You've Got...Plants!

So, little known fact about me, I am an avid aquarist. Ever since seeing Chris' very stellar Nano-Cube when I started going to Life Group at his house, I wanted one. Nano's are amazing because the entire filtration system is in the back of the tank behind a built-in wall so you don't have any ugly filter sitting on top. Also, the lights are built into the hood which comes attached to the tank, so you don't have ugly light fixtures sticking out. And to top it off, all the cords from the filter, lights and ballast fit through holes in the hood and are hidden behind the stand. This makes the Nano a very sleek-looking operation and then you can store any miscellaneous meters or siphons or fish food in the cupboard door on the stand.

So after much lusting, in May Chris took me shopping and I finally got my very own 12 gallon Nano-Cube! It takes about 2-3 weeks after you set it up with sand, saltwater and rocks for the water and the organisms in the live sand to get "established". That means the nitrates and the salt levels are all kosher to support live fish. (I prefer my fish live, unless they're on my plate.)

And then I got Buddy. Buddy is a percula clownfish, and looks similar to Nemo from the movie. However, since Buddy lives with me in a spacious Nano-Cube condo, he does not require an anemone for symbiosis. I do notice however, that he mostly stays in one place in the tank, which is a characteristic of clownfish. When they are in a symbiotic relationship with a chosen anemone, some never go farther than 5 inches away from it for their entire lives. I made an addition a few months ago of some snails (I got 4, but one died).

Even more exciting is that today I got PLANTS! Chris gave me some pieces of his flora to start growing some plants in my tank. This should help keep my algae growth down. And this is significant because, while fish are the fun part of keeping an aquarium, you'll know truly dedicated aquarists by their excitement over rocks and plants. When I got my live rock, I was so excited I lost all interest in getting fish. Watching all the little organisms grow out of the rock was awesome. So I feel the same way about the plants. I can't wait for them to get hooked into the rocks and start growing away. They will keep the water cleaner (helpful for when I take trips away, like to New Orleans) and especially helpful with filtering all of Buddy's waste out of the tank. I am getting more diligent now in doing water changes, which also helps keep the water clearer. Overall, I do love saltwater for the lower maintenance. Basically, you're creating a mini-ocean that supports itself, as long as you keep screening enough fish wastewater out and putting enough fresh saltwater in.

I knew I was in love with my Nano the first time I turned off the TV because it was distracting me from watching Buddy swim around my tank.

I'm sick

Since day 2 in New Orleans, I have had this awful sore throat. It was kind of bad the Saturday we got back (the 18th)and then seemed to be getting better. But yesterday it got a ton worse so I went to the doctor this morning and basically, I am instructed not to leave the house for 3 days. I am waiting for the strep test results, which I should hopefully get tomorrow. I think part of me has thought that since I spent a majority of this year dealing with the aftermath of my skiing accident, that God wouldn't be so awful as to let me get sick or injured again. I'm so tired of spending time in impersonal and cold doctor's offices. But I guess the challenge to be healthy and take care of myself will never be over until the end of my life. So I'm trucking along and trying not to worry that this will be another big expensive problem.

Self-Hatred

I remember when I was a kid and it seemed like if I shut my eyes tight enough I could erase the bad/embarrassing/chaotic things happening around me or to me. It's really not all that crazy of a tactic if you ask me. But somewhere along about high school, it stopped working. No matter how much I tried to believe that people couldn't see me and I couldn't see myself or my world if my eyes were closed, I could still feel the world around me. Very disappointing. It seems the adult equivalent of this is alcohol. Since I don't really want to become an alcoholic, I pretty much have to rely on God to give me His love for me, when I don't have any for myself. And frankly, He doesn't always come through. Lots of days go by where I can be free to live and love and grow, but then days happen where I see a picture of myself or I hear my own voice and I just want to sink into the ground. Becoming one with the dirt seems like a really good idea in those moments and I have to FIGHT to remember that I have a purpose on earth. I am heartened when I remember that the purpose isn't just me surviving and thriving. My purpose is other people and getting free from my self-hatred long enough to love someone else. To be an ear when ugly things come out of mouths, realities never spoken before. It is a privilege, this life that I got, and I am needed in it even when I don't want to be needed and when I think the world would be better off without me. Jesus, help me stop this sin against myself. Give me your love for me when I don't have any.

I've changed my mind...

