Through a Glass, Darkly

Mike and I went away this weekend to stay at Casa Holland and see the Braves, have storytime with Trey and Aaron, play poker, watch That Thing You Do, and stay at Café Intermezzo until way way past “ungodly hours” and on into “so ridiculously late it’s early.”

As expected, we had a lot of fun, and there are tons of stories to tell. Today, though, what I’ve been thinking is that when I’m not feeling my best, be it tired or sad or sneezy (I was all three of those dwarves this weekend), I revert a bit. This weekend, I felt like I reverted to some insecurities that I hadn’t been dealing with lately, telling Mike that I knew everyone had to be sick of me sneezing (I took Claratin!) and being tired (we were all tired) and sad (I doubt anyone actually begrudges me feeling sad). I tried to perk up and be happy, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone would be having a better time if I wasn’t there.

I haven’t done much of that these days, being so insecure in my relationships. I’ve been fighting it. When you don’t feel 100%, though, it’s easier to slip into those patterns. When you’re already worried that everyone is so over you being sad, it’s easier to imagine that sneezing your way through IKEA may make even your husband want to throw you out of a window. Or at least into a bin of spatulas. I wonder sometimes if I’m ever going to believe that my friends care about me enough to have patience with all my crap. (Or snot, as the case may be.)

It’s a cliché, but it does seem true that life is about making progress and losing some of that ground again. I imagine it as a dance – you move forward, you move back, but most important is that you keep your footing. I stumbled a bit this weekend, but I am thankful that, despite my insecurities, I was mostly buoyed along in the fun, and that my friends gave me the space to be myself. I just wish that who I was this weekend was someone a little more energetic.

Really, what I learned this weekend was about grace. Community living will do that for you. In the midst of taking turns with showers and watching Friends and caravanning our way around Atlanta and eating entirely too much food, I was reminded of how great it is to know people who will open their house to you for a weekend, how great it is to stay with people who are willing to put up with some inconvenience to spend time with you, how great it is to make new friends and open your heart. How all those things, big and small, are part of what makes life here so wondrous.

When I started working on these thoughts, I was thinking of the weekend in terms of missed opportunities – conversations I didn’t get to have, time I didn’t get to utilize. But now . . . now I see that wasn’t really what the weekend was about after all. I got to see people taking time out of their lives to love and enjoy each other, which was just exactly the three-day weekend I needed.

When the eye surgeon measured my eyes for the surgery, he said that my prescription was -13.00. My contact box says the prescription for is -11.50, but I know that glasses prescriptions can be a little different than contact prescriptions. For whatever strange reason. I used to round that to a -12.00, because that was easiest. -12.00 is just on the border of where they can do LASIK, which is why I had the lens implants instead.

I mentioned before that I would probably need to have glasses for driving and watching TV, but that reading is fine. I have been very pleased with my new eye. Last week, I went to get measured for driving glasses, because I have to go without the contact in my right eye for a week before my second surgery, and I’ll need the glasses to help me drive until I get the stitches out of the second eye and we see where that prescription settles in.

Speaking of the prescription, you may not be dying to hear what my new prescription is in my left eye, but I am dying to tell you. Remember, it was -12.00 before. And now? -0.75. Not even one whole diopter. It wasn’t sharp, but I could read the 20/30 line without assistance. Fairly unbelievable.

I was supposed to pick my new glasses up today. I called and told them I was on my way, and they said, “Oh, good thing you called! We’re going to a meeting, but we’ll leave them in that box outside our door.” Great. Sounds good.

Except.

When I got there, the glasses weren’t there. And, as they were all in a meeting, no one was in the office. And that was how I found myself trying to break into my optometrist’s building today. All right, yes, yes, I didn’t try to break in. I did check all the doors, though, and I considered using a credit card on one of the side entrances. I chickened out, though, because I figured there was no way that I could get off the hook for it if I did get caught. “I’m just breaking in to get my glasses! They were supposed to leave them for me!” Have fun in jail, Kari.

And so I had to leave without them. I managed to get them after work tonight, and can I just say . . . wow. So, here’s the thing. I don’t hate glasses. I hate having to wear glasses, and I hated my glasses because they were so thick and made my eyes look so small. Before I decided whether I wanted to use the same frames, Mike and I tried on frames at Costco. We were both so used to seeing my itty bitty eyes behind the glasses that we were astounded at how big my eyes looked in them. My new glasses, since they have a low (very low!) prescription in one eye and glass in the other, make my eyes look so big! I don’t feel lost behind them. I am very happy with the results of the surgery so far. (The doctor has said that after both eyes are done, we can do a LASIK touch-up if I would like. I am not sure whether I will want to do that or not.)

