Through a Glass, Darkly

Mystery’s walking on my head again
In a pattern figure eight
Round a turn cross a path again and again and again

Save communion for the holidays
And keep perception at a safe arms length
Does hallelujah wear the same old face
I’m okay yeah okay fine okay
What I really want is to wrap my arms around Your name

I just spent several minutes playing Yahtzee (oh, excuse me, “Yahdice”) on my palm pilot during my lunch break. I am not feeling all that well, not because I am sick but because I am stressed out. I don’t know why I chose Yahtzee to help me calm down . . . my Yahtzee skills are legendary. Legendarily bad. Right, Mike and Brian?

Today is one of those “okay yeah okay fine okay” kind of days. The weekend wasn’t bad, necessarily, but I did get an email this morning that put me on edge. And I’m still recovering from being exhausted all week last week for no discernable reason. The real kicker was the conference I went to on Friday and Saturday at my old church. Much of the conference centered on our identity in Christ. I decided to go because a lot of my friends have been before and just love the materials, and I figured it couldn’t hurt.

To break the cycle cynical
Keeping man inside his head
Wisdom offers up her best advice
And I’ll run to her side and ask why and ask why

Nothing that was taught was bad by any means, but I just couldn’t connect with it. At conferences like that, I get caught up in, “Well, how do I know what this guy is saying is true? Do I agree with his interpretation of this scripture? Should this scripture be read in light of this other passage?” and so on and so forth. I don’t respond well to lists of Bible verses taken out of context because my brain starts thinking about what they mean in context and who they were written for and why and I don’t seem to be able to accept that I can just apply these things to me, to my life. I don’t know how to read the Bible without getting caught going down all these paths and making all these connections . . . I like making connections and I like that the Bible is consistent, but it all gets so heavy. I don’t know how to read it and enjoy it anymore.

I am used to relying on my mind and my intellect, and I think it’s really causing me problems in this aspect of my life. But the only way I know how to approach things is intellectually. I don’t know a different way. I don’t know why I don’t make the heart connections that my friends are able to make, why I can’t just accept things. I have to overthink everything. I have to wring all meaning out of it before I allow it to be true. And there’s just not a lot of joy in that.

I’ll scrape the bottom ’til I’m good and ready old
And take the cup of kindness while searching for the gold
For the gold for the gold
Tomorrow’s filling up like yesterday
Something’s constant underneath this place
Shape this prayer to sing with such a grace
For today just today or someday
What I’d really like is to wrap my arms around Your name

I don’t know how to enjoy these things of faith like I used to. I want to be able to soak things in and see God’s faithfulness in the Bible. I want it to be a little simpler, like I think it’s supposed to be. Somehow I have made things really complicated.

What I’d really like is to wrap my arms around Your name

[And credit must go to Sarah Masen for her beautiful lyrics.]

“If forecasts of snow send you to the grocery store for milk, bread, eggs, and toilet paper, add 10. If forecasts of snow cause you to reminisce about how you used to deal with snowstorms in Buffalo, subtract 10.

Why it matters: If North Carolinians want to prepare for a two-week blizzard — even if the forecast is only for a ‘light dusting’ — that’s our right, and frankly, we don’t care how it’s done in Buffalo. This ain’t Buffalo.” -From the “Are you a true Tar Heel?” quiz in the February 2005 issue of Our State magazine

I have never gone to the store to get milk and bread just because it was snowing, but I have upped my shopping date because of a forecasted snowstorm. After all, you can’t make snowcream without milk! The worst is when you were needing milk and bread anyway, and there are all these newspeople at the store, showing how cleaned out the bread aisle is, and you want to say, “I needed this anyway! I’m not buying it because of the snow, I swear!”

We got some snow and ice this weekend. It’s times like these that I miss living off a main road, because the roads in our neighborhood look fine, but the news showed a lot of ice on the roads in Greensboro. It used to be that we could just look outside our window and see how fast the traffic was going to know if it was safe to go out. Ah, well, Mike needs to work on some homework anyway, so we won’t be going out regardless.

This morning I got up to see if church was cancelled, and after seeing that it was, I crawled back into bed.

Mike (opening one eye): Is church cancelled?
Kari: Yes.
Mike: *goes back to sleep*
Kari: Let’s make pancakes!
Mike: Oka–wait, you don’t even like pancakes!
Kari: I know. But I want some today. Fluffy ones. And an egg. Over medium.
Mike: Am I dreaming? Because you don’t like eggs, either. Can I go back to sleep?

I waited a reasonable amount of time before asking again, and we finally went down to make pancakes. We keep our flour and sugar in Rubbermaid containers, and in a fit of genius, I had taken the Bisquick and put it in a plastic container as well, cutting off the pertinent part of the box and taping it to the top. Or so I thought. We usually use Bisquick for biscuits, you see, and it’s been a long time since we made pancakes, so I didn’t get all of the pancake information. Not my finest moment, apparently. So we called my mom.

