Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The fervent prayer of a righteous woman.

Once upon a Sunday morning, one not so long ago, I was sitting in a church service, soaking in truth with a smile on my face, feeling uplifted to such a height I could have sworn there were clouds within my reach.

Then a memory like a pin came in and jabbed a small hole in my balloon. I slowly lost altitude.

For much of the past eight months, I have felt like I've been living in a moment that is perpetually seriously wrong.

"God, why? This is driving me crazy. This is ridiculous. Do you not see how ridiculous this is? I am an untapped well whose resources are not being taken advantage of. What is there to be gained from me being completely helpless? Did I just take five years to get through college and gain a degree so that I could move on to keeping my house clean, hanging drywall with my dad, and serving as a non-paid taxi driver? What's going on? I don't get it."

That's just a small snapshot of my end of the dialogue I was having with God. There were moments that were less bewildered and self-imposing and more encouraging, but in general I spent most of my time feeling defensive, believing, subconsciously I think, that to stop fighting would mean admitting defeat, which was unacceptable.

I did eventually begin to get over myself, though. It was a remarkable work of grace. And I began to see how nothing was wrong, how suffering isn't always punishment, but - more often than not, perhaps - an opportunity for better; a grace is its own right. We'll leave that there until another blog on another day, and say nothing more on the subject beyond this frame of mind is the one I had on that high-flying Sunday morning. Another one of the reasons I was feeling so much lighter than air.

We now return to the prickly memory. I don't remember what anyone was saying at the time to trigger my specific remembering. All I recall is that my specific remembering was of a time several years ago. I came to a point in my existence where I was feeling particularly discontented by how content I was to be comfortable. When I get comfortable, I get stagnant. I don't grow. I don't contribute much to the world. I don't do anything to enrich another person's life, because I'm not doing anything to enrich my own. I only drain life, I don't give it.

I was so unsatisfied by settling for comfortable contentment, that I remember writing these words to God: "Lord, don't let me get comfortable." And for a time after that, as I would think-talk to God, I would repeat those words, "Please, don't let me get comfortable." I repeated them often, and fervently.

Vividly flashed the memory. Sharp became the realization: I begged God to disallow my comfort, then what did I do when my comfort was undermined? I felt like a victim. I fought against defeat.

Oh. Yeah. That's right. I did say that, didn't I?

It's a good thing I'm not condemned. My balloon did deflate a little, but I very quickly felt that much more a victim of grace than I had before. God honored my prayer, even when I didn't understand the gravity of what I had prayed or that I had prayed it at all. He's not letting me settle for less than the fullness that is available to me.

Thank you, thank you, Jesus.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

On Lent.

I didn't learn much of anything about Lent until I was grown. Before that, I only heard the word a few times and all I knew of it was that it was somehow associated with Easter. I was born into the religious circle of General Baptists. General Baptists don't talk about Lent. General Baptists talk about believing in Jesus and getting your hands dirty; the school of love God and work hard. My heritage is a practical one, and the idea of sacrificing something for 40 days and giving extra care to prayer and penance was too complicated for my doctrinal forefathers. Baptists of all types, whether "General," "Primitive," "Independent," "Southern," "Missionary" or any other name you can imagine, are "the plain people." The only exposure I had as a child to all things liturgical, aside from the days of Christmas and Easter themselves, came through my father's father and the Methodist church. He was a United Methodist minister when I was growing up, and we would occasionally visit whichever United Methodist church he happened to be pastoring at the time. While in that religious sphere, I would sometimes hear words like "Lent" and "Ash Wednesday" and "Advent," but as my stay never lasted long, my understanding of such matters remained shallow.

I still am largely uneducated in Lenten matters (just last year, while I was still a student, I saw a girl walking around campus with a smudge on her forehead. I let my initial confusion pass, but after I saw another girl, I thought, "What is going on?" Only then did I remember it was Ash Wednesday.), but after learning what little I do know, I've found the tradition interesting, and I've thought about participating.

