1000 gifts

I'm playing scrabble with my almost-husband and it is overcast and quiet and Sunday. Goose is walked, but I'm still due for some gym time this afternoon. I'm slowly starting to grow accustomed to the rhythms of my own life: the waking, the doing, the resting, the simply existing pieces of my one tiny and wonderful life. For once I'm enjoying today, not looking forward to what's around the bend. Indeed, there will be more bends, more enjoyments to look forward to. But for now, it's time for lunch.

cynic.

I guess mostly I am tired of trying to be relevant and cool and unusual in a world where I don't necessarily agree with every thing that happens most of the time. I don't want to have a kick-ass wedding where all the guests take home incredible souvenirs and we go on this amazing vacation and move to a beautiful city and I walk my dog down (mostly) safe streets to meet my new friends at some hidden, delicious coffee shop that turns into a bar after 8pm.
I want to live near my nieces or my mom and dad or my cool soon to be in-laws. I don't want Brian and I to have the same smile. Or clothes. I want to feel like I'm the most fashionable one in our trio. I can try.
I don't want to go to the opera or a movie or a play or a concert and pretend that I enjoyed it if I didn't. I don't really want to sit around and talk about your compost pile or sustainably sourced flooring or how your neighbor moved his entire apartment with only "bike power" either.

I still really like Starbucks chai tea lattes. I'm trying to not be embarrassed about this.

I am a normal, simple, ice water and beach-mornings kind of person. I have no intention of occupying wall street or anything else for that matter. I can't guarantee we'll have much to talk about or that you'll even find me a walk's-worh of interesting. But let's meet up and take one anyway. Unless you'd rather jog? Which, in that case, never mind.

This year

I want to be a good steward.

The Quiet

Confession.
For most of my life I have been shy. There may have been approx. 3 weeks of my entire existence where I pretended to be an extrovert (probably around the time I started college), but deep down I knew my heart couldn't take it for long. This is truth: I am shy; I am quiet; I am oftentimes (I hope unbeknownst to others) terribly worrisome and may be guilty of thinking too much. Okay, okay, I think too much. It still makes me a little sad when I finish a good book, because I invest in the characters and feel like I'm losing a group of really cool friends. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; but you see what I mean.
So I find it interesting that I gravitate towards those who are not as quiet as I have been. Many of my friends are and can be (for lack of a more graceful description) loud. They are boisterous and in charge and have fun and reap the benefits of being known. And for that I am grateful. Maybe if I had too many friend who were just like me we'd all sit around and say nice things about each other. Which sounds cute, but could become terribly boring after about 20 minutes.

I guess what I am saying is this: I have grown up in the boisterous and in charge and have fun, but instead have become the gentle, deferential, and speak softly. It is not so much an ultimatum as an internal observation, and as for this time of year, I think it's a pretty good place for me to be.

all right?

I may have forgotten what it feels like to simply exist without an agenda beyond waking up, exercising, working, playing with Goose, and falling asleep.
It is a humbling process.

on investing your love.

A friend of mine recently lamented? exclaimed? that I had "everything" I wanted. And even though I couldn't tell if it was unmet longing or cryptic relief on their part, I couldn't help but think that everything I have now could very well be all I ever need. Forever? Perhaps. It seems idealistic of me to confess that at 24 years old, I can't possibly imagine anything else that I need to be content. It is only a feeling you know if you have it, but also a feeling you know if you don't.
At church today, we prayed a lot of peace prayers, lighting little tealights around the unity candle, and I couldn't deny the overwhelming sense of peace that passes my ideas of self and others and the world. I also couldn't deny the realization that I have stopped comparing myself to others, or, at least, have not dwelt on it as strongly as before.
I think it's a freedom that's just as real as what most Americans are honoring today.

On not disappointing.

For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late. -Habakkuk

Brian and I are getting married! Tell all your friends.