Sister Time

The main reason I flew home to Delaware for this first part of the summer was to be here for Michelle's graduation. She graduated second in her class, and consequently had to give a speech at graduation. Michelle, like me, is very sensitive, and she has a acute fear of public speaking. Nevertheless, she decided not to back out of the opportunity (other people offered to do the speech for her) and to face down her phobia. I was so proud of her! She got a bit choked up a couple of times during her speech, but everyone in the audience clapped for her until she was able to keep on going. I nearly started crying myself - I was so proud.

Michelle with some of her graduation presents.

After we went home and Michelle opened some of her graduation presents, I took her out to IHOP for a late-night celebration dinner. She has now experienced the joys of stuffed french toast covered with strawberries (one of my IHOP favorites!) We got a booth by the windows so that we could watch the thunderstorm outside.

It's been great to have time to hang out with Michelle. We've had fun watching a ridiculous number of movies, listening to and critiquing music, dyeing our hair, shopping, playing card games (and creating our own rules), and just generally being silly. I've also been teaching Michelle ballroom dancing.

We tried to dye our hair red, but it didn't entirely work. Here are pictures.

Fun at the Beach

Mom, Michelle and I drove to the beach today. It's only an hour away, but we hardly ever go. It's a bit crowded, and very much commercialized, but we had fun anyway. We created two different sand sculptures (Mom did most of the artistic work) played in the water some, sat in the sun, and got a bit crispy around the edges (I forgot to put sunscreen on my lower back).

The horse was about life-sized, and the cat was a bit bigger than a house cat. It got washed away once while we were working on it, so we had to start over. It's one of the hazards of making sand sculptures.

On the drive there and back, we listened to the radio, and sang along with some of the songs we knew. Mom put up with it nobly.

Tie Dye Fashion

Two summers ago, I was the arts and crafts director at a camp in Pennsylvania. I created quite a few extra shirts as templates, and I found some of them in my closet. On a whim, I decided to cut them up a bit and see what kinds of styles I create. Here are some of the results.

Girl Time

Last weekend my friends Lynne and Jenn came from St. Louis to visit. It was great to have some girl time. We got all dressed up, and went out on the town - first to the Piano Bar to listen to some live music, then to Generic (a local dance club). We got home around 1:30am, had icecream and cheetoes, and started watching "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." In the morning, we finished the movie, made apple cinamon chocolate chip pancakes (yummy!) and then went thrift-store shopping. While we were shopping downtown, it started pouring rain. At first we tried to stay dry, then we embraced the downpour, and went running and laughing and screeching through it. We were a bit cold in our wet T-shirts at Chipotle when we went to dinner, but it was a fun experience. I need to play in the rain more often. :-)

Creating an Open Space

Allowing God to work in us and through us requires us to make space in our hearts and minds. Today as I was praying, I saw more clearly some of what I need to let go to create that open space.

I have been thinking for some time of what it would be like to live every day in trust, and with a full expectation of goodness - to have a deep certainty that God would provide all that I needed, and that most importantly, God had already placed within me all that I needed for happiness, wholeness, success, and fullness of joy. The question then is, if I truly believe that God is our Father and Mother, why am I so reluctant to accept this goodness?

I think what I need to let go of is the willful belief that it is my job to carve out for myself a place in this world, and the fearful belief that I am incompetent to do it. With these beliefs come a huge weight of human baggage.

In letting them go I can see:

• My success as defined by God, not by society
• My happiness as built-in, not gained by achieving certain goals set by myself or others
• My worth as established by God, not conferred on me by anyone else
• My spiritual strength as a beloved child of God
• My beauty as spiritual and pure, not physical
• My unbroken relationship with my Father, Mother, God

To experience this freedom, there are some old habits of thought and action that I need to set aside. I need to stop accepting a false picture of who I am.

We read in the Bible the following injunction: "Put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." Ephesians

Setting aside the fear, willfulness, cynicism, and baggage of an imperfect human history is not an easy thing. I think in my case it requires that I stop the human effort to change myself from something flawed and imperfect into something better and more "worthy." This is hard to do, because then I have to face the fear human rejection and failure. But, unless I stop this human striving, I can't be open to see that God has already created me (as He created each of us) complete, whole, and perfectly good. I have to trust with my whole heart, that even if I cannot see my true identity clearly right now, and even if others never see it, it is who I am, because it is what God created.

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." I John 3:2