Sad, sad, sad, sad--why must I be sad?
Rows of dandelions growing all around me
Why must I be sad?
~They Might Be Giants

I think that song is about Alice in Chains or something, but it's always been a favorite of mine because I'm often sad for no good reason. Another great one that helps is "Think About Your Troubles," where Harry Nilsson makes an argument that thinking about all that is bad in your life is a waste of time.

On the way to seeing Cold Mountain with my mom, I described to her my favorite part of the Return of the King, when Gandalf greets the waking Frodo at the end of their journey, stands in front of him, and laughs. Frodo was given a task--destroy the ring. But there were enemies that didn't want that to happen that gave him a hard time. By the end of the journey, Frodo barely accomplishes this task before he succombs to the other side. In fact, he doesn't actually do the job. Standing in front of the lava, he sees that he's not strong enough, and it takes Gollum to destroy it for him, after all. So, he doesn't really finish out what he was sent to accomplish, but the job gets done despite of his weakness. In that moment when he wakes up and Gandalf is staring at him, there's this moment of fear;"Shit, he knows that I did a crappy job." Gandalf's stern face melts into a joyous visual aid to his bellowing laugh. Frodo joins in, and then the door opens and the Fellowship tumbles inside. They all laugh, embracing; "we made it" is the subtext. Seeing that the first time, I bawled my eyes out because I felt like I was seeing a picture of myself in a few years.
I was given a task. "Follow Jesus." And, like Frodo, today all I can see is what a crappy job I'm doing at it. All the messes I've made that God has cleaned up for me. There's no way I can be a light. But maybe Jesus sees me the way Gandalf saw Frodo. "You made it. You did it. You might not have done it exactly right, but the job is done and now you are here." One day I'm going to die and I'll see Jesus because(I believe)everyone will. I just imagine that he will appear before me, like Gandalf saw Frodo, and he'll be the first thing I see when i open my eyes. And Jesus will crack up. And I will crack up too. And we'll just laugh, because, yeah, I did a pretty crappy job, but who the hell cares? I've made it and all that doesn't matter. And then my fellowship will come tumbling in behind Jesus and we'll all embrace, knowing that we made it. Goodness, that is a nice thought, isn't it? Today would be a nice day to hear "Well done, faithful servent." Because today, I feel like I'm hoping for too much, if I hope I'll hear that. Sigh.

So, we got to the movie 20 mins early. Lord of the Rings played next door to Cold Mountain. I told my mom we could go watch 20 mins of Lord of the Rings. Heh. So we went in and there was Frodo, getting his finger bit off. We watched until the Fellowship came tumbling in. God must have known that I needed to see that again. I love it when that shit happens. It makes my Lord that I'm following a bit more tangible in a world where I can't see him. And Lord knows I need that time to time.

I guess my point in bringing up the quotes is that if you're looking at Jesus, you're automatically going to see what a crappy job you're doing, or how awful the world is. Because he makes it all look bad. But there's no use focusing on all that which "drags our spirit down" (right, Mr. Bibb?). There's alot of trouble and sadness in my mind today. But I gotta keep on walking and just deal with it. Because I think God sees past my trouble. Maybe he'll teach me how to just laugh it off.

It's New Year's Eve!

Here's some thoughts about the past year.
I started the year off with Richard III. I don't even remember my character's name; I had three lines and spent most of the process writing poetry backstage. Then I did "Under Milkwood." I played a cranky middle aged woman and a girl who lay in fields and traced lipstick around her breasts. Hah! Then I did the Fantasticks, my mother's favorite musical. For that I had to quit smoking and retrain my voice to hit notes I hope and pray I'll never have to think about hitting again. Following that (or maybe during it?) I wrote a story that simultaneously covered my grandmothers and my dating adventures. Yippee. I found it to be extremely self-indulgent and vowed never to deliberately write a story about my life again.

I ran into some financial trouble and prayed to God "I need money." The same week I was offered 17$ an hour to talk to Korean kids in English. That job lasted until about October. I still keep in touch with the Kim family though. I am blessed to have them in my life.

Then Jenni left for Thailand. I dealt with it by listening to Stevie Wonder's "Place in the Sun," which reminded me that I will have to move on from that phase in my life, but comforted me to, knowing that Jenni and I are running towards the same goal, and that our friendship is eternal. And then I moved out of my apt on Maiden Lane. That hurt. I was attached to that place, and I still miss Ian Trevethan throwing wood chips at the window to be let in. But I signed the lease for the new "Upper Room" that I reside in with Erinn and Elma and am quite pleased with it.

Then there was a roadtrip. Roadtrip? you ask. What Roadtrip? Heh, yeah right. I'm sure you have already heard about it so there's no need to recap (and somewhere in the past entries of this online journal I wrote a pretty amusing list of things I learned from the roadtrip.) But looking at it from this point in time, I see that the trip was probably the biggest trial to my faith I ever faced, but the fact that I still believe shows me that there is a God after all, and it's He's not a mere concoction I have developed to deal with my problems (not a crutch, as I've been accused of this past year by a fine gentleman who obviously cared about me lots.) Oh, but I read Travels with Charley on my roadtrip, and that book made me decide that Steinbeck is my favorite author and that we have a lot in common because we're both messed up, and that I aspire to be him.