If you know me somewhat well, you know I have had a general aversion to the idea of marriage. To illuminate this for you, my good friend Saro likes to tell the anecdote that if anyone ever asked me to marry them, I would laugh out loud. I really don't think I'm quite that heartless, but in saying that he's trying to communicate that for me the idea of getting married to another human being for the rest of my life has always seemed a little ludicrous. Although Jesus and I have worked on this issue quite a bit, I still realize it is just a weird idea for me. I never really imagined myself choosing to love and live with one person for my whole life. This is probably partly due to my parents marriage not being at all present in my memory and also due to the fact that I just don't like anyone, including myself, that much, to want to live with them forever.

But God is always changing me along the way, and I am open to Him changing my heart about this...

So today I moved one step forward on this point...I decided it's possible I will get married one day if the person looking back at me on that day looks anything like this...

(Definitely click the pic to get the full effect.)

P.S. If you're wondering how I'm going to get married while onstage at a George Strait concert...well...I haven't worked that out yet...

Calling v. Vocation, 2006

Whenever I hear the word vocation I think of this poem from Robert Frost that I memorized in high school. I first read part of the poem in a book and looked the whole thing up and since I liked it so much I memorized it. It tells a story and takes a while to get it all out, but the last stanza really packs a punch so wait for it...

TWO TRAMPS IN MUD TIME
Robert Frost

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
The judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

The hardest part about blogging.

The hardest part about blogging for me is reading my own blog. I try not to do it any more than I have to, but sometimes I need to review to see what I missed recording about my life. And it's HARD. I don't want to think about all the ledges my brain has stood on the precipice of. I don't want to think about all the prepositions I have ended sentences with.

And another hard aspect to reading back over my own blog is not going back and editing out the parts that are unlovely. Or the parts that now feel a little too honest.

My friend and I had a conversation tonight about the Experiment blog and Rockharbor and what it means to edit and package the gospel for people. Rockharbor is definitely seeker-friendly in a powerful way. Even having been there for 5 years now, I still LOVE Verge Sundays. Sometimes I think they impact me even more than people attending for the 1st time. Every one is a fresh angle on grace. But there was something about my first time at the Senior Center when Keith took the stage and decided on a whim NOT to do a sermon that changed me. I think the people had just been out serving that day or something, so he just took the stage and asked people to come up one by one and share how they had seen God move. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe it was impromptu. And it was uncomfortable. I was new and I was kind of ticked. I wanted a sermon or some kind of talk so I could decide if they were quacks or not. I had been kind of terrified to enter a church in a while, and I wanted a return on my investment of my time and heart. I know that's not an ideal way to come to church, but after having been mistreated by people in the name of Jesus, all congregational gatherings were suspect. And especially ones where people looked made-up, glossy and put-together like they just stepped out of a magazine ad.

So tonight my best and I were discussing how Rockharbor values "cool moments" and how often the stories that we tell about ministry or God center around one cool moment. And I was sharing my experience being in the Experiment, that being a guinea pig seems to mean a LOT of pictures will be taken. Some without my knowledge even. And I really want there to be a value in my life to record God's glory and hearts transformed and that can get lost in the midst of capturing "cool moments" to share with others.

I guess this entire blog has come about due to two things that happened. One has been over a year of reading Renee Altson's book and then her blog. (Find the link to the right.) Talk about taking a seriously personal life and putting it up for the world to see. And I think somewhere on there or in her book she talked about blogging before writing her book because blogging held the safety of knowing she could remove her posts anytime. And the second thing that happened was seeing Charlotte cry so very hard as we drove through the streets of the lower 9th ward and seeing her frustration with the picture-taking. And even though I took pictures myself, I am grateful that Char was honest about what was happening with her because I know what it is to feel over-exposed. I am not made-up, glossy or put-together and no one has ever asked me to be in a magazine ad. So when I face the words or pictures of myself, I tend to cringe a lot.

Jesus, I invite you to keep me un-lovely as long as I can stay in the lovely place of seeing you work. Your hands are deftly helping, and your heart is easily loving and your feet are quickly running after me when I run away from your healing. Help me to accept myself, the messy kid you picked to be yours. Help me never try to erase the me's I have been or the feelings I've had. They are real and you want them. You want me even when I don't want me.

