So once again this ball of rock has ventured around this big blazing ball of gas to mark the twenty ninth year of my life. Way to go, cosmos. Everyone played their parts beautifully.

So what exactly does all this mean, eh? A year older, a year . . . dare I say it? Wiser? Certainly a year poorer but that’s probably another story. So what exactly has been so great about these past three hundred and sixty five days? What have I learned? What have I found? Shall I itemize?

I shall try. Here are my lessons:

1. God is sovereign, sustaining, and wonderous, and His plan is full of surprises.

2. Natalie is the beautifullest baby of all time.

3. My mother has provided for me, even when she isn’t here to see it.

4. YouTube isn’t actually just an amateur porn site and is a great place to find Doris Day clips.

5. People change. For better or worse, they do.

6. Sometimes it isn’t people who are changing-sometimes instead it’s me.

7. Back windows in my apartment not be left open.

8. National City bank is just doing it’s job, ma’am, just doing it’s job.

9. The world is a messed up and devouring kind of place, but when all seems hopeless, see Lesson #1.

10. Veganism is FUN!

And that’s all I can think of now because I have a delicious bath waiting for me in the next room. Thanks to Stephie for the Lush! :)

Ok, ok, so I was whining last night. Well, early this morning. It’s unbecoming and also it’s fairly useless. So I don’t have what I think I want-there is always Purpose, God is always Soveriegn, and He was gracious enough to remind me this afternoon of all the things that I have been ignoring that are so valuable.

I read a newsletter from Nightlight wherein I learned that four new women are now working there instead of selling their bodies on the street, thanks to the prayers and support and ministry of Ron’s aunt and uncle’s organization. And then I came across an email from Freedom Church praising God for a boy who has been healed. And it seems to obvious, doesn’t it? That wanting for myself is even smaller than I thought, and that the reason I am here is for a much bigger purpose. As in, bringing glory to the most high God.

I was reading last night, ironically enough after moaning about some version of relationship that I term “love”, in Corinthians 13. As will surprise no one since it’s pretty well known, especially if you’ve been to a wedding in the past decade, it’s all about True love, real love, the love that is inspired by the Holy Spirit. And I realized that . . . I need to work on it. I do need to learn to love people better and in the Truth. I can be so lazy when it comes to that. I can “do no harm” for my own part, but still not do any good at all.

So pray for me, folks. I need it. I need a lot of things, but the deepest and truest of them all is the alignment between myself and the character of God. And lucky for me, He is faithful. Luckily for me, He is the Great Physician who can heal heart troubles as much as anything else.

I was thinking of making some excuses. I will not make any. This is What Is.

I have A Problem.

Okay, okay, so I have many problems. In fact, my biggest problem sometimes is trying to catalog and address all my problems. Especially the cataloging part. I have problems like a bargain hunter after a liquidation sale. My problems are varied and voluminous, oddly sized and awkwardly shaped. But they are all exacerbated by The Problem I drew attention to previously, which is this: I love the short road.

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So I’ve been blue and mopey. I’ve been whiny and inconsolable. And, I’ve been desperate and unhappy.

I am SO lame.

Understandable? Sure. Justified? Debatable. But righteous? I doubt it.

This morning I had breakfast with my grandparents. And with my grandfather ill, my gramma explained to me that she’s had about all she can handle. And I thought to myself, I can be of some use to her. I can minister to her as I’m waiting. I’m so daft sometimes, thinking that ministry and missions have to always be Over There Somewhere, when there are people with needs not only right down the street but in my own family. And there is a peace in that because there is direction in it. So maybe I don’t flee the country sometime soon. Maybe for the moment I’m needed here.

God’s plan is not always (read: ever) what I think it will be. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is absolutely Good. Not necessarily what I think would be good, not always what I would ask for myself. Not even what is “good” for me in this moment, but the Ultimate Good. There is something so comforting in that, and it is in comfort that I learn more and more to trust Him. There is something so humbling in that, and it is in humility that I learn how better to praise the God who was and is and is to come.

I am happy. For now. But more importantly, I feel joy.

Yes, in this case, the Walrus is me. And the time has come, as I mentioned before by proxy as my current animal incarnation, to speak of other things. And work on them, which is the more difficult part.

I’ve been reading my way through Romans and last night I was up to chapters 12 and 13. I’ve been feeling not so great recently about picking up my old bad habit of smoking and what do I find as soon as I read the first verse, but: Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Ouch. I’ve been zinged. But, I must say, deservedly so.

