Ordinary Visionary

Thanksgiving in North Carolina

I returned yesterday from a few days of Thanksgiving in the mountains of North Carolina. I've never seen the house so exposed, without the warm blanket of green the summer lovingly drapes over everything up there. The quiet of November in the mountains is striking. If you stop and listen long enough, you'll hear only the rustling of just a few brave animals who stick it out for the winter. The familiar din of of leaves smacking against one another is long gone; at times the only thing I could discipher was the ringing in my ears. With the noise of life on mute, all that is left is the clanking around of half-thoughts and the occasional appearance of complete sentences that make sense. (Those are the reason I should carry a Moleskine in my pocket.)

I can see why great writers and artists so often retreat away to a cabin in the woods to work on their memoirs, an epic painting or album. The deer will never laugh at your work. (But they will stare with their big eyes, waiting to see whether you're one of the good ones.)

The perfection of creation in Connestee Falls (as in all places where the trees are allowed to mature past the length of a human life) stands in stark contrast to the big box stores and supermarkets on the other end of the highway that brings you there. The Walmart in Brevard stands out awkwardly from its backdrop of the Blue Ridge mountains. Who invited this monstrosity to the nature party? But of course, we went there. Because it's the only store within 50 miles that sells essentials like cheap Cheerios and black fuzzy slippers on Thanksgiving day. Speaking of which, have you read this?

I've been trying to think of what I'm thankful for this year, other than the Creator and the Creation, my husband and the rest of my beloved, ragamuffin family. What else belongs?

a dry spell

I have goals. I don't always live up to them, but I have them nonetheless. One of this year's goals was to write more. Specifically to blog more, but journaling, writing documentation at work, and writing long emails to old friends count, too. I've failed at that goal miserably this year, as those of you who still keep me in your RSS reader know (thanks, by the way).

I do still think a lot. (HA!) I had a few thoughts pertaining to Ft. Hood, Jesus, and robes last week that I'd love to share. But I keep putting it off. Not because I'm sitting on my couch every night totally absorbed in the political theater that is "news" these days (though that's part of it I'm sure) but more because I am totally overcommitted.

This year I've designed and developed two websites outside of work pro bono, and I'm currently helping a friend code another website right now. I love doing it. I love helping, using my gifts to help friends, family, my church. And I don't anticipate that going away. I may get frustrated and want to bail -- to sit in a corner and read a book (or write one) -- but I won't.

I will, however, keep my goal of writing more. Even if it doesn't bear fruit until after I've coded the beautiful blog redesign that was graciously given to me by a friend. Now, I must retreat once more to the land of HTML. Adieu.

Character over Performance

Vance and I have been attending First Presbyterian Church of Orlando for going on two years now, and today left me feeling broken. I'm still figuring out why. It's good, though.

I must confess, we've both attended First Pres' with some reservation, and at times even anger, over some aspect of the teaching, the community, or the bureaucracy that comes with a mainline denominational church with a lot of money and a lot of history. For whatever reason we keep coming back, keep pushing to be a part of the sea change that's happening there.

David Swanson preached a good word on confession today, a discipline that seems conveniently forgotten in our American way of life. Somehow we've gotten to a place where it's too uncomfortable to admit that there's anything wrong with us, or too unthinkable to imagine worshipping at the sort of church that would imply the same.

Those perfect people who walk through the doors to the sanctuary each week -- the ones with the feathered hats and the thousand dollar pearls and the broaches that match the shoes -- they don't need Jesus if they don't need rescuing from something. And I know I'm the farthest thing from perfection. But I'm still prone to the same kind of pride that wants to portray the best side of myself to everyone I meet. But what if, as Dr. Swanson put it, if we start each conversation with anyone by thinking, "Hi, I'm Jamie, and I'm a sinner too," maybe we'd feel less inclined to portray that false image of perfection and more inclined toward mercy and grace (for ourselves and for others).

Powerful as the sermon was, I appreciated most the Biblical perspectives on parenting offered by Leigh Swanson during the Sunday School hour. I was worried, if I'm being honest, about what she would teach. I look at the kids running around the childcare center with barcodes stuck to their backsides, each in expensive, matching brand name outfits that will last all of a few months, and I think about how I wouldn't want to raise children up in this church. (That thought sounds rancid when I write it out, but with the subject of the week's sermon, I decided not to delete it.)

