Those of you who know us realize that these fake teeth played a part in our first meeting. Landing in the Midwest from California, Sam got off the plane with these "Bubba" teeth in his mouth because even though he had seen pictures of me, he was concerned that I wouldn't turn out to be someone that he was interested in, or that was interested in him. So to lighten the mood, he wore these. It would either make or break us, he thought.

I never saw the teeth--just his eyes. I even kissed him --a little peck--and still missed the fact that he had these teeth in. I had a vague realization that he had more of an overbite than I remembered seeing in his picture, but quickly dismissed it. "He's such a nice man." Sam was beaming at me and oddly quiet. When finally, I heard him slurping as he hugged me to him, trying to keep the teeth from falling out, I leaned away from him and got the full picture. He was cracking up, trying to keep from laughing outright. He hauled them out of his mouth and the first words he said were, "Thank God --you're gorgeous!!"

He looked significantly better without these teeth. They distort his entire face because they're so large and change the structure of his mouth so much. Which is why they're so hilarious. I cannot not laugh when I see him in these.

Sam's appearance could have been really shocking to me. Except that I had a pair on my desk at home that I had come close to wearing to the airport. Can you imagine what kind of first meeting that would have been?

In any event, Sam still thinks I'm gorgous (now I'm the one saying, Thank God!) and he still makes me laugh. I still only see his eyes, even though the rest of him is nice to look at, too.
It has been an interesting and wonderful journey, these five years we have been married. My heart is resting in your hands and I would marry you again, Honey.

Happy Anniversary!

Staying the Course

Found here

Today I sat with Mia, a young woman who wants to be able to sleep better at night. She clenches her jaw, grinds her teeth, and has to massage her face to open her mouth in the morning. While she spoke today, her fingers danced across the edge of the couch. Then up and down her right leg to her knee cap, over to her left knee cap, and up to her thigh. Her hands folded momentarily in her lap.
It was hard work to keep her on task. As soon as I verbally took note of something significant, she was off again, her words spewing from her mouth as though she was racing away from my comment. Watching her mouth move, her hands fluttering up and down her legs and across the couch cushion, I fantasized that she was a water spider, flitting across a pond--so quickly that she barely penetrated the surface.
We covered all sorts of things--an ailing relative, her responsibilities at work, how teenagers irritated her, how she tries to stay in control all the time, her sleep problems, her cat--it was one thing after another. My interjections and observations reigned her in temporarily, but then off she'd go to something else. It was like driving 90 m.p.h. on a circuitous road.

I knew what was happening, but the two doctoral students observing this from behind a one-way mirror, did not. They had been having trouble with their own therapy and I had invited them to observe me at work--something that seems to help students. They need to see different ways of doing therapy and to hear different ways to say things, phrases to use, mannerisms to consider for their own use. And here I sat, touching on every topic known to man whilst my students were probably falling into a coma of boredom in the next room:

You call this therapy? I can't believe anything is happening in there--they're just talking. She's all over the place. I don't want to be like that. Barbara should be more focused and settle that woman down.

There is a process to therapy, however, and it can be trusted. Mia was someone who used to look at the picture on the wall and disappear into it, in her head. Now she was able to stay present with me for the entire session, even though today, she was having a much harder time finding a landing spot. I knew Mia would eventually slow down and I could almost predict how the bridge would be made to her presenting issue in the last part of the session. Sure enough, at about 10 minutes to the hour, the session became focused, intense, and moving. It was the crux of the work and it took place in about 8 minutes. A couple minutes later as we stood to leave the room she said, "I feel really different now." That was obvious. Her face was no longer contorted and she looked peacefully satisfied.
Whew.

It sometimes feels like a crapshoot--where the client(s) will go with the issues over the course of an hour. Or which issue they will choose to address. Once, a client divulged that she had been abused, then promptly crumpled into a dead faint and urinated on my couch. Another client who was explaining a distressing situation, suddenly vomited in my wastebasket. "Big John," a man with paranoia problems, once began tearing the pictures off my wall because he was sure that my hidden transisters were relaying his image to the CIA. These things happen. But one thing is sure: there is a predictability to the process of therapy even though the individual journey may be different. Change will occur, ideas will crystalize, emotions will bubble up, and insight will expand. Staying the course and not giving in to my anxiety that the process won't work--this is the essence of being a therapist.

Salvation is like this.

