Here I Stand

On Sunday night, Kirk and I lay down to sleep through the merciful release of prayer. We had come to that moment through a lot of internal striving in the previous week about Big Things, mostly circling around career and calling. Many good options lay in front of us, but which are the best ones? Which have we been holding onto because of our own designs and desires, rather than the design and desire of God? And within His plans, how do we keep ourselves from clutching too hard, from running too quickly in the wrong direction once He shares His intention with us? What, truly, does it mean to live in Him, through Him, and for Him?

Last week I wrote about fleeing Christ, and I opened that post with a stanza from a hymn we sang in corporate worship. I had come to that church service exhausted and discouraged. The discouraged part came from having received the first four responses to my survey for SC (which is shorthand-speak for the name of my business), and these four responses provided somewhat unfavorable data on the whole. This naturally led me into a downward spiral of questioning myself and what I am doing and whether it's something other people want or even need. (Though Kirk was good to remind me that four responses do not quite make up a representative sample of the whole.)

The exhausted part came through all the spinning and churning and twirling that my mind had been caught up in for so long over SC, trying to make each step that I took be exactly right and trying to understand every parameter it could possibly touch. My mind was exhausted from so much spinning and churning and twirling, and yet I didn't know how to get myself out of it.

When I talk about fleeing Christ, then, it shows up so glaringly in this place: when I run from Him to the power of my own mind, trying to contain all the power and wisdom that will make my life work and cause it to make some semblance of sense. And which ultimately leads to the utter ruin and exhaustion of my spirit. And which, really, is where I spend most of my time.

Thankfully, God was gracious enough to let me see that this had become the pattern of my recent days. He nudged me, asking if this was where I'd stand, if this was where I would root myself forever. I shrugged my shoulders at Him, my head hanging down, so tired but acknowledging that I heard Him and that He must know a better way because He is God, after all, yet knowing myself utterly incompetent to learn what that way was, much less how to get myself there. Gently, He disclosed to me the words of the next stanza:

I will not boast in anything,

No gifts, no power, no wisdom.

But I will boast in Jesus Christ,

His death and resurrection.

As I lifted my voice to sing these words, I knew there was something to them. Something important that I couldn't quite grasp. Something beyond the width and length and breadth of my own mind's landscape. It was, literally, out of my mind.

Yet I further confess that I don't always know what these words mean, to boast only in Christ's death and resurrection. Sometimes this notion strikes me as ethereal and ultimately paralyzing, since you can't really live rooted in that one place. If you spent all your time boasting about Christ, how would you get anything done? How would you actually live life? And isn't it our gifts, our power to act, and our wisdom to make decisions that get us through each day as living beings? And didn't God give us those gifts, that power, and what wisdom we do have, anyway?

Despite my incomprehension of this truth, I took it into myself and made it my prayer. Lord, help me to learn what it means to boast only in Jesus Christ. I wasn't sure if God would answer this prayer, and I really had no idea how He would answer it, if He did. But I kept asking, and on went the rest of the week. I continued to receive survey upon survey, with your generosity and the power of word of mouth spreading it like wildfire, and yet as more and more surveys came back, the greater grew my conviction that something in there was wrong.

Here is where I will confess two things. First, that my marvel at the beauty of the human spirit, and particularly the feminine spirit, runs so deep that I have been pursuing how to make SC all things for all people, even transcending religious boundaries, upon the conviction that helping any woman get more in touch with her true heart, no matter her current, previous, or future walk of life and no matter her religion or core beliefs, still helps her get closer to God. If we believe Him when He says He cares most about the heart and that it is through the heart that we spill open the wellspring of life, then getting closer to the truth of our hearts ultimately gets us -- all of us -- closer to Him, and I have wanted to be a part of helping that happen. I trusted that He could take care of the rest, meaning all the religious particulars that would unfold from that point forward, because He's just that big and sovereign enough to handle it.

My second confession is that I have gotten quite far in developing SC without having any real knowledge of the content, the actual questions each woman will sit with that will help her spill open that wellspring of life in the first place. This has been a challenge for me, especially in the way I need to use language to communicate with other people about what SC is about. Usually I end up saying something like, "It's about helping women understand their lives, where they have been and where they are going, in light of how they were uniquely created to live." Except that doesn't really get at the heart of it, isn't anywhere close to what I mean it to be, and usually just winds up making people think it's about finding one's purpose in life, particularly in relation to work.

What's really quirky to me about this whole situation is how clear I am on everything else: the context, the format, and even the look and feel of the actual product. I know how all these elements will work together to help facilitate the SC experience and what SC is about, except I still hadn't been able to quite articulate what SC was about.

This all came to a head through the SC survey. In creating it, I had to settle upon a language around which to base all the questions. Because I was still attempting to make the audience as open and far-reaching as possible, this made it challenging. (This is also no doubt why articulating, even to myself, what SC is about had become quite the challenge.) So I elected to use more general terms for the base of the questions: "self-awareness" and "personal reflection."

Yes, self-awareness is one of the SC values, and yes, personal reflection is an integral part of the discovery process a woman will go through . . . but, really, those phrases do not fully incarnate the heart of it all, likely because they're so firmly rooted in the self. There's no transcendence there. And the more the surveys went out and came back in, the more I could feel in my gut that this was a problem. SC is not meant to be earthbound, I was slowly coming to see and embrace. But what, in fact, was SC meant to be?

Remember that all of this was taking place last week, after I had prayed that prayer of release in church, the prayer that asked God to teach me how to boast in Jesus, not myself. And remember that the beginning of this post started by saying that it was this past Sunday night, about a week after that hymn prayer, that Kirk and I fell into bed in prayer, asking God to help us let go of the parts of our lives we were directing ourselves in favor of letting them truly be directed by God.

One of the things I let go of on Sunday night was SC. Confessing that I have no idea what this is supposed to be about, and knowing that He was the one who had called me to do it in the first place, I told Him that I was handing it over and would just stand before Him and wait. I would wait to receive it back from Him, if indeed He wanted to give it back, and I would listen closely for His voice, not my own, telling me what it should be.

Remember, too, that Sunday was the day I had that pivotal and paradigm-altering conversation with my bro-ham Bobby, much of which circled around my desire to write. So that night, when Kirk and I fell into prayer, I did the same thing with my written words. I gave them back to God. I told him, Here, you can have them. As much as I want to do this, and as much as I think I probably can, you meant my words for Yourself when You gave them to me. If you want to do something more with them, then give them back to me Yourself. I will stand here and wait. I will listen, also, to what stories You want those words to tell.

That night, I tossed and turned fitfully, drifting in and out of sleep and never fully falling into dreamland until 4:30 in the morning. (This is probably due to my drinking three mugfuls of hot black tea right before going to bed!) But in the middle of all that fitfulness, I heard a voice that was wholly other in a still, small place.

Soul care.

I went wide awake and listened closely, and then I heard it again.

Soul care.

"Soul care," I said aloud, acknowledging I had heard it. Of course. That's exactly what SC is about. That's what it's been about all along, just without my knowing it. It's so completely true and at the heart of it. I can't believe I never noticed that. (And no, "SC" as a name had no previous relation to the term "soul care" at all; it's a combination of two wholly other words.)

And now, for me to consider SC in light of soul care, I'm aware how far I have to go. How much I have to learn. How much I still don't know. I'm still keeping this a matter of prayer, asking God if that was indeed His voice that I heard in that silent night, still standing before Him and waiting, but preparing myself for an even longer haul that may include another degree here or here. And, of course, this also answers the question of religion: SC truly is meant for Christian believers alone, helping facilitate the soul's movement up toward God.

Later the next day, as I washed the dishes after dinner, I stood there praying with God about the other concern: my writing. I'm still standing here, God, I affirmed to Him again, waiting for what You will reveal. And as I stood there sudsing up the glasses, washing them clean under all that hot water and then standing them up to dry on the dish towel on the counter, I heard Him talk back to me:

Why not share what I've been up to? Why not share about this whole long journey I've been taking you on for the past ten years, all with an aim to more fully capturing your whole heart? Why not talk about you and Me together?