The big take-away from Leigh's teaching today was that, when we have kids, we ought to encourage, celebrate, and reward the development of their character, rather than some measure of performance. I'm paraphrasing here since I didn't have a notebook with me, but I loved when she said, "Instead of rewarding each 'A' on a report card, what if you said, 'I loved how your teacher commented here on how hard you worked.' Or what if instead of telling your kid how proud you are of all the home runs he scored in a little league game, what if instead you told him how incredible he is at encouraging his teammates?" Character over performance.

I like that.

Excuses come too easy for me on this side of the tracks.

Art by Nick Dewar.

We've been back in the real world now for a week. Portland ended quietly after days of walking through gardens and parks and campuses, eating well, drinking well and sharing a bit of our vacation with friends. The place feels a bit like The Grey Goose must have to Sheldon and Davy in A Severe Mercy: a thing that we hope for and dream about, a place we might one day live, a symbol, perhaps, of our commitment to life together.

There are more than twice as many Portlanders as Orlandoans, yet the city feels smaller somehow. We were able to take public transit everywhere, from Imago Dei to the Rose Gardens to the campus of Portland State University, 23Hoyt, Hawthorne, and the airport. The practicality of it was stunning; most trips through Orlando on Lynx take at least twice the normal driving time, while trips on the MAX or buses seemed to be hardly longer than what it would take to drive. There's a Zipcar network, three forms of public transit that can get you to your destination with less than a quarter mile of walking, and people know how to drive with bikes, buses, and trains in the road. The green movement there isn't something that's underground or visible only through the presence of reusable grocery bags. It's inescapable. Toilets in the PDX airport give flushers the option of whether to use just enough water for "#1" or "#2." Restaurants list the farms where their meat comes from. Rush hour looks like 2pm in Orlando. Community gardens are everywhere.

Portland provides a constant challenge to question my own excess. To think about things as small as reusing the cardboard sleeve on my latte to something as big as giving up my gas guzzling SUV (yes, I still drive one) and not owning a vehicle at all.

It's also a challenge to my role as a witness. In our week there, Vance and I interfaced with hundreds of broken people, on buses mostly, but also in parks and on sidewalks. People desperate for a friend, if only for the twenty minute ride from downtown to Hawthorne. People who love their city and desire to share it with strangers. People who live every day in the unhappiest city in the United States (according to Business Week).

In my LIFE community last night, we got into a discussion about how, as Christians, to deal with the fallout of a violent world. Some said that you do your best to avoid it, choosing places to live that are relatively safe and private schools that advertise values-based education. Others remained quiet or remarked that it's a sad world. Knowing my propensity for rhetorical flourishes and having spoken quite enough already, I remained eyes down and ran my knife over the crease in my napkin over and over.

What I wanted to say was that the most beautiful moments in my life have been the experience of redemption: the entrance into a place of darkness and brokenness with Christ, allowing his light to either shine on me or through me. I wanted to say that as Christians we are called to enter into darkness. Scandalously, Jesus calls us to love the very people we hate or fear:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
— Matthew 5:43-48, emphasis mine

This would be one of the many portions of The Message where Peterson would stop and write, "Are you listening? Are you really listening?" And I don't, really, if I'm being honest. I live in a city where I'm as closed off from the world as I want to be; I live in my house with my husband, getting calls from true friends once a month or less. I drive my big car to my big office, say good morning to the sweet lady waiting at the bus stop, and commence another eight hours with team members I love and see five days a week. When I'm done I get back in my Explorer and drive home to start the cycle all over again.

In the words of Gustavo Gutierrez, "To be followers of Jesus requires that [we] walk with and be committed to the poor; when [we] do, [we] experience an encounter with the Lord who is simultaneously revealed and hidden in the faces of the poor."

When my brothers and sisters in the LIFE community described their Christian response to violence in the city of Orlando, they immediately referenced the poorest area, a place where I've spent weeks of my life in the living room of a dear friend's home. She is living a Christian response to violence. She doesn't run from it; she enters into it. Excuses come too easy for me on this side of the tracks.

