what's yours is mine

Part of my job as an intern includes sorting and reading...a lot of reading. I've encountered so many diverse, yet triggering pieces, each one unique to its writer. I'm blogging about this now because I just came across two of the sweetest pieces I've read yet. They pulled at my heart, but also left me with a palpable excitement for what they were updating their readers about.

One of the letters was written by an American man--young, according to the picture he posted alongside the text--living in Korea. He was reporting on how he has met his future wife there, and gave detailed plans explaining their meeting and falling in love. She is now his fiance and wedding arrangements are quickly being made. 

The second letter was noticeably terse and straight to the point. But through the quickly-written text you could feel joy and love pulsing through this man's finger tips. His wife was in labor at the hospital and he was waiting in the lobby for his two twin girls to be born. 

I'll probably never meet either of these men. I'll never hear their long life stories or understand the true emotions they're experiencing as they type away these exciting updates, but their joy has been passed to me in a very real way. I don't need to know them. I don't even need the details, really. And I think that's what I love about writing most. It doesn't take analyzing and extensive knowledge of someone to understand them through their written words. Sometimes all it takes is an exclamation point. 

So, here I sit on a very cloudy, Hitchcockian afternoon and yes, I am indulging myself in a bit of organic peanut butter. On the one side of the coin I am faced with the looming question of, "Becky, did you not enjoy a heaping amount of tortilla chips and salsa (and two itty bitty tacos) for lunch?". On the other side is a very appreciative girl in dutiful gratitude for the absolutely, mouthwateringly delectable treat of buttered peanuts. So to speak.
For all of you out there who are resisting the gym and embracing the chocolate, or whatever else your fancy may be, I say enjoy it! We only live once and our hunger is a good measure of our vivacity for life.
I have spent far too many hours slugging away at myself in anger over my incessant indulgences. I am finally ready to embrace the candy cabinet and take a spoon to the pudding. (Even though I'd probably rather reach for the sugared granola and hazelnut truffles...).
My peanut butter treat started as a spread for my apple...now it's taken on a feast of its own. And I am A-okay with that! You should be too.

Sometimes, unbelievably, we are handed the most neatly packaged, perfectly designated gifts from God, waiting to be unraveled and devoured by our anticipation. Circumstances fall in the exact order as to create the perfect moment, the perfect destiny. This is usually a combination package of our desires mixed with God's fervent longings for our lives--how interchangeable the two are is a completely different matter.
Today was a day of unexpected bliss and satisfaction as I watched the Lord not only fulfill my heart's desires, but also display His own through my abilities. All I can say is THANK YOU, JESUS! And, more on this whole tangent to come. . .

your eyes are the sunset

Today can be a day of prosperity. It can be filled with good hair and sweet nothings exchanged by passers-by to passers-by. It can be filled with the Lord's providence. A day that is nothing short of joy abounding and peace overflowing. Today can look like a sunrise greeted with soothing tea and sugary biscuits, followed by a sunset waved off with a brisk jog and a bottle of iced water. Today can be embraced by a prayer on bended knee, recognizing the existence of such a lovely Creator-God.
Or today can be meaningless. It can be overlooked and forgotten. It can forget where it came from and return to where it had already been. It can be dismal and down, saturated with pessimism and reluctance. It can be denied all of its beauty and all of its divinity.
For me, I choose Life today. I choose joy. I choose love and faithfulness. I choose to taste from the well of goodness and enjoy what my Father has laid before me.
I hope you choose the same.

{print by Peter Tarasiuk Photography}

mmm. mmm.

I would like to give out some love to my sisters who have braved the pathway to fine dining and foodie blogging. As a passionate, pathetic lover of food and one who deeply appreciates all things related to the matter, I could unashamedly gaze at fancy macaroons and posh looking fish tacos with bright hues of greens and reds for hours. One day, I too hope to write something that brings such...salivation to my readers.

What did I get myself into?!

Here I sit at 8:00 p.m., thumbing through pages of sociological research and deconstructionist explanations of literary theory. I will have no life this semester, thank you English Major desires.

So why then, in the midst of all this struggling through understanding and lack of innate insight into theoretical assumptions and wordy textbooks am I unabashedly excited to be so up against every academic difficulty I'm currently facing?

Perhaps haste really does make waste and being lazy, well...only makes you lazy.

So off I go. To study. To learn. To be an intellectual and a theorist. And to become, yes, yet another exhausted, in-too-deep university student waiting to be the next novelist/great mind of America.

Lord, give me the strength!

the new year

Welcome 2010.

And so another year passes, and what mark has really been made? Can we truly say yesterday was a yesteryear and we've moved past the implicit ignorance and mistakes we try to associate with 2009? I don't think it works that way. Today is much like yesterday, identical almost. Just as today is a striking resemblance to 200 years ago, minus the outfits and idioms. But none the less, it's very similar.

We're often victims of "ancientism", this mindset that our time period/generation is any greater than the last. This must have been the same mindset that the Greeks and Romans had viewed their society in, and the Israelites long before them. There is no more progressive or engineering time than the current age, but how many current ages have there been?

Society as a whole functions in much the same way as it always has, despite the year mark. We'll wake up tomorrow and find 2010 to be our new and improved 2009. We'll find the end of this year just as controversial and superior as the last had been. It's the movement of time, the pertinence imputed to the present age.

The wind will blow in the same direction today. The television will use the same remote and old, thumbed-through novels will still flip open to the familiar pages of broken binding that they did a month ago. The only thing that will ever look any different, sound any different, or hold any visage of newness is us. We will change. Even today we are another person than who we had been yesterday. If for no other reason, because we know the promise of 2011--that we will see change and we will be affected by it. Change lies within us. Let us mark our years by that.