When it snowed last week (I am desperate for it to stop snowing), Mike took this picture of one of the first signs of spring covered in ice. To him, it was just a picture. I saw an image that represents so many of my own struggles: I begin to trust and allow my heart to grow, and then something happens and I am frozen again, afraid to move.

When that happens to me, I cry a lot. When it happened to Susan Isaacs, she took God to couples counseling.

“Susan,” Martha declared, “our relationship with God is nothing short of a marriage.”

“Well, in that case,” I replied, “God and I need to go to couples counseling. Because we’re not getting along.”

The Sacred Romance wasn’t the first book foisted on me. Someone else told me to read Conversations With God, that new age piffle where God is like the Big Lebowski, telling you to “just follow your truth, dude.”

Who on earth had conversations with God like that? If I wrote my conversations with God into a book, they’d be very angry conversations. They’d go more like:

SUSAN: What the —-, God? Are you trying to kill me?
GOD: Shut the —- up or I will!

And that would be the end of the book.

(I think I have had that conversation with God myself.)

To our great good fortune, that was NOT the end of the book. Susan Isaacs did, in fact, talk through her relationship with God with a couples counselor, a former pastor who both let her be honest and challenged how she represented God in their sessions. (Her version of God was sarcastic and a little bit mean.) As she worked through her issues, I recognized myself in her questions and experiences. This is a passage that comes close to the end of the book that sums up a lot of her journey.

When I think of the people whose character I admire, they’ve all walked through deserts or hells far worse than mine. And when they got to the other side–the ones who did get to the other side–they always said God got them through it. They have a peace and a friendship with God that I want. But the problem is, the man who’s stuck in the desert because God put him there looks exactly like the man who’s stuck in the desert because he’s lost. And I don’t know which one I am. I don’t know if I’m here to find friendship with God or if I’ve been left to die.

My ex used to get angry when I said that. He would say, “God isn’t personal. God isn’t good or bad. God is like science. God just is.” But even with science . . . Look at the stars. You see such beauty and order, and you sense the Thought that went into their making. But if that thoughtfulness is not extended to me, then all that order and beauty is merely cold and sterile space that mocks me because I’ve been excluded from it.

If God wants to burn up everything useless in my life, amen to that. But I want to know whether or not this sorrow has an end. Do these longings in my heart for love and purpose mean anything? I say yes. Is my need for God just misplaced longing that has no place to be satisfied? I say no. The body thirsts because it needs water and water exists. The soul longs for purpose because it needs it, and because it exists. And I wouldn’t long for God if he didn’t exist. I am taking this personally because I am personal. And I don’t think that an impersonal God could create humans to be personal. So I’m taking this personally from a personal God.

A sixteenth-century monk wrote a treatise called Dark Night of the Soul. When we first know God, he lavishes us with blessings and signs of his love, the way you do with your children when they’re small. But God wants us to grow up. So he removes his blessings. The sense of his presence. And even signs of love. Because he wants us to trust when we can’t see, to believe we’re loved even if we can’t feel it, to walk by faith and not by sight. And maybe he wants me to love him for himself, not for what I can get out of him.

Well, if that’s where I am, that’s okay. I can be here. I’m in my own Dark Night of the Soul. And I’m just waiting for my sun to come up.

I have said before that one of my main definitions of myself is that God is busy taking care of other people and that he’ll get around to me if he’s got time. It is very easy to see things through that paradigm. Any challenge, any adversity is just God looking away, taking a nap, worrying about people who have much bigger problems. It is much harder to believe that a personal God wants me to be a better person and to take up the challenge and accept that becoming a better person is part of why we are here and what we should be about.

The best thing about this book is that, while Susan talked about her struggles in a way that I could relate to, the book was also wickedly funny. Here was a conversation with God that I particularly enjoyed. (Rudy is the counselor.)

RUDY: Last question. Let’s talk about creativity. No one in Susan’s family “got” her. Doesn’t sound like the church did either. Why is that, God? Do you not like art?

SUSAN: Only if it ends in an altar call.

GOD: Come on. I love art. The Sistine Chapel, the Bach B Minor Mass. A Man for All Seasons. Love that stuff.

SUSAN: You didn’t like my kind of art. Show me one joke in the Bible.

GOD: The hill of foreskins.

God snickered and Jesus joined him. Well, that’s how I saw it.

(That’s how I see it, too.)

That’s on page 58, and by that point, Mike was already tired of me reading stuff from the book to him. But he had to admit that that one was pretty much awesome. And written just for this family, yes?

