reflections on joy, part 3

Lately, everything I read or hear about joy has been pointing back to the gospel of Jesus--the good news that he stood in our place and was killed so that we could be freed from God's judgment and enjoy eternity with him. Here are a couple of quotes I've been digging lately:

 

"So, have we nothing to do to obtain this righteousness? No, nothing at all! For this righteousness comes by doing nothing, hearing nothing, knowing nothing, but rather in knowing and believing this only--that Christ has gone to the right hand of the Father, not to become our judge, but to become for us our wisdom, our righteousness, our holiness, our salvation!" 

 

-from the preface to Martin Luther's Lectures on Galatians

 

"The redeeming love of Jesus gives rise to one grand and joyful passion." - Mark Bair

ISTJ meets INFP

Here's a semi-interesting story from my day (interesting to me, anyway) that gives a glimpse into how different my husband and I are. It's almost a typical day in the life of the Daltons.

 

This morning I got up and got ready for work like usual. I left on time, swung by Starbucks (yum) for a treat, and made it down 71 before the "oh my God, the roads are wet! Let's all go 5 mph!" traffic jam started, and I arrived at work at the usual time. In my mind, everything was going well until I reached for my keys to turn the car off and noticed that there was a much bigger wad of keys there than I am used to grabbing. Uhhhh, those aren't my keys...

 

Somehow, in my half-asleep, pre-caffeinated blur of a leaving-the-house routine this morning, I had grabbed Craig's keys and left mine on the table. Maybe for most households, this wouldn't be a problem, but in our case, the keys in my hand held the key to Craig's work truck. Problem. I then grabbed for my purse, certain that there would be like five missed calls on there, one for each level of panic as my husband nervously tried to alert me of my error before it completely screwed up his schedule for the day.

 

...Except my phone wasn't in my purse. I imagined on the kitchen table, lying innocently (or maybe smugly--I haven't decided) next to my keys.

 

Crap. I then grabbed my stuff and flew up to my office (well, "flew" might be an overstatement, considering I work on the 5th floor and spent a few minutes waiting impatiently for an elevator) where I threw it all on my desk and dialed Craig's cell number from my work phone.

 

Voice mail.

 

Are you kidding me? Aren't you wondering where your keys are? If it were me, I'd be glued to the phone. This was the first moment since we disconnected our landline a month ago that I wished we still had it. The only time that phone ever rang was (a) when a telemarketer was calling or (b) when one of us really needed to reach the other one but couldn't get through on the cell. Dang it. At this point, I left a frantic voice mail ("IhaveyourkeysI'msorryIleftmyphoneathomeI'mleavingrightnowIshouldbethereby8") and ran back down to the car (re: "ran," see previous disclaimer).

 

On my way home, all I heard on the radio was how the southbound lanes of both 315 and 71 were backed up almost to 270 (as I whizzed past the parking lot on 71 going the other direction...the direction I would soon be going on my way back to work), apparently because it rained overnight. Columbus drivers, you are seriously a bunch of sissies. WTH.

 

When I arrived home, sweaty and freaking out, I found Craig in the kitchen, cool as a cucumber. He actually laughed when he saw me fly through the door. "Forget something?"

 

It's days like today when I am grateful that I married a man with a personality nearly the opposite of mine. Some people might have been afraid of the wrath they'd face at home after a blunder like that. I was just worried that I'd make him late for his first job (which wasn't, as it turns out, until 10am, so the only thing he was "late" for was driving to the office to drink coffee and kill some time). And you know what, even if he had had an 8:00 job and I'd made him late, he still wouldn't have been mad.

 

I took the through-town route on my way back to work and arrived around 8:30. The whole debacle gouged a nice hour out of my morning, but other than that, it left me amused at my freaky-outy reactions to things and the contrast of my husband's mellow, go-with-the-flow approach to life. Yeah, we're good for each other. 

okay, let's attempt to blog or something

I've become a lame-o on the blogging front. I'm not sure what my problem is, but maybe I'll try to give it another shot before giving up completely. Although, I don't know why I'm even concerned with whether or not my blog is lame--it seems that a lot of people spend a lot of blogging time/space with concerns about their blog's quality, and honestly when I read that, my mental response is almost always "What are you worried about? I like reading about everyday stuff! That's my favorite kind of blog." And yet, when it comes to myself, I feel like I have to be some sort of masterful wordsmith, crafting these poetic and profound posts that make readers weep/laugh/think deeply about the deep things of life, etc.

I need to chill out.

Um, so what's been going on? Well, the Buckeyes lost last weekend, and that was sad. And I know the angry sports fans of Central Ohio are calling for Tressel's resignation with their fists in the air (or maybe that's just my husband) and scoffing at anyone who makes comments like "well at least we didn't get totally blown out," but I have to say that I was actually more impressed with the athletes' performance than I expected to be. The way people were talking before the game, you'd have thought the Buckeyes were going to take the field and immediately pee their pants and wave a white flag. Instead of that, they fought hard and kept it close. I thought they looked good, with the exception of a few mistakes (which USC matched with mistakes of their own--hello interception, hello safety). With my limited football knowledge, I'll probably have to agree that Tressel's conservative play calling kept the Buckeyes from winning a game that they proved, athletically, that they were capable of winning. And that sucks. But I'm still proud of them--they played a hell of a game and proved something to the nay-sayers who expected them to look like a bunch of weenies.

And that's my girlie football commentary of the week.