Which brings me back to Portland. One of the scariest things about the city is also one of the most hopeful. Not that I feel presently equipped to bring much light to that place, but that I will see Jesus in the faces of my neighbors every day. That he might have opportunities every day to sculpt me more and more into his image. That I will interface with immense darkness and inescapable community on my commute, and teach my children the value of love, of life, of hope, and of creation.

Until the day we're called to move, which may be years into the future, we must seek the beauty, the quirky places, and the lonely, broken people here in Orlando. There are so many ways we can be used by Him, just on the other side of our protected spaces.

Exciting and mundane things

I'm sitting in Stumptown (Ace) after making a break for it across the Rose Parade route thinking over the last two days. What memories might be worth committing to pen a blog?

The man at the 10th and Jefferson streetcar stop telling us about the two $450 snowboarding jackets he'd won for wearing a tie-dyed shirt, how he was bringing his own chocolate soy milk to the streetcar with the best coffee in Portland across from the chic storefront coffeehouse with the worst coffee in Portland; two brown preteens in the back of an east side bus rapping freestyle to the beat pulsing from the boom box resting on their knees, jumping as their feet arched up with each would-be bass hit; the child holding an entire bag of Honey Nut Cheerios, peering quietly into the display case full of pastries he could not pronounce at Grand Central Bakery; the barista at Stumptown who poured perfect Rosettas without looking down; the three Navy sailors asking where the club scene was; the twenty-something responding that there really wasn't one.

These events are so everyday in this place, but are still somehow extraordinary from where we sit. We've descended upon Portland with our flipflops and preconceptions, expecting the thousands of cyclists, anticipating the fog, looking forward to the many unique and local shops and eateries and yet somehow are still surprised by how close our experience here lives up to Donald Miller's description.

Like New York, there are churches everywhere yet the culture remains hyper-secular. From this single vantage point I've watched people of all walks, people with brightly colored hair, grey hair, new blonde curls five months old, white people, black people, sweet dogs pulling at their leashes, a toddler with pearl earrings, women with worried glances, a girl in a green shirt dancing in the street. All of these people with one thing in common: the city they exist in every day. I wonder if we might be one of them one day, or if Anne Lamott is right when she says, "the fog lets you see what it wants you to see."

We went up into the west hills yesterday, where the houses are big and expensive and beautiful, with the Rose Test Gardens and Japanese gardens right up the road. Our bus driver echoed the sentiment of several locals, commenting on how rough the storm was yesterday, worried maybe we'd resent the city for the clouds. We assured him that where we come from the storm was minor; we rather enjoyed the sounds of the rain smacking against the window pane and the fact that water droplets make for the best rose pictures anyway.

It's only Satuday but we've already tasted the best coffee in Portland, the best dessert, the best views. This trip is a different type of adventure -- an adventure that is the everyday experience of the locals. Our exciting is their mundane. Or maybe life is always this colorful under the misty sky.

journey to the rose city

We left our home in the City Beautiful yesterday morning a little after 8. Vance gave Chester his we're-going-away-for-a-while-but-I-hope-this-will-help treat just before the doorbell rang and Dana walked in. He was visibly conflicted - the only time I've ever seen sheer panic in the eyes of a dog over so silly a choice.

Do I bark at this intruder? Do I jump up and say hi to Miss Dana, who has fed me and walked me countless times? Do I chew the delicious treat in my mouth? Do I run upstairs? Yes, I'll run upstairs to ponder this further… And chewing is overrated, swallowing whole is much more efficient. I'll do that. But first I'll snarl at mom as she attempts to steal my tasty treasure… (I was really just trying to say goodbye; oh the joys of parenthood.)

It was heartbreaking leaving the 28 pound "monk" but we were late as it was and the lovely Dana was ready to go. I finally hugged her, said "good morning," and let myself relax a little after running back in the house to say goodbye to Chester once more, sans angst.

We stopped at the curbside baggage checkin to avoid the long lines inside and I regretted it about two minutes into the man's five minute rendition of How To Construct The Dexter's Chicken Salad spiel. I should have known when he started the "where have I seen you before" act that it would end with the four word plea that he repeated over and over: I'm providing a service. Although I hate mandatory gratuity I forked over $5 so that we could get to our gate and officially be on our way to the Rose City.

