Lots to Update

Life's been picking up for us around here in good old Florida.

Last weekend it was a rockin' concert. We went to the Social in downtown Orlando, a small intimate club that's standing room only, to see Anna Nalick, by far one of my favorite chick artists, and now even more of a favorite: that girl is only 21 years old and can sing and write songs like . . . well, like something else. (Don't have time to come up with a simile that fits.) I told Kirk on the way there that I hoped she could actually sing and wasn't one of those people who can sound good in the studio but not in concert. I was not disappointed in the least. This girl is the real deal.

It was Anna's last night of a 2-year tour, so we settled in for what we knew would be a good, long set. She didn't disappoint. Not only is her band composed of all-male rockers, but they each look like they've stepped out of a Def Leppard or Metallica concert from the early '90s. Except for her. She's cute and vervy and petite and, man, can that girl sing. Not only that, but she commands the stage and her band. She even commands the audience. She has no problem responding to their yells and whistles, making jokes with herself as the object of tongue-in-cheek ridicule, and then telling people to pipe on down. In a good-natured, somewhat hilarious way, she kept us entertained for two hours.

Before she came on, the concert had opened with a set by a guy named Joshua Radin, whom neither of us had heard of but quickly learned a few things about: 1) His music airs regularly on Scrubs and Gray's Anatomy, 2) It sounds a lot like Elliot Smith and the whole Good Will Hunting soundtrack, 3) He hates it when people talk during his set, and 4) His music rocks. Preview and buy the whole brand-new album here.

Anna let us know before she sang her very last song that they weren't gonna bother with going off stage and hoping for an encore. She wanted us to know ahead of time that they were just gonna keep playing after the supposed last song because it was their last show and they were damned determined to make it last. So she included, among the three encore slots, a montage of impersonations of all the people she's opened for in the past two years, including Sting, Train, The Dixie Chicks, and, oh yeah, some guy named Aaron Carter that she'd never heard of before. The montage was hilarious. The concert lasted until midnight.

This past weekend, to move on forward, we got free tickets to the Night of Joy festival at the Magic Kingdom. It's basically private access to all the rides for about seven hours after the park closes to the public, filled with Christian concerts all over the place. I'd never been to Disney World before, but it really is just like Disneyland except some of the rides go a little slower. Oh yeah, without the Matterhorn or Indiana Jones.

It really brought back a million memories of home for me to be walking around that park.

Our friends Tom and Cindy, who had gotten us the tickets, made reservations at Cinderella's Castle for dinner to start things off at 5pm. Then we went on all the big rides, hopped through the VIP line to watch Casting Crowns, tried out Mercy Me, but then ditched their concert for the way stinkin' better one by David Crowder Band. Man, can that guy give a concert. I've never jumped around and sung so loudly at a concert in my life. (Well, maybe that's not true. I've jumped around and sung really loud at lots of concerts. Anna Nalick's included, in fact.) But I lost my voice anyway. It was great.

After the Night of Joy, we didn't get home until 3 in the morning, and I had to be at work at 9:30 the next morning. We were taping one of the last installments of a DVD that will accompany a workbook series for that big health book we're publishing in January.

And next weekend, it's the UCF football game for us. Life sure seems to be picking up forus around here, and we are having a blast.

Health How-To

Kirk's been sick for going-on-3-months now. I've caught the head cold he had last weekend. And here we sit, just the two of us and our two cats in our small little Winter Park studio. What are we going to do about our health?

Well, for one, we're going to keep taking our vitamins. Vitamin C and a daily dose of garlic pills are necessary components to healthful existence. (I promise the garlic doesn't make you smell, but you do taste it as it makes its way down your pipe!)

For two, we're going to be drinking lots of water. And I mean lots. Do you know the formula for how many ounces of water your body needs each day? Cut your weight in half, and there you have it. That means I have to drink four water bottles full a day, which I've begun to drink each day over the past week. I already feel a difference! In fact, I've been moving up to five and six bottles now that I'm on a roll and my body's begun to crave it!

Three, we're cutting out the sugars. This means Hot Tamales, Baskin Robbins, Panera bagels, and all soda drinks are out of the running for my daily flavor dose. But you know what I've noticed? Once you stop consuming so much sugar and start loading up on water, your body no longer wants that yucky refined sugarland of crud.

Following it up with four, which is that we're adding in all the good stuff. And I mean the really good stuff, like fruits and vegetables and almonds and soybeans and spinach salads and tuna sandwiches. Again, once you're off the sugar highs and on to these more sane choices, your body begins to crave them and love them.

And finally, we're gonna walk more. Winter Park is a lovely town. It's small and charming and historic and tropic. Just this week we parked our car down by the Scenic Boat Tour landing and walked all the way back to our neighborhood, back down historic Park Avenue, and then back over to our car -- 50 minutes of walking in all, filled with conversation, notice of cute homes and and cute dogs and the beautiful night sky above us, and the essential exercise and water routine we needed. It felt great!

