Time is love

When you're younger you take a lot of things for granted. Like snow in winter and sugar in tea and so many other things you saw and assumed would always be there before you learned about "global warming" {myth} and counting calories. {unfortunate fact.} But there are some surprises in growing up, and one of them I've stumbled over this year is the category of friends.

Being grown-up means busy schedules. It means you won't "bump into" each other as often. Through no fault of my own and through mutually hectic schedules, I haven't seen two of my dearest friends {Joanna and Maryanna} all summer. Okay. Haven't really seen them. And then one of these girls--a friend who knows my heart inside and out--begins a relationship with a guy I'd only heard shadow-things about and it struck me:

Friendships can't survive on accidentals. 

I can't wait for visits to happen and chats to occur. I can't assume that some time or other my schedule will clear and their schedule will clear and we'll have that heartfelt talk I've dreamed of for the last six months.

Relationships are built off of time spent.

Memories made.

Life shared.

But being grown up and having had a halcyon time of it the past six months, I felt out of touch with my sweet girls. I didn't know anything about the ins and outs of their lives lately. Though I had met this David-fellow, I hadn't even heard the whole scoop. I got most of my updates on the gals through a mutual friend who somehow has made time in her grown-up schedule for visiting. I felt like while I'd been focused on politics and family matters they'd gone and grown up and spun out of my reach. A dastardly feeling.

I am a growing fan of select country music and one of my favorite singers, Josh Turner, pegged this lesson in his song "Time is Love"...

But thankfully God--Who set up my summer and fall schedule and lead me down so many intriguing paths--in His mercy is on the look-out to protect friendships with these friends so when I spent the day helping out at one set of friends' farm and got a call from Joanna that she and Maryanna were going to be home by themselves all evening, I rushed to call Mama for permission to go visiting.

Mama said yes... and I got to spend four hours of uninterrupted conversation with these dear girls. Our time was punctuated by hearty laughter, numerous cups of P.G. Tips, a blush or two, a brief match-making splurge in which Joanna and I agreed on the case of spindly men and ourselves and added "short" to the list of no-gos, an animated discussion of Broadway musicals, and the occasional companionable silence spent down in the blue slate den with the pine wainscoting and the roaring wood-stove hard by. I haven't spent an evening like that in too long, and I came away so blessed. Our friendship was renewed and revived and refreshed as I'd always known it would be if only we had the sense to lay aside our craziness and simply be together.

Mare and Jo? I love you both so very much. Thanks for being patient with me while I figure out this whole grown-up thing.

Everyone else? Time is love. Never let it slip through your fingers and fade any relationship in your lives: God first, then your precious family, then the dear friends who know you better than you know yourself. Such things are what makes life worth living. Hold fast to them.

this daring life

What if it wasn't about getting married?

What if it wasn't about waiting?

What if it wasn't about Till Then or Someday?

What if it was simply about embracing life in a bear-hug, hanging on with all you've got, and loving where you'd been placed?

These are questions that have surfaced and resurfaced in my mind and heart this past year as I've watched so many of my friends grow up, marry, pair off, and change. Those of us who aren't paired up with someone tend to think of ourselves as shelf-stock. When asked if we've got a guy we shake our heads, laugh patiently, and say: "Well, not yet."

But I'm sick of living in "yet."

We're all sick of living in "yet." It's as if we feel that our lives and our futures and everything we are is on hold till...then. If I am certain of one thing, it is that God does not mean for singleness to be a purgatory. I've said before that this isn't an endurance test. It's not a desert to go through till we reach the oasis of marriage on the other side. What if singleness is the oasis? What if we laid aside all our expectations of how our grown-up years ought to look and instead dwelt in the moment? In this moment.

Too often we Christian "singles" are in either of two camps:

Pining or Pinging

Pining for a husband (or wife, as the case may be), for the future we want, for something.
Pinging. Pinging off the walls with feministic (or arrogant) energy and self-reliance. With our own plans for our own future because obviously God doesn't have marriage in His plan for us--MOVING ON!

It's my firm belief that there is a joyful, vibrant middle-ground that Jesus has prepared for us and is waiting for us to find. After all, Paul of the Bible is full of praise for the single life. He even goes so far as to say that he wishes more people remained unmarried because--in his personal opinion--it was the better thing. Obviously he was not sitting there wailing for a wife.

