So, speaking of procrastination, I think I got MAYbe half of the things on my list done this weekend...My house is what suffered the most neglect, with my kitchen and bedroom still appallingly messy...But, on the other hand, the housekeeping done in my heart was much more profitable! And probably much more needed, too...Conversation with friends and family, the fellowship of the Body, laughter, a solid sermon from Pastor Jon, an evening and afternoon playing with small children. I'm still chewing on a G.K. Chesterton quote that Pastor Jon mentioned:

The problem isn't that the Christian ideal has been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

And I can't help but wonder - am I really trying it? Or am I playing it safe because that hurts less, requires less of me?

Procrastination...

So I've always been a procrastinator. All of you who knew me in college know this very well! Pushing the deadlines on papers, burning the candle at both ends to get everything done on time, camping out at the library during the last few weeks of school working on those big papers that we had all semester to work on...Well, in some ways, I guess I thought that after college my procrastination would go away, because I don't have papers and tests and deadlines any more. But for all of you procrastinators out there, you know that the opposite is, in fact, true - when there are no deadlines, procrastination gets WORSE! So I make deadlines for myself. And then, knowing that there are no consequences if I break my self-imposed deadlines, I push them back a little farther. Then I realize that I need to start giving myself consequences, or implementing a reward system, otherwise my motivation would be ZERO! For example, I tell myself, "Becca, you can't watch those new episodes of Gilmore Girls that just arrived from Netflix until you wash all the dishes in the sink and clean out Shelby's cage." The problem comes when I decide that I can get my reward now for doing the work later. For example, I could instead tell myself, "Becca, your reward for washing dishes and cleaning Shelby's cage is Gilmore Girls. But it's Friday night and you're tired, and you know that you're going to do those things tomorrow, so you can just watch Gilmore Girls tonight instead." Danger, Will Robinson! :) So the moral of the story is that it's harder than I thought to be self-motivated. But it feels so good when I actually do it right, in the right order, with the task first and the reward later! So that makes it all worth it. Except I'm still a procrastinator. For example, here is my list of...

Things to do this weekend:

1. Babysit for Jadyn Mucher tonight.
2. Bake bread tomorrow morning.
3. Finally finish and mail that letter to Rachel...that I started forever and a day ago...
4. Finally mail that card to Michelle...
5. Finally clean my room, that is currently submerged in piles of clothing (I don't think I've put anything in a drawer in 2 loads of laundry - it just goes from the clean laundry basket to my body to the dirty laundry basket, or the pile of I've-worn-this-once-but-it-doesn't-need-to-be-washed-yet pile. For all of you who don't have such a pile, you don't know what you're missing. It saves so much laundry-doing!) :)
6. Finally finish reading The Catcher in the Rye, which I had given up during my brief yearly foray back into the world of Narnia.
7. Finally go for a wintry walk near my house, to discover where all the snow-covered country roads actually lead.
8. Bake lots of goodies so that I have "planned-overs" in my fridge this week for Amy, Katrina, and myself to munch on.
9. Pray.
10. Replace the lightbulb in my other headlight, that is now burnt out like the other one was a few months ago, except this one isn't as easy to replace because the angles to get to it are all funny.
11. Work on what I'll be saying when I speak in youth group on Wednesday, about what drives your life.
12. Sleep...lots and lots of sleep... :)

Do you ever have one of those days when the urge to laugh and the urge to cry are equally strong? When you're not sure whether to run outside and dance a jig in the sunshine or to sit inside curled up under a blanket with a book? Whether to talk or just sit back and watch everyone else around you...whether to go to people or wait for them to come to you...whether to go out and change the world for Christ or to rest and allow myself to be changed by Him...whether to sit or stand or kneel or hug or shout or sing or lie down and fall into a very restful sleep? Well, today is one of those days for me. I bet it probably makes it very interesting for the people who work with me... :)

Thought for the day:

"Hope that is seen is no hope at all," Paul told the Romans. He mentions some of the good things that might come out of difficulties: "Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." He lists hope at the end, instead of where I would normally expect it, at the beginning, as the fuel that keeps a person going. No, hope emerges from the struggle, a byproduct of faithfulness.

