"Know that I am with you; I will protect you wherever you go, and bring you back to this land. I will never leave you until I have done what I promised you."

Genesis 28:15

today i am picking up my wedding dress.

even though the sun is shining down on me
and i should feel about as happy as can be
i just got here and i already want to leave
it's gonna be a lonely lonely lonely lonely day.

lonely day, phantom planet



anna mary and i had a starbucks date today. a middle aged red haired man came up to me and said, 'your daughter is so precious, she really is a spitting image of you.' i'm tired of explaining that she's my sister. . . yeah, i know, i'm too old to have such a young sibling . . . yes, my parents know what birth control is . . . i know, i look old enough to be her mother . . . so i just say 'thank you'.

usually at work during the night, i'm able to catch 15 mins of sleep here and there. not last night. i had a chart open for 6 hrs. i worked with the same family for six straight hours. the daughter was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the patient was imminently dying. how do you explain to a crazy person that her mom is dying? *sigh* it was awful.

wedding planning is . . . stagnant.

been listening to alot of bach lately, seems to help to clear my mind. when my mom gave birth to my siblings and i, she always requested to have classical music playing in the background to help her focus on her breathing. she majored in classical composition and conducting in college. so each one of us was born to a different composer, i was born to bach. and i'm having amy sing bach's ave at the wedding. if nothing else, the music at the wedding is going to rock, i'm pumped about it.

oh, we stutter and we stammer till you save us
a symphony of chaos till you play us
phrases on the pages of unknown
‘til You read us into poetry and prose

nichole nordeman, healed



today, i am amazed.

i know i'm smart. i first realized that i was smart when i was the only kid from my grade walking across the street to the junior high building for my english comprehension and social studies. mr. sowell was my fifth grade teacher and he told me that i could do anything that i wanted with a brain like mine. he told me that life was always easier for smart people. and to an extent, he was right; i did really well in high school, really well on my ACTs and really well in college. school has never been a problem for me, i love to learn.

but today i was struck with the reality of the intelligence of God.

i was in adoration today, and at benediction, as we were singing the tantum ergo, the words flew out of my mouth -

praestet fides suplementum sensuum defectui
where the senses fail, faith is supplemented

i stopped for a second; it wasn't just where my senses fail that faith takes over. it is true that when i can't see Him, i still believe He is near, when i can't taste Him, i trust that it is He whom i am consuming. but faith saves the day most completely when my intelligence fails to comprehend Him.

i don't think that anything is more puzzling than not being able to fully understand the one that i worship. i guess when He decides to make Himself known to me, it's clear, it's crystal clear. but it's so little of Him . . . how can you know so little of something and yet be so convinced? it's like not knowing the person that you love.

no matter how smart i am, i could never think something into existence. this is me - i am my body and my soul, and my thoughts which are functions of my body and soul, don't go anywhere. they're just in my head and occasionally result in some action. there is nothing that depends on my thoughts for it's existence. when i die, there might be a few things that end, but the world would still exist.

compared with what and who there is to know, i know nothing.

i'm trying to catch up on my reading this summer. when i was in school, we read some heavy hitters; aquinas, john of the cross, augustine, church council documents, theology of the body etc. so this summer i can catch up on all of my bubble gum novels guilt free.

i think everybody has a list of books they want to read. and most of the classics are on that list, just so that people can say that they've read them. i have read a ton of books from different periods up until modern and post-modern literature. and i don't know of alot of really talented modern authors. so i've developed a new technique. i just walk down the aisles, open up a book and read the dedication and the first few lines. probably every 10 books start out something like this;

"it was the first cool day in months, which remined sally williams that she needed to have someone come out and look at her seemingly one thousand year old furnace. he had always done that, and until that fateful day three years ago, she couldn't tell you if it was a good thing or a bad thing that there was a small fire burning inside of it."

*sighs* next book.

it's funny how everyone writes about death and loss. the theologian in me wants to say that people write about it because it is unnatural; adam and eve weren't created to die, it was a result of their sin. but the other parts of me know that the challenge for the author lies in attempting to put such a life-altering experience into words.

i love words. language is an incredible tool; i don't ever want to take for granted the gift of expression that we have been given in words. our words are so far beyond the sounds that animals make to 'communicate'. an animal's mating call doesn't make the other animal feel anything, it's just instinct. but our words can evoke so much emotion; but it's not the sounds, it's not the syllables but together to make the expression - it's the person who is speaking, the thing that he is speaking about that evokes different emotions. the word 'death' is not directly corralated to the actual thing; it's just noise that we make to communicate what is going on. and the script of our noise are just characters assigned to the individual noises. just another form of communication.

amazing.

amazing that we can make noise and adapt our understanding to be moved by it.

"when they write my obituary. tomorrow. or the next day. it will say, 'leo gursky is survived by an apartment full of shit.' i'm surprised i haven't been buried alive. i often wonder who will be the last person to see me alive. if i had to bet, i'd bet on the delivery boy from the chinese take-out." the history of love, nicole krauss

"the candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. he took off his hat and came slowly forward. he looked down at the guttered candlestub. he pressed his thumbprint in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer. lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the fold of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. that was not sleeping. that was not sleeping." all the pretty horses, cormac mccarthy