Southwest Air has perfected their boarding process now so that instead of a veritable human cattle call that looks something like the line outside Best Buy the night before a video game console hits the shelves, you stand with a group of five determined by what time the previous day you remembered to check in online. Add that to the singing stewardesses and you have something really special.

On the last leg of our flight, from Kansas City to PDX, I sat down next to a soft, pale woman with stark white hair. The second I sat down, she kindly winked at me and said, "You know, we play our cards right nobody will sit next to us." Vance followed shortly behind and broke her sweet heart, and I moved to the seat she'd hoped would stay empty, trying my best to be completely invisible so she would be comfortable for the hours that followed. She mostly alternated between a new age paperback book and dreams, nodding off every ten minutes or so for a quick nap. Must have been a good book.

Ten hours and five delicious chapters of Anne Lamott's Blue Shoe later, we arrived at our gate in Portland. From there we still had at least an hour of public transit to ride before we could unlock the door to the vacation rental we hoped wouldn't be in the back alley of a strip club somewhere. (Spoiler alert: it isn't.)

As the red line took us quietly over the highway filled with rush hour traffic, we could see the majestic Mount Hood and a bit of Portland's lush landscape through the windows. Vance commented on how green it all was, as the window before us was engulfed in huge trees that have been there since long before the highways or trains were constructed.

There were four women sitting to our right, each coming from a different city and converging on Portland like a church bus unloading on Sunday morning. The voice of the only one not wearing a wedding ring provided an hour of background noise for our journey. She described her former husband, who suffered from anger management problems in the past, as "a humble man," to which her friends turned to her aghast as if she had commended Mussolini on his good manners. He was in therapy now, she said, physical therapy for a form of MS that was rapidly taking over his body.

The other women commented on the weather, and the public transit, and the adventure the "four old ladies" (their words) would have in this city.

The train slowly filled to the brim with cyclists and wandering homeless men, two dogs and two men with identical wedding rings discussing philosophy in the corner. Everyone who didn't have a suitcase seemed to be reading a book. Public transit seems to create the time and space for reading like no other daily event. I considered whether I might start taking the Lynx back home, and decided against it when the image of the man waiting at the stop on 436 every morning, punching the sky, flashed in my mind.

Our condo was more than what we had expected. Rather than being adjacent to a brothel or crack house, it's two blocks from a grocery store and a block from the streetcar line, close to art galleries, restaurants, and coffee shops. It's a studio with a modest living room, modern kitchen, and clawfoot tub in the bathroom. As soon as I stepped in I had this urge to unpack everything all at once, to move in. Once the clothes were hung and the laptop connected to the protected WiFi network, I felt my shoulders relax and my heart rate slow.

We're here.

In this place.

But we were also hungry in this place. The night begged for celebration, so I suggested a place that was described as a neighborhood gem with some of the best food in Portland, a place that would have had lines out the door if more people knew about it: 23Hoyt.

We arrived to find a restaurant in the middle of a neighborhood shopping district. From our table we watched dozens of people on bikes, people dressed more for comfort than for fashion forwardness, people carrying boxes of pizza or ice cream wrapped in housemade cones, people sipping local beer at the pub across the street, people calmly taking in the cool Wednesday evening air as they walked with their dogs and their lovers toward the homes nearby.

The menu at 23Hoyt offered some creative takes on ordinary dishes -- butter lettuce salad with ruby red grapefruit, avocado and chili oil, chilled asparagus salad with hard cooked egg and arugula, penne with sausage, arugula and chilies, scallops with mushrooms and brown butter sauce… Our waiter poked his head out several times to update us on the chef's progress, his worried posture letting on that the seared scallops were proving to be a challenge. But when the food finally landed on our table, the scallops cut like butter left out for ten minutes, and tasted better than any I've ever enjoyed at a fine restaurant. The food was beautifully but simply presented, and the restaurant comped dessert for us because of the wait, which I would hardly have noticed if not for the waiter's genuine concern. After seven layers of chocolate and Vance's roasted pound cake with sorbet, our bodies gravitated toward our downtown condo.

It's here in this place that we unwind, here that we take pictures and smell roses and drink way too many lattes. Keep an eye on this blog for updates on the mundane and exciting details of our first "braincation."

Farewell, dear friend.