Jesus has promised to will and do in us of His own good pleasure. It doesn't seem like it's going to happen when we look at ourselves and what we bring to the task. We either decide that it's too slow going and decide to push things along by forcing ourselves to do right (which can bleed over into legalism), or that it doesn't matter what we do, so just do whatever we feel like and God will forgive and forget (cheap grace). Or we blither and blather to God instead of making room for His voice in our lives. But there is a process to salvation--a process we can trust. It is a science and there are good rules laid out for how to reach for this experience. It is a "God Thing" and what He begins, He will finish and do well. The challenge is staying the course: managing our own anxiety that we will never be good enough, acceptable enough, righteous enough. We begin to wrestle ourselves out of the arms of God.

We can trust the goodness of God. We can trust the process of His righteousness through Christ. For it is greater than our eyes have seen or our hearts have imagined. For what He has promised, He will do. Corrie ten Boom knew this when she wrote, "Don't wrestle, just nestle."

Keep me on course, God.

Congratulations!

On Thursday my sister successfully defended her dissertation. She now holds a PhD in nursing education from Louisiana State University. Her dissertation was entitled, "The process of maintaining balance during the surgical wait." It is a grounded theory study in which she examined the experience of 34 adults in hospital waiting rooms while their loved one underwent surgery. I have all of her data, revisions, and the dissertation defense slides in a file on my computer which she titled, "Donna's Glorious Works," because she was afraid her computer would crash by accident and she would have nothing. So just as I sent her my data for safekeeping while I was writing my dissertation, she sent me hers. Donna is on the faculty of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Today, a very dear friend successfully defended her dissertation at Emory University. Her degree is in religion and psychology. The study examined attachment styles of individuals who have large gaps in their memory (ie., who may not remember a year or years of their childhood or adolescence). Her data includes drawings of what it is like to be without memory, extensive interview transcripts, and findings from her attachment instrument. In her 380-page dissertation, she points out that individuals with memory gaps most often have serious attachment problems. I can't wait to read her tome (yikes! It's lonnnnng!) She will probably have the dissertation published as a book. This friend is the director of an institute that promotes the integration of spirituality and clinical work.

The process of writing a dissertation is a very isolating experience. This is especially painful for extroverts, who begin to feel desperate if left alone without being able to talk or be around people for too long. For example, just to find mental clarity in order to write about complex data means that one must go off alone and stare at a computer screen for hours, days, and weeks. If you don't work on your data at least twice a week, you forget what you were doing or how you were thinking last time you were "into the data." Then you have to take time and find your bearings once again. This goes on for several months in the beginning--particularly if you have lots of statistics to think about or interviews to code. After it become apparent that it takes too much time to continually reorient yourself to your work, the logical conclusion is that it would be better to cut back on work and throw yourself into it for hours each week. It may be an entire weekend day, or a couple afternoons per week. But it has to be worked on in blocks of time. If a friend asks you to go out for dinner during those sacrosanct times, you must refuse. If you do end up going out, all you can really think about is the rows of numbers in the tables you are constructing, or how to perform axial coding to include your field notes. People who are writing dissertations recognize that they can be extremely boring and socially off-kilter for the larger part of a year, if this is how long they are analyzing and writing. This is why people who have just defended their dissertation are like bats who are flushed out of a cave on a sunny day: squinting around at things they've only guessed about for so long. "Now I can do ________!" It never fails--this hope of finally realizing their goals by having time to quilt, do woodworking, write a novel, take up hiking, learn a language, or do nothing at all--this has kept them going for months.

I went through this as a newlywed. Sam and I got married in March. I defended my dissertation at the University of Minnesota in early July. I used to kiss him "goodbye" in the morning and retreat to the study, closing the door behind me so I wouldn't be distracted by his good looks. Usually I could stay in there for a couple hours at a time, but I would often burst out and rush into his arms for a quick hug, kiss, and heartfelt apology that I had to shut myself up like that. Coming out of that room at the end of the day, I was almost mute. Sam could talk about things he had seen and done, but I could not. There was nothing except statistical jargon about how I had run my ANOVA or regressions on SPSS. His eyes would glaze over if I even went there. So I was the proverbial bump on a log--smiling stupidly with nothing to talk about, only to listen and comment on things in the house. It was not fun. But Sam could not have been sweeter about it all. When I finally did defend, he was sitting right there across from me where I could see and feel his support.

So I salute two women of whom I am very proud. It is an enormous milestone and you both had to battle within and without just to get this degree. But you did it. May you both enjoy your time, and energy in new ways. And your PhD! I'm absolutely delighted!

