To be honest...

1. Right now my Love is playing the guitar again for the first time in ages! It makes me so happy! He's practicing Yellow.

2. I just did all the dishes. ALL. DONE.

3. I've been wanting a very good chocolate for a while now. Just one. To have with a tiny glass of sparkling water.

4. I feel really behind on German, French and Spanish right now, but I just can't choose which one to work on. Not being able to choose is making me way too stressed!

5. I'm thinking of switching to raw milk. And definitely never buying any more 2% milk. The nastiness of low-fat milk is more unfathomable than I even knew. (or imagined, and that's saying something!) I'm trying not to believe everything I read, but still.

6. Now that we're actually having a child, I'm more excited than I ever knew I would be about teaching it!

7. Tonight my dad called me and we talked for half an hour about England, and how much we appreciate it's having spent 1,000 years hashing out self-government and freedom of religion for us, about New York City, and about the setting moons we used to see over Copano Bay when we did the paper route at 4:30 in the morning.

8. I feel really claustrophobic about social media for some reason right now! Just knowing it's there makes me feel acutely overwhelmed.

9. The baby moves a lot now! Being pregnant is way funner than it used to be.

10. My 16-year-old sister Abby made a pretty much perfect-looking (I didn't get to taste it, being 200 miles away) coconut cream pie for my dad. She's really interesting and can do anything.

11. We've decided to continue to throw around names but not choose one until the baby's here.

12. We're going to San Diego before the baby comes!

13. I am so, very, really tired of caring what anyone thinks of me. How could I have cared enough to get this tired of caring when I already thought I didn't care?

14. I'm excited about my 2 baby showers I'm going to have!

15. I took my sewing machine to be fixed today and I cannot wait to get it back!!!

16. My Love's sister and her husband are coming to visit next weekend, and I'm thinking about what I hope to get done before then. We always have a really great time with them, even though I always feel a little apprehensive the whole time, that I might say or do something she'll misunderstand. (Amendment: I don't worry about it anymore because I don't think I ever do or say anything my husband's family does understand. And that's okay!)

17. Almost finished with The Return of the King. It will be the first time I've actually finished the series.

18. First knitting class tomorrow.

19. My mind has been really cluttered lately and it's starting to wear on me.

20. I'm going to make ice cream cone cupcakes for my birthday. They're going to have cherries on top and candy on top and decorations on top and I'm really excited!


21. I'm going to go make some tea.

I'm 21 years old and have no pertinent thoughts or opinions.

Giving up is hard. It is especially hard for me. It always has been. Allowing people to think what they want without trying to force them to understand me has never really been my strong point. In fact, it's probably my weakest point ever. It's pretty clear what causes that weak point, when I start to think about it.

What inside me, besides plain old pride, could chafe so strongly at being completely and totally misunderstood? And I don't mean something I said, I mean my entire identity, person, purposes, meaning, whatever. I admit that it must be my pride that causes me to be totally frustrated at being treated as an idealistic child, rather than a normal 20- or 30-something adult, simply because I've been blessed with more imaginative excitement about life than the average 20- or 30-something. (although I think that depends on who you know. I know many people who are like that.) What besides selfishness could make me dread being around someone simply because they treat me that way? Why should I care so much that someone, perhaps through no fault of their own, does not know or care that I question and study and think to know how and why I believe what I believe? Besides, is that why I think through things, just to get credit for it?

Anyway, I'd like to shop to make myself feel better, but the budget for that is all gone this month. (Oh poor me.) And since I can't shop, maybe I could bake something, but oh, I can't because we're out of butter AND grocery money. We have eggs I could bake with, but I have to save them for eating, since my body will not forgive me anymore on the days I skip an egg, it seems.

This is a tangent, and we're far from starving, actually. This week, for dinners, I have the stuff to make pizza, lentils and rice, fried chicken and mashed potatoes, beans and cornbread, lettuce salads, chicken quesadillas, and that's without being at all creative. I have plenty of tea and half and half. And I really could make bread, and I have some jam. It's just I want to cream some butter and sugar since I can't shop. This is very, very good for me.

I feel better already, because this is simple. The problem: I'm upset because I'm misunderstood. The cause: not their misunderstanding, but my pride. The solution: to obey and learn what I know God wants me to learn in this and just let go of the pride.