Tonight

I'll say goodbye to a dear friend,

Break off another piece of the group that changed my life

The group that showed me more of Jesus every Thursday night in Kate's living room

I'll miss this prayer warrior woman

this thought maker world changer dancer creator

believer woman

I'll think of how many times I watched her put words to ideas

from a distance

how much I know she'll grow while she's away

I'll try not to cry as I think about how far apart we've been

how far apart we'll be

how all the growing, changing, becoming

will be done on the other side of the world

I'll have a glass of wine and smile and laugh

and look at the faces of everyone else who came to say

I'll miss you, Jenna.

Traditions

Lately it seems like conversations compulsively drift back to the subject of our economy or politics. Maybe that's because people are watching the news more. Maybe it's because they, too, are worried about their family's future.

I'm determined to be fixated on my family's now.

Before Vance and I got married, we drove to West Palm Beach once a month for nearly a year to meet with the pastor I grew up with, the pastor who would marry us. He asked us to name the traditions we'd maintained with our respective families and the ones we hoped to start as we became family to one another. Now that a year has passed since we exchanged the promise to have and to hold, I'm thinking back on how we've done.

One of the simplest traditions we probably assumed we'd never keep is a monthly meal where we prepare three or four courses of gourmet fare for one another and sit down over a tablecloth and some candlelight to enjoy it together.

We haven't missed a month of these meals yet, and because of that we have had an opportunity every 30 days to talk about our hopes, our goals, our hurts, and our passions in an intentional way unlike what we share at our daily meals. It also gives us an opportunity to constantly serve one another and be creative.

Another tradition has been an annual Thanksgiving celebration where we open our home up to share with friends and friends of friends who want to come together in community around that time regardless of whether family is close by enough to serve up the turkey and mashed potatoes. We managed to get through our third year of this tradition together -- our first as a married couple!

Our commitment to cooking and consuming slow food has grown and matured over the year as well; we're learning to garden organically, learning to incorporate local and seasonal foods into our regular meals, learning to skip the fast or cheap option to go with something a little closer to home and a little closer to the farmer's heart.

And finally, we committed a year ago to spend time reading together each week. This has probably been the biggest struggle for us, although we've managed to make it more of a priority in the recent months. We read in the library Vance helped design and create soon after he moved in, and at Palmanos during our trip to the Winter Park Farmer's Market each Saturday.

It's staggering to think of how quickly this year has gone by and how much we've grown together in that time. It's also exciting to think that we can plan and dream and hope together and come out a year later knowing that together we made it happen!

Our Green Life

It's Earth Month again. April is a great time to rethink our habits and attitudes toward the planet, and to share ideas about what we're doing to make a difference with our friends and neighbors. Our green journey started a while ago, but this year we've made a bigger commitment than ever to live a life that respects Creation. Here are a few of the habits we're forming:

Cultivate a Garden

We live in a two-bedroom townhome with no usable yard space, so we knew we'd have to get creative if we wanted to be a part of the 1 million gardens springing up around the US. Before Spring had even arrived, we picked up a copy of the Bountiful Container.

Check me out in Schmap!

My photo of Anthropologie's marshmallow storefront made it into Schmap's overview of their New York location! I took the picture on a trip to NYC I gave myself for my 21st birthday gift.

Link: New York - Shopping & Services - Tribeca.

Musings on Static and Car Fires

It's so strange signing into my personal TypePad account again. The last time was apparently sometime in September, though oddly enough it doesn't seem like more than a few weeks to me. But here I am, two months closer to my wedding, two months closer to the launch of SocialSpark, and right in the middle of my favorite time of the year in Florida (when it drops below 50°… at night). What happened to the time??

Most of my memories looking back at the last two months have the din of my MacBook Pro's buoyant keys under my fingers in the background (meaning that mostly, they are memories of work). Other stuff happened — the future in-laws met my parents, I watched an antique car catch on fire, wore jeans to a four-star restaurant, and finally picked my bridesmaid's dresses. Oh! And I got a really cool lunch box.

It's been really really hard on my mind, my spiritual life, and my relationship life to maintain the pace the entire dev team had to keep up during the weeks and months leading up to PostieCon. It's always hard when I don't have all of myself to give to the people closest to me. The ironic thing is how easy it can be when I don't have all of myself to give to God.