As for faith, it will always mean believing in what cannot be proven, committing to that of which we can never be sure. A person who lives in faith must proceed on incomplete evidence, trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse. As Dennis Covington has written, "Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend."
~Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God

I think this may be the hardest part of faith, the blindness of it all. A blindness that comes not from emptiness, but from a fullness that is too full for me, a brightness that is too bright for these dim eyes to see except in very small doses, reflected and refracted and diffused. "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain." And sometimes, when I ask God to reveal His plan to me, I realize that maybe I don't really want to know it all now. I don't think I could handle it. I might be like Sarah, and laugh, or like Moses, and claim inadequacy. Sometimes I wish things would make sense in advance. But then we wouldn't need faith. And everyone in their right mind would commit their lives to Christ, because there would be certainty in Him, clear-cut answers and paths and directions. It is so much harder to trust in advance what only makes sense in reverse. But here's the difference: the value is not only in the end, where the path is leading, but also in the process, in who we are becoming along the way. "The testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." If we knew ahead of time, we might walk a little straighter, stumble less, but would we really be becoming more like Christ? That task is infinitely harder. But infinitely better.

This is me today:

'Cause Amy & Katrina are getting back in 3 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hip, hip, hooray!!!!!!!!

Life without electricity...

So today I realized what my life would be like without electricity, and the amount of stuff that I wouldn't be able to do was scary! I discovered this when I woke up late because the power had gone out and my alarm didn't go off...so, after much pondering about how much I rely on this amazing phenomenon of moving electrons, here are the things that can't happen in Becca's house/life when the power is out:

1) Waking up! No alarm clock, no wakey-wakey...
2) Showers! Water pump and water heater are both electric...so I'd be very dirty...
3) Eating! No refrigerator, no microwave, no stove...hmm...that leaves dry cereal and cold stuff out of cans and PB&J...
4) Staying warm! All my heat is electric baseboard heating. And I don't have a fireplace. So without electricity, I would freeze...
5) Driving anywhere! Not only does my car use electricity to start, I also can't get out of my garage without the electric garage door opener. At least I haven't figured out how to do it another way...
6) Entertainment! For the most part, I'm usually only at home when it's dark out. So there's only so much that one can do by oneself by candlelight to keep oneself busy...no wonder Laura Ingalls Wilder went to bed so early! :)

I don't realize how dependent I am on electricity for so many things in my life until I suddenly see what my life would be like without it. In the same way, I also can't help but think about how much more completely and utterly dependent I am on God. And sometimes I forget. Sometimes it takes a time when I see what my life would really look like without Him to appreciate and fully grasp how much He sustains me, how much I need Him! "I need Thee every hour, most gracious Lord..."

For all you linguists and culturally-interested people...

My mom sent me this one, and I just about fell out of my chair I was laughing so hard! Maybe it's only funny for people who speak Portuguese, or who have been to the Northeast of Brazil (the Brazilian equivalent of "the South"), or who have ever been in places where people try to spell out English words the way they sound to them, but I couldn't resist...

VOCÊ SABE O QUE É TAPOÉ ????? ("Do you know what a tapoé is?" - pronounced as 3 syllables, with the emphasis on the third and the "t" at the beginning sounding more like a soft "d." In Portuguese, it sounds kinda like the name of an animal, or an exotic tropical fruit, or maybe like it could be some character from folklore like the Saci-Pererê, a one-legged black man who lives in a whirlwind.)
ALGUM DIA VOCÊ JÁ VIU UM TAPOÉ???? ("Have you ever seen a tapoé?")
OU SERÁ QUE SUA MÃE SEMPRE ESCONDEU O TAPOÉ DE VOCÊ???? ("Or has your mom always hidden the tapoé from you?")

SEGUE A FOTO DE UM LEGÍTIMO TAPOÉ. ("Here is a picture of an authentic tapoé.")


Get it? It's Tupperware!!!!!!!!! Hahahahahahaha......

Fine, roll your eyes. I think it's hilarious. You only wish you spoke Portuguese like me...