March 16, 1959

Today I turned 49 years old. The girls were only too happy to point out that next year I'll be 50 "and then it will really hit you, Barbara!" When I reminded them that now I'm half of a century old, the youngest said, "How depressing! It must be terrible to be that old. Is it?" How can I explain that actually life has never been better?

We all went out to Carolyn's Cafe where we were served by a cheerful middle-aged woman wearing a fuschia T-shirt and blue jeans. Then we had a great time going through model homes. Of course, the girls thought we should buy every house we saw. Now they understand what we've been going through for months, trying to figure out the best choice in housing.

My birthday gift was a beautiful new ceramic birdbath for the back lawn. How delightful!

I must say that I have never dreaded getting older. I am the age I have always looked forward to being: middle-aged.

So I'm at the peak of my life. After taking stock, I have had to say that life is good. I adore Sam and my job is a joy (albeit, one that runs me happily ragged). Life as a stepmother has become somewhat predictable. Mother is fairly happy and making a new life for herself. My sister successfully defended her dissertation on Thursday and a dear friend is defending hers tomorrow. My friends are close to my heart and my needs are all supplied. Life is good and I am so grateful to be alive. Happy Birthday to me!

"Feeling the Heartbeat" found here

He was a six year-old child with uncombed, rooster-tailed hair, crumbs on his chin and an only partially tucked in blue and yellow polo shirt. Mark and his mother were finishing up a quick lunch together before he was to go back to his cousin's house for the afternoon. "I don't like having to be around Aunt Shiela and Uncle Mortie!" Mark hit the table with his fist for emphasis. "They talk to me like I'm a baby. ...I'm not a baby, Mom, and I don't like it."
Mom was a bright woman who encouraged her son to process things and express his feelings in articulate language. "How do they talk to you like a baby, honey? What do they say?"
"They don't say stuff that makes me feel that way." He paused. "It's something like how I feel around them." He looked off into space while he collected his thoughts.
"And how do you feel around them, son?"
"Like, ...when they're talking to me, they're really not talking to me. To someone else. Like...I'm not there."
"Like you're somewhere else?"
Mark straightened in his chair. "No. Like that guy on The Fantastics, that no one could see."
"Invisible?"
"Yeah, Mom. That's what it was. I don't like it. It makes me feel not real."
It was an important moment: one that Mom wanted to use to give him building blocks for life. "Is there someone who you like to be with because you don't feel invisible with them?"
"Yes!" he cheerily said. "Sarah. I feel REAL with her!"

Sarah was a family friend who often had long talks with Mark. From watching them together, I could see that indeed, Mark felt anything but invisible with her.

A phrase from today's student presentation is ringing in my head tonight: "A child needs to feel "felt."" A child need to know that you see them and are impacted by them. A child who is "felt" is an empowered, child with more hope of developing a healthy self esteem than a child who does not feel "felt," but who feels invisible. That they don't matter.

Reflecting on this, it is also a rare adult to adult relationship (outside one's spouse or family member) who makes a person feel "felt." How does one do this? Do you know what I'm talking about when I use this term? It means taking the time to see, hear, and sense the person in front of you. To look deeply and to connect with her in a way that she knows you "get" her. That what she says finds a safe resting place with you. To treat a child as though s/he is as important as a visiting dignitary. Getting down to his eye level, talking to him in non-instructional, non-sing-songylanguage and inviting responses to complex questions. Listening to her give an entire explanation. Taking time to reflect on her words and give a response that an "important" adult is worth of. Understanding his worldview and validating it by a thoughtful (not flippant or hurried) comment.

Do people around you feel felt because you were there?

Running Scared

Found here

I am sleeping in a small bedroom, on a soft bed with a quilt over me. It seems to be a cabin out in the country somewhere. I'm not sure where, and I think I'm alone in the house. I wake up suddenly aware of some noise, someone prowling around outside under my bedroom window. I slowly slip out of the bed, trying not to make a sound. As I get closer to the window I can see a shadowy form tinkering with the screen, removing it. It won't take much to break in. It's such an old place with old fashioned, brittle wooden window sashes and locks. I've got to get out of here, quick! Maybe through the livingroom door at the front of the house. If I can sneak out the door and run to my car, I can get away without the guy at my window seeing me.

