Elation

I paid $1 for a vintage copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking today. I will not be making aspics, nor utilizing the sections on liver, sweetbreads, brains or kidneys. That said, I am SO EXCITED! You're all invited for dinner! (c:

from an email to my twin

The Holy Spirit has really been impressing on me lately what a tortured soul Paul was. I always felt like he was so cold and businesslike and like I had nothing in common with him. But lately, I've been thinking over a lot of the things he said . . . and . . . they really resonate with me. When he talked about living being Christ and dying gain, we think of that as a noble sentiment, but I think he might really have been saying he longed for death. We talk about Paul like he was superman, but he wasn't; Jesus was teaching him how much he would have to suffer. )c: Am I a wimp if I don't want to know?

Blackberries are here

Maija and I switched it up making jam on Saturday. Usually I make the jam and pour it and she's responsible for reading the directions (which I partially ignore) and preparing the jars. Yeah . . . so Maija has terrible aim! She's a quick learner though. She kept asking me things, or saying something wasn't working and I'd go, "Oh, I never do it that way." Or, "You should always start with a wide-mouthed jar first so you get a feel for the pour." (c: Hehe, it was fine. We did discover (again - it's been two years since we've made jam) that the people who write those recipes are silly-pantses. You DON'T have to add all their yucky sugar to have it set up. We made one batch full sugar (and by "full sugar" I mean as much as our "no sugar" pectin required) and it was gross. Well, my friend Heather will love it, but we're going to gift it, WAY too sweet for us. What's the point of having fruit that's not a little bit tart? That's the charm of fruit. If I wanted something just sweet I'd eat chocolate. (And I do.)

Other than that, I'm back from my motorcycle trip and on to troubleshooting getting it started now that I'm not driving it everyday; thank you Jesus it started on my trip! And moving into my apartment. Also, I need a job. I really want the one God wants for me. If you want to keep that in your prayers that would be great.

Words I never thought I'd type . . . so sad

I wish I had a camera.

I can't believe it. What I really want is actually a sketch book and the ability to draw. I flipped though this quilting book the other day while running errands with Mary Jane and was completely inspired with an idea for a quilt. Anyone who's interested can get in touch with me for more info on that, but I know most of you probably don't care, so I'll save myself the time and go get my tent set up. I am in Cortez, CO this evening. Colorado is beautiful; I'd live here anytime. Maija - we are totally a go on the B&B!

Other than that, I would just like you all to know that KOA campgrounds ROCK!!! (That's why you're getting this little cross-country update. Hmm . . . I guess it could be dangerous for me to post that I'm out of town if I had a house people could break into. Fortunately for me that's not a worry I have, everyone who loves me has different ideas about which town I'm out of . . . (c:
I love you guys, goodnight.

A Book Off The Shelf

I pretty randomly pulled a book off of one of Maija and Terry's shelves the other day, and I found this magical sermon (I do believe Rev. Claypool would appreciate me calling his sermon "magical") about the verse that talks about "soaring on wings as eagles."
Let me just say, that verse always struck me as kind of . . . over-enthusiastic. And John Claypool helped me realize why: People have always used the part about flying as the standard for life. But it isn't. The verse also says, "[T]hey shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." That is so beautiful to me. Yeah, sometimes life is awesome and you feel like you're flying. But there are certainly times when not fainting feels like a lot. Thanks God for being You; thanks for being realistic and the kind of Guy I don't mind betting everything on, because it's not a gamble with You.

Here's the passage in full just for your edification:

Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
"My way is hid from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God"?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the
ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary,
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.
ISAIAH 40:27-31