Anyway, I was desperate to get those glasses, because we’re heading to Atlanta this weekend, and I knew I’d need them. That was the first time I’ve ever strongly considered trying to break into a building that wasn’t my house.

I had some other “firsts” today as well.

-The first time I went to the UNC hospital. Good thing Joseph was able to help me figure out where I was supposed to go.

-The first time I ever went to an ABC store by myself. And the first time I ever bought anything there. I needed Kahlua for the upcoming “Chocolate Chip Kahlua Cake Bakeoff” that Adriene and I will be attempting this weekend. (Really, we just want to know if it makes a difference whether you use chocolate or vanilla pudding.)

LADY BEHIND COUNTER: I hope you brought your ID.

KARI: *gets out ID* I’m 27.

LADY BEHIND COUNTER: You look 16.

KARI: *sighs*

-The first time I took a particular road to get to the town that housed the ABC store. It was nice. It went through the country. There were a lot of cows.

All right, so that last one is kind of lame. I will offer you another story instead.

For my birthday, Mike got me Freaks and Geeks on DVD. This was a very good present for many reasons. 1. I like watching TV shows on DVD. 2. Watching TV shows on DVD is something Mike and I can do together. 3. The show? Is awesome. We are loving it. It’s awkward, it’s hilarious, it’s uncomfortable, it’s fabulous. Lindsay makes us cringe, Sam makes us smile, and Bill . . . we love everything that comes out of Bill’s mouth. Everything he says makes me laugh, and then say, “Everything Bill says makes me laugh!” I admit that may be somewhat annoying. But I don’t care. Mike and I have been alternating Freaks and Geeks and Scrabble.

I have to finish packing for Atlanta, and I need to do dishes. I hope the image of me trying to break into my optometrist’s office will get you through the weekend.

I am notoriously bad at Scrabble. What I have figured out is that I am not great at games where there is a lot of visual information to take in, like Nerts or Scrabble. I can’t see all of those things at once. In Scrabble, that means that I create words that start or end with one of the letters on the board, because I can’t “see” it quite as easily when the letters are in the middle.

I also get really irritated when I suck at Scrabble, which is pretty much always. But, come on. If you had to put up with Mike turning your “CAT” into “CATASTROPHE,” you’d get irritated, too. (That didn’t actually happen, but it could have happened. Because Mike is excellent at Scrabble. Similar, equally humiliating things have happened. On a triple word score.) I have gotten so irritated in the past that Mike put a ban on Scrabble at our house. I don’t think we have played since the great ice storm of 2002.

An aside: the first time I remember playing Scrabble was with my grandma. I was probably in late middle school or early high school. My grandma does crossword puzzles constantly and watches Wheel of Fortune every day. She is good at word games. This game of Scrabble was momentous because it’s the first time I remember being utterly humiliated by my grandma in a game. She had stopped letting me win a long time before, but that game of Scrabble was the first time I remember that she didn’t go easy on me. It was not just a loss, it was a devastating defeat that shook my Scrabble confidence.

That changed this weekend, though. A few weeks ago, we bought a cute table to play games on, and we had planned to play Scrabble when Mike got home from youth camp. I am not sure what made him change his mind about playing Scrabble with me, but I was determined to do better, both in the actual game and in my sportsmanship. And so, on Saturday, after going to the grocery store and doing some laundry, we played four games of Scrabble, ate cheese nips, and forgot to make dinner. Here are some interesting facts about those games.

-Mike got the 50 point bonus for using all his letters in one turn. I have never ever gotten the 50 point bonus. (I didn’t even know there was a bonus for using all your letters.) The word, for the record, was “INERRANT.” The last “T” was already on the board.

-We do allow some use of the dictionary, mostly for checking the spelling of words before we play them, but occasionally to see if something is actually a word before we put it down. We are aware that these are not official Scrabble rules, but there’s something to be said for keeping the peace.

-The dictionary we use is the only dictionary we own - a Webster’s that my mom owned when she was in college. It’s always fun to threaten to challenge a newer word that could not possibly be in that dictionary.

-My favorite word that I made was “JIHAD.” Come on, that’s an awesome word. I should be commended for it. I turned Mike’s “HAD” into “JIHAD.” Brilliant. And the “J” was on a triple letter square.

-I got the Q every single time. I am now brilliant at Q-without-U words like “QAT” and “QAID.”

