For Sage

I lost a friend yesterday. 

Sage was waiting for a double lung transplant. Like me, she had CF, and like me, she was 34. She had a wonderful husband and three hilarious dogs. We talked almost every day, about Outlander and Pocket Jamie and Mascara brands and even eyelash curlers, and what I should wear on a first date. (And then, helping when the date didn't call back.....) 

She was such a funny person, sometimes sarcastically so, and we had the same sense of humor. She was the only person who really understood CF life, so we could bitch to each other about Stupid Doctor Things. (And stupid other things.....) She loved the color purple. She worked for the U.S. Senate and so we could talk about Crazy Things Constituents Did. She adored scary movies, which terrify me, but she loved them. She would watch them with her nephew. She was a huge Bachelor/ Bachelorette fan. She had fantastically curly hair that she dyed auburn; her niece Lizzie had the same corkscrew curls. I was jealous of her hair.

She would've liked this--purple confetti. 

(And GOSH I hate using the past tense.)  

She lived in Oklahoma and Wisconsin, so we'd never met in person. A mutual friend introduced us over the interwebs, so this is one case where a Facebook friendship became as real as any of my "IRL" ones. 

She was admitted to the hospital last week; her last text message to me told me she was doing a direct admit from the ER. I sent her texts and messages variously; I knew she was in the ICU so I knew she probably wasn't reading her messages, but I hoped Jerry (her husband) would tell her.  I didn't want to bombard her phone with notification noises, but I felt like I needed to let her know I was thinking about her. 

Yesterday I felt this keen desire to send her a message: like, do it NOW, Emily. So I did. I told her that I was thinking about her and I missed her and I loved her. It was a little sappy for me. But you know. I thought she'd know what I meant. 

And then, a few hours later, she died. 

Right before she died, I bought a new eyelash curler. We had talked about this a few weeks ago--which ones were the best. She was a Girly Girl and I knew she'd have opinions. So I bought the one she suggested, and it was purple, to boot. I thought, Sage would love that I just bought this. I wanted to send her a picture of it. 

I wish we would've gotten to meet in person. I wish I'd have met her husband and her Awesome Dogs George, Piper, and Sadie. I wish we could've played Monopoly together. 

Guys, CF sucks. It really does. And so does people dying while they wait for organs. She was such a light. And now she's gone. 

Rest in peace, dear heart. I'll see you when I get there. 

"Grief is the price we pay for love." --Queen Elizabeth II

(A note about this video: Sage and I were connected through music. She was a friend of Emily, who was the twin of one of my best friends, Amilia. Amilia and I were in All-State choir our senior year of high school, and this was one of the pieces on our program. It was written in honor of a young lady who died too soon. So not only is it appropriate for Sage, but it's appropriate because music is how I met Amilia and Emily, and thus, Sage.

It is also one of the most beautiful and most moving pieces of music ever written.) 

Disclaimer: I don't own this!

Summer Scribbles: Journal keeping

Today's SITS girls prompt: 

Do you keep a journal? 

I sure do. 

I have since I was 12 years old, actually, and my Aunt Patty sent me a Hallmark diary for my birthday. It's one of those that had the little combination lock that after about 20 uses just popped open without the combination, so it wasn't the world's best security measure, but my siblings knew better than to try to sneak my journal (although I didn't really try to hide it. It was always on my nightstand.) 

Since then, I've always kept one. Sometimes I write with more fervor than others, but I've always had one with me, and I save them all. In my house there are two big bins full of my journals. My currrent one is a red Moleskine I got at the Strand in NYC a few years ago. I generally buy journals when I'm on vacation and then they get used a few years later; when I was in California I bought a Bouchon Moleskine notebook. I've also got a notebook my parents brought me back from Disney World when they went back in 2011. People also gift me journals at an alarming rate, but I don't mind this. 

My blog isn't my journal, and my journal isn't my blog. This is something I think people can easily get confused, especially younger bloggers. What I write on this blog is obviously public. What I write in my journal is intensely private. Sometimes I'll use what I've written in my journals as a springboard for public writing, but this space is not where I pour out my soul. That's what a journal is for.  

Blog is different from journal, journal is different from blog. Important distinction, at least in my world. As much as I love my readers, there are some things that I'm just not going to share with the interwebs. 

Summer Scribbles: Let's Communicate

Continuing with the SITS Girls' prompts, this week's is: 

Do you communicate differently online than in person? 

Short answer: Nope. 

Long answer: Still nope, but with qualifiers. 

