Phone Conversations

"Good Morning - Christian Stewardship Ministries"

"Ummm....Do I have the wrong number?"

"Well, were you calling Christian Stewardship Ministries?"

"No."

"Then you have the wrong number"



I have nothing......

The Little Boy Next Door

The office next to mine is a group of young adults who work with not only high school age kids, but middle school kids as well - so you can imagine their energy level! They are a great group of people but to say that the energy level in their office is different from the energy level in our office is a gross understatement!

Often times, one of the girls brings here little boy with her. He is probably about 2 years old. He is a very busy little boy, as most 2 year olds are. Today he had a whistle.

That's all I'm going to say.

It all seemed like a good idea....

We decided to take a day trip today to a little town in Maryland named Hurlock. Why Hurlock? My mother's maiden name is Hurlock and well - it just seemed like a great place to visit and there might be some family connection there etc. It actually turned out to be further away than I thought - but it was a beautiful day outside and we thought it would be fun. Turns out that was wrong.




I of course brought my camera along - to take all the great pictures of this historical little town. So I got a picture of the welcome sign...... and the water tower. That's it. There wasn't anything else. I mean it. We couldn't find a park, a quaint little cafe, or any historical signs - or even the pickle factory! Seriously!

I was really a little disappointed - I had this built up into a story about us walking on the streets of downtown Hurlock and meeting someone who turned out to be the long lost great uncle of mine.....but no.

All I got was a lot of traffic, a lunch at Applebees down the road - and a lot of windshield time. Oh well - it seemed like a good idea.

Fractals

A new word for me - Fractal.

What is a fractal? A fractal, in mathematics, is a geometric shape that is complex and detailed in structure at any level of magnification. Fractals are an outcropping of the mathematics of chaos which relates to random behavior occurring in a deterministic system such as the Laws of Nature.



I'm reading The Shack and in that book was where I first encountered this term.
Papa says to Mackenzie "My purposes are always and only an expression of love. I purpose to work life out of death, to bring freedom out of brokenness and turn darkness into light. What you see as chaos, I see as a fractal."



Mac was in a garden with Sarayu earlier and it was, as he described it, chaos in color. Sarayu explains the garden like this: something considered simple and orderly that is actually composed of repeated patterns no matter how magnified.




There is really something to this - a fractal. I know that I don't begin to see things as God does - not even close. What I see as chaos, God sees as perfect order - according to His plan.

I want to know more.

I take it all back

From my previous post about traffic and bad drivers and people who honk, you'd think that the people around here don't have any hearts at all. I've posted about this before, but it happened again this afternoon and my faith in the DC drivers has been renewed. I'm heading home - 6 lanes of traffic....and everyone is stopped. There are 6 Canadian geese walking across the highway. And I mean walking. More like sauntering. They are sight-seeing. Taking their own sweet goose time. And they are not fearful. They are not intimidated. They are walking. To the other side of the road. And all the cars are at a stop. Nobody - and I mean nobody - is trying to hurry them along. Nobody is edging up close to them with their bumpers. In fact, when I looked to my left, I saw drivers smiling. When I looked to my right, I saw drivers chuckeling. They just let them cross the road and just maybe it took the edge off of a lot of people. I know it worked for me. And the beauty of it all? The only honking came from.... you guessed it.... the geese. :)

The three mile commute

It's only three miles from our house to my work. Three little miles. By city standards, that is a walk in the park. A piece of cake. No big deal. I am amazed by how that little three mile commute can turn so ugly. I am quickly turning into "one of them" I'm afraid. There are a lot of people out there driving who should not be behind the wheel and it is becoming easier and easier to get "wired up" from my little drive to and from work.

Honestly - by the time I get home from work at night, my blood pressure is high. I'm sure of it. I'd love to be hooked up from the moment I exit my parking lot until I pull into the driveway. I'll bet it rises significantly with each turn of the wheel.

The other issue that scares me is that it's becoming clear to me that whenever I'm honked at, there is a strange false sense of bravery that comes over me. Friday on my way home I got honked at because there was a green light in front of me - but the thing was, I couldn't move because there was a red light up ahead and there was a long line of cars and nobody was moving. I couldn't move. When the guy honked at me, I really felt like I could get out of my car and go back and smack him. That would be the false sense of bravery kicking in. In actuality, it really is a sense of stupidity - but sometimes those two things are easily mistaken for each other.

I find myself now hurrying wherever I go - even if I don't have a deadline. We went to the baseball game last night. The game wasn't until 7:30 and we left our house at 5:00. We took the Metro and it really does take about an hour and a half by the time you change trains etc. etc. etc. - but we still had plenty of time. Even so, I was hurrying through the crowds of people, wishing people would walk faster and wondering why the next train was taking so long.

This city is just doing me in - I'm becoming "one of them" and it is scaring me. I'm from Kansas - I have ALWAYS lived in a small town and this is crazy. I need to remember my roots - and stay in my car when I'm honked at.