Trying to conceal my heavy breathing by holding my hand over my mouth, I run quickly to the livingroom. I only have on my bathrobe. It's a good thing I have on something half way presentable so when I dash down the street or into the car, I will be decent.
What's this? Someone is shining a flashlight in through the livingroom window's sheer curtains, trying to see inside. I'm afraid to move. It looks like only one person is there but I'm not sure. He begins to rattle the doorknob. I turn to run back to the bedroom but I hear the window in there slowly sliding open. Should I go back to the livingroom? There aren't any other rooms in the house except the bathroom and the door doesn't have a lock. I back up to the wall. The rattling of the front doorknob intensifies. The man outside is pushing his weight against the door. I hear it creak and groan as he fidgets with the door hardware and leans against it.

There is the sound of footsteps coming from my bedroom into the hall. The wooden floors do not mute the sounds of his shoes--clip, clip, clip. He is walking slowly and deliberately toward the livingroom. Should I try to hide behind the couch? No. It is under the window and he will see me. There are no long curtains to hide in, no table for me to crouch under. The man in the hall is almost to the livingroom now. I press my back against the wall as if it will pull me into the siding. There is the sound of splintering wood as the front door yields under the force wielded against it by the man on the porch. A blinding light shines into my eyes as the flashlight is slowly raised and pointed at my face. I can hear loud breathing behind me.

There is no place to hide, nowhere to go. I can't escape this and I think I'm about to die. I am panic stricken.

Scary, isn't it? This is the dream I had one year ago on the first night I attended Camp Good Grief as a counselor. I woke up out of breath with my heart racing. My jaws were tense and I was gripping the blankets up around my neck for all I was worth.

A simple nightmare, right?

Why do you think I had that dream while I was getting ready to lead a group of young boys through a weekend to resolve their losses? Most likely because I had not yet resolved my own. It had been six months since my father had died and for many reasons I had not been able to concentrate on grieving. My job, my responsibility for my mother who was languishing across the country, my own shock. Plus the fact that I never got to say goodbye. Daddy had donated his body to science and I never saw my him after he died. I had just been carrying on, relatively unmoved and amazingly composed.

Now I was going to have to face grief coming and going. There was no place to go, nowhere to escape to. I would be hearing about the boys' sadness, numbness, grief, emptiness. And mine was going to be tapped and drained.

It was an oddly predictive dream that immediately resonated with me. Over the next three days I entered into the experience of the boys: hearing their stories of loss, questioning why, memorializing the dead. My own healing began. My dreams had known.

Tomorrow I am going back to Camp Good Grief as the therapist for the weekend. I hope to see "my" little boys again this year. Six of the nine from last year are slated to be in my group. We formed a bond. They asked about my pain and I witnessed theirs. This year however, I am not trapped. I go freely, feeling ready and much more settled in my heart. No more looking over my shoulder and no more running scared.

I'll make more...

One of my students is doing her practicum in an inner city drug abuse recovery clinic. Everything about the place is depressing: stark buildings, ill pregnant women, smoke-filled institutional green rooms. It's a ramshackle building sitting at the edge of a vacant lot. There are lots of vacant lots in this particular city--it's a place with a dying economy. 60% of the city inhabitants are dependent on public assistance.

All the women have lost parental rights to their children because of their drug abuse. Some have turned a blind eye while their children were abused. Others were so busy cruising for drugs that they neglected their children. Some were cooking meth in their kitchens while their babies crawled around on squallid floors littered with unsheathed, contaminated syringes and needles. Breathing fumes of meth gives almost all children some sort of respiratory problem.
Did you know that it takes between $50,000 - 100,000 to rehabilitate and clean the environment of a house that has been a meth lab? All the workers who do this work wear white space suits with gas masks. And yet the babies who are removed from these homes have no protection.

So my student was telling me today about her experiences down in the clinic with these women. The apathy is palpable: vacant eyes stare back from the gaunt faces of these women. Some are in their early 20s and have already had 3-4 children removed from them. There appears to be nothing for them to live for: relationships are unattainable. Family members have abandoned them. They are emotionally and socially isolated from all but their dealers.
The shocking thing is that some of these women still have to pay child support for the children whom they don't get to see or hear about any more. It is their debt to society to help support them.

When she heard that, my student drew back in surprise. "It doesn't seem fair that you don't even get to see your babies!" The 24-year old mother of four children standing before her said flatly, "It's all right. I'll make more." She was about to lose her five-month-old baby and that's just how it was to be.

"I'll make more." As if having another child would make her forget the four little ones whom she will never see again. These nameless, faceless "more" babies she mentioned were for the purpose of getting back at "The Man." Not for the sake of bringing little, precious lives into the world to cherish and nurture.

