Life in the Desert

Good Riddance 2011. You Sucked.

2011-12-31T22:32:00.000-07:00

Somewhere Different Now

2011-08-26T09:16:00.000-07:00

where'd kyla go?

2011-04-01T15:28:00.001-07:00

A couple weeks ago i was doing the dishes, when Elliot walked up and asked me if i could go get Kyla. My heart stopped as it suddenly occurred to me that it had been quiet for some time and as i scanned the room i didnt see or hear kyla anywhere. "Where is she?!" I asked, totally freaked out while i jumped over the kids gate i had put up to keep the kids from pulling the dishes out of the dishwasher as i loaded them in.
Elliot replied calmly, "She's in time out."
Oops.

Yesterday my friend Janice and her two girls came over. Kyla had climbed on the table and when i told her to get down she just looked at me and shook her head no. So into time out she went. Janice hadn't seen what had happened other than Kyla going in time-out, so a while later when she was correcting one of her girls for something i begin to tell her how a little while ago Kyla had flat out shook her head no at me when i asked her to do something. I hadn't gotten very far in the story, when it occurred to me "Wait... is Kyla still in time out?" Janice nodded her head yes and smiled as though she had been wondering just exactly how long i normally subjected my child to time out. Awesome.

And then today... I was sitting on the computer and noticing that Elliot had been playing nicely by himself next to me for a while. I could hear Kyla making occasional noises in her room, but it was odd she would be playing by herself for so long. I figured this meant she must be getting into trouble so i asked Elliot to go see what she was doing. He came back and said "She's just sitting in her room." He usually jumps at the chance to tell me when she's doing something bad so i figured she must be ok. Another 5 min go by and Elliot asks "Mommy can Kyla come out of time-out now? shes been in there a real long time."

Im starting to wonder how many years im going to be forgotten about while i wait in purgatory to pay this off.

I lasted a year

2011-03-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

A little over a year ago I had two kids in diapers and had just moved into a project house. I'd had a house full of pets my entire life, but came to a point where there were just way too many entities in the house whos poop and messes i was required to clean up after. So I became petless for the first time in my life. It lasted a year. It was a very nice break. But now that Elliot's potty trained, Kyla's not nearly as demanding of constant attention, and the immediately necessary house projects are taken care of - I got the itch again. It was probably mainly Scott and Janice's fault with their adorable new puppy that Elly and Lucy just adore. Mixed with the fact that my kids had become terrified of getting near anything with fur and this was disturbing to my soul. Most people would think i was mainly a dog person, but really im an all animals kind of person. Its just that Keith is an anti-cat kind of person, so we had not had any cats. But he made the unfortunate (for him) mistake of wondering out-loud if cats were less work than dogs, because he was also disturbed at our children's fear of animals and thought a pet might help. That was all it took, and i spent the next couple weeks reminiscing about the cat i had growing up and searching the classifieds for a kitten. My plan was actually to find one that looked just like the cat i had growing up, name it the same thing, and pretend it never died. I got as close as i could, but since the gender was wrong and the little white paws were different, i decided against calling the poor boy "Mitzy" and gave him a nice respectable masculine name. Rambo. When I was picking out which kitten i wanted, the guy told me this was the friendliest one. At the time i thought it sounded so cute that he followed the guy around everywhere. He wasn't kidding! Rambo follows me everywhere meowing, lays on me and begs for attention all day long..... oh yeah - and climbs up my back to sit on my head while im working on the computer.

I think the world needs a new perspective on bats

2011-02-13T22:00:00.000-07:00

There is no spoon

2011-02-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

I've been taking some time processing my end of the week thoughts towards our church's week of prayer. But as I allowed a 'couple days' to pass while I thought about it, the things going on in my life continued to change the direction of my thoughts. One phrase that kept coming to mind during the week was something i heard at our last women's retreat. We talked about all the things in our individual lives that hinder us in coming to God. Events, fears, insecurities. I was kind-of wondering what we were going to do with that information. Were we going to find healing from those things while on the retreat? Were we going to learn the magic secret to getting past it? At the end of the retreat when it seemed we were running out of time to fit in all that magic damage repair, this is what Angel said that stuck with me,
"Stop pursuing freedom. Pursue God."
Of course my initial reaction (after i block out the whiny voice deep inside that just realized i wasn't going home with my magic freedom) was to think "ok, so if i start really focusing on pursuing God then I will get freedom from this other stuff." Now I had a problem. I knew that I was still really pursuing freedom. As though if I were conniving enough, I might trick God into thinking I was doing great at pursuing Him so he would then miraculously heal me. So now what? How is it even possible for me to get past my extraordinarily self-serving nature to truly pursue God just for God and not for the benefits I hoped it would bring to my brokenness?
This past week (after the week of prayer) Satan has hit me pretty hard. And I came to a decision that may not be true for everyone, but it feels like a light bulb in my brain to my dilemma in pursuing freedom.