But my want of education, in both senses of the word, is at once my first and second hesitation. My first hesitation is that I feel I lack the knowledge to, in a sense, have the right to participate. I felt the same way about Communion (or the Lord's Supper, Eucharist, whichever is your term of choice) when I was a child. I have known about Jesus my whole life, and I gave that life to him when I was four years old, but I didn't understand the whole thing with the bread and wine (or juice in the cases of every church I've ever attended) at such an early age. I heard "Do this in remembrance of me" over and over again, and watched all kinds of people nibble either bread or crackers and drink tiny shots of grape juice from these nifty fluted cups, and felt like I should do it too, but I didn't get the context surrounding it or understand the depth of its meaning. So one Sunday morning, while walking with my aunt through the procession at the front of my grandpa's church, when my father's sister looked down at my short frame and offered me a piece of bread I shook my head from side to side. I didn't understand it, so I didn't want it. Even though I adore freshly baked bread and grape juice more than most other things on this planet.

My second hesitation is this: clearly, Lent is currently nothing more than an intellectual curiosity for me. The essence of my interest is contained in my desire to know, not in a desire to be affected by it. If all I want to do is pull it apart and examine it so that I can store knowledge and experience in my brain....is that the right posture to have when approaching Lent? I think I too often engage the world solely with my brain and not with my heart, and that detached intellectualism has a way of stripping beauty, truth, good things, of their meaning. In my zeal to learn about the flower, I pluck it from its roots, and pretty soon the life that attracted me to it is gone and I'm cradling a broken, dead, decaying configuration of atoms; not a flower. I don't want to kill Lent.

But maybe that's just how I roll and I need to embrace it. I think most of the time I need to see the flower die before I can appreciate what it means. Then, through the sacrifice of that one flower, I can go on to find other flowers and be fulfilled by only gazing at them and breathing in their scent, not tearing them apart with my fingers. Maybe I could jump into Lent with no more knowledge of it than I now have, and being around it, looking at it, hearing it, smelling it, would allow me to experience how meaningful it is. But more than likely, it wouldn't. More than likely, I'll have to make it die, to pull it apart into myriad facts, ideas, and theologies before I can find its essence, the essence that I have ripped away.

And for all my debating on both sides of the fence, maybe that's actually not such a bad way to operate. I seem to remember some guy saying that it's only in losing my life that I can find it.

As Lent is already upon us in Christendom this year, maybe this season can begin my education. And maybe before the next one rolls around, I will have thoroughly ravaged it enough to put it back together and finally have it mean something to me.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

My misfit children.

In an effort to capture as many thoughts as I can, I write down things on a regular basis. If I have a specific plan for them, they could end up any number of purposeful places. My order-loving left brain won a battle with my erratic right brain a while ago, and it's winner's demands were that I categorize the colorful array that dances through my head and designate separate depositories for every category. With a minimum of eight notebooks/journals, it has worked well, and my right brain has complied. But the ease of submission has been helped by the fact that His Orderly Majesty was merciful, and did allow me to have one place that could be a catch-all for everything that refused to fit in a category.

That notebook has become one of my favorites. Its contents are all of the things that I don't know what to do with, but don't want to lose. As a misfit that has found a place with other misfits and has been cherished enough to not be left for lost, that notebook resides in an empathetic place in my heart.

So, like a proud mother, I present to you now a sample of what's in the quirky pages of my beloved. Why? Because that's what mothers do. Much of it is self-explanatory, but if you're reading these thoughts, and they don't make sense, don't panic. I'm aware that the chatter that happens in my head on a regular basis would likely be unintelligible to most if it was audible, and by writing it, I'm essentially making it audible. If anything you read below peaks your interest, and you want to understand more about it, just let me know and I will be happy to let you in on the joke. Or at least try to let you in. As with all jokes, some people just "get it" and others don't. (If you're reading this, that likely means you're my friend, and as my friend, that means you're probably cool (read "nerdy," "dorky," "geeky," or any other delightfully similar adjective) enough to "get it.")



"I appreciate having online conversations with people who don't take me seriously."

"My great aunt and uncle died last year and left us Febreeze."

"My mom and I are both eating close-to-midnight sandwiches. Mother-daughter bonding. But that looks like a weak bond. Maybe I should write it mother=daughter bonding."