John Claypool

"The Bible arranges life and thought in just that sequence. First, we are called on to live passionately and openly and then to use our minds to try to understand and interpret what we have experienced. In this way life moves on and whatever insight is possible is born. If we turn the whole process around and try to put understanding before the living of life, however, everything freezes and we become immobilized.
...
"Harry Emerson Fosdick once wrote that 'a man can put off making up his mind, but he can't put off making up his life.' That statement has all the realism of the Bible behind it. The business of making up one's life, concretely and directly, is more basic than intellectualizing abstractly about it. And not only that, it is the way we were meant to learn. Making up our minds is not something we can do before we experience anything of life; it comes as we experience it, through experience, after experience.
"Centuries ago a philosopher named Descartes climbed into a stove and determined to think out life before he acted. When he finally came to the conclusion 'I think, therefore I am,' he set the whole direction of modern Western thought. His was a fatal mistake, however, for he reversed the true relation of living and thinking and 'got the cart before the horse.'"
"It was the same mistake that Adam and Eve made back in the Garden of Eden. God spread the whole creation out before them like a banquet table and invited them to participate in it fully. They were to eat, drink, work, multiply; that is, to live passionately. But instead of immersing themselves in life, they turned rather to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the symbol of the Ultimate explanation of all things that belonged to God alone, and lusted after it. In other words, before they lived they wanted to know all the answers, whereas God had ordained that knowledge was to come through and by and after experience."
~~~~~
Smart guy . . . I'm going to go look for a job.

They're from Texas, and delicious!

I know a while back I said I felt like crispy, scooped-out potato skins. Tonight it's more like a grapefruit that's been thoroughly juiced. *Sigh* I hope I was a Ruby Red.

Bonus

Heather and me - she loves taking pictures so much, and I thought, "What the heck, there should be some sort of documentation of this anyway."

Email to Jess

Basically people are all narcissists. We're all into ourselves and our stuff. It's like Donald Miller talked about (Blue Like Jazz?) if anyone were ever to really be about other people that person would be the most different person ever.

I'm glad you brought it up, because I'm feeling pretty convicted right now. I'm so tired. Tired of this summer and of being "on" all the time. I'd go to work and have to concentrate and be "on" and then come home and have to cope with the Truth stagnating in the air at home. Never an "off" moment to just . . . sit and read my book, or be grumpy by myself. Jesus must've felt that way all the time. He'd try to pull away, and people would chase after him and he'd end up looking at them, and even though he was probably so tired his body just didn't want to anymore, he'd feel compassion for them - because they were like sheep without a shepherd. It takes something from you to feel compassion.

I talked about that in my grad school interview too, about how being there for people costs you something. I told Jabez about that too, before he left, about how some things in life are hard, and you know they're going to be hard, but you have to do them anyway. So what I usually do is try to pull myself together and hit them as hard as I can while still pacing myself if necessary. In my head it's like a battle scene, and the armies are looking at each other, and finally one guy takes a deep breath, brandishes his sword and rushes forward. That's me - I take a huge breath and let the waves of whatever it is wash over me. Then I think about that verse - I'll look it up, Ephesians 6:13 - where it talks about standing in the day of evil, and then, after you've done everything, to stand. Pretty much, I feel like I'm just standing now. My legs feel like they want to buckle underneath me, but I'm not going to. Thanks Jesus for standing with me.

"Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand." Ephesians 6:13

Su-um-mer Nights

Yeah . . . so apparently it's been awhile. May was a long month. I actually left work one morning (after working basically 23 days in a row and swapping my sleep schedule 3 times) just really thankful that I hadn't cursed anyone out. June was kind of meh. Mostly clean-up in terms of paperwork. And now I'm in the middle of July . . . not exactly sure how I got here, but a summary of major life events would include, but not be limited to, the following:

1. I'm debt free. God is good.
2. I'm going to grad school. Not ambitiously, not in the, "Hit it hard and fast," way that I approached my undergrad, but I'm going to get my feet wet. I believe that will entail taking two classes, finding a (hopefully) nice but small apartment to live in and riding my motorcycle around watching sunsets and going for long walks. The Oregon Coast anyone? (Oh, and I need a job if anyone has any ideas - keep in mind my hair is pink, but we'll come to that.)
3. I have a motorcycle. Technically I've owned it since December. But I am now qualified to ride and ready to go. . . . As soon as I get the battery replaced. Lc: Oh, and leathers. And a helmet. Also it's in New Mexico and needs a tire replaced. Look, I'll get there okay. Safety first.
4. My hair is pink. Not all of it, and not quite as decidedly pink as it was when I first had it done. But it's still there, lingering. (It's tasteful, I promise.) I might re-do the pink part depending on jobs in Vancouver. I'd like to, but we'll see. The avant garde residents of Portland and Vancouver aren't quite as forgiving of appearances as the backwards peoples of the North. *Sigh* One thing I will miss about Alaska.
5. I got out of bed this morning. I know that won't seem like much to most of you, but for those of you who know, thanks for your prayers. We needed every single one of them.

It's now 2 am and I really do have to be to work at 1000. (That's pronounced ten-hundred and means ten o'clock for those of you not initiate into military time, where there's no confusion as to what time someone's getting in from the airport unless 575Z decides not to land in Galena and the people we in dispatch just call "resources" have to sit on the airstrip for hours in the sun waiting for an aircraft of some description to come for them. Like I said in the beginning, summer nights. . . . )

I wish I had time to tell you about the magic of sitting in dispatch (two ATCO trailers basically duct taped together for the last 30ish years) looking out on the Chena at 4am. The purples are so beautiful. I wish I had time to tell you about hiking Angel Rocks barefoot or about my Kelsa, a sweet, lovely empathetic creature with a penchant for unusual sunglasses who's basically my office-soul mate. It's indescribably rare to find someone who intuitively understands one's personal filing and organizational methods almost without explanation and who is simultaneously very pleasant to work with that you can also get work done with. Maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about, but she's a treat, I assure you. Working in an office with her is like cooking in my sister's kitchen.

I think I'm out for now. I really do have to sleep. Hopefully I can.

God keep you all.

P.S. Hebrews 12:2 - If Jesus thought it was going to be worth it, I guess he knows a lot better than I do.

Oh Yeah . . .

I'm workin' today in Fairbanks . . . it's raining. Sweet deal. We pulled down the huge maps in dispatch and they're going to put up new ones. Sweet deal.

"What If This Road"

What if this road, that has held no surprises
These many years, decided not to go
Home after all; what if it could turn
Left or right with no more ado
Than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin
Were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,
That is shaken and rolled out, and takes
A new shape from the contours beneath?
And if it chose to lay itself down
In a new way; around a blind corner,
Across hills you must climb without knowing
What's on the other side; who would not hanker
To be going, at all risks? Who wants to know
A story's end, or where a road will go?

~Sheenagh Pugh

I completed the application process for grad school today (the interview). Like all interviews, I left feeling the weight of all that was not said. This weekend I went to visit my grandma in Nebraska. Nebraska is beautiful and blooming and full of lovely old houses that beg to be made homes. Overall today I felt . . . scooped out. Like a crispy potato skin that hasn't had any filling put back in it. I guess maybe that's better than a stuffed zucchini though. /c: Maybe it's time for bed.

There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

'Home' is a funny thing . . .

. . . a more fluid concept that I would have imagined. I head back to Alaska on Wednesday, but now, more than ever, I am convinced that anywhere on this earth has the ability to become as much of a home as this earth is capable of. Man! I can't wait for heaven!

At last

"Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World," said the Rat. "And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or me. I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all. Don't ever refer to it again, please."
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

I am delighted to report that I am done with significant traveling for at least . . . I don't know. I'm hoping at least a month. This month I'm applying for grad school. We'll see how this works out. God is good, I'm counting on Him taking care of all of the stressful parts.