I am sick today. It started with a sore throat a few days before our weekend vacation and came to a peak yesterday on the drive home with a runny nose and stuffed up head. I didn't sleep at all last night and this morning still felt very tired and stuffed up. I'm thankful that right now work can wait and sick days are a plenty! It's weird that I've been sick the last 3 times that I had time off. I don't get it but know that I need the extra rest and am thankful for it.

"He did not want her to see him like this, she understood that, but the alternative was worse. They were so close to nothing already- or so she'd thought, because afterward it was harder than she could have imagined. There were days when she got dressed fully intending to go to the hospital, but there was no one there. It was like going mad, she supposed. Everything she was so certain of, everything that held intense meaning for her, no longer existed. She spent hours pursuing pointless rituals, talking to herself or people invisible to others, addressing objects, then suddenly stopped and scourged herself for it, furious with her own emotions."

I can't ever imagine life without my husband. Even more, I can't imagine almost 50 years of marriage and then life without him. How do people go on? I know it's by the grace of God, but the logistics of that are lost to me. The mere thought of it overcomes me.

My mom's birthday was yesterday, March 18th. I won't tell you how old she is, but you would never guess because she still looks amazing. I have so much respect for my mom. She's one of those moms who becomes your best friend over time. One that knows you well and loves getting to know you again and again year after year. I had moments (very brief I'm sure!) during adolescence when I was...how shall I say...hard to handle. I can only imagine the prayers and tears that were shed on my behalf. Prayers and tears that I fully believe helped me to become who I am today. My mom has never judged me and yet has shown tough love when needed. She's smart and quirky and has a heart of gold. Every day I become more like her and although at one point in time that might have made me cringe, I now embrace the evolution realizing how blessed I am to follow in such worthy foot steps.

I have been reading Henri Nouwen's "Reaching Out" and in it he talks about how parenting is a form of hospitality. In it he writes:

"What parents can offer is a home, a place that is receptive but also has the safe boundaries within which their children can develop and discover what is helpful and what is harmful. There their children can ask questions without fear and can experiment with life without taking the risk of rejection. There they can be encouraged to listen to their own inner selves and to develop the freedom that gives them the courage to leave the home and travel on. The hospitable home indeed is the place where father, mother and children can reveal their talents to each other, become present to each other as members of the same human family and support each other in their common struggles to live and make live."

I read this paragraph and was struck by how much I understood exactly what he was talking about. I grew up in a home like this one. And I know how blessed I am because most people today have grown up in a home nothing like the one described above. My mom played a major part in making our home one in which we could be ourselves without fear of judgement or ridicule. My mom put in the time with us to make sure that we knew we were loved. My mom worked to help pay the bills and yet I never felt like her career came before her family. My mom created a home that was and still is a home to all. I've never seen my mom turn someone away. She's a lover and a fighter and for that, with tears in my eyes, I am eternally grateful. This is the mom I strive to be. Thank you Mom for years and years of love and laughter, I look forward to many, many more. Happy belated birthday!!

Well, we are all moved in. There's still some arranging/ re-arranging to be done so no pics quite yet, but I will have them soon. My goal today is to find the perfect place for all of our belongings and leave them there! Dustin and I absolutely love the new place. It's not quite as big as I had remembered it..in fact it's still quite small as far as actual square footage. But the high ceilings and huge front window add a lot of ambiance and have already affected us positively. It has challenges of its own, such as sloping ceilings and virtually no storage space in the bathroom, but I am my mother's daughter and therefore love a decorating challenge.

I find it quite amusing that in Dustin and I's relatively short dating/ marriage relationship of just over 3 years, we have moved either one or both of us 4 times!! That's a lot! I feel like we have both learned our responsibilities when it comes to moving day and give our best efforts to make sure it goes as smoothly, stresslessly, and even as fun as possible. A special shout out to Dan and Chris for helping us move the big stuff, i.e. couches, bed, dresser. Thank you for saving me the strenuous physical exertion and thank you from Dustin for saving him from my emotional breakdown!

Dustin is at work painting right now, so I should probably get back to setting our home in order so pics can be taken!!

- From the apartment above the garage

Dustin and I went with our friends Jason and Kim to see the movie "300" on Saturday night. We snuck Dollar store candy into the movie just like old times. I was pretty pleased with the movie (specifically the wardrobe, hehehehheh) It was a little over the top in places, but that's to be expected from an epic such as this one. I left loving the passion of the Spartans and the beauty of Greek culture.

