oh, the hours...

The days and hours pass so quickly, yet so slowly, that I find myself not knowing what to do with myself. Be thankful for my job, with my wonderful boss and the knowledge I am gaining from it and the beautiful, aching customers I get to meet and enjoy, or despair because it keeps me locked inside a retail store for too many hours. Perhaps I should keep reading Mother Teresa for lessons on gratefulness. Though it is very true I would rather be lying on a blanket in the grass or gliding down the Longleaf Trace on my bike right now, this is the real world, as my hubby reminded me, and sometimes you just have to make money to survive. So I am trying my darndest to choose gratefulness and joy, in all things. It is necessary. India. Brazil. They remind me of gratefulness, and not just because, "Phew, glad I'm not living on the street or sniffing glue or born into a brothel," but because there is a God who orders the universe and set us a little lower than god-status, and lets us have our hands in this whole beautiful mess. And for that I am learning to be... grateful.


The wonderful body of believers we get to be a part of are really stretching us, in wonderful and frustrating ways. I've always been a part of the United Methodist Church, and even after bitterly running away, I am drawn back to this place. Though I believe that denomination is our measly way or wrapping our hands around a tangible God (who is, I think, intangible) I am still drawn to this body of believers who choose the banner of United Methodist. Inside our walls are more skin colors and tastes in music and home lives than I've ever had in one place before, which obviously is difficult and absolutely refreshing. It is difficult as a self-proclaimed, free-spirited 22-year old to sit in a pew on Sundays singing hymns that I appreciate so deeply, yet yearn to wander from sometimes, just a bit. I would just love to sing.... to God. I'd love to help run sound just to stop the endless squeaking on Sunday mornings, when the mics are turned up too high because someone doesn't really know how to run sound, but is trying to very hard (out of the goodness of their heart, I am sure.)

Then I come back to this: gratefulness. Grateful for this body of belivers, who are struggling just like me, even if over completely different things. But really, what looks different, is quite the same, I think--which is, we're all just trying to figure this out. We're all just trying to figure out what works and what doesn't, how to get through life, how to sing good songs, how to be organized, how to play our roles in life... how to make the journey.

But sometimes I just want to throw it all out and start over.

Starting over, though, is an impossible thing to do. And so I will be start with this hour, this very fleeting, passing ever-so-quickly hour, by being grateful.
Maybe.