"I've taken to sleeping with an array of books again. I'm taking that as evidence that my heart is alive."

"I appreciate living in a place where I can hear trains on a regular basis. There's a loneliness in the whistle that captures my sympathy whenever I hear it. But the train is also a reminder of other life being lived out in the world. Travel. Interaction. Non-loneliness. There's more and I long for more."

"Feminine clocks...clocks with fur coats..."

"It's weird/interesting knowing that I live in a house where druggies have been in before. Makes my life seem more interesting that it actually is."

"I'm grateful for friends who inspire the use of genuine exclamation points."

"I look like I'm wearing someone else's clothes. Someone else's larger clothes. If this shrinking keeps up, I won't be able to wear half the stuff in my closet."

"Fear me and my words of might!"

"1 Chronicles 1:10 reads, 'Cush became the father of Nimrod; he was the first to be a mighty one on the earth.'"

"What other people got from the Grammys: 'So-and-so won this many awards, Yay!'; 'What the heck was that?'; 'Is she for real?'; 'Oh, Whitney. We'll miss you, darling.' What I got from the Grammys: 'Milton Babbit died? Really?'"

"Due to a lack of vengeance, apparently I'm a disappointment."

"Often times, the best moments come unexpectedly. I hope I'm always ready to accept them and make the most of them while they're around."

"Editors are nasty? I suppose. Gentle editor, am I."

I also have a number of lists in the notebook, including but not limited to: "Things I Intend to Do When I Live Alone," "Disney Songs," "Emily's Favorite Things," "Songs for My Blog," "Harry Potter Discussion Topics for a Podcast," and "Skills I Have Which I Don't Want to Turn into a Full-Time Job."



Thank you, reader, for allowing me to be so self-indulgent.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

On free toothpaste, washing dishes, and overcoming responsibility.

Every time I shrink away from writing a "this is what I did today" post, one of the things I tell myself is that the only people who follow this thing are my friends. If we were looking at each other face-to-face, I would tell any one of my friends everything that I feel compelled to write about what I've done, so in reality, such a post is all good, yes? Yes. So, although I don't want this site to decay into nothing more than a depository of Emily Lynn Harmon's current events (...and now, there she goes to the mailbox...), for this friendly reason and for another I will soon explain, I will now talk about a few things that recently happened in my life.


This week, it has been a challenge to engage my right brain. I've wanted to write more, and not just more but better, but that hasn't happened. So here I am writing something just for the sake of writing something.

Every day this week, I have awakened and soon devoted my thoughts to cookies. "Today, before this day is over, I'm going to make some," I've told myself. Then, I get started on the things I "need" to do and/or following through with plans that I've made. If you're intimately familiar with the state my surroundings, you'll know that "things I need to do" truly means the "things I can't possibly put off or my world will feel like it's tumbling out of control." My life isn't that organized and perfect. It's more like a regular battle against chaos. One of those things that I've "needed" to do, something that directly relates to the cookies, is clean the kitchen. We don't have much room in the kitchen to begin with, but when dirty dishes are added, the surface space fades to nary a square foot. With no dish washer and no hot water in the pipes, washing dishes, for five people no less, is a bit of a challenge. But it's a challenge I didn't want to leave undone before I made cookies. I can function with messes in certain situations, but in a kitchen, especially a cramped one, I find it to be nearly mentally and emotionally impossible to overcome.

Thus, several days this week, I have valiantly begun attacking the kitchen mess, aiming to finish quickly so that the cookie-baking can begin.

I still haven't done it. Those dishes never disappear. It looks like I'll have to get over my kitchen-mess-ophobia if I ever want to make cookies. That, or the Harmon house will likely be homemade cookie-less until we get either hot water or a dishwasher.

I've also been continuing my efforts to shop wisely and thriftily. Every store ad that comes in this house gets scoped out for the best deals, and I diligently search through my coupon depository to find coupons for sale items. When something's on sale and you have a coupon for it, chances are it can be obtained for a pretty low price.

