A Road Less Travelled

Today I am thankful for the shade of blue the sky was yesterday. Today there are clouds and I could so easily forget how the color blue feels on my skin, but I can remember yesterday. I can remember yesterday’s sky and keep the memory of how light blue the wind felt and how bright the leaves smelled against that sky. I can hold tight to yesterday’s memory and then maybe I will remember to be thankful for today, too.

So, for reasons I won’t get into, I’ve had the train of thought bouncing around my head: if someone walked up and asked me “How do you know that the Bible is really completely true? How do you know it didn’t get changed around over the years, so it’s just mostly true?”

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’.

Today I am thankful for birthday parties, which is a good thing because they can be a snootful of work. Sometimes when we’re gearing up for a party I start wishing it was just over. I keep thinking that there’s just too much work and there’ll be too many people and I just don’t feel like doing it. But then the party starts and people show up and we’re having fun. The birthday person feels special and gets to enjoy being surrounded by things and food he thinks is fun.

So today I’m going to help Crystal set up a haunted house in the Breakfast Room. Then we’re going to make a gazillion pizzas that will all fit together into one huge pizza. Some fruit salad, some punch, a big ice cream cake and we’ll be all set. And Isaac will feel special and loved. I bet it’ll be totally worth it all.

The library had a book sale and I went and spent five bucks and got lots of books. So today I’m also thankful for book sales and the libraries that put them on.

Today I am thankful for leftover oatmeal. Not just because it makes breakfast the next day so much simpler, but because it gives me a reason to feel creative and thrifty.

So today I opened up two containers of oatmeal that were the leftovers from two different days. I put them in a pot and added some water to help reconstitute them from their solid state to a less solid, easier to stir state. Then I chopped up some apples really fine and I added them to the pot. I rarely think to do this when I’m making oatmeal from scratch because I’ll get the water boiling and then walk away. Since I’m just reviving oatmeal I have to be in the kitchen the whole time so I remember the apples.

Next, I add some cinnamon to the oatmeal. Adding cinnamon at this point is very important in our house. Two or three of the young lads have very sensitive skin and will break out in an unattractive rash if raw cinnamon gets on their faces. So it must be cooked in, but I don’t normally make the oatmeal around here and peoples often forget.

Now, I take a small, unmarked jar from the fridge. The jar is full of a dark, thick, syrup looking liquid. It’s a good thing the liquid looks like this because it is actually syrup. Homemade apple and cinnamon syrup, to be exact. Since it was a reward for my helping some friends make scads of applesauce it’s only fair then that I’m the only one who remembers it’s there and could be used. So I put appley-cinnamony syrup in the oatmeal and stir, stir, stir.

It’s really yummy. It’s like a tiny, tiny instance of creativity and redemption. I take two containers of unappetizing globs that are taking up space in the fridge and I make them into something good and enjoyable. They become appetizing and then they become breakfast. And apart from the apples, the cinnamon and the apple-cinnamon syrup it’s reusing leftovers. That’s why I’m thankful for leftover oatmeal.

Last night I was super tired. Wednesday Night Dinner can be a lot of work and often when it’s over I’ll be dead-tired and really wound up. Sometimes, like last night, my legs will be aching and my body will just be worn out, but I’ll be too wound up to go to sleep. It could make for a hard time going to sleep when I’m so very tired.

But Crystal, dear Crystal, has started getting beer. There is a Wednesday night beer stash at our house. We aren’t suppose to get into it on other days except for emergencies which means that there is always beer on Wednesday night. Last night Crystal broke out the beer and we each had one. By the time I was done with mine my muscles had calmed down and my mind had slowed to a sleepy crawl. I climbed into bed and quickly fell asleep.

So today I am thankful for beer. For all different kinds of beer and ale from Guinness to Killian’s. For God’s love to us demonstrated in the creation of beer I give thanks.

Today I made a superhero for medical terminology class. We’re supposed to make up twelve medical terms, using real medical term parts, and draw a cartoon character who has all of those conditions.

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…

Today I am thankful for bananas. Those crazy yellow fruits are so versatile and yummy. You can cut them up into cereal for a breakfast treat; you can smother them in peanut butter for a snack; you can mush them up to feed to the baby and, of course, you can throw them at each other hoping they will explode. The peels are indispensable in slapstick comedy and their shape can suggest either a gun or a telephone. Truly a wonder of the natural world and a sign that God loves us. So eat a banana today! Or, um, throw one. It’s up to you.

Oh my! It’s the third of November and I haven’t started my traditional Thanksgiving lead-up thanksgiving. As always I must remind you all that this was my sister’s fabulous idea. If I don’t she’ll call me up and yell at me.

Today I am thankful for errands. For an excuse to be outside in the colors and the sunshine. For the chance to be out of the house and juggling numbers in my head. For trade-in credit at the used book store and Naked Fruit smoothies on sale. Even for the postal worker who thinks I’m a moron and aching feet. For my day today and next week and the week after that I give thanks.

(There is a good chance that this will come out completely wrong and will somehow sound like heresy. I mean no disrespect and certainly no heresy so just bear with me.)

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.