Hm. This is certainly something I had considered before, but had always discounted it for a later time because it all still seems so fuzzy. To be truthful, writing this blog for the past year and a half has been quite instructive in teaching me my method of writing. When I hit upon something important that needs to be said, things usually stew around on the inside for a couple days without any words until -- suddenly, as if hit with a beam of light -- it all becomes clear in an instant. I see the post unravel itself from beginning to end, telling me how the story most wants to be told, and then I sit down to write it. These more significant and weighty posts take a long time to write, sometimes a couple of hours (this one has taken seven hours so far . . . ), but I've learned from this blogging experience how I work: I incubate, then I see it in a flash, and then I compose it line by line, sentence by sentence, one paragraph at a time.

I suppose through this blog experience, then, I've assumed that the writing of a book would happen in the same way. Every writer on the planet has a different way of doing things, and this must be my way. And since it is such a much larger project, I figured the stewing process would just take a much longer time, which is why I hadn't sat down with any flash of inspiration for a book idea these days. It's all still just incubating around in there, I thought.

Monday night, however, I got a different sense about all this. Perhaps the writing of my spiritual journey is a journey in and of itself, something God wants the two of us to embark upon together. Perhaps the mystery of the process is intentional because it grows my active dependence on Him. And perhaps that dependence is part of the point. Perhaps that dependence is, really, what it means to boast in Christ.

My Bro-ham

This is my brother Bobby. He grew up setting fields on fire and stalking trick-or-treaters in camo gear with his best friend. He grew up mouthing off at teachers and skating by with Cs and Ds, even though IQ tests scored him as a genius (and way smarter than me, I might add) when we were tested for the gifted student program. It was probably no surprise to anyone when I, the overachieving, people-pleasing one, jumped at the chance to study with the smart GATE kids but Bobby spurned the notion.

When I caught up with him in high school, a genius of a different sort emerged. We found out Bobby is a musical genius. He picked up and mastered the bass guitar and drums in something like a week, flat, each. Then, when he moved on to the acoustic guitar shortly afterward, his genius accelerated him to pulling sounds out of the body of that musical soundboard within weeks, when it would have taken someone much older many years to even approximate those techniques.

Bobby then moved on to writing his own songs, spinning them out of his soul like they'd been lodged in there for a lifetime, like they'd been waiting with bated breath for a key that would turn a door and set them free. One of my fondest memories of high school is falling asleep many nights to the soft strumming sound of his guitar and the lyrical words falling from his lips in the room next door.

While I have watched Bobby with admiration much of my whole life, I have often watched him from afar. When we were younger, this was because he was larger than life, both in body and temperament. As we got older, this distance became more subtle. Although we would talk over coffee or on the phone quite extensively about his love life or his career, I kept my own self at a distance, much to my own shame and sadness. As has been the case with many of my relationships, I have always found it much easier, not to mention natural and invigorating, to ask questions, to probe, to encourage and to cheer, while finding it excruciatingly painful to put my own heart on the line. I have always been afraid to find out someone doesn't understand me or, worse yet, doesn't care.

This morning, something about that pattern broke in my relationship with Bobby. I had woken with a feeling of "down-ness" that had been descending for about a week, and I wanted someone to talk to but didn't know who that could be. Kirk was alseep, having finally gotten there after a night of restless wakefulness himself, and it was too early to call my mom or my friend Sara or my friend Kate. When I checked my e-mail and found a note from Bobby, who was answering the family e-mail chain about our plans for Christmas, I saw that he had posted the message just five minutes earlier. Hmm, I thought, then picked up the phone.

I'm so glad I did. We spent the first part of the conversation catching up on his work news, what he and his lovely girl Ana have been up to, and all the silly fun they've been having with their dogs. When he turned the tables and asked how I've been doing, I could have demurred or begged off as fine, saying that there was not much news here. Except that wasn't true, and I had called him for a reason, believed perhaps even God had arranged the moment (since I had cried out a frustrated prayer to God earlier about not knowing what to do with all these feelings in this place, nor how to make any sense of them). And besides all that, I wanted to just plain trust my brother with my heart in a way I'd never done before.

So I plunged in. I told him about my ambivalence this week about my life's work, how I feel straddled between the business and my writing, how I'm not sure where the business idea is going or if it's even good anymore, how I want with all my heart to just write books for a living but worry that it's a self-absorbed or bastardizing process to write about my own life, which is what I really want to do more than anything.

Bobby was amazing in that place. I have to say he impressed me, that he really stepped up when I actually gave him a chance to do so. He got so excited for me, sidestepping the business questions completely and jumping right into my writing life. "What do you mean by self-absorbed," he asked. "And did you really just say 'bastardized'?"

He told me that he could hardly contain his excitement for me to write, that he had goosebumps just thinking about a book I needed to read that might encourage me in this place. He said he thought I was trying to compress too much, that I was trying to write my whole life in one book instead of breaking it up into chapters, and how the chapters could form whole books in and of themselves. He told me I didn't need to apologize for my life or my experiences, that I didn't need to answer to anyone else about my take on things and the way I've perceived the world through my experiences in life, and that maybe all this could be of some encouragement to someone else, the same way some books I'd been telling him about have encouraged me.

Finally he said, "If you decide that writing books is going to be your bread and butter, the way that you put food on the table for the rest of your life, I don't ever want to hear you apologize again about making money for doing it or calling it a bastardizing process. Chris, I hate to say it, but you just need to get over yourself. This is so not about you."

It was so, so great to talk with him like this. Even when I was getting schooled by his lecture. :)

In other news, he called back later to tell me he and his girl Ana had gotten engaged! This is so funny because he had been talking me about her this morning in such a lovey-dovey way, and afterward Kirk asked me when we would likely hear about the engagement. It turns out that when I called Bobby this morning, he had just been putting the finishing touches on a letter to this lovely girl, and our two-hour conversation had stalled him back a bit. Even still, it worked out beautifully for him to ask her to marry him at just the perfect moment a bit later in the day, and now they are happily engaged. I couldn't be more thrilled!!

Congratulations, Bobby and Ana. I'm so proud of you, bro-ham. And a great big welcome to the family, Ana. You so belong here with all of us. That is due in great measure, of course, to your kookiness, which so perfectly matches all of ours. :)

Aren't they a beautiful couple?!

Meeting Lauren Winner

Lauren Winner came to RTS Orlando yesterday to speak about her book Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity. (This is the same seminary Kirk and I happened to visit last week, which we decided was excellent timing on our part, as we hadn't visited the campus in quite some time and only happened to learn of her visit when we stopped to purchase some books at the bookstore!)

I first came to know Lauren Winner as most people did: about five years ago, with the release of her first book, the spiritual memoir Girl Meets God. I love this book for so many reasons, some of which include her honesty, her love for books and learning, her facile use of language, her transparency about her foibles as a young twentysomething, her deep exploration of spiritual territory, and, of course, how she translates a greater fullness to our faith through the medium of our Jewish heritage. I particularly love that this integration is delivered through the story of her own personal journey into Judaism, out of Judaism into Jesus, and her consequent struggle to understand Christianity in light of the Jewish faith.

It had been some time since I'd read Real Sex, having skimmed the entire book while taking a leisurely afternoon at the local Barnes & Noble Cafe back home a couple years ago, so I looked forward to a refresher talk on her perspective about sex, chastity, and our relationship to our bodies within Christianity.

More than that, though, I just looked forward to hearing her speak -- seeing how her personality on the page translates into real life, given the ideas you tend to gather about a person as you hear them share about themselves inside a book.

To the extent that you can gain real glimpses of a person through a one-hour lecture and a book signing, I will say that Lauren Winner appears to be one of the most articulate, thoughtful, intelligent, studied, feisty, yet down-to-earth 31-year-olds I have ever met. My respect for her increased by the minute as she shared with great candor about how she came to write the book and with even greater candor about what she would do differently if she could write the book all over again. I was particularly moved by her genuine grief that the book does not include any discussion about sexual violence, which she shared was a complete and grievous oversight. I also loved hearing her riff extensively on the many subjects that were raised as she fielded questions from the audience.

I could have listened to her talk all day long.

