Mercy for Japan

(photo credit Recorded Pictures)

Did you ever play the game of Mercy when you were a kid? You know the one - where someone pinches you or twists your skin or pummels you until you writhe in pain and cry for mercy. That's how it feels these days. Every time I turn on the news and hear of another earthquake or another tragedy, I cry out for mercy.

There are times in life when I just don't know what to say. This is one of those times. I've largely avoided the news from Japan, because, honestly, I just don't want to know. The devastation...the pain...the suffering...the heartbreak...they're all too much for me to handle.

It's almost as if I believe that if I pretend it's not there, then it didn't really happen. That people on the other side of the world aren't reeling from the aftershocks of a cataclysmic disaster. That the earth's axis hasn't shifted and that life as usual is going on. But, of course, it's not. Life as usual has ceased to exist for more people than I can imagine, and it will never be the same again.

Mercy, Lord, Mercy.

Until next time, grace and peace.

In Retrospect: He's Always Been Faithful

(photo via Lumberg the Loquacious Llama)

I've been feeling pretty retrospective lately. It started when I began preparing for a talk I gave at DNow a few weeks ago. The theme of DNow? Love. So, of course, I started thinking back over all the relationships in my life and the boys that I loved in the past. And then, while visiting my parents last weekend, I stumbled across a box in the top of my closet that held mementos of most of my old relationships. There were crumpled notes in that box from the fourth grade! That's a long time ago, y'all!

Anyway, I stayed up entirely too late reading all those notes, and my mom and I got quite a few giggles over some of them, because, let's admit it, seventh grade love is just plain awkward. But then there were other letters and notes and poems that weren't funny at all. They were serious, and by the time I finished reading all of them, I was more than a little sad.

I was sad because I had forgotten how much they loved me and I loved them. My last memories of my relationships with those boys are generally not pretty. That's how breakups go. When it comes down to it, it's a lot easier to remember the pain of parting than it is to remember the goodness of what once was. I think it has to be that way. If we spent all our time remembering how good things used to be then we would never be able to move on.

Reading through all that old stuff made me even more thankful for the man I'm married to today. I love him more deeply and more fully than anyone in my past, and I am so grateful that none of those other relationships worked out. We are a well-matched pair, and God has truly blessed us with one another.

I don't wonder what might've been, and I don't wish that things had turned out differently. God used every single bit of my past to shape me into the person I am today. There's a line from He's Always Been Faithful by Sara Groves that's been running through my head as all of this has been on my mind: "I can't remember a trial or a pain he did not recycle to bring me gain." And that's the truth. God has taken both the good and the bad in my past and transformed it into peace in my present. Even when I have made mistakes and messed up, God has always been faithful.

And I am most grateful for that.

When I returned home Sunday afternoon, I pulled down another box from the top of the closet I share with Dennis, and I reread all the bits and pieces of our love story. There were post-it notes that he had hidden all over my house in Waco and a stack of handwritten letters that I received the old-fashioned way. There were birthday cards, e-mails, Valentines, and notes. And the best thing about that box? I'm still adding to it.

Until next time, grace and peace.

Taking Things in Stride

Last night I had a moment, well, several moments, really, in which I thought I had lost everything on the blog. Well, not everything. I do have all of the posts and comments and pictures saved in a backup file. I'm talking about the site structure itself. Major panic ensued.

Obviously, you're reading this, so I got everything sorted out, but for about four hours last night, I was at my wit's end. Which is silly, really, because it's just a website. But it's a website that I built and customized for myself, and it took me a long time to get it exactly the way I wanted. I was seeing hours and hours of getting it just right again in my future, and the prospect made me shudder.

This is just the most recent of events that has set me back lately, and the more these little things pop up, the more I've noticed something about myself.

When things don't go the way I have planned, I get bent out of shape. And when I say bent out of shape, I mean that I get twisted up into an unrecognizable form of myself. I obsess over "fixing" things when it's obvious to everyone else that they can't be fixed.

I don't want to be that way.

I want to be the kind of woman who takes things in stride. Who never gets her feathers ruffled or works herself into a tizzy. I want to calmly step both feet into my big girl panties, pull them up, and just deal with it.

This, I know, is going to be a slow and painful process, and given some of my recent circumstances, I'm afraid that it's an area that God really wants to work on right now.

He always does that, you know. Gets me in the gut.

I've been feeling overwhelmed lately with everything I've loaded on my plate. It's piled higher than a styrofoam tray at Thanksgiving dinner, and when I dive in to tackle the butterbeans, I send my cornbread tumbling off the plate. It's not pretty.

I called my mom Monday and asked her to come get Micah, who has refused to nap consistently for the past month, and when Micah refuses to nap, I can't write, which is a problem since I have two major deadlines at the beginning of next week. I have to work this week. Thank goodness for grandparents, right?

I'm hoping that I'll be able to get back on track while Micah's at my parent's house. That maybe these few days will be like pushing the reset button, and when I retrieve her, all will be calm, and my plate will have a few empty sections.

One can hope, right?

Until next time, grace and peace.