My mom and I went to two drugstores today. While I don't know the exact numbers, I do know that we saved over 50% on everything we bought. The thing I'm most excited about is that we made $2 on some Vitamin D. No joke. We also managed to pick up some free toothpaste. And tomorrow, I believe we are going to acquire a free light bulb. I'm kind of a rookie at this bargain hunting thing, but it seems to be working out pretty well.

As cool as all that is, I'm fighting a battle that all people incur, creative types especially, I think; how should I balance my priorities? The typical responsibilities never leave, and while I am in the middle of a glorious opportunity to learn to not be so duty-bound by them, I have not yet become so untrained that I no longer care about them. I do care about them. Tending to them does good things for my family and me.

But I want to write more. I want to read more. I want to sing more. I want to become a better musician. I want to make things. I want to be a better German speaker. I want to become more learned in Latin. I want to make cookies. And share them with my friends.

Every good writer I've heard address this subject says to forget the laundry overflowing the hamper, look at the dirt laying on the floor, and move on. If what you want to do is write more, then leave it all alone and write. And when you can't leave it alone enough, feel no guilt in trading sleep for playing with words. I know they're right. And I do that sometimes. Regularly, even. But not regularly enough to feel like I ever accomplish much.

What to do, what to do....

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

"Love is not a feeling in your chest."

I don't usually give much thought to Valentine's Day, therefore would never think to write on it. Consider this an exception.

I have no qualms with Valentine's Day. I have qualms with excessive commercialism, but it and the Celebration of Love are not inherently linked. What I like about Valentine's Day is the idea that there is a multitude making an extra effort to let someone/s know they are loved. Just like on Christmas, more people than usual are thinking about how God made himself like us and came into the world. Love and Emmanuel, the fullness of love, are glories we should always be mindful of and whose worth we should be demonstrating with every breath breathed. But I think it aids our human nature to have days like today set aside for remembrance.

The most common sort of love talked about today is the kind of husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. But if one is going to acknowledge the holiday, I don't think the love celebrated should be so limited. Which is why it's a day still applicable to me. And which is why this song, so fitting for today, is also applicable to me.

"For the Love of God" by Andrew Peterson

Yesterday we drove all night to Pittsburgh 
Jamie laid her head down in the back 
My little boys asleep beside their sister 
They’re the best I have 

I brought an old recording of your father 
He was teaching men and women how to love 
He carried on about his sons and daughters 
Growing up 

As we drove across Ohio 
At the dawning of the day 
I could hear the tune of truth was in his voice 
And it felt just like I knew him 
Though I never saw his face 
Maybe that’s because I know his boys 
Who live their lives 

For the love of God 
In the name of Jesus 
The groom who gave his life 
To love his bride 

I know you thought you’d never find a woman 
I never thought I’d have to write this song 
But here I am and there you are together 
After all 

You felt like you were buried 
In a city underground 
All broken bits and pieces of the past 
And somewhere she was searching 
On the surface of the mound 
She was digging for a treasure that would last 
Now she’s giving you her heart 

For the love of God 
In the name of Jesus 
The groom who gave his life 
To love his bride 

Now, love is not a feeling in your chest 
It is bending down to wash another’s feet 
It is faithful when the sun is in the west 
And in the east 

It can hurt you as it holds you 
In its overwhelming flood 
Till only the unshakeable is left 
“This new command I give you,” He said, 
“Love as I have loved” 
So brother, love her better than yourself 
And give her your heart 

For the love of God 
In the name of Jesus 
The groom who gave his life 
To love his bride







Happy Valentine's Day, friends.

Friday, February 10, 2012

"Like a lark who is learning to pray."

Is it okay if I'm transparent with you? If it's not, I guess I'm going to do it anyway.

I'm really happy at the moment. All strong emotions tend to spread of their own accord, but happiness bubbles further and more quickly than the rest. It's harder to resist sharing.

The reason why I'm happy is that my voice is finally strong again.

I became sick the day after Christmas. I felt it coming on the day of Christmas, so I suppose that's a more accurate start day. After that, I felt seriously ill for three weeks, well into the month of January. My health had improved greatly by the end of those three weeks, but my voice was still mostly gone for an additional two weeks. After five weeks of relative silence, I was finally able to speak clearly again and carry a tune that spanned beyond half an octave, and not just any octave, but half of my lowest octave.