All of this would have been thrilling enough, but then I got to meet her. I confess I was nervous. Wouldn't you be nervous, too, if you got a few minutes of face-time with an author who has influenced you tremendously and with whom you feel a one-sided kinship when you read their books? I hemmed and hawed in my head about what to say. Should I say her book changed my life? Should I confess that I wrote and mailed her a letter back when I finished Girl Meets God for the first time? Should I dare ask to take a picture? Should I just let her sign the book and move on?

Thankfully, I was fifth in line, so I got to watch what other people did and then how she responded. Yes, she was gracious about taking pictures. Yes, she would listen to what individuals wanted to share. Yes, she would respond to new questions, and even extensively, settling back into her seat and gesticulating with her hands as she gained momentum in thinking about a new idea. She was adorable.

So, I braved it all. I told her that Girl Meets God changed my world, that along with Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott it was the first book to help me settle more into my own skin as a writer sharing about my spiritual journey. I told her about that letter I had written many years ago, how I had sent it care of her publisher without knowing if they would even forward it on to her, and how I had been compelled to write it because her book had raised so many thoughts and feelings in me about questions I'd already been asking myself about pursuing an academic path. This last part caught her interest, so we talked for a few moments about it.

And then to top it off, when she agreed to take a picture, she noticed my purse. It's a small vinyl magazine bag with classic leather books printed all over it. I get so many comments about this purse, and people are amazed when I tell them Kirk found it for me at Borders for something like ten bucks. But a comment on this purse from Lauren Winner? Nothing quite like it.

Here's Lauren, listening to me regale her with stories about my life. As you can see, she is a most gracious and present listener.

This is me, just plain happy to be sharing a moment with the amazing Lauren Winner.

Fleeing Christ

Behold the Man upon a cross,

My sin upon His shoulders.

Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice

Call out among the scoffers.

Two years ago on Easter weekend, I participated in what has become a yearly observance at my home church in California: a day of mourning on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the day when the disciples had no idea what the heck had just happened and no notion of what lay ahead in the days (and centuries) to come. All they knew was what they had seen: the One they had followed was gone. All they had staked their life upon had, quite literally, expired.

On that Saturday, my home church clears out all the seats in the sanctuary so it is simply a vast, open space lit only by candles. Six stations are available for you to move through at your own pace. On this day of mournful identification with the disciples in their grief, the first place you stop is a remembrance station. Here, you take a colored stone from a vase, sit with it in your hand as you contemplate Christ and what His life has meant to you, and then cast the stone into a bowl of water. The second station is a confession booth, where elders and pastors receive your words of contrition and offer the liberation of absolution. Yet another station provides a table covered in mural paper, as well as crayons; you draw what your words cannot express. The final station is a large wooden cross draped in red cloth, planted center stage, where you grieve the loss of Christ and the terrible crucifixion He endured.

I know it's a strange time to be talking about Easter, it being November and all, but as I sang the words to the hymn quoted above at church last night, I was reminded of one particular station I visited on that Saturday two years ago, the sin that was revealed to me in that place, and how closely I still abide it.

At the particular station I'm talking about, we were asked to put ourselves into the shoes of one of the followers of Jesus, encouraged to really try to capture the thoughts, feelings, doubts, regrets, and grief they may have been carrying around in their hearts on "the day after." We were to write those impressions on one side of a piece of paper, then turn the paper over to journal our response and reflections on that experience, speaking to how it became personal.

I chose Peter. The one who loved Jesus fiercely but ran away in the eleventh hour. The one who correctly called Jesus the Christ but then denied having had anything to do with Him when push came to shove. As I sat there on the floor that Saturday two years ago, surrounded by candles and scraps of paper and pencil nibs, as well as a handful of other believers exploring that same space, I realized that I dwell not so far from Peter's folly. I, too, campaign with zeal for Christ when I am near Him. And yet, how quickly I flee from before Him, how immediately I mock Him, if not with words then with actions or inaction.

I have more specifics to share about this, more to say about how fleeing Christ currently shows up in my life and how He's inviting me deeper than my fear. For now I will simply say that He is patient and He is loving and He is kind and He is wondrous, and all of this so graciously so. Praise God, truly, for that.

Sparkly Lip Gloss Sure Helps

I found two lip gloss sticks in an old purse I haven't used for a while. Both of them are sparkly and shiny, and one of them even has a yummy smell and faint yummy taste! The other one has a thicker consistency and is great for dressing up the oh-so-serious lipstick . . . perfect for making you feel like a doll even when you're all grown up. What's even better is that I think I scored one of these lip glosses in an Estee Lauder free gift package and the other one for a buck at Target. I think I'll be trolling soon for more $1 lip glosses at Target.

The other thing that helps bring on the girl these days are cozy red sweaters. It's been cool like fall here finally, so out came my thick, knitted red cardigan from the Loft that I haven't worn since last winter. With the bulky red cardigan paired with my tan khakis and some sparkly gloss, today I feel wrapped in cozy, girlie love.

Outdoor Explorers

Kirk and I had the afternoon free on Friday. For the first time in a long while, we chose to spend it outside. We shucked through the McDonalds drive-thru, picked up our hamburgers, cokes, and fries, and headed out to a local seminary where we could sit at a picnic table by a lake and feel the wind blow through our hair. This particular lake is dark and choppy—very Northern—and we could see the wind blowing through the hanging moss “hair” of the cypress trees, too. It was quiet and peaceful, with different birds clucking and cacking in the air and no other sounds at all.

Then we discovered a giant anthill under our table, and many ants crawling our legs, so we headed to the bookstore and browsed around for an hour.

The next morning, we decided to go on a hike. Kirk knew a great place about forty-five minutes away. We pulled on our faded jeans and hiking shoes and headed on out with the windows rolled down, all the fresh fall air whipping in and out of the car and us crying, “I can’t believe how insanely gorgeous this day is!” about once every two minutes. It was divine.

We pulled up at the trailhead, signed our names in the guestbook recorder, and then stepped onto the trail. Kirk relinquished his camera to my ever-curious eyes, and I stopped every few steps to photograph some new view.

Entrance to the hiking trail.

Trees that look like nymph ladies dancing.

Cool tree bark.

This was going great for about ten minutes . . . until we discovered the spiders. At first it was just a thin, medium-sized web high above our heads on the trail with a bulbous, small-to-medium spider who scampered along the web and out of sight when he saw us stopping below to stare at him. Kirk proceeded ahead on the trail, walking under the web above us, while I stood rooted to the spot, staring upward with mouth agape. I couldn’t move. I’m pretty afraid of spiders.

After Kirk reached for my hand and persuaded me that the spider had moved away, I slowly let him pull me along the trail underneath the web, my eyes watching it steadfastly in case the spider decided to descend by his webstrings into my hair or mouth.

This fiasco over, we kept moving along. I relaxed for a moment and put my photographer eyes back on . . . until Kirk pointed out another web, this one above our heads but off to the right a bit, and this one hosting an even bigger spider. It was definitely medium-sized, and you could clearly see its black and yellow stripes. A banana spider, Kirk said. A big one, I said.

Now I was beginning to realize that perhaps these spiders were indigenous to the place, and perhaps we were trespassing upon their ground. How many more would we see? I can tell you the answer: more and more. And they just kept getting bigger and bigger.

My body had gone totally tense by now. I dropped further and further back on the trail from Kirk, who had taken the lead so that he could scope out for spiders and keep us from walking into any elaborate webs. “I don’t know if I can do this,” I whispered. “I just don’t know if I can.”

The verdict was settled when we saw the biggest spider of all—splayed out to the full glory of its size in a giant-sized web at the right side of the trail. This spider was huge—at least the size of my entire hand, palm and fingers included. (Because I refuse to post a picture of these hideous creatures on my blog, you can check them out for yourself by clicking here.)

I screamed, then screamed again. “I can’t do this, hon,” I said. “Okay, let’s go,” Kirk said. Of course, this meant we still had to walk back along the trail, underneath all the spiders and webs again, in order to get back to our car. I was a wreck by the time we made it. The muscles in my back were so tense, and my arms were sewn at my sides.

One question I have is, are all woodsy trails like this? Will I ever enjoy a hike again without worrying about spiders dropping into my hair, down my clothes, or into my open mouth?

