Sharing Life

They didn't know I was in town.  I knew I couldn't leave without seeing them.

After dinner one evening, I gave them a call.  No answer.  I called their cell phone.  No answer.  I called the house phone again.  Still no answer.

"What do you want to do?" Laura asked.  "Do you want to go over there and check or just wait awhile?"

I hesitated.  There are some people in my life that the best (read: only) way to get a hold of them is face-to-face.

"Do you mind if we just run over there?"

She didn't.

We figured they were having Family Time.  The phone does not interrupt Family Time but Katie and Laura are welcome to Family Time.

We were wrong.

The phone went unanswered because Ruth was out walking the dog.  When we pulled up beside her she gave us a small wave.  Her eyes were teary.  We parked and ran over to hug her.

"Jesus sent you to me!" She said.  Twice.

Her father who, despite being in his 90s, had been doing relatively well had taken a bad turn.  She didn't know if he had hours to live or weeks.  She didn't know if he'd still me alive in a week when they made the cross-country trip home.  She didn't know if she wanted the opportunity to say goodbye or if she would prefer he pass quickly rather than suffer.  It had only been a month since her mother went home to heaven.

The three of us walked around the neighborhood hand in hand, tear in tear.  Then we sat on the couch together, journeyed back through life, and cried some more.  Sometimes we talked.  Sometimes we blubbered.  Sometimes we sat in silence.  We shared life.

We prayed to God.  We praised God.  We questioned God.  We said, "Thy will be done."

Thanks to her sons, we were the hill in a painful rendition of King of the Hill.  We were drooled on by the dog.  We cleaned up the kitchen.

Laura and I had no idea what to expect when we decided just to go over.  But we're so glad we did.  God was using us and, at first, we had no idea.

Be intentional.  Life is messy: share it with someone.  Drop in to check on a friend.  Let God provide your shoulder, your hug, your friendship for someone in need.  You never know when your smile is the highlight of their day.  When your kind word is really the Holy Spirit speaking directly to their heart.

<>< Katie

UPDATE: Earlier this week Ruth sat at her father's bedside and heard him draw his last breath before he went Home to his Father's House.  Please take a minute to pray for the family as they are grieving but also rejoicing that he's now healthy and whole.

Orange

"Are you ok with the orange?"

Instead of selling it for profit, Ruth was giving me a three by three book I'm going to fill with Bible verses.  The book has an orange theme, and I'm a purple girl.  I assured her the orange was fine and thanked her for the gift.

While orange does not make it in my top three favorite colors, it holds a special significance.

Orange is the color of the World Vision pen on my desk because it is bright enough to not get lost in the heap of dead trees.

Orange makes me think of Nikki and her now, rightfully, retired phone...
Orange makes me think of Carrie.

Orange is construction cones and Taco Bell hot sauce.

Orange makes me think of Guatemala.
Orange helped me realize that just like white crevices in stucco take forever to fill so does sin take forever to be removed from our lives. Every time we think we’re getting close, we find yet another missing spot… and then some more.
Orange is a reminder to stop and listen. Sometimes we have to be quiet to hear what God is trying to say.

Orange mean authority.
Orange means funs, friendly, and flexible.
Orange proclaims, "We believe!"

More than anything, Orange reminds me of my trip to New Orleans where I got to be part of Orange Nation. A week of long days and short nights. A week sacrificing ourselves and serving one another. A week of almost being trampled every night as I tried to play crowd control for 25,000 excited youth. A week I learned where "challenging" and "cherished" can intertwine.

I won this game, by the way.

Happy Reformation Day.
Happy Halloween.
Let orange be more than the color of the "publish post" button.

<>< Katie

Finals Week

I'm kind of on a roll spilling secrets this week, so we're going to go with one more: I love exam week.

1. Boing, Boing, Boing
There is this unwritten rule against throwing bouncy balls inside the apartment.  I grew up in a house with a strictly-enforced "no throwing balls in the house" rule, but apparently Andy didn't.  It's not unusual to find bouncy balls whipped at you from across the room.  Well, over the last semester these bouncy balls have disappeared into dark crevices of life.  Since we're actively moving out, they've been reappearing and flipped into full action.  Boing, boing, boing.