My voice had returned. I could feel it. Before that point, even when my speaking voice starting sounding like it was approaching normality, I could still feel something in my throat telling me that it wasn't. I knew if I talked too much, what little voice I had would disappear again, and if I ever tried to sing anything, there was always something there blocking it. But whatever it was had finally gone away.

I rejoiced. I didn't have to repeat every word that came out of my mouth anymore. People could finally hear me again. And I could finally sing a simple major scale without sounding like a dying bird. I did expect, though, that after such a prolonged period of non-use it would still be somewhat weak, even though my throat had healed, so I wasn't shocked when singing the national anthem was still far beyond my reach.

I knew it wouldn't get any better continuing to lay dormant, so I began to use it as best as I could, as often as I could without fear of creating damage, and I figured it would be back to the 100% I had come to know faster than you can say "Bob's your uncle."

But it wasn't quite that fast. I kept testing the proverbial waters and finding them to be lukewarm. After a little while, I started to feel a bit of sadness seeping back in. Yes, I know I needed a lot of rehab, but did I really need this much? I've been doing what I can to rebuild, but for days on end there's been no progress. Shouldn't there be progress? And as much as I tried to not think it, eventually "Is this as good as it's going to get?" popped into my brain, and that was not an encouraging thought.

But as of today, I can confirm that all strength I had pre-Christmas has returned (what made this more ironic, is that I sang a lot on Christmas day, publicly that is, more than I had in a while, then woke up the next day as hoarse as a chain smoker), just a few weeks after being freed of illness. Funny how a few weeks can make me feel so defeated. I'm grateful it was only weeks and not any additional months.

I count my voice a gift. I've had others share with me an appreciation of it, and that is a blessing I am sincerely grateful for, but I think it has been a gift as much to me as it has to any of them. Music is a thing that I draw life from, and God knows that. He made me that way. So what a great blessing to be able to make it myself. I can't tell you the number of times I've felt healing begin to displace my wounds as I've sat singing out my hurts. And as much as I enjoy hearing the voices of others, nobody else singing would have done the trick. Mercifully, God has helped me disentangle my identity from my voice, so when it fails, I'm not as fragile as I used to be. I still feel there's hope to go on, whereas I formerly would have been devastated.

But because of God's grace, I am not limited to only enjoying the root of my identity. If my voice ever leaves, it'll be sad, and I'll move on. God will heal. But as long as it's here, I'm going to be happy about it.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Like running into a wall.

The process of writing is different for every writer. What inspires one person might be a hindrance for another. Some may like quiet while others may think better with white noise. Some may be highly organized, filtering everything through an outline before constructing a draft, while others never have any real "drafts," but rather a constantly evolving work in progress until an acceptable end is achieved. (<--- me)

I think, though, there are some aspects of being a writer that all workers in the profession share. The phenomenon commonly known as "writer's block" is one of them.

Today, I came across an amusing example of how I deal with writer's block when it invades my process.

I needed to reference an old document which I no longer had saved on my computer, so I pulled out my brother's external hard drive which he so graciously lets me share. I quickly found the document, and began browsing through it. When I came to the bottom, I laughed out loud at what I found:


"Writer's block is like running into a blocked Platform 9 ¾. Like wandering into darkness. Like a strait jacket around the brain. Like a chalkboard eraser to the mind."

I could think of nothing related to the task at hand to write, so I wrote about the only thing I could think of: how I couldn't think of anything to write. I could publish volumes on that subject.

What amuses me most is not that I wrote that, but that I saved it. I usually erase things like that as soon as I type them. Maybe I subconsciously knew that a year later, on a quiet February evening, I would appreciate the laugh.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Getting linky with my blogging friends; or joining "The Saturday Evening Blog Post."

It's after midnight, but let's pretend it's still Saturday.

I was made aware of "The Saturday Evening Blog Post" today (it's still Saturday, remember?) thanks to my friend Jen. "The Saturday Evening Blog Post" is a first Saturday of the month feature on Elizabeth Esther's blog, where she invites bloggers to share their favorite post from their own blog from the month before.

