the Truth

it may be that I feel and express a million things, but at the end of the day this is the Truth, regardless of how I feel: I am a worthless, broken, silly girl who is utterly and completely made new in the Person of Jesus Christ. in Him I find all worth, all purpose, all joy (for there is none outside Him). He is the source of all things, the source of all good and the source of all healing. I have no gifts, no accomplishments, no life outside of Him. He is a vivid and beautiful reality which I am absolutely in love with. there is no thing he cannot redeem and he has redeemed me. I owe everything I am to Him. I am never alone, never forgotten, never worthless or purposeless or hopeless because He is in love with me. I am who I am in Christ.

moth

I looked up from my work tonight because a funny muffled noise drew my attention. a dusty little moth was tapping against my window, drawn to the lights strung along the wall. I watched him for a while before looking back down, thinking, don't let the warm lights fool you little guy, you don't want to come in here, this is not a happy place.

thank you for your pretty little face

if people were to send me thank you notes simply for my existence, they would probably look something like this:

dear (but not quite dearest) noel,

thank you for your pretty little face. thank you for your wit and spunk and conversation, your stories and advice, you're nice to have around. you're a charming little being and if you left we'd miss you anytime our thoughts happened upon you. we're perfectly content with you floating on the outskirts of lives, your little smile peeking in once in a while, though you're not a staple, not a focus, nowhere near the center of any one of us. thank you for the lessons that we've learned through you, while moving on we have used them quite a bit. we are glad that you were there in that time of our lives, and if you're gone it will be as though a christmas light upon a string upon a house upon a street went out. and now we really must get going we have many dreadfully important things to do.

fairly sincerely,
us

low expectations

what is the balance between what you would like and what you expect? I know how I wish I was and wish you and they and them were. I know how I wish things were. but I'm not and you're not and they're just. . .not. the reason we're not constantly disappointed by things is because we don't actually expect things to be as we wish they were. things that we are satisifed with dont actually meet our standards, they just dont dip below our expectations. thats why idealists can be rather disappointed people. their standards are their expectations. every thing, every friend, every relationship, girl, boy, book, sermon, class, summer, day falls just a little short. it could or should have been better. they're waiting for perfection, throwing good behind them because they just know there's something better. but maybe happiness is found in low expectations, or maybe better no expectations. keep your standards high, perfect in fact, because that is how things should be. just don't suppose they will be. upon letting go of expectations people will suddenly delight you, things will satisfy you and beauty you could not before see will creep to the surface.

l.o.v.e.

I deliberated for a while today about what I think love is, I thought first of all the things its not before I finally landed on this, at least for a while until I change my mind: love looks like doing what is best for someone, it is a promise, not to succeed (since no one will ever love anyone else perfectly), but to never give up trying. every day you will not love someone as well as you could but love isn't conditional, so it doesn't give up. and its messy too. really messy, and hard. but even if you fail more than you succeed, loves virtue is in its endurance, not its perfection. you cease to love not when you fail to love as well as you could, but when you choose not to try and love at all.

relationships don't exist

I am beginning to understand hermits (not the crabs of course). while I was rattling around on my bike the other day, perched on the seat and rather buried under piles of thought, feeling a little alone, I realized: I am. my life is nothing more than the sum of all my thoughts and memories, and all the people I consider mine are really no more connected to me than before I met them. every conversation is just noise and movement that floats on the air like dust between two people so how do relationships really exist? you can't look at them and pull apart the strands or comment on the color. you can't roll them over in your palm or hold them up to the light. relationships are just. . .memories. . .and memories aren't really real. our brains do interesting things. even two people's perceptions of the same relationship is just that: a perception. for them the realtionship is nothing but the sum of their thoughts and memories, which are not the same as your's. so really, I am just me and I am no less or more alone anywhere I am, and making noise at someone or listening to theirs doesn't change the fact no one else can step inside my brain and that is really where we live anyways, isn't it. and so the hermit on the hill maybe knows a thing or two. he's no more alone, there's just less noise and maybe a prettier view. so everyone should feel alone, or maybe no one should, because its sort of all the same. but really, I guess I dont believe this.

darn single pane windows

darn them. they are food for I-told-you-so-ers (and worrisome mothers). I might have shown my fragile window some less than tender affection. . .and. . .inadvertently punched it out to fall a story to the even less tender driveway. . .and shatter. I laughed. and called my dad (what else do you do when you shatter a window? hope the movies are true and that tears really do contain magical healing powers? I wasn't about to romantically kneel over broken glass) he might as well get paid to be the ace hardware help hotline. my parents hate that I live in the sunroom up here, so the soon to be fixed (hopefully) broken window was fuel enough for a pair of "move back innnn" speeches. I am in. I'm in. out is out and I'm in. and it'll get cold but not hypothermia cold and I have a space heater. so I'm set. set in the sunroom. . .with no curtains. . .and a cardboard window.