What you want to know, though, is whether I won. At least, I hope you are rooting for me a little bit. The good news is that I finally won the last game we played on Saturday, and won it by quite a lot. The bad news is that it was not a sustainable victory, because we played two more games yesterday, and I won one by two points and lost one by two points. Statistically, those games were a draw. I have not yet gotten to the point where I can pound Mike into the ground on a regular basis. And, let’s face it, I probably never will. But at least I am now spelling words like “JIHAD” and “QUARKS” instead of “CAT.”

I still get really irritated when I am playing badly, and there’s some debate about the way I play the board (Mike says I’m too concerned with making sure the board is opening up, which causes me to sacrifice points instead of letting it open up on its own), but I think there has been some improvement. If I don’t feel so completely insecure about my Scrabble playing (often fed by comments such as, “I would expect you to be better at Scrabble”), I don’t get so upset. So my one victory went a long way in helping me be a better Scrabble player. And Mike swears that he didn’t let me win.

Right after we got married, we noticed that some of our friends had a continuous Scrabble game going on on their coffeetable. That’s the idea we’re going for here, because our new table has little drawers we can keep our letters in. Of course, continuous Scrabble is going to require that we stop a game in the middle, and if this weekend was any indication, I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to do that. And, really, don’t you think balanced diets are overrated? Cheese nips are where it’s at. We’re feeding our minds instead.

I can’t remember the first time I read Little Women. I remember what the book looked like, a hardcover with pale flowers on the front that I checked out of the library, but I don’t have any specific memories of reading it. I do remember reading Little Men – I read it in the bathtub, soaking in some mixture that was supposed to help keep my chicken pox from itching quite so much. I didn’t like Little Men as much as Little Women, except for Daisy’s little stove, which isn’t a huge part of the story. I always found it a little off-putting that Jo married someone so old, and I didn’t like reading about him all that much. And I never made it through Jo’s Boys. I read Little Women not long before I read Little Men, but I don’t remember meeting the March family for the first time, which surprises me. It’s such a vivid story, the kind of story I usually remember encountering for the first time. I remember discovering Anne of Green Gables, but not, for whatever reason, Little Women.

My book club is discussing Little Women this month (and the new companion to it, March, which is from Mr. March’s perspective, next month). One of my friends is planning on coming to the discussion, so she just finished the book, and last night we watched the movie (Winona Ryder version) last night. I own the movie, but it was the first time in several years I had actually watched it, as opposed to putting it in because it’s familiar and comforting and I can fall asleep to it. It was also the first time I’d watched it since being married, at least for any length of time, and this is the first time I’ve returned to the story of Little Women (I’m about ¼ of the way through the book) since reading March, which gave an interesting perspective on the family.

And I loved it. I really did. I liked the inclusion of politics, especially after reading March and thinking more about the Alcotts and what they believed about slavery and suffrage. I think including that information added another level to the movie, which I appreciated. As I’ve been reading the book, I’ve recalled so many of the scenes from the movie – Meg letting her friends dress her up, Amy and the limes, the Christmas dinner they gave away. I don’t exactly picture Winona Ryder when I read about Jo, but she has the right eyes to play the part. The March house looks to me like it does in the movie, and Christian Bale is exactly how I picture Laurie.

I wonder sometimes if Little Women could even be published these days – it’s a little preachy, and the story’s kind of long for a children’s book, and wouldn’t the editors require a different ending? Louisa May Alcott has disappointed generations of girls who think that Jo should end up with Laurie. I’ve paid lip service to the fact that the author was right, that Jo and Laurie weren’t right for each other, but I never actually believed it. Last night, though, when Laurie was proposing and saying how they wouldn’t fight and he’d change and she didn’t have to write unless she wanted to, I finally got it. I got that he didn’t really understand Jo if he would say that she didn’t have to write (in the book, he doesn’t say that, but she does say that he would hate all her “scribbling”). I got that she, who struggled with her temper, needed a different kind of person. I got that they actually aren’t right for each other, which I haven’t seen before because movie Laurie is so cute and appealing. I still wish the Professor wasn’t quite so old, but I’ll admit that Louisa May was right after all. It took being married for a while to see it, so I admire Jo for knowing what was right.

My friend said she cried the whole way through the book as she read it this time, and she cried last night, too. I cried a little bit when Beth died (I mean, when they’re putting the flower petals on Beth’s dolls, it’s just a bit much! They’re goading me into crying!), but I saved my good cry for the car ride home. I’m anxious to get to that part of the book, because I remember the movie version so much better.