I thought, and still think, that this is a great idea. Bloggers need places to share with each other. And who knows what goodness you may find out there from someone you don't know?

So I selected a post, this one to be exact, and cast my lot in with the 58 others who posted before me and the yet untold number to come after.

So go check out "The Saturday Evening Blog Post." I've read several of the linked posts so far, and there's some good stuff in there.

Friday, February 3, 2012

The end of me and what I know and what I found once getting there.

I attend and participate in a weekly Bible study with some very good friends. We - a bunch of kids fresh out of high school - started out under the umbrella of the church that we were all involved in at the time, but a lot has changed since then. Our group kept meeting faithfully (it's been...ah...six years...at least), but we don't all attend the same church like we used to. We're not even officially affiliated with that church anymore. Our meeting place has hopped all over the Boro. The faces have also changed over the years. Some people have come and gone, and they have always come and gone with our blessing. But our core is essentially the same, and the ever faithful Charlie Chase still guides our discussions and offers us wisdom we couldn't possibly have gained in our scant twenty-something years.

Before I go on to say more about the Bible study, I want to let the attention dwell on Charlie for a moment. Charlie is a man in his fifties, old enough to have been a father to each of us. As his two kids are a part of our group, he actually is a father to some of us, and he's kind-hearted enough to treat the rest of us like we are his own. Whenever we all get together, he remarks on how happy he is that his "kids" are all in one place. As eager as he is to be a father, he's not an overbearing one, which proves he's eager to be a good father. Everybody is always free to share what they have to say, and just because he's a fifty-something-year-old adult does not mean to him that a twenty-something-year-old adult has nothing to offer. Charlie respects. Charlie is also a man that does not let money define him. He spends his days installing phone lines and fiber optic cables, but if you ask him what he does for a living, he'll tell you he's a teacher. He's never made a dime teaching anyone anything, but that singular role is more important to him than all others, save those of husband and father. Often times college students (which is what we all were when we started out) end up leading themselves. I think this is a symptom of two things: 1) we're adults now, we think we can take care of ourselves, and in our want to assert our place in the world, that's what we do; and 2) we're adults now, so the older adults don't want to have to take care of us anymore. They wash their hands of responsibility. Just leave leave them to themselves, they think, they've been taught the basics, they'll find their way eventually; we don't need to help them anymore. We have a gift in Charlie Chase.

Turning attention back to the group, under the guidance of Charlie and the Holy Spirit, we study one book of the Bible at a time. Sometimes we make it through a chapter or two a week, other times we make it through five verses. However much it is that we study, the Bible is all we ever study. There are many people out there who do great work putting together Bible study materials for people to use, and I have used them to my benefit before, but never has a Bible study grown me as much as just reading the words on the page and talking to other people about what we know and what the Spirit has revealed to each of us. It's a life-giving practice.

Our time together this week granted me a particularly alive shot of life. We are currently making our way through the book of Joshua. This week, the Israelites took charge of the city of Jericho. To briefly recall the details of the occasion, Joshua is leading God's people. A messenger, often translated as the "commander of the army of the Lord," comes to Joshua and tells him that the city has been divinely granted to him and his people. They just have to follow a few instructions: have all the armed men walk around the walls of the city once a day for six days, walk around the city seven times on the seventh day, have the priests blow their trumpets during the seventh day's circling, then have the army give a shout while the priests give a long blast after the seventh time around. This was supposed to knock down the walls. And wonder of all wonders, it did. If that's not crazy enough, God's next instructions were for the armed men to storm inside the city and destroy everything, both living and non. The only things to be kept intact were those of silver, gold, bronze and iron, and they were to be given to the Lord, not kept by the individuals who found them. Other than the land, the people were gaining no spoils from this conquest.

