Tired.

Throwing six months’ of work into the next two and a half weeks.  Part of it’s schoolwork, which was delayed by problems with a statistical computer program, and truth be known, there is some procrastination.  Most of it is a project I offered to help out with last fall, and was assured that everything was “under control.” This from a person I’ve known for a very long time, and quite honestly, I should have known.

It’s about a year long project and only half done.  But because we are friends, and he is very much like me, he knew he could wait until the last minute to call and beg for help.  Fortunately for him, this friend is an amateur chef, and my daughter thinks the smoke detector means that dinner’s done.  So, someday when I move out, he owes me a freezer full of meals, and I will send this thing off, beautifully done and in excellent shape, in about two weeks.  While I’m in the middle of finals, and, oh yeah, I got three new clients on my caseload this week, so I am seeing at least one family every day of the week. Saturday I see three. Because I’m going to Hawaii, and will be gone when my finals should have been scheduled, I have to complete all my courses by the end of September so I can take my finals before I go, otherwise I fail all three classes.

I wish I could be a kitten…

 

 

One Hundred Years from now 
It will not matter 
what kind of car I drove, 
What kind of house I lived in, 
how much money was in my bank account 
nor what my clothes looked like. 
But the world may be a better place because 
I was important in the life of a child.

 

 

Ponderables on parenting (and even if you’re not a parent, realize that there is someone, somewhere, who you influence):

.
 
(My beautiful child Amanda as a baby
August 1998)

A careful woman I ought to be;
A little girl follows me.
I do not dare to go astray,
for fear she’ll go the self same way.
Not once can I escape her eyes;
wate’er she sees me do, she tries.
Like me, she says she’s going to be
that little girl who follows me.
I must rember as I go
through summer sun and winter snow,
I’m molding for the years to be
That little girl who follows me.

(Me, Rachel, and Rebekah; December 1987)

 

Said one whose yoke
Was that of common folk,
Would that I were like Saint Cecilia,
And could invent some goldly instrument
Passing all yet contrived to worship Thee,
And send a love-song singing over land and sea.

But when I seem,
Almost to touch my dream,
I hear a call, persistent though so small,
The which if I ignore, clamours about my door
And bids me run to meet some human need.
Meanwhile my dream drifts off like down of thistle seed.

A sound of gentle stillness stirred and said,
My child, be comforted,
Dear is the offering of melody
But dearer far, love’s lowliest ministry. (Amy Carmichael)

 

(Amanda, age 6)

Lord, I find the geneology of my Savior strangely checkered with four remarkable changes in four immediate generations. (1) Rehoboam begat Abijah; that is, a bad father begat a bad son. (2) Abijah begat Asa; that is, a bad father begat a good son. (3) Asa begat Jehoshaphat; that is, a good father a good son. (4) Jehoshaphat begat Joram; that is, a good father a bad son.  I see, Lord, from hence that my father’s piety cannot be entailed; that is bad news for me. But I see also that actual impiety is not also hereditary; that is good news for my son.  (Thomas Fuller)

 

Relinquishment is always a part of the process of maturing.  When Christian parents have done all that can be done to shape their chidlren for God, the time comes when the hands must let go.  The child, now a responsible adult, must be released.  For any parent this is painful, even when the child is moving in the direction the parents prayed for.  The child’s continued development, and the spiritual health of the parents as well, depend on the willingness to accpet this next stage of the cycle–hands off, ready to part without a struggle, giving up authority and control, entrusting that child to God. (Elisabeth Elliot)

 Bill is still making fun of me for this last entry. Well, when an alleged staff member of Hillary Clinton’s isn’t calling me, chiding me for saying “not nice” things.

I suppose this is the main reason why I keep dating guys who do impressions.  You never know who will call.  I suppose once you’re married, you never know who will show up for dinner, either. 

My cousin Jeremy is getting married in October.  This is amazing to me.  Of course, being Jeremy, he had to pick a date when I’m in Hawaii…so I’m going to miss the earthshattering event that I never actually thought would happen.

But, Erica, I’ve already put in for vacation the week of your wedding, so I guess you just get lucky.