There is no spoon.

Or in my case: There is no freedom.

Not in this world. I am an exile. I will always have the desire for freedom. I will always long for my true home as a child of Christ with a new heart that deeply aches with the pain in this world. But I cannot hope, cry, or claw my way away from it. Freedom isn't to be found here. It will come like a white knight whisking off the damsel in distress when our Savior returns to take us back to the home from which he sent us into exile. In that lies my hope. In that I hope to accept what is, and move forward to pursue God just because He is God.

Day 5: Your Love is Changing Us

2011-01-29T09:16:00.000-07:00

Tear down the walls, see the world

Is there something we have missed?

Turn from ourselves

Look beyond

There is so much more than this

I don't need to see it to believe it

Cause I can't shake this

Fire deep inside my heart

Look to the skies, hope arise

See His majesty revealed

More than this life there is love

There is hope and this is real

This life is Yours, and hope is rising

As Your glory floods our hearts

Let love tear down these walls

That all creation would

Come back to You

It's all for You

Your Name is glorious

Glorious

Your love is changing us

Calling us

To worship in spirit and in truth

As all creation returns to You

Hillsong United Tear Down the Walls

Day4: Adventure Awaits

2011-01-27T17:33:00.000-07:00

I began this week at first not really sure about how this week of prayer and fasting was going to play out, but with some excitement just at the thought of doing something different – out of the ordinary. First day and I’m immediately hit with fear. Wait a second – I’m not sure how I feel about ‘out of the ordinary.’ Ordinary happens to be working out just fine for me right now. It could take me places I really wasn’t willing to go. Could be scary, could be painful.
And then the very next time I devoted some time to talk with God about it, I found multiple Bible passages that spoke right to me. Things I already ‘knew,’ but in the moment I felt them. Although nothing had changed, simply taking the time to express my fears and then read the living and active Truth of God was able to elevate my perspective on things – bring it slightly higher than the self-absorbed depression of this worldly view.

Keith and I decided to take our fasting to a place that was a little more unfamiliar and difficult for us. We decided to fast from food for the remainder of the week. Taking another step out of the bounds of ordinary. I honestly wasn’t really sure what this was going to do, other than make me hungry and irritable. But I wanted to give it a shot. Believers kept on doing it all through-out the Bible so I figure there’s a reason even if I’m not quite sure I understand it correctly. Some reasons I thought of included taking out the distraction of eating in the sense that you can use that time to pray, or that the strong and constant hunger pains will remind you that you are dedicating your week to prayer. Perhaps just the act of disciplining yourself, strengthens your discipline muscles which are essential to any believer’s life.

At first I think I focused more on trying to distract myself from hunger, than on praying. I set aside time to pray and I shot little prayer darts to heaven when I felt those hunger pains reminding me to. But I was pretty sure that since I spent the majority of the day doing whatever I could to avoid thinking about food, and didn’t spend the whole day on my knees as I envision the Bible characters did – that there might not be much of a point to it.

Day 2 is looking a little different. I woke up with some trepidation at facing another long hungry day, but I also had a little bit of this strange feeling that felt entirely out of place with the stomach growls. Fun. As Keith and I got out of bed and laughingly grumbled about what a hard day it was going to be, I realized it was fun to be doing this together. I thought about how our whole church community is going through this week together. We are individually fasting in our unique ways and praying often on our own, but we are all taking this same week to pointedly come before God and show our intentionality in seeking His will for ourselves, each-other, our world, our city, our church, our leaders. It’s kind-of fun.

