like gold to aery thinness beat

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It's Saturday night. I am sitting at my desk. Even though I have a long to-do list without many check marks on it, and consequently should be busy, I find myself feeling lonely. 

I have made many lovely friends this year, people I connect with, enjoy, and see regularly. But I miss having friends around who will do the little things with me. 

For all of you who aren't here this year, this is what I miss when you're not around:

1. Someone to walk to the Union with me when I want a smoothie, just to keep me company.

2. Someone to watch movies with.

3. Someone who asks me how my day has been.

4. Someone to lean on, someone I can show my vulnerabilities and uncertainties to.

5. Someone to go to church with.

6. Someone to help me unload my car when I arrive back from a weekend at home.

7. Someone who tolerates my goofiness.

8. Someone to tell me Bob stories. 

9. Someone to eat meals with regularly.

10. Someone who is excited to hear what I'm learning in class

11. Someone to study with me at Panera (or perhaps distract me from studying).

12. Someone who will have dance parties with me.

13. Someone to take the trash out with.

14. Someone to comment on my inadvertent cold noises.

15. Someone who leaves sweet little sticky notes on my desk.

16. Someone to cuddle with when I'm having a rough day.

17. Someone who gets as excited about BBC dramas as I do

18. Someone who is excited to see the dances I've choreographed

19. Someone who will go down into the Pit with me when it's dark and spooky.

20. Someone I have a silly little nickname for.

21. Someone to pull all-nighters with.

22. Someone who includes me in almost everything they do.

23. Someone who will mother me when I'm feeling sick.

24. Someone to dance on the raquetball courts with me.

25. Someone to make waffles with in the dining hall.

26. Someone who believes in my abilities and tells me so.

27. Someone who inspires me daily with their faith and desire to become more Christ-like.

28. Someone to give me hugs.

29. Someone to coordinate schedules with.

30. Someone who likes the same kind of music I do.

31. Someone who appreciates my teapot! 

32. Someone to pull pranks on.

33. Someone who also enjoys analyzing books and movies.

34. Someone to encourage me. 

35. Someone to share birthdays with.

36. Someone who understands and affirms my goals and ambitions.

37. Someone to scream into pillows with.

38. Someone to share the sisterhood purse with (it's lonely right now).

39. Someone to have snowball fights with.

40. Someone to jump in muddy puddles with.

41. Someone I can return all of these little favors and kindnesses to. 

You all are loved and missed. I cannot wait to see you all again. 

We endure not yet 

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to aery thinness beat

(Donne)

With love,

Amy

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Psalm 63:7-8

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Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.
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a taste of my week

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Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

On Wednesday my friend and I attended an Ash Wednesday service at a local Episcopal Church. It was my first Ash Wednesday service ever. I couldn't help but be sobered by the liturgy, by the reminder of my fallen and broken nature. I was struck anew with how very dependent I am upon God. All I can say is thanks be to God for the miraculous grace and mercy he grants me who is mere dust. For the duration of Lent I want to ponder the extent of my brokenness. My prayer is that I would be continually reminded of my dependence upon Him and the fact that I do nothing but by His grace. Without His Spirit breathing life into me, all I am is torpid dust. May that reality enter into and lodge deep within my soul.

This week I also discovered a new music artist, or at least one new to me: JJ Heller. With a quiet, folksy/indie sound and theologically sound lyrics, I believe she'll be amongst my top favorites for a while. Songs I especially like...

Only Love Remains

Your Hands

Currently I am rereading A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. It's been at least 5 or so years since I last read it and I am finding myself gleaning so much more this time around from the richness of ideas and insight presented by the Vanaukens. Their opinions and way of life inspire me. I wish I were more like them, with their impulsivity and constant love of life. If they had a dream, they believed it could be accomplished, no matter how crazy or impossible it seemed. Due to that belief, they put action behind those dreams and often brought them to fruition. For an extraordinarily rational person such as myself, that is a difficult task. But their story is encouraging me to think a little more broadly, a little more creatively and imaginatively.