Because the weather has suddenly turned so gorgeous, with a sweet smell and a crisp fall nip in the air, we are determined to enjoy it to the full, so today we took lunch at the seminary again. We sat at a table on the concrete patio, under the library overhang to avoid the ants this time, while Kirk finished a paper and I continued my way through a second reading of Eat, Pray, Love. After about an hour, I closed my book and got up from the chair. “I’m going to go walking around a bit,” I said, and I headed out onto the grass that leads down to the lake.

But I didn’t just walk around—I tromped. By this I mean I picked up my legs so that my knees came up real high, then slammed them down to the ground for a good tromp sound. I tromped down to the lake, stood for a moment and took it in, and then imagined that an alligator was laying hidden in the brush and could come up from behind at any minute and gobble up my legs. (I know, I have a vivid imagination!)

So I tromped my two legs back up toward the patio, making my way in circles a couple times just because I wasn’t done tromping yet, until I finally landed back at our table. As I tromped, I was telling my body, my lungs, myself, my God, and that whole space of land that I was so really and truly alive.

Wanna Take a Survey?

I've created the first in a series of market surveys for my new business, and I'd love for you to participate!

If you are a woman and are willing to answer 10 short questions on an anonymous web survey, please e-mail me at christianne118 [at] gmail [dot] com, and I will include you in the group that receives the survey link. You can also leave a comment here, so long as you leave a way for me to contact you.

Thank you in advance!

Disconnected from My Heart

Pre-note: You'll want to tuck in for this one, 'cause it's gonna be long. The words for this post have been forming in an ever-growing, wordless orb for some time now, and it took sleeplessness tonight to help me see what those words were in order to bring them to the light. I hope you're able to find my deep heart somewhere in these words, and that you're still here with me at the end of this long story.

Before I was single in my twenties, I was married. I've shared tiny mentions of this here and there in the history of this blog, but not many details. I'm not going to share many details about it here, either, except to say that it wasn't until I was single in my twenties that I got to explore what it really meant to be a girl. It wasn't until I was doing my own thing, learning my own path, that I started truly nurturing and tending to the soft and feminine places inside my spirit. And it felt so wonderful once I did.

I remember shopping -- really shopping -- for myself in that place for the very first time. It was April 2005. I had been single for a year and a half, and I had just quit my job at a local non-profit without the promise of a new job lined up, even though it seemed like a pretty done deal that I'd be going back to teach at the college honors program. Still, there was about a week's worth of time between my leaving the old job and finding out that I'd gotten the new one. But even without that certainty nailed down, I had a peacefulness inside me that said it would be okay to move forward, away from the non-profit, without anything else in store. It was that feminine heart in me, learning to trust in God's deeply personal love for me. And then, of course, He proved that I could indeed trust Him, because the job came through.

So, back to the shopping story. When I got news of the job, I decided it was time for new adornment. I had looked into my closet and found all kinds of professional clothing -- in blacks, greys, and tans. No color! And I realized for the first time that I'd never really kept vibrant colors in my wardrobe before. When I turned my mind back to working at the college, this time as a single girl learning to make her own way in the world, I knew that I wanted to do it in color. And I wanted to do it with my own brand of femininity.

Off I went to the mall by myself. What I bought was truly lovely. There were pastels in pinks, creams, purples, light blues, and turquoise. There were girlie-colored corduroy pants and a dashing pair of sapphire pants that tied with a cream-and-sapphire sash. There were all sorts of fabrics and styles, from sheer material and velvet to baby-doll eyelet and lace piping. There was even a pair of pink velvet pants! (My personal favorite.)

It was heavenly. Eventually I found shoes to match the styles -- a pair in light brown with pink stitching and a cute bow, a cream pair to match my corduroys, some summer sandals with thin white straps and a burst of turquoise and maroon and fuschia flowers mashed together, a pair of brown peasant shoes, and more -- and gave myself permission to splurge for another shopping excursion just two months later.

It was the first time I'd ever treated myself to such luxury, and I felt like a feminine queen every single day of that year. Somehow, when I made the move to do this, it felt very important that I was doing it. And when I shared about it with Kirk (he and I had just begun corresponding via e-mail a few weeks prior, still in the very early stages of our relationship), I so appreciated his response back to me in that moment: "God is lavishing His love on you in this place. You are reclaiming your feminine heart."

And it's true. I was. I was remembering that I was a girl, and that God had made me beautiful. This is what He had been teaching me in deep places all through the major season of my healing from the divorce, in the quiet corners of my home and the new spaces I was learning to inhabit in the world. For me, all of this experience with the clothes was tacked on top, having so much to do with showing on the outside everything that was healing and being transformed in me on the inside. I was connecting with my feminine heart for the first time in forever, and I wanted that to show up in the way I adorned myself. I wanted to feel the adornment of loveliness all over me. And I did, for that entire year.

Proof of pink velvet pants.

The other thing that happened in that year is that I connected more deeply with my free and creative spirit, and ultimately my writer's heart. I traded in a future life of academia for a life of expansiveness and expressiveness and freedom. My heart was truly being set free.

Fast forward one year from that first shopping experience, and you will find me preparing to leave California to make a new life in Florida with Kirk. In this memory, I've been engaged three months, and our wedding is in about two weeks. I'm purging my little guesthouse studio of everything that will not fit in the back of my Volkswagen Jetta or the ten cardboard boxes I am shipping across the country.

With my life on overdrive to close out a job, a life, and a single girl's home for a cross-country move, an overseas wedding, and a new life with my sweet, I've gained about ten pounds. The velvet pink pants no longer hang loose and fashionable on my form. The cream corduroy pants feel a bit tight, as do the purple ones. The sheer, layered, multicolored blouse that matches my sapphire pants seems worn, having lost its luster over the course of many wearings this past year.

So I pack all my feminine adornments in a box that I donate to a girl going on a mission trip, a girl raising money through a weekend garage sale that's happening in two days. I give her all my beautiful things, knowing I will never see them again once she drives away. (I still cannot believe I did this.)

Fast-forward another month and you will find me home from our honeymoon and another five pounds heavier. (Europe for a celebratory three weeks will do that to you!) The clothes I did bring with me to Florida no longer fit so well, either, and they are nowhere near the prettiness factor I had going on before. This is not how I wanted to start my life as Kirk's new wife. This, I'm thinking, is when I should be feeling at the height of my femininity. But I wasn't. And when I went to work for the publisher soon after that, I spent $500 on black and grey and brown suits instead of flowy pink and purple and textured things. I've already shared in a previous post my issues with body image. And now that I'm no longer working today, I feel shopping for girlie clothes is a luxury I just cannot afford to indulge.

I miss my feminine self.

On top of that, I miss my creative self. You may or may not remember that I went through a quiet wordlessness for a couple weeks recently. I didn't understand what it was about for a while, but it has all slowly begun to come together. Let me share more about that now.

During that couple-weeks period, I was delving deeper into some beautiful and amazing new blogs I'd discovered through a series of connections. Each new discovery led to yet another, and soon I had a good list going of women whose hearts and talents and creativity and spirits I immediately recognized and came to love, even though I'd never met them nor worked up the courage to say hi and introduce myself.

One girl in particular arrested my attention in this process, and I spent a couple afternoons combing through her entire blog archive, thirsty to keep reading her story and watching her transformation from social worker to full-time artist unfold with each new page-click.

Here is what I think happened through all that. I think that discovering these lovely new ladies, and especially traversing the deep landscape of one particular girl's release into full creativity, ignited something in me that had long been dormant, and that is my own creative and feminine heart. My writing heart. My girlie heart. The one I had discovered and nurtured into being during that season of singleness. The one I now realized I had left back home in California in so many ways, with all of the touchpoints that reminded me through my daily routine who I was and who I was becoming each new day.

Kirk and I have shared numerous conversations in the past few weeks about all this as I've been walking through it and trying to make sense of it, and those conversations have been full of tears and revelations and laughter and sadness and hope. I'm able to look back over this year and see how many times I have chosen, in fear, to rely on my own strength and resources as the source of my life and hope, instead of the promises and proofs of God's provision or the strength that Kirk has to offer. As has so often been the story of my life, I've gone self-reliant, and in the consequence have slowly closed off my heart to many things . . . especially to its longing to run free and explore and trust and laugh and smile and dream.