This morning Janice and I got together to discuss a book we’re going through. Captivating , by John and Stasi Eldredge. Yeah, it’s a touchy feely book and I’m kind-of embarrassed to admit it, but ironically that disownment of the seemingly derogatory traits of femininity is partly what the book is about. Did I just make it sound sillier? Well it’s not. We read three chapters and it pretty much has me pegged. One of the things it discusses is the desire for adventure. I thought through my life and didn’t really view anything as movie or book worthy adventure. Then this afternoon I sat down to pray. I was praying for Eric and Dejah who are moving to Tijuana to work with Outside the Bowl. I specifically was thinking of Dejah and how she was dealing with some fears of anything happening to their newborn Malena on account of them moving there. As a mother I can relate to the depths of those feelings. Something happening to my children is my greatest fear. But what Eric and Dejah are doing sounds so exciting. They are following where the Holy Spirit is leading them, regardless of their fears. Then it hit me. They’re on an adventure.
I began to visualize myself in a pathway. A little ways down the pathway opened up, as though in a scene from a Narnia book going through the closet into a beautiful, unknown land. Adventure. We all long for adventure, right? Well adventure entails danger. It entails risk. It entails fear. But in our story where the devil is the enemy – we already know we will conquer. We know God will give us the strength to be the heroes of our story whatever hardships befall us. My family is not mine to risk – they belong to God. They are under His protection and His will for their lives. My responsibility is me. Is God calling me to something bigger? To be a part of an adventure full of risk, danger, excitement, and the promise of eternal victory?
God promises that when we seek him with all our hearts, we will find Him. (Jer. 29:13.) It is amazing to hear God. To feel His comfort, to realize His truth. Why is it I seek Him so rarely?

Day 2. Church-wide prayer focus: Community Life

2011-01-25T21:27:00.000-07:00

Hebrews 10

23-25. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to faith and good works, not neglecting to meet together...but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

35-36. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.

39. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

Day 1. Church-wide prayer focus: Personal and Relational

2011-01-24T22:06:00.001-07:00

When I was pregnant with Elliot and went into labor, I was convinced that pain is all in your head. I figured I was mentally strong and would be able to rise above, and it wasn’t going to be that bad. When the labor was getting pretty rough and they asked me if I wanted drugs, I said no, but I really wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be able to take it if it were going to still be a long time. The nurse assured me that if I’d made it as far as I had, that I would be fine. I took this to mean it wasn’t going to get much worse and it wasn’t going to last much longer. A couple of hours is not too much longer compared to many women’s stories, but it was an eternity to me – and the pain got MUCH worse. As I approached going into labor with Kyla, I had of course forgotten the extent of the pain and figured if I’d done it once, I could do it again without drugs because I believed in the long run it was better than the chance I’d need surgery if the drugs affected the process negatively. As the labor intensified and my recollection was awakened, I became terrified of the pain to come. Having gone through two natural births and having survived them, I would think my natural response to other physical pain in life would be to say “There’s nothing I can’t handle, I’ve gone through labor and childbirth!” But that hasn’t been the case. I’m actually quite afraid of physical pain now, though I never remember having that fear before I experienced childbirth.

One of the prayer points for this day in the week of prayer and fasting (see previous post), is prayer for God to continue to refine our character. I went all day avoiding that prayer point and focusing on other things instead. I’m a stubborn person, and I know what refinement tends to look like for stubborn people. Painful.

I’ve experienced some serious refinement. And it entailed more pain than I thought a person should be able to survive. And although it probably won’t ever fully go away, I am at least to a point where I can look back and realize that I did, in-fact, survive.

However, having had serious refinement by no means negates that I am still in need of serious refinement in innumerable ways. But I can’t bring myself to ask God to refine me. I’m terrified. I’ve experienced God’s miraculous power and Sovereignty over my life, yet I still sit here paralyzed with fear with the memory of pain still fresh on all my senses. It angers me to know that in this, the enemy is winning. How can I get there? How can I get to the point of truly giving everything to God and jumping off that cliff?