I try to write the way I talk. I want my pieces to have a sort of conversational air about them, like I was talking to you, instead of you reading words I've written. Some of my friends have told me that I've accomplished that, so that makes me happy, because it's one of my main goals. I don't think you need a stilted writing style to get a point across. I want to sound approachable and like myself. 

Now, when I'm communicating on things like Facebook, or comments sections of articles, I try to be a bit more circumspect, realizing that things like sarcasm don't exactly transfer. So I try to be nicer, in a way, than I am in person. Not that I'm mean! But writing WHATTTTT?!?!? on a Facebook page doesn't really convey the same thing that it would in my voice, with facial expressions, etc. So I can't do that all the time. I try to keep it cleaner for the sarcasm-impaired. 

But my hope is always that when you read my pieces, it's like we're having a conversation, and that my authentic voice comes through. 

Summer Scribbles: Seeking Motivation

I am a hard person to motivate. 

Well, wait. Let me rephrase that. 

I'm a hard person to motivate--sometimes. 

I'm not a hard person to motivate when it comes to doing things for other people. If the essay needed written for school, it got written. If I have to be at the doctor's office, I'm going to get up early and be there on time. If I have to go to a class, I'll be there. I'm good at being held accountable in exterior ways. If someone is depending on me, or needs me to be somewhere, I'll be there, and I'll do it. 

I am very bad at self-motivation. 

If you've read Better than Before, by Gretchen Rubin (and if you haven't, get on it), then you realize that I'm an Obliger. 

Rubin writes about how there are four tendencies--everyone is one of them. You're either an upholder, a rebel, a questioner, or an obliger. To determine what you are, you can take this quiz. But it basically boils down to how you respond to interior and exterior expectations. 

An Obliger, which I am, "Meets outer expectations but struggles to meet expectations they impose on themselves." 

So, it's hard for me to do things without accountability. Exercising and diet is a huge area where this is true. If I had someone to go to the gym with, or to go to class with me, or even someone I lived with to cook with and for, that would be a huge help when it comes to meeting the nutrition and exercise goals I've set--because I'd be responsible to someone else. 

One of the ways I work around this is by using my Powersheets--I have my tending list for the month, which has all my goals broken into monthly, weekly, and daily sections. I schedule my Barre 3 classes ahead of time, so they're in my calendar, and if I don't go, then I lose money. I have "meal planning" as one of my weekly goals. And yes, as sad as it may seem, I do get a thrill when I can check off the boxes indicating I've done these things. 

But it's much, much easier for me to get off track with what I know I should do if I don't have an external motivator or someone/something to keep me accountable for what I do. Or don't do, as the case may be. 

I also have an avoidance policy on things I'm not good at, like math. I probably, intellectually, could've done fine in Math. But I hated it, because I wasn't automatically good at it, and a lot of it just didn't make sense to me.  I'm that way with exercise--fi I don't get it pretty quickly, then I tend to give up and feel like a failure. I'm trying to get through that with my barre classes, and I have found that, as you would expect, the more I do it, the better I get at it. I'm just not a person that likes doing things that I don't have a natural affinity for, which probably makes me like most of humanity. 

I have some friends that I talk about nutrition and exercise with, and they do a good job keeping me motivated to keep trying. So they're my external accountability, for the moment. 

But I'm still looking for that fail-proof motivational tool. I'm guessing, sadly, it doesn't exist. 

What sort of temperament do you have? 

How do you motivate yourself to do things that you know you should do, but you don't necessarily want to do? 

Summer Scribbles No. 7: What is Courage?

The SITS girls question of the week: 

How do I define courage? 

I actually think about this a lot. Does that make me weird? 

A lot of people tell me that I'm brave, and I don't think I am. 

To me, courage and bravery involve risking something when you don't, necessarily, have to. Firefights and policemen are inherently brave, as are soldiers. They are putting their lives on the line every day to protect and defend people, and they don't have to. (Well, OK, at least in the U.S., soldier wise.) 

People who save people from drowning, or rescue kids from burning buildings, or the people who ran into the buildings on 9/11--those people are brave. 

I don't consider myself brave. The things I do are the things I think anyone would do in my situation. The choices I've made, I've made to save my life. Choosing transplant wasn't brave. Without it, I'd be dead. Full stop. 

I know that not everyone with CF makes the choices that I've made. And I know that part of me decides to fight even when it might be easier not to. And I guess that's brave. 