I have a really hard time getting up in the morning so I use the most annoying tactics I can think of to motivate me to get out of bed. The latest tactic has been static. I wake up to static so loud it'll make your ears bleed. It seriously makes my hair stand on end even when I'm in the shower and hear the second round go off.

That's the kind of static I've felt in my spiritual life since I last wrote. Part long hours and part just-the-way-my-mind-won't-shut-up, it drowns out the urgings of the Spirit to where I can talk to God all day long, but have a terrible time hearing anything back from Him.

Like my alarm clock, it's a static I can sleep right through.

My mind does this really annoying thing when it's faced with a problem of any magnitude. It sits and spins like that little plastic rainbow¹, trying to come to a resolution that can't be broken, and then it breaks it. So I've been sitting here thinking on this a while and keep thinking about this little blue book I read exactly a year ago on the spiritual disciplines.

Sometimes prayer isn't enough to break through the noise. The resolution I came to is much simpler in principle than "pray more." Here's a shocker: Silence gets rid of the noise. Meditation, study, and more intense prayer — literal silent time. So along with chipping away at a very cool project this weekend I'll be prioritizing quiet time, for the first time in weeks.

I sat down to write a completely different post — one about our church search and the philosophical debate that went on in my head during the sermon at the last church we visited. But this one wound up being for me… There are some things too precious to let slip away no matter how important the static is.

¹ Mac users, you know what I'm talking about.

The Five Love Languages

Two days ago I finished listening to Dr. Gary Chapman's The Five Love Languages¹. Oddly enough, I have used the love language phraseology for many months, ever since it surfaced in discussions that took place in my Captivating group. And, thinking back on those discussions (the ones that took place pre-Vance) I get the feeling that my love languages have shifted somewhat in priority since then.

Dr. Chapman asserts that we all receive love best in some particular way — physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, or acts of service. We all may receive love to some degree via all of the five languages, but our needs and desires tend to cluster around one or two of them.

When Vance and I started dating, and even a bit before, he began doing the strangest things — things no man I had ever dated ever offered or took action to do. He helped me prepare meals, do the dishes, walk the dog, and eventually he just started doing my laundry, cleaning up around the house, cleaning my car and scrubbing the tub. Ever since I had heard of the five love languages I was sure that my primary language was quality time, but suddenly in the midst of "inloveness" I found myself filled with joy over a man who would make my bed even though he didn't get to sleep in it. A man who would drive to my house once a week to walk the dog, just so I could spend more quality time with the women in my life.

As a child, I don't believe that my love language was the same as it is now. Dr. Chapman describes a very different picture of the child whose love language is acts of service. I don't remember regularly thanking my dad for doing my laundry or my mom for sewing on hundreds of pointe shoe ribbons. Instead I gave great thanks for the gifts I received, taking great care to provide my Cabbage Patch dolls and Barbies with a proper education.² But now, gifts mean much less to me than the incredible act of love that serving really is.

Even still, I'm not convinced that I receive love from my parents via the same language that I received love from Vance. When I have the opportunity to spend time with my parents, I don't want them to go around doing things for me; I just want them to spend quality time with me. No television, no movies… Just good quality time.³ And so one of the questions I am still left with after listening to the book a second time over the past couple of days is: Can our love language differ from childhood to adulthood, or even from relationship to relationship at a single point in time?

Here's another thing that's been getting to me. In the book, Dr. Chapman states that the way we behave before marriage is "no indication of" the way we will behave after we are married. No indication? Is this even plausible?

I understand the natural high we experience at the height of the "in love experience," as he puts it. I also believe that given the events of the past few months and the deep relational, intellectual and spiritual growth that we have experienced as a result, that "the height of the in love experience" has almost certainly passed. Don't get me wrong — we are still very much in love — but the sense that the other person can do us no wrong, or that loving one another will always be natural and easy, has long since gone away. But here we are, still Jamie and Vance, and still very much ourselves. I remain feisty, strong, independent, a stickler for grammar, etc. And he remains incredibly loving and thoughtful, an artist, a servant, and even a bit of a nerd at heart. It's confusing to think that according to Dr. Chapman the two of us will suddenly morph into something else after we are married, when we have been through such highs and lows and managed to maintain our identities thus far.