Dad: *sleepily* Hello?
Kari: Can I speak to Mom?
Dad: Only after you speak to me for a minute.
Kari: But I have a question.
Dad: Maybe I can answer your question.
Kari: How do you make pancakes?
Dad: You get the Aunt Jemima mix, and you add . . . I’ll get your mom.
Mom: Hello?
Kari: How do you make pancakes?
Mom: With Aunt Jemima mix?
Kari: You didn’t use Aunt Jemima mix when I lived there. What is this? No, Bisquick. I cut off the, uh, wrong part of the box.
Mom: I don’t have any Bisquick. But I think you add some water. Or maybe it’s milk. And an egg. And a little oil or butter.
Kari: Um . . .
Mom: Just make sure it’s the right consistency.
Kari: Um, okay, I guess. Thanks!

I relayed this information to Mike and we started trying to decide what to do. We had a mix for some buckwheat pancakes, so we decided to use similar amounts of oil and water and egg. The problem was that I was armed with my mom’s information (”make sure it’s the right consistency”) and before I realized what was going on, Mike had put more water than I thought advisable. And we didn’t have any Bisquick left.

Kari: I just wanted some pancakes.
Mike: Well, you’ve got a comedy of errors instead.

The batter was pretty thin, but we made a pancake with it, just to see. It turned out okay, but I really wanted fluffy pancakes, so we thought maybe we should add some flour. And then Mike added Splenda, because he said, “They should be a little sweet, like how I used to make them at McDonald’s. (In fact, he mentioned working at McDonald’s at least ten times in the time we were trying to make the pancakes. Apparently breakfast food makes him reminisce.) The pancakes from the extra-flour batch were actually less fluffy than the first one, but we decided we could just put two together and pretend that it was one. And Mike made my delicious egg for me, and I got some toast to sop up the yolk.

I poured the milk (we got it earlier this week, okay? We didn’t have to go to the store to get it just because of the snow, I swear), and we sat down to eat. After all that, they tasted very good, even if they weren’t quite what I had in mind. And we put Bisquick on the grocery list, so hopefully we can prevent situations like this in, say, five or so years, when I decide I want pancakes again.

Mike: This doesn’t need to be a blog entry, okay?
Kari: Oh, it’s too late. I’ve already got it all written out in my head.

(He just came in and saw the title and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There haven’t been any great pancakes in 2005.” hehe.)

I have been in a couple of situations lately where lapsed friends of mine - people who know the most about the deep dark hard things about my life but deserted me when I needed them most - are now trying to rekindle the friendship. In one situation, there was an apology of sorts, but in the other, it appears that they have no idea that their lack of commitment has burned some people.

It’s hard to know what to do in situations like these - should you challenge these people? What’s the point of that - just to demand an apology, or actually to repair the relationship? Is it worth it? How much do you dredge up the past and how much do you just try to move forward?

Mike and I were talking about this last night, and in one of the situations (the one with the apology) he really wants to work on the relationship, but I am feeling more cautious. I can’t imagine diving in and being vulnerable like that again . . . I am not sure whether I feel like it’s necessarily worth it, or whether I feel ready to trust my heart again to people who let me down when I needed extra support. That’s not to say the relationship can’t flourish again, but I can’t really be expected to jump back into the same level of vulnerability.

Of course, there is also the question of whether I am being too hard on my friends. I hold myself to a pretty high standard, and I think that can lead to me having unreasonable expectations of my friends.

I don’t think there are easy answers to any of these questions. So I’ll just keep trying to do the best I can.

Behold the gloriously purple box.

May 3rd, baby. (We’ll start saving our pennies now.)

Yesterday I wasn’t feeling too hot, so I went home at lunchtime. I read a magazine and ate lunch, and then Mike came home and he put in my Pride and Prejudice DVD so I could fall asleep while he read Naked. (The book. Get your mind out of the gutter.) And sleep I did - I missed pretty much the whole first disc, which means I slept for two-and-a-half hours. Mike actually woke me up so I could see the dance at Netherfield and the proposal scene, because he knew I’d want to see them. After that, we changed discs and he kept reading while I was watching. And when I finished disc 2, I went back and watched my favorite parts of disc 1 (that I had slept through). (And the proposal and the dance at Netherfield, because, really, who can see those too many times? Not I.)

The result of all of this is that I’m dying once again to re-read Pride and Prejudice. I have mentioned the first time I read it, and I have read it regularly since then. Alas, I have a few books in line that I need to get through before I can do my re-read. Friday Night Lights is next up, and Mike got me a couple of books that I need to be disciplined and read before I can snuggle down with Elizabeth Bennet again.

When we were hanging out with Scott and Kelly, she mentioned that she’d been reading Girl Meets God (one of my Top Ten Favorite Books) and she thought it was interesting that Lauren Winner gave up reading for Lent one year. She said, “I think you should do that.” I laughed it off, but she kept pushing me. “In the book, she talks about how reading is her life, and I think that’s the same for you. I think it would be good for you.” Scott tried to intervene here and said that Kelly should let me decide what I wanted to give up on my own, but I had to admit that she was right. He didn’t know that I read while drying my hair, while cooking, while eating, and while exercising (if at all possible), and he had to admit that Kelly had a point.

This morning, while I was drying my hair, I pulled out Girl Meets God and read the section Kelly mentioned.