Is it courageous to do those things that keep you alive, even when you don't want to do them? Were all those years of PT and nebulizers and giving myself IV treatments in the bathrooms at work brave or courageous? 

I don't know. To me, it was just life. The other option was death. And that's not an option I choose. 

I'm not afraid of death, by the by. I never have been. Maybe it's because I know that something better is awaiting me. (Or at least, Purgatory.) I trust that God's got this. He's going to take care of me. And I'm not really even afraid of dying--because I've done that process. I've gotten, really, as close as you can, I think, and done it twice. And both times,  I've been back. 

But does all this make me courageous? I don't know. I don't think so. Because to me, none of it was conscious choice. 

This, on the other hand. This works well for me: 

I have never, ever wanted to be defined as the girl with CF. Or the girl who had that transplant thing. I don't so much mind the latter, which pops up a lot. But I am so grateful to my parents for letting me have a normal life. Some CF parents don't send their kids to regular school because they're worried about all the germs floating around. Guys--we have an immune system. CFers can have totally normal lives. I don't want to live in a bubble. I don't want to have a live that's so protected from everything, tainted by fear of what might happen. My identity is as a daughter of God, and not as some weird genetic thing. 

Am I brave? I don't know. To me, all of this just is. And it always will be. 

Summer Scribbles No. 6: Tools of the Craft

Today's SITS girls prompt: 

What's your favorite writing tool? 

Well, it depends. 

I do love my MacBook Pro. I mean, for blogging and writing, it makes life so much easier. That being said, I love paper and pen for keeping details of my writing projects straight. I have a blog calendar in my bullet journal that I refer to, and I find that really helpful. Not only does it save me from "hmm, what to write about today", but it's easy to make notes of things I want to write about on certain days (saints' days, anniversaries, holidays, etc.). It also keeps me from writing about the same thing all the time.  I figure you guys want some variety in your reading, right? 

I'm a big pen and paper nut. I love using pretty pens and I am very picky about my notebooks, especially for my journals. I generally use Moleskines for those. They're durable and pretty, and even better if they're a special kind I can get when I travel (like the one I have now, from the Strand in NYC.) 

My fountain pens are all Lamys, but I also love Le Pens and Sharpies and...well, OK, I just love pens. Pens rule!

You can see this journal is pretty well loved. :) 

What about you? Do you have a favorite pen/paper/notebook/planner? 

Amazing Grace

Amazing grace.

That's really all that can be said about eleven extra years on the planet. 

That's more than 4,000 extra days. 

That's sort of staggering, if you think about it. 4,000 days. 

Extravagant grace. 

Extravagant gift. 

Some people, post-transplant, talk about bucket lists. About climbing Machu Picchu or going around the world and seeing the great sights. And I've done some traveling, post-transplant. I've done some things that I never thought I'd do, and met people I never thought I'd meet. 

But the most delightful things are the small things. 

Getting to see my godson graduate from high school. 

Holding a four year old on my lap during a fireworks display. 

Sharing root beer floats with friends. 

Deeply diving into God's life in me, deepening His life within me and my relationship with Him. 

Feeling the ocean waves wash over my bare feet. 

Of course, all of this is only possible because Suzanne was an organ donor. When she died 11 years ago, her family decided to honor her wishes and donate her organs. And since she died due to a brain aneurysm, her organs were in great shape. She saved a lot of lives that day, including mine. 

If you're not an organ donor, please be one. 
If you are, tell your family that you are one. 

Some people, when faced with health issues or other problems, wonder "why God has done this to them." And I've never thought that way. I'm not a saint. But I've never wondered why all of this happened to me. 

God gives everyone their cross--and it's a cross that fits them. This is the one that fits me.  My salvation only comes this way. And if I can drag a few more people to heaven with me, then that suits me just fine. :) 

I'm writing this in a coffee shop on a sunny summer day. It's a totally ordinary day in July. But it's a day that I never would've had, without Suzanne's generosity, and without the incredible skill and dedication of a whole team of medical people. 

Eleven years later, their skill, and their work, still live on.

I am so thankful for them. I'm thankful for Suzanne, of course, and her family. And even on the bad days, I am so thankful for every moment of ordinary joy. 

Amazing grace. 

Other transplant posts:

Starting the Ten Year Party

Catholics and Organ Donation

Sugarcoating suicide

Summer Scribbles No. 5: I'd Like Your Vote

Or, actually, I wouldn't. 

Today's Summer Scribbles answers this question: 

Have you ever wanted to run for political office? 