New Year, New Hopes

2011-01-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of the annual week of prayer and fasting at my church 2nd Mile. Im eating icecream as im writing this, so obviously the concept of "fasting" has been left to flex with our ideas on what will be the most effective for us. Honestly, im not really sure how i feel about this. I am curious to know if there is thought or reason out there that fasting ought to be from food as it is in the Bible. My experience with this is pretty much limited to a '24 hour famine' I did with my church in junior high. We camped out in the church building for 24hrs with no food, but for some reason were allowed unlimited amounts of coffee among other fluids. Not really the smartest idea on the part of the poor adults who agreed to watch us.
The idea of this week is to eliminate something from our life that takes up our time or thought and devote that time to prayer instead. I wasn't sure how effective fasting from food would be, given that I still have to spend the time making meals for my kids and i wonder if I'd start viewing the week as a crash diet instead of a somber devotion to prayer. As Im thinking about it though, perhaps food is the most common form of fasting because hunger is such a strong and constant feeling that it would bring with it the reminder to pray in a strong and constant way. I may still decide to add this to my week.
I was thinking through what things take up a lot of my time that i could be using for prayer. After deciding I probably shouldn't fast from dishes, laundry, cleaning, or my kids - I decided to go with the obvious: facebook. It's kind of depressing to realize this is so much a part of my day throughout the whole day that its going to be quite difficult for me. But at least I know that with the amounts of time i normally click that tab on my computer, I will be reminded to pray constantly through the day instead. The other discipline I'm going to be adding on to my week is to wake up before my children for some time of prayer. Since I can't really give them away for the week, the only way to avoid their distraction is to get my butt out if bed earlier than they do.
These simple tasks seem daunting to me, yet I'm pretty excited for this week. I spent the month of December mentally gearing up for the new year. I love the beginning of a new year. It feels fresh and new. A chance to start the year with a clean slate, full of goals and ideas on how you're going to do things different to make this year really count for something. So far this new year has bombed. Not in a cool slang 'bad means good' kind of way. Its just been a rough month all around. Its really been a rough month for all of Tucson as well. And as the week of prayer and fasting approached, it occurred to me that I was putting my hope in the magical properties of flipping a page in a man made calendar.
I'm so grateful to be a part of a community of people who have made a determined effort each year to spend a week putting aside the trivialities of the world and putting our focus on God - the only true giver of hope.

The Consumption of my Time

2010-02-18T21:26:00.001-07:00

I've got these...

Im selling those...

We bought and are remodeling this...

Terminator Salvation

2009-06-15T21:39:00.001-07:00

Today was my birthday. My parents took me to go see the new terminator movie which GREATLY exceeded my expectations. I was so irritated at the third terminator movie with its destruction of the whole "no fate" theme of the first two movies - not to mention their wimpy impression of john connor, his annoying bossy girlfriend, a stupid malfunctioning arnold, and a ridiculous chick terminator that was less advanced than the T1000 of T2. Before seeing T3, I had a group of friends over to watch the first 2 consecutively and then we went strait from those to watch the first midnight showing of T3. What a disappointment! So I wasnt even going to bother with this one until it hit the cheap seats (especially with no arnold in it!) except that my parents offered to take us to a movie of my choice for my b-day. Christian Bale was a MUCH better John Connor, and the movie spectacularly lived up to the point of the first two movies while not needing to acknowledge the travesty of the third. (My dad said i take these movies too seriously.) Nice save John Brancato and Michael Ferris.

Explode with Joy

2009-04-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

We’re going through a series on relationships at 2nd Mile. Last Sunday we looked at some characteristics that we are to manifest in how we relate to others. “Put on then as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience… (Colossians 3: 12-17).” This is just the beginning of the list of characteristics, but the focus was mainly on the preface – “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved. “ These three descriptive words are the foundation for all that follows. They are of greatest significance and power, and yet it is the part of the section I am most likely to have just skimmed over on my quest to determine exactly what outward manifestations I am to attain. And my quest will be a weak one -void of the founding power behind it. Because it’s not easy to always have compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, love, peace, and thankfulness.

Last night we discussed this a bit at our mid-week discussion group. We started out by being asked if we are comfortable with these things – that we are chosen, holy, and beloved. It took me a while to process what was meant by this question, and true to what usually happens to me at discussion groups – by the time I have formatted some thoughts, the discussion is way beyond having moved onto something else. I think if we really were comfortable with this description of ourselves, then putting on the following characteristics would not be such a challenge. It wouldn’t feel hard or unnatural, because we would be comfortable responding “as we are now in Christ, rather than responding as who we were.” We are chosen by God. We are holy. We are beloved by God. As Chad said – these three truths should cause us to explode with joy! “Inward reality causes an outward expression.”

Sometimes our focus is too hard on ourselves – resulting in guilt, discouragement, and failure. So here’s to focusing on some amazing truths about myself. I am chosen. I am holy. I am beloved. By the God of the universe. May these truths sink in enough to reveal the characteristics of Christ that are living in me.

