Birthday

My lands, has it really been 6 months since my last post? No wonder people keep calling to poke me with a proverbial stick to see if I'm alive.

I have been in a season of sheer insanity. Working full time retail (I'm now managing the Compass... yikes), of course all the while still trying to maintain a full time job as mom and wife, and then working with the youth at church and attempting to play LJG gigs from time to time. Oh, and in the midst of it all, we've just moved. Just finally got settled (sort of) in Boerne, where we're still tripping over boxes but fully enjoying the life of city dwellers -- first time in 10 years that we've actually had modern conveniences like pizza delivery and a corner store within rock-throwing distance from the house.

And we did away with our phone at home at the old house the last three months we were there. Initially we got rid of it because we were finally able to get DSL, so we no longer needed the land line (we've gone almost exclusively cellular) for anything. And then we found out we had to move, and so I've been without internet for a long, long time.

It's been really great, though... I have spent my (miniscule) free time reading. I have discovered some really amazing books that have revolutionized my world and have thus inspired me to write again. This summer I read "Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller, and while I was, as usual, late to the party concerning my discovery of Donald Miller, it came at just the right time.

I just finished Anne Lamott's "Traveling Mercies," and I have decided that I have found my favorite writer in Lamott. Reading her book was like a cool drink of water for me. I was inspired by her journey, her real-ness, her view of God that sometimes makes me wince a little but challenges my formulaic view of Christianity.

That's the road I'm currently on... I think God is breaking down some of the formulas, some of the "pat-ness" of my thinking, not that Truth is any less Truth, but I think that I have been taught to believe in a very small God, one who we have tried to fit in a tidy little box because it's easier for us to manage, and He doesn't fit in a tidy little box at all. I am learning how big and other He is, His ways are not my ways and His thoughts are not my thoughts, and while it blows my mind, it is comforting to let go and to surrender to this huge Other and know that I don't necessarily have to figure Him out. And the beauty of that is that it opens me up to find Him in lots of new places, to not be limited to my usual American conservative right-wing consumer-driven perspective, but to be more open to the fact that He is not limited to my narrowness. There is so much more of Him to find.

I will continue this track later... I have to go to work. I'm 33 today. Wow. Maybe I'll get a muffin.