So what is this middle ground? I'm not certain of all the details, but I am certain that it is there. It's a radical, daring idea....living your single years without looking for the "light at the end of the tunnel." I don't know how to do it yet. But I feel God moving in my heart in this way and it's terribly exciting. Daring. Adventurous. If I ever am to marry, I want to look back on this season of unmarried-ness without a single regret. I want to remember it as one of the finest parts of my life. I want to look back on it with fondness when I'm eighty-four and a widow.
After talking to many friends who are in this same season of life and waking up to the reality of this paradox of Pining or Pinging, I am curious and expectant. There's obviously something here. Something God is wanting to teach me, perhaps you, perhaps many unmarried young people around the world. So since I've sat up and taken notice, I've decided to keep track of the things the Lord shows me in this season. I'm writing them down in a rather schnazzy, bling-spangled journal to keep forever and always.

 I'm writing these lessons down as they come with the intention of sharing them with you. That is, if you'd like to hear them. Anyway, hold fast, dear people! This is a joyous, beautiful time of our lives! Don't fret it away. :) Enjoy this daring life while it has been given to you.

Masquerade...with pictures! So you'll love it.

It happened. It was wonderful. What, you ask? The amazing Masquerade Ball I fretted over for so long. I ended up painting my mask and forgot to get a picture. *Le Sigh* Oh well. Not that you were overly curious anyway. Since my dress was coppery-gold, I painted half my mask copper and the other half gold, bordered the eyes and edges with silver, and accented by gluing black sequins and red gems along the top. Wow. I really wish I did get a picture. Oh well. I wasn't in the car with the iPhone and that's that. Sarah had the iPhone this time and managed to get a couple pictures of her get-up. I painted "Fanny Dorrit" lips on her (a.k.a. "The Red Queen" lips) and when combined with her black dress and a little top-hat-head-band gave her a singular look. Very playing-card-ish. I liked it. :)

She made her mask out of fabric, then stiffened it and added lace and accents with fabric paint.

Daniel and Abigail went as "Zorro" and his Senorita.

You may ignore the fact that his mask was far too tight for his head. 

 I think she looked like a Spanish rose. :) 

Casey and I were consulting as to how much she looked like a mysterious, alluring, runaway bride when she was dancing The Triumph. (I'll elaborate on that favorite dance later.) Hee-hee, Abigail. Bet you didn't see that one coming, did you? Which, by the way, I was so glad to see you, Casey! :) For the rest of you who wouldn't know, I emailed Casey very late in the game...like two days before the dance...and she ended up being able to get things together and come! And a lovely thing she was too!

Oh dear. I really do wish I'd got a picture of myself. 

But it probably wouldn't have turned out anyhow. 

Pictures of me seldom do. I'm just that way.

******

UPDATE

******

A dear person I know heard that I hadn't got any pictures and sent me pictures her mum had taken as I danced with her brother. Now you can see my mask. :)

Dancing with Wyatt Fairlead...

However, a friend of mine did get some pictures. (don't you love Facebook? It's like digital highway robbery.) Thanks, Stacey! I'll use some of those photos to fill you in... We got there late--an hour late--but the dancing hadn't begun. Hallelujah! Immediately upon our entry though, they did begin....and didn't end till nearly 11 p.m. YEAH! So. Much. Fun. More than I anticipated! Oh. And for the record, I love dancing indoors in November versus outdoors in July. It's just better for a harem of reasons.

Our callers were a brother-sister team: Stacey and Daniel Bradshaw.

Two of the hostess' gorgeous sisters and their dashing brother...

Michelle...

The gorgeous hostess, Miss Joanna T.

Pretty much the highlight of the evening was getting to meet my best friend's new fella: David. I came home from my SAT to find that she'd done gone and got a guy since I'd last seen her. 

Furthermore, a guy I'd hardly heard of, let alone met!

 I had to inspect him, of course. And he passed muster with flying colors. It helped that he was one of the best dancers there...

Maryanna and her darlin' at the front of the line as we begin the Grand March

The Virginia Reel. I love how color-coordinated this photo is. Purple was definitely "in". That's Anna right there on the left in her beautiful gown. She had her 13th b-day party Saturday as well! Oh yeah. And check out the mask--I painted that on her and you can hardly see she has glasses. I loved how it came out.

The Triumph. Such a hilarious dance. The girl ignores her partner and goes to the next fellow down and sashays with him, and her partner has to chase after her....

..