To be brief: No. HELL no. 

I hated selling candy for my school fundraiser. I loathed running for student government in college (really, I did). I have done a lot of campaign work in my time, and I don't mind campaigning for other people, but I hate marketing myself. It's one of the reasons I hate asking people to subscribe to the blog-but hey, I'll ask you now!

Please subscribe, if you don't already! There's a big pink box in the corner! 

And that is all the campaigning Emily will do today. :) 

Campaigning is definitely an art. You have to really love it, because it's continuous. As soon as an election ends, you start gearing up for the next one. There is constant fund-raising, and the elected official has to keep name recognition up to make the next election cycle a little easier. You need a lot of people to run a good campaign, and you need a fair amount of money. Signs, flyers, banners, t-shirts, etc. are not cheap, and neither is throwing the fundraisers. It's definitely a spend money to make money (or get elected) proposition. 

I've worked on two presidential campaigns, a gubernatorial campaign, and a bunch of smaller campaigns. And it can be fun. It can also be really not fun, when you're standing in a wet, muddy baseball field in a downpour sans umbrella because the Secret Service does not allow umbrellas at said event. 

So, while I will campaign for others, I will never, ever run for political office. EVER. 

That's a promise I'll keep! 

Summer Scribbles No. 4: The Summer After High School

Using the SITS girls monthly prompt list

The summer after high school was a pretty nondescript one for me. I did some baby-sitting, I read Harry Potter and anxiously awaited the release of the fourth book. I spent a lot of time with my high school friends, swimming in their pools. There were a lot of sleepovers. 

(Side note: weren't sleepovers the best? I mean, really? I miss those. Although, sleepover pro tip: When your friend's parents are at a wedding out of state, leaving you and said friend alone in the house, with only the scaredy-cat dog, it might not be a good idea to watch Silence of the Lambs at 2 A.M. Just, you know, maybe not the best idea.)

Most of my friends were going to college sort of locally, meaning in the state of Ohio. A few were going out of state. This was before the advent of Facebook, so we knew it was going to be harder to keep in touch, but fortunately this newfangled thing called email had opened up wide possibilities. And AOL instant messenger! That was going to be super useful during our college years. 

There was some packing for college. And yeah, I started early. Like, August. Even though I was only going about fifteen minutes away. I had one summer orientation session, when I had to set my fall schedule, and then orientation orientation began August 25th. Of course it rained that day. It rained every single move in day of my college career. Again, glad we didn't have a lot of stuff to move. I was just really glad that my dorm had air conditioning, and that you couldn't smoke on our floor. Yes, you could smoke in the other dorms at this time. But you couldn't have lit candles. Crazy much? That got changed at the end of my freshman year. 

I was excited to go to college. I mean, I had liked high school, but I thought I would really like college, and I was right. I did really, really enjoy college. OK, the almost dying wasn't a fun thing, but that wasn't college's fault (and that's another story), but most of it was a great time.

It did feel odd, though, to not have work to do during the summer. The summer before my senior year, I'd had the Summer Reading List for AP English. I remember spending long hours at the neighborhood pool with my super cheap copy of Jane Eyre. But there was no summer reading--at least not yet--for incoming college freshman at my school. That changed a few years later, when every incoming student had to read an assigned book, with classes and events during the academic year surrounding said book. 

So it was just me, my friends, swimming pools, and sleepovers. It wasn't a bad way to spend a summer.  

The Fight for Joy

The tagline of this site is "Celebrating Ordinary Joy." And that's what I try to do on a daily basis--to remember that this life is so incredible, such a miracle, that everything is Joy. The brown bananas in the freezer awaiting their transformation into muffins; the roses and sunflowers in a vase on the counter; even the trash bags that need taken out. Everything is a gift. 

But that doesn't mean it's easy. I never wanted a Pollyanna tag line, where we play the glad game, and blithely ignore realities. Sometimes, reality is hard. 

Last week, I felt as low as I've ever been. I tried all my normal things--journaling, napping, bubble baths, talking to friends, a holy hour, a weekday Mass. When I go to Mass, no matter how crappy I might feel, usually the consecration floods me with peace. Not on Friday. On Friday I was totally just at Mass. I didn't feel a thing. It was like robot-me. 

I talked to my therapist (Most people, post-transplant, see a therapist. It's par for the course.) I basically didn't talk--I sort of fell apart. I was a mess. I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating right, I was forgetting conversations I'd had two days ago--and I don't do that--and I had no idea why. 