In the past couple days, it seems God is trying to get even more personal with me. (What, He hasn't gotten personal enough already?!) In all kinds of places, I keep bumping up against this question: "Will I let God romance me?" I'm sitting here, every time I hear the question, and I'm thinking, "That requires trust and vulnerability." In all honesty, I'm not sure I'm ready to give that to Him. But I can see that He's persisting. He keeps asking the question. He keeps meeting me in places where I begin to let my mind wander into what that might look like, how that might feel, how it could maybe happen, for me to trust and be free and let Him romance me at an even deeper level than He has before. I'm sad to say that I keep evading Him within about two minutes of pondering the question every time.

But here I am, at 3:00 in the morning, writing it all down. Getting back in touch with my heart. Sharing it with you. Perhaps you will pray for me.

Post-note: If you want to visit any of the lovely new blogs I've found that I mentioned above, you're more than welcome to join me in lurking! I'm working up the courage to say hello. Anyday now, I'm sure it will happen. Maybe that day will be today! But in the meantime, here are the links for you to enjoy right along with me . . .

Boho Girl

Kelly Rae

Self Taught Girl

Andrea Superhero

Dancing Mermaid

Going Home for Christmas

Well, it's official. Kirk and I just booked our flights home for Christmas in California. Woohoo!

I'm so excited about this trip, as I've been walking through a pretty homesick season. I miss getting regular cuddle time with Kate and hours and hours on Sara's couch. I miss my family, and I miss my mom's house. I miss my home church, Rock Harbor, like crazy on a pretty regular basis.

Basically, I miss the familiarity of the place I spent twenty-five years of my life, and I miss the people in it. I even miss the temperamental freeways.

It's been rough lately, being so far from home and from my established community. I keep wondering if God will bless me with deep cords of friendship here in Florida, too, and when that will happen if it does. I wish I could say *presto!* and watch a beautiful group of new friends materialize before my very eyes. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. I keep wondering if I'm doing something wrong, missing something obvious, not looking in all the right places.

So, obviously, I'm pretty darn excited about this trip home. It will be good to have facetime with folks I love, and especially for the cozy Christmas season.

Inspired Today By . . .

This lady. Or should I say, this First Lady.

Kirk found a great article in Newsweek today that tells a fantastic story about what moves Maria Shriver, and it in turn moves me. Shriver's heartbeat in this article basically boils down what I'm passionate about and working toward in 450 words. I'm going to tack the printed page above the desk in my studio space . . . once the studio space is finished, of course.

To top it off, through the article I also learned of a women's conference that takes place annually in Long Beach, California, not far from my old stomping grounds. Someday, perhaps even as soon as next year, I'd love to attend.

The cool thing about the conference this year, though, is that it takes place on October 23. Which is, um, today. Great timing, to have learned of it on the same day that it's running! It was fun checking out the website while knowing thousands of women are there right now, enjoying all that the day has to offer.

Two other cool things I learned about the conference . . .

The first is that the conference is hosting a live luncheon webcast in about 20 minutes. Naturally, I'm tuning in. It will feel like I'm really there!

And the second is that I found a forum where women are responding to the question, "What do you do to make a difference?" In the response thread titled "Support, encourage, challenge, and inspire women," I read the following stories:

"I facilitate women's bible studies. Whenever a group of women get together to grow, learn & encourage each other magic happens. We laugh a lot, cry some, pray, eat, discuss families, careers and connect on levels unimaginable. At the end of our time together we have collectively gathered strength from each other until we meet again next week. We know that no matter how much life happens in between we have sister friends that we can count on."

"In the 12 step fellowship of NA there is a womans conference that is held in different parts of the US every other year. We get upwards of 5 thousand chicks praying in one room at one time there. The energy is so uplifting and so positive it moves me even today."

"I recently created and started teaching a class for older women who want to go back to school for their degrees. (I was 52 when I graduated from UCLA a couple of years ago.) Mature students (who are mostly women) face different challenges than younger students. We may have less energy but we've got life experience and focus in our favor. While working full-time and carrying a full load of classes, I had to find ways to work smarter, not harder. These strategies and general information on the California community college and university system are what I share in my classes. Although my degree was FAR more than a career move. It changed how I view the world…but it also changed how I view myself. It gave me a sense of what I'm capable of achieving. It was also an amazing journey - one that I wouldn't trade for any amount of money! It's exciting to encourage (and help equip) other women to take the plunge too!"

Wow. Women are amazing, aren't they? I just love their energy, their creativity, their giving nature, all of it. (If you are a woman, then this means YOU!)

Caught on Camera

This scene made me laugh. Especially after hearing the news about

Charity (see below for more details). This scene shot at a neighbor's house, just right around the corner from us. The aftermath of some high-school shenanigans, no doubt. I wonder how long it will take them to clean it up?

I'm Sad for My Friend

My friend Charity has cancer. This hit all of us in the blogosphere community who know her like a bombshell. Laura has invited us to share our feelings in our respective spaces, and she is graciously compiling a list of those reflections. So, here goes.

I've found myself weeping throughout the afternoon. Who can read about capital asset management and business valuation after hearing news like this? Somehow studying for a quiz doesn't seem all that important now.

It's strange how you can find yourself missing someone you've never met. Strange how the fact of your loving that person hits you square between the eyes, or straight to the center of your heart, when you're faced with this kind of news.

I love her. Even though I've barely known her.

Yet what I've known has been precious to me. Charity will never know how much her sweet life has impacted me personally, but it has done so profoundly. As I shared with her in a comment on a recent post she wrote after a long absence, even her silence moves and teaches me. Though she does not comment frequently here, what she does contribute always carries substance and gentle encouragement that soothes my spirit. Her name is one that always makes my heart leap when it shows up at unexpected times in the comment conversations my blog sometimes begets.

That's about all I have to share right now. That, and the fact that I'm beginning to grasp that loss really is an inherent part of our lives, and I really don't like that God has allowed it to be that way. Why must we bear the pain of losing those we love? Is it to increase the leap of joy we'll feel when we recognize one another again in the New City? I hope so. Maybe then we will fully understand what we meant to one another here on earth, in the time we shared together.

Oh, Crap.

So, I'm working on my first-ever proforma income statement for my business, right? For the past couple days, this means that I've been up to my ears in numbers and projections and "what if?" scenarios, and me and the Excel formula calculator have become really close friends.

This being the case, I could say the "oh, crap" factor hit me when I began to really dig down into it. After all, this pretty baby requires monthly snapshots of the entire first year of operations, which means on a monthly basis accounting for figures that run the gamut from gross sales to the cost of goods sold, from salaries and benefits to payroll taxes, from marketing and advertising to legal and accounting fees, from rent and utilities and telephone expenses to postage and shipping fees, from website maintenance to travel expenses, and much, much more. Not only that, but then it requires projecting how those dollars will change in years 2 and 3, assuming growth accelerates.

Completing this spreadsheet, in other words, is onerous and tricky and not a little intimidating. So I repeat: I could say the "oh, crap" factor hit me when I got my head in the game, when I finally realized the width and depth and breadth of the actual undertaking, but that wasn't what honestly did it.

I could say, then, that it happened when the essential nature of this process finally dawned on me. When you start plugging in numbers for what you think you'll need to operate the business for your projected growth in year 2 -- even if you'll really grow -- only to find out that your projected gross profit from sales doesn't even range within shouting distance of your projected expenses to manage that growth, you finally get it. You get it so much that you drop to your knees in great reverence and awe for being required to complete this process, and you thank God for the insanely compressed month of late hours and early mornings He provided for you to do it.

There is no way, and I mean no way, someone can hold the potential expenses and growth hopes for their business in their head and then just go out and "wing it" and expect to be successful. It's just not gonna happen. No way. Not even for the simplest business model. Working on this project made me really, finally get this. Like, seriously. Whoa.

But that's not what did it, either.