I must confess, too, that the love they shared together is what I hope one day to experience, should God call me to marriage (which I'm not always sure will be the case). Their commitment to each other, their delight in one another, their sharing of everything, their desire and determination to grow closer year by year, their mutual love of art, beauty, and poetry: their unity. That is what I desire.

The intimacy in their relationship also seems to me a model of the intimacy and closeness God desires to have with me, with everyone. I am in relationship with my God, my Creator, the Master of the Universe, and it is, like the Vanauken's marriage, a relationship symbolized by unity, commitment, and delight. For I am one with Christ, hidden in Him, I am in a covenant relationship with my God that cannot be broken, and I know that he delights in me and I pray that I may always grow to delight in Him more and more.
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mortal immortality

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Here I stand, weak and mortal amid the immensities of nature. But blessed be Thou, O Lord God, that Thou hast made me in Thine own likeness and hast breathed into me the breath of Thine own life. Within this poor body Thou hast set a spirit that is akin to Thine own Spirit. Within this corruptible Thou hast planted incorruption and within this mortal immortality. So from this little room and this short hour I can lift up my mind beyond all time and space to Thee, the uncreated One, until the light of Thy countenance illumines all my life.

John Baillie
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perhaps...

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Each Tuesday evening I travel off campus to volunteer at a local pregnancy center where I am shadowing and learning to be a lay counselor. My time there has been rich, full of eye-opening experiences. Never have I come so close to such great need, to despair, to palpable fright, to joy and resilience in the midst of hardship.

I respect the women (and men) we see. I strive to treat them as equals. My pride, however, could not handle being in such a spot. As I try to mentally place myself in their proverbial shoes, I find that the thought of asking for help to feed my own child or to have a clean diaper to put on my baby makes me cringe.

I love to help. But I do not like to receive help. In my mind, needing help equates to weakness.

It seems God might be trying to change that mindset.

For many months past, due to a friendship that disintegrated, I have often felt invaluable, unwanted, not worthy of attention. And I have hated feeling such things because they make me feel weak, spineless, dependent.

But I am reminded tonight of a quote I read over Christmas break in The Gospel of Ruth by Carolynn James: "How can I hope to grasp anything of God's heart for this broken planet if I never weep because its brokenness touches me and breaks my heart?"

Unless I experience how messed up this world is at times, how sad and disappointing it can be, will I have any sort of understanding of what God feels for us? Looking ahead to a potential career as a therapist, my experience of sadness, of questioning, of experiencing firsthand how broken and flawed we humans are, takes on meaning. For through my pain, perhaps God is pushing me toward the world the people I might counsel inhabit. Perhaps he is peeling away my sense of superiority. Perhaps He is breaking my heart to bring me to a fuller understanding of Himself.
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I will

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This song nicely sums up my emotions of the past few days:

"Maybe" by Ingrid Michaelson
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I don't want to be the one to say goodbye
But I will, I will, I will
I don't want to sit on the pavement while you fly
But I will, I will, oh yes I will

Maybe in the future, you're gonna come back, you're gonna come back around
Maybe in the future, you're gonna come back, you're gonna come back
The only way to really know is to really let it go
Maybe you're gonna come back, you're gonna come back, you're gonna come back to me

I don't want to be the first to let it go
But I know, I know, I know
If you have the last hands that I want to hold
Then I know I've got to let them go

Maybe in the future, you're gonna come back, you're gonna come back around
Maybe in the future, you're gonna come back, you're gonna come back
The only way to really know is to really let it go
Maybe you're gonna come back, you're gonna come back, you're gonna come back

To listen to the full song, go here.
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lovely leaf lace scarf...

This weekend has found me taking far too many breaks from my research paper due Monday morning to work on this scarf. I'm using Paton's Classic Wool in Plum Heather and it's turning out beautifully.

It requires some concentration (at least for the lace section), but the result is well worth the time. I'll post pictures of my own sometime soon.

The rest of the site is full of wonderful projects, as well (the fabric beach ball pattern makes me want children of my own right now!), so I'd encourage you to check it out.