Death Cab: What Sarah Said

Got an ipod for Christmas and have been listening to this song over and over:

I've heard it countless times before, but never really listened


And it came to me then
That every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU
That reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself
That I'd already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD
Took you a little farther away from me
Away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines
In a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend
On a faulty camera in our minds
But I knew that you were a truth
I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground
As the TV entertained itself

'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous paces bracing for bad news
Then the nurse comes around and everyone lifts their head
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said
That love is watching someone die

So who's going to watch you die?
So who's going to watch you die?
So who's going to watch you die?

All for love's sake

I've been trying to wrap my mind around the Christmas story, Christ coming to earth, God incarnate and yet man. I always thought I understood how much he gave up, how low he really stooped, at least to some degree. I was reminded once again of how little I actually know. My pastor preached a sermon about the humiliation of Christ, which is easy to assume starts in the garden of Gethsemane, but he argued, begins from his conception in Mary's womb. God literally became nothing. He grew up in a town called Nazareth, a place noone would think the Messiah could come from. His earthly father was a carpenter, and he was born in a stable, probably not the nicest one either. How to understand this: that the eternal God became a nobody for us. As the great hymn goes:

Thou who was rich beyond all splendour,
All for love's sake becamest poor,
Thrones for a manger didst surrender,
Sapphire-paved courts for stable floor.
Thou who was rich beyond all splendour,
All for love's sake becamest poor...

Perhaps the reason why this really hit me this Sunday as I sat in church is that I have a fear of being nobody, of dying and nobody thinking my life was important in any way, of being forgotten by the course of history. This fear has been unusually strong recently and I've been battling it for a few months now. To think that Jesus became nothing and yet the temptation to be somebody was with him everyday. He was God after all, and people said of him, "what good can come from Nazareth?" I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to continually humble yourself, to orient yourself to the Father without fail, to deny yourself an innate human desire to be the king he was.

And this is my calling...to be "content to fill a little space, if thou be glorified." There is contentment in knowing your place, and hope knowing that the Almighty God confined himself to his when he became a man. This Christmas I rejoice in Christ's willing humiliation for my sake.

running towards an end

Do you ever want to change but have no idea how to go about it?

That's how I feel in quite a few areas of my life right now. What's ironic is social workers are supposed to help other people do this. We're kind of like social architexts. We get to create plans, help to lay foundations, and hopefully, see a beautiful building at the end. But I'm beginning to wonder if this is even possible.

Sure, we can help people in little ways, but only if they're willing to recieve the services and act on them. However, actually helping them precludes us knowing how to help them. This is very scary to me. I am not a person that by nature knows how to solve problems. When I see people I don't instantly catalog all the things I could fix in my mind and know exactly how to go about that. It takes me a long, and I mean long, time before I begin to feel comfortable expressing or even thinking about how I would change another person. Sometimes I never get that far. I can usually come up with some shortcomings that a person has, but I don't usually find those shortcomings offensive or that they necessarily need to be corrected instantly. Those people that I do want to change significantly I tend to chalk up to personality difference and will assume it is my fault for not liking them.

None of these things are, I think, what the experts in my field would say are good to do, but the issue of solutions or resolutions to a problem is an important part of being a good social worker (at least it seems to me so far). I have absolutely no idea how to help with this. From what I know of myself I am a person that likes to be involved with the journey, to provide support, to listen and understand, but feedback is not necessarily my forte, nor is having a specific goal and achieving it. I can do it, but its usually pretty strained. A part of me doesn't want to emphasize the goal setting at all...not exactly sure why though.

So how to practice this...i guess that means that you will all be my guinea pigs... or should i be practicing it? THis middle of the road girl might need to train herself to not only run while balancing two different sides of an issue, but also to effectively run towards an end.

friendships

I don't care what anyone else says, I am blessed with the best friends in the world. Sometimes I lay in bed at night and just let each one of them scroll across my brain. I stop with each new face and rejoice in the connections, moments, laughters and sorrows that have made them a part of my life. Sometimes its so overpowering I want to cry.
I talk on the phone now with most of my friends or through a facebook chat (ridiculous, right?) and yet I'm amazed how connected I still feel to them, how much my thoughts reach out for them.
Today I worked at the Aowns. I really hate calling it work even though I'm paid and it can be exhausting because I feel like I'm at my other home. I had so much fun today because of such little things that make up life but are so much better with friends. I watched the apple cup with Isaac. I taught Tamala how to sew christmas pillow cases. I made sure itunes played only christmas music, and had plenty of encouragment for the tree decorators and I helped Mari with long divison ( how many times does three go into nine? apparently 27) :). oh, and i rubbed the kitty's tummy and scratched behind the dog's ears.
What a wonderful life! What wonderful friends(yes,you)! I have been blessed beyond measure and I am so thankful, though not nearly thankful enough, for the "ties that bind our hearts in Christian love".

things to look forward to:

Thanksgiving with the arkins
my 22nd birthday
my adult driver license :)
Christmas break
singing christmas songs at church
getting the christmas tree
baking christmas cut out cookies and eating them
curling up to read some good books
snow?
finally getting to go to a group service in Jan.

Life is good. God is good. I am content.

- - - - - - - - -

Silence swallows, engulfs, devours,
It speaks its ponderous syllables.
Somehow I’m not devastated
For you and I are words.

Isaiah 8:12-13

"Do not call conspiracy all
That this people calls conspiracy,
And do not fear what it fears,
Or be in dread.
But the Lord of Hosts,
Him you shall shall regard as holy,
Let him be your fear and let him be your dread.
He will become a sanctuary..."