bsmiles and sunny days

It's the complexities of suffering that trouble me the most, I think. I walked into a public restroom last night and there was a fairly large beetle hanging upside-down in a tiny web, just above the floor. It was flailing around trying to get free. I was mesmerized immediately, until the bug was completely still and I saw this tiny spider creeping down to the point of its caught leg and then he flailed again, as if he knew his fate. And I thought, "How cruel." Being removed from the situation, I could rescue the giant beetle, but then my only inclination would've been to stomp it a few minutes later. Now on the other hand, letting the beetle remain left a colossal meal for the tiny spider, just trying to make its way in the world. Right? I also considered stomping them both, but then what good is that? I thought about the bug hanging there waiting for its slow death, already creeping down its leg. Was it afraid? Was the spider excited to have baited its prey? Was ther...

when the dichotomy is all around and none on the inside. At about three o'clock in the morning the last night I worked, I had to fight down this overwhelming rage that has been simmering for a couple of months now. It was terrible. Everything that I want to be and sometimes claim to be, and really try to be on good days, was exactly the opposite of what I was, what I am most of the time. I'm becoming less consciencious of being a vocal testimony for Christ and more obviously a hypocrite in the walk. Used to be the other way around. Isn't there ever a middle road? Who is this awful human being that possesses me when I am opposed to the path I am directed to walk? I'll show up, but I won't like it. And if I have to keep showing up for too long, no one around me is going to like it either. It's such a juvenile methodology, but it's the way I roll. God make me like You somehow, Lest I perish!!

I have never craved the quiet, small town life; my parents met in the ghettos of New York. However, there are perks to life in the slow lane. And here is one. Kennedy has been begging for roller skates for weeks, so while we were vacationing at the Great Wolf Lodge, we stopped at Target and she spent her allowance that she's been saving for six months, on a new pair of roller blades, which she has not removed except to shower, since she got them. I want to call her Tootie! It's so funny that she skids to a stop when I call her to the kitchen. So Jas went into Target with what was left of her savings and she didn't have enough money to buy herself some- the only ones in her size were several dollars more and I thought it was an important lesson in saving for her not to get the big prize when she piddled her money away on little stuff. Naturally I felt guilty regardless of the lesson, so this weekend, we headed to the Salvation Army on a whim that they would have some skat...

We are all lovers of the city, we've instilled it in our children. The irony is in that Dale and I both grew up in smaller communities. When we first started dating, I had already lost my heart to Chicago and he told me he also loved Chicago, I remember thinking, "Well that's weird," because we had so many other things in common. I think we asked each other if we could live anywhere in the world where we would live or something like that. Well, we've yet to reside in the city as a family, but I showed the kids a lakeview of the skyline and they all said, "Wow..." (that breathless, unbelievably wow) and have not stopped asking when we can go there. We have been fortunate to live within an hour of a big city from every place we've lived. It's one of my favorite things just to be familiar with the drive to freedom. Our outtings are not generally extravagant. When we lived in Nebraska, we set the tradition on our Friday night family nights to go eat ...

After an unbelievable three years of racing through life and all of it's beckonings, we decided it was time for a much needed vacation, just us. Dale announced that we were going and that we should pack. He was treating us to a day in the life of leisure.The hunt for the perfect place was on while I was at work Thursday night. The plan was for us to leave as soon as I got off work Friday morning, destination: surprise! Daddy's specialty- we all love them!He found an amazing internet deal and booked us a room. This place was incredible. There is shopping, a restaurant, a bakery, an arcade, indoor and outdoor water parks, tons of activities for kids including a bedtime storytime...! It was just incredible. The room was so cool with a gas fireplace and a seperate bunk room for the kids.We were only there Friday and Saturday morning, but we all felt like we'd been gone a week. It was so much fun. The whole area is just a blast. If you're up for a trek, everything is withi...

I stood in the trash and laundry foyer at 6:43 this morning and found myself standing hard in the midst of a precious dicotomy. In my left hand I held a garbage bag full of used depends and globs of ham salad sandwiches that people spit on the floor and I picked up; in my right hand, another bag heaped with dirty clothes and bedding. I stood in that dingy basement hallway- not uncommon to that of a scary movie and all of it's delicacies- affronted by every horrible stench encompassed in the necessities of my job. The air is thick and musty before I enter with my bundles, my addition to it is overwhelming. It's a minor detail of the job, it takes only a few minutes a couple of times a night. I run back, dump the stuff, and it's done for the next four hours. However, I hate being back there especially in the night. Being such a small portion of my time, it remains one of the greatest grudges therein. Upon entrance this morning, and somehow for the first time in three y...

Last night I was reading about Adoniram Judsam, they call him the father of modern missions, and his wife, Anna. Along their journey to Burma, she sent long letters back home chronicling the adventures they had encountered and the life they were leading. It was presumably because of her letters home that their legacy even exists. She died early, but she left her trail in print. I can't get it out of my head. Everytime I sit down to write here, I stop and erase because I don't want to be too forward or share too much. I'm gun shy because someone left me a comment that this should be a private blog- which in haste I deleted- because it embarrassed me. It made me second guess myself and my writing, whether I really should keep my sacred things private or share my guts for the sake of another. But while I was reading a plug for GK Chesterton's autobiography, I discovered that there were hundreds of books, articles, and stories that he had written in his lifetime. ...