i heart the nw!

so a few weeks back i went to this place called deception pass. sometimes we choose to love, but other times it seems you can't help but fall in love ;o)

consider the lilies of the field...

so this weekend i had the great privilege of returning home for the briefest of respites...but quite delightful nonetheless. in two short days i saw so many people from my past and present.

i was inspired.

in so many ways these friends and family members have shaped who i am, and i owe them the deepest dept of gratitude for what i am becoming. i was profoundly struck by just how easily my heart slipped into cadence with these dear life-companions and although the conversations were more abbreviated than i would have liked they were rich and they were deep and they were just what i needed!

needless to say, returning to seattle this evening was slightly bittersweet. but i am carried by the inspiration and refreshment of this weekend...



'So often we mar God's designed influence through us by our self-conscious effort to be consistent and useful. Jesus says that there is only one way to develop spiritually, and that is by concentration on God. "Do not bother about being of use to others; believe on Me" - pay attention to the Source, and out of you will flow rivers of living water...The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mould us.' -oswald chambers

well, i? uh?

okay, so right now i should really be working on my infectious disease midterm...or at least sleeping...but instead, i am here and i have been thinking a lot about life and my journey and the journeys of those around me -- oh! how i love them so dearly.

sometimes i think if one more of my weaknesses is revealed i will just crumble into a thousand little pieces. and yet, He continues to reveal as i continue to thrive.

loving and living are two very difficult things to reconcile with one another. life is competitive, evolutionarily there are only so many resources to go around. loving means laying one's life down for another. yet without love, i believe, there is no life.

i have always thought of myself as a compassionate person, but it is only recently that i have come to experience all the places where i wholly lack it.

what would life be without our daily experiences? it is in the rubbing up against one another where life happens. i am afraid to hurt. but in my fear to interfere i am choosing to refuse the oppportunity to live.

i guess what i am trying to say is that in the past few days i have run up against myself in unsettling ways. i am uncertain, i am speechless, i am void of empathy, i have no common experience to share. its not really new, its just different somehow. my posture is changing and i'm not exactly sure how. its like i want to have answers to questions that aren't really being asked, or something.




but more than anything i am compelled to examine the glory that is written on each of our hearts. the realization of that glory has come, and the time for living is now.

tonight i cooked eggs. well, tried at least.

recently i have been processing those sorts of things that kind of have a significant bearing on your future. reciting over and over in my head difficult conversations that i so terribly don't want to have and wishing quite deeply that i understood my own heart better and the hearts of those most dear to me.

but these things, as significant and weighty as they may be, are not easy to articulate. so instead i decided i really just wanted to eat something...the problem is i have an unfortunate disposition of dysfunctional motor skills -- especially when my mind is many miles away from my body. i did not take this small weakness into account when i chose cooking as my mode of therapy. but, really, fried eggs?...if one of the greatest childrens' books of all time could rhyme about them being eaten in boxes with foxes, surely i could prepare them with relative ease.

i suppose its not hard to see where my evening's events are headed. the truth is, i think even i knew it somewhere, deep down. but i digress...

so the eggs, well, there were seven in all. i only wanted two, but it took seven. i am not one for wasting (truly), but tonight was much like passover (where on all other nights we waste not, but on this night we waste exorbiantly not for any true reason other than as some sort of symbolic embodiment of all that has transpired...i guess) and i was determined to have my eggs and toast and i was determined to have them properly.

maybe it was the fact that i was chatting with my roomate about life and what it means to choose a path and if we can choose 'wrongly,' maybe it was that i had a busy day or that yesterday i experienced the piercing intimacy of a medical profession on a newer, deeper level, or maybe i am just really really bad at frying eggs.

anyways, i stared in dissapointed disbelief as the pan quickly consumed my first attempt and both yolks spilled rebelliously out of their neat golden mounds when i delicately tried to turn them. there was no real remedy for my clumsy handiwork, seeing as the damage had been done, i was persuaded to acquiesce -- it appeared my grand evening's meal was destined to be slightly maligned.

but my roomate's well-intentioned urging to simply retry, and her look of surprised shock that i was actually intending to eat my half-folded, slightly scrambled, fried eggs, compelled me to start over. now i was unnerved, and worse, i felt the guilt of cracking two new eggs tingling in my fingertips. so when i cracked the first prodigous egg it, quite fortuitously, slipped right off the edge of the pan and chose to slip not into the pan but underneath it and subsequently slid beneath the burner of our gas stove. i grew more anxious and frustrated and completely determined to prove, then, my total ability in this culinary endeavor...my sweet roomate graciously helped me clean up my mess and then encouraged me to stay the course. very little bidding was needed now, i was on a mission. and so i tried again. this time both eggs were in the pan, but once again quickly consumed, sizzling to a dark brown mess.

though i was encouraged that one yolk remained uncracked. my roomate was immoveable; eggs were on the menu, and they were going to be prepared properly. so she took the pan (thankfully) from my tight grip and cracked two more eggs into that contemptuous little pan. this time i guess she knew something about lowering the heat, because they cooked quite beautifully and i found myself in awe of her agility in the kitchen. (her success was nothing short of a miracle, to me.) but there was still the trick of just so perfectly turning them that lay ahead of her. she was kindly invested in my meal, and beautifully inent on the task at hand that as she raised the pan to turn the eggs she hardly noticed she was drawing the pan's hot edge closer and closer to her body. i, so intent on the process at hand, was oblivious until we both smelled her burning jacket. in a very meg-and-jo little women moment we both screamed as she pulled the pan from her body and the melted front of her jacket remained with the pan, down feathers burst into the air and we both stared amusedly shocked at all the events that had just transpired. i sank to the ground in fits of laughter and tears laughter and tears. her poor beautiful jacket, my poor, beautifully turned eggs.

it was a priceless, delicate, revealing moment that i will not soon forget. as i stood back up from our kitchen floor i suddenly found myself bursting, once again, into tears. tears for all my unsaid words and all my mistaken moments and all my joy and all my sadness and everything i have been holding inside of me these past several weeks, and for the first time in a very long time i cried on someone's shoulder and i was forever thankful for those stubborn, ridiculous, frivolous, wonderful eggs.