California here we come

Two weeks away from the city! The hubs will get his well-deserved, hard-earned West coast fix and I am just so happy to see green hills and trees again.

40 Days

I was pretty surprised at how many ashy foreheads I saw on the streets yesterday, marking the start of the Lenten season.

Over the years, I've attempted to "give up" a bunch of things; some were really self-serving rather than Jesus-focused like desserts and non-essential email checking and non-essential personal spending.

In my U of T days, a friend and I tried to give up on complaining. It made us realize how many of our waking hours were devoted to complaining, how complaining was the basis for a majority of conversations. Another year, I tried to give up making sarcastic remarks. It helped stamp out that habit, for awhile.

In Shanghai, a friend of mine who was preparing for a marathon right after Lent gave up eating meat! I felt really sorry for him. Other friends in Shanghai that year gave up video games, tv, and the purchasing of pirated DVDs.

Last year in Boston, I encouraged the youth I was working with to consider observing Lent. They came up with some good stuff: the Kool-aid obsessed Jessica gave up Kool-aid. She sent me a text message at the crack of Easter Sunday dawn, celebrating her first sip after 40 days. Corina decided to try and "treat each person like they were king", and T gave up cursing. Some CCFC'ers last year gave up drinking any water that was not tap water in solidarity with the millions without clean drinking water. Yeah, that was something.

I haven't decided what to do this year yet. But I know I've been blessed and challenged by observing Lent over the years. Hope that all you people out there will consider giving something up too.

we wish to inform you

that the position you applied for has been filled.

I keep getting these in the mail, over e-mail, and on extremely rare occasions, over the phone by some decent employer who will call to thank me for applying anyway.

But hey, I'm oddly ok with all this rejection.

Maybe it's cause I wasn't that excited about any of these positions in the first place. Maybe it's a defense mechanism I've developed to keep from feeling really sad. Blah!! Psycho babble! Must resist the temptation to armchair psychologize!

Maybe, I'm actually, at least tentatively, trusting God to open and close the exact doors he wants. And so far, he's keeping them all shut. Alrighty then.

I've decided I'll just keep applying to stuff that seems promising, keep talking to interesting people, and write write write. Maybe I can write a column, be Carrie, minus all the messed up relationships.

i'm not so bad

So I've been thinking recently that I'm not so bad a person. I mean, I don't really think I'm a despicable sinner. At all. When we sing songs about God's forgiveness and our wretchedness and what a crushing burden of debt Jesus has absorbed for us, I don't really feel it, most of the time.

What's going on here?

It seems so puffed up to count off all the wrongs I haven't committed (yet). But who are we kidding? I'm pretty confident that I'm innocent of major BAD sins. Nor do I even remotely get struck by the urge to actually DO anything noxiously, Desperate Housewives-ly sinful, most of the time. Good for me.

It seems I've adopted some hierarchy of sin where mine are on the mildest portion of the spectrum. They're just not that big a deal. I think.

Must I be horrified with myself to really appreciate the depth of God's love? Do I really have to FEEL it to BE what the Bible clearly says I am? Or is it simply a matter of environment? I haven't done anything so bad because I haven't really had a reason to. Put me in the hoodest of hoods, strip away parents and schooling and good friends and regular meals and what do I become then?

I'm not trying to force myself to feel wretched just to feel wretched. I just sense a flippancy here that begs more careful examining. Every action and attitude seems justifiable, 'I lost it with that guy because he cut me off', 'I'm ticked at her because she's flaky', 'It's ok to ignore this homeless guy because I already tithed. And he's probably faking it anyway. We have to be responsible stewards.'

Uh--hey--let's not turn this into a reason to email me with lists of all the bad things you've ever seen me do, or that I've ever done to you. Yikes.

Miranda and my mom

So I started tutoring a 5th grade student on Friday. We went to Starbucks at Barnes and Nobles by Lincoln Center. Her mother had phoned me a few times earlier in the week to arrange all the details.

The mother's name sounded REALLY familiar, though I totally dismissed it (I mean there are like 10 computer screens worth of people who share my name in the U of T system alone).

But I was wrong to dismiss. My gaping mouth and bugged out eyes broadcasted my shock to the world when this mother, better known to all my best girlfriends and me as Miranda, came towards my table in Starbucks to retrieve her daughter.



I was starstruck and stupefied, though still alert enough to know that everyone in the cafe was also gaping.

My mother, who basically lives for celebrity gossip shows, responded nonchalantly with, "Sarah Jessica Parker had her baby in DH's hospital."