“Lauren, he says, “I want you to give up something additional for Lent.” I raise an eyebrow. “I want you to give up reading . . . Reading, it seems to me, is something you really love. It may be the thing you love most. I would like you to give up reading for Lent . . . I think books would be a gift you could give Christ that would be really meaningful.” I butter my English muffin. “Let me ask you,” says Milind,” what do you do on say, a Thursday evening once you have eaten dinner, rinsed your dishes, and quit working for the night?”

“I read.”

“What about the occasional Thursday night on which you do not read?” says Milind.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Usually, I read.”

Then he says it again: “I’d like you to give up reading for Lent.”

…

“You know,” I say to Milind, “reading really is my fallback activity. If I have time on my hands, nothing to do, what I do is read.”

“No, no,” says Milind. “Reading is my fallback activity. Reading is your life.”

I haven’t decided whether or not I want to try it. Kelly says she’s giving up forks for Lent - anything you eat with a fork, she will eat with chopsticks so that she can learn to be more deliberate about her eating and her food. Last year I didn’t give up anything at all, but I have enjoyed the discipline in the past. I probably won’t post about whether or not I decide to do it. I tend to keep it as quiet as I can, because I don’t want to appear as a Pharisee, making my deeds known to men so they can glorify me. If I do decide to give it up, it will be because of this:

Giving up books for six weeks did not just leave me with more free time. It did not just save me some money. It also left me starkly alone with my life. I read, I think, for many reasons. I read for information, I read for pleasure, I read because I want to figure out the craft of putting a sentence together. But I also read to numb any feelings of despair or misery that might creep my way. Sven Birkerts once wrote, “To read, when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and set off toward it. And like any traveling, reading is at once a movement and a comment of sorts about the place one has left. To open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one’s life or of one’s orientation toward it.”

Even before Lent I had suspected that I used reading just this way, as a tonic or escape route. In late February, I wrote something in my journal about reading. “I feel myself entering a morose funk over this.” (”This” was, of course, a man.) I recognize this funk not because I want to sleep more or eat more, but by my desire to do what I always do when I get funked out: burrow into some feel-good small-town novel I’ve read a dozen times, usually Mitford, sometimes the Deborah Knott mysteries, now Overnight Float. It seems to be my always-cure.

During Lent, I don’t have that always-cure, and I find myself, not surprisingly, praying more. At first I pray more because I have time on my hands . . . But I also find myself praying more because I don’t have my usual distractions. When I am stuck in a puddle of sadness and mistakes, I cannot take them to Mitford. I have to take them to God.”

Comfort food, I told Scott. I use books like comfort food. Kelly chimed in and said, “Like some people use movies to escape, Kari does it with books.” And that’s why I might give up books for Lent - I have for too long carried the habit of drowning my sorrows in Circle of Friends or Pride and Prejudice or, as Lauren Winner says, the Mitford books. I am afraid of being left alone with my life, of having to think about things and having to find other ways to fill my time. I enjoy having that escape route. But I am thinking about it. It does seem to embody the spirit of Lent - giving up something truly important to you, truly of yourself, that will change your patterns and help you focus on Christ. But it also seems to be . . . overwhelming.

Yesterday Mike and I went to Raleigh to spend some time with our friends Scott and Kelly. We had planned to meet in Raleigh because we realized that there was just no way for all of us to get together in January, and that would break our streak. So, instead of driving out to Wilmington or having them come to us, we decided to meet for dinner in Raleigh (despite the bad weather they apparently experienced last week, the roads were fine, although it was so windy that I got to use my favorite Winnie the Pooh word - blustery). I used some of my Christmas money so we could go to P.F. Chang’s. I knew before I walked in the door what I was going to order - Wok Seared Lamb. The sad thing was that I had talked it up so much that Mike and Kelly both also ordered it. Our waitress said that normally when people at a table all order the same thing, she tries to talk them out of it . . . but nothing is really like the lamb. Mike and I never cook lamb (Mike: “They don’t really sell lamb at Wal-Mart.”) so I always jump at the chance to eat it when I can. We also had the lettuce wraps that everyone talks about - neither Mike nor Scott had been to P.F. Chang’s before, and they seemed to like what they had. We had good conversation about some friendships that have been hard lately, and about the reasons I have been feeling better about all that God stuff lately. And I had at least six glasses of Diet Coke. (As the “designated driver,” I got my drink for free. hehe.)

Before we had dinner, I got to see the new pages in Kelly’s scrapbook, and she claimed to get some inspiration from mine. Then Kelly and I did our thing at the mall (”our thing” includes Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Crate and Barrel . . . you get the idea) while the guys went to EB Games and other silly places like that. None of us bought anything (although Kelly tried on a cute skirt at J. Crew that was marked down to $20 after originally being $150), but fun times were had by all. And they are planning to come stay with us the last weekend in February, so the streak will live on!

Mike is the David Gray fan in our house, and we were listening to one of his playlists last night that included a few David Gray songs. As we were driving home, holding hands in the dark, This Year’s Love came on, and it seemed like a fitting end to a wonderful day.