Ode to Murtle

2009-03-10T15:25:00.001-07:00

We got our turtle Murtle around 20 years ago. She was originally Joel’s turtle. My first turtle was Trisha. Trisha died of accidental sun over-exposure when her aquarium was left outside for too long. Then I got Tommy. We returned Tommy to the pet store after a week because he seemed sick. Then I got Myron, then Myron Jr., then Myron the 3rd. The first two Myrons didn’t survive hibernation during the winters. The third Myron escaped the outdoor turtle pen we’d made and a day after we found him he got all puffy and died of some sort of disease. I wasn't having very good luck with my turtles, but there was no killing Murtle, she survived everything.
Joel wasn’t so much an animal person like I was, so by this point when Murtle was indoors she lived in my room and I cared for her and exercised her. Joel thought he’d capitalize off of this situation and he told me that since Murtle was officially his turtle, he was going to give her to a friend of his unless I bought her from him for 10 dollars. Thus Murtle officially became my turtle.

Murtle was an escape artist and I once painted a design on her back with pink and blue nailpolish so I could find her better when I brought her out for exercise. Apparently I didn't think about this being dangerous, but I figured nailpolish remover might be, so to this day part of that pink and blue design can still be seen on her shell. One time Murtle got out of her turtle pen and we couldn’t find her. We were certain she was gone for good. Then 3 months later I had a bird that escaped. My mom was upstairs praying for us to find to find the bird and she threw in a prayer for us to find Murtle as well. She then went downstairs and found Murtle sitting on the porch right outside the back door with her head outstretched as if to say “Here I am.” (We also found the bird shortly after.)

When Keith and I lived at the ranch for a while, one of my almost daily activities was to catch grasshoppers outside and then put them in Murtle’s aquarium and watch as she caught every last one. Keith would joke that Id probably spent more time in my life watching Murtle than I’d ever spent watching TV. We’d always feel bad for Murtle though because life seemed so boring for her living in an aquarium. Last year someone gave us a tortoise. He was too big for the aquarium and too annoying to have living in the bathtub, so we built a turtle pen for him and Murtle in our backyard. We worked hard to make it dog proof, and when we got the invisible fence for the dogs we made sure they couldn’t even get close to it. I was planning on bringing Murtle back in for the winter since it had been a while since she’d had to hibernate and I didn’t want to risk it. But right before the cold spell and during the week I was planning on brining her in, my little escape artist disappeared. We were pretty sure she was in the neighbor’s yard because the turtle pen bordered her fence and it seemed the only likely direction she might have gotten out. We couldn’t find her though and the neighbor was insistent that she’d gone under ground for the winter and we wouldn’t be able to find her till she emerged in the spring. But I was certain we’d find her. After all – It was Murtle. She always came back. The last few days have been extremely warm and I’d been thinking about how I should replace the faded “lost box turtle” signs on the street posts and remind the neighbor to keep a look out.

Yesterday afternoon, 3 months after she disappeared, Murtle once again showed up on my back porch right outside my door.
Only this time she was in the mouth of one of my dogs.
And about half of her was missing.

There is a turtle sized hole tunneling under the back porch, indicating she’d been right under my back porch all winter. 2 days of unseasonably warm weather must have brought her out. And it brought her out on the day I had jury duty. The one day I wasn’t home all day looking out the window any time the dogs bark in case they’re barking at the prodigal turtle.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Murtle was supposed to always be there. Murtle always survives.
So I am sitting here in devastation. Mourning the loss of my lifelong pet. Drowning in the accusations of “if only.”

If only I’d brought her in a week earlier for the winter. If only I’d done more to prevent her mysterious escape. If only I hadn’t been at jury duty that day. If only I hadn’t bought those stupid dogs.
If only . . . . . . then Murtle would have lived forever.

A rare silence

2009-01-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

It is a rare occasion that Elliot is not playing in the same room where I am. If I move to another room, he picks up his toys and follows me and begins playing in that room. It is an even rarer occasion that when he is playing in another room from where I'm at, he's not making enough noise for me to know what he's doing. So when those rare moments of dead silence come, I am instantly aware that my son must be doing something he is not supposed to be doing. These are the moments when i find such things as him sitting on the floor with my wallet and every last item that was in it is strewn in a nice circle around him.
But recently he's found a silent activity that I LOVE to find him doing.
Reading to himself in the rocking chair in his room. This is just plain adorable.