2. Out to Dinner
I rode an hour with my adoptive family to have dinner with my parents.  It was weird to arrive with someone else, eat with those people and my parents, and leave with someone else.  Just to paint the picture for you: my dad is shy, naive, and quiet.  So is Ruth.  Dr. Z is a strange bird, and Mom is Sarah Palin.  Yes, I think we were the waitress's favorite table that day.  Well, we were her only table for awhile because we scared away the rest of the guests... Oops.  By the end of dinner she'd challenged my dad to go trout fishing in the lake and offered to play frisbee with Malachi in the parking lot.  On the ride back, we tried to use the words "indefatigable" and "perspicacity" in normal conversation.  Bonus points if you could get them both into a single sentence.

3. How did this happen?
Allyson and I use two separate bathrooms, so how we met outside one to do this I'm still not sure.  I had my "gooked" electric toothbrush in my right hand held high above my head.  In my left I held Allyson's left wrist.  In her right hand she had an open bottle of listerine.  Realizing how silly we looked we burst out laughing and couldn't figure out what we were doing.  Something about Allyson wanting to turn on my toothbrush and spray toothpaste all over the apartment...

4. Breakfast of Champions
The incentive to walk to the caf to eat breakfast before an exam is virtually non-existent.  Luckily, we also have to use up our points and eat all of the bizarre food we've accumulated throughout the semester.  Nikki ate a re-heated hot dog, chips, and old cheese dip.  Allyson ate some chocolate cake with her whipped cream.  Chris, an hour away and unaware of our creativity, had a peanut butter sandwich.  I feel lame for eating an apple and peanut butter (by clutching the jar of peanut butter between my knees); I really don't like apples.

5. EXPECTO PATRONUM!
Allyson's taking a conducting class right now, so her baton is waving as she prepares.  Carrie borrowed said baton and turned it into a Harry Potter wand.  My favorite part is when she speaks into the end of the wand so that it can hear her better.  :-)

6. (in the middle of a class discussion exam)
Dr. T: Alex Haley and Malcolm X co-write the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and they both have "X" in their name.  Isn't that weird?
Katie: What do you have against people that have "X"es in their names?
Dr. T: Nothing... it's just... Saxon has an "X," too, and you're sitting next to each other.
Katie: It was the "X" factor that drew us together on this side of the room.
Dr. T: My middle name is "X."
Katie: Are you lying to me?
Dr. T: It's Xavier.
Katie: You are lying to me.
The rest of the class kind of stared at us.

7. Redecorating?
Nikki: Remember that one time our phones used the same charger?
Katie: Remember that one time you asked to borrow my phone charger and I said no because you licked me?
I do remember that one time when Nikki stole my phone charger and replaced all of the photos on my bulletin board with Kleenexes... Thanks.

8. Why is Cornhole in our apartment?  (aka Bean Bag Toss)
I really don't know, but we played.  Who says Cornhole's an outdoor game?  We played in the living room with one person standing on the Platonic Love Seat and the other standing one of the arm chairs.  I'm better inside than out.

9. Four Hour Exams
It started innocently enough at 6pm.  By 6:30 our class of eight was seated around Dr. Paul's dining room table eating summer chili, chocolate-covered pretzels, and (get this!) fresh strawberries.  By 7:15 we were having a living room discussion of the Christology of William Paul Young as found in his book, The Shack.  By 8, we'd looked up the Wii Fit.  For the next two hours we pondered how "Grandaddy" was born in 1975, is 5'7", and weighs 107 pounds... Either way, he looks great while juggling, hula hooping, and flying in a chicken suit!

10. Moving
This is my least favorite part of spring exam week: studying and packing at the same time.  Some of my stuff goes to storage; some of my stuff goes home.  Friday means 14 hours of driving, three cars and two drivers.  Wait.  Switch that.  I guess I'm not indefatigable.  By the time you're reading this, we've probably gotten a little giggly in the car.  After retelling our favorite stories we'll start playing word games.  Dad's a "numbers guy" so he loves writing sentences like "Tiny Tim tinkled in the timbers" or "Blue birch-bark burn on Bob's bum."  Mom's a little bit better.  :-)

Bon voyage and bueno suerte,

<>< Katie

New Rule

"What did you do over break?" Ruth asked me on Friday night.

"Blogged, scrapbooked, blogged, wrote, blogged," I told her. I little while later I was telling her about my new blogger obession, and she laughed at me!

"You're right, you did blog all break!"

I can't help it. On Friday, I had a little while to check my email before class. I checked all of my email addresses, read blog updates (a lot of people updated on Friday, might I add), and still had a few minutes left before class.

