Catching a whiff

Is Sunday the start of your week or the end of it? I can never decide.

The last couple of Sundays, I'v noticed that I come home smelling a lot better than when I left it. I mean, I use deodorant and everything (not like that one time), but I'm not really a body spray or perfume kind of girl. But after a morning of hugging various friends (and let's face it, the gallery just gets real crowded real fast), their body spray rubs off on me so when I get home, I have some sweet scents to remember the day by. Which is kind of lovely.

And maybe a little creepy.

Happy Thanksgiving Week!

(P.S. I've enabled comment moderation. Lame, I know. Just go with it.)

I'd rather have a pity party, thanks.

That's what I said when one of my co-workers offered me an orange. For the Vitamin C. Because I was busy nursing a sore throat. Cough, cough. I'm a smidge overdramatic when battling viruses. Little bit.

Anywhozzle, sometimes when I get sick, or when I have a lot of things to bring in from the car, or when I have a lot of housework to do, I think, "Score one for roommates." (I pretty much have a daily "roommate vs. living alone" kind of mental scoreboard going on. Just go with it.) Sure, living with people is hard. They don't always do their chores. Or maybe you do something that irritates them. Schedules conflict and decorating preferences clash. It can be rough.

But it's nice to be able to text someone and ask for help bringing on all the groceries. Or share the burden of chores. Or bring you soup when you're sick... or at least throw some sympathizing glances your way. And good roommates - if you are lucky enough that they are good friends, too - will say things like, "You kind of suck right now." And yes, that counts as a point for the roommate scenario.

This is the epiphany I had the other day. I mentioned briefly that sometimes I feel like my life is full of busy-ness but devoid of meaningful relationships. Then I started thinking about what I wanted my relationships to look like and why they did not look like that. There are a lot of factors. Schedules. Personalities. Priorities. Normal things. Neutral things. But outside of those, something I kept coming back to was: me. Maybe I'm one of the reasons that I don't have the relationships that I want. So I've been praying. And thinking. What are the things that I do or don't do that might turn people off? That might be overwhelming? That might just plain annoy others?

And then I realized, it would take me a long time to come up with that answer on my own. When I look in the mirror, I do see a sinner, but I tend to under-emphasize my sinfulness and exaggerate my awesomeness. So unless someone comes up and holds a different kind of mirror up to me and says, "Hey, you are being really dumb and it really hurts my feelings when you ________." Or, "I think that you are making a mistake by ___________." Even, "When you do _______, it is overwhelming/frustrating/irritating."

Those are hard things to hear. And I confess that I don't handle critique well. I want to be a more gracious person and take correction like a grown up, not a three year old with a temper tantrum. But if I don't know my sins, how will I grow? If I can't see the things that are keeping me from focusing all of my attention on Christ, how will I learn? How can I have genuine relationships with people if no one tells me how I'm being dishonest?

I need people to tell me when I'm being dumb. Left to my own devices, I'm going to think I am pretty hot stuff. I'll strut around, patting myself on the back for my good deeds or for being the most mature person the room (never mind that I'm the only person in the room).

I've had a few roommates who were willing to do that for me. At the time, I was mad at them for doing it. How dare they have the audacity to tell Awesome Me that I was really a Sinful Me? What I didn't know then was that it was the most loving thing they could have done. Thanks, ladies.

(And no, it's not just roommates who do that. Friends. Family. I was just reflecting on roommates in particular but by no means is saying hard things limited to people who occupy the same household.)

Hey, you know how when you let out a really big sneeze and you get light-headed for a few minutes and you can pretty much feel your eyes glazing over with that weird "I'm getting sick" look and your core body temperature rises about 500 degrees and you start saying loopy things like "One time, at band camp..."?

No?

Oh, me either.

If you need me, I'll be delirious with cough suppressant and carrying on a conversation with the light switch.

In His Time

Our church is going through a series on its core values. So far, we've done truth, worship, transformation and community. This week it was beauty and next week it will be city.

I gotta tell you, I was/am a little stumped on the beauty thing. Everything else makes sense to me. Truth - totally essential. Worship, duh. Transformation - ditto. Community... well, you'd hope a church would uphold community, yes? But beauty? I don't know about that. Beauty as I know it is so subjective. Skin-deep. In the eye of the beholder. I was willing to admit the value of beauty in everyday life but not quite ready to embrace it as a core value for a church.

So I've been praying that the Lord would lay this thing called beauty on my heart and that if there was merit to it as a value, core or otherwise, that He would open my eyes to that truth.

And today I kept thinking about this song we used to sing at my old church. One of the lines went, "In His time/in His time/He makes all things beautiful/in His time." Then I started thinking about what that meant, especially in light of my hearing loss. I had dinner with a friend last night and I was telling her that I was so much more willing to trust the Lord with my friendships (or what I sometimes feel is a lack thereof) and socialization and that I had to come to grips that the life I had in mind for myself (belonging, being part of a regular circle of friends, movie nights, weekend outings, etc) was not the life He had called me to. And then I (embarrassingly) starting tearing up. Dangit, I explained, I'm really more okay with this than my eyes are letting on! :)

So I was just mulling that over today, that maybe the life He has called me to isn't what I had in mind for myself, but that even with my hearing loss, He will make everything beautiful in His time. And that there is a time for everything. A time for friends and a time for loneliness. The writer of Ecclesiastes never specifies just how much time anything should take and I'm grateful. Maybe my time of loneliness is a lifetime and a time of friendship an eternity... in Eternity. But what is so promising about the "Time" passage is that there is a time for everything. If there is a time for tears, then there will be a time for not tears. If there's a time for loneliness, then there will be a time for not loneliness.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man.

I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away."

There's a time for everything and I "cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." His works are too great and unfathomable and marvelous and beautiful for me to comprehend and I can rest in that.

And now, it's time... for dinner. ;)