Gone before he was ever really there. Birds and summers are made of motion.

I wish I could freeze the frames captured by my eyes… I yearn to silence the ticking clock… To cry out, begging time, beauty and passion

to stay.

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

Ha HA! I knew my blood had to be naturally caffeinated. I took this test two minutes ago.

But I haven’t had any caffeine yet. HA!

Apparently, I’ve reverted to a fourteen year old girl.

Last night I watched Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and Escape from Planet of the Apes, which ended around five in the morning. I then got up two hours later to quickly do the dishes before my Mom got up. It’s not like I have to do the dishes, I just consider it a courtesy to clean up when she does most of the cooking, but the early morning subterfuge brought back so many memories I nearly laughed out loud.

But then of course, being up so early on two hours’ worth of sleep and already in somewhat of a mood of insubordination to adult rules, I rummaged around in the fridge and came up with a can of Red Bull and a slice of double chocolate fudge for breakfast.¹

And well, naturally, once you’ve started your day like that, it’s only logical and reasonable that you would simply continue on in that vein… continuity and consistency and all that good stuff. So I spent the morning ripping CDs to my hard drive and arranging playlists in Pocket Tunes on my T|X while IMing some friends from school about how intense SLOW and O-Week are going to be for those of us who are SOS leaders this fall.

Then I parked myself in front of Animal Cops: Houston and Deadliest Catch and Monty Python’s Flying Circus for the entire afternoon…

By the time evening came around, my own slothfulness had exhausted me and I was only able to be revived by some shopping and and surfing some blogs. Despite those remedies, I’m more than ready to curl up with my books (I can never just read one book at a time) and music and drift off to sleep earlier tonight than usual.

If I wake up tomorrow and I’m 25, we’ll need a heck of a lot more Corona and a plane ticket to Vegas…

1. OMG I love you so much, husband who went to Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory on the Riverwalk in San Antonio and forgot your fudge in the fridge! [↩]

I’m watching Beneath the Planet of the Apes, studying Greek vocabulary flash cards online, and debating whether I should do the dishes now or get up before my Mom in the morning and do them then. I miss Doug more on these nights when he works so late we can’t call each other before I go to bed. But I’m so grateful for his hard work which means so much freedom for me.

Today, while we were doing our laundry, my Mom and I saw a two year old boy tell his mother in Spanish that he needed to pee. She turned him away from her and pointed wordlessly to the short palms that line the walk up to the laundry room. He marched up to them, whipped out his equipment and let loose, Calvin-style, making arches and bows in the sunlight. I turned to look at my Mom, one eyebrow raised. Now it doesn’t surprise me that 10 and 17 year old boys think nothing of “watering the garden” over in the park next to the complex, or on the banks of the little bayou - it’s apparently just what you do.

I didn’t mind the peeing toddler that much. The last time we did laundry, we spent two hours with a young mother who was coked out of her gourd. Her kids were sweet. It’s life, you know? My parents have always just settled where they felt called… class, socio-economic status and race never figure into it. I’m proud of them, even if I do notice with a start once in a while that we really are the only white people in Kroger half the time. Or that we’re the only white people in the complex almost all of the time! But I love it. I love that God has constructed our comfort zone with such far-flung boundaries. I love how my family fits in everywhere they go. My dad is a consu1tant for one of the most well-known 0i1 companies in the world and they work out in a gym where they stand out like a white t-shirt under a blacklight.

The dishes are waiting. Escape from Planet of the Apes is beyond me at 2:15 AM. I’m done my Greek vocabulary cards. Hebrew was next, but I’ll leave them for tomorrow.

I’m on vacation after all. ^_~

One o’clock on a June morning knowing full well I should be in bed, I am instead prowling the darkened living room of my parents’ home. In winter, the urge to sleep is as strong, as steady as the pull of the moon on the tides. But in June, sleep flees from my wide-eyed stare and my thoughts are alive and electric.

In the Januaries of my life, reading becomes a struggle. Trying to digest the words on the pages feels like the last few bites of a too-large holiday dinner, heavy and uncomfortable. In June, the words sluice over my eyes like icy water on summer thirst. I rip through paragraphs and hunger for chapters.