So even though we've both been sick lately, I think we are on the mend. I feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin and clothes just from the last two week's worth of health attention, to tell you the truth. And we've made the maintenance of good health a priority component of our married life this year.

What Cats Do (Part 3)

(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.)

They get frisky when you sing.

Especially if you have a mid-range alto voice like mine and like to sing a capella in the mornings.

Here's what happens.

When I get up early enough in the morning to read the Bible (this doesn't occur often), I like to read the psalms. And as I'm reading, I inevitably come across -- or am reminded of -- a number of psalms that were made into old-school songs.

So I start to sing, at will and at random, sitting on my couch in my cotton striped pajamas, the Word of God propped open on my lap.

Next thing I know, Diva has hopped out of her blanket box over by the front door and is warily making her way across the room toward me. Then she's mewing at my feet. Next she's rubbing against my legs. Now she's staring up at me with those beautiful and plaintive sky-blue eyes.

I keep singing, only now my hand is stroking her back as I do it.

Within a few moments, Solomon, too, has lumbered off the foot of the bed and ambles over to where we sit. (He moves very slowly, because he is so large.)

He begins licking Diva around her ears. She, amazingly, lets him. He licks her chin. She licks his ears and nose. They're getting pretty cute and frisky with one another.

However, neither of them have the freedom to do anything about their urges, Mother Nature (a.k.a. The Doctor) having taken away their right when they were kittens, so all this exploration is for naught. They, however, never seem to remember this.

At some point, Solomon gets so excited that he throws his big right paw around Diva's neck in order to kiss her closer. However, Diva decides she has had enough. She swats him on the top of his flat black head.

Then begins the stand-off.

They stare at each other, her blue eyes locking with his copper ones in defiance. She's daring him to do anything about it, and he's not sure if he's gonna. After a few seconds' pause, she hauls off and swats him again, the pink pads of her dainty and snow-white paws smacking hard against his head with precision. He reels back and stares at her, incredulous.

"This 7-pound ringer's testing me?" I can hear him thinking, but slowly. "I weigh 3 times her size and could crush her -- or, even better, force her into submission!" This realization is all it takes for him to make an offensive move.

He lunges. She scrams. He warbles. She shrieks.

And my morning of meditative worship has come to an end.

First Week Finished

Wow, I can't believe how much I love what I am doing. Never before have I felt more fully utilized in a position, where a perfect intersection exists between my right and left brain.

The Left-Brain Me
When I was younger, I used to walk by banks and administrative offices, look in the windows and see all the office supplies and computers and paperwork on the desks, and think that I wanted to work in that kind of environment when I grew up. The environment here at Strang is just like that, and my job here in the Imprint Group is just like that, too: administrative in a fun way. There's lots of typing and inserting of changes and checking of documents for consistency, clarity, and correctness, and I love that part of my job!

But I'm a Right-Brain, Too
Then again, I also have a strong mind with great capacity for new ideas and how they should be structured and expressed. I wouldn't be satisfied with a job that was only data-entry or typing other people's words all day long. Thankfully, the even bigger part of my job involves working directly with manuscripts and making them even better.

Just today, for instance, I took the first chapter of a workbook that will accompany an important health book we're publishing in January, and I whipped that chapter into shape. The book it accompanies is dynamic and fun and inspiring, and I had to do a bit of work to make the feel of the workbook match the feel of the main book. I must say I'm pleased with the end result. (And Debbie was, too, which boosted my confidence in what I am bringing to this team.)

But Don't Forget: Relationships Are Priority One
When I was half-way through my term at Biola last year, limping along from the difficult writing class I had created for 100 honors freshmen, a very special girl in my life revealed the unique stamp God put on me.

"Christianne," she said, "don't compare yourself to all the other people you work with and the strengths they bring to the department that you don't." (She was speaking to their unified possession of PhD diplomas, compared to my measly BA.)

"From where I stand," she continued, "they're all the same, like black-and-white. But what you bring is color. You have a heart for people and their hearts that they need desperately to receive. So let your color shine!"

I'll never forget those words Hannah spoke. They're what helped me realize that God gave me a great heart and open mind and listening ears for the needs of others. It's a unique thing to be able to provide God's compassion and mercy and grace to people who need to feel His loving embrace, especially in places where a stellar performance is emphasized and in a world where nobody listens.

In the end, it's most important that I bring the love and authenticity of Christ to those I work with here -- both inside and outside the office, with coworkers and with authors. I want them to see His grace and mercy shining through my words, actions, and presence whenever they come around me, and I have great hope He's already begun planting those seeds.

My First Tropical Storm

Ernesto's headed this way, and my family is freaking out. Are you alive? Are you going to be okay? Please let us know how things are going. Is it going to go right through your town?

