Christmas was so relaxing this year, and made even more special by my parents upcoming move from the big blue house on Hardscrabble Road. Next year we will be having an Idaho Christmas, or perhaps filling up the guest room at my grandparents house. It's funny how we are given new eyes to see the things that are important to us, just in time for them to change. Does the promise of loss make old things seem glamorous, or just shed some light on the way things have always been? Either way, it seems important to realize that we don't have to continue dwelling in the past in order for it to be precious to us.
Easier said than done, as life marches on before we are ready. Or should I say, before I am ready. Me, the grown child who once became depressed and despondent when my dad chose to chop down a tree in our yard. One that was interfering with the power lines. Not my favorite climbing tree, but just a tree. Just a slight alteration of the view from the kitchen window. If I had known what an environmentalist was then, I would have eagerly joined the cause at the age of six. Not to protect mother earth, but to save my little girl brain from the uncertainy of sitting in the back seat of a minivan, never knowing when we would round the curve to find a bald hillside where once stood a forest.
There is something so urgent and temporary about being human; something in all of us that gets nostalgic about the time that is slipping through our fingers, knowing we can never have it back...and something that makes us get all teary eyed and sappy about babies growing up, and say stuff like, I remember when you were born, and other highly original phrases.
Last night, I lay awake in what used to be my bedroom, with my husband beside me (weird), and thought about all the thinking, planning, and dreaming that went on there...wishing on a plastic glow in the dark star from Wal Mart. Never could I have imagined a life as full and blessed as the one that has come my way so far.
All that to say that this Christmas, we all collected some more beautiful memories in the blue house...ones that will stay with us through the inevitable changes as my mom and dad move to Boise, Jonah learns to walk, my little brother graduates from high school...and yes...a tree is chopped down to make way for a clearer view.

Jonah at six months

The day after Christmas, I got to spend some time with Kara, Joel and JONAH! He grows to be more delightful every day. Lately he is all smiles, especially when he's with his mama.

The fabric of our lives

Today I wore a beautiful new scarf, crocheted by my mother. It is very warm in color and in function.

I am naming the colors myself, since they are too rich and varied for the usual names.

Merlot and raspberry jam...two of my favorites. Although that might not be a very good combination in your mouth (yuck), it sure is beautiful in yarn to be wrapped around your neck. There is also an orange cinnamonish color that I have yet to name. Any ideas?

Adding to my textile delight, I also received this blanket from India. I find it pretty special since it is handmade out of used saris, and handpicked by my little sister.

This website tells the story about the organization where the blanket came from.

http://www.saribari.com/

And here is an excerpt from their website that I copied and pasted (can I do that?)

Sari Bari is a safe home where women, who have been exploited in the sex trade, can have their dignity restored and experience new life in the making.
Each of our products made from the Indian sari is marked with a woman's name, a woman who now has the opportunity to make a choice for freedom and new life.

Direction

my little sister's favorite red shoes. ruby red slippers to bring her home on Saturday. Yay!

For some time now, I've been searching for some direction for my blog. I've always been a sporadic journaler, and am finding blogging to be a similar experience. Chronicalling everything that goes on in my life ends up being pretty tedious for me, and I find that it just becomes another thing on the to do list.

But, I really like blogging...I eagerly check my friends blogs for new posts, hoping for something new to read...and I enjoy the connections that it gives people; a window into someone else's life that you might not gather from passing the time of day. So, I haven't wanted to throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet (what a horrible metaphor).

What I would really like to turn this blog into, is a way to practice making a big deal about the everydayness in everyday life. I need a place to document the presence of God in the details....you know, in the small stuff....as in, "don't sweat the ______". side note: could anyone please tell me whether or not periods and commas go inside of quotations marks or outside? It's getting a little embarrassing to not know that.

