Blah

Life continues. I got to walk in monsoon season this week. I went on a long hike last Saturday and over-extended a muscle in my foot. I walked down the river the other day just to listen to the silence and bought corn on the cob at a little market. I think I'll eat it tomorrow for lunch.

I don't lie

To say I have a lot going on right now would seem so unrealistically large an understatement that it might pass into the realm of falsehood.

In other news, I have now successfully breached the six-month barrier of living abroad. It has been 10 weeks since my last 3-day weekend, and I'm feeling it, but look forward to a long hike, a hot shower, and a lot of extra sleep the 11th, 12th and 13th.

The Truth is that I'm only writing this to pacify my sister. As most of the people who've spoken to me can attest, there's not much I have to say that's fit to print. Life gets hard, but I'm really thankful for all the people the Lord has built into mine who make it much easier to handle.

If you want to know what I've been doing lately: (This is complete rubbish, you don't have to read it.)

I've taken (in June especially) to measuring my time in Korea by the other teachers' contracts. Ray just left the end of June, Steve leaves the end of August and Luke is out of here the end of September. Fortunately for me we recently had two new additions to our little set, Jesse and Cassie arrived the end of June! They're both really sweet, wonderful young women, and I look forward to getting to know them better.

On the fourth we all went out and had hamburgers and french fries (because we couldn't come up with anything more American than that) and then while everyone else went off to enjoy their various festivities Luke and I took a walk down the river. It's been pretty (relatively) cold and rainy this last week, so the evening was nice. (When I say, "Evening," you should really read, "Night." On my Korean schedule 'evening' begins at approximately 10 pm.)

These last couple of weeks I've been teaching SAT classes in the evenings. It's really fun and I enjoy the students a lot. Ostensibly this will continue for the next two months until the students are sent back to the US for school, poor things.

Other than that I've been sleeping . . . lots and lots of laying in bed staring at the ceiling and talking to God.

Job 2:13

"Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was."

Please pray for my family.

. . . like with pie

Sometimes people are layered like that. There's something totally different underneath than what's on the surface. But sometimes, there's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie.

- Joss Whedon, Zach Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon

It Has Come

After a couple of weeks of not sleeping very well, I finally turned on my air conditioner this morning at 6 am. I am delighted to have made it until June.

Commitment

It rained this morning, and was, I felt, the perfect day for putting into practice some of Charles Lamb's wisdom from yesterday. A friend of mine is going through a hard time right now, and as my thoughts went with her this morning I was reminded of this hymn by Daniel W. Whittle:

I know not why God’s wondrous grace
To me He hath made known,
Nor why, unworthy, Christ in love
Redeemed me for His own.

Refrain: But “I know Whom I have believed,
And am persuaded that He is able
To keep that which I’ve committed
Unto Him against that day.”

I know not how this saving faith
To me He did impart,
Nor how believing in His Word
Wrought peace within my heart.

I know not how the Spirit moves,
Convincing men of sin,
Revealing Jesus through the Word,
Creating faith in Him.

I know not what of good or ill
May be reserved for me,
Of weary ways or golden days,
Before His face I see.

I know not when my Lord may come,
At night or noonday fair,
Nor if I walk the vale with Him,
Or meet Him in the air.

There is so much that is uncertain in this life, but as I think about my friend I am so thankful that there is a powerful God into whose care I have committed her; He will keep her, so I don't have to worry.

"For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." 2 Timothy 1:12

Charles Lamb

IN THE CHURCHYARD
I continued in the churchyard, reading the various inscriptions, and moralizing on them with that kind of levity which will not unfrequently spring up in the mind, in the midst of deep melancholy. I read of nothing but careful parents, loving husbands, and dutiful children. I said jestingly, Where be all the bad people buried? Bad parents, bad husbands, bad children, what cemeteries are appointed for these? do they not sleep in consecrated ground? or is it but a pious fiction, a generous oversight, in the survivors, which thus tricks out men's epitaphs when dead, who, in their lifetime, discharged the offices of life, perhaps, but lamely? Their failings, with their reproaches, now sleep with them in the grave. Man wars not with the dead. It is a trait of human nature, for which I love it.
. . .

ON RISING WITH THE LARK
At what precise minute that little airy musician doffs his night-gear, and prepares to tune up his unseasonable matins, we are not naturalist enough to determine. But, for a mere human gentleman - that has no orchestra business to call him from his warm bed to such preposterous exercises - we take ten or half after ten (eleven, of course, during this Christmas solstice) to be the earliest hour at which he can begin to think of abandoning his pillow. To think of it, we say, for to do it in earnest requires another half-hour's good consideration.
Not but there are pretty sun-risings, as we are told, and such like gauds, abroad in the world, in summer-time especially, some hours before what we have assigned; which a gentleman may see, as they say, only for getting up. But, having been tempted once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated. We are no longer ambitious of being the sun's courtiers, to attend at his morning levees. We hold the good hours of the dawn too sacred to waste them upon such observances, which have in them, besides, something Pagan and Persic. To say truth, we never anticipated our usual hour, or got up with the sun (as it is called) to go a journey, or upon a foolish whole day's pleasuring, but we suffered for it all the long hours after in listlessness and headaches; Nature herself sufficiently declaring here sense of our presumption in aspiring to regulate our frail waking courses by the measures of that celestial and sleepless traveller.