The thing is, I don't feel scared at all. Should I? I don't know. Kirk says maybe this is God's way of introducing me gracefully into the Land of Hurricanes and Great Big Storms. (It's true, we have the absolute best thunder-and-lightning storms I've ever seen in this place.) In any case, from my perspective it's just another chance to hear big bangs and see bolts of bright stuff in the sky, plus the sound of hard pounding on our roof.

Besides, it's only a tropical storm at this point, which isn't even on the hurricane radar scale. If it does move up to a category 0 or 1, I'll start to reconsider my laissez-faire opinion of the situation.

I guess the most interesting flurry that happened today had to do with all public schools being cancelled for tomorrow. We thought maybe that would mean we'd get to cancel work, too, but they quickly sent out a message saying "business as usual" for tomorrow. That's cool with me, since I'm having a blast at my job. That is, so long as I don't get swept off the road by a flood while I'm driving there or back again.

Lucky for my happy husband, his school classes are cancelled tomorrow, too. That means he doesn't have to study tonight and I can keep him all to myself. We're going to have ice cream and watch the third Harry Potter! In our penchant for all things Oxford, we rented all four DVDs this weekend and have been moving slowly through them.

Oh, and he just volunteered to take me to work tomorrow if I get nervous about driving. Sweet and thoughtful, isn't he?

Well, until next time: I love you guys, and please try not to worry.

First Day News

So, the big news today is that my boss -- the one I was so stoked about working under -- is retiring in two weeks. He let the team know last week, and Debbie let me know it was her job to let me know when we were on our way to lunch.

I'M SO BUMMED.

I really like my boss. Bert's a cool guy. He's about 5 feet tall, has a quirky personality, likes to rib people, but also gives them props when they deserve it. He's been in publishing for 32 years and has published 17 books of his own. He's huge in the Catholic church, too. I was looking forward to the conversations we might have shared, given the interest in the Episcopal (ie., more liturgical and sacramental) tradition Kirk and I have begun to have.

Oh, well.

Other than that, I'm going to love my job. The people are super nice and very talented, and everyone seems to really enjoy working for the company. I can already tell that the work they're going to put me on will challenge and invigorate me.

A New Era Begins

Tomorrow's my first day at my new job, and I must say that I'm quite ready and excited to get started. I didn't think I would be on the job track when I came to Florida, but it turns out to be a good thing for me for a few reasons:

1) I went from not writing at all to trying to be a full-time writer in one shot, and the long slate of open days has been a bit too daunting to be productive -- though some essay work and a new novel have come out of it, as well as more regularity on this blog.

2) I want an outlet for meeting new people and making new friends, and working by myself on novels and essays in my own home or at Panera is just not a realistic way to accomplish that. Besides, those kids working at Panera, even though they're used to seeing me around all the time, are just a bit too young for my taste. :)

3) I've come to see how much I enjoy being a part of something bigger than myself -- some kind of project or mission for which my skills and talents and abilities and personality can help make a difference. I like being part of a team that's working toward a common goal.

4) And besides, I just like working with the written word and other people.

So, tomorrow begins New Era #2. (The first was getting married and moving to Florida, obviously.)

Kirk's life is back on the fast track, too, with school and prospective coaching clients coming up, so now we'll both be focused and on point in our respective areas of life. The past few months have been a gift, though, with all the unending time together. It helped establish us as an "us" in our new life. Now we're ready to "go and do" with that foundation laid.

You can keep us in your prayers about the future.

Some of you know we have been thinking and praying toward a life of ministry in Oxford for over a year now, and it's become increasingly clear that that's where we're headed in the next 2-3 years -- at least, unless God drastically intervenes to direct us otherwise, but it seems quite clear all this has come from Him. We're beginning to take some material steps in that direction, and we would covet your prayers for continued clarity on the means and methods and timing for this.

Just so you know what we're thinking of doing, we may start with a 9-month program on missions and apologetics with Alister McGrath and Ravi Zacharias at the Oxford Study Centre. Since it's based at Wycliffe Hall, we'd have the two-fold privilege of being an active part of the college while in regular fellowship and community with Christians from all around the world. We'd also delve into practical missions work on a regular basis with those in the program and learn first-hand about the climate of faith in the United Kingdom.

After that is done, I feel very strongly that God is leading me to start a Ministry of Mercy for people in the city, residents and students, who are broken and need the healing touch of comfort from the Holy Spirit as He seeks to revive and reclaim their hearts. Kirk is also praying toward a ministry of availability and encouragement, so I guess you could say that both of us are being called toward loving people where they are, plain and simple.

Besides praying for us, please also keep in your prayers those whom we would touch through our life of ministry there. This is something I've just begun to do as well.

And that new step, of course, would be the start of New Era #3 in our life! Dear Lord, hear our prayer and guide us in Your sacred way all of our days in You.