I'm missing one, I thought to myself. There's some website I always check that I haven't checked yet this morning.

I thought about it for about thirty seconds before it dawned on me and I literally laughed out loud. In the library. I had not checked facebook!

With that said, I proclaim a new rule.

I know, "Too many rules; no more rules." My mom tells me that all of the time, but I think she will approve of this one.

No blogs before homework is completed for the next day.

This doesn't mean I can't check blogs during my class break on MWF but only AFTER I eat breakfast. Learned that lesson last week... ask my ASL class about my noisy estómago. :-)

However, I cannot read blogs in my apartment until after I've done my homework (or at least a significant amount it). Otherwise we have weekends like this one.

What did I do this weekend?

Friday: blogged, chilled at the northern harbor, and wrote (very productive)
Saturday: blogged, scrapbooked, and went out to dinner (wonderful social time)
Sunday: church, blogged, had dinner in, and went bowling (Disappointed with myself)

Do you see a lot of homework being done here? I don't. I see a lot of blogging. :-)

Don't get me wrong, I loved my weekend, and I'm slowly getting better regarding my recent blogger obsession, but it's still the first thing I want to do everyday.

No blogs until after I've done my reading. Sorry, yall.

<>< Katie

Cell Phone and Gloves

I'm looking through my blog and realize I have a lot of drafts that never got posted. Most of them I just published as they were and were recorded under the day written. This one I rewrote, so I put it on a new day. This happened sometime during the past semester:

Last night, I walked up to order my food and the woman behind the counter was texting... with her gloves on... I made my order, she reached for my pizza, and I added, "And I'd like you to change your gloves before you make it, please. Sorry." Her face changed and she looked at her coworker as if to say, "Did you hear that?"

I felt rude, yet not sorry. If it happened again, I'd do the same thing, and here's why:
1. She should not be texting a work.
2. If she must text behind the counter, her gloves should have been removed. I've always learned that when gloves are on you are committed to what you are doing and nothing else. If you do something else, change your gloves. It's not that hard.
3. Cell phones are among the germiest things on the planet.

I shared this story with my surrogate family because Ruth is more outspoken than I am and she would have had no problem asking the woman to change her gloves. Yes, Ruth definitely agreed with me. My brother Andy, looked and me and said, "That's awful!" I like to think my eyes got huge when he said that because he kind of backpeddled realizing how that could have been interpreted. He then added, "That she did that, I mean; you were in the right."

Why does the right still feel wrong? What would you have done? Sometimes God tells us to do something that is right but it still feels wrong.

What would you have done in the dirty glove situation?
<>< Katie

Holding History in my Hands

I kind of want to just see how many days in a row I can update my blog. Posting comments might encourage me to be more diligent.

I don't remember where I read this, but I read it within the last few days. It said, "Everyday, do something you don't want to do." I had to read it twice before I really understood it. Everyday, do something you don't want to do. Some days I just don't want to get up in the morning. Other days, I don't want to clean. Today was both of those days.

I awoke this morning to "Moving Day" at my grandparents house. No one was really moving, but the furniture was. It's hard to sleep when someone's carrying beds and dressers down the hall and stairs right next to your room anywhere much less in an old farmhouse where the floor squeaks if you look at it. Then--go figure--they need something out of your room. It's hard to keep four dogs out and ten people quiet anywhere, but it's even harder at my grandparents'.

The men loaded the furniture into trucks and the women decided we should take the opportunity to go through some boxes. After all, we were all there, and the boxes needed to be moved anyway. It was a job no one really wanted to do but desperately had to be done! My grandmother is a pack-rat, and it seems whenever someone passes away, she gets their stuff. She has all of her mother's stuff, all of her friend Ruth's stuff, and some of other miscellaneous friends' stuff. As a result, my grandparents' five-bedroom farmhouse, barn, and garage are FULL! Someone had to sleep on the floor last night. Not because there weren't enough beds, but because we couldn't GET to all of the beds. Every room in their house is a fire hazard.

We started going through boxes. Ruth's stuff has the least sentimental value, takes up the most space, and has been sitting un-touched for the most years (because we don't know what's in there), so it was a good place to start. We went through a plethora of old boxes and each of us came home with an item or two. Then, a truck load when to Good Will. We even made sure the truck left and everything wasn't piled back into the house, too! (We're getting smarter in our old age).