Have you ever had one of those days when everything seems to go by in slow motion? Well, today was one of those days. I woke up feeling like I'd been hit by a Mack truck - body aches, fever, sore throat, sinus pressure, the whole shabang...So I called in sick and tried to go back to sleep, but I just tossed and turned. Finally, I decided it was useless to try anymore, and I got up, showered, took some Day Quil, and trucked off to work. I feel like I've been blundering around in a hazy daze, taking longer than usual to do everything, having to have everyone repeat things to me because I forget them...And I really miss being able to breathe through my nose...

Have you ever stopped to think about how amazing it is that our bodies work the way they do? For example, all the sugar and protein and hormone levels in my blood are kept in balance by an amazingly complex system that takes whole textbooks to explain. And, if that system stopped working properly for some reason, it would take a whole medical team on 24-7 rotations, with meds and needles and machines, to make up for it. Like Karis, who has ports and catheters and lines jabbed into her body in 12 different places to handle all of it:
This week, she just started being able to eat again! WOOHOO!!! Orange popsicles and chocolate pudding and ice cream. :) Man, I would miss food...salad, rice and beans, chicken parmesan, extra sharp cheddar cheese...

Right now, if I want to pop on over to the Proctor Station just down the hall for something to munch on, all I have to do is stand up and walk my little body over there. It just takes a few seconds. This is what it takes for Karis to go for a spin down the hall (no food involved):

It takes about an hour just to get her transferred over to the wheel chair!

How blessed I am indeed. And so very little of it has to do with me. Lord, how can I ever be grateful enough for the depths of Your grace?

For once, I wish I had TV channels...Usually, the thought of most television shows just makes me cringe, and I don't want my life to revolve around what my Grandma so fondly refers to as "the boob tube." But for this week, I'd gladly give up all my scrupulous arguments about TV to be able to watch the Olympics. Specifically the figure skating. :) Looking at the pictures online afterwards just doesn't cut it...sigh...anyone want to record them for me?????? I would love you forever! I was trying to figure out whether Netflix would put DVD's of the Olympics in my queue if I asked them to...right above the Godfather...but, somehow, I don't think they'd do it. Bummer!

Food for thought...

From the pen of Nick Spencer, from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity:

Art should illuminate. And cartoons, as valid an art form as any other, should help us to see ourselves and our world more clearly, exposing faults, parading idiosyncrasies, mocking pretensions.

Regrettably, our response to such illuminations often sheds more light than the illustrations themselves. Such is the case with the reaction to the satirical images of the prophet Muhammad published in various European newspapers over recent months.

It has shown, among other things, how there exists a silent hierarchy of religious sensitivity in Britain. Christian offence at Jerry Springer – The Opera or Gilbert and George’s Sonofagod exhibition (to name but two) is clearly not as important as the potential Muslim reaction to a cartoon of Muhammad.

It has shown how, for some Muslims in the UK, an insult to Islam greatly outweighs the moral and legal framework in which they live, justifying open incitement to violence and murder.

And it has shown how wide is the gap that separates what we might loosely call the religious mentality of the ‘Rest’, which believes that some things should remain beyond ridicule, and the secular one of the ‘West’ that claims that nothing is.

Different as these three matters are, they all point towards one key question: what (if anything) is of ultimate value to us? What (if anything) is sacred?

Our answer to this question will dictate those to the many others that cluster around it: Is there a limit to artistic freedom? Does freedom necessarily involve the freedom to offend? Is religious or national identity more important? Is anything beyond ridicule?

A very good point, Mr. Spencer. Is it unreasonable to expect all use of freedom to also be tempered by respect? Is it my right to infringe on other people's rights?

A week of surprises!