All throughout my 30s I yearned for children. Pretty hard to have during those years as a single woman. I wasn't a hippie, and my morals prevented me from procreating with someone other than a husband or using sperm from an anonymous donor.
One day at the hospital I was recovering a post-angiogram patient in the outpatient unit. He was dozing but had on his TV to a PBS channel. It was a program that followed a first-time mother through childbirth. I remember standing at the side of his bed, up by his pillow where I could get a good angle on the TV screen--watching the woman go into labor. And all through the "Push! Push!" I was fine. But when the baby's head crowned and the baby slipped out, I burst into tears. It was such a beautiful miracle and the woman was so thrilled to have a lovely child. I desperately wanted a husband and children. But life was not to be the way I had planned.

"I'll make more."

Because my own arms have been empty for so many years, the woman's words make me almost ill. I've been preoccupied with the horror of her attitude all day.

One day in Heaven, there will be many, many children there without parents. I am banking on the fact that the love of God will, over the eons of eternity, love these "more" children into the likeness of God Himself. For now, we can only try to be God's hands, feet, and heart to these little ones, and to the women who are so hurt that they can only think of their children as the currency of vengeance.

This is an enneagram. I used to think that this was some sort of Satanic pentogram so never took any interest in it. Students and colleagues mentioned them but my mind was turned off and nothing ever registered. Anyone who began to talk about it would only prompt me to inwardly say, "Oh, that" and I'd shut my mind.

Last week one of my students who happens to be a Protestant chaplain in a psychiatric hospital, gave a classroom presentation about how he uses the enneagram in his work. This time I listened and learned something.

The enneagram comes from the time of Pythagoras. It was believed that Sufis used the principles of the diagram to tell people cryptically what kind of idiot they were--something that most of us don't need help with! But there is historical evidence that this symbol was used in South America and was passed along to Claudio Naranjo, who was instrumental in making it popular in recent years. It does in fact, come from mystical components of Judiasm, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, and Islam. Christians have recognized the seven deadly sins in seven of the points, and have added two more. These seven deadly sins correspond in some way to the strengths and weaknesses associated with personality characteristics. If you have ever taken the Myers-Briggs Temperament Inventory (MBTI), you will quickly see that the findings of this instrument help describe your personal tendencies.

You can read more about the enneagram here. But you might also wish to take a simple, free test here. It's rather fun and interesting. I have taken the test twice and have had minor changes with each result. The test site recommends that you take the test several times and take an average of your results, or see if they change over time.

What do you come out as?

I am Helpful (86%)

Calm (74%)

Perfectionistic (62%)

If you want to know what this means, take the test yourself!

Immunity

Now here's some news I just heard tonight for the first time--even though it made a limited number of headlines two years ago. Sam and I were channel surfing tonight and came across the movie, Deliver us From Evil, a documentary about sexual abuse in the Catholic church. It chronicled a massive cover-up by church officials at every level of the hierarchy in regards to the approximately 100,000 children who have been sexually molested by priests. Well over 500 priests in the Los Angeles diocese have been accused of molestation. However, Cardinal Mahoney has not put forth the effort to investigate these priests or bring justice and closure to the hundreds of victims.

The movie, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival, showed a psychologist who works with pedophile priests, who stated that 10% of the graduates from St. John's seminary are pedophiles. If 10% of Harvard graduates were pedophiles, something would be done to correct that--or Harvard would be closed down. But not the Church.

The same psychologist pointed out that a number of priests enter seminary at a point when their sexual knowledge and identity are not fully developed. Because of their vow of celibacy they believe that any sexual contact is sinful. It doesn't matter what the sexual contact is--it's all the same and all bad. Having sex with a woman, groping someone, or fondling a child--it's all in the "bad" category with little differentiation. Because many of these young priests have arrested sexual development they seek out someone for intimacy who is at their same delayed level of development--someone younger than the age of majority. This doesn't seem as bad somehow in the beginning--it's just two boys having contact. But it is very, very bad as they become habituated to this behavior. Only about 20% of the molestations ever get reported. Reported, not convicted. Which means that about 80% of molestation victims never tell anyone, tell the right people, or do tell and are told to keep quiet.