Baby Kolomichuk Photo-shoot

2008-12-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

I had a whole bunch of pictures taken this morning of Baby #2. This is a very unfortunate experience to have to go to alone, because it is AMAZING! The lady operating the sonogram is somewhat less impressed seeing as how she does this every day, so you keep looking around wanting to exchange a look of awe with someone who thinks this is as incredible as you do. The baby was moving around like crazy. I saw him (or her, but I'll use "him" for the sake of avoiding "it") kicking his legs, sucking on his fingers, flipping around and around, rubbing his face, yawning, banging his fists together.... My favorite move though sort of resembled that move that martial artists use when they're getting themselves from their backs to a standing position by swinging their legs forward and arching their backs - it kept looking like he was trying to do that. Kind-of like an inch worm but on his back. I came home with 12 pictures, but they all disappointingly look nothing like the clarity I felt like i saw on the screen. So I'll spare you trying to figure out which part of white fuzz is the baby in all 12 pictures, and I'll just post two of them here. One is just his hand with his fingers outstretched waving hello to his mommy. The other one is his freakishly skeleton looking face (on the right) with big eye sockets and his mouth wide open. He kept opening and shutting it as though he were talking to us ("help im stuck in this tiny place! let me out! let me out!")

The Bourne Identity spoilers for book and movie

2008-12-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

The last few days I’ve been living vicariously through Jason Bourne. I was looking for a book to read that was purely entertainment instead of informational. We don’t own a whole lot of entertainment books that I haven’t already read, but Keith has the Bourne series so he recommended I read The Bourne Identity. I almost refused because I don’t like reading books after I’ve seen the movie. I feel like it ruins all the imagination factor plus you already know what’s going to happen. I was desperate enough though to pick up a novel with a cheesy Victorian romance type of cover. I only have this book because it was written by George MacDonald and came in a box of George MacDonald books I borrowed from my Dad from when he ordered just about every MacDonald book he could get his hands on. If I can find a pic of the cover you’ll see why this particular book had gone untouched. I tried to give it a shot, but the first page started out with a description of hills and flowers and such and after a paragraph of this boring nonsense I traded it in for Jason Bourne. Now Keith told me it was different from the movie because it had a lot more detail - but after reading the book I fail to see how the book cover can say “Now a major motion picture” – when I don’t think there is anything that happens in the movie that happens in the book other than the main character getting amnesia. They have a few of the same character names such as Marie – but how did Marie go from being a Canadian Doctor of Economics whom he kidnaps at gunpoint, beats up, slaps around, and eventually greatly utilizes her expertise in banks and finances - to a German gypsy that he pays for a ride and she’s got nothing better to do than to get a crush on some guy she doesn’t know, flirt her way up to his apartment, and then tag along for the ride? I mean Jason Bourne’s not even really an assassin in the book! Had I read the book before the movie I may have been quite disappointed in the movie. But all in all it was a good book, and it was a good movie. Just don’t expect the two to have any plot correlation. As soon as I have another entire day or two to waste I will move on to the second book (Yes I have trouble putting a book down at all once I’ve started) and I will see if there is any possible way the second one has anything at all in common with the second movie. So far the end of the first book sets up the second in a way that would completely contradict the events of the second movie. So this time I will pick up The Bourne Supremacy with a completely open imagination and zero expectations.

Blog Transition

2008-12-11T10:02:00.000-07:00

Due to cooler templates and user friendliness, I have moved my blog to this blogspot address. Sorry to those who'd commented on previous blogs as those did not transition.

A Faltering Message

2008-12-10T19:26:00.000-07:00

I went to the park this afternoon with my stopwatch and my jogging goal for the day. But this time I also had another goal.

I’ve been going to the park a lot this past month and every time I go there is a little old lady walking around the track in her slippers. This is slightly unusual, but what is even more strange about it is that I never go to the park on the same days or even the same time of day. Morning, afternoon, or evening this lady always seems to be walking the track when I am. We smile and say a customary “Good-morning” (or whatever time of day it is,) but that has been the extent of it.

Sometimes when I jog at night I have trouble getting to sleep because I’m still wound up. This was the case a couple nights ago. As I lay awake, I couldn’t stop wondering about this cute little old lady in her flimsy brownish slippers that showed a hint of having been pink at some point in time. So I decided I ought to try and get to know her and find out her story. When I come to the point of crossing paths with her, I’m going to place a mental pause on the dictatorial watch’s flashing green countdown and slow down enough to try and talk. Wouldn’t you know it, for the first time in a month she wasn’t at the park when I went.

