Welcome each visitor...

Two quotes and a link. My own thoughts are just not fitting for public consumption. I've laid on the couch for nearly a full day. I'm feeling slightly more rested, and but still deeply sad and exhausted. Tomorrow morning I'll go back to work and start again. This is a season of breaking, of shattering, of wondering if wholeness will ever happen again, and do I really want it anyway? Of evaluating the high costs of various decisions. Of questions and elusive future possibilities. Of silence and oftentimes loneliness (even in the midst of crowds). Of fasting. Of thinking and praying and wondering and waiting. Of agonizing and weeping. Of opening my life to the thousand and one sorrows that surround me, and letting them change things in my heart. Of crying out to God in the desperate hope that he will hear and respond and send peace.

I'm going with my best friend to a panel discussion on genocide - in Rwanda and Darfur - in a few hours. We'll eat together first, and then listen, and once again I'm sure my heart will shatter.

So, two quotes and a link. That's all I can manage for public consumption.

Sara Miles describes a conversation soon after she'd become a Christian, with an old friend, where, as he shared the pain in his life, she recommended he pray. She writes:

"When you told me to pray," Jose would remember later, "it was incredibly earnest. You said prayer was like having this intense, profound longing that you just had to be with. That you put the longing in the hands of God, in a certain way. That it was important to be receptive to the unfulfilled, and not fill it or deny it."

I had to be receptive or go crazy - because even as I kept going to church, the questions raised by the experience only multiplied. Conversion was turning out to be quite far from the greeting-card moment promised by televangelists, when Jesus steps into your life, personally saves you, and becomes your lucky charm forever. Instead, it was socially and politically awkward, as well as profoundly confusing. I wasn't struck with any sudden conviction that I now understood the "truth." If anything, I was just crabbier, lonelier, and more destabilized.
(Sara Miles, "Take This Bread", pg. 70)

The poet Rumi writes:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meannness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for
some new delight.

I first came across that poem a few years back, as the inspiration for this story, "The Crowded House".

To be receptive to the unfulfilled spaces and not fill or deny them, and to welcome each visitor, even if they're a crowd of sorrows. This is the space I am working to occupy.

Home Sick and Mice

I'm home from work today.

Praying that it's just exhaustion (from months of sleeping only 4 or 5 hours a night) and not a flu bug. Queasy, exhaustion, aching body, possibly fever.

I got up just long enough to send my office an email telling them I wasn't going to be able to come in today, then went back to bed and slept another three hours. Planning to take a nice long nap this afternoon as well.

Oh yes, and a mouse update.

After some maneuvering, Mom and I figured out how to arm the mousetraps yesterday afternoon. (Mom nearly broke her finger in the process - her fingers being notoriously fragile).

I put several traps around the house and set out to wait.

Nothing.

Figures.

Maybe the mouse I saw was a figment of an overstressed imagination? I was involved in an intense conversation at the time.

If I don't catch anything for a couple more days, I'll patch a few holes in my closet wall (discovered upon emptying the closet) and put my belongings back in place, instead of them being strewn across my bedroom floor.

Challenging day...

I'm having a rather challenging day.

Not much sleep.

I spent the first couple hours I was awake laying on my couch, and praying. I also spent the first couple hours I was awake working not to toss my cookies.

Mice.

(does anyone know how to arm a mousetrap? the diagrams are less than helpful.)

lack of sleep and mice means that I bought groceries I don't actually need. Like balsamic vinegar. who knew that I bought a bottle of that the last time shopped? (good thing it keeps).

My emotions are all over the place.

I'm trying favorite methods of self-medicating. Except my all-time favorite method (sugar - particularly in chocolate or cake form) isn't available.

So, I went to a bookstore. This time I made it out easy. Only $30, and two titles. One on pilgrimage. One on miracles. Because I could use a few miracles, and know some people who could use some too. And because I know someone who is currently walking the pilgrimage in Spain the other book is about (and it has a foreword and endorsement from Eugene Peterson), and I'm fascinated by pilgrimage.

I'm eating one of my grandma's homemade hot-crossed buns (minus the icing cross). They taste best toasted, with butter (or occasionally cheese) melted on them.

Eventually I'll curl up and write really honestly in a journal.

But for now, a bottle of water, and episode of M*A*S*H* (another favorite form of emotional release for me). Maybe a book, or a bit of a computer game.

Errands with my mom this afternoon.

Rascal Flatts concert with my brothers tonight. I need to laugh. Rascal Flatts put on a great show - and I laughed until my stomach hurt last time. I'm glad for the chance to hang with my brothers.

Twisted Sense of Humor

Okay, here's the deal... if you get offended easily by sexual humor, or crude language, you shouldn't go to this e-card site. But I'm in a twisted sort of mood today, and needing to laugh at something ridiculous and cynical, because if I don't laugh, I'll cry. So, if you have a slightly twisted sense of humor, then you might enjoy being able to send e-cards with captions such as these:

For Friendship:

• You'd merit very kind words in my suicide note.
• Let's agree to disagree and quietly resent each other.
• Please be my excuse for not showing up to something.
• I love it when you tell a story 368 times
• We hate all the same people
• I couldn't get through Mondays without knowing you're equally miserable

For Lent or Easter:

• I hope your 40 days of shame, penitence and self-denial are going well
• Lent is when I determine which addictions I still have some control over
• Adorable candy will help distract us from the astounding horror of a man being nailed to a cross

Thinking of You

• If you really loved me, you would say it on my facebook wall
• I love you like a cannibal loves human flesh
• I'm glad you recognize how terrible your life would be without me

Workplace

• We've decided to change the name of this department in order to fix all its problems
• I'm intrigued by your cubicle knick-knacks
• Our health plan covers half the therapy sessions I need, so plan on me being half-insane
• I love pretending I have the courage to quit my job
• It's my meeting and I'll cry if I want to
  

Awake? and mice?

I'm awake.

After approximately 3 hours of sleep.

Does that even count as enough to be called a "night's sleep"?

Does that even count as awake?

I'm sitting and praying, and hoping to fall back to sleep on my couch.

Also. I have mice. Or at least a mouse. In my house. (bad rhyme - did I mention I only got three hours of sleep?)

I was sitting in my chair in the corner of my bedroom last night, when I noticed movement in my closet. The third time I saw it, there was a mouse attached.

I'm really excited to find myself living somewhere with rodents.

25 years in Calgary, and we've only ever had one mouse (and that was in the garage). Now, I have one in my closet. Fantastic.

As soon as it's not 7:30 am any more, I'll be phoning my dad and asking for mouse traps.

I'm not really any better with dead rodents than live ones.

My roommate - who grew up in Africa and is a bit more used to creepy-crawly things is leaving any minute for a week long road trip.

Which means I get to deal with the mice issue all by myself.