Joy was really far away. Incredibly far away. I thought about the tagline and I laughed. Joy? Really? JOY right now? 

No Joy. 

On Saturday, I was very gentle with myself. I read a book suggested by Elizabeth--The Awakening of Miss Prim--and I re-read the Restore workshop pieces. I went to Mass. I made dinner. I slept when I could. 

Today, I had a doctor's appointment. It was my normal clinic visit, but I was anxious because I didn't know what was going on with me. I wanted to find out. So I spilled out all my symptoms in a flood of words. 

The doctor and the nurse listened, and we figured out what it is. It's nothing major--it's just my body adapting to different drugs, and readjusting hormone levels and all those delightful things that happen when you're taking very powerful medicine. 

So my body has to readjust--and this will happen both physically and mentally. As it readjusts, things will go back to baseline. But until then, it's measures to fix the symptoms--sleeping when I can, getting good food and exercise, having the A/C set just about arctic. :) 

I'm so happy that I'm not crazy. 

But during those foggish days, days when joy seemed so far....it was hard to remember to look for the ordinary joy. 

But it's there. It's always there, even when I couldn't see it, or couldn't feel it. 

When it's elusive, hang on. Keep looking. Find that one thing. It's there. And that one thing can be a crack of light that you need to keep looking, keep seeing....what keeps faith. 

Summer Scribbles No. 3: A Taste of Summer

Like most good things, this recipe was created sort of by accident.

My friends and I spent a weekend in Hocking Hills in July, in a lovely cabin that had a full kitchen, so we decided to do most of the cooking. We have a lot of culinary-minded friends, so I was planning on making a few things: my Irish soda bread (made ahead and brought down for breakfast), and a Caesar salad. I also decided to do balsamic strawberries as an ice cream topping or fun dessert, because I love balsamic strawberries and more people need to like them too.

I had asked a friend of mine to bring eggs for the Caesar salad, since I was going down right from work and didn’t want the eggs to be destroyed in my car. Sadly, friend forgot the eggs, but that led to this creation, so I guess that’s OK.

Anyway, this salad was quickly imagined, and everyone liked it–the guys even fought over the leftover strawberries. I have made it for another meal with friends and they liked it so much that one of them asked for the recipe so she could make it for her friends.

So here it is. 

Summer Strawberry Salad

This serves about six people, give or take.

2 heads romaine lettuce

2 pints strawberries

1-2 tbsp. brown sugar (light or dark. Or Splenda!  really like splenda brown sugar because it doesn’t get hard and gross in the bag)

2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar

EVOO

3 lemons

First, make the strawberry topping, because this need to sit for at least 20-30 minutes (If you can get an hour of sit time, that’s optimal)

Lop off the top of the berries and cut in half. Place in a bowl. Add the sugar and balsamic vinegar and stir to combine. Let sit.

When you’ve got about five minutes to dinner (or you’re ready to eat), start the salad.

Starting at the frilly top end of the lettuce head, cut the lettuce into 1-2 inch pieces. Discard the stem end. Then cut down the middle of the lettuce, which will cut each piece in half, leaving you with smaller and easier pieces to eat. Continue with the second head and place the lettuce in a serving bowl.

In another small bowl, add 1/2 c. of EVOO, depending on how much dressing you like. Add the juice of two lemons, then whisk together. Remember, there’s balsamic going in here, too! Taste, and add more lemon juice if necessary. 

When ready to serve, add strawberries to salad. Add dressing. Toss. Eat a piece of lettuce to check seasoning. You may need some kosher salt or pepper added for seasoning. Totally up to you.

Summer Scribbles No.2: Sink or Swim

Continuing on with Summer Scribbles (using prompts from The SITS girls), here is this week's prompt: 

When did you learn to swim? 

Um, well. This is sort of a funny story. 

I cannot "officially" swim. By that, I don't mean that I can't swim, because I can. I just mean that, in official parlance....I flunked swimming lessons. 

Yes. I'm a swimming lessons drop out. So is my brother, by the way. 

Back in the day, when I was probably five or six, my mom enrolled me in swimming lessons, like almost every other parent around here. I wasn't afraid of the water, and I would get in just fine. I'd kick and splash and all that. No problem.

So how'd I fail? 

I couldn't float. 

Really. I guess I just wouldn't trust that the water would keep me up. So I refused to do it. 

Thus, I was unable to move up to the next level of swimming lessons. 

