.oh hey June.

Ten things I've learned in June:

1. I'm proficient at using the double-smiley.  As in, I'm the girl who will send you a text saying, "Hi there! How's it going, friend? :))" Why do I do this? I don't know. But I hope it brightens your day. 

2. I finally watched "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" on several recommendations thinking I would love it. And didn't love it. I tried. I tried so hard. 

3.I never really noticed Hebrews 6:9 until this month.

"Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation." 

Better things. I like the sounds of that.

4. The banjo and I will be fast friends.

5. My best friend got engaged and I learned you really can almost pee your pants from excitement. 

6. I spent more in coffee than gas this month. Can you say issues? Issues.

7. Surrender is sweet. no more white-knuckles, please.

8. "Everybody needs a 'we'" -perfectly put by a dear friend of mine. 

9.  Pockets that aren't pockets get me out of sorts. Fake pockets. I mean, really.

10. Finding a vintage camera bag for less than a meal at McDonald's makes me feel like I may have turned a corner in my thrifting ability. Feeling fancy. 

.on quirks, cold pizza, and taylor swift.

i like to squeeze the middle of the toothpaste tube rather than the bottom.
sometimes on purpose.
that bothers some people.

i like chunky grandma sweaters. i like the super-mega pack of markers. i like Guinness.  i like banjos. i like words. i like to eat cold pizza (that's apparently not lady-like. i doubt Kate Middleton would ever be my friend). i like newspaper print. i like socks. i like dilapidated old houses just because they're old & have some character. and i could lie and tell you that i change the station whenever a tswift song comes on. but i don't. it's ok.

Sunday late-afternoons can be for pondering quirks and not being able to figure out for the life of you why you are the way you are. I do a lot of over-analyzing so thinking about these things comes way too easy and settling into self can come way too slowly. 

I thought this nonsense was reserved for junior high. no sir, not for this girl.

it's quite the process, being ok with the fact that people may not be ok with you and your cold pizza and tswift.
but the people who are? they're some special ones.
I am most, most grateful for these people. partly because they're so easy to be around. partly because they point me to the Truth always. and partly because they'll laugh with me at inappropriate times.

thanking God today for these people. and for lessons that may take awhile.

.adversary.

you persuade us that He withholds.

that He turns away.

that He's long gone.

and when we fail to lift our heads, your words and ways are quite convincing.

you would keep us from everything that we have in His name.

and you weaken us until we bend low enough to hear you whisper "fall".

but you deceive us.

deception is the song of the defeated and you,
you have been mightily defeated.

you lost in the desert.
you lost in the garden.
you lost at the tomb.
and you lost we who shout His Word over every fallen whisper you have ever spoken.
That Word is our God.

and so we live victoriously,
over every "save yourself"
every "if you are..."

and the treachery that is your existence.

because I want a lot of like-whoa's.

I've started a list.
I think it's typical around this time.
We look at the year ahead and think of resolutions, trips we want to take, set aside time to map out and prepare ourselves for big plans.
But it seems like resolutions have a way of only lasting a good 2 hrs into New Year's Day, trips require hours of pre-planning (if you know me, you know this is laughable), and big plans turn into half-day events.
These can be good things thought up with good intentions, but sometimes grander doesn't always mean greater. And sometimes, I forget that.

What tends to linger in my mind the most are the smallest of places, circumstances, and encounters....like Dad and his insistence on a live Christmas tree.  And my brother and summertime and Coca-Cola.  Or how whenever I hear John Denver, I think Mom and long car trips.  Small things.

This year, I want more small things that are really the big things.  I want to have a lot of this-one-time's and like-whoa's and tell a lot of tales about this one long adventure because that's what it always is with God. An adventure.
And that will be my reason.

So. this is my list...my list of big small things for 2013.  Twenty and counting.

1. Learn to play the banjo.
2. Start and finish St. Augustine's Confessions.
3. Dance in a Chicago cafe, because the music in Chicago cafes is typically dance-worthy.
4. Create something from Pinterest.
5. Trade books with a stranger.
6. Do a New York Times crossword puzzle.
7. Spanish Spanish Spanish
8. Visit my Dad in Montana, coffee and conversation included. (ok, yes, it's a trip. definitely no hours spent on pre-planning. beyond buying a plane ticket...or a car).
9. Write at least 5 letters of encouragement. one, to someone I've never met.
10. Buy a bike, name it, and ride it in the city.
11. Buy a friend popcorn from the stand in my hometown.
12. Try a new food. a new, new food. like alligator or octopus.
13. Do more pinky-swearing.
14. Make my Grandma's peanut butter fudge. following a recipe. successfully.
15. Be intentional about finding Jesus in the seemingly small things, and thank Him for them.
16. Spend a weekend at a local monastery.
17. Take at least two weeks off all Facebook and Pinterest.
18.  Find a quiet spot somewhere and quite literally, put my name on it.
19. Read Scripture aloud.
20. Write more about Mom.

10:07pm

"oh Lord that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness."
  :W. Shakespeare:

it wouldn't be like this.

that armchair next to me is as empty as the years would have been without You.

but I can't remember a time when I didn't know You to be next to me in all of these rooms,

even the ones where I could see my breath.


It wouldn't be like this, You know.

if winter never came,

and You hadn't let the cold in,

that cold, it was the unbearable kind.


You knew then it wouldn't be like this between You and I, not without the winter air.


because had it not been I wouldn't have known the warmth of Your words

and all that You left here for these begging hands of mine,

a beggar with pride one-hundred miles high veiled by good deeds veiled by a verse or two.


and I wouldn't have seen You in the glorious days,

or the shadowed days,

or the ones heavy with longing for something called forever.


But I can't remember a day that You didn't invade,

And I don't know a part of me that You don't inhabit.


and sometimes I think of You in that armchair next to me,

You and Your words that lasted the winter.

9:31am

"No amount of fire or freshness
 can challenge what a man will
 store up in his ghostly heart."
                           ::The Great Gatsby::