People

In between students I ran up to Starbucks at the Barnes and Noble to grab coffee and hang out with Dottie.  As I was leaving there was a table of people outside playing chess that consisted of: 

A transvestite with very big forearms (short one more operation)

2 Western Europe foreigners

1 very creepy American 

And a chain smoker.

How did they find each other?

I love people :)

O Christmas Tree

We just put up our Christmas tree and are decorating.   I miss you baby sister!

Tis the season

I'm not really sure if they think those clip-on pony tail hair pieces look real or not.  But they don't. Ever.

Also, I have recently realized that I become much less of a cool person during the holidays.  My radio in my car has been on 99.1 since Thanksgiving.  I keep adding people to my Christmas list because I like present shopping so much.  I made a mandatory rule that all wrapping paper used at my house has to match if it's going under the tree.  Contrary to normal I've become very smiley.  And every time I see the giant Christmas tree in the mall I clasp my hands together in joy and smile using all my teeth.  

Tis the season.  

Panera

Every Tuesday or Wednesday of each week I have about an hour a half for lunch, so I come and sit at Penera Bread.  It's really climbed the list of favorite "part of the week".  I adore alone time spent surrounded by other people.  And I love the thought process that that follows in that sort of an environment...

- What will I be like when I'm 75 years old?

- What will LIFE be like when I'm 25 years old?

- Young children in public places is the best kind of birth control around.

- Lord, let me love people the way you love people.

- He created such a capacity in us to love, and too often I end up wasting so much of it loving my self.

- I always have, and always will like the way a tall man looks in business clothes 

- John Mayer is so good at what he does, because his lyrics are not trite or easy...they make you say, "YEAH!  I feel that way too!"

- There's a man dressed like Indiana Jones eating two tables over...oh right, it's Halloween.

Though there is pain...

"...when I wake up, I am still with you."       ~Psalm 139

Battlefields & Whistling?

I heard the song "Love is a Battlefield" today on the radio.   

There is whistling in it after the chorus.

I just thought that was silly is all I wanted to say...

Hindsight

My prayer and petition as of late has been the longing for hindsight of the present.  So what it really boils down to, is me not wanting to deal with faith.  Sure I want it...but there's always a work to be done in the process of it all.  

Bonhoeffer wrote, in "The Cost of Discipleship",  that the two statements, "only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes", are joined.  "It is quite unbiblical to hold the first proposition without the second."  

But I know that when that choice is made to be obedient and it is followed by hurt, there is a special kind of peace and faith that mingles in the midst of it all.  It helps soften the edges and makes you look forward to the hindsight instead of fearfully waiting on it.   

In some sense the most benevolent, generous person in the world seeks his own happiness in doing good to others, because he places his happiness in their good.  His mind is so enlarged as to take them, as it were, into himself.  Thus when they are happy, he feels it; he partakes with them, and is happy in their happiness.

~ Jonathan Edwards

Lover

When we give love, to whom is it that we give that love to?

It is generally the one(s) easiest to love...but this often means the one(s) in need of it least.  As for the unlovable?  Nah, it's much too hard to love them.  Yet there lies the greatest need for love.  

When I am insecure, hurting, needy, wallowing in self pitty...I know I am no fun to love.  But that is when I ache for it the most.  

How quickly I forget that feeling and pass by loving another aching for it.  Because that person is just so arrogant, selfish, needy, annoying, time consuming, not fun, clingy, etc.  

Aching for love is one of the most impossible hurts.  How quickly I'm reminded when I begin to forget.