You Are Here

Sherah, 

Your life sounds a notch above crazy right now. (Mine is too, which is why I’m a week behind responding to you and not even bothering to apologize for it.) Please, take your own advice and go read Anne of Green Gables.

On second thought, save the hours of plodding through L.M. Montgomery’s tiresome prose—dripping with superfluous adjectives and ghastly sentimentalism, which drones on and on, completely disregarding all rules and regulations for a properly formed sentence; using semi-colons where there is absolutely no reason on God’s green earth that she should not employ terminal punctuation and start a new freaking sentence; as if she does not even know where the period key is located on her keyboard (or rather, on her typewriter… although now, come to think of it, she really does strike me as a longhand type of writer, perhaps because she takes the most tedious, dreary, laborious, endless, humdrum route in her writing and storytelling)…I mean seriously, I do not even know how she manages to go 164 words long in the first sentence of that book (I’m trying my best and I think I’ll be short)—and go cuddle up on the couch to watch the beautiful, inspiring, soulful, salvific movie. 

AHH!!!! That was 164 words exactly on my first try!!!! I’m not even kidding right now!!!!! 

Except now I’m thinking that the first sentence is 156 words. Shoot. 

Anyway, when you’re done watching Anne, I’d love to chat with you about whatever you are reading and learning about women and the Church. Next to AoGG, it’s one of my favorite topics. Maybe you could recap the conversation you had with your friend and share a couple highlights from your subsequent research? Or maybe tell me one belief you’ve held about women and ministry/God/family/authority/whatever that you’ve plucked out of your thought-system to examine more carefully. Maybe you’ll put it back the way it was, understanding it more thoroughly, or maybe you’ll make some amendments. Either way, I’m interested. 

In the meantime, I’ll respond to your bullet points with a series of my own! The other day a friend asked me how my previous week was, and I couldn’t remember at all. The more I tried to remember the past week, the more it started to feel like my life was a backlit map of Woodfield Mall and I couldn’t find the “you are here” star anywhere. Maybe this will help.

- Congratulations to dear Anna! Those pictures of the three of you sisters and your baby niece are too perfect. 

- The preschool I wrote about last time? It’s started to dissolve into something more aptly resembling a playgroup. I still love having the kids over, but the prep was becoming killer. So, no lesson plans coming your way for now. I do songs, stories, games, free play, coloring, and endless rounds of Simon Says. But it’s working out really well, and it makes me wonder why more groups of moms don’t do a rotating playgroup co-op. 

- Last week I went to a fruit festival in village. Anders summed up my thoughts exactly when—after we got off the plane, took in the gorgeous sights, and admired the traditional Indonesian dresses—he dumped a bunch of fruit in his backpack and said, “Let’s go home now.” It had been ten minutes. We had six hours to go. But really, it was an amazing thing to witness, and I’m so glad I went. For as much as I miss taking Anders to libraries and parks, watching him snatch a piece of fruit out of the Governor’s hand and then run off to play with village kids is a fun tradeoff. 

- I’ve been ghost writing (help me find a less creepy term for it…collaboratively writing? creatively editing?) a book for a pastor right now. I finished one last month, which took me quite a bit of time. I’d like to finish this one faster, but I’ve been gorging on Krista Tippet’s “On Being” podcast during work hours, so…

- Bad Joy.

- Feel better? Procrastinators love the validation of fellow procrastinators.

- I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say that our kitchen renovation was maybe the best thing I could have done for our longevity here. After three days of no running water in the house (like, couldn’t flush a toilet), I’m never moving. Pictures later. 

- I just wrote a long paragraph here and then realized the topic might make for a 300-word piece for the MAF blog that I’m a day behind on, so I deleted and will hop to that right now.

I’m not sure that I found the star on the map, but it just occurred to me that, regardless, I’m standing on it. Onward. 

Till next time, friend! 

Joy