The clincher in this movie for me was the final statement that rolled before the credits: President Bush issued immunity to the pope so he could not be tried in connection with a sex abuse case. Apparently, when the abuse crisis hit the church, Cardinal Ratzinger was given the assignment to head a taskforce to deal with child abuse allegations leveled against priests. He was subsequently involved in a conspiracy to protect a known pedophile priest who is now a fugitive. By his actions, he assisted the priest to avoid prosecution. Ratzinger states that the Church's handling of cases related to child sexual abuse are subject to "pontifical secret." His behavior is hideous in terms of the blatant belief that he is above the law and can get away with it. But perhaps more vexing is our own president's decision to grant him immunity. What message does this send American citizens about the moral fiber of this country? About turning a blind eye when to do so works in your best interest? Who is advocating for the safety of children if the Church and even our president doesn't hold abusers accountable? The laws to protect children that we try to put through congress are a travesty if our own president lets an entire system continue to abuse children. Yes, the argument has been made by the Bush attorneys that for them to prosecute the head of the Catholic church would cause political intrusion into a religious organization--something protected by the Constitution.

I am incensed.

The film makes the observation that the way sexual abuse has been shoved under the rug by church authorities is yet one more way that abuse survivors are revictimized. A very thin veneer of piety covers the ugly truths that celibacy does not work and that powerful organizations are more important than the people whom they purportedly serve. And the victims wonder what God, church, and faith have to offer them if this is what they encounter in God's name. Sobering.

Clearing Out

Tonight I'm going to bed with my heart surging and singing. Because today I spent 8 hours cleaning the garage. Yes, it made me very happy. And yes, it was an absolute mess.

We moved here a year and a half ago after living in the Pacific Northwest for nearly two years, and after living in our Indiana house for exactly one year. Because we'd moved rather suddenly from Indiana, things had gotten chucked into boxes. Those boxes got stacked in our garage in Washington. Then, when we moved here, they were added to and stacked in this garage. Because we're in a small rental house, many more boxes of things have been stored in the garage.
Then when I moved Mother out here, her boxes joined ours along with a couple chairs, my great-grandfather's chest of drawers, a bookcase and table. Everything has been hurriedly pushed into the center of the garage floor which, I might add, has been covered with dust bunnies and leaves that have blown in under the door. We have hundreds of spiders--nasty black and brown ones--that have spun miles of webs up against the walls and under the shelves. They all got swept away today.

Today I went through everything except two boxes: a box that came with Sam from California when he married me (full of old receipts and goodness knows what else), and a box of cable wires, phone parts, and unidentifiable computer parts. As soon as Sam decides what to do with all of that, our garage will be completely packed properly and I will know where everything is. At long last!
Mother's boxes and things are all on one workshelf, covered with a blanket. Her antique chair is wrapped up and the table is protected.

I had no idea how therapeutic it would be for me to clean out the garage. I know that when people feel out of control of parts of their lives, that they do well to manage and straighten up what they can. Not that I can identify anything that is pressing my "control" buttons right now. But it is true that if I'm angry at Sam, I start a cleaning frenzy until everything in my surroundings is in order. At least I can control my surroundings. And by the time things are cleaned, he either ambushes me (he knows that frenetic cleaning in the middle of the week signifies upset on my part) until everything comes out, or I have had time to think through how I want to discuss things. He tells me that while I'm cleaning I hold my mouth funny and he knows immediately that I'm on the war path, even when I try to hold my mouth normally--whatever that is--and not clomp through the house. He always knows. And he usually makes me laugh about it.

Today, I just wanted to clean things up. There is beauty in order. It was drizzling outside most of the day and the cool, moist air wafted through the garage as I sent swirls of dust out into the rain. A whole carfull of "stuff" got taken over to the thrift store. Nice tax write off and good way to make space. I found things in boxes that I had forgotten all about: a little dish from Dublin, Ireland; a series of clay pots made by my friend, Nathan; a letter I'd sent Sam while we were dating. And tons of recyclable paper and cardboard. The trash bins are nearly overflowing. Perhaps what was really wonderful was that not once did I think about or concern myself with school: no grading of papers, reading reports, writing lectures or working on projects. I don't remember when I had a day like today--just me, the dust, and the hope that everything would be predictable and pleasant in that uninviting space.

I suppose this is what God does in our hearts--haul out the useless stuff, scrub the dirty places, make space for Himself. If it took me eight hours to clean a double car garage and storage room, think of how long it takes to clean and renew the human heart. As He clears away the junk, we find emotions and thoughts that have gotten lost on our journey. There is real delight in connecting with those things again.

As I go to bed tired but satisfied, I'm reminded that it is God who does the work--both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Have at it, Lord. My heart has lots of stuff that needs to go.