Now that I am full-fledged Liberty University graduate student, complete with ID…though, I haste to mention, completing my master’s online, as I refuse to abide by LU’s ridiculous set of rules, which makes Houghton look like the den of sin.

Which it was, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but that’s beside the point.

LU, as part of the new student packet, sent me a car decal reading Liberty University Graduate Program.  For a brief second, I though about putting it up next to my Houghton College Alumni decal, and then quickly came to my senses.  What am I doing at a school famous(infamous) for it’s fundamentalist Republicanism?  I am not an Evangelical, I am not fundamental, and I am not Republican; and I most certainly do not like Jerry Falwell. 
And I cannot put this on my car…but if I cannot even put the decal of the school I am attending on my vehicle, how can I possibly tell people I go there(albeit over the internet)? What happens when my master’s degree diploma reads “Liberty University”?  What does it say when I am asked where I’m attending school, I dance around it and finally settle glibly on “A college in Virginia. Online. It’s accredited.”

What happens when I am against almost everything they stand for?

Such as, in 1994, Mr. Falwell accepting 3.5 million dollars from Sun Myun Moon, the Korean cult leader who claimed he was Jesus Christ’s succesor and superior.  This may have had something to do with the fact that LU was about to go under because of a staggering debt load.  Or the simple fact that he was one of the founders in 1979 of the Moral Majority, an organization which blessedly seems to have disappeared. Or his consistent anti-choice, anti-gay stance.  

Yet somehow I think that I, somewhat pro-choice, certainly pro-gay-rights and semi-liberal me(I might be more liberal if they’d shut up about gun control and worked on reforming health care), will stay at Liberty, even though my professor deducted 3 points out of 20 on an otherwise perfect essay, simply because I wrote(in response to a question asking what testing and treatment options I would choose in a high-risk pregnancy, and mine was carrying a child with Down’s Syndrom) that I, in that situation, would heavily lean towards abortion.  I think I’ll stay because I can see first hand the silliness of fundamental Christianity, an experience, perhaps, that will forever keep me from falling into the same fuzzy logic.

(Plus, I think their views are academically interesting…) 

I hear there once was a time, back in the olden days before blogs, where couples could split up and actually go through the rest of their lives having no idea what/where/how their ex is doing.  I actually know people who have done this.  They don’t know, don’t care, don’t want to know or care, what their ex has been up to all these years.

I think this is wise, because this means that they can spend their lives fantasizing that the ex is living in an attic apartment somewhere with rats and weeks-old pizza boxes, miserable because of this decades-old-failed relationship.  I, personally, think this is a pretty picture, and would happily believe this is how all of my ex’s have ended up.

Except for that whole internet thing.

I’m not sure why I read old boyfriends’ blogs.  Primarily because I’m hoping that they’re miserable(except for Dan Perrine, of course).  Instead, I click on their old link and discover that not only are they not miserable, they are, in fact, happily married now with a good job.

While I am spending the night in my little room with my computer and the rats in the wall.

I vote we go back to the days of old, when one could actually walk out someone’s life and stay that way.  Or, at least, not have to read about how happy they are without us…

Amanda believes our house is haunted.

Mostly, this means that I often wake up in the middle of the night to the pitter-patter of little feet coming into my bedroom, as she climbs into my bed, eyes wide and little hand clutching a teddy bear.  Amanda curls up beside me(fortunatly, I have a big, antique bed) next to the wall, and quickly falls asleep again.  Simply knowing that I’m right next to her, that she’s snuggled safely between the wall and the me, eases her mind from the ghosts. I am there.  She is secure in the knowledge that nothing, imaginary or real, man or spirit, can harm her while I’m there.

This trust amazes me.  There is no doubt in her eight-year-old mind that her mommy-sister can take on anything, no matter what, and defeat it in an instant. It has not occurred to her yet that there might be a fight I can’t win, an enemy I cannot declare victory over.  The idea would be almost heresy to her(I know, because I suggested it).

I sometimes wish I could have retained that trust.  In parents, in leaders, in friends, in God.  Instead I assume, in my adultish wisdom, always the worst–that instead of defeating the enemy, I will be handed over at the first moment possible.  Instead of walking off the cliff and knowing I can fly, I stay back, glancing fearfully at the edge, wandering close and then running away.