More Church Good Stuff

Last night, Kirk and I decided against joining a creative class at Northland in favor of a Prayer & Praise gathering at All Saints. This church has gotten so under our skin and into our blood that we just couldn't wait until Sunday.

While we were walking up to the fellowship building, not sure which side was the entrance, an older lady, probably in her 70s, came up from the parking lot and offered to walk us in. Her name is Barbara, and she moved to Winter Park from San Bernardino, California, with her husband 13 yars ago. Of all the churches they've belonged to in their long lives so far, she said All Saints is her favorite. Her reason? The love and kindness of its members.

Nice.

Barbara introduced us to two of her friends, Bill and Angelina, also an older couple, who competed with her for the chance to sit with us during the service. When we sat down beside them, we learned that their daughter had just returned from working 3 years on her doctorate at Oxford, while their son used to run the contemporary praise service at the church.

Nice again. (And we can't seem to stop running into Oxford wherever we go!)

Lest you begin to think this church is full of old people, let me add that there were also lots of middle-aged and younger folks there, too. It seems a good spread, in all.

When Father Rob got up to speak, we entered into the second best part of the evening (the first being all the friendly people), as he began a sermon sprinkled with references to Dallas Willard, Celtic Christianity, Ruth Haley Barton, and C. S. Lewis, all of whom are on our hotlist of "approved theological fodder." Plus, he shared a lot about Jesus -- always a good sign, right?

In the view of this new rector, the vision of life is all about the kingdom of God -- growing it, living it, and learning to enter into it. It's about a lifelong journey of transformation.

We couldn't agree with him more.

In the Bag

Well, I got the job.

You are now reading the blog of the newest associate editor of the Imprint Book Group at Strang Communications. You may start your congratulations adulations now.

Check out my new boss. He's super-cool and about 5 feet tall. I'm really looking forward to learning all I can from him and adding all I can of my quality dynamite zest to his team.

Speaking of Bert's team, it consists of 3 people: him, me, and Debbie. Debbie is the editor, I'm the associate, and Bert is the editorial director. Together, we'll put out titles in three imprint groups all year. The imprints are:

• Siloam, offering titles in alternative health from a Christian perspective;
• FrontLine, which discharges political and social justice views; and
• Realms, their new fiction imprint with a supernatural flair.

Debbie does most of the work with Siloam; I think it is her "baby." They're interested in what I can add to Realms, and this excites me even though I don't read much of the kind of fiction they produce. I wanted to work in fiction when I started out toward the book business, and now it seems I'll finally get that chance.

(As a sidenote, I think they want me to help with Realms because I mentioned I write my own stuff. Sure, I have a few novels in the works, but I warned them my problem is I never finish anything. I just started a brand new story last week, for instance.)

Even though Strang publishes books and magazines that are geared toward an audience different than myself, I'm looking forward to what I can learn from this job. I'll not only get to groom my editorial skills far beyond where they've currently grown, but I'll also be working with a team I already like and feel great affection toward. Plus, working on stuff that challenges my own way of thinking and believing has a twofold benefit: it can teach me something new and it can offer an opportunity for me to challenge others in their places right back.

So, here's "cheers" from me. I'm going to have a glass of wine in honor of myself tonight. I'm sure convincing Kirk to join me will not possibly be that hard. :)

God's Comic Genius

Some of you know, and some of you don't, that I've been looking for a job.

I sent almost 15 resumes into the void in the past month and waited over 3 weeks for a nibble. All told, I got 3 interviews: one from the first job I applied for, one for the last job I applied for, and one for a freelance job I applied for the same day as the first.

The freelance talk went well on Thursday. They need a proofreader for a Bible research book, the second in a series, and also someone to write a study companion guide to the first one they published last year. I enjoyed talking with the author, a successful businessman by trade, who is writing these books as a lay theologian because he believes God asked him to do it and to give all the proceeds away. Wow. I felt inspired when I left that meeting -- inspired enough to reduce my fee for the job when I sent them my bid.

The Friday interview was flawless and spirited and fun. I hadn't expected to interview with more than one person, but I ended up interviewing with three -- all at the same time. I liked all of them immensely and immediately, and I especially loved the work I was being considered to do: copyeditor for an imprint group at a book publishing house. It's just along the lines of what I was aiming to do when I left college, but didn't see much chance for finding without going straight to New York!

Mind you, copyeditor positions are the "lower end" of the editorial food chain, and I have tons more experience in higher-level editing. However, the group is growing, the chance for promotion is high, and the doors of opportunity are open. They were very accommodating, in fact, when I expressed concern that I might want to offer more input on the books than copyeditors usually provide. Great!

Besides liking them a lot, they spoke openly of their very keen interest in me. This was aided in great measure, it seems, before I even arrived by my performance on the 10-page editor's test I took and sent in before the interview -- a test I had great fun completing, though it was rigorous, and which they said was one of the best tests they've ever graded since they'd been grading them. They also seemed to get a kick out of the self-deprecating humor I exhibited about my professional foibles, as well as greatly respecting the personal strengths and accomplishments I could bring to the job.