There were some cool items. Like a WWI military pin that my cousin snatched up before I could claim. A plethora of handkerchiefs we gave to a friend. My mom got a martini shaker. My aunt found a pretty crystal vase. My sisters took necklaces, books, and bent-out-of-shape rings. I wasn't so excited about Ruth's stuff, although I did find a fun-colored kitchen set I'm storing at my grandparents' house until I have an apartment.

I was more excited about the fact that Grandma let me go through her books and see if there was anything in there I wanted. After all, I am an English major. She'd already gotten rid of a lot of them (yay for Grandma!), and she wanted to rid of the rest before we came back at Thanksgiving. I'd already read most of the titles and searched for a good book to read on other visits, but this time I was searching with a different intention.

I only pulled out a few books. A dictionary of quotable definitions from 1970. Grandma was sooooo excited that I wanted it. I'll have to add "reading the dictionary" to my interests on facebook... haha.

I asked Grandma if I could have her hymnal. It was a confirmation gift given to her by her parents in 1952! She said I couldn't take it today, but at some point, yes, I could have it. I pray maybe she'll read it, though the chances are unlikely.

One of my coolest finds for the day was actually in Ruth's stuff. It's a medical book from 1912. It's well-loved, even though all of the pages are still in tact. Even though I know it's really out-dated, and I don't really plan on reading it, it's still something cool to have. How many people have books from before World War One? Not to mention one where it's very easy to note changes and technological advancements since then! I just felt like it was something that shouldn't be lost in the house (or the piles for Good Will). If you ever want to know the 1912 treatment for something, let me know! :-)

Even though cleaning anyone's house does not sound like a fun job and was not on my list of things to do today: it was well worth it! There are only six words that seem appropriate for the hard work done today:
"Well done good and faithful servant."

Ok, maybe a little sac-religious, but it works!

Sorry, this is a really long, pointless post, but thanks for reading!

In Christ
<>< Katie

"His master replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!'" Matthew 25:21

Lost in a one stop-light town?

Ok, so we weren't exactly lost. Nor did we know exactly where we were. We knew we were on the north side of the river and the east side of the highway, but that's about it.

A few weeks ago Laura and I decided we should be more physically active and since neither of us like to run we decided to go for walks. Most of our walks have been like, "Let's walk to the lake and walk back." Or "Let's walk to Ruth's and sit on her couch for two hours then walk back." One day we started walking and wound up at the coffee shop with smoothies... so much for being healthier. :-)

Yesterday we decided to take advantage of the beautiful day and go for a walk along the river. We contemplated walking to the river or driving. For the sake of time and to control the length of our walk we decided to drive. (haha!) After I got out of the class and she got off work at 2:30 we drove to the river and began to walk. It was really pretty and it made me feel like walking along the river at home (except there were sketchier people here than at home). We got to a certain point and Laura said, "I've never gone any further. Let's make our own trail!" We tried that for awhile but it wasn't working too well. In the middle of nowhere we found this gravel path and I thought it would be fun to follow it (please notice following the path was my only decision about the walk all day). We followed it for a long time before it branched off and the gravel road went one direction up a hill and a grass path went another direction up a steeper hill... Laura felt it would be smarter to follow the gravel path and she was right. They both met up at the top, and our walk continued. Eventually the gravel road ended, but it was not anywhere near where we expected it to. We wandered along the road for a long time still only have an slightly educated guess as to where we were. We refused to ask anyone for directions (mostly because there wasn't anyone to ask) as we continued walking. Around every curve of the road and at every "stop sign ahead" sign we expected to find the highway. However, the closer we got the more we realized it wasn't what we were anticipating. At one point, Laura looked over, "LOOK! I see a steeple! I know where we are! Unless, of course, there's more than one church." Good job, brilliant. We're in the Bible belt, there are eight churches every block. :-) Around four o'clock we finally found the highway we had been looking for and had to walk 1.6 miles back to get her car. We finally made it back to campus around 5:15!

Our walk wound up being two and half hours long with minimal stopping. We estimate it to be upwards of six miles! Even though our legs wanted to kill us at the end and our feet had disowned us, we still had a blast! However, if you are ever walking along the river: don't take the gravel path because it just leads further and further away from where you wanted to go. :-)

<>< Katie

"He looked up and said, "'I see people; they look like trees walking around.'"
Mark 8:24