Don’t you know this life goes on
And won’t you kiss me
On that midnight street
Sweep me off my feet
Singing ain’t this life so sweet

The Christmas after I got married, Grandma took me into one of the back rooms at her house and said, “This is the last of Great-Grandma’s quilts, and I was saving it for the first grandchild who got married, so it’s yours now.” (My brother says that, as I am the oldest girl, I had an unfair advantage, but I say that the younger kids don’t remember her anyway, so it’s only fitting that I should get the quilt. And my older cousin David . . . well, he had his shot at it. Too bad for him! haha!) When I got it, Mom and my aunt Nancy kept pointing out bits that they remembered. “This was a dress of mine, and I remember that fabric . . .” It was fun to watch them tell those stories.

Mike and I have enjoyed having a quilt, but its age has meant that some of the pieces have torn, so Mom and I went to Wal-Mart on Monday to buy fabric to repair it. That was an adventure in itself - I measured the quilt before we went, but we kept having trouble with the math since we didn’t have anything to write on. Actual conversation:

Mom: Right, so that’s 63 inches, and we’ll need to get that twice to cover the width.
Kari: *whacks mom with fabric* No, it’s SIX feet THREE inches!

Our whole time at Wal-Mart was like that. “Wait, no, so we could do it lengthwise and . . . wait, no, we could double it this way . . . wait, no.” I just stopped talking and let her figure it out, because my brain could no longer do the math. The lady in the fabric department was actually kind of rude to us, because she talked to us like we were stupid (which, you know, the above exchange may have warranted, but still) and kept accusing us of arguing. Yesterday when we were working on the quilt, we kept coming up with “clever responses” we should have said back. Unfortunately, though, our idea of a clever response is something like, “Be quiet, or we will argue with YOU!” Oh, well. I guess I should have hit HER with the fabric.

When we were working on the quilt last night, my mom kept bemoaning how crooked it was. I asked her if this meant that Great-Grandma was not really a detail person, and she said she thought that was true. What I remember about her are images of what she looked like, her hair, her glasses, her smile . . . and little things like the peppermints she always had for us, the chair she always sat in, and where her cane hung on the wall when she wasn’t using it. I was too small to remember whether she was into details, but I remember that she loved me, and I remember scraping my knees on a tombstone at her funeral.

Last night I kept trying to wax philosophical while working on the quilt. I said, “Do you think Grandma worked on this quilt, too? Because that would mean four generations of us have worked on it!” Mom said no, Grandma was too busy raising her six children to make quilts. It became a game with us. I’d say, “Do you think Grandma cut any of the pieces?” No. “Do you think Grandma helped decide where any of them would go?” No. Finally she said, “Hey, I bet Grandma bought some of this fabric originally, so let’s just say that she did so we CAN MOVE ON.” hehehe. I also tried to inspire Mike and Joseph with things like, “You know, this quilt is crooked, but it’s still very special to me. I would like to make a quilt, but I am afraid to start that kind of thing because I know that I wouldn’t be very good at it, and mine would probably be crooked. But I bet if I made a quilt, it would be special to my great-grandchildren one day. Let this be a lesson to us all. The things we make are special to those we love.” Joseph gave me the look. You know the look. The Kari-has-lost-her-mind-but-let’s-just-ignore-her look. (I get it a lot from him.) My family just doesn’t appreciate me.

The best thing that happened was that my mom said, “Since this stuff is so important to you, I should find that picture of the four generations that Great-Grandma insisted that we take.” I had no idea such a picture existed, and I am happy that I am like Great-Grandma in that small way. I would have insisted on a picture, too. I hope she can find it so I can get it framed.

I am the only “daughter of a daughter” in our family, so maybe I do take those things too seriously. Maybe I feel too much pressure to learn how things were so I can teach my daughters. Maybe I have read too many “YaYa” books, or maybe that’s just one of the things I have picked up from living in the South, but I do feel the importance of being connected to the women in my family, and knowing the history there. I have mentioned before that that kind of connectedness helps me keep a little perspective, and I felt that way a bit last night as well.

We didn’t quite finish fixing the quilt last night. I am not as good at using the sewing machine as my mom is, so we’ll have to finish it another afternoon. We borrowed a blanket from my mom to use until we have finished the quilt, and snuggled down under it last night as we watched the snow falling.

It was a good evening - we talked about family names and names we like for our future children, and we ate Mom’s “special brownies” (she put 1 1/3 cups of water instead of 1/3 like the recipe called for, but they were very good. However, my dad came home and said, “The only kind of ’special’ brownies I know of have . . . illegal substances in them. I have been married to your mom for 30 years, and it takes you all one afternoon to corrupt her?”) and ate ribs for my brother’s going away meal. He’ll be leaving next weekend for Connecticut for the semester, so that was the last time we’ll all be together for a while. (”Thanks for going away,” I said, “the ribs were really good.” And he gave me the look again. hehe.)

A couple of days ago, everyone in my department had on khakis. Two people had on red shirts, the department head had on a blue shirt, and I had on a brown shirt. My boss said, “Hey, it’s like Star Trek day or something - all these solid color shirts, khaki pants!” Then he turned to me and said something about how my outfit wasn’t conforming quite as well as the others. I said, “That’s okay, I’m the ship’s counselor, and I can wear whatever I want.” He nodded his approval.

A few minutes later, I walked up to him and said, “Can we forget that I knew enough about Star Trek to geek out like that in front of all of you?” He looked at me and said, “We can try to forget it, but we’re still going to give you a hard time about it.”