I could say, then, that I hit the "oh, crap" ceiling when I realized my business model actually facilitates exponential growth that makes sales accelerate almost of their own accord as early as the fifth month we are in business. I could say that setting goals for how this internal growth would self-generate and then setting very modest goals for new, outside business we drum up on a monthly basis allowed for me to create, out of my own head, a very complex Excel formula to represent this growth, and that my genius in doing so blew me away.

That wasn't it, either, though it came close. :)

No, what finally did it wasn't so much creating the tricky formula but applying the formula to the actual spreadsheet to get dollar amounts. It may have amazed me last night when I applied the formula to the first year of operations, but I skyrocketed through the roof this afternoon when I applied it to years 2 and 3. Especially when the number staring back at me from the gross sales calculator for year 3 had not six figures in it but seven. That's right, seven figures. If my predictions for this formula are accurate, and because they are modest I have reason to believe they are, my humble little business will hit $3.3 million in gross sales by its third year of existence. This may sound like nothing to huge tech companies like Facebook or Google, but for a young woman starting out on her own with an idea nobody's ever heard of before, it scared the bajeebies out of me.

You can join me in saying it now: "Oh, crap." It might even help you to repeat it several times out loud, with your hand covering your mouth as you stare at your husband with wide, disbelieving eyes and a completely humbled and frightened heart.

Oh, crap.

A Very Cozy Moment

After having stayed up last night until well after 4am, it's no exaggeration to say that today finds me t i r e d. So, after claiming the car from Kirk when my morning class was done, I swung by China Garden for some takout Chinese and then headed home for a quiet girlie afternoon with no stress.

One of my secret indulgences is that I occasionally read chick-lit. The first book was way back in 2000 with Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner, which I promise is not anywhere near as scandalous as it sounds. The second was The Devil Wears Prada, way before it ever became a movie. And the third was In Her Shoes, Jennifer Weiner's second book that also, for fun, loosely incorporates the main character from her first book as a periphery character at a certain point.

Of what did my afternoon consist, then? None other than the chick-lit film adaptation of In Her Shoes, which I further confess that I own. I think Toni Collette, Cameron Diaz, Sean Feuerstein, and Shirley MacLaine make a great ensemble cast for this fun, quirky movie about two sisters who have absolutely nothing in common.

After lunch, then, I headed into the bedroom with my laptop, curled up in the bed with the shades drawn just in case I eventually decided to take a nap, and settled in for this afternoon flick. Pretty soon (read: less than 2 minutes later), Diva wandered in. She stood at the side of the bed, looking up at me with her plaintive eyes like she always does, which is her way of waiting for an invitation to hop up on the bed and join me. One pat to the velour blanket on top of the bed is all the invitation she needs, and she jumped up in a flash. Then, as I was laying with my head propped up on a pillow to watch the screen, she finagled her way into the little crevice between me and the laptop, then moved to block the screen entirely with her body, so that I could do nothing but attend to giving her a snuggle rub on her head and cheeks for a good, long time. (I had to pause the film, of course.)

When I was finally able to scooch Diva away from the screen, she sat herself down on her haunches in the little crevice and just stared at me with her wide blue eyes. She does this often -- sits and stares at me, I mean. I would call it creepy if she weren't so darn cute. I'm especially helpless to her gaze when the blacks of her eyes are contracted so large in a darkened room that they barely evidence the light ring of blue surrounding them. Add to that the soft, downy white of her chest, and I'm a goner.

So here we were, two girls with our girlie flick between us and tons of pats and snuggles. Sometimes I get so caught up in her cuteness and how much I love loving on her that I can't help swooping her close to my chest in a tight squeeze of love with a big kiss smacked on the top of her head. Unfortunately, she hates this. Besides being beautiful, Diva is also skittish. She has been this way, Kirk says, since the day she was rescued from an alleyway behind an opera house when she was just weeks old. Who knows what she saw of the big, mean world before she was rescued and brought, matted and mewling and fearful, into the pet rescue center? (The rescue from behind the opera house is how she got her name, by the way, and not an indication of any snootish personality.) To this day, Diva shrinks from being held too close or feeling too closed in, which is unfortunate for those of us who want to suffocate her with squeezes of love!

I confess that I've succumbed to my need for a Diva-squeeze fix twice today (so far!), but she has thankfully stayed close and allowed me to coax her back to my side for more docile strokes of love. This, I know, is because she trusts me.

I sure do love that girl and our cozy girlie time right now. No boys allowed -- and that means you, Solomon! :)

Love This Interview

My honey-babe found this interview with Don Miller on the Belmont Foundation website, and it says so well everything I love about the uniqueness of people's stories and the importance of knowing the stories we live in. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

-------------------

An Interview about Don's New Book:
Story: Why Some People's Lives Make Sense and Others Don't

What is the new book about?

Essentially, the premise is that the same principles screenwriters and novelist use to tell a good story also work in our lives. For instance, in story a character should have an ambition, or the story drags. And conflict is to be expected, but the way the character deals with the conflict determines the quality of the overall story. So screenwriters know this stuff, and they apply these principles so that people don't come to the end of their movie feeling let down. I think a lot of people come ot the end of their lives, or for that matter their day or week feeling let down as well. But living a good story is the antidote.

How did the book come about?

A couple of filmakers contacted me about making a movie out of Blue Like Jazz. I had turned down other opportunities, but these guys seemed to have some good ideas so I said yes. And in the course of writing the screenplay with them, I learned about these principles. The interesting thing about this experience was that we were shaping up a character who had my name and my overall story, we were just making his life a little less boring. Why not do the same with my own life.

What can a person do to live a good story?

The overall principles are pretty simple. But they can be expanded upon to make a story better and better. Essentially, though, a good story has a character with an ambition that is willing to overcome conflict to achieve a resolution. That's it. If we do that, then we've lived a good story and probably will feel more contented at the end of the day, or the end of the story how ever long it takes. But inside those basic elements there are a miriad of other ideas that can make a story better and better. The character of the character matters, for instance, and the nature of the ambition. The characters mentality about conflict matters and the way the story is resolved also matters. But the point is a person can feel just as fulfilled with a real-life experience as they might at the end of a movie that has touched them.

When will the book be out?

I am wrapping up the manuscript now and the publisher is thinking of a fall 2008 release. It will be my first hardback book so we are all pretty excited.

Some Cool News

I stopped by Hospice of the Comforter on Tuesday afternoon for a final interview with my volunteer coordinator. This is where we finished crossing all the t's and dotting all the i's for my file and talked more about how the formal process of volunteering works. It was a great meeting, but let me tell you about something funny that happened at the beginning and how it put a big, huge smile on my face for the rest of the day by the time I left.

When my coordinator came out to meet me in the lobby, I was chatting with one of the nurses I had met the night before on our final night of training. The three of us continued chatting for a moment, and I expressed how excited I was to get started. Then my coordinator said, "And then you've got your blog! That was so exciting!"

I was really surprised to have my blog come up. How had she heard about it? And what did the reference to it being so exciting mean? My mind went back to the previous evening, when I had typed up my previous post that mentioned just having finished my training and how much I had been blessed by the experience. My mind also went to the other, more personal post I had written about my grandmother a couple weeks ago when the training started. Was she referring to one of those? And again, how did she find out about it?

As she and I walked up to her office, I asked more about the situation. I slowly began to piece together that a lot of people at Hospice of the Comforter had visited my blog that morning. My coordinator had gotten the word from the volunteer recruiter, and then had passed it on to her husband, who also works for the organization. He had passed it along to other people in the development and communications departments, and before I knew it, she was telling me that the PR department wanted to talk to me about doing a special blog on my volunteer experiences!

All of this came down on me in a dazy haze. It felt really good, but it was so surprising that it also felt kind of numbing. But when we got into the conference room and we opened up my file, there was a printout of my blog sitting there, my little profile pic staring up at me and the "Lilies Have Dreams" banner at the top looking oh-so-familiar. Again, this felt so surreal.

At the end of my interview, my coordinator offered to bring in the girl from PR (whom I had met at one of the training meetings previously and really liked) to talk more about the volunteer blog. It wasn't clear to me whether they were wanting me to consider occasionally posting stories about my experiences here on Lilies Have Dreams or to start a completely new blog specifically tailored to that experience.