The Monday interview, in contrast, went less well. I wasn't keen on what the job turned out to be -- copyediting (in the truest sense of the word, meaning little to no editorial heft with the authors) techical manuals about film and music production. The samples I saw were replete with illustrations of amplifiers, wires, and machinery. Blech.

Plus, the whole interview carried a negative tone. Most of the questions were directed toward professional failures, conflicts, and weaknesses, with a few positives thrown in here and there, and the department itself is young and underdeveloped. The turnover rate is high; even the supervisor has only been on hand for a mere 3 months. And the workspace is too open and interactive for my liking. I left that meeting with great relief that it was over and in hopes that they would not call me back.

But this left me in a vulnerable spot. The only full-time option on my hands -- and the one I wanted very much -- was the one from Friday. And even though they liked me, and were open about my being the strongest candidate, what if they didn't call me back?

Well, they did. They liked me so much, they even gave me a promotion before I started the job! (Instead of copyeditor, they offered me associate editor.) This is great timing, in my opinion, given a comment I just made to Kirk yesterday, which was, "If I get this job, I wonder how long it will take me to get promoted." Because I have a knack for expediting the promotion process wherever I go, and I always have promotional hopes in mind.

God is so funny. I especially think he's funny because of the way he took care of what I was "losing" from not wanting the full-time job with the other company: higher pay and a closer commute. It cracks me up that God made accommodations for me in these things anyway. Not close to my house or paying quite as high? Here, Christianne, take a promotion and pay raise before you even get started! Ha ha ha. That's freaking hilarious.

So now we're in salary negotiations for the new position, and I should have a job in hand by tomorrow evening. Here's hoping, anyway. I hate these money talks, and just hope I don't blow it in some way along the way!

All Saints

Kirk and I visited a new church last night, called All Saints, in downtown Winter Park. It's an Episcopal Church that we've felt drawn to visit for a while, even though neither of us is particularly interested in changing denominations.

We're so glad we went!

First of all, how can you help but fall in love with a church that looks like this?

Also, even though we were pretty lost through most of the readings in the service -- people were flipping through their Books of Common Prayer like they'd been doing it for years, which they probably had, and we sure hadn't! -- it was easy to close the book, put it back in the pew, and let the sacred and life-giving words wash over us, knowing that we affirmed them in our hearts along with all the other believers there beside us. We felt like we belonged to the body of Christ for real, even though we had no idea how the order of the service was progressing. We decided we're content to just be "learners" right now.

The biggest kicker of all is what we found out when the rector got up to speak: it was his first Sunday at All Saints, too! Apparently he was chosen after an extensive search for a new rector, and the coolest thing is that he took the transition in stride. He got up there and said right off the bat, "I've had a great day. You all have been so warm to welcome me to your community at All Saints." Kirk and I looked at each other and said (non-verbally, of course): "It's his first Sunday, too? Looks like we came at just the right time!"

About halfway through the service, Father Rob also mentioned that he'd been on a sabattical not too long ago in Scotland. What did he study? Nothing other than Celtic Christianity. And what saint did he learn most about? None other than Saint Columba, the same saint on whose feast day we were married in Ireland (because Columba was a great patron saint to both Ireland and Scotland)! When this happened, Kirk and I just looked at each other and laughed. We just couldn't stop! (Okay, okay, I admit that I'm the one who was laughing and I'm the one who couldn't stop. It was just too uncanny how at home we were made to feel in such a short span of time.)

Because the thing is, this Father Rob is all about the things we are about, too. He talked over and over about making our lives count for something greater than ourselves, about living for things that will last, about finding "the place of our resurrection" where we feel most alive because of how God created us. All of these are the same exact things Kirk and I have talked about for as long as we've known each other. We want to live for building the kingdom because it's the only thing that matters and the only thing that lasts. We want to help people rediscover their true hearts, the things that make them unique, the things they were created to do with their lives for God's glory and purposes. In other words, the things that make them come alive. And we are committed to helping each other come more fully alive in our ministry of love to one another.

So, it seems like a wonderful and mysterious thing has begun here. We have no idea what all of it means. We still aren't that interested in becoming Episcopalian. But we did love the feel of the church, the heart of the priest, the love of the body, the sanctity of the sacraments, and the legacy of the tradition. It made us feel like we were in the heart of England again, which is where we greatly desire to be placed in ministry someday soon. It made us want to learn more. It truly moved us.

In the meantime, we'll keep you posted on our progress at All Saints . . . and on the things we learn . . . and other stuff that's happening around here in Central Florida, a place that's become near and dear to my heart.

Two-Month Marker

On Wednesday, Kirk and I crossed into "two months married" land. We asked each other how it felt and discovered it felt much the same for both of us: surprising, in two directions. First, because time has flown so fast and we can't believe it's been two months since we exchanged our vows in Ireland. Second, because two months sounds so puny, compared to how we really feel about it, which is, like we've always been a "we."