Katrina, Day 1

Day one has come and gone. I considered blogging about the travel day, but then I realized I can just include the highlights of that day in Day One's blog. So we got up at 4:00am yesterday to arrive at the airport at 5:00am. Ok, this is too slow. Fast forward to the first highlight. I met this realtor on the plane from Dallas to New Orleans who told me story after story about people here who are now coming back to their homes and dealing with gutting them to re-build, selling them or trying to even live in them. Her stories from the flood were the most powerful. She told me about a man and his wife who didn't have much packed and hadn't planned to evacuate and so when the flooding came, they went up the trapdoor into the attic. All the man had was a screwdriver, no other tools, so he spent something like 7 hours that night scraping the roof to make a hole so they could get air and finally a big enough hole to climb out of so they could sit on the roof, where they stayed for 2 days until a boat came by and picked them up. All that first night, the water was up to the ceiling, so the attic trapdoor was banging back and forth. Can you imagine?

Today we spent the entire day working on a house. I think it was a pastor's house because we found checks for the general fund of a church. Now their family lives outside on the front lawn in a 150 square foot FEMA trailer. And they've been there since Katrina. There were still closets full of clothes, a vacuum, lamps, etc. We tore down the interior walls and removed all the insulation and fiberglass, leaving just a frame.

All day I kept singing to myself this song:

Stepping forward
Keep us from just singing
Move us into action
We must go

The Evidence for Heaven?

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
- Dr. Seuss

Oh, Dr. Seuss...how you nurtured me in childhood and how you are nurturing me still. Someone had this attached to an email I received and it's so apropos for this night. I guess I created a little bit of a maelstrom tonight at our Experiment meeting. I didn't mean to. I just sat there and when they asked the question, I felt like I should be Christian and honest at the same time. So I said what I felt and was who I am.

And the problem is this: I am someone who doesn't really "believe" in heaven. I believe in life and the earth and that it's all real and Jesus and his father God exist and that Jesus was born and that he died and was resurrected. But my faith doesn't really encompass heaven. I mean, of course, I believe God when he says things are true, so if he says there's a heaven, I take him at His word, because I believe in my head that the Bible things will come true. But truly honestly in my soul I doubt it. And there are so many ways I want to justify this to people, because Christians freak out when I tell the truth about this. But I don't want to be a liar. I don't want to pretend I believe it, because I did that for a long time and it didn't get me any closer to believing in it.

Being honest however has actually gotten some results.

The first time I said this out loud, the response was my life group co-leader just offering me total understanding and acceptance. True grace.

The second time out loud, my new life group got a little silent and then they rallied around me. We were assigned to address each other's doubts, and my person got me a video entitled, The Evidence for Heaven. It kind of freaked me out because it was mostly about near-death experiences and if you know me well, you know I have a phobia of any kind of what I've recently come to term "Irregular Anatomical Activity." I'm really sensitive to it, so this pretty much even includes photos of hospitals. Not to mention the title, which was preposterous. The Evidence for Heaven; it's like saying The Evidence for Leprechauns. If something is invisible and totally unprovable, there is no evidence for it. Duh. That's the whole concept of faith. I have faith in Jesus and his resurrection this way. And I believe it. In my gut of guts, I KNOW that he really was all dead and then three days later he got up, took a deep breath and walked out of the tomb.

The third time I said this out loud was tonight and I guess the third time's a charm because I learned something significant tonight. I and other concerned citizens of the church have been worried about what I mis-believe when maybe I (and we) should focus more on what I do believe instead. For instance, tonight it occurred to me that I do believe in the resurrection of the body. I really do see Jesus/God coming back and resurrecting our fallen selves to new life. I can see my new body floating around here on earth and being perfected by His love. So that's something.

I feel bad that I freaked everyone out and I hope that people will still give me a chance.

517 Words

Ok, it's ten to midnight and I have written 517 words of my novel. WOW. Can I just say...WOW! I have to get to 1667 to finish today's quota and already I am so amazed at this process. I had ZERO and I mean zero ideas on what I was going to write about, who my characters would be, what they would do and somehow magically it's coming out. They have identities (frighteningly similar to people I know, of course) but also truly singular identities. And names. Seriously, if you doubt that I had not at all planned this novel out, understand this: On the drive home tonight at 10:51pm I was debating whether to use my future kids' names in the novel because I had ZERO other ideas. Luckily, little Colin, Eden and Ishmael are safe. I ate some Lucky Charms and I just started writing and dialogue came out and I saw a scene and I knew who the people were, and what they looked like and what they talked like and I knew their names. And I can see their personal relations, who is important in their lives, so that gives me other characters to write about and their names just showed up too. And they are talking about doing things, so tomorrow I can write about the things they are going to do. And they are talking about things that only happen in a certain time and space, so I have a time and place to put them in. They are almost writing themselves. I thought this was going to be laborious but it's NOT, it's GREAT!!!