Anyways, back to my revelation about blogging. Having a place to record my observations will help me get in the habit of noticing God around every corner. Because there really is a whisper of the divine in everything, and I want to tune my ears to hear it. I miss out on where God is in my life, because I am looking for her in something so....Goddish. Except for the fact that that is not a word. And then I wonder where God is. I actually ask myself that sometimes. But I know that I am the only one. :)

Self Doubt: The Loudest Voice in my Head

I've got zero creative energy tonight, but just want to bring up the topic/topics of:
Self Doubt
Self Counsciousness
Insecurity
The voice that seems to speak up the loudest, is the one that confirms my deepest fears. I want to drown that voice out; listen to it less and give it no room in my life. But old habits die hard.
I know that the voice of Jesus speaks of love, freedom, acceptance...this is the voice that I need to turn up the volume on.
Otherwise, I end up trapped inside myself; tangled up in my own fears with no one room to see anyone else. Aside from the anxiety that my insecurities bring me...they keep me focused on myself, and incapable of cultivating the kind of love that Jesus gave out with abandon.

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

from a poem by Mary Oliver

Now

my Gramps knows how to live in the moment and so does my Grammie.
Here he is picking blackberries.

Does anyone else find themselves putting off contentment?

Lately I've been noticing that my brain is always going a million miles an hour, and even if I have some down time, I have lost the art of just being in the present moment.

I catch myself unsettled about whatever I am doing currently, and always looking towards the future (near or far) to bring me a greater sense of fulfillment.

I put off my life until someday...and I'm getting a little sick of it.

Here are some examples:

As soon as I get through my first two classes, and I can can get coffee during my break and everything will be fine.

or

When I don't have to work as many hours I will be able to keep up my house better, and that will make us feel settled.

or

When I get to know these people better (could be anyone), then I will have the confidence to reach out to them.

or

When we are done with school, and have time to spend together without homework, Bryan and I will learn to communicate better.

or

Next week when I'm not as busy, I will prioritize my friends and call them

or

If I can just make it through the week and get home to my parents house for Thanksgiving, then I will really enjoy myself.

or

If I could get back to my pre-marriage weight, then I would feel good about my appearance.

or

When I can travel again to help people in third world countries, I will feel a sense of purpose.

or

When I reach my production goals at work then I will start enjoying it.

Some of these are grounded in truth...some of them are not. Regardless, the point is that I am doing a lot of missing out on what is in front of me, and what is unique to my life right now....

right now..........or now.....

......................................................and now.

Mary Oliver's poems are really powerful to me because they emphasize the sacred in the everyday moments of life.

I will post some, but not today.....Maybe someday....when I'm not so busy :)

I plan on writing more on this blog soon, and not using pictures to fill up most of the space, so hang in there with me. Right now my school life is a little writing intensive, so I spend my creative energy on that...maybe I'll just post some of my writing for school, and use it for two purposes.

Bryan Lee is 24 today

I'm so thankful that my sweet husband was born...in 1983...3 months before me.
His first home was in Palisade, Colorado (http://www.townofpalisade.org)

Here is a picture of him doing what he does best. I love to see the world through his eyes.

And some people pictures...still in Astoria

Bryan thinking deep thoughts.








mom-in-law. she is adorable, and I love her.








Bryan was teasing me about something, and I was clearly outraged :).








My father-in-law, Gary is reading something historical.

Astoria

a view of the city

Bryan's parents flew in from Colorado last weekend and we all drove to Astoria to spend a lovely night at a bed and breakfast. I really fell in love with the town, which sits where the Columbia River meets the Ocean. Here are a few highlights.



the street, looking out from the pier








haunted house

Monet Refuses The Operation

(this picture of Lisby Rogers seems to go well with this poem. thanks for the use of it Lisby)

poem by :Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
(photo by Bryan Rupp)

My Friend Kara: A Sappy Love Story

I would like to devote some space on my blog, to my friends from time to time.


Let's begin with the friend formerly known as Kara Lee White, who has now become Mrs. Joel Young, and the proud mama of the adorable Jonah Julius, pictured in my previous posts.We have both been feeling a little sentimental lately about our friendship as we grow older and realize what a huge role it has played in our life. Friendships that last forever are rare, and ours is one of those treasures. We started out playing together when we little, off and on when I would come back from Kenya. We really became close in high school when we clung to each other for companionship and made ourselves laugh so that we could get through it.


Since high school graduation in 2002 (gulp)...


Our friendship has more than stood the test of time,


Spanning all the phases of our lives.


I don't have any recent pictures of the two of us together, so that will have to change soon.

Here we are about 3 years ago

Jesus Christ

I have been thinking about him a lot lately. I wish that wasn't something so new that it was worthy of a blog post, but that is where I find myself.