Little Women isn’t one of my favorite books, but I love how sincere it is, the whole way through. I love that the girls are trying to make themselves better, I love the plays they put on, I love that they give their Christmas dinner away. I read a lot of books that are more jaded, and maybe they have more interesting or important things to say, but it’s nice to return to Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy every now and then. I’m really looking forward to the discussion.

Every time Mike goes out of town, I feel the urge to act like a teenager and throw wild keg parties. Which is ridiculous . . . why do I act as if he’s the adult in our house? He might care if I was throwing wild keg parties, it’s true, but he doesn’t care if I eat pizza rolls or popcorn for dinner. (I know, I know, we’ve been over this before. I told you this happens every time.)

With all this big talk about acting wild and crazy, you would think that I . . . acted wild and crazy last night. You would be wrong. Yesterday I went grocery shopping, baked a cake, folded laundry, did dishes, and went to see my brother for his birthday. I was in bed before 10:00, finished the book I was reading (don’t tell the doctor I was reading in bed, because she told me not to. But when there’s no one else home, it’s just more fun to read in bed than anywhere else, because bed is where the pizza rolls and popcorn are), and was asleep before Mike called at 10:30. It’s a good thing I’m going to the movies tonight, because I . . . am . . . boring. But the house looks better than it did.

Last night before I went to bed, I made a list of all the things I needed to do this morning, including calling a doctor, watering the garden before I left the house, and making sure I had everything I needed to go to the movies tonight. I have been making lots of lists lately, both at work and at home, just to cut down on stress. It seems to help. And so, this morning I remembered to go to the backyard and water the plants.

At 7:30 am, our backyard was beautiful. The sun’s beams were filtering through the trees, there was a mist near the ground, everything was covered in dew, and the neighbor’s dogs were apparently not yet awake, so it was quiet and peaceful. I watered the tomato plants and peppers (we had to give up on squash, which is so disappointing) and then the trees before leaving for work. The hem of my pants was wet and a little dirty, but it was nice to be outside during the cool part of the day. This post, with the going to bed early and getting up early to water the plants and call the doctor, is further evidence that I’m a morning person.

Maybe it’s all the Drunkard’s Prayer that I’ve been listening to lately, maybe it’s the fact that I have had Elizabethtown on my mind, but I’ve been feeling melancholy lately in a good way. The kind that makes you want to “wallow in delicious misery” and “get into the deep beautiful melancholy.” My doctor talked about how sometimes, we here in America freak out when things are hard, because we buy into the idea that life is supposed to be happy and easy. I think that’s why I’ve been playing so much Drunkard’s Prayer (especially “Born,” which for some inexplicable reason is on my iPod twice) at work, because it’s both melancholy and hopeful at the same time. I think I’m learning how to be okay with being a little sad, instead of feeling like I need to make myself fight it because it’s not “right” to be sad. Being alone in the yard this morning watching the sun and the mist coexist, I felt like that was a picture of how I was doing inside. The sun was there, and things were green and growing, but there was an element that the sun hadn’t reached.

Meanwhile, other than forgetting to buy stamps on my lunch break, my list is complete. Movie night tonight, girls’ night tomorrow (complete with outdoor movie watching and a hot tub), and hopefully I’ll be squeezing some more alone time in there, too. And probably listening to Over the Rhine a few hundred more times.

Pour me a glass of wine
Talk deep into the night
Who knows what we’ll find

Secret fears, the supernatural
Thank God for this new laughter
Thank God the joke’s on me -OtR, “Born”

The reason I don’t really listen to the radio is that they play songs over and over. For me, the stage between, “I hate this,” and, “I’m singing along to every word,” is bridged by repetition. In many cases, all you have to do to get me to like a song is . . . play it a lot.

Last year, Mike fell in love with The Decemberists. I objected to them, mostly because their songs are kind of dark. Rape, prostitution, death, revenge . . . not the happiest of topics. Some might say they’re a bit . . . depressing. The one I object to the most strongly is “A Cautionary Tale.” I mean, I like Patty Griffin, and she has some sad songs. But they’re not so . . . morbid.