Surprise #1: I finally got to meet my dairy farmer neighbours. When I had to trudge over there and ask for help pushing my car out of the snow bank off the end of my driveway on Tuesday morning on my way to work. :) His name is Dan Smith, and he's a downright pleasant guy, not to mention wonderfully helpful when one's car is stuck in the snow. When I introduced myself, he said, "Oh, I have a daughter named Becca!" Maybe I'll just have to invite their family over for dinner sometime, as a thank you, and so I can meet his daughter Becca. :)

Surprise #2: When I got home from work on Tuesday, already sore from digging and pushing my car out of the snow earlier, I wasn't looking forward to having to shovel the other foot of snow off my driveway that accumulated while I was at work. But then I got home to a CLEAR DRIVEWAY! Someone with a generous heart and a plow on the front of their truck had removed all the snow from my long driveway. HOORAY!!! :)

Surprise #3: Yesterday, I got a surprise visit in my office from my Aunt Paula and Uncle Steve, who moved to Florida not too long ago! They used to live in Andover, about 45 minutes away from Houghton (just south of Wellsville), and they were on their way back through here in the North for visits, doctor's appointments, and a little bit of business, so they decided to stop by and see me at work while they were in the neighborhood. What a wonderful surprise! To catch up with people who you love but haven't seen in a long time. :)

Surprise #4: My cousin Alyson (Uncle Steve & Aunt Paula's daughter) and her husband Jon are pregnant with kid #4! Let's just say it was a surprise. :)

Surprise #5: (Well, this one isn't really a surprise. It's a given. But it makes all these surprises possible, along with all the other amazing things that go on around us every day that we take for granted but are, in fact, truly miracles of God's grace.) God is awesome! And wonderful, and immeasurable, and beautiful, and gracious, and compassionate, and loving, and...humble enough to shrink Himself down into a size that we can see and feel, through the world and people around us, so that we can know His love for us even though it surpasses knowledge, and so that we can love Him back.

Interesting in Exodus...

So, our church is reading through the Bible in one year together this year, and even though I've read through it many, many times before, it never ceases to amaze me how many things I stumble across that I've somehow never noticed before! Do you ever do that?

This week's musings and delvings were kicked off by something Pastor Jon mentioned in his sermon on Sunday, about the ways in which God works to bring His people freedom. Jumping off from the plagues, he talked about how His deliverance often comes in stages, not all at once, and His plan is mysterious and even confusing until it is fully completed. And he used as an example the crossing of the Red Sea, in which Moses prays and raises his staff as the Egyptians close in on them, and...the wind blows? That's God's deliverance? Exodus 14: 21 says that the wind blew all that night. Maybe it's because I've seen Cecil B. DeMille's Ten Commandments too many times, but I'd always pictured the parting of the sea as a pretty instantaneous occurrence. Moses raises his staff and prays, and BAM! there is a dry path through the sea. But it wasn't like that. It took the wind blowing all night. And even with the pillar of fire between them and the Egyptians, that must have been a pretty confusing, frightening, and sleepless night for the Israelites, wondering what the heck kind of help wind was going to be against Pharaoh's chariots! It was still miraculous, mind you, but I'm sure the people must have been thinking, "Hurry up, already!" as they waited on pins and needles with the Egyptians breathing down their necks. And yet when morning came, that long night of waiting became clearly worth it, as there was singing and dancing and worship for the Lord who works deliverance through blowing wind.

So, still thinking about the often slow and mysterious ways in which God works, I came across that same theme later in Exodus, as God is addressing His people from Mount Sinai. After giving them the Ten Commandments, telling them how to live in love and justice with each other, teaching them about the festivals they are to keep, He promises to drive out the Hittites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Amorites, and Hivites from the land that will be theirs. But then He adds, "But I will not do this all in one year because the land would become a wilderness, and the wild animals would become too many to control. I will drive them out a little at a time until your population has increased enough to fill the land." Hmmm...not exactly what they were expecting, I'd imagine. In other words, "I will work My promises slowly, so that you can keep up, so that when the time comes for the fullness of My work, you will be have grown enough to handle it." Wow. I had honestly never caught that before. Yet another reminder that His ways are higher than mine, that things will come about in His time regardless of how much I fret. "Be still, my child! You can trust me!"

Thank you, Rachel!!!!

Today, I just got a new book in the mail, at the suggestion of my wonderful friend Rachel, who is beautiful, and whose heart is even more beautiful: Between Heaven and Earth. Yes, I'm in the middle of my workday, but when a package comes in the mail run with my name on it, and I KNOW that it's the book I just ordered, it's hard not to rip it open and take a peek right away anyways. It's a compilation of prayers and people's musings about prayer, and even in my random flipping through its pages, it has already blessed my socks off! Here's a tidbit:

Why do we pray?

