I'm sitting at my computer listening to the latest Over the Rhine album, Drunkard's Prayer, trying to process what has happened this last week. Our lives have turned completely around and are heading in a direction I never expected, only dreamed of. After turning down Jews for Jesus and planning to strike out on our own, I feel almost euphoric at the possibilities. I don't regret the last year at all, maybe just the debt we've incurred (I regret that a lot), but I feel completely liberated and ready for our next family adventure.
Although we are nervous about jobs and supporting the family, we are very excited about living in a brand new place and living closer to Mindy. There are so many great things about Louisville: archery ranges in the city parks, photography classes at the park district for $52, getting to eat at Lynn's Paradise Cafe whenever I damn well please; that's the life for me!
I'm on a daily e-mail list that sends me a devotional from the Bruderhof Community. One day this poem was on there. I just fell for it. It's beautiful.
To Jesus in the Spring
Oh, break the chrysalis of doubt!
Plough up the clods of thick despair
And split the buds of ignorance,
And cleanse the winter-heavy air.
Create a tumult in our hearts!
Drive us to seek what we have lost,
Until the flame of faith again
Has seared us with thy Pentecost.
Jane Tyson Clement
Friday, April 15, 2005
Friday, April 01, 2005
Anxiety or PMS?
It's 1:48 a.m. Last night I was up to nearly 3:30 a.m. I kept thinking about the future. What if we're rejected by Jews for Jesus? What if we're accepted? How are we going to survive that plane ride to San Francisco with Phoenix on our laps? I am so absolutely sleepless!
Tonight I started thinking about Phoenix and how amazingly cute she is. How when she walks she looks like a plumper, hairier, smaller version of Mr. Burns. She sticks her neck out and raises her arms up to her chest and totters along, bouncing off walls and tables and whatever random people are in her line of sight at the time.
All of a sudden I thought, she won't be like this forever. She won't always walk up to me and lay her head on my knee, or chew on my bare toe while I watch Will & Grace, or try to sit on my head when I'm lying on the floor to play with her. But the walking, watching her walk, swelling with pride and bursting with laughter at her clumsy toddler antics, this is what I will miss. And I just started to ache inside. I don't want these images to ever leave my memory. But what if they do? So I told Mike we have to get a video camera. We've already gone over a year with nary a video image of our girl to show for it. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. But of course we can't get a video camera. Not yet. I suppose we could borrow one. I just have to capture that walk. That insatiable curiosity, that absolute ownership of the world around her. I will miss this baby so much.
So I got out of bed and got on the computer and opened my old Outlook Express e-mail account, so I could look through my old e-mails and pull out the stuff I had written about Phoenix. I don't want to forget anything. But the first 6 weeks aren't there. They must have been on an old computer. I just got so scared that I would forget how she amazes me every day.
Like a few weeks ago my friend Becky gave Phoenix and I a ride to Bible study. Phoenix was in the back seat with Becky's two daughters, Cami and Natalie. Natalie is maybe 7 months younger than Phoenix. And she hates the car seat with a searing evil hatred. She cries the whole time she's in it. So Phoenix is in her own car seat which she does not hate with a searing evil hatred and she is looking at Natalie with such compassion and concern, and she actually holds her hand! And keeps looking at me, like she wants me to tell her what to do to help this poor baby feel better. It was so sweet. Then there was the time she walked by the pastor's baby girl, Elizabeth, and plucked the Nuk right out of her mouth and kept walking, like she had just been given a flyer for a tarot card reading on a street corner. They call her the "Drive-By."
She has many dimensions, my girl, and I pretty much love and adore each of them. Even her rage hits a soft spot in me, and it is hard not to laugh too obviously at her.
I still can't believe she's all mine. I am surprised every morning when she wakes up screaming, still with us, healthy and whole and charged with life. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that God can be this good, when I've believed so many other terrible things about him. That he would give me a gift so priceless and rare and fragile as this baby girl, when I so obviously deserve so much less.
Tonight I started thinking about Phoenix and how amazingly cute she is. How when she walks she looks like a plumper, hairier, smaller version of Mr. Burns. She sticks her neck out and raises her arms up to her chest and totters along, bouncing off walls and tables and whatever random people are in her line of sight at the time.
All of a sudden I thought, she won't be like this forever. She won't always walk up to me and lay her head on my knee, or chew on my bare toe while I watch Will & Grace, or try to sit on my head when I'm lying on the floor to play with her. But the walking, watching her walk, swelling with pride and bursting with laughter at her clumsy toddler antics, this is what I will miss. And I just started to ache inside. I don't want these images to ever leave my memory. But what if they do? So I told Mike we have to get a video camera. We've already gone over a year with nary a video image of our girl to show for it. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. But of course we can't get a video camera. Not yet. I suppose we could borrow one. I just have to capture that walk. That insatiable curiosity, that absolute ownership of the world around her. I will miss this baby so much.
So I got out of bed and got on the computer and opened my old Outlook Express e-mail account, so I could look through my old e-mails and pull out the stuff I had written about Phoenix. I don't want to forget anything. But the first 6 weeks aren't there. They must have been on an old computer. I just got so scared that I would forget how she amazes me every day.
Like a few weeks ago my friend Becky gave Phoenix and I a ride to Bible study. Phoenix was in the back seat with Becky's two daughters, Cami and Natalie. Natalie is maybe 7 months younger than Phoenix. And she hates the car seat with a searing evil hatred. She cries the whole time she's in it. So Phoenix is in her own car seat which she does not hate with a searing evil hatred and she is looking at Natalie with such compassion and concern, and she actually holds her hand! And keeps looking at me, like she wants me to tell her what to do to help this poor baby feel better. It was so sweet. Then there was the time she walked by the pastor's baby girl, Elizabeth, and plucked the Nuk right out of her mouth and kept walking, like she had just been given a flyer for a tarot card reading on a street corner. They call her the "Drive-By."
She has many dimensions, my girl, and I pretty much love and adore each of them. Even her rage hits a soft spot in me, and it is hard not to laugh too obviously at her.
I still can't believe she's all mine. I am surprised every morning when she wakes up screaming, still with us, healthy and whole and charged with life. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that God can be this good, when I've believed so many other terrible things about him. That he would give me a gift so priceless and rare and fragile as this baby girl, when I so obviously deserve so much less.
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