However, over the past few months, I’ve noticed myself becoming more and more familiar with the material of The Decemberists. Mike kept slipping songs onto playlists, he’d have them on the stereo when I came home, he played them while playing X-Box. I came home the other day to find him playing Uno on his X-Box (my comment? “You know what’s fun? Playing card games with actual cards!”) and listening to Picaresque. As he was playing, “We Both Go Down Together” came on, and . . . I started singing with it. It’s a song that features a deranged young rich man who may or may not have raped a young woman from a lower class. And I was singing along with it. Because Mike played it so much that he tricked me into thinking that I like it, just because I know all the words. Actually, I do really like the part that goes, “Meet me on my vast veranda [awesome guitar/percussion], My sweet untouched Miranda [awesome guitar/percussion].” But that is not the point. The point is that Mike tricked me. When you hear me say that I was listening to some M. Ward, you will know that he’s finally broken me there, too.

So, this morning, I did the only thing I could do. I put Picaresque on my iPod. I kind of hate myself. But I love the awesome guitar. And percussion.

One of the reasons we’d been so intent on working on the fire pit area in our backyard is that, for a while now, I have been wanting to burn the journals I kept off and on from high school until about three years ago. It wasn’t for a ritual cleansing or anything like that. I’m not really romantic enough to be big on rituals. No, it was pure practicality. I didn’t want them around anymore. I didn’t want anyone to be able to find them and read them. In a small way, yes, it was about moving on and letting go of the past. I know I could have simply thrown them out, but I really wanted to make sure they were gone.

Mike, who once burned an old journal in the kitchen sink, understood my desire to get rid of the records of my not-so-exciting exploits. One of his goals this summer was to get the fire pit ready - ready for Birthday Weekend, ready to use in the fall, and ready for my journals. Saturday night was deemed the night, and my brother, being at the house, helped us start a really good fire. We then made him leave, since, well . . . journal burning is kind of private and needs no witnesses. He seemed to understand.

I had about, I’d say, 10 journals to burn. They weren’t all completely full. Some were daily journals and some were Bible study journals and some were notes I took on retreats or at meetings when I was in IV. Last year I went through and looked at a lot of it, and I decided it was just time to let it go. The daily journals were too embarrassing/incriminating, the notes on retreats didn’t all make sense, and I don’t really need notes from meetings that were held six years ago anymore. Mike and I ripped out page after page, crumpling them and throwing them into the fire. Occasionally he’d catch some words just as it burned, and I watched as he tried to make sense of it before it turned to ash. I read him my valedictory speech and snippets from the oldest journal. My personal favorite was when I started an entry by saying, “ER was a rerun tonight.” You can see how incredibly interesting my life was in high school.

I’ll admit it, there’s a part of me that is sad that so much history is now gone, but it’s definitely balanced out by the relief that . . . so much incriminating history is now gone. I’m not that girl anymore, not by a long shot. I did so much ranting and venting in those journals. Burning them was one more way of letting go of some of that baggage, of growing up. I don’t see things the same way that I did, I don’t feel or value the same things. It felt heavy to still have them around, as if I couldn’t really move on.

I was surprised, though, that after we had finished ripping out pages and sat down on the picnic benches, I felt kind of sad. All that time spent writing, and nothing to show for it but a lot of smoke and ash. I’m glad I didn’t do this earlier, in a fit of anger. It was planned out, and it was time. As we sat and watched the fire, I leaned onto Mike’s shoulder. He seemed to understand that I had mixed emotions about it all.

We plan to use the fire pit as much as we can, and we’ve made a good start already. I think Mike and I have both imagined sitting out there, roasting marshmallows, talking, listening to music. We’ve already accomplished the goals of spending more time in our yard and taking care of the weight of the past (one goal was a little more serious than the other). If spring is a time of starting over, well, so is autumn, at least if you’re still on a school schedule like we are. New shoes, new clothes, new books, new lines in a journal. As much as I love the long hot evenings of summer, I am looking forward to the cool evenings of fall we hope to spend with a fire. And now that the journals are taken care of, I like to think the fire pit is primed for autumn, too.

We sat quietly for a while, only interrupted by the fireworks that the neighbors set off (real ones yet again. They were very pretty). And then he stood up, pulled me off the bench and said, “Come on. Let’s go inside.”

I’m not too sure how I feel about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

“Yes?” The librarian did not bother to look up.

“Cold you recommend a good book for a girl?”

“How old?”

“She is eleven.”

Each week Francie made the same request and each week the librarian asked the same question. A name on a card meant nothing to her and since she never looked up into a child’s face, she never did get to know the little girl who took a book out every day and two on Saturday. A smile would have meant a lot to Francie and a friendly comment would have made her so happy. She loved the library and was anxious to worship the lady in charge. But the librarian had other things on her mind. She hated children anyhow.

It hurts my heart.

For my birthday, Andrea gave me a copy of Don Miller’s Searching for God Knows What. It took a little longer than I thought to finish it - I thought I’d be done on Saturday, and then Sunday, but I finally finished it this morning.