Best of all, these June nights are never spent alone. Oh, no. Even if I try to sleep, toss my head on pillows striped with amber streetlight, I feel His presence steal over me, beside me. Why sleep when I’m not tired? Why yearn for dross when pure gold is mine? Everything I desire has become couched in His approval. Everything I want, I want because I think it will bring me closer to Him.

All my life I have desired Him, sought after Him. Some years I pleaded with Him for more, some I begged for less… some years I was so empty of Him the memory of it sharpens the breath in my throat and hurts my very heart. Always, I could not deny this secret, intense longing for some sense that I truly belonged to Him, that He even knew who I was.

What majesty of spirit my blessed heavenly Father has shown me this past year! What a sublime discovery I have made! How wonderful of my Lord to show me that my heart’s desire is already mine. That my Lord, my God, does not just know me… does not just love me…

He pursues me.

While Doug and I were in San Antonio last month, one of the best moments we shared was lunch at Joe’s Crab Shack on the Riverwalk where I, in a completely uncharacteristic moment, ordered a steampot. The expression on my husband’s face was awesome as our very sweet and very gay waiter brought me a gigantic plastic bib with a cartoon crab on it, gathered my hair to one side and tied it on me. I loved it. But the expression on his face when my meal was served in a tin bucket and a net was priceless. I’m sure he was waiting for me to come to my senses, send it back and order a salad. As much of a wild child as I was, I had become a fairly staid adult. Prim. Proper.

Boring.

Going back to college has been hard. Last year felt like swimming in a rip tide most of the time. It was the absolute best thing in my life, but at the same time it was really such a series of unfortunate events. But coming out of this last semester felt like being 12 and surviving the BMX event at DVRC summer camp. I loved BMX racing almost as much as riding (horses), but that tournament left me with three bruised ribs, contusions on my thighs and a torn fascia in my right foot. And an exhiliration so intense it formed an actual lump in my throat.

There is elation in trying something so far beyond your abilities that the only realistic outcome is a spectacular wipeout. It opens you. It shows you how far and hard you can fall and still get back up. You realize that winning doesn’t always look like winning; that sometimes it looks a hell of a lot like losing. I didn’t get a ribbon that day, but I remember it better than the dozens of other days that did end in ribbons and trophies. It doesn’t matter that my term GPA is now sitting in a corner with a bloody nose and fat lip, I’ve still won. Wipeouts are a fact of life. Once you know how to survive them, life becomes something to be lived, not feared.

Tonight I went out to dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack here in Houston with my parents and a dear family friend and colleague of my Dad’s. Everyone ordered a nice, tame entree served on nice, tame plates.

And I? I ordered a steampot.

Darkened porch in the hour after sunset, scent of wine mingling with heat and the soft deep green of a summer night in south Texas. My mother’s voice, low and bright with intelligence and love as we speak of metaphor in Hosea or the genealogy of Shem reaches me in concert with the sustained thrum of frogs telling their secret stories in the bayou just beyond. Her wisdom and knowledge center in interests different from mine in many ways, but where we intersect is like a path lit by the silver tail of a falling star. A thing to be savoured.

My parents, all to myself. Insight, wisdom, puns and elephant jokes. Healing space for my raw-scraped heart and bruised compassion. Teaching space for God to show me his heart for those amongst whom we live, for those sought-after by him yet shunned by so many.

My world is so gentle. My needs so abundantly provided for. Even the endlessly-surfacing yearning for children, even my losses, somehow muted by golden-lit mornings and the deep knowledge that this time, this space, will be savoured. Fresh loss will come, more pain I am mercifully unable to imagine is surely on its way.

But when it comes…

I will remember rain-softened air on my skin and the way home and family smells. I will remember three o’clock in the morning conversations with God and the sure, slow work accomplished in me day after day. I will cling to him and trust him and wait for a shared hour after sunset with one who loves him also, for conversations to be savoured.

And thus, he will sustain me.