The sermon series at church has been about Jesus, and the Gospel (a novel concept, I know). Two weeks ago, Pastor Rick talked about how one of the problems with Christians is that we are not fully convinced ourselves, of some of the basic truths that we claim. Deep inside we're not entirely sure if Jesus is really our only way, our truth, and our life. We're not fully convinced that he is our only hope for this life. We keep thinking that we can come up with a better solution to fill the emptiness that we feel, or to heal the hurt that we see in the world.

It seems like an elementary concept for someone like me who has been following Jesus for as long as I can remember. But yet I seem to make a game of seeing how far away I can get from Jesus, while still being a part of the religion that is named after him. All of my life I need to be surrounded by friends and family, and a church that points me back in the right direction.

What my little sister has to do with human trafficking

Kolkota, India is home to some 10,000 sex workers, and also, my baby sister. Hannah is currently working with an organization called Word Made Flesh, trying to reach out to the women in the red light districts, in the city best known by outsiders as the home of Mother Teresa, and prostitutes. Many of the sex workers have been trafficked from Nepal, or Thailand, and are trapped in their lifestyle by debt, or physical force. Word Made Flesh is trying to build relationships with the workers, and connect them with organizations that can help them escape, and build a better life.

I am so proud of Hannah, I could bust. Here is a picture of her and her little buddy Sanju.

The Vote

Here is a confession: I don't usually vote, and I am very embarrassed about it. I mean to. I want to, and I believe in doing it.
The one and only political act in my life has been to march in the peace rally in Portland this year. Even then, I felt a bit ignorant, like a second rate marcher, who was going to be found out, and kicked out, because I wasn't wearing a shirt that says "Bush is the Antichrist". I don't find myself championing for any one political candidate, or party, and I feel horribly uninformed, so I bow out in a very cowardly way.
Today in my Gender Communications class we were discussing the history of Women's Suffrage, and how so many women and men fought a long and hard battle, so that I would have the right to vote. I was humbled, and grateful.
It means the world to me to have that opportunity. It really does. Almost as much as it means to me that my mother has stuck out a tough few years as a female youth and family minister, within a church tradition where the female part of that is a problem for many.
She does it because of God's call on her life. She has a message about Jesus that she wants to share through her work, and so she is willing to take the heat, and carry on.
She also does it for her daughters, and granddaughters. So that we might not discount God's call on our lives, or our spiritual experiences as less than valid within our church families.
I am so thankful for people who see a bigger picture than just what is acceptable in the culture around them. I shudder to think about where we would we be if no one was willing to question the social norms of their day and age. Let me throw out a word like....slavery, for example.
(On a side note...sex slavery and human trafficking have not been eliminated from the world. At all. Not even close).
So.....I am going to make a conscious effort about becoming an informed voter. Not just for the presidential elections, but in local things that affect the schools and people who live in my community.

"The Wild Rose"

Here is something that I did not write. But it says something that I find to be very real. I shared this with my husband Bryan. He is the one that I choose every day.

by Wendell Berry
for his wife

Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,

Suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,

and once again I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before.

Sweet Boy

Jonah in the Fall

Here are some pictures of my best friend Kara's beautiful baby boy. His name is Jonah Julius Young.
These were taken at my parents house, by my husband,

shortly after Jonah celebrated
3 months of life.

Bryan took this picture.
of a leaf,on the sidewalk,
in Portland


Hannibug, this is for you, since you don't get to see the fall colors this year.

5 Reasons Why I Started a Blog

1. I was at work late, and trying to distract myself from my taks.
2. I have friends and family far away who I would like to keep updated on the life of Bryan and I. You won't be receiving a mass Christmas letter update from Bryan and I, so consider this as a substitute. (maybe next year).
3. My little sister has one, and I would like to be like her when I grow up. Actually, I would like to be able to post on her blog, without being anonymous.
4. I need some writing practice, as I am getting a little rusty. If you want to know the truth, I was invited into a writing group this summer, only to realize that I would have nothing to actually bring. I am not the only person in the history of time to think of herself as a writer, without actually ever having written anything. I know this, because one of my friends has confessed to me that she is in the same boat. We are currently recovering, and trying to be more honest.
5. I can't think of a fifth one, and its dinner time. I wrote the title before I actually had five reasons.