Well my life went from zero to sixty in no time flat.

I have two jobs now, and all the stress and buckets of coffee caught up with me today.

I spent the morning relaxing, eating good foods, drinking coffee... but as soon as I hit work, my stomach was not happy at all. Acid stomach, or heartburn, or I dont know what it was but blech. This has never happened to me before.

So I drank some baking soda, (Alkaline! I taught IPC, I did!) and am currently sipping on cup of boiled cinnamin stick (supposedly a remedy for acidic stomach from the middle east).

I really need to be sleeping.

Remember

At church, we have been going through the book of Joshua. The series was entitled The Land, and it paralleled the walk of the Israelites on their way to their Promised Land with our own struggles on our walk into the ultimate calling and blessings in our life.

….I’ll bet, like me, they doubted.

I’ll bet they awoke some mornings without zeal for the long walk ahead of them that day. I’ll bet they wondered some days where they were, and if they were on the right route. I’ll bet some days they forgot even where they were headed. I’ll bet some days they awoke with very little hope. I’ll bet they often felt like they were going to wander the wilderness forever. That sometimes even the manna they miraculously received felt paltry and dry.

I’ll bet, like me, they also hoped.

I’ll bet they clung to reminders that one day, one day sooner or later, they would come to the promised land. Reminders like the ever present smoke and fire. They reminded one another, I’ll bet. They would tell one another, “He promised. He promised us a home, a resting place, plenty. He promised that one day we would get there. We will.” When they days got long, and dusty, and hopeless, they reminded one another. They remembered for one another.

I’ll bet some days they just wished the Lord had given them a map. But if He had given them a map, they could have done it all on their own strength. Instead they, like me, had to learn the lesson of daily obedience. Of not knowing, but staying close to him, and following day by day, hour by hour, step by dusty step. They had to daily awake, gather their manna, and follow the pillar of smoke.

And remember.

 

He promised.

Bernoulli....

Sitting in Caribu, trying to come up with enough research to make me feel comfortable about the interview and presentation I am going to give tomorrow. It’s a job with a company called MadScience. They give parties and afterschool programs to wee children and try to interest them in science. Something I love. I have to present on Bernoulli’s principle for five minutes.


But I’m afraid that I won’t make Bernoulli’s principle entertaining enough.

I remember the day I taught this to the ninth grade class. Fourteen boys and four girls. Too much energy for a teacher with six weeks experience. I taught them the basics, did a few demonstrations, then handed them two sections of straw and a cup of water in order to make atomizers….it was a good day. Lots of interest and curiosity, and water everywhere.

I miss teaching.

I miss working.

I wish life would get into gear. Any gear will do.

Summer dinner at our house.

Its dinner time in Duestchland. Here are the the ingredients!

(sorry about the quality, my camera is acting up)

Tomatoes. (My parents have had this colander since they were first married 26 years ago. My dad remembers because it is slightly melted at the bottom.)

Plus green peppers (and a few more ingredients)....equal....

Pasta Salad! (in Polish pottery!)

Add Mead.

And chickens smoked on the grill.

Et voila! Summer Dinner.

Strawberries and vanilla ice cream for dessert.

Hello, Sweet Summer...

I miss Boone.

 I miss writing long, boring academic papers about things I'm insanely interested in while drinking cheerwine from CookOut.

I miss having 40 books checked out from the library.

I miss cool summer nights in the mountains with stars like nothing else.

I miss poking through junk shops on Main St.

I miss history and academia and not being looked at strangely when everything I think about relates in some way to history or anthropology.

Oh how life changes!

I am also looking forward to moving to a real, live grown up type apartment complex.

I'm looking forward to wearing heels more often and not tumbling down a mountain when I do.

I'm looking forward to learning to love the flatlands.

I'm looking forward to seeking and finding a new passion (and maybe a coninciding job!).

I'm looking forward to getting the drive to make art.

I am learning.

Thoughts from the road...

Winter hit Boone hard this year. Spring is just now peeking her head around the corner to see if its safe to come out. The roads are all pockmarked and whole swaths of trees are dead and fallen over, their root balls as tall as a grown person.

Jon Amos Comenius, the moravian archbishop who's name my high school inherited used to say that Nature is God's second book. He admonished people to notice the cyclicity of nature, and to use it as a textbook for life.

If there is any lesson I have learned, it is this. After every winter, not matter how hard, no matter how long...there is spring.

 Sometimes spring is a just little long in coming.

"I will change your world for you"

Plant your hopes. 

"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone;

but if it dies,

 it produces much grain."

John 12:24

He is faithful.