Roadtrip
560 miles. 8.5 hours. Two dogs. One Interstate.
But we made it.
Hope everyone had a great holiday. I need a nap.
Year In Review
2005 in review
Autumn sent this around to our e-mail/friend group, and since I put it on my site in 2005, I figured I might as well do it again!
1. What did you do in 2006 that you’d never done before? Went on a mission trip; Used my passport three times in one year.
2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I did not keep a one, and I’m not making them anymore. Save the ever-present motivation to simply Do Better.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? My sister-in-law gave birth to my nephew, Michael Edward. And two of my girlfriends are expecting in early 2007.
4. Did anyone close to you die? No.
5. What places did you visit? Texas, Jamaica, Siesta Key, Las Vegas, Hilton Head Island, Romania, Ohio, Destin, Albuquerque and Cancun
6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006? Financial stability.
7. What dates from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Feb. 18 – Sarah & Doug’s wedding; July 6 – Michael was born; July 11 – departed for Romania; Oct. 31 – Melissa told me she got engaged!
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? I’m not sure. Maybe just a bunch of little ones: surviving homeownership on my own; doing things that scare me; effectively widening my social circle.
9. What was your biggest failure? Getting involved in situations/relationships that I know are unhealthy and/or wrong for me. You’d think I’d have learned that lesson by now.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Nope!
11. What was the best thing you bought? iPod video! (And I didn’t buy her, but the best thing I got this year was Scout.)
12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Waumba volunteers, Romania team, trivia group, my mother, yours.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? I’m sure they know.
14. Where did most of your money go? Boarding my dogs!
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Romania, Labor Day Retreat, Sarah’s wedding, my 30th birthday, Buckhead Church, the one time we won Team Trivia!
16. What song will always remind you of 2006? “Mighty to Save”
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Much happier and I was pretty happy last December, so that’s saying a lot
b) thinner or fatter? A lot fatter
c) richer or poorer? A whole lot poorer, and I’m not sure how that happens.
18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Spent more time with my family
19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Being crazy
20. How did you spend Christmas last year? Same way I’ve spent every other Christmas, with my mom and family at my parents’ house. We have brunch, open presents and then head over to my Aunt Jane’s for dinner and dominos.
21. Did you fall in love in 2006? If you count Michael Edward, (which I do!), then YES.
22. How many one-night stands? None.
23. What was your favorite TV program? The Office! (“I once outran a black pepper snake.”)
24. What did you do for your birthday in 2006? The day of my actual birthday I went to Loca Luna with about 18 people and ate lots of food and danced. The next day we went to Sarah’s family cabin with all the dogs and cooked out and ate a lot. (A running theme.)
25. What was the best book you read? Probably “Searching for God Knows What” by Donald Miller, which I finished in January and have been passing on to all my friends ever since!
26. What was your greatest musical discovery? Death Cab for Cutie, maybe. Which makes me way behind everyone else, I know.
27. What did you want and get? An iPod and a laptop that lasted me about three whole months. Still working on getting that back. Thanks, Dell!
28. What did you want and not get? An LV Speedy. I’m ridiculous, I know.
29. What was your favorite film of this year? Little Miss Sunshine was good, but probably Marie Antoinette.
30. Did you make some new friends this year? If so, who? Yes – quite a few. My small group, the boys’ small group, Waumba people. New work friends.
31.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Less house drama!
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006? Can’t-buy-any-new-clothes-because-I-have-too-many-and-I’m-in-too-much-debt-to-buy-yet-another-pair-of-shoes.
33. What kept you sane? Friends. Faith. Dogs!
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Totally random, but I really like Sherri Shepherd right now.
35. What political issue stirred you the most? Poverty. The GOP’s complacency.
36. Who did you miss? Melissa. Michael. My mom.
37. Who was the best new person you met? I couldn’t narrow it down.
38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006. That my passion for issues may not be shared by people I assume would share it; that people pay attention to the random things I say so I need to guard more closely what comes out of my mouth; that people will hear what they want to hear and believe what they want to believe, regardless of the evidence or lack thereof. That God is bigger than all of us and that I need not worry about anything.
The List Gets Longer
Proving that I strive to be like my mother in many ways, I save every Christmas card I receive so that I can later reuse them as gift tags. Last night I was digging through the ever-growing card box looking for a cute one to put on one of Michael’s gifts, when I pulled out a card with a teddy bear on it. I opened it to see who it was from and the wind was knocked out of me when I saw that it was signed, “Aunt Jo.” There wasn’t a date on it, but judging from what she’d written, it was the Christmas I lived in my final Columbus apartment, and she and I must have met for lunch or something – probably in German Village – shortly before she sent the card.
I moved to Atlanta four months later, and shortly thereafter she relocated permanently to Florida. Surely I must have seen her again after that, but if I did, I can’t remember when or where. When she moved to Florida, she never said that she was moving there to die, that she wanted to die close to the children who loved her, but we all knew that to be the case.
I have learned more about Aunt Jo since her death than I ever did while she was alive. I suppose that’s often the way it is with families; we keep each other’s secrets until there is no reason to keep them any longer. She was, in many ways, the star of my mother’s family. She was the one all the sisters strived to please. My mother was the popular cheerleader, but Jo was the untouchable beauty queen, airy and aloof, with an air of sophistication she must have been born with, as she couldn’t possibly have learned it on a farm from her untiring workhorse of a mother. She loved to travel and her taste was exquisite. She loved theater and art and took me to several shows at the Ohio Theater. She lived for a time in Columbus’ German Village and I know she was always pleased that I chose to spend several of my post-college years in the Village as well. Last Christmas my mother pulled bags of sweaters out of the attic and asked me to try some of them on. As I did, she told me that they were all Jo’s; that before Jo moved to Florida, she’d asked my mom to “hold on” to quite a bit of her cold-weather wardrobe. I brought several sweaters back to Atlanta with me, including the softest cashmere sweater I’ve ever owned. It’s Nieman’s store brand and it has to be at least 20 years old, judging from the label. I take better care of that sweater than I do of anything else I own. When I wear it, she is with me, and it is as if I hold a secret over my heart.