Trust…I could use some more of it…

I promised myself I would not complain in this entry, and we’ll see if I live up to that.

I am disgruntled.  Here is why:  I really want to be in a play this fall.  The local community theater is doing “Beauty and the Beast: The Musical.”  I refuse to do this play, because it is filled with inanity–not to mention there are about two parts, and everyone else is villagers and utensils.

If I am going to spend the amount of time a play requires, I want it to mean something.  I want a role I can sink my teeth into–Maggie in Cat on A Hot Tin Roof, or Beneatha in Raisin in The Sun, or, honestly, anything, as long as it’s (a) well written, (b) actually has a point, and (c) is a character that I can do something with.

The truth is, of course, that I have chosen to live someplace where I’m stuck with community theater. If I want to act, I can’t be choosy, because there’s no choices.  I don’t have the natural talent to think about the almost-professional theaters in this area(one of which just did Spitfire Grill; I would have killed to be Percy), and I’ve exhausted any classes, and there’s no one around here that could serve as an acting coach.  If I want stage, I have to deal with plays that are familiar enough to sell tickets–and Beauty and The Beast qualifies as that.

Am I complaining? Not really.  This isn’t whining; this is just Sara, discouraged, wanting something more out of life, something I can almost sense, but never quite touch. 

Mostly, though, all I’m asking for is quality.

Hello…

I am here.

Does anyone read this, or do I throw my words out into the vast black hole of cyberspace?  Is this blog simply an indulgence for me; a way for the writer in me, though dying, to make one last stand?  Is this an immortality; if I was to die tomorrow, this blog would still be here.  Not forever, but you could come read my words and remember.  You could print off my entries and compile them together; gather my poetry and put it in a three-ring binder; sit late at night with your tea, and read, and think, and remember that I once was.

If I have seemed morbid recently, forgive me.  I have lost a great deal, and the last two weeks have reinforced my own mortality.  Reinforced that time is short, and life is sweet, and when it’s over…when it’s over, what is left?
Of course I believe in the Christian concept of Heaven, though I question the whole gold-roads-and-shining-streams thing.  All I truly know is that once I am freed from this frail, difficult prison of flesh I will dwell in the presence of God.  And that is enough for me.

But what is left for those that are left behind?  What mark do I leave?  This scribbles of ink and dots on paper or screen? 

I have read David’s poetry tonight; some of the old stuff we used to write together that I dug out of the attic.  I see his comments still scribbled on my papers, and the diet coke that Cheryl or Pam or Ronelle spilled on my notebook one night, creasing the edges and staining the paper. I see the old ink puddling under my tears, new tears that I cry and let fall onto te pages.  I clipped the newspaper articles of his death and slipped them into the old notebook, then laid it back into the box.

Someday, perhaps, many years hence, my own daughter will stumble across these papers, and draw them out, leafing through, wondering who this mysterious David was, and what these words all mean.  And perhaps she will come and ask me(though, knowing my child, she’ll just go hit google first), and I will tell her what I can of the time and place in my life that David shared.  Maybe someday she will have her own David, and I will be able to wrap her in my arms and whisper that I know the pain of loss, and I know it because I walked this road, and I grieved, and those ink smears on the paper are mine.

And I say this so that David leaves more than simply poetry and thoughts behind.  His legacy is more than simply those worn pages in a box in my attic; I trust his legacy, in part, will be what he gave to me in life–joy, and hope, and appreciation for the simple things–and what he has given me in death–wonder, compassion, and appreciation for life.  And perhaps someday I can pass this on, something more than stained words, but hope for someone else who grieves. 

That was simply the most awesome weekend ever.

After parking, right about when the race started, my dad and I decided to see if we could find a place to sit.  We had these free-because-we-worked-there cold passes that allowed us to go pretty much anywhere, so we waltzed into the grandstands to see if we could find any open seats.

And we did.

Front row.

Behind the start-finish line. 

The best, most expensive seats in the house; and we just walked in and sat there.  We kept waiting for an usher to kick us out, but we had the full passes, and apparently no one had bought those seats.

It was incredible.  Right in front of pit row, which was completely awesome to watch.

Now I’m burned, even my lip, so I have lip peel, but I’m happier than a tornado in a trailer park…