One Last Post for 2007

I've been trying all day to figure out what to write, how to end this year off on my blog.

I don't really know what to say. Tomorrow I'll reflect backwards, and then turn and look forwards, but tonight, there aren't quite words.

I'm sitting here in the semi-dark. In a few minutes I'll go back to the episode of Grey's Anatomy I'm watching on dvd. But for a few minutes I paused the dvd, and crept up into my stairwell.

My upstairs neighbors are African - Christians we're quite sure, though we've never met them except to smile and greet in passing on our way to and from our respective apartments. I sat in my stairwell in the dark, on my side of the door and wall that separates my home from theirs, and listened. They are singing and praying and worshipping in the New Year. Such beautiful harmonies, accompanied only by a tambourine, and such passionate prayer, though all in a language I'll never understand. I crept up the stairs to listen, to sit in the dark and let their prayers flow over me because I recognized the tune, if not the language, to one of the songs they were singing. "Oh How I Love Jesus." So beautiful.

I'm glad, I think, that the people who live above me bathe their home in worship and prayer. Tonight it makes me feel safe, and cozy as I stay alone this week while my roommate is out of town. I live in a building that (at least half of it anyhow) is regularly bathed in prayer. Beautiful.

Happy New Year!

The Long Way Around

I was thinking today about how the path I'm choosing in life right now isn't really all that traditional. How most of the people I went to high school with are all in graduate school becoming academics, or pursuing high paying careers in various fields. How I have a degree, but I'm working as a a receptionist in an unrelated industry, and dreaming of travel and coffee shops, and praying with friends all over the country and the world. How a new year is coming and my dreams are becoming stronger, rather than fading with a sense of growing responsibility and settledness. How in eleven days I'm leaving Canada for a month to start pursuing those dreams.

I was driving around earlier, doing errands, and listening to the country station on the radio (and singing loudly - since I believe that one should always sing loudly along with the radio while driving alone), and the song "The Long Way Around" by the Dixie Chicks came on. I can never actually decide what I think of the Dixie Chicks and their in-your-face political statements, but I do love a few of their songs, and this is one of them. Today, a few of the lyrics grabbed my attention, spoke of my journey, and gave me hope.

Well, I fought with a stranger and I met myself
I opened my mouth and I heard myself
It can get pretty lonely when you show yourself
Guess I could have made it easier on myself

But I, I could never follow
No I, I could never follow

Well, I never seem to do it like anybody else
Maybe someday, someday I'm gonna settle down
If you ever want to find me I can still be found

Taking the long way
Taking the long way around
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around


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Now playing: Dixie Chicks - The Long Way Around
via FoxyTunes