This is what we humans call counter-intuitive. Marching, trumpeting and yelling will make a city crumble? Maybe if the city was made out of lincoln logs and stood about two feet high. And who destroys free stuff? We keep free stuff.  This mandate of destruction is even more nonsensical in light of the circumstances the Israelites were in before this. Once they gained freedom from their captor Egypt, because they made some poor decisions, they ended up wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. There wasn't a lot of food out there in that wasteland. Nor was there a thriving marketplace where goods were produced and exchanged. The clothes they had when they started were the only ones they would come to see for four decades, and while it was good that they supernaturally didn't rot and wear out, I'm sure their eyes were longing for something new.

After all those long years, always changing in that they didn't have a home, yet never changing in that they did the same thing, ate the same thing, looked at the same things every day, here came the promise of Jericho. A home, protection, food, material things to make their lives more comfortable. But they had to destroy it all. Why would God command something like this?

If I were them, a home with big sturdy walls would have made me feel safe. I would soon have come to rely on those walls as my only source of safety. If some ill-intentioned persons challenged their strength and they ever failed, my peace of mind would fail with them. Having all of that food right there in front of my face without having to wonder from where my next meals were going to come would also have been nice. And the less I wondered, the more settled I would have become, and the more settled I would have become, the less prepared I would have been for any moment when that food might have run out. New things, creature comforts, would have also been lovely. They make one feel comfortable, which is why they're called "creature comforts." I would have been content to let them fuel my comfort. Then one day, should I ever lose them, my comfort would disappear just as quickly as those things did.

The Israelites, as a people, lived in a culture of nonsense that lasted a lifetime. But maybe he led them around like nomads to help them learn that he would provide for all of their needs. Then once a whole city was granted to them, he first took away all temptation for the Israelites to look to their own abilities to help them succeed at life by having them do nothing more aggressive and challenging than walk around and make noise, and he then took away all temptation for them to look to the city as their ultimate source by having them destroy it. The fancy self-contained, self-sustaining city would have distracted them, and if you track their history through the old testament, Lord knows they didn't need any other excuses for distraction. They were good at finding them and fixating on them, even when God worked really hard to eliminate distractions to aid their focus. Maybe all of the wandering, and city-circling, and comfort-destroying wasn't such nonsense after all.

As we were talking about all of these things Wednesday night, and Charlie was gently, persistently leading us to draw these own conclusions for ourselves, I began to think, my life hasn't been nonsense for nearly as long, but in this latest stint it has been so for about seven months, which in my short, ambitious life is approximately six months and 29 days too long. But what if God is removing distractions? What if he's trying to help me to look beyond the success I can bring myself? Because I inevitably fail from time to time, and when success is all about me, my failure to bring it is depressing. What if he's eliminating the temptation for me to find comfort and security anywhere but in him? What if he's helping me realize that he is the ultimate source of all good things I could ever want, not a house that gives me shelter, or things that make me feel like I have some sort of claim in this world, or food that gives my body life, or relationships that boost my self-esteem, or a job description that proves to the world I'm doing something with my life.

My life may look like nonsense, but I think God's in it. Yes, God is in my life, and if he's in my life...friends, that is the most encouraging thing I could ever know.

I walked away from the hospital, our latest meeting place, Wednesday night with a little weight removed from the heavy burden I insist on carrying through my life -a burden God is slowing convincing me to release - and a rejoicing spirit.

Here's to nonsensical living!

Grocery shopping joy.

(Pre-script. Only someone like me would blog about the wisdom of the mind in the stories of Solomon and Harry Potter one week, then grocery shopping the next. Life is a many splendored thing.)

In a post last month, I shared with all you faithful readers what had been keeping my brain preoccupied since Christmas. I also told you that if my preoccupation ever amounted to anything, I would come back with an update.

Thus, here I am.

I went grocery shopping yesterday with a mission to find a bargain. I scoped out sales and matched coupons to those items to reduce the price even further. (I sound like such a mom.)

After visiting two stores, here are my stats.

Total spent = $38.47
Total saved (according to receipts) = $38.47

50%! I saved exactly 50%. And I didn't buy anything that the eating of which would make me regret my life.

I think that's pretty nifty. And not bad for somebody who's never attempted anything like this before.

Off I go now to prepare for my next challenge: drugstore shopping. My mission is to find my mother some supplements we have not been able to afford lately, but that she needs to be a happily healthy person again. I hope the return of that person is soon.