I feel like I’m being shown a lot of missed opportunities lately. When my brother and his wife were going through a rough week, my husband’s immediate response was that we should go to Colorado and help out for a bit. Sounded great, but then I started thinking that maybe they didn’t want to talk about it so I shouldn’t call just yet… and they actually have a bunch of family around so we might be more of a hindrance than a help...and so on. Turns out had we called right away they would have gladly welcomed the idea and we would have had an opportunity to really help family in a hard time. We have really nice neighbors right next door. When we moved in, we thought we should have them over for dinner sometime and really get to know them on a deeper level. It’s sad how “sometime” can turn into two years of never actually going through with that plan. What’s even worse is when out of the blue our neighbor tells us that his wife is moving out and we had no clue they were having problems. Before I even got the chance to see her again she’s packed up and left and 6 months later we still hadn’t seen her once even though she has three kids that were apparently left with the husband. What happened? What went wrong? What’s going on with her? We’re still on such superficial pleasantry status that I don’t have the right (or maybe just the guts) to ask these questions. These neighbors are the drinking, smoking, cursing out their children at the top of their lungs kind of people – yet they go above and beyond in doing acts of kindness towards us and put our neighborliness to shame. How have we shown Jesus to these people who live right next door?

And now my little old lady has gone missing.

My Grandpa died of cancer back in 1995. My Dad said that when my Grandpa knew he was dying, he was expressing great regret for all the time he wasted, and all the opportunities missed for telling people about God. From everything I remember and have been told about my Grandpa – he was the kind of man who didn’t just seize every opportunity he had, but he went looking for opportunities to share Jesus with people every chance he had. It’s astounding the amount of lives that he affected. Yet here he is at the end of his life wishing he did more. That’s stuck with me. If at the end of his life he felt like he’d wasted so much time – how am I going to feel about what I’ve done with my life? I live in a constant state of seeing opportunities plain as day in front of me, and thinking “I should do something about that.”

Someday. Tomorrow. Next time.

He who knows what he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.

We listened to a sermon recently by Rob Bell that helped to poke at the regrets I’ve been feeling. He told of scenarios of evil in the world. Christians are seeing these situations and crying out to God “Where are you?” And in this illustration God’s response to man is “Where are you?” God has chosen us to be the message in this world of evil. We are not just the vessel carrying this message to the world, we ARE the message. Our lives are the message. Our reaching out to people, our demonstrating God’s love, our doing the things that Jesus would have done in the face of the evils of this world – poverty, pain, suffering. We are the message. We are God in this world. What are we telling people with our lives?

These are just some things that have been on my heart. I haven’t done anything about it yet. But maybe next time I go to the park, I will cross paths with a little old lady in tattered slippers.

Of Mice and Men

2008-12-10T19:25:00.001-07:00

Recently Keith was searching for something under the guest bed in the spare room, when he suddenly called to me "We've got a mouse in here!" A mouse? I was shocked. We live in a neighborhood in a city, we're not supposed to get mice, right?
Expressing this sentiment provided Keith with yet another opportunity to poke fun at the different sides of town we grew up on. When Keith lived in Tucson growing up, it was in the neighborhood we're currently living in - on the south east side of Tucson. I grew up on the northwest side - the nice side of town. Not quite to Oro Valley (the nicer side of town) and definitely not the foothills (the really rich part of Tucson), but definitely nicer than most everything south of us. Anytime I mention an item or experience from my childhood that Keith doesn’t relate to, he explains it by saying "We couldn’t afford that kind of thing on my side of town." He enjoys this type of teasing merely because I highly resent the implication that I am a snob or excessive. On the contrary, my personality type prides myself in practicality and being a good old-fashioned cheapskate. (You taught me well, Dad.) When Keith and I met, he was highly into brand names and wanting the best of the best in everything. Excessiveness under the guise of quality. I, on the other hand, would lean way to the other side where I would buy something so cheap, for "practicality," that I would probably have to replace it 10 times as often as something of slight more expense.

So back to the story at hand - Apparently mice do occasionally trickle into some neighborhoods in Tucson. And one miraculously made it past the abounding number of neighborhood cats that like to sleep in our yard and got into our house. I decided to catch it. So we tore apart the room looking for it. No where to be found. Next day it's under the kitchen sink. We think we have it trapped, but pull everything out to find its not there. Next day we see it behind the aquarium, and chase it into the back room, with Elliot's room and our room carefully blockaded from mouse entrance. Tear it apart again, but still don’t find it. We finally gave up and went back into our bedroom. Keith's getting ready for bed and says to me "I'll be fine as long as nothing crawls over me in the middle of the ni-AHHHHH!" Yup - the mouse had made it into our bedroom closet, and ran across Keith's feet right in the middle of his ironic self-assuring statement. "That's it Shawna - you need to go buy a trap tomorrow!"