I loved this book. It balances a lot of my favorite things very well: faith, questions, humor, personal stories. Even more than that, it showed how Susan pushed for real answers and had to change her thoughts and actions because of them. Susan’s tenacity and desire to work through a relationship with God resonated with me, as did her frustrations with how a relationship with God is so different than our ideals. And I laughed. A lot. I’d recommend it for fans of Don Miller (she toured with him), Anne Lamott (of course), and Sara Miles. Also recommended for friends and family who would like to understand me a little bit better.

Laundry room! (I love my new washer and dryer and want to have their babies.)

Our closet and my half of the closet (it is really hard to show closet size in a picture).

This is what our bedroom looks like now. Not that I ever showed you what it looked like before. Because it wasn’t as bright. But now it makes me really happy.

And we’ve got the kitchen all figured out now, too. If you look here, you’ll see where the fridge used to be. This is what everything looks like now.

And remember the door to nowhere behind our TV? Check it out now.

Mostly we’re just sitting around and listening to the quiet these days. It’s the greatest sound I hadn’t heard in a while.

It worked essentially like you’d expect – we had to race to destinations and get our “passport” stamped. At a few locations, we did have to answer trivia questions, but there were no tasks. Alisa and I did not come anywhere close to winning, but that is okay. Because before the race started, we saw the Fox 8 guys standing around, and we asked them if they were going to follow a team. They said yes, and we convinced them to follow us! So we got the real Amazing Race experience (except that we felt bad about talking so much about The Amazing Race because it’s on another network. Also I kept talking about Michael Scott. Still the wrong network, nitwit. Finally we remembered to talk about Glee). We even tried to hit all the Amazing Race cliches: we called each other “baby” and discussed whether it was God’s will for us to win. (I guess he was busy with other things.)

(The video works for me but sometimes I have to refresh the page first. So try that OR you can just click here to watch it.)

Here we are afterwards with our cameramen. Special thanks to them for editing out the part where we climbed the back hill to the Blandwood Mansion in the dark when the clue was, you know, at the front. As we were doing that, I thought, “Here’s where we get the dumb girl edit.” But, no. They were lovely. And we definitely owe them beer for making them run so much.

Sometimes nice, fun things just happen. I am usually the person who would watch the cameraman choose someone else, so I am thankful to have a friend like Alisa, who gives me the courage to try new things and be bold. I am so happy that we spoke up! We could not have had more fun than we did, and we would do it again, even without cameramen. Many thanks to Triad Stage for hosting such a great event. Mike and I went and saw the play a few weeks ago, and it’s very funny. I would recommend that you go see it, but I believe they said last night that they are all sold out except for the weekend matinees today and tomorrow. (I am not sure what they said – I was too busy getting my microphone put on. hee hee hee.)

February 1 – Cleaned out all our old magazines. Filed the recipes and book reviews I wanted to save. Total dorky happiness about it, yes.
February 2 – Best workday lunch ever. I would explain it, but you kind of had to be there. I will give you a few pieces of information: guacamole, tomahawks, unsafe road conditions, and band manuals.
February 3 – Dealt with the fundraiser for Haiti and got all the money organized and cleared out of the library. Over $1000 raised! With a week to go!
February 4 – I got my teaching license in the mail. All that hard work, finally finally over.
February 5 – We moved the fridge to its new spot and started decorating. Also I ordered about 150 digital photos for our walls and for other reasons. And then we watched Footloose (Mike had never seen it before).
February 6 – Great organization and house cleaning sort of day.
February 7 – Mike had a good Male Bakeoff experience and I got to be excited for Scott when the Saints won. (I yelled a lot during the second half of the game.)
February 8 – The painters finished and it was the greatest day of my entire life.
February 9 – 3.1 miles in 30:29. My best time yet! Soon I hope to be under 30:00.
February 10 – I talked on the steps with a friend of mine for an hour instead of doing yoga.
February 11 – I came home to a lovely clean house. God bless cleaning services.
February 12 – Tea party for some six-year-olds and had new friends over for dinner. Also . . . Olympic opening ceremonies!
February 13 – Babysat for the neighbors. Four kids (and I) ate four bags of popcorn. Two of them stayed up and watched speed skating with us. Worst babysitters ever? Possibly so.
February 14 – Homemade pizza and The Amazing Race premiere.
February 15 – Good workout at the gym. Which is kind of lame but true.
February 16 – Saw a friend do his first public reading at a coffeeshop. Also my mom sent me a fantastic YouTube video.
February 17 – Ash Wednesday. Nice service at church.
February 18 – Watched the snowboarding half-pipe with Mike and made fun of the announcers saying the same thing for every. single. guy. (“This is his last chance at a gold medal run. He needs the run of his life.”)
February 19 – Took a sixth grader to Lucky 32 (her first time eating there) and Triad Stage to see Around the World in 80 Days. Now I never have to read the book.
February 20 – Fun game night with very creative friends. Also pots of chocolate.
February 21 – Lunch to celebrate one of our Sunday School student’s baptism and a good walk with my neighbor.
February 22 – Great day teaching sixth graders how to do Microsoft Publisher.
February 23 – Did 3.1 miles in exactly 30 minutes on the elliptical. New world record! For me, anyway!
February 24 – I was sick so we ordered Chinese food for dinner and it was wonderful.
February 25 – Had to miss a friend’s party, a meeting, and my book club, but got good sleep thanks to the new and improved Nyquil. No Sudafed in Nyquil = GENIUS.
February 26 – Mike went out of town so I fell asleep watching the Olympics.
February 27 – Two fun friends came over for soup and wine and more Olympics.
February 28 – Unexpected coffee with a friend. Plus a walk with my neighbor. Plus Mike came home.