I sort of taught myself backstroke while watching the Barcelona olympics, and noting what the commenters said about technique. I cannot butterfly or breast stroke, and I really can't do freestyle, either. I do my own sort of freestyle. But I can handle my own in a pool. I love the ocean, and baths are one of my favorite things in life. Water and I are friends. 

However, I used to get really nervous watching kids in water. Part of it was my lack of strong swimming skills, but also, when you have crappy lungs, the idea of not breathing is not one you voluntarily accept. So the idea of going out and chasing down a kid while I could barely breathe while swimming didn't seem good. 

But, since I have 22 cousins (not counting my siblings), and the vast majority of them are younger than me, and my aunts in Pittsburgh have pools (two did, now it's just one)--I got to watch a lot of kids in the pool. It always baffled me. I have many cousins who are excellent swimmers. There are a whole bunch who were on their high school swim teams, for pete's sake. Are you sure you want to trust me with your offspring, oh aunts of mine?! (They did. No idea why.) 

It's not such a big deal now, because almost all the kids are grown, or old enough that they can handle themselves in the water. 

I'm probably not the person you want in charge if you're sending your tiny tots to the water park. Or the ocean. Unless your kid really doesn't want to swim. Or go out beyond the breakers. 

But I can float now.

How did you learn to swim? Were you ever afraid of the water? 

Summer Scribbles No. 1: A Question of Packing

The SITS girls had a list of blog writing prompts for June, and I've selected ones I particularly enjoy, and which I'll be sharing with you on Wednesdays throughout the summer. Sometimes using prompts helps ignite my creative juices and give us some variety in the content we have here. And it's summer, so we might as well have fun with it, right? 

The first prompt is: 

What is something you always take with you when you travel? 

Besides the medical equipment--CI cleaner, CI battery charger, the huge medication bag (which is smaller than it was pre-transplant!)--and the normal stuff, there are two things that always come with me when I travel:

Tea and Jane Austen. 

I realize those things are probably connected. 

I started taking Bigelow tea bags last fall when I went out of town for a wedding. I found it was so nice to have the option of hot tea in my room at night--if there's a coffee machine, I can heat up the water for tea, and if there's a microwave, I can even reheat tea again in the morning. I brought an entire box to California with me, if you can believe it, and it came in handy on the last day, because I caught a cold and having tea was definitely helpful! 

The other thing I always bring is a hard copy of a Jane Austen novel. Usually it's P&P. For Pittsburgh, it'll be Persuasion, unless I finish it before then, in which case it'll be Emma. When I' tight on space and/or I have my iPad, all of Jane's books are loaded on there. Her books are sort of my literary security blanket. I know I'll always have something to read!

What is something you always bring with you when you travel? 

Ordinary Joy

I have to start by saying: I am so humbled--and so surprised, honestly--at the reaction I received over my last piece. I am so honored to have received so many beautiful comments, both here and throughout social media, regarding it. Thank you for your lovely response! 

A lot of the writing I do here chronicles my daily life--ordinary joy. I write because that's what I do. It's my main creative act, the way I focus the lens of life. I write about books, and knitting, and travel, and theater, and my faith. And generally, my posts are pretty small. They go out into the world and a few people read them, and I get a few comments here and there. 

But Friday's post really clarifies why I write about the small. I write about the ordinary joy. I write about my constant use of the knit stitch and Jane Austen and sometimes I write about hospital stays and problems with insurance and IV woes. Because those tiny, ordinary things are what make up a life. It's a life I'm blessed to live, and to share with all of you. 

"Earth's crammed with Heaven", Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, " and every common bush afire with God; but only him who sees, takes off his shoes."   

I want to see, and I want to share those moments here in this space. I want us to take off our shoes. 

Ordinary joy, ordinary faith, ordinary life--and how extraordinary it is, that I get to live it at all. That any of us get to live it, at all. 

Gratitude in All Things

“I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.

Ann Voskamp


”

Gratitude is an overused theme during November, because it's the month of Thanksgiving. It's the "Month of Gratitude"--facebook status updates start with "30 Days of Gratitude", tweets are all about it, newspapers run specials about things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving.

This is good. We should all take the time to count our blessings, to be thankful. 

But what if we did it....all the time? Not just when someone gets the job, or the baby is born, or the cancer is in remission. It is, of course, good to praise God at those times. But the Bible doesn't say, "In happy situations, give thanks." It says, "give thanks in all circumstances."

