stairwell accompaniment:Radiohead-Kid A

eat.work.josh.sleep.school.wash.rinse.repeat.

run.laugh.read.travel.wash.rinse.repeat.

We're taking a class together on Global Poverty. I find it enlightening to be students together. My husband the perfectionist. And the valedictorian. And I, the sponge. Albeit the competitive sponge. The material is fascinating and depressing and encouraging and heavy. So we're reading and thinking and discussing. We're forced to write more and we're still thinking big. Beginning with the small things and planning for the large.

We've booked another international flight. Traveling to commune with friends and new worlds and inviting adventure. Unfamiliar words, beautifully foreign faces, familiar challenges. Our shoulders aching from fresh immunizations against various diseases with no promise that we won't be infected with the desire to stay. At the very least, to return. And I've renewed my passport to link me internationally with my husband. Or, I suppose, anyone else who had the most common last name in the world.

I'm spending these days with laboring women, laughing families and hopeful expectation. I am finding joy in this continually.

This week we have spend countless hours visiting with friends. Listening to their lives, laughing at their stories, holding their babies. Offering our words, or more often still, our ears. Sharing our joys and dreams and collecting theirs the same.

ready for warmer weather. and sustained sunshine.

This week, once again, I toast to my God who doesn't tell me to have it all together. dry up all my tears. talk right. sit up straight. act your age. He doesn't require me to abandon my occasional antisocial tendencies. my small delights. my procrastination. my weird humor. my sentimentalism. He sees my mistakes. my scraped knees. my typos. my insides. my past. present. future.
He's a God who saves discipline for disobedience and not just falling short. I fall short every day. hour. minute. second. He delights in me. He. delights. in. me.

Cheers and hot tea.