Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes Until a Below-Zero 2009

This morning my thermometer said it was -30 F. 

I’m taking a break from the all-night-movie-athon.  We just finished Castle in the Sky (I’m a huge fan of Miyazaki’s films) and took a half-hour roller blade break before starting Nanny McPhee.  In leiu of trying to fit my feet in kid-sized roller skates, I spent some time reading Feminist Mormon Housewives (a fascinating little place I like to peruse every now and then, surfed from there to this interesting article with plenty of parallels for Christian evangelicals, and am now planning to put on my ipod (finish up the latest episode of This American Life) and clean up the remnants of the New Year’s Eve feast.   

I recently put together a book list for you all, even at the risk of hearing, “Heretic,” (I’ll tell you the story of the preacher who heard I had a Brian McLaren book in my home, er, some other day) and am looking forward to any recommendations you might have.  Times, they are a frugal, and do I ever mean frugal, so despite the fact that I’m sort of against trying to make money off of readers, I figure it can’t hurt to use Amazon to make my reading list.  Sorry if that’s offensive.  I’m kind of offended, and it’s my blog…but book-lusters can’t be choosers.   

It’s now two hours and five minutes until the New Year.  I can’t believe the three year old is still awake.  But he is.  We have a bottle of sparkling grape juice sitting on the bar with plans of toasting in the new year.  If you’re reading this looking for my resolutions, you’re at the wrong blog.  Try my buddy, the famous Ann Voskamp.  Now there’s where you can get seriously introspective and meditative about the year we are entering and the year we are leaving.  The thing that’s so weird about Ann is that when you talk to her, you’d sort of expect to hear the voice of a nun.  No, a Mother Superior who is incredibly wise.  Maybe even a wise Mother Superior who regularly performs miracles.  But Ann is incredibly down to earth, goofy, and, best of all, has a loud and life-filled laugh.  I think that adds to the holy.  I like Ann.   

 My thermometer says it’s only -19F right now.  Whew.  Warming trend or something.  The bad thing about cold weather is that there is cold weather.  The good thing is that it kills all the bugs and creatures that you guys have that give you Lyme disease and poisonous bites that rot a pound of flesh and crawl around in your cupboards and bit your ankles.  That’s right, no ticks, poisonous spiders, cockroaches or snakes.  Unless they are in an aquarium or came in your suitcase. 

In Alaska, if it can kill you, you will see it coming.  That’s an Alaskan-ish motto for you.  Another one is, “Fireweed in Bloom, Reds Running Soon.”  Stuff my grandpa, the half-Aleut says.  He likes moose nose too, so I’m not sure how far his advice should be taken, though it’s proved true time and again that the red salmon come at the same time the fireweed blossoms pop out.  Nonetheless, I draw the line at moose nose.   

Have I mentioned that I hate cold weather?  I’m trying to think of the positives.  There aren’t very many, but you work with what you’ve got.   I don’t miss cockroaches. 

My resolutions for next year are the same I have right now: grow.  But what if those resolutions fail?  Things can, despite our best of attempts.  I think I learned something so valuable last year (Fall of 2007), during a time when my health had gotten so bad that I thought I was dying.  I remember standing in the bathroom, crying, my body wasting away into nothing and doing all sorts of odd things, muscles jumping, fatigued, my mind fuzzy.  Superwoman was withering away into nothing. 

I kept my game face on, as usual, but just lost it one day and went to hide in the bathroom for a good long gutteral cry.  Every last thought was in mourning for my children…and then I began crying about just me—all the things I was supposed to do, all the things I was going to do…  In my mind I saw myself laying in a hospital bed, emaciated, which felt like where I was headed, and I remember calling out to God, as if literally in that place, “But what can I do for you now?”    

There was just nothing left, no energy to do, no ability to do.  And I realized, in that moment, how much my relationship with God had to do with me doing for Him.  It suddenly became very clear to me that doing was the lesser of things, and that that had always been His opinion on the matter.  And then, through tears sitting on the floor of the bathroom, I found myself whispering, “I will just love You, then.”  

Everything was different after that point, like God and I had this little secret.  I stopped worrying about getting all my theology straight.  I stopped worrying about what to do.  I still thought I was dying, so it wasn’t like that moment on the floor took away my problems.  It didn’t, not at all (though a few weeks later would finally be diagnosed, which was such a relief given the crazy symptoms.  In layman’s terms, I blew out my central nervous system, something that takes a few years to recover from [but I'm so much better now!], something that happens when life is so stressful that you regularly flood your body with massive doses of adrenalin).  But, though it was no magic bullet fixing al circumstances in a single bound, for the most part, everything changed on the inside. 

I have this sneaking feeling, when I whispered what I did, that God answered with a huge smile, like something got through my thick skull that He’d been unable to communicate to me before, not for lack of effort.  I’d thought His voice was in the whirlwind, in the fire.  Turns out it was in the whisper, after all.   

And now it’s 10:24 and the dishes in the kitchen are calling.  This post has been interrupted numerous times (yon preschooler is now in bed) and has amazingly become the usual disjointed entry that most of my posts wind up being.  I start with every intention of just writing a paragraph or two and before I know it, the paragraph has taken on a life of its own.  I’m not sure how it is that so many of you manage to have patience with me rambling here, but you do, and I thank you for it.  You have been such wonderful mates on this journey.  

It’s still -19 below, and the kids think it’s cool that they can spit and watch it freeze.  There are things better than fireworks.  So here is a Happy New Year from my home to yours.  May the smile of God be on your days and mine. 

“I’ll plant her in the good earth.  I’ll have mercy on No-Mercy.  I’ll say to Nobody, ‘You’re My dear Somebody,’ and he’ll say, ‘You’re my God!’”   - Hosea 2, TMB