Then I went to the campout, which forced me to face some tough stuff in the Fellowship, but it also helped me to rebuild my faith. Then I came home and began to teach the Sermon on the Mount every other week for the teens at NWF Sunday School. I had to do it alone, which was hard at first, but God has really blessed me with that.

For school I took another fiction class and gained some great friends in there. I also stuck with the anti-self-in-the-story pact, and wrote female protagonists who were all 5'11. Oh, and I managed to somehow use three formes ofthe name Ed for characters in a story I wrote about grasshoppers, which still amazes me. I think the writing has improved. I also took a class about the theater business which was pretty unbearable, but I got through.

And then there was Clown Class. In hell, there are lots of clowns. Lots and lots of clowns, and lots of demons telling you that you are a bad clown. And at the far end of hell, an angel comes down and throws whipped cream in your face and lets you watch "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" before allowing you another chance at the world above. There you go, that was the best description of my experience in Clown Class I could come up with.

And then there was playwriting. I'm not comfortable enough with that experience to remember it at this point in time, but I'll just say that I felt like it was a lot of work for nothing, and perhaps if I didn't take Playwriting I could have written better stories in my fiction class, but hey, I'm hard on myself.

Ah, and then, also this year, I entered the wonderful world of databasing grasshoppers and met plenty of entomologists and peeked into the Oh My! drawer to see that there are, indeed, huge-ass insects in this world, but they are mostly from Brazil. So, also, I could name 2003 as the year I decided not to go to Brazil.

I also met Jay and Scott from the Psalters who may be a part of my future year(s?). They offered me an opportunity to be a part of their musical group which sounds more exciting than anything I could have imagined.

So, that's where I'm at now! Overall, God has been pretty damn good to me through it all.

This is in response to Eric's comment to my last entry, that I may need a little more than God.

I thought about that for a minute. "A little more than God." Why did that strike me as so strange? How do I see
God? As the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the last. Huge, mysterious, encompassing everything. A God who goes everywhere with me, who never leaves me, no matter how hysterical I get in my emotions. Who walks with me when I'm in a slump and somehow sustains me to keep going. He promises I'll find Him if I'm looking for Him. He finds me when I'm not looking for him (like a coin, or a sheep, eh Uncle Paul?)... But, more than anything I know about him, I know he meets my needs. And he does that with people, I think, more than anything else. Yes, I admit, the tears of the other night were selfish, considering the amount of pity involved. I think my point was, bringing up Harry Martin, that people and God are very connected. Well, some people and God. Some, like Harry, who make statements like "I'm happy to be 75 and still have a future to look forward to," can sense what I need to hear and say it to me. The "Man." at the end of the last entry was in response to the way my needs were met, with a person, after lamenting that I was too burdensome for people.

I can look back at my life and see that people come and go quite frequently during the course of it. If I look at that from the surface, it looks like I am simply bad at keeping friends close for more than three years at a time. If I look closer, I can see that each person had a purpose. I like to believe that each person was placed there, by God, to meet the needs of that time. My friend Jenni, now in Thailand, is a great example of that. During the three years that she was around me, God used her tons of times to point me back in the right direction. If I look at my life surrounding my time with Jenni, I can see that I wouldn't have survived without her. When she left, I cried knowing that my time with her would never be the same (I knew that when she returned that she would probably be damn near having a new last name), and that was hard. But in time I had peace about it. "You needed her right next to you during that time," my Reason told me. And He was right.

I'm reading a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer now where the verse from Proverbs, "The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord," came up. I think it was put there just for me at this time. I see that I do isolate myself, to an extent, but I can never isolate myself from God as long as His spirit is with me. But if I open myself up to people, I am allowing myself to see God clearer. Because of what Harry said the other day, it was clear that God uses us to be lights (He tells us He does, anyway. "You are the light of the world. Not, if you want, you can try to be the light of the world, but as matter-of-factly, "You are the light of the world.") Isolating myself from people, yes, is a sick form of hiding from God's light.

To wrap this up, I'll mention that there is really no such thing as "a little more than God." I think, what Eric meant, though perhaps he'll disagree, is "I think you need a little more OF God." The God that manifests himself in the people around me, to meet my stabilizing needs. Anyway, Eric, thanks for responding, because you're right, I have plenty of people around me that help meet my needs. It's foolish of me to try to love them and to isolate myself at the same time.

Last night was pretty rough. I didn't sleep very much and I woke up crying twice. It reminded me of some of the
nights of the roadtrip when I did that. I'm trying to quit smoking, and usually I could just go out and have a cigarette but I couldn't this time. It was miserable. I started to get upset because my thoughts told me that I was impossible to live with, with my condition of emotional instability. But I hated being alone. So it was like I couldn't live with or without other people. And then I thought it would be better to live alone, so only I would have to deal with my misery. Ugh.

I woke up this morning and went to church. Once again, Harry reminded me, through his teaching, that God is with me. But after the meeting, as I passed him he said "Thank you for being on this earth." I told him, "It wasn't my choice." And he said "the world is so much richer because you're here."

Man.