I am not the hugest Don Miller fan on the planet. I didn’t care for Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (I was working at a Christian bookstore when it came out, so I remember it being promoted . . . and then being on the $4.97 shelf). I enjoyed some parts of Blue Like Jazz, but it didn’t rock my world (I remember one guy asking why I hadn’t recommended it to him after I read it, since he read it and loved it, and I was like, “I . . . just didn’t think to”). Of all his books, I liked To Own a Dragon the best, mostly because it gave me some insight into what it might be like to be a man without a father figure. This book was somewhere in Blue Like Jazz range - it had some parts that I enjoyed, but overall the book was just things I already agreed with that didn’t really change anything for me.

The first part that stood out to me was when talking about the fall. The chapter closes this way:

I happened to see Larry King interview Billy Graham shortly after the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. I had read an article the previous month about violent video games and their effects on the minds of children, desensitizing them to the act of killing. Larry King asked Billy Graham what was wrong with the world, and how such a thing as Columbine could happen. I knew, because Billy Graham was an educated man, he had read the same article I had read, and I began calculating his answer for him, that violence begets violence, that we live in a culture desensitized to the beauty of human life and the sanctity of creation. But Billy Graham did not blame video games. Billy Graham looked Larry King in the eye and said, “Thousands of years ago, a young couple in love lived in a garden called Eden, and God placed a tree in the Garden and told them not to eat from the tree . . .”

And I knew in my soul he was right.

How much do I love Billy Graham? So much.

The next part that stood out to me was in the chapter about the circus - Don Miller talked about how much he loves elephants. I’m not going to quote it here, but he talked about how being around elephants makes him relax, his heart slow down. They’re very calming.

I don’t have a deep spiritual reason for liking that passage, but it reminded me of how I feel about cows. I love cows. (As a girl, I should like horses. But I don’t. I like cows.) When I was a little girl, my grandparents still had cows. And my grandma would send me cards and letters telling me about her day and how much she loved me. My grandparents’ lives weren’t all that exciting, to be honest, because she would tell me things about their garden and how much rain they got. And she’d tell me about the calves, and how she’d given them their bottles. When I was staying with her, she’d let me go help give them bottles. They always had very “cow” names like Bessie and Bossie. (I’m not making this up.) So, to me, cows are these wonderful peaceful animals that I associate with my grandmother. When we go to the fair, I want to see cows. When we go visit my parents, I like to look at the cows that are in their yard (they don’t own the cows - they just let a man keep his cows on their land). I like their big brown eyes and the way they chew. I even like their smell, because . . . that’s how cows smell. For a while when I was growing up, there were horses in the field next to my parents’ house, and I took them sugar cubes and apples, but I never felt about the horses the way I do about cows.

And so I liked how Don Miller talked about the elephants, because it made me remember those days of helping Grandma give the calves their bottles. It’s so strange to me that my youngest cousins won’t have any memories of those things, because the cows were long gone before they were born.

In the chapter on the Gospel, Don Miller talked about how, once when he was teaching a class at a Bible college, he told them he was going to present a form of the gospel but leave out an important part of it. And so he talked about sin and depravity, and how the wages of sin are death, giving examples from our culture. He then talked about morality, about how choosing not to sin can bring such fruit into your life, about heaven and about how fulfillment on earth and afterward could be theirs if they’d just repent and turn from their ways.

None of the students in the class realized he had never mentioned Jesus. They couldn’t figure out what was missing.

On one hand, I can’t believe that. I just can’t. On the other hand, working at a Christian bookstore afforded me the opportunity to see a lot of that kind of thing - the idea that you have to work hard to be a good person and believe the Bible, but not always talking about Jesus. Brian and Sarah were over last night, and we talked about that part of the book, and how it was similar to Brian’s story from a few weeks ago where everybody was talking about hearing from God and nobody was talking about . . . the Bible. American Christianity can be so inwardly focused on how we feel, what we are doing, instead of being focused on Jesus. I would have to say that, if you look over the archives of what I’ve posted here, things for me spiritually have gotten better over the past few years in part because I have learned a lot more about Jesus and in part because I did stop focusing so much on myself and how I was doing, and I have been able to see Jesus more as a source of strength and guidance. In this chapter, Don Miller talks a lot about how the gospel is relational, not a list of ideas, and that has definitely proven to be true in my life.