My name is Kari, and I’m a recovering Star Trek addict. (Original and Next Generation, with a little Deep Space Nine thrown in for fun.)

I will be the first to tell you that my life isn’t hard, especially by the world’s standards. I have always had enough to eat, and clothes to wear, and a loving family. Life, though, is hard on everyone in an emotional sense. Things happen that are sad and upsetting. People die, and they let us down, and things we hope for don’t always come true.

The funny thing about the way a girl gets destroyed
About the way that deal goes down
Is that everybody pretty much sees it coming at the sister
From all the way across town
And she isn’t always blinded, she isn’t always far astray
She just might not be thinking, she might be having a bad day
But when you choose, you choose, and when you drown, you drown

In the summer and fall of 1999, I was dealing rather badly with some of the changes and disappointments of life. I got a little depressed (actually, if you ask Mike, it was a lot depressed) and behaved in some ways that I’m embarassed about. One of the results of that was that Mike’s parents decided they didn’t want to support our marriage, and cut off contact with us, including not coming to our wedding. This isn’t something I talk about much on a public forum such as this, but I feel like it’s okay to state the bare facts like that.

Oh, God, it hurts so bad to love anybody down here
Why don’t you come and help me out ’cause I can’t even see clear

Mike and his sister have told me ad nauseam that it’s not my fault, that similar things have happened quite a lot, and that I shouldn’t blame myself. I think it’s fair to say that it would have happened eventually, but that I was a catalyst for causing it to happen more quickly.

Regardless, though, it was a hard thing. I listened to a lot of Waterdeep that summer, and “18 Bullet Holes” really resonated with me. It is hard to love people here. It was hard for me to love Mike well, both because I was so caught up in feeling sorry for myself that I couldn’t grasp the enormity of what he was going through, and because in some ways, loving him meant losing some of my ideals of having a “perfect family.” On the flip side, it was hard for him to love me well, because I was in such a dark place that I wouldn’t let anyone help me.

When I look back at that time, I realize two things. The first is that that time brought us closer together as a couple, because we had to decide if this relationship was really what we wanted to do. We were having to face up to some of the serious sacrifices we were going to have to make - not just little things like, “I like skim milk and he likes whole milk,” or even, “Oh, I want two kids and he wants three.” We had to decide if we could construct a reality where we were together without the support of his parents, and if we wanted to make those sacrifices. And because we both decided to do those things, it strengthened our relationship. It does hurt. I don’t have in-laws who love me. We don’t spend holidays with them. We haven’t even talked to them in over five years. Life hurts. But when I close myself off to the pain, I am also closing myself off to the joy that relationships bring.

The second thing is that that period of time is when I really began to grasp some things about the incarnation. The past few years have been a time of disappointment and letdowns even more serious than those that spun me into those dark days of 1999. And over and over and over again, God has reminded me: “I was there, I understand. I was betrayed by one of my closest friends. Even my closest friends didn’t understand me most of the time. Bring those disappointments to me, because I can help you with them. They are too much for you to carry on your own.”

Oh, God, it hurts so bad to love anybody down here
Oh, that’s right, you know so well
One thorny crown, three nails, and a spear
One thorny crown, three nails, and a spear.

Last week we bought a pork roast because I said I wanted to have pork roast, but we had no clear idea for what to do with it. This morning I googled recipes, and found one called “tasty pork roast” (which is funny if you know me, because when I talk to my friends’ babies, I’m always saying things like, “Have some tasty cereal! Here’s your tasty paccy! Is that stuffed animal tasty?” Mike wanted to know if I googled “tasty pork roast” because it seemed like something I would do) that ended up being quite good. I had to sear the pork and then pour a marinade over it and put it in the oven for two hours. I felt like such a professional, because “searing” is not something I do a lot of, and it turned out really well. That recipe was definitely a keeper. Mike made his famous broccoli casserole (I have no idea why I just said it’s famous), and we had a great dinner.

I always feel good when I do something like that, because Mike is generally the chef in our family. He gets recipes in his email every day, and he is always wanting to try new things. I am a fairly good cook, good at following recipes, but he has that creative spark. Today I was the creative one. It was a nice feeling.

Mike has been enjoying posting his top 50 songs list, and while I don’t have the patience to list all my songs in order, I do have around 50 songs that are my favorites of all time. So, I have decided that, from time to time I am going to post those songs in this category - Music that Matters. Most of these songs are special to me because of the lyrics, but many of them are also special because of where I was or the company I was keeping when I heard them. So, without further blathering, here’s the first song in that occasional series.

Just before my sophomore year, I moved into the basement of my aunt and uncle’s house. Their four children had each taken a turn there, and when I asked if I could move in, they said I could. It was a great situation overall - they didn’t need to raise any more children and I didn’t want to be raised any more.

That basement is where I took my first real steps into adulthood. I got engaged while living there, had my first kiss, had my first job issues, got accepted into the business school, planned a wedding . . . I look back on that time and see how I started to take more responsibility for myself, started learning how to make my faith my own and to think for myself. If you had asked me, I would have said that I was already doing those things, but the truth is that it takes some being on your own to really start to figure those things out. I won’t even pretend that I have them figured out now. Regular readers know that my faith is something that is a constant struggle for me, and as I continue to work out what it means, I think I am still in the process of making it my own instead of my parents’ or Mike’s.