I sat there holding the card for a few minutes, unsure what to do with it. I didn’t want to rip it in half and paste the cover onto a box for a baby who wouldn’t understand the significance of his aunt grabbing a card from the late aunt after whom she was partially named. So not knowing what to do, I took a picture. I stare at it, reading “love you,” written in her quick script, again and again. Life gets shorter and the list of people we miss gets longer. May we all learn to hold on to what we can.
Dog Park Daddy
Jennifer, Sarah and I stood by the pick-up counter as Tabitha made our lattes, chatting about how crazy warm it was in Atlanta and how glad Jennifer and I were about it during our run that morning.
As we waited, I noticed a familiar-looking guy stirring sugar into his coffee, so I asked him, “Do you have a dog?” He looked over at me and his face lit up as he pointed and said, “Dog park!” I laughed and said yes, and that wasn’t he Josie’s dad? He asked if I worked in the building and when I told him no, that I worked a few buildings over, he said that unfortunately he did work there.
We introduced ourselves with our real names – as opposed to Josie’s dad and Scout’s mom – and he said that he and his girl would be there on Saturday. “We will too!” I answered.
Tabitha called our names, we picked up our lattes and the three of us walked back to the office, amazed that I’d just approached a random stranger with the question, “Do you have a dog?”
2006 Moments
2006 was a year of mile markers, some superficial (finally got an iPod and chopped all my hair off), and some significant – I turned 30. So when I try to name a single defining moment, I’m hard pressed. I would think, initially, that it would be Romania, and while it was undoubtedly a defining trip, and my heart and life were changed because of it, it feels so much like its own beginning, rather than a single moment that sticks out in one year.
I catalog the year in my head, running through all the trips, travels and significant dates. I stood on a beach in Negril and saw two of my friends get married. I marked the first anniversary of homeownership and it came and went without me running off somewhere or robbing a bank. There was a fateful trip to Las Vegas where I heard God loudly telling me that perhaps the reason none of my relationships work out is because I’m the one doing the choosing. I turned 30. Michael was born and my heart no longer belonged to me. And then I got on a plane – more scared than I’ve ever been – and flew to a country I never dreamed I’d visit, to serve people who served me far greater in return. Sometimes in my dreams I can still see the countryside. I still hear them worshiping in their native tongue and I see with my own eyes Timisoara’s Victory Square laid white with snow, the way it was washed clean that fateful December day in 1989.
I fell for someone I had no business falling for and I made the conscious decision to stop dating, perhaps for good. There was Labor Day Retreat where Francis Chan spoke words that wrecked my world and I fight daily to remember them, only to be wrecked again and again. Sarah and I stood in a New Mexico field and watched hundreds of hot air balloons ascend into the sky, littering it like candied confetti. I waded into the Caribbean seas off the Yucatan Peninsula and, totally alone save for the tide, raised my arms to God and proclaimed “We are yours, we are yours, we are yours,” and knew right then that as long as there is an ocean, I will never have trouble remembering how vast He is.
And those are just the big moments. It does nothing to encapsulate the millions of words exchanged or the friendships forged. It doesn’t speak of the low times when I wondered how I would ever persevere; the times I felt alone or victimized or slandered. It doesn’t even speak to the little memories in the big moments – like how Rodica took us on a walking tour of Timisoara and I was overwhelmed by the thousands or roses everywhere. They were pink and white and red and I thought that how strange it was, in a city that was the birthplace of a revolution, in a country that was ruled by a heartless dictator, still there were roses; still there was beauty amid the gray buildings and downtrodden citizens. There were moments of worship when I thought I would never stop singing – and I stopped and opened my eyes and saw in front of me, behind me, beside me, friends whose arms were also raised; people who were worshipping the same God I was; who love Him just as much, with as much awe and appreciation. On one occasion, those people were singing in a different language, but their hearts were saying the same thing. There were moments where I felt totally unacceptable and then was suddenly told in the next moment how appreciated I am, and how lucky that person feels to be my friend. There are moments I’ll never forget – like driving to Teri’s house – my beloved, wonderful Teri without whom I would have been lost long ago – to hang out with her two-year-old child and getting a phone call from my beloved, beautiful Melissa telling me that she is getting married. And I felt nothing but lucky.
Sometimes I am amazed – amazed! – at how different I am. When someone strikes me, instead of striking back or getting worked up over how unfair life is, I wonder what I did to make them lash out. And if necessary, I apologize and then that’s the end of it. Forgiveness is never easy, and sometimes you have to wake up every day and forgive again and again, but when you’re no longer struggling on a treadmill of being the BEST, life gets easier. It’ll never be easy – suffering came into the world on the tail of sin and we will never escape it while we inhabit this skin. But knowing that my life isn’t about me and that I’m not running a race for a flush bank account or a hot husband makes it easier to swallow the petty and the stupid and the simply unnecessary.
I know that this is sometimes a dirty word on the Internet, but I am happy. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed and sometimes I wonder if it will ever be my turn, and sometimes I wish I had enough will power to not eat so many dang cookies, but almost all of the time I am happy.
To be able to say that at the close of 2006, when I most certainly could not have said it at the start, is perhaps the best moment of all.
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Compassion