So, some reflections.

I've learned that life in a marriage can be refreshing and sweet. Coming from one that was on the rocks from the get-go, and even before the get-go started, I can't tell you how filled with wonder and gratitude I feel at least a few times a week when I realize I'm living in what marriage was meant to be: a land that is sweet and clean and free and, well, nice. (I hesitate to use the word "easy" because people always say marriage isn't supposed to be easy, but it actually is easy for us, and at least 90 percent of the time, if not more. I think this has mostly to do with what I'm about to share next.)

After living 3,000 miles apart for a year, Kirk and I have spent the past 2 1/2 months nearly inseparable. We've had a lot more side-by-side time than most people get, what with the road trip and then the extensive time in Europe and our already pretty free lifestyle and then Kirk's 3-week illness that just ended. But in all that never-ending time together, we've rarely (and I mean rarely) needed our "space."

This amazes us. We've both lived the majority of our lives in need of frequent alone time and space, what with our shared introspective and introverted natures. Plus, we haven't heard of any couple, even friends, who have spent as much actual time together as we have in the past two and a half straight months without feeling worse the wear for it. We thought this could be because of living on two sides of the continent for so long, like we're making up for lost time and just want to soak up the shared energy as much as we can. But we actually shared lots of time together in the last year, with monthly visits ranging from 3 days to 6 weeks, and each of those visits were the same: unending time together, with the same results: enjoyment and lightness and sweetness and fun.

We just genuinely enjoy one another. That's the secret to married-life happiness, I've come to believe. That, and carrying around a great amount of care for the other person in your heart, which makes you want to hear them and do things for them and forgive them and share your real heart with them all the time. Oh, and being on the same page about life and what it means and where it's going. These past two months have blessed me with great evidence that we really are on the exact same page of life's book. What's more, the exact same line of the exact same sentence of the exact same paragraph of that page. Perhaps even the exact same word.

I never knew that could happen.

Plus, Kirk is just incredibly silly. This I already knew, but living in close quarters for two months has revealed the even greater extent of his silliness. (And, for that matter, mine.) He does impersonations, mostly of cartoon animals. He makes sound effects when telling stories. He's incredibly smart, which means he comes up with these amazingly snappy quips out of nowhere in the middle of a conversation, and they're usually quips that pull from some joke or experience we've shared in the past.

All this to say that we spend a fair share of our time together in laughter, and that can't help but be a good thing for anybody. I never knew humor could be so important. But I think, especially for someone like me, a person disposed toward serious thought and conversation for the whole of her life, humor is something I never realized I needed. It draws me out of myself. It lightens the air. It helps me worry less and live with more freedom. And this is especially a gift when it's given so gently, like the way Kirk gives it.

In Other News . . .

I just arrived in California for a visit! I flew in last night and am here until next Wednesday.

This is a precious gift of time to visit with family and friends for long stretches each day. I'm incredibly thankful! I'm looking forward to lots of card games with Mom, lunch at Miguel's with Beth, a special birthday breakfast with Dad, and loooong afternoons of good conversation with Sara, Kate, and Hannah.

Thank you, my sweetie, for this wonderful, generous gift. I know it is a sacrifice for you, but a sacrifice of love for the good of my heart. I feel so cherished by you.

Time for Lighter Fare

All this story-telling has made me tired. Lots of detours just to get to the main point, and I'm not even sure there is a main point anymore, at least without many more detours. Plus, the collection of essays I'm writing on the side of all this blog-writing traverses the much fuller landscape of my spiritual history, and the overlap is making me, well, dizzy.

I'm not about the put the scope of that other quite literally life-size tale on the pages of this blog. For one, blogs weren't designed for posts that size. For two, you'd surely grow weary of reading them, just because they would be long. (My regular blog posts are already too long by most blog standards. Just notice the length of this one as proof enough of this fact.) So, the full story's much more suited for a book. And besides, if you really want to read about how God astoundingly changed my life over the course of it, in the hopes that He'll do the same for you, you can go out and buy the book yourself once it is published.

So let's move on.

What I'd like to talk about now is how stories change our lives. What makes them move us? I'm reading a book right now, perhaps you've heard of it, called Life of Pi. Have you heard of it? It's about this kid who lives in India. His parents own a zoo. They aren't making much money on the zoo, so they decide to move to Canada. They take the animals with them, in order to disperse them to zoos in America, but while they're bobbing over the Pacific on a wooden cargo ship, the ship sinks and everyone drowns.

Everyone, that is, except the boy, a zebra, an orang-utan, and a psychotic hyena. Oh, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger. All squeezed together on a 100-square-foot lifeboat. With no land around and no one to save them for . . . well, I'm not sure how long yet because I haven't finished the book.