The part where he lost me was, I confess, the last chapter, the one on Romeo and Juliet. I remember there being a big debate about this chapter at the time the book came out, and I wasn’t able to participate in it because I hadn’t read the book at all. Now I feel qualified to weigh in with my opinion. I am sure you were all waiting with bated breath, were you not? In this chapter, Don Miller uses Romeo and Juliet (specifically the balcony scene) as an allegory for the gospel. I think he makes some compelling points, and if he’d stopped there, I would have enjoyed it. But, in a few places, he seems to say that Shakespeare intended for it to be an allegory, and I honestly think that’s a bit of a stretch. I wish he hadn’t pushed it quite that far, because I think a discussion of how Romeo and Juliet could be seen as an allegory could be a valuable one, but, from what I remember, people didn’t really discuss that part since he claimed it was intentional.

Anyway, the book gave me some stuff to think about, which I appreciate. I always hate to express any kind of opinion on Don Miller, because, for whatever reason, he’s so controversial. But, for me, it was a nice in-between book - I had been reading some light light chick lit, and I’d been planning to start A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but I needed something to bridge that gap. (How is it that I’ve never read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? I remember it always being around when I was growing up, but I’ve never even started it before.) It wasn’t the best book I’ve read all year, but it certainly wasn’t worthy of some of the contemptuous things that I’ve seen written about it, either. Many thanks to Andrea for getting me a copy.

On the way to my parents’ house last night, we were passing through Liberty, a small town close to where I grew up. As we were driving through downtown, I noticed a few dogs on the other side of the road. Suddenly, the four dogs darted into the road and into our lane! There were two big dogs and two small dogs, and they were all barking at us and standing in the road! Every time they moved from in front of the car, Mike would try to move forward, and they would run in front of us again. This happened several times for a couple of minutes. We honked the horn and kept trying to move, but nothing happened. The pack of wild dogs had surrounded the car! We were trapped!

As we sat there trying to figure out what to do, a line of cars formed in the lane behind us. Growing tired of our antics, first one car and then another moved into the turn lane and passed us! That’s right - not only were we surrounded by dogs, but no one cared! It was around this point that I looked at Mike and started laughing uncontrollably. I was afraid that he was going to be upset, so I tried to hide it. Luckily, he finally got free of the dogs and was able to proceed, and he started laughing as well. “We were just attacked by a pack of wild dogs!” I said in between hysterical laughter. “It was like Kujo!”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is one more reason I don’t like dogs. As I told Mike, I would have reached a point where I was like, “Hey, survival of the fittest!” and just driven on, hitting whatever dog was necessary to get out of there. I mean, we weren’t on a dirt road! We were in downtown! There was a turn lane! For the record, Mike says the only reason he didn’t hit them was because he didn’t want to hurt his car. And Mike loves animals. (He did say that if the dogs had started throwing themselves at the car like Kujo, he would have driven on regardless.)

My favorite part of this story was something I didn’t find out until later: When we were telling my parents, Mike confessed that, as the dogs surrounded the car, he reached over and locked his door. That was his natural instinct. I didn’t see this, so go ahead and imagine it with me: A pack of wild dogs surrounding the car, and . . . Mike reaching over to lock his door. Safety first. (Before you ask, my door was already locked. No need to worry about me.)

On the way home, I was secretly hoping that the pack of dogs would attack us again, just to make the story even better. “There’s a pack of dogs running wild in Liberty,” I would say. “The streets just aren’t safe anymore.” However, no such luck. Around the same place where we were attacked, I saw a single large dog standing in a yard. Mike didn’t think it was the same as the ones we saw before, so I’ve decided it was standing guard for the others, looking and listening for unsuspecting cars to attack. As we drove by, it ran to the back yard, no doubt to rally the rest of its gang.

On the 4th of July, I found myself standing by the side of the road (under an umbrella) watching two sets of fireworks go off, one to my right and one to my left. The car stereo was cranked up, patriotic music was playing, and, oh yeah, the two guys I was standing with had patriotic bandanas draped on their shoulders. For whatever reason, people driving by were looking at us kind of strangely. Go figure.

And that probably wasn’t even the weirdest thing that happened this weekend. After all, the setting off of fireworks is enough to make an entire city come to a screeching halt. We weren’t the only car parked by the side of the road, even if we were the only car on that particular road. One of the things I love about the 4th of July is the relentless pursuit of fireworks. People angling for the best spots, people camping out for hours beforehand. Why do people (except Dawn) love fireworks? Why do we drop everything to watch them?