For reassurance, sometimes, because it's an uncertain world and each of us needs our spirit bolstered from time to time. For guidance, sometimes, because it's an uncharted way we travel, and we need all the direction we can get. For help, other times, because the way is long and almost always uphill and sometimes perilous.

We pray for our daily bread and our yearly physical. We pray when we wake up in the morning and when we go to bed at night. We pray when we're confused. Or lonely. Or sad. We pray when we're happy, too. And when we're grateful. Grateful for seeing a hummingbird up close or a double-rainbow off in the distance. Grateful for a good friend who was there when we needed someone to listen...or there when we needed someone to speak. We pray for reasons as slight as a sudden feeling of appreciation for a cloud that shades us from the sun to one as serious as a lingering sense of abandonment in the face of some personal tragedy.

Partly, though, at least, we pray to find the part of us that is missing. Like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle that draws attention to itself by its absence. Like the empty space on a wall that calls out to be filled with a picture or a piece of furniture. Like the bare spot in a lawn that yearns for grass. Prayer is a cry from the bare spot in our lives, from the empty space, from the part of us that is missing. It is the wounded part seeking to be healed, the missing part seeking to be found, the now-dry clay of the sculpture seeking the hands that first touched it, first caressed it, first loved it.

Somehow, I think that's exactly why I pray. And it seems to make "praying without ceasing" a little less daunting of a task. :) Thanks for the book suggestion, Rach!

So, the Superbowl is coming up this weekend,
and I just have one question for you, a question that I have been asking for a loooooong time:

Why do they call it football?

I mean, the ball is actually in contact with someone's foot for maybe 1% of the game. Which makes it only slightly more of a foot sport than basketball, in which the only involvement the feet have is running around. The hands have more involvement in soccer (the real "football") than the feet do in American football, even if you don't count the goalie, because of how many throw-ins there are in a game. Who comes up with these silly ideas, anyways?

Every week at youth group, I have a blast. We play amazingly fun games, and sometimes I can't believe how few of the kids already knew them. For example, last night we played Fruit Basket Upset (which Pastor Don re-named Demolition Fruit Basket to add the full-contact element...), and only about 5 of the 30-something teenagers there had ever heard of it before! Can you believe it? (If YOU don't know how to play Fruit Basket, MY mouth is gaping at you right now, like a fish, in disbelief and shock.) We also played a modified version of Speed Scrabble/Take Two - my favourite game of ALL TIME - except with giant Scrabble letters, making a crossword puzzle on the floor, and whenever a team yelled out "Take one!" they had to send someone running across the room to get a letter out of the pile. TONS of fun. Except for when they started getting frustrated that they couldn't think of words to use - I guess that's what I take for granted from having grown up in a home where reading and talking and playing games gave me a HUGE vocabulary. Among many other things.

But every week at youth group, my heart also breaks. It breaks because so many of these kids don't have so many of those things that I have taken for granted. Like 2 parents who love each other, who desire to know and love and follow God, who love me and want me to live in Christ. (Not to mention siblings and grandparents and aunts, uncles, and cousins who do, too.) Like encouragement from friends and teachers to do well in school and in life. Like food to eat every day, and no shortage of clothes to wear (and that I LIKE to wear), and having no relatives in jail, and a million other things. And when the kids in youth group drive me crazy with their antics, it helps to remember that a lot of the reason for their behaviour is that it's a cover-up for all the ways in which they feel exposed and helpless and vulnerable and shafted and hurt. So many of the kids I work with every week don't have the things I used to take for granted. Some of them are so starved for attention that they would rather act out and get reprimanded than risk being a wallflower, being ignored. Some of them have families that don't care a snit about what they do with their lives, and others have families that are working so hard to make ends meet that they don't have any time left to be involved in their kids' lives at all. It reminds me every week of how much I have to be grateful for, how little of it has to do with any merit or effort of mine, and how much I am called to share the blessings that have been so lavishly bestowed upon me.