Here are a couple amazing things about this story.

1) The boy is devoutly religious, practicing Hindu, Islam, and Christianity with equal zeal, all. Simply put, this boy loves God with fervor and delight. This I find amazing for a couple reasons. First, I admire his love and zest for all things true and all things God. Second, it confounds me that he can hold each of these religions with complete devotion in his heart without seeing this as a contradiction in terms. And third, I'm learning more about Hindu and Islam than I ever knew before (which was, in actuality, nothing.) So I'm intrigued to understand more. Ultimately, I want to know more about this boy and how he puts the three worlds of his religion together in a package he can take to sleep with him at night.

2) As a rule, I don't enjoy stories about Eastern countries or wild animals. I'm not really into all that "jungle stuff." In fact, before I finally purchased this book, I had picked it off the shelves at Barnes & Noble at least five times in the past few years -- the length of time it has been a national bestseller -- trying so hard to care enough to buy it. I mean, everyone was buying it. And not in the same way everyone was buying The Da Vinci Code. You know what I mean?

I kept wanting it to be about math -- you know, something about the mysterious life of that good old 3.14 -- but every time I read the back it yielded the same old snapshot: young kid survives a boatsink and makes it to Canada with a huge Bengal tiger in tow, somehow. And, oh yeah, he practices Hindu, Islam, and Christianity as if all three of them are equally true.

I guess what I'm saying is amazing about this is that, if you're like me and don't go for these stories usually, the story holds a mesmerizing power that will reel you in and rivet you by page 30. Give it at least 30 pages, I say, and you'll finally get what all the hype is about. That's when it finally happened for me, at least.

Except hype would be an unfair word to use on this book. It is no hype. It is no hack work. It's purely and simply . . . beautiful. Beautiful in its language. Beautiful in its plunging dive into the animal kingdom, taking you with it into the compassion, true grit, and humor it takes to care for all those animals, one by one by one. And it's beautiful in its treatment of faith, quite honestly. I actually feel the holiness of God when I read this boy's thoughts about prayer, faith, and Jesus Christ, and even his love for all his other gods. And finally, I feel the beauty and pure dignity of human life when I read about the days of his life on that lifeboat. The thoughts he had. The things he saw. The pain he carried, knowing all whom he loved were dead. You can't put aside so easily the story of one whose story is like this. At least, I can't.

What Writing Means to Me (Part 3)

Journalism lasted less than a semester. Less than a week. Okay, if you want to get really technical about it, it didn’t even make it through the front door of my new college life.

That’s because the School of Journalism closed, suddenly and irrevocably, two weeks prior to my arrival. In favor of Theatre Arts. In a letter that hailed the new program on two sides of a memo but denounced the old one in fine print on the back. Did I want to join the new program instead, they wondered?

Of course I didn’t want to join the new program instead. I was, after all, a news writer with my integrity to uphold. (Who knows to whom my indignation here was directed. I had, ahem, just one semester of high school journalism behind me and a couple of years on the yearbook staff. Promising news life ahead, indeed.)

But one thing was certain. There was definitely no room in the very important plans I had in view for my life for traipsing around wooden stages in purple and green nylon stockings and big fluffy hats with feathers spouting out the top!

So I blundered my way into education instead and proceeded to spend the next two and a half of what I now deem wasted years doing . . . well, something. I must have been doing something those two and a half years I spent in that major, I’m sure, but all I remember now are a few of the kids I taught, a lesson plan I made about illustrating scenes from Goosey Goes to Market, and the many frustrating days I endured trying to explain abstract math concepts with the likes of hardened kidney beans, paste, and popsicle sticks.

I just wasn’t -- and never have been -- good at teaching young kids whose frames stop short of five feet tall.

And let’s face it. I just wasn’t -- and never have been -- interested in teaching young kids at all. I never knew how to talk to other kids my age when I was one of them, never hit upon the knack my sister innately had for baby-sitting and playing mommy to all the little kids down the block, and didn't really enjoy the company of wee ones. Why did I somehow think all that had changed when I got to college?

I don’t know. So goes the first set of “wasted years” in my life.

As a disclaimer for those quick-to-be-alarmed-at-anything-sounding-unorthodox types out there, let me be quick to point out that I know nothing is wasted in the hands of God. Those years weren't really wasted; it just feels like they were. He used that time in the classroom, I’m sure, to help those kids and myself. At the very least, he used it to show me at least one thing I am not and perhaps shine some rays of sunshine and love into the lives of those otherwise needy and lonely inner city kids with fathers in jail, uncles on bail, and brothers in hardened and streetwise gangs. And he used the next stage of my life -- the “writer poser” stage, into which we step next in our story -- to wrap me in the skin of a real aspiring writer, finally.

I thank God every day for the mercy He extended to me in leading me out of some darker -- and, albeit, somewhat embarrassing -- phases and into His marvelous light: the wide open fields of true and unimagined and unparalleled identity in which I now walk today.