 You've probably heard of Corrie ten Boom. If you haven't: Corrie and her family hid Dutch Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland during WWII. They hid them in their house and watch/clock repair shop, building a "hiding place" in case of raids in the back of Corrie's tiny bedroom. 

Corrie and her sister, Betsie, and her father, Casper,  who lived above the shop, were not young. They were not rich. Betsie wasn't even in very good health--she had pernicious anemia. But they hid Jews and worked with the Dutch underground to give hidden Jews ration cards, false ID cards, and whatever else people needed to save their lives, to keep the Jewish people in their care alive during the Nazi occupation, while trains took millions of people away by the boxcar full, all over Europe. 

Eventually, they were caught, and Betsie, Corrie, and their father were shipped to concentration camps. They were separated from their father, who died in a camp hospital, but Betsie and Corrie were sent to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp in Northern Germany. 

"We stepped out of line with a dozen or so others and stared at the long grey front of Barracks 28. Half its windows seemed to have been broken and replaced with rags.

A door in the center let us into a large room where two hundred or more women were bent over knitting needles...On either side doors opened into two still larger rooms...Our noses told us, first, that the place was filthy; somewhere plumbing had back ed up, the bedding was soiled and rancid. Then as our eyes adjusted...we saw that there were no individual beds at all, but great square piers stacked three high, and wedged side by side, and end to end with only an occasional narrow aisle slicing through...

We lay back, struggling against the nausea that swept over us from the reeking straw...

Suddenly, I sat up, striking my head on the cross slats above. "Fleas!" I cried. "Betsie, the place is swarming with them!" 

We scrambled across the intervening platforms...and edged our way to a patch of light. 

"Here! And another one!" I wailed. "Betsie, how can we live in such a place?"

"Show us. Show us how." It was said so matter of factly that it took me a second to realize she was praying..."Corrie!" She said excitedly. "He's given us the answer! Before we asked, as He always does! In the Bible this morning. Where was it? Read that part again!" 

"It was in First Thessalonians," I said..."Here it is: 'Comfort the frightened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always see to do good to one another and to all...'" 

"Go on," said Betsie. "That wasn't all." 

"Oh yes: '...to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus--"

"That's it, Corrie! That's His answer. 'Give thanks it all circumstances!' That's what we can do! We can start right now to thank God for every single thing about this new barracks!"

I stared at her..."Such as?"

"Such as being assigned her together!"

I bit my lip. "Oh yes, Lord Jesus!"

"Such as what you're holding in your hands."

I looked down at the Bible. "Yes! Thank you, dear Lord, that there was no inspection when we entered here! Thank you for all the women, here in this room, who will meet You in these pages."

"Yes," said Betsie. "Thank you for the very crowding here. Since we're packed so close, that many more will hear!" She looked at me expectantly. "Corrie!"

"Oh, all right. Thank you for the jammed, crammed, stuffed, packed, suffocation crowds."

"Thank you," Betsie went on serenely, "For the fleas and for--"

The fleas! This was too much. "Betsie, there's no way even God can make me grateful for a flea."....

[Weeks later] there'd been confusing in her knitting group about sock sizes and they'd asked the supervisor to come and settle it.

"But she wouldn't. She wouldn't step through the door and neither would the guards. And you know why?"

Betsie could not keep the triumph from her voice. "Because of the fleas! That's what she said, 'That place is crawling with fleas!'"

My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie's bored head, remembering her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for.

Bestie died in Ravensbruck on December 16, 1944. In January 1945, Corrie was released, due to a clerical error--all women her age were supposed to be sent to the gas chambers. Instead, Corrie was released, nursed back to health, and returned to her home in Haarlem. Five of the six Jews the ten Booms hid survived the war. 

When I first ran into that Betsie story, I thought the same way Corrie did: Is Betsie for real? Seriously, she must be living on a plane higher than the rest of us, because, like Corrie, there is no way I'd be able to give thanks for fleas. 

But that worked out--the fleas were what Ann Voskamp calls "ugly beautiful"--those things that we see as ugly, but really, are gifts, are beautiful things, in God's vision. We just can't see it. 

Maybe we need the macro view? 

The lower part of my right arm is mostly covered with a big skin graft scar. It's not hideous, but it's not gorgeous, either; but it looks  a lot better now than it did 11 years ago (this weekend, actually) when I originally had surgery. The skin was taken from the top of my right thigh, so there's two scars, roughly a inch wide and five inches or so long, there, too. 

