Rushing about

None of you in this endless internet abyss probably knows me...which is ok. But if you did you would know how prone I am to rushing about. I run around getting random thing after random thing done with hardly a chance to stop and take a breath.

Last night around 11 o'clock I picked up a book I had checked out from the library a couple of weeks ago and started reading it. It was due this morning so I figured I might as well read a chapter or two before going to bed, just to get an idea of what it was about. Around 2 in the morning I turned the last page and settled down into my cold and uncomfortable chair to think about the book I had just read. Anne Lamott, for those of you who don't know, is amazing. Yesterday I had been stuck in my own cynicism, forever unable to think positively about anyone or anything around me. Ms. Lamott told me that it was ok. In a quirky and refreshing way, she reminded me of a God who loves us not in spite of our pain, our insecurity, our mistakes, or our...well, sins; but who loves us, in some ways, BECAUSE of those things about us that we are most ashamed of. She tells the stories of her life in such a candid and honest way that I can't help be drawn in. As the daughter of a single mother I drank up her reflections on being a single mom; as someone who also finds it very difficult to forgive George W., I laughed and fumed with her as she sought how best to love him as a brother in Christ; and as someone who is very often fed up with and sick of American Evengelicalism, she reminds me that I am not alone.

For those of you who don't know me, I love to read. Stories are my life. Yesterday I also finished off the memoir "Three Cups of Tea," and spent the rest of the afternoon day dreaming about how I might also become someone middle easterners trust and adopt into their families.

So after I went to bed last night, the pressure that I had felt building up in my heart slowly released itself and I woke up this morning slightly less nerotic and slightly more capable of grace. As I meandered over to campus, however, my capacity for grace decreased with every step and by the time I stepped into work, I was my old cynical self. It was a step in the positive direction though.



Il-Hamdu-Lilleh