I am not going to go on and on again about how much I love the Olympics, but even though I wasn’t as captivated by the figure skating this year (the new scoring system takes so much of the fun and grace out of it), I was particularly moved by Joannie Rochette, the Canadian skater who lost her mother just before the games. Obviously she has an amazing inner strength, but I also felt as if every person in that room (including me on my couch in my pajamas and scarf) was willing her to land those jumps. The Olympics are big, but there was something even bigger going on. There have been some great moments in these Olympics, but I imagine her skate is the one I will remember.

I was also impressed with Johnny Weir’s press conference after some Canadian TV announcers made some jokes that perhaps he should skate with the women instead and perhaps he should be tested to prove that he’s a man. Instead of asking for an apology, he chose to call attention to the fact that they said those things and to ask them to think before they speak for the sake of young people who just want to express who they are. I appreciate that perspective and his insistence that they think about the power of their words. I saw a young man crying this morning because he did not want to be made fun of for being smart, so this is an issue that is on my mind. I want my students to be able to express themselves through school and sports and art and music and words and even feathers (like Weir) or ballet (like Billy Elliot) if that’s what they want. Thanks to Weir for articulating that in such a thoughtful manner.

I have been working with a couple of classes on projects on the Holocaust, and one of the topics that has come up was the Armenian genocide. I never learned about it during school myself. In fact, I learned about it from, of all people, Charla and Mirna on The Amazing Race. So I have taken that opportunity to help my students see why we spend so much time focusing on the Holocaust, because it happened before and we did forget, very quickly. One student has been particularly engrossed with the Rwandan genocide, and I have pointed him in the direction of some of the resources I encountered when I was studying that topic for myself.

This was a long week, which is something I imagine I say every year at the end of February. With all the snow, I think everyone will agree with me if I go ahead and declare that, this year, February was the cruellest month. But doing good work with students, telling them that they should be proud of themselves, and pushing them to explore new things prove that even February and a nagging cold cannot completely keep me down.

(This picture reminded me of some old-school Derek Webb, but instead of running across a box of letters, it’s a box of music. Just go with it, okay?)

We haven’t done this in a while!

—

Dear Man on the Next Elliptical,

You are coughing or snorting kind of a lot. It is very distracting. And also weird. I keep trying not to look at you, but I can’t help it. Do you know you are making that noise? Can you help it? Can you please make it stop?

Do you need a tissue? I really want to help.
-Kari

—

Dear Book I am Reading While on the Elliptical,

I was enjoying you quite a lot, but the part where you decided that the mind actually has no control over the body was kind of uninspiring to someone who is exercising. Yes, I know that a real athlete would run outside on such a nice day. What made you think that I was anything resembling a real athlete?

I did, however, run 3.1 miles in exactly 30 minutes today.
-Kari (that’s a new record for me)

PS – Do I actually have to go back to running outside? I am so spoiled.

—

Dear Woman at Starbucks,

Why are you so annoying? No, seriously, what with the, “I don’t have a TV OR cable,” and, “I work for social services,” and your super complicated drink order. I think even the guy you were with was annoyed by you. So of course everyone around you WHO COULD HEAR EVERY WORD BECAUSE YOU WERE TALKING REALLY LOUDLY ABOUT HOW AWESOME YOU ARE was also annoyed.

Just . . . stop it.
-Kari

—

Dear Food Lion,

If I have to shop at 5:00, which I do not enjoy, I have to say that it is nice to shop with you. Your employees always greet me and answer my questions. Last week I went to that OTHER grocery store and wandered for several minutes before I found anyone to help me. So thanks for all the help. You rock.