I am still slowly inching my way to losing weight. I haven't weighed myself in a month. I'm scared to know the depth of my progress or, more likely, lack of progress. I felt fat yesterday but thinner today. It's a never ending emotional battle and food seems to be the enemy (although i could have swore it was an ally the last time I checked.) It's so hard for me to give up those comfort foods of breads, cheeses, and sweets. And so I press on...

I am missing my nieces and wanting more pictures of them. Send pictures Beth!!!

I have been in one of those moods lately where I am missing my friends and family and yet don't call them. Sometimes it's almost easier to think of them instead of hearing their voice and being reminded of just how far away we really are. It's no excuse, I need to be better about calling and writing.

We move in three days!! Pictures to come as soon as all boxes are disposed of and every item is strategically and loving placed in its very new spot.

It is ironic that I just opened up my Word file entitled “thoughts” and there’s a blank page. It’s not just ironic but true. I have had many thoughts as of late, but have failed to get them on paper. In fact, I believe this has caused poor sleep habits and wild imaginations because my most basic thoughts, my heart, my struggles, my voice has been stifled by my own laziness. I would like to do a study on laziness because in my personal opinion it is the root of stunted spiritual growth in our culture today, but that is for another time.

I attended a writing workshop on Saturday. It was somewhat of a last minute decision, although I had been contemplating it for weeks. Money was an issue, of course. But this week I had a bit of a revelation. While working on our annual budget at The Salvation Army, I realized that I wasn’t enjoying my work all that much. This might not seem like a big deal to anyone else, but to anyone who knows me well, they know that I have always enjoyed financial and number related tasks. My best friend, Jaime, would make fun of me in college for “saving” my accounting homework for my break from writing a paper. The truth is, I enjoy both numbers and words. Recently, through my graduate degree and my career, I have focused more on numbers. I realized this week that my interests are lying elsewhere. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ready to give up my addiction to numbers yet, they are in some bizarre way soothing and comfortable to me. But this desire to write that has been screaming inside of me, I feel, can’t be stifled any longer. At the very least, I feel that I need to give it a voice and see what it has to say. And so I went to the Women’s Writer’s Conference at Western Seminary and I am so thankful that I did.

The main theme throughout the whole conference was this- write because it’s a gift from God and for God. Do not write for the sole purpose of being successful and making lots of money and having lots of books, etc. The only way to deal with the ups and downs of a writer’s career is to write because you have to. Because you could never give it up and if you did you would cease to be you. I thanked God for that reminder. Because I’m not ready to pursue a writing career and I don’t know that that is what God has in store for me. Our main speaker resonated with my heart when she said, “You know, I’m not one of those people who are ok with failing. You know the type of people that if they fail at something the first time they try it again, and again, and again. That is not me! I know when I’m not good at something and I just don’t do it. I only do what I’m good at because I don’t like to fail.” That is my heart exactly. This has been a huge fear for me when thinking about writing. I don’t want to fail at it. I don’t want to be not good enough. But this weekend reminded me that writing isn’t to be the best, it’s just to be. I write because that’s who I am and that’s how I best communicate with myself and with God. Another slap-in-the-face revelation was that I haven’t been communicating best with God because I haven’t been writing. I haven’t been completely honest with myself because I haven’t been writing. Writing helps me to be me and that’s why I need to do it.

So I’m excited to recommit myself to be me and to make God a bigger priority in my life. I’m also realizing probably the biggest negative affect of living in a studio apartment is the lack of privacy. I don’t mind sharing space with Dustin, I like being close to him all the time. But it’s hard to “get away” for those critical and desperate times with God when you bare your soul in such a way that only God could understand or want to see. (For example, Dustin just turned on Seinfield and it’s so hard not to listen!! But I press on!) My prayer is that I’m able to find those times of utter abandonment in order to be painfully real. And even more to stop being lazy.

"Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being, for we ourselves are words of His. But we are words that are meant to respond to Him, to answer to Him, to echo Him, and even in some way to contain Him and signify Him. Contemplation is this echo. It is a deep resonance in the inmost center of our spirit in which our very life loses its separate voice and re-sounds with the majesty and the mercy of the Hidden and Living One. He answers Himself in us and this answer is divine life, divine creativity, making all things new. We ourselves become His echo and His answer."

I've been contemplating this, I ask that you join me.