My Latitudes and Longitudes

A few weeks ago I wrote about dropping anchor in the goodness of God.  This continues to be a reoccurring theme, and a powerful one, in my life.  It's what I am thinking about, despite the mess of this week.  Despite things that are chronic or disappointing or haven't gone away for a long, long time. 



It's been the kind of week where there is rush hour, conversations with car mechanics, bills to pay, meetings to attend, grades to enter, lots of grading that still isn't done, calming students, unexpected conversations.  And maybe even a mild panic attack.  Very unusual in my life.  Very.  It gives me perspective for those people who say this is not unusual at all.

I also witnessed this big thing in every 8th grader's experience with U.S. History....this week they recited the presidents to me in the hallway.  It's intense.  I force myself to stare at the list while they wait and think.  To live in the silence and still smile a little.  To help them along with their method, not my own.  It's a lot to manage for 75 people.  It's a lot of reading people and making space for them.   There are about 15 students left today.  Then we are done.

Breathe in, breathe out.  

God is a Tremendous Author

I know that everyone and their mother is decorating their tree today because of Facebook.  It told me so.   And while I will not put up a picture of my own newly decorated house there, I will write about it here.

Hiaitus officially over. 

Today I welcomed the Christmas season.  Gingerly, because it's a slow and gradual warming I feel towards the hype of December after what is blissfully silent in November.  I took my tree and box of decorations out today and lit my pine scented candle (hello, apartment living) and then inevitably thought about the story of my life while unpacking the ornaments. 

Slate Gray Silence

 In the course of my life, I have always liked Novembers.  I thought of that today as I was driving to school.  This drive, along the river, is always picturesque.  It’s a winding road, and it is beautiful.  Today I saw the trees as they are after the leaves and before the snow, and could suddenly tell that the look of the sunrise had changed.  And then I felt again that it really was about time for November. 

It seems odd to like November so much when we live in a world full of Mays and Augusts and Septembers.  But November is rich like none other.  It feels silent and set apart....before the explosion of festive things in December and the bleak midwinter that follows.  It’s a hibernation, nestled between the brilliance of fall and the intensity of a storms in winter.  Every year in November, I think of Robert Frost poems.  And when I look out the window and see the gray sky, I am not depressed.   Not at all.

Instead, I feel steady again, like the bracing winds can tell me why some things are the way they are.  And I know all of this on the page sounds overly sentimental, because in the end, the sky really is slate gray half of the time.  But I still say it’s a very nice thing.

Things I've Come to Believe In My 20s

The grass is greener where you water it.

 

Plan B IS life.

Marriage is able to enhance a life, but it does not solve life's problems.

People with a need for constant achievement (and constant conversation) are exhausting.

Swim

I went swimming this morning.  And it was that deep down happy I was talking about a few months ago when I discovered I finally made peace with exercise.  It had been a while since I had been swimming, but the joy of it came back.  Let me tell you, I am not constantly doing laps or doing those cool flips at the end of the pool in order to turn around and not lose momentum.  In fact there were only laps in intervals, and in life, I have never been able to do the cool end-of-the-pool flip. 

Believe me, I have tried.  Water gets into my nose, and once I hit my head and got disoriented, and my overly active imagination imagined how I would get myself out of drowning if the coach wasn't watching me at all times. 

There's something nice though about not being the best at something and liking it anyway.  This, for me, is swimming. (And diving.)  But I grew up with swimming lessons, and I would say that, though I don't want to head for open water to do all major swimming, I am just fine in the pool at the gym. 

French Motherhood, Observed

A few weeks ago, I came across Bringing Up Bebe, recently published by an American living in France.  It  immediately caught my attention, though I am not yet a mother, so I bought it and finished reading it today.  And now my mind is full of things very French and very American and the middle ground - whatever you get when you agree and disagree with both all at once. 

It occurs to me now that sociology might just be a hobby of mine, loosely attended, amidst the hustle and bustle of my life.  I like these books...written about the times, about people, about their habits in society.  And stated with notes and research to back it up. 

Do I want to do that research myself?  No way.  Is it always right?  Probably not.  But I like reading about it.  Especially when the author is good.  Or so unlike me that I can't put the book down. 

What the Years Know

Good morning, Monday.

This time, here and now, with coffee and silence and without the orders of the day, is good medicine for clearing the mind and refocusing the heart.

I am still thinking about the weekend. It will be said cryptically. But when some of that 'unbelievably painful' found its way again into the last few days, I decided that this is why God gives us time second by second, minute by minute, in order to go on and breathe in and out and make it through. For all of our wonderings about the reasons for time feeling and being what it is, the brilliant genius of God is that He lets us see it in small slips.

And then there are the years.