I found out it was the second option. They want me to consider starting a blog about my volunteering experiences (keeping patient information private under HIPPA laws, of course) and also the stories of other volunteers that I may meet out in the field. What's more, they want to also talk about how to possibly link that blog to their website so that anyone visiting their website for information can then click on my blog and learn firsthand from an unbiased perspective what hospice in general and Hospice of the Comforter in particular is all about, complete with the honest highs and lows and learning curves and all the sundry emotions that a patient or caregiver or friend or volunteer would experience if hospice became a part of their life.

This was such a strange, strange turn of events for me for a number of reasons, but also so surprising in a very good way. It feels wonderful to be asked to write about the stories I encounter, the ways they make me feel, the things I learn, the amazing people I meet, the beautiful patients and families I serve, and to be asked to do so because I love to write stories and write them well and because God has gifted me with the ability to do that.

So, please join me in celebrating this good news. I look forward to sharing more with you about it as this project gets underway!

Smatterings

I'm still here, sitting in my corner without saying much. It's so strange being in this place -- I'm usually so verbal, even if just with myself! Even so, I've had lots of other thought flickers I've been wanting to share with you. So here they are, in all their random jumble: some of the minor or major thoughts taking up some of my brain-space these days.

* I'm in the business finance class of my master's program this month. Have I ever told you how this program works? I take one class at a time for four hours a day, five days a week, for one month straight, for a total of thirteen courses over thirteen months. That's three and a half weeks to get a whole semester's worth of learning in. It's totally new, this way of learning for me, but I've found that I like the intense focus on one subject at a time. Everything moves so quickly, I can hardly believe I'm in my fourth month of the program already -- over a quarter of the way through!

* Anyway, business finance. Lots of fun. Yeah. But seriously, I am learning so much that's incredibly helpful and useful and moving me along in my business. For instance, we learned on Friday about financial statements and balance sheets, and we learned today how to analyze them. I would never have known any of this stuff if I just struck out on my own and got started without any training, and I probably would have failed big time. This way, at least my odds of failing are less stacked against me. Personally, I don't like learning about finance, especially at 9 in the morning and for four hours straight. However, I see the necessity for it and am glad to be learning from someone who will continue to be a great resource even after I leave Full Sail.

* Tomorrow, as part of an assignment, I'm having lunch with a guy I used to work with at the book publisher whose 20+ years of expertise is in manufacturing. I'm going to interview him about all that I need to know about working with suppliers. Next week, I'm going to meet with an arm of the Small Business Administration that specifically helps women and minorities (I'm both) find financing and/or funding for their small business, especially when starting out. And I have the business card of a guy who started a game board company in the last few years; I'm going to make an appointment to talk further with him about finding and working with manufacturers, since a number of the final pieces of my product will require a similar level of manufacturing and assembly. It's cool being able to be in the learning phase of this process right now, interviewing people who can help me along by sharing what they learned in their own journey.

* Speaking of classes, last month I took the brand management class. Can I tell you how amazingly awesome it was?! It was the third course in my program but the first one that was intensely practical and applicable to getting my business off the ground. We had to plan a complete brand strategy for our business, based on the immutable laws of branding that we studied during the month. It kicked my tail in gear to actually put this plan in place, but I am very pleased with the end result. I have to tell you, though, that it was somewhat intimidating presenting a brand strategy for a business centered around the heart of a woman when my class is 95% male! My classmates were great, though, and surprised me in the end by asking a ton of very thoughtful questions. (It probably helped put them at ease that I went off-script near the beginning and quipped, "I'm just forewarning you guys right now: my presentation is very girlie!") Anyway, besides their thoughtful questions, it additionally felt great to have already thought through many of those they asked so that instead of saying, "Hm. Good point. I'll have to think about that," I could tell them my response and then back it up with rationale.

* Tonight I finished my fifth and final night of hospice training. Can I just say that I am duly impressed with Hospice of the Comforter? Every single person who taught a segment of our training was so professional yet compassionate, so knowledgeable yet warm. This has got to be one of the best non-profit organizations out there. Oh yeah, and all the other volunteers were amazing to get to know, too. We were a great little group -- I'm going to miss seeing them, now that the training's over!

* Speaking of hospice training, did you know that the only people who benefit from hospice services are those in the end-stage of life? Meaning, they most certainly are going to die within the next six months (though most live shorter and a small percentage live longer). I must confess that when I signed up for this, I thought hospice was a home-care program for people who were too sick or frail to make it to the doctor's office or hospital. But, no. It's for people at the end of their lives who have chosen to die in the comfort of their homes, surrounded by their families, friends, and the comfort of the familiar, rather than prolonging their lives artificially or with additional treatment after treatment. (I'll likely write a longer post soon about all that I've learned so far -- which is so much!)

* Kirk and I have been praying about opening our home for regular gatherings of people. You can be praying with us about this, as we're taking it pretty seriously and weighing what that could look like. More than anything, we want to love Jesus and seek His face more than we seek anything else we could do "in His name." Simply put, we need wisdom.

* Oh, and speaking of noise and the need for quiet in soul space, I continue to be dismayed at the increasing glitz and in-your-face-ness of bookstores these days. I haven't found a book at Borders in months (except for two books I went into the store knowing I wanted to buy ahead of time). So last night Kirk and I went out of our way to visit a Barnes & Noble instead but left 20 minutes later completely discouraged. It seems like a million books are being sold these days but only a fraction of them with anything worth saying. It's like the gajillion of books in supply put publishers in the sad position of competing for the next biggest scoop, which means catering to the lowest common denominator of our humanity. Blah. And besides that, the people writing these books seem to want to capitalize on baseness, like the terrible conditions of their childhood or their slow descent into insanity or their fifteen minutes of celebrity. Yuck. Since I love real-life stories of ordinary people, I'm finding it increasingly hard to find anything worth reading, and this bums me out. If you've got any recommendations, I'll gladly take them. Keep in mind that I like personal memoir, quirky travel narratives, spiritual essays, and the occasional really good novel. :)

Quiet Space

I haven't felt much like talking these days, both in real life and in blog land. A part of me is trying to figure out what this means, trying to hold together in my hands the many fragmented pieces that might be contributing to this need for quiet space inside, while another part of me feels like all that work of holding things together to figure them out is just too noisy.

So, there's a lot going on and many thoughts and feelings rumbling around in my spirit, but most of them sound really muffled to me. And while I could take the time to tease each of them out, doing so feels not quite right, right now. Something is telling me to just let the process take its course, to just be in this space without need for explanation, without trying so hard to make some sense as it goes on.

I will say, though, that the best thing that could have happened in this space of quiet happened for me last night, when I got home from my third night of hospice training. Kirk was laying down, reading, with just the soft light from the nightstand lamp going, and I came into the room and sat on the bed next to him. It was the first time we'd had to spend with each other all day, since we're on opposite school schedules this month and my hospice training took up the evening. We just sat on the bed, talking gently and quietly with each other for a while, and I began to see the beauty of our care for one another in that moment. We were listening, really listening, to the other share thoughts and impressions and news from the day, and then offering something back in return. The conversation meandered over a lot of subjects, all joined by this spirit of listening and sharing in a true, real, and gentle way together. It really soothed my spirit. It made me feel safe and held.

What I Wish I Could Tell Her

Dear Grandma,

I still miss you.

Sometimes I imagine you still live in your apartment on Magnolia, sitting at the dining table with a guest visiting, fingering a clump of fabric as you listened and spoke, just one clump of many that were layered into dozens of plastic boxes stacked in the closet by the bedroom door. Even though you hadn't quilted in so long before you died, those clear boxes with their many textured scraps and prints are always nearby in my memories of you. I love that quilting was an important part of who you were.

I don't know if I ever told you, Grandma, how much I regret the way I responded on the night that Grandpa died. With all of us crowded into that tiny apartment you shared with him, I went coward and mustered a reason to leave. "Grandpa wouldn't want us to sit here mourning and crying," I said. "He's in heaven with Jesus now." And then I went to party at a friend's house, snaking through the crowds of people in that house and wondering that whole time how I could have left everyone, and even my grief, so easily.