I suppose those are the biggest philosophical questions I am left with after going through the book. My questions aside, The Five Love Languages has so much to offer for those who have no idea what love languages are or how an understanding of them could dramatically improve their relationship.

¹ I purchased the audiobook because as a part of our marriage counseling in West Palm Beach we received one copy of the book, which Vance was happy to keep. We listened to much of the book together on our last drive to and from WPB, pausing to talk about key issues along the way.

² You read it correctly — I regularly educated my dolls, giving them each a Highlights magazine to read and hand-copying quizzes and tests for them to complete. One of my grandfather's favorite memories of my childhood seems to be when we were together in K.B. Toys and I was picking out new school supplies for Curly since his were tragically stolen from his locker.

³ Granted, quality time is right up there with acts of service as my primary love language, but the difference is still there when it comes to receiving love from Vance versus receiving love from my parents.

Le Update

It has been weeks since I've written anything here and it hasn't been for lack of thought or imagination but for lack of time. Ever since Vance and I got engaged life has been going non-stop, and so tonight I'm taking advantage of my unusual alertness in order to catch my blog up to my life…

The past couple of months have been extremely cleansing for both Vance and me. I described it to Jenn earlier as a "stirring up of dust" in our lives, and while it has been exceedingly difficult at times I truly feel that it is leading us both in a positive direction and that we are becoming stronger for having been through it. We are learning to talk openly about real issues, to fight for one another, and to love one another through things. How blessed are we to begin learning these lessons before we are even married.

In the midst of all of the dust-stirring was a flurry of wedding planning activity — everything from tasting what our guests will be served at the reception (it's going to be so good) to asking close friends and relatives to join our wedding party to choosing the most incredible dress I will ever wear… Luckily, I think we're through the worst of it and we can just have fun planning the little details from this point forward.

Speaking of the wedding, our photographer, Joriann, spent the better part of last saturday with us in West Palm Beach shooting our engagement photos. She gave us a sneek peak of some of the frames and I am absolutely thrilled. Until I found her, I feared that we'd end up spending hundreds of dollars on a photographer who would give us pictures that would sit in a lonely album collecting dust until a major anniversary or family reunion. But this woman shoots art, and is a ton of fun to work with.

All of my closest friends here are out of the country, from China to Europe. I'm praying unceasingly that they are being used as a light to the people they encounter, and that they will return home safely soon.

I've left my job as the marketing administrator for STATUS, which stings for the moment but will ultimately be the best thing. Development has started for the next release of PayPerPost.com, which promises to be the largest scale, most challenging project I have ever worked on. It's cool — really cool. But it's daunting at the same time to think of how much work needs to be done in the coming weeks.

As busy as I've been, I have still been blessed with solitude and a heightened awareness of downtime. It hits me every so often when my mind shakes off the day that this is a moment I have to myself. It's amazing how much more reading and writing and praying I get done when I realize that I have a moment to rest, un-accounted-for time I can fill with whatever fills me.

And I think that about brings you to tonight, having worked out and changed into pajamas, fed the dog and eaten trail mix for dinner, poured myself a glass of milk and sat down at the table with one foot up in the chair… This is a moment I have to myself.

The scent of Babylon

Every morning on my walk to work I pass by the entrance doors to a popular nightclub. It's become impossible for me to walk past the large red building without it affecting me — the cold, damp air that leaks around the edges of the towering gold doors fills my lungs with the smells of the club. Sweat, alcohol, stale cigarette, and a mix of a hundred different colognes fight to tell the stories of the night before. It is, in the best way I can describe it, the scent of Babylon.

I'm not sure what part of the stories carried in the smell has such an effect on me. There is nothing inherent to dancing or meeting new people or having a cocktail that strikes a negative chord within me. I, in fact, do all these things. And so it must be something greater, or deeper, or more important than all of these acts that we as "good Christian women" are supposed to run from.

Why should we run from "dressing like sluts"¹ when behind our modest clothes there is a heart that believes it has to give something away before it's worth protecting?

What good is choosing water over wine if we have minds that believe we aren't funny or interesting enough to hold a conversation without it?

Why stop dancing if our bodies (or our minds) give into their fleshy desires anyway?

And so my lungs choke at the scent of Babylon — that place where satisfaction of physical desires and devaluation of things that have been declared holy² supersedes that which truly matters in this life.