Also your prices are lower. I especially enjoy the cheap bottles of wine.

Not a wino,
Kari

—

Dear Girl Scout Cookies, Bejeweled, and Hershey Kisses with Caramel,

Listen, I need you to stop. Mike is unable to control himself around you. Cookies, you need to stop being so tempting. Bejeweled, you need to stop being so mind-numbing. And Hershey Kisses, you are essentially crack. Leave my husband alone, sweet things and Bejeweled. I beg you.

My personal form of crack is chips and salsa,
Kari

—

Dear Olympics,

Please stop making me cry with inspiring stories. Whenever other people start crying, I also cry. It’s getting embarrassing. In related news, could you speak to NBC about how it doesn’t really WORK for me to stay up until MIDNIGHT to find the results of figure skating? Olympics, I love you, but I am not as young as I used to be.

Is this why I actually enjoyed the ice dancing? I always thought it was boring before but now I am OLD.
-Kari

—

Dear Curling,

You continue to be awesome. Please never change. Unless you add flaming brooms.

Also, please ask the Norwegian curlers to never change their pants.
-Kari

Mare’s War is about two different generations of teenage girls – Octavia and Tali, who live now and who are, much to their dismay, on a cross-country trip with their unconventional grandmother, Mare. As they travel, Mare tells them about her own years as a teenager, and how she ran away from home to serve in the army during World War II.

Mare is extremely likeable, but she is so much more tough than I am that I was a little bit intimidated by her! I would definitely want her in my corner. I related a bit more to the current teenagers, but they aren’t nearly as filled in or as interesting as Mare. I enjoyed the three women getting to know and appreciate (or at least tolerate) each other better, but this story really shines when Mare is talking about her time in the army. I didn’t know anything about African-American women serving in the army during World War II, and it managed to be interesting and informative while also painting a vivid picture of what life was like for those women.

I am so glad that I had already added this book to my school’s collection, because I’d recommend it for ages 12+ and I will probably look into getting more copies. I could see a great book club discussion or literature circle focused around this title, and I will continue to pass it on to my students who are looking for thoughtful books with African-American characters.

A while back, I read an article that was talking about poor relationships with in-laws and making suggestions about how to “fix” that problem. The article, written by someone with good in-law relationships, was essentially based on the idea that you should check your own attitude first and if you are nice and pray a lot, the relationship will improve over time. I do agree that you should check your own attitude, and I am in favor of praying a lot. But the article itself filled me with a helpless rage. Because we are talking here about people who rejected me to the point that they did not come to our wedding, people we have not spoken to in ten years. Ten years is a lot of life to live without them. I will confess that I do not pray about the situation anymore, because I think God knows how I feel. And what else is there to say at this point? But I also think that being nice and praying a lot wouldn’t do much of anything at all. There is no system that works when we are talking about broken, hurting people. We have to do the best we can. And sometimes the best we can do still looks and feels like a mess. I know the article wasn’t written for people like me, but I wish there had been more of an acknowledgement of . . . the difficulty of it all.

Over the summer, when my pastor was preaching on Dr. Seuss stories, one of the sermons featured The Zax. In it, he encouraged us to take the necessary risks to work on healing broken relationships. After the sermon, I went to him and said, essentially, “What am I supposed to DO with something like this? Because I would love to have a good relationship with my in-laws, but that seems to be out of the question.” And he told me that what we are experiencing wasn’t the kind of situation he was talking about, and that we should keep on making our lives with the people who love us. If we feel nudges to do something different, we should follow them, but we can’t choose a different sort of life for people who have un-chosen us. I need to hear those words of grace from time to time, because I want to do what is right, and I want what is right to be a plan of action, something that will fix this brokenness.

Lent is often a time to focus on our own mortality. From dust you were made, and to dust you will return. Alleluia and amen. If you are anything like me, what you have been given, both good and bad, is not what you expected at all. I do not have advice for people with difficult in-law relationships (or even good in-law relationships), because I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t have a relationship with my parents-in-law at all. I think that the advice to look at your own attitude and to pray a lot is probably good in those situations, though I will acknowledge that I know that relationships are complicated. I do believe in redemption, but I think it does not always take the form or figure we would like, choosing instead to surprise us in complicated, unexpected ways. At church, this week’s scripture text was from Ecclesiastes, which are a good reminder that we can see things as meaningless, or we can make the choice to do the best we can with what we have.

“If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice” -T.S. Eliot, from “Ash Wednesday” (complete poem here)

My mom really knows how to pick ‘em – YouTube videos AND basketball teams.