...and she dances saucily back up the line with the both of them before reeling down with her proper partner. This may very well be my favorite of the reels we dance. :)

Our own dear Tim was rather startling as The Phantom...

Another reel...

As if her first ball with her chap wasn't enough, Maryanna's evening was made by winning the "best female costume award" alongside this inventive fellow we fondly termed "two-face." :) Isn't she gorgeous? And isn't he hilarious?

Further questioned about his outfit, he admitted to having gone to several thrift-stores to find enough black and white pieces, and sewing them together himself. Two-piece shirt, tie, jacket, pants, and shoes. I'm glad he won. Such tenacity in a guy in the category of tailoring deserves an award. I know one lady took a lot of video of the dances, so if she ends up sending it to me, would you like me to post it? :) I was so pleased that the Bradshaw's freshened our classic dance-set with some new dances like "The Postie's Jig" (I know it now, Julia!!) "Oh Johnny, Oh" and "The Ship's Cook." I got to help teach the latter, and it actually worked out really well! I would recommend next time, however, not calling it. It's one of those dances that you just need to learn and then dance silently. :)

Like I said, we didn't finish with the last dance--the exhausting, wonderful, giddy "Snowball" reel--till close to 11. Then we stood about and talked for an hour at least before wandering home with Abigail, the Alexander boys, and ourselves. I wrenched my ankle in the last dance but wouldn't stop to molly-coddle it because I wanted to finish the last dance. It was a little sore upon coming home, but nothing too terrible. I iced it and all's well now. :) ....I was sore the next morning though, and my arms haven't recovered! :D Ahhhh me....I was so ready to dance! I hadn't had a good dose since early February! WAY too long, I say. It will go down as being one of the best dances I've been to. There was almost an even split of guys to girls. I got asked to dance every swingin' dance. With a guy. Which is a new record. So all in all I'd say it was a glorious time. Nothing like some good fun with amazing people!

Love is a pox...

I seldom indulge in doubt.

But there are some things as a kid that the adults said were "givens" in life that I'd always written off as exaggerations. I'd always doubted a certain set of things. You know the sort. "Time will go so fast ten years will pass like a month." Really? Come on now-I'm not that dumb. The "time-flies" promise was something I always denied. At seventeen, eighteen, I was not ready to accept it. Not quite yet. But my reticence to acknowledge there might be something in it after all was weakening, though I wasn't aware.

Because this year has been huge in one way: A pox has broken out. The pox. 

When you're fourteen years old you sit on the bed with mama beside you and talk about "the future" in comfortable terms of far-awayness. You sigh and lament the fact that there's nobody around to marry, were you old enough anyway. "Don't worry," mama says. "Once it starts happening you won't know what has started. Everyone will start dropping like flies."

You snort.

You chuckle in a "Yeah, like that will every happen" way.

You forget about it.

Until you're twenty. And then. Then. Then the pox does break out.

After coming home from a trip for the second time this fall and finding (for the second time!) that another friend has found herself a "matchless match" (and what's up with this happening every time I leave town?) I felt rather kooky. Was it just me or was there an inordinate amount of "matches" being made this year? How many was it? An alarming amount, it seemed. Could it be that Mama was right and once it started it wouldn't stop? Ahem.

This afternoon I sat down and decided to count--for sanity's sake--how many friends and acquaintances of mine had begun a relationship {or were bordering on it} this year? The total took me by storm.

14.

14 couples.

That makes 28 if you're counting. But who's counting?

28 people I know (more or less) who have coupled off this year. And this isn't counting the people I know who have gotten married or are engaged currently.

O.o

I feel...

...not jealousy.

More like bewilderment.

 Confusion and a little kick-back defense to find that those adults were right all along.

Love is a pox. A pox the whole world succumbs to by and by.

Well jeegley-clambake. This is a to-do.

It's one of those cases where you find the world flying out of control, out of your grasp, and growing up suddenly looks rather serious and cock-eyed and not at all like you thought it would be. It's exciting because obviously some things are finally moving along and little people are growing up and meeting people and loving people and marrying people and having more little people. But it's going so fast.

A busy summer and fall of campaigning, ministry, and writing.

I finally slow down, turn around, and three of my best friends are in relationships.

Several good friends follow suit.

I hear tell rumors of the same happening in my extended circles.

What on earth happened? I'll tell you. We grew up. And once you grow up beautiful things start to happen. Beautiful, scary, adventurous things. It's real now and I find the adults were right.

...about love.

...about time.

...about life.