I recently attended a two-day event held for the women of STATUS called I Am Her³. It was the first Christian women's event I've ever left without feeling like all of my problems might be solved if I would just fasten an extra button and bake cookies for Africa. It was nice to hear that I could (and really, was supposed to) be both strong-willed computer programmer and wife. That I could get married without closing the book of my dreams and following his. That modesty was not just about giving our brothers in Christ a break from all that stumbling.

The issues that come up again and again in circles of Christian women (and don't get me wrong — they should continue to be discussed) are not solvable by band-aid remedies like covered midriffs and appropriate behavior. It is, if I may put it so simply, an issue of value. Not of some standard of family values and etiquette set by June Cleaver, but of worth.

How much value do we give our bodies?

Our hearts? Our minds?

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¹ I'm crediting Jenna for that phraseology
² Read Daniel 5:1-4, 13-28. And check out Beth Moore's Daniel study.
³ I begged the amazing women who put the event on to change the name to "I Am She" but had no luck. Ah, well… You can't win 'em all.

struggles

It's past my bedtime but the discomfort of a hot thai dinner eaten too quickly four hours ago is keeping me up, along with the nagging feeling that whatever gift I have for writing has been quietly benched for too long. The trip I took to Portland in December to escape the burden of a schedule was so prophetic — this has been a year of near suffocation for me. Time has become a commodity more precious than A Girl's Best Friend.

struggle :: prayer

Two days ago I worked from early morning until the bell at the Catholic church across the street rang in 6 o'clock. I rushed home to walk Chester and make tiny cucumber tea sandwiches, which I ate in the car as I rushed back through downtown to a meeting at the church, where I also work. The meeting lasted nearly four hours, after which I felt like all of the people present in the room had been kicked in the knees at least once, occasionally agreeing but only to disagree. By that point I had worked more hours than not in the day, without any real dinner or rest to speak of.

To close the meeting, I was asked to pray for the mission to Sierra Leone, a group of people whom I confess I don't know by name, or even whether they have yet left the country. And so after beginning the Generic Mission Trip Prayer we as Christian leadership seem commanded to pray — for traveling mercies and the preparation of hearts and minds — I stopped. I waited several moments and then tapped the shoulder of the woman on our team who has been most intimately connected with the group to finish the prayer.

Because the busier I am, the harder it becomes for me to drop to my knees in prayer. I quickly ran out of words worthy of the men and women leaving for Sierra Leone. And rather than continuing to carry out a mindless prayer, I held my flailing tongue and encouraged my Sister to do the work for me.

The less time I have for prayer, the more time I need for the voices of the world to fall from my ears, the more time I need for my knees to fall into a posture where I am ready to speak to the Creator and Savior of the world. And the more essential it becomes for me to make that happen.

struggle :: words

I was at a women's conference last weekend, and listening to the voices around me during the Career break-out session I realized just how blessed I am that God has confirmed in me what my vocation in the Kingdom is. He has named me a writer, a counselor, and an open book to be read by those who don't know Him. Yet even as a writer, my most prevalent struggle lately has been with words.

The Gospel of John begins with the familiar verse, "In the beginning the Word already existed. He was with God , and he was God… Life itself was in him, and this life gives light to everyone. The light shines through the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it."

Following from those verses, my writing is not to be of this world, but for this world, with words authored by me (perhaps) but inspired by the Word and pointing back to the Word, giving life and light to the world. And this is both my highest calling and my greatest struggle. I wrestle with the idea that, made in the image of God, the words I write or say have the ability to speak either light or darkness into existence. And rather than take the risky move of picking up a pen or typing up a blog, I often say nothing.

And sometimes that is okay.

The struggle comes with discerning whether my silence is wisdom, as in Proverbs 10:19, or whether it is vice (laziness, cowardice, doubt, self-hatred, or any number of other happy bullet points on the resume).

…

There is so much more I have been learning and processing through lately, particularly the ways the men and women of STATUS have been challenging me through I Am Her and Muse, as well as some of the phenomenal reading I have been doing. I pray that I will eat another uncomfortably hot thai dinner soon so that I will have the time to capture those thoughts in writing as I have tonight. (Heh.)

I thank those of you who have been patient with me and my lack of presence here and in your lives. Please continue to pray with me through this.

Your Sister