(Sigh)

Amy, I concur with your latest blog: there's nothing like going home! No matter where I go and who I meet, there is nowhere else I can be so completely myself. Bad sentence, I think. Anyway, it's great getting to know my parents, brother, and sister-in-law on grown-up terms rather than just on daughter/little sister terms. Getting to know Jenne better has been so great too! It's like she was the part of our family we always had but never met till three-ish years ago. It's also amazing getting to know Bob and Snoob better...I can't believe those two wierdos are actually growing up! It's also mildly freaky when I think of how huge life is and how scary it was for me when I began to discover that at their ages. There were and are times I feel like I'm pushed so close to the edge that I could just snap and lose everything, and I feel that anyone less sane than me wouldn't have a chance. I guess I'll just have to trust that they're equally or more sane than me, I guess! Or, more effectively, trust God to be as faithful to them as He has been with me. And that's something I know I can count on.
One last point about being home: I can take out all my pent-up motherly affections on Butterscotch, who is now ten, senile, obese, and scar-faced. I'll cry when he dies.

The Prediction

She is withered and small. She can barely stand up straight for the hunch in her back, and can barely lift her left foot off the ground. When she walks, it sounds like thump, sliiiide, thump, sliiide...Her walker shakes with the effort of her frail arms to move it forward. You are walking close beside her, and her head only comes up to your elbow. Suddenly, halfway down the long hallway, she stops. You stoop to her eye level and she looks at you with a worried expression. In her small, gravelly voice, she mutters "I'm shhhhcared."
You don't ask why. You want to get her to bed as soon as possible, or she might fall. "Everything's okay," you reassure her with a gentle back rub. "We're here to take care of you. Nothing's going to happen."
Momentarily mollified, she moves forward again. You finally get to her room and tuck her in. But before you leave, she grabs your arm.
"I'm shhhhcared," she says again. She plays games. She's a great actress who craves attention, and you know this is one of those times. You get down to her eye level again and reassure her that everything's fine, you're watching out for her.
"Not just me..." she says. Suddenly her blue eyes are clear and piercing and wide, and she looks directly into yours with a certainty you find chilling. She continues: "Shhhomethin'gshhh going to happen to shomeone tonight."
Okay, we're talking storybook foreshadowing creepy. Of course, it's just the dementia talking. With staff turnovers and such, she's just confused and a bit upset with all the activity. But the look in her eyes...no matter how explainable and rational this "prediction" is, it still seems a little bit creepy!

Arrabon

I need to share something I read in "Tired of Trying to Measure Up" by Jeff VanVonderen (which is, by the way, a must-read for everybody in the universe). Here it is:
"Let's look at the following verses: 'He has put his seal upon us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee' (2 Cor. 1:22); 'He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee' (2 Cor. 5:5); 'You also, who...have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance...' (Eph. 1:13,14).

"The Greek word for 'pledge' or 'guarantee' in those verses is arrabon. It means 'engagement ring'. The Spirit is God's guarantee, His divine engagement ring which says that you and I are His and He is ours. He is going to return for us someday, but in the meantime, we are sealed in Him. No one else can have us!"

Escape Mechanism

Do you find yourself plagued by nightmares? Or maybe you have an average of only one nightmare per year, yet it's still a terrifying experience. Well, I've found a way of escape from these dreadful dreams. Actually, I can't take credit for it. My body sort of figured it out on its own. So without further adieu, here's the solution: snort really, really loud! Just one sudden, crisp, loud snort, and you will be whisked away from Scaryland where there are escaped convicts trapping you in a tilted house (where you are, naturally, running around naked and your clothes are somehow stuck to the floor), back to the safety of your bedroom. I have done this snort-escape a number of times, each time without actually planning it, so I have come to the conclusion that this is my subconscious' natural response to the paralyzing fear that nightmares evoke. The other curious thing, though, is that I always snort myself awake after several failed attempts to scream in my dream. I'm wondering if my subconscious is thinking, "Hey, if pushing air out the mouth doesn't work, maybe sucking it in through the nose does!"
Anyway, my point is, the snort works. It has rescued my pounding little heart on a number of occasions, so I highly recommend this method to all those subconsciouses out there.

In The News

I'm not much of one to keep up with the news, but I'm sure almost everyone's heard about the man who threw his three-year-old daughter headfirst off an overpass, 50 feet straight down into heavy traffic. He jumped right after and died, but the little girl is alive (on life support, as I understand it, so things look grim). Anyways, I don't know much about the circumstances. All I know is that people in this world who can hurt so much as to throw their own baby off a bridge before committing suicide is such a huge reminder of how screwed up this planet is. People are in so much pain everywhere we look, I guess in different degrees. And what can we really do? There are no pat answers, and sometimes by trying to help, we say or do things that make it worse. I'm not saying we shouldn't try, but how do you begin to effectively reach out to someone who has self-destructing tendencies, lifelong depression, even temptations to commit adultery or murder? It all lies in God's sovereign ability to stir people's hearts, I guess when you get right down to it, and it's not up to us to move mountains. But practically speaking...what do you do?
That's maybe more a rhetorical question than anything else, cause of course there is no perfect answer. And it's late, so I'm just tired and have too much of a one-track mind at the moment.

Let Me Hide My Face Now

I am such a freaking typical woman driver. I park in such a way as to take up an entire block, so that no one else can park and strangers leave notes on my windshield reminding me to be more courteous (I guess I should be glad it wasn't a death threat). My deepest apologies go to the little mouse I either hit or gave post-traumatic stress disorder to, but you were in my way and I was feeling mildly aggressive because of DMS (the D is for during, I think you all know the rest). I run red lights like there's no tomorrow (actually, I did it just once, but the honks that suddenly erupted at my side will forever remind me of how incredibly inane I must have looked). Not only that, but my car's terrible for fogging up in any kind of weather, so at any given moment I can be seen wiping furiously at my windows with a brightly-colored cloth, although I have yet to master cleaning off the backseat ones while I'm driving...maybe I should never try to master that one. And I've come to the conclusion that I have the whitest, old-ladiest posture, as I tend to lean far forward and grip the steering wheel with both hands, whilst my neck is sticking out forward like a turkey vulture. I'm thinking I should never plan on driving with any potential future hubbies until I'm sure they love me for who I am.

The Hardest Thing

It's crazy that every day we are faced with the choice to push, push, push ourselves to the breaking point, over and over again, to try and defeat the shame that comes part and parcel with living in this fallen world and to gain the attention of God and other people; or to fall back on His grace because He has already done all the necessary work for us. For all the sweat, blood and tears the first option requires, the second one is usually so much harder. Maybe it's partly because the second option doesn't allow us to feel bad about ourselves, the way we "deserve" to feel since we're so screwed up and unworthy. Maybe it's partly because there is nothing else in existence, not even the purest human love, that doesn't require some sort of high-jump bar to be leapt over before complete acceptance is gained. What do you think?

And Challis, I'm glad we're both flutes. Let's tootle our way off a cliff together.

In Like

Wow, I love being in like. I miss being in like. There is absolutely nothing as exciting, as nerve-wracking, as stomach mammoth moth-evoking as being in like (forget dinky little butterflies). But it's also incredibly scary and uncertain, and I really hope the next time I'm in like will be the last. Cause no matter how hard one tries to keep one's expectations down, one is incredibly powerless against the force of the stomach mammoth moths. And I really hope the next time I'm in like leads to being in love with Oliver O'Malley.