"But He gives us more grace."


I am learning to eat Truth for breakfast and to never underestimate the therepeautic power of cleaning the bathroom, washing dishes, and vacuuming. I am learning the beauty of flowers and Christmas lights and love-ferns. I am learning the comfort of grocery shopping and the peace of solitude. I am learning to not only read poetry, but to listen to it, smell it, eat it, and rub it like lotion into my skin. I am learning to say yes and to say no, but I'm still unsure as to when I should actually say them. I am learning to like egg rolls and to dislike gratuitous violence and bad language. I am learning to accept love and hugs without cynicism and self-doubt. I am starved for my family, but I am also learning that it is more important for Camie to get a dog than for her to name it Dante, or Eliot, or Two Headed Boy. I don't know if I'm becoming my mother, or just learning to understand her. I am learning to cry over Christmas carols on September nights. Joy to the world! I am learning about the finer things in life--like a new toothbrush, and pistachios, and Dirty Dancing in the Sigma Lobby. I am learning to order other flavors besides strawberry when we go to get ice cream. I am learning to not steal things from Michael Garten because he will demand them back. I am learning the infinite value of a mother: "What makes mothers all that they are? Might as well ask what makes a star?" I am learning to sit in hushed awe of Dante's artistic genius. I am learning what Barney Fife felt like secretly cooking food on a hot plate in his boarding house. I am learning to read fortune cookies with finesse, to lose graciously, and to love Fall days. I am learning to open windows. I am learning that there are some people I'll never get over--like David Kaufmann, for instance. I am learning to wake up earlier than noon on a Saturday, and to wash dishes right after I use them. I am learning what I never knew: that I am content sitting on a couch reading, content eating rice and beans for dinner, content to sit still. I am learning to use iTunes Music Store to satisfy my deepest desires. ;) I am learning the depth of my own emotions, the heaving of internal waves caused by memories and holidays and familiar music. I am learning to accept this complex mixture of soul and body and love and fear and a million pages of memory constantly suffusing my conciousness. I am learning to accept the wholistic impact of barely comprehensible impressions and sensations and feelings that form themselves into an inextricable collage--an all-telling, but never understandable back drop to my life. I am learning to blend Dante with West Virginia, and to walk the Mountain of Purgatory even as my mind wanders through the hilly streets of Salem, West Virginia. I am learning to walk to school with Anne and Dianna even as I watch college football games with my Dad and buy pumpkins at the grocery store with my Mom. I am learning what to do with the smell of Dad's hot peppers cut up over his plate heaped with rice and peas. I am learning that some wounds can only be healed by pain. I am learning new recipes for beauty--roses and sunflowers and poetry and music and brown skin and sky and hope. I am learning to take naps in the afternoon when the room is drenched in sunlight. I am learning the amazing capability of a window to bring the outdoors inside. I am learning that perfection is simply what is. I am learning to slip into the lobby quietly when Scott is playing the piano so that I can listen peacefully in the dim light.

"Not that I have already obtained all this or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me."