The truth is that I’ve been lax and I’m not to pleased to share it, but it is what is, so I must proclaim it I suppose. It isn’t only a matter of smoking either really. I’ve been lax in many things. I was talking to Ron about this last night. Last year at this time, I was, perhaps not a different person, but full of God in a much different measure. The things that I haven’t been able to understand yet, like those particular losses that I mention again and again, have blocked something valuable from entering.

The losses aren’t important; The gifts were. And though in some cases, I still don’t understand, the important thing is Job 1:21  The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.

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So this topic comes up because of a conversation I had with some friends of a Swiss a couple of weeks ago. I’m not sure why I bring it up now except that I’ve talked with my brother and sister about this a few times and it seems pertinent to life if not to current circumstances.

There’s a certain idea that seems to be going around that you can’t disagree with what someone’s doing without judging them. Case in point: I was talking with the aforementioned people that I met up with in Clifton, and somehow the topic of stripping came up. Don’t look at me, I didn’t bring it up. Anyway, there was another girl present and the two of us began talking about how we felt bad for women who felt like they had to take their clothes off for money. A guy jumped in at that point and gallantly stated that we shouldn’t judge strippers because that was their choice and who were we to act like we were better than them? I pointed out that I didn’t say, nor did I think, I was better than anyone. I further said that I thought strippers were as fine of a population as anyone else but the fact that they felt that taking their clothes off and selling the view was an innocuous profession was something I didn’t agree with. We argued about whether or not stripping was done out of sexual liberation or necessity and whether saying that strippers should be supported and that there might have been issues of self esteem or trauma that led them into the occupation might be offensive. He felt that it was.

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I have a confession of my own: I heart St. Augustine.

We’re like soulmates seperated by hundreds of years, and by class, gender, education, and age. We’ve both been foolish, we’ve both been degenerate. And yet God in his infinite wisdom and grace was kind enough to show us fully what kind of jerks we really were and grow us into something better, more in keeping with who he is. And it is encouragement to me now to read the words of someone who has sought, as I myself need to continually seek, the absolute truth.

<—–see the resemblence?—–>

” Entrust to truth whatever truth has given you, and you will lose nothing. What is withered in you will flower again, and your illness will be made well, and all that was flowing and wasting from you will regain shape and substance and will form part of you again, and they will not lay you down in the place where they themselves descend, but will stand fast with you and abide with you forever before God who stands and abides forever.”

May I say it? HOT.

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I ask myself, When did you begin to grow? Was it when everything fell apart or did it start before?

There seems to me to be a piece of everything that’s happened in everything that came before. Nothing simply appeared. If I hadn’t gone to a sleepover in seventh grade at the house of a girl I didn’t know very well. If I hadn’t been at a certain Bible study my first week of college. If that other boy hadn’t been bitter, if she hadn’t thrown me that surprise 20th birthday party. It was all so tenuous. It could have all turned out differently. But it didn’t. And this evidence reminds me that God’s plan is sometimes interwoven so by little things that it may seem at times as though nothing at all is happening. But then something will happen, like a couple offering to raise your child and give her the home that you would have wanted for her, and looking back, all the steps will come together.

And this is what I need to keep sight of.

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So I talked to Simon tonight, online. Mostly because I was procrastinating getting my resume finished and sent out. Well, maybe not mostly, but in part. And it was really . . . alright. It was completely just fine. It was what it was.

I’m surprised to say it, and moreso that it’s true, but I think I can really deal with this. My sister may not believe me because I’ve acted like such an idiot in the pursuit of this, well, let’s admit it, melodramatic demand for this boy. But talking to him as something of a chum was . . . nice. I actually enjoyed it. I think I’ve finally been through the crux of this crisis and now I can look at myself from the other side, with a bit of a chuckle about how silly I’ve acted and more pleasure in the act of knowing my friend than would be gleaned from forcing myself on him.

This is a good thing.

And I believe that prayer is what has brought me here. I know that the Lord is my strength and that his will is perfect. Not only complete but without error. And . . . this is just another piece of it. This is just the last chapter. And I’m being led into the next.

This morning feels like early spring. Windows opened, curtains fluttering slightly, and in the breeze there’s a smell like a fresh shower and the afterbirth of rain. I’ve been too long held down. And now even the weather seems to make my heart light.

I’ve been demanding, I can see that now. I’ve demanded that my demands were met and I decided for myself what I should have. I told God that if he wanted something different, I would submit. But I didn’t. I stored it all up, my disappointment, balled it up into a knot of self-pity. Because look at all I’ve had to put up with and now this too? Don’t I deserve what I want? Haven’t I suffered enough?

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