winter

Tonight, Reader, is a cigar and easy-chair kind of evening... as was last night.  After a horribly traumatic week of pms (including not just the first meltdown of my previous post but another meltdown a few nights ago, as well as biting Halley's head off a number of times for minor infractions like leaving dishes in the sink so as to block my attempts to fill the humidifier... seriously, I can be such a grinch sometimes.  And grinch wasn't exactly the word that went through my mind just then...), the last two nights I've basically come home at the end of each day to hibernate.  Tuesday night (despite the horrible mood I was in), I made enough chicken soup to last me til the end of 2011.  So both last night and tonight the pattern has basically been the same:  warm up soup, make hot chocolate, eat dinner while reading Wednesday's copy of the New York Times, make cookies / practice / listen to NPR.  All in the stillness of my quiet little apartment.  These are the winter memories I long for each January.  I love hibernating, especially when I have the house to myself and I don't feel the loneliness of my solitude.  Seriously, it's the best.  Too bad nobody's here to appreciate the improved mood I'm experiencing... let's not kid ourselves though, perhaps in reality its for the best :)

And I could talk about my last meltdown for a second, but I won't.  Because it's too stupid to even post on my blog now.  But at the time, it was monumental and absolutely horrible and emotionally paralyzing.  Satan is such a grinch sometimes.  Instead, I'm going to talk about the things I've been realizing this last week, namely that I've been really apathetic about my relationship with the Lord the past month and a half or so... and I don't know if you've noticed, but you can always tell by the state of my blog where I'm at with God, which is kinda creepy, but nevertheless, it is what it is.  And when I sat down to write tonight, I had no intention of my post taking this sort of very real and raw turn but it has and so I'm going to go with it... 

Anyway, the apathy:  let me just be honest with you, Reader (and with myself) right here and now.  Daily worship and time in the Word recently has just been too painful to enter into because then I actually have to deal with the issues I'm struggling with and encounter them in a meaningful way.  This is why I hate change... the process is so incredibly painful.  And honestly, I don't even think I've scratched the surface of all the change that's taken place in my life in the last six weeks, let alone the last six months.  It has been... too much.  Too much to deal with in any sort of real way, and by that I mean, coming to the Lord with it because I still have to face it all again and again each morning.  There's a huge part of me that, as dysfunctional and sinful and unhealthy as it is, has just needed to find a way to ignore the painful reality to some extent, despite the fact that it stares me down in the face every freaking day, daring me to try and stand up against it.

It's like this:  I know with all my heart that the salve I need in order to deal with my reality properly can only be found in Christ.  But in order to get to the salve, I have to encounter the pain first.  I want the salve... without the pain.  But that isn't really possible.  So I've basically chosen not to come before the Lord at all for the last month or so, especially since my painful situations haven't gone away and there aren't any easy answers to be had.  Reader, if you have never experienced anything remotely close to what I'm talking about, just imagine what it feels like to lose a loved one -- you miss that person desperately and love them, but even the thoughts of them are so painful that you choose not to think about it or engage emotionally in the pain of the reality.  That's what it's like... sorta.  So much has happened, so much has changed, and yet not changed... there is so much pain in just living right now that it's hard to encounter the God I love.  Although he holds the keys to life abundant, it's hard not to feel defeated, even in the life he graciously extends.  We're not in Kansas anymore.  This is what being a mature believer is all about:  sometimes you just have to fight, and you have to fight alone...  No one can go with you into the fray and sometimes the battle lasts a long, long time.  And it always feels so much more difficult because the one who can go with you, who promises to always be with you and never forsake you isn't exactly human, so it's easy to feel like you're completely on your own, even when you intellectually and spiritually know you're not... it's easy to fall into functional independence, which can be another battle in and of itself in addition to the pain you're already facing.  So yeah, each day presents another chance to fight... you choose to enter into the pain and encounter the God of Creation, bringing all of it to him or you choose to disengage.  And it's a hard choice because ignoring it is way easier.

But maybe this is a good sign, even the fact that I'm realizing all this... maybe this means that I want to feel alive again, even if it means fighting and dealing with a painful reality each day.  Dave Cover once said that we weep our way into eternity... yes, even as believers.  I couldn't agree with him more.  Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

Top 10 Composers of All Time

The entire series of articles done by the New York Times on the 10 greatest composers of all time can be accessed by clicking on the above hyperlink.  Apparently I missed parts 1, 3, and 4:  Bach, Schubert / Beethoven, and Debussy.  Part 5 to come out Jan 17, 2011.

Nearly everything that is good and worthwhile in this world is born out of pain.  Examples?  children, jazz, honey, runner's highs, love, the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, education, redemption... the list goes on and on.  The point is that no matter how much you're failing out there in the wild, you keep going.  The battle isn't with the thing, it's with ourselves.

Vienna Four

Great article recently found in the New York Times about the 10 greatest composers of all time, this article focuses specifically on the Vienna Four:  Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert (first article in a series continuing through Jan 21, 2011).

oh, Life... you're a punk, you know that?

So following the pre-menstrual freak-out of late last night, I awoke this morning with renewed determination to make things work this month financially.  So much seems to have come up all of a sudden that demands financial attention (new tires, dentist, contacts... in addition to the normal rent / utils, student loans, and paying off the car repair bill I've had for the last 5 months, which by the way, was the catalyst for not going to grad school in the first place... seriously, life!) and then of course on top of everything, our heater's been acting funny so of course in the middle of the night last night (a few days before the Visitor's supposed to arrive), the world didn't just look gray, it looked some dark and horribly foreboding shade of charcoal.  I basically had a meltdown in the shower around midnight and then decided it was totally and completely necessary to blog about it, prompting an extremely sweet, yet concerned phone call from my grandparents this morning (thanks, Grandma!) as I was on my way out the door to play for a chapel service at Lutheran High. 

All that to say, today was a day of a renewed commitment to chip away again at the puzzle.  I got new front tires put on this afternoon, just in the nick of time... mere hours before the forecasted (as my 16-yr-old brother says) "snow hurricane is supposed to wax all of St. Louis tonight."  I also finally paid off my car repair bill (... the one I've been paying down since late July... yeah, that one), paid my insurance, and put away money in savings.  It all made me feel extremely industrious and made it somehow ironically easier to trust that the funds will be replenished at the right time for the other bills I have this month.  Weird.  Maybe it was just me feeling better about paying some stuff off... or maybe it was me knowing that I'd been provided for just in the nick of time, yet again.  I can't tell you the relief I felt at just making it to the mechanics' today and being able to get new tires put on.  I knew I'd been gambling with that one...
 
Either way, tonight I'm holed up in my (thank God!) cozy apartment.  Our heater still works, despite the quirks I've noticed in the last month, and even though there's not tons of food in the fridge / pantry, it's still more than some people have.  I also had a huge revelation today about the student I struggled with most all last semester, which makes me feel amazing as a teacher... I think I finally outsmarted this one (fingers crossed).  And I learned something extremely valuable this morning:  I still have a safety net, which means that a lot could go wrong and I'd still manage to make it somehow.  Not everyone has that protection.  So as I eat spaghetti for the ??th night in a row (just kidding... sorta... Mom and Dad had me over for dinner Sunday night), I consider myself a lucky girl to not only be doing what I love, but to also be loved by those who've always been there and to be loved by those who are quickly becoming like family in this new location of mine.  It's a hard, but good place to be.

Everything is on the verge of falling apart right now.  My tires are balding, a snowstorm is coming tomorrow, I haven't been to the dentist in three years, and our heater keeps acting funny.  Dear God, help.