For those who wanted a bit more...

My former roommate and her new husband just posted this video of clips from their wedding ceremony on July 4th, and, since a few of you either know J., or have asked about the wedding, I thought I'd share it here.

My favorite part of their ceremony was the emotion with which R's brother sang "All the Way My Savior Leads Me" as a prayer and blessing over J and R while they shared communion together - one of their first acts as a married couple.

Second Half

The second half of my day was decidedly less than productive.

They created a new system for taking messages at our office related to a new product that was launched yesterday. I spent most of my afternoon following this ridiculous procedure for answering a call, taking a message, and then ensuring that the message got to the appropriate person. This, while trying to juggle the responsibilities of my other position.

It was the sort of day I was expecting yesterday, and it was gross.

Thankfully the grocery trip was relatively painless, and only minorly soul-sucking. A good list and staying on task helps.

I got home from that, ate dinner, took a quick shower, and now I'm crashed out in bed with a movie playing in the background while I catch up on a few emails, and basically do as much nothing as possible. I need to rest and (hopefully) sleep tonight. Especially since tomorrow is likely to be filled with the same sorts of challenges at work that today was.

Productive?

I feel like it's been an oddly productive morning thus far, on both a work front, and a "things I personally need to do" front.

I talked with my car insurance company to get an answer to a question I had.

I scheduled a driving lesson - long story, but my license is coming up for renewal, and I'm also well overdue to take the advanced road test that is part of Alberta's Graduated Driver's Licensing system. (I think I was eligible to take the test about three years ago!) Anyway, because it's been over five years since I last did a driving road test, and since this one covers different things, I thought I'd book a bit of a refresher lesson to try to ensure I can pass this test in one attempt and only have to pay for it once.

I knocked several items off of my work "to do" list.

I bought groceries (unexpectedly) for the office.

I spoke briefly with the rep for our filing system when she dropped off some samples I'd asked for. And I supervised the delivery of several new furniture pieces in the office as well.

I talked with my mechanic about George. He informed me what a particular problem that I'd noticed was caused by. I'm really thankful for our mechanic, who's honest and never tries to cheat me. I asked if I needed to have this problem repaired, and he told me that George is absolutely safe to drive without repairing the problem, that it was my preference. Since I'm trying not to sink huge amounts of money into my rather old vehicle, I opted to leave it unrepaired for the moment. So, George just had an oil change, and I'll pick him up after work tonight.

I find myself somewhat surprised at what's been accomplished today. Especially since I slept very poorly again last night, and was most definitely dragging this morning.

I'm less than excited about the fact that there is a trip to the soul sucking mega grocery store in my future tonight, but I'll survive it, and then probably have to do another round of yoga to recover!

And I'm still in the mood to wear scarves (and pray). Yesterday's was sent to me by a friend, a gift from Morrocco. Today's is a gift from another friend, this time sent from Nepal.

More thoughts later I suppose...

Memories, Quotes, and an oddly poignant evening...

I had an experience tonight that reminded me just how many things can trigger memories. One moment I was standing at the sink, rinsing lettuce leaves for the taco salad I was preparing, and in the next I'd been transported backwards through time and was re-living a moment I'd nearly forgotten. It's a oddly powerful and poignant sort of thing to have that happen.

George is safely at the mechanic, and I even managed to get a full yoga workout in.

I went hunting tonight for a scrapbook like journal I created in the first few years of university. It's full of quotations and thoughts and comics that I'd collected. Favorite things that spoke in different ways to me, or that simply made me laugh. There were a few forgotten treasures in there.

At that time in my life, I was approximately right in the middle of the seven years I suffered from severe depression, before so very unexpectedly encountering God's healing. I was finding it hard to cling to faith, to believe in God, and strongly identified with any statements that made room for my doubts, my struggles, my questions, and my depression to co-exist with a relationship with God. I came upon a few of those quotes tonight as I flipped through that journal, and smiled as they again acted as salve to a tired soul.

The questions are different these days, but there are still questions. The doubts are different, and rarely reach the depths that depression drove them to, but there are sometimes still doubts and uncertainties. I know now, in a way that I didn't know then, that I will never be able to walk away from Jesus - that in Him has been the only joy and fulfillment I've ever really found. I'm learning daily about trust - and how trust mostly exists in the uncertainty. There's not much need to trust if I can know something for certain. But I still appreciate those philosophers, writers and thinkers who offer space for God and those questions and doubts to co-exist.

Quotes like these:

"When we get our spiritual house in order, we'll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty." (Flannery O'Connor)

"It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt." (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

"Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me." (Frederick Buechner)

I went hunting for that journal, not because of treasures like these that it contained, but because it contained a typed out set of lyrics to the song I mentioned yesterday. "Because You Are" by Everybody Duck.

The partial lyrics I'd put in the journal read as follows:

I can't feel You like others around me
I don't feel like kneeling or closing my eyes
Is there something wrong with my heart that I can't see?
Or do You feel love still when nobody cries?

'Cause I know in my heart how bad I want to touch You
You must sense this love my soul barely contains
No lack of desire in this desert to worship
I keep singing skyward it just never rains

So I'll praise You if I never feel You
And I'll love You cause I know You're there
And if You should choose I'm sure one day I'll feel it
But feeling good's never the reason I cared.

It's funny to me to remember, years later, the space I was existing in when those lyrics first hit a chord. At the time I was just beginning to encounter God in a more "spirit-filled" way. Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say that I was part of a community that encountered God in that way, and that I was desperately hungry to have those sort of personal encounters and relationship with Jesus that they demonstrated for myself, but was equally convinced that it would perhaps never happen for me. Thus the power of lyrics that began, "I can't feel you like others around me."

Five or six years later, after many crazy encounters with Jesus, I've walked for the last year and a half through some very challenging circumstances. I'm more convinced than ever that Jesus speaks and guides and loves. But I'm also in a place of exhaustion, in need of rest and healing and recovery, and, when I came upon this song again earlier this week, I was struck deeply by the lines I quoted yesterday, "No lack of desire in this desert to worship. I keep singing skyward, it just never rains."

So I worship anyway. Even in those moments when it feels like rote memorization. Like a dead practice, instead of a living joy. Because I've learned, too, that eventually the rains always come. I spent the afternoon looking out my office window at the downpour we were having, remembering the many complaints the last years of drought, and praying that in ways that are internal, that impact my heart, the rains will also come, and bring cleansing, healing, refreshment, restoration, and new growth and life.

Still unpacking...

A post with content related to something other than the fact that I moved two weeks ago is coming. I promise.

In the meantime, my roommate and I began the task of tackling the arranging of furniture in our living room tonight. I have quite a few piles of things to sort through still. And a large stack of items to be taken to a thrift shop. And a microwave to be returned to a friend who loaned it to me a couple years back, when our first house didn't have a microwave.

I'm off to unpack the last bookshelf, and perhaps sort through a bit of other stuff.

I'm waiting for my dad to call, as George needs yet another visit to the mechanic (though I think just for an oil change this time) and I'm borrowing a vehicle from my parents to drive tomorrow while George is getting checked out. Dad will meet me at the mechanic, I'll take him home, and then head back to my house with one of their vehicles.

And, I'm hoping to do a bit of yoga or stretching, or some sort of exercise tonight - hoping that doing that will help me sleep a bit better tonight.

With that, I'm off to return to the unpacking process... (I'll be so glad when that is finally under control...)