I loved living there. I loved being able to go upstairs and hang out with my uncle after my classes were over for the day. I loved having my aunt around to talk to. I loved my room, sparse as it was, and how the washer and dryer were just down the hall, and my bathroom that was decorated with penguins. I loved my proximity to campus and that I had a real home to go home to. I didn’t care so much for Zelda the cat, and I wished for central air and heat, but overall it was one of those decisions I am so glad I made. I miss living there sometimes, even though I know I can’t go back.

After Mike and I got together, he shared with me his love for the Counting Crows. In the fall of 1999, This Desert Life came out, and I made an effort to listen to it so that I could learn to love the Counting Crows like he does. I like a lot of the songs on this album, but the last one really stood out to me: St. Robinson in his Cadillac Dream. I’m no ballerina, but I could relate to Carrie in the second verse.

Carrie’s down in her basement all toe shoes and twinned
With the girl in the mirror who spins when she spins,
From where you think you will end up to the state that you’re in
Your reflection approaches and then recedes again.

And there’s a line near the end of the song that seems like it was written just for me:

There’s a girl in the basement coming out of her shell . . .

This song didn’t make Mike’s top 50, but it makes both of us think about that time in our life - I was living in a basement, my life was changing, our relationship was growing, and I was coming out of my shell.

This week I have been kind of tired, so I haven’t made a lot of headway on The Fellowship of the Ring. Last night Mike and I were reading, and he says I fell asleep downstairs in our big chair about 9:15. (I woke up at 11:00 and he was upstairs and I started cleaning things, like putting glasses in the dishwasher and dumping the grease from the fried okra we had last night. Mike came down and said, “Kari, why are you awake? And since when did you become Cleany Kari at 11:00 pm?” hehe.) Today I feel more rested, but it’s such a rainy day outside that I’m still kind of dragging.

Anyway, now seems like a good time to share something that stuck out at me a couple of days ago when I was reading during my lunch break.

“But it does not seem that I can trust anyone,” said Frodo.

Sam looked at him unhappily. “It all depends on what you want,” put in Merry. “You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin - to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours - closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo.”

What a great definition of friendship. And yet, Frodo doesn’t learn the lesson, because he’s going to try to leave again, after Lothlorien, and again Sam won’t let him. Frodo is just about as hard-headed as I am.

While standing in my closet this morning desperately seeking inspiration, I suddenly remembered an old black jumper (the American version of a jumper, not the British version) I had that was tucked away in the very back of my half of our closet. I got it out, paired it with a white oxford shirt and my Mary Janes, and . . . voila! A whole new outfit! My coworkers noticed, too - “You look cute today, Kari. Like a schoolgirl.” I’m going to take that as a compliment.

I am not kidding when I say that the jumper is old. The strong memory I have of wearing is was when our Quiz Bowl team won the county championship, which we only did one year out of my four. Which means it’s at least ten years old. I haven’t worn it in, oh, six or seven years, at least, but it’s well-made, and it was fairly expensive, so I didn’t want to get rid of it. Carla Jean recently talked about how certain items of clothing often have memories attached to them, for good or for ill. I remember this jumper partly because my picture was in the paper while I was wearing it and partly because we weren’t allowed to wear short(er - it comes to my knee) skirts if we were going to be competing, but since I was a sophomore, I wasn’t on stage, so I got to wear my jumper.

In my mind, there’s something sort of charming, almost quaint, about wearing something that’s ten years old. It also makes me want to box up my old clothes instead of giving them to Goodwill. After all, I might want them again in ten years or so.

When I read Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, I was struck by one of the essays that talked about popularity. A young David was sitting at a table somewhere where there were lots of kids from different schools, and he overheard some kids from another school talking about the popular crowd from their school. And he was surprised that the social circle at his school was not the center of the universe that he imagined it to be. What did that mean for him?

I hate to admit it, but when I read that, I found it hard to believe, too. You mean Allison and Ashley and Kelly and Samantha weren’t the most popular girls everywhere? On one hand, of course I knew that. I went to a church 45 minutes away . . . of course my youth group friends didn’t know or care at all about my classmates. At the same time, though, I spent so much time thinking about the popular girls (all while denying I had any interest in them whatsoever) that it’s hard even now to think that it didn’t mean anything.

(Youth group friends were a whole ‘nother deal. Some of those kids actually were very popular in their schools, and yet they hung out with me. I was more popular there at church than I was at school. I still wasn’t the center of the social circle - that spot was reserved for the pastor’s kids - but I was in the circle, closer to the center than I could ever dream of being at school. You’d think I would have learned something from being shunned at school, but, no, I was quite content to do the shunning.)

You know how everyone says that middle and high school are hard times socially? I never believed that until just recently. I couldn’t imagine that these supremely confident girls struggled and felt insecure like I did. I thought they were just saying it because everyone says it, but they didn’t really understand how hard it was. They were popular, after all. They had everything they wanted. The thing is . . . I think I just wasn’t quite as good at hiding it. Or maybe I was better at hiding it than I knew - maybe they looked at me and saw a smart girl with a loving family who seemed to get a lot of strength from her faith, and they envied me. All I knew was that I didn’t feel very enviable, but I am beginning to learn now that they didn’t, either.

