.

But not so the Green Lady. Lewis talks about how sometimes Ransom couldn’t look her in the face because there was too much pure virtue in her face, too much pure joy unmingled with tears. She delighted in a thing because it was delightful and it made her happier than she had been a moment before. There was no doubt in her mind that the next thing would be just as wonderful.

Towards the end of reading the book I came down with an ear infection. Once again I was trying to find a way to explain the sensation of an infection in my head and once again I was overwhelmed by everyday sounds. My body died just a bit more. I was sick and hurting again. All because Mother Eve listened to the Deceiver.

So, I’m shouting still more for Ransom to do something. Perelandra must not fall. It must stay pure and unsoiled. There must not be a repeat of what happened here on the silent planet so long ago.

I’d read the book before and knew how it ended and still I’m figuratively jumping up and down and shouting. It is a powerful book and a very different read now than when I first read it. Though I’m afraid it’s ruined me for Earth. There’s a longing in me now for a place that doesn’t exist. If it did I’m not sure I’d go; I would just bring the darkness in with me. So I remind myself that even Perelandra is just a picture of a place that is real and will be. And when I walk on the floating islands or the streets of gold there will be no more darkness to carry. Then my ears will be healed with no possibility of infection and I will be able to rest under the golden sky.