Other news? It's getting cooler, the days continue to get shorter, and that makes me sad. I'm trying to put on my big-girl pants, though, and get mentally prepared for the inevitable winter. God, sometimes I hate living in Ohio.

Labor Day weekend was nice. We went up to my aunt and uncle's place in Michigan and had a family picnic on Sunday. There was the typical quota of family drama and tension, but that's to be expected. The comedic tension-breaking winner of the day was my grandma, who interrupted an uncomfortable silence with uncharacteristic, too-funny comedic timing.

*tense silence following some loud scolding*
Nani looks up into the trees and quips, "It's so *peaceful* here!"

Win, Nani. That was awesome.

But tense moments notwithstanding, it was a good weekend. Craig and I slept in the yard in the sweet, retro camper (dubbed The Mystery Machine because of its resemblance to the bus from Scoobie Doo, although my aunt can never remember the name. "What do you call the camper? The Time Machine? The Hippiemobile?"). That was awesome, although neither of us slept very well (It's hard to sleep next to a 6'3" guy in a bed not much wider than a twin, especially when he's snoring an inch away from your face. Not that I'd know what that's like or anything.), and we got some quality time with my aunt and uncle and cousin, whom we don't get to see too often.

Let's see...other news? I'm still having some hair issues, this time with a color job gone wrong. I decided to stop the highlighting and just go back to my natural color. Now, my natural natural color is pretty dark, so i was prepared for a shock. However, the color my hair lady used was a shade lighter and definitely redder than what God gave me. It's a great color, and if I were going to continue cheating nature, I might stick with it. However, what I was going for was honesty, and this does not match my eyebrows. But the yucky part is that it doesn't really cover my highlights. So as long as I have my hair in a ponytail and you only look at the top of my head, it's fine. But if I have my hair down and I'm standing in the light, you might notice some odd streaks that look...well, kind of green. Um, no, this is not going to fly. So I'm going to try to get together with her soon to see if it can be repaired. We'll see how it goes. I'll let you know.

Oh, and speaking of hair, I never posted a curly-do picture on here, but I think I've sort of got the hang of it. Success requires a combo of products and a dryer with a diffuser, but the result is probably as good as it's going to get for someone whose hair is really only naturally wavy, not full-blown curly. Maybe I'll post a pic if I remember.

Oh, well here's one, sort of, although you can't see much of my hair. This is from our neighborhood barbecue (celebrating the completion of the patios Craig and his friends put in for us and our next-door neighbor) That is our friends' two-year-old "riding" one of the neighborhood dogs (a ginormous Rottweiler mix--we love him!)

the devil's funeral

On my desk, I have a tear-off calendar of quotes from The Office. Since the year only covers one season (and 365 quotes from 20-something episodes), some of the quotes they've chosen are a bit of a stretch and not exactly the

crème de la crème of pure Office humor. Today's, however, I found delightful:

 

Pam: "You mean 'leaves' as in 'dies'? You want us to throw Toby a New Orleans funeral?"

Michael: "If the devil were to explode and evil were gone forever, what sort of party would you have?"

reflections on joy, part 2

Here's another one from an old favorite book I'm in the middle of rereading:

"'But it is so happy to love,' said the Shepherd quietly. "It is happy to love even if you are not loved in return. There is pain too, certainly, but Love does not think that very significant.'"

-Hinds' Feet on High Places, Hannah Hurnard

reflections on joy

This has been the theme of my summer--the main thing I feel God is trying to teach me these days. Maybe if I get around to it, I'll post some thoughts or other quotes that have gotten me thinking, but for today, here's just one:

 

"There is a joy which is given...to those who love you [God] for your own sake, whose joy you yourself are. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to you, of you, for you; this it is, and there is no other."  --Augustine

Home sweet empty(ish) home

We got home today from our Colorado vacation. Maybe my brain is still on mountain time because I am still up, although I am pretty exhausted.

Our trip was good. We decided to go on the trip to celebrate our sixth year of wedded bliss, and it was a decently good time. I'll write about that another time, though.

Last Saturday morning—the day we were scheduled to leave for the first leg of our westbound trip—we awoke to an awful discovery. Obie, our sweet/quirky/wonderful/inquisitive/one-of-a-kind/preposterously ridiculous cat of six years had died during the night. He appeared to have died in his sleep. We're grateful that it was apparently painless, but the suddenness and unexpectedness of it shocked us with a force that was felt throughout our trip and felt with a different kind of force this evening when we arrived home to the soft mew of only Cosette (our formerly timid and mostly hidden cat, now endowed with a new boldness, or maybe just a curious confusion about being suddenly left totally alone in the house for almost a full week).

We miss him terribly. I find myself in tears at the silliest moments--opening a can of tuna this evening, realizing that I only needed to drain the "tuna juice" (which had been so greedily coveted by Obie, but shyly eyeballed by Cosette, who was able to enjoy her portion only until Obie's was gone and he bullied his way over to her bowl. Jeez, just the sound of the can opener would bring his 20+-lb frame sprinting from any corner of the house within seconds if he thought the delectable taste of tuna juice was coming) into one dish tonight.

Anyway. Now that we're home, it's starting to sink in a little, but the freshness of this new loss hung over our trip like a wet cloud, and we arrived home this afternoon exhausted in more than one way.

We'll miss you, "little" Obie. You've been as much a fixture of the past six years of our marriage as anything else, and we loved you. We're grateful for the laughter and absurdity you brought to our life, and I have a feeling we'll be telling Obie stories for a really long time.