In the past few year, I have opened up to some acquaintances (now friends) about some of the hurts and fears and struggles in my life. More than once, the response has been, “Wow, you seem so confident. I had no idea that you were dealing with that.” For better or for worse, I have learned the lesson of having that hard outer shell, of an impenetrable veneer that shows people a supremely confident person, even when I’m shaking in my boots on the inside. If I had to go back to high school now, there are parts of me that would honestly not care about the popular kids, because my world is a bigger place now. But there are still parts of me that would want to be accepted, to be liked, to be welcomed into the world of the popular people. How did they get to be so popular? Why do I even want that? I don’t even know.

I have started my somewhat annual re-read of The Lord of the Rings. I realized this morning as I was reading that Ian McKellan was pretty much how I’ve always pictured Gandalf, and when I read about Sam I do picture Sean Astin, but, in my mind, Frodo is older and rounder than Elijah Wood. That’s not to say that I think Elijah Wood did a bad job. Just that he didn’t match up to my idea of what Frodo should look like.

There were so many things that were great about the Lord of the Rings movies. When we went to see the first one, I spent the whole movie in wide-eyed wonder, whispering to Mike, “That was just how I always pictured the Shire . . . I can’t believe they made Galadriel act like that . . . Oh, that part is all wrong . . . Oh, I’m so glad they included that!” I loved the intro on the history of the ring - I had been wondering how much I was going to have to explain to Mike just to get him up to speed, but he only needed a few small explanations. (For the record, I am thankful to have a husband who can just glaze over when I say things like, “You have to understand that this is important because of XYZ, but they couldn’t include it all, obviously. But just know that it’s in the appendices.” He just nods and smiles. I’m so blessed.) The second movie was one of my all-time favorite moviegoing experiences - people cheering when Gandalf reappeared, and when he came at the end with the Rohirrim. And when Legolas did his awesome swinging up on the horse move. The third is a lot more somber, and contains a scary spider, and I was in a fairly low point of my life, so I ended up crying through the entire second half of it when we saw it in the theater. But all three are among my favorite movies, and there are things I love about each of them.

I am glad for the popularity of the movies, and I think Peter Jackson did about as good a job as anyone could with them. I loved so many things about them - Theoden was wonderful, and Aragorn and Eowyn. And Merry and Pippin. There were so many great moments that were included - it’s obvious that Peter Jackson and company love the story and tried very hard to make the movie in the right spirit. After each movie, I said things like, “Well, they had to make changes, you know. I’m not married to the text, so I understand that.” My only real problem was what they did to Faramir and Denethor. But, you know, when we watched them all back-to-back-to-back on New Year’s Eve, I could see how there were quite a few things that were fudged. The Arwen plot is really quite a muddle, and I can’t really abide the idea that Frodo would send Sam away. Watching them all in a row like that, I ended up liking them a tiny bit less than I did originally as individual movies. Don’t get me wrong - I still love them and count them among my favorites. But it was a little easier to see more of the problems and difficulties.

The worst thing about being a fan of the movies is that I have been accused more than once of “groupthink” or liking them simply because they are popular. I want to somehow separate myself from the “I love Legolas” crowd (*ahem* not that there’s anything wrong with liking Legolas, to be sure!) and wear a sign that says, “I read The Hobbit when I was eight! I read The Lord of the Rings when I was 14! I’ve been a fan for a long time!” When I read them, my classmates thought I was kind of weird for toting them around. It definitely wasn’t groupthink when I first fell in love with Bilbo and Gandalf and Frodo and Sam.

I’m looking forward to this re-read - I haven’t read the books since seeing Return of the King, and the movies always made the battles a lot clearer for me. I’m really interested to read about Pelennor Fields now and have a better idea of what it might look like. But it will be a while before I get there. I am already noticing things that I had forgotten - things I had accepted as “as they should be” in the movies when they were really quite big changes from the story in the books. I hope Mike is ready for all my “filling in the gaps,” because I am sure it will start again in earnest. hehe.

There are so many memories in the patchwork of my childhood. Last night I was thinking of the one summer I spent playing kick the cup (cans were apparently too dangerous) almost every evening with the other kids in the neighborhood. Not the snooty family that lived down on one end of the culdesac, but some of the older boys and some of the girls who seemed more bold, more exciting than I was. I look back on those evenings, remembering how long they stretched before darkness started to fall and the fireflies started to make themselves known. We would hide in the trees and the bushes, making our frantic run back to the stump where the cup was kept. It was almost a sacred place, that stump, and we would kick the cup and run some more. I was a fast runner, but not as fast as the bigger boys. But I was good at being “it,” good at finding people, so it didn’t much matter. As I was younger than most everyone else, I’m not sure that I fully grasped the rules, but I was excited to be included in their games and to get to play in new backyards with new hiding places.

I don’t remember any of their names, and I didn’t play with them again after that summer. But I still look back on those long hot evenings and feel . . . happy. Warm. Included.