I always wished I could have apologized to him, and could have grieved properly when he died. I didn't know how, Grandma. For so many years afterward, I used to pray little prayers to him in heaven, asking him if he understood, telling him how much I wished I could redo that moment and all the days after his death, wishing he could come back so that I could begin to memorize the stories he was famous for, the ones everyone alludes to but I do not remember. I imagined that he'd look down from heaven, with all the knowledge Jesus gave him once he died, and would forgive me and love me in that place, understanding even more than I could understand about myself back then.

Now I picture you up there with him, both of you so happy to be together again after all those years. You were so sad toward the end, just missing him every day more and more. I wanted to understand that kind of love, and now I'm glad I do. It makes me smile to imagine the two of you looking down upon the large family of us left here, watching us go about our daily lives, smiling when we offer our thoughts and prayers up to you still, wondering if you can even hear us voice them.

Even though I know you're happy to be with Jesus and Grandpa in heaven now, and that you're free from pain, I still wish you were here, Grandma. I wish you were still that constant presence back at home, always welcoming us with so much gladness and a kind heart whenever we would come to see you. I wish for one more day I could sit and play cards with you, and listen to the stories of your life. I wish I could tell you about Kirk and how much I have learned in my life with him. I wish I could tell you about how it feels when I write a story, and about the kind of stories I want to tell, and how I'm doing something new with my life that feels more true than anything else I've spent time doing before. I wish you could have known more of me while you were here, Grandma.

I have some news to share with you, Grandma, that is special for me to tell you, especially, about. This month, I learned that a place called Hospice of the Comforter was looking for volunteers to record the life reflections and stories of their hospice patients. This caught my attention because of how important people's stories have become to me. I see so much dignity to be had in a person who wants to look at their life and fold it into some kind of meaningful understanding of their life's offering on this earth. And I also know that since God has gifted me with an ability to write stories well, perhaps this is one way I can bring glory to Him in the service of others with some of my time right now.

When I told Mom about this opportunity a couple weeks ago, she said it reminded her of what I had always hoped to do for you -- to write down yours and Grandpa's stories so that all of us could have your memories preserved as a legacy handed down, to remember where we came from and the people that you were. It surprised me when Mom said this, since I hadn't made that connection when signing up.

But then, when I received the volunteer application materials in the mail a few days later, I really made the connection. Grandma, I can't tell you how overcome I was with sadness at your passing as I read the materials Hospice of the Comforter had sent. It made me remember that you had hospice care when you were dying. Somehow my volunteering for Hospice of the Comforter suddenly made me feel closer to you, even though my first signing up to work with them hadn't been about that at all.

But even more than that, I was filled with so much memory about my intention to be the one in our family to record your memories. I never did that. I know you know this, but it helps to admit it out loud to you. That is another thing that I really regret in my life: never having gathered your story while you were here. I remember getting started on it the summer after I graduated high school, when I came to visit you in Minnesota. It was the first trip I'd ever taken by myself, and I began to ask you questions about your life growing up and when you first met Grandpa. It was all with the intention to start writing it down, but then I never did. Years later, we all kept saying it should be done, and I always intended for the person to do it to be me, but still I let other things get in the way. I got busy and didn't make it a priority. And now the opportunity has passed forever, except for what we might piece together from our own memories. Still, it could never be the same. I am so sorry for failing you in this, Grandma. I hope you can forgive me.

Sitting there, reading those hospice materials last week, I was really struck with grief that you are gone. And last night, during my first full night of orientation and training, you were never far from my mind. There are so many ways we do not make as much of the days as we should, and I really feel that is the case in my loss of you in my life.

I wish that you were here. I trust that you are well. I love you.

Love,
Christianne

I'm Stuck at This Here Table

Along about 4:45 this morning, I woke to the unmistakable sound of my cat about to cough up a hairball. This happens every couple weeks and is really disgusting. Paper towels are entirely useless in this operation, no matter how Brawny may boast. My hands inevitably get wet with the acidic goop. Blech. Double blech!

I was particularly attuned to this sound because just yesterday it occurred to us that our kitties, who have taken up an official residence on the new couch and booted us effectively out, might eventually throw up on it. It has happened numerous times on our bedspreads, and when it's coming, it's coming, and there's nothing you can do about it unless you have the foresight (or forehearing, I guess, in this case?) to scooch them gently off the bed before the matter launches out of their mouth. (Unless you've witnessed such a spectacle before, you might not know that you get advance notice in the form of the sound of choking.)

So when I heard that distinctive choking sound, I went wide-awake and tried to determine where the sound was coming from. Thankfully, it wasn't coming from the open door to the right, which leads into the reading nook with the couch. It was coming from the left, and it sounded like it was coming from somewhere within the bedroom. As neither cat was on the bed, I began to breathe a little easier. They would not be staining our bedspread again anytime soon, either.

Sufficiently appeased that our new couch and bed were safe for the moment, I waited for the hiccups and throw-ups to pass . . . 1 . . . 2 . . . 3. (Our cats always throw up at least three times in a row.) Then I lay there trying to decide if I had the energy to get up right then and clean it up or wait until morning. It didn't take long for me to realize that Kirk would be the fall guy if I didn't get up and do it now, since it had happened on his side of the bed while he was fast asleep. I really didn't want him to find out the hard way what had occurred while he slept if I he happened to get up before me in the morning.

So I got out of bed and snaked around to the other side of it, quietly calling each cat's name to determine the location of the crime. (Hey, I didn't want to step on it in the dark with bare feet, either.) "Diva . . . ? Sollie . . . ?" Neither one came.

I decided not to chance it further in the dark and chose instead to approach it from the other direction. (Our bedroom has two access points -- one from the hallway on my side of the bed, and one stepping down from the kitchen on Kirk's side of the bed.) I went back out the door to the hallway and into the farmroom and turned on the light. No cat and no throw up there. So far so good. I continued around and into the kitchen and turned on the light. No cat and no throw up there, either. Good.

Now it was confirmed the crime had indeed taken place in the bedroom, on Kirk's side of the bed. With the light from the kitchen casting some sheen on the wooden floors in the bedroom, I stepped into the bedroom and bent down to try to locate the messes on the floor against the sheen.

I couldn't see any.

Hmm. Weird. Now it was time to investigate the underside of the bed, as we have a big space under there that the cats sometimes like to inhabit.

It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the dark under the bed, but I thought I finally located three blobs on the ground, the largest of which was actually over by my side of the bed, near my nightstand. I stepped back into the kitchen to grab a handful of paper towels and then headed to my side of the bed to take care of the main event.

At this point, Solomon intercepted my path. I waited as he lumbered under the bed. "Maybe you're the culprit," I whispered, since I still didn't know who had done it.

With the coast finally clear, I swooped down upon the lumpy mass on the floor. I picked it up and looked at it. It moved. I suddenly realized I had picked up a cockroach. I flung the towel, along with the cockroach, back down to the ground with a high-pitched whisper-squeal: "Ew! Ew! Ew!"

I was hoping but also not hoping this would wake Kirk up. So far, nothing.

I stood and stared at the paper towel on the ground. I could only presume the cockroach had fled under the bed, right below where I usually sleep.

"Eeeew!" I high-pitch whispered again, shivering and wriggling up and down with the willies.

At this point, Kirk did stir in the bed and mumble, "You okay?" I told him what had happened, but it didn't register in his sleepiness and I got no more response. Darn!

Now it was dawning on me: I had caught a cockroach and brought it close to my face. Ewwww!!! Not only was that creepy and crawly and disgusting, but it also meant that now I couldn't clean up the rest of the mess under the bed, nor could I reasonably go back to bed. Go back to bed with the chance that the disgusting creature would climb up the wall and into bed with me? No way, man!

So now I'm out in the farmroom. It has slowly occurred to me that I'm stuck out here, since I sure as heck am not going back in the bedroom until Kirk wakes up and can help me bring closure to this fiasco. So, for the time being, I'm checking blogs and e-mail and figure I can start in on my homework next. Pretty soon I'll start the tea brewing and pull out my Bible, too. Maybe I'll read a little in my Mother Teresa book. Because as of right now, I've got a few hours to kill.

I am such a girl.