I know to most people, mice are disgusting little creatures. But I still see them as little lives. I've always been highly sensitive to the sanctity of life. Any life. (Excluding cockroaches and mosquitoes, which everyone knows aren't really lives, but spawn of satan in insect form.) When I was little, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for hours because none of adults seemed to care that my brother was outside maliciously killing ants on purpose! Before the days when Joel and I were given weeding to do as a chore, I used to pull up occasional weeds by the roots and plant them somewhere else or in pots in my room so my Dad wouldn’t kill them with his weed sprayer. I remember watching a Harrison Ford movie in the theater (Patriot Games?) and crying because of the numerous amounts of no-named bad guys getting shot and killed. They were people too - with parents and possibly a wife and children at home who were now going to be fatherless. Didn't anyone understand the magnitude of snuffing out a life? And finally, once in my Uncle Art's house, I reached down without a thought and snatched up a mouse that was running across the floor, because I knew he had mouse traps set up around the house. My Mom is an amazing woman to put up with me bringing that mouse into the house and keeping it as a pet.

So I went out and got a mouse trap. A mouse trap that consisted of a little plastic box with a swinging door that could only be pushed open by the outside. I humane mouse trap. I baited it and even rubbed peanut butter on the outside of the door to attract it by scent like it suggested. A few days went by. No mouse. So I gave in and let Keith set up the other kind of trap. The head squishing kind. We set it right next to my humane trap - I'm still hoping the mouse chooses mine. We set it up and were in the living room talking when, probably not even an hour later, *snap!* Keith and I look at each other wide eyed. I'm horrified. Keith goes to check the trap. "It was probably a cockroach that set it off," I say to assure myself that I did not just participate in the killing of a little life. Nope. It was the mouse. Keith tells me not to look and a few minutes later he asks where I keep the bleach. My brain gets a little warm with emotion, and as a byproduct my eyes get a little sweaty. "I feel rotten!" I announce. Keith looks at me and laughs. Not a mean laugh, but I understand its somewhat funny that I'm so worked up about it. I laugh too, but at the same time I'm shouting "It's not funny! That was a little life! Haven't you seen Cinderella? That could have been Gus-Gus!"

So there it is. I can be an overly sensitive girly-girl who cries over a mouse. During high school and college, I managed to completely callous over this sensitivity to points where I honestly didn’t feel anything towards things that I should. But in the end I still have it in me. The extremist who doesn’t give a rip about some people's problems that I don't think are important enough for them to get all upset about - but who can go into depression for days because of a stranger's pain over something I find of infinite value. I believe we shouldn't become desensitized to the sanctity of life. I believe Life is of infinite value.

Overprotective Parenting?

2008-12-10T19:13:00.000-07:00

I've heard that parents tend to over worry with their first child. Boil the pacifier every time it drops, bathe every day, sanitize everything, freak out if anything random starts to find it's way towards baby's mouth. I developed a good dose of maternal instinct when Elliot was born, but the germa-phobia and excessive worry never took over. Keith asked me the other day what I think we'll be like with a second child when we've already started out so relaxed with Elliot. What's he sucking on? I don't know but it doesn't look too dirty. Does he need a bath? Nope - I think he had one within the last week or two.

Elliot is starting to crawl all over the house and be into everything so we're starting to talk about baby proofing. Meanwhile we've been going to a Love and Logic parenting class at a church out here. In our last class the leader made a comment about how parents control their children's environment so much that they don't allow them to learn from the natural consequences of things. Her example? Baby puts something in the outlet. It won't kill them, but it'll hurt enough to teach them not to do it again. But parents deprive their children from learning that lesson by covering up the outlets.

Ok so maybe I have a little more worrying in my nature than that. I think I'll still cover my outlets. So where exactly do you draw the line? Elliot climbed/fell out of his crib the other week. I imagine it hurt (although he was crawling calmly on the floor when I went in and discovered it), but we still lowered the crib just in case he didn't quite learn from the consequence the first time. Even if he his one tough little boy, it protects my heart from breaking at the thought that my baby may have been hurt or scared for even a moment over such a large fall. But with many things to come, I imagine I will have to suffer the parental empathy as I allow Elliot to suffer the consequences of actions he must learn from. I just pray God will give me the wisdom to find that balance.