Stay tuned for the next bit of news in this story of grace, coming your way later this week.

What Writing Means to Me (Part 2)

When I was in elementary school, it seemed like everyone knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. One time, in a conversation with friends, all the girls in my group said they wanted to be doctors or lawyers or teachers or moms. I remember being amazed they all had an answer, whereas I had never even considered the question.

I couldn't imagine the girls actually wanted to be the things they said they did. They hated school and all things school-related, so how could they want to do 10 more years of law or medical school beyond regular college, if they even went to college?

Whereas I, on the other hand, was the smart and capable and studious one in the group. I knew I could do school for a long, long time, and I knew I could make a career at something big and important in life, like law or medicine. Except I had zero interest in the sciences or being something like a big-shot scary lawyer. Hm.

So I started telling people I wanted to be the first woman president of the United States.

This is funny to me now, considering 1) I had no concept of politics, 2) if I did, I wouldn't have been interested, and 3) what could a 5th-grader possibly know about what it takes to run a country?

But, hey, why not shoot for the top, right?

I actually took this route because I didn't know writing could be a profession. Books were my life, and writing was my love -- just ask my family to tell you the stories, or maybe I'll tell you some later -- but it never crossed my mind that these could be a real part of my life in any real way beyond reading and my journal.

But then I discovered journalism just before I went to college, and I decided I was going to be the next Katie Couric. I was going to be an international correspondent, and I was going to be good. Chase all the "hard news" and stuff. All this, despite my never sitting down to read the newspaper on my own.

I think it had more to do with the smart-looking business suits and cute shoes than anything else, to be honest. But at least I was on the writing trail, and God wasn't done with me yet.

Stay tuned to hear what happened next . . .

What Writing Means to Me (Part 1)

I've been reading some stuff by Donald Miller again. I read his third book for the first time, Searching for God Knows What, which made me re-ponder a lot of things that are already important to me, like how to read the Bible as an unfolding narrative about real people and a real God, and about how propositional theology doesn't move or change people the way myth and story do.

Reading that book motivated me to re-read his second book, the one that made him famous, the one called Blue Like Jazz. And it's the first paragraph of Blue Like Jazz that I could re-read again and again and never grow tired of it because of its absolute beauty. I've only read the book twice, but I've read this first paragraph at least six times or more by itself. Here's what it says, and I hope you read it slowly and let it move you:

"I once listened to an Indian on television say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was because it meant you could swim in Him or have Him brush your face in a breeze. I am early in my story, but I believe I will stretch out into eternity, and in heaven I will reflect upon these early days, these days when it seemed God was down a dirt road, walking toward me. Years ago He was a swinging speck in the distance; now He is close enough I can hear His singing. Soon I will see the lines on His face."

The first thing I want to say about what writing means to me is that it means talking face to face with God on a blank page and saying the things that are true of Him in the best, most worthy way I know how. Writing, to me, means worship. It means telling the truth.

Find a Penny, Pick It Up

Have you heard they might get rid of the penny?

I guess it takes .014 cents to make one penny. That's 40 percent more than the penny is worth. So it's not very profitable to make them. And that's money better spent on something more important, like our growing national deficit, I guess. So, thus the consideration.

Poor old Abe.

Kirk and I decided that at least one group of professionals would suffer from this move: chiropractors. With that many less people bending over to pick up pennies on the sidewalk, that's a whole bunch of people no longer in need of back care.

Poor old chiropractors.

At Long Last!

I’ve been wondering how best to write about our honeymoon. I mean, let’s face it. How do you distill the most intense, emotional, energizing, intimate, and imaginative experience of your life into a few short stories with humor, meaning, and grace? It’s hard, and I’ve been tongue-tied at the thought of even trying it.

But since I want to share some stories and you want to see some pictures, here’s my attempt to do it justice. Note that these entries don’t begin to get inside what I feel when I think of the time Kirk and I shared these moments together. But for now, I guess these descriptions and photographs will just have to do.

King and Queen for a Day . . . or Three

After a whirlwind of travel and our beautiful wedding ceremony, Kirk brought me to Ashford Castle for a few days of rest and rejuvenation. I could hardly believe we were staying in a castle! Take a look at these gorgeous environs:

This formerly private residence has been converted into one of the leading small hotels in the world, where the likes of Ronald Regan, Mel Gibson, Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe, Robin Williams, Pearce Brosnan, and Jane Seymour, to name a few, have stayed. And when it was a private residence, it used to house the Guinness family -- you know, the people who make that thick draft beer that tastes like molasses. (Blech.)

While we were in Ashford, Kirk and I enjoyed some walks along the nature trails on the property, some of which wend their way through forests or encircle the private lake. We also enjoyed a thunderstorm, a few sumptuous meals in their restaurants, and our spacious private chamber that made us feel like a real king and queen!