I have seen things change so fast it'll give you whiplash. I actually started a Pinterest-board because of this new revelation of having grown up. It's inspiring new ideas, new thoughts, new inspirations. So here's to adventure. Here's to wearing a neck-brace if you have to. Here's to buckling your seat-belt, checking your parachute, and waiting for the drop.

Here's to a bit of daring.

"...Paper faces on parade..."

I'm going to a masquerade ball tomorrow night and have had the worst time trying to figure out what sort of mask to wear since I have glasses. It's an age-old question, and the only option that remotely appealed to me was to paint a mask on my face. That's what I've decided to go with and the ideas are actually really cool...here are some of the really neat ones I've seen...

A tissue-paper election

"Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before." 

-Jacob A. Riis

You'd think that with Obama as president of our country again I'd be struck down into some dull state of depression and despair.

The temptation was there last night. It really was.

After all, for the past five days I, along with sixty students, a slew of parents, and an awesome team of fellow leaders, had worked our tails off making phone-calls twelve hours a day, running through neighborhoods passing out literature, enduring foul-mouthed people tired to death of the phone-calls, and generally pouring our every drop of life's blood into this presidential race.

When I sat with my kids and watched the results come in, when it was clear that not only was America keeping Obama, but my own state as well, it was tempting to feel a haze of depression and give into it.

But one of our leaders had the oh-so-brilliant and right idea to turn down the volume on the news and to turn up some worship music. As the words to "Ten Thousand Reasons" poured out of the speakers, I turned my heart to worship the Lord:

"Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me let me be singing when the evening comes..."

After several songs one of my dear friends and fellow leaders came over and began to pray with me. We knelt together on the ground and just poured our hearts out to the Lord...

Pleading for His mercy on our country and for His protection of the unborn children.

Praise for His marvelous ways so far beyond us.

Repentance for pride, for foolishness, and for ignorance.

Dedication of our hearts and minds to His will and service.

Trust that Obama is the president God intends to use in our lives in some way.

I cried. I laughed. And the Lord was with me. I literally felt Jesus' presence right there with me, and His voice whispering comfort and peace and joy back into my heart. It was surreal, how a half hour of deep, intense, sincere prayer changed my mourning into dancing. We prayed separately and then together, and by the end of the time we were literally laughing through the tears over how silly we were to have lost our perspective.

God is way bigger than Obama. He's way bigger than America. He's way bigger than which states went red and which went blue and if our phone-calls and door-knocking mattered at all. He's bigger than all that. The word Josie and I were given in that moment was tissue-paper: it's all tissue-paper in the face of the steel-fists of our God and King.

So Obama is our leader. We are called to pray for Him. We thought we knew what was best for America, but obviously Jesus planted Obama as president of America for another four years for a reason. To bring Himself glory in some way. Our job? Stop complaining. Get involved. And pray. Pray harder than you've ever prayed in your life and don't stop after the election buzz settles. Look for ways to serve Christ and keep on keeping on. It's life people. We weren't made for this world so we're not going feel natural and skin-smooth-fit into it. So let's be resilient, let's be humble, and let's not let a mere man steal our joy.

Voting, Camp, and Running Away

Hello everyone! I know I was just gone and you will now think that I'm never home at all, but I am here to inform you that I'll be gone (and computer-less) for the next 5 or 6 days. I'm working on a Generation Joshua Student Action Team (SAT) with a group of nearly 100 students up through election day!
Since I'm going to be away from home on election day, that means I got to vote early! :)

Matthew, Daniel, Sarah, and I all voted in our first presidential election together!

In other news...I had oodles of fun making decorations for my table at camp...

my co-counselor's idea to put the greenery behind the paper roses. :)

Some of the things my girls and I did together...

Hiked the mountain...

Knotted my co-counselor's hair all over her head to make it curly...

Oh yes! And I turned my whole cabin into "orphans" for talent night.

WE LOVE YOU MISS HEFFINGTON!!!! ;)

I love this picture. It totally looks like a Broadway cast picture. And I make the perfect Miss Hannigan, don't you think? :P 

"I want you kids t'clean this dump till it shines like th'top of th'Chryslah-buildin'. Now get to work!"

The dazed counselor...I think I had just realized how strange I looked....

Our Andrews Sisters pose...

Aaand on the way up we stopped on the state line between VA and NC to take this picture...

Look! Real live twins! <3

Good times. Good times. Well, I'm off so y'all have fun without me, K?