Something happened to me yesterday that was bizarre in a funny, surreal kind of way. All I could do was sit there and think, “It’s like I’m on Seinfeld.” Well, I also thought, “Man, this would make a great blog entry.” Unfortunately, it’s one of those things that I can’t post without sounding like I’m mocking the other people involved. Which I don’t especially want to do, because I love them and because they might one day come across it. So, next time you see me, get me to tell you the story. hehe.

In a completely unrelated story: yesterday my friends Theresa and Jessica came to visit me in the afternoon. In college, I discipled Theresa, and she and I spent many hours poring over Philippians, talking about Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, sidewalk chalking our friends’ houses, working through issues with mutual friends, and just goofing off. She and I are similar in so many ways, and we would often get accused of sounding just alike or being the same person. Since she graduated college, I haven’t gotten to see her as much as I would have liked, and I miss her a lot.

Jessica worked for Mike, and we haven’t hung out nearly as much as Theresa and I have, but we have had a lot of fun when we did. We have painted pottery together and gone to concerts. I am the one who hooked the two of them up as roommates, and it seems to have worked out fairly well. When you hang out with two friends who know you in different ways, there’s a possibility that it can be awkward, but we had a great time. When I said, “Theresa, remember the time we made enchiladas and took them to Mike at the store?” Jessica chimed in with, “Oh, did you get to see the mouse in the back room?” There was enough connectedness for us all.

Yesterday was a day of catching up with friends, drinking coffee (I was reminded why I don’t often drink regular coffee after having some and being sick all evening long), laughing, and a teeny bit of awkwardness. The weather here has been lovely, and the visiting was a welcome change from the rundown way I’ve been feeling all week.

I have said before that I don’t have much to post when I am not reading anything. I would like to amend that statement. I don’t have much to post when I’m not reading anything I love. I have read a lot lately, but nothing that I feel really passionate about. I started The Red Tent yesterday, though, and I am about 1/3 of the way through it, so it should hopefully spark some thoughts. I didn’t love it the first time I read it, which means I’ll probably have lots to say about it. hehe.

My days are feeling pretty routine. Get up, get ready for work, drive to work while listening to Sam Phillips, order books, work on the reference desk, go home. It’s a good routine. I like my new position - I realized recently that I am a great person to be doing the ordering, because I love looking at new books. I love opening the boxes when they come in and seeing them in such pristine condition. I love being one of the first people to look at them. Trying to order the correct amount of books and choosing what we’ll have is scary, but I am very much enjoying it so far.

Life isn’t all that exciting these days, but that also means it’s not too angsty or upsetting. I have time to read and to work on my scrapbook. Mike and I are enjoying his last few days before his semester starts. We’ve seen some good movies. It’s mundane, but it’s also beautifully peaceful. I can live with that.

When we bought our house, we had a spurt of creative energy. We painted three rooms in three days and did all our unpacking and arranging our furniture. Then, suddenly, it was all we could do to just exist. No more decorating took place until September, when we decided to hang a few things downstairs.

Now, I don’t know if it was from the holidays - being in other people’s houses, getting decorating ideas, that kind of thing - but Mike and I had a crazy day yesterday, moving furniture and hanging pictures. The downstairs looks mostly the same, but we did a lot of work in our room. We also had a big cleaning day - it seemed like we’d been out of town or really busy forever, and the house needed some TLC.

The whole weekend was nice for TLC, actually. Mike and I had some gift cards to a local shopping center that we were able to use, and it had been a while since we were able to just run errands. When you have no money, you don’t run any errands. Errands encourage money spending. It was fun to be able to shop on Saturday, even though neither of us bought very much. We got free coffee at a coffeeshop that just opened, wandered in and out of stores, and just had fun being together. The most random encounter was at the coffeeshop. They had this cake called “Explosion Cake” that had tons of stuff on the top: nuts, chocolate chips, caramel, I don’t even know all of it. But it looked amazing. I pointed it out to Mike, saying, “I want to marry that cake and have its babies.” The woman in front of us in line kind of turned around and looked at me a bit reproachfully. Then she looked at the cake and her entire expression changed into one of understanding and agreement. hehe.

Yesterday we went to a baby dedication at our old church and dropped off a ton of film. I should have some new pictures this week, which is great. After the massive picture hanging/moving furniture/cleaning afternoon, I worked on my scrapbook while we watched an episode of Gilmore Girls. Then Mike went upstairs to play Halo while I worked on another page and listened to some of the cast commentary on Return of the King.

Today I am kind of tired, but I have a feeling of great accomplishment for all the work that we got done and all the quality time we spent together over the weekend. This morning on the way to work I was listening to Sam Phillips’ A Boot and a Shoe, and I can’t tell you how much I love that album. It was my favorite new album from 2004. I probably have six different posts that I have started just based on lyrics from that album, but most of the lyrics aren’t online, so my posts never seem to come to fruition. Today I was really struck by “Hole in my Pocket.”

My life fell through a hole in my pocket
I can’t see anything, only this moment
I hear my heart breaking into faith
Pieces of soul building up a mountain moving seeds of doubt

I think that describes how I am feeling these days. I have been doing better, and “heart breaking into faith” sounds about right.