Fireworks make me feel like a kid again, like the last day of school before summer break. Like catching fireflies by the trees at the edge of our yard. Like homemade ice cream at my grandparents’ house. Like I do on my birthday, which is one of the reasons that fireworks and I have such a great relationship. In middle school and high school, we stopped going to see the fireworks quite as much, but I am glad Mike has helped restore the tradition of cheesy music, patriotism, and angling for the best possible view.

You don’t care about any of that, though, do you? You just want to know what could possibly be more strange than standing by the side of the road blaring “America” by Neil Diamond while people drive by giving you pitying looks. There are a few candidates:

It could have been when my shirtless next-door neighbor offered to let me, Adriene, Andrea, and Alisa (Kari and the Three A’s) get in his hot-tub. We declined. Actually, I declined for everyone else, finished playing with sparklers, and told the other three when we got inside. Much squealing ensued. Which was exactly why I didn’t tell them when we were outside. Sure, we can mock him, but we have to do it in the safety of my four walls.

Perhaps it was the real fireworks that people in our neighborhood were continually setting off all weekend long, much to the chagrin of whoever lived next door to them (or so I gathered from the yelling). I remember people setting off fireworks at their houses, but never big real ones. It was especially exciting when one apparently went off while still on the ground, and the yard was sprayed with colorful sparks. There was an extra-special bout of yelling after that one.

But it was probably the proliferation of glowsticks (that almost kept Mike out of the amphitheater), American bandanas (that helped Scott make friends in Target and Mike make friends at the grocery store), and embarrassing dancing that took place at the Kelly Clarkson concert. I very rarely go out in public and act foolishly on purpose, but apparently Kelly Clarkson brings out that side of me. We sang. There was dancing and jumping. There was no way for people to know that . . . we don’t always behave like that. Nor do we always wear glowsticks to concerts. Or accost little children and demand to have our picture taken with their Kelly Clarkson posters. So I’m pretty sure that everyone around us thought we were a truly weird group of people who are freakishly obsessed with Kelly Clarkson. Hence all the, “KELLY CLARKSON, WOOOOOOOO!” yelling. Instead, I think we are a truly weird group of people who are mildly obsessed with Kelly Clarkson. And Adriene, the photographer who does not judge us. At least while we are in earshot.

Having been to see Coldplay with a similar group of people (Susan, that was supposed to make you feel sad twinges. Did it work?), let me say that the overall crowd was much more fun at this concert. And by “much more fun,” I mean “much less drunk” and “much less crowded.” Which made it much more fun. No drunk frat guys looking for diamond rings they dropped. Nobody walking through our huge pile of snacks. Just good times with friends and fun pop music.

Scott pointed out that the weekend was all-American: baseball games, American Idols, and, well, I didn’t make apple pie, but I did make peach cobbler. Close enough, right? I made flag cake! Surely that should count for something!

Last year after Birthday Weekend, I thought a lot about how great my friends are, and the only thing I can do this year is repeat that sentiment. I had such a great time this weekend - my only regret is that there weren’t more hours in the day so there could have been more sleeping. But there was so much I want to remember about this weekend - the quiet night in with the girls where we played with sparklers and talked. Going to church with Scott, where we had an excellent discussion about Elizabethtown. The cookout that was attended by so many people I care about and who care about me, which made it much more fun than stressful. Seeing different parts of my life integrate pretty successfully (but how could they not when two adorable little girls were involved?). The s’mores we made as we initiated our new fire pit. Shopping with Dawn and Adriene. Going to Target for snacks (per our concert tradition). The sheer volume of fun of seeing Kelly Clarkson with a bunch of 13-year-olds. Taking Adriene to the airport (and being hungry for pizza at 8am). Watching The Office with Scott and Mike (Dawn was asleep) while baking a cake. Yelling “WAFFLES” with friends who don’t think I am ridiculous for doing so - and having Adriene on the phone when the Waffle House Strikeout Victim actually struck out. And wrapping up the weekend by watching fireworks by the side of the road. It went by so fast, and I’m so glad there are pictures to tell parts of all the different stories that took place. I’ve sort of gotten to the point that this entry has said all I can say right now, even though it’s not everything that could be said by any means.

Mike asked me what I was going to title this post, and I said, “Just ‘Birthday Weekend 2006.’ Should I subtitle it something like ‘This much fun is impossible to top?’” And Mike’s face suddenly looked both happy and sad, and he said, “Yeah, I don’t know if we ever will.” Thanks to all of you who came and made it such a fun time, or sent supplies and presents or called or just enjoyed the many pictures. You are greatly appreciated.

And Mike and I were there.