Why did I need a skin graft at all? Because an IV that was dispensing calcium during my transplant infiltrated, and gave me  a third degree burn on my right arm. For awhile, the surgeon thought he might have to amputate. Fortunately, I was blissed out on drugs and wasn't privy to all those discussions. 

So if it's a choice between pretty and still having an arm, I'm going with the later--especially since I'm right handed!

That's probably the most graphic example of the macro view. 

After I read Ann's 1000 Gifts about 1000 times (really, I dip into it almost constantly), I think I've started to get it. Waking up late? Traffic jam? Not getting cast in the show? It's all OK. God has a plan. I don't know it (And some days that drives me crazy), but God wants me to give thanks all the time. There is always something to be grateful for. 

Even, as Betsie tells us, the fleas. 

What's your passion?

“The biggest thing for me is the passion that I’ve always had for hockey. I remember growing up, no matter what I did in life, my parents always told me to try to do my best at it and be my best. I can say going through different things that that passion is the most important part. It’s not skills or talent or any of that stuff.
”

— Sidney Crosby

What are you passionate about? 

Is that a strange question? 

I don't think it should be. I think it should be something we ask people all the time. Instead of "what do you do", it should be, "What are you passionate about?" 

What we do doesn't really tell us a lot about a person. "I'm a manager at Widget Co." "I'm a speechwriter." "I'm a teacher." Sure, it can help us find some common ground. But when people used to ask me what I did, I told them, and they thought it was the coolest thing in the world. In truth, after doing it for about five years, it wasn't nearly so cool to me anymore. I worked to live, I didn't live to work--but I knew people who did, in my workplace. 

My passions have always been writing, music, theater, reading, cooking, hockey....I could keep going. I have a lot of passions. :) Some of them are dependent on other people, like theater. If I don't get cast in a show, then obviously I won't be doing a show. But that doesn't stop my love of it. 

Being good at something isn't the same thing as being passionate about it. You can be good at something and hate it. You can love something and be rubbish at it. (Like people who love music, but are tone-deaf) I love hockey, but let me tell you, I'd never be able to actually play it. I recognize my limitations. 

A great thing is when passion and work coincide. Now, for artists, it might never happen. It's hard to make a living from art. Everyone knows that. Some people are very lucky, and they succeed in that area, but not all of us do. But I think a mark of passion is doing it for free. I've done theater where I'm paid for my work. I've done more theater where I do it without any pay. And really, the enjoyment I get out of both is about the same. Sure, I like and Appreciate the money I get from doing paid shows. But it's not a requirement for me. If I hate the show, I'm going to hate it whether or not I'm making money from it. I put in the same amount of preparation and approach it the same way, money or no. When I'm drawing, I know I'm not going to get any money for it. I'm doing it because it's fun. 

It isn't always fun. There are times when the words aren't coming, when the scene's not jelling, when the lines on the paper look absolutely terrible. And that happens in anything. Sports teams lose. Plays flop. Books are panned in the New York Times. But people keep playing, acting, writing. 

“We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
”

— Henry James

God made each of us for a unique reason. No other person can bring to the world what each of us can bring to it. Part of that is our passion. What do we love? What skills and talents has God given us to bring His beauty and truth to the world? Because that's part of what good art does, incidentally. It makes us think about the world and our place in it, and our relationships. 

If artists don't make much money off of their love, then those who love God "for a living" really don't. Nuns are often told that their lives are "wasted" in service to God. "What, you want to pray all day? What is that about?" But they love God and His people so much that they're going to give their entire lives to the service of them. 

God loved us so much he sent his only son to die for us. That's passion. That's love. 

A passion can really be anything. Crossword puzzles, Tudor history, football, politics, knitting, housekeeping, cooking, math, mystery novels, fishing, quilting, travel, oil painting, fossils--whatever. What do you love to do? Our lives need passion. We weren't designed to just do utilitarian things. We need passion in our lives. 

Find your passion, and dedicate work to it. It takes hard work to be good at something. Passion ensures that the work is enjoyable, even when it's really not. If you've seen the movie Miracle, you know about the scene where the players are skating back and forth across the ice in endless drills as Herb Brooks barks, "again!" That was not fun. But that's what's needed, to be really good at what you do. Hard work serves the desire. If you hate playing the piano, it doesn't matter how great you might be at it. You might be blessed with long fingers and great technique. But that's not any good if you hate it. 

Find a passion, and work at it. Enjoy it. They make life a lot more fun, and they serve the special gifts that God has given only you to have and perfect. 

What's your passion? What makes you excited to get up in the morning?