What about if I just pray for the ability to let go? What if I just do that and then go practice? I did recently learn that when you pray for obedience, you get peace.

Living in Worship

If I could just remember Jesus on the cross, paying for my sins, I would not have the pride to get angry with people for hurting me.

If I could just remember Jesus on the cross, there because of my inability to understand or meet God's standard of holiness, I would not be so upset when people misunderstand me. After all, I didn't understand Jesus.

If I could just remember Jesus on the cross, and the fact that I caused Him to go there, I would not be anxious about the future, because I would be remembering how kind He is.

If I could just remember Jesus on the cross, because of me, I would be so thankful all the time that I would not have room for worry and fear, prideful anger, or bratty ungratefulness.

If I could just remember that Jesus died on the cross for me, it would change my life.

It has changed my life that I know it, and remember it a little bit, but the more I remember it, the more it would change me. Is that what it means to be freed from your sins?

answered prayer

I prayed for obedience and I got peace. I asked Him to take away the worry, because the worry is too heavy for me and besides that, worry is disobedience.

On a little road trip with my Mimi this summer, she told me of some times when she has said, "This was not where I thought I would go, but Lord, if you want me to be here, then this is where I will be." There are so many things in my life about which I do not say that, but instead, fight for the way I think it should be.

I don't know why surrender is so hard for me, when I know that God loves me and doesn't make a mistake! But the peace that comes from not fighting is worth the surrender.

I just got home from the grocery store and I'm really tired and need to go eat a snack. I'd just like to take a moment to say how thrilled I am to see that not everyone dresses their little boy in bright, toy-print covered colors all the time.





I know it's trivial, but those pictures give me the encouraging idea I am not the only person in the world who wants to dress their baby like a person, not a doll. I know there is a time and place for colorful, casual, smothered-in-baby-print clothing. It's called home, and it's probably most of the time. But I'm hungry, I'm in an opinionated mood, and I needed to say this.

a ticket

I woke up this morning to see a facebook status of a distant friend from one of my music theory classes. He said:

"Dear friends, our little boy, Joseph Lee Erickson, is with Jesus and was born today at 3:52 PM. He was 9 lbs 4 oz and 23 inches long! He's a big, beautiful boy that we love and will miss so much. Thank you all for your prayers and support."

I was shaken with shock and sadness. I don't really know this man anymore, and I don't know his wife at all, but it did not seem a complicated or abnormal situation, from what I could tell. Every month on facebook, the daddy put up fun little updates that said things like, "Our baby is the size of a cucumber." or whatever. His excitement at the normal progression of the pregnancy was evident. You look at these situations and just say, "Why?"

I know of 5 or 6 people who have had births like this, some family, others friends or even friends of friends. Of course the next thought is, what if that happens to me?

My mother reminded me of something that I usually remind myself of in these situations: In her book, The Hiding Place, Christian author Corrie ten Boom remembers going regularly to Amsterdam by train as a little girl with her father. One day at the station, shortly after being faced with the death of a little baby, she told her father that she was afraid to die, or afraid that something bad would happen to her family, and that she would not be able to bear it.

Her father answered, "Corrie, when we go to Amsterdam on the train, when do I give you your ticket?"

Little Corrie's answer was "Just before we get on the train."

Her father said,"That's right, Corrie. You don't need your ticket until you are about to board the train. But I always give you your ticket just in time. That's how our wonderful heavenly Father is. He always gives us just what we need, and He is never late."

Ever since I read The Hiding Place as a little girl, that little story has given me so much comfort and insight into God's care for us. When I worry about what could or might happen, I have to force myself to remember that I do not have a "ticket" to bear those things now. They are not trains that I have been asked to get on. If and when I am asked to get on one of those trains, the Lord will provide what I need at the moment I need it.

Tonight I discovered that another of my siblings has a blog: my sister Kathleen. I discovered her to be a pretty good storyteller, something I had not really had occasion to see before. The dog walking post was quite fun.

Anyway, I read a post of hers that happened to be also something she had talked with me about previously, something interesting that had been on her mind that was now on mine as well. I had some more thoughts about the subject and put them down rather inefficiently as a bunch of comments on her post. Rather than make a whole blog post restating it all, I'll just link to it here.